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New Star Trek Series Rumblings
Tycoon Guy writes "TrekToday just posted a write-up about the next Star Trek series, containing info on all the characters. Here's a quote: 'Series V will indeed be set on a Starship Enterprise, under the command of human Captain Jackson Archer. The backdrop of the series will be the 22nd Century, at a time when starship travel was a relatively new endeavour, humans and Vulcans still had much to learn about each other, and the universe really was still filled with strange new worlds, new life and new civilizations.'" I guess I'd care more if the last 2 Trek series, and the last Trek Movie maybe, didn't suck monkey. The casting information reads just as bland as you would expect. I'm actually much more interested in tonight's premiere of The Lone Gunmen (X-Files spinoff). Please don't suck!
Heh... I've actually seen the Lone Gunmen Pilot already. It was floating around the ABM newsgroup a while back.
:)
It was actually pretty good IMHO. It is a bit lighter and tounge-in-cheek then the X-Files, though it does attain a fair sense of mystery and intrigue. The the lone gunmen characters are flushed out more then in the X-Files and form a good ensamble.
I think that will be the key to the show's success or failure: whether they can operate as a strong ensamble cast, which is very difficult to do on TV. The writers also have a very tricky job ahead of them in balancing the humor and intrigue. I think the pilot was successful in all of these areas. We'll have to wait to see if they can pull it off for an entire season.
This is not to say that the show is perfect. There were some weak spots, including a number of especially improbable and bizzare fudging of technical aspects (mostly computer related, ironically).
My suggestion: Be sure to watch it, but put on your "suspension of disbelief" hat.
-- tjoynt
--==Hail Eris!!==--
This seems very unlikely. The NCC-1701 that Captain Kirk commanded was the very first starship enterprise... and even the Enterprise B and C have been given crewnames(not matching that list). Also, didn't the producers previously deny the 22ng century setting?
...it won't die, either.
the stories have gone from okay, to bad, to worse, to the the worst crap hollywood and new york can scrape off the used wax ring of a trailer park toilet.
gimme a break.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Maybe people are just tired of the same old political correctness, deus ex machina problem resolution, goofy technology (thousands of weapons, and not a one that leaves gibs; stuff that works or doesn't work as the plot demands), and utter lack of continuity.
The same old plots come up over and over again: resolving generations-old blood feuds in a few days, refusing to take or use over-powerful weapons, facing trial by god-like aliens, respecting alien culture (no matter how stupid), forced alliance between old enemies, etc.
TOS was okay when it was new. TNG was okay for those who hadn't seen TOS, or were pathetically desperate fans of the sort who can watch the same second-rate show a hundred times without getting bored of it.
Going from loading an optical illusion into the borg so their computers will crash to giving the shapeshifters an incurable virus is not creating a new story. We've heard it all before, the players just keep putting on new masks.
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Rich
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RumorsDaily
Remember the TNG episode where it turns out that key high-ranking federation officials had been taken over by little bug beasties? With their little bug beastie asses sticking out of the backs of necks? And how they managed to send a signal back to their homeworld, but were never seen or heard of again? That's because too many people wrote in saying it was too dark, too sinister, not 'Trek' like. Lots of people like their 40 minutes of spoon-fed morality play and nothing bad happening. Everybody else is too busy preaching to the choir on Slashdot to actually write in and express some dissatisfaction to the people who can do something about it.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Tell me where this supposed 'Enterprise' would fit into Trek History?
The first Enterprise, NCC-1701 was commanded by Christopher Pike, Robert April, then James Kirk.
The second Enterprise, NCC-1701-A was commanded by James Kirk.
The Third, NCC-1701-B was commanded by Captain John Harriman.
NCC-1701-C was commanded by Captain Rachel Garrett.
NCC-1701-D and NCC-1701-E were commanded by Captain Jean-Luc Picard.
None of the official Star Trek documentation lists anything of a ship called "Enterprise" prior to NCC-1701, and after the Barbados Patrol Craft commisioned in 1981. They're trying to come off as saying that this new series is Pre-TOS, but it doesn't fit.
Then, there's the crew. The doctor is supposedly an Exotic Alien. Prior to TOS, people from Earth had limited contact with extra-sol life forms. "The Doctor has filled Sickbay with all sorts of bizarre medical instruments, alien plants and spores, and stasis chambers with small, living creatures." No doctor would create a sickbay like this. Even Dr. McCoy's sickbay was a clean, sterile environment.
Then, we have names. The author of the hoax couldn't come up with any creative names, so they stole the names from various Star Trek sources:
Sub-Commander T'Pau (Sub Commander? This isn't a Romulan Ship...)
Admiral Forrest (DeForest Kelley, or "Leonard McCoy")
Admiral Leonard (Leonard Nimoy, or "Spock")
Commander Williams (William Shatner, or "James Kirk")
Tos (Well known acronym for 'The Original Series')
Plus, the sheet goes on to say that shooting begins in May - before casting is even complete?! For a series that debuts at the end of the year? Not likely.
-- 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.
Did anyone catch that on The Lone Gunmen today? I didn't know cookies were so dangerous... maybe /. is trying to hack our system with that cookie..... Be afraid!
