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Babylon 5 Creator Pitches Trek
pdawerks writes "According to Sci-Fi Wire, Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski told fans on a B5 Usenet group that he and Dark Skies creator Bryce Zabel have put together an idea for a new Star Trek series, which he said would revive the ailing franchise. 'I got together [with Zabel] and wrote a treatment earlier this year that specified how to save [Star Trek] and develop a series that would restore the series in a big way,' Straczynski wrote. 'I actually think it could be a hell of a show. Whether that ever goes anywhere with Paramount, who knows?'"
...is a rest. For about 10 years. I don't say that unkindly...I like Star Trek, but familiarity breeds contempt. Only time can make it fresh at this point. Well that and interesting characters, decent writing, and fewer solutions that involve reversing the polarity of something and shooting it out the deflector. But I digress.
"Captain, it's a planet where they allow men to marry men and women to marry women!"
"Well, that's something Earth had to recognise as a fundamental human right..."
"But, Captain, they're doing it in polygamus unions!"
"WHAT!?!? Helm to starboard! Weapons officer, load all topedo tubes! Raze their capitol!!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
New title of series: Start Trek: ?
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
Put it in stasis for 20 years. It will be a lot fresher to a new generation when it come out.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
As the series centers around Wesley's travels around the galaxy as a higher being.
-- Not Wil Wheaton
If the writers are reading this I have an idea for the pilot.
Captain Archer of enterprise saves the life of a crew mate and SUDDENLY disappears in a flash of blue. He awakes to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that are not his own...
I know what you guys are thinking...
"OH.... BOY"
...have Rick Berman shot, drawn, quartered, and then really hurt. That man has done nothing but ride the noble stallion, passed on by Roddenberry, that was once Star Trek to death, and after the horse died, Berman has been beating the fucker with a stick for a few years.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
What irritated me the most about Berman ruining the Star Trek universe was that it had so much great potential. And he just pissed it away. This could be something very, very cool. I really think that these guys, for lacking of a better description, get it.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
If he has enough ideas to make another trek show, he might as well spend the time to create another series in the B5 universe - it will be better received.
ANYTHING except this nonsense about history needing a DUMBASS. I mean really! Archer goes around, screwing up everything in his path, gets all "in-your-face" pissy over his stupid DOG, then somehow is a requirement to the founding of the FEDERATION? God! No wonder we haven't heard about Archer before! Everyone tried to forget the fact that HISTORY NEEDS A DUMBASS.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
is a disgrace. I couldn't bear watching it - this from a die hard Trek Fan. I hear it has gotten better, but I'm not sure I believe it...
Scott Bakula should have started making Quantum Leap episodes again.
Why the fuck was this posted in science? :)
Star trek is just a soap series for geeks...
...from Berman, Straczynski can.
Technoli
I sure hope it goes someplace because the current incarnation is little more than recycled soap opera story lines in a pseudo-science fiction format.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I've watched every single ep of B5 (plus the mini movies), as well as Voyager (one of the ST series with consistently good eps). I must say the continuity and depth of the B5 storyline, as well as the most excellent script writing (entire dialog of "In the Beginning", a mini movie, are written and published as a novel).
I can't wait to see Straczynski take up a new ST series. He's one who can revive the ST franchise.
VIVA1023.com | Political Fashion.
Star Trek TNG was the best series by far. What made it great was the chemistry of the crew. Enterprise has lost ratings, in my opinion, due to the crew simply not having good chemistry...it's just not as believable a show because the interactions of the crew seem contrived at times. The captain, especially, puts too much effort into his acting. Patrick Stewart captured the fans because of his ability to convince the audience he wasn't faking it (like any good actor incidentally) Any new series would really have to focus on crew chemistry to gain a fan base
that this is going to ride the wave and give us:
Str Trek:CSI
I really need to sell my TV.
Yay...
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
this
Apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem, apparently you can apply a Babylon 5 solution to a Star Trek problem!
Let's a have a Star Trek with the original crazy plots involving midgets and special powers...
For The Best Jazz/Hip-hop fusion > COlD DUCK
Didn't Joe pitch a Star Trek series to TPTB before?
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Which chick will be cast as the crewmember with large breasts? Maybe Lindsay Lohan is looking for Star Trek work.
This show will follow a group of friends in a well-to-do Starship, their trials and tribulations, and the problems they encounter in growing up. It will show the world that being young, beautiful, rich ensigns on a Starship is not all fun all the time.
Bab5 guy first went to Star Trek guys with the idea of Babylon 5. But they didn't accept the "space station" suggestion at that time, so Bab5 was born independently.
Later Star Trek guys came up with DS9. (no comments here)
Now, I wonder what will be different.
High school Trekker nerds being harassed by bullies. I'd watch that.
Star Trek is dead!
netcraft confirms it...
One more FEKKIN Star Trek spinoff! How bout doing something useful! Like getting Farscape back!
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
JMS once talked about his doing a trek series. It was back in the hieght of B5 and someone asked him what he would do if Paramount handed him a Trek series. He said something along the lines of (can't find it on Google Groups right now): I'd start by getting away from the federation. Kill off a few people so the fans know that this is not going to be the same-old and then start to tell some interesting stories.
It was funny because he said that before Voyager and Andromeda (which was originally a Trek series about the fall of the Federation as Rodenbury had pitched it) came out, and the good points of BOTH of those series were exactly that: getting away from the Federation and establishing their own stories. Woefully Voyager just entrenched itself in its own static mythos and Andromeda as plagued by execs that couldn't stand how dark it was.
Personally I don't see JMS being able to play ball with Paramount. I think he'd last 3-6 months tops before he blew up at them and walked. He's just not enough of a political animial (his detractors would say he's too much of one) to be able to put up with it.
That episode of ST:TNG was one of the most spiritual. Here's Wesley, trying to be like his Dad. He finally figures out that he's not his dad and his destiny is somewhere/something else. I'm kind of disappointed that he had to be turned into a demigod of sort, but the underlying(grammar?) theme is all the same - he has to become his own man.
Think about it, Star Trek is all about being in Star Fleet. What if you don't want to be in Star Fleet in the Star Trek universe? Do you go around and work for the Forangi(sp?)?
There's a lot to be done still with the ST Universe.Come on Malda, this is "News for Nerds"! Trek is large enough to deserve a separate category icon (even dispite of "Star Trek: Enterprise").
I suggest either a picture of the Original TOS Enterprise (NCC-1701 without any suffix) flying towards the user or a Starfleet Emblem.
You know it makes sense!
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
Voyager (one of the ST series with consistently good eps)
Which Voyager were you watching?
Let's get ready to rumble......
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
well, JMS did try a Trek-like B5 followup that didnt quite pan out -- Babylon Project Crusade.
If he put as much planning for Crusade as he did for B5, there's a lot of ideas for him to recycle into a new ST series.
Fascinating.
Does that mean he'll solve that pesky "The universe resets at the end of every episode" bug?
And will be get the "Non-trivial character development" patch?
Cool.
My lord, this would be cool. A Trek Series with a plot.
We haven't seen that in ages.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Why not leave Trek in it's dilapidated, polarity-inverted Universe, and instead create another series in the Babylon 5 one?
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
It's a totally fresh concept. They're merging Star Trek and Babylon 5. It's Star Trek only with a space station instead of a... oh, nevermind...
Unlike others who think that Star Trek needs to go on 'vacation' I don't agree. There is little value to bringing Trek back 10 years from now if its going to be the same as it is today. Berman and Braga are a plague on the Trek franchise that needs to be removed. It is clear that they are too burned out on this franchise do anything useful. For goodness sakes, they have reduced the process of the founding of the Federation into a romp through time. Yeah, creating this massive Federation 'empire' is just too damn boring. I mean all the species, conflicts and technologies that would have to be created would just be too bland to watch.
:)
The problem is with the writing, not the franchise. Its just not interesting anymore - and this latest travesty (Enterprise) is just adding insult to injury. Blue alien nazis? Someone get these clowns outta here
Babylon 5 Creator Pitches Trek
Somebody needed to pitch it.
It's been really stinking up the place for a while.
(I actually watched the last half of the "Search for Spock" movie last night. Man, that dog did not improve with age -- not to mention that Bones and Scotty looked pretty aged when it first came out.)
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Jake Sisko didn't want to be in Starfleet like his father, he wanted to be a news reporter/writer... and he was able to follow that, even staying on the station during Dominion occupation. The father/son thing has actually been a big part of a lot of characters.
Star trek is/was just a Sci-Fi Soap.
Most episodes were a simple science fiction idea, combined with lots of character interaction and development.
Good characters made people identify and stick around.
An interesting idea, or bit of action would get people to pay attention and potentially buy in.
DS9 payed too much attention to the characters and lacked the variety of different ideas.
Voyager I thought did a pretty good job moving back to ideas and characters.
Enterprise I don't know, kinda stopped watching TV, this whole "grown up" life thing gets in the way a lot.
According to the article, Manny Coto is being handed the reins of Enterprise as the executive producer/"show runner". This is a good thing.
Rick Berman can't do it. He's proven it. Trek started heading downhill once Michael Piller quit running the show. Bringing in some new blood can only help.
I'd like to see a JMS-run Trek. If the powers that be stand back and let him run the show, or, heck, anybody with a track record better than Berman's, things will get better.
That said, there's something about Enterprise. I still watch it, and I'm still not sure why...
-JDF
Personally I don't see JMS being able to play ball with Paramount. I think he'd last 3-6 months tops before he blew up at them and walked.
Babylon 5 was extraordinary for two reasons:
(1) An astronomically talented writer
(2) Said writer having complete creative control over the show
That is why Babylon 5 was able to be what it was: an utterly fantastic story stretched over five seasons. JMS himself has said that he had the general structure and philosophy of the story laid down from day one.
I don't see item #2 having a hell's chance of survival at Paramount, do you?
The coolest voice ever.
And I think a great (paraphrased) line from it was
"...Nostalgia belongs in a museum...and you have to decide if you're running a museum, or you're running a Casino..."
Star Trek with Captain Kirk was new original and fun. Star Trek with Captain Picard was a great remake of the original. Star Trek Deep Space Nine seemed like the UPN-Space-Ghetto show and not so much of a Star Trek...Star Trek Voyager had an interesting premise, but the characters seemed to fall apart with me giving barely a rats ass if anything bad would have happened to them. Star Trek Enterprise is again a remake, but done in an original way much like Generations, but prequils don't hold my interest nearly enough as (good) sequels.
