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New Star Trek Series Rumours
HashCode writes "The Star Trek franchise is about to take a warp speed trip down memory lane ... Star Trek: Birth of the Federation. It looks like its going to become a reality. " Free Advice to paramount trek producers: Go to farm. Find horse. Kill it. Beat it until fists hurt.
A related story from
Adam Juda confirms that Voyager will land in 2001.
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You can be sitting in a pizza place and think to yourself, "This is absolutely the worst slice of pizza I've ever had." Which is another way of saying it ain't half bad. The worst piece of pizza is better than most other foods. Similarly, Star Trek, on it's good days, is a lot better than most other shows. And even a bad episode of Star Trek (well, not Spock's Brain -- I mean, let's be reasonable) is better than most anything else on the air. Bring on the new series. I hope they will take the opportunity to do a good job. Even if it's no better than Voyager, however, it'll still be worth a watch.
are they gonna have that guy on who says "NANU NANU!"
Why is it that Star Trek is getting yet another series, and more movies, but Doctor Who is still in limbo? The TV movie from BBC/Fox could have been a pilot for a new series, but that didn't happen. Is anyone working on this?
Does anyone else find it odd that the new rumor has the same name as the Microprose Star Trek strategy game?
YOU CHEATERS, YOURE TRYING TO AVOID BEING HELD ACCOUNTABLE IN META MOD BY MARKING THIS POST OVERRATED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHY ARE YOU SUCH FUCKING ASSHOLES!!!!!!
-the masked troller-
I wholeheartedly agree with your assertion that Star Trek is 'real' sci fi. While I liked Star Wars, it will never leave me in the same state that some of my favoraite Star Trek episodes have. I dunno though, DS9 has always been my favoraite (aside from TOS). I think mostly because it's not like traditional Star Trek. DS9 sucked at first though, but it got _much_ better (before the war story arc), right around the time of the Episode where travel back in time, while in Earth orbit. One question though, where did all the writers go? Voyager stinks to high heaven -- I can't even watch an entire episode without feeling sick. I'll watch this series for the first two seasons (they usually need that time to build up the characters) then I'll know if it's any good. BTW: it amazes me how hypocritical the Slashdot crowd can be. Everybody raves about Star Wars, even though Episode One sucked, and you're pretty naive if you think Lucas won't beat the Star Wars horse till it's dead (or till he makes all his money). --Mark
Starring Wil Wheaton and Christina Applegate! Any takers?
When they moved things to UPN, it was moving them off the air for me. The local UPN affiliate was bought out after just a few months on the air, and the local cable system said "all the channels are occupied. Sorry." So I pretty muck gave up on seeing the end of DS9 or much past the 1st season of Voyager. So did they ever get home, or were the Gilligan's Island metaphors right all along?
Pussies using overrated so they wont be held accountable... BE A FUCKING MAN AND MODERATE IT SO ITLL STAND IN META!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hmmm, I always thought that the Gates bloodline ran closer to Ferengi than Klingon.
We need less careful people pouring over what money goes where and what ads they can get and what focus groups want... We need the passion from the first series!
So after Uncle Sam breaks up Microsoft, Sun becomes a supplier to the military, and the rest is 23rd century history...
OK, how about Starship Troopers: The Series.
This exists. It's all computer graphics, and was showing up around here (Maryland) at 8 in the morning. Apparently 40 episodes were done, check out www.imdb.com for more info.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
It had Riker flying the Enterprise with a joystick. "Computer, activate manual steering column!" Like the enterprise has ailerons and flaps. That was the most retarded thing I've ever seen, at least that I can remember right now.
:-)
Yeah, we all know the really good players use a mouse and a keyboard...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
How about this final episode:
The Voyager makes it back to Earth. No shortcuts where found and it DID take about 60+ years to get home.
The ship contains only one crewman: Tuvok. Being a Vulcan he would outlive the rest of the crew.
The Doctor is still there, but he is no longer the Doctor. He has been expanded and enhanced to the point that he IS Voyager. Voyager is no longer his vessel but is now his body.
The rest of the crew died of old age or through their own stupidity:
Janeway is killed trying to impose Federation law on a planet well outside Federation space. There being no Federation backing behind her blustering she is burned at the stake by angry locals.
Harry Kim ans Seven are killed when trying to explore the outer realms of human/borg sexual coupling when one of the remaining implants in Sevens body shorts and electricutes them both.
Paris is killed on his wedding night when Belana (sp?) gets a little over excited and accidently breaks his neck. In a fit of depression she kills herself while trying to expunge her guilt through painful Klingon rituals.
Neelix disapears one day and no one bother to investigate. We never do find out what happens to him.
Chikote (sp?) dies of old age, peacefully in his bed.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Nah, won't work, for the same reason voyager didn't: you KNOW they are going to succeed, at least in some measure, at least for some time, because if they don't, then the series ends.
Unless the writers are bold enough to deal with the rogue starship being "jerrymandered", etc.
While I think that they have to be *really* carefull about new series, I have to say, I'm looking forward to it..
The *ONLY* series I simply couldn't stand was Voyager, and I still watched the darned thing, just becouse it was on..
What *I* hated to see was 'Angel' get spun off from Buffy.. Neat in the begining, but quite annoying now..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Like they say on MSTK3000:
"If you're wondering how they eat and breathe, and all those science facts... repeat to yourself it's just a show, I should really just relax."
The revolution will NOT be televised.
I agree with Ensign Taco (he got demoted ;-) on this. Why beat a dead horse? The Sulu idea sounds much better. After that I'd like to see them stay completely away from Federation based stories, it's getting quite old. They could still do a Klingon based one, that would be kinda neat. The one that sounds the coolest to me is the special fources one. That would be alright but it'd still be Federation...
No transporters would make a lot of sense... I mean a) there aren't any in ST:FC (before this
timeframe) and b) someone gets mistakenly fried in one in ST:TMP (after this timeframe)... so
presumably the tech would still be... "beta"??? Or something.
--Ben
--Ben
That sounds pretty cool. I read AICN pretty regularly, but I had missed that one. Of course, that would also involve the typical "what the heck happened?" scenario- think of the folks from the Foundation, trying to find the mythical Earth. That was great stuff...
~luge(who has a total weakness for dystopia)
IAAL,BIANLY
>Execute the entire crew for being a bunch of
>Whiners. Better yet, have Q force them to redo
>the journey all over again....and again....and
>again.
Better yet, force them to watch their own show
while strapped into some Clockwork Orange-style
chairs. Except for Kes. She got out of the show in
time. Lucky woman...
>Oh, and what real spacecraft has Babylon 5
>sparked?
I always thought that the Earth Alliance shuttles look a little like the new re-usable passenger shuttle that NASA is currently testing. Not a flame, just contributing my opinion.
>That new dax actor completely sucked and turned
>the show into a naive 14 year old retard fest.
I don't know, Ezri seemed like a refreshing change for a new character. Instead of a super-genius who could do everything, there's a nervous and scared young woman who has no clue at all what she's supposed to do in her new situation. I think some of us can relate to that. She's sort of like the DS9 equivalent of TNG's Barclay. Plus, Ezri was rather cute.
"let JMS (B5, Crusade) write / direct."
Now *there's* a great idea (although I like the other guy's idea about Robin Williams in "Good Morning, Cardassia" a lot, too).
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
As I was about to post way down at the bottom of the page...
I'd be interested in a pre-Earth show. Where did the Borg come from and how did they get to be the Borg, how did Vulcans and Romulans start as one and wind up like the results of a particularly nasty divorce, how about a revisit to some of the aliens only seen in the original series, only visit them beforehand to show how they got to the point they were when Kirk & Co. showed up.
On the other hand, earth-centric could be good too. 10 or 15 years ago I read one of the Star Trek based paperbacks that featured Kirk's father and how he died, it would have made a good show. They could even do a show that's faithful to the original series's premise that there were atomic wars in the '90s and show how "we" wound up converting from the current calendar to "star date" this and "star date" that and how Earth acquired a single, planetary-wide government and which came first, StarFleet or the Federation.
According to one DS9 episode the entire Star Trek universe only exists in the imagination of a black guy from the '50s who wrote for a pulp SF mag (which solves the atomic wars in the '90s conflict very nicely). Perhaps they could do an anthology show based on stories from that magazine and show us what some of the other writers might come up with (which could present endless spin-off possiblities).
Showing my ignorance now, could someone please tell me what "First Contact" is/was, an episode I missed, a book, a movie, what? And is there any way to see the original Blake's 7 episodes here in the U.S.? I remember the name Terry Nation from Dr. Who and that's sufficient recommendation.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Dukat's daughter was played by Melanie Smith and I suppose all that alien makeup job helped concentrate my attention on her acting ability, but don't pass up an opportunity to watch her play the part of a human female lounging by a swimming pool if you ever get the chance. :-)
She was on "As the World Turns" years ago.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Nurse Chappell (give or take a p or l), as I recall. Also, played a doctor secretly working with the resistance on the early episodes of "Earth:Final Conflict" (an excellent prediction of any advanced alien race we might encounter: they'll have their own agenda, and they will worry about that first, and our future and well-being a distant second).
There are rumors floating around about how she and Nichelle Nichols became close while Nichols and Rodenberry were busy being close, which leads to speculation of the sort which I'm sure Slashdotters wouldn't engage in.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
"Remember Bones' appearance in TNG?"
That was the best part!
The idea of a starship populated by descendants of the original crew was done at least once in print back in the '50s or '60s, but I can't remember which author. Of course in that one they were outbound from Earth, and, after many generations while the ship's computers and robots ran everything, the humans all forgot that the inside of the ship wasn't all of creation and existence.
The plot of the book, of course, was that brave young hero and heroine eventually discover the truth, fighting high priests of whatever religion evolved over those generations.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Clarke was heavily involved in the writing of the screenplay. I refer you to several of the comments from the "2001" thread about a week or so ago here on Slashdot.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
BOTF :-)
Bastard Operator *to* Hell?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I'd have to agree with you on DS9. It was easily the best series of the four. Much darker mood, less cheesy hyper-optimism. And they definitely ended it far too early. The Dominion-Federation war had at least two more seasons of excellent storylines left in it.
:)
As far as the next series goes, I think the "Beginning of the Federation" idea is a pretty poor one. Sure, it might be interesting, but what new things can they do with it? Pretty much all of the relevant "history" from the time period can be gleaned from the other four series and the movies.
What I'd like to see is a series set further yet in the future. Perhaps set during the eventual Borg invasion of federation space. Perhaps with Picard as the President of the Federation, and Janeway as his secretary. "Kathy, would you bring me a cup of tea. Earl Gray. Hot."
In my mind, if they feel the need to go back and explore the past, rather than moving the storyline forward and exploring the future, it's time to either shitcan the whole thing, or bring in fresh people with fresh ideas who can take a new series and do it right.
I've enjoyed Star Trek far too much over the years to watch them turn it into a hollow shell of what it should have been. It's bad enough having to see what they've done with Voyager. It was actually a great concept, and the series has had its moments, but as a whole, I'd have to say it's an embarrassment.
Please, guys, if you can't produce a new series that measures up to TNG and DS9, then turn it over to someone who can, or just let the saga die with dignity.
First, I have to agree with you about Voyager. It's an embarrasment.
I agree with most of your points about TNG, it was an excellent series. It was just to optimistic and cheerful for my taste. It's that point alone that leads me to prefer DS9, although realistically I'd probably have to rate them neck-and-neck.
Sure, DS9 had its share of crappy episodes, what TV series doesn't? I am a little curious about this comment, though:
The series finale was mediocre at best, and from that point on DS9 went steadily downhill.
Just how exactly does a series go downhill after the finale?
Oh, no need to wait 10 years. No reason they can't boot Rick Berman's ass out on the street today and start turning out a quality Trek series right away.
Ahh...
OK, that makes much more sense.
pronoblem
I loved the original series. Sure, they looked cheesy, but the stories were typically quite interesting.
.9 not .5, damn, I hit the asteroid. Geesh, how difficult, slow, and cumbersome must that be?
Worf, to put it mildly, sucked. He almost always gets beat up, over powered, someone draws on him first, etc. He hardly ever does any damage unless he is beating up on fellow Klingons. There was one episode of DS9 in which the station was bordered by Klingons and he did a good job at defense. Plus, Worf is always confused about his loyalty to the Federation or the Empire. I say, once he has that kind of conflict, I chuck him off my crew. I don't need someone I can't depend upon. He is also stupid and narrow minded and almost all things in his mind say fight, fight, fight. He did make a good straight man on occasion and I enjoyed him for that.
The joystick was totally laughable, and totally something star trek has needed for years. C'mon, if you are in a fighting situation and need to maneuver you craft precisely, what is better than an aircraft yoke? The computer will interpret your inputs into something that will make the ship respond. But what is that ensign doing all the other times? Inputing numbers to get the ship to turn left or right? Damn,
You hit the nail on the head. It was entertaining, and as long as you can separate it from the heritage of the original series (which nothing could live up to) it stands on its own as some quality scifi. I think Captain Cisco in particular was great - Kirk was the swashbuckler, Picard was the proper military commander, and Cisco was the Starfleet version of Shaft. He was one bad mutha (shut your mouth). Check out the episode 'In the Pale Moonlight' if you don't know what I'm talking about.
Hey, I liked the war - it was very dramatic, and ended the series with a real bang. And Nicole deBoer was brought in as Ezri because Terry Farrel left the show to do that stupid sitcom with Ted Danson. She was not written out.
Yeah, Voyager kinda sucks. Don't even get me started about Captain Wrongway...I mean Captain Hepburn...aaahh you know who I mean. Or First Officer Chipotle. Or Tom 'Forget About' Paris. I blame poor writing. They are more charicatures than characters.
I agree with you about the sets, but those ST:TMP uniforms sucked ASS.
The ST:TWOK and later "military-style" uniforms were the best of any of the Trek series, by far.
The guts were pushing out because all the actors were fat, not because of any deficiency of the uniforms.
Those uniforms look great when you don't have to accomodate a "legacy actor".
isn't that how one of the movies ended? Only it wasn't earth and it was the Enterprise E. I think it was Generations.
-mark
-mark
If your computer says LINUX, run...computers can't talk! [unless you have text-speech software]
I was actually looking forward to the next series, but this concept seems absolutely retarded. I think the reason Voyager is way out in another part of the galaxy is to prevent it from ever coming into contact with DS9, because if the two shows were in the same "world" the storylines would have to remain in sync and it could probably get pretty hairy (though I realize TNG was on the air at the same time as DS9 without much intermingling, but that was before there was a war and the dominion, etc). By having this new show take place way in the past, they don't have to worry about any mixing of the storylines.
But besides all that, and despite my love for the show, I think this new series will suck royal balls, and the next movies will as well. They have exhausted almost every possible plotline already, and the most recent movie (Insurrection) showed this quite well. Did anybody else notice how they rehashed scenes from the TNG series in that movie? Like when Data was explaining to that kid about how he would trade all his "superpowers" to be a human kid, that was a complete ripoff of the TNG episode Hero Worship, where some kid latches on to Data and Data says "I would gladly experience pain for the ability to taste my drink" (paraphrased from memory). I guess you have to see it to notice it, but it wasn't an isolated incident.
Another one was when Picard took off his rank pins, those circles on his neck, when he was going down to the planet against the orders of that admiral (Why didn't picard just arrest that guy, anyway?). That was a complete ripoff of when Worf quit the Federation (taking off his comm. badge and throwing it on the table in front of Picard and Riker) to join Gowron in Redemption.
Also, Insurrection had the gayest thing ever to appear in a ST episode or movie, even gayer than tribbles. It had Riker flying the Enterprise with a joystick. "Computer, activate manual steering column!" Like the enterprise has ailerons and flaps. That was the most retarded thing I've ever seen, at least that I can remember right now.
Anyway, while a good new series would be welcome, fodder along the lines of Insurrection surely is not. I would rather the series be honorably laid to rest than to see it run into the ground with inanity. But of course, there are people far more obsessed with Trek than I, who will go to see anything starring anyone remotely connected with Trek, and so the movie/series will be made for them and the paltry few million that can be squeezed out of them.
__________________________________________________ ___
rooooar
The matrix intellectual? Sure, you can think up a lot of explanations for minuscule detail, but apart from 'reality is what you perceive it to be', and a few nicely chosen names it's just another scifi film. A nice one, sure, but still...
Turning humans into batteries.... Come on, even I could have come up with a better explanation than that...
Majel Barret Roddenberry is using this idea in another "Gene Roddenberry" (in the same vein as Earth Final Conflict) series called "Andromeda" originally titled "Phoenix Rising". I believe that it will begin to air this fall.
Unfortunately, "Andromeda" will not take place in a post-Federation Star Trek universe but one very similar to it.
