Should the next Star Trek series have a major war?

[BillJ]

And by the way, no one's answered my question as to why,
in the cutthroat world of TV ratings, if VOY was doing so poorly, it was kept on the air for SEVEN YEARS?

I think two things were at play:

One, the network was owned partially by Paramount.

Two, did you see what else UPN actually had on their schedule during those seven years?

As an aside, for me Star Trek will always be Kirk and Spock first and foremost. They were the characters I spent my formative years with. I also tend to think they are the most popular Star Trek characters with general audiences which is why Paramount brought them back when deciding to do Star Trek again.

 

[Hober Mallow]

2. A TV reboot featuring Kirk and Spock.

Yes, please. It's much more appealing to me as a Star Trek fan to go back to the source material instead of watching a spinoff of a spinoff of a spinoff of a sequel.

 

[iPadCary]

Two, did you see what else UPN actually had on their schedule during those seven years?

What?!?
You mean "Shasta McNasty" and the Andrew Dice Clay vehicle "Hitz"
weren't the be all & end all prime examples
of the Golden Age Of Television? lol
Point taken!

Yes, please.
It's much more appealing to me as a Star Trek fan to go back to the source material instead of watching a spinoff of a spinoff of a spinoff of a sequel.

Look, can you guys explain to me, as succinctly as possible,
just what is so bloody unappealing to a continuation of the story in a post-Dominion War (pDW) Trek universe?

It would not be the same old story, as if anything is wrong with that.
No, it'd open up a myriad of possibilities ....
* would the Fed stay intact after a war weary population has seen what havoc a major political affiliation could bring down on thier collective heads?
* what ship, and why, would be the focus of a pDW TV show?
* will a Worf-led First City maintain thier current détante with the Fed or will he be deposed by a hardliner High Council faction who,
spurred on by the opportunity to take advantage of the pDW disarray, are eager to the return of the pre-Khitomer Accord cirumstances?
* and on & on ....

Don't all of these possible/plausible storyline directions
sound positively delicious?

 

[BigJake]

will a Worf-led First City maintain thier current détante with the Fed or will he be deposed by a hardliner High Council faction who, spurred on by the opportunity to take advantage of the pDW disarray, are eager to the return of the pre-Khitomer Accord cirumstances?

Uh... what's a "First City"?

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Don't all of these possible/plausible storyline directions
sound positively delicious?

....not really.


As for your question -

Look, can you guys explain to me, as succinctly as possible,
just what is so bloody unappealing to a continuation of the story in a post-Dominion War (pDW) Trek universe?

The opinion I can give you is that new Star Trek has been off the air for close to 10 years, and it will likely be longer before the next series is produced. I think it would be best to take the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) approach and stick to the core concepts of Star Trek without adding the extra stuff the spinoffs bolted to the side (Star Trek +______). Star Trek's been gone a while, so when it returns, I think people will expect Star Trek, not Klingons Arguing About Honor For An Hour or Boring Space Politics or Storylines That Were Wrapped Up When DS9 Ended But We're Picking Up Anyways For Reasons.

As for timeline/universe/whatever - I really don't have a strong opinion one way or the other.

will a Worf-led First City maintain thier current détante with the Fed or will he be deposed by a hardliner High Council faction who, spurred on by the opportunity to take advantage of the pDW disarray, are eager to the return of the pre-Khitomer Accord cirumstances?

Uh... what's a "First City"?

The capital city of Qo'nos, I think?

 

[BigJake]

The capital city of Qo'nos, I think?

I guess? I can go with that.

I'm a less casual fan than I was prior to the spate of amateur research that brought me to this Board, but still: a series concept that asks me to care about the ins and outs of Worf's political career after the Dominion War is pretty much begging me to pull the ripcord.

 

[Melakon]

If Worf is "deposed", that means he's dead if we're talking about Klingons.

