Yeah, TNG is like TOS, Take Two.
In the 26th century...
- Thread starter Mudd
- Start date
Yep.
As for setting it forward, I'd rather that new show be ballsy and just reboot Kirk and Spock again. You know, multiverse and all. If it works for DC's separate movie and TV universes, it can work for Trek.
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Let's see. TNG is set in the same timeline as TOS, but at a later point. Sounds like a sequel to me. Yes, things changed between TOS and TNG, but that's because it is set 80 years or so later.
In the real world, things are drastically different today compared to 1935 (80 years ago), but that's because things naturally change. It doesn't mean that we're living in a rebooted universe!
It's very simple and there's no need to introduce vague terms like "soft reboot". TNG is a sequel series to TOS.
Mr Awe
Everyone already understands the conceit that TNG is supposed to be in continuity with TOS, so reiterating that point isn't either informative or even interesting anymore.
Yes.
I would have liked a Take Three after Voyager ended. A 26th century on board the 1701-G U.S.S. Enterprise Star Trek television series instead of ENT.
People, can't it be both?
TNG is a re-quel. There.
Love it. A requel it is.
Yes, from a real-world, business and production standpoint, Star Trek: The Next Generation was basically a remake of Star Trek built on '80s sensibilities and the "vision" that Roddenberry had developed well after the original series was over.
The television franchise was re-booted in the sense that it was being started up anew after having been dead since 1969 (similar to how industry writers keep referring to the 2016 X-Files miniseries as a "reboot" even though, in-universe, it is a direct continuation).
TNG's vague in-universe setting as a 80+ years later sequel meant that they weren't obligated to slavishly adhere to every detail of the original, and they could make something totally different that barely had anything to do with Star Trek.
Kor
The television franchise was re-booted in the sense that it was being started up anew after having been dead since 1969 (similar to how industry writers keep referring to the 2016 X-Files miniseries as a "reboot" even though, in-universe, it is a direct continuation).
TNG's vague in-universe setting as a 80+ years later sequel meant that they weren't obligated to slavishly adhere to every detail of the original, and they could make something totally different that barely had anything to do with Star Trek.
Kor
Exactly so.
Over a decade later, long-time producers of Trek on TV - one of whom had been with the Franchise since TNG rebooted it in 1987 - tried to do essentially the same thing in an attempt to reinvigorate it. This time they moved a century or so back from the time of TOS to an earlier starship Enterprise.
It didn't work a second time, obviously. Among other things the creators lacked the fresh perspective on the property that would have been required for it to have a real chance.
Over a decade later, long-time producers of Trek on TV - one of whom had been with the Franchise since TNG rebooted it in 1987 - tried to do essentially the same thing in an attempt to reinvigorate it. This time they moved a century or so back from the time of TOS to an earlier starship Enterprise.
It didn't work a second time, obviously. Among other things the creators lacked the fresh perspective on the property that would have been required for it to have a real chance.
Let's check the dictionary on this one:
According to Merriam-Webster:
2
a: subsequent development
b: the next installment (as of a speech or story); especially: a literary, cinematic, or televised work continuing the course of a story begun in a preceding one.
a book, movie, etc., that continues a story begun in another book, movie, etc.
TNG is a sequel to TOS according to the dictionary.
Call it what you will, I just think it's a bit funny to try to adapt a computer term to apply to this when all it does is confuse the issue. We've already got perfectly good terms to describe.
Mr Awe
According to Merriam-Webster:
2
a: subsequent development
b: the next installment (as of a speech or story); especially: a literary, cinematic, or televised work continuing the course of a story begun in a preceding one.
a book, movie, etc., that continues a story begun in another book, movie, etc.
TNG is a sequel to TOS according to the dictionary.
Call it what you will, I just think it's a bit funny to try to adapt a computer term to apply to this when all it does is confuse the issue. We've already got perfectly good terms to describe.
Mr Awe
The dictionary is irrelevant to all of this.
Whether TNG was a sequel or a reboot is a question of the producers' intent.
The intent was clearly to recreate TOS with commercial adjustments and authorial revisions for the 1980s.
To suggest that the show began as a sequel is misleading; that's not a "perfectly good word" for what they were doing.
Whether TNG was a sequel or a reboot is a question of the producers' intent.
The intent was clearly to recreate TOS with commercial adjustments and authorial revisions for the 1980s.
To suggest that the show began as a sequel is misleading; that's not a "perfectly good word" for what they were doing.
The originally planned Phase II that eventually turned into TMP is what I would call a sequel. I'm not totally comfortable with calling TNG a reboot, although that would be closer to true than a sequel for me. Another term that comes to mind is spin-off, but that is subjective I guess.
Yep.
As for setting it forward, I'd rather that new show be ballsy and just reboot Kirk and Spock again. You know, multiverse and all. If it works for DC's separate movie and TV universes, it can work for Trek.
I would have no problem with this whatsoever. In fact, I'll root for it.
I realize Shakespeare's plays were written over 400 years ago and their interest continued all this time because the stories made relevant comments to the human condition and contained universal themes and feelings (besides being well-written).
That said, moving Trek further and further into the future (a fictional future, but still) bothers me for some reason. Maybe because it gets harder and harder to imagine what that kind of world would look like and how identifiable it would be with audiences, even in the Trek-tech world. Set it too far into the future, and to me, it might as well be a galaxy far, far away, as well.
Why not move 100 years into the future of the events in "Star Trek Beyond"? Heck, even have a new Enterprise-D with Jean Luc Picard as the captain, if wished. Cherry pick other characters from the TNG cast to have "made it" into this universe as well.
I wouldn't go that far.
The point that some of us have been trying to make is that it's not an either-or proposition. There's a wide space between leaving preexisting continuity alone on one hand and scrapping and replacing it on the other.
The conceit of setting the new show 80 years in the future took care of a lot of continuity issues on its own, but for the remainder anything that didn't fit the necessities of the new premise was implicitly rewritten. A major element in this category was the existence of androids. On at least three different occasions, Kirk's ship encountered lifelike humanoid robots able to pass as human. In one case, there was a whole planet of them. You can't have "left the preexisting continuity alone," and incorporate Data and Lore as literal novelties in such a universe. It's completely implausible, especially when it comes to Mudd's android planet. The simplest approach is the one they took: ignore what happened in TOS as if it never happened, or in other words scrap that episode.
