Star Trek 2017 will not be set in the JJ-Verse

[fireproof78]

Actually it's not that far-fetched for them to go back to the Prime continuity even with a soft reboot. It holds a host of possibilities that need have little to nothing to do with what has been seen before. It would also allow them to distinguish themselves from the current movie property.

Also, slightly off-topic, I do find it interesting that while I dislike JJtrek intensely I do find what I see of the forthcoming of the new Star Wars production to be intriguing. For one thing it looks like Star Wars and has a decent vibe to it. So far JJ seems to be doing right by SW. Of course, time will tell...

Which is funny because I hear SW fans worried that Abrams is going to pay too much of an homage to the OT or the EU, and not actually tell a new story.

I think the Prime Universe has plenty of opportunities, but I am also concerned that the technology will reach such an advanced stage that there is disconnect to the audience.

I'm sure it can be done well, I'm just afraid that it won't connect with audiences.

 

[Warped9]

Technology isn't an impediment to good writing.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Do Hamlet, Faust or the Magic Flute have prequels and reboots? (I admit the Magic Flute was a rip off of another opera called "The magic Harp".)

They might be the reboots. IIRC, Shakespeare was fond of adapting preexisting stories.

 

[fireproof78]

Technology isn't an impediment to good writing.

I don't believe I said that it was.

 

[Trekkin]

Do Hamlet, Faust or the Magic Flute have prequels and reboots? (I admit the Magic Flute was a rip off of another opera called "The magic Harp".)

They might be the reboots. IIRC, Shakespeare was fond of adapting preexisting stories.

You could easily argue that every 'update' of a Shakespeare play is a reboot. Off the top of my head, 'Sons of Anarchy' and 'The Bad Sleep Well' took the 'core' of Hamlet and expanded/updated/reinterpreted it. And Orson Scott Card's fucking awful novel 'Hamlet's Father' has a good chunk of prequel material in it.

The opera of Faust is a reboot of the German folktale and the resulting play by Marlowe that changed the character into a somewhat tragic figure. To quote:

The legend that he had sold his soul for magical powers, and had been torn to pieces by devils upon the expiration of the contract, seems to have sprung up immediately, spread by Lutheran preachers who used him as an Awful Example. The first surviving fictional account of his adventures was a chapbook that appeared in 1587, Historia von D. Johan. Fausten dem weitbeschreyten Zauberer und Schwartzkünstler ("History of Dr. Jno. Faust, the far-famed Wizard and Sorcerer").

In this or similar form the legend spread to England, where Christopher Marlowe would embody it in The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (first published 1604, probably written c. 1590).

There's also a lot of evidence that the character of 'Faust' himself just happened to be the name that caught on, and his story was originally just another in a long line of 'deal with the devil' tales that had existed since before the Christian religion.

The concept is well worn, 'Reboot' is just the latest catch-all label Hollywood uses for reimagingings/adaptations/reinterpretations/remakes/ressurections etc.

 

[I am not Spock]

We've explored the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th centuries. How about the 25th? Post DS9, VOY, post Nemesis. Post Star Trek Online.

 

[Belz...]

The studio can't lose. Except...what they have to worry about isn't trekkies walking away, it's trekkies aging and dying off.

I would think they'd be more interested in building a new fanbase than relying on the old one. Trek isn't Star Wars, after all.

 

[Rincewiend]

A Prime universe series would have to be set way after Voyagers return to Earth...
Any new show set between TOS and VOY has to play it safe because it is bound by canon, a show set 50 or 100 years after VOY would have an unknown timeline/future so the writers can do more exciting stuff...
But the JJ movies are now in most peoples memories so it will be most likely set in that universe...

 

[johnjm22]

I think it's going to be JJ-Verse, but they'll have some episodes where they cross over into the prime universe.

 

[gerbil]

Technology isn't an impediment to good writing.

It kinda is, though. Especially for Star Trek fans. The JJ Writers had to explicitly mention that the tranwarp beaming was confiscated and (probably) destroyed in the archive explosion. Why? It introduces an easy fix for anything.

Too much tech creates too many opportunities for puts that have to be ignored or written out. Cell phones render almost any 90s sitcom plot moot. It's a hurdle to overcome and gives us the awful technobabble that's been the hallmark of 700+ hours of "canon."

The canon itself is an impediment to good writing. It hamstrings the writers. There's too much to explain or to choose to ignore or adapt.

Trek is too full of, well, Trek to be conducive to the type of writing that will please audiences today AND satisfy Trek fans. JJ came as close as I think anyone will and look at how that's turning out.

 

[MarsWeeps]

I've always wanted a new series to take place even farther in the future, the 25th or 26th Centuries. A Next Next Generation, if you will. You can give us all the familiar races, but it gives enough time to reinvent the landscape and start from scratch without needing to reference anything that came before.

I think they should set it a century or two past TNG. Instead of continuing to explore our galaxy, the new mission of exploration would take on other galaxies. Of course, warp drive would have to be updated, or maybe jumpgate technology added. Something that would allow travel to different galaxies. I'd want to see completely different aliens and different types of planets than what we've already seen. That will be the challenge.

 

[Warped9]

Technology isn't an impediment to good writing.

It kinda is, though. Especially for Star Trek fans. The JJ Writers had to explicitly mention that the tranwarp beaming was confiscated and (probably) destroyed in the archive explosion. Why? It introduces an easy fix for anything.

Too much tech creates too many opportunities for puts that have to be ignored or written out. Cell phones render almost any 90s sitcom plot moot. It's a hurdle to overcome and gives us the awful technobabble that's been the hallmark of 700+ hours of "canon."

The canon itself is an impediment to good writing. It hamstrings the writers. There's too much to explain or to choose to ignore or adapt.