"Episodes can show us virtues like blind obedience, jingoism, militarism, and all the fun of being a gun-toting redneck ("Let's go shoot us some goo^H^H^Hbugs")!"
That's definitely true of the movie. I didn't find that in the book. The movie was a fun, brainless [*REALLY* brainless] way to spend 2 hours. Only once though. Please don't make me sit through it again.
The party's over
They explained it in the ST:The Roleplaying Game that the Kilngons that were in ST:TOS were Klingon-Human hybrids designed to eventually replace humans, and that the forehead-ridge-pattern-of-the-day Klingons are "Imperial" Klingons. Rodenberry looked at it and waved his hand in unoffical blessing.
Um, not that I know anything about Star Trek or anything . . .
The party's over
It will take up where First Contact left off and continue until the time period of the original '60s series.
Isn't this roughly a 200-year time span?
To add suspense, it will feature a 29th century villain who is trying to prevent the Federation from being born.
Aha! It can't just be a simple Volume 0 of ST; they have to base the whole series on a YATI that will distract from what the title suggests this will be about.
Apparently getting their suspense just from a simple future history is too much work for UPN's writers; they have to add a gaudy door of uncertainty through which to throw off-the-wall plot devices. The sorts of things that shows like Cleopatra 2525 thrive on.
I hate UPN. When are they going to schedule this episode? 1:30 AM after "Jack of All Trades"?
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
I always thought the Voyager series could be saved from the "Lost in Space" syndrome if they made it back to the Alpha Quadrant but decided to join the Maquis. Voyager would become the "flagship" of the resistance: Lots of pirate action, trade, negotiations for allies, etc.
Unfortunately, the episodes that I've seen lately show that the former Maquis characters have been assimilated by the Feds. Too bad.
I wonder if they ever seriously considered naming the character "6 of 9".
I AM captainkirk, JAMES T.kirk, ofthestarshipEnter PRISE. andIpronounce 'LInux'... LI-nux.
I couldn't pass up a chance to put in my $.02 on a trek related post:
I am not a "trekkie".
I do not know the internal schematics of the Enterprise by heart.
I don't own any trek related memoriablia.
I have watched numerous episodes of all 4 Treks.
Conclusion:
The best series ever made for television, sci-fi related and otherwise is IMHO:
Star Trek: The Next Generation
The writers,actors/actresses,producers,(etc.) for this show produced one of the most entertaining and thought provoking series ever made.
Long Live: TNG
Fin
Eddy.WriteLinux.Com
release the source code for their Starships' OS.
Yes! Wouldn't that be wonderful? Then it'd be easy to network a house and have it running seamlessly together, if we only had such an illustrious OS installed. (heh)
But honestly, it'd be neat if they actually had an idea of what the source code for an OS like that would be like, and if they'd release it. We could make a Star Trek distro of Linux!
Insert mind here.
And that's because Lucas made damned sure that all those 3rd rate (and very rare 1st rate) SW paperback writers stuck to the rules. No one at Paramount seems interested in doing that for Trek.
But that was always true - even with TOS. Heck, from a SciFi view point, I always thought that 70's cartoon was the best Trek. At least the ripped off the best authors.
--
Greetings New User! Be sure to replace this text with a
Clear, Dark Skies
I'm speaking up, and karma be damned.
But the only episode of B5 *I* ever saw was the one that involved some guy who thought he was King Arthur wandering around the whatever-it-is-they-wander-around.
King. Arthur. Check please!
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
They have totally beat the Borg sect of the show to death. You'd think when they are so close to home, that they'd be out of the Borg threat forever, but oops, another conduit, and they keep getting easier and easier to destroy. Oh well, better than the kazon at least.
Of course, the critter responsible for the pile of bones et the ensign, but no one seemed to care...
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Will there be Romulans? It seems to me that in the old Star Trek people knew about the Romulans but never saw any. Therefore, I don't see how they can even plausably have the Star Trek equivalent of Drow in the new series.... if they intend to maintain continuity (highly unlikely).
Will there be Borg? There shouldn't be Borg... but again that doesn't mean they won't show up... (The only legitimate way to have Borg is a history altering time paradox deal.)
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Yes everyone was dead on the ship when it was found. However, the epesode ends with Harry Kim changing the past. So the timeline was changed and the crash did not happen.
A little OT, but I really liked the Dune series of books. I think it would make a great story line for a TV series. It could take place in the time after the 3rd book. When is the miniseries coming out?
--
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
Are you crazy?
Star Trek has always been "raygun popsci", as you call it. Transporter buffers, rayguns (oops... phasers), warp drives, humans with funny ears (oh, that's supposed to be an alien race?), etc.
The Matrix and Star Wars both had better acting than Star Trek (though Mark Hamill and William Shatner are quite a match), and The Matrix was quite a bit more intellectual.
"and release the source
code for their Starships' OS."
Then you would have to release the source to Gene Rodonberry's wife (shes the voice of the computer)..... and I don't think you really want to see that.
AdFuel
My idea: Star Trek: Red Ensign.
Make a show about the ensign-in-the-red-suit who is always getting killed.
Every show would end like this: "Hey! You killed the ensign! You bastards!"
Think about it.. really, how is it that this crew, which is part Maquis, hasn't gotten desperate? Basically, there hasn't been a challenge to the Captain Formerly Known as "Bun of Steel" since the first season. I mean, she's gotten better but some of the character's early command decisions were ridiculous. Does anyone else think that the USS Voyager looks too clean and spiffy? I mean, this thing has been in space six years without a dry dock. Should they really be wasting resources on keeping it pretty? A good look keeps up morale, sure, but these are desperate times. And why the heck didn't they pick up some cool Delta quadrant tech to spiff up a admittedly weak vessel? They had Borg armor installed, and as soon as they got through the Borg space Chakotay was like, "Hey, let's get that Borg stuff off the hull". Hello! That stuff saved your butt, it might be kinda useful! You never see a cop turn down a kevlar vest in a hostile situation because it's not a good look for him. By now, the ship should be totally Borgarific, with lots of phaser scars, Ten Forward should be a strip club, and the crew should be getting unabashedly shagadelic in the corridors. It's going to be a long trip (or not).
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
There's a difference between Star Trek and Star Wars though. Lucas not only controls it, but he's alive. Roddenberry controlled Star Trek (and it was pretty good at the time), but now he's dead and things have gone to hell. Things really started to go in the last season of TNG (which just happens to be when Roddenberry died). While I don't think Lucas will make anymore movies past episode 3, I'm sure the toy makers and comics will try to go for as long as possible.
Actually the success of Babylon 5 was based mostly on the fact that each episode was based on another. In the sense that, in season 1 something happens that does not quite make sense 'til season 5 or so. The whole series was tied together.
But with Voyager they wanted to attract a new market/new viewers so doing that would have counteracted thier goal.
I agree that Star Trek is tapped, they need a break. But I also think they need a new direction. Play with a few ideas. Lexx actally had some success with its mini-series at first, until they lost thier sense of direction and the series collapsed.
Star Trek should head into that direction. If they want to play with the past a bit then instead of dumping a wad of cash into a new series that has a good chance of floping, then try a mini-series with a few concepts.
Or maybe even a few motion pictures. If they were smart, instead of creating a new series right away, put alot of effort into creating a movie that people will have alot of hype for.
But then it might not meet everyone's expectations, kind of like Episode I. Granted, a very good film, but the hype was worth way more than the film
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
I've been a fan of the show for a long time now, and I've steadily become less interested as the years have gone by -- to the point where I really just don't care anymore. I feel like Star Trek is still *capable* of doing extraordinary shows (on par with some of the original, TNG, and DS9 classics), but they need to undergo a paradigm shift to do so.
:>), it needs a dramatically new approach. Voyager claimed to represent a new concept: a Federation starship, light-years from home having to fend for themselves in the unknown reaches of space. Um, sounds good on paper, but I'll be darned if I can figure out how that applies to the current series...the ship still looks like it was just launched, the crew doesn't seem to be having any difficulty coping with life away from the Federation, and the stories seem like they could have been done on any of the other series. There just isn't anything NEW there. A new show would also need new writers and new producers...and at the same time, would need to bring back some of the old writers and producers who have jumped ship over the years: Ron D. Moore and Peter Allan Fields immediately come to mind. These guys have proven their ability to be flexible, in addition to their writing ability.
First of all, I would give the show a rest. There are so many syndicated episodes out there that there really isn't any *need* for new shows. The downtime of the 70's proved that in the absence of new material, the popularity of the show will only increase. Let the franchise run on reruns for a few years...maybe more than a few years if necessary.
Secondly, when the show does return (and it will return...you can't get rid of Star Trek
Star Trek is far from dead, but it is in a downward spiral...and the only way to pull it out is to make it unique again. It needs people who care.
OK, so if this is the START of the Federation- is MIR going to be a major player?
Actually, the original design for the Enterprise was heavily influenced by NASA concepts... the bio for the series remarked that Roddenberry went there and asked everyone everything to get something realistic. Oh, and what real spacecraft has Babylon 5 sparked? Funny how there's a real Enterprise, because when that Space Shuttle was rolled out there was nothing else that the people would let it be called. And the command crew of the ST show were invited to stand next to it at the press conference... so perhaps you should think a little more before mouthing off.
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
If you're talking about Living Witness, Voayger was not destroyed, but simply involved in a war.
If you're talking about Timeless, voyager was destroyed trying to slipstream home. However, Harry and Chakotay used time travel to change that.
There was an anime Starship Troopers series about eight years ago. There was that fscking awful movie, and now a CGI series (that i've not seen yet). From these examples and your post, it seems like no one has ever read the book.
virtues like blind obedience, jingoism, militarism, and all the fun of being a gun-toting redneck
In response to this, I can only say, "Huh?" You may have read a book about all of the above, but I read (and re-read many times) one about growing up and leadership and duty and honor and personal responsibility. Obedience was forced down the MI's throats during boot, not because of a gleeful disregard for individual liberty, but because training is expensive; asking questions or ignoring orders in combat can get you and your squad-mates dead. The jingoism puzzles me greatly; in the context of the book, a military response was a direct response to a first strike by the "bugs"; I suspect that had Mr. Heinlein tried to write about how we humans tried to get a diplomatic settlement after that, it would have made for a very brief novel. The militarism was inevitable, again in the context of the book, since the main character was part of the "Mobile Infantry" during war-time, it would be hard to avoid a military viewpoint. As for the "fun", yeah, boot-camp is a blast. And watching your friends getting killed is a hoot. And hearing about your family getting nuked; what a riot. Never once, in multiple readings, have I gotten the impression that Mr. Rico "enjoyed" and of the violence that he felt necessary to dispense.
Keep in mind that this was originally published a couple years before the average American had ever heard of Viet Nam (1959, I think). The military had lost face in Korea, but they were still big winners in the WWII bowl. And forget coed shower scenes; while Heinlein had no problems with writinig about sex, pretty much before any other SF writer tried it (like a couple years later in Stranger in a Strange Land), Starship Troopers was originally published (in serial form, I think) in Boy's Life which was (and still is?) a magazine targeted at boy scouts...
Back on topic: I pretty much gave up on Voyager after the Star Trek: Smackdown episode a month ago. While I think an "early years" series has potential (less machina es deus fixes), I'm sure Rick Berman and company will track down that potential and beat it to a pulp before any filming gets started...
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
You are right. That was one of the best Trek episodes ever... if only because it was campy in the way of TOS by visiting TOS!!!
the older klingons all got killed or smth. by a virus.
er, enlighten us, then. how should it translate?
The conclusion of your syllogism, I said lightly, is fallacious, being based on licensed premises
So what was that one with Kim/Chakotay making it home safely because of this funky new drive but everyone else dying and the lads becoming outcasts because of their grim determination to go back in time and change what happened? Go on, dazzle me :)
The conclusion of your syllogism, I said lightly, is fallacious, being based on licensed premises
ah. ignore my question in the other thread then :)
The conclusion of your syllogism, I said lightly, is fallacious, being based on licensed premises
Neal Stephenson?? Could be interesting for all those interesting "Authorisation Janeway Alpha" encryption bits.
:o)
Only possible thing that might make this good would be if there wasn't a set cast. It is, after all, about the Federation and should surely span a couple of generations. Hey, this might be a good idea actually...
shit...contradicting myself now...
The conclusion of your syllogism, I said lightly, is fallacious, being based on licensed premises
Which Dax? They killed off Jadzia in the next-to-last season, then in the last season they introduced Ezri, who goes back to DS9 despite the Trills' strict rules against trying to relive past lives. I liked Ezri much better than Jadzia, although I still think Seven is better-looking than either of them. (Then again, maybe it's just the uniform.)
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not necessarily my own, as I've not yet had my medication today.
I probably got quite a few details wrong, so someone feel free to correct me.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not necessarily my own, as I've not yet had my medication today.
To be honest - I think you're thinking of a TNG episode, with Data in the doctor's place - the one where they travel back to the 19th century?
"The romance of Silicon Valley was about money - excuse me, about changing the world, one million dollars at a time."
Visit
Yeah! I for one would give anything just to see that annoying Holodeck go away. Its like, who would use this thing if it was so buggy it would crash every couple of weeks, and put the users in mortal danger, or spit out some sentient hostile being?
I think the holodeck should be renamed the "lazy-writers couldn't think of anything lets send the crew to 14th century mongolia-deck".
If the holo-deck goes away, and the once-cool borg stop getting dilluted into absurdity, then maybe this could be a cool series.
If they had good writers and ignored the conventional wisdom (Hint- ST is not a soap opera!) this could be good. And honestly, even if its crap, I'll probably watch it and just complain more.
www.avacal.com -- the home page of pete shaw
Well what do you know -- I found it: Living Witness
I hope they make some form of DS9 movie. The last years were very interesting and the space battles were fantastic. The Sulu idea is good. What we really need is more Aliens/Space Marines movies.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
It's also important to remember that science fiction was a young genre when Roddenberry started Trek.
We expect more from it now.
It's over. If not for Paramount needing to squeeze every last red cent out of their cash cow it wouldn't (shouldn't) even be on TV anymore.
And red cent isn't even a good term because there is no life left in the Star Trek franchise, Voyage attests to that.
With the passing of Rodenberry, Star Trek too should be allowed to die with whatever dignity it's got left. Each new series takes a little away from the magic that Trek was. Watch the original episodes on Sci-Fi and you'll understand.
After this series has served its time...uhhh, I mean run its course The Powers That Be will of course, want to milk the Trek Franchise again. My idea is a new show entitled:
The End Of The Federation
Where high powered leaders overextend the Federation to the point where nobody takes it seriously and the population desperately thinks back to the glory days, that are now just out of reach. A place once so real, that now exists only in the memories of dejected, disillusioned supporters, all over the galaxy.
Star Trek is a cultural icon (even if it is a little tired), like it or not. I think it'd take even more of a "geek" to have an informed opinion, or anything at all to say for that matter, on the paid open source hacking story.
and for the record, I just plain don't get the whole hot grits thing.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Actually, "Forbidden Planet" is a thinly-veiled adaptation of William Shakespeare's "The Tempest".
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Riker said it was not possible, as there hasnt been a reported case since _______ .
SOrry but my memory is crap. But it did happen! :-)
Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design
V has two seasons of shows, plus a number of made for tv movies (some mini-series type stuff). I need to dig out the old VHS tapes.
Who can forget the toys? THEY were awesome. :-)
But I have to admit, that whole star-child Elizabeth thing was pretty lame. Especially since she went from infant to 18 in a month.
Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design
Does no one like the idea of "Star Trek: Excelsior" (or whatever they'd call the show)???
I think this would rock.
Wiwi
--
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
Isn't thier always a war, or disease that they have to combat on that show? Thier is still indecency, look at seven of nine or any of the girls in the first show.
Really, the birth of the Federation is hands down the most interesting thing in the whole Star Trek universe. It is something we can, and should, take into account when forming the society of the 21st century.See the movie "Galaxy Quest"
Do not wright in this space.
They shouldn't have started The Next Generation. Now Star Trek fans are gonna be fearful of a life in which all the Trek episodes they see are reruns... that's why we're seeing one spinoff after another... there always has to be someone filming a new Star Trek
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Is a partnership between the makers of Star Trek and Squaresoft... they could make a totally computer-animated show based on the Star Trek setting...
Maybe called Square Trek?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
The problem with that idea is the massive fights that will break out at all the Star Trek conventions due to the disagreements of how to pronounce "Linux".
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Isn't that the one were an older Harry Kim and thatblokewiththetattooonhishead (I don't watch Voyager that much on account of it's inherant rubbishness) who were the only surivors sending a back through time to a borg implant still in 7of9- who then warns the captain, who averts disaster and changes the future (not that Voyager crashing being any form of disaster......
