Greetings, new TrekBBS member. Sorry, everybody, this is a long one. Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.
I wish I could fly through space and explore all the unknown worlds out there, that's why I love star trek! I think they did a good job until they started trying to veer away from the motif set forth by FOUR fully successful and incredibly popular series (TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager) What I love the most about the first four series is that they were always exploring new worlds and seeing new things in the universe while they simultaneously told a story arc and it seemed like the writers were genuinely trying to stretch the limits of what people would imagine is possible to exist out among the stars, it made it a truly unique work of video-graphic art.
Okay, no. The first four series were all different from each other, and they were planned that way.
In TOS, you have a five year mission, lots of exploration, pretty much every episode stands alone (the two parts of The Menagerie being the exception). There's no arc. The Federation and Starfleet are only vaguely sketched out, sometimes inconsistently,
In TNG, you have a deliberate and intentional move away from TOS. There's less exploring, they get back to Earth more often. There are tiny arc elements but a good 90% of the episodes are standalone. The Klingon stuff, the Bajor stuff, the Borg stuff, the Wesley stuff, they barely interfere with anyone's attempt to just watch a random episode. The portrayal of the Federation and Starfleet are changed, making them some kind of peaceful utopia with no money and conflict only coming from outside.
In DS9, you have a deliberate and intentional move away from TNG. The show is set on a station, not a ship. Only a few of the regular characters are Starfleet. It's not about planet of the week exploration, where we visit Beta Flapdoodle II one week and never hear of it again, it's a lot of close examination of Bajor, Cardassia, the Klingons, and the Dominion. It is much more arc-intensive, and it's also much more character-intensive. Not only do the core characters change and develop a lot more than was ever the case on TOS and TNG, a lot of one-off characters become important enough to have stories revolve around them. The portrayal of Starfleet and the Federation is different from TNG's, showing that an allegedly perfect society under strain can have some serious flaws, but our heroes still work for a better future.
In Voyager, you have a deliberate and intentional move away from DS9, in that we're on a starship again, doing lots of exploring, and a deliberate and intentional move away from TNG that gets jettisoned almost instantly -- all the Maquis arc setup from DS9 and TNG goes right out the window, and we get a largely episodic series with occasional arc elements. Only one or two characters get much development. But they were originally trying to shake things up again, to boldly go where no one had gone before.
I also love how they portrayed humanities future potential in a very positive light, world peace, no more need for currency within our own species, scientific idealism, peaceful cooperation and exploration with the species we meet. Its a refreshing change from the millions of sci-fi stories that believe we are a hopeless species who will only end up killing anything intelligent we find out there. It seems that most authors believe humanity is much closer to the alternate negative dimensions veracters rsion of events rather than the altruistic peaceful society that The Federation stands for. That's just depressing. If that's true we don't deserve to continue as a species, so I prefer to hope that Star Trek will be a good example of how humanity can still choose to show their best side and save not only our world but ourselves and our future.
You're only describing TNG here. In every other Star Trek series, we see characters fighting for a better future. There are bigots like Stiles in Starfleet in TOS, don't forget, to say nothing of Federation-based criminals like Harry Mudd, who we first see trafficking women. Our heroes don't live in a world without those things, they try to make a world that someday won't have them. In TNG, characters sit back smugly and tell aliens that the Federation is Utopia., but sorry, we can't help you because we changed the definition of the Prime Directive.
I tolerated their experiments in the star trek enterprise even though the time travel was horribly convoluted and made little sense, they even ignored previously established super powerful beings for the convenience of forcing their story arc to exist mostly because I liked how they did do a bit of exploring and random adventuring or encountering random ships of unknown aliens unlike anything imagined in previous series.
I don't really feel the need to defend Enterprise because I think it was a series of bad decisions, but, like every Star Trek series before it, it tried to be different from the other Star Trek series. It tried, however feebly, to get back to the TOS notion that things aren't perfect, but we're going to try to make them better, while lurching back and forth over whether it should have old school Trek standalone storytelling or modern arc storytelling.
However after that it seemed like they went all out sell out and tried to change the show to imitate the most popular mainstream counter parts such as "The Expanse" which seemed to be in direct competition with ST Discovery or it seems like Picard is a direct counterpart to the Mandalorian, as if their trying to make the new series about Picard as rough and gritty as the new series about the Mandalorian.
The only connection I see between new Trek and shows like The Expanse and The Mandalorian is that this is the year 2020, not 1966 or 1987, so it makes sense to make TV shows for the year 2020. A new Star Trek series is not going to have the kind of pacing that something like the 1960s Outer Limits has. It has to work as TV now.
