The market has already done that (Battlestar Galactica, The Expanse, The Orville).
You can have high concept without lecturing people (See: The Expanse).
Why the hate for Alex Kurtzman?
- Thread starter HotRod
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The market has already done that (Battlestar Galactica, The Expanse, The Orville).
You can have high concept without lecturing people (See: The Expanse).
A toy from 1976. Proving?
For some odd reason you assume focusing on younger characters equals "bad." What does the age of cast have to do with "quality"? Just about any Trek story from 1966 onwards can be told with younger characters. (or older characters for that matter). Just about any story could be told in a contemporary or historical setting as well.
Merch, so what?
Nope.
I'm arguing that Trek has not always been that. It's been comedy, low brow, action oriented and dramatic.
And I'll always argue for more shows not Star Trek. Star Trek is not the best, it's not so special that it must exist by itself or immune to competition. It lost to seaQuest and Stargate with me, and The Expanse and For All Mankind are series with high marks.
I think that Trek can be many different things and appeals because of that, not because of a rigid straight jacket approach that doesn't adapt at all.
The 6.7-magnitude 1994 Northridge earthquake did a lot of damage to LA, and single-handedly rewrote large sections of the California Building Code.
I'd rather forget that. It was very loud.
I've never watched a CW show in my life. So, whenever someone tries to tell me that Discovery or another Kurtzman Trek show are like a CW show, all I can think is, "Well, you'd know more about that than I would."
Also, I'm only a fan of two Kurtzman Trek shows. So, if someone's saying another Star Trek show besides Discovery or Picard is like a CW show, then it doesn't matter to me because I don't have a dog in that fight. Sorry. And if you say the two that I do like are like a CW show, then I take you back to my first paragraph.
Also, I'm only a fan of two Kurtzman Trek shows. So, if someone's saying another Star Trek show besides Discovery or Picard is like a CW show, then it doesn't matter to me because I don't have a dog in that fight. Sorry. And if you say the two that I do like are like a CW show, then I take you back to my first paragraph.
One other thing: Even though Alex Kurtzman isn't really doing anything for me nowadays, for a long time he was. So, I'm not going to forget that, and I'm grateful for what I got for as long as I did.
I’ve been a Star Trek fan since I was 11 years old and TNG started running in the UK. There has NEVER been a time when Trek fans weren’t unhappy about the state of the franchise. Even during the 90’s “golden era”. A lot of the older TOS fans HATED TNG, so it was not universally adored. And poor DS9 got hell for most of its run. VOY and ENT did too (although in my view they deserved much of the criticism).
Trek fans are never happy. To quote Julian Bashir, they are the Ambassadors of Unhappy! And so the world turns.
Trek fans are never happy. To quote Julian Bashir, they are the Ambassadors of Unhappy! And so the world turns.
Which was deserved, because many fans felt that Berman & Braga were running on fumes and creatively burned out by the time of Voyager and Enterprise, and were coming out with plots that weren't as good as what other sci-fi/fantasy shows had (as much as I liked Voyager and Enterprise, I can understand how the fans felt.) But the basting of Abrams, Orci & Kurtzman by these people is getting tiresome; they wanted a different Star Trek, they got it, but they're still angry? What do these Gen-W and Gen-X fans want? The franchise has to appeal to a younger generation, and the series concept wasn't about only exploring space (as a reminder):
Notice how I bolded,italicized, and capped the first two words of the second paragraph? That's what Roddenberry wanted and intended from the get-go, yet the Gen-W and Gen-X fans didn't seem to understand that, and so they blasted Abrams, Orci & Kurtzman for making the the three movies they did too 'action-oriented' and 'too much like MTV', they blasted Kurtzman for making Discovery & Picard 'woke' when the franchise was always that, and they also heaped abuse onto Lower Decks for not being real Trek (even though at one point there had been a proposal to create a spin-off sitcom with Majel Barrett as the elder Ms. Troi starring alongside Tim Conway around the time of TNG, and Star Trek as a franchise needed to lighten up anyway.) These people don't really know what they want from a Star Trek show other than it be like the original (which Star Trek Phase II and Star Trek Continues was to a big degree, and why both were big successes with fans.)
But in order to work today for an audience of today, they have to be written, directed, costumed, acted and have sets/costumes/spacecraft/equipment designed for an audience of today consisting of the now middle-aged Gen-Y & twenty-something Gen-Z, both of whom have different ways of looking at the world and dramatic expectation expected from entertainment. Somebody summed it up well:
Apparently many 'fans' don't get that, so they expect the same thing over and over, even when it doesn't work anymore (such as the 2006 movie of this character, which was so much like the 1978 movie [and its 1981 sequel] it was a follow-up to that none of the younger people cared for it, leading to DC and Warners getting a different director and trying a more harder approach in the 2013 movie of the character [and who, despite how people feel about said approach, actually has fans that like it more than they do the upcoming one that's also going to be a retread of the 2006 movie which is similar to the 1978 movie.)
