Exploring a darker theme in a future star trek series
- Thread starter EmoBorg
- Start date
Changeling, couple of security folks got vapor'ed ...
followed by Kirk's "my son the doctor (killed a couple of my crew)" joke.
How about DS9?
Ziyal gets brutally murdered, next week, the gang is having a zany Klingon wedding!
Odo betrays everyone by siding with the enemy, but magically there are no repercussion. He even gets his old job back - as head of security!
The Federation has been embroiled in a horrible galactic war for years, yet that doesn't stop the entire senior staff from becoming obsessed with a holosuite baseball tournament. Lucky for them the Dominion didn't choose that time to attack.
And DS9 was the series with continuity.
Ziyal gets brutally murdered, next week, the gang is having a zany Klingon wedding!
Odo betrays everyone by siding with the enemy, but magically there are no repercussion. He even gets his old job back - as head of security!
The Federation has been embroiled in a horrible galactic war for years, yet that doesn't stop the entire senior staff from becoming obsessed with a holosuite baseball tournament. Lucky for them the Dominion didn't choose that time to attack.
And DS9 was the series with continuity.
Well that was really a TNG thing actually.
In the last episode of the first season Crusher said something about people no more being afraid of dieing so yeah, TNG definitely felt sometimes a bit too Asimovian, cold and unemotional, but in the third season when TNG changes significantly it became a bit warmer but also a bit too soapish.
99% of the time though, Trek major actors are always the morally upstanding people fighting the evil corrupt dark people. The one notable exception are Janeway trying to kill that ensign for information.
Even Sisko when he threatened to destroy the biosphere of a planet backed off and it's unclear if he would have gone through with it.
Trek characters are rarely if ever the darker figures. Times have changed, I agree with the OP - audiences demand more complex characters today than in the past.
But wasn't the assassination, ultimately, the moral thing to do? No, Sisko didn't come out of the experience feel warm and fuzzy about himself, however as a consequence of his (and others) action, Sisko's community wasn't destroyed or subjugated. Casualties within his community were lower.
You say that like it's a bad thing. What's wrong with it?
Um, he had just gone through with it not two seconds ago all he backed down from doing was going after the rest of the Maquis colonies after Eddington surrendered which was what he wanted in the first place.
I think you can darker situations and still have a likable cast of main characters. There some things from past Star Trek shows that should be left in the past:
1. The no mourning rule: Death has to mean something in fiction, as it does in real life. Having people not mourn, makes them robot not people. Death has to be something with a real impact, not something that is dismissed right away.
2. No inter personal conflict: People are always going to have different ideas to deal with a problem, having everyone agree all the time makes it seem like Star Fleet promotes group think.
3. No more pat solutions to moral dilemmas. A moral dilemma has to be a tough choice, making the best choice in a situation. Dressing up a black and white situation as a moral dilemma is not going to work anymore.
1. The no mourning rule: Death has to mean something in fiction, as it does in real life. Having people not mourn, makes them robot not people. Death has to be something with a real impact, not something that is dismissed right away.
2. No inter personal conflict: People are always going to have different ideas to deal with a problem, having everyone agree all the time makes it seem like Star Fleet promotes group think.
3. No more pat solutions to moral dilemmas. A moral dilemma has to be a tough choice, making the best choice in a situation. Dressing up a black and white situation as a moral dilemma is not going to work anymore.
I don't disagree with your statement that these 3 things are bad. I just don't see how they apply to past star trek shows?
1. There has never been a "no mourning rule". Death and mourning is often tackled in Star Trek, and often well. I honestly don't know where you got this from.
2. It may be trendy and cool on the internet to talk about how there was no inter personal conflict in Star Trek (especially TNG), but it's not true. There has ALWAYS been conflict between the characters in EVERY Star Trek series. Listening to too many Ron Moore Battlestar Galactica podcasts has somehow magically cemented this as a fact in the minds of people who actually watched the shows and should know better.
3. There are plenty of examples of Star Trek writers taking the easy way out or setting up an obviously one-sided dilemma, but there are also just as many examples of great moral dilemma's played out and payed off throughout the Star Trek canon. Some stories work, some don't. This isn't some chronic problem with Star Trek, it's just the reality of doing a billion episodes heheheh.
I would have to agree. On the whole, the characters in TNG (for example) do seem to get on quite well however. There just dosn't seem to be any real "stupid' people in Star Trek as everyone appears to be on the same page. However, that's most likely caused be the writers trying to get to the crux of the story. Any one being "individual" would just slow down an otherwise pretty good plot. I've often wondered though how I would go in such an era. I really don't think I'd fit into a society where everyone seems to have their correct place in the overall scheme of things.
