I think I deciphered what went wrong with new Star Trek. Rushing it to be Ronald D. Moore-esque.

[Sci-fi fan]

Which wasn't a great idea.

Ronald D. Moore is the guy who created the new retcon vision of Battlestar Galactica. It was a great result and almost everyone loved it (apart from the very ending maybe). Problem was that there's one thing trying to retcon older Battlestar Galactica and another trying to retcon older Trek.

Ronald D. Moore said (https://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-08-24/former-star-trek-writer-says-bryan-fuller-will-strangle-all-of-the-possibility-out-of-discovery-in-a-good-way) that new Star Trek would have been great but what people forget is that he was already responsible for working on TNG and he explicitly said "I don’t have any regrets about the [TNG] show. Some of the storytelling we did in Battlestar Galactica, to graft that on to Star Trek it would have required changing the entire format of the show, and really a different taste of the show.". Battlestar Galactica from the 70s was not the slow paced and visionary and hopeful show that Star Trek was so it was fitting to return it to a more mundane at ethics vision of the future (which is basically current year society + new technology). This complete failure to see what Ronald D. Moore saw when he clearly implied "I would not do the retcon of Battlestar Galactica on Star Trek because I did not do it for TNG when I had the chance" (maybe he should have worked on Star Trek again?) shows the lack of intelligence expressed by the new show runners which might explain why it's also not a great Battlestar Galactica-esque show with so much of writing being rushed and only paying lip service to Roddenberry's vision and filled "THE POWER OF MATH PEOPLE!" pat in the writer's backs which makes your skin crawl.

 

[Vger23]

Nothing "went wrong with new Star Trek." It simply doesn't appeal to you.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

paying lip service to Roddenberry's vision

What are you even talking about here? What is Roddenberry's vision? Because in all honesty things that are attributed to Roddenberry's vision, like the very notion of the Federation came from other people. DS9 paid total lip service, if not outright ignored what you would call 'Roddenberry's vision' and it's acclaimed by the fanbase. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you have zero problems with DS9

Why do you think Star trek was dead in the water as a franchise until the Abrams films and Discovery came along?

 

[Sci-fi fan]

What are you even talking about here?

Did you watch the rest of the trek franchise? Paying lip service to his vision is saying that you respect trek's vision of a hopeful future and then showing 90% of humanity being racist bigots that want to let romulans die or even release short trek cartoons for kids that show the enterprise itself automatically killing new alien forms with automatic robotic systems which is at the core of what the enterprise would do in the opposite. Even when some apologists use the 60s to say it was harsher back then that's wrong since the 60s show had a black woman being treated with no racism at all and now many decades later almost everyone is a hateful racist bigot apart from "you the viewer with your love of a protagonist and their little circle of friends and the writer" i.e. patting their backs galore (no wonder they shoehorned "I love science!" lines that make your skin crawl).

 

[F. King Daniel]

 

[Sci-fi fan]

> I have no arguments
> Let's troll
We get it.

 

[Jayson1]

Don't you mean this instead:

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Jason

 

[Agony_Boothb]

Did you watch the rest of the trek franchise? Paying lip service to his vision is saying that you respect trek's vision of a hopeful future and then showing 90% of humanity being racist bigots

Oh you mean the future where Miles o'brien referred to Cardassians as 'spoon-heads', Worf refused to save a romulans life, Archer was bigoted towards Vulcans and threatened violence against T'pol or how B'elanna mentions experiencing a whole ton of bigotry growing up?

Even when some apologists use the 60s to say it was harsher back then that's wrong since the 60s show had a black woman being treated with no racism at all and now many decades later almost everyone is a hateful racist bigot

You know there are a lot of trek fans currently who seem to have an issue with a black woman doing things they would have no issue seeing a man do. I wonder if there is a word for that?

 

[cultcross]

Ronald D Moore was a key creative figure of the Berman era and went on to be a truly excellent TV writer. Trek is already a product of his influence and would be lucky to have him back.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

Ronald D Moore was a key creative figure of the Berman era and went on to be a truly excellent TV writer.

I agree, but his tendency to 'wing it' when it came to story arcs on BSG was something I found really frustrating.

 

[Relayer1]

Ronald D Moore was a key creative figure of the Berman era and went on to be a truly excellent TV writer. Trek is already a product of his influence and would be lucky to have him back.

Sadly, I can "like" this only once...

 

[cultcross]

Also, let's please lay off both the memes and the accusing said memes of being trolling. Thanking you. Not happy with a topic/post? Hit notify mod.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Battlestar Galactica from the 70s was not the slow paced and visionary and hopeful show that Star Trek was

Uh-uh, nope.

First of all, the original BSG was a hopeful show. It began with an apocalyptic event, but then it had mankind searching for Earth and ultimately finding it. Pretty much every episode in between had them make some progress towards finding Earth or having them suss out some clue about it; each episode depicted a situation of people persevering against their hardships. That's basically the definition of hopeful.

