Is it just me, or is Star Trek going the wrong way?

[STEPhon IT]

Oh, yeah. He has been considered a poor choice since the whole Khan in ID debacle, as well as his participation in changing Prometheus script, supposedly.

I don't get it, what was so wrong with Khan being a "Red Herring" in "Into Darkness"? Admiral Marcus was THE villain in the movie and I thought making Khan a victim of circumstances a nice angle for the story. This movie was no way as bad as Nemesis and Insurrection and Prometheus was no way as terrible as Alien 3, Resurrection, AVP1 and 2, and the last Alien movie Covenant.

 

[fireproof78]

I don't get it, what was so wrong with Khan being a "Red Herring" in "Into Darkness"? Admiral Marcus was THE villain in the movie and I thought making Khan a victim of circumstances a nice angle for the story. This movie was no way as bad as Nemesis and Insurrection and Prometheus was no way as terrible as Alien 3, Resurrection, AVP1 and 2, and the last Alien movie Covenant.

Khan was considered wrong because he was out of step with what people expected of the character. Again, assumptions clouded expectations of the film rather than what actually happened in the film. My only issue is the fact that the writers, including Lindelof, felt that they needed to bring Khan back, which irritates me.

I personally don't care for Lindelof's work because of Prometheus and taking that film in a completely different direction than initially presented. I think he needlessly complicates things some times and his style doesn't appeal to me.

Mileage, etc.

 

[STEPhon IT]

What was Prometheus' original intent? Covenant was worse and made me tired of ALIEN all together.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Covenant was a big budget version of "Datalore". I liked it.

 

[fireproof78]

What was Prometheus' original intent? Covenant was worse and made me tired of ALIEN all together.

John Spaihts draft was a lot more overtly Alien connected, called Alien: Engineers. It's not a pursuit of immortality but of technology that drives Weyland to find the Engineers.

 

[Scionz]

What was Prometheus' original intent? Covenant was worse and made me tired of ALIEN all together.

It really depends on what version of Prometheus we're talking about, and who was in charge at the time.

If we're talking about Ridley Scott's vision and not scripts that came along the way, it was even less Alien-related and more Engineer / Synthetic related. That survived in the final film in a kind of malformed manner by relating the human-engineer relationship to the synthetic-human relation... created an creator. The Alien stuff was somewhat forced in by the studio. and the "Deacon" at the end of Prometheus was meant to be his new interpretation of the Xenomorph. Prometheus originally had a much looser connection to the Alien franchise. Calling it a spiritual reboot wouldn't be too far off. Ridley Scott created Alien 40 years ago, and it had been through so many different hands, that by the time he came back to it with Prometheus, he wanted to just disconnect it from all the additions of the sequels, AVP and so forth. He just had no interest in Alien queens, dog aliens and all that stuff. Prometheus' alien was the mutagenic spore.

Prometheus did well, but Fox felt it could have done better. So when Prometheus 2 was greenlighted, it was instructed to pull it into a closer direction with the franchise. Noomi Rapace was supposed to return and find the Engineer's homeworld. Instead that became a kind of mini-prequel to Alien Covenant and we got a very different movie instead, one that featured an authentic xenomorph and alien eggs (again, with some differences), but also more of the stuff Ridley Scott really cares about - the mutagenic spore, and androids. The franchise Xenomorph stuff? Scott still isn't all that interested in it. His original vision of Prometheus 2, again, had lots of engineers and nothing with the Xenomorph.

He still wants to do a third, but his problem is that he has less interest in things involving the Xenomorph and lots of interest in the rogue AI and creator/created stuff that the David plot is all about.

This is, Disney, which now owns Alien, probably isn't about that at all.

Alien Covenant wasn't a failure. But it wasn't exactly a success either. It made over twice its budget, but it didn't do the business Fox hoped a more Alien-centric sequel to Prometheus would do. It made a lot less money than Prometheus. A lot of that is probably on the studio, that didn't really get behind the movie and market it. It got eaten alive by Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

Disney will likely want to go back to basics, and go big, when they decide to push a major new Alien production. Probably a new director a very studio-run creative process like the Marvel movies. And probably a much more aggressive marketing push that differentiates the next film as "Disney's Alien 1" rather than "Alien 7". That way they can try and make a billion-dollar film out of it. Heck, they're already showing up in Marvel Comics.

 

[Adorkable]

I think there's a good balance between Game of Thrones-like edge lord ness and the kind of peaceful yet smug corporate & institutional idealism that the series hasn't really found yet. It wants to too extremely be both things at times, but also neither- and it hasn't really found that sweet spot yet. It should be a bit more realistic than TNG, but at the same time I think making it gritty & MA rating is a bad step.

I don't think people like Barclay should have gotten such a high position or status cuz nerds feel warm fuzzies when our kind is empowered - but nor do I think people like Barclay or Tilly should always get their neck snapped by an edgelord Alien villain because 'weak and shy people always die cuz the world is naturally cruel and Space is really cold!" If you try to please everybody- you tend to just piss everybody off, and things like that.

