Should Star Trek Die?

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?"

Comments

BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[MoxCamel]

Levar and company are right, Nimoy is high. (not that that's a bad thing...) Although I'd give it even longer, say ten years. It's all a pipe dream though. ST is just too hot a property, and I seriously doubt they'll have the patience to wait two years, let alone five. Coming to a WB station near you: Star Trek Babies!

But a simple hiatus won't fix ST. ST needs better writing, fresher ideas, and to get away from this fixation of techno-babble saving the day. And while I'd be the first to jump into a goo chamber with T'Pol, the "FOX approach" is simply gratuitous and insulting.

ST needs to get back to it's cerebral roots. (yeah the current line in Enterprise is better, but after living through Voyager, it would be hard to get worse.) It needs a rest, but it also needs intelligent direction. coughfirebermancough.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[Dogers]

Cerebral roots? Where/when/what are you talking about? TNG? TOS? I didnt really catch enough of voyager to create a view on it - the few i did see weren't too bad though and they seem to be repeating on the likes of Sky One :(

Personally, I'm quite enjoying Enterprise, although I will admit the whole Xindi thing is getting a bit long in the tooth now.. It certainly has promise, in the whole how-we-got-started thing.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[Tony Hoyle]

I've been watching the voyager reruns and they're actually not bad in places. They never got the continuity to work though (like being caught up by aliens they left behind two seasons ago... aren't they supposed to be trying to get to the alpha quadrant? Doesn't look like they're making much progress!).

I had a look at the enterprise reruns and just can't get into them.... some of the episodes are so dull I just switch off halfway through. Not surprised they cancelled it, really.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[dirvish]

A new series could survive, just not on a major network. However, another terrible movie could really hurt the franchise. Unless the next Star Trek movie gets great reviews I'm going to have to skip it.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[julesh]

like being caught up by aliens they left behind two seasons ago... aren't they supposed to be trying to get to the alpha quadrant? Doesn't look like they're making much progress!

All the episodes that involved time travel set them back several years worth of progress.

I had a look at the enterprise reruns and just can't get into them.... some of the episodes are so dull I just switch off halfway through. Not surprised they cancelled it, really.

Well, yeah. There have been some truly bad ones. But some good ones, too. And when did I miss the news about it being cancelled? I thought it had been renewed...

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[Pharmboy]

I like Enterprise as well, although season 2 was a bit thin. I can't help but to agree with the original post that Berman is part of the problem, if not the whole problem. His approach has become too predictable, too formulaic. He seems to have lost his way.

They do focus on technobable entirely too much, and they forget what the hell ST really is: A soap opera for nerds, with social commentary that questions the status quo. Once you get away from that, it gets weak. Its not about taking sides on current issues, its about raising issues and letting the viewers debate it. Also, just ONCE I would like to see them shut the Autodestruct down with more than 1 second left... Showing dumb luck as just dumb luck would also be more realistic.

The Xindi thing was good, although I agree its about time to move on. I DO really like the way Archer has to face a bunch of moral questions, and the response is usually realistic. IE: Yes, what we will do is wrong, but the world is not so black and white, and we have to survive. Again, its the story, not the do-dads and special effects that make the show.

Oh yea, and although I am a bit insulted by the overt sexuality of T'Pol, I would still savor the opportunity to bring out a little emotion in her, if ya know what I mean ;) Oh, and lots more Hoshi, who is sexier than T'Pol anyway. Hoshi doesn't have to look like a slut to be hot. Once they found out more people like Hoshi than T'Pol, I noticed Hoshi became a lot more scarce. That is just dumb.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[jmcmunn]

Well said. I did not watch Enterprise until this season, but I sort of got into it after catching TNG (The next generation for those non trekie /.'ers) fever a year or so ago. Since then I have seen most of the TNG episodes, and most of the Enterprise episodes.

I would liken TNG more to an adventure show, something where there is a story line in each episode, with a beginning and an end. Enterprise was a soap opera to me. It seemed like if you missed an episode, you missed out on "who was kissing who" and not the important story developments.

I think they need to concentrate less on the romance and whatnot, and get back to the roots.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[Paulrothrock]

There was an Enterprise episode about how freighters were the targets of piracy, and how their captains feel ignored by the Earth government and start taking laws into their own hands. Why not make a few more shows like that, about how ordinary citizens are coping with the incredible technological and political changes in their world?

What made DS9 the best (my opinion) was how it didn't ignore what was happening around it. In TOS and TNG I got the feeling like as soon as some good issues got raised, they were off to some other planet (usually EXACTLY LIKE EARTH except for ONE CRAZY DIFFERENCE).

Maybe ENT shouldn't have created the Xindi. Maybe they should have focused on the important events happening to the people of Earth? Things are changing quickly in their world just like ours. And they wouldn't have to shit all over Star Trek lore to do it.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[nine-times]

ST is just too hot a property, and I seriously doubt they'll have the patience to wait two years, let alone five.

This is why I sometimes think that aquiring the prestige of a cultural icon should kick you over into public domain faster. Otherwise, it's only natural that people will spend far too long "milking" it, when, justifiably, they've already made their money- Star Wars being another good example.

I think, if your goal was not to milk the series, but to create the best conditions under which an interesting Star Trek movie/series/book/whatever would be most likely to be made, you'd just open the intellectual property up to whoever wanted to do something with it. A lot of crap would be made, but maybe some really good stuff too. Of course, you can't expect someone holding such a "hot property" to give it up on their own accord.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[Dogers]

In the middle of last season there was talk about it being cancelled along with a few other shows.. some other shows got cancelled and Ent got rescheduled to another time spot afaik.

Its still coming back, as posted on startrek.com.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[fakeplasticusername]

For sure. The thing that set ST apart from the rest of the sci-fi of that ilk, is that in addition to the triumph of technology that these series showcased, ST was much more prevalent in showing the triumph of philosophy. A lot of sci-fi characters seem like immature idiots in a world of technological fancy. Most notable in ST to me is not the tech, but the characters. Uhura's line about her generation no longer fearing words being one of the notable ones, Picards timely episode about security vs. liberty, and i'm sure there are countless others that escape me right now.

It is hard to imagine that in a world that has conquered nearly all of the worlds' problems with technological solutions, people would still be acting like children.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[Foolhardy]

Nimoy is high.

He must be on LDS.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[Scrameustache]

needs intelligent direction. coughfirebermancough.

Star Trek was good when Gene was alive and kept "interfering" with its direction.
For it to become good again, Rick Berman must die.

He'll never let go, he'll never admit he's wrong, he'll never stop dilluting it and killing every part of it that was good, leaving only an empty husk that looks like star trek, but isn't.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[Scrameustache]

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!

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[atriusofbricia]

Screw that. Give me HOSHI :)

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[J Mack Daddy]

>> get away from this fixation of techno-babble saving the day But the positron inverted flux field that was causing the crew's brain alpha channels to super-juxtapose just seemed to make so much sense...

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[Tharian]

That would be a show I would definitely watch... Nothing like seeing all them...

Oh ... wait...

you said babIes. Sorry... Missed that one letter.

Now if you were to create a ST: Babes (or ST: Babez, I'm not too particular), I'd have to set up a PVR for that one.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. I get roasted by "hard core fans" on a regular basis for saying this, but DS9 was the best of all the Trek series. Moreover, a large part of why it was the best is because it goes directly against Roddenberry's utopianism. None of the characters are the shiny perfect people from TNG, Earth is explicitly portrayed as not a paradise, religion was handled pretty realistically, and technobabble rarely saved the day. Add in actual married characters, actual long-term character development (who could've predicted where Nog would end up after you first saw "Emmissary"?), bathrooms, and no reset button and you have one hell of a great show. Paramount should give Berman's job to Ira Behr, pronto.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[Squarepusher]

I'm a pretty big TNG fan. I'm almost done watching season 3 and this is the first time I've been able to see every episode (seasons 1-3, 4 is in the pipe, thank you suprnova! :) ) so I'm really able to observe the way the characters and stories develop.

Ok, so every problem they come across can pretty much be solved with Geordi and Data with a sprinkling of Picard because he's a bad ass captain. But, much like what happened to the show Sliders, Star Trek really did seem to head down the soap opera alley after TNG.

TNG brings up a lot of personal dilemmas and interesting characters with amazing powers (Q) which allowed for some pretty wild problems. It didn't need the soap opera feel to garner an attachment to the characters. I hate to have to fall back on this but, the social commentary from TNG can be applied to any time period. When you try to tackle current issues you prevent future generations from being able to identify with your show. And, on top of that, television has enough trash on it fiction and non-fiction, I want to watch a show that doesn't take a political stance.

I want a show that allows me to think, and hopefully introduces nifty new lines of thought, but if I want current affairs I'll come to /. or put on the real news (not that I actually want to watch the real news, you don't know what your getting there...). It's only 30-60 minutes, is that so much to ask?

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[Mr. No Skills]

Cerebral roots? Where/when/what are you talking about? TNG? TOS?

I thinks this refers to the original series. While the acting was hammy, the costumes lame, and the special effects a joke by today's standards, if you go through the writers of the episodes I think you'll find a surprising number of well known SF authors. A number of SF short stories from Ellison and others provided the original source for the episodes, IIFC.

Someone else probably knows better than I, but I think "The Arena", "The City on the Edge of Forever", and a few others had a level of drama that the later series didn't touch. And, without a need for much techno-babble.

Of course, back then they were probably desparate for material and were grabbing it from anywhere, and there was lots of unmined material to grab from real authors. The bigger budget, later series are obviously more formula with their story arcs across episodes and over-use of effects instead of original, thought-provoking content.

It is amazing to think about watching this series over 30 years, though!

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[ToApeiron]

I don't think that Star Trek needs to die, I think Rick Berman does. He is a scheming Machiavellian BASTARD who has systematically dismantled Gene Roddenberry's cerebral, and thus sometimes commercially unviable, dream of the future and twisted it into an insipid mockery of cogency and wit, all for the sake of corporate profits and lining his own pockets. Since Season One of TNG, he has manipulated people and events to elevate him to supreme dictater of a multi-billion dollar franchise. I've read interviews with many Star Trek staff and cast members (read the interview with brilliant artist/designer Andrew Probert) and the consensus is that Rick Berman is an EPIC asshole and is the ROOT CAUSE for Star Trek's decline. Of course, corporate boneheads complicit with Berman are to blame as well, but the real creative engine and Captain at the helm, so to speak, of Star Trek was not one Gene, but two. Gene Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon, were the wellspring from which Star Trek grew and flourished. Though Gene L. Coon died shortly after the cancellation of TOS, Gene Roddenberry continued, more or less, to exert his inimitable influence over his creation. Alas, as he is now dead, I can say that without a similarly brilliant, polemic, and progressive storyteller with a hatred of corporate management, Star Trek will remain no more than a pathetic effigy of a great man's vision. In short, a new Roddenberry is needed to usurp the tyrannical dictatorship of Berman et al, and reinvent Star Trek, that is to say, to genuinely shock and disturb people with the sight of an ALIEN reality where conventional thought is constantly challenged. Hey, I just had an idea. Somebody should start a petition asking Paul Allen, (the world's richest Trekkie, right?) to BUY Start Trek from Viacom. Perhaps, under Paul's auspices (benevolent or no), ST might recieve the vital creative directorship that it requires? I don't know. Regardless of how, Star Trek needs to be completely remade, or else it will stay as it is now: Dead with Gene.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[Suidae]

That fits in a bit with my idea for Trek.

I loved TNG, most of it was really well done. But I got tired of the 'stateless' nature of the show. DS9 was cool once they got a real story going, but then at the end of the story they had to kill the show (well, it had been on the air long enough either way).

What I want now is a Trek show run kind of like a cross between the last few seasons of DS9 and The Outer Limits. Pick a story in the Trek universe. Any story, past, present or future, choose a story in the empires of humans, vulcans, klingons, whomever. Run it like a SciFi channel mini-series. Use as many or as few episodes as it takes to tell that story. Maybe its just one episode, or maybe it takes a dozen to do the story right. When the story is done, thats it, its over. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Maintain an active online presence, and actually use fan suggestions. Pick up loose threads from other series, follow characters that showed up in other series. Sprinkle in episodes that tell the same story from the perspective of several different characters of different races.

The possibilities for such a show, particularly with writers that will pay attention to feedback from fans, are nearly endless, as is the potential for money-making spin-off series in the style of the older shows.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Star Trek 4 called. It said, "Zing!"

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[Pharmboy]

Hoshi is our own little Anime character, all innocent on the inside, but you know shes all naughty on the inside if given the chance.

Ok, gotta go take a cold shower now...

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[bev_tech_rob]

To Tony Hoyle: RTA.....not cancelled...scheduled now on Friday nights....

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[KlomDark]

See this for an explanation of what is meant by LDS. :)

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[drinkypoo]

This is why I sometimes think that aquiring the prestige of a cultural icon should kick you over into public domain faster.

Right, that way the fanfic and slash writers can really murder the memory of our beloved shows.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[Pchelka]

I really liked the episode of Enterprise with the freighters too. It kind of reminded me of a book I read by C. J. Cherryh a while back, but I can't remember the title.

There have been some good episodes of Enterprise, but a lot of them have been disappointing. I think that what the producers of Star Trek really need to do is hire people like C. J. Cherryh, Lois McMaster Bujold, Orson Scott Card, David Brin, etc. to write episodes for Enterprise. I'd definitely watch if they did this, and I'm sure a lot of other people would too. Most of the people who watch Star Trek also read science fiction novels, so bringing in a few major authors as writers for the show could be a big draw for viewers. Personally, I think this would work a lot better to attract viewers than female Vulcans in heat or sexy Borg. Not all Star Trek fans are male. Better writing would encourage a much broader audience to watch the show.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[Pharmboy]

Did you watch any of the origional series? The whole thing was a giant metaphore for the cold war that very clearly had the USA (Federation) as the good guys.

It takes good guys and bad guys to make a story. The Xindi are the current bad guys. The Klingons go from good guys to bad guys all the time, showing it is not a black and white issue. Showing the conflict among friends (early Vulcans) is good as well. There is a difference in bad and evil. Even the Romulans are not always "bad". Just like in real life.

We hated the Soviets, but we love the Russian people (substitute for any country). We often support a country in public, but privately work against them (or vise versa). There are usually good reasons for this, even if we don't like them. Life is always simpler "in theory" than it is in practice.

Enterprise and other ST shows are a classic example of art imitating life. So yes, you have good guys, bad guys, and sometimes truly evil guys.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[cmotd]

Yes BER-MAN must die. I have repeatedly sent his address and personal schedule to Al-Quida, Al-Jamir, the IRA, the Sandanistas, the Triads, the Yakuza, the Mafiosi and the International Tuba Players Association to no avail. If anyone out there knows how to get within arms reach please smear him with honey and I'll supply the killer ants. Or maybe a quick furtive push at the right time could see him under a bus or other equaly dangerous heavy, fast moving object. I heard talk of Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Unspellable getting his job, that would be kewl.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[BigLonn]

When your right your right! Berman and the viacom people who've over milked this cash cow need to go golf for a few years. When they finally get serious about recovering this franchise they'll need to hire a "Cannonista"(thats right one of us old school hacks) to recover the franchise. They need to do this so that they can go back to the base form, albeit modernized for recent senibilities, Then some how right all the cannon derailments put in place by the writers and producers during the Next gen. If they don't, and in all probablility they won't(they after all know startrek), then kiss ST and all its derivatives to the warehouse video store shelves of your choice, as there won't be enough viewer support to support another slack jawed vision of the future.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[suckmysav]

"While the acting was hammy, the costumes lame, and the special effects a joke by today's standards, if you go through the writers of the episodes I think you'll find a surprising number of well known SF authors. A number of SF short stories from Ellison and others provided the original source for the episodes, IIFC"

While what you say is correct, you forgot to put a * at the end of that sentence.

* Does not include TOS Season three, which had lamentably bad writing due to substantial studio budget cuts.

The prosecution presents Exhibit A as evidence.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[Lemmy Caution]

It takes good guys and bad guys to make a story.

That's just not true. Some of the best stories have absolutely nothing of the sort. Even in the fantasy realm, the stories of Studio Ghibli show a remarkable absence of the good guy/bad guy dualism. It's part of the American - and, perhaps in origins, English - astigmatism that good vs. bad is the master narrative. Homer even depicted a war without such limits - the Trojans were neither bad nor evil.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!

[Mr. No Skills]

Hee Hee -- with evidence like this I plead "no contest"!

Definately deserved an asterisk -- they weren't _all_ good! Just some were very good!

I think it died

[Anonymous Coward]

a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...

Re:I think it died

[nkh]

I think it died a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...

Which leads us to the second question: should we kill Star Wars (or its creator? ;) now, before the shooting of the 7th episode?

Re:I think it died

[Morph233]

a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...

I love Star trek even though the new one sucks(Enterprise). But it still doesn't suck as much as part 1, 2 and probably 3 of star wars, now that sucks ass.

Re:I think it died

[hplasm]

The 7th episode... hmm that would make it 7 of 9. That should make for some ST v SW geek wars... :>>|

Re:I think it died

[Cat_Byte]

speaking of....when is episode 3 supposed to come out? Anyone have an idea? I haven't seen movies in awhile & haven't seen previews lately.

Re:I think it died

[CanadianCrackPot]

No it kicked an empire and republics ass a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away. Ten years before that phrase was coined.

Re:I think it died

[llefler]

Which leads us to the second question: should we kill Star Wars (or its creator? ;)

No, just make him live with Jar Jar for a year or two. He'll do the rest.

Re:I think it died

[heffel]

According to this,
it is coming out May 19th, 2005.

Re:I think it died

[blockhouse]

Well, episode 1 came out in May 1999. Episode 2 came out in May 2002. If it follows the pattern, it'll come out in May 2005.

Better get in line for tickets now. There are just eight shopping months until Episode 3.

Star Trek is dead, has been for awhile

[stratjakt]

The question is, should we bury it, or spritz it with Fabreeze and see how long we can milk it "Weekend at Bernie's" style.

Re:Star Trek is dead, has been for awhile

[FictionPimp]

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:Star Trek is dead, has been for awhile

[GlassUser]

shatner playing a dead guy

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

Re:Star Trek is dead, has been for awhile

[abb3w]

Um, kinda hard to do, given that Bones is the one who's dead. And unfortunately Scotty currently suffers from Alzheimers amoung other problems-- which means... he'll... sound... like... Kirk... since neither... can now... remember their... lines!

Mind you, I'll take your money anyway (and give you nothing for it). A fool and his money are some party.

Re:Star Trek is dead, has been for awhile

[aurelian]

Given that Bones is actually dead and Scotty soon will be, that's an unlikely storyline. The other way round, with Shatner pushing the wheelchair, is just possible however..

Re:Star Trek is dead, has been for awhile

[Lt Cmdr Tuvok]

Your attitude is commendable, although your choice of wording is poor. However, it is, as you might say, the spirit that counts.

As described at some length in this post, the phenomena known collectively as 'Star Trek' should preferably be brought to an end as quickly as is practically possible.

The crew of Voyager are still in peril, and any actions taken in your timeline towards bringing about the end of 'Star Trek' would be most beneficial to our survival.

Re:Star Trek is dead, has been for awhile

[discord5]

He isn't dead, Jim

Re:Star Trek is dead, has been for awhile

[metlin]

Hmm, better acting when he is playing a dead guy? ;-)

Re:Star Trek is dead, has been for awhile

[abb3w]

Check the IMDB bio; he has both, along with other problems. I wouldn't be trying to sell him life insurance.

Re:Star Trek is dead, has been for awhile

[base_chakra]

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

20% fewer spasms

Re:Star Trek is dead, has been for awhile

[operagost]

Old enginners never die, they just:

Canna give ye any more!

Canna change the laws of physics!

Canna take much more o' this!

Canna ... what's my name again, laddie?

Re:Star Trek is dead, has been for awhile

[syousef]

ok, I'd pay to see shatner playing a dead guy with scottie and bones taking him around the ship pretending he's alive.

Okay its not scottie and bones taking him 'round but have you seen this film - Free Enterprise? Embarassing!

Probably

[BigDork1001]

Yes, they probably should let it die. I'd much rather see it die than have another bad movie/series/game with the Star Trek name come out. At this point executives are just trying to squeeze every last cent out of Star Trek no matter what happens to the franchise.

Re:Probably

[syn3rg]

> Yes, they probably should let it die. I'd much rather see it die than have another bad movie/series/game with the Star Trek name come out.

Leisure Suit James T.?
You don't know Spock?

Yes...

[AltImage]

The good of the many outweighs the needs of the few...

Re:Yes...

[Anonymous Coward]

...or the one.

*cough*Berman*cough*

Re:Yes...

[ConceptJunkie]

That's a typo. You meant to say:

The good of the money outweighs the needs of the few.

Re:Yes...

[madprof]

No one has the courage to say "It's dead Jim"...

Re:Yes...

[Palshife]

Please turn in your account for misquoting Star Trek.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.

Re:Yes...

[AltImage]

It was misquoted intentionally...being on Slashdot, I'm all too conscious of other people's copyrights.

Re:Yes...

[pjt33]

Nonsense. It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.

Re:Yes...

[petepac]

I'm a Slashdotter, not a Doctor!!!

Re:Yes...

