please jump forward in time for christ's sake. Make it 500 years from the last; new alliances, new races, a new Federation, put the Romulans among the friends, put a Cardassian first officer, cats and dogs living together. Shake the goddamned thing up without worrying about old ass plots and boom, here's your perfect starting point
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Star Trek (January 2017 TV Series) News and Speculation Thread of Boldly Streaming
- Thread starter JeffZero
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I'm happy to see they got Nicholas Meyer, he's a great catch for the writing staff.
500 years is way too much IMO, I think a 50-100 year time jump would be better.
Though I'll probably be happy as long as it's set in the main Star Trek universe and not the JJ universe.
500 years is way too much IMO, I think a 50-100 year time jump would be better.
Though I'll probably be happy as long as it's set in the main Star Trek universe and not the JJ universe.
PdotMichael
Banned
The old Star Trek universe became such a clusterfuck that I think it would be kind of impossibel to find creative staff worth a shit who want to work and deal with all that nonsense.
As a long time Star Trek fan who has seen every film, episode, etc I never got the weird minority fans who trash the Abrams films. They got overwhelmingly positive critical reviews and the first had fantastic word of mouth at the box office. This weird minority of fans online seem to dislike them and seem to assume most do as well tbut in reality most people really enjoyed them.
A lot of Star Trek fans are dissapointed with the Abrams movies because they threw out a lot of what made Star Trek unique and good in favor of a big budget spectacle to rope in more moviegoers. I like them for what they are but I can see why some don't.
The new ST movie looks even worse with it trying to ape Guardians of the Galaxy.
Which is wierd, since the reigns were handed over to the Trekkies on set.
I'm giving it the benefit of a doubt. At the very least it sounds like the most TOS episode yet; deep space, unexplored Planet, getting into trouble.
If they are following the original universe then 500 years later Starfleet had time ships and all sorts of other crazy tech. A more reasonable jump would be 100+ years, it's the same jump ToS and TNG had I believe, things can change wildly in 100 years.
I'm not a big Star Trek fan, but I'd rather have a Star Trek OG, TNG, DS9 tv show and an Abraham's (first one) like movies, instead of one common "tone" that is present in movies and tv series.
I don't even think Star Trek works in a movie environment (unless it's trilogy or sth. like Star Wars), especially for casual viewers as the series is more about world building with some slow/quite pacing, technology focused aspects and conflicts that builds up in time. A movie is too short for that.
So in my opinion, I'd like them to separate their movies and tv shows and focus more on the tv shows for the core audience, while the mainstream watch the movies instead. I never really liked or rather "loved" the original 10 movies any way, it was more like a 2-3 part episode packaged as a movie with a big budget so I'm really confused why people are so upset about the new movies.
I hope they don't cut off their noses to be true to every technical manual, history document, and crew musing.
Take the big events if needed. Jettison the rest.
I do like the idea of 70 years later, new stability with old races. But TNG fell too often into the trap of shuttling people inside Fed territory. Let's see a ship and crew out on the frontier again. (Just not Voyager).
Bobby Roberts
Banned
It's always been "it's different, so it's wrong".
Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
I guess I'm weird and pouty then.
It's not that I hated the Abram's movies, I enjoyed them for what they were, Star Trek mixed with Star Wars, but neither of the films "felt" like Star Trek to me. When I think of Star Trek I think of TNG, the original series, and movies like Wrath of Khan and Undiscovered Country. I like my Star Trek at least reasonably grounded in some semblance of believable science fiction, and the Abram's movies just stretched too many mechanics to be used as plot devices to make shoddy scripts work. It's fine as an action sci-fi movie but they obviously weren't' written by Star Trek fans, and it shows strongly.
THAT's why many older Star Trek fans didn't care much for the new movies. A lot of us just want our Star Trek back rather than settling for a Star Wars-ified version of it.
Sapiens
Member
JJs star traks were unexciting and relied to heavily on the old films. They really should have done a reboot instead of trying to appease fans with old spock and all the shoehorned (khaaaan) call backs.
These films were big balls of nothing.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Kinda, sure.
