Pitfalls the new series should avoid

[Awesome Possum]

I'd love for it to drop the standard Trek format. Given the binge watching nature of most television viewing now, it's probably better to have some sort of ongoing story arc. It doesn't have to be the entire focus, but each episode should somehow continue the story. I wouldn't even try to ignore the more goofy aspects of TOS and the other shows. They can make a compelling drama and still have fun with it. I think that Fuller can pull that off.

 

[Kor]

They should avoid the pitfall of depicting sound in the vacuum of space.

Kor

 

[dmac]

The pitfall of recreating a long popular series and hiding it behind a subscription service with only 100,000 subs.

 

[Awesome Possum]

The pitfall of recreating a long popular series and hiding it behind a subscription service with only 100,000 subs.

Adding a popular franchise to an exclusive streaming service is a good way to drive up subscriptions. Especially since it probably wouldn't last long on broadcast television which is dying as a business and as a place to find creativity. That's all going to cable and streaming where they can flourish and have more freedom.

 

[mos6507]

No magical characters. TNG may have gotten away with Q in the 80s, but I think modern viewers expect more believability from a science fiction show.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Classifying characters like Q as magical is therefore incorrect.

Also, as for how "believable" such characters are, "serious" SF is full of "magical" aliens also. The aliens behind 2001 are nothing if not godlike, even though not seen, wouldn't you say? How about in Carl Sagan's Contact? Solaris? Vorlons in B5?

 

[eyeresist]

No magical characters. TNG may have gotten away with Q in the 80s, but I think modern viewers expect more believability from a science fiction show.

Which is an oxymoron. I don't understand that. You said it yourself. it's a SCIENCE FICTION show. That right there tells you it's about things we don't have in our world.

Magic ≠ science.

Also, as for how "believable" such characters are, "serious" SF is full of "magical" aliens also. The aliens behind 2001 are nothing if not godlike, even though not seen, wouldn't you say? How about in Carl Sagan's Contact? Solaris? Vorlons in B5?

Q was effectively a trickster god, not an advanced alien.

 

[TheSubCommander]

Personally, I think the new series should avoid the episodic, TOS/TNG style of presentation, where everything is resolved in one episode. I think it should embrace story arcs, much more like how DS9, Enterprise Seasons 3-4, Babylon 5, BSG and Stargate SG1/Atlantis/Universe ended up doing. I think people want to see an ongoing, connected story, with each episode as a chapter in the larger story of the show. Not self contained episodes that rarely do call backs.

 

[Takeru]

Magic ≠ science.

As soon a a work of fiction portrays magic as real it becomes a natural part of the universe that can and will be researched scientifically.

That's also why magic vs. science stories are silly, magic would be a field of science in those worlds. They wouldn't be opposed.

 

[mos6507]

Q was effectively a trickster god, not an advanced alien.

Thematically he's a trickster god. He's presented as an advanced (evolved) alien.

I get it that you don't find this plausible but my point was that this kind of thing has been a facet of quite a bit of "hard" sci-fi, the degree to which life (or AI) could evolve to godlike status. For instance, Asimov's The Last Question.

 

[Vger23]

Things to avoid:

1. Over-use of technobabble, re-modulation, tachyon bursts, or modified deflector dishes.
2. Warp core breach
3. Earth-like worlds
4. Overly PC or inoffensive attitudes toward sensitive cultural topics. Let's take some risks.
5. Preachy, "holier than thou" garbage about how far humanity has evolved over petty things like "conflict" and "economics"
6. Spatial anomalies of any kind...ever.
7. Continuity bog-down. I have no problem with staying within a general framework, but I could care less about the details. Tell good stories.
8. Large story arcs that concern the nature of intergalactic politics and relations between various governments. Please, enough of that bullshit already. I don't mind a little bit of world-building...but we don't need 4 seasons narrating the complex and unstable relationships between the Breen, Tholians and Gorns in a Post-Nemesis climate where Romulus is weakened. Dull, predictable, male-soap opera crap.
9. No anti-heroes. No. No. No. We have plenty of Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Sopranos etc etc etc etc already. TV is filled with morally ambiguous lead characters...it's old now. Let's figure out how to tell a compelling story without this (now) exhausted trope.
10. No holodecks or re-set buttons that allow you to explore "what if's" in a safe manner.