[sbowles]

"That's all I can give ya! I can give ya n'more!"

Re:Yes...

[nyekulturniy]

"Then run a Level Three diagnostic on it."

Re:Yes...

[Ibiwan]

.sigged

Re:Yes...

[G-funk]

We come in peace! *shoot to kill, shoot to kill, shoot to kill*

We come in peace! *shoot to kill, shoot to kill, shoot to kill, men!*

There's klingons off the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow..... /runs away

Re:Yes...

[pjt33]

And for those who haven't seen it, check out the Stone Trek version - Flash, sound.

Overexposure?!

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Overexposure is what Madonna has.

Star Trek is "not special anymore" because it's been taken over by people who can't understand what made it special. Bring in some real writers who understand why Threshold and Meridian were terrible stories and why The Inner Light was a great one, and the viewers will follow.

Re:Overexposure?!

[abb3w]

Overexposure is what Madonna has.

As opposed to what T'Pol has?
Not that I mind having something to appeal to my baser instincts, as long as you can do it while actually telling a thoughtful SF story. And frankly, Bujold's the only author in SF who's had anything new and thoughtful to say about sex since about 1975. Yes, the repetitive calisthenics are fun, but so what?

Re:Overexposure?!

[networkBoy]

Funny, My fav series was DS9. It had a nice story line and I've always held that J. Dax was my favorite (not Troy, 7of9, or any of the others) . . .

Re:Overexposure?!

[ImaLamer]

Bring in some real writers who understand why Threshold and Meridian were terrible stories and why The Inner Light was a great one, and the viewers will follow.


Oh my god, I must be tired already... I though you said tribble stories...

Doing a search on Google for "tribble" resulted in this, which is kind of disturbing.

On a side note, a "Rejected Star Trek Title" is "10-Minute Tribble Recipes"... ewww

Re:Overexposure?!

[Steve G Swine]

Bujold's the only author in SF...

Varley?

Re:Overexposure?!

[abb3w]

Varley?

Point. He had some interesting things to say in Ophihuchi Hotline back in '84, and he's elaborated a bit with Steel Beach in '94. (No, I don't think his "Titan" trilogy had much of interest to say on sex; sorry.) There may have been a very few others, too...

Re:Overexposure?!

[Anonymous Writer]

Bring in some real writers who understand why Threshold and Meridian were terrible stories

Meridian was just a plot copy of an old movie called Brigadoon released in 1954 about an old Scottish town that disappears for a century every night when everyone in it falls asleep.

Re:Overexposure?!

[fred fleenblat]

And no more plot recycling. TNG and voyager became a weird combination of funny and annoying after a while because of all the plot recycling. It's almost inevitable since each new series has to have the same essential characters:

* captain married to ship: kirk, picard, janeway, sisco
* devoid of emotion: spock, seven, tpol, early dax
* insufferable physician: mccoy, crusher, hologram, bashir
* engineer w/attitude: scotty, o'brien, jordi (not so much), that maqui chick on voyager
* grumpy tactical person: seven, yar, worf, kira
* stereotype-based aliens: all ferengi are greedy, all klingons are violent, all romulans/cardassians are sneaky, all vulcans are logical but conflicted
* ships all have same tech: transporters, phasers, cloaking, shields, tractor beams, holodeck (tng and later)

I can't really blame the writers for not being able to come up with a new plot: the raw material of players, stages, and props is nearly fixed in stone.

Re:Overexposure?!

[Steve G Swine]

Oh, I dunno. For books that were really busy doing something else, Titan/Wizard/Demon did squeeze in a lot of interesting dynamics - Robin the Nine-Fingered's societal outlook, Chris and Valiha, Rocky and Gaby, and if you expand the topic to the politics of procreation, the Titanide/Wizard relationship was a new viewpoint.

Steel Beach is the one I was thinking of, though. And I pretty much agree with your main point.

We're just talking to each other now behind the main wave, I suppose, but still worth saying. Maybe Varley will cut us a commission.

Re:should star trek die? yes

[Ansonmont]

Can someone just mod this whole "story" a Troll?

yes

[Slashbot Hive-Mind]

Star Trek:
Western in space. Kinda campy but did have its moments. Very memorable characters. Fanbase: Big enough to get a few movies going after its cancelation. Noteworthy: The fans loved the show and movies enough to get an entire freakin' space shuttle renamed. Nae bad.

Star Trek: The Next Generation:
Pretty deep plots. Much deeper than much of what is shown on TV, which really doesn't say much. Very memorable characters. Very powerful episodes. (Remember the one where the crew find a probe and Picard spends a lifetime on a dieing planet?) Had many people who aren't fans of scifi watching. Noteworthy: Roddenbery died during this series.

Star Trek: Deep Space 9
Very deep storyline spanning many seasons. Characters not as memorable as those on TNG, but memorable none the less.

Star Trek: Voyager:
Unmemorable characters, superficial plots, enough gaps in the plot to make Spock have a stroke. The previously immortal and near unbeatable borg were made to look like a bunch of pussies in this. Time travel became more cliche than it previously was. It's crap, Jim.

Star Trek: Enterprise
New 'hip' series that shits on the pre-federation history laid out by the previous series and movies. Superficial. Unmemorable characters. Plots so shallow not even an infant could drown in them. Superficial. Tries to grab your attention with random semi-nudity. Predictable. Superficial. Theme song sucks. Superficial.

As somebody who used to be a HUGE Trek fan 10 years ago - good. The horse is laying in the middle of the field, four broken legs, broken ribs, and is oozing blood out of its ears. Just shoot it and get it over with. I hate seeing my childhood fave raped for ratings.

ST XX: Return of the Franchise

[richie2000]

Star Trek can't die. It can enter a state of suspended animation, however, and that's what it should do. Hibernate, if you will, to be revived when we have the technology to cure it. Put the whole thing in a time capsule and dig it up in five years, conveniently "forgetting" to pack any oxygen for Berman. That should do the trick nicely.

Re:ST XX: Return of the Franchise

[mbrother]

You mean caught in a transporter loop, right?

Re:ST XX: Return of the Franchise

[richie2000]

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.

Re:ST XX: Return of the Franchise

[Guppy06]

Yes, but what happens when the people who revive the series realize that this was the same series that was one of the major players in the Eugenics War? Exile it to Seti Alpha V(I)?

TRRRREEEEEEKKKK!!!

Re:ST XX: Return of the Franchise

[drinkypoo]

Get back to me when ST XXX comes out. Just make sure all of the old guard are off the show by then. I don't have a GILF fetish.

Re:ST XX: Return of the Franchise

[-medeakun-]

All star trek needs is something new. The rumours after voyager were that they were doing a series within the Academy, that would have left greater scope for original storylines. It would have been nice to see them integrating stuff from the ST Encyclopedia in lessons for example. Instead it's same shit, different shovel. Think of how many 'transporter accident' storylines you've seen it gets tiresome. Don't blame it on 'audience fatigue', B&B fatigue maybe.

Re:ST XX: Return of the Franchise

[drinkypoo]

The ILF part means "I'd Like (to) Fuck". HTH :)

Re:ST XX: Return of the Franchise

[richie2000]

a series within the Academy

Star Trek - Savek Potter and the Vulcan's stone? Hm.

Five years?

[Kassiopeia]

More like twenty. Things went to hell in a handbasket when TNG started to spawn all these spinoffs. In a better world, TNG would have ended with season 7, and after that a long wait, until in say 2005 we'll be salivating over the prospect of a new ST series carrying on from there, perhaps concentrating on Timefleet.

Re:Five years?

[meringuoid]

More like twenty. Things went to hell in a handbasket when TNG started to spawn all these spinoffs. In a better world, TNG would have ended with season 7, and after that a long wait, until in say 2005 we'll be salivating over the prospect of a new ST series carrying on from there, perhaps concentrating on Timefleet. I wouldn't go for Timefleet, though. A time travel show is wholly different from a space travel show, and would turn into Doctor Who. I like the idea of Enterprise, but it just isn't quite Star Trek. Perhaps the Enterprise-C would be worth following someday?

Re:Five years?

[why-is-it]

A time travel show is wholly different from a space travel show, and would turn into Doctor Who.

Doctor Who was a fantastic program! The special effects were low-budget, but the stories and acting more than made up for it.

On the other hand, the Berman era Trek has emphasized special effects and moralizing over acting and storylines, resulting in the train wreck that was Voyager, and is Enterprise.

Re:Five years?

[meringuoid]

Agreed, Doctor Who was excellent - sometimes. Don't tell me there weren't some bloody awful stories, though. What was that crap with the maggot things in that Welsh mine?

But it's an entirely different show from Star Trek. If time travel was a weekly occurrence in Trek, and not just something that happens occasionally and uncontrollably, then it would no longer be Star Trek.

Re:Five years?

[drinkypoo]

If we're going to do time travel, let's dust off some heinlein. At least then we're guaranteed to have more hot chicks. Of course, it's going to have to either air on Fox or HBO...

Re:Five years?

[why-is-it]

What was that crap with the maggot things in that Welsh mine?

Yuck, the one with the maggots. I think it was largely an excuse for the writer to have a script in which a bunch of Welsh extras spent a lot of time calling each other boyo, and things got out of hand after that... They can't all be gems.

On the other hand, stories like City of Death or The Talons Of Weng-Chiang were fantastic.

Time travel seems to be a fairly common occurance in the Trek universe (once or twice per season IIRC) and it pains me to see what a mess they make of it. Sure, it's just fiction and all, but have the writers ever heard about a little thing called continuity? Time travel is the sort of plot device that should be used sparingly and with great impact. Time travel should not be a cheesy excuse to give Denise Crosby the odd guest-starring role.

I'd better stop now, I am starting to sound like comic book store guy...

Re:Five years?

[MSTCrow5429]

Perhaps the Enterprise-C would be worth following someday?

That would be a horribly depressing show. We know they're all going to die anyways. And who is going to get attached to a doomed crew?

Re:Five years?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Enterprise C would have been ideal. True, the ending is known, but it would be powerful, moving, maybe even heartbreaking. None of the campy "the hero never dies" bullshit they so often foist on us. Done right, B5 would pale in comparison.

Done badly though, and we'd have the same shit they give us now, though.

Anyone else find it amusing?

[plover]

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.

Re:Anyone else find it amusing?

[underpar]

"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."

Re:Anyone else find it amusing?

[AndroidCat]

Beached whales are a problem. Blowing them up doesn't work. If you leave them alone, they still blow up. (yuck warning) Burying them has toxic issues.

I'm not sure how Paramount will solve their problem. XXXXL fans can usually be shifted with a trail of doughnuts.

Should Trek Die? Yes.

[grub]

But I still have to scream "KHAAAAAAAANNNNNNN!!!" when thinking of it.

Star Trek And Learning

[RadioAct1ve]

We have learned so much for star trek. Its true, I know a lot of people that substituted star trek for an education, it works.

YES!

[rdilallo]

If Star Trek would die, so would half of the conversations on Slashdot!

Re:YES!

[richie2000]

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.)

Re:Yes!

[phuturephunk]

Yano, Enzyte can help you will that little frustration problem of yours ;).

Re:YES!

[VE3MTM]

Lots of things are dead or stillborn, but we still talk about it here anyways.

Re:YES!

[Threed]

There'd still be SCO and all the "In Soviet Russia, all your Natalie Portman overlords welcome YOU with hot grits" jokes.

Re:YES!

[Hooptie]

Don't worry. The trolls can still talk about *BSD dying.

Hooptie

Re:YES!

[ThousandStars]

And if Microsoft would die, we'd be all out of topics.

I've always been wondering, which is better, KDE or gnome?

Re:YES!

[richie2000]

I've always been wondering, which is better, KDE or gnome?

A right-honoured reverend from the Church of Emacs will shortly pay you a small correctional visit, heretic.

Wow

[Palshife]

So, nothing is "dead" today, so we've started putting up stories that ask for things to die?

Seriously, when has anything really just DIED?! Technology gets reborn into newer applications, fads resurface, trends rise and fall. Quit it with the incessant death babble.

It's Sputtering

[trevinofunk]

Honestly, it just hasn't been all that exciting and great recently. Star Trek 10 was supposed to be this huge movie with grandiose themes and all. It was kinda lame and it felt like the star-trek wagon's wheels were falling off. Not to mention Enterprise....blech.... There comes a time when you just let a thing go and have its legacy.

no, but

[Rooked_One]

we need to stop making all these spin-off's. TNG was great. It had the whole star trek spirit, but things like Voyager make me want to puke. Endless encounters with the borg, and no general mission besides "making it home." Can the borg win for once and just blow them up? :)

While I love Star Trek...

[Short Circuit]

...I'd be in favor of a hiatus. Spend five years planning the hell out of the next series.

Seems applicable

[Jonas the Bold]

Clicky Clicky

Personally I agree, it's already dead. Voyager sucks, and theres not a big following of Enterprise. The last movie sucked.

Re:Seems applicable

[antiMStroll]

"Star Trek" is little more than a brand name slapped on anything in which most of the cast wear an upside-down 'V' on their shirts and the rest have bumpy noses. Whatever remained of the original series ended its mission decades ago.

Re:should star trek die? yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Ja, lägg ner rymddallas en gång för alla.

Wouldn't bother me much...

[ThosLives]

It wouldn't bother me at all to see the current generation of Trek put on hold. I can't really stand any of it since TNG ended (I don't even enjoy the movies all that much). I had such high hopes for Voyager, and that was a let down (I've maybe seen 10 episodes). I had such high hopes for Enterprise, and I think I only watched the pilot.

I'd agree that there is too much exposure, lack of creativity (it's the same old plots over and over) and way too much trying to be uber-politically-correct and "visionary". It was better when they put the social commentary in without ramming it down your throat.

I love the idea of having a great spacefaring future, but the best new sci-fi / space shows out there were canned (Farscape and Firefly). I don't really care too much for Stargates; too sappy for my tastes.

While it may be sad to have no new Trek, I think it would be best if they just let a good thing go and not risk tarnishing the franchise any further.

Re:Wouldn't bother me much...

[meringuoid]

I watched most of Voyager. It was... bad, but not dire, until they met the Borg and we got into weapons inflation problems. Voyager just had to get harder and harder as time went by, didn't it? That ship should have been half-wrecked after years on the run in deep space, it should have looked like Nostromo or Red Dwarf, but not only does it remain Starfleet-clean, it makes a ruin of half the Borg collective and ends up violating just about every law of physics in the Trek universe.

Enterprise isn't that bad. It's very different, but I think it's decent enough. Some of the plots are excellent, and by its nature as a prequel it can't be driven by technobabble quite as much.

The best SF space show I've seen in recent years is undoubtedly Cowboy Bebop. Definitely not Starfleet-clean, that one... ;-)

Re:Wouldn't bother me much...

[cpsc2005]

I had such high hopes for Voyager, and that was a let down (I've maybe seen 10 episodes). I had such high hopes for Enterprise, and I think I only watched the pilot.

So, in other words, you have never seen any of the latest two series (You've seen 6% of Voyager and less than 3% of Enterprise.) You have no real right to attempt to critique a show you have yet to watch. It just doesn't work that way.

I also don't believe you have any basis to be disappointed with the latest two series. Watch them, enjoy them, and don't make them have to live up to the greatness that was TNG and TOS. Those series are long gone, as is the original creator. The latter half of TNG followed in Gene's footsteps, while the latter series are unique creations in a right of their own. I earnestly think Enterprise should have the right to be finished (7 seasons.) After it is finished, then a hiatus can be taken.

(As a footnote, I have seen 94% of Voyager and 100% of enterprise)

Re:Wouldn't bother me much...

[julesh]

I had such high hopes for Voyager, and that was a let down (I've maybe seen 10 episodes). I had such high hopes for Enterprise, and I think I only watched the pilot.

I'd suggest actually watching more before berating them too much. Yes, Voyager wasn't brilliant. They did miss an opportunity to actually turn it into a story rather than just a series of individual episodes, but there were some good points. A fair few of the stories were well written. Some of the characters were interesting, at least for a few series.

Enterprise isn't as good as Voyager, that is true. But even Enterprise has its share of episodes that don't suck, and few that are truly dire. I mean, OK, they've done a couple of episodes that had "this never happened" endings, which I have to agree is _the_ _most_ _lousy_ trick in the book.

So neither of them were up to the standard of Firefly. But then neither was DS9, IMO.

I think what they need to do is get some good writers in, let them play around with ideas for characters and stories for a year or so before committing to anything, then write a few stories, put together a series manual, and ask established modern SF writers to write the rest of the series. The problem with modern trek is that Berman & Co are writing so much of it. Who wants to watch hour after hour of the same writer doing stuff with the same characters? It gets boring quickly, even when the writer's good.

Re:Wouldn't bother me much...

[ThosLives]

True, I haven't bothered watching more of Enterprise; but between my lack of being impressed with the pilot and the commercials for other episodes just looking plain stupid (I have caught maybe another hour of Enterprise, just never a full episode) was not enough to convince me.

And the 10 episodes of Voyager were more than enough for me to think it entirely too contrived with characters that remind me of the people I hated in high school because they were trying so hard.

That said, Firefly only aired 9 episodes, and I was hooked after watching only two of them (caught them on DVD actually). Then again, Whedon's a bit of a genious with the writers he finds...I could be convinced that the new Treks could be (could have been) better with the right staff.

The best assessment I can make is that some people like the new Treks, some don't; it's all up to taste anyway. That said, it's fun to discuss the why's of it all on one's lunch break...

Re:Wouldn't bother me much...

[glass_window]

I can't really stand any of it since TNG ended (I don't even enjoy the movies all that much).

You do not mention DS9, I hope you have just forgotten it only because it is so different and easy to disassociate from the rest of the series.

I love the idea of having a great spacefaring future, but the best new sci-fi / space shows out there were canned (Farscape and Firefly).

Ironically enough, this fits right in with the current situation NASA finds itself in. It seems like we're all just sort of giving up on the whole "Final Frontier" thing, yet most people I know would practically give their life up for a chance to go to space. I suppose we have grown from kids who are day-dreaming space visionaries to adults that see it as just another thing they'll never have. It's been too long without much tangible progress in the field of space travel. People find themselves more worried with other problems. If you had everybody make a list of their top 5 concerns in life, how many would place: "the need for reliable space travel" in there? Now if they found a way to use the inflatable space habitats in conjunction with reality tv... watch out!

Sure...

[wo1verin3]

But only if there is an opening on Boston Public for Jolene Blalock. :)

Star Trek tech coming true...

[Iscariot_]

Which is kinda making it a bit antequated. I mean, we all already have the original communicator (cell phones), we've got teleportation working (kinda, only a few particles at a time over short distances but still).

Point is, Star Trek is highly based on "science", which is how Gene wanted it. Unless they can find a way to move away from the science, and do more morality stuff, then yea they need to pause.

Maybe in a decade or two we can revisit Star Trek, only it'll be the Next Next generation. Ugh, and let's pretend the temperal stuff never happened.

Re:Star Trek tech coming true...

[jellomizer]

Which is kinda making it a bit antequated. I mean, we all already have the original communicator (cell phones), we've got teleportation working (kinda, only a few particles at a time over short distances but still).

Well Cellphones vs. the Trek Communicator is a little different. The Comunicator is like talking to a person on the moon or anywhere else on the planet with your cell phone without any cell towers. The Cell Phone system is a bunch of towers every so miles apart to form a network. The Trek Communicators just kinda get there with no infrastuctore.

Well a fiew particles is not much compared the trek transporter which can move an entire body while keeping all of the particles momentium the same. If not then there would at least be a lot of heart attacks or at least a lot of dizzy people to get the hearts to get the blood pumping again from a compleat standstill.

Re:Star Trek tech coming true...

[bheer]

Unless they can find a way to move away from the science, and do more morality stuff, then yea they need to pause.

The campy science + characters of the original series was what made Star Trek what it is.

The Star Trek rehashes of today are not-so-elaborate morality plays set in space -- and that's why they suck. They haven't taken the series forward, the way (for example) Herbert did in the Dune novels (each sequel quite different from the last). And they expect the fans to stand for this blatant milking of a franchise?

Re:Star Trek tech coming true...

[GQuon]

Well, they should try to stay more internally consistent, and not make up new science to solve a problem all out of nothing.
But yes, maybe they should take Star Trek into the future with new discoveries and more advanced tech. What would it take to put in a wow-factor, with new technology that is unheard of not only in everyday life, but little known in mainstream skiffy today?
The thing about Trek is that the technology you see there is put there as a Swiss army knife to give the writers the highest degree of freedom possible. Want to not waste time on travel? Transporter. Not waste time on setting up communications? Communicator. A story about the old West or today? Timetravel and holodeck.
Then there's the unlimited supply of new races and the reset button, but that's not a technology issue.

I like the replicators. I like the replicators.
That's something that's just about as far away from achievable as the transporter is. But it could introduce new issues of copyright violation :-)

Sersiously, I don't think the lack of flashy gadgets is Trek's biggest problem. It's how the technology is used to tell a story about the human condition, how we embrace technology and deal with each other.

Re:Star Trek tech coming true...

[prgrmr]

The Trek Communicators just kinda get there with no infrastuctore.

There was most certainly infrastructure for long-distance communication. There were several references to communication arrays, the most notible being Epsilon 9 from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Re:Star Trek tech coming true...

