will star trek ever return to prime universe?

[EmperorTiberius]

They can easily "reset" it by setting it in 25 century. Star Trek is not Batman, there is no reason for resetting at all. The abortion that was the movie would never fly as a TV series because you woulnd't have a dedicated fanbase. It would be another run of the mill nonsense sci fi, there would be nothing special about, no magic.

"Nothing special" about bringing back Trek's most famous and beloved characters? I couldn't disagree more.

Characters will always be more important than continuity. That's why all the comic book characters, why all the classics, why Sherlock Holmes etc are reborn time and time again. Because the characters are loved.

Trek has tried and tried, but they never topped Kirk's crew. They are icons. And as we saw with the cancellation of Enterprise and flop of Nemesis, the setting of Trek itself is no longer enough to draw people.

Another generic Trek series further into the future with a crew of nobodies is doomed. A Trek series bringing back the characters everyone loves and updating them, THAT has a chance.

No there is nothing special about it unless you're a fan which is a small portion of the audience. What are you going to do, rejuvenate Shatner or Stewart? Or do you really want a bunch of kids playing them?

Good actors can be found for a new show, just like Stewart and Brooks were. The appeal of Star Trek was strange new worlds and technologies in adition to writing and acting. New generations of kids want to see wonders just like I did when I was a kid, not same old rehashed technologies. Everybody has a laptop now, everybody has a powerful database, everybody can buy a video game and play with phasers, starship combat etc... there's a million "gritty" shows on TV like the nuTrek, that type of stuff is just not interesting. A Trek series like that would flop in 1 season.

What needs to happen is that new, revolutionary technologies need to be invented, new strange stories need to be told, with a new compelling characters that we don't know, but want to know more about, etc etc. That's why I'd set it in the 25th century, have Picard and Sisko come in a cameo aboard new ship as 145 year old admirals or captains.

That said, I'd like movies to feature them, but a new series needs to be totally independent.

 

[Greg Cox]

What are you going to do, rejuvenate Shatner or Stewart? Or do you really want a bunch of kids playing them?.

Why not? Classic characters can always be recast.

Worked for Bond, Batman, Tarzan, Zorro . . . .

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I've always liked the idea of going back to the Lost Era and picking up a series there, plenty of scope for stories, bridging the gap between TUC and TNG and all the massive changes that went on there. There are also a few ships that could be the focus: Excelsior (the rumoured Sulu series from the 90s), Enterprise-B (repairing the damage that GEN did to Harriman, by making him a competent CO rather than the baffoon he had to be to make Kirk look better), or the Enterprise-C (from the time the ship was launched, she is on a countdown to an honourable death, but before that she would have done the name proud).

 

[EmperorTiberius]

What are you going to do, rejuvenate Shatner or Stewart? Or do you really want a bunch of kids playing them?.

Why not? Classic characters can always be recast . . . .

Because no one can act like Stewart or Shatner no matter how many manerisms they try to replicate. I'd never buy it, just like I didn't nuKirk. It was just alien to me.

PS. Those were all movies, and no continuity movies at that. When you see Picard in almost 200 episodes, it's a bit different from replacing shambolic Cloney with serious actor like Bale. Comic books vs Star Trek is too much like apples and oranges

 

[Greg Cox]

What are you going to do, rejuvenate Shatner or Stewart? Or do you really want a bunch of kids playing them?.

Why not? Classic characters can always be recast . . . .

Because no one can act like Stewart or Shatner no matter how many manerisms they try to replicate. I'd never buy it, just like I didn't nuKirk. It was just alien to me.

PS. Those were all movies, and no continuity movies at that. When you see Picard in almost 200 episodes, it's a bit different from replacing shambolic Cloney with serious actor like Bale. Comic books vs Star Trek is too much like apples and oranges

Okay, what about Bond? Suppose somebody had decided decades ago that "no one can act like Connery no matter how many mannerisms they try to replicate." Should they have ditched the character back in the seventies?

Heck, Bela Lugosi was the definitive Dracula for generations, but then Christopher Lee came along, and Frank Langella, and Jack Palance, and Gary Oldman . . .

No actor is irreplaceable. And audiences have proven that they'll accept new actors in classic roles, sometimes over and over and over.

There have been six different SUPERMAN's in my lifetime. Another Kirk or Picard doesn't faze me!

 

[BillJ]

Another Kirk or Picard doesn't faze me!

This is how I feel. If I make it another thirty or forty years, I imagine I'll see multiple actors play both characters.

We've already had two actors play Kirk and three play Picard or a clone.

 

[Dream]

You know, instead of recasting, they could do something original and create new Trek characters to launch a new show or movie!

 

[BillJ]

You know, instead of recasting, they could do something original and create new Trek characters to launch a new show or movie!

But they'll all just be pale imitations of the characters and situations we've already seen.

 

[Greg Cox]

You know, instead of recasting, they could do something original and create new Trek characters to launch a new show or movie!

That could work, too. It certainly did for TNG.

But, on the other hand, you don't have to put the old characters out to pasture as long as you can recast and reinvent them . . . . .

 

[F. King Daniel]

Another Kirk or Picard doesn't faze me!

This is how I feel. If I make it another thirty or forty years, I imagine I'll see multiple actors play both characters.

We've already had two actors play Kirk and three play Picard or a clone.

Don't forget James McAvoy's xcellent Xavier in X-Men: First Class. That's pretty much Wheelchair Picard.

 

[Ryan8bit]

I honestly can't think of a single movie or tv franchise that reverted back to a previous continuity after being rebooted.