J-aims
--
Yo, whatever happened to peas? Join T( H)GS
...which isn't Living Witness
J-aims
--
Yo, whatever happened to peas? Join T( H)GS
but Timeless Those guys really need to recycle less plot :)
J-aims
--
Yo, whatever happened to peas? Join T( H)GS
......and Bablon 5 is?
J-aims
--
Yo, whatever happened to peas? Join T( H)GS
I expect they'd be lynched if they went to the miniskirts the women wore in ST:TOS; that at the very least will be changed.
OK, how about Starship Troopers: The Series. Since they won't be able to duplicate the coed shower scene on broadcast TV, they should go back to the book. Episodes can show us virtues like blind obedience, jingoism, militarism, and all the fun of being a gun-toting redneck ("Let's go shoot us some goo^H^H^Hbugs")!
If UPN won't carry it, pitch it to the Family Channel, but be warned, they might be reluctant to give up any of those wholesome cowboys-n-injuns westerns.
Score 1: Yee-haw
However, my personal opinion is that Paramount needs to give Star Trek a break, take a few months off. This is because for the past 15 years or so, we've had Star Trek continuously non-stop and they have obviously run out of ideas. They need some time off to come up with some good ones, otherwise, the next series is going to be just as bad as Voyager.
Sounds that that could be quite a scene... heck maybe
it could even keep Paramount/CBS from making another ghastly mistake.
Someone had to do it.
"I?ve just had flick through some of the earlier posts and it?d obvious that this item is going to be full of ?nobody wants it?, ?flogging a dead hours?, ?enuf already? etc.. For the most part I agree, yet another startrek series is the last thing I want to see, and I would never go out of my way to watch it. The fact however remains that whilst viewing figures have declined since the height of next-gen but there are still a lot of people watching it.
So I ask the question who is actually watching it if everybody hates it?"
When I see posts like this (with ? instead of the correct character) I just skip over it. Unfortunately more and more web sites are being authored with Microsoft FrontProstitute, making proprietary changes to the standard character sets, making me move on. Pity that I have to look at this shit on slashdot.
Lars -
What series did you watch? V had two miniseries: V and V: The Final Battle. The series was 8-10 episodes. At its best, the series sometimes hit Battlestar Galactica quality. They had one special effect. The half breed girl would occasionally stick a red piece of cellophane in her mouth and call it a forked tongue. Oh yes, and the one time they showed a guy with a rubber lizard head and a bathrobe.
pornking
I dont know where you got your philosophy training but the Matrix actually deals with many of the same issues that Star Trek deals with. In fact I would go so far as to say that it deals, in two hours, with more issues of real philosophycal depth than the entire first series of star trek. Dont get me wrong I love star trek as much as the next geek but too many people on slashdot who have never had any philosophy training spew bullshit about philosophy. I know very little about routers and networking so i make no comments on the subject yet people feel free to make asinine comments on a subject which they are practically illiterate on, viz. philosophy. The matrix is a work that explores almost all of the questions inherent in buddhist philosophy (object-subject split, duality versus oneness, nirvana samsara being the same or not. being not-being and nonbeing the list is very very long if you actually pay attention to the movie's depth) In fact it is the story of a boddhisatva. It also raise many of the epistemological problems that Descartes brought into the fold of philosophy. The problem is that people have gotten too caught up int he special effects of the movie and forgot about the plot and the characters. Film makers have to get people to go to the box office and usually it requires a lot of explosions and fights. some people were not able to separate the beauty of the film from its intelectual relevance. People have a prejudice that beauty cannot be deep. people constantly make jokes about pretty people not being smart. Nietzsche would say that this is simply resentiment. I do not have this prejudice and thus will not deny the plastic beauty of most of the fight scenes in the movie but the movie is much deeper than its flashy surface wich in and of itself is a work of art. Part of the beauty of the matrix is not however the imagery but the architecture that is formed by the ideas it presents to those who pay attention. Kant wrote horrible prose but if someone tell you that the ideas in the transcendental asthetic of the CPuR are not beautyfull they are full of shit.
Mr. V. has a long history of parodying the (presumed) American psyche. Two excellent cases in point are the two Robocop films-- particularly with regard to the fake commercials, and the newscasters.
Mr. V. has also directed Showgirls-- a film that was generally lambasted, and apparently almost universally disliked (I can't comment on it, having never seen it). It is entirely understandable that he might be a bit peeved at American viewers for not enjoying/understanding/going-on-a-killing-rampage- to-see the film.
From here, we go to Starship Troopers. Personally, I enjoyed the film-- as a broad political comedy. Mr. V. probably saw it as an excuse to get back at the same (from his theoretical perspective) redneck yokels who dissed Showgirls, by tricking them into swallowing heaping helpings of Nazi imagery masquerading as Good 'ol Boy American jin-- er, patriotism.
"Pardon," you say?
From the beginning, hallowed American symbols and ideals are intermixed with fascistic ones. The stylized eagle we see near the beginning of the film could be mistaken for a "SF-ed up" version of the American Eagle motif. On the other hand, it looks a great deal more like a fusion of the stylized Nazi "SS" and the eagle that perched atop the laurel-wreathed swastika. Likewise, the uniform that Doogie Howser (yep, same actor), Mind Melter and his Intel comrades wore looked virtually identical to a type of WWII German uniform (it actually scared the hell out of me the first time they showed up on screen).
In and of itself, the film was a parody of American war movies (and war news coverage), from the opening audience briefing ("Klendathu must be destroyed" [graphic of quietly exploding planet]), to the hypermedia propaganda bits, to the increasingly desperate recruitment ads (note how enlisting slowly goes from merely increasing the likelihood of having one's citizenship request accepted, to guaranteeing citizenship at the end of the film). I'll refrain from explaining how the "brain bug" at the end is a blatant manifestation of the vagina dentata, partially because it should be obvious just from looking at it, and because I don't want to waste any more bandwidth.
Five tons of flax.
For the record there is no such thing as "TOO big".
Not everyone deserves a 320i
OK, So I'm "OK" with the Birth of the Federation idea, but I would like the whole Excelsior/Captain Sulu MUCH better (if properly done, of course). Anyone have any news of a mass-email campaign I could join???
mas cerveza, por favor politically incorrect stu
Why do Chinese proverbs have to translate to broken English?
There, I fixed it... only now it doesn't fit on one line. Doh!
I assume it's in broken English so that it pisses off all the Chinese people out there. ;)
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
The real problem is there are so few truely new story ideas. How many transporter accidents can you have? Or holideck mishaps? Mostly all the ideas for the current series have come from TOS or TNG. Basically they keep recycling the same ideas with just a different crew and a twist. So basically almost every episode is fimilar and rather predictable. How many transporter accidents do you think they'll have in Birth of the Federation? Maybe we should start taking bets.
I'm not sure exactly what it is, but is it not what he says. Something disgusting. I didn't look long enough to identify it.
Yeah, I know, I'm feeding the trolls, but I just want to prevent others with weak stomachs from seeing it.
>Original Series. Great concept, low budget, good cast ruined by W. Sh1tners terrible acting. He's a total ashole in real life btw.
I`ve heard this..although you have to give him at least a little respect for appearing on Clive James (u.k.) chatshow about 5 years ago, pissed (thats drunk, for you americans - it means the opposite over here!)... at the end, Clive asked him if he still knew any Klingon, and he said some phrase...
Apparantly after the show the BBC switchboards received a few calls from orthodox Jews, complaining that what he`d actually said was `my dick up your ass` in Hebrew!
(Source: Private Eye, so you tell me if its true!)
Of course you realize that the downward spinoff spiral is an inevitable consequence of the economics of television, since TV producers like to think they are getting something for nothing with a spinoff. The problem is that after the show is cast with a fraction of the original's budget, you end up with cheap[er] sets, worse acting and worse writing than the original. TV executives fail to realize what drove people to watch the show in the first place.
When viewers start abandoning the spinoff in droves, the reaction from the producers is not "let's hire better writers" because this costs too much. The reaction is more like: "Um...maybe if we added a Borg character with Really Big Breasts..." That may in fact get more people watching, but they won't be the same people that left the show for lack of acting and writing, and even they may eventually stop watching for the same reasons.
No silly, Gates is Borg!
Make Seven
Username taken, please choose another one.
Better yet, will the Klingons lose their cranial growths and get haircuts? Did they ever try to explain that? I nominate some kind of bizarre virus that caused all the Kligons to mutate.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Did you ever see the short-lived 80s action-adventure show Sledgehammer?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
i think the new Dax host in the later DS9 is very cute
well maybe on board a starfleet ship they can't get drunk, same as in today's navies? but when they get shore leave boy those federation types know how to rumble!
ST : The Klingons
yeah baby! a whole series of "klingon krap"! lots of "HUAAAA"s and "BWAHHH"s. fighting, drinking blood wine or whatever it is. every episode could be entitled some subtle variation of "It is a good day to die"
one word : Avon
shooting stuff is good, u can't go wrong
i would be a viewer for a start. ST broke through to the mainstream decades ago and has remained there. popular because it emphasises the humanity and not the technology. i guess it has many detractors because its popular arf arf
wait until they show the old ships using the current state of the art SFX, then they might look just as good. i just hope they keep the old WW2 submarine sound effects like they had in ST:TOS during battles.
Invent the replicator. Society's problems are mostly due to limited resources.
without the need to produce anything such as food and clothing people have massively more leisure time. in the ST universe the culture was for "self-inprovement" and "self-discovery". very new age but i guess if u forced it to start with after a few generations it would be second nature. with political will u can change how a whole society acts and things (see Sparta).
or whatever else Forbidden Planet ripped off
That would be about half the pulp and cinema sci-fi of the 30's 40's and 50's wouldn't it?
Come to think of it, Trek quite openly ripped off Gunsmoke and Wagon Train.
I think everyone gets a bit too hung up over who ripped who off though. Art inspires art. If anyone actually creates something truly original then I will be impressed.
Well, I quite liked Alien Nation, but I felt it was just saying the same thing and repeating itself again and again towards the end, and just became a cop buddies show with funny heads.
The telemovies seemed to have much more general direction.
That guy has to be the most hated person on usenet.
Newsgroupd include
alt.ensign.wesley.die
alt.ensign.wesley.die.die
alt.ensign.wesley.die.die.die
alt.wesley.crusher.die
alt.wesley.crusher.die.die
alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die
alt.borg.wesley
I think there were a couple of others, but even Microsoft doesn't have that many newsgroups dedicated to how much people hate it. (at least not on my server)
Star Trek: Grits - Starring Natalie Portman as the captain of the USS Grits. Boldly pouring hot grits where no-one has poured before.
Star Trek: Microsoft/Borg- There's actually a good parody based on this somewhere, so I won't go into details.
Star Trek: Geek - Captain Taco in the USS Slashdot and his crew of engineers, engineers and more engineers. A disproportianately male crew, no command staff. Everyone just goes where people think they want to. If anyone disagrees they replicate a new ship and go in the opposite direction.
The problem with that idea is its yet another Crew on a Starship series. That formats been done to death with TNG and Voyager. It might work as a mini series though.
You're taking stuff from TNG. TNG was ok, TOS was great. Nothing will ever compare to TOS. Admittedly, they copped out a ton but TOS still grades as some of the best televised sci-fi in the regard. Try doing it only one hour...with a very low budget...in that timeframe. damn
Checkout taccom my worl war II simulator
Sorry, but IMAO I think you're reading way too much into The Matrix. If the movie was meant to be anything more than a superficial action thriller they would've written good dialog; instead, they wrote 'whoa.' It's the same sort of thing several people have done with Star Wars. Star Wars is simply a space opera, the 'philosophy' of the force is great and high sounding but totally without material. Lucas simply wrote it to make some money. As to the philosophy of The Matrix: yes, it does *seem* to raise some interesting questions...but, once again IMAO, I heavily doubt the writers were thinking any more beyond the usefulness of it for the moment. 'The body can not live without the mind' was most likely simply a cheap cop out that allowed the writers a way to continue the plot element.
I'll admit that I have no formal philosophical training, nor would I ever claim to. However, the idea that 'The Matrix' is some great philosophical treatise is simply wishful thinking; it's like looking for deeper meaning in a Horatio Algiers novel. Sure, it was great fun, but it was written for the buck, not for the intellectual.
In closing I will admit that there is a non-zero possibility that 'The Matrix' does have a deep meaning. In fact my initial feeling after leaving the movie was 'Wow, that was a pretty cool idea until the directors suddenly remembered they had to make money and threw in the fighting at the end.' I think it could've been much better, though it probably wouldn't have made as much money.
Checkout taccom my worl war II simulator
Jeez, man...I've been thinking the same thing for years. The Federation is such a small part of the Start Trek universe. Some sort of Twilight Zone-like structure is exactly what would do it for me. There is such a strong sense of continuity and a large, detailed set of rules. It just makes a lot of sense.
I agree that the ensemble cast structure is too limiting. Any time you have a holodeck episode, it just proves that point. I like character development, but more like what was in Babylon 5, not the sappy soulless crap that was DS9 in the last season. I can see how Voyager might go down that same tragic path as it winds up.
As for the whole Sulu thing: WTF are they (Star Trek Groupies) thinking??? They need fresh ideas, not yet another pathetic trip down nostalgia lane. Paramount has a great formula going with the progression from series to movies. I really don't give a rat's ass about what Sulu did after he killed Kirk. And the thought of the rest of the aging original cast making guest appearances (and sponsored by Priceline.com with the Shatner ads) is scary.
So what do I want? I want to see what it's REALLY like to live in the Federation. How about a story about a Ferengi trading vessel stranded without warp drive? What about a con man who makes his living cheating other life forms? Explorers from other galaxies just passing through? I mean, there's just so much that could be done. It would even be a better outlet for fan fiction and stories. They could go a whole season without a holodeck program gaining control of a ship and scaring people. Personally, I would write a big check to Paramount if they would only quit beating that particular dead horse.
I say we lobby for something like that. If Star Trek fans (and I'm a big one, although I wouldn't wear the uniform to jury duty) got behind something inventive and creative that allowed more contribution from fans, I think they could get the best series yet.
Isn't that better than some crap about how the Federation was born? Come on...do you REALLY think they will have the short skirts and political incorrectness that was a hallmark of the early Federation? Puhleaze!
I'm sorry but that is the problem with Trek today. They borrow way to much from past shows. Some of the NG shows could stand on there own. But DS9 and Voyager laked any sence of originality or creativity. It just seemed like they grabbed a bunch of stuff that worked in the past and stuck a new series title on it. They need to come up with an original story, not a picking over of whats worked in the past.
I want a gmail account. Can someone help me
Francis Fortcoppler's First Wave ruled over all series mentioned here so far.
There was another good one, Nowhere Man, but I can't remember who wrote/directed that one.
no sig
If you want to check out a real sci fi book, that's actually researched well, written brilliantly, etc, check out Peter James' HOST . There's real UNIX technology in there. And cool sci fi too, but not totally unbelievable, like aliens and startroopers and spaceships and rubbish. The man writes brilliantly, most of his stuff is good, but HOST takes the cake.
no sig
Babylon 5, on the other hand, only took a couple of episodes to get going (and a crappy TV movie). 5 year arc, awesome foreshadowing, desent acting, and I can't forget to mention the 3D. Oh and can we say the story actually had a great SCI-FI angle. Several people wrote books on physics of star trek, but did any star treck people get INVITED to NASA? I don't think anyone would actually consider making a star craft based on Enterprise (any edition) or Voyager.
DS9 was arguably the best OVERALL series, too bad they ended it early. They could have had a lot more fun with the story. I just hope they don't repeat their mistakes with the new series.
Voyager? What the hell is that? I like Roddenberry's Earth Final Conflict better. There are no decent SCI-FI series on right now!
I have always had this idea, so what do you think? The world of ST is suppose to be this ideal, perfect earth and such. However, the view we get of it is always through the eyes of the military elite. I would like to see a series based on the lifes of non-military, regular joe type people living in the ST world. Aliens they meet, general life on earth, vulcan, etc. More character evolution and less blast em'. Imagine viewing our world today only thru the eyes of a bunch of Special Forces nuts. Not exactly how I see things. So what do you think?
Remember the TNG episode where the ship full of yuppies turns up and Picard gives them a lecture about how they don't have money?
Spewosity-up-throw!
One thing I liked about B5 was that it wasn't a big happy utopia - Earth hadn't solved any problems, just shipped them out to space. (i.e. the homeless people on downbelow)
And another thing...
In TOS, they have booze. Kirk likes a spot of Romulan Ale, and there's that episode where Scotty drinks a Klingon under the table, right? But in TNG the bar only serves non-alcoholic drinks and Picard only drinks Tea!