IF they'd just be more interested in creating new planets/aliens/stories instead of always falling back on the soap-opera-ish plot lines of recent trek series. Somehow I don't think Gene would approve.
We don't need our officers screwing eachother dammit!
Blech. Signatures.
After reading though some of the firestorm of comments on trektoday's discussion board, it sounds like this new prequel series will be set before the creation of StarFleet, the details are obviously vague, but set in the 22nd century, 'historically' it could be before or sometime close too the formation of StarFleet and the United Federation of Planets.
The whole thing sounds great too me, *if* it happens, would be bridging that gap that has always been there between the 'current day' (paranoid, etc) human society and the 'future' startrek UFP..
With the TMP scene, i saw this link http://www.geocities.com/st_ent/ which is apparently one of the pictures shown in that scene of TMP.
Damn. I was determined not to post to this story, and then you had to go and read my mind. Please don't laugh, I have to get this off my chest.
I watched my first star trek in fifth grade. That was Voyager's 1st season. I still vividly recall Future's End. Now, I will say that I have a very active mind, and I spent a lot of time thinking about Captain Braxton and the 29th century. Car rides, long hikes, boring gym classes, whatever... whenever my brain was on "idle," I would start speculating. Soon I had an entire 29th Century (or C29, as I couldn't help calling it) setting thought up. A crew for a ship, uniforms, technology, politics, history... the works. No one really wanted to hear about it, so I just kept it to myself and let it grow in my head.
Eventually, i matured, and found it felt much better to spin my own universes in my mind. C29 sank to the back of my mind, and I've recently found myself cannibalizing some of those ideas for my original fiction. But I still recall a lot of it. In fact, I probably still hve my sketched out uniform designs somewhere. Maybe I should turn it all into a webpage.
When series V was more sepculation than fact, one rumor I found was much like this one, except that it specificed occasional appearances by Captain Braxton from the 29th century, in pursuit of temporal criminals and suchforth. That blew my mind, especially since i hadn't thought about it for a couple years.
For all that it would doubtless conflict with my ideas, I would love to see a C29 series. There's so much potential, as you said.
I guess it's hard to take all i've said here seriously. This being slashdot, mockery is probably forthcoming. Whatever. Had to get this off my chest.
You know, while a historical doesn't seem to have much potential, it could have been much, much worse. One of the other rumors I encountered a while ago was a Starfleet Academy series. Good gods, it would've been the voyages of the starship Loveboat, NCC-90210.... ;)
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Yoda is from Babylon 5 not Star Trek. I wish people would do more research before posting things like this.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
DS9 desprately tried to be all dark and realistic, but it couldn't do a story arc to save its life, and failed miserably at character development. While relying on the RESET button at every turn.
Don't forget "All in the Family". I think they lead the pack with spinoffs: Goodtimes, Maude, Jeffersons, Florence, Archies' Place, etc.
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
That "data blob...with the text strings off to one side" is the same thing you'd see with debug or Norton's Diskedit, and they did call it a sector editor (or something like that), so that part, at least, was reasonably accurate.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Wattsamatter, need a few more hits on those banners, so you post some flamebait comments attached to an article?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Just in case you missed the the technobabble and catch phrases the first time around...
It Sucks
The fundamental problem? The average, non-tech TV viewer hates real technology, and the propeller-heads (like us) hates everything not true to form.
Every time we see the "magic computer search", my wife turns to me and asks, "how come ours doesn't do that?" to which I must reply, "because we don't live in TV land, dear..."
Yeah, right.
They brought in the cheesy special effects, costuming, acting, and fight scenes from the Hercules family of shows.
The first few shows looked great, even if the acting and FX were cheesy, and I thought it was going to be one great big storyline, but then it went totally episodic. They don't seem to be busily restaffing the ship, as I assumed they would, and their new allies from previous episodes don't seem to be helping them much in restoring the Commonwealth. It had such potential, it's really a shame to see it turn out as nothing more than a cross between Hercules and Star Trek.
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It's almost as bad as when the TNG crew solved problems by "reversing positronic flows". The difference is that 23rd century technology is completely fictional, whereas Lone Gunmen addresses real technology that many viewers are familiar with.
I expect that every episode of this series is going to have a couple of hacking-into-computers sequences, and I hope they're not all as silly as this. I don't expect technical accuracy. But why not put in somewhat-believable gibberish rather than complete gibberish? Non-techie viewers won't know the difference, but it won't turn off techies..
The UFP was started in the year 2161. Whether or not Starfleet was started is another matter.
Starfleet is one of the principal executive agencies defined in the Federation's Constitution (Chapter 8). There is mention that temporary forces would be "borrowed" from individual Federation members until Starfleet got its own fleet up and running. Perhaps this Enterprise will be such a ship.
Sorry Taco - The Lone Gunmen sucked. Does anyone else have this urge to become a hollywood special effects supervisor so we can put an end to shit like this?
Excuse me - I have to go secure my cookies with my new sector editor so the spooks don't steal my new Socket-7 CPU or my USERDATA.INI file. Maybe I should defrag it to make sure the modem inside my CPU doesn't upload any information to the internet..
