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New 'Star Trek' Series Set For Fall
demaria writes: "Executive producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga of ST: Voyager are at it again, and we can expect another Trek series in the fall, according to this article. Rumors are that it'll take place during the early days of the Federation. I wonder if they'll make the bridge have the same cardboard/buttons glued-on look as TOS did." Just my luck -- the more Star Trek spinoffs there are, the more toys I have to buy for Trekkie friends, and I'm always a few shows behind. Hopefully this one will have some cool merchandise. ($15 MP3 playing "communicators" for kids?) So send in scripts early, if you want to counteract an expected writers' strike. Note that Rick Berman specifically denies the "early Federation" rumors.
Rick Berman doesn't know good Trek from a hole in the ground. What we really wanted was Excelsior! Get it straight, Berman!
I'm personally fed up with the over-merchandised crud that's being pushed on us under the guise of Star Trek nowadays. The quality of the series has been consistently declining since TNG. Even the low-budget TOS (my personal fave because it's the original) beats DS9 and VOY.
Constitutionally Correct
Ar Trek Series Set For Fa-
L-
L Posted by timothy
on Monday Februar-
Y 19, @03:13AM fr-
Om the v-
Ulcans-in-tight-skirts dept. dema-
Ria writes: "Executive producers
Rick Berman and Brannon
Braga of ST: Voyager are at it again,
And we can expect another trek serie-
S in the fall, according to this articl-
E. Rumors are that it'll take place
during the early days of the Feder-
Ation. I wonder if they'll make the b-
Ridge have the same cardboard/buttons glu-
Ed-on look as TOS did." Just my luck -- the more Star
Trek spinoffs there are, the more toys I have to
Buy for Tr-
Ekkie friends, and I'm a-
Lways a few sh-
Ows behind. Hopefully this o-
Ne will have some cool merchandise. ($15 MP3 playin-
G
"communicators" for kids?) So send in scrip-
Ts early, if you want to c-
Ounteract an expected writers' strike. Note that Rick
Berman specifically denies the "early Federation" r-
Umor-
S.
-- Optimal, minimum-bandwidth solution, found by dynamic programming for your viewing pleasure. --
ST:OLPGFM
(Star Trek: One Last Pathetic Grab for Money)
ST:AYBABTU
(STAR TREK: ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US)
***
To get that real TOS look, you need a lot of complicated gadgets that make silly noises and seem to have been designed by people who never heard of integrated circuits.
Which, come to think of it, is precisely what I miss most about TOS. Like all good SF, it required a certain amount of imagination on the part of the audience. You're involved in making the concept work. Once you get in that mode, you don't care that surgical tools look like exotic salt shakers (they actually were), that all the caves and mines have flat floors, and that all the alien planets look like the San Gabriel valley.
Now all the effects and sets are letter perfect -- and the scripts are unimaginative, scientifically illiterate stories about a future where humanity is represented entirely by cliche-spouting dweebs, and all the aliens are walking stereotypes that would be considered painfully racist in any other context. This is progress?
__________________
Rumor has it that Brannon Braga detests TOS in its entirety. They really oughta retire it for ten years, and then decide if more Trek is worth it. But I guess their balance sheets show that it still is, currently. They're certainly not making another spin-off for love of the genre. That's for certain.
Daniel Crawford
It's from the intro sequence of an old SNES game called Zero Wing, where all the english is apparently the result of a horrible mistranslation job.
You can see an animated gif of the intro sequence here.
Marrissa Amber Flores Picard
(Google is your friend).
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
" The other problem with the holodeck was that it was a technology so incongruous with everything else that it was "indistinguishable from magic" and totally destroyed the show's believability. "
This is actually the thing that I like most about Star Trek, and paradoxically, the thing that most people hate about Star Trek. (Referring to the technology, not specifically the holodeck, though I will get to that.)
Many people miss the point that the writers are deliberately vague on the specifics of the technology. For one thing, it's obviously difficult to just invent technology that might exist hundredes of years from now for the mere purpose of a television show. Secondly, the technology is explained vaguely so that the audience is free to use its imagination regarding the details. This was always Gene Roddenberry's principle: Create an entertaining story about interesting characters and let the future be the vehicle.
