Star Trek Needs to be Closer to Home

[LightyKD]

Part of what made Trek sucessful in the 60's is that it dared people to believe ansd see a future in which humanity can accomplish so much when working together. Combine that with the face that there was so much NASA activity in that decade, people then had that "What's next?" feeling. In my opinion, part of what makes Trek so hard for new people to get into is the lack of relatable situations. The Human, more correctly, Earth factor is mostly missing. Nu-Trek does a decent job of bringing things home and giving us a take on future human life but a 2 hour movie is peanuts compared to a 4 - 7 season show. I believe a new Trek series should feature a split cast, senior officers on ship and a few B characters on Earth that are related to the senior staff. The next series should also follow the same setup as Power Rangers in Space. Have 3 to 5 episodes of the crew in the field and then have them come home for one or two episodes.

This next Trek series should show us as much of every day Earth life as posible. Show people being people, having relationships, living life. The show should also limit the number of mainstay aliens. Keep it simple, Vulcans, Klingons, Andorians, Denobulans, Tellarites, Orions and some Feringi's for comic releif. That should be enough to have varying stories. Additionally, the new series should be no further in the future than Nu-Trek. Everyday life needs to be relateable so having too much tech might push people away. It's time for a back to basics Trek.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Personally, I want my Star Trek to be out among the stars, far away from the safety and comfort of the Federation core.

I don't care much for 'normal' life on Earth, I want to see strange new worlds and awe-inspiring spatial phenomena that baffle the laws of physics, with a diverse crew, richly populated with aliens from all across the Federation (personally I want more aliens, 99% of the time they are the most interesting in the series).

What I would want to see more of is the day-to-day lives of the crew onboard ships/stations, show what they do when not exploring dark nooks of the cosmos, battling evil space-Nazis, and teaching alien females to love. Looking at their lives and what makes them tick would make the characters more interesting and shift the focus onto them, rather than the alien-of-the-week, phasers firing and women in inappropriate attire.

 

[HIjol]

Personally, I want my Star Trek to be out among the stars, far away from the safety and comfort of the Federation core.

I don't care much for 'normal' life on Earth, I want to see strange new worlds and awe-inspiring spatial phenomena that baffle the laws of physics, with a diverse crew, richly populated with aliens from all across the Federation (personally I want more aliens, 99% of the time they are the most interesting in the series).

What I would want to see more of is the day-to-day lives of the crew onboard ships/stations, show what they do when not exploring dark nooks of the cosmos, battling evil space-Nazis, and teaching alien females to love. Looking at their lives and what makes them tick would make the characters more interesting and shift the focus onto them, rather than the alien-of-the-week, phasers firing and women in inappropriate attire.

^^read and learn, LightyKD, and, of course, welcome to the BBS...

Bry, can I come intern on your writing staff? Your post is exactly what I would say!

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

^^read and learn, LightyKD, and, of course, welcome to the BBS...

Bry, can I come intern on your writing staff? Your post is exactly what I would say!

Welcome to the team HIjol, now snap to it!

I want a twelve episode season arch on my desk by 0800 tomorrow!

 

[HIjol]

^^read and learn, LightyKD, and, of course, welcome to the BBS...

Bry, can I come intern on your writing staff? Your post is exactly what I would say!

Welcome to the team HIjol, now snap to it!

I want a twelve episode season arch on my desk by 0800 tomorrow!

Will Do, Chief!...what are we looking for here?

"Love with a Tri-Ped?"
"Cochrane through a Wormhole?"

I got some good ideas for dialog for Angle On's
I can write Continuous dialog to match the warp speed shots, if you want?
Do you know if there will be Crossfade, or Dissolve for the Love Scenes?
Who or what will be the Favor On?
I know you want a lot of heavy duty emotional Push In's!
Swish Pan's for Warp Speed, or just do it with the Sound Mixer and have dialog?

So Many Questions! I am excited!

I will make you proud!

No, no, really, I am ok!...

 

[T'Girl]

Show people being people, having relationships, living life.

Yes, but these things should take place aboard the hero ship, and not on Earth. Occasional references to "home" are fine, maybe even the rare episode, but not a major block of the show.

Unless you're going to set the entire series on Earth, and forget the ship altogether.

Everyday life needs to be relateable so having too much tech might push people away.

Definitely need to push the tech into the background. The characters and events should carry the story, not the machinery.

 

[Isolinear]

Definitely need to push the tech into the background. The characters and events should carry the story, not the machinery.

Less Technobabble: Yes.
Less Tech: NO!!!!!

If I wanted to watch every day life, relationships and no tech stuff, I'd watch a soap opera.

 

[Stephen!]

The next series should also follow the same setup as Power Rangers in Space. Have 3 to 5 episodes of the crew in the field and then have them come home for one or two episodes.

The bulk of Power Rangers in Space seemed to be earth-based, which it would be, given that Denji Sentai Megaranger is an earth based sentai series.

