Define the standards for Star Trek.
"What I want it to be."
I mean, I suspect that's the case but I would hope after so many years of smart and intelligent sci-fi in Star Trek that something of a quantifier or measurable aspect to provide useful feedback.
Arbitrary determinations of what does and does not suit star trek are such reductive arguments and retreads of things that happened when I was far too young to notice "star trek on a space station doesn't fit" or even before I was born "star trek without captain kirk doesn't fit"
It's okay to genuinely dislike something if it isn't your cup of tea but to try and assert is as anything beyond the subjective is wrong and will always collapse.
To veer away from SNW slightly as this is the Academy forum the setting has been met with similar barriers as DS9 way back when. Gatekeeping and bigotry with the rise of the internet making it far worse. Conceptually Academy is not a failure as it is exploring a long known and only limitedly explored facet of the universe in a time period that has a lot going on with sociopolitical relevance to today, another Trek staple. Yes Academy did not resonate with the largest audience in its initial release. Maybe season 2 will have a larger audience, maybe it will have a smaller audience that's for us to learn next year but at its core it is solid and recognisable Star Trek.
Its execution will always be a subjective affair and will end up a circular argument we will have for many years. The reasons it never generated a large audience are debatable as are the reasons for its untimely cancellation. I feel that this will be something that goes round in circles for quite some time at least until its detractors get bored or find a new target.
It's okay to genuinely dislike something if it isn't your cup of tea but to try and assert is as anything beyond the subjective is wrong and will always collapse.
To veer away from SNW slightly as this is the Academy forum the setting has been met with similar barriers as DS9 way back when. Gatekeeping and bigotry with the rise of the internet making it far worse. Conceptually Academy is not a failure as it is exploring a long known and only limitedly explored facet of the universe in a time period that has a lot going on with sociopolitical relevance to today, another Trek staple. Yes Academy did not resonate with the largest audience in its initial release. Maybe season 2 will have a larger audience, maybe it will have a smaller audience that's for us to learn next year but at its core it is solid and recognisable Star Trek.
Its execution will always be a subjective affair and will end up a circular argument we will have for many years. The reasons it never generated a large audience are debatable as are the reasons for its untimely cancellation. I feel that this will be something that goes round in circles for quite some time at least until its detractors get bored or find a new target.
If everything is the most dramatic, then nothing is.
Star Trek is generally an optimistic franchise, so it has to return to optimism eventually or it's not optimistic any more. Like how Enterprise season 3 is a very dark, un-Star Trek season that crawls its way back to the light by the end. Technically it's a return to the status quo, Earth is not destroyed, the crew lives etc. But the series has to return to the path, because it's heading to the birth of the Federation.
Deep Space Nine is leading to the end of the Dominion War and Bajor being a healthy civilisation, Voyager is leading to them returning home, Discovery is leading to Burnham becoming a captain etc. Setbacks can only be temporary, everything arcs towards growth and success.
Unlike a lot of series, in Star Trek characters don't have to suffer from problems that are much bigger than them and never seem to get solved. If there's political corruption Sisko deals with it, if there are wars Burnham ends them, if people's rights are denied Picard gets up and makes a speech and things get better. That's the optimism that Star Trek fans love. Fans also love stories where lots of drama happens, and everything goes to crap, but that's fine as we can have both, as long as things get back on track.
It's pretty normal though. I'm sure everyone here would be pissed off about some artistic choice someone could potentially make. Like maybe it turns out the Federation is on the back of a giant turtle, or the moon is an egg, or maybe it turns out Spock had 15 more secret siblings and he fed them to his sehlat. James T Kirk was never a captain, he was in an asylum the whole time!
Plus it's not like I'm pissed off by musicals and puppets, I loved Buffy, and Angel, and Legends of Tomorrow. I am into series with fantasy elements and magic, and wacky bullshit. I still love Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry. I'm a Rick and Morty and Futurama fan.
What pisses me off is when a writer comes in and ignores the unwritten laws that make something what it is, either out of ignorance or because they're bored with them, in a way that leaves a permanent mark on the whole franchise. It's like a group of artists passing a canvas between them for 60 years, each adding some brush strokes to the work, and then the 150th artist in the line draws a bunch of dicks on it because it's funny. Those dicks are there to stay I'm afraid!