What happened?
"Information wants to be paid"
I may get crap for this, but seven of nine is fugly. shes got big breasts, and thats her only quality that can (in my mind) explain why so many of my fellow nerds have this obsession with her. shes got the Marcy D'arcy (read: married w/ children character) haircut, shes always got an angry face on, and honestly.. her breasts are TOO big.. just my two cents.
IMHO Janeway's overly pacifistic nature was the main problem. How about replacing her with, say, Mr. T? Also, Chakotay barely existed. And NO ONE EVER LISTENED TO TUVOK! No matter how many times he advises against this course of action, no matter how many times he's right, Janeway just delivers some form of "can it, Tuvok!"
Best science fiction I've seen in years was Space: Above and Beyond. So much better because it had real military, real politics, real characters with real relationships and problems, and an actual background that made sense. The AI wars, the Invitros, etc. Very interesting stuff.
Ah, Space: Above and Beyond -- where they spend several million dollars a pop training people as pilots, then use them as grunts/security guards. Where they go out of their way to point out that they're on a low-gravity asteroid, so sombody can throw football really far, but then completely ignore the low gravity in the gun battle which follows ten minutes later.
Didn't take me long to give up on that series.
- - - -
The real Tetsujin 28 is a giant robot.
the older klingons all got killed or smth. by a virus. Nice try, but wrong. ST:TOS "Errand of Mercy" and ST:DS9 "Blood Oath" and "Sword Of Kahless" have the same Kor (John Colicos)...
that wasn't meant to be a troll, but i guess that as long as people disagree and there are moderators somebody's gotta take the heat.
/.
good bye
"Have you eaten your
I always thought Dax was way sexier than 7 of 9...
Now Dax in 7's uniform. That would be a sight to see.
I always thought that the next Trek series should be about the hologram Professor Moriarty (From Next Gen) captaining a federation-captured romulan warbird... (Let's face it, anything's better than another boring federation starship design)
I think Federation has legs, though. Hopefully they will have a good idea of the overall plot from the beginning, ala Babylon 5.
Just look at cars of the '50s compared to today. TOS just occurred in one of those periods where design was in a black hole (Kinda like the '70s - present day)
Hell, this would be a great opportunity to really design stuff that's _different_ from standard Trek.
At the UPGR awards cerimony...
Beloved Comrade OOG_THE_CAVEMAN,you have entertained and through your humor showed your...ah...intresting oppinions to our comrades on Slashdot,and for doing such,I,as Benevolent Dictator,award you the Medal of Penguinitic Honor for Unselfish Humor.May you be held up as an example of true ROTFLMAO humor,insightful caveman arguing,and may your best rants never be moderated down.Long live Comrade OOG!
Comrades,please stand for our National HymnThank you.
------------------------
Thus Spake ComradePenguin
Voyager should end with the ship crashing and burning after making its final descent to earth. Only then will I be surprised.
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JavaScript tutorials scripts
While I do share your preferences in sci-fi book Novels over (bad) SF movies/TV serials and (especially) tie-ins in book form, I believe the primary reason that said SF movies/TV serials suck is precisely because "real" Novel writers are not involved in them
On the other hand when there is a writer actively involved in the production of a movie/tv show then generally things are better.
Take Babylon 5 as an example. JMS, the producer and visionary behind the show is a writer. He came with an idea and a vision (a five-year novel for the TV) and produced a really Good, entertaining and consistent show. When B5 ended it was not because ratings were low, or the people were tired , or simply because the writers could not think of something else to keep people's attention. It ended because (and in the way) it was planned all along to end in the 5th year. After the finale, the viewer does not feel in any way cheated, he feels like someone who finished reading a terrific book and now has to close it. But he/she will always remeber it.
Another example is the classic 2001:A Space Odyssey, where Arthur Clarke was heavily involved in the visualization of his famous book. Another example is the success of the TOS itself. Roddenberry had comissioned several well known SF writers of the time (Harlan Elisson and Norman Spinrad come to mind). The result was some very sucesful TOS episodes.
Maybe Paramount should consider doing something like that. It would be better for the quality of the show (and maybe they will need someone like JMS if they want to bring a show with a more arc-ish structure as the title 'Birth Of The Federation' implies
Hmm.. I sure hope the new series doesn't abuse new technology like alot of shows have. Shows that are too rich in special effects suck in my opinion, but I've always been a fan of the Star Trek series, and they've been fairly good at retaining the key aspect of the show. This looks like a welcome addition. :)
Bottom Line - the Matrix is as intellectual as the really stoned guy who says "Wouldn't it be trippy if everything that we like thought was real was fake, and there were different realities and we just like lived in one but didn't know, and it was like set up by evil robots or space aliens or someone man?" Still a good movie though.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
As for "good writing", I think that might be a little too generic of a solution to really be much of a suggestion. (Ignoring the obvious examples of about 1/3 of DS9 and 3/4 of Voyager episodes.) What made the original show interesting was an almost single-minded focus on a small number of core characters. The characters had to be complex and well-written. Furthermore, the plots were almost always conflict-driven, which allowed the acting and writing to reflect more extreme emotions. One thing you notice about the original show is that there is almost no focus on the technology. Things like warp drive, transporters, and phasers are treated like totems and never explained (which is odd for science-fiction). Compare this to the modern shows where the engineers will have a 5 minute discussion on how to reverse the polarity of the tacheon beam pulse. Boring. And one way that the "fans" with their endless technical manuals and letters pointing out minor inconsistancies really have made the shows dull.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
In the original series, they alluded to a huge war with the Romulans where they were using Nuclear weapons against each other. That might make an interesting series because the 'tech' aspect would be much more primitive and less able to drive the plot.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Ok, just to be picky I must add..... MST3K.....Mystery Science Theater 3000 not MSTK3000 which would be Mystery Science Theater K*3000 which would be 3000000, right?
Forget "Sources close to...". How about news right from the horse's (Rick Berman) mouth?
In the last issue (Vol 6, no. 3) issue of Cinescape, there was an article about the future of the Trek franchise in which Rick Berman states that all three of the rumors mentioned on the mentioned web page are false.
I don't know if the Cinescape web page mentions any of this, but you can check it here.
That's my $0.02.
"He deals the cards as a mediation...The sacred geometry of chance." -Sting "Shape of my Heart"
Normally i find your comments witty and insightful, but the origional star trek sucked. All the sets were cheesy, the aliens had no thought put into them, and captain kirk makes me gag. The plots were good, though. DS9 is my fav, followed closely by TNG. Does anybody else see the similarity between DS9 and World War II. Its kind of blatent...
-Kanon-
I had an idea something along those lines... say Voyager comes back to Earth and finds the Federation in ruins. Some new alien race is kicking the crap out of most of the Alpha Quadrant; blowing up starships, occupying planets, capturing officers, fun stuff like that. Anyway, Voyager and the remnants of Starfleet go into hiding and form a resistance. Using all the cool Delta Quadrant tech that Voyager brings back, they start to rebuild and launch guerrilla attacks on the enemy. I'd just like to see a series where the Federation isn't the strongest power in the galaxy for once.
Why don't ground troops have personal shields on them to stop them from being killed? ...Why aren't transporters used in a million imaginative ways instead of merely moving people from place to place? At the very least I can think of a few episodes in which bad guys should have been beamed into the nearest boulder to get rid of them.
Because closed source Microsoft Engineers built the technology used in Star Trek and this is the reason why the series went downhill from there. Ever notice that they always require assistance from an engineer just to keep things running?
That's the most important part. We *really* want her voice.
Wouldn't it be just perfect during boot?
"Starting network services"
"Going multi-user"
I'd probably pay for a package with her voice on it . . .
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were not individuals; they were different parts of humanity. There was no attempt to interest in who was dating, personal interactions, poker games, etc.
It was about the ideas.
After the first half dozen or so Next Generation episodes (or was it the whole half season?), this was completely lost, and there was a heavy focus on the characters as characters. This missed the whole point that made Start Trek interesting in the first place.
And no, I couldn't care less about the stupid robot and his attempt to be human. All of that together wasn't worth a single round of McCoy and Spock.
>Another example is the classic 2001:A Space Odyssey, where Arthur
>Clarke was heavily involved in the visualization of his famous book.
Nope. The movie was spun from his short story "The Sentinel." THe book 2001 followed the movie.
ts also debatable if Star Trek invented Vulcan, as it is used as a planet in a Dr Who show at about the same time as star trek started (ST wasn't shown in the UK for some time afterwards though)
Wasn't the original Vulcan a theoretical planet that was suggested was the cause of the variations in Mercury's orbit that couldn't be accounted for at the time? I think it was supposed to be orbiting the sun directly opposite the earth, so we would never see from here....or something like that...(and the variations in Mercury's orbit were later used to show that relativity was correct?)
I can't remember exactly, but it was something like that.
dylan_-
--
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
Not even eleven years, dipshit. Star Trek debuted on September 9th, 1966. Star Wars first hit theaters May 25th, 1977.
...the sci-fi universe with the most developed backstory, detailed characterization, realistic society, logical use of available tech, and internal consistency is probably Star Wars.
You can apply the anthropic principle, or
something like that, to science fiction. You
might think it is unbelievable that the Star Trek
universe contains so many things which just
happen to make good (or bad) television. But
consider that there are an infinite number of
possible sci-fi universes, but only a select few
get made into books or TV series. Therefore the
fact that you, the viewer, are watching the
programme is the reason why semi-inverted
Hoffenschauer tachyon field anomalies exist. If
they didn't exist, the writers wouldn't be able
to crank out a plot, so no episode.
Does that make any sort of sense?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Hey, now there's an idea. Robin Williams cross-dressing as a woman to get into an over-crowded Federation Academy that doesn't have any male enrollments available.
Or Robin Williams as Patch Adams, replacing The Doctor.
Perhaps Robin Williams, military radio broadcaster on duty in Cardassia during a Federation war in Good Morning, Cardassia!?
Maybe they'll just go with a guy who's not far off from Robin Williams -- John Lithgow. They'll do StarTrek: 12th rock from the 3rd sun and the entire crew will masquarade as natives of some planet by meshing in with their society and living in an overcrowded house with some over-the-hill sit-com star -- or Tine Daily.
Or how about revising his role from What Dreams May Come, by playing a Federation captain who has met up with all the other dead StarTrek crews and cast members on the other side? It could be called StarTrek: The Afterlife.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
A: The trekkie can actually spell "trekkie."
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
The unfamiliar face on the Bridge used to die by the opening credits. I hope the new series has the brains to make the Red Shirt the central character of many episodes, so they can explore the new world (and by reflection, our own) from many vantage points.
:-)
:-)
Yeah, and *THEN* kill him.
Think Tasia Valenza on "Space: Above and Beyond".
I'd have to agree with you on DS9. It was easily the best series of the four.
Um... what?
The first series was decent. Not great but on par with the last couple seasons of TNG. It was downhill from there. I finally stopped watching at about the third season, after that God-awful episode that ends with the revelation that everything in the previous 2 episodes was basically an illusion, and that nothing had really happened. There was no clever plot twist-- they just got out of these little machines and were told that everything they had just done was VR-type illusion.
My dislike was confirmed with the fourth season premier (?) which was little more than an excuse to spend an enourmous special effects budget. There was nothing the least bit original about the plot: simply a big buildup to a 10-minute battle scene.
Now I like SFX as well as anyone, and some of them were pretty cool. But a big space battle does not a story make.
I still watch it occasionally, and every time I do I am struck by the fact that it is a hollow shell of what TNG was. Many of the plotlines were taken directly from TNG plots, many of the ideas were re-hashes of things that had done before, and most of the attempts at originality were even worse.
The franchise died with Gene Rodenberry. The series finale was mediocre at best, and from that point on DS9 went steadily downhill. Voyager was never worth watching. Frankly, I don't think the writers are capable of pumping out 30 fresh original scripts for 14 years without eventually burning out. The franchise needs to be put to rest before it embarrasses itself any further. Maybe 10 years from now it can be resurrected (with someone other than Rick Berman at the helm) but for now they need to give it a rest.
Of course, UPN can still make more money on the fumes of a once-great franchise than on any of the other crap they pump out, so I don't think they are going to be ending it any time soon.
The plot seemed cobbled together at the last minute and was full of inconsistencies. Yes, it did a good job of allowing us to get all nostalgic for the last 7 years, but as a story, it was a flop consider:
The "anti-time anomoly" runs backwards in time. That means that it starts in the future and grows "backwards" through time. Now ignoring the absurdity of this in the first place, consider the events in the "future" story. The Enterprise goes to find the anomoly, finds it missing, and then comes back later and finds it there. But this means that it is running *forward* in time. Otherwise, it would be getting smaller, and would have been there at first and gone later.
That this nonsensical problem was the central conflict of the show-- combined with the continuation of the already-stupid premise of the premiere, in which Q puts humanity on trial--says a lot about the quality of the writing. Inventing an "anomoly" as the final villain of the series is stupid.
The ending was even worse. The crew emits a "static warp bubble," and the day is saved. Since the problem was a bit of technobabble in the first place, and the "solution" was more technobabble, the story falls apart completely. All the melodramatic crap with Q is completely irrelevant. To save the galaxy, all Picard had to do is emit a static warp bubble. Duh! I bet every viewer was slapping his forehead for not seeing that one coming.
In a good story, the events of the story all lead up to the climax and conclusion. Details that don't contribute to the story should not be there. But the central conflict was Picard versus the static warp bubble. How exactly is any of the other stuff relevant to that conflict? And how does emitting a static warp bubble resolve any of the other conflicts in the story?
I'm sure there was some good writing in there somewhere. It would be hard *not* to make some moving scenes when you are closing out the greatest Sci Fi show ever made. But the overall story arc was completely uninspired and is completely unworthy of the high expectations fans had of it.
The series finale was mediocre at best, and from that point on DS9 went steadily downhill.
I meant the TNG finale.
Step 1: Invent the replicator. Society's problems are mostly due to limited resources.
Sorry, but replicator technology is prohibited by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
Someone once said that the original series was Wagon Train in space. It wasn't great science fiction, but it was a masterpiece in comparison to My Mother the Car.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Unfortunately your hopes for the comeback of witty Stratrek classic humour or even the usually correct but still funny New generation are all wrong.
The times have changed. Scotty is dead. So is Jan Luc. You will have to leave on a bland and politically correct diet. Unless the series are filmed in a country that is politically incorrect for sake of being funny at least from time to time.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I remember a time when I had time to play plain old pen and paper role playing games. In the course of our adventuring eventually we'd find someone who had the raddest sword/gun/ship/character in general yet had no REAL way of backing up said cool thing (i.e. actually won it in battle or some such). These people always got rad stuff off-screen, we called these people munchkins. Star Trek always reminded me of these munchkins, especially with the antics of Deep Space 9 and Voyager. I mean of course it's science fiction and some stuff you just need in order to make a story work but as with our role playing games, too much rad stuff leads to not enough innovation and you don't have a fun game.
Back on topic now. I've thought for a while a good series idea for ST would be one that took place on and around Earth. I was thinking like a series based out of the Starfleet Academy or something, that way you could have lots of characters many of which are not reoccuring. They key to a series ought to be the characters and story, not the quality of special effects. I'd like to see a series with a dozen or more characters in the course of a season. Then the Paramount people could figure out who people liked and keep them and replace the ones people didnt like. If I didn't have to see the same crew and the same scenery all the time I'd watch it alot more often. I think thats what people really liked about TNG and TOS, you saw lots of different people and places and you had the option of seeing dozens of worlds. The series' also didn't have a set path to follow, DS9 had some prophesy while Voyager needs to return home. TNG didn't have much of a path at all, Q didn't rub it in Picard's face much that he had a plan for him. Well thats all I have to say about that.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
You bastards!
Star Trek, BSD: only redshirts need apply!
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I love it when a plan comes together, Scotty!
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Star Trek:TOS
or
Star Trek:BSD
Crazy, man, I'll take 2.
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
they sorta did that in Wrath Of Khan.
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
On my way to cybersquat at http://www.birthofthefederation.com , I found Jeffrey Rhind of Avon, MA beat me to it by 72 hours.
Riddle me this, how long will it take Paramount to launch "photon lawsuits"?
Check out Largest recipe database on the web.
Well, I have to say that all of the ideas for new Trek episodes have been dodgy in some repect, espcially the academy one
:)
Actually, the one a lot of the fans have been calling for would center around the crew of the Excelsior, with Sulu in command. There were rumors (obviously disinformation) flying around that this would succeed Voyager. (Hey, Slashdot people, Taco, Hemos, et al: I submitted this one and it was DECLINED! And now you go and post this? I'm offended
(Hopefully the writers shall be made to watch the Phantom Menace continually- until they get the idea of what not to do!)