I think we've done enough with Star Trek and i'd rather see the creativeness go somewhere else. I liked a lot of the ideas behind shows like Babylon5, Farscape and (very very little) of Lexx. But the calibur of acting and dialogue wasn't always there. Stargate seems to be the only sci-fi show of this era that really impresses and I think has the ability to continue for a while, but we'll see, they have a new spin off coming along and it could totally suck without Macgyver.
Ave Molech Setting
Other clues he's posted tell us this is "The Memory of Shadows" a possible movie/miniseries/something.
1 of the relevant JMS News postings
Also mentioned is info on Crusade DVDs and a new book series.
The Q are basically omnipotent. The Shadows were not. The Shadows lose.
I would be interested in seeing the posibilities this brings up. With luck, political climate will not take control and the guys from B5 will be given a shot. :)
While I am not a viewer of B5 (ducking the boo's and hisses), it seems very popular so maybe they could enhance Enterprise (can't really hurt).
It's a shame, I am a big fan of Star Trek (use to watch it with my father every saturday) but it has slid downhil - and I don't lose any sleep if I miss episodes (I missed almost this entire season).
Btw, I have never read such funny posts as I have today on this thread!!! I wish I had some mod points
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
"Sam, you won't believe what I'm about to tell you..."
***
I think you might be right, but if anybody could salvage Star Trek, it's Straczynski. Babylon 5 is truly one of the best though out sci-fi programs to have aired on television. His focus on a defined and limited story arc really gave the show a sense of purpose from week to week that I think is totally lacking in most of the Star Trek spinoffs.
The biggest problem, I believe, with Star Trek is that they've tended to let the show ride on random events rather than running plots. The times when they have gone to more of a story arc they have made the shows far more worthwhile.
Enterprise has done this to some extent over the last season, tracking down the Xindi and it really helped give the show some energy. Deep Space nine had the same sort of thing happen when they had the shape shifter backed armada coming to wipe out their part of the galaxy. ST:TNG has the Borg and a few other running threads.
But overall, with Star Trek, these runing plots have always felt kinda tacked on. Something to drive a season finale, etc. I think starting a new series with a defined story arc over a fixed period like they did with Babylon 5 would really do well.
For example, perhaps do a series that's entirely focussed on the events that take place during the creation of a peace accord with the Klingons. Pick some key moment in federation history and depict it's course over a period of time. Project star trek out into the future and have some run in with a new species perhaps? What about a major civil war with the federation? There's a lot that can be done with this that could really make for an interesting show.
But anyhow, if they want to go that direction and really freshen the show, I think they can. If they try to crank out yet another bland spinoff, it's going to fail. So if they don't want to try something truly new with it, they need to mothball it for like 20 years. Then they can go back and do the same tired old concept again.
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Straczynski can.
In-freaking-deed. The Babylon 5 storyline possesses breadth and depth that cement the show's place as a rare science-fiction treasure, on the level of anything concocted by Bradbury or Clarke. We are not likely to see anything of that level of accomplishment for a long time--at least on television.
That said, if Straczynski were to work with Paramount, and Paramount didn't get their stupid clumsy hands into his game... he would have a very, very good chance of pulling Star Trek out of the hellpit it's been in for the last several years. It might not be Babylon 5 caliber, and it definitely wouldn't be Star Trek the way anyone was expecting, but it would be a damned good story and a damned good show.
The coolest voice ever.
My question: Why is he in control? He may own/control the rights and there's nothing to be done about it - even by Majel Baret.
Please ,Please prove me wrong!!!
When the Enterprise is facing yet another crisis and someone suggests rerouting the coffee machine output through a highly focused baryeon ray and then reverse polarizing it through the deflector dish, instead of the usual "Yes that might just work" whats really needed is for more of the other crew members to adopt completely bemused expessions and ask "What the Fuck are you babbling about????", "Is this another one of your loon ideas that involves writing a subroutine in less than 3 seconds with your left hand?", or "through the what dish?, will that affect Sky Sports reception?". Why does no one ever says "what?" on Star Trek, no matter how preposterous the proposed solution, enquiring minds want to know.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
A friend of mine told me about a series of Star Trek that just released a pilot episode and is being looked at. It seems to be a continuation of the original series and will use amatuers as the crew and everything.
The one I am referring to is the Star Trek - New Voyages site.
Even though I share the same name as one of the actors who played in Trek, I'm not much of a follower. Maybe some others on Slashdot who are in the know could validate this?
root 10956 5164 0 Oct 22 - 0:23 sendmail: rejecting connections: load average: 70 (isn't sendmail just too kind)
No. What Trek needs is a writer of JMS's calibre to plan a five-year arc with all manner of arcs, loops, time-travel paradoxes, and an epic scope to blow the viewer's mind in the same way that B5 did.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Well, there's a limit to how much I'm going to build up the myth of Roddenberry. After all, his insistence that there were no sane villians or informed disagreements -- Roddenberry insisted all conflict was caused by insanity or ignorance -- meant that Next Generation was pretty dull in the first two seasons.
This belief of his is also why Star Trek is chock full of evil madmen, but has few interesting large scale conflicts.
It was only as Roddenberry gave up control of the series that the show became more dramatic. Roddenberry was deeply uncomfortable with the idea of the Borg, and presumably he would have hated the way Deep Space Nine went once the Dominion War began.
I've always thought it would be great if there were a Federation Civil War. After all, the Federation appears to have an incredibly weak central government (that Prime Directive has actually been invoked to describe why the central government can't interfere with a member planet) and the Federation is spread over a large area, with only slow travel between the edges (apparently, it would take years to cross the Federation).
But because of Roddenberry's guiding principles, that'll probably never happen. "Enlightened people of the future will never fight each other."
Yawn.
Check out my blog: My Galaxy is Milky Way Adjacent
Well lets see how would JMS make a new Star Trek... I see an opening of Q and Picard, Picard is dead and Q is talking to him. Q explains that, everything since the end of TNG was crap, he doesn't buy this slip stream stuff, why does the borg queen have to be scary sexy? And why on earth is a woman with a phaser up her butt running around in the delta quadrant? So Q decides to change everything, throws the federation into ruins, eradicates the founders, etc. Q turns to Picard and says "now watch the crew on that ship that looks like a flying chicken.. this'll get interesting!"
if it involves Starfleet Academy and shuttle bay seven-and-three-quarters, tell 'em to forget it.
Would he bring Harlan Ellison along with him? Given previous history, I doubt that would take off. :-)
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Captain: What happen??
Ensign: Someone beamed up us the bomb!!
An intergalactic communications system has been created. Kirk is captured by profit hungry exploiters of the system and forced to act as spokesman. Trusting Kirk, millions shell out their hard earned credits for unnecessary "discount" space travel. In effort to turn attention away from their evil deeds, the profiteers find the evil Spock, shave the goatee, and try to portray humorous interactions between the two.
How many stories are there, really, that will fit into a one-hour TV slot? The universe may or may not be finite, but plot possibilities certainly are.
Which is why new shows seem like such dreadful, bloodless retreads of old ones. We've seen all the characters and pretty much every idea you could ever squeeze onto the deck of a starship.
There's nothing really *wrong* with ST. It's just played-out.
If ST could learn one thing from Babylon 5, it would be plot and character development. In the original series, the fact that Kirk and the others were flying through space was somewhat incidental. We might have enjoyed it just as much if the same actors had been set in a western.
Perhaps ST could move toward the sort of long-term plot arcs we saw in Babylon 5, and have come to expect from series like the Sopranos. Freed from the format of episodic drama -- and the crushing weight of our expectations -- Star Trek might be free to again explore the Undiscovered Country.
That would be kinda nice.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
...if I get to be the Captain this time. Really, there have been enough Star Trek series that it is definitely My Turn.
Who did what now?
As wonderful as it might be to have a new Star Trek series, there is one axiom about this process: It is absolutely impossible for a creative person to efficiently obtain approval for a new project from a large company.
Proof:
Disney turned down Lord of the Rings
Sony turned down Everquest
Electronic Arts tried to cancel the Sims three times
MGM turned down Gone with the Wind
Now, if they don't mind spending $10,000 a day from the moment they make the first phone call, great. Otherwise, find a way to do it without conference rooms, or it's going to be nothing but anguish.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
I would happily sacrifice the whole star trek franchise to have Fire Fly back.
Using the Star Trek ship as an icon will probably get /. sued - especially under the current IP law.
Well if JMS is going to Trek, he should have Bill Mummy and Jeff Conaway on the show as morale officers.
I make my face look like this and concerned words come out.
Hey, why don't we all come up with a bunch of story ideas for the new series, and post them here so that JMZ can read them!
dinner: it's what's for beer
Just don't let Fox have the rights to air it.
Just combine it with 'Rocky Horror Picture Show" -instant camp - and what a great reason to sing "time warp"!!
I think a great movie, if not series, would be all about the Borg. How the first nanobytes took control of the first specieis (species 001) and how the collective was created. No Federeation, no Vulcans, etc.. just BORG.
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Probably the one without the warp particles and the intelligent deuterium ore.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Babylon 5? Trite concept. And the dialog? So fucking dull. I mean - cliche after cliche.
So yeah, he's ready to take over Star Trek and keep churning out drivel.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Finally they can all put to rest the Babylon 5 vs Star Trek geek battles. If we could then just bring in Star Wars with a few Star Destroyers we can hve the epic battle a la the five armies battles in 'The Hobbit'.
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
Intellectual Property. Not Internet Protocol.
This is exactly what Enterprise had been doing. People bash it a lot, but I kind of like it. Season 3 last was really nice, especially towards the ending, but the cliffhanger was really lame.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
(Opening comm channel to the UPN Flagship Berman...)
"Captain Berman, First Officer Braga. Only one man - J. M. Straczynski - has done battle with broadcast studio executives while being able to produce five years of good science fiction television. He is behind me. You are front of me. If your employer values the deep-space franchise, be somewhere else!"
Looking at the big picture, the bad thing about prequels is the fact that they need to fit into a universe which we know so much about already. Anything that slightly diverges from what we all know becomes blasphemy. If Enterprise came after TOS instead of TNG we might be viewing it differently.