Yeah, when you think about it the Xindi probe attack on Earth that kills 7 million innocent people and cuts a trench of destruction from Florida south to Venezuela is one of the most un-Gene Roddenberry ideas Trek could have had. Gene would have vetoed the idea were he still alive and in a position of authority in 2003. But it adds risk and some much needed dramatic stakes to a show that's Season 2 had gotten kind of stale and inconsistent in quality and seemed to be creatively adrift without real focus.
But by the end Earth is saved, most of the NX-01 crew makes it home alive and the path to both the Federation and the Star Trek we'd known and loved was still set. ENT got pretty dark in Season 3, but by the conclusion of the Xindi Arc we were headed right into TOS worldbuilding and more positivity about humanity and the known galaxy in-general. The Earth-Romulan War was still on the horizon but for the moment things were looking up.
But by the end Earth is saved, most of the NX-01 crew makes it home alive and the path to both the Federation and the Star Trek we'd known and loved was still set. ENT got pretty dark in Season 3, but by the conclusion of the Xindi Arc we were headed right into TOS worldbuilding and more positivity about humanity and the known galaxy in-general. The Earth-Romulan War was still on the horizon but for the moment things were looking up.
I'd assumed that was a given.
Farpoint Station was on the back of a (giant space) Turtle.
The universe is balanced on the back of a giant koala
Agreed. Any form of storytelling that doesn't change, evolve and grow just stagnates and dies. If you just want more of the same, then go back and rewatch the same that you already have. I'd rather see a swing and a miss than to never step up to the plate. And if the swing is a miss, I just shrug and move on, like I have with so many other bad, ill-conceived episodes of Star Trek in the past. It's just a TV show. Not worth getting pissed over.
Thats not true. You're basically saying that a way to tell a story stagnates? So the way old movies or tv shows were made are stagnant and only modern ways of story matter? Basically old trek is stagnant? Let's admit it here. They changed so much that they sucked out what made star trek special and replaced it with standard modern sci fi elements and looks that we see all the time. It no longer stands out.
Well, that was a lot of words. And a lot of it was putting words in my mouth that I didn't say (this is my shocked face
).Yes, old Trek stagnated. Badly. It recycled the same old formula over and over without any appreciable growth or change in the format (with the very notable exception of Deep Space Nine) and the storytelling suffered as a result. (And let's not pretend that any of the old Star Treks other than TNG were ever ratings "phenomenons".)
And frankly I'm not even sure what you mean by "standard modern sci-fi elements" so I'm not even going to address that.
I guess in a way that seems to indicate the best way forward is a middle road. Something that has some familiarity, some roots in what prior Star Trek has done, but still sprinkling something new on it in the process.
Something that feels like it's contemporary but yet still is recognizably Star Trek at it's core.
I keep reading the comments about Star Trek being optimistic. I think that's kind of missing the point. Yes, overall Star Trek shows a future humanity that is growing, learning. But we're still human and screw up from time to time. But in the future Star Trek depicts we learn from that and over periods of time we grow and improve.
Star Trek to me though is overall supposed to be smart science fiction. Intelligent SF that gets you to think. Granted there are individual episodes that are dopey and even cringey. But as a whole I believe it tried to be good sci fi. I recall reading back in the day that even in the production design they didn't build things on the ship just because it looked 'cool.' It had a purpose. Why was this junction here, was the deuterium for, what purpose does this conduit serve. And at times it had us question things, not in a lecturing, condescending way, but in a way that hopefully helped you grow a bit. But at the same time I think Trekkies have a romanticized view of older shows. When it did have a message it tried to treat it's audience as intelligent human beings, and it was relevant to the story and added to the story. But not every episode was a message. Sometimes it was just TV with zero message.
My biggest problem with Starfleet Academy honestly was I didn't find it intelligent story telling. Many times I felt like a show like South Park or Family Guy were more intelligent. I couldn't even figure out the point of many of the episodes. And it didn't even seem like the writers knew the show's own internal continuity. At times it seemed like characters reverted back to how they were in previous episodes. Not that I really cared about the characters. I didn't relate to them at all and realized they could all be assimilated by the Borg and I wouldn't care one way or another. I found none of them to be likable. And obviously I struggled with it to the point that finally I just stopped.
