News? Stories from Dubious Sources

[F. King Daniel]

Is this Ellison's way of saying that Trek hasn't been relevant since 1994?

Star Trek Into Darkess made Trek the most money globally of any movie. Star Trek 2009 was at one point the #6 best selling Blueray of all time. And yet they never managed to make a fourth movie.

So either the stats we've had are false, or he's speaking from the wrong orifice

 

[Tomalak]

STID also cost the most money of any Trek movie and had a marketing budget to match. Beyond did less well but didn’t cost much less, so it’s not a mystery what happened there.

I think all this is wish-fulfilment stuff from people with an axe to grind with basically all Star Trek produced in the last thirty years.

But there’s probably a kernel of truth that Star Trek hasn’t had a significant cultural impact since that Shatner/Stewart Time Magazine cover, and “back to the eighties” is the kind of bankrupt creative vision I would expect from someone like Ellison.

It also isn’t a big stretch to assume that any new film project will be some kind of hard reset, or at least a hard “ignore” of recent shows. It will be some kind of a back to basics reinvention of Star Trek, like 2009 was at the time.

 

[Dukhat]

Any new film project will be some kind of hard reset, or at least a hard “ignore” of recent shows. It will be some kind of a back to basics reinvention of Star Trek, like 2009 was at the time.

I certainly hope so. Trying to shoehorn in adventures that take place 'right before TOS' is getting to be monotonous.

 

[Detached Nacelle]

No one who says Star Trek is in need of saving has any credibility. Particularly as they always seem to believe that rolling back the clock to 2005 will miraculously restore the franchise to the height of TNG's popularity which is just code for less non-white characters, less women and no gays.

 

[Cap'n Calhoun]

Star Trek Into Darkess made Trek the most money globally of any movie. Star Trek 2009 was at one point the #6 best selling Blueray of all time. And yet they never managed to make a fourth movie.

So either the stats we've had are false, or he's speaking from the wrong orifice

Something tells me whoever wrote this article forgot that the only Star Trek projects Skydance has been involved with in the past are the three Kelvin/Abrams films.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

But there’s probably a kernel of truth that Star Trek hasn’t had a significant cultural impact since that Shatner/Stewart Time Magazine cover...

I am on the "Star Trek's cultural peak was 1994" train. It hit the peak, plateaued, and then began a long decline in fits and starts.

As a fan in 1994, that year was the best year. We had "All Good Things." We had Generations. We had the DC/Malibu NextGen/DSN crossover. We had Federation. Everything felt huge. I'm not sure it ever felt that huge again, except maybe 2009.

Rob Sheffield makes the argument in his book, Dreaming the Beatles, that modern Beatles fandom and the cultural impact of the Beatles today rests more on the Anthology project in 1995-6 than on the original albums. He argues that Anthology took 90s Sixties Nostalgia and used that to reinvent the Beatles as something that wasn't locked into the 60s box as your parents' or grandparents' music.

Paramount took the opposite approach in the mid-90s. Instead of leaning into the Sixties Nostalgia -- see, for example, The Brady Bunch and The Flintstones movies -- in 1994 they threw away the franchise's connection to the sixties. The nostalgia pull of the franchise outside of the licenses only went back ten years. Next Generation may have been hugely popular on television, but that didn't carry over to film.

I think Harve Bennett was on to something in 1990 with his "Starfleet Academy" script. Maybe what Star Trek needed in 1994 was a reinvention of the past, not an abandonment of it. The idea behind 2009 was right, but it came at least a decade too late.

 

[Tomalak]

As a 9 year old in 1994 who discovered TOS through TV repeats and then the Beatles via the Anthology, I can relate!

But I think it's wrong that Star Trek should have simply repackaged TOS so soon after that cast bowed out. The first two TNG films were successful adaptations of a popular show, but anything more than that would always have been pushing it. The X-Files, probably an even bigger cultural phenomenon than TNG, only did two films.

They blew the big two obvious film premises and had nothing really left for the next two. That's ok. The series had a good run. Insurrection was always going to struggle to appeal to anyone beyond fans, and the finished film lacked any real hooks. Piller was honest about the failings in Fade In.

So maybe instead of NEM there was an opportunity to go back and reinvent TOS a few years before ST09.

But as discussed in the other thread about the Captain Sulu show, Berman's house style just wouldn't have suited it. His attempt was ENT, which demonstrably failed to attract a new audience and revitalise the franchise.

 

[Cap'n Calhoun]

I am on the "Star Trek's cultural peak was 1994" train

Honestly, I'd go with 1996, or maybe the 1996-1997 TV/fiscal year.

Two successful TV series running the entire year, including some peak DS9, and both series overlapped with a feature film release,. Star Trek: First Contact, which was much more successful in the public eye and at the box office and has a longer-lasting cultural cachet. The only other time we had two series overlap with a movie was when Star Trek: Insurrection came out in 1998.

The insanity that was Star Trek/X-Men followed by Marvel launching something like five series, including comic originals like Star Trek: Starfleet Academy in late 1996 and Star Trek: Early Voyages in early 1997.