Taking the fact that it came after 3 concurrent sequels into account, a new prequel would have been better if it didn't actively follow the formation of the Federation. How awesome would a series about the rise of the Klingons or the Romulans be? There's so much there that's never been explained and it would be DIFFERENT. The whole feel of a Klingon or Romulan show would peak new interest because we'd see the Federation from a different light. That would be fresh, that would be new.
that would be CSI: riza, wouldn't it?
ed
I remember cringing at some of the earlier TNG episodes that ended with Riker making some inane remark and Picard saying "Agreed!" * YAWN *
I find it very hard to believe that this state of utopia will ever be reached, because every improvement in society brings its own drawbacks. For example, the richest country in the world today has still not managed to find happiness, look at the sheer size of the shrink and self-help industry. The nation with the highest car-ownership in the world has brought with it an epidemic of obesity and enormous environmental problems. Bottom line, for every problem you solve in society, another is created. This is something that's missing from the humans in the Trek universe.
Lastly, from a drama point of view, people happily getting along makes for unbelievably boring TV. Remember the Itchy & Scratchy episodes where they became best friends? All the kids in Springfield started switching off their TVs and went out to play. We demand TV that keeps us indoors!!!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Here's a good course of action:
1. cancel the shows that are still on
2. destroy any archives of them
3. force Trekkies to move out of their parent's house
4. get said Trekkies some v-to-the-gina.
5. ?????
6. Profit!
http://cassettefetish.com
The original series challenged a lot of commonly held social values, sometimes having a hard time getting past network Standards & Practices censors. If they make the episodes topical to today's world issues they should certainly stir more interest as people either think to themselves 'Yeah, that's right, that is unfair!' or 'No, that's better the way it is, we shouldn't change!'
I think you are vastly overestimating people. The sad fact is that the majority of people do not want to be challenged by their TV. They use it as a way to unwind after a day. That's why mindless drivel such as "The Bachelor" or "Watch Random People Completely Rearrange And Fuck Up Someone's House" are such hits. I disagree with you that most people want "episodes topical to today's world issues". We geeks might want that but not the average person. They want to pull the blanket over their heads and forget about the increasingly scary world out there.
And I also suspect that people are less willing to have their beliefs challenged in this day and age. I don't have an idea why that is. But I think classic Trek episodes like Arena from TOS or the TNG episode featuring the persecution of a sexual "deviant" are more likely to infuriate a large segment of the audience then in the past. And I think executives are scared of the power that angry viewers can have. The internet allows people to organize meaningful boycotts much more effectively than in the 60s or 90s. And keep in mind that with today's array of channels to watch, if a program rubs someone the wrong way they will switch to one of the other 50 channels they have and never come back. Back when TOS was a hit, there were so few choices on what to watch that audiences probably stuck around and watched more of the show rather than clicking the channel as soon as they got a little offended.
I think the suits are playing it safe by producing bland, inoffensive, and uninteresting entertainment because it's less risky to them.GMD
watch this
Al Qaeda is a terror group with has nothing to do with semitic and arbian races.
Don't be fouled by NaziS slipping subcontinuous racist proganda in their posts.
...is a coffin. I say just chock this one up to the shows that have jumped the shark. There isn't anything that they could really do to save ST as a television series. They have some potential as a movie franchise, but they need to get some entirely new script-writers and totally break away from all previously used characters. And I still want to know what happened to the Klingons' foreheads.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
yes, girls read /. too...
How about a Wonder Woman series that brings back all the bondage and female domination themes from the original Dr. Marston issues? Put it on HBO and go nuts.
--- Ban humanity.
ST has become fashionable to hate. It used to be just a geek thing but now even geeks are trying to be hip by saying they don't like it.
If you look at the recent ST series I think the fault is that they tried to be too popular. Instead of aiming at their main audience they tried to broaden it and managed to loose both their old audience and not aquire a new one.
ST:TNG was too softly and soapy (it even had the evil twin sister kinda stuff), Deep Space 9 became a true soap, going away from the 1 hour episodes into an neverending story with returning cast members. Dynasty in space. Voyager never stopped whining. Enterprise is so bad I didn't even watch past ep3. And I am very forgiving to ST.
Any new series needs to go back to the roots. 1 hour episodes of a small crew exploring the universe. No whining, no soul searching. Just doing things. Focus on the old fans, they kept the franchise going for decades, we are ready to be milked more. Just don't insult us anymore.
Oh and shoot the person that came up with the holochamber idea. These guys are out exploring space and the best they can do for excitement is do fantasy games indoors? Losers.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Why do we mark history by wars?
Because it's exciting and it drives people.
If you think back to the best and most memorable episodes of ST, TNG, DS9, or B5 they nearly all involved major conflict, or wars, and (potentially) loss of life. Those shows (and it works in real life, too) were able to bring out the most intense aspects of the characters simultaneously with the coolest gadgets, best ships and special effects.
The reason why TNG seemed so lame was because they were trying to be "nice" and hardly ever used their phasers - until the borg showed up - some of the most memorable episodes.
Bonanza was on for a lot longer than any of the ST shows, and managed to stay watchable. The problem with the current incarnations of ST is their constant theme of teenage angst stops being interesting for teens and non-teens alike. Yes, JMS could breathe some life back into that old series, but I'd rather that they just laid it to rest.
I wonder how JMS would've gotten along with them. IIRC he originally tried to sell the B5 concept to Berman and co. and was told no
Surprise surprise, DS9 came out soon after.
As its part of a lengthy thread with further JMS posts, some fans might wish to mine for further data...
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Which role will Walter Koening play?
Ya know what ST always lacked? Those trite cross-series cameos that sitcoms would do... like maybe get Mimi from Drew Carey on as a token space alien, or... or... well, no. ST is too stick-a-fork-in-it-done, even for that.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
Interesting story I heard a few years back: JMS approached Paramount with the idea for B5, but was turned down (probably due to the success of TNG at the time).
In 1994 saw the debut of 2 Sci-Fi series based on a spacestation - DS9 (3 Jan) and B5 (22 Feb).
Ironic, or did Berman really take the idea from JMS?
I wonder how well that might have worked though. I love B5 and almost everything JMS has written since. However, good or bad, when he doesn't get his way, he will walk away from a project. He likes to be in full creative control.
After Crusade was killed by TNT's influence, I think JMS took a lesson from that. He had a great comic series called Rising Stars. He said in the same place as the above comments, that the final issues would be finally out later this year. It took so long because he and Top Cow were having contract and money issues and he wouldn't finish until it was settled.
He also recently left Showtime's Jeremiah over creative differences.
Fortunately, he has been happy with Marvel and now the B5 movie (TMOS or The Memory of Shadows) is being made.
I would have loved to be a fly on that wall though when Paramount came to him to help. I wonder if they talked ideas, etc. Interesting that Enterprise chose to do a season long story arc for this season. Something B5 did with lots of success (hell, it was a 5 season long arc, well 4).
People should be able to submit story ideas and scripts, and have others review them, all through ther website. Kind of like this site, I guess, but the other users get to vote on good stories. So the website just turns into this big story making machine. They would possibly come across some brilliant screen writers lurking somewhere on the net that would provide them with unbelievable material.
I wonder what ever happened to Q. Why they did not make him the bad guy for a movie. They could do anything with him as the baddie.
I mean look at what he did to them
1. He was the first villian in the show.
2. He introduced the Enterprise to the Borg. Until then, the Borg were at the outskirts of Federation space in the Romulan Neutral Zone. Now, they were on the way to Earth. All Q's fault.
3. He was the villian in countless other stories.
4. He was the final villian in TNG's finale.
Or if not Q, work Q in with him running to the Enterprise for help again. The only trap such a story holds, is how to create a threat with someone so powerful and not have a plot device, etc to save the day in the end (I believe that is called a McGuffan or something).
But the TNG writters have already delt with that issue before. They'd have to expand it, just do it carefully.
The Xindi story arc was pretty good. A lot of the complaints I am seeing about Star Trek in general do not aptly describe Enterprise as it was last season. There were consequences, and while none of the major characters died. Some were changed dramatically, and possibly forever. And with the cliffhanger at the end of the last episode, they could go in several directions with the show.
What makes Enterprise different from Next Gen is that the episodes are more serial (less episodic). The previous episode usually impact the next episode. And past episodes have frequently impacted following episodes (Andorians, Star Fleet politics, gaining the trust of Vulcans, not to mention the whole Temporal War)
Finally, Star Trek is seems to be gaining the social comentary it once had in the original series. The Xindi war, especially the last few episodes, seemed to be makeing the same arguement those who support and those who are against the Iraqi War are making.
I really think folks should give the show a chance. Tivo a few reruns. Like Farscape, watch at least three to get what's going on.
Go Gusties
Use some CGI and *get the hell rid of the idea that EVERY friggin' intelligent species in the universe is a damn humanoid*.
Human/centipedal interaction on a regular basis beats human/klingon/romulan/..... with head creases interaction. Yeesh.
I know, what we need is Star Trek: Crusade! With JMS's help we can strive to create a series even more gruesomely awful than Voyager!
What i want, is a new StarTrek-series about the Klingon Empire. The story of an Klingon House or
a fleet of battleships in an conflict. I've seen enough of the federation...
Sadly there is only one thing that can safe the Star Trek universe (and thus the Franchise):
a COMPLETE rehaul
By now there are hundreds (thousands?) of methods to solve impossible sitations, just by reversing the polarity of something (and yet these methods will only be used ONCE, no matter how benificial the effects are - probably some big company instantly gets the patents once the crew uses them once - I blame the Ferengi)
There are paradoxes and plotholes large enough to dump an entire series in, to never be seen again (Enterprise would be my favorite here...) and if I see one more pointless time travel...
The universe needs a complete overhaul, remove all the horrible glitches from the official Canon (as far as possible) and then start with a clean plate. (e.g. the Borg - if you HAVE to have a Borg "Queen" - how about having the Queen just be an avatar of the Collective will? Make her less bitchy and more emotionless like the Borg used to be and most of the fans would no longer be out to stake you)
And honestly, I think Michael Straczynski and Bryce Zabel might be able to do that.
I know, probably they will only create another ST Series - but hey, one can dream, right? (and still, even if they "only" create another series - at least its gonna be less sucky that Enterprise)
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
While it started out slow, DS9 was the deepest Trek series, because for the most part everything was confined to the station rather than a roving ship exploring new worlds, the plots revolved more around the characters and larger story arcs, rather than on what wierd new planet they'd have to deal with. Add epic wars and space battles, mysticism, emotion, cunning and deceit and you get the best Trek Series. All I need now is a thousand dollars to buy the DVDs
Umm.. isn't this equivalent as saying "JMS will shortly add Paramount to the list of companies he will never work with again?"