In a nutshell, you have to do a bit of thinking for yourself in order to make the technology on Star Trek seem believable. You have to make your own interpretation. Those who refuse to do so are just plain lazy and inevitably come to the conclusion that Star Trek is stupid because its technology is unbelievable.
"They could take a relatively small room and, through the magic of... magic, make it into a full-size baseball field (DS9) where individual crew members could look at each other and be a hundred yards apart. People could run and run and never hit a wall. They could walk the plank and fall 20 feet into water (TNG - movie). It could reproduce old B&W sci-fi movies (Voyager) and, miraculously, all of the "real people" would see themselves as B&W. But despite the fact that it could manipulate visual perception this way, you still had people parading around the hallways on the way to the holodeck dressed as pirates, cowboys, and 19th century Irishmen. If it could make you see B&W, why couldn't it put a costume on you?"
My interpretation is this is that the holodeck is able to project the illusion so that the actual illusion itself is, in reality, never beyond a few meters of each participant. That, coupled with force fields and artificial gravity generators (which were never mentioned in any show, but this is *my* interpretation) can easily make it seem to separate people that they are walking away from each other, in any direction, for any distance.
There are contradictions to this in the very first few TNG episodes... such as where Wesly comes off the holodeck dripping wet after falling into the illusion of a stream. Or when data throws a rock into the wall of the holodeck when the rock is supposedly part of the illusion. I merely attribute these to bad writing.
About the costume issue. I would think that it might be a bit more desirable to replicate your own costume and don it in the privacy of your own quaters than to go to the holodeck, strip naked, and have the holodeck "paint" some clothes on you.
What if you have to leave really quick because the Borg are attacking? What happens if the deck loses power and the captain walks in?
Regarding B&W, it's probably a simple matter of projecting certain visual wavelengths on top of the existing environment that cancel out "colors" of the surrounding area, resulting in a monochromatic illusion.
" And it was not simply the visual and physical issues. Why was it that the computer, normally barely smart enough to open lift doors on command, could suddenly create completely believable, intelligent, human characters in the holodeck?"
Once again, my interpretation: technically, the computer does not do this. Whoever programs the particular scenario is responsible for the behavior of the characters, with a little help from a bunch of pre-made subroutines. The holodeck is not capable of "creating" people, it can only emulate them within whatever set of parameters the user defined.
But this rule too has been broken before. Moriarity, for example. Just a really stupid decision on the part of the writers. (Though it was a nice plot.)
"I like science fiction to be science fiction and fantasy to be fantasy -- and never the twain should meet."
I'm sorry to disappoint you, but the former has always been a subset of the latter.
[And I apologize in advance for mozilla's splended job of misformatting this post.]
Civil liberties are dependent on grass-roots-level solidarity (ooh, scary word that); just as militias and insurrections are our defense against the depredations of a corrupt government (see Yugoslavia, the Phillipines, Indonesia, etc.), unionizing, strikes, walk-outs etc. are our defense against the depredations of corrupt corporations.
I mean, the sides are writers who are ST geeks vs. UPN aka Viacom/Paramount etc.
Hooray for megacorps. BTW, the Viacom boardroom is sweet, let me tell you.
--
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Make mine methylphenidate.
Remember that Sun Microsystems commercial from a few months back that showed the space ship dealing with some space-based threat? You know, the one with the character that was made to look as much like Mr. Spock as possible without infringing on any copyrights? Right down to him saying that "the Dot is highly logical," or something quite similar. Heck, they might even convince James Doohan to do a commercial for Sun where he says his famous "Hello, Computer" to the mouse. And the Dot could actually answer. Oh, and let's not forget the M$ Borg who would have to be the main enemy..."I am BillGatus, of Borg. Your life as it has been is over. From now on, you are one of M$."
Windows is going the way of phlogiston...
I am a Trekkie who seriously likes this. I'm sick of Captain X showing how morally great they are compared with everybody else. I think there are lot of people who would love to see the world from the view of a Klingon. Romulans would be tough since they are so different. Vulcans would work too but it might be boring.
Maybe it could take place on a planet/base that is in Romulan or Klingon territory before there is an alliance, and they are trying to rebel and join the federation. This way, the plot would be from the POV of a new alien race rather than from the Federation. And perhaps in the end they should end up winning the rebellion, but not being Fed either.
