Is it time to put Star Trek to rest?

[fireproof78]

the spirit of the 2020's we may expect a new series where Earth has been ravaged by civil war and then destroyed, the Federation has fallen apart and the few human survivors are searching for a new planet where they can continue their infighting and bickering.

You do realize that in order to get to the Federation there has to be WW3? Utopia is no guarantee, not even by Trek's standard.

 

[Dar70]

I can assure you I have never expressed a distaste for Enterprise.

Oops I quoted the wrong post. Sorry

 

[HotRod]

As for your taste, maybe you should watch Baywatch or something similar instead of Star Trek.

My taste are just fine, thanks. I've been watching Trek for almost 40 years and see no reason to stop now. As for Baywatch, thanks for the suggestion. It was a fun show during its heyday. Been a few decades, but it would be fun to go back and see Mitch and the gang run down the beach again.

I like those characters and what you think is irrelevant for me

Evidence points to the contrary.

They are ruined and the destruction was unnecessary,

Again, what makes it unnecessary? Was it necessary when Praxis blew up? Was is necessary to destroy the original Enterprise? Or the Enterprise-D? Probably not, but it pushed forward the narrative and changed the dynamics of the story.

Merging the Romulans with the Vulcans actually destroys two of the most important races in the Star Trek universe.

How so? And why do you hate Spock's goal of reunification?

Who are you to question my opinions?

I'm not questioning anything. I'm stating outright that you're simply afraid of change. Nearly everything you've said points to this rather obvious conclusion.

"Things can and should change"? What a stupid statement!

How is it stupid? Explain. If something isn't changing, if a story lacks any growth, that means it's stagnant.

What if they change to the worse?

You'll never know if you don't try. Further proof that you're afraid of change.

As for Voyager, it did change to the worse.

Most would probably argue to the contrary. I no big fan of Voyager, but much like the general consensus that TNG improved in season 3, the consensus with Voyager is that it improved in season 4.

Changes for the sake of changing is just stupid.

Seems like more definitive proof of a fear of change.

No, they have become a sad mess and so have the Vulcans too.

How so? They are most certainly a damaged people. Their future might be in question. But now instead of being bland, mustache twirling villains, they've become a people in search of hope. A race that needs to change and adapt if it wishes to survive. They are now far more interesting.

Watching Star Trek is not proof of intelligence.

Never has that been more obvious.

 

[FederationHistorian]

I am beginning to think the franchise has nothing left to really offer. Well for me at least for me. Out of all the live action stuff over the last 7 or 8 years. Most of it has been pretty bland/bad to me. With maybe a season and a half of Disco, 1 season of SNW and 1 season of Picard. That I enjoyed to varying degrees.
Everything else I have not really enjoyed. Lower decks was just too inane for me. Only watched one ep of prodigy and they took it off streaming.

Lots of missteps imo the last 8 years. But it just seems like the franchise has run out of steam. I constantly find myself watching the older stuff or finding new scifi fantasy shows that offer something a bit different and unique. Or just plain watching more non scifi stuff now.

But after almost 50 years of some type of Trek in production almost every year (except maybe between Enterprise and the 2009 film) it's gotten pretty stale to me. There are almost 1000 episodes of Trek not to mention like 14 movies.

Many its just my age. Idk.....
But getting old doesn't explain why I love Star Wars Andor...

Star Trek does not need to rest and Star Trek’s not going to die out. And even if Star Trek did die out, then their would be documentaries for years and years asking what killed Star Trek.

The only thing I can see is Kurtzman's contract ending soon. He's almost been around as long as Berman was during his run.

 

[kkt]

I have a feeling it's going to go the way of a Sulu Show or Worf show. Shows that many fans and the actors wanted but the studio just ignores until it's too late. I think even Terry Matalas has moved on at this point. Starfleet Academy and SNW until 2028 or 2029. So another show not until 2030 or 31. At which point Jeri Ryan will be over 60.

I would have liked to see a mini series with Data and Geordie. 5 or 10 episodes with them managing the Starfleet Museum together....

They need to have Scotty there too.

 

[kkt]

Well...



OK, there it is.

