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Star Trek XI: Romulan Wars?
Tycoon Guy writes "TrekToday reports that the next Star Trek movie will deal with the war between Earth and the Romulans that led to the founding of the Federation. According to Rick Berman, the film will be 'set before the time of Kirk, but will not be connected with Enterprise.' So how will they make this fit with the Classic Trek episode Balance of Terror, in which we learned that no human ever saw the face of a Romulan during the Romulan Wars?"
So how will they make this fit with the Classic Trek episode Balance of Terror, in which we learned that no human ever saw the face of a Romulan during the Romulan Wars?"
Perhaps no human that saw a Romulan made it back to Federation space to report the fact?
Trolling is a art,
Just make sure whomever does, dies. Sheesh.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Heh, further proof thatBerman couldn't get an original idea to save his life.
:\
:P Always remember to keep a reliable backup of your Data. ;)
Okay, so it's not EXACTLY the same, but dang, how close can a guy get? Anyway, sounds to me like this would be better 'experimented' as a TV miniseries, as you're going to have to introduce characters, do character development, plot development, and plot resolution all in a single flick. In a miniseries, you'd have more screen time to work with, and wouldn't have to rush through it all.
Oh wait, this is Berman we're talking about. Then again, we'd be bashing him if this were announced as a miniseries talking about how much it's going to suck.
My personal feeling is that until they return to the TNG timeline, come up with a believable story plot, and give the Berman team a rest, things aren't going to get better. Perhaps dropping the franchise altogether is the answer, but not so long as the cash flows is that going to happen.
I know! Captain B-4 of the Starship Enterprise-F!
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
One way to handle this would be to work the plot out so that Romulans are actually seen by Terrans and/or allies, but that those who see them are either a) all killed or b) that it's all hushed up (I like this latter option, as there are all kinds of cool foreshadowin things which could be done).
They will just do what they normally do, ignore continuity.
You can bet the style of the ships and interiors won't even be remotely close to The Cage either.
With movies like Sky Captain coming out with intentional retro looks, I think it would be a bold move on their part to replicate the 60s feel, but with modern FX behind it. They should have done that with Enterprise but now they've pretty much blazed a revisionist trail despite the DS9 Tribbles flashback episode.
Rick Berman obviously never saw any classic Trek, so anything that happened there never really happened in the Bermanverse. :)
Slightly more seriously, I'm glad to see uncharted ground. With the removal of Brannon Braga as "show runner" on Enterprise (replaced with Manny Coto), it may well step up a notch. If he brings in someone else to handle the Romulan movie, not an unreasonable thing to do for a completely new aspect of Trek, it may be done well. (Is it possible that this was the treatment Joe Straczynski and... uh, whassisface from Dark Skies? turned in?)
After all, remember, Berman was in charge even through the hey-day of TNG and early DS9. Berman's problem may not be that he doesn't know decent science fiction from a hole in the ground; it may be that he can't seem to hire people who know decent science fiction from a hole in the ground...
-JDF
Why don't they just give B&B something else to do and give JMS free hands like Warner Bros did with B5.
The owls are not what they seem
(Of course the director's cut went off and added a whole bunch of cheasy plastic model in a green tank of water shots. Bastards.)
Frankly, you don't really need to see the face of your enemy in a space battle. They are a blinking set of lights a few kilometers away. It's just a question of turning that blinking set of lights into a fireball before they turn you into one.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
They'll probably just "forget" that ever was mentioned, like they "forgot" Spock saying that WWIII took place in 1997, during TOS episode with the first appearance of KHAAAAAAAAN!!!!
well you have to forgive them for that one, place any story in the future, and sooner or later we'll actually reach that date.
"Nyquil - The stuffy, sneezy, why-the-hell-is-the-room-spinning medicine."
In the movie Enemy Mine -- as strange as it was -- I think humans never saw the Drac before, only their spacecraft as they attacked. Could they use the same reasoning?
