Impact on the Franchise

[F. King Daniel]

Because with an alternate universe branching off in 2233 they've got all of Star Trek's universe and history to draw from should they wish, while not having to slavishly adhere to it.

IMO, having the entirety of Trek as a prequel (both Enterprise before and the alternate future of TNG/DS9/VOY) is awesome. What did Spock do before Romulus blew up? Watch "Unification". Who's that Archer guy? Watch Enterprise. What would Kirk have been like if his father didn't die? Watch TOS or the old movies. STXI manages to be a new beginning while still being a part of something much bigger.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Yes i understand that. I am still puzzled by it. I dont know maybe some were so hungry for new Trek, that they excused the same things that were criticized for Nemesis and Enterprise.

That's a poor assumption.

Most people who saw Nemesis and Enterprise didn't criticize them at all, much less for the nitpicky things that we critique on message boards. The fact is just that not enough people found that movie and that TV series entertaining enough to support them.

More people enjoyed JJTrek than Nemesis or Enterprise - and that's the only reason that these things exist.

It's not a matter of "excusing" anything, it's a matter of not caring about little things if a piece of entertainment actually, you know, entertains you.

If people have enough fun watching the next one, they won't criticize it for the trivia that Trek fans like to fuss over on message boards either. Worry about "continuity" or the recasting? Most people didn't, and most people won't.

 

[Dar70]

Yes i understand that. I am still puzzled by it. I dont know maybe some were so hungry for new Trek, that they excused the same things that were criticized for Nemesis and Enterprise.

That's a poor assumption.

Most people who saw Nemesis and Enterprise didn't criticize them at all, much less for the nitpicky things that we critique on message boards. The fact is just that not enough people found that movie and that TV series entertaining enough to support them.

More people enjoyed JJTrek than Nemesis or Enterprise - and that's the only reason that these things exist.

It's not a matter of "excusing" anything, it's a matter of not caring about little things if a piece of entertainment actually, you know, entertains you.

If people have enough fun watching the next one, they won't criticize it for the trivia that Trek fans like to fuss over on message boards either. Worry about "continuity" or the recasting? Most people didn't, and most people won't.

I was actually talking about Trek fans. Not the general audience who didnt care for Trek all that much to start with. Yes for them it was a starting point and they really didnt have to know much about trek history so they went to see this and not Nemesis and Enterprise. Maybe Im wrong though maybe the Trek fans who hated Nemesis and Enterprise hate this also. Maybe that group was smaller than I had previously thought. Maybe the majority of Trek fans who like ST9 liked Nemesis and Enterprise.

 

[BillJ]

There's only one Star Trek property, one "franchise." If this movie had been unsuccessful, that would have been pretty much the end of it.

Don't they say this everytime a Trek project fails?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I was actually talking about Trek fans. Not the general audience who didnt care for Trek all that much to start with. Yes for them it was a starting point and they really didnt have to know much about trek history so they went to see this and not Nemesis and Enterprise.

Except that more than a couple of folks in that "general audience" have watched Trek on TV and have seen Trek movies before; they simply weren't showing up in the last years of oldTrek when the whole Franchise was dwindling down to the hard core. It's not like the audience is neatly divided between "people who care about Trek" and "people who know nothing about it but just saw an ad for a movie."

Maybe the majority of Trek fans who like ST9 liked Nemesis and Enterprise.

The "majority of Trek fans," shockingly enough, don't criticize it much and don't nitpick it - just like the majority of fans of anything simply enjoy it.

 

[Agenda]

They should have done an acutal reboot than instead of the ridiculous shoehorn that we got. I would have gone for that much more than this.

That's all personal preference stuff. Regardless of if it was a reboot, alternate reality, etc., obviously had little to no negative effect on the end result. A film with an 80-90% approval rating from Trek fans and general public, the most successful Trek installment in history, etc.

Yes i understand that. I am still puzzled by it. I dont know maybe some were so hungry for new Trek, that they excused the same things that were criticized for Nemesis and Enterprise. Maybe people wont be so forgivable with the next film.

Still I think it would have either been smart to start the whole thing fresh. No worry about continuity, no major suspension of disbelief when it comes to the look of the actors. I dont see why that approach lost out to a pocket universe.

First, it's an alternate universe. I'm not sure where this pocket stuff is coming from. Second, if they had done a full reboot, you'd have haters coming out of the woodwork complaining that Abrams was throwing 50 years of continuity away.

 

[Satyrquaze]

I loved the new Trek and it did for the franchise what the last 3 films combined couldn't.

 

[Dar70]

That's all personal preference stuff. Regardless of if it was a reboot, alternate reality, etc., obviously had little to no negative effect on the end result. A film with an 80-90% approval rating from Trek fans and general public, the most successful Trek installment in history, etc.

Yes i understand that. I am still puzzled by it. I dont know maybe some were so hungry for new Trek, that they excused the same things that were criticized for Nemesis and Enterprise. Maybe people wont be so forgivable with the next film.