/Laura
I mean, he stopped working with TNT (??) over "Crusade" disputes, stopped working with Image over "Rising Stars" disputes, he's refused to do a third season of "Jeremiah" with Showtime even if offered. And it's not surprising that Marvel comics has only two writers that are allowed creative control, with no editing: JMS and Neil Gaiman.
I'll hold my breath on this one until I know I"m going to get a complete story. Don't get me wrong. JMS is amazing... but I still go to the comic book store every month hoping that somehow some miracle will occur and I will _finally_ be able to find out how Rising Stars ends...it's a shame he can't punish the company without also punishing his fans...
Uh, that (the "undiscovered country") is a reference to death, you know ...
having had to work with Bryce Zabel I can assure you all that he is satan. i was in his home office one day and saw a script on his floor called "ROBOT MOM."
He's a hack and I don't want him anywhere near anything that requires talent.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Arced stories are exactly the reason why I am not a B5 fan. My geek brain likes the modularity and completness of the short ST stories. I have the feeling that Soprano's type Star Trek format would be something the marketing department guys would love, a locked in audience. Lazy execs might go for it.
I think DS9 started off slow but improved and had some great episodes like "The Vistor" #75 (many fathers appreciated it). They introduced the "runabout" (cool ride, kinda like the winnebago of the 24th century) and the "Defiant" (one very bad ass, greatly overweaponed ship). The wormhole allowed for someone interesting plot additions. They showed us how a lot of different species lived, many more than any other ST series.
Not to be forgotten, the "Ferengi Rules of Acquisition" gave interesting insite to greed.
34 - War is good for business.
35 - Peace is good for business.
239 - Never be afraid to mislabel a product.
261 - A wealthy man can afford anything except a conscience.
Morals were well tested. A "former terrorist", Major Kira, became a respected leader while still having a few terrorist traits; interesting when one thinks of the use of the word "terrorist" today. Some "Black and White" morals were shown to have acceptable shades of grey. To many DS9 was as good as TNG. I think the exploration into the psychology of people make it a good show. Different for TNG, but still good science fiction. And yes, the long lesbian kiss.
Imagine what Straczynski and Zabel could done with it though. There's a lot of life left in the ST franchise.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
This was a strong theme running through Babylon 5 Seasons Two and Three, which culminated in the secession of Babylon 5 from Earth.
Seriously, all the good aspects that people rave about in DS9, B5 did first. DS9 was just a Paramount copy of B5, quite frankly -- almost to the point of lawsuit.
Note the first three letters in each of those sets of parentheses: TNG. That was a long time, sadly.
Star Trek: Oz.
"Derp de derp."
DS9 was first run in syndication and was never on UPN.
Space Ghetto? Not sure what this is suppose to evoke in the reader. Are you trying to say DS9 was well written with interesting characters and story lines that progressed and developed over time while being set in a Cardassian Space Station rather than a stereotypically clean and "sterilized-for-your-protection" Federation Starship? Then you're right.
The Star Trek thing needs to get back to it's roots. ( No, not Levar Burton ) I mean...what made it a real impact on Sci-Fi in the orginial series: Those hot short skirts and boots the women crew had!
Helped me ( and I am sure a lot of others ) get through puberty a lot easier thats for darn sure!
I have been watching enterprise as I could downloading eps when I missed em on tv. But alien nazis back in time? W T F? I literally groaned in disgust when I saw it at the end of the finale. what could they possibly have been thinking?
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms,
I actually liked Next Generation (got into it after the first few awkward seasons had already come and gone) but you're right, unflawed characters and literary references do not good Star Trek make.
My favorite episodes involved exactly the kind of stuff you're calling for, leaders making tough decisions and mistakes (Picard is assimilated, Riker orders a kamikazee attack) and real irony beyond "damn that prime directive".
I like the idea of conflicts that echo current world adversaries. Political fragmentation to the point of rebellion within the Federation could be quite interesting too. Sort of a macro extension of allowing character flaws.
I really wanted to like Enterprise, but pretty as it is, it doesn't do it for me. I think the series could be revitalized, without "giving it a rest", if some philosophical changes are made rather than putting a different cast in the same polarity-reversing and particle-du-jour physics scenarios where every Star Trek has gone before.
Sony owns Everquest.
The cake is a pie
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe I read that MJS was forced to let "Crusade" (follow-on show to B5) because he would not add more "Sex". So, I dont see how he can save Trek err.. what I mean to say is that Enterprise has gotten very "Sexy" (T'Pol is half-nude in many of the latest episodes) and while I dont mind this in the least, I think MJS will have a problem with this tactic. Does he propose to change it all together? BTW I watch every episode as soon as it is TIVO'd, I dont think it could get so bad that I wouldnt watch it. ;) I also have some B5 on my TIVO of which #422 is my personal favorite.
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese!
Well, I hope they don't go with the "Starfleet Academy" idea that has been rumored recently. That would be dumb. Star Trek lost momentum with Insurrection and was definitely killed with Enterprise. The pilot was excellent, the idea was interesting, but boy... the writing... the horror... the horror! They should have new rules for any upcoming ST project: (1) No captain-centric stories. (2) No more "Ensign Rodriguez, go look behind that bush and get killed by a man-eating alien while the regular cast stays here." (3) More interesting aliens, less annoying aliens (Ferengi.. puaj.) (4) DO NOT reuse ideas from previous ST projects. Be creative. There are lots of things that can be explored without remaking a couple of episodes in a movie, with new characters. Oh, we need the glory of the TNG years.
TV just doesn't have that high a priority in my life. I miss episodes. I try to make it up during reruns.
But DS9 (and season-3 Enterprise) is one long multi-part story. Miss one episode and don't get the tape (pre-Tivo, sorry) watched before the next one, and you've lost some continuity. Do it too often, and you lose the thread, and episodes become less enjoyable - making it more likely to de-prioritize another episode. Or watching the tape, I still have 2 or 3 season-3 Enterprise shows that my son and I haven't watched, yet.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I don't think JMS and trek would be a good combination. One of the things that's hrting trek now is that Berman/Braga and their cabal of writers are locked in and running the whole show. Part of the reason TNG and DS(, and even TOS suceeded is that they had a multitude of writers with different styles.
...and depsite the holy reverence that many scifi fans place on b5, it was not without its flaws. The overall story arc was very ambitious and well thought-out, but many parts of the story - the dialogue was heavy-handed, foreshadowing (no pun intended) was overused as a plot device and frankly dind't always need a riddle-talking alien to be accomplished, etc. b5 was good TV, and certainly surpasses Voyager and most of TNG in quality, but I can't really see JMS helming a show whose canon, universe, and fanbase he can't entirely control. Nor can I see his particular philosophy working especially well with the established continuity. If JMS were going to "Save" trek he'd have to let go of some of teh creative control to allow people to fill in where he's weak, and his track record on such things isn't the best.
Meanwhile, JMS wrote nearly all of b5. And that was in fact one of the things that I felt worked to its detriment. The wrtier's flaws quickly become the show's flaws, and that's one of the things killing trek right now.
----
"I used to listen to Null Device before they sold out."
I want more Babylon 5 and Firefly!
-- What's this '-r *' file doing here? -- Oh well, a simple 'rm' should do the trick.
Uh, that (the "undiscovered country") is a reference to death, you know ...
No, you dope, it's a reference to the FUTURE.
I mean, I have no problem with you having not watched ST:VI in general, but if you're going to make snide comments that reference it, you really should try to know what the heck you're talking about.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Second to time travel, the borg are the most overplayed concept in Trek.
The anime franchise Gundam has been running much longer without interruption than Trek, and unsurprisingly, they ran into the same problem: an over-complicated timeline which advanced the clock but did little more than retread the same territory.
Give them credit for the way they got out of this mess: they shut down the original timeline and brought in outside creators, giving them the keys to the Gundam franchise for a year, letting them do new shows in alternate universes, using whatever elements of Gundam they liked and dispensing with the rest. The resulting was a nice revival of the franchise: Yasuhiro Imagawa based "G Gundam" in a crazy international robot-fighting competition, while Masashi Ikeda took the "pretty boy team" approach of his "Ronin Warriors" ("Yoroiden Samurai Troopers") to create the five troubled pretty-boy pilots of the atypically girl-friendly "Gundam Wing". And when they flop, like "Gundam X", you only burn off a year of the franchise (et tu, Enterprise?)
You can see the same approach in the recent "Gundam Seed". Details are different - psychic "newtypes" from the original series have given way to genetically modified "coordinators" - but there's a pleasant mix of the familiar and the new.
Bringing in JMS would be a commendably daring move. But for my money, give him one season in an alternate universe and then bring in someone else. Imagine what Spike Jonze... or Spike Lee, for that matter... could do with the Trek franchise.
--realinvalidname"From:jmsatb5@aol.com (jms at b5)
Subject:re: various from jms
To:rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Date:6/17/2004 2:43:33 PM
>> John W. Kennedy wrote:
>>> Over on one of the British B5 groups, they've been speculating that
>>> you're about to take over "Enterprise", but unless you've suddenly
>>> started using the word "series" in the British TV sense (i.e., what US
>>> TV calls a "season [of a series]"), that's out.
>>
>> Enterprise has already been taken over by Manny Cotto. And why would jms
>> go and work for Star Trek??
>Manny Coto is, I believe, show runner; not EP.
No, just to clarify, though I got a call last year about coming onto
Enterprise, offering an EP position, and declined, the series I mentioned has
nothing to do with any current series, it's a new show. As for Manny, he's a
good writer, and left to his own devices, I think he could be a big help over
there without the other powers that be impeding the process.
Amusingly enough, on the Trek front, Bryce Zabel (the creator of Dark Skies)
and I got together and wrote a treatment earlier this year that specified how
to save ST and develop a series that would restore the series in a big way. I
actually think it could be a hell of a show. Whether that ever goes anywhere
with Paramount, who knows?
jms
(jmsatb5@aol.com)
(all message content (c) 2004 by synthetic worlds, ltd.,
permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine
and don't send me story ideas)"
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I agree with you that B5 might of "inspired" better writing and better plots for DS9. B5 was good for tv scifi in that it "raised the bar" in good writing.
Your comment is indeed insightful.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
that's all the chemistry any show needs
I love Star Trek, but one of the things that's always annoyed me about it is the cultural elitism. Snobbery, of sorts.
It really started with TNG. All the music they listen to is classical, or dull jazz. Reading classic literature seems to be the preferred method of entertainment, aside from the holodeck. They LOVE to do stuff like quote Shakespeare. They all seem too... refined.