[jellomizer]

On the Planet. Even in startrek those comunicators rairly worked for long distances to anything out of orbit range. Hence no infrastructure to get them to work.

Re:McCoy

[Nos.]

Dammit Jim I'm a doctor not a writer!

Re:yes

[Palshife]

I've seen this post several places on the Internet before, same spelling errors and all. Where'd you get it?

Yes, Today is a good day to die....

[IckySplat]

Sorry, couldn't help myself :)

Current Trek is a good reason to get rid of
all the brain dead marketroids ....

Big breasts & tight fitting costumes should
be the hook for the show not the main plot.

Yes, let it go into hibernation

[Toxe]

Star Trek has grown a little old lately. They should take a break of ten years. Yes, ten years. After that they might be able to come back with new and fresh stories.

After DS9 there hasnt been much. Voyager is crap and only the first two seasons of Enterprise where good. After that it has become... well, dont know what it actually has become but it is no longer real Star Trek.

So let it die please. Ummm, no wait, I mean: let it rest.

It died years ago...

[clickety6]

.. ever since Star Trek TNG when they took all the OS characters, split them in two (Kirk = Picard+Riker, Spock = Data+Troy, etc.) and turned up their smugness factor by 1000. And then forgot to employ any decent writers with original storylines...

Re:It died years ago...

[Idarubicin]

... and turned up their smugness factor by 1000. And then forgot to employ any decent writers with original storylines...

I don't know...there were flashes of brilliance. The first season was mostly crud. Once the writers started to get a little more comfortable with the characters--and weren't so afraid of being cancelled--there was some neat stuff. With his classical training, Patrick Stewart is a particularly strong actor, to wit:

"The Inner Light", where Picard lives an entire lifetime on a now-destroyed planet;
"Chain of Command", with its indelibly-etched cry of defiance: 'There are four lights!';
"Tapestry", where Q gives Picard an opportunity to live a life of caution or die on the operating table;
"All Good Things", the final episode, was very well-done, and almost redeems the mess that was "Encounter at Farpoint".

Johnathan Frakes delivered a strong performance as an involuntary insane asylum inmate in "Frame of Mind".

I also remember with fondness the sense of humour in the series. Data was the ultimate straight man, and the episodes with Barclay had their share of priceless moments. (Barclay facing a midget Riker in a holodeck duel was a hoot.)

Is it The Odyssey? Is it Citizen Kane? Nope. But it was good television, with good production values and clean writing--and better than most other things on the tube at the time.

It's crap, Jim ...

[Savage-Rabbit]

... but not as we know it!

Sorry, had to.... Now mod me down.

Re:It's crap, Jim ...

[magefile]

That may actually be relevant. "Only goin' forward, cuz [they] can't find reverse" - or the brakes, for that matter.

Bones

[Aggrazel]

Dammit Jim! I'm a doctor, not a network executive.

yes, the creativity is gone

[holy_smoke]

It was a fun ride but it got old a long time ago. Same with the Star Wars family.

good things are only good until they get ruined by over-indulgence. They've explored all the angles into a mind-numbing state of mediocrity.

Star Trek = cool
too much Star Trek = boring, repetitive, predictable, stale.

Better to spend their energies creating the next cool thing instead of re-hashing and desecrating the last cool thing.

Re:yes, the creativity is gone

[jfengel]

Ya know, I was an immense Star Trek fan back when there were 79 episodes, and I had every single one of them memorized. I won trivia contests. I watched it as much as three hours a day.

Somehow, the movies got in the way of my perfect knowledge of the series. And then TNG added scores of new episodes, more than the original series.

And, maybe, I stopped being an adolescent loser (and became a post-adolescent loser). But I still want to blame my falling out of love with Star Trek on there being too much Star Trek, not all of it lovable.

Re:yes, the creativity is gone

[Suidae]

Its not that we've got too much Trek, its just that they are stuck with the same characters.

My idea is a Trek show run kind of like a cross between the last few seasons of DS9 and The Outer Limits. Pick a story in the Trek universe. Any story, past, present or future, choose a story in the empires of humans, vulcans, klingons, whomever. Run it like a SciFi channel mini-series. Use as many or as few episodes as it takes to tell that story. Maybe its just one episode, or maybe it takes a dozen to do the story right. When the story is done, thats it, its over. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Maintain an active online presence, and actually use fan suggestions. Pick up loose threads from other series, follow characters that showed up in other series. Sprinkle in episodes that tell the same story from the perspective of several different characters of different races.

The possibilities for such a show, particularly with writers that will pay attention to feedback from fans, are nearly endless, as is the potential for money-making spin-off series in the style of the older shows.

Re:yes, the creativity is gone

[Kethinov]

I will never understand the wide acceptance of Star Trek and Star Wars bashing on this site. I don't think Voyager or Enterprise is up to par with DS9 and I don't think the Star Wars prequels are up to par with the original trilogy. But I still think it's damn good quality entertainment.

You people set your standards too high. A truly great movie or TV show only comes around once in a long while. Killing Star Trek and Star Wars in its current form will not raise the overall quality level of the franchises. It will only sadden the people who actually enjoy them in their current forms as well as the old, like me.

So if you don't like it, don't fucking watch it. Go take your high standards and wait around for the next great movie or TV series. Don't worry, I'll be right there with you enjoying it just as much when it comes. But don't hold your breath.

If you don't know...

[ari_j]

If you don't already know who Levar Burton and Leonard Nimoy are, you:

A) Shouldn't be on Slashdot
iii) Aren't qualified to talk about any Trek, because you missed the only two good series in the franchise

Enterprise is a great show. They just need to divorce the Star Trek name from it. Great sci-fi, but it doesn't belong anywhere in the Trek timeline.

Re:If you don't know...

[magefile]

Agreed, but DS9 was pretty good. Not as good as TOS and TNG, but decent in most episodes, good in quite a few.

Re:If you don't know...

[fr2asbury]

Yeah but . . . what have "In Search Of . . . " and "Reading Rainbow" have to do with Star Trek? ;-)

Re:If you don't know...

[Paulrothrock]

"That was a kick ass 'In Search Of', with Leonard Nimoy, kickin' out the jams!"

Re:If you don't know...

[IronicCheese]

"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:If you don't know...

[MSTCrow5429]

Great sci-fi, but it doesn't belong anywhere in the Trek timeline.

It's not. It's an alternate timeline. We hope.

Re:If you don't know...

[Minwee]

Yeah but . . . what have "In Search Of . . . " and "Reading Rainbow" have to do with Star Trek?

Well, "In Search Of..." had better writing than "Voyager" and "Reading Rainbow" had better acting than "Enterprise".

Re:If you don't know...

[ThousandStars]

If you skip in an incrementing sequence from A) to iii), which requires the elimination of the number two spot as well as a complete change in representation from alphabetical characters to numerals, then you should use the "Preview" button.

Re:If you don't know...

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

There was that episode called, "The Search for Spock's Brain", wasn't there?

Re:If you don't know...

[ari_j]

At least they were in ordinal sequence this time! :)

what ?

[Phibrizo]

Star Trek is alive ??

They should

[Loadmaster]

take a hiatus. And in the meantime, someone get Firefly back on the air. Firefly had some problems (Doctor and his sister developed too slowly), but I felt the writing and timing the actors had made it a great show.

Fox has the rights for 10 years, so no more episodes I guess. Oh well, I'll just wait for the movie.

Re:They should

[sadler121]

Whoa, I think in only 13 episodes the Doc and his Sister developed just fine, maybe even two quickly, (ok that was a lie).

If one looks at some of Joss's other shows (Buffy / Angel), you will see that he *LIKES* to draw things out and not resolve them right away. Besides, it was only 13 episodes. In 13 episodes I have a very hard time finding an ep I don't like (unlike the ST series, Farscape, Stargate SG-1, or even Buffy and Angel). Damn it we need Firefly back! or perhaps a cool comprimise would be to hand over ST from Bermen to Joss, now that would be interesting! :-)

Re:They should

[Scrameustache]

Firefly had some problems (Doctor and his sister developed too slowly)

Just because the series was cancelled while we were still hooked on wondering what was up with these two doesn't mean it was develloping too slowly, it means they were cancelled too soon : )

The movie is gonna give us our awnsers, we just have to be patient.

My opinion may be unpopular...

[cronostitan]

but I am still greedy for Star Trek.. and I am looking forward to the next ST:Enterprise Season.

You can get into a big discussion wether it should be historically correct based on the previous series' but IMHO it isn't so important that anyone should get desperate about it.

Personally i dont like the original TOS.. its so cheesy and artificial. I am an early adopter so I like to play around with new things all the time.

A new star trek episode every week is exactly the thing i need ;)

Play well..

Rick

Yes.

[tod_miller]

Yes.

Errrr.

No? I watched one episode of that new one, you know, with quantum leap guy (IANASTL) and it was too dumb actors stuck in a ship, with no air, and then it was cold, then they plugged a hole in the hull with some stupid food.

I think it has been dying a long and painful death, and we can already smell the advanced decomposition of the script writters.

Re:should star trek die? yes

[Punko]

I though Voyager WAS ST dying. Enterprise is just the death throttle. Let the horse corpse lie until the current producers/execs have passed on, and turn the creative and writing control onto people who care about good writing and good acting. Oh, and please, no Wesley and no Jar-Jar (or any kind of "humourous" facilimies

after RTFA

[WormholeFiend]

Did I miss an episode or something?

Original cast, from left, Grace Lee Whitney, Majel Barrett, Walter Koenig, James Doohan, George Takei and Nichelle Nichols and the astronaut Neil Armstrong

WTF?

Re:after RTFA

[dave-tx]

I'm such a dork that Armstrong was the only person in that photograph that I didn't recognize...other than Barrett, of course.

Re:after RTFA

[markhb]

Trek may be dying, but damn... they got Neil Armstrong to show up. That is too freaking cool; AFAIK, he does an extremely limited number of public appearances each year (as in single digits).

I though It _Was_ Dead Already

[jazman_777]

So the question is: Should Star Trek die?

You mean, it's not dead yet, Bones?

Yep

[jellomizer]

Yes, Star Trek should die. Right before one series ends an other begins. between TOS and TNG There was a good time frame difference and plenty of time to rethink new ideas new planets and alien creatures. Then DS9 came along DS9 wasn't to bad either it many ways it was a lot better the TNG. But after DS9 Voyager and Enterprise (although Enterprise is better the voyager) are still just kinda sucking the franchise dry. Give them some time for the nature of politics to change and for some of the issues of today be different. Also some time to revaluate our technology that we have in the future to really make a good guess what the future will be like. But the franchise is still struggling to match the ideas of the future of the 1960s and trying to loosely follow that time frame. I Think they need to make a new franchise that will make more sense.

Re:Yep

[meringuoid]

Give them some time for the nature of politics to change and for some of the issues of today be different.

The world agenda changed a LOT about three years ago. I think more could have been made of the Maquis - these people who were sold out by the Federation, moved off their land by force while the world looked the other way. They were the enemy, yes, but an entirely different kind of enemy.

I know you. I was like you once, but then I opened my eyes... open your eyes, Captain. Why is the Federation so obsessed about the Maquis? We've never harmed you. And yet we're constantly arrested and charged with terrorism... Starships chase us through the Badlands... and our supporters are harassed and ridiculed. Why? Because we've left the Federation, and that's the one thing you can't accept. Nobody leaves paradise. Everyone should want to be in the Federation. Hell, you even want the Cardassians to join. You're only sending them replicators so that one day they can take their "rightful place" on the Federation Council. You know, in some ways you'r worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You're more insidious...you assimilate people and they don't even know it.

Re:Yep

[CaptnMArk]

At least for the movies: Star Trek should have ended 5 minutes into ST7, right after Kirk's death.

The start of ST7 is one of my favorite parts of the movies but after Kirk death it all goes downhill.

Re:Yep

[jellomizer]

Umm I was talking about Current U.S. Politics. Because you see StarTrek does a good job of explaining our current pollitical problems in a different setting to try to get the point across. Right now the only major political difference from now and 10 years ago is the public overwhelming consern on terorism. Which was still there 10 years ago and probaby at the same level but now that an attact actually really worked the public is now overly aware of it. But other then that its the sameold stuff.

Re:Yep

[Scrameustache]

Then DS9 came along DS9 wasn't to bad either it many ways it was a lot better the TNG.

In exactly 2 ways: In budget, and in special effects technology. ;-)

Re:Yep

[Snaller]

They need to hire people who do not call it "franchise"

Yes

[ericdano]

Yes, and they should bring back Firefly instead!

NO QUESTION. YES.

[tr33limbz]

YES. yes. long overdue for death. the whole thing is getting ridiculous. and CHEEZY. way, way too cheezy.

Maybe ...

[drmancini]

When I think of Star Trek I remember the endless hours of watching the old series and TNG ... but with the newer series (DS9, Voyager ...) Star Trek seems to have lost its "trekkieness" ... in my eyes it has become something completely different - something i didn't enjoy in that special way as the old series.
Since then Star Trek has been dead for me and the only thing that reminded me of its existence were the new cinematic releases. Then I kind of remembered being a trekkie but a few days later I sort of forgotten it all over again.
I don't know if I'm the only one that feels this way but I think Star Trek sould cease to exist in the way it has existed tha last couple of years ... and return when it's ready.

Priorities

[rlp]

What makes a good sci-fi series is:

1) The quality of the writing
2) The quality of the acting
3) The quality of the special effects

Many shows get this backwards (such as the current ST series and the horrendous ST Voyager). The old Dr. Who series with Tom Baker had ultra cheap special effects (the special effects budget must have been about five pounds) - but are still enjoyable when viewed today. The original ST's special effects were not special by today's standards, and Shatner's acting - well 'nough said. But, the quality of the writing created the whole franchise. B5 and Star Gate (though I'm a little worried about the later) were good because of the many excellent scripts. Forget overexposure - get some decent writers that understand science fiction and can write interesting, thought provoking scripts. That will revive the franchise. Anything else, and it's doomed.

Re:Priorities

[scovetta]

I don't mean to troll here, but consider for a moment that the reason that the old Dr. Who, Star Trek TOS, etc all seem so good is because you were (how old?) when you watched them for the first time. Ask an average 16 year old to watch a Dr. Who episode and they *probably* won't get the same enjoyment out of it as you do now.

Of course the newer Star Trek movies/series will seem worse to you now because you're older, but still have the memory of how good the old ones were. Even if they really weren't *that* great.

I watch TOS all the time-- it's a great series to fall asleep on the couch to on Sunday afternoons, but I think a bit of the good feeling I get is due to the associations I've made to it.

I can also watch movies like Top Secret, Indiana Jones, and Clue over and over and never get tired of them. There's probably something more than just great writing (Skeet Surfing???).

Re:Priorities

[d_p]

Pick any two.

Re:Priorities

[White Roses]

This is true in a lot of cases. Take a look at almost any franchise that has to start out with a $10 specical effects budget. What do they do? Rely on better writing. As the series gains in popularity, the FX budget increases, and almost inevitably the writing suffers.

I'm thinking specifically of one of my favorite shows, Red Dwarf, but it seems to hold true for a lot of shows. Even the wonderul TNG had this problem in the first season, until someone decided that having the saucer separate wasn't an excuse for flat, recycled plots (seriously, go back to the first season). It became a useful device in the "Locutus of Borg" episodes (I forget the actual title) later in the series, but the writing for those episodes was already outstanding.

Re:Priorities

[Ignignot]

Stargate SG1 and Atlantis are both going downhill unfortunately. I've seen literally every episode, and after awhile you know episodes before you see them. "Oh, its another 'something has taken over someone's body' episode. Oh its another 'semi-advanced people in the middle of a war' episode." I thought that they were about to reveal the stargate to the entire world in SG1, which would have led to new direction and cool ideas, but that didn't happen to my disappointment. At least they brought back the bad-ass NID. Currently there is a badguy vacuum in the show, and I'm tired of the "bigger ghould" trick. I hope they introduce something different and most importantly, thought provoking.

Re:Priorities

[boinger]

Yeah, I remembered Three Amigos to *much* funnier than it apparently is.

Re:Priorities

[Michael Dorfman]

Forget overexposure - get some decent writers that understand science fiction and can write interesting, thought provoking scripts. That will revive the franchise.

That's like saying that if we could get a Congress and Executive Branch made up of honest politicians, we'd have peace and prosperity. It's trivially true, but damn-near impossible to implement.

Actually, decent Sci-Fi script-writers might be even more scarce than honest politicians--you gotta figure some politicians will end up honest accidentally, just because they are too lazy to lie. Good scripts don't happen by accident.

Re:Priorities

[glass_window]

Of course the writing suffers, the writers start making money and they no longer feel the need to dig deep within to find good plots. Doesn't everybody know an artist has to suffer in order to create to their fullest potential?

I would have to agree

[Moloch666]

It's time for Star Trek to die. It really should have stopped with the death of Rodenberry.

What they should focus on is Babylon 5. I think the B5 universe as a whole has much more depth than the Star Trek universe. I just got done digging up a lot of the made for TV B5 movies even with bad production value they were quite good.

When the creater of B5 croaks, so should the franchise. While he's alive, I want more!

Re:I would have to agree

[drinkypoo]

They tried making another B5-universe show but they didn't try very hard. The acting was CRAPTACULAR with a capital CRAP, and a capital TACULAR. Also, it seemed that their 3D graphics ability regressed somewhat. I would like to see a more concerted effort but I don't see it happening. The B5 Universe not only had more depth but also more conviction. Plus, the quality of acting ramped up faster than TNG :)

Re:I would have to agree

[SlashdotLemming]

So should LoTR have also died when Tolkien died in 1973?

It's all about the people who carry the torch. If Jackson's movies tanked, we'd all be crying that it should have died. But they didn't. And we didn't.

Re:I would have to agree

[Oddly_Drac]

"When the creater of B5 croaks, so should the franchise. While he's alive, I want more!"

Have you seen Crusades? I couldn't believe it was JMS that produced that pile of crap. The 'party' was formulaic, the 'quest' on a par with a D&D module and the plotlines were inconsequential. Even the multi-episode story arcs had disappeared.

Very disappointing after the frankly crap last series of Babylon 5 (eg the one they weren't supposed to actually make)

Re:I would have to agree

[Scrameustache]

They tried making another B5-universe show but they didn't try very hard.

And you've hit the Hollywood mentality dead on: Once its got brand-name recognition, there's no reason to put in any effort. They're hooked, all we have to do is keep shoveling them something that looks like what they liked originally, and they'll keep on coming.

Re:I would have to agree

[Moloch666]

You are absolutely correct, but in most cases the creater has the dream and passion. Everyone around him does not, they want the money. If the creator dies chances are the franchise will fall into the hands of some one wants a quick buck. If we are lucky the franchise will be taken over by a family member or friend that has the same passion. Maybe by some slim chance a random producer/director will continue the franchise honourably.

Re:I would have to agree

[Moloch666]

I actually never did see it, but I've heard. I'm not sure how accurate the person is who replied to you. But I have heard JMS did struggle horribly with TNT. SciFi has put out a lot of crap, but with the taking over of Stargate, the quality has hardly dropped. I wish the same producers would work up a deal with JMS, the B5 universe has so much to be explored.

Re:I would have to agree

[chaoaretasty]

But LotR wasn't a major brand before the movies. It was kind of popular, and quite a few people would have heard of it, but not many would know it at least not compared to a big francise.

Because it was small scale it wasn't on the watch list of the big execs, so they didn't appoint one of their formulatrons to lead the project and create a nice, demographically tested derivative of the books. Jackson was a fan who also had the talent, meaning he not only could make a good job of it, but who had to for his own sense as a fan.

Unfortunately Star Trek is firmly in the grips of people that lack both talent and passion, and if they do move on to other shows, they will be replaced by similar people who can be trusted not to upset the status quo. This isn't going to change until it nose dives in the ratings. After 5-10 years it would be open for someone to come in with a new idea, unobstructed by people scared of changing their formula.

Re:I would have to agree

[Oddly_Drac]

"TNT screwed JMS around so much, shuffled the order, wanted lots more sex + violence etc."

That makes a certain amount of sense, but I know the problem I had with it. The incidental music was completely off. It's hard to explain, but the music was frequently keyed to a mournful sound when the action or script needed something more.

I may be missing the added sex and violence...it certainly doesn't look anymore or less violent or flesh-flecked than Bab5 did.

I also question the now ubiquitous "female-alien-with-past-coming-to-terms-with-human ity's-lovable-quirkiness".

I was almost expecting 'What is this human thing you call "The nasty"?'

give it a break

[Enrique1218]

I haven't watched Star Trek in years. I haven't seen the last two movies, the last seasons of DS9 and Voyager, and not a single episode of Enterprise. I have been Star Trek out for quite some time and no longer make it a priority to watch the shows. I agree give it a hiatus for maybe a decade. Then see if the countless reruns and online game will generate a hunger in a new generation of trekkies as well as the old.

Re:yes

[Ignignot]

I have to disagree with Enterprise. You are missing the best parts of the show - the hard moral choices. Should the captain torture a captive to extract information from him (by putting him in an airlock)? Should they destroy an unarmed outpost because it can report their position? I admit they are few and far between, and the show is (in my ranking) little better than Voyager, but it uses very little technobabble, has had a few striking episodes (shuttlepod 1 was a fine work) space battles where there is visual damage to the Enterprise (in one scene you see crewmen get sucked out into space after a chunk is blown out of the hull).

