Ok, so I've posted a few comments here and there, so I figured it was about time I started a thread of my own. I'd like to deal with an issue that seems to be somewhat common in a lot of the discussions I've seen here. The subject being: How can JJ Abram's Trek do better than all the other films?
Here's my take on the subject:
First off, there seems to be two entities that are held as the building blocks of all that is 'Trek--The Original Series (TOS), and The Next Generation (TNG). I'd say that's a good estimation of where things lay as far as that's concerned. Now, what I'd like to delve into a bit is the basis of those two shows.
With TOS (and I'm leaving April and Pike out for the sake of brevity) we were presented with what I like to call "The Age of Adventure". Kirk and his crew were not a special case, in fact, it's been said any captain and crew of this era would have behaved similarly to Kirk and his crew...that is to say, Kirk was not a special case. He stood among his peers as one of many who could be trusted to get things done, the right way, the first time around. That's why he was made a captain, and in fact, the youngest captain at the time. Kirk and crew existed to provide a mirror of the current culture who aimed towards a brighter future. We don't have warp drive in real life, but all in all, the show was grounded in reality. I don't think I need to pursue that issue any further, as I believe almost everyone would agree with me on that point.
Now, we move into the TOS movie era...and extension of the Age of Adventure. The high water mark here is "The Wrath of Khan", "The Search for Spock", and "The Voyage Home". These three movies told a linear story and marked the best times ever for Kirk and his crew on the big screen. These movies gave us what we'd always wanted to see in Star Trek: High Adventure and deeper insights into the characters themselves. An important note here: with the loss of the USS Enterprise, we may finally realize that it's not the ship that's important, but the crew who actually get things done.
Of course the bridge "The Undiscovered Country" between TOS and TNG, along with "Generations" cemented the relationship between what was the past (TOS) and what was the future (TNG) of Star Trek.
TNG invoked the "Age of Diplomacy". We were presented with Picard, who was more of a diplomat than a cold-war era fighter that Kirk was. While at first, Picard makes his tenure on the Enterprise-D seem a grand way to carry on the series into the next century, there always seemed to be something lacking in these stories that was not in TOS. I believe this factor is what we call "deus ex machina" or "god out of a machine". It was with TNG that this problem now inherent with Trek began to emerge. All too often, we were given some exotic form of radiation, or some other non-sensical technological reason for getting the crew out of danger. Granted, the issue may have been something from real science...but the fact of the matter is that most people did not know that, or did not understand that. It was becoming something like magic...that is to say, the show was becoming a fantasy...no longer about the characters and what they could do, but what the ship and technology could do.
The movies of TNG took this and the fans of Star Trek right along without ever looking back. And so the concept became a given. I think the people that made the TNG movies, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager came to imagine that the fans would accept anything now thrown at them. It was a fatal flaw.
And so we enter the "Age of War" with Deep Space Nine and Voyager. It is in my opinion that Voyager is the more guilty culprit of damning Trek than any other Trek incarnation. Fluidic Space and Transphasic Torpedoes are just tips of the veritable iceburg. I'll leave this for you to digest a bit, and move on.
Now we go back in time..Trek time, that is, for Enterprise, and Captain Archer and his crew. Now, this show was quite good in my opinion, with the Xindi conflict being the best of it all. The tragedy of Enterprise was the writing, many people say, and I'd have to agree because the actors were acting out the parts they were handed each week, they had little choice. From this comes my argument that Archer was too weak of a captain as presented to us. He should have been more like Kirk.
And that brings us full circle back to the movie due out next year, the reimagining of TOS. In is in my humble opinion that going back to what works: a Star Trek that gives us a mirror of ourselves, even though set in the future, provides the audience with realistic characters who deal with things on their own. This is what Star Trek was about, and what it needs to be about: real people dealing with problems without pulling the solution to their dilemma out of a can. It's been said more than once by more than one Trek character "It's not the ship that matters, it's the mission". Sometimes we (the writers of Star Trek) can see things very clearly for a moment, then it all fades into the background.