Yes, there will always be a high brow crowd... but who's to say that Starfleet crew members don't love a bit of the low brow culture?
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
I have always been a big fan of the 50's and 60's pulp science fiction. One theme that has never been translated to TV is the Space Trader.
Now I know the Ferengi are not the most popular of species, but it would be great to do a trader show. Wandering the universe buying low and selling high. Smuggling goods past imoral embargos. Always searching for that elusive Proffit!
For one, it would show space as an exploited resource instead of a conquered frontier. Profit is a better reason to explore the universe anyway. It would allow us to explore some social themes associated with big business, trade relations, political embargos...
Just my $0.02
Insert Generic Sig Here:
Why in the world is this entertainment story in the "science" category on slashdot? Surely the editors can differentiate between "science fiction" and "science", can't they?
And to make matters worse, neither the story about StarshipOne going into space nor the story about fuel-cells for laptops were put into the science cateogry. Surely at least the first of those (if not both) should have been classified as science.
..wayne..
The unknown extra always dies on ST away missions.
.. hello Ensign Extra! Muarhhaa haaa haaaa
With JMS in the picture, the characters that have been build up for a while are more likely to get axed!
Bye, bye Worf, Picard and Data
Gene Roddenbury created Trek, but Gene Coon made it good. It took years and a captive audiance of thralls to make Next Gen any good. What Star Treks needs is another Gene Coon, and te B5 guy (sorry, I can't spell his name) might just be the guy.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
B5 was an amazing series. And strangely prophetic, too, some of the episodes in seasons 2 and 3, about xenophobia, personal freedoms vs government security, free speech, etc.
I encourage everyone to buy the DVD boxed sets to support this man, so he keeps coming up with great scifi stories.
Here lies Trek, R.I.P. 2004.
t needs to get back to its roots. Let the characters have flaws, let them make mistakes. Put irony and humor into it in difficult situations. Make the leaders make difficult choices. Make it interesting again with good stories, not practically perfect people and a lot of references to Shakespeare.
Heck, Klingons were a cold-war type adversary -- make up some nasty race like Al Qaeda and have the characters discuss how the federation got into a mess with them and try to find a way out of it.
Thats what the "Suliban" were meant to be. Taliban, Suliban. Get the idea?
I don't watch the show, and I have no idea what ever happened with them. I've only read articles on it. That said.
It needs to get back to its roots. Let the characters have flaws, let them make mistakes. Put irony and humor into it in difficult situations. Make the leaders make difficult choices. Make it interesting again with good stories, not practically perfect people and a lot of references to Shakespeare.
So in other words, your suggestion is to "make it good". Wow, that's really helpful. And also, how were Picard, Ricker, etc. 'flawed' They may have had some minor weaknesses, but in general they were pretty functional people (hardly dysfunctional anti-heroes). The DS9 crew was more human, (and I thought it was a better show). But yeah, I've seen like half of an ep. Of Enterprise, so I have no idea.
If they really want to fix the show, they just need to hire good writers.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I hated babylon 5
Star Trek: Red Shirt Guys
Each episode focuses on a different red-shirted security guard aboard an Enterprise-class Federation starship, showing his mundane on- and off-duty shipboard life.
Then, at the end of the episode, he beams down to some newly discovered planet with several of the ship's most important officers, and is almost immediately killed in some horrible fashion.
Okay, firstly, an admission: I actually liked DS9, and Voyager. I'm truly very sorry. But I think that TNG picked up after Berman took over it. It's just that he's past his prime, and everything that Enterprise goes against is everything I feel about Star Trek. I think that ditching the changes Enterprise has made and effectively reverting *back* to the state of play at the end of Voyager would be a very good idea. I think Enterprise just lost credibility from me when it started buggering about with the series that I'd pretty much grown up with (that is, the films and TNG onwards, I was born in '84) and went in the face of and effectively erased everything that those series' achieved. I started avoiding watching Enterprise, basically because I felt that if I watched it, I leant it validity, and if none of the events in the other series and films happened, how could I really care about them? I think letting the B5 guy have a go at Trek would be an incredibly good idea. I never watched much B5, but when I did, I really enjoyed it, more than the average Trek episode. I think Trek needs to energy, because at it is, Enterprise is just a rotting corpse of a show.
Do you see what I did there?
Don't prop up that shitty universe anymore let it die finally. You do this and i'm burning my season 1-5 dvd sets and all the vhs tapes that s1-5 are on.
When Babylon 5 was over, he created a follow up show called 'Excalibur'. Preachy, condecending, P.C. and full of cliches. It was still born and it was not wonder it was not picked up by anybody. In other words, it was awful. Let's hope he is not trying to find an excuse to pull that one out of the grave.
Let's face it people. Star Trek has been done to death. It's saturated the market and NOTHING new will ever be any better. Star Trek, while fun to watch in the beginning, eventually suffered the same fate of ALL shows that HAVE NO END: they get OLD and DIE (or at least live on in a permanently crippled state).
This is the problem: shows that are made to continue until the popularity dwindles into unprofitable status NEVER end well, and most are even lucky to have an 'ending' made to close the series out anyway (look at what happened to Farscape).
There are many reasons, for example, that Babylon 5 was so great: Characters with Depth(tm), a universe that grew in depth and changed over time, and a great overall story. Let me tell you though, what helped Babylon 5 ultimately succeed with the aforementioned attributes: THE FACT THAT IT ENDED!
Babylon 5 had an end. Like any good book or book series there is a definite END to look forward to. An end finishes up the story. It let's you have a sense of completion. You have an expectation in a book to finally, at the end, understand what it was all about. Japanese anime is also often like this. There is almost always a set, limited number of episodes in which an overall story is told and completed, though I won't say they always succeed, but that's just like any book: some are good, some aren't.
Yet, it's important for a story to end. It's important to HAVE a story in the first place. TV shows that rely on mini-stories every episode like star trek, friends, etc, just keep going and going until you're just sick of it or just don't care anymore because there's no growth, no change, and no end to it all.
One last point to make: it's the Rare things that end up being more valuable and stay valuable in the long run. Star Trek isn't rare, isn't unique, isn't fresh, isn't new and exciting anymore because we've seen it and seen it and seen it over and over and over again in different forms with different actors with different props but it's ALL THE SAME.
Let it die people. Just LET GO and MOVE ON and MAKE SOMETHING NEW ALREADY!
They should do a series based soely in the TNG timeline, but take it from the Romulan perspective. Get into their politics, their dirty deals, and evil science. Now that's a series I'd watch!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
star trek icon for slashdot
Dead on discription of that series.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Starfleet academy reality series.
There are paradoxes and plotholes large enough to dump an entire series in, to never be seen again (Enterprise would be my favorite here...) and if I see one more pointless time travel...
I think Enterprise was actually designed to be cut off from the rest of the canon. The entire 'temporal cold war' thing from series 1 was a pretty strong hint at this: what you were seeing was the result of somebody using time travel to try to prevent the formation of the federation. Then they went and had that borg episode, and everyone realised that this wasn't actually supposed to have happened before the rest of trek, but after it (in the perception of somebody who had travelled back in time).
Any future series will be free to accept or ignore Enterprise as its authors see fit.
Since Im not a kid anymore they would need to have pretty nice tits to keep me interested.
As quoted in the most authoritative work on extra terrestrial life THGG by Doug Adams. It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
how about a 24 season in the StarTrek universe?
....into the garbage!!
_Rimshot@!
Before everybody get excited about JMS and his little trek film does anybody remember that little movie B5: Legend of the Rangers (LOR)?
Now I loved B5 the series, the movies, and Crusade, but LOR just plain sucked. I don't know if it was the SciFi channel screwing with movie too much or JMS had just run out of ideas, but it was Voyager bad.
So not everything JMS does is golden, really he was never that good at writing dialog, oh so melodramatic.
What really needs to happen is have Joss Weldon take over Star Trek, now Joss could make a good...oh wait, been done.
Frankly Farscape beat the hell out of all of them. God does the SciFi Chanel suck.
TV just isn't the place to have good scifi any more. Doesn't matter who's running it.
The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data.
What is this story doing in the science section? I hate to be the one to break it to you guys, but Star Trek isn't real.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Its been floated several times in the past to have a series about a federation police force. It could cycle amony spy missions, unusual crime investigations, and court cases. Usually there were couple episodes of such each year on the various Star Trek series.
At the beginning of this television season there was a court series set about 30 years into the future. It supposedly investigated problems caused by recent inventions such as cloning. I dont think it lasted more than a couple episodes.
"When the horse is already dead, it is too late to add another rider."
That salute now has a lot of baggage associated with it due to the Nazis, but pre-Nazi era it was simply another salute. The origin of all salutes is to display to your leaders that your combat (right) hand is unarmed, and this gesture does so.
Particularly when considering that "Enterprise" is better than "Voyager" (i.e., "captain janeway's trip to places we couldn't care less about"), "Deep Space 9" (i.e., "The-Space-Station-so-full-of-twits-even-NASA-coud -be-more-interesting") and "The Next Generation" (i.e., "One cool captain and a bunch of ninnies in shitty makeup have a fun time battling lame aliens") ALL PUT TOGETHER.
Don't get me wrong - I enjoy ST enough that I'd be glad to give yet another franchise show a chance - but I reject the notion that ST needs "saving". Especially considering that I never thought B5 was even remotely as good as many people seem to think it was. But then, they're usually people who liked "farscape", which was also lame. Oh well.
Bring on the flamebait mods...I'm just calling it like I see it.
No gods, no demons, and no masters. Secular Humanism!
B5 replaced the model-based F/X with CGI rendered spaceships and worlds. They used Newtek's Lightwave product which made texture-mapping cost effective. Though it looks a little tacky now, these were cutting edge in their day.
First, let me say that I loved Babylon 5. It was arguably the best space opera ever. I also enjoyed Crusade, what little there was. When Paramount announced a new series after Voyager, I prayed that Berman and Braga would take a rest and Paramount would place JMS at the helm. Then I saw Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers-arguably the worst movie ever. The tactical officer's "Dance of Death" is a low point is Sci-Fi history. (And that's a history filled with low points.) Mr Coto's Odyssey 5 was some of the best Sci-Fi television I've seen in a long time. I was POed when Showtime cancelled it but was thrilled when he came to Enterprise. With MC at the helm of season 4, I actually have hope for Trek for the first time since DS9.