Permanently killing of Stamet's husband would have been fine, but it was just a Bury Your Gays trope because there still wasn't enough gay male couples in comparison so they were forced to be too SJW-y and Tokenism with it. Yet I mean it's obviously a Disney Death and too unrealistic to think he could just come back to life like that- even though it was "hopeful" so I think either way and no matter what type of person you try to appeal to, it doesn't work for me. But it would have worked better if they just had a true diverse cast, instead of Token-ism.

And most of the "good moments" right now are corny and unearned on the show. They just feel too light and not earned. Star Trek was always pretty light and hopeful, there's nothing wrong with that- but characters used to grow through real struggle and professional pressure. Nowadays the entire cast claps for them and is over the top nice ((so much so where it kind or reeks of sarcasm to me in a way)) just because they are a little shy, social phobic and dorky. Or they happen to be born into a "minority" group. It makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit and makes me think of a bad group home I was in once lol.

But the opposite of that sort of thing is just grimdark overly violent edgelord ness and yes, Trek doesn't need to become that either. It was never really 'cool or bad-ass' to be a Trekkie, but it was always special. <3

 

[Nerys Myk]

Lost me at "edge lord".

 

[fireproof78]

Lost me at "edge lord".

I didn't follow most it after that...edge-lord seems so strange of a description for any show.

 

[Filker]

they were forced to be too SJW-y and Tokenism with it.

Congratulations, your vocabulary was given to you by the shittiest people on the internet.

 

[The Old Mixer]

 

[JirinPanthosa]

80% of the time I've heard people talk about tokenism, their implication of is 'Any representation of this group is being done just for the sake of representation and thus shouldn't be done'.

Starfleet was always supposed to be composed of humans from the entire Earth. Discovery's cast has a racial distribution far more representative of Earth's total population than any previous Trek, speaking both racially and in terms of sexual orientation. None of it is 'Tokenism', and none of the characters have ever been treated like tokens only defined by their non-white-heteroness the way they all have been for the last fifty years of television history.

When I first saw ID I saw most of it as a perfectly good summer action flick which is incidentally titled Star Trek. The whole role reversal thing at the end though with Spock shouting Khan was just so forced and cheesy it dragged down the whole movie. And much like JJWars, JJTrek has the problem of trying to solve the problem of 'How do we both please old fans and new fans' by just rehashing everything and throwing in feel good references but actually just writing a generic action movie.

JJ Abrams seems to hold the belief that all long time fans of big franchises like about the franchises is those names and references.

 

[fireproof78]

JJ Abrams seems to hold the belief that all long time fans of big franchises like about the franchises is those names and references.

I think he is more of the feelings associated with those names and references. Sometimes its a bit like how Lucas treated R2, C3PO and Yoda in the prequels. Everyone start the screaming and clapping because of the name.

However, for me personally, Abrams did one of the best Trek films ever made in 09. ID was good but the need to put Khan in did the film a disservice. But, otherwise, excellent film because of the themes in touched on.

I think Abrams can do a good job but he isn't always patient enough to set it all up.

 

[FederationHistorian]

I don’t think Star Trek is going in the direction you are thinking off. It needs to come up with fresh new experiences if it is going to thrive long term. And sci-fi in general has come a long way since TNG first aired. The standards and expectations are going to be different now.

I do think that the franchise is spending a great deal of time trying to make up for the sins of ENT though.

Abrams Trek dealt with the superficial complaints of ENT (phasers, torpedoes, looks of the exterior and interior of the NX-01, acknowledgement of the era by future generations, not feeling like TOS).

DSC is a spiritual sequel of sorts to ENT – similar uniforms and adventures, but with a better theme.

PIC is in a rough and gritty setting, set on a ship not typical of Starfleet/Federation, and had Riker and Troi featured in their first live action appearance since TATV - which is considered enjoyable and the best episode of the first season.

LD is a focus on the lesser crewmembers, which never really happened on ENT.

Who knows how SNW and the Section 31 show will try to atone for ENT.

The thing is, I don’t know if that is necessary. It wasn’t like ENT was a bad show. It was a show with a poorly planned out vision – because they did not have the time or break needed to plan it – that came at the tail end of a 10+ years long run on tv (20+ years if you count the TOS movies) that made the most out of what it was given. Even though the creative directions that series could have taken are much clearer today, creative exhaustion & dealing with a network that wanted them to play it overly safe were real things to contend with back then.

TNG wasn’t really TOS in its first season, and made it clear that it wasn’t. DS9 made it clear it wasn’t TNG. VOY made it clear it wasn’t DS9. ENT never leaned in on being a deconstruction of the TNG era as it probably should have, but that’s not their fault as they never got a serious chance to do that. My main point is I don’t think that same definition that TNG/DS9/VOY made that they are distinct from each other as well as TOS has happened with the Kurtzman-era series, in that they are not like the last show of the Berman era.

If Trek is going in the wrong direction, this is how.

 

[Mudd]

No one is thinking about, much less atoning for, Enterprise.

