What are your thoughts about seeing the prime universe again?

[BillJ]

But the later shows do. And that's a lot of hours and years of work.

None of which are going anywhere. I still periodically watched the various spinoffs, even though the Abrams films take place apart from them. I didn't need the Abrams films to do anything more than tell good stories. The same thing I want from Discovery.

What differentiates Trek from generic Space Opera, part from its history?

Its worldview and its unique elements. Neither of which are timeline specific.

I grew up with the Starfleet Universe, and comic books with multiple timelines, new universes don't faze me in the slightest. And, as a fan of alternate history, I love to see events examined from different angles.

 

[jaime]

What Makes Star Trek An Exceptional Space Opera: How much people (or a person) like or recognize it, compared to how much they like or recognize all the other Space Operas.

What Makes Star Trek: The Label. And a lack of lightsabers.

See, I knew Star Trek Online having glowed swords was a bad idea.

Yup, that's pretty much it, but then you have to look at what is being recognised, is it just the names of characters in the original series? What about the later series...Picard has almost as much recognition, and for some, even more. Is it something about the style? The Design? The nacelles and hull, the Starfleet Delta? Well...as endless parodies and similar in hints can show you, those can occasionally turn up elsewhere without directly meaning Star Trek. Is it the federation? That specific utopian set up? Well...we all know Andromeda is Star Treks cousin, but is it actually Star Trek...what about Babylon 5? Now granted, all these things are influenced by Trek. Is it the made up but grounded science? Well, Dark Matter (I mention that show a lot, I think it's gonna be useful thinking about new Trek tbh) drips with subspace this, tachyon that, chronitons....it has all the notjeffriestubes and notquitewarpdrive and almostatranswarp drive, not to mention Androids with emotion chips you could want. The morality tale aspect outright planned by Gene Rodenberry? That is pretty much the point in a lot of SF.
Now given these things are not unique to Trek, in some cases because Trek has inspired other material, and given that each fan or person may have a different idea of what Star Trek is.....is Star Trek simply anything the legally has those words slapped in the title and some of the things we know are in it?
The absolute one thing, that is unique to Trek is the characters and settings we have already seen, which means it's history basically. A reboot can retell those, or a continuation can build on those, but without those, we are left with literally just a name as its unique point. Which isn't much. We are basically on brand recognition here, and brands love to have history. Star Trek Est 1966. More or less.

Which path would you take to ensure absolute maximum brand recognition, trading on 50 years of history, and hundreds of hours of Television?

 

[Captain of the USS Averof]

Yep, and anime fans keep loving it.

They "do it" by being sane and having a sense of proportion.

That's the first time anyone has used the word "sane" to describe anime fans.

You probably never heard of the otaku.

 

[BillJ]

Which path would you take to ensure absolute maximum brand recognition, trading on 50 years of history, and hundreds of hours of Television?

By simply calling it "Star Trek". That is what people are going to recognize immediately.

Seriously, what advertising have they done that ties it to the Prime universe in a meaningful way? A Starfleet arrowhead and a ship with a saucer, secondary hull and two warp nacelles. "Star Trek" is the hook.

 

[Trekkin]

Yup, that's pretty much it, but then you have to look at what is being recognised, is it just the names of characters in the original series?

A new series is new 'history.' Trek is not a defined 'universe' that some writers have come and played in. They built it, from absolutely nothing.

And their tools were retcons, messing around with setting, changing genres and mediums, and just generally trying out and introducing new things.

 

[jaime]

None of which are going anywhere. I still periodically watched the various spinoffs, even though the Abrams films take place apart from them. I didn't need the Abrams films to do anything more than tell good stories. The same thing I want from Discovery.



Its worldview and its unique elements. Neither of which are timeline specific.

I grew up with the Starfleet Universe, and comic books with multiple timelines, new universes don't faze me in the slightest. And, as a fan of alternate history, I love to see events examined from different angles.

I agree. But the timeline, the continuity, really help define that. And I find alternate history fun too, but they really work by knowing that history itself differs. And I am not sure a fictional history can support that, unless you stay really tightly focussed, and that works awesome in some works...but didn't work out so well for Into Darkness. Probably because it tried to jump ahead of itself and do Wrath of Khan before it had done Space Seed. Of course Kirk would sacrifice himself for his ship and crew, particularly in the Kelvin Timeline. It's his defining overhang from his father. But on the other hand it doesn't work because it's inverting our little history clumsily...the weight of Spocks death in TWOK is based on years of history that just isn't there in Into Darkness. Spock isn't Kirks friend, they seem to only be something like friends because future Spock said they would be. Everything in the Kelvin Timeline is predicated on that point. It's building towards a future that it's creators wanted to jettison the continuity from. So...it's become something else. A bubble in our fictional history.
I think continuity is actually a tighter more oppressive force on the Kelvin Timeline reboots than it ever was in any new series of Trek, ones which stayed more or less in continuity with each other. It's all about how you follow it as a writer I suppose.

 

[BillJ]

I'm also not sure that "trading on fifty years of history" is necessarily a good thing where Star Trek is involved. Its overall track record is mixed, at best.

 

[BillJ]

I agree. But the timeline, the continuity, really help define that. And I find alternate history fun too, but they really work by knowing that history itself differs. And I am not sure a fictional history can support that, unless you stay really tightly focussed, and that works awesome in some works...but didn't work out so well for Into Darkness.

How did it not work for Into Darkness? It is the highest grossing and one of the most critically acclaimed Star Trek movies. I bet Paramount wishes that Beyond had been such a failure.