If current Star Trek isn't being what you want it to be, then all that needs to happen is for you to find something else to watch that scratches that itch. Problem solved.

When no one--or not enough people to make it profitable to the studio, which is the only factor that counts--wants to watch Star Trek, then that will be the time for Star Trek to be "put to rest".

Until there's an audience again.

And then there will probably be more.

We've seen that happen a time or three already, haven't we?

The Long Darkness between October 1974 and December '79.

 

[M'Sharak]

The Long Darkness between October 1974 and December '79.

Well, I was there, but that's not at all what this thread is about, is it?

 

[Lynx]

You do realize that in order to get to the Federation there has to be WW3? Utopia is no guarantee, not even by Trek's standard.

Which was stupid as well, in fact one of the few things I've never liked with older Trek.

If WWIII would happen, humanity would be gone.There would be only radioactive dust left and in a few decades humanity would have died out.

Even if they did survive, they would be back in the Stone Age. It would take ten thousands of years to come back to what we have today.

It would not be as it was in Star Trek, sort of "Ooops, we had a little war with billions of dead and most of the civilisation wiped out, but don't worry, in 20 years time we will be back where we were before the little incident, then the Vulcans will show up and we would build a paradise".

I would rather have seen a history built on slow development to the better with some minor setbacks here and there (like the 2010s and the 2020s) than a highly unrealistic scenario after a devastating WWIII.

In fact, what Star Trek should do is to re-write a few things wnen it comes to the description of human history before the Federation. As we all know, the Eugenic Wars never took place in the late 20th century and Ireland was not united in 2024.

We can always blame Henry Starling, of course.

My taste are just fine, thanks. I've been watching Trek for almost 40 years and see no reason to stop now. As for Baywatch, thanks for the suggestion. It was a fun show during its heyday. Been a few decades, but it would be fun to go back and see Mitch and the gang run down the beach again.

Evidence points to the contrary.

Again, what makes it unnecessary? Was it necessary when Praxis blew up? Was is necessary to destroy the original Enterprise? Or the Enterprise-D? Probably not, but it pushed forward the narrative and changed the dynamics of the story.

I'm happy that you are happy.
Unfortunately I'm not happy with the development of Star Trek now.
As for the destruction of Praxis, it was a minor change. The Klingons never became a people on the run like the Romulans have become.
The destruction of the Enterprises were also minor changes. It didn't devatste the federation or eben the crews of those ships in any way.

How so? And why do you hate Spock's goal of reunification?

I don't hate it. I just see it as unrealistic and unnecessary.

I'm not questioning anything. I'm stating outright that you're simply afraid of change. Nearly everything you've said points to this rather obvious conclusion.

I'm not afraid of good changes. But I dislike bad changes and changes made just for the sake of changing.

How is it stupid? Explain. If something isn't changing, if a story lacks any growth, that means it's stagnant.

But if a story changes in an unwanted direction, the fasn will abandon it.

Like that heavy rock band which tried to get new fans by changing their music to a more commercial style on their next album. It backfired!

The band lost many of its old fans who thooght they had "sold out" and they didn't gain any new fans either.

At the next album after the "adapted" one , they were back to the heavier stuff. But it was too late.
They did regain some of their credibility but they never became as popular than they once were.

You'll never know if you don't try. Further proof that you're afraid of change.

I have learned to be careful. don't mess up a winning formula.

Just look at what Star Wars has become. OK, Star Trek hasn't gone so far yet that they name one of the "heroes" after a psychopath and mass murder from the 20th century yet but they have really messed up a lot of things as it is

Most would probably argue to the contrary. I no big fan of Voyager, but much like the general consensus that TNG improved in season 3, the consensus with Voyager is that it improved in season 4.

Voyager is a problem for me. I liked and still like the characters and the premise of the show.
I had the bad luck of not being able to watch DS9 more than the first season back in the 90s and after some years of watching constant re-runs of TNG, Voyager felt like fresh air.

It took some years before I ciould watch all of DS9 and realize what a great series it was. Watching Voyager now feels a bit.........disappointing. Too many plot holes, quick fixes and overall bad writing compared to DS9.