Wrath of Khan and Undiscovered country, the only two movies you actually namechecked, don't work because of "believable sci-fi" at all. The sci-fi is almost secondary. They work because they're great character dramas. And most of the best TOS and DS9 also work primarily because they're great character dramas. We're talking about this because Fuller (character guy) hired Meyer (character guy) and we're all happy. It's not because plausible sci-fi scenarios are about to start flowing from the tap. It's because we're pretty certain we're going to get great characterization, which is really what makes Star Trek go.
Sci-Fi is just the means to get at that character goodness. Star Trek that's about very ostentatiously being sci-fi is a TNG thing, and TNG isn't even all that great an example of Star Trek.
I've brought it up before, but a lot of older Star Trek fans pretend like TNG is the standard, when it's really the outlier. The Star Trek you want back isn't really the best example of Star Trek, basically.
Fuller has been on record to want to get back to a more TOS style of swashbuckling adventure over the style of DS9/Voyager.
Expecting a show closer to the 90s Trek over 60s Trek does not jive well with what Fuller has been saying.
radios shipping overview
Member
It doesn't take much to get a pretty high RT rating these days. A action movie just has to look good, feel good, have a brisk pace, and have enough jokes to fill in any gaps. The Abrams movies were great at this, and it seems like that's why people liked them. The movies were just aggressively dumb and obnoxious at the same time.
But anyway! I have high hopes for the TV series, even if I don't really know what it'll turn out to be.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
This is a new one.
BrokenFiction
Member
This right here is the biggest problem with the Trek-verse. By the end of everything the technology they would have is mostly like magic. You could hand wave anything. The only thing you could do to bring it back down to parity and believability would to have some kind of galactic cataclysm. Reset everything or ignore most of what came after TOS. Otherwise you've got techno babble solutions to everything.
It's at least 15 years in real time since we last saw the universe. Plenty of time for a lot of changes in the universe (we never saw any real aftermath of the Dominion War, seems ridiculous they're still rocking 100-year-old ship designs, a Cardassian diaspora seems possible, etc.)
Especially if you went to the Delta Quadrant there's so many open threads Voyager left you could do plenty with.
Which isn't to say the new series should be beholden to the old, but what's the point in tossing all that canon like JJ did? It's removing Star Trek's biggest strength.
Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
True, but it's more than just characterization that is making people miss "classic" Trek. For example, in TWoK it takes the Enterprise time to get to places, they need to travel about space and this makes space feel big and vast. Same thing in ST6, when Sulu needs to get the Excelsior to the battle quickly he pushes his ship past it's limits and it still takes time to get there. These are fake tech limits but it adds drama and a believability to the universe the movies takes place in, it adds tension to the movies.
Now take the Abrams movies where the Enterprise can warp from planet to planet within minutes no matter where they are going simply because the plot needs to move at breakneck speed for reasons. Also in the Abrams movies it's super easy to transport people between planets or even ships hundreds of light years apart with nothing more than a backpack. This defies everything about the Star Trek "universe" that fans have loved for decades now and no fan of the series would ever allow such a thing to even be written once, let alone twice in two films.
Roddenberry created the show to be as grounded in real science as possible, that was important to him and it's also one aspect that is very important to many fans of the franchise. Abram's movies didn't care about real science at all, they did whatever they needed to in order to service their scripts. For lots of people this is a silly point of view and, as you said above, "pouty and weird", but to lots of Star Trek fans it's an important aspect that makes Star Trek "Star Trek". It's a science fiction show that at least tries to take the science part of it's fiction seriously. That's the draw, that's the appeal, and without it you've just got another typical Hollywood sci-fi romp, like the Abram's movies. It's one reason why so many Star Trek fans loved the new BSG series to death: good characterization coupled with a world of "believable" science rules that they stayed true to.
I think for people who aren't frenzied ST fans this is hard to comprehend, but it's how a lot of fans of the franchise really feel.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
But I feel like the biggest problem is that the "classic" Trek people keep wanting isn't even Classic Trek. it's TNG. Which isn't a great example of Star Trek, overall. It's very, very good stuff. But it's the outlier.
Now take the Meyer/Nimoy movie where it slingshots around the sun as a means of time travel after having a soul transferred back into a dead man's body that's been regenerated by a planet made of miracle gro.
I mean...
What Roddenberry wanted with Star Trek was often at odds with what actually made Star Trek good. Roddenberry was more often than not one of Star Trek's worst obstructionists, honestly. It got worse once the show was canceled and he basically lived on the convention circuit believing all the hot air superfans blew up his ass on a monthly basis.