Now, arm weapons and raise the shields!
Here's my take on the subject:
First off, there seems to be two entities that are held as the building blocks of all that is 'Trek--The Original Series (TOS), and The Next Generation (TNG). I'd say that's a good estimation of where things lay as far as that's concerned. Now, what I'd like to delve into a bit is the basis of those two shows.
With TOS (and I'm leaving April and Pike out for the sake of brevity) we were presented with what I like to call "The Age of Adventure". Kirk and his crew were not a special case, in fact, it's been said any captain and crew of this era would have behaved similarly to Kirk and his crew...that is to say, Kirk was not a special case. He stood among his peers as one of many who could be trusted to get things done, the right way, the first time around. That's why he was made a captain, and in fact, the youngest captain at the time. Kirk and crew existed to provide a mirror of the current culture who aimed towards a brighter future. We don't have warp drive in real life, but all in all, the show was grounded in reality. I don't think I need to pursue that issue any further, as I believe almost everyone would agree with me on that point.
Now, we move into the TOS movie era...and extension of the Age of Adventure. The high water mark here is "The Wrath of Khan", "The Search for Spock", and "The Voyage Home". These three movies told a linear story and marked the best times ever for Kirk and his crew on the big screen. These movies gave us what we'd always wanted to see in Star Trek: High Adventure and deeper insights into the characters themselves. An important note here: with the loss of the USS Enterprise, we may finally realize that it's not the ship that's important, but the crew who actually get things done.
Of course the bridge "The Undiscovered Country" between TOS and TNG, along with "Generations" cemented the relationship between what was the past (TOS) and what was the future (TNG) of Star Trek.
TNG invoked the "Age of Diplomacy". We were presented with Picard, who was more of a diplomat than a cold-war era fighter that Kirk was. While at first, Picard makes his tenure on the Enterprise-D seem a grand way to carry on the series into the next century, there always seemed to be something lacking in these stories that was not in TOS. I believe this factor is what we call "deus ex machina" or "god out of a machine". It was with TNG that this problem now inherent with Trek began to emerge. All too often, we were given some exotic form of radiation, or some other non-sensical technological reason for getting the crew out of danger. Granted, the issue may have been something from real science...but the fact of the matter is that most people did not know that, or did not understand that. It was becoming something like magic...that is to say, the show was becoming a fantasy...no longer about the characters and what they could do, but what the ship and technology could do.
The movies of TNG took this and the fans of Star Trek right along without ever looking back. And so the concept became a given. I think the people that made the TNG movies, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager came to imagine that the fans would accept anything now thrown at them. It was a fatal flaw.
And so we enter the "Age of War" with Deep Space Nine and Voyager. It is in my opinion that Voyager is the more guilty culprit of damning Trek than any other Trek incarnation. Fluidic Space and Transphasic Torpedoes are just tips of the veritable iceburg. I'll leave this for you to digest a bit, and move on.
Now we go back in time..Trek time, that is, for Enterprise, and Captain Archer and his crew. Now, this show was quite good in my opinion, with the Xindi conflict being the best of it all. The tragedy of Enterprise was the writing, many people say, and I'd have to agree because the actors were acting out the parts they were handed each week, they had little choice. From this comes my argument that Archer was too weak of a captain as presented to us. He should have been more like Kirk.
And that brings us full circle back to the movie due out next year, the reimagining of TOS. In is in my humble opinion that going back to what works: a Star Trek that gives us a mirror of ourselves, even though set in the future, provides the audience with realistic characters who deal with things on their own. This is what Star Trek was about, and what it needs to be about: real people dealing with problems without pulling the solution to their dilemma out of a can. It's been said more than once by more than one Trek character "It's not the ship that matters, it's the mission". Sometimes we (the writers of Star Trek) can see things very clearly for a moment, then it all fades into the background.
Now, arm weapons and raise the shields!