Still I think it would have either been smart to start the whole thing fresh. No worry about continuity, no major suspension of disbelief when it comes to the look of the actors. I dont see why that approach lost out to a pocket universe.

First, it's an alternate universe. I'm not sure where this pocket stuff is coming from. Second, if they had done a full reboot, you'd have haters coming out of the woodwork complaining that Abrams was throwing 50 years of continuity away.

Well its an offshot of the prime universe. I just use the Pocket Universe term since it originated from the prime universe and never existed before the Narada incident. A pocket universe is artificially created and within the bounds of another universe.(according to wiki anyways.)So I figure its the closest term to use. Though I doubt its within the bounds of the prime universe. When the movie says otherwise for sure anyways I will use something else.

I first thought the movie was an altered (not alternate) universe. The prime Universe just changed, of course that wasnt the case. So Im just going with Pocket for now.

 

[Skellington]

Would you say that JJ's movie has had a positive effect on the franchise in that it will attract substantially more fans, or is the move to a more generic action movie format alienated older fans, and just attracted a set of fickle ADHD generation ones that will leave once Sucker Punch is out?

Excellent point. I have to say that the second choice appears more likely, unless and until the sequel draws a general movie-going audience into what Star Trek is all about.;

 

[Temis the Vorta]

JJ's movie and what he does in the future IS Star Trek now. So that makes it good for the "franchise." It's this or nothing.

They should have done an acutal reboot than instead of the ridiculous shoehorn that we got.

It might not have done any worse but there's no reason to believe it would have done any better. JJ wanted to do Star Trek his own way. If he hadn't been driving it, Paramount would never have bothered. By definition, the Star Trek that exists is the Star Trek Abrams wanted to do. It wasn't going to happen any other way.

Second, if they had done a full reboot, you'd have haters coming out of the woodwork complaining that Abrams was throwing 50 years of continuity away.

Pretty much. The haters will find something to hate either way. Abrams shouldn't bother listening to them (but of course I'm sure he doesn't.)

I just use the Pocket Universe term since it originated from the prime universe and never existed before the Narada incident.

We don't know that. It might have existed but had its timeline altered from "what was going to happen" by the interlopers from another reality.

A pocket universe is artificially created and within the bounds of another universe.

There's no reason to believe one reality is "nested" in another. The issue was never discussed. Very little was discussed in the movie on this topic, for a sensible reason: the characters shouldn't know what's going on! The minimal dialogue that did exist was nonsensical because it requires characters to have preternatural knowledge about things that are way beyond their ability to perceive directly or even figure out logically. There could be any number of explanations for what was happening other than "parallel realities" yet that was the one they glommed on immediately.

Why? Because the writers were talking to the audience right then, and their goal was to do their damnedest to get us to realize that the original Trek continuity has not vanished in a puff of smoke, so stop worrying!!! We just have to accept the silliness of it because there's no other way to communicate this information in the context of the movie, and after all, they were only being polite to try to set our minds at ease. They could have just had the characters say nothing and let us all wonder.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I disagree that they "shouldn't know". Because of Nero's advanced technology and black hole weapon (they don't yet know about Spock Prime's involvement), Spock suggests that Nero's from the future (and in Trek we've seen hundreds of similar wormholes, singularities and vortexes that move people through time, so it's not a huge leap). Kirk suggests they do something unpredictable to throw off Nero's future knowledge. Spock says Nero's future knowledge is useless, has been since he arrived and altered history beginning with the attack on the Kelvin 25 years ago, and that as a result their destinies have all changed - hence "alternate reality". It's not something they "shouldn't know", it's something they reason out based on available evidence.

 

[Jeyl]

I disagree that they "shouldn't know". Because of Nero's advanced technology and black hole weapon (they don't yet know about Spock Prime's involvement), Spock suggests that Nero's from the future (and in Trek we've seen hundreds of similar wormholes, singularities and vortexes that move people through time, so it's not a huge leap). Kirk suggests they do something unpredictable to throw off Nero's future knowledge. Spock says Nero's future knowledge is useless, has been since he arrived and altered history beginning with the attack on the Kelvin 25 years ago, and that as a result their destinies have all changed - hence "alternate reality". It's not something they "shouldn't know", it's something they reason out based on available evidence.

But how exactly does that figure into "alternate reality" instead of "altered time line"? What evidence was there to suggest that Nero was even from an alternate reality?

We've seen many time traveling stories in Star Trek to know that if you travel back in time, anything you change will affect the present as demonstrated in "City on the Edge of Forever", "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "Star Trek: First Contact". Heck, Deep Space Nine established that the Federation had a whole division called Temporal Investigations dedicated to figuring out what changes in the time line could have occurred should anyone travel back in time.

