Where Trek went wrong IMO

[Anwar]

No, that was part of the plot since that episode dealt with an attempted Military takeover of Earth.

Anywho, where it went wrong was oversaturation. There should never have been two Trek shows on at the same time. VOY should have been made a 1 or so after DS9, and ENT about 2 years after VOY ended.

Gives enough time to refresh the writers and plan things out better. Berman himself wanted to wait longer to make ENT.

 

[Who_Trek]

IMO: Trek did NOT go wrong. There are things you can nitpick about, certainly. But they're but spots on a healthy Trill.

 

[Doran]

Getting back to the original post, I think I see where your going with it. As ST developed, we seemed to rely more on technology than the human element. But everything is done with plot and viewer interest in mind. ST II's famous escape from the SB brigg in all actuality probably wouldn't have been successful, but it needed to be to keep our interest piqued. The more scenarios necessary to keep show scripts moving determined how fast the ships could traverse the galaxy and where they would go. It's us who give the ST universe its depth and reality. I think that TNG did a superb job in relating time and distance in the Captain's Logs on each show. They would talk of travel weeks to arrive at a destination. This wasn't really done in TOS. I think the earlier movies reflected the "space western on a shoestring budget" action packed adventures of the original crew, but by the time TNG came along, Trek had morphed into something way more sophisticated. I know that I, along with some other old trekkies, was not really comfortable with the new series, and the PC thinking and board meeting command decisions of the new show we a far cry from TOS. But it worked and survived. I have to say that it did more for ST than any other series or movie... but, I do agree, with the advancements in technology, the galaxy does seem a lot smaller. Then again, in 1966 I never thought I'd be conversing with people through the use of a computer, or have an on-board nav system in my POV. Beam me up Scotty, the world's a whole lot smaller than it used to be...

 

[Mirror_Barclay]

No, that was part of the plot since that episode dealt with an attempted Military takeover of Earth.

Anywho, where it went wrong was oversaturation. There should never have been two Trek shows on at the same time. VOY should have been made a 1 or so after DS9, and ENT about 2 years after VOY ended.

Gives enough time to refresh the writers and plan things out better. Berman himself wanted to wait longer to make ENT.

Now this, not having two shows at once, I can buy.

Nothing* bugs me more than "let's have no Trek for ten years! wouldn't that be great?" or "let's just have movies" since I really want a Trek series again sometime soon.

But that doesn't mean the oversaturation idea doesn't have some truth to it.

* Applies only to things people post on ST message boards, and at that probably has some exceptions.

 

[A beaker full of death]

It comes down to the source material. Star Trek transposed the world of the sailing ships of the Napoleonic days to space (while taking its procedures and shipboard routine from WWII aircraft carriers).

Two generations later, Berman and Braga were taking their cues from their own misperceptions about the original series (and a good bit of soap opera). After the first two seasons of TNG, which still had the grander approach, the galaxy got smaller, the ship got smaller, the characters got smaller. Eventually, everything was run from the bridge of the ship, all the characters knew each others' business, and all the aliens were just like us but with extra nostrils.
The adventure disappeared. The exploration of the human condition disappeared.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I would love to see an official map of the alpha and beta quadrants to see how all these neighbouring territories fit together. I am assuming that all the star systems are on the same galactic plane and therefore can't overlap each other like a multi-galactic planed would be able (if such a thing were to exist)

"Star Trek Star Charts" by Geoffrey Mandel (Pocket, 2002) is based on the previous "Star Trek Maps" (Bantam, 1980), but Mandel tries to draw together the ideas in "Maps" to fit with the ST movies, TNG, DS9, VOY and Season One of ENT.

It has some errors but is "official" as you'll get. Aspects of the original Bantam resource were used in various episodes (eg. a map of the Federation in TNG), and Mandel worked with the production team.

http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Star_Charts

http://memory-alpha.org/en/index.php/Star_Trek:_Star_Charts

 

[Arpy]

^ I agee Beaker. I may be off on this but I think what the Original Poster (OP) may have been reacting to is how the characters got smaller, the themes got smaller, the plots were repeated, the designs repeated, the characters and species all knew one another and cam back again and again. Everyone had the same way of looking at things and aliens the same language and protocols and technologies as one another only different in superficial ways. The whole thing was incestuous and I'm glad it collapsed in on itself.

The new movie helped in this regard but I'm cautious in praising it too much. It was after all a step back in time into familiar, limited, characters and uniforms and technologies, and now there's talk of Khan showing up in the next one.

...Khan! It was by chance they even ran into the Botany Bay in the vastness of space before it ran out of power and they all died, and now (because they're trying to be topical with the current situation in the Mid-East and emerging India and the inevitable emergence of genetic-engineering) they go to the most talked to death villain (aside from maybe the Borg or the Klingons) in Trek history.

 

[Anwar]

God, I am tired of Khan. I never understood what was so great over him anyways.

Give me NuKor or NuKang or SOMEONE other than Khan...

 

[JustKate]

^ Lordy, do I agree with Anwar. My vote for the villain in the next movie is "pretty much anybody other than Khan." He started out fairly interesting, though not written all that well if I may be so bold, and he ended up being characature of a character who was pretty over-the-top to start with. We don't need any more Khan. There's a whole universe out there - surely they can come up with something more fresh and more interesting.

 

[barnaclelapse]

I don't think it ever went wrong. There have been some pretty crappy moments, without question, but Star Trek has never lost its ability to show off the things about it that make it so damn brilliant in the first place. For something in entertainment or popular culture to be lost is when the bad is clearly outweighing the good, and I don't think that's ever been the case with Star Trek.