Your approach?

[Joker]

Your assertion that "TOS fans" prefer anything other than what was on the screen is disagreeable, yes. To imply that people who didn't like the new movie are somehow not TOS fans is pretty silly.

Given that you've mostly ignored other people's ideas after requesting them, replying only to dismiss responses or reshape the question to illicit a different response, the assumption isn't a huge stretch.

Since the question's been posed as is and is lingering as we speak, my own version would be directed by Peter Weir, written by someone of Weir's choice, with all aspects overseen by Weir with zero input from myself beyond the choice of Weir, and possibly the wish expressed that the Enterprise be less ugly.

 

[T'Bonz]

I would have preferred a clean reboot. No connection to the previous world of Star Trek whatsoever.

This would have meant no Leonard Nimoy in the movie, of course.

Less emo for Spock, ditch the inappropriate relationship, and Kirk not being an unethical dick would have been nice too.

This doesn't mean I didn't like the new movie. I did, especially Kirk's father and Pike. But it, like most Trek, had its flaws.

 

[xortex]

I would of course like to see everything that makes TOS recognizablebut as a spanking brand bew space opera as if nothing ever existed or always existed and had kept up with the times.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Well, since real-world realities don't have to be addressed, like who owns which part of the franchise, I'd have done the movie as a big budgeted backdoor pilot for a new tv series, much like was done with Buck Rogers back in the late 70's.

As for setting, I don't think a reboot is necessary. Just need enough of a gap in the timeline to fit in at least five years' worth of episodes, like the launch of the original Enterprise under the command of Captain April.

Yes, I'm biased. So sue me.

This approach would give us the familiar setting of the original ship, yet enough leeway to slightly tweak the sets and other details, plus giving us a whole new set of characters to play with, and a chance to tell stories that lead up to what we know as well as fill in some blanks, i.e., deliver on ENT's promise.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

1.) A clean reboot - what we got was a mess that massively altered the "prime" universe as well as the "altered" one.

They didn't alter the past of the prime universe. Canon was preserved.

Yes, canon was perserved. But since Romulus was destroyed in the "prime" universe, it's been drastically changed.

I'm not wild about Romulus going kablooey. Vulcan being destroyed seems like less of a problem for good stories than Romulus being destroyed - you gotta have strong villains.

But even then, some fancy footwork could repair matters some. The Romulans had plenty of advance warning about the supernova - those things don't just pop up outta the clear blue sky - so they could have evacuated a good portion of their population and could establish a colony elsewhere, and rebuild their strength. The Romulans might be even more interesting, considering they are still crafty and formidable people, and are now mad as hornets.

That is, if and when we ever return to the primeverse for TV or movies.

I'd like to recapture that "strange new world" and/or "where no man has gone before" sensibility. I want to get away from familiar territory and feel like we're "out there" again.

We'll have disagree there. I find that Trek is at it's best when it builds on familiar terrority. The whole "strange new worlds" and "where no man has gone before" concepts never quite worked for me.

If you actually look at what TOS is about, it's mostly not about exploration anyway. It's Kirk & the gang patrolling and defending the Federation, plus getting into trouble, plus personal stories. The actual business of exploration - mapping star systems for instance - would be rather dull and doesn't require a close-up visit by a starship anyway.

Investigating alien species on a new world does require a close-up visit, by scientists, but you don't just fly away after meeting the natives. You stick around to make observations, which would require decades or even centuries.

Real explorers would establish outposts on every new world, and probably do, after the Enterprise has made first contact. But the Enterprise's job is not science; it's to make sure things are safe for the real explorers who arrive in their wake.

The Enterprise wasn't exploring in the scientific sense. It was sussing out opportunities for the Federation, in the diplomatic and political sense. Their attitude towards new worlds was not "can I write a scholarly paper on these people" but "would these people be good Federation allies/are they a threat/are there trading opportunities?" All you have to do is look at ENT to see how dull and pointless hit-and-run exploration is, minus the Federation to give it purpose. It ends up being space tourism.

I don't believe Star Trek belongs on the big screen - that goes for any of the series. You have to compromise too much of what Star Trek is to make it work there.

I think it belongs on TV, too. And I'd like to see a return to what TOS really used to be about - patrolling and defending the Federation, and exploring with the purpose of finding allies and discovering threats.