Well, I'm not trying to defend ST plot consistancy, you can explain away a lot of these problems with a little creativity. For instance, the Queen probabally isn't really as crucial as she lets on. I bet she is little more than a figurehead for the Borg, maybe even have as much power as the President of the US.
The cube destruction was not all that unbelieveable given that nobody else was crazy enough to actually board a Borg ship before (this part is completely obvious as the Borg have even less internal security than your average unmanned Federation Ships (My guess is that every other race assumed that anybody boarding a Borg ship would be more or less instantly assimilated, that and transporters seem to be in short supply in the Delta quadrant). Since the Borg are rather poor at thinking up new things for themselves (as opposed to merely adapting to solve problems, and assimilating new knowledge from species), they may never have considered the internal security problems on their ships. They certainly didn't learn anything useful on this issue by scanning the Enterprises computers... Also, they wern't blown up by conventional means, they self destructed when Picard glitched the command systems (and they show yet more really bad security by not securing the "everybody goes to sleep" command!)
I think the Starfleet is probabally one of the formost experts on the Borg now, as they have a lot of time to study Borg technology (and even have an ex-drone) without worry of assimilation (unlike every other species that meets the Borg, save Species 8472). Most likely the Quantum torpedos are designed to be difficult to adapt to. Plus the first Borg attack was against a mostly unprepared Federation, later on the Federation has no doubt spent 1000s of man hours developing procedures for Borg attacks. Finally, the ships at Wolf 359 were no doubt a mish-mash of Federation ships from whatever was available. After the destruction of these old ships, the replacements were no doubt newer, stronger ships.
Seven of Nine is more than just T&A, she is also the requisite robot/alien looking to become more human that every ST series needs...
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
Ahhh...well, bear in mind that this is likely not the real info... Paramount has a history about as long the distance between Voyager and the Alpha quadrant of spreading disinformation to throw people off as to the *real* story... this "anonymous source" really has me suspicious.
My journal has hot
Watch your tongue, L&O continues to be awesome. SVU, otoh, I don't care much for either.
Wow, those are a lot of points you make... and exactly how many episodes of the various series did you watch to figure all that out?
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python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Absolutely, 6 months ago, I would have said that ST:TNG was the best series. Then I got a TiVo, and discovered the DS9 reruns that our local ABC station airs late at night.
Seasons 6 and 7 (about halfway through 7 now) are brilliant. It's nice to have stories that aren't resolved in an hour, and have characters who remember and reference events in past episodes.
If you were like me, and sort of tuned out of DS9 after the first few seasons, check out the last two. You'll be blown away. I can't wait for the finale, which I haven't seen yet...
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When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
wishlist:
-main characters who occasionally set aside their principles to make a really big gain
-at least a few alien species that never betray their stereotypes
-at least one alien from a species with a deeply unpleasant, but generally accurate stereotype, who betrays the stereotype to be nasty in totally different and dramatically worse ways
-weapons that blow their targets into messy globs of whatever the target is made of, even if it always happens offscreen
-reasonably intelligent robots without emotions, that everybody treats as machines (no casual conversation, are casually sacrificed without concern except for the cost of replacing them)
-deaths of main characters that serve the plot, not casting convenience
-badasses who are more concerned about their ability to wreak havok than any particular ideas about why they should do so
anti-wishlist:
-fistfights (unless there's a very good reason for the combatants to be unarmed)
-drawn-out close-range shootouts (as if their weapons couldn't blast through flimsy cover like tables)
-comic relief characters
-deus ex machina resolutions
-time travel or other "physics anomalies"
-humanoid aliens without at least a dozen immediately obvious distinctions from humanity (basically, anything that can be done with a rubber mask)
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I hope it picks up, because, man, what a great show concept for nerds.
-m
So this would be Star Trek, the 0th Generation?
When hacking into another computer system, make sure you disable cookies, lest they be compromised.
Don't run a file server when hacking into another system, lest they retaliate by hacking into yours.
If you run a file server anyway, don't keep your real name and address in a file named userdata.ini.
When you take over a system, encrypt the manual override command to make sure no one knows what it is.
The problem with really great supporting characters is that they're really great supporting characters -- you usually just can't give 'em enough to do on their own. Think of all those spin-offs that failed horribly; the only ones I can think of which succeed are complete departures from the original premise (for example Fraiser is technically spun off from Cheers, but is in all important respects completely unrecognizable as a derivative).
The Lone Gunman were barely enough to pull off an episode that was mostly them (the DefCon Vegas convention epp, and even that one had a lot of help from Scully).
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
On voyager, every other show someone mutinys for 40 mins and they appologize to janeway in the last 5 and its all cool.
Id like the show to be a bit more like the real military. Anyone who mutiny'd would be dead by morning.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
1)The 'characters' of the original characters were what initially got the series off the ground and not the space notion behind them. The space notion and associated circumstances helped extend the series into a full-fledged production for years, but it was the characters which helped hold audiences at first. 2)Too many times recently, computer FX are leaned on too heavily without adequate character development/story development/motivation. Just saw that preview for those computer nerds from x-files looks like some good stuff. Lone gunman may get my viewing time!