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
I haven't gone to the theaters to see an ST flick since first contact and I doubt I will anytime soon. At best I rent it or watch it when it comes on TV and only if their isn't a better alternative. The plots are ridiculous and it's painfully obvious that they are going to make as many movies as they can to drain out the franchise until people finally stop going to see this junk. Star Trek should definitely take at least a 5-10 year break from television/movies and come back as a revival just like TNG. Their was a reason TNG was the number one rated drama on television... you'd think paramount would want to bring back the golden years but the bottom line as has been stated before is BERMAN needs to be removed.
I'll make you a deal. You pray to God for help and I'll stop the moment he shows up.
Star Trek TOS got it wrong. They had the official story. In reality, humans will see Romulans a couple of times during the war. The Vulcans will engineer a cover-up, destroying records and doctoring memories with mind-melds.
Alright, so it's offtopic and I'm sure there's probally already a hundred posts about it below my threshold, but what about DS9? I'm not much one for prequels or even the TNG timeline. TNG was really "white bread" with it being extremely predictable episodes with flat (but sometimes lovable) characters resolving the given situation inside the episode to make for good syndication material. Oh, and throw in some Borg/combat oriented episodes towards for the season premiers and finales to try to hook people in and resolve it like any other syndicated episode afterwards.
Anyway, enough of my dorky rant, here's what they should be doing:
1.) Screw alternate time lines and particles and such. Don't even mention the possibility of it. Sure, it'd kinda annoy Star Trek dorks like me who have kept up with multiple series and like to compare them (god knows what Voyager did, haven't seen much of it myself) but if you just plug your ears and say lalala then it'll be okay. I promise!
2.) Go back to DS9 era and explore what happened there. All three major powers (fed, klingons, romulans) of the Alpha quadrant are recovering from a long and costly war from a powerful adversary that was basically the anti-federation from the Gama quadrant. I'd love to see how the Dominion would deal with the aftermath considering it comprised of a variety of genetically engineered races to fulfill specific jobs. Now that their founder "gods" have been defeated, will that shake the Dominion to the core? If so, what happens?
Hell, Sisko is still living in the Wormhole and with the Prophets, can we give him a resolution? I'm sure he'd come back and be part of the main story.
3.) Don't involve Berman/Braga in the creative aspect. They're okay producers just bring back the DS9 writing team and people like Ira Steven Behr.
4.) No fucking cameos. I'm sick of TNG cameos and the feeling that it needs to be done to somehow validate the series. Take a goddamn risk every once in a while. DS9 did it and it was succesful in a lot of regards. It didn't get the same ratings as TNG, but considering it was overlapping with Voyager and TNG towards the beggining its no suprise. I'd love to see a relaunch of this series after Enterprise is put to rest.
I would like to agree, Rick Berman has got to go. They got lucky with TNG, somewhat, but completly destroyed Voyager, DS9, and now Enterprise with unimaginative story lines and a reliance on tight-costumed bimbos
Maybe that's what we would call 2007, after the 22nd century calendar reform. Or maybe (and this is a really frightening prospect) Spock was wrong. I never saw the episode where he won Space Jeopardy 26 nights in a row, so maybe his knowledge of history is imperfect.
Or maybe B & B will put even less thought into the matter than I did.
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?
There is a MacGyver movie already(looks like more than one), look at Richard Dean Anderson's IMDB page and look at the MacGyver ones.
at that peroid of time, Romulans wore combat armor with helmets that covered their faces. The faceplates were one way mirrors with the mirrors being on the outside. This was done to terrorize the Federation of Planets for fear of not knowing what the enemy looked like. Think of their grunt troops to be more like Storm Troopers or Clone Warriors from Star Wars. ;)
Hey did I win a No-Prize or what?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
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?
I, for one, would love to see him take over Trek and make it an interesting show again. He also mentioned that he was offered a job as executive producer on Enterprise, but turned it down, I believe it was because he didn't want to exec. for a show that's really not his, creatively. However, my memory is fuzzy on that point.
But for the life of me I can't remember the name/author...
The general premise is that an earlier prototype of the Constitution class is on a maiden voyage (or something) and encounters the Romulans.
Some of the book IS from the Romulan standpoint. There is a mutiney on the Romulan ship and the Romulan captain (who is the honorable elder statesman-type) defects. The Romulan (evil) second in command presses an attack on the Federation ship.