The time travel is hokey, the metaplot is mediocre, but don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Already Dead

[Dugsmyname]

After Voyager and Enterprise, the only way Star Trek could be brought back as a fresh and viable franchise is if Spock placed his hand on the left side of Rick Berman's face and said, "Remember...". Thereby, infusing his soul into Rick Berman. Creative thought seems to have left Rick Berman's head!

There is still money to be made as the franshise digs itself even deeper into the ground, but my vote would be for no new series or movies for at least 5-10 years.

wrong topic

[Slashbot Hive-Mind]

I think Timothy should have posted this story here

Death Before Social Commentary

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone else wish Star Trek would stop trying to be profound with its social commentary episodes?

In this article Levar Burton mentions a future episode where they hope to parallel questions and concerns about the war in Iraq to some civil war on Vulcan. I know geeks love this kind of stuff, but most of the non-rabid Trek fans hate it.

Why? Because Trek moralizing is geek moralizing. It's that naive, "I live in an ivory tower mommy and daddy paid for" philosophizing that makes the series so unapproachable. You know the storyline is going to end with a darker hand shaking a lighter hand, and the entire universe commiserating about how stupid and violent we humans are. It's goofy and embarassing - you know, like that stupid poem Data recited about his cat.

Trek needs to get cool again, and it needs to get cool again fast. Why don't people realize that the reason people liked Kirk was because he was a man's man? He took his ladies and he beat up his enemies. He didn't recite Shakepeare at them.

Re:Death Before Social Commentary

[Morpeth]

Ummmm... there was plenty of social commentary in the original series. A black female communications officer on the bridge, along with a Chinese-American and a Russian? You don't think that was social commentary, not heavy handed perhaps - but very much a statement, especially given when the original series was filmed

Sure Kirk had his butt kicking episodes, but there was often references to (at the time) contemporary or historical issues. Perhaps because they didn't interest you, you've forgotten them, which is fine, I'm just saying the commentary was clearly there.

I think if you do it without going over the top, being too obvious, too black-n-white or simplistic, social commentary can be very interesting and effective. Personally, I'd get tired of a program that just did action all the time with no context or reference point, that's was FPS's are for :)

My 2 cents anyhoo

Re:Death Before Social Commentary

[tehanu]

Then why was TNG so popular amongst the non-geek crowd (probably more than the original Star Trek)? There was a lot of social commentary in TNG.

Re:Death Before Social Commentary

[geeber]

Guy who is half black/half white hates guy who is half black/half white but with the colors reversed.

Doesn't get much more simplistic and blatent than that.

Re:Death Before Social Commentary

[gordo3000]

Why don't people realize that the reason people liked Kirk was because he was a man's man? He took his ladies and he beat up his enemies. He didn't recite Shakepeare at them. I just love this quote, recited almost exactly but talking about James Bond being castrated in his last movie with well.... really bad writing and a horribly non-Bond story line. I think the problem is they forget you are doubtfully going to find new people to watch the shows and what you need to cater to is all the people who grew up on either the original or TNG(frankly, no other series has had the magnetism all the way through a create a new trekkie, and I used to be that person that would watch every new episode, till voyager just kept going down hill and then enterprise just sucked). Cater to what made people fans of those movies with some changes. Yes, if you want to make social commentary, do it as quietly as possible so its actually something that people ahve to figure out for themselves. NO spoonfed morality, just new stories, and I think that needs time and well.... not using anyone that has to do with enterprise's first season. Oh, and after voyager, rule for the writers, no more idiotic stories about time lines and loops and anomalies. TNG ended on an interesting, and voyager must have used that theme at least every 8 episodes, no more, for my sanity.

Re:Death Before Social Commentary

[Oddly_Drac]

" Does anyone else wish Star Trek would stop trying to be profound with its social commentary episodes?"

Yes.

"I know geeks love this kind of stuff"

Welcome to slashdot. We enjoy all sweeping generalisations, but especially those from anonymous cowards.

"It's that naive, "I live in an ivory tower mommy and daddy paid for" philosophizing that makes the series so unapproachable."

There you go, we love that kind of stuff because it betrays such hatred of an ideal you can never reach. Now you may have missed that there were different series' which had different moral slants. Voyager was very moral, TNG changed from 'UN in space' through to the fairly strange 'Moral dilemnas in space', and DS9 was so full of moral ambiguity that you had deals going back and forth that made you dizzy. You should try watching some.

"Why don't people realize that the reason people liked Kirk was because he was a man's man?"

Because all the gay men are rapidly coming out of the closet, and the people that like "men's men" actually watch wrestling?

Re:Death Before Social Commentary

[MobyDisk]

It's funny that you say that, since that is exactly the oppposite of what Gene Roddenberry intended. He thought of Start Trek largely as a social commentary, and he added in the kick-ass Kirk character to appease NBC. The initial pilot was turned down because it was too geeky. The next pilot, which was accepted, involved Kirk kicking the ass of a superhuman character.

So here we are decades later, and all you remember is the fluff that was there to appease the masses. Your comment is insightful in that it shows how much people missed the boat on what Star Trek was about.

(Source History of Star Trek)

Re:Death Before Social Commentary

[randyflood]

Actually, what made Star Trek cool was not that Kirk just went around randomly beating people up, but that instead, they had social comentary.

Remember the episode where he realises that the people have the Constitution and gives the whole "We the People" speach? Or how about the episode where the people have computers simulate the wars between their societs and report to the termination chambers to be executed and then he destroys the chambers in disgust? Or, if you insist on empasising Kirk's "manliness", then let's talk about when he kissed Uhura. As far as I know that was the first time a white man kissed a black woman on TV at all.

Social commentary is what made Star Trek great.

Re:Death Before Social Commentary

[Anonymous Writer]

there was plenty of social commentary in the original series. A black female communications officer on the bridge, along with a Chinese-American and a Russian?

Don't forget the first interracial kiss on American television between Kirk and Uhura in the episode "Plato's Stepchildren".

Re:Death Before Social Commentary

[SvnLyrBrto]

Who was Chinese-American on ANY of the Star Trek bridge crews? Not a one that I can think of.

cya,
john

Re:Death Before Social Commentary

[Morpeth]

My bad, should be Japanese-American, Sulu.

Re:Death Before Social Commentary

[aedan]

>>He took his ladies and he beat up his enemies. He didn't recite Shakepeare at them.

Kelinda in "By any other name"?

aedan

Re:Death Before Social Commentary

[Scrameustache]

Kirk [...] took his ladies and he beat up his enemies. He didn't recite Shakepeare at them.

No, they recited it at him.
In the original Klingon no less!
: )

Re:Death Before Social Commentary

[jafac]

Well, since James Bond's "Man's manness" has already been spoofed in the name of Austin Powers - maybe it's time for a Kirk spoof. . . oh wait, they dun did dat already. . . (can't even remember the NAME of that damn movie).

Re:Death Before Social Commentary

[prockcore]

here was plenty of social commentary in the original series. A black female communications officer on the bridge, along with a Chinese-American and a Russian?

Yeah, but they never had that "Very Special Episode" where "we all learned an important lesson today".

Brady Bunch in Space.. that's what Trek has become.

Re:Death Before Social Commentary

[AngryDill]

I believe Ensign Harry Kim (Voyager) was Chinese.

Re:Death Before Social Commentary

[Anthony Boyd]

It's funny that you say that, since that is exactly the oppposite of what Gene Roddenberry intended. He thought of Start Trek largely as a social commentary, and he added in the kick-ass Kirk character to appease NBC.

True that Kirk was brought on board for the "second" pilot episode. And it is true that Roddenberry had some noble ideas brewing in his head, especially for TNG. But that doesn't erase the low-brow comments he made in many interviews. He called Trek a space-western. He made jokes about putting extra naughtiness into his scripts so that even after the censors censored it, there might be some edge remaining. He made it clear that some of the big things we attribute to him, he didn't even realize were big things. For example, he accepted congratulations for having a black woman on the bridge, but even he admitted that he relegated her to the role of secretary. Roddenberry was enough of a visionary that he did some great things without even trying. But he also liked a good fight and some sex to keep things spicy.

Re:Death Before Social Commentary

[Jurisenpai]

I'm sad to say that I know that Harry Kim is Korean.

I just proved my dorkiness yet again.

Re:Death Before Social Commentary

[WuphonsReach]

Well, since James Bond's "Man's manness" has already been spoofed in the name of Austin Powers - maybe it's time for a Kirk spoof. . . oh wait, they dun did dat already. . . (can't even remember the NAME of that damn movie).

Galaxy Quest?

(I didn't see that, but the commercials looked like a star trek spoof...)

B&B out...

[Isosceles Triangle]

Personally, I would settle for the canning of Berman & Braga. These guys have taken Star Trek so far from the spirit of what was created by Gene Roddenberry, it is ridiculous. New people, new ideas.

I bet the next things on their list are shot for shot re-makes of TOS with new actors & CGIs...

bring us the 'New Frontier' series

[havaloc]

If you haven't read the New Frontier series of books by Peter David, you should. The characters and story lines would make a great series, and would bring back the old feeling of the series that made it great.

Re:bring us the 'New Frontier' series

[Pchelka]

I agree! I've read some of the Star Trek books, and I think that Peter David creates interesting characters and excellent plots. He also has a sense of humor, which is something I think has been lacking in Star Trek lately. Enterprise would be a lot better if Peter David was in charge!

Maybe Star Trek would be good again if they could get some of the best science fiction writers to write a few episodes. I think that too many of the people currently involved with Star Trek have only ever written stories in the Star Trek universe. It would be a lot better if writers who had experience creating their own universes were to take over. For example, Peter David has also written some amusing fantasy novels. He knows the Star Trek universe, but he is more than capable of coming up with his own ideas.

It shouldn't die, but...

[jbarr]

...it should be put on hiatus for a while. Simply producing one series after another for sake of "having something" is not the way to go. This "have-to-have-it-now" and "have-to-have-it-always" mentality is really doing nothing more than producing inferior works and tarnishing the genre.

Maybe after it "sits" for a while we will anticipate and appreciate it more--of course, they'll have to deliver...

It's already dead

[prgrmr]

And needs to be taken off the (supposed) lifesupport that has Enterprise crawling along as a mere shadow of TOS. It needs to be killed dead, and left so until Brennan, Braga, and Co. at Paramount who chronically Do Not Get IT are also dead.

Then we can maybe consider a glorious resurrection.

Too Little Too Late...

[Chaotic Evil Cleric]

I don't just want Trek's Death, I want revenge for the last 4 movies!

The best Writting

[NetNinja]

Some of the Best Star Trek writting was done during DS9's last season.

Expansion of Klingon Politics, the Dominion, Cardassians, even the annoying Ferengi played a vital part.
Some of the best special effects ever seen on television.

I have yet to see ANY Romulan politics. How about expanding on the knowledge that Voyager obtained in the Delta Quadrant?

I think it's just the writters and directors are burned out. Time to bring in some fresh blood!

Fact: Star Trek is dead.

[H_Fisher]

It is now official - Neilsen has confirmed: Star Trek is dying.

Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Star Trek community when recently Neilsen confirmed that Star Trek accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all TV viewers. Coming on the heels of the latest Slashdot poll which plainly states that Star Trek has fewer fans than the Goatse troll, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Star Trek is collapsing in complete disarray.

You don't need to be a Q to predict Star Trek's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Star Trek faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Star Trek because Star Trek is dying.

Things are looking very bad for Star Trek. As many of us are already aware, Star Trek continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. "Enterprise" is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core viewers (preteen males with an income of $100 - $500).

Due to George Lucas' ego, abysmal sales of "Episode 1" and so on, some Star Wars fans turned to "Enterprise" who sell another cheesy repackaging of the same plots and characters. Now "Enterprise" is also dead, its cast soon to be turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Star Trek has steadily declined in market share. Star Trek is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Star Trek is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. Star Trek continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Star Trek is dead.

Fact: Star Trek is dead.

Info.

[ideatrack]

Leonard Nimoy (Spock)

Thanks for that insight. Does anyone, I mean anyone on Slashdot not know who Leonard Nimoy is? He sang the Bilbo Baggins song. The loon.

GameDev forums

[T-Kir]

Thanks to the google cache... about two thirds down the page posted by "Jesper T". Had to use the cache because the direct link to my original search came back with a resource denied (original google search text: "Western in space. Kinda campy but did have its moments. Very memorable characters. Fanbase: Big enough to get a few movies going after its cancelation. Noteworthy:").

Re:GameDev forums

[Ignignot]

As you can see from my other post, I found that too but even that site was a quote. This is like a quote of a quote of a quote now :-( Damn man how much plaguerizing can we take??

Re:GameDev forums

[argStyopa]

Slamming ST because it's so tired, by REHASHING a previously written critique they copied from someone on the internet?

How do you say 'ironic' in Klingon?

Re:GameDev forums

[julesh]

How do you say 'ironic' in Klingon?

That would be "SlashbotHiveMind". Or maybe Q'Ghaqrxla'ptah. I might be getting confused.

Re:GameDev forums

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

If the unicode consortium would just approve of klingon glyphs, I could put it here in the correct alphabet.

Offtopic: I'm seriously considering registering "theunicodeformerlyknownasprince.org", a non-profit organization with the sole purpose of advocacy for making the "prince" glyph official. Years from now, how can we possibly write of modern music history without this glyph? There will be a gaping hole in records without it. Do your part, and petition for the inclusion of the "prince" glyph!

Re:GameDev forums

[Anonymous Writer]

How do you say 'ironic' in Klingon?

Cue annoying Ironic link

Emphatically...

[Mawbid]

As someone who just watched Enterprise s01e22, "Vox Sola", I have to say: YES!

Re:yes

[Ignignot]

I found it in a google cache... here that seems to be the exact same.

Social Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe someone should cue Berman in on the fact that aliens can actually be used to examine the human condition and are not just an excuse to do cool makeup or skin-tight jump suits.

Honestly, even though the acting/stories/sfx of TOS were crappy, Gene knew that non-human races were the best way to explore human issues. I mean look at Spock, a character with no emotions that can blatently comment on the sometimes conflicting nature of human emotions. Or the two aliens with different coloring on each side of the face to demonstrate the sillyness of racism.

ST will be good again when the writers realize that aliens can be used more for introspection that exhibition.

YES

[Espectr0]

But only if Netcraft confirms it

Um...

[StarKruzr]

I think you mean "death rattle."

Seriously though, are you going to try to tell me Enterprise is not a better show than Voyager? It's good SF - not GREAT SF, with a few exceptions - but it's well-written and well-acted.

Can you people give me some good reasons why you seem to hate Enterprise so much?

(I mean, hell, I'll give you Voyager ;)

Re:Um...

[Punko]

The death throttle was how this series was being killed off by Enterprise . . . No, you are correct, I was aiming for death rattle but missed. Enterprise is slightly better than Voyager, but that's like saying the pistol is better than fists in Doom, when there is a perfectly good rocket launcher available. Voyager was crap, Enterprise is slightly less offensive crap.

Re:Um...

[CountBrass]

Actually I think, with one big exception, Enterprise is rather good. In terms of feel its very much more like the original ST but with a bit more of an edge (none of this no money bollocks). They've even improved things by making replicators much cruder and transporters unreliable so the writers dont keep having to come up with reasons why they cant be used to solve this week's episodes. The big, big, mistake they made was not only did they not reduce the whole time travel thing, they've made it the cornerstone of the over-arching story. The whole "temporal cold war" is just such a terrible idea.

Re:Um...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

1) Space alqaeda.
2) Polarize the hull plating. (Unless everyone attacks them with alpha particles, what can this possibly do?)
3) Over-reliance on time travel. TOS wasn't exactly time traveless, there had to be 5 or 6 involving it... but every other episode of Enterprise uses this stupid cliche.
4) Even more de-scary-ification of the borg. They went from unstoppable, barely outrunnable mindless drones, to something that this crew can chase down and nail. I thought Voyager ruined them, but damn...
5) Stupid science, particularly unclever captain and officers. It's not enough to have a bad lightning storm, it becomes a "polaric" something or other.
6) Bizarre political contrivances. OK, the vulcans are a little annoyed with humanity, even less than friendly. But when the the bomb comes through yet another FTL contrivance, not a single vulcan ship is there to defend us? Certainly they could try, and leave before they themselves would be destroyed by it. Hell, there are more than a few vulcans on the planet at that point...
7) Xindi tests. They keep setting off proto-types to get things right, but because Berman is an ijit, they test the first on earth, presumably just to tip us off. Maybe they want to give earth a fighting chance.
8) Zero character development. For god's sake, even Andromeda has characters that grow and learn, and exist outside of their duty to the ship.
9) The need to wrap things up at the end of the show. Even when they do character development for instance (or what passes for it), it always resolves in the last 5 minutes of the show.
10) Reluctance to develop any minor crew characters. What's the deal, if they do that, they have to start paying these guys guild actor rates?
11) Insistence on tying in every damn thing that the other series did. Let's see, romulans, klingons, borg, Risa, Enterprise E, and a host of others.
12) Generally shitty writing. Take the worst writing from TNG, multiplied by ST1:TMP, plus the cashing in of Voyager... times 1000. This is the best Enterprise episode. The worst... oh god.
13) Berman
14) Braga

Re:Um...

[Scrameustache]

Enterprise is rather good.

You are drunk!

In terms of feel its very much more like the original ST

AND on CRACK!

The whole "temporal cold war" is just such a terrible idea.

Well, there's hope for you yet then.

I have trouble not watching Enterprise. It suck, like, a lot. But its called Star Trek, and I keep hoping beyond hope that it will turn into Star Trek at some point instead of just using the name...
You know that Rick Berman is convinced that his time travel stuff is pure genious?

Re:Um...

[GeekZilla]

(I mean, hell, I'll give you Voyager ;)

No! You can't make me take it! Nooooo!

Re:Um...

[NanoGator]

"3) Over-reliance on time travel. TOS wasn't exactly time traveless, there had to be 5 or 6 involving it... but every other episode of Enterprise uses this stupid cliche."

That's the basis of the series! Do you have this complaint about Doctor Who as well?

"8) Zero character development. For god's sake, even Andromeda has characters that grow and learn, and exist outside of their duty to the ship."

Been watching?

"11) Insistence on tying in every damn thing that the other series did. Let's see, romulans, klingons, borg, Risa, Enterprise E, and a host of others."

Again, that's the point of the show. (Never mind that the Enterprise-E and the Borg are what kicked it all off to begin with.)

I don't care if you like or hate Enterprise, but when the question is asked "Should Trek die", people start pulling things out of their asses to prove their point. Never mind that the question is completely irrelevant if it still commands an audience. "I don't like it, so nobody else should like it either."

Re:Um...

[Heywood Yabuzof]

You forgot the most important one:

0) Alien Nazis!

Although it could be included in the time travel complaint, as a "jump-the-shark" moment, it really should stand alone.

Re:Um...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Not sure it should die. I like the idea of JMS taking over. Maybe B5 is a fluke (too early into Jeremiah for me to tell), but if it isn't, the man is a genius.

Star Trek has potential, no one denies this. Maybe the title should be "Should Berman and Braga die (painfully) ?".

Re:Um...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Yes, because the nazi SS were so open to people of all races, even alien ones! They may have been xenophobic in their insane quest to be eugenically perfect, allowing only those with the most nordic features (over 5'9", blonde, good german features, athletic, etc), but when an alien shows up with a blue ugly face that looks Berman's ugly crackho mama, they'd just welcome him into the club.

But, after wrapping up the StankyAssfest that was space alquaeda, how were they going to do a cliffhanger with a twist? My god, if not for alien nazis, they'd be forced to do some real script writing!

Re:Um...

[jonfelder]

I have a -big- problem with the transporters. Yeah, I think it was interesting that they decided to make them unreliable. The only problem is they are reliable when they want them to be. There's never a problem with beaming up people when they need to. Furthermore there are so many instances in the show where they could use the transporter and they don't. For example, if Archer is surrounded by enemies...why not beam THEM up? Who cares if the enemies get fried by the transporter?

Enterprise has so many other issues. It's supposed to be StarTrek, and yet it's incredibly dark. StarTrek is not dark...that's the whole frigg'n point. StarTrek repesents optimism about the future. When I watch StarTrek I want to feel good...in Enterprise they just kill people and make all these moral compromises.

Also, in Enterprise they never use technological solutions to get out of problems. They always go in phasers blazing. They seldom figure out peaceful ways to accomplish anything.

Another thing that bothers me is that Archer is almost always right. There's really no rhyme or reason to him being right, he just is. Tipol makes a rational observation that fits the facts that they have available at the time, then Archer comes along and makes ridiculous observations that are fairly baseless and they ALWAYS turn out to be right. How many times on the show has someone appeared to be helping them, and Archer out of the blue is like, "We need to watch them, they're evil."?

Finally, what's with the plot lines? That whole Xindi thing was awful. It just dragged and dragged and dragged...hell with DS9 they at least took a break from the war every now and then. Also why don't they address other issues like first contact and the subsequent war with the Klingons?

Re:Um...

[cybpunks3]

They made a fundemental flaw in Enterprise by not going into a retro 60s chic look.