Meesa chief engineeer! Meesa Lt. JarJar Binks!
:)
I only care for the doctor really
Shhhhhhhh! I do NOT want the Zefram Cochrane to turn out to be an opera star!!!!
Let's hope that they keep certain WWF stars out of this as well... *sigh*
And to CmdrTaco: Star Trek is NOT a dead horse!!!
The continuing popularity of the movies and TOS and TNG reruns proves this. And Voyager is still UPNs
highest rated show.
My journal has hot
No problem. As witnessed in ST:FC, no transporters existed during the founding of the Federation, and I don't think that the Vulcans had them either. (At least there were no transporters when I was around :)
I can't really speak for the writers, of course, but I don't think that transporters were there, at least if they want to avoid any YATIs...
My journal has hot
It was in the DS9 epp Trials and Tribblations, where worf remarked 'It is not something we discuss with outsiders'.
(This is just a wild stab from memory, so it might not be really accurate. But it's in that general direction.)
> If this new series is to succeed Paramount is going to have get back to the basics.
Actually, their problem is that they keep trying to revive a '60's show. They need to flip some channels and see what everyone else is doing these days. For prime time, it's the Bikini Action Flick genre or nothing. For Saturday afternoons, it's the Hercules Spinoff genre.
So what they clearly need to do is ditch the old fuddy-duddies, hire a cast of young hunks and babes, show more cleavage and thigh, use lots of stunt men in more fight scenes, and play Hollywood-imitation heavy metal really loud for about 10 minutes per episode, to save on having to come up with dialog.
And the worst shortcoming is that the ST baddies don't look like punk rockers. Where have the producers been? Every movie or TV show made in the last 20 years has had baddies that look like punk rockers on bad hair days. How can we tell the good guys from the bad if we have to pay close enough attention to see how they behave? I want some baddies that are bad at first sight, and obviously deserve to be thrown around the bridge in the final scene.
I'm tellin' ya, this is the sure-fire recipe for suxess in the '00's.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The best news that comes from this post is that Voyager is coming to an end. About time.
JEFF
Then I got a DSS system, where Trek wasn't and still isn't available. Thus, I quit watching. While it was a great show, I wasn't about to go out of my way to pay to get it. Their active decision to not allow it on my distribution system of choice is why they lost a viewer.
Now, I don't have time to watch DSS. Now they would have to get it distributed through the net. There is an important lesson here. If the entertainment industry doesn't quickly adopt new distribution systems (like DSS & Internet) just because they conflict with their legacy systems (like geographic dist), the result will be a loss of viewership, and thus loss of revenue, that makes the potential loss of revenue from piracy totally negligble.
To purchase it is not like spending money but rather it is an investment in the future in a blow against the empire
They should suspend Star Trek TV series for a while and concentrate on high-quality movies. The next movie could be a 2.5 hour "crossover" type with a 20-minute prologue featuring Sulu's Excelsior (including Grace Lee Whitney and Tim Russ) which hatches the plot. Of course, the climax of the prologue would be accompanied with a heartfelt Takei "OH MY." The plot would continue 80-90 years later with the current Enterprise-E crew, who could team up with the New Frontier novel series' Excalibur crew. Of course, Dylan McDermott or Alec Baldwin should play Capt. Mackenzie Calhoun (based on artists' conceptions on the NF series's covers), and Zak Kebron would be an excellent showcase of CGI technology. A side plot could be Riker receiving command of his own ship.
When Voyager goes off the air, they could star in a parallel series of movies.
I think I would find a STmovie every 1-1.5 years to be much more entertaining and engrossing than the relative blandness of 22-26 hour-long episodes per year.
---- Politics: Kissing ass and pointing blames.
Well, if it is about the Birth of the Federation, then there will be no Prime Directive, at least to start. So you may just get your wish. At least, the potential for ass to be kicked will exist.
Come on! Bring back the spirit of Roddenberry!
Wait a sec...doesn't this contradict your previous wishes? I though Gene R. was Mr. Ahimsa.
--sugarman--
Let's hope that they keep certain WWF stars out of this as well... *sigh*
Are you annoyed that this was the highest-rated episode in quite some time, or just that the r.s.p-w trolls decided to hose the voyager NG?
And Voyager is still UPNs highest rated show.
Not by any stretch of the imagination. Ask any UPN exec if they had to decide between ST:V and Smackdown, I can assure that Capt Janeway and crew would be hitching rides back from the other side of the galaxy.
--sugarman--
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I remember, when I was like 10, watching old Star Trek episodes with my dad, and being completely and utterly infatuated. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen! I ran around, zaping people with my phazer, and generally had a blast!
Then Star Trek: TNG was released, and I hoped that it would live up to the standards of "old school" Star Trek.. and on some level, it did! However, I still believe that Spock kicks Data's ass any day of the week.
Then came Star Trek: DS9, also known as the bane of my existance. I found it (and still DO find it) to be insanely boring. I mean, all they do is sit around on that stupid station, and their problems come to them! Give me a break! This, my friends, is the in-space version of a toll booth! It gets old. Fast.
Then we get Voyager, complete with a captain who sounds spookily like Sharon Carstairs, leader of the NDP. (New Democratic Party) It is OK, I suppose.. except, once again, they have written themselves into a corner. All the characters do is bitch and complain about never being able to get home. Give it a rest, guys! If you miss your loved ones so much, then just CREATE THEM ON THE HOLIDECK! Or get the doctor to erase their memory from yours. Anything! Just stop whining about so and so! =)
As you can see, I am fairly opinionated about this sort of thing. I know my Star Trek. And all I can say is, the latest installment had better be GOOD. (No pussyfooting around in the Gamma Quadrant, please.) If it isn't, then I guess I will go back to watching classic Trek on Space.
All I can say is "Beam Me Up Scotty!"
,-----.----...---..--..-....-
' CitizenC
' WebMaster, PlanetQ3F
`-----.----...---..--..-....-
I would love to see them explore the darker side of the birth of the federation. Surely there were some bad moments. One of the things that always bugged me about all of the other Trek series was that everyone was too pristine and goody-good. I'd like to see some massive mess-ups on the part of the young federation. I wonder if Brannon Braga is writing? That's right up his alley.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
> I always thought Dax was way sexier than 7 of 9...
;)
ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww
Dax was nothing more than a big, intelligent slug, basically, and you find him attractive? ewwwwwww
Oh wait, you must mean Jadzia, Dax's host
First posting isn't trolling. It's...first posting.
Well you can take this for what you will but here's most of my background.
I started looking at star trek from TNG and thought that Picard did a very decent job with what he did. Star Trek at least tries to cover the fact that the whole idea of FTL travel isn't totally unproven and that at least things can be proven if you don't have a Phd in physics. Most of the stuff I have seen has been well foolish and pathetic.
Space Above and beyond: well having people get killed because no one really knows a damn thing about creating either a means of deflecting objects or energy beams and the fact that they can't pilot a damn ship or maybe get robots in there to do the work.
Babylon 5: from what little I saw of it a little silly again evil nasties that no one can really kill at all because of incompetience and lack of application. Silly costumes
TNG: decent work. People have a nice central government and they follow the rules. When people break the rules the Federation makes them pay. People in general don't get completely screwed. Romulians never get a chance, the Cardassians are a little evil but in general they are bunglers.
Stargate SG1: absolute crap. Historical inaccuries out the wazoo. Numerous archeological evidence supports the claims that the Egyptians did everything themselves or with slave help. Wormhole technology again is not provable. Conspiracy on a whole is difficult to cover up.
ST DS9: I don't hate Sysco personally but...oh what the hell. He's a bungler. The very first episode he is ordered by a superior officier basically to "do anything short of breaking the prime directive to get Bajor into the Federation". Well from the get go he manages to compeltely screw that. He gets into feeling sorry for a group of people who didn't even bother to really have much of a military and have a deluded concept of reality. Sysco then decides to take this to a whole new level of foolishness and voulenteer and become some sort of resident God for these people (hmm what about that little old prime directive).
Then he starts meddling in things that are not Federation business with his motley group of fools and pirates. He discovers a new little toy which everyone and their mother likes because they couldn't build a warp engine to save their life.
Well to cut a long story and paste in more story he then gets even more deluded into thinking that perhaps because ther are some uberpowerful aliens in the nice little hole in the sky that means he should do anything including allow for a group of nasties to come into their part of the galaxy.
Now not to point fingers *points accusative finger at Sysco* but you don't risk trillions of lives because some third rate agragian small population wants to have fun and never take care of themselves dosn't mean you have the right to risk lives of people who live and work in the rest of the galaxy.
In reality a nice thing called a courtmarshal should have occured culminating in a nice public execution or at least a nice place in a supermax facility orbiting some cold dead sun.
Voyager: Well at least we have more people following some sort of rules. Although now we have the cheasy Maquis. I tell you some people never learn (think hippie radicals in the 60's in the 24th century).
Also we have the little aspect of Chacotay (gotta love the name) and more Bajorians (this time they get to force us to think their way). They manage to prevent the Maquis from murdering and plundering any way they like and do something useful.
Yeah the first episodes sucked with the idiot Kazon and everything; not to mention figuring out that their stupid ship needs more power and better internal anti-terrorist devices. The borg were a good touch and rather nice.
Birth of the Federation: Well I have always wanted to know the gap of time from say WWII to maybe 2020 or so. Something about the eugenics wars or something and some nasty outbreak of WWIII however that starts to leave me rather cold. I like consistent and logical plots that still mean we could actually get off this hunk of shitty rock before I turn to dust.
One absolute fact: the bad guys will lose and the Federation will almost always win. In various publications about this The Romulians get a serious ass whopping and we (rather stupidly I think in the long run) sign a the Treaty of Algeron which essentially sets up the DMZ called the Neutral Zone and also prevents the federation from developing cloaking technology (meaning we have to do it in secret ala phased cloaking device in TNG with RIker and the admiral or bey it from the romulains/Klingons).
Unfortuantely we get to see the equivelent of a Cold War with the Klingons/Russians because of a botched first contact attempt and thus the drafting of the Prime Directive and planet observation similar to Insurections.
What does this mean? I think some better material, more logical, slightly predictable, and more information for the people out there who would rather be living there than here and now.
Most Sci-fi sucks and just works on crappy social issues and reads almost like a Grimm brothers fairy tale in it's approach. I like a change of pace from forced analysis of all the where s andhowtos that come from some of this stuff.
The people of slashdot (editors). I think are better suited to writing code and doing tech oriented things. I tried that and found that I might just do something else (woe is me). But what I do know is a lack of creativy can be a damaging thing when analyzing something. There just aren't that many ideas that aren't beating a dead horse or that don't have logicial inconsistiencies (Mission from mars) a mile wide.
Do you seriously think there is anything that can replace these things? Is ther any proof?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Now, this new series could have lots of promise, if the cast is set correctly and the writers study the successful episodes of the original series and TNG and determine what makes a good episode, something they seem to have forgotten in most of Voyager.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Actually, if this is the episode that I'm thinking of, it wasn't the Doctor, per se. What happened was that Voyager passed through a region of space just as a war started, and one of the sides attacked Voyager and stole a couple of components, including an EMH backup module. So, basically what they found was not the Doctor himself but an archived copy. :)
Just my $.02...
I personally like Dawson's Trek :)
there was a reference to that in one of the series. i think it was in DS9, but i couldn't swear to it. basically, Worf said that those particular people without ridges was something that is not discussed except among Klingons.
Okay, I don't watch a lot of Voyager, so I probably missed that one but...I don't think your reasoning is exactly a show-stopper.
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First of all, the Maquis that were fighting with Cardassia were all in the Alpha quadrant. That doesn't meant there aren't other battles on other fronts that are being fought by the Maquis. As near as I can understand it, it's patterned after the Bjorn's during The Occupation in that there is no central authority, just a bunch of independant cells. So how could it ever be really killed off? It may go into hiding, but as long as there is some Federation Officer pissed off at the crap he gets handed, there will always be Maquis.
Second, okay so let's say after the Dominion takeover they wiped out the Maquis. That could be talking about whatever cell it was that Chakotay and B'lana and whoever belongs to. So their friends are sad, boo hoo, all dead but meanwhile back in the Alpha quadrant, there is a growing number of Federations officers who aren't buying this "we give up" attitude the founders are handing them...they are seeing evidence to the contrary but the Federation leaders, anxious to rebuild in peace, refuse to accept/believe it. This causes several to go rebel, renue the Maquis name in the Alpha quadrant and in general raise hell about anything or everything.
So yes, the Maquis as we know it from DS9 and VOY maybe be dead, but it's not a hard leap to see that any Federation officer of sufficient rank will know about them and their cause and could be pursuaded to defect at any moment. Like that one security guy that Sisko spent years chasing...Mr. Val Jean...and Tom Riker, tho if Voyager said he was dead, it would be a bummer because he is their best bet to "tie in" to the previous series. But really, the producers could take any Star Trek character and find some convincing reason to get him/her to quit and join the Maquis, openly if it was to be permanent or secretly if they wanted to maintain continuity with future TNG/DS9 movies...
Plus, think how cool AND realistic it would be to have tens even hundreds of small Maquis ships fighting instead of this one big, vulnerable starship. Maquis would work like a swarm (possibly with distributed networks that make their many ships function collectively as a massive ship, if the head gets shot off, another is automatically promoted and fight continues) and be enough of a threat that both sides are working to stop them, Federation through "peaceful" means and the other side (Cardassian, Romulan, etc.) with not-so-peaceful means. And, because the Maquis would be working with hand-me-down scraps, there wouldn't be any of this BS "let's do X to the main deflector and solve everything" since more than likely, even if they could see a solution, they wouldn't have the time/resources to implement it and oh crap they die, time for the show to jump to the next cell and continue the storyline with them angrily vowing to avenge the deaths of the previous cell.
I truly believe the only way you are going to get people to care about Star Trek is to force them to care about what happens on a show-by-show basis. As it currently stands, you know exactly when characters are going to enter/exit and so I think that it becomes that much harder to suspend disbelief. If the Maquis had no standing cast (just an interwoven series of appearances) and suddenly there is no magic save at the last possible second...characters actually die not just in some heroic "needs of the many outweigh needs of the few" way but just plain die because they were outgunned, outnumbered, tricked and trapped...then I think people would actually find Star Trek to be something they watch and care about. Not just "ho hum, I haven't watched the last X episodes but I know exactly what's going on and what's going to happen anyway."
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Bravo!
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Best thing I've read in a while.
I could actually hear that raspy, smoker's voice of Capn' Janeway as I read your log entry.
+1 Funny +1 Interesting
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
That rocks! :)
I'm glad to hear that there will be (yet) another StarTrek, I'm sure it's gonna be good (after the initial 10 episodes or so).
Only thing I'm concerned about is the look fo the starships - the old one's looked crappy compared to the new slick ones, but they can hardly show stylish starships if this is supposed to be earlier than Next Generation...
Also, will Seven of Nine appear? Please? I know the story-line would not allow it, but who ever followed the laws of physics and logis in ST anyway. So please, put Seven of Nine in this show as well.
-- "Tradition is the illusion of permanence."
That's it! Star Trek: H4x0r5...
We could have all the "enlightened" federation ships running Linux 2100, each with their own customised bridge skins, constantly h4x0ring the Klingon ships which are running P'TACH!! (or however you spell it) 2000, which was designed by a direct descendant of one W. Gates, who defected to the Klingon side in 2017.
Each show would climax with an illegal operation gag and the Klingon captain always finishes with the line: "I'd have succeeded if it weren't for that pesky Norwegian!"...
The conclusion of your syllogism, I said lightly, is fallacious, being based on licensed premises
release the source code for their Starships' OS
Who'd want that? Sure, voice recognition is nice, but the security is as bad as Windows 95. Anyone can just take over someone else's ship, without having to extort so much as a password from them.
First impulse is to say, "It's just a show."
But the current producers have opened themselves up to these kinds of questions by publishing Tech Manuals and leaning more on the technology.
I believe in Roddenberry's original conception, Star Trek was supposed to be modern mythology -- a program about moral dilemmas. The technology of the ship and the phasers and so forth was literally window dressing.
Roddenberry didn't care about technical continuity, he cared about MORAL continuity.
Modern fans threw out the original "spirit" of Trek and substituted it for a Star Wars Action Figure kind of Trek.
There's really nothing WRONG with this, but we've grafted a technocentric view of entertainment onto a show that was never intended to be realistic.
Complaining about "unrealistic transporter technology" in Star Trek is just as silly as complaining about "unrealistic character abilities" in Beowulf!
I'd like to see a new series that started from a realistic tech base and copied Roddenberry's MORALITY.