BrokenFiction
Member
Yep. (But TNG is the 800 lb gorilla now.)
Yep. (But I loved those movies and WoK is still GOAT)
Yep. (Yep.)
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Wrath of Khan is indeed still the greatest.
Succinct Verbosity
Member
I'd argue hiring Meyer would suggest that he's aiming tos movie tone, which is arguably a reboot in tone of the series. WoK has a lot of swashbuckling, but the overall tone of that and the undiscovered country, especially, is far darker and ultimately inspired ds9 and all future releases to head in that direction. We probably will go back to the tos feeling, but I suspect it will be closer to the films than the show.
Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
Oh, I'm not saying classic Trek was perfect by any means, but it tried more often than it failed. Abrams Trek didn't even try! (note that I still garner enjoyment from them for what they are...)
Sometimes I feel like what I want is a new sci fi franchise as Trek is many things now, something more like cross between The Martian and BSG but in the distant future and on starships.
And yes, The Wrath of Khan is still the best.
TheLegendOfMart
Banned
Haha. Rick Berman is the only thing that could kill my excitement for this series.
BrokenFiction
Member
Seriously. Berman was everything I hated about 90s Trek.
Star Trek has never been about real science. Not a single iota of it would make sense if you tried applying scientific logic to it. Roddenberry might've "wanted" Star Trek to be based on science, but that was pure PR, not fact.
Star Trek works because of characters and adventure, not because of science.
Star Trek works because of characters and adventure, not because of science.
BrokenFiction
Member
That's not entirely true. Foundationally, it is scientific, but they take liberties. This is an interesting read: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/star_trek.html
I'd love a series set in that era. It had the best costume and prop design by far.
I've read pages like that -- they describe real science that's similar or inspired by Star Trek, but not that Star Trek has real science in it. When they say otherwise, it's PR to get Trek fans interested in science.
For example, Trek's warp drive is compared to the theoretical "Alcubierre metric" and adopts its "warp bubble" stuff, but in real life, it still wouldn't work. Barring the problems with using it (it's physically impossible to turn off from the inside), it still lets you do faster than light communication. Which still means time travel, and of the "reality breaking" kind.
I've been watching DS9, and it's obvious when they pulled a string of technobabble out of their ass. That's perfectly fine for me, there's no need to pretend that it really is scientific.
GuyKazama
Member
Existance of time ships travelling back could lead to some war, decimating the Federation and setting tech back for 100s of years -- so, no more time ships! I like the idea of rebuilding a crippled Federation with a rich TOS/TNG history.
Succinct Verbosity
Member
The temporal cold war story line of Enterprise was shit, though. The only time travel stories I'm interested in are ones that cover verry important parts of federation history we never see, such as the Romulan-Earth war and the Eugenics War (or at least earth under the leadership of the warlords). Outside of that, Trek needs to stay far away from time travel.
TheSecondSpitter
Member
I raise you one Brannon Braga and a Jeri Taylor.
I think we're just using the wrong word here. It's not scientific, but fake real. (Science Fiction duh!)
NDT,as always, has it right.
https://youtu.be/TMH1vDDd1xc/
GuyKazama
Member
Agreed. Was thinking more that time travel never happens because time travel that did already happen messed something up.
funkystudent
Member
I stand by the idea that the only way the temporal cold war could have maybe been cool is if in the end the way it ending was with the Enterprise crew doing something that erased their ship from history and thus explaining why no one ever talked about that Enterprise in the future.
But now I guess Enterprise is actually kind of canon in JJ trek which is pretty hilarious.
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
that's one of the reasons why I feel they should probably avoid being 'canon' with anybody.
But I doubt it is meant to be anyway (because wasting the Gorn on a subpar video game is a waste). If it is, they might as well just deal with 'time tech remnants' in the pilot, both pulling people in and removing the 'anything goes Deus Ex Machina reset' at the same time. Kind of how Q was used in the TNG pilot / first episode.
Oh, and instantly telling people it's not going to be another Enterprise or Voyager (that whole 'future tech' storyline...uuurgh), though technically Q could of course do all these things with the snip of a finger anyway, but somehow TNG avoided using Q as a time travel ploy (afaik), except for the ultimate series finale.
