Which Lost Era are you most interested in?

No. Post a real response.

How many times have you done this now? If you don't stop, I'll send the mods a list of the number of times you've spammed like this. And they're many.

 

Out of the choices actually given, I'd have to say post-ENT/pre-Cage.

My preferred pick, OTOH, isn't in the list: post-WW3/pre-ENT.

 

They'd never, ever be able to do the concept justice (least of all with the very safe/keep it familiar current regime), but the temporal wars could be amazing. That's why I picked the post-Picard pre-Disco future. Plus there are hundreds of years where anything could happen. Civilizations could rise and fall.

Interesting characters and plots matter much more than era, anyway.

 

Post TOS/Pre TMP for me.

That’s when the Discovery Enterprise as a refit Excalibur and Bill Krause’s designs would have shined.

 

I for one would love a young Picard series set on the original Stargazer, with the appropriate tech and uniform settings. But I doubt it will happen, or at least happen in the way I would envision it. It's been proven time and again that prequels never do justice to the source material.

 

Aye. It does make sense. It's an established name. The Star Wars prequels had a similar phenomenon and it sufficiently did flesh out the universe before the events of the OT. And don't tell anyone, but I sorta did like "Rogue One" and had a soft spot for "Solo", which opened up avenues (e.g. Darth Maul) that I hope they make proper use of...

he temporal wars might not be unlike Sliders Voyagers!* on LSD. There's a lot of potential in the format, but potentially too much. How would casual/general audiences** cope, how would keeping any audience grounded with cleverly written recaps keep it going?

* the next time anyone*** talks of Sliders ripping off Quantum Leap, QL already ripped off Voyagers!. Neither later show was a rip-off of the former either, the only similarity might be a blue field surrounding the heroes at some point, but that's about it****. Each new show may have been influenced by an aspect or more of the predecessor, but it's like being in a room - albeit a larger one - during a brainstorming session; a base idea is added on to or altered if something novel or original is brought up.

** A show so entrenched in all of its spinoffs and lore is going to be able to cater to people who, at best, turn on the show as a cozy distraction while soaping up dirty dishes and/or themselves up? That seems unlikely too. Even the makers of "Police Squad! (In Color)" ditched the show, claiming that it required the viewer to pay attention. But it's not the 1980s anymore either and a good off-the-wall sitcom is so rare... Best of all, which temporal figure is the "correct" one? A Red Dwarf episode, "Stasis Leak", amusingly parodied the idea before anyone actually did it for real.


6:26 has the actual moment of brilliance, but the whole review of the episode is fantastic...

*** it's an oft-mentioned complaint on sci-fi forums, or used to be/was more so in the past, and it drove me nuts in 1995 because none of these shows' premises are completely comparable, but it's neither here nor there...

**** well, Voyagers! and QL both have people going back in time to fix history to make it right by whatever criteria they're looking at, but one involves a machine that sends back only the soul or whatever arbitrary reason was doled out that week, and the other had a time machine. Hey, did Voyagers! rip off Back to the Future and Doctor Who too? We all know Doctor Who didn't really rip off Quatermass either as the professor didn't have a space/time machine with malfunctioning components that he couldn't control (at the time)...

^^this

 

As a non-Star Wars fan, who went to go see those movies as part of the Mainstream Audience, I liked Rogue One. It had a very late-'70s look and didn't feel like a normal Star Wars film. I've never seen Solo.

I think Prodigy is the exception that proves the rule. It's made for an audience who didn't grow up with TOS or TNG, and the show isn't rooted in either of those. Because Janeway is in there, kids who'd want to watch a live-action Star Trek show after Prodigy would want to go watch VOY, which also has a slightly better gender-balance and doesn't look quite as dated.

The main reason I'm glad DSC jumped to the 32nd Century; and why with SNW, my thoughts are, "Here we go again... " except this time it's with a series I'm less interested in.

 

And it would provide a ready-made excuse as to why, for example, SNW looks so much different from TOS, despite it claiming to be in the same timeline.

Indeed, the argument can be made that because of the Temporal Wars, there logically cannot BE an "original timeline" - meaning, every bit of Trek that we have ever seen, or ever will see (TOS included) is the result of temporal meddling, and there literally IS NO ORIGINAL TIMELINE.

 

I voted for post Enterprise - Pre Cage simply because I want to see the Romulan War.

 

2287-2293. Enterprise-A in her heyday.