Does he also invent new types of salutes, and unclog chicken soup dispensor nozzels?
--
"How many six year olds does it take to design software?"
dinner: it's what's for beer
As far as I'm concerned, you were 100% correct. I just watched the episode, and I had a lot of trouble with it:
* I had heard it labeled as humorous in nature. Ha! And that was a Ha of sarcasm. Much of the show was spent in moody lingering moments - most of the humor I found really lame, and I have a pretty broad tolerance for humor.
* The computer stuff was totally rediculous. "Hey look - red text in an otherwise all blue interface! It's a breakin!". "Processor frozen". "I'll just pop in this prototype chip into my laptop and we're good to go!". I know they have to have some leeway to make the computer stuff exciting, but a computer professional just using "deltree" to wipe a computer leaving the FAT intact? Come on! I'd rather have seen them use a handbuilt remote magnetic sensor to detect previous disk images, it would have been more beleivable. And the text file download - time to upgrade the 300 baud modem guys! And you might want to check the tmp directory for partial downloads.
* (Major spoilers here) Plot "twists". I might be able to forgive other areas, but the plot was SO WEAK. Who did not know right when they found it that the blood was not his fathers? Who here didn't assume automatically the moment they knew the plane was in danger that it would be another remote? Forget the father wanting to tell the media, don't you think the pilots would be just a tad upset and be talking to them anyway????? ARRRGH!!! It was so stupid I had to force myself from turning it off a number of times.
* Lara Croft ripoff. I can hear them discussing the basics of the show now: "Hmm, we can't write, we have little sense of humor. Say, I hear this 'Lara Croft' character is quite the rage with the kids, how about we throw one of her in there! We can just have her shooting uzi's in every seen and re-use footage.
All in all, I found the plot so mind-numbing stupid that it just amplified the other basic errors (like all the computer flaws) that I can normally get past in a movie or TV show. The problem is that at the core it's still a warmed over conspiracy drama, when it should really have been be a comedy I was expecting - it had real potential there. Read the IGN preview, that's how I thought it would be.
It's probably just as well, I only have two or three shows a week I watch all the time and I really didn't need another time drain.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When TNG came along, things seemed so inwards - they were no longer exploring other worlds, they were reciding into their own minds and the issues had become much more social. This is why the holodeck (a crappy addition to the show) and Diana Troy both annoy the crap out of me.
I am glad that this show is earlier in time, because it suggests to me that the series will be returning to its roots, that of exploration of the physical universe.
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I'm really excited about tonight's Lone Gunmen premiere. Like Taco, I hope it won't suck, but I've been disappointed before.
;-)
Voyager was a pretty disappointing series for me, at least until about halfway through (this last season has actually been very good, IMHO, but it's unfortunate the series took this long to really get going).
I thought Deep Space Nine was quite good, though I haven't seen it for a while (nobody plays DSN reruns around here). I never got to see as much of it as I wanted, since it was on at the same time as Friends. Sorry guys, but some days I really need to laugh
Anyway, hopefully TLG will be good.
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will they bring back the good old card board sets and cheesey phaser effects. I mean if the original was like that, whats this show gonna be like? I can just imagine a fight involving a bunch of Star Trek models bought from Hobbytown flying around on strings. Now that would be worth watching
______________________
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
Actually, The English show from which "Threes company" was copied was called "man about the house" and spawned off the really rather successfull "George and Mildred" (Roper of course) and the somewhat less successful "Robin's Nest" (Where the guy shacks up with one of the girls and opens a restaurant).
Of course, differences in humour and the American entertainment industries tendency to dumb things down may have had something to do with it (I mean, "Cybil" is meant to be your version of "absolutely fabulous"?)
Rich
Do you want to appear on Voyager before it goes off the air, to keep the Number One/Christine Chapel/Lwaxana Troi track record going? How about Series V?
I'm still doing the voice of the computer on Voyager. But I know there is no chance of appearing. Two years ago, I would have loved to work on a campaign to get me on the show, because I was thinking, after thirty-some years, why not? But then as it started to settle in -- the older you get, the wiser you get -- I started to say, not on your life.
I know absolutely nothing about the next Star Trek series. I don't think there are many people over at Paramount who do either. I haven't heard anything, not even that the main office has said, here's the money, go ahead. Those days are over.
Says an awful lot about Paramount
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
This is very true and one of the big reasons while I'd like to see the Timeship premise fleshed out. This is obviously my own opinion, but I think some of the best Trek episodes (in any of the series) were those dealings with conundrums of time travel.
It gets boring and obnoxious quickly.
Here is where I have to disagree. I think there is an immense amount of stories to be told revolving around time travel. The aforementioned Trek episodes are very different from one another and illustrates how a whole series could be had from the premise of a time ship.
Also, temporal mechanics doesn't need to be the only thing discussed. I'm sure the entire law, economy, moral system of those in the 29th century is shaped by the ease of time travel. Are criminals punished even though their wrongs can be righted? Are they placed into rehab before they even develop the personality to commit said crimes? Do rare artifacts hold any value when it is possible to reach back in time and bring them forward? Are there any fields of study like history, archaeology, anthropology when absolute answers are available rather than assessments of evidence (Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter address this question somewhat in The Light of Other Days)? Those are just ideas that I've come up in my stream of conciousness for this post. I'm sure the writers of the show would come up with others much more interesting.