On the subject of moral dilemmas, there are plenty and I suppose these are designed to explore how such dilemmas could be overcome. Time and again I often feel that Kirk and to some extent Picard can often be a bit too "human" and that that attribute is far too often overlaid upon an otherwise alien civilisation. Episodes abound where "our rules" and "morals" are almost forced upon an alien culture that otherwise would have a completely differing set of social moral attitudes.
Dr.Crusher can be rather annoying with regards this, as can Captain Picard. In the series we are the ones who always seem to have the right answers, the right way of looking at....., well, anything. It would be nice for an alien culture to (just once) show us the apparent error of our ways rather than the other way around.
I guess it's just the frame of reference we have. That is we just inherently think we as a species will always have it all figured out correctly.
On the subject of moral dilemmas, there are plenty and I suppose these are designed to explore how such dilemmas could be overcome. Time and again I often feel that Kirk and to some extent Picard can often be a bit too "human" and that that attribute is far too often overlaid upon an otherwise alien civilisation. Episodes abound where "our rules" and "morals" are almost forced upon an alien culture that otherwise would have a completely differing set of social moral attitudes.
Dr.Crusher can be rather annoying with regards this, as can Captain Picard. In the series we are the ones who always seem to have the right answers, the right way of looking at....., well, anything. It would be nice for an alien culture to (just once) show us the apparent error of our ways rather than the other way around.
I guess it's just the frame of reference we have. That is we just inherently think we as a species will always have it all figured out correctly.
A good ST series will have its share of "dark" episodes as a natural outgrowth of the characters, setting, etc - along with light-hearted and humorous material to balance it out. TOS and TNG had this, but I think DS9 did the best job of any ST series in balancing the dark and light stuff without getting too far into either.
I don't really think it works to compare ST to BSG as they are vastly different shows that really have nothing in common other than being set in space. BSG was dark just because of the basic premise of the show.
Don't worry about making a "dark" or "optimistic" or "dramatic" or "gritty" ST show - just worry about making a good show and let the other adjectives fall where they may.
I don't really think it works to compare ST to BSG as they are vastly different shows that really have nothing in common other than being set in space. BSG was dark just because of the basic premise of the show.
Don't worry about making a "dark" or "optimistic" or "dramatic" or "gritty" ST show - just worry about making a good show and let the other adjectives fall where they may.
The next Star Trek series will be just as dark as its venue requires. On Netflix or TNT, not so dark. On Cartoon Network - an animated series that is dark by kid's standards, but not by grownups. On Showtime - dark enough to be perceived as consistent with their lineup (Dexter, Homeland), so pretty dark. On Starz (which just announced a space war series), very dark, violent and sexy.
Quality is a different issue. You can have a good, dark show or a good, light show. Obviously, nobody intentionally creates a crappy show, but the pressures to make something high quality will be strongest on Showtime, less strong on TNT, and as for Starz, I'm not at all sure they care.
Another big unknown factor is the showrunner who is the driving force behind the series (and there will have to be someone driving this project, to overcome CBS's inertia about it). Bryan Fuller would create a distinctly different series than Seth McFarlane.
But everyone can stop worrying about TNG - the TV ecosystem that supported that kind of space opera series is long since defunct. There will never be a Star Trek series like that again.
Quality is a different issue. You can have a good, dark show or a good, light show. Obviously, nobody intentionally creates a crappy show, but the pressures to make something high quality will be strongest on Showtime, less strong on TNT, and as for Starz, I'm not at all sure they care.
Another big unknown factor is the showrunner who is the driving force behind the series (and there will have to be someone driving this project, to overcome CBS's inertia about it). Bryan Fuller would create a distinctly different series than Seth McFarlane.
But everyone can stop worrying about TNG - the TV ecosystem that supported that kind of space opera series is long since defunct. There will never be a Star Trek series like that again.
And if true, that right there is a reason to worry.
Not for me - I don't want to see TNG back again. I want to see how the franchise can be shaped to the grownup cable market.
But even for TNG fans, there's no reason to worry because there's no hope left, so why worry? Well, not until the TV business really fragments from niches to micro-niches, in which serving very specific tastes becomes economically viable.
Then you could have a dozen different approaches to Star Trek simultaneously - TOS flavor, TNG flavor, DS9 flavor, JJ Abrams flavor, gritty-adult-drama flavor, cartoon-for-kids flavor, etc. We're still a ways away from that, but who knows what the future holds?
Optimistic and dark are not incompatible. Both TOS and DS9 were essentially optimistic in theme, yet dealt with dark issues. "Dark" is probably the wrong word here. "Honest" is a better way of saying it.