I'm not sure Fuller realizes the bee's nest he has stepped into, though I wish him the best of luck in succeeding. Enterprise was hammered more for its contradicting of other series than its dramatic failings. He is going into a world where every misstep, no matter how minute, will be blown up as the biggest failing in the history of the universe.

 

[jaime]

How did it not work for Into Darkness? It is the highest grossing and one of the most critically acclaimed Star Trek movies. I bet Paramount wishes that Beyond had been such a failure.

I'm not sure Fuller realizes the bee's nest he has stepped into, though I wish him the best of luck in succeeding. Enterprise was hammered more for its contradicting of other series than its dramatic failings. He is going into a world where every misstep, no matter how minute, will be blown up as the biggest failing in the history of the universe.

I am never gonna go by gross as sign of quality. Success maybe, mainstream success, yeah...but does that mean Blade Runner is not as good a film as Into Darkness? Is TMP the best Trek ever?
Not sure about the critically acclaimed either, since JJ and the people working on beyond all sort of...ran away from Into Darkness and discussed its failings.

I see what you mean about enterprise, but can only ever use myself as a yardstick...some of the continuity issues were a problem, but that wouldn't have mattered if it didn't have serious issues in other areas. The strengthening of any one of its failings may have helped paper the cracks elsewhere.....people seem to think it goes up in quality when it starts following Trek canon more. I don't think it's so much the case for me, but did like it doing the thing with Suraks Katra to deal with one of its dramatic and continuity problems. I didn't give a monkeys about the Defiant or the Mirror Universe. Some of enterprises writing and even its production design was just plain bad, from my perspective and in my opinion. It success or lack thereof suggests that we all had various reasons for not quite feeling the love for Enterprise. It can't really be used as a discourse on the problems with canon though....for every moment it cocked it up, there's another where it plopped solidly into fanwank, and neither saved it's ass.
TNG is the best model DSC could hope for, and the best level of success it can dream of. And I think that's their plan.

 

[jaime]

A new series is new 'history.' Trek is not a defined 'universe' that some writers have come and played in. They built it, from absolutely nothing.

And their tools were retcons, messing around with setting, changing genres and mediums, and just generally trying out and introducing new things.

Again I would agree, with the caveat that they always built on what had gone before, and the retcons were usually small or simply plausible. Not planet sized, not even person sized.

 

[jaime]

I'm also not sure that "trading on fifty years of history" is necessarily a good thing where Star Trek is involved. Its overall track record is mixed, at best.

True or not, it's what they are doing...and mixed or not...it's confused existence suggest it leans to the positive side. Doctor Who had even more of a mixed history, and it's continued highs and lows show that's just a thing that happens....it's continued popularity again suggests there is something there, even with its own fandom tribal warfare.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Or some folks don't define "Star Trek" by its timeline.

/thread

 

[BillJ]

/thread

Sometimes, I miss the days when it was just Star Trek around. There seemed to be this universe of weird and wild wonder where anything could happen. Even early TNG had some of this flavor. Then the spinoffs kinda devolved into bland, paint-by-numbers drama.

 

[TRON JA307020]

Sometimes, I miss the days when it was just Star Trek around. There seemed to be this universe of weird and wild wonder where anything could happen. Even early TNG had some of this flavor. Then the spinoffs kinda devolved into bland, paint-by-numbers drama.

DS9 was excellent. If you think that wwas paint by nunbers then you don't get what makes a good show.

 

[fireproof78]

Of course. But the later shows do. And that's a lot of hours and years of work. Otherwise you can slap a Star Trek sticker on a lot of Space Opera, and it could be true. What differentiates Trek from generic Space Opera, part from its history?

I agree with @BillJ in what defines Star Trek is it's attitude. It presented an optimism about the future of humanity, regardless of the hardships that was faced.

It has changed and been presented in different ways over the years, but the essence of what GR presented as Star Trek was optimism.

I saw your questions about Babylon 5 or Andromeda, and my response is still optimism in humanity.

 

[Mr Awe]

I'm noticing. Use multiquote from now on, please.

I was, of course, being facetious, and will be using this feature.

Mr Awe

 

[Mr Awe]

None of which are going anywhere. I still periodically watched the various spinoffs, even though the Abrams films take place apart from them. I didn't need the Abrams films to do anything more than tell good stories. The same thing I want from Discovery.



Its worldview and its unique elements. Neither of which are timeline specific.

I grew up with the Starfleet Universe, and comic books with multiple timelines, new universes don't faze me in the slightest. And, as a fan of alternate history, I love to see events examined from different angles.

That's a cool view to have and I totally respect it. But, as I've noted earlier, this is a personal preference. Others have a stronger preference for the Prime timeline and it's history. All of it's cool, just different opinions.

Mr Awe

 

[jaime]

I agree with @BillJ in what defines Star Trek is it's attitude. It presented an optimism about the future of humanity, regardless of the hardships that was faced.

It has changed and been presented in different ways over the years, but the essence of what GR presented as Star Trek was optimism.

I saw your questions about Babylon 5 or Andromeda, and my response is still optimism in humanity.

And I would agree (it's why I never understand the want for grit in their Trek, at least not of a certain nature.)

Andromeda and B5 actually bothe contain that same optimism to a degree as far as I can recall. It's just less widespread.

Even Dark Matter seems to revolve around the idea that people are good to each other if you strip everything else away. These are definitely all things that are children of Trek mind you.

 

[Mr Awe]

DS9 was excellent. If you think that wwas paint by nunbers then you don't get what makes a good show.

DS9 is the best Trek series after TOS!

Mr Awe

 

[JWPlatt]

What differentiates Trek from generic Space Opera, part from its history?

Its worldview and its unique elements. Neither of which are timeline specific.

Can't argue with that. It is actually quite consistent with the arguments in the case against Axanar.