The Federation captain learns from the Romulan captain that the Romulans have broken ALL of the Federation codes, so the Federation captain uses a ruse... PRETENDING that the Federation has invented a cloaking device and that there are other cloaked ships waiting for a general attack.
The visible ship (our heros) has a "cloaking unit that has failed" and radios home in "theoretically unbreakable" code (that they know that the Romulans will intercept) that they (our heros) have compromised the general attack and to call it off.
The Romulans KNOWING that there are additional Federation ships about (after all it came across in high priority code) break off their attack on our heros.
So at the end of the book the Federation undergoes a crash program to improve their codes, while the Romulans break their balls trying to discover the "cloaking device" because "obviously the Federation can do it, why can't we..."
It was a REALLY good read. Too bad I can't remember the title...
Help? Older slashdotters?
Line Grunt.
Somehow I prefer the eyecandy on DS9. Terry Farrel, Nicole DeBoer, and holy shit that Chase Masterson.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Let me explain a little fact about the makers of Star Trek here that should be clear by now: They don't give a flying fuck about continuity, what they care about is sales. If they got the idea that the next film would sell better if it suddenly turned out that Troi was somehow Kirk's mother and actually a Klingon, they'd do it in a heartbeat.
The problem is that the creator of Star Trek, the one person who really, really cared, is dead, and not around to defend his creation from the vultures. Contrast this with "Buffy", where JW made the mistake once of letting other people take control -- the stupid "Buffy" movie that came before the series. He learned from that. This is also why, as sad as it might be for us, it is a Good Thing (TM) that Buffy was brought to a clear, clean, and logical (if badly written) end: Whatever else happens, those original seven seaons are safe.
And this is the way to look at Star Trek: Remember the original series, remember "Next Generation", remember "DS9" if you liked it, too -- and forget the rest. It never happened, it doesn't exist, don't let their greed spoil your memories. In fact , this is also the only way you can stand "The Matrix": Tell yourself that there was only one film, the first one. That was the whole story, don't accept anything else that came after that. As far as you are concerned, those sequels never existed.
It's your choice.
Actually, Romulan redshirts (or their low-rank equivalent) wore shiny helmets in the TOS timeline. If hand-to-hand combat happens, the humans won't necessarily see any of the distinguishing features (like Vulcan-like pointy ears, for example :))
:-(
On the other hand, Star Trek X pissed on the Romulan canon so badly that I have given up any hope of the proud race of Romulans ever being represented in their full TOS-era glory again.
I believe that they will turn Romulans into some kind of Al-Qaeda terrorist organisation which kills civilisations for fun, hey that brings in money these days
1. Fallout is bad. Murder is unethical. Whip Berman in public in Beverly Hills as an example to other producers. Don't stop until his back is raw. Then fire him. Then make him knock on the door of every true sci-fi fan in Norther America and beg for their forgiveness.
2. Leave Gates McFaden at home. She was a boring, her character was boring.
3. Bring back Patric Stewart, but lets be honest and make him a British Starship Captain. Do the usual contrived plot to undo the thing stupid thing of his character french when belize fries are more french then he will ever be.
4. Jeri Ryan....approved.
5. Leanord Nimoy....approved
6. Agreed. Bring back Kira, but the evil one from the alternate universe. Looked good in spandex and had a lot more personality.
7. Michael Dorn .....approved.
8. Losing time travel as a plot element....approved.
9. Borg.....approved.
10. More action.......approved.
11. I like pizza, I like ice cream, but not together. Leave B-5 & Mel Brooks out.
12. Forever ban the use of the holodeck as a story line.
13. Forever ban the use of "Earth like" planets as a story line.
14. Forget dream sequences too.
15. All new alien races/cultures must have more creativity used in forming them beyond putting some silly putty on an actors nose or forehead.
16. No proselytizing. It is didactic and dull. Stop trying to teach morals through Star Trek. Declare a 5 year moratorium on mentioning the prime directive. Let the characters be human, the way DS-9 & Enterprise were when they first started.