Just as the all the other Trek shows don't use the exploration of space as a way to show all kinds of extraterrestrial wonders, a show based on time travel doesn't need to show all the wonders of time. They show the implications of the ability to do so. Some shows may resolve around time travel technobabble but others may use it as a vehicle to explore ethical and moral dilemmas - just as all the other Trek shows have.
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We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
Well, I for one am glad that one of those 15 different story editors saw it appropriate to give us an episode where the android gets some!!
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python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
- Ensign Hoshi Sato: Comm Officer. Japanese. Mid to late 20s. Striking and intelligent, Hoshi has a feisty spirit that often tests the patience of the crew. She's in charge of communications on Enterprise, but she also serves as ship's Translator. An expert in exo-linguistics, she learned to manipulate her vocal chords to emit a range of alien sounds no human has ever produced. She has a natural affinity for picking up languages. Hoshi doesn't like the idea of being trapped in a "tin can" hurtling at impossible speeds. Every time the ship jumps to warp she grips her console and closes her eyes. She's a "white knuckle" space farer.
Is it just me, or isn't this new series supposed to take place before the warp drive was invented by Zephram Cochran (à la First Contact)?--
have you EVER watched Doctor Who? Time lines are screwed up left and right.
1) NOBODY would be stupid enough to make a series set so far in the past that it would mess up every timeline in existance.
Ok ask yourself this question.
How much do I look like an Octopus? How much do I think like a bobcat? The answer my friend is nothing and not much. If two creatures who evolved on the same planet, same atmosphere look and act so different from each other why do you think aliens from another planet with a completely different atmosphere, gravity, flora and fauna would look and act excetly like humans?
War is necrophilia.
What you say may be true in the general case, but spinoffs work enough of the time to make trying them profitable. Sure, some spinoffs are doomed failures. (Does anyone remember The Ropers from Three's Company, or Golden Palace from The Golden Girls? I didn't think so.) But how about Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which was spun off from Law & Order? I'd hardly call SVU a "complete departure" from Law & Order. Likewise with the hugely popular Star Trek: The Next Generation and, to a lesser extent, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, which were spun off from Star Trek. Also let's not forget the countless successful children's cartoon series spun off from movies, such as Beetlejuice and Ghostbusters.
Regards,
I've been following this for a while. I'd be very doubtful if this was real. The biggest issue is credibility. If they did it now, they would have all sorts of cool gadgets that are supposed to predate TOS, but would be more advanced. Without this, no one would watch. Furthermore, and Rick Berman personally agrees with this: You just can't bring back the 60's mentality. Star Trek is an issues show, and any issues that correspond with the TOS era from the 60's just don't exist anymore. I think the future (a la 29th century) is more credible, and Brannon Braga (STSV exec), agrees that this would be the logical course of action. Let's face it: they can't go back pre-TOS.
I'm not totally clued up on my ST History, but:
Is this series before or after the set up of the UFP? If it is after, then logically the Enterprise would have an NCC designation.
However, we know that the TOS Enterprise must be the first NCC Enterprise, otherwise they wouldn't keep putting on the A, B, C suffix...
And another thing... in ST:TMP after the alien intelligence infilitrated the crew member's body, they took her on a tour of the Enterprise and they passed through a rec lounge (or similar) and mentioned "all these craft were called Enterprise" with pictures of the AC, Space Shuttle, and a few others. I can't remember the details exactly, but is this new Enterprise going to look like one of those, or are they going to fix that in the Directors Cut?
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Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
nope. Insurrection was good, lighthearted etc. Could have been much better, but they destruction of the borg in FC, and later inVoyager, is unforgivable.
The non borg part of FC (the planetside part), was great though.
Actually, from what I heard at a Trek convention, the reason these aliens were never heard from again is that the Trek story editor changed soon afterward. This is partly why Trek TNG had trouble getting and keeping cohesive continuing storylines--they went through something like 15 different story editors, and with each change, old story elements that were the former story editor's favorite project got lost. The same thing happened for those fish-like aliens that were kidnapping members of the Trek crew into another dimension and performing anatomical experiments on them in a later season--they dispatched a probe into this dimension, but were never seen again.
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Yep, if the characters "tos" (The original series), Lennord, Forrest and Williams, and the similarities with vulcan science officer, renagade captain, etc. is not proof enough, section31.com posted:
m
http://section31.com/stories/mar-2001/030401_a.ht
My name is (Identity Preserved) and I'm a casting director in London. Having an office in New York allows me to obtain US casting information.
I'm afraid to say that all the information you have received about the next 'Star Trek' project is incorrect. The official information about the new show was given out a few weeks ago and the steps have been taken to ensure that information is kept confidential.
I truly believe that this is someone's idea of a practical joke. Even though the party in question went to extreme lengths to make the character info as a real document, it's a fake.
"Sub-Commander T'Pau" -- Is this supposed to be the T'Pau from Amok Time?
And the brethren went away edified.
