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.

Comments

curse you, Rick Berman!

[ChristTrekker]

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.

Yeah, screw the writers

[The Cunctator]

Nothing like busting unions made up of creative people, artists, etc. Some writers get oodles and oodles of dough, but most don't, and it's pretty lame to say, lookee, a writer's strike, let's let the megacorps trample all over individuals because the rabble won't support its own.

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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Early days could work

[steveha]

A show based in the early days of the Federation could work.

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

Set for fall, indeed.

[Observer]

My first reaction to the headline was "yes, very probably true". Then I remembered that fall is the US word for autumn.

I'm aghast

[Ross C. Brackett]

Hopefully this one will have some cool merchandise.

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.