They had an opportunity to do a whole series that felt like the Tribbles episode of DS9 and instead they went with a TNG aesthetic which just spoils continuity with the original series.

I mean, talk about fatigue, when you go from watching TNG to any of the other post TNG series they all have the same basic "feel" to them, which is the Berman/Braga feel. BLANDNESS. Only on a Berman show can you watch an action scene with a seemingly incongruent droning synth-pad soundtrack in the background. There is no sense of excitement or high drama on these shows.

That's something the current stewards of Star Trek just don't understand because they have been riding on coat-tails for 15+ years.

When you pop in an episode of TOS you are reminded of the original day-glo technicolor hyper-melodramatic roots of Star Trek, and it just has so much more LIEF to it, regardless of how much its dated or over-the-top. It ENTERTAINS better.

When I went to see Master and Commander I was reminded so much about how Trek was really Horatio Hornblower in space. I saw direct connections to the TOS episodes like Balance of Terror or the nebula sequence of Star Trek II. It was all about the new "frontier" and how dangerous it was and how the technology to navigate that frontier was just barely viable via the combined teamwork and discipline of the crew. Kirk was always calling down to damage control. Scotty was always fixing things. The ship needed constant maintenance. Space was dangerous. This tone was maintained into the original cast movies pretty well, but TNG with its ultra refined technology made space travel look too easy. Enterprise makes too much of a connection with NASA rather than the analogy of the old navy so it still doesn't strike the right chord.

Re:Um...

[Anonymous Writer]

3) Over-reliance on time travel. TOS wasn't exactly time traveless, there had to be 5 or 6 involving it... but every other episode of Enterprise uses this stupid cliche.

What do you expect with Scott Bakula as the captain? It has become Quantum Leap.

Re:Um...

[StarfishOne]

(I mean, hell, I'll give you Voyager ;)


Can we reach an agreement on _just_ 7 of 9 ?

I mean... I've always wanted to go out and lunch with a Tertiary Adjunct of the famous Unimatrix. ;-D

Re:Um...

[JackHolloway]

"That's the basis of the series! Do you have this complaint about Doctor Who as well?"

NO!

Doctor Who is a series based around time travel. And even after 20 years they did their best to not screw with their canon and storylines. The ST franchise has no compunctions with changing canon or storylines simply to show off better special effects (ex. Klingon makeup, "quantum" torps). Doctor Who didn't change their badguys to update them to new SPEFX.

Star trek is supposedly a spaceship western. If Berman wants to make a time travel show, he should make one. We don't need him to fit different types of shows into the ST franchise (coming soon...star trek survivor!).

For ghu's sake, please just toss the ST franchise into an airlock and let it go.

Re:Um...

[vtolturbo]

Who cares if the enemies get fried by the transporter?

In the future, humanity has evolved to have an enormous respect for life, human(oid) or otherwise. You can't just vaporize your opponent. That's not nice. Sure, you *could* do it, but it's unethical. Just like the USA *could* nuke the middle east, but it's unethical.

Eventually, people will grow to understand that murder, for whatever reason (including self-defense), is wrong. Well, that is unless you plan to eat the deceased. Then, it's a food chain issue. Of course, the food chain in nonlinear in the future, due to the addition of millions of new species from other planets. I don't think there's any easy way to justify killing the pets of citizens of other planets, even if you plan to eat them (the pets, I mean), because there is no longer a "food chain" because of the light years of distance.

Humanity is not ready for technology, let alone transporters or fusion or warp drive. We need to learn how to live in peace without all the nationalism, racism, ethnic cleansing, and bigotry we see today. Yes, it's gotten better, but not by much. After all, why else would we have invented the Geneva Conventions?

Re:Um...

[Mouse42]

It has become Quantum Leap.

Ha! I was just thinking the same thing...

Re:Um...

[jonfelder]

Ah...so that's why they spend most of their time in Enterprise killing people, instead of um...killing people yeah.

So it's unethical to vaporize them by beaming them up, but it's ok to phaser them. It's also ok to clone someone to kill them later, torture people, steal from people...that's why the show sucks.

The reason the USA doesn't nuke the middle east (disregarding the major environmental issues) is because nuking the middle east would kill many many noncombatants (even more than we already do kill). It's killing noncombantants and destroying the environment that's unethical.

Beaming up people trying to kill you does neither.

Re:Um...

[vtolturbo]

Actually, I meant that using an unreliable transporter that may or may not turn the transportees into goo is unethical. Besides, what does it gain you to transport the enemy onboard your ship, where they can take over from the inside?

Oh, and don't get me started on site-to-site transport. They never used it except in a handful of episodes, one of which was my favorite of the TNG eps where Data goes nuts and returns to find Dr Soong (great episode!). Why hae turbolifts if you have site-to-site transport?? Madness.

Re:Um...

[NanoGator]

"The ST franchise has no compunctions with changing canon or storylines simply to show off better special effects"

Bullshit.

a.) The whole premise is that somebody's mucking about with time. This was established in the first ep. There are going to be differences. Especially considering we don't know how far back in time that time's been altered. (we'll ignore, for the moment, the Borg's implications to the time line.)

b.) Klingon makeup and quantum torps? Huh? Care to elaborate a bit?

" Doctor Who didn't change their badguys to update them to new SPEFX."

I still don't understand the nature of this complaint. Whoopie, they gave Klingons bumpy heads. They even pulled off a very amusing joke out of it. The show should die because of something that happened 20 years ago?

"For ghu's sake, please just toss the ST franchise into an airlock and let it go."

I have a better idea: Don't watch it. Some of us have actually sat down, watched it, and enjoy it. I shouldn't lose my entertainment because of your half-baked opinions of the show. You can turn a show you don't like off easier than I can turn a show that isn't on the air anymore back on.

Re:Um...

[jonfelder]

Actually, I meant that using an unreliable transporter that may or may not turn the transportees into goo is unethical. Besides, what does it gain you to transport the enemy onboard your ship, where they can take over from the inside?

It's not any more unethical if it's quick, painless, and you were going to kill them anyway. There are a few ways to employ the transporter here...you could beam up part of them...you could beam them up and blast them...you could beam them up and then beam them back down somewhere else...you could beam up just their weapons...you could them up and "lose" them (i.e. a fabricated transporter accident).

This wasn't really an issue in other StarTreks because either the transporter wasn't working, or they could just beam up the crew to get them out of trouble.

I don't think they'd have site-to-site in Enterprise...I don't see anything wrong with it in general though. Site-to-site is a reasonable progression of transporter technology...presumably you beam the up and out without having to rematerialize them in the middle. People could use turbolifts instead of transporters for any number of reasons. The transporter takes up a lot of power, the transporter can't move as many people to as many places at the same time, the transporter breaks easier, the transporter is often not usuable in many situations (certain kinds of radiation, blah blah blah). Besides a lot of "action" goes on in those turbo lifts...

Re:Um...

[Sj0]

Behold: The mighty power of SCOTT BAKULAS NOSE!

That's the only reason the new series flies.

We have to face facts, this series has almost nothing going for it. Behold:

-is it a "prequel"? (note that all prequels suck)
-derivitive by definition followup to half a dozen shows with 5-8 year runs?
-daily "jumping the shark" by conveniently altering the entire timeline of the previous serieses?

But, what does the new series have which allows it to be popular anyway?

-Star Trek name (worth very little)
-Hottie first officer (good for five minutes)
-SCOTT BAKULAS NOSE!

I think I've proven my point. ...Al, why haven't I leaped yet?

Re:Um...

[Sj0]

YEAH! WE D--

Wait. What?

Dude, that's one of the only redeeming features of the new shows. That and Scott Bakulas nose.

well..

[joper90]

dr who anyone.. ?

I think they may be right.

[Goronmon]

I honestly can't believe they are still pumping out new versions of the show, I like TNG episodes but after that they just get watered down, like even the writers are getting sick of comping up with new episodes.

Definately wait at least 3-4 years, spend some time getting a decent amoutn of quality episode ideas and then come back strong. I think they can really do a lot with the series if they weren't just going through the motions.

Beat it to death... again

[east coast]

Yeah, good idea. Let's beat Trek to death just like Sci-Fi and Comdey Central did to MST3K. Infact, let's beat it so far into the ground as to alienate not only the fans but also those who are hands-on involved in the production. That's the ticket.

Or perhaps the ticket is to let Enterprise finish it's run, hire some completely new writers who've never touched Trek and give them a few years to spin up some new concepts. I doubt it will happen, instead we have a machine that produces Trek just to produce something. The vision seems to be gone.

One thing is for sure; if they continue on this breakneck pace there won't be enough left of Trek to make a comeback for over a decade.

Trekkie

[genessy]

While I admit to being a Star Trek fan, I can also admit to not wanting it to become the big, bloated, loathable behemoth that Star Wars is. So, down with Trek and up with my DVD budget.

Trekkies

[Paster Of Muppets]

If it dies, what are we going to do with all the Trekkies?

It may be unpopular...

[cronostitan]

...but I am still greedy for Star Trek.. and I am looking forward to the next ST:Enterprise Season.

You can get into a big discussion wether it should be historically correct based on the previous series' but IMHO it isn't so important that anyone should get desperate about it.

Personally i dont like the original TOS.. its so cheesy and artificial. I am an early adopter so I like to play around with new things all the time.

A new star trek episode every week is exactly the thing i need ;)

Play well

Rick

Re:yes

[meringuoid]

I like the idea of Enterprise. A primitive starship does away with all the ridiculous technological dei ex machinae that plagued Voyager's plots: Enterprise NX-01 doesn't have a tractor beam, it has a harpoon! The low-tech scenario means the writers can't use bullshit physics to resolve a plot quite so often.

I'm not so convinced by the actual implementation of Enterprise... I can't see how Archer's universe is going to become Kirk's universe, and it doesn't feel quite like Trek all the time. But there have been some damn good episodes - I actually like Enterprise a lot better than Voyager.

When a sports franchise sucks ...

[Stavr0]

... you fire the coach. It's time to let B&B go. (Berman and Brannagan).

Alien Nazis from outer space (Enterprise cliffhanger)? What were they thinking?!?

Do Not Resuscitate order

[kzinti]

Star Trek is living the old Dylan Thomas poem "Do not go gently into that good night..." Unfortunately, Trek's raging makes for very bad TV.

I watched the original Star Trek (TOS) as a kid, and I was captivated and stimulated by the series of new and amazing things it revealed: scientific wonders, new forms of life, alien cultures, and above all the feeling of adventure "out there" among the stars.

Trek TNG followed this formula pretty well, although it became too immersed in "technology" plots - how many variations on the holodeck plot can they expect us to endure?

DS9's theme was more political, exploring the various relations between the Federation, the Bajorans, and the Cardassians - and, to a lesser extent, the Klingons and the Ferengi. This variation on the theme seemed to bore a lot of people, but it seemed to me it produced some of the best writing of all the Trek series.

Voyager was where I seriously began to lose interest. The "journey home" theme - a kind futuristic retelling of the Odyssey was a good foundation to build on, but the series never seemed to take advantage of its potential. You know that a Trek series is failing at its primary mission when the producers feel the need to add cheesecake like Seven just to prop up its ratings.

Enterprise? They've lost me and I can't even bring myself to watch it. Don't even know its regular time slot. For my sci-fi fix I now turn to Stargate *, and reruns of Farscape, DS9, and Babylon 5. Oh, and I have great hopes for Battlestar Galactica - the human race fighting for its survival is a hugely compelling theme, and from the looks of the premier, the SciFi channel wants to do it right.

Yes, Star Trek needs to be put to sleep, or at least into a deep coma. I don't even have to RTFA to tell you my opinion on this.

not die, just rest

[syrinx]

I think there is the possibility for another good ST series... but not with the current leadership. Paramount should give up on Berman et al., let Trek rest and recover for several years, and then bring back a new series, with new writers and new producers.

I think there's a song that goes....

[linuxrunner]

It's worse then that... He's DEAD Jim!

Dr. Demento I believe...

Let the true fans keep it alive for a while

[chia_monkey]

I agree to a certain extent that the Star Trek franchise as we know it should die. Or at least take that hiatus they spoke of in the article. By doing that, they wouldn't dilute the value of the Star Trek we all know and love. Let the fanatical fans continue with the conventions, the underground activities, etc. That way, when a new movie DOES come out, there will be a big to-do about it because of all the hype, all the memories that get exaggerated over the years, and the fact that the movie producers will actually want to make a GOOD movie so as not to let down the fans.

In a similar sense, look what happened to "Star Wars". The original trilogy has so much awe around it. After years and years of nothing but old Star Wars toys and watching "Empire" over and over on VHS, they brought out Episode One. Look at the fervor it created. Unfortunately, the movie blew. Then Episode Two came out...it blew even more. Fans will go see Three, but it just doesn't have that "Star Wars!!!! I gotta go see it!" appeal.

Hey! Hey! Hey!

[nightsweat]

Let's not get carried away with the bad-mouthing random semi-nudity.

I mean, come on!

Re:Fact: Star Trek is dead.

[east coast]

Due to George Lucas' ego, abysmal sales of "Episode 1" and so on, some Star Wars fans turned to "Enterprise" who sell another cheesy repackaging of the same plots and characters.

The real bottomline there is that TV & movie "sci fi" is a joke. I'm personally sick of phasers and aliens. Is that the scope of sci-fi today? On TV and the silver screen it is.

Not overexposure, but context.

[plover]

I think Star Trek isn't special anymore because the times have changed.

Back in the 1960s, in the days of Commies and Sputnik and the Space Race, a show about astronauts warping around space with a dashing captain punching the Evil Empire in the nose was exactly the right formula to grab America's attention. Surround him with beautiful but deadly women, tear his shirt off in a fight over them every so often, and it captured the interest of teens and young men and women all over the country. And since there were three whole networks of TV channels to choose from, competition for attention was scarce.

But now, there are hundreds of channels with thousands of shows. The internet is high speed and in the kids' bedrooms. Soccer moms spend every waking minute taking their kids from activity to activity. Kids just aren't interested in Star Trek. It's now just a show for their dads and moms to watch; there is no excitement for kids, nothing new in these movies and series. There's no evil villain that they could show that these kids haven't already virtually shot a thousand times in their Nintendos.

Star Trek won't die as long as we adults keep hanging on to our memories of Captain Kirk. But we can't expect our kids to hold him in the same "reverence." And no matter how "special" the stories might be to us, they're just another level in a video game to the current generation.

Re:Not overexposure, but context.

[wwest4]

> But now, there are hundreds of channels with thousands of shows.
> The internet is high speed and in the kids' bedrooms. Soccer moms
> spend every waking minute taking their kids from activity to activity.
> Kids just aren't interested in Star Trek.

Mine thinks of nothing else. I'm lucky if I can convince him to go out for a run or a bike ride - he'd rather play starship creator or throw in a DVD and watch episodes. When he flips through the hundred channels, guess where he stops? Trek Uncut. When he's not staring at his SETI@home screen, he's searching google for a Zephram Cochrane birth announcement. His last class project was about his visit to Vegas, and he spent a disproportionate amount of his energy on the side trip to see Trek at the Hilton... in spite of the impact of seeing the strip, GameWorks, In-and-Out, the Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon, and Zion. It's not just another video game to him. He just gets it.

Trek hasn't really changed. It's always been about flashing some scandalous bits to attract general viewership. The spoils (occasional good bits of sci-fi, ideas, imaginary worlds and histories) go to the geeks. The difference now is that many older geeks have tired of their dependence on the general viewers and want to divorce the real meaty center of star trek from the filler that keeps Joe Sixpack in his seat and, by the way, the shows on the air. Well, I say that the only way you can really ever divorce yourself from the filler is by creating something on your own. Geek kids understand this intuitively. Some start with Trek as a base and some start something new, but by the end, Trek just whets one's appetite and does not sate it. That's why my son isn't happy only to sit and watch episodes or wait idly for the next movie. He's building ships, coming up with his own stories and characters, and looking for signs of trek-like progress in the real world.

There is also the argument that there is too much popular filler and Trek has become diluted, but that's another thread...

Re:Not overexposure, but context.

[plover]

Well, I'm really glad to see the spark of imagination still burns brightly in some kids. Congrats, it sounds like you've got a great kid! And I hope he invents warp engines some day!

Re:Not overexposure, but context.

[richieb]

But now, there are hundreds of channels with thousands of shows. The internet is high speed and in the kids' bedrooms. Soccer moms spend every waking minute taking their kids from activity to activity. Kids just aren't interested in Star Trek.

I don't know. My daugther was hooked on ST Voyager when she was about 8 and she is still interested. We've been watching "Enterprise" together since it started and are working our way through the complete Voyager DVDs.

She was attracted by the strong female characters on Voyager (Captain, Belana, Seven of Nine etc).

She's never seen the original ST or even TNG.

Re:Not overexposure, but context.

[Polkyb]

Of course, the original Star Trek, way back in the sixties, was cancled by the moneymen because not enough people were watching it... It didn't really kick back into life until they noticed that a LOT of people were watching the reruns

Then they made a film, which, although it had outstanding (for the time) special FX, sucked from a plot point of view

Things were a lot better when we just had TOS and TNG... Of course, would Roddenbery have approved of the following series if he were around to be consulted? He may have had a hand in the general look and feel of DS9, but was long gone when Voyager rehashed all those old stories

I think he would have approved of Enterprise, though...

Re:Not overexposure, but context.

[coaxial]

Back in the 1960s, in the days of Commies and Sputnik and the Space Race, a show about astronauts warping around space with a dashing captain punching the Evil Empire in the nose was exactly the right formula to grab America's attention.

But the fact is it didn't grab America's attention. It was being beat in the rating by the Monkees. There's a reason it only lasted 80 episodes. Star Trek didn't "grab America's attention" until long after the original series was canceled and only viewed in reruns for a long time. That's why the movie wasn't made until 1979. (Yes. Yes. I know ST:TAS ran from 73 to 75 with the original cast; but are we honestly going to count a 22(!) episode Saturday morning cartoon?)

Re:Not overexposure, but context.

[lindsayt]

I'm lucky if I can convince him to go out for a run or a bike ride - he'd rather play starship creator or throw in a DVD and watch episodes.

This is OT; but I'm interested in people's opinions.

I'm glad your kid's creative; but aren't you concerned about him being inside so much? I'm about to become a parent for the first time, and I'm quite concerned about this. As a kid, I always played outside with other people, went camping, rode my bike, etc. Other than a VIC-20 in the living room, a library of books and four channels of broadcast television, there was nothing to do inside.

Now, I have lots of technology around the house and things that may keep one occupied inside. I'm concerned that these things may distract my daughter - real social interaction and physical play are important, especially when young, since this is how kids learn to be social and well-adjusted (and physically healthy) adults. I know of so many children of IT pros who are overexposed and over-reliant on technology in a way we weren't, and I'm concerned about what this means for their health, their social welfare, and so forth.

Of course, I imagine that many of the 14-18 year-olds here on slashdot grew up with this ever-present media; am I overly concerned? Opinions?

Re:Not overexposure, but context.

[wwest4]

Basically the way I've approached this is by doing things myself that involve being outdoors, in the hope that he will emulate to some degree. He isn't terribly interested in team sports, but he seems to enjoy martial arts and running, two things that I do regularly. Mileage varies by kid, I imagine, but I think that like everything else, setting an example works best.

Re:Not overexposure, but context.

[Jurisenpai]

Oh, please show your daughter TNG! Some of my favorite memories growing up were watching TNG with my dad. I remember him comforting me because I was so upset when Picard became Locutis of Borg. (I was 8 at the time.)

Even now I watch the reruns, and remember how I wanted to be Dr. Crusher when I was little. :)

Re:Not overexposure, but context.

[richieb]

Oh, please show your daughter TNG! Some of my favorite memories growing up were watching TNG with my dad. I remember him comforting me because I was so upset when Picard became Locutis of Borg. (I was 8 at the time.)

Well we will probably work our way to that (she's 12 now). We watched some of the ST movies - particularly "First Contact", since it sets things up for "Enterprise".

Few Halloweens ago she dressed up as "Seven of Nine"... :)

Re:should star trek die? yes

[borg007]

Think about it! If you have to ask I think the question has already been answered.

Star Trek did die

[Dexter77]

In my opinion Star Trek died when Roddenberry died.

What we see nowadays is a soap opera in Star Trek clothes.

All new Trek-series made after 1991 have been pure BS. There have been only about 2-3 good episodes per season. I'm personally ashamed what Star Trek has become.

Re:Star Trek did die

[geekoid]

you might ahve a point if it wasn't for the fact that all the best ST were written and directed by someone else.

Star Trek Reality

[siriuskase]

We need to find a pseudorandom collection of people we don't need on earth and install them into the ISS for a few months. Hey, I might volunteer..

Re:Star Trek Reality

[triso]

We need to find a pseudorandom collection of people we don't need on earth and install them into the ISS for a few months. Hey, I might volunteer..

What about sending all the middle managers, hairdressers and telephone sanitizers.

Yes

[mabu]

The lame theme song for Enterprise alone is worthy of burying the entire franchise.

The biggest problem with the series is that they've pretty much exhausted their ever-redundant plot devices: time travel, super-superior uber hostile aliens that all conveniently have simple secret weaknesses, crew members going bad, intra-crew sexual tension, emotion as an asset/liability, etc. I'm so tired of watching a new episode only to see an old theme played out with different actors.