Bones: "Dammit Jim, the Star Trek series is dead!"
Spock: "I believe, doctor, your observation is in error."
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
I'm curious to see how they handle presenting the "future's past." Star Wars Ep I did a pretty bad job of making the past feel like it was actually earlier. As CGI techniques improve, it's harder to apply them without making things look more futuristic. Even the DS-9 tribbles timewarp episode spent half its efforts in getting the color palette right and making up for series discrepencies.
I bet they go for an earlier time, somewhere between first contact and The Enterprise. It could make for an interesting series, where more impactful discoveries are made than just another 'subspace anomaly.' It's been a long time since I watched an ST creation and actually felt like they were "boldly going where noone has gone before."
Will they change it back to "no man" since it's set earlier? Will Guinan guest star? Will Q?
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
The biggest problem facing the writers in Star Trek is that the technology can do so many different things. If the characters are in trouble, why not just beam them out? If a friend is fighting an enemy and you can't get a clear shot at the enemy, why not just stun them both? If the Federation had a cloaking device that not only made things invisible but could actually make things slide through solid matter, wouldn't they have done something with it when fighting a major war?
The current answer is just to handwave with silly made-up words: "We can't use the transporter right now because there is a cluster of verteron particles in the area." (At one time there was a "Particle of the week" web site, updated whenever Voyager introduced a new particle, which was about every week.)
A series set in the early days of the Federation would let them put more limits on the tech. They might go as long as a month before introducing a new particle to us.
If I were somehow put in charge of Star Trek, I know what series I would make. We know that when a civilization invents warp drive, the Prime Directive ends and they are invited into the Federation. We know that sometimes the Federation sends in a covert team to make sure things go smoothly--remember the episode where Riker was undercover and that alien chick was blackmailing him for sex? So, the series I would make is about a covert team that goes from planet to planet, helping smooth the way as each planet makes the final leap and joins the Federation. Because they are covert they can't just run around with phasers, communicators, and other gadgets, and they can't just beam out whenever they feel like it. Ideally it would have a story arc like Babylon 5 had, where it would take multiple episodes to resolve all threads in the plot and get the planet introduced to the Federation; over a 7 year run we might see 10 planets helped in this fashion. I wanted to call this "Star Trek: First Contact" but they used that title for a movie.
Anyway, setting the show in the wild-and-wooly early days of the Federation might work out well. But I still don't expect them to take any actual risks with the new show. It will be more of the same, but just a little bit different.
Hmmm, let's extrapolate from the past: white male starship captain, older starship captain, black starship captain, woman starship captain... I figure the next one up will be an older, woman black starship captain. Probably not bald, but we can't be sure.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Here are two special effect shots I created for the new show. I've put them up on my site for you all to see - Paramount will probably make me take them down once they find out about them, though, so mirror these quickly! I could tell you more about the show, but then I'd have to kill you all.
You can get a good feel for the new show seeing the setting in the first one & one of the craft used. The second shot has a pic of some aliens.
Craft & Bases
and
Aliens.
Personally, I can't wait for an earlier Star Trek series, when Starfleet uniforms for women were those really short miniskirts instead of those horrible Deanna Troi jumpsuits.
The only certainty is entropy.
I read somewhere that the original concept for TNG was a knock-off of the "Horatio Hornblower" series. Wesley was supposed to be one of the main characters, always saving the day with his unconventional ways, while the stuffy captain did things by the book.
For whatever reason, they abandoned this and chose another route. Thank goodness...
My first reaction to the headline was "yes, very probably true". Then I remembered that fall is the US word for autumn.
I think it will be really interesting to have a show with a non-federation point of view. Will others races see the Federation as an evil monopoly that forces their ways to others? The Federation way or no way! Anyone not in the federation is pretty much a bad guy. I can see it now...
Just a joke, Trekkies leave me alone!
====
Codeala - Just another mindless drone
Unionizing and strikes are fine, but they aren't inherently good any more than all corporations are bad. In recent decades unions have done as much to harm some workers as they've done to help others. As an example, the closed shop concept, in which you aren't allowed to get a job at a given employer unless you join the union. Well, what if I am opposed, diametrically, to many of the things the union supports? Well, if I want to work at that job, I still have to join the union. Are you telling me there are *no* Republican middle-class workers? As one myself, I'd be outraged to have my dues going to fund a party I don't usually vote for. Fortunately, I live in a state where closed shops are outlawed--but my state is, if I recall correctly, in the minority. Often, non-union workers are just people trying to make a living in their chosen field without having extra money siphoined from their paychecks, and used for political purposes. Unions often try to squash anyone who isn't a member, and act as bad as any strongarming corporation.