I think the biggest one that strikes me would be Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. They ignored the third movie completely. But the fourth movie continued from the third despite the TV show. Yeah, Terminator is definitely not as big of a continuity as Trek, but it's at least a decent example. There are other examples in movies where a new direction was forgotten.

You know, instead of recasting, they could do something original and create new Trek characters to launch a new show or movie!

But they'll all just be pale imitations of the characters and situations we've already seen.

Wouldn't that be the case for recasting too?

Personally, I'd want a new set of characters for TV.

 

[Greg Cox]

I honestly can't think of a single movie or tv franchise that reverted back to a previous continuity after being rebooted.

I think the biggest one that strikes me would be Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. They ignored the third movie completely. But the fourth movie continued from the third despite the TV show. Yeah, Terminator is definitely not as big of a continuity as Trek, but it's at least a decent example. There are other examples in movies where a new direction was forgotten.

Hmm. Interesting example. Although I think that's more a case of a franchise spliting off into two separate continuities rather than backtracking, since the TV show and Salvation were developed more or less around the same time.

(I remember being told, when I wrote my Terminator: Salvation novel, to ignore the TV show since that was a separate continuity.)

I'll be curious to see where the Terminator series goes next, especially since rewriting timelines and continuity is pretty much built into the concept's DNA . . . .

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'm not sure if this really holds up, but I thought Sarah Connor Chronicles was the same kind of time travel thing as STXI. Terminators from post-T3 (or T4?) travel back to sometime after T2 and make changes sending history down an alternate path. Just like Nero and Spock went back to Jim Kirk's birth and started meddling.

 

[Greg Cox]

I'm not sure if this really holds up, but I thought Sarah Connor Chronicles was the same kind of time travel thing as STXI. Terminators from post-T3 (or T4?) travel back to sometime after T2 and make changes sending history down an alternate path. Just like Nero and Spock went back to Jim Kirk's birth and started meddling.

Indeed. "Continuity" in the Terminator series is kinda slippery by design, since the whole series is about the future trying to change the past in order to change the future . . .

 

[Nerys Myk]

Another Kirk or Picard doesn't faze me!

This is how I feel. If I make it another thirty or forty years, I imagine I'll see multiple actors play both characters.

We've already had two actors play Kirk and three play Picard or a clone.

Shouldn't that be "four actors play Kirk"? ( counting baby Kirk and young Kirk in ST09)

 

[Dukhat]

The abortion that was the movie would never fly as a TV series because you wouldn't have a dedicated fanbase.

Yeah, because Star Trek '09 was a dismal failure that nobody went to see.

BTW, I think the word you were looking for was "abomination," not "abortion." An abortion is the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus. Using that word as a metaphor for a movie would not make you very popular with the female sex. The next time you bash Abrams's film, you might want to be a bit more careful with your choice of derogatory statements.

In a real sense, that's how Trek began--with a crew of nobodies. The key with any television series, regardless if it's Trek or not, is creating characters that click with an audience enough that they want to watch them again and again to see what they do or what happens to them next.

I believe Ron Moore said it best when he said that people's attitude should be "Yay, another Star Trek series!," not "Oh God, not another Star Trek series..." My fear is that making a new series with a new cast in the prime universe, but just farther into the future, would just give people reaction #2. Changing the time period is not good enough (but don't take my word for that, just see how good that worked with Enterprise). C.E. Evans is right: the characters are the most important thing, not the setting.

 

[Nerys Myk]

In a real sense, that's how Trek began--with a crew of nobodies. The key with any television series, regardless if it's Trek or not, is creating characters that click with an audience enough that they want to watch them again and again to see what they do or what happens to them next.

As long as the name "Star Trek" is attached to a project it will be judged by what came before. Kirk, Spock and McCoy are iconic and part of our culture. The characters that followed have never reached that level of renown. I don't know if they ever will.

 

[Greg Cox]

In a real sense, that's how Trek began--with a crew of nobodies. The key with any television series, regardless if it's Trek or not, is creating characters that click with an audience enough that they want to watch them again and again to see what they do or what happens to them next.

As long as the name "Star Trek" is attached to a project it will be judged by what came before. Kirk, Spock and McCoy are iconic and part of our culture. The characters that followed have never reached that level of renown. I don't know if they ever will.

To be fair, I'm sure people said similar things back in the eighties before TNG debuted, and yet people accepted a STAR TREK series without Kirk and the usual gang--for seven successful seasons.

On TV at least, TNG was an unqualified success, even if the TOS crew has a better track record on the big screen.

 

[Dukhat]

In a real sense, that's how Trek began--with a crew of nobodies. The key with any television series, regardless if it's Trek or not, is creating characters that click with an audience enough that they want to watch them again and again to see what they do or what happens to them next.

As long as the name "Star Trek" is attached to a project it will be judged by what came before. Kirk, Spock and McCoy are iconic and part of our culture. The characters that followed have never reached that level of renown. I don't know if they ever will.

I bet if you asked random people on the street to make a word-association with "Star Trek," most people would automatically say Kirk or Spock (or Enterprise, Klingon, "beam me up, Scotty," etc. of course, but that's not important to this point). Maybe a small few would say Picard, Data, or Worf. I'd bet nobody would say Sisko, Janeway, or Archer.

 

[Ryan8bit]

I think that's more a case of a franchise spliting off into two separate continuities rather than backtracking

Which could maybe still be the case with Star Trek. Maybe the movies will continue with the alternate universe, and maybe a series would be in the prime universe. It probably wouldn't happen that way if the Bad Robot team controls the TV series though. I think it's too hard to say since a TV series doesn't even seem likely for the next few years. There's a lot of variables.

As for Terminator, well, I think Cameron said it best when he said that the soup had been pissed in.