Star Trek should always be on the frontiers of the Federation, because that's where the threats and opportunities are. But it shouldn't wander too far away, or it loses purpose.

a) Spock would have been a pure Vulcan. A Human-Vulcan hybrid (assuming we stick with TOS physiological differences) is about as realistic as a Human-Artichoke hybrid.

That's a great way to ruin the character! Spock is Spock because he's an outsider everywhere he goes. Just because his birth is unlikely means nothing - faster than light travel is unlikely. A device like the transporter ever being built is highly unlikely, and if it were, it would kill the people it transports and nobody would use it. By the 23rd C, I'd bet a Human-Artichoke hybrid will be possible (probably possible long before then, hopefully not in our lifetimes! ) but a lot of the tech on Star Trek will never be possible.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

It's interesting: Gene Roddenberry advised his writers to handle Trek as a kind of serious period piece rather than as juvenile twaddle and Matthew Weiner, creator of Mad Men, has likened the experience of recreating the early 1960s as akin to science fiction. I think the appeal of a TOS is in this inherent contradiction: it's much more about the 1960s than it is about the 2260s. Thus any revival of mine would go out of its way to evoke this, to be Mad Men in Space. There are touches of this deliberate retro-futurism in Trek '09: the Kelvin uniforms are reminiscent of 1950 B-movie costumes and the phasers harken all the way to the sci-fi serials of Buster Crabbe. I'd have just gone all the way, like in "Trials and Tribble-lations" and "In a Mirror Darkly," only with aluminum instead of plywood and more detail on props that look, in essence, unchanged from the original designs. I'd have it be a direct sequel sequel to TOS, the first episode of the fourth season, and I'd eschew the rogue Bond villain archetype, which only really worked with Khan, for threat that is more an expression of existential uncertainty in the face of the unknown (like Vejur) or the political "realities" of the Star Trek universe (Kruge and Chang were imperfect versions of this). And there would be no time travel. Also, I'd find a job for a barely updated Wah Chang Romulan Bird of Prey because I like them so much and because they are the finest examples of Star Trek's retro-futurism.

Indeed, isn't long past time we got a Romulan threat that actually represented the Romulan Star Empire rather than a fey human clone or a pissed-off BP employee?

 

[plynch]

They didn't alter the past of the prime universe. Canon was preserved.

Really? I'm still stumped why the Kelvin looked so much like a TMP-era ship, when it should've looked more like the Cage-era Enterprise (spikes and all).

 

[Warped9]

They didn't alter the past of the prime universe. Canon was preserved.

Really? I'm still stumped why the Kelvin looked so much like a TMP-era ship, when it should've looked more like the Cage-era Enterprise (spikes and all).

ST09 is an alternate universe. Who you are seeing are not the TOS characters but alternates in another universe, As such they could have done the whole reboot thing without the supposed time travel shtick.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Re: QUINTO'S SPOCK SHOULD BE CONSTANTLY SHOUTING!!!

They didn't alter the past of the prime universe. Canon was preserved.

Really? I'm still stumped why the Kelvin looked so much like a TMP-era ship, when it should've looked more like the Cage-era Enterprise (spikes and all).

ST09 is an alternate universe. Who you are seeing are not the TOS characters but alternates in another universe, As such they could have done the whole reboot thing without the supposed time travel shtick.

The Kelvin didn't look exactly like TOS or "The Cage" simply because it needed to look believable to a modern audience. The TOS look simply does not hold up as a belivable spaceship(outside the dreams of a few old-school die-hards).
If we can swap-out Kirstie Alley and Robin Curtis as Saavik, we can swap-out/modernize visual styles for the TOS era.

And if stuff like a glowing deflector upsets anyone then, quite frankly, they're watching it wrong

 

[Brutal Strudel]

But those who would be upset about a copper deflector dish are watching it right?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Re: QUINTO'S SPOCK SHOULD BE CONSTANTLY SHOUTING!!!

Really? I'm still stumped why the Kelvin looked so much like a TMP-era ship, when it should've looked more like the Cage-era Enterprise (spikes and all).

ST09 is an alternate universe. Who you are seeing are not the TOS characters but alternates in another universe, As such they could have done the whole reboot thing without the supposed time travel shtick.

