Captain April, while I agree with you, I remind you that Paramount is a corporate entity the sole purpose of which is to make money for their shareholders. While I believe they could have made more money by simply creating an entirely new franchise, perhaps an updated space opera based, not on Wagon Train to the Stars, but on CSI: Mars, and renting Star Trek to PBS for their updated COSMOS series, this is what they did with what they own. It saddens me, but there is no group to protect "franchise integrity." The law in this case is not on the side of art.
The fact is that space travel has proven far more difficult for organic life than was expected in the 1960s, and AI and computers and robotics have advanced much faster than projected at that time. The biological revolution is just beginning. We already know there is no Khan, but there may be far more interesting variations on people to come. People designed to survive in spaceships on long trips better than we can. We may yet create a living environment on Mars. The intellectual integrity which I loved in Trek (and I urge you to read my review of the new film before you decide I'm not telling the truth here:
http://startrekreviewed.blogspot.com/2009/06/211.html) is not really in accord with how science has progressed over the last 40-50 years.
I morn real sci fi Trek, and dislike fantasy Trek, but I guess the good thing that has come out of this for me is that I am trying to rethink what a positive future would look like if we were making an equally realistic projection NOW.
Material science has advanced far faster than quantum physics. The Space Elevator looks more and more possible, while the transporter still looks like it's centuries off, if it can ever be done. The grim science, economics, starts to look grim again as the human population grows by the billion, and the sea warms and seems in a march toward less dissolved oxygen and more production of poisonous methane gas. We poison our environment, as we continue to grow in numbers. Are we programming our AIs as Isaac Asimov warned us to, or is the Terminator senario more realistic than we'd like to admit? Those who are 5 and under can expect to see a world first where robots are our servants, and then when they are discussing the rights of robots. Nanobots seem to promise a cure to cancer and heart disease, but senile dementia still threatens an aging society. Racism declines, but religion, far from dying out, seem on an upswing. And where will the biology revolution take us? Trees that grow leaves of lettuce, roots of carrot, and fruit of every variety we could desire? Bacteria that fix nitrates while thriving on the roots of a variety of plants, not just clover or beans? Stronger smarter, more generous, more intelligent people? Less criminality? Dogs that live 30, 50 even 80 years? People that live illness free to 250?
Today I'd write a tale of without Warp drive, but with more robots and recombant DNA and nanobots and sentient AIs, with aliens in communication with us, but not in trade of things beyond ideas. There would be fights over the rights to asteroids with rare minerals, and diamonds would be without value as their production is now a routine experiment performed by small children. Perhaps we could transport our consiousness into a robot around another star, and after a year, have the experiences there played back to us here like a RPG.
I have not yet seen any of the non-Trek series coming out of the Trek fan film houses. Most just sound like updates on Buck Rogers, or in the case of the Phase II project, Buck himself. These will do me no more good that JJA Trek. But perhaps, out among the fans, there are just a few who will think, and formulate a new vision for the future, one that will seem as bold and prescient in 40 years as Star Trek seems to us today.
For me, that's what Trek is about. It's about looking to the future, and trying to imagine one which takes our growing knowledge to improve our world, not wreak it. Along the way, it actually helps lead us there.
For me, Trek is Martin Luther King, Jr. urging Nichelle Nichols to stay with Trek because she cannot imagine the effect seeing a black woman working with white people in a respected position has on the young, and decades later speaking to African-Americans who say they would never have considered college if not for Star Trek. (Yes, I remember the freedom marches, I'm old).
Keeping Trek in a box cannot preserve this. We each have a vision of what would be a better world. At Hidden Frontier, that's a world where gays are at least the equals of straits... maybe a bit more than that. Many Fan Treks, though, seem to go where Trek didn't... to the dark side. Dark Armanda, Dark Frontier, Mirrorverse.
Without Dickens, would London have cleaned up it's poor houses? Without Uncle Tom's Cabin, would the South have tried to leave the union, or would they have, instead, have stayed in the union, making it all slave states? I celebrate Trek because of it's vision and power.
I hope at least some of my fellow Trekkers feel the same way. As for Paramount, I don't expect vision from a corporation.
Phase II is giving us a taste of extra, original, Retro Trek. I enjoy it a lot. I think it's great. But a newly discovered novel by Dickens couldn't have the effect on the world now that his writings had on the world then. I will watch everything Phase II offers. But the next Star Trek isn't JJA Trek, and it's not Retro Films, either. It'll have a taste of the future, with vision.