03 "Save Our Ship" (Earth)
07 "A Ranger Among Thieves" (Earth)
08 "When Push Comes to Shove" (Earth)
09 "The Craterite Invasion" (Earth)
10 "The Wasp With a Heart" (Earth)
11 "The Delta Discovery" (Alien Planet / Earth)
12 "The Great Evilyzer" (Earth)
16 "Flashes of Darkonda" (Alien Planet / Earth)
17 "The Rangers' Mega Voyage" (Jupiter Moon / Earth)
19 "Invasion of the Body Switcher" (Earth)
21 "Red with Envy" (Earth)
22 "The Silver Secret" (Earth)
23 "A Date with Danger" (Earth)
25 "Always a Chance" (Earth)
26 "The Secret of the Locket" (Earth)
30 "Dark Specter's Revenge, Part 2" (Earth)
31 "Rangers Gone Psycho" (Earth)
32 "Carlos on Call" (Earth)
33 "A Rift in the Rangers" (Earth)
34 "Five of a Kind" (Earth)
35 "Silence is Golden" (Earth)
37 "Andros and the Stowaway" (Earth)
38 "Mission to Secret City" (Earth)
39 "Ghosts in the Machine" (Earth)
40 "The Impenetrable Web" (Alien Planet / Earth)
41 "A Line in the Sand" (Earth)
42/43 "Countdown to Destruction" (Earth)

 

[Greg Cox]

This next Trek series should show us as much of every day Earth life as posible. Show people being people, having relationships, living life. The show should also limit the number of mainstay aliens. Keep it simple, Vulcans, Klingons, Andorians, Denobulans, Tellarites, Orions and some Feringi's for comic releif. That should be enough to have varying stories. Additionally, the new series should be no further in the future than Nu-Trek. Everyday life needs to be relateable so having too much tech might push people away. It's time for a back to basics Trek.

Except that TOS never showed us life on Earth in the 23rd Century. It was all about exploring the Final Frontier, not about what was going on Earth at the time. The only times we ever saw Earth on original TV show was when they went back in time for some reason and visited the Great Depression or the Cold War or whatever . .. . .

Star Trek is not about the idyllic Earth of the future. It's about seeking out new life and civilizations and going boldly where no one has gone before . . . .

 

[Amaris]

I like what TNG gave us, what DS9 gave us, and so on, which were little tastes of what Earth might have been like. I love the idea that in the future, there are still people who have family-run creole restaurants, and things like that.

For me, ST09 and STID gave us the best views of future Earth, by focusing on the equivalent of rural life in the former, and a major city in the latter. That filled the small need I had to see Earth in the future.

 

[CorporalClegg]

It seems to me that, of the 12 films, the only two that don't have at least one scene on or around future Earth are Insurrection and First Contact. (Generations is a stretch, but it at least shows and aspect of 23C life.)

All the TOS films showed 23C Earth in some fashion, which is interesting because, of all the shows, TOS itself had the least.

The subsequent series (Even Voyager!) had whole episodes devoted to future Earth life.

And, of course, the nuTrek films are almost exclusively about future Earth.

 

[Amaris]

I have to say, I love the look of future London.

 

[Ubik]

This next Trek series should show us as much of every day Earth life as posible. Show people being people, having relationships, living life. The show should also limit the number of mainstay aliens. Keep it simple, Vulcans, Klingons, Andorians, Denobulans, Tellarites, Orions and some Feringi's for comic releif. That should be enough to have varying stories. Additionally, the new series should be no further in the future than Nu-Trek. Everyday life needs to be relateable so having too much tech might push people away. It's time for a back to basics Trek.

Except that TOS never showed us life on Earth in the 23rd Century. It was all about exploring the Final Frontier, not about what was going on Earth at the time. The only times we ever saw Earth on original TV show was when they went back in time for some reason and visited the Great Depression or the Cold War or whatever . .. . .

Star Trek is not about the idyllic Earth of the future. It's about seeking out new life and civilizations and going boldly where no one has gone before . . . .

No. That was the Enterprise's mission, the mission of a fictional ship. The mission of the television show Star Trek was quite different. It's a common error. But clearly, watching almost any episode of the show exposes that the show's mission was very different than that - the aliens the characters meet, for example, are not truly alien at all (certainly not alien in the way aliens in the science fiction literature of Bruce Sterling or C. J. Cherryh are), but only metaphors for varying kinds of humans. And rather than being about exploring truly alien worlds, it was about using alien worlds as metaphors for the political and social problems of the day, or in other words the late 60's. Rather than portraying how different things out in the universe can be, it was about metaphorically critiquing or commenting on certain habits and events right here on Earth at the time the show was produced - things like the Vietnam War, and Civil Rights, and the Cold War, and nuclear escalation, those sorts of things.

