"Star Trek: Rebooting a Classic" article from Entertainment Weekly
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To be honest, i always thought a quick and effective solution would be to just jump another 100 or 200 years in the future. That would free up room for new ideas and still allow for the previous continuity
RobertScorpio
Pariah
No...I always thought that was, and still is, a terrible idea. Might have been good for hardcore fans, but for new ones? No way. Part of the reason, I think, Treks were losing their steam was because today's people could not relate to the 24th century cream puffs. The show needed to get more gritty (Enterprise had the right idea) but with more challenging and new story ideas (Enterprise failed BIG TIME with this.)
Rob
Nope, it would just complicate it further while continuing to be repetitious.
Moore, obviously, is right.
Moore, obviously, is right.
If anything, the middle ages showed that jumping a few years in the future does not ensure technological advances :
: Just jump a few centuries and regress technology. With a little imagination, you could make new stories without over writing old ones.*EDIT: I think its also safe to add that Treks best performance on TV came during the TNG years...which took place in the 24th century. Also, trek was at its grittiest during DS9, which took place in the 24th century. Treks LEAST popular series was ENT, which took place closer to modern times than any other series. I think its safe to say that the year the show takes place isnt the issue. its the writing.
RobertScorpio
Pariah
If anything, the middle ages showed that jumping a few years in the future does not ensure technological advances :
On a grander scale? They have created 600+ hours of TV trek. I hope they never make a new series so long as this current movie series is being made. All it does is put out the perception to the regular people out there that the movies are just two-hour episodes of the current TV trek. And who could blame them? NEMESIS and INSURRECTION didn't really challenge that perception at all.
Rob
i dont care how long something is, so long as its good
Whether something is 10 episodes or 600 episodes, if you keep the same creative team behind something, it will get stale over time. It seems to me that this was more Treks issue than the fact that it has a large amount of back story
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Moore said it well. There were fewer and fewer "blank spots" in Trek history.
But you can't move too far forward and pretend you're still telling stories that relate to the current human condition. It would also get harder and harder to envision what that future may be like. Trying jumpstart things with ENT was going in the right temporal direction, but by then the franchise was running on fumes.
The beauty of TOS was that except for having a more advanced and enlightened attitude, the characters were basically people with 1960s sensibilities facing conflicts with which we could all identify. Exploring the human condition as it is today.
I think Abrams gets that last part right (hence his need to make it "feel" even more real and indentifiable), and I hope he exploits it to its maximum in the next movie (though it would be 2000s people and their sensibilities
).I certainly agree that Trek had gotten to the point where people jsut couldn't relate to the characters. it was a huge issue and one of the reasons why people jumped ship. I don't see why that means they have to ditch the previous continuity though. Whether this is what actually happens in the current film or not is something that I do not know. Either way I'll see the film and probably enjoy it. I'm not buying the argument that ditching the previous continuity is necessary though and seeing what Ron Moore did to BSG, I find it hard to take his creative opinions too seriously.
Moore said it well. There were fewer and fewer "blank spots" in Trek history.
But you can't move too far forward and pretend you're still telling stories that relate to the current human condition. It would also get harder and harder to envision what that future may be like. Trying jumpstart things with ENT was going in the right temporal direction, but by then the franchise was running on fumes.
The beauty of TOS was that except for having a more advanced and enlightened attitude, the characters were basically people with 1960s sensibilities facing conflicts with which we could all identify. Exploring the human condition as it is today.
I think Abrams gets that last part right (hence his need to make it "feel" even more real and indentifiable), and I hope he exploits it to its maximum in the next movie (though it would be 2000s people and their sensibilities
To preface, I think Abrams's decision to revisit Kirk and Spock as their younger selves was an inspiration. That said, I do agree with you that they could've told a TOS-era story and not tread on continuity. It's hardly like TOS was a serial. But, it would've been attached to the staleness of what Trek became. Not fairly, but it would have. And, that wouldn't help things in trying to reinvigorate the franchise.
There was the other baggage, too. Forty years of it. The popular perceptions. The declining fan base. The lack of energy. Trek faded from popular culture.
Sometimes, a reclamation project ends up needing to be turned into new construction. You can only renovate something so many times. Pretty soon, all you can do is respect what went before, and carry the best bits of it into a new beginning. It's risky, but if you do it right, you get something like new Yankee Stadium, or Abrams's Star Trek.
You're not reading the two "I have seen it" threads stickied up top?
Nope
I'm with Moore on this one. It wasn't the villainous Berman and Braga that destroyed Star Trek, it was its own continuity and "canon." The ability to effectively tell a story was undercut by all that baggage, stagnating the franchise and the very characters we were supposed to care about.
I think Moore is correct that canon made things difficult, but hardly impossible, as the novel writers demonstrate continually.
No way they could do that....they couldn't bring back their most bankable characters and I think we'd all on cringed if they brought Kirk's great great grandson into the mix....
The main factor driving that statistic is the huge changes in the TV industry over the timespan of TNG to ENT. Audiences have fragmented enormously - cable has now stolen 50% of the TV audience, and it wasn't even a factor when TNG debuted. Neither were: TiVO, DVRs, DVD viewing, downloads or the internet and social networking as popular distractions. Some of those might have been incipient factors when TNG premiered, but they've grown enormously since then.
The writing has very little to do with it. Entertainment has balkanized and all forms of entertainment have to survive by either being entirely lowest-common-denomenator (reality TV, police procedurals) or appealing heavily to a niche audience and making up the revenue shortfall by other means - product placements, international sales, etc. Star Trek can never be the former, so it has to use the latter strategy (and can't use product placements in the mix either like other sci fi shows like Heroes and Chuck do, to keep their heads above water.) Tough assignment for an inherently expensive-to-produce property, but not impossible.
Then why weren't the very-much-non-cream puffs of BSG more popular? Instead we got continual complaints that they were too nasty and nobody could relate.
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If anything, the middle ages showed that jumping a few years in the future does not ensure technological advances :
*EDIT: I think its also safe to add that Treks best performance on TV came during the TNG years...which took place in the 24th century. Also, trek was at its grittiest during DS9, which took place in the 24th century. Treks LEAST popular series was ENT, which took place closer to modern times than any other series. I think its safe to say that the year the show takes place isnt the issue. its the writing.
look, I am a Niner, and I'll be the first to admit that DS9 lost Trek its audience to an extent from which we never recovered.
the problem with jumping ahead has nothing to do with technology and/or ideas, it has to do with PEOPLE.
with this movie, the basic problem to be solved was the fact that most people still, STILL, relate to Kirk, Spock, McCoy et al the best. and that is what they still want.
those are the people they want to see.
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