The Kelvin didn't look exactly like TOS or "The Cage" simply because it needed to look believable to a modern audience. The TOS look simply does not hold up as a belivable spaceship(outside the dreams of a few old-school die-hards).
If we can swap-out Kirstie Alley and Robin Curtis as Saavik, we can swap-out/modernize visual styles for the TOS era.

And if stuff like a glowing deflector upsets anyone then, quite frankly, they're watching it wrong

Seriously, do people really think that they're going to pop a duplicate of a model or set from a 1960s TV show into a big budget movie of the 2000s?

 

[BillJ]

Re: QUINTO'S SPOCK SHOULD BE CONSTANTLY SHOUTING!!!

Deleted...

 

[Warped9]

The actual business of exploration - mapping star systems for instance - would be rather dull and doesn't require a close-up visit by a starship anyway.

Exploration:
Where No Man Has Gone Before
The Corbomite Maneuver
The Enemy Within
The Squire Of Gothos
The Galileo Seven
The Alternative Factor
The City On The Edge Of Forever
Catspaw
The Gamesters Of Triskelion
Who Mourns For Adonais?
The Changeling
Obsession
The Apple
The Doomsday Machine
The Immunity Syndrome
By Any Other Name
Return To Tomorrow
For The World Is Hollow And I have Touched The Sky
That Which Survives
The Savage Curtain

Each of the above had at least some element of exploration to it. That's easily 25% of the episodes.

 

[Dukhat]

It's been mentioned in a number of threads sporadically: what would TOS fans have preferred? Well lets ask that here. And I'm putting it here rather than in the Trek XI forum because the question is aimed at TOS fans.

But here are the basics: by some unforeseen chance YOU were tapped to helm the next Trek film. You were given two prerequisites by TPTB: it has to be a reboot and you have to return to the original era.

What would you have done?

Beyond that you can reimagine things moderately to drastically. You can use familiar elements in whole or in part. You could set it in the 21st century or the 23rd or the 30th or whatever. You can stick with the familiar names or revisit the Pike era (since that was Star Trek's initial form). You can use all the characters or only a few.

For myself some basics:
- no origin or prequel story. I am seriously sick of these things and it wastes a lot of screen time. Either Kirk has just assumed command or has already been in command for a time (just like in TOS).
- no time travel or alternate universe. It's a freaking restart unconnected to the original continuity.
- no technobabble.
- a smart story with adventure and drama and contextual humour.
- although I might mention Klingons and/or Romulans I wouldn't have any in the story.
- IF the Enterprise were to be redesigned, rather than just tweaked, I know it could be done while still evoking the original and not looking ugly and misshapen.

I'll leave it like that for now.

Although I don't believe for one second that TOS fans couldn't have liked Star Trek '09 just the way it was presented, I'll go along with this little thought experiment by writing what I originally thought ST' 09 was going to be about before I learned it was a reboot.

First, I was under the impression that Leonard Nimoy's Spock's scenes were to only take place in the future (i.e. late 24th or early 25th century), and that there would be no time travel involved. Old Spock's scenes would simply be a framing story, while the 23rd century stuff would be the main plot (If anyone's seen The Green Mile, then you know what I mean).

I was thinking that Old Spock was dying, and he wanted to relate a previously unknown adventure from his past to another character (and in turn, the movie audience), with the main plot essentially being a flashback (i.e. DS9's The Visitor), before he kicked the bucket.

Of course, there are certain drawbacks to this format. First, since it's not a reboot and/or the timeline didn't change, the "look" of the 23rd century would have to mimic a show made in the 1960's, in a film made in 2009. IMHO, this would simply look cheap and unbelievable to the target audience Abrams was gunning for. Sure, the extremely few TOS "fanatics" would love it, but it wouldn't help sell movie tickets.

Plus, by having the movie take place in the 23rd century of the "prime" universe, you'd have to really convince the TOS-loving audience that this is a legitimate prequel and that it fits seamlessly into TOS continuity, which, as we're all aware, is pretty much impossible (and even if it was tried, it would have the problem mentioned in the previous paragraph). Not even George Lucas could convince us that his prequels were "really" prequels with all their inconsistencies, and he wrote everything himself! So, instead of trying to pull off more than he could chew, Abrams instead created an alternate universe where he didn't have to slavishly follow the established continuity of a show made in the '60's.