And as for the thing about no-new-aliens, I think it's actually for the better. The species that kicked the Borg's ass (four thousand something) had so much potential, yet it was wasted by just using the species as a motivator for a human-Borg business deal. I'd rather not see any new species than a species that could've been a lot but never went anywhere because the soap must go on...
but DS9 is the best ST series ever! Voyager is ok, not as bad as some maintain. most of the criticism of it comes from people who sound like they only saw the pilot
Don't worry...when an episode calls for it, they'll have a visit from a time traveler, or change decades of Trek history by changing the way an invention came to be, or what have you...it's not required that the show's writers be able to eat without drooling.
I always wondered what happened with that line of the story and why they never further developed it, after all, at the end the worm creatures had managed to send a signal out into deep space before Riker and Picard could blow his host up.
I was eagerly awaiting a follow up with some sort of invasion force that was to do battle with the Federation.
That two part? episode had the best suspense of any of TNG episodes. Too bad people thought it was too dark and ruined it for the rest of us.
Besides people shouldn't say that Star Trek doesn't have it's dark side. The old series had dark moments like when Kirk was split in two with a good half and an evil half, or how about when innocent seeming kids killed their parents via a supernatural force and then tried to take over the Enterprise? Or how about "Cat's Paw" or the "Gamesters of Triskelion"? Two other very dark and medievalish episodes from the original series?
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
Star Trek *had* characters, but we weren't expected to care about them as themselves, but what they stood for. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are different parts of our own mind and culture coming into conflict. Spock was interesting as the outsider looking in for the observation; in the newer series, we're supposed to care about the stupid robot *himself*.
[The spinoffs aren't the only shows to make this mistake--compare the first half-season of Alien Nation, which was very well done and was about the conflict rather than the races, to the rest of its run, in which we were supposed to become interested in the details of the space beasties. The early episodes frequently crammed a feature-lenght plot into the hour, whereas the later ones spent time babbling about the eggs . . . Or _Heat of the Night_. The movie and early television series had the conflict between the two characters, whereas it devolved into them being chums fighting other evils . .
Anyway, skip the character development and write a better plot. Don't waste time on the characters "growth," or let excessive consistency get in the way of a good episode.
And a couple of quibbles after looking at the page. The captain may be an improvement over the last several, who have been burdened by (and even provided!) adult supervision. Kirk ran around the galaxy without supervision, getting himself into messes that were, often as not, of his own creation. The Bald One was the type of pencil-necked desk-flyer that Kirk avoided. [Oh, and if Kirk ever caught a klingon on his bridge, he would *personally* have thrown him out the airlock].
I'm starting to ramble (just coming off the second really bad cold in a week), but when the Klingons became more interesting than the fedceration, it was doomed . . . and that switch. Originally, the Klingons were Nazi's with bad accents. In the later series, they were Norsemen with funny heads . . .
Oh, and why are there a Sub-Commander and a Lt. Commander in the same navy in this new character list??? These are the British and American names for the same rank . . .
Finally, I suppose that the "sensual" female vulcan will be the, errr, busty hormone target, in the tradition of Commander Cleavage, Major Mammary, and 36 of D?
:)
hawk
Having won its target demographics in the overnight ratings. With better ratings than most of the Mulder-Free X-Files episodes this season.
Afterall, a spin-off doesn't have to be better than the original show, it just as to be almost as good as it. It already has an established fan base which helps with the word-of-mouth/email/IM marketing efforts. Also, they'll be helped by the original series going off the air if they get sufficient ratings to justify the original show's time slot, as Frasier did eventually (though not permanently), and by the orginal show becoming a big screen franchise (for example, it was Star Trek's big screen success that prompted the STNG era spinoffs).
Work for Change & GET PAID!
I thought that andromeda was going to be good...looked promising. But what happened to it? It really does not have any appeal. I have to question whether or not writers will be able to think up original new episodes that won't immediately remind you of a previous series episode. It seems to me that unless some drastically different story is created, many episode ideas may make their way back into circulation. Perhaps they should try a more 3rd person approach...say, something from the POV or starfleet command...
Commander Williams
Admiral Leonard
Admiral Forrest
Anyone else see a pattern here?Two words: Doctor Who
Let's see some more of the 29th century Federation Timeship Aeon! ( Future's End, I & II , Voyager, Season 3). How many more wonders of space can they create for Series V? Let's see the wonders of time that confront the crew of a Federation Timeship. Hell, if they wanted to show some Trek history, then write an episode w/ Cpt. Braxton returning to "fix" the timeline in the 22nd century and do it there.
I just wonder how soon the premise for Series V will wear itself out. A 29th century will at least give the writers a whole new playing field. I honestly think a radical departure from what they have done in the past is the only way this francise can keep itself going without a break after 14 years.
-------
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
Maybe it will be before they have a prime directive to circumvent as a plot gimmick every other episode. Maybe there will be "insensitive" ear jokes about the Vulcans and vice versa. Maybe there will be pre-catastrophe Klingons who still look like humans.
Maybe there will be only one plot per episode.
I'm thinking more of the "duct tape"-type of imaginative engineering - with possibly references to previous episodes starting with stuff like "You remember that emergency weld I made around Centaur Antares III? It didn't hold."