Wow, look, the Enterprise season finale has them tossed back in time to where? Of course, WWII and Nazi Germany. /yawn

Give it a rest Paramount.

One answer ...

[dago]

YYYYYYEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS SSSSSSSSS

What lameness filter ! It's for Star Trek, right ?

What, my karma diasppeared ??? why ???

.

What series' did you watch?

[tgd]

I watched them all, and I remember a campy western set in space, a all-to-perfect soap opera buried in technobabble, a total fluke in the Trek saga in the form of DS9 when the show sucked until they dropped any semblance of it actually being like "Trek", and went much darker and was far better than the prior series. Voyager shouldn't even be commented on. It was the worst part of all the sci-fi shows on TV all mushed together in a shocking display of suck. Enterprise has been entertaining, I suppose. The acting is horrid, but its never been good in the Trek franchise.

In all of those, however (even being a Trek fan), I fail to see any semblance of a cerebral root.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[MoxCamel]

In all of those, however (even being a Trek fan), I fail to see any semblance of a cerebral root.

Then you may want to go back and rent some TOS DVDs. Were they all cerebral? Hell no. Some of them were downright awful. But when you put them in the context of the era (late 1960s) they were powerful but subtle. They addressed issues of race, politics, social issues, sexism, and more. It seems a simple space western today, because we don't have the context.

Even the worst episodes of TOS were better than many "better" episodes of later series, because the writers seemed to care.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[xdroop]

Mod me Flame-bait, but I like Voyager.

TOS was too campy, NextGen was too stateless. DS9 was painful when it started, losing me before they got into the long-story-arc thing once Babylon 5 showed that audiences would follow such a story.

Don't know why, but it appeals to me and I enjoy watching it. I still watch Voyager in syndication... not daily, but a couple times a week.

And just to prove to you all that I'm a total crack-pot, I'll also cop to liking Dharma and Greg.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[SFBwian]

And just to prove to you all that I'm a total crack-pot, I'll also cop to liking Dharma and Greg.

No, I think that proves that you're a total crack-pot, regardless of your ST watching habits.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[nathan s]

In my honest opinion, Voyager was the most interesting of the three that I've seen (TOS, TNG, and Voyager). I know a lot of people seem to be blasting Voyager on the basis of its technology or something of the like. However, Voyager tackled some real issues.

A few that I can recall offhand:
- Throughout the entire series, a lot of time was spent discussing what is basically Artificial Intelligence in the form of the ship's doctor. Over the course of the show, this 'program' develops a personality and actually some creativity, and at least one Voyager episode is a court case that closely parallels a recent real mock trial (although here the AI is arguing for life instead of the ownership of its intellectual property) http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0594.html?pr intable=1
- Another aspect of the show is the characterization, which I felt is much better than previous Trek series. Capt. Janeway has to make some quite tough decisions, and the series finale is perhaps the most interesting episode for her as she encounters a future self and has to defend her decision to protect millions of strangers' lives at the risk of her own crew/family. This theme repeats throughout.
- The whole Borg thing was quite well explored, in my honest opinion (although it may be better so in DS9). Some people seem pissed that the Borg aren't all-powerful, but really, apart from the Species 8472, they don't face much real competition. The destruction of some of their collective at the end of Voyager is reflecting another long-lived Trek theme, individuality vs. the collective (and of course, individuality comes out ahead here - good or no, but that's what it was about).

It wasn't perfect, but overall I felt that the characters offered more to care about than previous Treks. I enjoyed the TNG crew, and was amused by the Western antics of the TOS crew, but Voyager actually had me caring about more than one character (I only found Picard interesting in TNG, and Spock was the main reason to watch TOS for me).

This is all quite personal, and I'm sure people quite disagree; however, I think that people might appreciate Voyager more if they paid more attention to the characters and less to the technology.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[Tassach]

Did you notice that DS9's change in tone corresponded with B5 beating it in the ratings game? Competition is good. Of course once B5 went off the air it was back to the same old Star Drek.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[Zerbey]

I watched them all, and I remember a campy western set in space, a all-to-perfect soap opera buried in technobabble, a total fluke in the Trek saga in the form of DS9 when the show sucked until they dropped any semblance of it actually being like "Trek", and went much darker and was far better than the prior series. Voyager shouldn't even be commented on. It was the worst part of all the sci-fi shows on TV all mushed together in a shocking display of suck. Enterprise has been entertaining, I suppose. The acting is horrid, but its never been good in the Trek franchise.

I disagree, TOS looks dated today because you've gotten used to much, much more sophisticated shows. Bear in mind it was made in the 60s and the world was very very different back then.

DS9 will remain the best Star Trek, unless they can figure out a way to top it. I think it could have easily gone on another 7 series if they'd not decided to end it. Such a shame.

Voyager wasn't too bad, some of the episodes sucked but there where a few gems in there ("Year of Hell" is one). It was certainly comparable to TNG, which I really enjoyed.

Enterprise should just be cancelled and disowned :)

I think ST should just go on hiatus for a few years, the world will change again (like it did between TOS and TNG) and fresh ideas will surface.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[skiman1979]

I'll have to agree with you on this. I happen to enjoy watching Voyager as well. I used to watch it all the time in college. I don't get much time to watch the reruns lately, but I do occasionally.

It seems whenever the topic of Star Trek comes up, people end up bashing Voyager. Personally I don't see what's so bad about it. It was a bit different from other series, like TNG or TOS, but then again they were in a different part of the universe. Things are bound to be different.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[pilgrim23]

I stopped watching Televison as a medium over a decade ago. All TV. Try not watching it for a brief period. During that time, amuse yourself by reading all those books you "Never have the time for". Then, after a month or so, turn on the babble box again and pay attention to what is said. See? Yes, that tripe, that bilge, that total insult to an inteligent thinking being is what you had been mistaking for "quality entertainment". Now, turn it back off, cancel your cable subscription, and use the resultant savings to purchase more books.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[cybpunks3]

--
DS9 will remain the best Star Trek, unless they can figure out a way to top it. I think it could have easily gone on another 7 series if they'd not decided to end it. Such a shame.
--

DS9 really didn't have any likeable characters outside of Worf when he came over, and Worf was one of the stiffest TNG castmembers (Mr. Dorn, you know, Klingons ARE capable of laughing, you aren't supposed to be playing a Vulcan).

Avery Brooks has got a serious speaking problem.
His diction is too deliberate. He puts these unnatural spaces inbetween his words. Shatner's delivery is far more natural in comparison.

It's like a weird Johnny Mathis or Neville Brothers like delivery.

I guess that's his idea of shakespearean diction but I think it's robotic and fakey.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[Scrameustache]

Voyager tackled some real issues.

A few that I can recall offhand:
- Throughout the entire series, a lot of time was spent discussing what is basically Artificial Intelligence in the form of the ship's doctor. Over the course of the show, this 'program' develops a personality and actually some creativity, and at least one Voyager episode is a court case that closely parallels a recent real mock trial (although here the AI is arguing for life

Yeah, hmmm, TNG did the exact same thing with Data, trial and all.
Its sad when you're ripping yourself off.

The whole Borg thing was quite well explored, in my honest opinion

See, here, you're not making any kind of sense.
TNG Borg: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, one, ONE Borg Cube defeated the entire Federation fleet and was only stopped by daring and clever hacking.
Voy Borg: A single lost Federation ship without ressources defeats the ENTIRE DAMN COLLECTIVE. Pussyfication galore!

individuality vs. the collective

Was explored in depth in TNG with Hugh, "I Borg" and the follow ups.
Voyager rehashed it.

I felt that the characters offered more to care about than previous Treks.

Kess. Was supposed to age very fast. After 3 years, they realised they had only untied her hair while she should have aged by about 30 human years. Also, they realised by that time that they had to cross Borg space, a daunting task. How did they solve these problems? MAGIC! Kess becomes Q-like, flings Voyager to the other side of Borg space (but no farther, that would have been too convenient), decides she's too hot for them, leaves, and they get a replacement babe in the same show. That disgusted me. That was...horrible.
Sure, the new babe was better, but the way they solved these problems... They painted themselves into a corner and pulled the magic powers card to solve it. Not worthy of Star Trek.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[MemoryDragon]

Actually DS9 was heavily influenced in the darker parts by Babylon 5 never reached its quality though. Bab5 was the best thing which could happen to the Star Trek authors. Long running high quality sci fi with an interesting story, and interesting characters bascically drowned to death by the unwillingness of the networks to support it. All they had to do was to follow the main storyline of Bab5 and convert it into the Trek universe and voila you had the best Treck series in a long term.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[Firethorn]

Well, considering that the Original Star Trek is probably older than half the people on this board, I'd agree that people don't get how 'edgy' TOS was for the time. Heck, the very idea of a female bridge officer! Do you remember the black/white episode? It might seem obvious and overdone now, but back then?

Re:What series' did you watch?

[CptNerd]

Sorry, back then it was obvious and overdone, as well.

The biggest difference I can see between then and the intervening ST shows is that back then they had actual science fiction writers writing screenplays. Nowadays, not so much, the occasional Peter David notwithstanding.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[MadChicken]

but I like Voyager.

Me too. The acting is a grab-bag though, as excellent as the doctor and Seven were, Janeway... Chakotay... and (shudder) ...Kes... let's say they were not the cream of the crop...

Re:What series' did you watch?

[nathan s]

Yeah, hmmm, TNG did the exact same thing with Data, trial and all. Its sad when you're ripping yourself off.

Agreed, Data was also fighting for equality with humans. However, that was a more classic Asimov-esque struggle. Voyager took it a step forward with the idea of a software-only construct that was not even embodied demanding the same rights and exhibiting the same creative powers as humans.

See, here, you're not making any kind of sense. TNG Borg: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, one, ONE Borg Cube defeated the entire Federation fleet and was only stopped by daring and clever hacking. Voy Borg: A single lost Federation ship without ressources defeats the ENTIRE DAMN COLLECTIVE. Pussyfication galore!

Actually, the full story is something like "A single lost Federation ship, aided by technology from 35+ years in the future, manages to severely damage the collective while getting home at the same time." I don't really get the sense from the end of Voyager that the collective was actually destroyed, and the Borg Queen didn't seem to have that sense either. In any case, the point was that the Borg were not invulnerable. It may even be that the writers felt that the "invulnerability" of the Borg was too unrealistic.

Was explored in depth in TNG with Hugh, "I Borg" and the follow ups. Voyager rehashed it.

Agreed, but this isn't a bad thing. I think Voyager did a very good job with it, and it's still a topic in society today so I see no reason why it can't be addressed again.

Kess. Was supposed to age very fast. After 3 years, they realised they had only untied her hair while she should have aged by about 30 human years. Also, they realised by that time that they had to cross Borg space, a daunting task. How did they solve these problems? MAGIC! Kess becomes Q-like, flings Voyager to the other side of Borg space (but no farther, that would have been too convenient), decides she's too hot for them, leaves, and they get a replacement babe in the same show. That disgusted me. That was...horrible. Sure, the new babe was better, but the way they solved these problems... They painted themselves into a corner and pulled the magic powers card to solve it. Not worthy of Star Trek.

I'm not sure what this part is supposed to prove. Kes wasn't one of the characters I was particularly interested in. I found the Captain, the Doctor, Tom Paris, Neelix, Harry Kim, Tuvok, Belanna - ALL of them were more "human" to me than any characters in the previous series. It just felt like there was some actual character drama going on - the technology aside. I'm not a big enough Trek fan to really memorize the technology, and that's probably why Voyager stood out for me more than the previous series.

I think what this boils down to is that, like all entertainment, people feel very subjectively about these things. Personally, I care less about 100% continuity within the Trek universe than I do about interesting characters. All the technology in the world and all of the pseudoscientific babble is secondary to the characters, and it's here that I think Voyager stands out.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[paganizer]

1. TOS
2. Voyager
3. TNG
4. Enterprise
5. DS9

With that being out of the way...
I sat down and watched TOS "Bread & Circuses" day before yesterday; I saw it when it originally aired, also (I was only 6, but I remember, it was cool).
It was GOOD. the costumes suck. the extra's suck. some of the acting sucked. The storyline was ridiculous.
Space Opera, in it's purest form; Shatner, who in his old age is just flippin' WEIRD, was a damn good Captain Kirk. And didn't have a moments hesitation screwing the slave girl who was ordered to please him.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[Scrameustache]

a software-only construct that was not even embodied demanding the same rights and exhibiting the same creative powers as humans.

I'm sorry, but holograms need a holo matrix, power to run the matrix, engineers to maintain the matrix, computer space and processing to house and run the AI, etc.

I found the Captain, the Doctor, Tom Paris, Neelix, Harry Kim, Tuvok, Belanna - ALL of them were more "human" to me than any characters in the previous series.

That is part of the problem.
Tuvok was much too human. Spock was haf human, he had an excuse for his human-like behaviour, Tuvok, on the other hand...

Hell, not only do they feel he need for tokenism to the point of giving alien species our races (yuck), but they throw in racial clichés with it as well!
Tuvok, after 28 years of seeing Vulcans, from scientists to security guards to ambassadors, all of a sudden, there's a african-american-vulcan. That's just plain stupid, but to add to it, he's the first violent and impulsive Vulcan (outside of Pon Farr)! Jeez, way to drag racist preconceptions to the stars Berman!
Much like Sisko was violent and impulsive. In Berman's Star Trek, if you're black, you're violent and impulsve. Pisses me off...

Kes wasn't one of the characters I was particularly interested in.

She was lame and they replaced her with a different babe.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

But where the hell else am I going to get my James Carville fix? He's only written like, 4 or 5 books, but he's on Crossfire EVERY DAY. Every DAY man. That's enough to keep my basic cable.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[Abcd1234]

*sigh* Not you again. There's crap in every medium. There is a metric buttload of *bad* books out there. Worse yet, everyone has a different idea of what defines "bad"... for example, I think the Count of Monte Cristo is a bad book (oh, I've tried to read it... how I've tried), but there are many who would disagree. Same goes for movies, music, and, yup, you guessed it, TV! The key, since you seem to have missed it, is to find quality material that you enjoy. Of course, if you choose not to do that, that's fine, but don't criticize an entire medium (and, by proxy, the people who view it) just because *you* have decided that it's worthless. After all, millions of very smart people (many probably smarter than you or me) watch TV every day (they also probably read books, watch movies, and listen to music... variety is, after all, the spice of life).

Re:What series' did you watch?

[SharpNose]

Yes, I sure noticed that. Babylon 5 very much seemed to be cleaning the Star Trek chronomet^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^clock and I sensed a gut change in the tone and tenor of ST series once B5 got established.

While I'm posting. TV Guide's Cheers and Jeers column usually wouldn't pay much attention to SF shows but it gave a "cheer" to the DS9 episode "In The Pale Moonlight," which I had seen and hed judged to be very, very good television for ANY genre.

Another DS9 episode, the two-parter "Past Tense," had the typical transporter-accident time-travel schtick but what they did with it was interesting and a bit harrowing. It involved the speculated existence of "Sanctuary Districts" in major cities by the year 2020, which, as described in the episode, seem eerily like what George W. Bush's "Opportunity Zones" might well devolve into.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you're busy flaming TV for being anti-intellectual, you should always make sure to spell "inteligent" correctly. Just a thought.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[jedidiah]

Tuvok was clearly miscast and badly written.

Sisko wasn't overly violent. He's just not a poet wannabe (like Picard) and is a bit more like Kirk.

There were plenty more Kirk-like captains of european decent in TNG.

The bloke played by OCP's #2 (robocop) makes Sisko look positive tame.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[tonejava]

The one thing that intereseted me about Voyager was the fact that they had a mission - to get home. They weren't just wondering around bumping into planets because they had nothing else to do.

To be honest the way they tackled future events was done quite well and I was hoping that something along the lines of Start Trek Relativity (set way into the future) could have been a better spin off. Who knows maybe making a series with Federation Delta quadrant posts could be a better idea than sucking all the technology out and calling it "Enterprise".

I watched Voyager and enjoyed it purely for the fact that it was set in the far future not a few decades ahead. I'm not interested in what might have happened in the next century I want to see further than that.

The whole Xindi saga in Enterprise was probably the better season of the whole thing (it had that ongoing storyline) and who is to know how the temporal cold war will take us but they are still flicking switches and using shuttle pods - where has all the technology gone?

For now I'm sticking with Stargate SG1 and Atlantis (Atlantis more for the technology of the Ancients). If Season 4 for enterprise actually evolves to something worthwhile then maybe I'll watch it.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[drinkypoo]

The best thing about B5 is that it had a five year arc, written by someone who could really write, and with main characters who could act - and supporting characters who learned to act somewhere in the middle of the second season, except for the redheaded telepath chick. She looked cheesy all the way through, I hope that was bad direction or I can't see her getting too much work. Then again, considering what comes out of H'wood these days...

The problem with Trek is simply that it's a limited premise, even though it sounds unlimited. In the end, you just have aliens with different forehead makeup doing the same things over and over again. Yes, some of the new shows have come up with new ideas. Yes, there is probably some life left in Trek. However, the nature of television leads to the fact that we're going to get ten tons of schmaltz for every ounce of actual content.

My vote is for a show based loosely on Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books. Near-future, technology that's almost here now - I found those books to be immensely encouraging. If we really are going to go to Mars in any meaningful way we need something like that to get people interested so we can get it paid for.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[A55M0NKEY]

If you live alone, no TV is fine. The internet, books, and NPR is all you need. TV IS tripe. And for one, see movies at the theatre. The price of a movie ticket gives you a better sound system and a bigger screen than a TV/DVD setup for not much more.

But if you live with someone, the TV is a way to get some alone time, or something to do to get off the other person's back.. It's something you can do together without talking.

I went a couple of years TV-less, but I wouldn't be without one now.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[CaptainAvatar]

Ta muchly for the spoiler - the final episode of Voyager hasn't aired yet in Australia (not on free-to-air, anyway).

Re:What series' did you watch?

[CaptainAvatar]

supporting characters who learned to act somewhere in the middle of the second season, except for the redheaded telepath chick. She looked cheesy all the way through

Arrgh, yes, she was awful! She was in the original pilot movie but not in season 1. I had assumed it was because she couldn't act to save her life ... but as she returned later on, I guess she must have had some dirt on JMS or something.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[Scrameustache]

Tuvok was clearly miscast and badly written.

Yes, though I have nothing agaisnt the actor, he made a fine bad guy in Starship Mine (the Picard Die-Hard), and he was a non-obtrusive extra in one of the movies...6 or 7...
The character was a mess, however.

Sisko wasn't overly violent.

Punched Q in the face! Q! Right in the face!

The bloke played by OCP's #2 (robocop) makes Sisko look positive tame.

Dunno who you're referring to (well, I remember Robocop, I don't remember him in ST).

But if your point is that violence is a trait that is not race-specific in ST, you are right.
However, I believe the number of out of controll violent black characters is disproportionate to the number of like-minded caucasian characters (there's a bigger percentage of violent black characters than violent white characters).

Re:What series' did you watch?

[Dabido]

"... variety is, after all, the spice of life"

Wow, just the idea Bermans been looking for to stop Voyager being the suckiest ST of them all ... INTRODUCING, THE STAR TREK VARIETY HOUR!

Watch Captain Picard Dance!

Listen to T'Pol sing!

Split your sides, Laughing yourself silly as Janeway and Dax tech the New Data about Human relations in many an hilarious skit!

You'd be a Feregni to miss it! (Show contains 20% new Star Trek Material)

I'm Troy McClure, wishing you happy viewing.

Nani-mo hoshii mono-ga nai

Re:What series' did you watch?

[Jardine]

TNG Borg: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, one, ONE Borg Cube defeated the entire Federation fleet and was only stopped by daring and clever hacking.

Compare Best of Both Worlds to Q Who. The Enterprise goes up against a cube in that one too and they blow giant fucking holes through it. Then rather than blowing enough holes in it to make it explode they decide to send over an away team to wander aimlessly. Then the away team notices that the ship is repairing itself. It still has holes in it, the Enterprise's weapons were active, they had no idea that the Borg could adapt to weapons fire yet, and it was determined earlier that the Borg can outrun the Enterprise. So what do they do? Destroy the ship while it's still reparing? Of course not. Run away from the ship that moves faster than you can.

Then when Best of Both Worlds comes around, the Borg are way more powerful. Anything you fire at them once or twice will be adapted against and completely blocked. Doesn't matter how much energy you put in, that phaser isn't going through. The Federation apparently has no concept of kinetic weapons except ramming manned ships into the cube. Earth must have thousands of those probes that the Enterprise loves to shoot into suns. Are they saying that the Borg's shields can stop 1000 probes hitting at warp 9? Either the galaxy has no creative weapon designers or shields block a lot more than I give them credit for.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[Lemmy Caution]

I agree completely. Some episodes of DS9 moved me profoundly. The cast had an excellent ensemble chemistry. As television and as drama, it was far and away the best of the franchise.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[ross axe]

Sisko wasn't overly violent.

Punched Q in the face! Q! Right in the face!

Let's be fair - it was in a boxing ring, of Q's creation (unless my memory deceives me).

Re:What series' did you watch?

[Snaller]

"And just to prove to you all that I'm a total crack-pot, I'll also cop to liking Dharma and Greg."

