Star Trek, what I think it should be.....
- Thread starter SPEKTRE76
- Start date
It shows.
Why, yes, yes you were.
For the same reason NBC took a chance on Heroes and WB took a chance on Smallville. If the network's reluctant to do a genre show, you do your best to disguise the genre part of it. In that case, replacing technobabble that's literally just syllables thrown together with recognizable jargon viewers can at least look up would go a long way to making Trek more palatable to a sci-fi wary audience. Same with proper uniforms. Contemporary astronauts wear uniform jumpsuits or comfortable clothes in their work environments. They only wear pajamas to bed.
You're right. The first customer for any Trek series pitch would be the network with the TV rights. Now, maybe you won't be able to sell SPEKTRE's version, but you sure as hell won't sell them yet another iteration of people in day-glo outfits on day-glo sets saying lines like "We need to mitigate the cabalic intensity of the trialic force in the vinculum!"
Don't be to proud of this technobabbular terror you've created. The ability to stuff a script full of vaguely scientific filler is insignificant next to the power of proactive characters.
Actually, that was part of my point, Jitty. What's yours?
Spouting Star Wars quotes. It's like quoting Holy Grail, it doesn't need a purpose. Just a humorous period or exclamation mark for your post, I suppose.
Ooooo-kay...
People, people! Stuff like this does not matter:
Not trying to pick on anyone in particular, but trust me. Nobody at CBS will know or care what any of that means. To the people with the power to make a TV series, a "Corvette" is a sports car that is far too low-end to interest them.
Not trying to pick on anyone in particular, but trust me. Nobody at CBS will know or care what any of that means. To the people with the power to make a TV series, a "Corvette" is a sports car that is far too low-end to interest them.
So you don't waste time explaining it in the pitch meeting. That's a detail for you to worry about if you shoot a pilot. At the pitch meeting, you walk in and say "The next Star Trek is the US Navy joins forces with the Smithsonian in space to search for the origins of intelligent life. They face new and familiar friends and foes along the way."
If they don't buy it, you go home. If they do buy it, you write a pilot script. If they buy that, you pick and choose the right details during production, because they're strictly for the end-users - the viewing audience - anyway.
Don't forget they will ask you to put up a significant amount of YOUR OWN MONEY for this venture.
Science fiction is high budget and very, very risky.
And Star Trek is not as hot a property as it used to be.
The fact that you will be fronting 70 percent of the cost may be the point that will make them green light it.
Science fiction is high budget and very, very risky.
And Star Trek is not as hot a property as it used to be.
The fact that you will be fronting 70 percent of the cost may be the point that will make them green light it.
There's some guy who does, I think he's some prince of Jordan, he's building a Star Trek theme park, and he should be bankrolling a TV series.
If it's on AMC, it needs to fit the interests of the AMC audience. If FX, it's the FX audience, etc. There is no channel where details about starships and military background are already of keen interest to viewers, so that audience simply doesn't exist. And nobody is going to do the work of trying to coalesce that audience, not when they've already got a perfectly good audience to sell new shows to.
If the Military Channel did scripted dramas, then maybe it would fit there, but they don't, and if they did, they would start with something more directly of interest to their audience such as a historical war drama about a real life war.
The details will need to be crafted for the most likely audience, true. But the details you are talking about don't map to any likely audience, which is defined as "the people who already watch the channel where this show is going to air."
If it's on AMC, it needs to fit the interests of the AMC audience. If FX, it's the FX audience, etc. There is no channel where details about starships and military background are already of keen interest to viewers, so that audience simply doesn't exist. And nobody is going to do the work of trying to coalesce that audience, not when they've already got a perfectly good audience to sell new shows to.
If the Military Channel did scripted dramas, then maybe it would fit there, but they don't, and if they did, they would start with something more directly of interest to their audience such as a historical war drama about a real life war.
How did Firefly do on the Science Channel? If the price could be kept down, the Science Channel could be a great place for Space Opera.
Xortex, yea, if I was a Billionaire, with money to burn, I'd probably finance a Space Opera show myself.
Star Trek is not supposed to be military science-fiction. There's the whole Stargate franchise for that purpose. ST is by definition about space exploration and making contact with new species and civilizations. Ship design and uniforms are also genre-specific, so I see no problem with those either.
Dark and gritty? I don't know. It really depends on the era we are talking about. The episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise take place during the early formative years of the Federation and depicts how they were trying to find their way in a dark and unkown universe. In contrast, TNG shows us the powerful, enlightened and self-confident crew of the 24th century Federation.
I agree with some other points of yours. A creative FX specialist needs to find ways to substitute bumpy foreheaded aliens. See the discussion on this topic here.
I also agree with your cry for more character development and timeline progression. This could be achieved by getting rid of the need to restore the status quo at the end of each episode, which is the specialty of sitcoms. They could also make more frequent references to earlier episodes.
Finally, I also concur with your last point. But then again, this is not the only law any sci-fi has violated. For a full list, click here.
What does that have to do with whether Starfleet should act like their the military or not? I seem to recall the Military usually doing exploration stuff back when there was exploration stuff to do.
And then DS9 injected so much needed realism into that, turning the TNG federation from space hippy love fest to real government.