Anyone care to give it a shot? Trekker bragging rights to the best list.
How about these suggestions to get you started?
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
1. Seatbelts. After being flung about the bridge for the Nth time someone, somewhere, must rediscover the lost art of strapping oneself to one's seat.
2. Fuses. Another bit of technology forgotten sometime after the 21st century. Just a couple of breakers and we can say goodbye to spark flinging controll boards and concentrate on structural members collapsing whenever the Enterprise hits a dust mote going faster than 10m/s.
Really, that's all I truly want from my SciFi TV.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
Well, I kept watching DS9 for a while after TNG had ended. I watched it regularly until "Way of the Warrior", which was when they had turned it into a "Wild West Soap Opera in Space" with religious overtones. It almost seemed to me like they had examined their "core demographic" and wanted something with more action, less plot & some "spiritual" elements. And then, for the even younger kids, they created Voyager, which was just plain ridiculous. Every single episode of Voyager I watched sucked.
Completely illogical plots, dumb basic setting ("We want to get home .. we want to get home .. will we ever make it? Oh, the pain, the sorrow .."), extremely stupid characters:
So after I watched about the first 10 episodes, I sampled the series every 20 episodes or so, with the aforementioned results. TNG was a mature series, DS9 was for ages 15-19, Voyager is for 7-14. So unless they want to combine this new series with the Teletubbies, I don't see many options to get much worse, it'll probably be similar to DS9, without the religious crap.
--
The second Startrek seires could be called
"yuppies in space". The newest Roddenberry spinoff
Andromeda is "GenX in space".
Do you even know *why* DS9 was so different from TNG? Because TNG was starting to get boring with all those nice and almost flawless characters and another series like that would be very boring. Instead, DS9 was different. A lot more shades of grey, flawed characters with dark sides and yes, perhaps not always the most positive view of the future.
Gene wouldn't have liked it that way. Well, wake up: we were not exactly getting along with the Klingons and Romulans in TOS, are we? Sure, there was no large war like the Dominion one, but there was conflict. (actually there was plenty of war, just not during the timespan of the series)
I'm glad DS9 explored some new grounds. Not yet another starship, but a station. Many reoccuring characters. True, a soap-like arc, but therefore also bigger story arcs and some continuity I *like* in TV shows.
As for Voyager: again something else. Away from Starfleet. While I would agree that could have played out better at times, the concept was good and it created some nice shows. The whole Hirogen arc was terrific. Seven of Nine is a babe but also gave us room to explore the Borg and I think they did a fine job there most of the time.
Last but not least, Insurrection. Come on, it wasn't that bad. Stop comparing it to First Contact. We all know that one was better. Look at it this way: it was definitely the best odd-numbered movie.
I am sure the new series will have shows that suck. And I am sure some shows will be very interesting and exciting to watch.
And if you really think Star Trek sucks nowadays, just ignore it and watch reruns of the shows you did like or watch other series and movies.
I'm trying to be possitive, 'cause I really want the next series to not suck too much. However, I hope the cast of characters isn't set in stone. The Chief Engineer looks like someone took "Bones" and pulled out his "Medical Officer" module in favor of a "Chief Engineer" module. A Vulcan Science Officer? An "excentric" Medical Officer? A female Communication Officer? It sounds far too much like ST:TOS (I know originality and vision are rarities in Hollywood, but a little effort would be nice). The thing that really gets me is that out of seven regular characters, only two are female. What is this, the 50's? "Women are too soft and can't cut it out here on the wild frontier?" Most of this wont make a difference if they can get a group of decent writers and actors. I just hope they can.
However, I find Andromeda to be a refreshing show. Although there are some TNG like storylines (it is a Roddenberry show after all), the universe and characters are quite interesting.
For instance, Andromeda has advanced technology like seat belts, and consoles that don't explode and kill people! The character's don't blindly love thier captain like in TNG, and the dialog is quite un-Trekish. Oh, there's no holodeck!
It's still in it's first season shakedown, still I'm hoping it will get better with time, although the other recent Roddenberry series, Earth: Final Conflict was basically unwatchable by the middle of it's second season.
Give Andromeda a shot.
The sping scifi convention in my town is
the first one I can recall in a dozen years
there is no actor from a Star Trek series or
movie appearing. The francise appears to be
winding down.
Time travel works for the occasional episode, or standalone work of fiction, viewed in isolation, purely for its "wierd thought" value. The paradoxes of time travel are fun to think about once or twice a year, but a series based on free-roaming time travellers would just be stupid.
Time-travel paradoxes are always resolved by fiat: "Yes, today you can go to yesterday and murder yourself; it doesn't really matter, as a time-traveller, you're insulated from the effects." "No, even if you don't do anything important, you'll return to a dramatically different universe." It gets boring and obnoxious quickly.
The only logically consistent bidirectional time-travel is one in which a new parallel universe is created every time someone makes a jump backwards. Which means that you never actually accomplish anything by time travelling, which is totally unsatisfying when you're faced with it for more than an hour or two.
There's just no way to make a good time-traveller series.
---
Agreed.
:/.