I was under the impression Roddenberry's "bible" was more about the social rules than any 'science' ones btw. And while I understand that writers were frutrated with it, I also think most people don't realize we're talking about 1960's writers and mindsets there. Seriously, there is a reason Space: 1999 ('the empty child' episode of TNG was ripped from an episode of that show) stands out among sci-fi shows but everything else has been quickly forgotten never to be mentioned again. Because they're really just that fucking bad, and most sci-fi / fantasy writers are atrocious writers too. I really do mean that. The reason is simple: they rarely have to write proper drama. Just thrown in a few monsters and scantly dressed lady and it's gold, Jerry, it's gold.
Speaking of Jerry's: hearing Goldsmith's variant of the fanfare or a version of it will be a streaming moment of legend. Doubt it will make two billion dollars worldwide like a certain competitor, but still.
Fuller said his interest is doing a show more TOS style and feeling, less DS9/Voyager.
JonnyDBrit
Member
...Is it bad if I want the new series to be set in the Abrams timeline, but approached as, well, a standard (I realise how vague that is) Star Trek show?
Like, much as I enjoy the Abrams movies, its not hard to see where they rely on a universe that they've not really built up for themselves. Hell even now, there's... what, the IDW comic series, to go with the movies? Sure, you had the game, but it wasn't that great, and probably made non-canon by Into Darkness anyway.
So there's a lot of material you could easily explore in that setting, old and new. Whilst the flagship is off into the vast reaches of unexplored space on some five year mission, focus on another crew closer to home. Do some worldbuilding without as many constraints from what was charted before.
Like, much as I enjoy the Abrams movies, its not hard to see where they rely on a universe that they've not really built up for themselves. Hell even now, there's... what, the IDW comic series, to go with the movies? Sure, you had the game, but it wasn't that great, and probably made non-canon by Into Darkness anyway.
So there's a lot of material you could easily explore in that setting, old and new. Whilst the flagship is off into the vast reaches of unexplored space on some five year mission, focus on another crew closer to home. Do some worldbuilding without as many constraints from what was charted before.
I love how modernizing-translating it to the current era gets coupled with pissing on it from afar when it comes to describing Abrams' reboot
I mean, if you have to hate on something pick Voyager or Enterprise. Bloody hell, TOS already had its best moments when they didn't go where man hadn't gone before, but in the dynamics between characters, which is what made Trek a phenomenon
I mean, if you have to hate on something pick Voyager or Enterprise. Bloody hell, TOS already had its best moments when they didn't go where man hadn't gone before, but in the dynamics between characters, which is what made Trek a phenomenon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FM6Xfs2ZoY
Yeah, that's a good description. All fiction is ultimately fake, made-up, but it has to create the illusion of being real. While I don't agree that Trek does the illusion of science well, that's personal opinion. It does to other people, and the character interactions feel real. (Mostly.)
Looks like at least CBS is trying with this Trek.
I loved Star Trek (09) and didn't hate Into Darkness, but I can agree that I'm in the mood once more for a TV series.
Also, I agree with Bobby that a lot of the more anti-Abrams Trek fans usually can never accept the real reason the "prefer" classic and TNG-era Trek: It's simply the one they grew up with and they grew up with great characters, not so much spot on sci-fi.
And it wasn't even the sci-fi, some of the best TNG moments are Picard monologues against fascism, religion, in defense of individuality, the humor on the show and other themes.
So yeah, I get how it might be a bit frustrating to see them warp so soon (on screen) from Earth to Vulcan, but I chickle when some fans put it as an example of what's wrong with Abrams trek.
I loved Star Trek (09) and didn't hate Into Darkness, but I can agree that I'm in the mood once more for a TV series.
Also, I agree with Bobby that a lot of the more anti-Abrams Trek fans usually can never accept the real reason the "prefer" classic and TNG-era Trek: It's simply the one they grew up with and they grew up with great characters, not so much spot on sci-fi.
And it wasn't even the sci-fi, some of the best TNG moments are Picard monologues against fascism, religion, in defense of individuality, the humor on the show and other themes.
So yeah, I get how it might be a bit frustrating to see them warp so soon (on screen) from Earth to Vulcan, but I chickle when some fans put it as an example of what's wrong with Abrams trek.
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