But in some way I still like the first three seasons, despite some not so good episodes here and there.

As I see it, TNG got better and better from season 3, Voyager got worse from season 4.

Seems like more definitive proof of a fear of change.

"Why do we have to carry on, always singing the same old song, same old song, same old song"

Anyway, I think the difference between us is that I dislike bad changes and changes just for the sake of changing, just like when some sports team change their logo or colors and the fans abandon them.

You seem to like ALL changes, so if Trek should be closed down tomorrow, you'll see it as good news and move on to watch som third-rate crap series instead.

I on the other hand can't pretend to like what I don't like.

I can mention another story from the music world. A member of a band I once liked made a solo carreer after the band split up. When his solo album came out, I bought it.
But I was so disappointed over the music. It was that kind of bland lightweight pop I just can't stand, a big change from what the band he once was in had done.
I rememer playing the record many times that week, trying to tell myself that "this is actually good". But I couldn't lie to myself.
I never played that record again.
Fortunately I did find a new great band some weeks later and they are still favorites.
However, that would have been difficult if it had happenened now.

How so? They are most certainly a damaged people. Their future might be in question. But now instead of being bland, mustache twirling villains, they've become a people in search of hope. A race that needs to change and adapt if it wishes to survive. They are now far more interesting.

No, they aren't.
Instead of being interesting villains, they have been downgraded to a lukewarm mix of Romulans and Vulcans, just like a cup of coffee with 2/3 water in it.
They will be just another watered-down species, lap dogs to the Federation.

 

[Qonundrum]

Tangentially related to the discussion on the last page, but: people who rate (post-season-3) DS9 as their favourite show while simultaneously bashing NuTrek confuse me because they share a lot of the same storytelling tools and plot ideas, and tend to portray Starfleet in similar ways (in fact, DS9 probably goes further with it - Discovery afaik never had Starfleet fighting trench warfare and bleeding out in bomb craters while saying lines from 'nam movies, or Burnham poisoning entire planets and laughing about it).

Sisko was laughing about it? Really? I don't recall that scene.. He seemed quite angry at the acts of genocide the Maquis were doing and no other means to stop them, what with Eddington being of much assistance to the Maquis and all.

Also, what baddies does DISCO have that are comparable to the Maquis, Dominion and Jem Ha'dar? Are the production styles the same? Are they different? Use of color palette/color timing, use of language (formal, informal, slang, etc. Most sci-fi uses formal language as a quick and dirty means to bypass a contemporary feel and to seem futuristic. Any old tv show can use informal contemporary colloquialisms.)

I'm not trying to be snarky or have a go at people who enjoy DS9 and/or NuTrek, liking either or both is a perfectly valid subjective pinion, but it just bewilders me when people who rate DS9 highly complain NuTrek is too dark or anti-Trek or portrays Starfleet badly when you can find direct equivalents for all those things in DS9, sometimes even moreso.

Or audiences got tired of "bad Starfleet" trope, which can only be done for so often to begin with as that only works when people are used to "good Starfleet", Khan redux, or all the substanceless nostalgiawank, substanceless swearing in an attempt to look "adult", etc. Show us the clip where Sisko said the f-word while laughing or saying how apples are made from feces*. After all, Star Trek Insurrection did "bad starfleet" too and that flick was not warmly regarded as being the best installment ever either, so what's going on with fan backlash is hardly new to "Kurtzman Trek".

* the closest pre-Kurtzman Trek got was in some episode of ENT where they're discussing waste product disposal, but ENT often acted as if TOS never existed and most of ENT (from what I do recall) didn't fill in any gaps and tried to be stunt plotting (we know Earth will be fine and the baddies blowing it up weren't engaging enough on their own to care. Well, some fans did, some didn't, let 'em both have their say and then get on with what they like more.)

I suppose big long scenes with logs about sippin' tea as if they're on the country farm** and everyone acting like teenagers in a dance party aren't going to help. Depends on whom you ask, I can sit here puking out any number of possibilities and end up in circular logic and recursive tautology. In the end, the franchise does what they all do: Gains new fans and fans leave later on. It's not all for the identical reasons. Just fast forward 20 years and see the current fans get their undies in a knot in what will be conjured up as well.