I'm kind of surprised that so many fans have jumped on to this band wagon explanation that if you travel back in time that it also involves traveling into an alternate reality where everything you do has no effect on where you came from originally, despite 40 years of Star Trek stories that say differently. And as I've earlier, there's no evidence in Trek09 to support that theory. They just pulled it out of their a%@ like previous trek writers pull technobabble antics. The difference here is that technobabble actually plays a part in the story. Does the concept of being in an alternate reality have any meaningful purpose to the story? Nope. None at all. It's not even brought up again. So really, what was the point?

 

[JarodRussell]

Regarding this franchise terminology. Let's assume all McDonald's restaurants around the world go incredibly bad. Less and less customers.

One new restaurant opens, and only that one goes incredibly well for whatever reasons. Does that save the franchise?

Or they introduce a new burger, and only that sells like Awesomestuff. Still, all the other burgers are not bought. Does that save the franchise?



What significant impact did Star Trek 2009 have on the sales figures of DVDs, books and other merchandise of the other parts of the franchise?

 

[Vance]

Tough call. Fans, of course, will say that it 'saved the franchise', but it's debatable. It was a hit movie, to be sure, but the influence of NuTrek didn't effect much outside of it. There were no sales spikes that weren't already being attributed to TOS-R and BluRay releases. Sales of merchandise (such as novels, comics, etc.) either remained stagnant or continued its slow decline. There are no plans for new series, etc.

It can be said, however, that "Star Trek" itself isn't sales poison, as some at Paramount had believed. Unfortunately the line of thinking hasn't extended to anything else beyond the next movie, which still isn't even 'green' yet.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Whether the alternate reality erased the original timeline from existance or not is ultimately up to the viewer. There is no proof in the movie to say otherwise, beyond Spock Prime's somewhat cryptic "I inferred that universe ending paradoxes may ensue" - which his younger self recognizes as a lie.

Most fans are happy to jump on the alternate universe bandwagon simply because it's a film and TV show which has already depicted tine travel in several contradictory and often nonsensical manners in the past. Compared to stuff like "Storm Front", where a time war is launched from an alternate WWII that's created as a result of that same war which hasn't starteted yet, "guy goes back and changes things" is as simple as it gets.

For all we know, all the alternate universes from TNG "Parallels" are products of time travel. Maybe the Borgified Earth from "First Contact" and the universe of "Yesterday's Enterpise" persist elsewhere in the multiverse too. Maybe not. IMO the mystery adds something.

 

[Vance]

JJ's movie and what he does in the future IS Star Trek now. So that makes it good for the "franchise." It's this or nothing.

That's actually not remotely true. Once NuTrek runs its course (three movies) there will be another period of downtime, then someone else will step in with their own 'reboot' idea and it starts all over again. And, even this time, if it hadn't been JJ Abrams, it could have been someone else, like Joss Whedon, or (god forbid) Micheal Bay.

It is not, and never has been, 'this or nothing'.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Tough call. Fans, of course, will say that it 'saved the franchise', but it's debatable. It was a hit movie, to be sure, but the influence of NuTrek didn't effect much outside of it. There were no sales spikes that weren't already being attributed to TOS-R and BluRay releases. Sales of merchandise (such as novels, comics, etc.) either remained stagnant or continued its slow decline. There are no plans for new series, etc.

The novelization of STXI was on the New York Times bestseller list. Four sequel novels were written, but cancelled due to a dispute with Bad Robot - you can't cash in on a hit movie unless the studio actually allows you to. The Trek comics are doing poorly, but the STXI-related ones (Countdown, Nero and Spock Reflections) are far outselling the "old Trek" ones. The toy line failed. DVD sales spiked.

Most of all, Paramount made a fortune from STXI's cinema and DVD releases. That's all that's really important.

A new TV series was never considered.

 

[Vance]

The novelization of STXI was on the New York Times bestseller list. Four sequel novels were written, but cancelled due to a dispute with Bad Robot - you can't cash in on a hit movie unless the studio actually allows you to. The Trek comics are doing poorly, but the STXI-related ones (Countdown, Nero and Spock Reflections) are far outselling the "old Trek" ones. The toy line failed. DVD sales spiked.

What you're saying is that 'everything else but the movie is failing' (and there are caveats with which you're skirting here pretty blatantly anyway), which is kinda what was said. The question is not how did the movie do, but what was the overall affect on the franchise.

The answer, right now, appears to be about zero, aside from the movie and its immediate tie-ins themselves.

 

[JarodRussell]

Right, the movie is not the entire franchise. The movie, and everything directly associated with it, sold well (quelle surprise!). What about the rest?


That SyFy does TNG re-runs has nothing to do with Star Trek 2009.

 

[Vance]

Right, the movie is not the entire franchise. The movie, and everything directly associated with it, sold well (quelle surprise!). What about the rest?

Still rating between 'abysmal' and 'bad' still, from the looks of things. And even NuTrek material is way, way off it's prime numbers.

That SyFy does TNG re-runs has nothing to do with Star Trek 2009.

I don't think I can cite SyFy doing anything as having much meaning these days. :P But you do realize that they were airing reruns of TNG-ENT trek well before 2009's movie, right?