(I thought Roddenberry's morality was preachy and naive, but it was good television.)
There was a Voyager episode on a few years back where the Doctor was transported to the Beta Quadrant after Voyager hacked into a communications net.
Anyway, he was updated on the current Dominion war and other important news. After he cam back, Chakotay had to go around to the various ex-Maquis crew members to tell them that All the Maquis were killed after the Dominion takeover of Cardassia.
-Foxxz
B5 gets green light (JMS had been flogging it since the 70's).
DS9 announced.
B5 starts to have run-ins with the Shadows.
The Dominion becomes a problem.
White stars arrive in B5 timeline.
The Defiant is allocated to DS9.
The Shadow War begins.
Every other DS9 episode is about some fleet action or another (an exaggeration, granted, but it did become a major element).
The Shadow War ends; Shadow Minions (etc, ad nauseam) become a problem.
Dukat goes insane, summons Par Wraiths (spelling?).
B5 20-years-after; Sheridan "dies", goes beyond the rim with the First Ones.
Cisco dies in mortal combat with Dukat. The Prophets welcome him back into the fold.
Five tons of flax.
The bit that worried me from the article was: "Brannon Braga confirmed that Paramount is testing a few early concepts with focus groups." Good television comes from creative vision, not consensus.
is in it's optimistic view of the human race that we have a future at all.
We are in what I call, "The Bomb to Starship gap". We have sufficient power to destroy ourselves, lack the wisdom, as a species, to control our breeding to match our resources. Finally, we don't have enough power to improve our resources through space travel/exploitation. IE, for the near future, it's a zero-sum game, we've got one heck of a deficit, and it's getting worse.
People criticized later Star Trek series' for talking their way out of problems. I look at it differently. ANY species, us included, with the power to travel to the stars MUST be able to control its impulses to kill its own kind, or it just plain won't survive. We've survived the A Bomb - so far, but that's primarily because a few Superpowers restricted distribution of the technology. The genie is slowly escaping from the bottle, getting in the hands of more desparate people, more likely to use it.
At the same time, we're also getting more knowledge at the small scale, both biological and nanotech. These are perhaps more dangerous than the Bomb, if only because the barrier to entry is lower.
So in a fundamental fashion, the people of Star Trek: TNG are different from us. They are mature homo sapients, much less prone to the brash, kill-you-own-kind impulses that we have. But for this very reason, a lot of people felt that TNG was boring.
One could argue that the people of Star Trek: TOS were somewhere in between us and TNG.
Personally, I was hoping for a new series to take place in between TOS and TNG, so it would be more relevant to action-oriented audiences without compromising the principle of a mature society. I guess going even before TOS still fulfills that wish. I suspect that a purist picture of Star Trek a century after TNG would be considered too boring for TV.
On the side, I don't consider a 'Mature Society' to mean that they never fight, have conflicts, etc. Just that they don't do those things over petty little things. (like money or power)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Instead, Star Trek chose to concentrate much more on the philosophical and human implications of a highly advanced future.
I have to disagree.
Star Trek does TRY to deal with the philosophical aspect of a highly advanced future (when they're not making fun of goofy looking species or trapped in the goddamn holodeck.) If you look more deeply at the arguments Star Trek presents, though, you'll see that it usually fails miserably. How many times have there been episodes about the eithical dilemma of the 'Prime Directive?' Now, of all those episodes, how many times does there end up being some kind last minute revalation that makes one course of action obvious. That isn't philosophical depth, it's copping out.
In short, Star Trek's objectivism couldn't even answer most of the questions it asked itself. Those who hold some great faith in the "Star Trek Ethic" or the "Star Trek Philosophy" would do themselves much better to go out and get a REAL philosophical grounding, not the phantasms of televised science fiction.
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
It's never going to die, just look at slashdot today as an example.
/. readership really lies.
Boy you guys really are a bunch of geeks. The story posted 6 minutes before this one (paid open source hacking) has only 38 posts or so, while this one has over 100, (numbers accurate as of 9:20 EST) 12 of which are moderated at +3.
Clearly, you can see where the interest of
Linux? Linux my photon!
It's all about silly sci-fi television shows, and of course natalie portman and hot grits.
Go outside and do something active.
-Nick
As an 8-year old geek larvae, reruns of the original Star Trek are what first brought me into the sci-fi fold. I would anxiously await every saturday when I got the chance to join the crew of the Enterprise, particularly Spock (my favorite), as they ran into some of the most creative societies, creatures, and people ever to be seen on television. Only Babylon 5 could match the original trek in terms of artistic vision.
I've watched ST:TNG and DS9 from beginning to end. Both were different in tone from the original, but I still appreciated them. Voyager at first seemed to be the rebirth of the original spirit of trek, a grand exploration of the limitless posibilities of space. In it's defense, the show had a good first few seasons. Then the idiots at Paramount decided to dump Kes, an interesting unique character, in favor of Seven. It was shortly after this that I stopped watching the show. The mysterious malevolence that made the Borg collective the ultimate villain was shattered by Seven's constant "revelations." Ugh.
I hope the new trek changes this. By going back to the early days, the galaxy is once again wide open and safe for the sense of wonder. Let's hope that they stick to Gene Roddenbery's vision this time.
In reading the article, I ran into something unusual, though: If the series starts after First Contact, and runs until just before the original series, it would have to cover 200 years. I plan on watching the final episode via holodeck.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
Probably the best Star Trek Series that never was. It had action, humour and most important of all it had Miss Piggy (Schwiiiing).
Now that the muppets will be back in production soon anyone want to vote for 'Pigs in Space'
Go on admit it, it was better than some of those rambling TNG episodes at least.
- Will the show focus on the adventures aboard a single starship or will they try to move the focus around to make it interesting? (prediction: it will be set on the "first" Enterprise (remember that scene from ST:TMP?)
- Will there be a central "Alpha" Captain figure or will it be more of an ensemble show? (prediction: yes there will be a central Captain character)
- Will the Captain chatacter be a white male? (prediction: The powers that be at Paramount know that Mulgrew was a mistake and will not repeat. We will get a strong charismatic white male at the helm. Besides, how can you have a female Captain when she'll still have to wear a miniskirt? :)
- Given that there is no Holodeck in the 22nd century, what device will they use as a backdoor to introduce whatever plot kludge is deemed necessary once the writers run out of ideas? (prediction: this one's a no-brainer - time travel is the perfect backdoor for bad SF writing)
- How will they handle stuff like spacecraft designs that need to be cool but still predate the TOS designs? (prediction: this is the one problem that will get solved in a cool manner. The rest will get screwed up.)
Just my $0.02. But wait BZZZZT!! I win a prize for being the one zillionth person to post an opinion about Star Trek on the Internet!!! Film at 11!!!! Yeahhh!!!!!
Might I suggest... Star Trek: OOG! Not any worse than TNG, DS9, or VGER ;-)
Actually, in that particular period in earth's history, it was common for women to go topless.
Step 1: Invent the replicator. Society's problems are mostly due to limited resources.
Step 2: Create an all-powerful 'federation' that runs everything. Trek stipulates a wise government - if it were that easy we would have done it already.
Step 3: Turn all the people into Trekdrones, who seem to be inherently happy. It's easy to _write_ happy people, harder to actually make it happen.
In short, Trek's vision of utopia is a well-run future filled with happy people who have everything they want or need. Gee, is that all it takes?
very interesting... why cant people just accept OOG for who he is? A GOD!!!
thats a lot of moderation... what this mean? could it be that our great leader OOG has shown us what we have always known? that moderators smoke crack?
Where hast Great OOG gone?
I'd like to see a rework of the woefully silly episode where Riker becomes an officer on a Klingon ship. However, rather than Riker easily taking over the ship in 15 minutes (yeah right), have a considerably less goofy character and develop the idea of into a short (1-2 year) series.
I'm thinking a cross between Apocalypse Now/Schinder's List/Moby Dick/Jane Goodall.
You make a good point, and here's to hoping that you get moderated above the noise.
Star Trek has had to live with enormous expectations of the fans for years. Hell, they brought the francise back after being dead for 10 years.
But inevitably, the fans see something that not everyone else sees. They actually like when Jordi goes into some technical mumbojumbo. They actually want to hear more about Troi's love life. They want a new show to be just like Next Generation or the Original Series or whatever show got them hooked.
The problem is that the fan base is not big enough to carry the show. It's network TV -- they need to attract a significantly sized general audience or the thing fails. That means not doing everything that the fanbase might want them to do. That means making sure that it's interesting.
I think that is what they tried to do with Voyager -- failing mightily. Not only did they piss off the fans, they produced some pretty damn poor TV. Voyager actually gets worse ratings than the horrid sitcoms UPN puts on.
On the other hand, Next Generation did this well. It was actually pretty poorly recieved by the hard core Trekkies, but was able to keep them watching while it built an audience. They need to pull that trick again, and it will be tough.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Actually please leave the Novel writers to Novel writing. I will take a good sci-fi book over a movie or TV show anyday. I have read Snowcrash and Neuromancer multiple types and they always entertain me. You can imagine the VR in Snowcrash and the console cowboys in Neuromancer so clearly and vividly in your mind (though the Matrix special effects were pretty awesome). Read a book and you won't care if the next Trek lives or dies.
On a seperate rant, sci fi like Trek is highly annoying. The writers should not try to explain how a highly advanced technology works. As Arthur C Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is virtually indistinguishable from magic." and that is how it should be. This technology does not exist so do not try to explain how it works. Star Trek is highly guilty of this sci fi sin. I prefer the Star Wars or Matrix or most sci fi book take, it just is. The Star Wars movies don't try to explain lightsabers or lightspeed (damn fans do but thats a whole different story), Matrix didn't try to explain why you die in the Matrix (one line...the body cannot live without the line DONE!), as most books do not try to explain how their magic works. If I want to know how something works, I'll take something real like O'Reilly books, Thank you very much!
Original Series. Great concept, low budget, good cast ruined by W. Sh1tners terrible acting. He's a total ashole in real life btw.
ST: Next Generation. Continued to have great concept, mostly excellent plots, this time the whole cast is excellent because ST is big name now. Also they get cash for special effects bought somewhere besides CVS.
Deep Space 9. Mostly as good as Next Generation, finally get a Afro-american captain, even change the ship to a space station, but I think they tried to save money this time around, and the scripts werent as strong as ST:TNG's. Better than ST:TOS in general but starting to lose steam.
Voyager. They put a woman in the command seat, which is all well and good except that Janeway's acting sucks. With a better actress maybe, but since the rest of the show is pretty sucky too, this one never had a chance (eg, the plots suck, the characters are lame, and they whine about the same stupid crap in every episode). It's fairly obvious they cut corners on every most aspects of this show and built the plot around the fact that they were just pumping in a little cash so they could whore the Star Trek name as cheap as possible (Delta quadrant==less extras, Female lead==glass ceiling, and the inside of their ship could fit in my backyard)
Star Trek really died with Gene Roddenberry, bless his soul. Once the creative fire went out and the bean counters were put in charge, shit like Babylon 5 and Seaquest started to settle in. Thank god they died out.
Since it looks like Star Wars and Star Trek have both had their blood thoroughly wrung from them for the sake of profit (SW:episode one was cock, admit it if you're over 6 years old, even if it had a couple visualy good scenes) I find myself wishing they would mess around with the V* concept a little more; some of those movies/episodes were really cool, and they haven't smooshed it to pulp yet.
If the TV networks were really smart they'd realize that Asimov, Heinlein, Bradbury, Niven, and company have been creating stuff that's so entertaining, PEOPLE ACTUALLY READ IT OUT OF BOOKS!
I know a lot of Steven King has gone from book to video, why not Heinlein or Asimov whose books touch on things that might be important someday instead of just being "scary". Alfred Hitchcock's "the Birds" deserved to be made... "The Langoliers" was total crap. Someone needs to secretly replace the TV execs with Nerds and Geeks so we can get some decent SciFi on television.
*V: for those who never saw V (pronounced vee) it was about a race of aliens who come to earth and give us medicine, technology, help us build industry etc, but it turns out (of course) that they are really evil reptile people wearing masks, who are farming us like cattle and shipping us back to their other worlds to be their meals. They also eat live birds and mice, and can interbreed with us. Somewhere between Star Trek and Alien Nation in terms of how good it was. I see it on TV every now and then; i think there's like 30 episodes, an hour each? not sure.
PS the cycle I refered to in the title is, lowbudget_badacting/ highbudget_doitright/ decliningbudget_doitalmostright/ lowbudget_badacting. Hopefully an equilibrium closer to ST:TNG than Voyager will be reached, 'cause you know Star Trek is gonna get whored until our great grandkids are watching the reruns on payperview on Risa.
Score 387, Insightful as Hell, and contains no sentiments which might in any way be construed as a troll or flamebait. M$ sux! linux rulez! open source forever! BANZAI!!!!
Lessse, the ship is taken over what, once a month, on average? And they let them run around with phasers, photon torpedoes, and whaterver else that week's plot needs (planet destroyers??? as a stock item???)
.
These folks shouldn't be allowed deflectors, let alone weapons.
And they've brought security through obscurity to new levels: oooh, an access code. Control any one federation ship, know where to look things up, and you can control them all.
Kind of takes the fun out of collecting . .
And haven't these folks ever heard of an ignition key? No key, no warp drive?
Babylon 5 succeeded in spite of its bad acting and sometimes-cheesy plots. Why? Because it was a serial; it was telling a story from beginning to end. Unlike any of the Trek series, where all of the characters have to end an episode in the same way they began it, Babylon 5 was free to introduce new regular characters, kill off important ones, and change the universe in some really drastic ways. Unlike Voyager, where no one cares what the crew goes through from week to week because the Big Red Reset Button keeps being hit, B5 viewers enthusiastically tuned in every week so that they wouldn't miss anything, and one of the most fun pasttimes was to analyze previous episodes to figure out what would happen in future ones.
The time period of an Excelsior series is rampant with possibilities. Space is being explored, but there's still a lot unknown out there; the Klingons are now our allies, but it's an uneasy truce at best; a lot of new technology is being developed, but it doesn't always work quite right. There's a lot of room for political intrigue, commando squads, tense standoffs, heroic bravery... the very sorts of things Hollywood loves these days. Throw in some marauders causing tensions between Starfleet and Klingon, add in some more of those high-ranking officials from Star Trek VI who believed the whole thing was doomed to fail, and there's your writers' bible for you.
The problem with a 'Birth of the Federation' series is that it's going to annoy fans when they inevitably get the details wrong... and who cares about the big clunky starships which had pea-shooter-power phasers, anyway? At the other end of the scale you've got Voyager-era Trek, where people fiddle with time and reality on a regular basis so that nothing's sacred any more. The Excelsior era comes at an exciting time in Trek history, and there's not a lot canon about it yet; I really feel Paramount's making a grave mistake by not listening to its fans here.
Please, oh please, oh please let there be no transporters.
That is the death of all things good in science fiction. This is the ultimate technology and they have to keep coming up with reasons why it won't work to solve a particular problem in order to have a plausible stories.
Hostages on the planet? No problem, beam them out.
Hostiles on the ship, no problem beam them into bulk heads.
Nano technology in the captain, beam out the circuits.
Pimples, beam them off.
Get rid of transporters, make it all like Space: Above and Beyond was and you will have a show I want to watch.
MSTK3000 was very funny.
It was also supposed to be taken as funny, as implausible, etc.
Star Trek, and other fantasy/sci-fi stories deal with the idea of a willing suspension of disbelief. They want you to accept them as plausible alternate realities. Not just as a show. A soap opera is the same way, they want you to believe.
What that (willing suspension of disbelief) means is, I am going to show you something fantastic, that is different from the world as you know it. I cannot necessarily explain this fantastic thing and why it can exist, just know that it does. Just accept it. Once you do, everything else will make sense in relationship to that acceptance. Oh yeah, and that fantastic thing will actually make the world different in realistic ways.
Examples: 1. There are two moons and nighttime is aslit up as a cloudy day. So, there is a thriving nightlife on this world because it is never really night. Construction, shopping, farming, whatever go on at all hours of the day. Society is changed in fundamental ways because of this. It is not ignored.
2. Gravity on this planet is 1/4 of Earth's gravity. Changes you might see as a result of that in a place that is the equivalent of our 20th century might be hovercrafts instead of rolling cars, architecture that builds up more than out. More orbital traffic as the cost to launch is less. Extreme sports more extreme than we know of.
3. A planet with two dominant, yet distinctly different species. Imagine a world in which there are humans, and city building lobsters in the oceans. Imagine the conflicts that arise from this about polluting, the hurricanes the lobsters make to turn over their underwater farmlands, a human society that couldn't explore the oceans because they would be killed by lobsters. No coastal cities unless they were heavily armed for defense against the lobsters. Or, if the races get along, imagine the underwater exploration that would be possible for humans, or the special niches on land the lobsters might be able to work. Imagine what the Olympics would be like between the two species?