So, don't whine and boo-hoo about someone making a joke at a union strike. Non-union writers have every bit as much right to work as union members, and probably deserve more respect since they don't try to bully people into unionizing just to work and paying a union-tax that gets used for PAC money whether the worker forced to pay union dues agrees with it or not. Now, legally, union members don't have to pay the portion of dues used for political bribery--err, lobbying--but Big Unions managed to successfully defeat a bill that would have required union shops to post this information, so few union members even know this. Kind of reminds me how slimey megacorps buy legislation, eh...
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
Hopefully,
1) The Federation has not made contact with Ferrengi yet.
2) Little brat kids are not allowed on board the ship at all. This means you Wesly, Nog & Naomi.
3) As with point number 2, this isn't "The Original Series Kids". We wont have the young adventures of Captain Kirk
4) Not the love boat in space as Deep Space 9 was.
The way I see it the series looks like it's going to be a whole series of first contacts with important races, and discoveries of technologies taken for granted in other series.
Major plot devices will be easy to come up with because they've already been in the series, just not introduced. We'll occasionally have some time travel so we can have star apperances, and probably an unrecorded Q encounter.
The question is what social/ethnic group will play Captain? Sadly not Sulu (which would of rocked cause he has coolest voice) slightly wrong time zone.
Oh well I've blathered enough.
It's turtles all the way down.
About once a week, the writers and producers would get together and have a big brainstorming session. Ideas are tossed out at these meetings. The group as a whole thinks about continuity and character development: What areas haven't we explored lately? What interesting things might we do next? What overall direction should the show take, what relationships should we develop? What are we doing wrong that we could do better? That sort of thing.
Anyway, one fine week at the writer's meeting the chief Suggestion From On High was: "Hey, what about Wesley? We haven't really done much with that character. He's around, but we don't have much sense of who he is as a person." Everybody agreed, so that was the closing thought that a half-dozen Star Trek writers went away with.
And what's the easiest way for the audience to learn more about and identify more with Wesley? Have him save the ship! Arrange things so that some unlikely danger comes along that only Wesley's special talents are capable of recognizing or defending against. So what comes back is a slew of "Wesley saves the ship" scripts.
Most of these scripts were actually pretty good as individual scripts, but you wouldn't want to use them all sequentially as a matter of balance. Rather, in an ideal world you'd want to slip in a "Wesley saves the ship" script every now and then among the more traditional "Picard surrenders the ship" or "Geordi dislikes being blind" scripts. Use the better Wesley scripts first, send the weaker ones back for a rewrite or keep them around for a rainy day. No two consecutive episodes should be allowed to seem too similar.
But then the writer's strike was declared. When you've got a show to film and no new scripts are coming in, you use the scripts you've already got, regardless of whether this makes for a balanced presentation. Therefore, Wesley got to save the ship every other week, no matter how annoying it was to the fans who watched the show religiously. Thus, the "die-wesley-die" phenomenon.
[my best friend's godmother produced some of the ST:TNG episodes]
I play Nerd-Folk!
Merchandise? From Paramount? Not likely. Call Paramount a lot of things... but not sellouts.
Nosiree - Paramount has been careful about who it licenses the Star Trek name to. So far, they've carefully limited themselves to posters, books, flashlights, magazines, pencils, cereals, pretend phasers, Christmas ornaments, lunchboxes, action figures, clocks, calendars, buttons, feminine napkins, crappy ceramic figurines, decorative plates, jackets, cheese doodles, pretend communicators, aerosol sprays, hot water bottles, trading cards, toothpaste, children's vitamins, AOL CDs, video games, role playing games, board games, snow domes, playing cards, cheap jewlery, dolls, hats, keychains and mugs that make Mr. Spock disappear when you add hot water. So don't expect them to start licensing the name to just anyone who offers them $20 and a bottle of Jack Daniels. The asking price is $40 and two bottles.