Star Trek to me though is overall supposed to be smart science fiction. Intelligent SF that gets you to think. Granted there are individual episodes that are dopey and even cringey. But as a whole I believe it tried to be good sci fi. I recall reading back in the day that even in the production design they didn't build things on the ship just because it looked 'cool.' It had a purpose. Why was this junction here, was the deuterium for, what purpose does this conduit serve. And at times it had us question things, not in a lecturing, condescending way, but in a way that hopefully helped you grow a bit. But at the same time I think Trekkies have a romanticized view of older shows. When it did have a message it tried to treat it's audience as intelligent human beings, and it was relevant to the story and added to the story. But not every episode was a message. Sometimes it was just TV with zero message.
My biggest problem with Starfleet Academy honestly was I didn't find it intelligent story telling. Many times I felt like a show like South Park or Family Guy were more intelligent. I couldn't even figure out the point of many of the episodes. And it didn't even seem like the writers knew the show's own internal continuity. At times it seemed like characters reverted back to how they were in previous episodes. Not that I really cared about the characters. I didn't relate to them at all and realized they could all be assimilated by the Borg and I wouldn't care one way or another. I found none of them to be likable. And obviously I struggled with it to the point that finally I just stopped.
Which is why I like Discovery and the Kelvin films. I sit and think on a lot of themes in there.
And, yes, I know I'll get push back on describing those as intelligent but it goes to show that intelligence is not just the Berman era.
Well I think Star Trek before Berman was intelligent and some since as well. And I loved the Berman era as well, and thought there was a lot of good Star Trek in there, certainly some clunkers and no doubt he was resistant to change. By the time he started becoming a bit more flexible I think the writing was already on the wall. Plus, in fairness, I think no matter who's in charge after a while things get stale.
I liked Discovery and still enjoy SNW for the most part. And I liked parts of Picard, grew to like Lower Decks and actually liked Prodigy quite a bit too. So I wouldn't say I'm anti-Kurtzman overall. But he was the first to put out Star Trek that I just didn't like at all. But there was some good in there as well.
For whatever reason the Abrams films are not ageing well for me. I loved them when they first came out, but now when I watch them they've lost a lot of luster for me. Especially Star Trek (2009). Each time I watch it, it falls further in my favorite Star Trek movies list.
I definitely can't describe DISCO or the Kelvin films as 'intelligent'.
I'll give DISCO credit for trying to be intelligent scifi, but the writers just weren't skilled enough to pull it off. Cheap gimmicks to try to evoke emotion rather than feel earned (like Airiam's death), the endless shrink sessions during critical moments (like Stamets in "Face the Strange"), telling rather than showing the audience the crew backing the captain, etc. Too many things to list, but it certainly was not what I'd consider intelligent scifi.
The Kelvin films... there is nothing intelligent about them. Even BEYOND, the only one of those films that I even liked, was less intelligent and more action and stakes. But with the nature of movies being the primary goal is getting seats in the theater, they at least have an excuse for not being intelligent. The first two films were simply bad. (Though I will say the first 15 minutes or so of '09 was actually really good.)
Intelligent is in the eye of the beholder. I loved all three films, they grab hold of the viewer and don’t let go for the entirety of their runtime.
Sometimes, it seems folks forget that action-adventure was a baked in part of the premise. Something that later shows would seem to forget.
Oh, I know action/adventure has been baked in the franchise since the start. I just didn't like those two Kelvin movies and I thought the action was just stupid and dull action. (I'm not sure what to call the action in those movies, but it just felt stupid and dull, so I just used those terms. Better action, for me, would have more tension, emotion, feeling, etc. TWOK is a great example: the tension was high, the emotions were very real and present, you felt what was going there. '09 and INTO DARKNESS? I felt none of that... except the initial battle with the Kelvin at the start. That one worked for me.)
Don't disagreement here. The films spoke heavily on fatherhood in a way that resonates deeply for me. I cry at almost every film at some point because these characters mean that much. The themes of relationship hit hard.
If that's unintelligent, that's fine but I would not argue for it being unintelligent.
And I do with the Kelvin films very deeply.
Same with Discovery.
The only two things I felt through a vast majority of DISCO was boredom and annoyance.
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