The Matrix is a great example of the willing suspension of disbelief. All you really have to accept is that, "You've been living in a dream world Neo." Everything else makes sense in relation to that one fantastic revelation. Everything except that damn kiss from Trinity.
Space: Above and Beyond is great with the examples of the AI war and the Invitros. The fact that humans fought a war against their own artificial creations will make them leary of automation of too many processes and stay away from technologies that will lead to that. The fact that they made cloned humans led to eventual social, political, and spiritual situations that had to be, or were still being resolved, at the time of the story. Similar to Picard trying to get Data declared a human (or the Bicentennial Man), except you have thousands of clones who need some sort of acceptance and civil rights. Much like the blacks in America. Whether they were slaves at one time, or free people who had law given rights but not the ability to execute those rights, to a society that has nearly removed those barriers but because of the long history of blacks being second class now find it difficult to get the education or motives to move beyond the life that 100+ years of persecution have left them with. Did that sentence make sense?
Anyway, Star Trek sucks because it rarely moves beyond the scope of the single show. If the crew of the Enterprise discover or invent a new technology, where is the ripple effect as that techonolgy moves throughout all of the Federation? If Geordie's warp engines are more efficient than any other, why don't people come study underneath him? If the Dyson's sphere is discovered, where the heck in the scheme of things will a metal sphere 1AU in diameter fit into the scheme of things?
Anyway, I enjoy Star Trek. It is fun and entertaining. But if I was writing a novel or a screenplay, it is not the universe I would want to base it in.
A couple of months ago, I talked to Lolita Fatjo, and she said at the time that:
1) They'd have to tell her about 18 months in advance of a new series.
2) They hadn't told her yet.
3) If they wanted to do one in fall of 2001 they'd have to start making public noises in a couple of months.
Now here we are.
Birth of the Federation was one of the ideas she mentioned as "not having been completely ruled out as too stupid" so I think we've got a pretty good chance that this thing is really gonna get off the ground.
I think you're going to be disappointed on continuity, though. Remember, they have to basically pretend like all the technology in TOS didn't really look like it did, or this one would have to look REALLY crappy.
I'd expect movie-era technology in terms of user interface, don't expect it to look even older than TOS.
Blake's 7 was always much better than Star Trek, because
And finally, 20 years on, they're going to film it :)
--
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Hey Paramount - want a good new ST series - let JMS (B5, Crusade) write / direct.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Well, here are my credentials: I have all 79 TOS episodes on videotape, and I could probably hold my own in any trek trivia contest. Having said that, I am completely confident that any new trek series will suck just as much as the current one.
The only way that this new series could possibly not suck would be if all the writers suddenly got a reality check. The key difference between TOS episodes and all the rest of the bunch comes down simply to this concept called "writing", and I have very little hope that any one of the current crop of screenwriters can come any close to cranking out the same quality of stories that Gene Roddenberry, and the rest of the original gang, did back in the 60s.
Now, taping those 79 original episodes, when they ran on the sci-fi channel, was quite an educational experience. I've seen all of them before, of course, but not recently. Before trek had its sci-fi run, the original episodes haven't been seen in years, and it was quite a perspective to see them again, after a decade, or more, of assorted trek spinoffs.
The conclusion that I came away with, after seeing the TOS 79 again, was as following. The acting sucked, yes, and I don't think I need to go extrapolate any further. But the reason why TOS became the hit that it was was simply because it was one of the best damn-written TV shows that ever was. Sure, there were occasional fuckups, like "Spock's Brain", but on average, the story lines, the concepts, and the ideas behind each episode were fresh, unique, insightful, and after seeing the credits roll at the end you can't help but ponder, for a few moments, of the message behind each episode.
Having said that, I've pretty much given up on Hollywood these days. I have very little hope that there's anyone left back there who can come up with anything on the same level again. Look at your average Voyager episode. Voyager is directly the opposite of TOS, in this case. Some episodes are pretty good and insightful, but, on average, the episodes are a complete waste, 40-some odd minutes of technobabble and gobbledygook, with gratuitous close-ups of whatsherface's ample curves. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but frankly I prefer doing the real thing with my g/f.
--
My bet was that the next Trek series was gonna be Starfleet Academy: 90210...
On the up side though, I won't have to gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon...
Personally, I think that if they're going to keep churning out Star Trek series, they should map them out more coherently (like a five year plan ala B5).
What does this button d$#%* NO CARRIER
I've heard all the arguments in this thread before (I used to be a regular on Usenet). Voyager sucks, DS9 sucks, Paramount should let it die, yadda yadda yadda. Look, it's a property. As long as they can make money from it, they'll keep trying new series. Nobody's forcing you to watch.
The basic problem I have with Star Trek, though, speaking as a loyal fan who thought that the best of TNG (e.g. Yesterday's Enterprise) measured up to the best of TOS, is that DS9 to some extent (which I initially liked very much for its somewhat darker world view) and Voyager much much more had this enormous problem with their fourth acts. They'd set up some wildly original premise, take you through a decent three acts of learning about it, then wrap it all up in lightning fashion, always too neat, always restoring the status quo ante, and bam! the show's over. I eventually stopped watching DS9 because I was tired of the war with the Delta Quadrant, and Voyager because every time I still liked a particular episode by the 45 minute mark, they would pull the rug out from under me and make me hate it in the last fifteen minutes.
I think it's born of the paint-by-numbers script teams they use. I know writing for television is hard, and I know writing SF that's 100% consistent with 400 pre-existing episodes is a professional impossibility, but building a story formula/framework that's obvious as the scaffold around the Washington Monument isn't the answer. (Well, it made money, so I guess it was at some level.) I appreciate that they insisted that every story was in fact a human story, even if this tended to weaken the SF elements. Really, the stories weren't true SF; the SF elements were always inserted later. They'd use "tech tech tech" in the early drafts before Okuda or someone could insert appropriate polysyllabic words, but especially towards the end you could also see them inserting human emotions the same way. As a bit of a writer myself, I didn't appreciate being able to see the puppeteer's strings so easily.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Slashdot is hardly representative of the science-fiction watching public.
Give me a break.
Star Trek is about the only show that has consistently kept science fiction programming on mainstream television.
My journal has hot
We all know what this is going to mean- more weird-ass vortexes, more mindless fights, more anomalies-of-the-week, and probably more women in catsuits. The Baywatch-ization of Star Trek will be complete
And this is one of the reasons I have so much respect for JMS, the writer of Babylon 5 and Crusade. After the amazing success of the first 4 seasons of B5, another season and eventually a follow up season were created. However, the Powers That Be (TNT, the sponsoring channel) wanted to turn the show into "Baywatch In Space." He said 'fuck that' and chose to end Crusade to maintain his creative vision.
And what a vision it had been. B5 was one of the most well written series I've ever seen. The character development was there, especially between Mulari and G'Kar. The first 4 seasons all intricately tied together. They even made a prequel movie 'In the Beginning', and it was good.
The writers of Star Trek could learn a thing or twenty.
And to CmdrTaco: Star Trek is NOT a dead horse!!!
Alas, too true. It's an evil undead vampiric corruption zombie hell-horse, that needs a stake through the heart, decapitation with the body quartered and sent to the four corners of the earth, a holy wafer put into the mouth of the head with the lips then sewn shut with black silk thread and then buried at a crossroads during a full moon.
But that's just my opinion.
And Voyager is still UPNs highest rated show.
Talk about damning with faint praise...
Really, the birth of the Federation is hands down the most interesting thing in the whole Star Trek universe. It is something we can, and should, take into account when forming the society of the 21st century.
After all, Paramount will soon reveal how the good people of the Federation erased war, famine, illness, indecency and leisure clothing from the known universe. Isn't that something we should all look forward to?
Marko Karppinen
I disagree with you. I think that this promises to be an interesting series - after all, I never knew how the Federation was born.
I hope they can give it an interesting plot, because some of the series were lacking.
Original ST - misfits exploring galaxy
ST:TNG - greater emphasis on politics, technology
ST:DS9 - overemphasis on politics, boring plot (like a sitcom)
ST:VOYAGER - absurd plot
No comment at this time
(thick scottish accent) i've done everything i could captain but she can't take anymore! Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!!!
Star Trek is schlock sci-fi at its worst. A throwback to the 1950s, when the audience lived for the hero to use his rocket pack or his laser pistol. The characters rarely have any depth, the writers feel they have to constantly preach at us and it gets really hard to suspend my disbelief when I'm asked to allow for successful interbreeding between a species with a copper based metabolism and one with an iron based one. Anyone who's been through high school biology would have a tough time swallowing that one.
You don't have to look too far to find excellent sci-fi these days. Babylon 5 was good and Farscape has some of the best writing I've seen in years. If you're of a surreal mind, Red Dwarf seems to still be running and can be frequently found on PBS. Just let Star Trek die while the franchise still has some semblance of dignity.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I've just had flick through some of the earlier posts and it'd obvious that this item is going to be full of 'nobody wants it', 'flogging a dead hours', 'enuf already' etc.. For the most part I agree, yet another startrek series is the last thing I want to see, and I would never go out of my way to watch it. The fact however remains that whilst viewing figures have declined since the height of next-gen but there are still a lot of people watching it.
So I ask the question who is actually watching it if everybody hates it?
Well, I have to say that all of the ideas for new Trek episodes have been dodgy in some repect, espcially the academy one (nononononono;) I'm pleased to see that the Birth of the federation shall be covered, I think that all fans will be interested to see stories from this time period (and First Contact is my fave ST film) The only worry I have is if they mess up timelines or have cheesily stupid things like having a young Kirk turn up (Hopefully the writers shall be made to watch the Phantom Menace continually- until they get the idea of what not to do!) I've got to say I'm glad to see that the Voyager turkey is definately to be put to bed, Janeway and co. as crew mostly stink- I only care for the doctor really- and the writers have really got stuck in a rut. Hopefully some new writing talent will get a chance in the new series, Will Riker to direct though hopefully!!!
J-aims
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Yo, whatever happened to peas? Join T( H)GS
The two most popular of the series were the original (because there was nothing to compare it to) and the Next Generation. Why was TNG good? It had nothing to do with the premise, except that the show's premise left it open to *any* plotline for a show. You tuned in not knowing what the story was going to be about.
You see, with Voyager, and Deep Space Nine, each episode follows the previous. I don't want to get hooked on another Trek soap opera - I want a series!
Oh, and it would be nice if the core Trek audience - you know, us geeks - could actually admire the captain in the show. Bring back the swashbuckling captain! To h*ll with the prime directive! Punch it to Warp 9, not Warp 6! Diplomacy is when you shoot first, and throw the survivors in the brig! Come on! Bring back the spirit of Roddenberry! - end_rant
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Anyway . . .
I'm not a big StarTrek fan to begin with. I'll watch an episode every few months, but I don't even turn on the tube on a weekly basis, let alone to watch any of the various Star Trek versions.
The only StarTrek I really ever got into was The Next Generation. This seems to be a rather unpopular choice, but something about the characters and the interaction and the in-depth characters (but not too deep) made it compelling enough that I'll even watch an occasional re-run of it if it happens to be on late at night.
A lot of the success of each version of spin-off appears to sit with the cast of characters. It's a hit or miss operation and I don't think there's any way to really pre-define it. Everything since TNG has catered to a corny mix of some type of alien guy, some type of hot-but-not-human-female, some unemotional (or incapable of emotion, but attempting) form of life (such as Spock, Data, Otto), at least one minority (only a complaint because they seem to so painfully cater to the need for a minority character instead of really allowing them a full, rich, robust character of whatever race with a true purpose and utility to the show), a woman in power, a Klingon, a Vulcan and an overly intelligent kid.
I think the Federation idea is an interesting one. I've sort of grown tired of the tedious "ship out in space finding stuff" plot-lines and wouldn't mind seeing something sort of like "The West Wing" done StarTrek style.
By the way, you have to love 'The Doctor's pitches for potential series ideas in the end of the article.
All in all, you know that half of the known world is going to tune into the first episode, no matter what. Half of that will return for the next episode. Half of that will probably hang around for a year or two. And maybe, if the show is extremely well done, half of those people will stick around through the series.
I'll probably be one of the guys who catches a few episodes and then forgets what night the show is even on.
Heh. I like the Linux idea though. "Captain Tux, I have the Cardassian ship on hailing frequencies."
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
If Star Trek is science fiction, I can only say that it is bad science fiction. Entertaining yes, but still bad science fiction.
It has no consitency what so ever. In fact, there are books and websites about the blunders in Star Trek and how it contradicts itself.
Why don't ground troops have personal shields on them to stop them from being killed?
Why aren't transporters used in a million imaginative ways instead of merely moving people from place to place? At the very least I can think of a few episodes in which bad guys should have been beamed into the nearest boulder to get rid of them.
Why are all the star ships a single vessel and that's it? What happened to carrier groups, convoys, and escorts? Sure would make them a lot more powerful force to deal with.
Going into battle I better have about 30 Defiant style vessels around my Galaxy class star ship for offensive bang. At the very least, 30 shuttle craft with phasers. Think of the Argo from Starblazers.
Why do the vessels take so few hits to be destroyed? Hit one, shields to 60%, hit 2 down to 20%, hit three phasers out torpedo bays jammed, my multizillion dollar ship is now useless. Where is my convoy/escort/defiant ship to save me?
Why does every single freakin circuit have triple redundancy? Do you know how expensive that is? Not just in materials, but time, design, labor, maintenance, space, etc.
How can Geordi know everything about engineering? I mean, we have specialists now who are brilliant but only have the time to specialize. They can't know things about other fields. The world is only going to get more technologically complex. Geordi will know even less outside his area, and his area will be even more narror. Like warp coils for only a Galaxy class ship. That's it.
Yes, just a general rant about Star Trek and how implausible it is. I still enjoyed the heck out of it. Reason, because I enjoy seeing the human underdogs finding a way to win.
Best science fiction I've seen in years was Space: Above and Beyond. So much better because it had real military, real politics, real characters with real relationships and problems, and an actual background that made sense. The AI wars, the Invitros, etc. Very interesting stuff.
Babylon 5, from my understanding, was similar. I could never catch enough episodes of it to get it make sense to me.
The Matrix was great. There is a lot of depth there if you care to see it.
You raise a very interesting point. Pre-Federation implies pre-"Pax Galaxia". The Earth-allied and -opposed forces would probably be dealing on parallel military/"UN-type" lines. I'd like to see realistic portrayal of the military -- and the rest of society (a very weak point in all the previous series, where non-Federation life was sketchy at best!)
Since the founding of the Federation would be imminent, Earth and the known civilizations would probably be in a postwar or post cold-war state not dissimilar to the current world situation.
I believe that a strong reality-based comparison to current politics could be compelling (well, by ST standards, anyway). They would have their Balkan situation, their third world issues, their period of rapidly exploding technilogy, new open trade frontiers, etc. Among the good points of TOS was how it addressed the sentiments of the era. (I was a very precocious pre-schooler when the original series aired, and loved it. by the time I was 11-12, I thought it was boing geek-fodder. I liked SF, and this wasn't it! It was nicely mainstream "speculative" fiction in its original timeframe, and only the 'big issue' episodes retained their real appeal beyond the 60's)
Change #1: Centralize the Red Shirt
The unfamiliar face on the Bridge used to die by the opening credits. I hope the new series has the brains to make the Red Shirt the central character of many episodes, so they can explore the new world (and by reflection, our own) from many vantage points. Episodes might open with an unfamiliar face who was a political refugee, a restauranteur struggling against 'the new Mafia' after the demise of an authoritarian regime, a new-tech entrepreneur, etc.
I'd even go so far as to make the ensemble peripheral, so the show resembled Twilight Zone (to cite an example contemporary to TOS) more than the closed universe of TOS.
No, they'll never do it. It's too big a break from the original franchise. But I sure think that this could be a genuinely interesting show. I'd be surprised and pleased if they even went as far as JAG, Law and Order, or ER. (all of which I very much enjoy, but are admittedly rather insular)
I guess there is a tremendous appeal to the strong ensemble cast, and it might be a real risk to fight it, but I think even the myopic ST writers have been feeling the contraints of the "strong ensemble" since TOS. That's why they were so many 'breakaway' episodes (sometimes called showcase episodes) following one or two characters away from the 'main base' for the entire show.
If any ST:BoF writers are reading: don't showcase existing characters when you need a change of pace. The fact that you need to change is a sign that perhaps you've gone too far in the wrong direction. 'Showcases' have been among the weakest episodes.
