Possible New Star Trek TV Series

Quote by Six-of-Nine

Zep, whats pink and sticky?

I hope the answer is bubble gum.

I hope the answer is a pink stick, and he's not referring to my face! Anyway enough about me... Star Trek TV show... Discuss.

The one good thing is the plan for the whole series, rather than just a concept for a few episodes.

Of course we could either love or hate the entire series because of this...

Such wonderful news!!! Finally a series that takes place after Voyager. I can't wait.

It sounds interesting, will reserve judgement until it becomes clearer.

I always wanted them to continue in the post DS9/VOY universe but I can understand that for casual fans, the heavy history would be a major turnoff, so the next best thing for me would be further in the future - perhaps deep in the 25th Century or a bit later, with transwarp to all quadrants of the galaxy, perhaps some contact with extra-galactic species, back to pushing back the frontiers of exploration.

I would normally say any Trek on TV is better than none but that was before Enterprise so I won't say that - I do think anything in the prequel area would be a bad idea though. It's been done, it didn't quite work, let's go forward again.

And thanks for reminding me I still have a ton of post-DS9/VOY books to read. I'm in kindle overload at the moment - too many books! Too many damn books!

The fact that he names J. Michael Straczynski and Joss Whedon as inspirations gets me a little more exicted for the idea than I have been for most others (except the actual JMS pitch) ;).

JMS for his ability to craft an epic story that spans time and space...

JW's for his ability to even out the good and bad valleys of character interaction and stories that JMS seemed to struggled with in B5...

And hell, if I'm putting together the dream team, I'd toss in Rockne S. O'Bannon from Farscape to add in someone who is willing to bring in the truly alien (not to mention the top notch quality of the writing).

What drives this fandom? B5, in my opinion, is the greatest epic ever told. A story that spans millions of years with interesting twists on the nature of time, filled with political intrigue, mythology, and the belief that even a villain can be likeable, or a hero dispised. I could stand to see a reboot of B5 (as much as I loved the original characters) with all that JMS has learned.

Farscape - best. written. scifi. ever. The unique twist of the main character talking TO the audience because we're the only ones who understand his references, jokes, etc. was absolutely brilliant. But thanks to Henson, the truly alien came to life on a regular basis. The incredible care taken with character development and interaction made you fall in love with a 2-foot tall slug (Rygel) and a 6-ft wide crab (Pilot). A series that initially appeared to a SciFi story-of-the-week slowly spun into larger cohesive arc. Don't TOUCH my Farscape. ;-)

Quote by Six-of-Nine

Zep, whats pink and sticky?

A pink stick.

Back to the topic at hand, I'm skeptical (or sceptical, if you prefer). Ever since the Galactica remake became "one of the best shows on television" (TV Guide), everyone thinks they have to copy its tone and style, even where that tone and style go against the grain of the project. Star Trek is not gritty and morally ambiguous. Or at least it never has been, at its root.

To turn Star Trek into Galactica misses the points of both shows. While both shows (or rather the ST franchise and the BSG remake series) commented on current events, as good sci-fi does, they come from very different places and different times.

In my opinion, there have been several missed opportunities in the Star Trek franchise. Voyager could have really broken out of the ST mold. They were isolated from the Federation, a mixed Star Fleet and Maquis crew. The possibilities for showing how real people would respond under those circumstances were truly intriguing. They could have shown the compromises and diplomacy involved in merging two cultures. Instead the Maquis crew just got assimilated into Star Fleet, and it became yet another ESNWSONL show. (Explore strange new worlds, yadda yadda.)

Then Enterprise came along. They made a point of leaving the "Star Trek" out of the name, because it was going to be such a departure from the other shows. What a great opportunity to show the dangers of early exploration! I thought it would be cool to see the new warp 5 ship treated like something special, unique, and dangerous. Every time they went to warp, it should have been a big deal, with alarms sounding, and people preparing for it. Picture a submarine movie: dive, dive! The ship should have been cramped. Accidents should have claimed more lives. But instead we got still another ESNWSONL show. Business as usual, ho hum.

I suspect Paramount (and possibly inertia) played a role in stifling these opportunities. I can imagine the suits telling the showrunners "Just give the people what they expect." Or maybe the inertia was in the producers themselves. (I always thought Brannon Braga seriously overstayed his welcome.) Or it could have been the fans, themselves, who pressured them into making it more Star Trek-y (by not watching it when it wasn't).

So now that I've completely departed from the topic, I wonder what would shape a new Star Trek series would have to take to succeed in today's market. The latest movie did well because it was a big blockbuster, with special effects and exciting visuals. (There was probably a plot somewhere in the mix, too, but I honestly don't remember it as clearly as I remember Chris Pine's boxer briefs.)

For years there has been talk of a "Fall of the Federation" series. Given the state of the world today, I could see some good opportunities for social commentary if the show were set in the years leading up to the fall. They could show the Federation becoming complacent, being slowly becoming either a police state, or bought up by the Ferengi, who then put in place laws that benefit business at the expense of people. They could show the infrastructure slowly crumbling, and no attempt to invest in the future, because it would adversely affect today's bottom line. The Federation's military could be stretched too thin, because of various police actions around the galaxy. The galactic economy could be suffering, leading to riots and refugees.

Or they could just go back and remake Andromeda, and pick it up years after the fall, and follow the attempts to rebuild.

Hmm, didn't mean to go on so long. I'll shut up now.

Quote by scoobs

I would normally say any Trek on TV is better than none but that was before Enterprise so I won't say that - I do think anything in the prequel area would be a bad idea though. It's been done, it didn't quite work, let's go forward again.

I think Enterprise was just as good as the other series.

I had a dream about the new series last night. And, of course, since it was a dream about a TV show, it meant that in the dream, I kept going back and forth between watching the show and being in the show. In my dream, the series premiere began with a chronology of Earth history from the early 21st-century--when the United States launched a nuclear-powered weather-control satellite which malfunctioned during its launch from Antarctica, which was misread by other nations as a nuclear attack and thus started World War III--to the times of Voyager. Subsequent episodes involved different characters from all five live series travelling back in time to different periods of Earth history. Nog travelled to 16th-century Spain--as was indicated in a photograph--but a malfunction in the technology made him a baby, and a tribe of Native Americans living in Spain had to raise him. The last bit I remember was about being on Voyager with the crews from two different realities interacting with each other, one crew trying to take over the other.

I hope the actual series is absolutely nothing like my dream. :)