Things to go with:

1. Complex multi-dimensional characters who have faults, strengths, passions and fears. No one-dimensional characters or relationships. Kirk was a great character. Spock was obviously multi-dimensional. Many of the DS9 characters are good examples as well (Sisko, Kira).
2. Complex arcing storylines about the perils and wonders of SPACE EXPLORATION. Interstellar, The Martian, etc. Let's get out there and TRULY investigate the unknown.
3. Aliens that are truly alien. I don't mind a few humanoid species...but I think it would be fascinating to discover some truly alien forms and cultures.
4. Risky, edgy, fun adventure stories. Again, you can "push the envelope" without losing the fun and light adventure tone of the original series.
5. Chemistry between the leads -real (Kirk, Spock, McCoy or TNG) not forced (ENT, VOY).
6. More of a feeling of isolation and pioneering and less of a feeling of "starship patrol mission of the week"
7. Keep the basics intact: Phasers, Photon Torpedoes, Transporters, Warp Drive, Klingons, etc.
8. Consequences...! I'm not sure that super-complex story arcs like "Game of Thrones" are necessary or desirable, but I'd like to see something more like DS9 where there ARE over-arching plots and that decisions or outcomes are permanent.

 

[Awesome Possum]

I'd like to see alien species that had more than one culture per planet. Maybe even some diversity amount a culture. The movies and TNG played with that some as the Klingons and Romulans became more than just one note bad guys. Expand that because it's more realistic.

 

[stardream]

Can we also not use the word 'ancient' for things that happened in the twenty first century?

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Re: "Pointless characters" like Kim and Mayweather... It's not like they SET OUT to create a pointless character in them. Kim was supposed to be a youthful, naive person who was out in space for the first time to experience all the wonders out there. Mayweather was to be a juxtaposition of the youngest person on the team and yet the most experienced of them. If written well and allowed to grow beyond their starting points, they would've been just fine. The producers in those cases were hoping that viewers would latch on to that starting point and endear themselves to the character based on that. It didn't work like that, but it wasn't MEANT to not work out.

That meshing of what the producers want, how the writers write it, how the actors act it and how the director will present will at some point become a roll of the dice and we'll just have to see what happens. You can't engineer a breakout character like Spock, but you can try different ways of doing it.That said, I'm not against a young / naive character at all. Bashir is arguably the best example of this in Trek, and he had tons of development because the dice roll noted above came up with enough sevens even before the whole genetically engineered thing.

Still, Trek is based in no small part on having a team of elite people, best in their field, out there discovering the awesomeness in the galaxy. There's not much room in there for the greenhorns, and so I hope they won't have too much of that to get in the way. Need a youthful / naive POV character? Bring in a junior crew member just for that, have them learn something, and then jettison them (or bring them back if they're popular). Trek actually did okay with that, IMO.

Mark

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

I'd further reference Stargate SG-1 as an example of an ensemble cast that worked very well. Nevermind their jobs, but every one of those four characters had something to contribute and learn. No greenhorns. When they NEEDED that, they brought in a guest character for that point of view. Furthernore, they got the right balanced of nobility, heroism, and a little flaw.

And then, they tried replicating the same thing with their own spinoff Atlantis. That time, they had a Mayweather-esque character who was younger than everyone else but who was an experienced soldier and gate traveler, to contrast everyone else (and especially the lead guy, who was a Stargate neophyte). It wasn't followed up on, it didn't work out, so the guy was replaced in the second season with an older character who had a sense of nobility and honor the team was missing. And it worked... So hopefully they'll be able to pull off a good team from the get go, and if it doesn't work, to be able to recast things without looking desperate.

