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No reason the current cast couldn't do a TV series.

So, movie franchise to TV franchise, as opposed to the other way round? Is there a precedent for that?

I can picture a series set in the revamped TOS era, perhaps. But with the recast TOS crew? Na-ah.
 
StarMan said:
So, movie franchise to TV franchise, as opposed to the other way round? Is there a precedent for that?

Aside from Star Trek's previous metamorphsis from TVH to TNG?

Yup. Stargate. Buffy too I believe. Neither show used the same actors as the films, IIRC.

I can picture a series set in the revamped TOS era, perhaps. But with the recast TOS crew? Na-ah.

Which is the problem. Aside from the TNG example I gave, these series recast the principles, and in the case of Stargate, put hopes of a film trilogy indefinately on hold.
 
StarMan said:
So, movie franchise to TV franchise, as opposed to the other way round? Is there a precedent for that?

Sure. Lots of hit movies become TV shows, just as lots of hit TV shows have become movies. But mostly, the entire movie cast won't agree to signing a five-year contract, or their asking price to appear in a TV show is just too high, or they're busy making other movies, so the TV version gets an all-new (or mostly new cast).

A good example would be... "M*A*S*H". Gary Burghoff (Radar) was a sole survivor.

And no way were Walter Pidgeon and Joan Fontaine (1961) signing up for the TV version of "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" (1964-1968)!

At one time, TMP was going to spawn a TV movie, but ST II ended up with a theatrical release.
 
stj said:Slash was invented to explain how Kirk and Spock got to be such friends. That's the only interesting character backstory.

Slash was invented because 'shippers see sex everywhere and some people just have to perv' every thing up. I think exploring the friendship between these two very different individuals is much more interesting than simply dissecting every scene looking for clues that "GASP! They're DOING IT!"
 
Therin of Andor said:
Plum said:
Let's imagine a reasonable, say, 3 season production. A real vision, something classy.

Unlikely. The standard Hollywood contract is a five-year minimum, studio's option to renew. If they signed actors to less than that, like UK did with the recent incarnation of "Doctor Who", they'd have their lead actors dropping out mid-stream. And when/if the show is popular enough to renew, the actors' agents put their prices way up.

Also, the expensive standing sets for Star Trek TV series are budgeted across the assumption of a five-year run. TNG didn't really start making Paramount money until Season Six.

Ouch. Double whammy. Thanx for the info, oh blue one. :)
 
Plum said:
^^^
Oh, a new TNG era show. That's a thought. But without B&B in the picture (they would have loads of royalties, I reckon) that option might not be very attractive to the studio. Just guessing.

EDIT - Thought you meant 24th Century, oops. My brain... not... tzzt...

24th C is what I don't think we'll get for a while. They'll want to stick to the milieu that the movie covers, not just the century but the tone, look & feel, however they pull it off. I expect something that isn't quite TOS or TNG/DS9/VOY.
 
^
The period we shouldn't be thinking of is 23rd century and 24th century. It's the 60s and the 90s. This film won't be the 60s, and any return to the '24th century' won't be the 90s.
 
Kegek said:The period we shouldn't be thinking of is 23rd century and 24th century. It's the 60s and the 90s. This film won't be the 60s, and any return to the '24th century' won't be the 90s.
Well, you're right.. kind of.

The thing to keep in mind is that people haven't changed in any real way from the 60s to the 90s to today. Human nature remains utterly unchanged (though on-screen portrayals of it have changed slightly... and not necessarily in ways that make the portrayals MORE realistic in all ways). Hell, human nature hasn't changed througout the entire duration of human history, as far as anyone can tell.

And neither, ultimately, has what people really enjoy as part of GOOD STORYTELLING. No period has a lock on "better storytelling" but each period does have its own unique flaws. Today is no different in that regard... films and shows made today are every bit as much a reflection of how we WANT to see the world as it was how people back then wanted to see their world. The bleak, depressing, "more realistic" effect that some people want to see really isn't any "more realistic" than the overly CHEERY attitudes that get denigrated so frequently. It's just a reflection of a curious, contemporary "style."

So, then... what part of the original series was really "The 60s?" Well, we know that womens' hairstyles, the presence of miniskirts and go-go-boots, not to mention hairstyles that are not currently in fashion (but ya never know, could come back next year as far as any of us can know!)... that does tend to "date" the show somewhat. The overuse of colored gels in lighting the sets (but not the sets themselves!) give us a "dating" as well. And certainly, with more money and more time, plus today's somewhat more advanced technologies, we can make (for example) a better Bridge set that is, at first glance, indistinguishable from the original, but which is of much higher quality and much more functional.