If we really do want to go to the 60's nostalgia well, we had "Trials and Tribble-ations" and "Flashback." Also a 30th anniversary TV special on UPN featuring... the cast of Frasier and Kenny G?

It wasn't unusual to get two novels in a month. They were so successful that the original series New Frontier launched in mid-1997. There were young adult adaptations, the only TOS YA Starfleet Academy books, and overlap with the TNG YA Stafleet Academy books and the DS9 YA novels starring Jake and Nog. Extend through to 1997 again and the Voyager YA books started as the seasons were shifting over. If you count the two "series" of movie novelizations (adult and YA), this means they basically had nine series of books actively releasing in 1996 (TOS + TOS YA + TNG + TNG YA + movie + movie YA + DS9 + DS9 YA + VOY); raise as high as eleven if we go through to 1997 (New Frontier + VOY YA). (Knock off two from the list if you don't want to count movie tie-ins; it's loads either way.)

That was the year the novel crossovers began with the four-way crossover Star Trek: Invasion! in 1996. Random House re-released the TAS novelizations. I have noted that there were forty new books in 1996, more than any other year before or since with the exceptions of 2002 and 2003. (2002 and 2003 have 49 each including a dozen S.C.E. eBook novellas for both years; 1996 is back in the lead if you exclude those.)

The Starfleet Academy games surrounded 1996 (console in 1995; PC and novel adaptation in 1997). Star Trek: Klingon, Star Trek: Borg, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—Harbinger.

That 30th anniversary year was epic. I remember thinking it at the time, and I still hold to it now.

Though a special shout-out to 2022 for giving us five different Star Trek streaming series airing new episodes as well as 33 "episodes" of the Star Trek Logs Instagram series and 27 episodes of The Ready Room.

 

[Cicero]

I am on the "Star Trek's cultural peak was 1994" train. It hit the peak, plateaued, and then began a long decline in fits and starts.

It was everywhere for a moment in 2009. I remember a Time or Newsweek cover story about how Star Trek was a symbol of everything that Obama was restoring.

Honestly, I'd go with 1996, or maybe the 1996-1997 TV/fiscal year.

I remember the 30th anniversary feeling much smaller than the 25th. I think I'd point to 1992 as the biggest year for TNG, though it also felt like the point at which TOS started to fade from the 90s consciousness.

To me, it holds up better in retrospect (especially "Trials and Tribble-ations") than it did at the time.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Honestly, I'd go with 1996, or maybe the 1996-1997 TV/fiscal year.

In terms of product output, you're right. Things remained high through '97, and really through the next few years. But the cultural peak would have come before the product peak, particularly on the licensing side where there are longer lead times. Visibility does not equate to being part of the cultural conversation.

Except for 2009, I'm not sure any Star Trek project has attempted to reach beyond the audience to the non-fans. Certainly, the streaming era has not; shoving Star Trek behind a walled garden with a limited audience is the exact opposite of trying to be a mass-market, cultural phenomenon. Star Trek has become niche because CBS wants it to be niche.

To me, the 30th-anniversary didn't feel as culturally significant the way the 20th and the 25th did, let alone 1994. "Trials and Tribble-ations" and "Flashback," while undeniably cool, didn't feel momentous the way "Unification" did, even though they were better than "Unifcation" was.

It was everywhere for a moment in 2009. I remember a Time or Newsweek cover story about how Star Trek was a symbol of everything that Obama was restoring.

2009 is strange because, yes, Star Trek was freakin' everywhere -- and then it was gone. There wasn't any plan around it to build any sort of long-term success or reinvention. The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

There's a lot to be said for the political angle you cite. Generations in 1994 reads like an ending -- the unbridled optimism of the 60s, with Kirk as its avatar, is literally buried by the more conservative Picard and all he represents.

When I think of 2009 though the Obama lens, I think the idea of 2009 -- a return to the bright colors, the imagination, and the optimism -- was subsumed by the reality of 2009, where the world economy was sinking into a depression and the movie itself was, while often fun, a bit dark and cynical.

 

[fireproof78]

09 was the best of the hype. It did recognize darkness as well as the potential.

It epitomized the strong pragmatism of TOS.

 

[Tomalak]

Except for 2009, I'm not sure any Star Trek project has attempted to reach beyond the audience to the non-fans. Certainly, the streaming era has not; shoving Star Trek behind a walled garden with a limited audience is the exact opposite of trying to be a mass-market, cultural phenomenon. Star Trek has become niche because CBS wants it to be niche.

I always forget that was the case for Discovery outside the US - in the rest of the world it was carried by Netflix, and did feel like it had a big launch. Anecdotally I know a number of people who watched having not been particular fans of Star Trek. Picard was on Amazon Prime and had a huge marketing blitz.

But then Paramount+ was launched and they had the fiasco of the new season being pulled and international viewers being left high and dry.

When I think of 2009 though the Obama lens, I think the idea of 2009 -- a return to the bright colors, the imagination, and the optimism -- was subsumed by the reality of 2009, where the world economy was sinking into a depression and the movie itself was, while often fun, a bit dark and cynical.

Yeah, it felt like a great relief at the time, but then we waited years for a sequel, and when it eventually came it was that grimdark, cynical disappointment.