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What is ''Real Star Trek''?

For me, "Real" Star Trek is big, brash heroes saving the day, with maybe a bit of a message mixed in. Sometimes subtly, sometimes with the grace of a sledge hammer.

I tend to think that the original Star Trek and the Abrams films most closely fit what I feel is "real". It doesn't mean other aspects of the franchise are necessarily bad (TMP is one of my favorite movies ever), but for me Star Trek needs to be fun. The universe needs to be a weird and wild place where anything can happen.
 
The cerebral stuff that GR wrote was true Trek in it's purest and strictest sci-fi sense.

Man want Cerebral, read the Novel for ST:TMP written by Gene with his full vision for the Motion Picture with everything that had gotten cut. It even basically implies that TOS didn't happen, at least in the way we saw on screen which Kirk basically calls Propaganda.

Why don't I consider Disco real Star Trek? Because it doesn't expand on the ideals of the franchise or the Trek formula. I view Disco as an extremely generic science fiction show that is wearing Star Trek's carved off skin and it's dancing it's dancing around like it's a grotesque masquerade. I don't like Voyager, I don't like much of Enterprise, but Enterprise and Voyager both "Feel" like Star Trek, in fact, Enterprise S1 and S2 really do feel like a return to TOS in many ways (Just, bad).

What is harder to pick are the movies. Honestly, the only Star Trek movie that feels like an episode of Trek is TMP. The rest are their own weird action-adventure movie thing really. I don't really get how people say Kelvin films "aren't Star Trek" but Wrath of Khan is.
 
The Wraith of Khan is not Star Trek. It's slop and get used to it or they'll take that away from you, I hope.
 
These numbers pertain to the approximate number of stories posted in each Star Trek category. The "Other" encompasses the nuTrek movies, the TOS and TNG movies, and whatever else can't be neatly slotted into the regular categories. I'm not sure where TAS stories fit into this (stories that include the TAS characters of Arex, M'ress, and Walking Bear or deal with TAS episodes, ie. "Yesteryear"). I'm also unsure where crossovers fit into these numbers. I've noticed some nuTrek stories being improperly posted in the TOS section.

Notice which series has the most stories posted? That's right. VOYAGER - the series that you blame for "killing" the franchise. These are not individual chapters; they're stories, some of which run over 100 chapters and explore the characters and alternate takes on some of the episodes. Quite a few are alternate takes on "Endgame", and there are certainly a wide variety of views on what happens after the ship returns to Earth... if it does return to Earth at that time. Some stories have Janeway ignore the Admiral's nagging and avoid engaging with the Borg, so the journey takes much longer.

Surely the most we can reasonably draw from this is Voyager (and to a lesser extent ENT and TNG) seemingly appeal best to those who enjoy writing fan fiction? That it lends itself to this process?

Even that becomes ropey when we take into account it and DS9 were the "growing up shows" for the first generation of trekkies who have known a widespread internet and would thus be more inclined than previous generations to produce this stuff online en masse, DS9 inspiring fewer stories because it was aimed at a more adult audience, had darker themes and less accessible, humourous characterisation.

Discovery of course has had nowhere near long enough in circulation yet to compare.
 
What is harder to pick are the movies. Honestly, the only Star Trek movie that feels like an episode of Trek is TMP. The rest are their own weird action-adventure movie thing really. I don't really get how people say Kelvin films "aren't Star Trek" but Wrath of Khan is.
Same here.
 
Surely the most we can reasonably draw from this is Voyager (and to a lesser extent ENT and TNG) seemingly appeal best to those who enjoy writing fan fiction? That it lends itself to this process?

Even that becomes ropey when we take into account it and DS9 were the "growing up shows" for the first generation of trekkies who have known a widespread internet and would thus be more inclined than previous generations to produce this stuff online en masse, DS9 inspiring fewer stories because it was aimed at a more adult audience, had darker themes and less accessible, humourous characterisation.

Discovery of course has had nowhere near long enough in circulation yet to compare.
Keep in mind that the statistics I provided are from one fanfic site. Just one. There are many fanfic sites around the internet.

Over the past couple of weeks I've been sorting my own fanzine collection (physical print 'zines). It's a huge job because I have hundreds of them, ranging from a small booklet of Klingon jokes to novels the size (and weight) of a large phone book. I've been researching them on Fanlore.org and adding them to my LibraryThing account.