 

[2takesfrakes]

STAR TREK television has tried to show major wars before, but they didn't really have the money to do them right. What we got was OK, but we should've gotten a much bigger and better canvas to work on. It was just too tight and controlled and, let's be honest, it came off as cheap. Fans are forgiving, though, as they've always had to have been, because of budget limitations. But no longer ... if they throw a lot of money at it, a war would be a lot of fun to watch, I suspect. It would be the best of both worlds, really. One one hand, we've got the ideals and utopia of the federation and on the other, we've got this war to bring all of this Human Drama to the series. If I saw STAR TREK: Dam Busters making it to the screen, I would probably tune in every night. I wouldn't mind a blood-thirsty series ...

 

[BillJ]

Look, can you guys explain to me, as succinctly as possible,
just what is so bloody unappealing to a continuation of the story in a post-Dominion War (pDW) Trek universe?

Not everyone is as in love with the Dominion War and that version of Trek as you seem to be. I like "Star Trek" because it's "Star Trek". If I want to watch a show about politics, I'll watch a show about politics. House of Cards (Netflix), blows away anything Star Trek could ever accomplish in the area of politics. Same thing goes for a war series, I'd simply rather watch a show that was about war than try to shoehorn a Star Trek series into that concept.

Star Trek, for me, is action-adventure science fiction set in a weird and wild universe where anything could happen. Something I feel the spinoffs lost to a large degree. Settling more and more for stories that were simply modern day political and war stories where the enemies wore funny appendages on their head. I'd rather have the swarthy manipulative Klingons, the warlike Romulans, the pizza-topped Horta and the Gorn rubber lizard suit than the Cardassians or Dominion if I was the one making the call.

YMMV.

Don't all of these possible/plausible storyline directions
sound positively delicious?

You talk about more of the same being a bad thing then your story ideas focus on the single most overused character in the history of the franchise.

 

[Ryan8bit]

Look, can you guys explain to me, as succinctly as possible,
just what is so bloody unappealing to a continuation of the story in a post-Dominion War (pDW) Trek universe?

Mostly I think it's because that just sounds like making more DS9. It's not a continuation of TNG, VOY, ENT, or TOS even. And not everybody loves DS9.

I think DS9 is great, but I really don't care to see a continuation at this point. If I did, I'd read the books. If we get another show, I want it to be something new and fresh, perhaps only casually linked to any of the other series. No continuation of DS9, no rebooted characters, and definitely no Klingon politics as a basis.

If I want to watch a show about politics, I'll watch a show about politics. House of Cards (Netflix), blows away anything Star Trek could ever accomplish in the area of politics. Same thing goes for a war series, I'd simply rather watch a show that was about war than try to shoehorn a Star Trek series into that concept.

Star Trek, for me, is action-adventure science fiction set in a weird and wild universe where anything could happen.

If I want to watch a show about action-adventure space fiction, I watch Star Wars. Star Trek is a little bit more complex than that and sometimes involves politics and war, and I mean in the original.

 

[iPadCary]

Uh... what's a "First City"?

Qo'noS's DC/Moscow/Berlin.
It's their capital.

OK, I guess I misread this board's love of Trek.
Apologies.
I shall now take my leave and shan't darken your doorstep again.
Live Long & Prosper!

 

[2takesfrakes]

"... darken your doorstep ..."

>>SNORT!!!<<

 

[Melakon]

If I saw STAR TREK: Dam Busters making it to the screen, I would probably tune in every night. I wouldn't mind a blood-thirsty series ...

Well, I'll be honest. I like to have a shelf video library, so I sometimes buy films or tv shows I've heard of but never seen. One of those was Space: Above and Beyond, which I missed during first run in the 90s, and only ran one season. I wanted to see if I could figure out why it failed.

It was a war story every week. I watched each episode once, and haven't rewatched any of them since because they were just deadenly dull after a week long marathon of space battles and ground battles and its gung-ho approach to US Marines... In Space!

I'm afraid I'd have the same reaction to any Star Trek: War! series. The Dominion War was an interesting little trip for a while, but it ran much too long for my tastes. War is not what I watch Star Trek for.

 

[BillJ]

If I want to watch a show about action-adventure space fiction, I watch Star Wars. Star Trek is a little bit more complex than that and sometimes involves politics and war, and I mean in the original.