Imagine you had to introduce a new 'major character' think of what you could say and do -- you'd never need a change of pace. The Federation is a very Big Place. Now subtract the 'excuse' -- the new character doesn't have to become a permanent character (semi-recurring might be a nice touch for continuity)
You promised us a universe. Show it to us. Follow a black marketeer, a young person oppressed by a regime (Taliban, Red Chinese, politics of your choice) that they don't hate (or didn't until now) and which is part of a culture they love, a corrupt official who is human not evil, a subsistence farmer looking for help with an irrigation project (or trying to get last century's flood-plain destroying eco-disaster of a mega-dam removed, so the land can return to its original cycles of renewal)
Show us real soldiers, real civilians. Steal from the best episodes in all of television history. there *were* some good points) but do it in a framework that is loose enough that it doesn't require gimmicks to justify the plot. No holodecks -- just thye multiplicity of life in a big universe where the pre-Federation is just the government, not the raison d'etre
Show us characters that are sincere enough to make us think, even if we decide they are wrong.
__________
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
...is a Star Trek series about the Maquis. IMHO, they are a much cooler aspect because you have that whole "fighting uphill battle against impossible odds" things working for you. (A la Star Wars, rebels versus Empire).
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
Plus, it would be a snap to enter major characters from previous Treks by having them either confront or join the Maquis. In fact, IIRC, the second Riker (Tom Riker or whatever his name way...the transporter clone) was already a member of the Maquis and stole a ship for them in the Deep Space 9 series. Riker would definitely be a big enough name to launch a series and it would be completely plausible (if you can overlook the whole cloning thing to begin with...heheheh).
Plus, having poorly equipt, poorly funded rebels fighting some big, big enemy would mean lots of ppl die in battle, so unpopular characters could die and popular characters could get promoted to the "behind the scenes" work back in the safety of the home bases.
The only question is who they would fight? Dominion would have been my first pick, maybe Maquis has evidence they lied at the end of DS9 and are fighting to prove they are planning a massive strike? Or the Federation is anxious to make friends with the Romulans, but the Maquis can't forgive past attrocities? It would be really cool if the Borg could come back and utterly wipe out the Federation, then all that would be left is the Maquis...but after the crap that Voyager has been handing us (Children of the Borg my f'ing ass) I don't know if I could stomach anything besides the kick-ass 99% unstoppable TNG-era Borg.
Just my wishes...who am I kidding? I'll end up watching it just the same. I just hope that they haven't yet invented holodeck techonology because if I see one more F'ing "Fairhaven" or "Dixon Hill" episode I'll hunt down Rick Berman and "deck" him myself.
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
...it's rare enough that I've seen any Trek episode that I didn't find some way entertaining or at even had to resist the urge the urge to flip onto something else. The plots have varied over time between bland and phenomenal, but Trek at its best can be no less riveting than the X-Files, First Wave, Millenium or whatever. For the most part, the plots teeter on the bland edge but it's never bad TV and you don't feel your IQ going down the toilet as you watch it.
;-] ).
Granted, each of the latter series have their characters you just want to strangle (Wesley Crusher, Jake Sisko, Neelix...) but, by and large, there's a lot worse shit out there that I could be watching (This is beginning to sound very half-hearted
Having said all that, a fifth Trek might be pushing it. DS9's last episode was aired on this side of the Atlantic last Monday by Sky, and it left a huge hole open for the almost inevitable DS9 movie. Movies I could just about take; the series, no. Sorry lads...
The conclusion of your syllogism, I said lightly, is fallacious, being based on licensed premises
I wish they'd just admit that the Star Trek series is pretty much obsolete, and release the source code for their Starships' OS.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Star Trek has been in a steady decline ever since the end of TNG. Deep Space Nine, while entertaining, just didn't live up to the Star Trek legend. The thing I always loved most about Star Trek was that it was real science fiction. It wasn't the ray gun popsci that Star Wars, nor the '2 hour long music video' that The Matrix was. Instead, Star Trek chose to concentrate much more on the philosophical and human implications of a highly advanced future. Episodes like 'The City on the Edge of Forever' will never leave me. After all these years 'The Wrath of Kahn' still sends chills down my spine...
And here is the problem which Paramount is only exacerbating in a desperate attempt to save the franchise. DS9 was dying: solution throw in a huge war story arc and Ezri Dax. Voyager's always had problems, mostly because of poor beginning charachter development. Solution: Seven of Nine. Did Either of these solve the basic problem? My resounding answer is NO! They only upped ratings a bit, they did not attempt to fix the inherrent flaws.
If this new series is to succeed Paramount is going to have get back to the basics. They need to plan it well from the beginning to avoid the poor charachters which have plagued Voyager. And, most importantly, bring in some good writers. They need to search the sci-fi genre and pay good money to good writers. If they could bring together a group of some of the best writers of today (David Brin, Orson Scott Card, Neal Stephenson to name a few) to just start the series and get some good original ideas it would be much more likely to succeed. It might be too late, but Star Trek seems to be the only way to get good Sci-Fi into mainstream television these days.
Checkout taccom my worl war II simulator
Does this mean a return of the kewl origianl 60's style clothing? Or are we talking about earlier styles? Seem weird if we go from flash looking suits of "pre" federation outfits to the kookie outfits of the original Star Trek... Well anyways... my first post ever and my $2
Star Trek: Linux
My personal favorite, one that paramount apparently did not follow up on is as follows:
[ This was apparently pitched to paramount, who turned it down (I guess it had too much potential)]
The basic premise is a show based in the Star Trek Universe, set in the time period AFTER the fall of the Federation. And Everything has gone to HELL. (let your imagination run wild)
Enter one Star Ship, which has some how been a stasis for up to 500 to 1000 years - so that the Star Trek federation is a faint memory at best.
the goal is to rebuild what was lost, and which everyone now believes to be a fairy tale.
They do have superior technology, but they are all ALONE. If they blow it, that is it.
We as the audience, know what was lost, along with the Star ship crew. but no one else does.
This has potential. Too bad paramount threw it away.
Let me guess...
Captains Log, Stardate May 2001: Following seven years of dim-witted new age sentimentality, our crew is exhausted. The power crystals have run out, the incense is getting stale, and the spirit guides seem to be out of whack [memo to Chakotay, run a level 3 diagnostic on the spirit guides]. Torres can't keep the bullshit compensators running for more than five minutes at a time, and Paris' smarmy "I love the 20th century" schtick is wearing thin with even the dullest executives at Paramount.
There also seems to be a curious shortage of wormholes, Borg pods, energy readings, warp fields, or anything else interesting enough to merit further episodes. After seven years in the Delta quadrant, we can confirm our worst fears: Space is really fucking boring.
Neelix finally died from his own food poisoning, and we ejected him out the photon torpedo tubes into a primitive planet. The inhabitants are now suing us for flagrant violation of the Prime Directive, reckless endangerment, illegal dumping, and unlicensed disposal of toxic waste. Tuvok is heading up our defense, though we may have to plea bargain it down. There's no denying that Neelix, dead or alive, was toxic waste.
Seven of Nine has received several offers from other ships in the area. Apparently our "Borgorific" crewman was all that saved our ship from premature self-destruction, although I'd like to think that the mature, articulate and charming captain had something to do with it...
[Memo to self: put that buxom bitch in the brig. New standing order: no one with bigger tits than me is allowed on this ship!]
One of our crew, I believe his name is Harry Kim, though I admit I can barely remember him. Some officers are so... forgettable. Anyway, this guy Harry said that we might be able to extend the mission by dropping a "monkey wrench" [memo to self: Throw that bastard Paris and his damn 20th century idioms in the brig with the Borg] into the main deflector. He thinks that the disaster and suspense would be good for a few more episodes, at least. Frankly, I don't see how any monkey could save us now, unless we get a few more of them typing out our scripts. Sooner or later, they're bound to come up with a "Hamlet"- or at least a "Welcome Back Kotter"-quality episode. If only we had sixty-three more years before getting back to the Alpha-quadrant. Goddamn that Quantum Slipstream Drive. Goddamn it to hell....
The Delta Flyer is in the repair shop, and "Joe," an eight-legged slug beast (and mechanic) said, "Whoever put these stupid dials and switches in your 24th century space hot rod was an idiot. This'll take at least two weeks to set right." Briefly, we on the Voyager hoped this would grant a repreive from the producers' axe, but alas, the Delta Flyer, like so many other Voyager props, proved to be entirely disposable.
[memo to Tuvok: don't pay that alien anything. Goddamn invertebrate labor. Memo to self: next time find a humanoid repairman. There's plenty of them here in the Delta quadrant, 70 years at maximum warp from Earth. Plenty of humanoids...]
We've committed ourselves to running at maximum warp for as long as possible. The end of Voyager may be inevitable, but those producers aren't nearly as intelligent as those sentient smart bombs we outwitted. Hell, they put us on the air, didn't they? It seems that no matter how hard we try, we can't just push a little button and make the ending a happy one. Our situation is desperate, we must think of a way... any way... to survive...
On a lighter note, the EMH is up and running, and is giving the crew liberal doses of methamphetamines, to cheer them up after wasting seven years of their careers talking about verterons, antineutrinos, and species 8472.
[memo to Chakotay: that lizard spirit thingy is talking to me again, what's up with that? memo the the EMH: Screw the methamphetamines. Scoth, on the rocks. Make it a double....]
End of log.
- The galaxy is so full of space-time anomalies that you cannot really describe them as anomalous.
- The galaxy is full of beings that are somehow exempt from the laws of physics.
- The galaxy is full of beings that have evolved to eat starships. (One wonders what their ancestors ate.)
- The galaxy is full of beings that have evolved to seduce starship captains.
- The galaxy is full of intelligent species that are just like humans, except for strange growths on their heads and one dimensional personalities.
- The galaxy is full of bad fashion designers.
- The galaxy is remarkably devoid of life forms not mentioned above, such as plants and (especially) non-intelligent animals.
But Star Fleet is ready to take it on:--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Right now, Star Trek is at pretty much its lowest point since the 70s, when there was no series at all. The last movie was a disappointment, both critically and commercially, Voyager ratings are a pale shadow of what they were in early seasons (they're stable compared to last year, but that's only because they really can't go down very much more). Hell, today came the news that Kate Mulgrew's fan club has shut down. Granted this seems to be for personal reasons on the part of the founders, but the symbolism is profound. The fan club of the actress who plays the captain on a Star Trek show- noted for the dedication of its fans- is no longer. Pathetic.
Birth of the Federation sounds to me like an unbelievably stupid idea. Anybody who knows about Star Trek already has a pretty good idea of what happened back then. And frankly, we don't really care. Brannon Braga has never been noted for his dedication to consistency within the Star Trek universe, so now he's going to bring in a time-travel guy so he can fuck things up. We all know what this is going to mean- more weird-ass vortexes, more mindless fights, more anomalies-of-the-week, and probably more women in catsuits. The Baywatch-ization of Star Trek will be complete. But hell, even if they want more of an action focus, the Special Forces concept would be cooler than this.
I think it's time for Paramount to realize what alot of other people already have: the time has long since come for Braga and Berman to move on. The franchise needs a break. Finish Voyager, then just let it sit for a bit. Then call in some fresh blood, or some veteran blood that knows what it's doing. Ronald D. Moore's recent articles on Fandom show that he is a man who understands the franchise's problems and he has a pretty good idea how to fix them. He is one of the key people responsible for one of Star Trek's few recent successes, the final season of Deep Space Nine, which was brilliantly done. Moore would be the perfect candidate to resurrect Star Trek.
Obviously I haven't seen Birth of the Federation so I can't make any final judgments. But I'm definitely not optimistic. Having a Star Trek series cancelled in its first season would be a huge embarrasment and the biggest insult yet to a franchise that's already been largely stripped of its dignity. But having it die might be the only way to save it in the long run.
Interesting reading different people's comments. I especially love the ones that start: "They broke what made Star Trek great. What I really loved was..." The basic flaw in that line of reasoning is: a) most of you have no idea what it was about Star Trek that made it work for you, or you'd be writing your own series and b) what made it work for you is almost certainly the one thing that someone else hated.
e heads crowd happy.
Personally, I think it just doesn't matter. The basic problem that Star Trek has isn't acting or writing or special effects or evil execs. It's us.
The fans are really quite blood-thirsty at times, and that has to be difficult to deal with. Not in terms of ego, or hurt feelings, but in terms of audience. When the most vocal part of your audience decries everything you do, you can't assess what you should do.
This is why the series that succede in the fans eyes are always the new upstarts. They have no expectations, so the fans judge them, pretty much, at face value (as examples: Babylon 5, Farscape, X-Files). What Star Trek needs is to back off and wait a few years, but the franchise can't afford that, so they'll plow forward with what the focus groups tell them is hated least, and we'll get the blandest possible thing with a lot of things blowing up, and just enough skin to keep the football-aint-on-yet, channel-surfing, what-the-hell-is-this-shit-with-the-fucked-up-for
They could try being truely daring, and do something that will piss off half of the fans and galvenize the rest into advocates who will pull in the next generation of fans, but that won't fly with the shareholders.
In the end, Trek is dead because fans and studios can't work together. It's both of us that did it, but we'll keep pointing fingers until the last show spits up blood. Of course, then we'll just say: look what you did....
Jenette: Yes, that was the press release from six months ago when it was first annonced that Star Trek: Voyager was comming to an end. Who could have predicted the fan reaction, and outpouring of support. As yet, Paramount has not changed its mind on ending the series, but here at Multi-Mega Theater in Burbank California, a public simulcast of the finale has just finished airing, and folks are just starting to get out. Let's go chat with a few.
[pause while she manuevers over to a teenager with reddish hair poking out from under his Klingon skull-cap]
Jenette: Well young man, what did you think of the conclusion of Star Trek: Voyager?
[The boy looks a bit dazed as he slowly realizes that he's been asked a question]
Kid#1: Uh... woah. I really didn't expect the 328 product placements for modern products in a futuristic series.
Jenette: You counted?
Kid#1: [Starting to get his bearrings] Oh yeah, I got it all here on my padd [waves Palm VII] Some of the highlights were: Bill Gates making a personal appeal to the public to block the breakup of Microsoft (they snuck that in with Data's cameo when he's doing research on historical precidents for the Drakh Plague, er Borg Virus); 22 different sodas and 32 beers lined up in a long, slow pan during the holodeck sequence; 15
Jenette: Thanks, son. And you, miss? What did you think?
[A late teens, college girl walks up, wiping away a tear]
Girl#1: I... I can't believe it. I always knew that the captain and Chakotay had a thing going on, but I didn't think you could hide being pregnant that well. And, wow, for the little guy to be accepted into Star Fleet as soon as they returned, that was just... like... wow.
Jenette: [Looking a bit perplexed] Ok... thanks. Um, you sir! What did... Oh! Mr Nimoy, I didn't even know you were here. What did you think of the final episode of the third Star Trek series?
Nimoy: Actually, it's either the fourth or the fifth, depending on whether or not you count the animated series, but either way, I just want to say that any remaining chance that I would be willing to reprise my, now famous role as Mr. Spock, was just jettisoned with Voyager's trash.
Jenette: You mean you didn't like it?
Nimoy: No, my contract as director of Star Trek IV: Whales in Space restricts me from saying that, but I can say that Vulcans, as I understand them, have never had a propensity for walking around noting how everything has this or that historical connection to a 21st century web-site. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Gene had never envisioned a Vulcan easing the tension of Pan-Far by visiting www.hot-nekkid-chicks.com
Jenette: Well, there you have it. Mixed reviews, but clearly a Star Trek episode that will be talked about for years to come. Back to you, Harve.
OOG NEVER LIKE STAR TREK, BUT IF OOG DID LIKE IT AT ONE POINT HE COULDNT TELL ANYMORE!!! STUPID COMPANIES KEEP TRY MILK STAR TREK FOR ALL IT WORTH, WITHOUT FOCUSING ON QUALITY OR WHAT MADE IT POPULAR AND GREAT!!! NEXT GENERATION WAS TOLERABLE, BUT CRAP LIKE DEEP SPACE NINE AND VOYAGER WASTE OF TIME!!! ALL THOSE SHOWS RUIN ANY NAME STAR TREK HAD AND JUST SIMPLY TO MAKE QUICK BUCK WITHOUT ANYTHING ORIGINAL!!! ORIGINAL SERIES WAS BEST, JUST WATCH OLD EPISODES INSTEAD OF WASTING TIME WITH THIS!!! STAR TREK SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO DIE WITH DIGNITY, NOT LIVE ON IN BASTARDIZED FORM!!! OOG BREAK HEAD!!!
OOG THE OPEN SOURCE CAVEMAN!!! OOG BREAK HEAD WITH OPEN SOURCE CD!!!