** VOY's premiere was corny too, but I'm not going to digress any more on that for now


In short, you're not being snarky for the most part, but you're making interesting parallels that don't necessarily apply. You're also suggesting that "it was just the same 30 years ago so why aren't fans liking it now" where either too much repetition of the same trope, or a different style are clearly both factors. Again, depends on whom you ask and why does anybody care when the modern shows have high enough ratings to get 5 seasons' worth?

 

[Starflight]

Sisko was laughing about it? Really? I don't recall that scene..

DAX: Benjamin, I'm curious. Your plan to poison the Maquis planets. You didn't clear it with Starfleet first, did you?
SISKO: I knew I'd forgotten to do something.
DAX: Big gamble.
SISKO: That's what it takes to be a good villain.
DAX: You know, sometimes I like it when the bad guy wins.

Are the production styles the same? Are they different?

The point about production techniques is interesting - if you took the average TOS or TNG script and give it Discovery's production values, you'd have a decent sci-fi story told in a needlessly flashy, distractingly over-the-top way. If you took the average season six or seven DS9 script and gave it Discovery's production values, I think some of it would genuinely just feel indistinguishable from nuTrek. The 90s, TNG-y visual and directional style definitely does the show a favour in making it all feel a bit more surreal (as most good Star Trek is).

You're also suggesting that "it was just the same 30 years ago so why aren't fans liking it now" where either too much repetition of the same trope, or a different style are clearly both factors

I understand that; like I said, I can understand people liking DS9 and not liking the newer shows (or vice versa). I just think that a lot of the most common criticisms levelled at Discovery and Picard are also easily levelled at DS9, sometimes even moreso.

For the record, I'm not a fan of (later) DS9 or Discovery/Picard, in case it sounded like I was coming at this from a standpoint of trying to defend nuTrek. It's just that for me, the experience of watching Discovery is largely the same as watching later seasons of DS9 - both felt like generic downbeat sci-fi that made very poor use of the Star Trek setting, and which I probably wouldn't have watched if they didn't have the Star Trek name slapped on them. The sheer discrepancy in how each show is received is hard for me to understand.

 

[BillJ]

If WWIII would happen, humanity would be gone.There would be only radioactive dust left and in a few decades humanity would have died out.

Even if they did survive, they would be back in the Stone Age. It would take ten thousands of years to come back to what we have today.

We burnt Japan and Western Europe to the ground and rebuilt them in 20 years. Nukes would be worse but not insurmountable.

The future has a price, we need to remember that lesson.

 

[Dar70]

They need to have Scotty there too.

Haha. I forgot he may still me out there somewhere with his shuttle craft. He would be like almost 100 now...

 

[Qonundrum]

Which was stupid as well, in fact one of the few things I've never liked with older Trek.

If WWIII would happen, humanity would be gone.There would be only radioactive dust left and in a few decades humanity would have died out.

There are always survivors, unless every single nuke was to be used, but I'm going to guess that wars don't always need nukes. Correct me on this, but there've been things like "the cold war", where it was war but just not with nukes?

Even if they did survive, they would be back in the Stone Age. It would take ten thousands of years to come back to what we have today.

No doubt. Does anyone under 30 know how to start a fire by rubbing sticks together and saying "this is due to relative use of friction"?

It would not be as it was in Star Trek, sort of "Ooops, we had a little war with billions of dead and most of the civilisation wiped out, but don't worry, in 20 years time we will be back where we were before the little incident, then the Vulcans will show up and we would build a paradise".

that This and other dates are unique to Star Trek's universe, which isn't ours. It's fantasy, just of a different and more defined sort than mushrooms and magic wands.

I would rather have seen a history built on slow development to the better with some minor setbacks here and there (like the 2010s and the 2020s) than a highly unrealistic scenario after a devastating WWIII.

100% agreed as well. TOS wasn't going to do that, nor the original pilot. They referred to a date and reason, but it's pretty clear Trek's universe isn't ours. The fact TVH eschews it all to make a bunch of "fish out of water" scenes is easily forgotten.