But I have to tell you, it makes me sad to see the trademark sign after characters' names. I'm sure there are 50 good reasons why it has to be that way, but it just seems wrong to see Captain Avery Sisko(TM).
Anonymous Kev
Proudly posting as AC since 1997
(Finally got a dang account in 2004)
Pirates of the Federation: The Curse of the Black Enterprise
What a good idea! Get Johnny Depp to stagger around with his arms wandering, and talking in scattered patterns of speech.
"I.... Am The.... Captain of... This.... Ship"
Doesn't this sound somewhat familiar?
-- IANAL, BIPOOTV
'nuf said.
"Space... the final frontier. When the nearest outpost of civilization could be weeks away, starship captains must act as judge, and jury. But when a captain stands accused, the greatest ally he can have is the Starfleet Legal Corps, and the crew of the USS Justice."
Star Trek: Law & Order. Coming this fall.
Babylon 5 is an absolutely amazing piece of science fiction but only when you realize that the 5 seasons are really one 80-hour long movie.
When I saw it aired on TV, I thought it was contrived because I didn't understand all the constant references to prophecies, councils, past wars, Valen, etc. I thought that they were doing what Star Trek writers do - reference cool sounding things just to enhance the illusion of the future, but those things are not existant in the actual plot. B5 is completely different; almost all their references are to cool stories in other episodes (both forward and backward) including some mind-blowing plot twists (some that make you giggle when you watch earlier season episodes because you know some *huge* secrets revealed later). It's important to realize that the B5 plot was fully written before filming, something that Star Trek never benefited from.
My roommate got the DVDs for all the seasons and we started watching them one by one. I'm a few episodes from finishing the last season. B5 is a trememdous story, not just out of science fiction, but of any type of story I've ever watched or read. It's one of those real works of art you only see once every few years. Of course I take issue with some scientific points, like their premise of the "first ones" (first race in the galaxy) living for indefinite lifetimes and such, but they are just quibbles.
It's also worth noting that besides the brilliant story weaving, B5 also fantastically avoided the concept of "good guys" and "bad guys". I'm impressed to no end how they side-stepped that oh-so-common trapping and actually made several alien races really come to life with politics, emotions, and goals of their own. Very cool.
The third great thing about B5 is that the problems are solved with character solutions. The tech is there to enhance the experience, but unlike Star Trek where they can reconfigure the primary deflector to do the dishes and take out the dog, in B5 they actually work out the problems using more traditional methods, and the interesting tech is for there for the viewer's enjoyment as backdrop, not primary focus.
If you're a Star Trek fan but have never watched B5, do yourself a favor and start with Season 1. Watch them in order, and P.S. there is an extra prequel movie, but don't watch it until after you get into Season 5 because it gives a few things from the middle away.
It makes me curious as to how they'd give Star Trek the B5 treatment, but I'd have to guess that the first step would be to write out a cohesive plot that can cover the first few years of the show before they start filming.
Star Trek: Empires would breath a breadth of fresh air into the series...BIG TIME!
ST:Empires would follow the crews of two ships. One Klingon and one Romulan. These would be the voyages and missions and battles and conquests of these Empires.
ST:Empires would have a couple things in it's favor. a) it'd provide a more in depth exploration of two of the favorite cultures in Star Trek. b) it allow for breaking the mold entirely (imagine an episode where the crew of the Klingon ship massacre a weak developing planet). c) the show would alternate each week what ship/crew was being followed (except for a few cross-over episodes)...this would also allow for easier filming by providing a 2-week filming period between episodes.
The arc would eventually lead to the unification of (Romulans joining the Federation after a civil war to re-unite with their Vulcan heritage...the Klingons would slowly progress closer into the Federation. Finally, after a 2-3 yr lifespan ST:Empires would end. The next show to follow-up several years later would be Star Trek: Galaxies. The premise of which is that the Federation has pretty much explored much of the free galaxy and now is venturing outside of galactic space....(with this series taking on a hybrid atmosphere much more akin to the original (TOS) and Farscape with much more freedom.
- theSaj
Astounding. Last night marked the beginning of my campaign to introduce my Trekkie boyfriend, who is most notably a fan of DS9, to the wonderful world of Babylon 5. He intends to make me pay for it by addicting me to West Wing, but oh well. Though I doubt anything really substantial will happen, given the way the TV industry works, if it did...well, I know I'd watch it, at least for a while. And I don't watch TV any more.
Now, if only we could have another chance at Crusade...
"ailing franchise"? After that stretch of craporama shows like DS9 and Voyager, plus all the STNG movies, that kept pushing sucking to a new level, I really think Star Trek has come back to life with Enterprise.
Then again, I suppose I'm not in the typical Star Trek demographic (e.g. I shower daily, and do not live with parents).
That wasn't an alien, that was the Red Skull!
Ok, its like Seinfeld, but in a space ship. It's a show about nothing...but in space.
Yeah, I'd pay to see that.
Something else I'd have paid to see in TNG would have been an exchange like this:
Data (staring at the phenomenon-of-the-week): It's like nothing I've ever seen before, sir.
Picard (incredulously): Oh, come on, Data. You can't be serious. You're on the flagship of the Federation of Planets, exploring new worlds and new civilizations. You have access to the Enterprise main computer, which contains the collective knowledge of hundreds of member planets; you've probably viewed the whole bloody thing twice through, and you probably remember it all photographically, too. And you're telling me that in everything you've seen and read and heard, there's nothing like what you're seeing here? Nothing?? Really, Data. It must be at least a TINY bit like SOMETHING you've seen before!
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
Cardassians, not Romulans. Romulans look like Vulcans.
I agree! The Visitor I refer to as the "Father's Day episode." That's a terrific, very human story that only science fiction can deliver. To me, that's the hallmark of great science fiction (and fantasy): to explore a facet of being human that rings true, but could not happen in the "real world." That's my favorite episode.
Up there with The Visitor, are two episodes worth mentioning, both featuring Miles (the engineer) as the protagonist. The first is sort of a reverse Rip Van Winkle, where Miles is punished as a criminal by some alien race and forced to serve an accelerated prison term of 20 years. In real time it lasts 6 hours, but mentally he comes out a changed man who has suffered from imprisonment and must reintegrate with his family and friends who haven't changed at all. The second episode is when Miles and Keiko's (his wife) daughter is lost in some kind of alternate time and is returned to them as a teen who has spent the last 10 years living as a wilding.
Deep Space Nine is great Star Trek and great science fiction television!
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
We need a reality-skiffy series about the creators of Bab 5 invading the offices of Paramount to take over Star Trek, complete with tasers and forehead makeup.
ahem.
Of course, you could always mix the two...
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Excerpts from jms during the pitch... "See, it takes place on this space station..." "And we can introduce a small battle cruiser so the crew can visit other destinations..." "And we'll use a five year story arc... SEVEN, if you're serious about syndication." Actually, all kidding aside, Hollyweird is a huge money magnet with executives thinking they can add creative influence to scripts, manage shows/projects and play God with projects that people might actually enjoy, if it wasn't for how their eggs were runny that morning, and the p!ssy mood made them decide to skip meetings, and a great pitch/show fell through as a result... Oops, I need to get back on track here. Anyways, God Bless jms for a.) turning down "Enterprise" (lost cause, imo); b.) wanting to pitch his vision. "Star Trek" (in general) deserves better, since before that Voyager dreck...
The biggest cliche' in Star Trek (and other sci-fi shows) has always been the crew member we've never met before who gets sent on a mission. No matter what, he (or she) was dead meat. The main characters, on the other hand, just could not be killed - or on the rare occasions when they were, some plot twist would restore them (a la soap opera). I'd like to see one of those captains or their first mates actually die and be replaced, changing the dynamics of the group.
(BTW, Voyager wasn't nearly the T&A that TOS was. Kirk was practically the James Bond of sci-fi.)
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
This is basically what the Axis did in WWII. It's also cropped up in fictional works like 1984, Aeon Flux, Equilibrium, etc.
Um, no. Hilter took power in Germany by leveraging nationalist and racist fervor, and working popular anger about unfair WW1 reparations treaties.
Um, yes. The burning of the Reichstag was a critical point in the rise of the Third Reich. A shocking, sudden terrorist action was used as a pretext for abolishing civil liberties provided by the Constitution of the Weimar Republic. All in the name of "defense of the Fatherland", you understand.
It is simply unacceptable that in a post-9/11, post-PATRIOT world that citizens of the U.S. would be unaware of how fear of terrorism can and has been used to strip people of their rights.
The enemies of Democracy are
Star Trek Series we'd love to see:
Trek-Junkyard Wars. Contestant Chief Engineers push their ships to the limit trying to solve or combat various temporal, quantum, space-time continuum, or subspace threats. More techno-babble than you can shake a stick at!
WW-Trek: Constant space battles. We don't care why, they can explain it if they want, but we really just want to see stuff get blown up by various scientifically impossible devices. Klingon's vs. Federation in a galactic smack-down -- oh, look, here come the Romulans! And they're jumping in on the fight! Who would have seen that coming!
Trek-Survivor: Take a competent and well experienced crew, blow up their ship, and leave them stranded on yet another M class planet. Viewers and contestants alike vote on who will be rescued last.
Candid-Trek: Practical Jokes in space. You'll die laughing when we reverse the polarity on the data matrix uplinks and teleport this unsuspecting ensign to two places at once! Red shirts be warned!
Add yours!
"he and Dark Skies creator Bryce Zabel have put together an idea for a new Star Trek series, which he said would revive the ailing franchise.
As much as I like Michael Straczynski, having great ideas for a Trek series isn't hard when you have such a rich universe to build upon. Heck, Enterprise was a great idea, which only goes to prove that your great idea is only the tip of the iceburg. It's all about execution, something Enterprise crashed and burned in. And quite frankly, while b5 was good, Jeremiah and Odyssey 5 were steaming piles last I checked [IMO, of course]. That's not a bulletproof track record and I'm not convinced he could pull it off any better, honestly.
But after space-nazies, I'd be willing to give anything a try.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I like the idea of J. Michael Strazynski doing Star Trek. B5 and Crusade were excelent.
For as much as I like the concept of "Enterprise" I think the wrong people are producing it. The stories aren't as strong as "Deep Space Nine" and there is no much of the jiggle factor (T'Pol needs to wear less revealing costumes) like "Voyager" had.
Just my $0.02 worth.
While he's at it, think Straczynski could take on Star Wars Ep III too?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
is that it got into the hands of its fans and became no better than any turd you can pick from the great steaming pile called fanfic.