...Whoops, I'm getting off topic.

Anyway, I would have liked to see the new movie in the way I described. But I'm happy with the way it turned out as well.

 

[Joker]

Re: QUINTO'S SPOCK SHOULD BE CONSTANTLY SHOUTING!!!

Seriously, do people really think that they're going to pop a duplicate of a model or set from a 1960s TV show into a big budget movie of the 2000s?

I have to admit, I belong to the camp that believes the Enterprise Refit would look great in a big-budget feature made today.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Re: QUINTO'S SPOCK SHOULD BE CONSTANTLY SHOUTING!!!

Seriously, do people really think that they're going to pop a duplicate of a model or set from a 1960s TV show into a big budget movie of the 2000s?

I have to admit, I belong to the camp that believes the Enterprise Refit would look great in a big-budget feature made today.

Its a great looking design that was made for the big screen. I think it holds up for being 30 years old. Maybe a minor tweek or two.

 

[Harvey]

Re: QUINTO'S SPOCK SHOULD BE CONSTANTLY SHOUTING!!!

I liked the new movie an awful lot, but if I had been in charge, I wouldn't have bothered with bringing Nimoy aboard or worrying about preserving canon. A straight reboot to the series would have been preferable--there's no reason Star Trek has to take place in the twenty-third century, for example. It would make much more sense if the timeline was pushed further into the future.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Re: QUINTO'S SPOCK SHOULD BE CONSTANTLY SHOUTING!!!

ST09 is an alternate universe. Who you are seeing are not the TOS characters but alternates in another universe, As such they could have done the whole reboot thing without the supposed time travel shtick.

The Kelvin didn't look exactly like TOS or "The Cage" simply because it needed to look believable to a modern audience. The TOS look simply does not hold up as a belivable spaceship(outside the dreams of a few old-school die-hards).
If we can swap-out Kirstie Alley and Robin Curtis as Saavik, we can swap-out/modernize visual styles for the TOS era.

And if stuff like a glowing deflector upsets anyone then, quite frankly, they're watching it wrong

Seriously, do people really think that they're going to pop a duplicate of a model or set from a 1960s TV show into a big budget movie of the 2000s?

Why precisely not? In the 30 years since since TMP, we've seen countless variations on the original--the refit, the Escelsior, the D, the C, the B, the Oberth, the NX, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. And we've seen versions from our own artists on this board--most notably, from degra--of the original that, with just a few touches of extra detail and moderate azteking, look as credible as any design derived from it. You want novelty? After so many knock-offs, the original would be novel.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Re: QUINTO'S SPOCK SHOULD BE CONSTANTLY SHOUTING!!!

The Kelvin didn't look exactly like TOS or "The Cage" simply because it needed to look believable to a modern audience. The TOS look simply does not hold up as a belivable spaceship(outside the dreams of a few old-school die-hards).
If we can swap-out Kirstie Alley and Robin Curtis as Saavik, we can swap-out/modernize visual styles for the TOS era.

And if stuff like a glowing deflector upsets anyone then, quite frankly, they're watching it wrong

Seriously, do people really think that they're going to pop a duplicate of a model or set from a 1960s TV show into a big budget movie of the 2000s?

Why precisely not? In the 30 years since since TMP, we've seen countless variations on the original--the refit, the Escelsior, the D, the C, the B, the Oberth, the NX, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. And we've seen versions from our own artists on this board--most notably, from degra--of the original that, with just a few touches of extra detail and moderate azteking, look as credible as any design derived from it. You want novelty? After so many knock-offs, the original would be novel.

Never said an upgrade of the model wouldn't work, just not the version used in 1964-5. My preference would be a slightly "modernized" version of the design. (In fact I think I said that in one of my posts.)

 

[Warped9]

Re: QUINTO'S SPOCK SHOULD BE CONSTANTLY SHOUTING!!!

I liked the new movie an awful lot, but if I had been in charge, I wouldn't have bothered with bringing Nimoy aboard or worrying about preserving canon. A straight reboot to the series would have been preferable--there's no reason Star Trek has to take place in the twenty-third century, for example. It would make much more sense if the timeline was pushed further into the future.

Not a bad idea at all.