You don't need hope, if everything is going just fine, anyway.

As far as how visionary oldBSG was, well "visionary" is a subjective term, but the show was certainly one man's vision of what a space opera should be (Glen Larson's). It cast humanity in terms of a cosmic struggle between good and evil and made the heroes religiously reverent, and that's all arguably visionary.

Lastly, Star Trek (TOS) was not "slow paced."

 

[Spot261]

Did you watch the rest of the trek franchise? Paying lip service to his vision is saying that you respect trek's vision of a hopeful future and then showing 90% of humanity being racist bigots that want to let romulans die or even release short trek cartoons for kids that show the enterprise itself automatically killing new alien forms with automatic robotic systems which is at the core of what the enterprise would do in the opposite. Even when some apologists use the 60s to say it was harsher back then that's wrong since the 60s show had a black woman being treated with no racism at all and now many decades later almost everyone is a hateful racist bigot apart from "you the viewer with your love of a protagonist and their little circle of friends and the writer" i.e. patting their backs galore (no wonder they shoehorned "I love science!" lines that make your skin crawl).

You imagine that "Roddenberry's Vision" was of a future free of racism and bigotry?

Did you watch TOS? Check out good ol' Doc McCoy and his behaviour towards Spock, or how he felt free and easy slapping a pregnant patient. How about Kirk's opinions of Klingons or the way he treated women? You know a fair few of his "seduction" scenes could easily be called rape? Didn't he slap a Princess and tell her he'd put her over his knee and spank her if she didn't cooperate with an arranged marriage?

How about the Scottish engineer called Scotty who loved a dram? No stereotypes there, no sirree...

Short Treks are bite sized and dumbed down for children's attention spans you say? There was a little series called TAS which did exactly the same.

I suspect you are amongst good company in overstating the social awareness of GR and the cultural impact of his creation. As others have pointed out, the Federation wasn't his creation, nor in fact was much of the material in TOS which is pointed to as being "visionary" actually his idea or even things he approved of. TOS was always intended to be a money spinner, nothing more and nothing less. It was an action show which followed the format of a western in a sci fi setting (much as Firefly and others have done more explicitly since).

Those elements have been overplayed and focused on since in a way which is not really representative of the show or the intent behind it. The idea of TOS as a modern day morality play is, frankly, somewhat plastic and doesn't really add up no matter what mythology has built up around it.

 

[fireproof78]

"Roddenberry's vision " varied from series to series. There was always bigotry and violence and human weaknesses.

The point was that humans could choose to be better and work together despite differences.

 

[Relayer1]

And exactly what went wrong with new Star Trek ?

Discovery is good and Picard's shaping up well...

 

[BillJ]

Did you watch the rest of the trek franchise? Paying lip service to his vision is saying that you respect trek's vision of a hopeful future and then showing 90% of humanity being racist bigots that want to let romulans die or even release short trek cartoons for kids that show the enterprise itself automatically killing new alien forms with automatic robotic systems which is at the core of what the enterprise would do in the opposite.

I suggest you watch "The Man Trap" or "Devil in the Dark" or "Arena". Human instinct was still there, we had to learn our way through difficult situations. It wasn't automatic.

Does "Let them die!" ring a bell? The phase cloak that violates the Treaty of Algeron? Working with criminal elements to assassinate a high ranking official from an opposing power? General Order 24?

I mean, despite all appearances, I'm not Discovery's #1 fan. I think the writing is mediocre at best, but Star Trek is simply full of human beings making massive mistakes.

 

[Vger23]

Some people WAAAAAY over-estimate / over-value the "positive future" Trek rhetoric.

I always took it as "we are no longer a bunch of evil savages who mass-murder and war with each other because of differing ideologies or needs for resources" and that the "positive future" is that we didn't destroy ourselves, and somehow managed to get our shit together enough to start exploring space.

It never needed to be "everyone is perfect and nobody argues or has character flaws any longer" for me to feel like Trek portrays a hopeful future.

Everything else is cake.


And dubious cake, at best.

 

[fireproof78]

It never needed to be "everyone is perfect and nobody argues or has character flaws any longer" for me to feel like Trek portrays a hopeful future.

And would be a rather unrealistic future as well. Having the expectation that all human foibles have been "cured" or "evolved past" is a rather limited view. It basically makes where if a human is outside that "perfection" then what? It smacks of "1984" level thought police.

 

[Sci-fi fan]

The only defense most have to my argument is a fallacy. That supposedly the 60s (or 90s) had more racism or bigotry and therefore Roddenberry's vision of a better future is tainted. That's a ludicrously wrong argument for the simple reason that Roddenberry didn't die in the 60s and he envisioned TNG and even if the 60s (or 90s) culture had more racism the intention was still hopeful and at the end of the day and most importantly even if the culture of the 60s (or 90s) had more bigotry the intention of the vision was clearly there since compared to the rest of the culture of the real world at the time it was an extremely improved society.