Should Star Trek Die?

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Posted by timothy on Wednesday September 8, 2004 @02:26AM from the melodrama-hypercube dept.

securitas writes "The New York Times Television reporter William S. Kowinski writes about questions of the Star Trek franchise's viability due to overexposure, audience fatigue and creative exhaustion. Star Trek actor and director LeVar Burton (Geordi La Forge) is in favor of a hiatus, and is quoted as saying, 'Star Trek's just not special enough, not anymore.... They need to shut the whole thing down, wait five years, create an interest, an excitement, a hunger for it again.' Also quoted are Leonard Nimoy (Spock) and executive producer Rick Berman. The article is particularly salient given the recent announcement of Star Trek Online, a massively multiplayer online game scheduled to launch in 2007. Remember that Activision sued Viacom over the Star Trek franchise last year, ending the license despite a 10-year licensing agreement that originally expired in 2008. So the question is: Should Star Trek die?"

19 of 703 comments (clear)

I think it died by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-08 02:28 · Score: 5, Funny

a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...
Yes... by AltImage · 2004-09-08 02:29 · Score: 5, Funny

The good of the many outweighs the needs of the few...
1. Re:Yes... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-08 02:31 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  ...or the one.
  
  *cough*Berman*cough*
2. Re:Yes... by ConceptJunkie · 2004-09-08 02:31 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  That's a typo. You meant to say:
  
  The good of the money outweighs the needs of the few.
  
  --
  You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
3. Re:Yes... by madprof · 2004-09-08 02:42 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  No one has the courage to say "It's dead Jim"...
4. Re:Yes... by pjt33 · 2004-09-08 03:05 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Nonsense. It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.
Anyone else find it amusing? by plover · 2004-09-08 02:29 · Score: 4, Funny

Did anyone else find the layout of the article amusing? This quote, '[Leonard Nimoy] likens the current situation to the period after the first "Star Trek" feature film, when "I felt that 'Star Trek' was like a beached whale," he said.' was right next to the picture of a 400+ pound 'John Harper, of Tulsa., Okla., in Starbase 21, his booth of memorabilia at the "Star Trek" convention in Los Angeles.'
Sorry this is so cruel, but it made me laugh.

--
John
1. Re:Anyone else find it amusing? by underpar · 2004-09-08 02:33 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  "I won it as a door prize at the Star Trek Convention, although I find their choice of prize highly illogical, as the average Trekker has no use for a medium-sized belt."
YES! by rdilallo · 2004-09-08 02:30 · Score: 5, Funny

If Star Trek would die, so would half of the conversations on Slashdot!
1. Re:YES! by richie2000 · 2004-09-08 02:51 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  If Star Trek would die, so would half of the conversations on Slashdot!
  And if Microsoft would die, we'd be all out of topics.
  (From the Netcraft-confirms,-yada,-yada,-yada-dept.)
  
  --
  Money for nothing, pix for free
Re:Star Trek is dead, has been for awhile by FictionPimp · 2004-09-08 02:34 · Score: 4, Funny

ok, I'd pay to see shatner playing a dead guy with scottie and bones taking him around the ship pretending he's alive.
Re:ST XX: Return of the Franchise by richie2000 · 2004-09-08 02:47 · Score: 4, Funny

Um, yeah. In the pattern buffer interface right next to the impulse-stream modulator. Stick Berman in it and then transport the whole section into a nearby star. Kinda like the Beam-A-John 3000:
Enterprise Tech Manual, page 378:
The Galaxy-class starships are the first Federation-built space vessels built with only one conventional bathroom (in the Captain's private cabin). All other cabins come with a Beam-A-John 3000 personal transporter that will transport all human (or alien) waste products into space, well aft of the ship.
The model 3000 also has the newly implemented Waste-Away feature that gives the feces a relative speed to the ship corresponding to one quarter impulse power. This ensures that, even during heavy manoeuvering, the ship will never double-back and hit anything to spoil that beautiful off-white Federation paintjob. Should the inertial dampening field collapse, the Beam-A-John 3000's powerful sensor array can also cope with any kind of surprise vomit attack. The main and battle bridges are ofcourse equipped with enough transporter power to handle an elephant's excrement, should Q see fit to materialize one there.

--
Money for nothing, pix for free
Hey! Hey! Hey! by nightsweat · 2004-09-08 02:48 · Score: 4, Funny

Let's not get carried away with the bad-mouthing random semi-nudity.
I mean, come on!

--

the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Re:If you don't know... by fr2asbury · 2004-09-08 02:50 · Score: 4, Funny

Yeah but . . . what have "In Search Of . . . " and "Reading Rainbow" have to do with Star Trek? ;-)
Re:Star Trek is dead, has been for awhile by GlassUser · 2004-09-08 02:52 · Score: 4, Funny

shatner playing a dead guy

And this is different from any of his other star trek appearances how?

--
funny munging
Star Trek Porn by AliasTheRoot · 2004-09-08 03:20 · Score: 4, Funny

Thats pretty much all that can save it. Marina Sirtis should get naked and service Brent Spiner.
Re:If you don't know... by IronicCheese · 2004-09-08 03:23 · Score: 5, Funny

"In Search Of..." and "Reading Rainbow" (ISO and RR for those of us who know and love the Trek Canon) are two of the least-watched and certainly least understood of the Trek Shows.

ISO was a Spock vehicle, a spinoff meant to explore the mind of our favorite Vulcan. Week after week he would show off his latest research; giving us a sense of what he was doing, peering into that scope of his while Kirk was seducing the alien babes.

Spock's facination with UFOs (naturally) later gave way to an obsession with Uri Geller and the Bermuda Triangle, by which time, most Trekkers left feeling that this show had jumped the shark.

RR was a prequel to the TNG storyline -- wherein a very gifted warp physics engineer shows his softer side by reading children's books, set at a time before he was blinded in a tragic e-book explosion. Paramount, for reasons that are not totally clear, decided to set this futuristic space adventure somewhere in modern times, and sadly, the pilot that explains the temporal anomoly was never aired and is lost to posterity.

Hope that clears things up.
Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!! by Foolhardy · 2004-09-08 04:32 · Score: 5, Funny

Nimoy is high.
He must be on LDS.
Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!! by Scrameustache · 2004-09-08 04:42 · Score: 4, Funny

Once they found out more people like Hoshi than T'Pol, I noticed Hoshi became a lot more scarce. That is just dumb.

You'll lust after whom Rick Berman wants you to lust!
Fall in line, ensign!

--
You can't take the sky from me...