What a great sheep you are! Communism might be dead, but the ideals of practiced Communism (not real Communism, mind you) are alive and well here in our executive branch.
I sat and watched every agonizing moment of B5 and I distinctly remember watching two episodes that didn't have painfully poor writing. Turns out those were written by someone else. Please... no more campy B5 writing.
...has anything happened with the movie option for it? The last time I was paying attention to things jms/B5, that process was just getting underway.
Those are excellent points.
I want to see more about a military training program that includes the Kobayashi Maru, where the candidate's character is tested in an unwinnable (cheating aside) situation. How do you nurture excellence in a standardized program? I want to see the debates that instructors would have with each other over a cadet like Kirk. I can see it now: "With or without us, either he'll be the greatest captain of our era or he'll bring the Federation down in flames. Let's try to ensure the former."
Someone should get David Gerrold to do a write-up. He did the original Star Trek: The Next Generation series bible as well as the old series episode, "The Trouble With Tribbles" and the excellent B5 episode, "Believers" and is otherwise a well established, excellent SF writer. He'd have to be paid by Paramount, though, and I'd rather he finishes the Chtorr War series first.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
I loved the original series. I hated pretty much everything else. I like to see suave guys woo sexy girls without all of our post modern sensitivity baggage. I like to see fistfights. I like to see new things every episode, not the same 4 or 5 antagonists cycled through over and over again. Give me a new planet with some new "what if life was like this?" concept and show me how the crew of the USS whateverprise responds to the contact. ST needs to more exploration & conquest and less contemplation of its own belly-button.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
He's good at dialogue and "kewl" moments but his day has clearly passed. Whedon's now unable or unwilling to listen to anyone else regarding larger arc issues or character development.
Sadly, he's fallen deeply, truly, madly in love with his own talent, and that's deadly for a writer.
IIRC, Neil Gaiman wrote an episode of B5; it would be cool to see him paired with JMS.
Consider for a moment the more popular Star Trek episodes.
From the original series, "City on the Edge of Forever" where Kirk and Spock travel back to 1930s America to rescue McCoy and restore the path of history. Also, there's "Tomorrow is Yesterday" where they end up hitting a black star and traveling back to 1960s America and inadvertently grab a fighter pilot. Then there's "Assignment: Earth" where they travel back on purpose to 1960s America. Not to mention the "parallel Earths" they encounter in "Piece of the Action" (1920s Chicago), "Patterns of Force" (Nazi Germany), and "Miri" (20th Century Earth destroyed in a plague).
From the movies? One of the most popular and successful Star Trek movies is Star Trek IV, where they travel back to 1980s San Francisco to kidnap a couple of humpback whales.
From TNG, we have the whole arc started in "Yesterday's Enterprise"(?) where NCC-1701C comes through a time-warp, gets repaired, picks up Yar, and returns to battle the Romulans and save the time-line. Then there's "Time's Arrow", where Picard and company go back to late 19th century San Francisco to figure out how Data's head ended up back then. There's also the holodeck, where they can create any point in history they want. Remember Data in the Old West?
I never watched DS9, alas, but I did catch a little bit of "More Trouble, More Tribbles"(?). Only one example that I know of, but I didn't watch DS9 so maybe there were others.
By the time Voyager rolled around, the writers figured out pretty quick that time-travel sells. It works even better when you have the whole alternate time-line thing because you can kill off whoever you want and then just change the time-line so they're back next week and nothing happened. You can show Voyager getting blown to bits (great special effects for the promo!) and, with a flick of the pen and some random technobabble, bring it back.
As an aside, I could see Berman using the 25th Century "Time-Cops" that you see in Enterprise (and saw once in Voyager--Temporal Prime Directive! Love it!) to create a new series with this "Temporal Cold War" going on. Then he'd get to do the whole time-travel alternate-universe thing every week.
Hitler's rise to power over the other Freikorp running around in the Wiemar Republik was based on his charisma (which he did indeed have), the ruthless efficiency of his Brownshirts (the Sturm Abteilung or SA) and key funding by German Industrialists who saw Hitler as a means to check to Socialist or Communist influence inside Germany and abroad.
However, Hitler DID get democratically elected, with a plurality if not a majority of the vote in 1933 and parliamentary manuevering that allowed him to take power legally. The Reichstag fire was a staged excuse to suspend the Weimar constitution but by that time the Nazis were so firmly in power that even NO EXCUSE would have allowed them to do what they wanted.
Once in power he ruthlessly exterminated any possible threat to his power (the SA, other independent right wing militias), and extended the Nazi party into EVERY aspect of daily life, including churches, civic organizations, the military (who all swore a personal oath of allegiance to Hitler), and the arts. All of this was enourmously popular and done with the general assent of the German people themselves.
People inside Germany (and much of the west, it must be added, including Lindberg, Joe Kennedy, Father Coughlin, and the Duke of Windsor) LIKED what Hitler did because they saw the Soviet Union and Stalin as the main threat. The treatment of the jews, homosexuals, gypsies, disabled, etc was deemed not important against the state to state communist threat.
To compare the Reichstag Fire to 9/11 is both insulting and preposterous. Insulting because 9/11 WAS indeed a real attack on American soil designed to kill massive amounts of Americans (and largely successful) by real enemies of Americans opposed to American and Western ideals. The various blood libels found in European (mainly French) and Arab countries are part and parcel of the usual anti-semitic lies: (1) That "the Jews" planned the whole thing and "warned other Jews to stay away that day," (2) That the CIA planned it to pave the way for a war on Afghanistan and Iraq (to help the "jews", (3) That George Bush knew in advance of the attack and let it proceed for political reasons (again because of the "jews" in his administration).
It's preposterous because it makes a marginally competent President into some demonically scheming mastermind, something fifteen seconds of watching GW Bush can easily disprove.
Hitler rose to power at least in part because people inside Germany and out found him a check on Soviet Russia and Stalin. GW Bush's policies exist because he's stupid in responding to a very real but largely stateless threat. Let's not confuse the two or adopt the mindless anti-semitism and anti-Americanism found too often abroad.
When the occupying or colonial power wants out anyway.
It worked in Kenya (Mau-Mau), Algeria (the French decided to leave), Palestine (for the Israelis who were fighting the then pro-Arab British Mandate), in Indonesia against the Dutch, the US in Lebanon, and a few other places.
It largely doesn't when a power or people won't leave: Sri Lanka, Israel, Western China, Southern Philipines, Northern Ireland.
At any rate, terrorism as a means of politics on the world stage was well known and effective in some cases by the late 1950's (Mau-Mau at least) so Trek's use of it isn't surprising.
What is new is the use by stateless entities to kill massive amounts of people in one go, in some cases as in Spain it seems to achieved their ends, in others it's probably counterproductive (Chechnya is likely doomed to Russian occupation and loss of language, culture, and religion ala the American Indian, Islamic rebels in Western China will get the full Tibet treatment from Han China).
At any rate, Terrorism is the weapon of the weak and only works when the strong half-way agree anyway with the weak.
Only the US has a military capable of globe spanning intervention, and even that military is severly strained. Among the other dirty little secrets is that the Iraq invasion force HAD to be small, logistics could only supply a force of around 120K (much of whom were support not fighting troops). The military of Gulf War 1 simply does not exist any more because it does not have the logistics capablity (particularly sealift).
The UN is essentially an anti-American and Anti-Semitic debating society, UN Envoy Lakdar Brahimi has boasted he's "never shaken the hand of a Jew" and calls Israel's existence "the great poison of the Middle East." The ability of the UN to project military force ANYWHERE depends soley on the United States, it proved singularly unable and unwilling to stop genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, and the Balkans. Tellingly it took US not NATO forces (which stood by idly while Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered by Serb militias) to stop much of the killing in the Balkans. The Europeans simply didn't have a military capable of making the Serbs stop. UN=Federation is a bad example since the Federation was not so much "anti" as expressing it's own values, and had a significant military component. US=Federation is a better match.
NATO and the European states in it are not much better, currently NATO combined has only 6,500 troops in Afghanistan, and is hard pressed to supply them with food, ammo, and equipment all of which are in short supply. Even if they wanted to they couldn't supply more than a few hundred soldiers at best to Iraq. NATO/Europe is also a bad match for Federation. They're more like the Ferengi (somewhat greedy, amoral, without any significant military power).
Russia is hard pressed to deal with Chechnya, and it's on it's own land border. China has a large military but has only begun to modernize. And only the US has a significant blue water Navy.
Russia might be a good match for the Klingons if you substituted Chechnya for Cardassia, with the caveat the that the Russians because they are much larger will eventually win.
... StarTrek's appeal basically boils down to its pimp-factor.
Kirk was the alien-lady's-man. The orbital James Bond. A space-cowboy. Capt Pimp. There was not an alien chick he couldn't nail.
STTNG's bald guy is too old to pimp.
The guy on the DS9 station doesn't get out enough to pimp.
Voyager's captain is a 'strong-woman', so no pimping there.
The very first episode (pilot episode) of ST was about the captain being kept in a menagerie, "forced" to mate with beautiful ladies. Those horrible aliens!
Lets return StarTrek back to its roots:
[strings playing ST-theme while viewing our solar system]
These are the missions of the star ship Enterprise.
It's continuing mission, to explore strange new worlds,
to seek out new life and new civilizations,
to boldly pimp where no pimp has pimped before.
[inset cheap porno-remix of ST-theme]
I loved B5 and all, but...
"'I got together [with Zabel] and wrote a treatment earlier this year that specified how to save [Star Trek] and develop a series that would restore the series in a big way,'"
"Yeah! First we'll start with some D&D characters..."
The last Ranger movie they did had its good points (and his name was "G'Kar"), but it also had that silly holographic tank for the weapons officer.
Really, I haven't given up on Enterprise yet, and so far it's better than JMS' more recent works in my opinion.
"It makes me grind my teeth together whenever somebody uses 1984 as an analogy for a contemporary phenomenon." You will need to get yourself a rubber mouth piece to protect those teeth because contemporary phenomenon warrants such a comparison-your grinding teeth and lack of vision notwithstanding.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
You must be kidding me, ST:TNG has much better writing than the 60s kitch o'rama that is Shatner's Shenanigans.
The shows were
More complex
More involved
More literary
It had intelligent stories and excellent acting. If you thought it was "boring" maybe you need to watch The Man Show instead.
"There are four lights" is one of the best moments in TV history, period.
The musical episode of Buffy got very high ratings. I think they should add song and dance to Trek.