Trek is too full of, well, Trek to be conducive to the type of writing that will please audiences today AND satisfy Trek fans. JJ came as close as I think anyone will and look at how that's turning out.

No. You're simply having too restrictive a view to see it. You're assuming that the writiers have to explain tech (they don't) and that they have to be constrained by what has been seen before (again, they don't)

If I send a ship to a distant quadrant or even another galaxy then I'm not constrained by having to refer to whatever is happening back home. I'm sure there were numerous ships during the TOS and TNG eras that felt no impact whatsoever by the exploits of the TOS or TNG crews. And that's just in those eras.

 

[rahullak]

The rules of Trek are not set in stone. Consistency and technology are subordinate to having good stories and characters, which are in turn subordinate to whatever brings general viewers, ratings and money. Heck, stories need not even be extremely unique across the various Trek episodes.

 

[Tai]

"We don't want to be bogged down by 700+ hours of continuity!" I am sick and tired of hearing this excuse. You don't want to be bogged down by that? Great! Don't work on Star Trek! Create a show called "Star Adventures" or "Space Voyage" or ANYTHING YOU WANT!

Don't say, "I've been a fan of Star Trek all my life! I love all the old episodes. I grew up watching Star Trek!" and then say, "Ugh, I'm so constrained as a writer."

Bullspit. Literally, all you have to do write the story you want to write. Spend 15 minutes checking Memory Alpha, Memory Beta and Wikipedia (Cause guess what? thousands of fans who love Star Trek more than you took the time to encyclopedia all this stuff) and if you run into a contradiction in your story, edit and re-write. Simple. If that's too much for you. Work on Keeping up with the Kardashians.

 

[Warped9]

"We don't want to be bogged down by 700+ hours of continuity!" I am sick and tired of hearing this excuse. You don't want to be bogged down by that? Great! Don't work on Star Trek! Create a show called "Star Adventures" or "Space Voyage" or ANYTHING YOU WANT!

Don't say, "I've been a fan of Star Trek all my life! I love all the old episodes. I grew up watching Star Trek!" and then say, "Ugh, I'm so constrained as a writer."

Bullspit. Literally, all you have to do write the story you want to write. Spend 15 minutes checking Memory Alpha, Memory Beta and Wikipedia (Cause guess what? thousands of fans who love Star Trek more than you took the time to encyclopedia all this stuff) and if you run into a contradiction in your story, edit and re-write. Simple. If that's too much for you. Work on Keeping up with the Kardashians.

is the only appropriate response to this.

Seriously, when a story indulges in continuity porn it comes off as, "Ooo, look how clever and knowledgeable I am about Trek." It's as bad as technobabble thats injected for absolutely zero value. It becomes essentially fanfic of the most tripe kind.

You don't have to keep refering to previous events to be guided by them. You can do a story with Klingons or Orions or whatever without ever having to refer to whenever they appeared previously and you can still keep the aliens in character as previously established.

When TOS featured Klingons did they keep injecting references back to when they appeared previously? No. When TNG reintroduced their take on the Klingons did they inject references to when they appeared in TOS? No. The only time TNG made references to previous events involving Klingons was in regard to a long ongoing storyline involving friction within the Klingon Council.

Trek continuity is not holy scripture that you have to keep refering to every ten minutes. It can be there as an unspoken guideline rather than a straightjacket.

 

[Squiggy]

"We don't want to be bogged down by 700+ hours of continuity!" I am sick and tired of hearing this excuse. You don't want to be bogged down by that? Great! Don't work on Star Trek! Create a show called "Star Adventures" or "Space Voyage" or ANYTHING YOU WANT!

Don't say, "I've been a fan of Star Trek all my life! I love all the old episodes. I grew up watching Star Trek!" and then say, "Ugh, I'm so constrained as a writer."

Bullspit. Literally, all you have to do write the story you want to write. Spend 15 minutes checking Memory Alpha, Memory Beta and Wikipedia (Cause guess what? thousands of fans who love Star Trek more than you took the time to encyclopedia all this stuff) and if you run into a contradiction in your story, edit and re-write. Simple. If that's too much for you. Work on Keeping up with the Kardashians.

That escalated rather quickly.

 

[Trekkin]

Not to mention Memory Alpha (and Beta) occasionally have mistakes, or mix up fanon with on-screen facts. They eventually get fixed, but it is edited by nice, normal, fallible human beings.

Then there's the dilemma of past contradictions. How can writers be completely beholden to canon, when characters can have two different backstories? Is Khan a product or eugenics, genetic modification, or both? Does Spock have a brother?When, and how bad was the first contact with the Klingons? Did fully conscious androids exist before Data?

The latest writers used time-travel as an in-universe 'out' so they didn't have to deal with it, and they also used their discretion to pick which version of canon they wanted to use (for eg. Khan's reputation as genocidal comes from TNG, ENT and DS9, but contradicts TOS). Just like every writer did before them.

 

[sojourner]

The only true Kirk is James R. Kirk.

 

[Tai]

Clever writers can reconcile differences in continuity. Season 4 of Enterprise had a few examples.

I'm not talking about filling episodes with wink/nudge references to prior series'. The occasional homage isn't a bad thing though.

What I'm talking about is maybe read up a little before you decide to make the NCC-1701 over 700 meters long and the USS Vengeance almost a mile long.

Maybe don't blow up a planet for a plot set-up and then leave the timeline without exploring any of the consequences.

 

[Mudd]

Clever writers can reconcile differences in continuity.

Really clever writers would find that shit tedious after a couple of paydays. Then you get stuck with mediocre writers who are so thrilled to be scribbling in the margins of their Favoritest Thing Ever and getting paid for in that you can only pry them loose by cancelling the thing when the viewers all flee.