You're right... the shows and films are "dated" to the time they were made, in every case. But the amount that needs to be "tweaked" to remove that "dating" is far less than I think most people tend to claim when making that argument.
 
^
I was mainly referring to style; not merely design and colour aesthetic, but also narrative styles. TOS very much has various attitudes more typical today than in the sixties, besides the brightly lit sets and episodic storytelling format - for example, its treatment of women. Kirk maintains an expectation in "Who Mourns for Adonais?" that marriage is equivalent to ending one's career.

Cary L. Brown said:
films and shows made today are every bit as much a reflection of how we WANT to see the world as it was how people back then wanted to see their world.

Precisely my point.

But the amount that needs to be "tweaked" to remove that "dating" is far less than I think most people tend to claim when making that argument.

I certainly wouldn't claim that. But just as TOS is a product of its time, so is Abrams' production, and it should not have to indulge itself in retro-futurism.
 
40 years from NOW Star Trek 2008 will look cheesy to the young people in that time, just you wait and see.

They'll be wearing go-go boots, have beehive hairdoos, ect ;)
 
Woulfe said:
40 years from NOW Star Trek 2008 will look cheesy to the young people in that time, just you wait and see.

Sure. Dated, anyway. These things are subjective. I think Metropolis (1927) holds up great; but ultimately it's a matter of taste.
 
Metropolis is pulp all the way, the designs of the miniture bulidings, the background paintings, pretty much everything is verry much like the cover of Astounding, Amazeing, Ect from that same time period, Art Deco everywhere ;)
 
I suspect that if there was an influence there it went from "Metropolis" to the pulps rather than the other way around. The first publication of "Amazing Stories" only predates the release of "Metropolis" by a year or so, and Lang was working in Germany.
 
^ Now that I think about it, yea, possibly the other way around, Art Deco was the thing in the early 20th cent in real life, it just got reflected in the films and pulp stories of that time period, still retro-future tho' ;)
 
Woulfe said:
40 years from NOW Star Trek 2008 will look cheesy to the young people in that time, just you wait and see.

They'll be wearing go-go boots, have beehive hairdoos, ect ;)
I won't be a bit surprised to see it, either. Everything, including goofy styles, seems to be cyclical.

I'm just curious when powdered wigs and hoop skirts will make THEIR come-back. :D
 
Metropolis was mainly influenced by German Expressionist art, and the emerging German Objectivist art, as well as what we call Art Deco. The most expressionistic influence on its architecture can be seen quite early in the film, when Freder Fredersen gestures out at the city to his father and we subsequently see a series of - impossible - architectural creations.

There are plenty of other visual nods as well, offhand, there is a Satanic pentagram behind the robot as it is being transformed into Maria's doppelganger. As far as pulps go, there are native German pulps of the era - Lang's next science fiction film, Woman on the Moon, includes a scene where a young boy shows off his science fiction pulps. I don't know if these had any influence.
 
^ I didn't know all that see.... Well, I do now ;) thanks for all that info on Metropolis.... Point is that George Lucas along with ILM, made the city planet in that same design, one only has to look at it and see it's there.

This only proves that there's nothing wrong with retro-future design, just a different way to present it up to people in this day and age.

Yea, I liked the prequel trilogy, so sue me ;)
 
I did like a lot of the design aesthetic of the prequel trilogy. And hell, I like retro-futurism sui generis. But that's probably not what Abrams is going for; and I hope whatever Abrams is going for is something I find appealling.
 
Dale Hoppert said:
stj said:Slash was invented to explain how Kirk and Spock got to be such friends. That's the only interesting character backstory.

Slash was invented because 'shippers see sex everywhere and some people just have to perv' every thing up. I think exploring the friendship between these two very different individuals is much more interesting than simply dissecting every scene looking for clues that "GASP! They're DOING IT!"

The family reunion of unrelated young people seems like a really bad idea. Slash was mentioned to emphasize how unusual the Kirk/Spock relationship was. Is it more annoying to be persistently misread as advocating a slash movie? Or more annoying to read this hysterical drivel?

A slash movie would almost certainly be way too imaginative for Abrams whose character work on Lost is derivative. I'm not a 'shipper nor am I into slash---I'm not into fan fiction generally---I don't even like the tie-in novels! But the remarks above came across as so arrogant and bigoted I now hope Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto show us how to do it in freefall.
 
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