It wouldn't be any worse, would it?
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
I'm of the "Star Trek needs a good long rest" persuasion, myself, but if anyone can revitalize and ailing franchise, it's probably Joe. He has the talent, the background, and the credentials.
It's ironic, though. When Joe first came up with Babylon 5, he pitched it to Paramount. Paramount turned thumbs down on it. Joe pitched elsewhere. What does Paramount come up with next? Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, a show about a space station located on the borders of several competing interstellar powers. Coincidence?
Joe reportdly hit the roof, but was careful *not* to blame Rick Berman and the other folks directly involved in ST production. Paramount wished to protect the Trek franchise at all costs, and wasn't about to compete with itself by backing a non-Trek SF show. Whether it decided to sucker punch a possible competitor by bringing out the same idea first remains unknowable.
The problem is that Paramount got a successful franchise largely by accident. Star Trek: TOS was originally cancelled part way through, and brought back through fan pressure. It seems likely that Paramount never really understood *why* it was popular, so successive Star Trek: Whatever's have trod the same old ground, in apparent fear that any actual new ideas would kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.
Personally, I was around when the original series was being aired. It was the best SF on TV at the time, but hasn't aged terribly well.
ST:TNG had some good moments, especially when it worked through the backlog of unproduced scripts bought for the original series and started buying new material. There was at least some attempt to deal with adult themes, even if there were embarassing clunkers.
DS9 had moments as well, especially when they introduced the war with the Dominion. Trek always had a schizophrenic attitude toward Star Fleet. Pointing out that the Enterprise was a capital ship, and if there *was* a war, Star Fleet would fight it produced hand-waving and denial from a lot of folks.
Voyager was simply excreble. I think I managed to watch one episode before giving up in disgust.
I had hopes for Enterprise. A show set early in the chronolgy of the series, detailing the early days of the Federation had promise. Promise that, unsurprisingly, has not been fulfilled. I've avoided it, too.
I have a problem with television that makes an implicit assumption that I'm dumb, and that any show with a few SF tropes and some FX will get me to watch. Dramatic story lines, meaningful characters, interesting plots, good writing? Who needs them? It's got the Trek name on it. It will sell...
Well, not to me, buddy.
Joe might actually be able to create a Trek series worth watching again. I'd love to see it. I'd lay long odds against Paramount saying yes.
______
Dennis
I too thought FireFly was a horrible series from the one episode that I saw. But watch a few, and you will be hooked. Joss is a master of the larger story arc, and while his characters may not be the most interesting in the immediately-grabbing sense, they become terribly, terribly addicting when spread out over two or three episodes (when played in the proper order, damn Fox). The professional seductress actually returns shortly thereafter for a second episode, where she has married an old friend of the Captain's. What follows is a masterfully written series of innuendos and backstabs that really clicks with the ensemble cast.
Firefly is a good series, and worthy of a second look. The whole lot is available on DVD (a very worthy purchase), or if you would like to sample first it is available for download. And quite frankly, I don't feel the slightest bit bad for posting the link so that they can be seen in the way they should have been, before Fox decided to trash continuity.
Besides, the show gave us some truly great quotes.
Simon: I'm trying to put this as delicately as I can. How do I know you won't kill me in my sleep?
Mal: You don't know know me, son, so let me explain this to you once. If I ever kill you, you'll be awake, you'll be facing me, and you'll be armed.
Simon: Are you always this sentimental?
Mal: Had a good day.
Mal: (spares Atherton) Mercy is the mark of a great man. (stabs Atherton with his sword) I guess I'm just a good man. (stabs Atherton again) Well, I'm alright.
Harrow: You didn't have to wound the man.
Mal: Yeah I know, it was just funny.
Kaylee: Wash, tell me I'm pretty.
Wash: Were I unwed I would take you in a man-like fashion.
Kaylee: 'Cause I'm pretty?
Wash: 'Cause you're pretty.
Kaylee: Is that him?
Mal: That's the buffet table.
Kaylee: How will we know unless we question it?
Simon: You're out of your mind.
Early: That's between me and my mind.
Mal: The wheel never stops turning, Badger.
Badger: Only matters to the people on the rim.
Zoe: Jayne, this is something the Captain has to do on his own.
Mal: (fighting for his life) No...no it's not!
Zoe: Oh. (shoots)
Zoe: Preacher, don't the Bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?
Book: Quite specific. It is, however, somewhat fuzzier on kneecaps.
River: What am I?
Simon: You are my beautiful sister.
River: I threw up on your bed.
Simon: Yep, definitely my sister.
Rvd. Book: I might be needing a preacher.
Mal: That's good, you just lay there and be ironic.
Mal: Ship like this, be with you until the day you die.
Zoe: That's because it's a deathtrap.
Wash: Little River just gets more colorful by the minute. What will she do next?
Zoe: Either blow us up or rub soup in her hair. It's a toss-up.
Wash: I hope she does the soup thing. It's always a hoot, and we don't all die from it.
Wash: Psychic, though? That sounds like something out of science fiction.
Zoe: You live on a spaceship, dear.
(Quotes lifted from TV Tome.)
The ______ Agenda
Sissy Klingons, Communist Ferengi, Isolationist Borg, Happy-go-lucky Romulans, and space toilets, thank you very much.
As a ST:TNG and B5 geek, I instantly jizz and convulse in orgiastic writhing on the floor at the thought of JMS-driven Star Trek. OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Start Running Better Polls
So...someone invents this machine. In it, you can do whatever you want, be anywhere. Yes, it's all fantasy, but it feels as real as if you were actually there. The computer is smart enough to create new stories for you that you don't know ending of, you can interact with people that act and feel real...You think they could do better for entertainment??
I think if we ever invent the thing, we'll have real issues getting anything accomplished. The only industry that will survive is the industry supplying power to the holodeck, and the only payment people will want is time on the holodeck. Food? Holodeck is linked to replicators, you can eat whatever you want. Exploring space? No one would want the real thing, they'd do that on the holodeck, where it'll be full of exciting things, without any of the problems, boredom, or danger.
Then again, they did explore that problem with TNG also, with Barclay's addiction to the thing.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
I like the Star Trek universe, but the whole Starfleet thing has been totally done to death. What _I_ want to see is a story about a non-Starfleet ship. For instance, one living on the fringes of Federation society (perhaps doing a little smuggling on the edges of Federation space).
:-) I'd watch it, for at least a few episodes...
You want character defects? How 'bout the captain being a female Klingon (in disgrace from the Empire?) who gets drunk all the time & tries to bed any decently strong-looking humanoid male (and all of the males who know her try to avoid her like the plague when she's in the mood, since they usually end up in the infirmary when it's all done).
You can have the engineer being Scottish, but make him only a mediocre engineer (who is already freqently drunk), and make sure that the ship isn't in very good shape, but he keeps it barely running with makeshift repairs & the future-equivalent of duct tape. The ship is pretty small & cramped, so you don't have hundreds of meters of corridors to run through.
The medic is an ex-war veteran who really only knows battlefield medicine (what the hell do you need anesthetic for?), and you don't have the nice replicators so you have to have a real cook (but who can't cook very well, and who has a tendency to spit in the food of the people who piss him off).
You have a rough-and-tumble crew of miscellaneous deadbeats & losers who take every opportunity to stab each other in the back (thereby providing a good reason to keep turning over actors until you find some that people like).
Every now & then, you can have them interact with a Starfleet ship, perhaps some of the known characters (perhaps they get "pulled over" by the Enterprise to be searched for contraband), whereupon there is plenty of mutual disgust to go around.
Heck, a situation like that could be the basis for a Star Trek "sitcom"
What you really meant to say is Star Trek needs more hot borg woman. It saved Voyager, why can't the formula be applied to other ST series?
The both have a very strong artistic vision, having both of them on the same show would "end in fire".
Hey, what J. Michael Straczynski does in the privacy of his own home is fine but I really don't need to be updated on things like his ere....
OH.
Whoops, I parsed Trek as Tent, my bad.
...another 1st for /.?
that's ALL we need...
After the way JMS hatcheted LOTR, my guess is this new Trek series revolves around a young Vulcan named T'Frodo who leaves his safe home with a company of Humans, Klingons, Romulans and Andorians forming a 'fellowship' in a quest to destroy Unimatrix One vefore the Dark Queen on her dark throne can stop them...
Nuff Said
If I had been unforgiving I would have stopped after the kid showed up in ST:TNG 1
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
They most often used to turn ST into something else. Historical drama, detective story. Mostly I hated because it was so, so, so white. Ever noticed how they always travelled back in time to the US? Never to any other part of the world. Same with the holo chamber it was always so middle class american.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I said "Uh, sure - I dunno - sure."
Boom! A check falls in my lap and I'm a producer; I never knew it was that easy. All these years I've been trying to write scripts and characters and plots, stories that have meaning... "Will there be tittie?" "Sure" - boom! I'm a producer now.
"Where've you been all our lives, boy? We've been lookin for you in Hollywood. What're these titties gonna do?"
"Um... jiggle?"
"You're a fuckin genius - give him another check! I can't write enough checks for you; you've answered our prayers in Hollywood. Jigglin' titties, who woulda thunk of it?"
Bill Hicks - Rant in E Minor
"Time is an abstract concept devised by carbon-based lifeforms to monitor their ongoing decay." - Thundercleese
Later Enterprise? Enterprise C are Ambassador-class, Enterprise D are Galaxy-class, and Enterprise E are Sovereign class. As far as I know, the first Enterprise of Kirk&co. was constitution class. Hardly "later Enterprise", unless you count everything after the NX-class into that category. :)
I was just reading a bit of the Trek history at the Starfleet museum www.starfleet-museum.org and it appears that there is a rich history that hasn't been realized in Enterprise. The highly developed morality of the 24 century is based upon less-than-noble acts of early Starfleet during the expansion era of the Federation. Kirks lack of respect for the prim directive seen in TOS was indicative of many Captains of the early era, Kirk was just being "old school". Even the Earth-Romulan war (ignored by Enterprise) was blind war-fair reminiscent of battles between old sailing ships. I had a really good idea that saw a young destroyer captain James T. Kirk player by Mark Walberg pushing his ship deeper into Klingon territory on a mission to disrupt shipping routes, discovers the ultimate secret! Years later Kirk is now captain of the USS Enterprise when he receives a distress call from an out-post along the Klingon neutral zone. The call indicates an attack by a ferrosious race of warriors calling themselves Klingons! Or a series that takes a closer look at the early days of the Kirk era.