 

My top preference would probably be a serious attempt at a second 5 year mission, post-TMP, animated with a broader focus on a wider semi-regular cast (Spock - step away from Uhura's station and sit down - she's got this). A Captain Sulu show along similar lines could be a lot of fun too.

For live action, I prefer the TOS movie era when the ships felt more like naval vessels in space and there was less magical technology.

I've always thoought that a series set outside the Federation, such as featuring free traders in the Orion Syndicate territory, could be fun. We'll call it Flyfire :-/. That would be better set during an earlier era I think.

 

I think the current show runners can have plenty of accusations levied at them, but I honestly don’t think “keep it safe/familiar” is one of them. If anything, the “fan outcry” is most frequently about how this <insert modern Trek title here> isn’t real Star Trek / Gene’s Vision / Ruined my childhood / etc. You don’t get that by playing it safe. None of these series, SNW maybe as an exception, have played it safe. VOY and ENT played it safe. DSC, PIC, LD and even PRO are all pretty significant departures from safe territory.

I honestly think Star Trek has done more than enough war story arcs at this point. A Romulan War story, from my POV, is about as interesting as seeing another warp core breach at this point. I just don’t feel like there’s any new ground there to cover, and I don’t think they’ll be able to top the Dominion War story….so why bother?

 

I’m all aboard with this. I think the tone and aesthetic of the TMP era is the most interesting. Get back to that naval feeling of “Hornblower in space” that comes with the Monster Maroon era…keep that beautiful TMP ship design aesthetic (inside and out) and have a good balance of post-TUC galactic unrest with the impacts of the Khitomer Conference as a backdrop to do pioneering and exploration stories out on the frontier.

Sign me up.

 

I like my way better. That DSC and SNW take place in an alternate universe, and authorial intent can bite me.

Unfortunately as I've mentioned before, this is not going to happen. Even if they tried to emulate the TMP era with costumes, ship design, etc., everything else is going to be 'we produced this in 2022, not 1985.' It will feel about as much like the movie era as PIC feels like TNG. Or DSC/SNW feels like TOS.

 

I guess. I’m not sure anyone can say that definitively, though. Doesn’t hurt to voice an opinion on the matter, though.

 

Well, this is where I'd switch sides. The late-'70s to mid-'80s are the pinnacle of sci-fi visuals. At least when they have a budget. I love the way that stuff looks. You can send certain other posters who'd say "But it's 2022!" my way. I'll handle it.

 

The Roddenberry Archive is using Donnie Versiga's TMP era digital sets so there has probably never been a better time to make use of that era plus both Discovery and SNW have used modernised TMP style designs. The writers of Lower Decks seem to have a good grasp on Trek lore as much of the satire is bang on target. All that said, I think you are right that the producers have traditionally stated that they don't want to tie writers down to strict world building parameters, which leads to magic transporters, wondrous replicators, super fast and super mobile ships, which appeared in later shows and casual viewers assume were always there. Whether the complaints levelled at Discovery have brought that approach into sharper focus is anybody's guess.

 

I mean, they can't fix what they don't know. The push back from Discovery and the movement towards SNW and LD and such demonstrate that there is a vocal protest in doing things visually different. Now, I personally am not one to hold the productions to that strict world building, but I would not fault anyone for saying "Hey, if you're going to do this then look at what designs came before, and what technology could and couldn't do."

Yes, the producers have stated they prefer to make it look like it was made in 2022; I happen to agree with them on that because to me Trek is supposed to be about our future, so tech updates and visual design updates I expect. But, if there is enough pushback by the audience then I'm sure we will see that 60s, or 70s or 80s inspired designs come back in to vogue to satisfy that segment of the audience. My only request is don't tell me that Star Trek represents our future. Then I'll be OK with it...mostly

 

Which was why there was no reason to link the show to TOS, since TOS is ridiculously dated. If it's already a visual reboot, and pretty much a continuity reboot as well, then what was the point of saying it's all the same?

The thing is, the visual aspect really has nothing to do with the fundamental differences between TOS and DSC/SNW. They could build sets and models that are a complete carbon copy of TOS, but the show still isn't going to be in continuity with TOS because there are too many things about it that simply don't relate to today's society. But instead we get the lip service that 'it'll all fit together' when we all know that isn't true. It's like trying to make a show now that's in the same universe and continuity as the original Lost in Space. No one in their right mind would make such a show, because it would make zero sense to link it to a show that's clearly as dated as LiS. Which was why they made a reboot.

But anyway, rant over; we can get back on topic now.