Hey! Dharma and Greg was very good - a sit com that was actually funny.

Perhaps that is why they haven't released it on DVD :-/

Re:What series' did you watch?

[Snaller]

"The key, since you seem to have missed it, is to find quality material that you enjoy. "

No, the key is to realise that hollywood (and burbs) are only in it for the money, not the art. Which is why 99% of it is crap. Which is why we should continue to complain until something changes for the better.

Quality material? Hah - don't make us laugh.

"...but don't criticize an entire medium..."

Its still (mostly a free country.

"and, by proxy, the people who view it" - the people who view it are the people guilty of keeping it on the air a lot of the time, and thusly are as deserving of a broadside as well.

"After all, millions of very smart people (many probably smarter than you or me) watch TV every day"

LOL -that's an opinion you'll find hard to prove. Unless you refer to the "news".

Apart from that i seriously doubt intelligent people bother to watch the crap which is usually on TV (if they did, Firefly wouldn't have been cancled)

Re:What series' did you watch?

[Snaller]

" know a lot of people seem to be blasting Voyager on the basis of its technology or something of the like."

When i blas it, i usually do it because of bad storytelling and no arc (and little sensible continuity)

Its funny though, i have soft spot for it. Where i millioniare i would buy the DVD's

Re:What series' did you watch?

[ralphclark]

TNG was not entirely stateless - far from it. For instance, after the events of "The Inner Light", there were profound changes in Picard's character which were echoed in many subsequent episodes.

I liked some Voyager stories too, but the show was frequently ruined by the very annoying (Katherine Hepburn-like) captain Janeway. She was inconsistent, frequently hypocritical and often guilty of poor decision making. Not what we like to see having been spoiled on a diet of Kirk and Picard. If the situation had been real she would surely have been relieved of her command by a cabal of senior officers.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[Scrameustache]

Sisko wasn't overly violent.

Punched Q in the face! Q! Right in the face!Let's be fair - it was in a boxing ring, of Q's creation (unless my memory deceives me).

Good point. He was just playing along...
Good point, I had completely forgotten about the context.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[jedidiah]

>>Sisko wasn't overly violent.
>>
>Punched Q in the face! Q! Right in the face!

Like I said. He wasn't overly violent. If anyone deserved a punch in the fact in Trek, it was Q.

>>The bloke played by OCP's #2 (robocop) makes >>Sisko look positive tame.
>
>Dunno who you're referring to (well, I remember >Robocop, I don't remember him in ST).

He took command of Enterprise in a pair of episodes where Picard was running around playing commando and got himself captured by the Cardassians.

Captain Jellico.

Re:What series' did you watch?

[Chadhulhu]

I watched them all, even tho i am not a trkker/trekkie.. Just something on that was Sci-Fi.. And since on my stations I never got B%, had to watch something... Anyhoo, i am a real true fan of Enterprise, sure the mucked up the timeline, but you know I like seeing a Captain who threatens an enemy with out worrying of the oft broken prime directive.. Second i like DS(, around the dominion wars.. except the finale.. absolute crap in a hat.. ST:ng was fun, but to clean and proper..

Re:yes

[Dr. Evil]

TOS drew a bit on western plot devices, the romance of WWII submarine warfare, the romance of travel, and with maybe one notable exception, it did this without referencing the 20th century directly and the explosion of the space-race.

The stories addressed complex modern issues, while space was a fantasy backdrop. I say that because the Sci-fi of Trek is quite weak, it's really only there to prop up the fantasy universe.

I think TNG and successors like exist to fill a gap in prime-time television, and primarily uses space and the Trek universe to create PG entertainment suitable for a broad audience.

DS9 did some cool stuff and tried to address contemporary issues, it got back to the roots of the series... including bad episodes amongst good episodes :-)

But what strikes me most about TOS is the link to contemporary issues of the late 1960's, including fairly recent memories of WWII

No ... but the hiatus idea is a good one

[Random BedHead Ed]

Contrary to what I'm sure a lot of others will write, I actually like the current direction of Star Trek, particularly Enterprise. I actually think Enterprise is one of the best shows yet, probably on par with Next Generation (feel free to argue below - I can take it). It's been a very inventive and original series, and I've been impressed with the ways they've linked our near-future with the events and concepts of the existing Star Trek universe (Andorians vs. Vulcans, not seeing the Romulans in person, etc.). One of my big complaints about Star Trek before Enterprise was that they rarely revisited old storylines and species. Enterprise is the first series to connect the dots to my satisfaction.

That said, they've made a lot of mistakes recently (not making Captain Sulu on the Exelsior into a series, making Voyager suck for most of its run, and so forth). Their biggest mistake: no hiatus. I actually realized this was a problem a decade ago when Deep Space Nine first aired. I loved the idea of two series airing in parallel, and hoped they'd do some cross-over episodes with TNG (which they failed to do). But after a while it seemed like a lot of work to watch two hours of Star Trek every week, and I realized that one of the things that had driven my interest in the past was the decade of no Trek before the movies, the two years between each film, and so forth. After TNG, they started building on their success a bit too thoroughly. I think Roddenberry wouldn't have treated it as much like a Trek Factory as Berman has.

I hope they keep going in their current direction with Enterprise, and that it becomes more popular. But I also hope that when it ends, they do the smart thing and take a couple years off. No movies, no nothing. The series needs a rest. And the payoff: after a hiatus, a new movie or series will actually excite fans again for the first time in years.

Re:No ... but the hiatus idea is a good one

[mikehoskins]

Agreed.

Adapt from the Novels

[frank249]

I just finished reading the 2 volumes on the Eugenics Wars. It did a good job of weaving the Star Trek universe into our actual real world events. It is also a good example of the quality of the writers putting out the ST novels. If there are so many novels out there begging to be adapted to movies or a series, why do they keep putting out crappy movies written by people who do not really know the franchise?

It's probably already dead

[Cro Magnon]

I liked TOS! Some of the dialog was corny but the stories were good.

TNG had some stinkers, but it also had some great stories.

DS9 wasn't as good as the first two, but it too had some good shows.

Voyager was when ST started to jump the shark. It had some good stories, but the crap was clearly growing.

By Enterprise, the previously mentioned shark was gnawing on the warp nascells. A show that had a lot of potential was dying fast. Archer's dog was my favorite cast member!

I liked ST, but they haven't given us decent ST for a long time.

Re:salient

[bat2k]

First really good use of the Dictionary Search extension for Firefox.

Man...

[StarKruzr]

Why can't we hire Farscape's writers for Enterprise?

Anyone?

Bueller?

Re:Man...

[Tony Hoyle]

Oh please no...

You'd have muppets all over the bridge!

Oh, wait...

My Breakup with Star Trek

[DeadVulcan]

A while ago, I wrote a quiet little rant about how I broke up with Star Trek.

I think a hiatus would be a very good thing. It just might make my heart grow fonder. But I'm not holding my breath.

Yes!

[Maul]

Please kill Star Trek while we still have fond memories of the franchise, rather than milking every penny they can by creating crappy series with the "Star Trek" name on them.

Paean to fanbase

[hey!]

The most memorable thing in this article, to me at least, is this Walter Koenig quote:

"In a society with so much violence and stupidity, the conventions are an oasis where you can find some genuinely good people who believe in humanity and respect the rights of others."

I think this describes practically any gathering of geeks, be it a sci fi con, trek convention, or just getting together with your buddies to play a game. Your basic square pegs in the round holes, the ones with the proverbially bad people skills, the ones who use and understand acronyms like IDIC in conversations -- these are the kind of people who can truly appreciate the uniqueness of each individual, and for whom diversity is not some empty political slogan.

So, let us no debate the profound wisdom (or lack thereof) of our beloved series. Of it, we can only say this: of all the series we have encountered in our years of viewing, it was the most ... humanizing.

Put it on the shelf for a few years

[raider_red]

Let's put it on the shelf for a few years. Keep rolling out the books, and maybe an occasional game, and keep TNG and TOS in general syndication. Around '08 or '09, start thinking about a new movie or series.

they need good writing

[oogoody]

not a vaction

Die, no. Stop Enterprise, yes.

[b12arr0]

I don't really care for the show because it is set in pre-TOS time. It's hard watching that show and seeing that Enterprise and then watching Star Trek the Motion Picture and seeing that Enterprise. I hate seeing the new props on the show and the old props on the movie because the show is set before the movie. I guess that's my main problem with Star Wars episodes 4,5 and 6 being filmed before 1,2, and 3. I do wish that the Star Trek series would stop for a while. I'd like to see the movies continue but I heard that the TNG characters are no longer going to be used in the movies. What a pity.

No, Star Trek should not die

[jayhawk88]

There's absolutely no reason Star Trek cannot inspire good, intelligent sci-fi, even after all the over-exposure.

A TV or movie is only as good as the people in charge of writing and/or producing it. Shit-can Berman and Braga and everyone else permanently associated with the franchise these days, and give it to someone who actually knows a little bit about sci-fi. Get some scripts from up-and-coming sci-fi writers. Sure, you'll probably get a lot of shit, but you'll also get the best Star Trek scripts seen in 10 years.

The point being, it's not the concept of Star Trek itself that's the problem, it's the people delivering it to us. Get the right people, and Star Trek can be exciting, interesting, and relevant once again.

"It's DEAD, Jim!"

[abb3w]

Sorry, but someone had to say it.

Re:yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Standard TOS episode:
The Enterprise or the Federation are menaced by a mysterious and deadly force. Kirk finds a way to destroy it.
Hidden agenda: The electic collection of different writers promote an interesting and occasionally contradictory mixture of left-wing liberalism, American jingoism, and Judeo-Christian egocentrism.

Standard TNG episode:
The Enterprise or the Federation are menaced by a mysterious and deadly force. Captain Picard asks it to please stop. It does.
Hidden agenda: Gene Roddenberry's personal viewpoints (secularism, humanism, collectivism, communism, pacifism, gay rights, sexual equality, atheism, political isolationism, etc). Disclaimer: I am an atheist and a humanist, but not a communist, so I had decidedly mixed feelings about this agenda.

Standard DS9 episode
DS9 or the Federation are menaced by a mysterious and deadly force. Sisko blows it up with cool special effects and lots of technobabble in order to appease the rock 'em, sock 'em crowd, then he turns around and subjects the audience to an agonizingly self-righteous lecture on the evils of violence and the horrors of war, in order to appease the intellectual crowd. If the writers are completely out of ideas, we get to to hear about their weird homegrown Bajoran religion.
Hidden agenda: None. The writers' only real agenda is to milk the Star Trek cash cow.

Standard Voyager episode
Drop Kirk's military control and aggression. Drop Picard's principled strong leadership. Keep Sisko's self-righteous monologues and dalliances with offbeat spirituality themes. Appease crucial lonely male Trekkie demographic with 7 of 9's large busom. Appease spiritual types with constant references to native American vision quests.
Hidden agenda: None. The writers' only real agenda is to milk the Star Trek cash cow.

Standard Enterprise episode:
Copy Voyager's modus operandi, but insert different personalities and different large busom. Annoy longtime Trek fans by ignoring continuity with TOS. Lonely male teen demographic is very excited about this new show.
Hidden agenda: None. The writers' only real agenda is to milk the Star Trek cash cow.

Re:yes

[schwatoo]

The time travel is hokey, the metaplot is mediocre, but don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

That's not a baby in the bathwater, it's a turd! Lose it!

From "The Ultimate Computer" Episode:

[davidsyes]

Kirk: And, M-5, what is the punishment for murder?

M-5: Thisss... Unit... Must... Die...
(M-5 winks out) Sound/music (dew-diu-do-doo-doo)

Kirk: Scotty! Get down there FAST! Kill M-5. Pull dah PLUHGGG, SCOTTY!

Scotty: Aye, Kep-ten.

---------

Really bring back Voyager, with Harry Kim as a captain. And, god, PLEASE,

--No more Excelsior or 1701 variants!

--No revisits to kirk and 2215/2315!

--No more hollywoodization of audience: the future belongs to EARTH, not the USA, not hollywood, not Los Angeles. Trek, if it needs to die, needs to do so and be reborn as a TRUE international representation of the future. Foreign actors/actresses, not just from up North, or from the UK. A REAL, Native Asian, a REAL, recurring Indian (yeh, they had Engineer Singh, but he dropped or was written out/ignored/replaced)

-- Add you suggestions here

films films films films

[Anonymous Cowpat]

Fact is, they're behind.

5 tos films 4 or 5 Next gen films.

so, they're behind by 5 DS9 films & 5 Voyager films... That's 10 films to worry about, and only a few years until they have to worry about Enterprise too.
What I propose is this. 1)Take a hiatus from making series' after Enterprise season4. For ooh 5 or 6 years. 2)Do 1 or 2 films with Each of DS9 & Voyager and another 1 or 2 with both of them (and the Enterprise, Riker's new ship, the USS illustrious et al). Ok, these would probably be a special effects fest rather than a heart-wrenching story, but that's what sensible people like.
Note, they onyl actually need 6 story lines in 5 years, even Bermann could think of that... Species 8472 anyone?

Then, when we're all desperate for a series after having been kept interested by a steady drip of films, they can start making a new series with the USS Illustrious as the principle ship.

Well, that's what I'd like to watch, but I'm probably in a minority.

No, I'm not going to tell you what the USS Illustrious is.

He's dead, Jim.

[mocular]

Somebody had to say it.....

Yes!

[psykocrime]

Yes, yes it should, especially with Doctor Who set to return to the airwaves. It's time to watch a real quality sci-fi programme again.

Star Trek shouldn't die, but ...

[evslin]

If you think about it, Star Trek's turning out like World Championship Wrestling did years ago. They cashed in on previous success and eventually went under because their creative team sucked and they were content to rest on their laurels instead of pushing ahead.

IMO if Star Trek is to stay alive, two things need to happen.

1) Entire creative team scrapped, no holdovers from previous series. It's obvious what they were doing wasn't working, so there's no reason to keep them around.

2) No ties to other series. That means Worf can't take a transfer to the new starship, Scotty can't appear through a Dyson sphere, etc. Every time they do that it just reeks of desperation.

guess if i'm in the star wars camp

[DeusExMalex]

i've waited for this for so long... and yes! dear god, yes!

its already been beaten to death

[nurb432]

As hard as its to accept being a diehard fan from the 60's, I've seen the whole thing been beaten to death with sequels and movies and merchandise..

Sure, one or 2 sequel series were expected and ok, but not 4.... Then all the movies.. what are we up to now, 15?

The ideas were all recycled again and again and again, taking away from the original in ways that are hard to quantify, but its happened.. .

Re:yes

[kannibal_klown]

I disagree on 2 points:

1) I think the opening theme is pretty good, when combined with the scenes they show. Sure, it isn't another orchestra piece, but it fits in well to show how we got where we're going.

2) While much of the show is superficial, and they rely on sex way too much (decontamination gel rubdown time! woohoo!), it has it's deep moments.

Like, when T'Pol essentially gets an STD which is looked upon as a stigmata by the Vulcans. She's immediately outcast, and you find that the Vulcans aren't in any hurry to find a cure because it will get rid of the "undesirables."

Some of the tough moral decisions Archer has had to make. Should we clone someone just to save a man's life? Saving this man would save the ship, which would save Earth, but it is right to clone something just to kill it?

Should we give this race a cure to a plague, even though the plague is giving ground to another species becomming the dominant species of a planet? Which species do we favor, as the dying species treats the "younger" species like cr@p and the "younger" species show much promise? Is it our place to interfere with the course of evolution of an entire species or the natural order of another planet?

W'ere screwed. We need an engine part to continue the mission, or Earth is doomed. We can't build another one. But LOOK! There's one, but they won't give it to us! Should we simply take it? It's just a ship of 30 people vs an entire planet, and we'll help them out if we can?

Yeh, at lot of the episodes are pretty horrible, especially the one where it was pretty much a "zombie movie" set on a Vulcana ship. But it has its moments.

The entire show started out centered around a "temporal cold war" for heaven's sake. And now, it's all about saving Earth. But, within the dreck, there are a few little gems that follow the themes of TOS and TNG.

In any case, I think this should be the last season of Enterprise, and another Star Trek show shouldn't come back for years. Then, maybe it'll be "fresh" and "new" again.

Give me FireFly any day.

OB Star Trek quote

[AnalogDiehard]

"It's dead, Jim."

It'll always exist. Just on a smaller scale

[Vinnie_333]

Not every property needs to be in the mainstream. There will ALWAYS be a ST audience. It's just the size of the crowd that the money hungary Hollywood execs are overestimating. Lower volume B movies/music/books/games make tons of money. They just have lower production values (which any TRUE sci-fi nerd cares nothing about. It's the story/science/babes they're interested in. Not the over done 'bullet time' effects).

Tits & Ass

[Lamont]

Star Trek died the moment they decided that T&A were more important (i.e. Seven of Nine) than quality stories and characters with depth.....

Re:Tits & Ass

[neurojab]

>Star Trek died the moment they decided that T&A were more important (i.e. Seven of Nine) than quality stories and characters with depth.....

No, that's how Star Trek started. Did you miss every episode of the original series?

It was all about making out with hot alien babes, from the very beginning.

Needs a hiatus if ...

[Tx]

Trek needs a (long) hiatus if all you want to do is come back and recycle the same old material in a slightly different guise yet again.

Personally I would like to see something like a Maquis spin-off, or a Section 31 spin-off, whatever. You know, break the mold, explore some of the not-so-utopian aspects of the federation, have some characters that don't go flying around the galaxy with the starfleet regulations up their arses pissing everyone off. No holodeck episodes. No time travel episodes, or other lame excuses for period peices. There would be no need for a hiatus to do something like that. Wishful thinking though.

Not really a meaningful question

[stinky wizzleteats]

Star Trek isn't going to die in the context of the current entertainment industry. I think it will outlive it. I believe that television entertainment, as we have known it, will give way to what is currently known as fan fiction. This may seem like a pretty far-fetched almost absurdly technophilic idea, and it does nauseate me somewhat to suggest it, but the reason I think this may happen is that the current entertainment industry is operating in mortal terror of digital recording, storage, and playback. MP3s and Tivo completely turned their world upside down, and this has created a barrier between the industry and popular online works such as RvB and strongbad that I believe will become the walls of its casket.

I've seen several Star Trek themed fan fiction pieces, and they are all based in TOS timeline and feature very good writing, excellent special effects, and reasonably good acting. I think this will be where the soul of Star Trek lives on.

Re:should star trek die? yes

[meringuoid]

Can someone just mod this whole "story" a Troll?

Not yet. Personally I'd like to see what clevernickname will post on this subject. He gets a guaranteed +5 on all Trek-related posts.

What about the fans?

[Azar]

My main concern here is the fans. I mean, if they stop making Star Trek movies and series, what will become of the fans?!

Will they take off the costumes? The ridiculous ears and inverted butt-crack forheads? Will they finally come out of their parents basement and mingle with the rest of society?! Let's think about this for a minute. Let's not make any hasty decisions. Do we actually want to try and reintegrate these people with the rest of us?

Oh wait, there's still reruns. Nevermind.

ST is wearing a Red Shirt

[NLG]

Just let it die, already. I love Trek. I grew up watching TOS, I saw the first movie the day it hit our local theater, and I watched all the series - as painful as it got. Now, I can't even stand to see the upcoming episode promos for ENT.

But is it really the case that ST has gotten worse? I would agree to some extent it has. But I think what many posters overlook is that we the audience/fans and SF have both matured in our tastes.

After watching Babylon 5 and Firefly and Farscape, can you honestly say even TOS or TNG measures up? We have experienced better writing and stories and , dare I say it, acting, than Trek has offered and now when we see any Trek we judge it by our newer, more refined sense of what SF can be.

To some extent even SG1 is trying to reach up, or at least it was trying prior to Atlantis. I will give it time to work it out, though.

The problem with Trek now is that the writers and producers recognize that better SF has been and continues to be made by others, but instead of doing better jobs themselves they sometimes just superficially copy the themes or ideas of the other shows or even past Trek stories instead of coming up with something original (B5 vs. DS9 , way too much time-travel, etc.)

Let me finish by saying, I think Trek has devolved into a formulaic, techno-babble solution in the last 10 minutes of every episode, gee didn't we all just learn a valuable politically correct lesson, pile of special effects with patterned characters and plot/continuity issues to fill several nit-pickers books.

But I also think that the very reason we recognize it as such, is that we are now smarter SF consumers. Good and even great SF films and TV have shown us what we should expect from the genre, and Trek just has not moved to meet these new, higher expectations. pfft...end of rant

Perhaps if the writing was better....

[borgheron]

I'm getting tired of the Borg popping up everywhere. I mean, every time there's a sinister thing happening it's either the Borg or the Romulans. Could we please have some imagination? How many times, exactly, have the Borg attempted to invade earth? I think around 5 times and now the Borg are showing up in "Enterprise"?? HAH! Come on!

GJC

Re:Perhaps if the writing was better....

[Scrameustache]

every time there's a sinister thing happening it's either the Borg or the Romulans. Could we please have some imagination?

I know: Romulan Borgs!

Oh! Oh! Better yet: Romulan Borg terrorist from the future!

Its gold baby, GOLD! ;-)

Re:Perhaps if the writing was better....