 

[dupersuper]

For the first time in a while, between Lower Decks, Discovery season 3, the constant assurances about Strange New Worlds direction and what little I've heard of Prodigy, I'm actually liking where Star Trek is going. For a while there all I really had were the Short Treks, expanded universe and fan-made stuff.

 

[STEPhon IT]

It really depends on what version of Prometheus we're talking about, and who was in charge at the time.

If we're talking about Ridley Scott's vision and not scripts that came along the way, it was even less Alien-related and more Engineer / Synthetic related. That survived in the final film in a kind of malformed manner by relating the human-engineer relationship to the synthetic-human relation... created an creator. The Alien stuff was somewhat forced in by the studio. and the "Deacon" at the end of Prometheus was meant to be his new interpretation of the Xenomorph. Prometheus originally had a much looser connection to the Alien franchise. Calling it a spiritual reboot wouldn't be too far off. Ridley Scott created Alien 40 years ago, and it had been through so many different hands, that by the time he came back to it with Prometheus, he wanted to just disconnect it from all the additions of the sequels, AVP and so forth. He just had no interest in Alien queens, dog aliens and all that stuff. Prometheus' alien was the mutagenic spore.

Prometheus did well, but Fox felt it could have done better. So when Prometheus 2 was greenlighted, it was instructed to pull it into a closer direction with the franchise. Noomi Rapace was supposed to return and find the Engineer's homeworld. Instead that became a kind of mini-prequel to Alien Covenant and we got a very different movie instead, one that featured an authentic xenomorph and alien eggs (again, with some differences), but also more of the stuff Ridley Scott really cares about - the mutagenic spore, and androids. The franchise Xenomorph stuff? Scott still isn't all that interested in it. His original vision of Prometheus 2, again, had lots of engineers and nothing with the Xenomorph.

He still wants to do a third, but his problem is that he has less interest in things involving the Xenomorph and lots of interest in the rogue AI and creator/created stuff that the David plot is all about.

This is, Disney, which now owns Alien, probably isn't about that at all.

Alien Covenant wasn't a failure. But it wasn't exactly a success either. It made over twice its budget, but it didn't do the business Fox hoped a more Alien-centric sequel to Prometheus would do. It made a lot less money than Prometheus. A lot of that is probably on the studio, that didn't really get behind the movie and market it. It got eaten alive by Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

Disney will likely want to go back to basics, and go big, when they decide to push a major new Alien production. Probably a new director a very studio-run creative process like the Marvel movies. And probably a much more aggressive marketing push that differentiates the next film as "Disney's Alien 1" rather than "Alien 7". That way they can try and make a billion-dollar film out of it. Heck, they're already showing up in Marvel Comics.

I would've preferred more Engineers than retreading old waters, also I liked Noomi Rapace's character. David was okay, but I'd preferred him as a cohort to her character than that predictable super villain in Covenant. Making him the creator of the Alien never jibed with me; it is weak and uninspiring. Exploring the world of the Engineers seemed like a more bolder idea, Elizabeth Shaw's quest for answers to why they wanted to kill humans was something I hoped Ridley Scott could delve into. If another one is made... which is inevitable, I hope they forget that horrible Covenant and proceed with the Engineer race; a race who appear to have the technology to travel across the stars should have other worlds they inhabit.

I would love to see more Alien-like creatures the Engineers conjure up and what could go wrong with these experiments. Did the Engineers created these weapons because there's an adversary they're in conflict with? These are questions I would like to see answered in a future endeavor of this failed Alien franchise.

 

[The Old Mixer]

This thread is going the wrong way...the Alien franchise is that way [points down to SF&F].

 

[Steve Roby]

When someone uses terms like tokenism, SJW, and edgelord in a Star Trek discussion, without being ironic or dismissive of those terms and concepts, they've lost me. Tokenism accusations are too often a way of pretending not to be racist to get racist goals. If you have to justify why a character isn't a straight white male, then you also have to justify why another character is a straight white male. It's not a default setting.

But I'm not sure what Adorkable is getting at. Discovery is making a mistake with its MA rating and grittiness and it's too nice and light. Um, okay.

(Sorry, mod, can I just throw in that Ridley Scott did not create Alien? Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett did.)

 

[STEPhon IT]

For the first time in a while, between Lower Decks, Discovery season 3, the constant assurances about Strange New Worlds direction and what little I've heard of Prodigy, I'm actually liking where Star Trek is going. For a while there all I really had were the Short Treks, expanded universe and fan-made stuff.

I would like for Trek to move from the so-called Prequel stuff and stop tainting the waters of TOS. I have zero interest of these cronies re-inventing the Star Trek Universe, it's better off they just launch a TNG type series. A series for a new generation of viewers and open the door to a very large canvas where it doesn't contradict what was done better during TOS run. Star Trek can be such a larger universe if we can have producers who can think bigger; there's more to Trek than saving the entire quadrants or Earth but exploring the human condition and looking for an avenue for peace. When the franchise was good the stories of adventure was something of a passion and I enjoyed that ride, I'm sure in time this will happen again.