Mark

 

[stardream]

Maybe they should just forgo 'greenhorn' characters altogether?

Although there is something to be said for the character who is also the audience 'stand in'. The one who asks the questions the audience wants to ask. That person doesn't have to be a fresh out of the academy recruit...maybe an experienced person who is just new to the 'team'.

 

[Admiral2]

The treknobabble was heavy handed on the Berman treks, I hope there's little to none of that crap. But I fear they'll have to comply to the few wannabe BIG BRAINS who have to know how the ship works, as if it's real, just to criticize it when the writers contradict themselves in a story. Or bitch about it in one of the tech threads.

See, that's actually easy to fix. The part of the treknobabble that's the problem is the made-up, bullshit words, not just that it exists or that there are some viewers that want to know every little detail about how the ship goes.

Here's what you do: teach the writers how the ship works first, in language anybody with passable English skills can understand, which will automatically start everybody creating the show on the same page as far as the ship's tech goes. Once the writers know how the ship works, they can also figure out how it can screw up and further know what kind of fix is needed. As long as you keep breakdown and fix in the realms of mechanical and electronic engineering and out of the realm of quanto-pico-horseshit physics, the resulting treknobabble will actually sound like words people who build stuff for a living might use, which will make it a lot less offensive.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

TOS got Chekov, and I'm sure on some level that's what they thought the Trek-archetype crew should have. So, we get Wesley, Bashir, Kim, and Mayweather. TNG also had LaForge and Worf as junior officers, but they had other character-defining aspects (blindness, Klingon stuff) to be used as an aid to development and story seeding, to the point that their "junior" status was secondary. That crutch wears away pretty quickly, IMO after a few episodes of saving the universe, so I don't think it's needed at all.

An audience stand-in should basically be anyone in the scene who isn't the focus of the conflict. Picard was frequently a stand in viewer for Data's attempts at humanity, for example. So no, it doesn't have to be a greenhorn... But in the realities of broad-spectrum TV, people are probably thinking that there should be SOMEONE who is younger, hipper, sexier... And so the showrunners have to have someone in that place. How often that WORKS is a whole other matter...

Mark

 

[STEPhon IT]

See, that's actually easy to fix. The part of the treknobabble that's the problem is the made-up, bullshit words, not just that it exists or that there are some viewers that want to know every little detail about how the ship goes.

Here's what you do: teach the writers how the ship works first, in language anybody with passable English skills can understand, which will automatically start everybody creating the show on the same page as far as the ship's tech goes. Once the writers know how the ship works, they can also figure out how it can screw up and further know what kind of fix is needed. As long as you keep breakdown and fix in the realms of mechanical and electronic engineering and out of the realm of quanto-pico-horseshit physics, the resulting treknobabble will actually sound like words people who build stuff for a living might use, which will make it a lot less offensive.

In TOS the references to the engines was like breaking it down like a car or a train engine. Only a few actually cares about tech lingo, I don't. All I need to see is the camera shake and stuff blow up in the engine room to have a clue something is wrong, and the Chief Engineer has to fix it.

 

[T'Girl]

They should avoid the pitfall of depicting sound in the vacuum of space

And while they're at it, the same with music. They maybe could use those weird "space sounds" that NASA released.

teach the writers how the ship works first

A relatively short writer/director guide would probably do the trick.

Turn technobabble around, transwarp drive becomes "engine," warp core becomes "reactor," phaser banks becomes "guns." quantum torpedoes are simply "torpedoes."

The mere fact the the show is on a spaceship traveling between stars will likely be enough to tell the audience that the show is set in the future.

+

 

[Brainsucker]

The only way for the writers of the new series avoid pitfall is to avoid reading this thread, and trust to themselves.

The fans set too many limitation, too many rule. Not only that, there are another side of the fans who disagree with their suggestion. So Either way, following the fans suggestion will only spark "protest".

So it's better that the writers ignore these "suggestion" or "rule" and believe to themselves. Either way, nobody can satisfy everyone.