So....in order to do what the 60's show did best, but do it now, the show needs to metaphorically be about NOW. It needs to tell, in metaphorical science-fictional terms, the stories of today, just as the 60's show told metaphorical stories about the 60's. Set it on Earth, set it on a ship, set it on an alien planet, set it on a colony, it makes no difference - either it will be about NOW, about the problems we currently as a species face, just as TOS, TNG, and DS9 were, and very successfully, or it will be about nothing but itself, and will disappear into the television ether just like Enterprise and every other empty science fiction show did.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Give me a Smallville/Gotham style TOS prequel set primarily on Earth and I'm happy.

 

[Autistoid]

Definitely need to push the tech into the background. The characters and events should carry the story, not the machinery.

Less Technobabble: Yes.
Less Tech: NO!!!!!

If I wanted to watch every day life, relationships and no tech stuff, I'd watch a soap opera.

The anti technobabble slant is so ironic.

Technobabble never ever makes sense in relation to actual engineering and technology, it's always writers that drop that garbage in there.


Good technical talk goes like this, captain we don't have enough power/water/etc.

You have limits and you can't insert more technobabble to remove em.


It's such a crucial part of a good written series. Yet people continually ignore it.

To really get into a fictional environment as an audience you have to feel that your in a real future.

Having material limits will only strengthen how engaging it is more the human context.

My favorite idea for an ep would be putting the senior staff on trial for putting excessive wear and tear on a ship. Have a chief engineer loose his job because of failure to protect assets.

You don't need an excessive amount of made up jargon. The point would be that these characters have jobs and responsibilities that are more complex than catch the bad guy.

In real life there are no right and wrong choices. Life is a gambling where you are constantly paying off old debts.

 

[Autistoid]

I like what TNG gave us, what DS9 gave us, and so on, which were little tastes of what Earth might have been like. I love the idea that in the future, there are still people who have family-run creole restaurants, and things like that.

DS9 also had the mega theme which is Bajor is some middle eastern outpost.

 

[BeatleJWOL]

Unless you're going to set the entire series on Earth, and forget the ship altogether.

Earth Trek: The Already Discovered Frontier

 

[martok2112]

Unless you're going to set the entire series on Earth, and forget the ship altogether.

Earth Trek: The Already Discovered Frontier

Sea Trek: Where SeaQuest DSV Has Boldly Gone Before.

or

Tsar Trek: A Russian Inwention.

 

[feek61]

Part of what made Trek sucessful in the 60's is that it dared people to believe ansd see a future in which humanity can accomplish so much when working together. Combine that with the face that there was so much NASA activity in that decade, people then had that "What's next?" feeling. In my opinion, part of what makes Trek so hard for new people to get into is the lack of relatable situations. The Human, more correctly, Earth factor is mostly missing. Nu-Trek does a decent job of bringing things home and giving us a take on future human life but a 2 hour movie is peanuts compared to a 4 - 7 season show. I believe a new Trek series should feature a split cast, senior officers on ship and a few B characters on Earth that are related to the senior staff. The next series should also follow the same setup as Power Rangers in Space. Have 3 to 5 episodes of the crew in the field and then have them come home for one or two episodes.

This next Trek series should show us as much of every day Earth life as posible. Show people being people, having relationships, living life. The show should also limit the number of mainstay aliens. Keep it simple, Vulcans, Klingons, Andorians, Denobulans, Tellarites, Orions and some Feringi's for comic releif. That should be enough to have varying stories. Additionally, the new series should be no further in the future than Nu-Trek. Everyday life needs to be relateable so having too much tech might push people away. It's time for a back to basics Trek.

I totally disagree. Star Trek was NEVER about being close to home. Even in the intro is says "Where No Man Has Gone Before"; it was about explorations and new and unique circumstances. Gene Roddenberry NEVER wanted to show earth during the TOS time-frame. The Enterprise crew was intended to be so far away that even communication at times was impossible; thus the captain would have to make decisions on his own without consulting anyone.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

This next Trek series should show us as much of every day Earth life as posible. Show people being people, having relationships, living life. The show should also limit the number of mainstay aliens. Keep it simple, Vulcans, Klingons, Andorians, Denobulans, Tellarites, Orions and some Feringi's for comic releif. That should be enough to have varying stories. Additionally, the new series should be no further in the future than Nu-Trek. Everyday life needs to be relateable so having too much tech might push people away. It's time for a back to basics Trek.

Except that TOS never showed us life on Earth in the 23rd Century. It was all about exploring the Final Frontier, not about what was going on Earth at the time. The only times we ever saw Earth on original TV show was when they went back in time for some reason and visited the Great Depression or the Cold War or whatever . .. . .

Star Trek is not about the idyllic Earth of the future. It's about seeking out new life and civilizations and going boldly where no one has gone before . . . .

We also see what Pike accepts as an accurate depiction of Earth in "The Menagerie," in the picnic scene. That's the only view of 23rd century Earth in TOS that I'm aware of.