(I wish I lived in a world where people described The Expanse as a popular mainstream series. Lots of people have never heard of it or seen it, even here on TrekBBS.)
Come one can't we please just have our series back? I dont care if "new viewers" like it, what about the already established fan base? Are we such worthless pushovers that they think we'll just throw our money at them no matter what they put the star trek logo on?
Established fan base? I've been a Star Trek fan since the early '70s. I've watched every episode of every Star Trek series and every Star Trek movie. I own well over a thousand Star Trek books and for several years kept the Complete Starfleet Library website up and running. I've got hundreds of comics, loads of DVDs and soundtracks, a few video games, fanzines, etc etc etc. I've been to a bunch of cons, had an article in the official Star Trek magazine, and visited the old Las Vegas Star Trek Experience and the Pocket Books Star Trek office back in the days of Marco Palmieri and John Ordover. I married a woman who had a cat named Phaser. I think I'm part of the established fan base, thank you very much.
And I am really enjoying Discovery, Short Treks, Picard, and Lower Decks.
I'm sick of it, I'm about ready not to watch any new star trek series ever again, the last 3.5 series they came out with were basically a middle finger to the fans (because enterprise was half okay) they have all but said "...you know what, we hate our fan base and want a new one..." [...] They even specifically said that they wanted to "Bring it to a new generation" which actually translated from PR double talk means "turning a classic into some desperate corporate shill scheme to get the wealthiest dumbest largest fan-base possible" so yeah, thanks for ruining something I used to be excited about.
Perhaps you hadn't noticed, but the second Star Trek series was literally called Star Trek: The Next Generation. It came a generation after the original series and brought in a generation of new fans. That's what the show is supposed to do.
Now to be clear, these would be perfectly good TV shows, if they weren't supposed to embody the spirit of their predecessors, just take the Star Trek name off them and no one would even realise they were star trek, and they could have their own style and story arc and not have to worry about living up to Gene Roddenberry's original vision.
Gene Roddenberry's original vision was the original series. The Next Generation was his second vision. There are significant differences between the two. Which one are you referring to?
As for not being Star Trek... Discovery makes a lot more use of previous Star Trek than TNG did in its first few seasons. We learn the backstory to the revelation in a 1960s Trek episode that Spock and Sarek didn't get along. We see any number of elements of previous Trek being built upon in new ways, from Klingon society to the Mirror Universe to Section 31 to Pike's Enterprise. As for Picard... that simply cannot be anything but Star Trek. It's taking a new look at a core Trek character and placing him in a different situation that came out of developments from Next Generation episodes and Trek movies. Lower Decks revisits the Next Generation era. These shows can't be anything but Star Trek. Oh, and while they have flawed characters, each of the shows returns to the pre-TNG original Star Trek vision. They have characters who want to explore, who value science and engineering, who want to make the universe better. Star Trek isn't just in the shows' titles, it's in their DNA. They just don't happen to be much like TNG's particular take on Star Trek.
Stop trying to make it into something its not. Star trek was always like us nerds at school, it was never the most trendy with the "popular kids" and it looked different than the other shows even of the same genre, but it always seemed to be more aware of where we were and where we, for better or worse, could one day be. If you've ever seen a friend try to force another friend to try to be something they're not then you know that its not right and its a bad idea! ^_^
Well, this is just sad. Star Trek: The Next Generation, in particular, was hugely popular. In Toronto, All Good Things was shown in the Toronto Skydome to 40,000 people. Around that time, 80 different Star Trek books were published in one year. TNG generated multiple spinoffs and movies, and Paramount used Star Trek's popularity as the basis for starting a new TV network.
As for the show being more aware of where we are and what we could be... Discovery is the first Star Trek series to have a black woman as the lead character. It's the kind of awareness of where we are that Enterprise, with its focus on its white male characters, had completely lost. It's 2020. The place I work has people of every race, people of multiple sexual orientations, people with disabilities. I see that in the new Star Trek. That's what Star Trek has always been striving for, sometimes bravely, sometimes not so much, but they have that real IDIC diversity on screen and behind the camera. They're telling stories that are tightly connected to past Star Trek series but reflecting that they're made by what you might call the next generation. And just as most of us TOS fans grew to love new Trek in the 1980s, a lot of us old fans are doing just fine with the new Trek of the 21st century. This is, as far as I'm concerned, a great time to be a Star Trek fan.
So, no, Star Trek is not going the wrong way at all. Sorry for going on at such length.