Or what about that really stupid episode where Kirk and et. al. find some planet full of American Indians who worship the US flag or something? I think we'd all agree that one ought to be dropped out of the story arc.
I don't. The episode you are speaking of is The Omega Glory and is not about indians whorshipping a flag. In the story, one of the federation's captains had beamed down to a planet where the people live hundreds of years. Those who beamed back had died along with carrying the infection with them to the rest of the crew who also died. The Enterpirse arrives and Kirk beams down to investigate before he is made aware of this though. The orginal people it turned out had been like 20th century Earth but had wiped themselves out with a nuclear war. In the end he finds the natives long life was natural and hence the search for the fountain of youth was useless. The show was meant to show three things. The first was the communists in the end would be destroyed completely. The second was that the ideals of liberty and justice would never die, not even after a nuclear war, they were eternal values. The third was that the search for eternal youth to escape the inevitability of death was ultimately always futile.
If your analysis is the closest you have payed attention to the series then no wonder you don't seem to like it. Maybe if we include a super shallow plot and pad it with special effects, like the current Enterprise series, it might hold your attention long enough for you to like it. The series of those times wasn't the piece of shit dramas people watch now where we are stuck with flat storylines that are just about characters, instead each episode had its points. It was very much like Gunsmoke and the Twilight Zone. Ultimately, it wasn't the characters that were important, it was the stories. This is the main reason why Enterprise is so bad. The series is just about the characters, not the stories.
We fans have to realize that when the writers generated the orginal stories back in the 1960s, they had to take into mind the current politics in the US, what advertisers wanted, what the network wanted, what budget they had, last seasons ratings, etc.
When the orginal series writers generated stories, it was to show us something. I haven't seen squat from Enterprise. A lot of the orginal series were timeless tales that are still relevant. That is what you need to realize. Its liek the Twilight Zone. Just because its fifty years old doesn't mean it doesn't have lessons to teach us and things to say that are relevant. Just because Shakespeare wrote in the 1600's, doesn't make his work less relevant. It wasn't the characters that made Star Trek good. It wasn't the special effects. It wasn't the acting. It was the stories. They had a point and what's more they were well written. Enterprise isn't. And until they realize this, there show will go nowhere with the real fans of Star Trek. If you want to watch characters instead of stories go watch a soap opera, leave Star Trek as it was.
But even in B&B's lame attempts at subsituting characters and soap operas for real stories, they have failed. This continuity garbage is crap to cover up the fact they didn't do their homework.
In the future, with better, cheaper effects it might be possible to take the old StarTrek episodes, run them though a PC and make them look like they have whatever the latest in effects can do and maybe even adjust the plots to create a more unified set of stories.
The ultimate proof that you don't understand Star Trek at all. But look on the upside, maybe Berman and Bragga will now hire you to write for them.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Have you watched one entire episode from the original series?
We fans have to realize that when the writers generated the orginal stories back in the 1960s, they had to take into mind the current politics in the US, what advertisers wanted, what the network wanted, what budget they had, last seasons ratings, etc
The writers wanted to be controversial, to have stories that tied into the issues of the day, and to be exciting and entertaining. The network worried about that other stuff.
Or what about that really stupid episode where Kirk and et. al. find some planet full of American Indians who worship the US flag or something? I think we'd all agree that one ought to be dropped out of the story arc.
That was a really good episode, if you'd sit down and watch it. Sure, having the American flag appear somewhere else seems a little far-fetched, but put that aside and watch the rest of it. Another poster had a pretty good synopsis of it.
Another thing is StarFleet itself. The 60s show had a mostly all white, crew-cut, "Right Stuff", NASA with bigger ships ethic.
Lets see... A black woman (Uhura), an Asian (Sulu), a Russian (Chekov), a fat scottish guy (Scotty), an Alien (Spock). Kirk and McCoy were the only two white American males of the main characters. In the pilot, the first officer was a woman. But the network demanded that it be changed. Having a black woman and a Russian were highly controversial, and Star Trek had the first interracial kiss on TV. Half of the potential audience at the time was offended by these things, thats part of what made the show great. I'm sorry, but you're dead wrong on that point.