Someone kept pestering me to watch the re-runs of B5 on Sci-Fi (I missed the entire original run), and I was very pleasantly surprised by the quality and cohesiveness (it helps that it was almost entirely written by JMS instead of an army of vying authors). I've never liked DS9 or Voyager very much, and this new series doesn't sound promising either
There's a report that the 13 Crusade episodes are getting shown on Sci-Fi (which JMS has apparently confirmed), as well as a possible new B5 movie (which is more realistic than Crusade itself being picked up as a production series I think).
I guess my point is that people looking for good sci-fi on TV don't have to settle for Star Trek or the dreck in Sci-Fi's original shows... (I also found it very amusing that TNN is getting the Next Generation re-run rights).
:wq
Damnit! Let it die already!
The people in charge have proven they cannot write themselves out of a wet paper bag....well actually they can, but it requires a new particle of the week and 40 minutes of pure Celine Dion-grade melodrama. And no matter how bad or potentially life-changing the whole experiance is, no one will remember it ever again. There will be no mention of it, and all it's effects will be purely short term.
This pisses me off like nothing else.
- The Trek writers cannot develop characters that are remotely believeable. Only mindless, one dimensional cliche's.
- They cannot handle character development. They tried on DS9, but it was always herky-jerky and forced. People didn't develop over time, they developed in one of their two or three designated character development episodes. Even then they couldn't convince anybody with an IQ above 74 that it was remotely natural and believeable. At the end of TNG, everybody was almost exactly the same as they were Season 1. Let's not even mention Voyager.
- They cannot handle long-term story arcs. The Trek way is to start a war in one ep and forget about it for oh......8 episodes or so, with a few infrequent cut and paste mentions here and there. Even then, you can forsee the outcome 3 seasons in advance. Their "surprises" are incredibly weak and convoluted. God forbid they start a conflict in an ep that isn't the season finale!
- No character ever dies unless the actor playing them asks for more money or quits in frustration when the writers can't think of anything to do with them. Everybody has their nice 6 year contract.
- The writers cannot come up with a new and exciting story, most of it is recycled from other Trek shows, and even if they can write a script you could consider "passable" everything is neatly wrapped up by the end of the hour.
- Did I mention the Trek universe has zero consequences?
- The surroundings are always sterile and unrealistic. Unless you count the one, single "plot-device-personal-possesion" each major character has.
- Everyone is obsessed with the 20th century and makes references almost exclusively to this time period.
- The solution to any problem is a particle-of-the week/technical thing we have never heard of before. While the "realistic" and "logical" soltion is impossible because of veteron radiation or something.
- The Federation believes itself to be infallible.
- All bad guys are one-dimensional caricatures who either die or come around to the infallible Federation way of doing things. Not to mention the fact they look like 50 other aliens we have seen.
I could go on for hours.....is it any wonder why a lot of people who watch B5 for long enough get so disgusted with Trek?
It's depressing to think the brain-trust behind the past decade of incresingly mediocre Trek has been handed the reigns once again.
Oh well, let's hope "Crusade" comes back.
Any Trek refugees are welcome in the land of Babylon 5, right now Season 5 is winding up on SciFi. Season 1 should begin again on March 9th.
WARNING: Stop reading already, I've been to the bottom of this thread and it's a complete waste of time!
The only good post is:
Neither Microsoft nor Unix exist in Star Trek.
I mean, have you seen any BSoD's? Have you seen anybody at an advanced console saying "computer, command prompt tar space hyphen exs vee eff space less than space data's new firmware dot bin greater than slash dev slash data brain pipe execute"?
Let get back to The Lone Gunmen...
Think about it. The insides of a current Shuttle or Advanced Jet look far more high tech and flashy than the stuff in the original series.
:)
TOS worked because it looked better than the technology of the day. That is no longer the case and people will notice and not like it. Knobs, buttons and flashing lights ? Nope.
What I expect is an actual glass like windscreen on this baby with a heads up display for some controls. This will likely be a smaller ship than even Voyager and will actually land frequently. If it doesn't land then the shutlecraft will be huge by comparison. They won't be able to explain the backward steps in appearance of TOS and hopefully won't have to.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
When I flipped it on the first thing I heard was captain Kunt Moldgrow's scratchy voice saying "We're trappeed inside the event horizon of a black hole- fire photon torpedoes", and I knew then that I could never again watch it.
Sure the plots may have worn thin, but the next generation cast was a thousand times better.
I hope they brink back yoda, he is my favorite star trek character. Since he trained jedi for over 800 years, I am sure that he was around when the federation was formed. This would be a wonderful tribute to Gene Roddenbery: May the Force be with You.
This message was encrypted with rot-26 cryptography.
Damnit, I wish they'd come up with a storyline which DOESN'T involve a Federation crew, but still in the Star Trek universe. Something where the crew isn't all the "best of the best", and always going around preaching goody-goody stuff.
:)
Maybe a trader-of-ill-repute (read: smuggler) operating on the fringes of Federation space, in a ship which is constantly in need of repairs and/or imaginative engineering, and where the basic goal is survival first, money second - and the great lengths they go for the second will often result in desperate moves to do the first.
They could have a female Klingon "captain", who has a tendency to get drunk, with the resultant havoc