I have been a fan of Star Trek since the early 60's TV shows. All the episodes and movies until the recent JJ Abrams versions hit the screen with the prequels were all about exploration and discovering new life and new civilizations (there are a few exceptions). The last 3 were all about war and destruction. Why is the Star Trek universe straying so much from these original ideals?
Where's the exploration
- Thread starter Raiderone
- Start date
The original series, the original movie and TNG were all about exploring the universe over senseless violence. Yes the Enterprise always had weapons for defense, but I cannot recall where the original premise of any project before XI was war before peaceful exploration. XI, XII, XIII all seemed like it was more important to have all out war with the Klingons over anything else.
Yes the new films are big dumb action movies, but lets not pretend like what came before them was highbrow exploration.
It seems to me the majority of TNG wasn't exploration.
Star Trek is all encompassing. It can pretty much cover any genre.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of nuTrek. I'd love to see something with less action and more exploration, but I don't have any delusions about what Star Trek has been previously.
Yeah, exploration has never really been a thing in the Trek movies. In fact, STID was the first time we see the Enterprise in a movie taking part in exploration. What exploration we do see in the prior movies was always handled by another ship, like the Reliant or the Grissom. Hell, the Prime Directive doesn't get mentioned in a movie until First Contact.
Enterprise was the series with the most exploration - which took the form of the crew excitedly talking about a new nebula or planet and was about as much fun to watch as paint dry.
Most TOS episodes were about specific missions rather than exploration. Investigate a missing ship, ferry an ambassador, investigate a dodgy planet etc.
Most TOS episodes were about specific missions rather than exploration. Investigate a missing ship, ferry an ambassador, investigate a dodgy planet etc.
Really?
Let's examine this theory,The Motion Picture - fighting Voyager-veejur
The Wrath of Khan- Fighting Khan
The Search for Spock-Fighting Klingons
The Voyage Home-Defeating a Probe arguably the only one they weren't fighting someone in really, instead 'There be whales!'
The Final Frontier-Fighting Spock's Brother Sybok and the Klingons
The Undiscovered Country-Again, Fighting the Klingons.
I'm not seeing any of those movies as being 'about' exploration.
TV series yes. They had more time. Any of the movies, no.
In the TOS movies we heard of a few other ships engaged in exploration/science (Reliant, Grissom), the Enterprise was responding to events.
I assume (there's that word) that the planet and it's volcano seen at the beginning of Into Darkness was discovered by the Enterprise in the course of exploration, but again that's an assumption. This would tie into the way things happened in TOS where the ship would run across problems and try to fix things.
If I could ask the OP a question, how do you feel the violence was "senseless?"
Exploration is investigating anything that's unknown or out of the ordinary. It's not limited to just new planets and stellar phenomena, IMO. In TOS (and perhaps to an even bigger degree TNG), the exploration premise was just an excuse for why the Enterprise was otherwise just wandering around out there.
The Utopia of TOS has been replaced with a Dystopia for the movies and all the recent television shows!
JB
JB
Similar threads