But if a story changes in an unwanted direction, the fasn will abandon it.

Exactly that. It's just as continuity can be abandoned by the screenwriters if a new idea that potentially is more expansive is used to eschew the original setup - which can work great, especially when other ideas have been exhausted or to build new possibilities. For one example:

The Borg have the best of both worlds on this notion, since they were originally set up a distributed cybernetic species that just took technologies (think "the Pakleds but creepy") and where 80% of their ship could be destroyed and it'd be negligible because of the redundancies put in... and, with a spaceship given the size of space and all, it's logical TO have a ton of backup systems... but the setup is pretty simple and pretty tight with little room for wiggleroom.

...Then came season 3's finale where everyone on the bridge is shocked that the Borg now want people rather than just the technology that was hammered into their first story... Nobody really complained and it felt like a logical extension. Later TNG episodes didn't explore assimilation of other beings too much, and still calling the Borg a "race" as opposed to being an amalgamation of races.

Fast forward to the 1996 film, the one that has been increasingly divisive over the years. In its favor, the assimilation element is reintroduced. Unfortunately, not only do we have a new centralizing force as the Queen - so much for the gestalt element that was established and maintained for 7 years. Worse, the Borg ship design now has convenient centralized points of weakness (which is weird for a handful of reasons), of which Picard could have sent this information by subspace long to the fleet or to Starfleet Command's database for anyone to look up, long before the second big epic screen battle began. Not to mention the Borg just send only one Cube, again, instead of two cubes to adapt and properly take over everyone with all the easier as they know the Federation is a big enough threat they want to assimilate but know there is going to be sufficient resistance. It's hokey. Worse, the answer to at least the Queen's introduction problem is easy: Make the Queen a new development to replace Locutus, while not perfect, would be far better than shoehorning in retconning dialogue such as "I remember you, you were there the whole time, how did you escape?" / "you humans just have three dimensional limited thinking"* that the Queen told Picard as a lost opportunity to boost the Borg instead of diluting them to make them easier to wipe out. At least VOY, albeit briefly, managed to restore a little sense of threat before they were diluted, watered down if you will, to the thickness of a single molecule of H2O.

The point is, changing established rules is risky, and the larger the established continuity that adequately fits is, the introduction of new ideas to keep expanding on them increases the risk of upending what was done before. Borg babies alone wouldn't be the only way to procreate and the technologies learned from assimilated beings adds up fine AND Picard and crew hadn't enough time on the Borg ship to realize the depths of the grizzly truth. The Queen, in ways, does feel like a natural progression, but on screen doesn't quite work. It was worse by directly adding dialogue to retroactively changes them in a way that doesn't make sense, combined with introducing weaknesses to the Borg Cube philosophy, on top of having more plot holes and conveniences than all the previous 7 movies put together. At least the direction was cool.

* The dialogue of which is paraphrased, but I did look up the transcript later and mine's close enough to what was said.

Like that heavy rock band which tried to get new fans by changing their music to a more commercial style on their next album. It backfired!

The band lost many of its old fans who thooght they had "sold out" and they didn't gain any new fans either.

Good points. A change in style may or may not work. Some fans did stay because they liked the changes too.

Voyager is a problem for me. I liked and still like the characters and the premise of the show.

Good characters with potential, but the premise wasn't built on but quickly ditched. The first use of the Borg was inspired and brought back some threat... but they quickly became disposable again.

As I see it, TNG got better and better from season 3, Voyager got worse from season 4.

TNG, to me, got better during its first four years, felt increasingly stagnant for 5 (complete with wallpaper blap muzak), then completely out of gas in 6 (where the episode teasers felt far more engaging than the episodes themselves). 7 tries to do strange new exploration stuff again, but all the writers had moved onto DS9 to explore that corner of the universe to build it up with.

No, they aren't.
Instead of being interesting villains, they have been downgraded to a lukewarm mix of Romulans and Vulcans, just like a cup of coffee with 2/3 water in it.
They will be just another watered-down species, lap dogs to the Federation.

Seems inevitable, overuse and dilution of a new character/species that are well-received.