A lot of the material in some of my print 'zines is now available online, on various sites that are not fanfiction.net. The link in my sig leads to the online site where the Valjiir Continuum stories are archived. Orion Press has its own site, the Kraith stories are archived on a different site, and so on. There's a lot of classic TOS fanfic that used to be only available in print form online now. Of course the online versions don't include a lot of the songs, poems, comics, and original artwork.

In all these various sites, I don't run across much DS9 fanfic. Granted, I haven't checked out AO3 to see what's there for Star Trek; I go to that site for the C.J. Cherryh Alliance-Union fanfic.

I just find it ridiculous that Voyager is being blamed for "killing" Star Trek when it's still being talked about, watched, and written about. People wouldn't write stories with 100+ chapters for a franchise if they didn't consider it worth the effort. This represents years of dedication, on the part of the writers and on the part of the readers.
 
Keep in mind that the statistics I provided are from one fanfic site. Just one. There are many fanfic sites around the internet.

Over the past couple of weeks I've been sorting my own fanzine collection (physical print 'zines). It's a huge job because I have hundreds of them, ranging from a small booklet of Klingon jokes to novels the size (and weight) of a large phone book. I've been researching them on Fanlore.org and adding them to my LibraryThing account.

A lot of the material in some of my print 'zines is now available online, on various sites that are not fanfiction.net. The link in my sig leads to the online site where the Valjiir Continuum stories are archived. Orion Press has its own site, the Kraith stories are archived on a different site, and so on. There's a lot of classic TOS fanfic that used to be only available in print form online now. Of course the online versions don't include a lot of the songs, poems, comics, and original artwork.

In all these various sites, I don't run across much DS9 fanfic. Granted, I haven't checked out AO3 to see what's there for Star Trek; I go to that site for the C.J. Cherryh Alliance-Union fanfic.

I just find it ridiculous that Voyager is being blamed for "killing" Star Trek when it's still being talked about, watched, and written about. People wouldn't write stories with 100+ chapters for a franchise if they didn't consider it worth the effort. This represents years of dedication, on the part of the writers and on the part of the readers.

But all this does is increase the sample size, the pattern stays the same. Voyager needn't be any more popular just because people write more fan fictions
 
Didn't Netflix say Voyager was the most popular as well?
Probably because it's the "newest" one before Discovery and had the Borg/Borg Queen and I assume it has a lot of fanfiction because it's the latest era of Trek.
 
THIS.

Is real Star Trek.

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Starfleet appointing an Adolf Hitler type to Captain the Discovery would not be pleasing to Trek traditionalists I would hazard a guess. Trek Traditionalists are far brittle for what they perceive as violating some sort of Trek orthodoxy or other but in this instance I kinda get their angle.
 
What are you talking about?

:shrug:



Well TWOK didn't tie it's science concept into the characters enough to be satisfying. Now if they concentrated on the genesis devise and the ethics/morality of how and why they created it and for whom, then that would have interested me but they just ignored that and made Kirk's son look like a bad guy, and Kirk look old and be a bad father. This is what I mean by slop.
Now let's say the Klingons knew about the protomatter and blackmailed David to use it or his mother would be killed or something like that, that would have been better formulating the elements to a good Star Trek story in a more interesting way. Plus they made Kirk out to be a cheat. C'mon! He should have been thrown out of the Academy for that, not given a commendation really.
Also if Khan joined up with the Klingons and offered to help them destroy Earth say..
 
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That one's easy.
The Real Star Trek is to Star Trek as The Real Ghostbusters is to Ghostbusters.
 
Well TWOK didn't tie it's science concept into the characters enough to be satisfying. Now if they concentrated on the genesis devise and the ethics/morality of how and why they created it and for whom, then that would have interested me but they just ignored that and made Kirk's son look like a bad guy, and Kirk look old and be a bad father. This is what I mean by slop.
Now let's say the Klingons knew about the protomatter and blackmailed David to use it or his mother would be killed or something like that, that would have been better formulating the elements to a good Star Trek story in a more interesting way. Plus they made Kirk out to be a cheat. C'mon! He should have been thrown out of the Academy for that, not given a commendation really.
Also if Khan joined up with the Klingons and offered to help them destroy Earth say..


I do like that we can embrace the weird and wonderful here.

News flash, David Marcus was obsessed, Kirk was a bad father, trek isn't particularly about science and Kirks whole MO is to lie, cheat and use subterfuge

I do get your point though, it's hard to get emotionally involved in a film where Earth isn't facing imminent destruction.
 
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