Which you've just nailed down why the format was so successful for so long: It could do any kind of story and could do different things each and every week. TOS and early-TNG were just chock full of variety. If they had done seventy-nine episodes of just war and politics with the Klingons or Romulans, people would've left in a hurry and we wouldn't still be talking about it today, nearly fifty-years after the fact.

I've always considered Star Wars a space fantasy with more in common with Lord of the Rings than Star Trek. YMMV.

 

[Ryan8bit]

Actually, I think that format staying the same for so long was where things started to stagnate. Yes, it was good for a time, but after a while it just became more of the same. It wasn't just TOS and early TNG that had variety, it was most of TNG. VOY had the same format, and Enterprise started out that way. DS9 is probably the only show that deviated from it, but they still didn't have an intense focus on war until the end. Even though they were at war, they still found time to do different kinds of stories within that context. Variety wasn't really the problem.

Now let me just say that I agree in that I don't think a war or political focus is a good way to go. To the original question, I believe my answer was that being after a war would be more interesting than during. I don't think the focus should be on war, but at the same time I keep seeing comments along the lines of, "It's Star Trek not Star Wars," which seem to imply that any kind of war doesn't fit in because of the name. Like Star Trek is only about [fill in the blank]. But as you've pointed out, it's never been about one thing. It's not just space fiction or action adventure... it's a melange of lots of fun things.

So the original question seems to ask if we want to focus on just one of those things that Star Trek is made up of, and I don't know if I'm in favor of that. I think if war was strictly a backdrop and not a focus, that would be ok, but I don't want all out war. As is, Star Trek has never really handled war concepts all that well anyways.

If we focused on just action-adventure, I think that would be pretty boring too, at least for a series. I'm still up for a variety of stories.

 

[BillJ]

Actually, I think that format staying the same for so long was where things started to stagnate. Yes, it was good for a time, but after a while it just became more of the same.

I think that format (people exploring space in a spaceship) is kinda what Star Trek "is". If you're going to abandon that, you might as well just make something entirely new instead of trying to make Star Trek something it isn't. YMMV.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Actually, I think that format staying the same for so long was where things started to stagnate.

I don't think it was the format so much as the uninspired storytelling, telling and retelling virtually the same ship-in-danger plots and the same crew-is-infected-and-must-race-against-time-to-find-a-cure plots and, in the case of VOY, the same looks-like-we-might-get-home-but-OH!-just-missed-it plots. If every episode of TNG had been of the same quality as "Measure of a Man" or "Yesterday's Enterprise," I don't think anyone would mind the episodic format. Unfortunately, Piller's rule that the ship had to be in mortal danger every week started to suck the life from the show.

 

[BigJake]

Piller had a rule that the ship had to be in mortal danger every week? That's news to me.

VOY certainly stagnated, and ENT -- where they didn't have the guts to really run with their premise -- even moreso. Far as I can remember Piller was responsible for the best and most varied seasons of TNG happening at all.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Piller had a rule that the ship had to be in mortal danger every week? That's news to me.

IIRC, his reasoning was that since conflict can't come from the characters (who are enlightened Roddenberrian 24th Century humans and have no real conflict with each other) the source of the conflict much come from outside. Makes sense being saddled with Roddenberry's vision of no-conflict, but then it led to terrible episodes like that one with Lwaxana and Alexander and a tacked-on ship-in-jeopardy b-story so dull that the Lwaxana story was actually more interesting.

Of course, Piller's own "Family" didn't feature an outside threat; but I also remember Piller complaining (in either Starlog or Cinefantastique -- I can't remember) that the episode didn't bring in the ratings, which is probably why we didn't get another episode like that one.

EDIT: Oops. My mistake. Ron Moore wrote "Family," though IIRC it was Piller's idea to show the psychological aftermath of Picard's Borg experience.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

OK, I guess I misread this board's love of Trek.
Apologies.
I shall now take my leave and shan't darken your doorstep again.
Live Long & Prosper!

Love =/= groupthink.

Except in dystopias.