Of how much the Kelvinverse movies and new shows haven't been 'real' Star Trek, I'll bring back this old comment which I think sums up what Star Trek is just as much as the above-mentioned 1964 draft was.
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No one wants to sit through a graduate seminar every single week.
"Action-adventure" does not mean mindless action (Michael Bay style) or low quality/shoddy craftsmanship fight choreography and camera work, AND it definitively does not mean "exclusively action".
Is Star Trek the only IP where the fan base is actively advocating for alienating their own established fan base to chase the illusive "modern audience"?
First I've heard of this. Any source for that?
Mentioned in Starlog in 1992 apparently. Sounds like a pitch rather than something that was actually ever going to happen.
Was a Lwaxana Troi sitcom actually planned?
A few years ago, I found the following claim on a random blog: at one point during the early TNG years, Gene Roddenberry had proposed a "Lwaxana Troi sitcom", starring his wife Majel Barrett-Rodden...
scifi.stackexchange.com
It was an on going joke among my friends for awhile. Each episode would end on a shot of an exasperated Mr. Homn looking into camera in reaction to Ms Troi’s hijinx of the week.
A search comes up with a Reddit thread on it, apparently Gene pitched the idea, but no official sources.
Funny, the fourth season of DSC definitely wasn't exclusively action. If I remember right, the most common complaints about it were that too little was going on in episodes and characters spent a lot of time talking about their feelings. Doesn't sound like "exclusively action" to me.
The fifth season didn't have "exclusively action" either. Adventure, yes. "All action all the time", no. It was a treasure hunt. Watch "Whistlespeak" and tell me with a straight face that this was some crazy "all action" thing. You can't. Not if you actually watched it. Which I don't think you did.
The fifth season also has an episode that took place in a library. It felt like a fantasy episode. Fantasy, think Harry Potter or something like that, not some stupid Transformers bullshit.
"Unification III" from DSC's third season. That was all arguments in a council.
The musical episode on SNW. I only watched half of it, but it doesn't come across to me as "exclusively action".
Also, SNW, there was the episode with Number One in court. Not an action episode.
Those are examples that come immediately off the top of my head. There are more, that I'm sure someone else can list. I don't have the time for it.
I watched first three live-action Transformers movies. I watched the original cartoon as a kid in the '80s, so there was no way I wasn't going to see these movies. At least at first. And I didn't like them. Not only did I not like them, but I couldn't tell who was who. And the action moved so fast, I couldn't even keep up with it. It's not like I was some old guy. I was in my late-20s/early-30s.
As far as New Trek, I could actually keep up with the action scenes. So that right there makes it not Michael Bay style. The only time it felt like Michael Bay was when I was watching Star Trek Into Darkness. New Trek yes, but that's not one of the Kurtzman Series.
Also, you have an avatar of Jason Statham. So if that avatar is any indication, you're a far bigger fan of action movies than I am. My favorite movie is Blade Runner. With very minimal action and it's not the main draw for me. The main draw is the visuals and the atmosphere, along with the wonderful soundtrack, the cityscapes, the retro-futuristic technology, Deckard, and Rachel. Throw in Batty and Pris too. The whole movie! But that's getting off-topic.
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I am also a fan of Transformers and watched the cartoon as a kid. I thought the first Michael Bay movie was absolutely great. There were just enough characters to follow the story, and the plot was pretty good. However, the rest of the movies were basically what you described.
You still need good writing. Duh. An interesting idea, an engaging concept, captivating characters, capable actors and directors.
If all of that is present, two people in a room talking can an amazing hour of television (Duet), if not, it's endlessly boring.
Ah, yes. The episode where the logical Vulcans are practicing the ancient and time honored ritual of ad hominem attacks (very logical) with the help of Romulan honesty warrior nuns who fight against an ancient Romulan secret cabal who hate ancient extra galactic AIs. And they all exchanged nonsensical arguments.
Oh, and we learn that Mischaela Brennschinken made Spock into the man he was. Of course.
STD at its best...
Michael Bay's Transformers. Alex Kurtzman at his best.
Some of his best writing...
Definitely Alex Kurtzman. His signature style: Shia Laboufing
(these are from episodes Alex Kurtzman wrote)
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