[borgheron]

No... I think we may have had that already. ;)

College Interns

[ForestStryfe]

You're right. I know someone who wrote for Star Trek. He spent three months last year in California as an intern. As far as I know, he was lacking in a lot of the knowledge that would probably have been crucial to the writing. (I realize that not all of the writers on the show are.)

Re:yes

[value_added]

"Star Trek: Voyager:
Unmemorable characters, superficial plots, enough gaps in the plot to ..."

You could add: "The only starship crew going boldly where no man has ever gone before, only this time led by a middle-aged woman who would have been better cast as a senior administrator in the ship's HR Department."

In fact....

[Iowaguy]

If someone recited Shakespeare at Kirk, he would kick the crap outa em alla star trek VI style. Or, as summarized by one of my favorite Kirk lines:

"Diamonds, rubies, emeralds. I would trade them all for a hand phaser or a good stout club."

You da man, Kirk. You da man!


-Iowa

Re:should star trek die? yes

[Ubergrendle]

Can someone just mod this whole 'story' as Insightful?

SF new things about sex.

[Grendel Drago]

Hmm. What has Bujold done? When I think of new and thoughtful with regards to sex, I suppose I think of Tiptree (new? dunno; dark? most certainly) and Heinlein (new? probably not; lots and lots of it? yep). Also the Tines in Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep"---because they're pack-minds communicating via short-range ultrasonics, they don't come into physical contact with each other unless they're fighting or breeding. So when one of them cuddles up to a human, he thinks of it as 'like fucking a corpse' (I may be paraphrasing.)

--grendel drago

Re:SF new things about sex.

[abb3w]

What has Bujold done?

She deals more with the "sex and reproduction" aspects of it. Much of it has to do with the technological implications of one idea: the "Uterine Replicator". From it you get: at the end of a war an irritated government returning the foetuses of rape victims to the perpetrators (Shards of Honor); the kidnapping of an unborn child (Barrayar); the job of an ObGyn specialist on a planet entirely populated by men (Ethan of Athos); a society which keeps its sex and reproduction seperate as part of it's experimentalist eugenics program (Cetaganda); many references to the peculiar "Beta Colony", which has a genetically engineered hermaphrodite minority seamlessly integrated, and apparent freedom in sexual practices at the price of absolute responsibility for the consequences; a noble who decides to start increasing his taxpayer base in a fairly direct manner (A Civil Campaign). There are others.

Bujold's emphasis is more on the reproductive aspects of sex-- possibly because she is herself a mother. She brushes up against a number of odd answers to the social questions sex (and families) pose-- generally as in incidental to spinning her entertaining space opera.

Not for me!

[Atryn]

I probably represent a pocket of the population not often here on Slashdot. I happen to love Enterprise and most of the other ST stuff that has been put out. I don't take it nearly as seriously as some Trekkers (probably the real reason you see so many calls for it to die is that they took it TOO seriously).

I also find it amusing that there are SO MANY commenters saying things like: "I haven't even watched the last 3 movies or the latest series" or "I only watched the premier of Enterprise" and then calling for the ST franchise' demise. If you haven't watched it, you aren't qualified to comment.

BTW -- I have friends that love FireFly. Guess what? I watched the first episode on TV and was unimpressed. I haven't watched it since. That hasn't made me go all over the net posting that it sucked and deserved death.

They should have ran TNG for longer than

[PotatoHead]

they actually did. TNG had many of the elements that made the old trek appeal. There is still plenty of time for a new movie following 'Nemisis' as well.

Would be nice to see the story thread about the Data prototype expanded upon.

Like the original trek and TNG, cannot stand Enterprise, forgot DS9, tolerated Voyager.

Freaking love SG1 and Atlantis!

Soap Opera

[NigelJohnstone]

Ignoring your plagarism for a moment (mentioned above), I think they lost it much earlier at DS9.

Deep Space 9 was just a Soap Opera covering the life's and loves of the people aboard a space station as they grow. It was no different than any other soap opera plot.

Voyager, was a story of the life's and loves of people as they grow aboard a spaceship travelling back to earth. Same soap opera formula, this time set aboard a space ship. Whoopy!

Enterprise I didn't watch, I switched off half way through Voyager.

Just kill it already, and don't get me started on Simpsons latest series....

Re:yes

[meringuoid]

1) I think the opening theme is pretty good, when combined with the scenes they show. Sure, it isn't another orchestra piece, but it fits in well to show how we got where we're going.

I look at the Enterprise intro, and I say '35 years and we've never been back', 'two out of five of those have blown up', and 'that will never be finished now'.

Then I just get depressed, and laugh bitterly at the future spaceships depicted.

Freelancer - The TV show/Movie

[Sheepdot]

IMHO, there is only so far you can go with a franchise and ST has been everywhere. Firefly has a better chance of becoming something cool/new. Battlestar Gallatica (spelling?) as well.

What I'd really like to see is a few games that have been out on PC turned into TV shows or movies. Among some of the great games with fantastic plots are Homeworld and Freelancer.

Freelancer is essentially this far-future space shooter/RPG that came out on PC over a year ago. The graphics were dated as it was originally schedule for release in something like 2000 or even earlier, but the game itself is just entralling.

The premise is based on 5 ships that set out from Earth after the war between the colonists (those that inhabited the planets other than earth) and the earth countries warred. The colonists essentially win, and 5 large colony ships take off for some distant system/galaxy never to be seen again. One of the 5 ships is destroyed upon leaving. The remaining 4 establish themselves in systems far away from the colonists.

Fast-forward like four centuries to the previous Earth inhabitants now rebuilding rather well, with some pirate groups having formed to cause trouble with the authorities and all sorts of other issues. The four systems developed into American, European, Britain, and Asian-like systems. They each have their own styles of ships, patrol their own systems, but for the most part, get along with each other.

The unique aspect of the game was the faction system. For example, in the "Rhineland" (German) area, there was a gang called the Corsairs who had decent faction ratings with the Asian system and some mining company in the British system that wasn't the best mining operation in that system, but since the Corsairs protected them, had access to better asteriods and thus minerals.

The whole game had a sort of wild-west in space feel to it. The idea of exploring a frontier where there are ruffians and "unknowns" is what makes space franchises work. They draw a certain crowd, and it would be best if ST would have stuck with that.

And despite what others on here have said, ST:Voyager *was* a return to the final frontier aspects that made Star Trek a good franchise. Their only mistake was that they focused so much on the Borg aspect because it drove ratings.

The whole time in Freelancer I was half expecting the colonists to come back into the game to beat on the four new systems, but it never happened. *That* is what makes a series good. The fact that there is so many directions you can go with it, but you never choose the one that the viewer will anticipate.

Watching Star Trek:Cowboy (or whatever the newest one is) is like painting a pretty picture and then telling those that view it that you created it out of dyed feces. The whole backstory to ST has been ruined, IMHO.

Re:yes

[Enahs]

This may be a copy-and-paste, but I have to agree. When I'm given the choice of Enterprise vs. Stargate SG-1, and want to watch Stargate because it's deeper, there's something very wrong. :-D

time slot

[hendridm]

They need to shut the whole thing down, wait five years, create an interest, an excitement, a hunger for it again.

Giving it a decent time slot would help. I tried for quite some time to watch Enterprise when the series was new, but they kept changing the time slot it played on the local UPN station. I never knew when it was going to play, and got tired of chasing it. So eventually I just downloaded the episodes to watch them, but I eventually got sick of hunting and waiting for the download, so I said to hell with it.

Obligatory ST II quote

[cyclist1200]

"He's dead already!"

scifi as "generational culture"

[peter303]

I make two claims here: (1) TV (and movie) scifi reflects the generational culture of the writers and actors; and (2) Star Trek has been unable to get out of its "baby boomer rut".

TV scifi spans the genrations of the WWII generation, inbetweens, baby boomers and GenX. The early shows like Twilight Zone and Outer Limits reflected the militaristic Us vs Them, cold war of the WWII generation. The first Star Trek series was the betweener generation- those who didnt fight in WWII but pre-boomer. It reflects hierarchial military/corporate sturctures of the 1950s/60s and the optimistic futurism of the times.

In contrast, The Next Generation 22 years later could almost be called "yuppies in space". The actors and writers were the successful professionals in space you see in the tech startups of the 1980s. They had a mission and teamwork. This continued through DS9 and Voyager where the main actors were boomers, and the plots along the same lines.

In contrast again, shows like Andromeda (another Roddenberry concept), X Files, FarScape, and Star Gate reflect the creative individualism attributed to GenX culture. And the actors are of that age too.

Star Trek Enterprise still seems stuck in the boomer rut. The lead character is a 50-year old boomer. The plots are too dated for the younger audience. You may guess what generation I'm in. However, if I watch a movie or show from 20 years before I am born, I generally "dont get get it" and am bored.

My Idea

[concordeonetwo]

Well, I would like to see some sort of Star Trek comedy. Maybe a "Holo-Kirk"?

Re:My Idea

[obergeist666]

Star Trek: Door Repair Guy

How to fix Star Trek....

[Dj]

1) Hand entire franchise to JMS.
2) Let him do whatever the hell he wants.
3) Profit!

Hey, I found a step 2!

Don't die!

[coldtone]

But I would recommend a long comma.

Star Trek Porn

[AliasTheRoot]

Thats pretty much all that can save it. Marina Sirtis should get naked and service Brent Spiner.

Re:Star Trek Porn

[KnarfO]

"I am fully functional... and posess a wide variety of 'attachments'!"

Re:Star Trek Porn

[freeze128]

Fifteen years ago, maybe. Today... Well, OK, I'm still interested.

Re:Star Trek Porn

[CommanderData]

Hey, quit stealing my lines! ;)

Yeah right

[puppet10]

Because the long hiatus did wonders for the Star Wars franchise.

Just get some new blood at the top of the franchise who are willing to take risks and fall down sometimes rather than slowly draining any remaining lifeblood out of the concept.

Not that this will happen its easier for the accountants to predict a long slow decline than the unpredictability of the unknown.

take a hiatus

[dpilot]

And since "hiatus" was mentioned in the story header, and to remain in-character, shouldn't it be, "Put into suspended animation," rather than, "Die?"

Would make a good series

[CrazyJim1]

They go from planet to planet, getting freaky in different ways with space babes.
Meinwhile you could have a lame character that can'te get any but likes to play in the holodeck, and has all sorts of interesting programs going on.
www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA

Re:Would make a good series

[rs79]

I don't think that would work. But, talk about bolding going where no woman has gone before... woah, porn with recognizable characters and decent acting and writing? But as I say I don't think it would work. I'd have to watch a few seasons to really get a good feel for it and I reserve judgement till then.

Just Wesley Crusher...

[fred3666]

Star Trek doesn't need to die, just Wesley Crusher.

(sorry Wil, I know you could use the work but they'll just edit you out again anyway).

Re:yes

[Oddly_Drac]

"The low-tech scenario means the writers can't use bullshit physics to resolve a plot quite so often."

So the tractor beam is unfeasible during a time when transporters exist?

Riiiight.

Instead they pull stuff out of their ass by having a guy travel back in time to nudge the plot every time it gets a bit stale. Then we get stuff like the whole episode with 'red alert', which resembled such a high degree of self-referential 'nudge nudge' intellectual masturbation that I couldn't believe that it had jumped the shark already.

Should I even mention gravity control?

Enterprise was an embarrassment that broke a promising curve that started with the later series of TNG and continued through the dark DS9 and the frankly lost Voyager. Don't even get me started on the quality of the films, because they're running out of deus ex machina to use.

The Borg, once feared and known for _shattering_ starfleet, ended up so pussified that an octegenerian admiral managed to outsmart them.

"A primitive starship does away with all the ridiculous technological dei ex machinae"

So, Firefly?

Re:yes

[kannibal_klown]

I look at the Enterprise intro, and I say '35 years and we've never been back', 'two out of five of those have blown up', and 'that will never be finished now'.

It wasn't just the present. Looking at the old ships and their maps, the Wright Brothers, the Lindenburg flight, etc. I'm not saying everyone should like the intro, I just think it's nice, and the theme and pictures combine nicely. Most people hate it because it's not a bunch of trumpets and violins.

Star Trek is fiction. It involves Spaceships that will probably never be built, exploring planets that don't exist, using science that is probably utter BS. And yet, you have a problem with the opening credits showing a space station that will probably never be complete in real life, and space shuttles that have exploded.

It's fiction. Get over it.

Can't quit now!

[PhaxMohdem]

We can't let Law and Order have more spin offs than our beloved Treks!

Too Inbred to branch the storyline

[Odonian]

One problem I think Star Trek has is that they really overused most of the interesting facets of the show. Things like Q, the Borg, destroying the ship, time travel, Klingons, etc. all got way over exposed/repeated to death. At the same time, they didn't spend enough time developing a well-populated, consistent universe with lots of hinted-at but unexplored branches. The result is the whole thing is kind of boring and too familiar without any prospects new directions to take the franchise.

Compare to Babylon 5 for instance; admittedly ran for a lot less time, but there were tons of options for offshoots there that were never tapped. (And yeah, the ones JMS did choose to branch on may not have been as interesting as they could of, but that's another story...)

Even if you leave the really cool stuff like shadows, vorlons, etc. alone, there are tons of things that could be developed, such as the Psicorps stuff, all those minor races you saw but never heard a lot of detail on, and even the major races such as Narn or Centauri could have been the subject of a spinoff w/o (IMO) overexposing them.

change in tone

[sniggy]

they really ought to kill the federation series. tv movies dealing with other groups such as the klingons or maybe some adventurers traveling through space would be more interesting. it'd still be the same universe but a different approach.

Should Star Trek die? NO!!

[farbles]

But there is a real good case for letting Rick Berman go.

I've been a fan since the beginning. I spent a good chunk of the 1970's hunting down the scarce model kits, writing letters to networks and studios and have been to the first showing of every movie. When Star Trek came back it was amazing, even if the first movie was very slow paced and not the freshest story line. There were maybe ten people in that first movie showing, talk about keeping faith.

I've watched the followup series come and go and have to say that they all had their moments - even Voyager is not as bad as the general opinion would have you believe.

I haven't always been happy with the directions the storylines have taken - as many posters have said, there is too great a reliance on techno-babble solutions.

Where "the franchise" and I parted company was not Insurrection, which I thought was at least an attempt at making a more thoughtful Trek but Nemesis, which was utter crap from beginning to end. The damning factor is that Rick Berman had no idea that Nemesis was so bad - every interview with him had such amazement that ticket sales were down so much and all the debate since is that this was Star Trek's fault. It isn't.

Look, we need Star Trek, the real Star Trek, more than ever. There are just about no ideals left any more in this crazy violent world. We've been taken over by large soulless corporations, government corruption is at record high levels, and most people are looking out for number one and screw everyone else and why not? Daily we see example after example that things are going to hell and selling out the future pays good money today.

Pre-Berman Star Trek's hook isn't that it has neato space toys that go whoosh and zap, lots of shows and movies have had that. Star Trek's hook is that at its best it shows a plausible and good future with humanity not looking like complete assholes but going for higher goals and brother, there are not many examples of that anymore anywhere.

THAT is why there are new original Star Trek episodes being made at home by people two generations removed from the original show. We are hungering for the higher goals we know we as a race have, and we are doing it in a world where all the higher goals have almost been forgotten in a haze of materialism, fear and violence.

Lose Berman, he just does not get it. Make a Star Trek that hooks us in before the first commercial and doesn't let us go until it's entertained us and shown a little bit more of that better humanity we can aspire to.

Honest to God, some days I feel like Cervantes living in the time of the Inquisition trying to hold hope for tomorrow.

Re:yes

[llefler]

Enterprise NX-01 doesn't have a tractor beam, it has a harpoon!

And so far, no sign of "I can make anything you need in my handy replicator" either. They have actually had to steal parts to keep their ship going.

Spock has feelings

[eomnimedia]

You it's time for a series to die when the male voice-over says in a soft voice, "Tonight, on a very-special Star Trek...."

YES!!

[John Hasler]

Put it out of its misery. Please. It should have died thirty years ago.

Re:should star trek die? yes

[drsquare]

Well, why not? It's already had a good innings, not every TV programme has to be leeched for every penny it's worth. No point diluting its reputation with countless more series like what happened with Friends etc. Leave it alone: the fewer episodes there are the better you'll remember them.

Arg

[alazar]

Its so hard to decide. Normally I'd say that even bad Trek is better then good TV everywhere else.

But there is alot of good SciFi on these days; Stargate(s), the promise of the new Farscape, and Galactica. Then there is the hope that Tripping the Rift will be renewed.

One thing is for sure. Trek needs new writers!

It was killed years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Growing up I was a huge fan, loved TOS and TNG. DS9 had it moment, but bored me much of the time, as did voyager (great idea, ruined by inept writing). Seen a few Enterprise, but the spark has gone.

The biggest problem is that when I was young ST was pretty much all there was (along with Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica), but in the interveining years we've been shown better vision.

For my money Babylon 5 was the ultimate space opera. Better acting and effects than ST and far better written. Where Voyager and DS9 meandered for so long, Babylon 5 always stuck to it's story arch. Worse for DS9 (at least from the airing dates in the UK), it followed in B5s foot-steps:
B5 on a station, DS9 ditto
B5 gets the white star, DS9 gets an new ship
B5 has the shadows, DS9 gets the dominion.

In each case B5 was better. Also, B5 had far better characterisation, an infinite range of grays rather than STs almost comic book blacks and whites, with the odd grey thrown in as an after thought.

Maybe it's the curse of the long running franchise. B5 started to slip after the 4th season (which was originally scheduled to be the last) and the longer ST has gone on the worse it seems to get. The only question is would a break of any length reinvigorate ST? Or have all the stories that can be told have been told already? I find that hard to believe, but the current crop producers and writers seem blinkered to anything new or different.

"First Contact" with Romulus or Cardassia.. whatif

[gd23ka]

I think the correct saying is:

The comfort of the ruling elite outweighs even the most basic needs of the many.

A cultural precept practiced in such advanced and enlightened societies such as the Romulan Empire, the Cardassian Empire and Earth.

Btw, a funny thought just crossed my mind. What if our real life Earth was part of the Star Trek Universe and we would have made first contact with the Cardassians and/or the Romulans?

If you ask me this, our Earth would integrate very well into the Romulan or Cardassian Empires. If we made contact with both at the same time however it would probably get very messy with Cardassians and Romulans duking it out just outside the moon orbit :-) It would be a messy because the American Bush/Kerry/Kennedy etc. elite would probably opt for the Cardassian Empire (their legal system resembles the American Post911-system the most and our execution-happy Fuehrer Bush would really "dig" Cardassia because they have the most executions in the quadrant), while the ecosocialist european elites would probably opt for the surveillance-happy, secret police state of the "you are nothing your people is alles" Romulans which corresponds to their "all of nature is valuable except humans" mindset.

Re:yes

[mikehoskins]

I agree. To me, it changes Star Trek, but it adds a lot, too, because the tech is much lower. It's almost like NASA, then Cochran [sp?], then Enterprise NX, then Star Trek TOS....

I liked Season 3 a lot better than the previous two.

Interesting...

[Grendel Drago]

*blinks*

Never quite thought of it that way before. Who was McCoy's other half, then?

--grendel drago

Damn stereotypes of Star Trek fans !!!

[dwalsh]

Check out the photo of the guy at the booth of memorabilia (the last picture).

It's a plant I tell ya, a conspiracy by the man to ridicule Star Trek fans!

In reality they are all fit, outgoing, mountain bike types of guys.

Netcraft confirms: Star Trek is dying...

[cpghost]

Insert "Netcraft is confirming..." theme here.

Pacing.

[Grendel Drago]

Folks, remember how far along thirteen episodes is. In Babylon 5, episode 13, we had *just* met Mr. Morden in that ep. The Shadows hadn't been mentioned yet. We didn't know what happened to Babylon 4. We didn't even know why the Earth-Minbari war ended. Earth politics were a distant and unimportant murmur.

And I'm too lazy to do this for TNG (which, I suppose, it doesn't work for, since the continuing plot is tenuous) or Farscape (which I haven't seen).

--grendel drago

Sleeeeeep!

[furry_marmot]

A truism of great stories, and it's not like this is a secret, is when the stories don't evolve, they get stale. TOS was a great vision of a clean, orderly future where people had learned from the past and were sharing the great wisdom with the messy other races of the universe. Such an imperial, white race's burden went over better in the 60's. By the fourth or so season of TNG, the future-science-as-pretty-magic syndrome was getting a bit old, like insisting that emotions aren't so much physiological states as magical powers that float hither and thither, lodging in mechanoid crew members as easily as humans. Also, the crew of the Enterprise forever insisting they respected the foolish ways of aliens, all the while trying to convert them to our better ways, puts me off more and more as I get older. It's a short road from morality play to condescension

DS9 made a good attempt at dirtying up the Star Trek vision to make it more real, and it had it's good points after the first season, but they lost it when they decided it had to be at the center of a galactic war. And then at the end, all the war heroes just went back to work. No promotions, no space parades. "Let's make it really interesting, but not change anything," say the makers, "like when Riker won awards and honors and proved himself the captain's equal, but never took his own command." They forget that interesting equals change and lack of change equals uninteresting.

So, yeah, I'd say the producers should try to live with the riches they make from the franchise, but go tell a different story. ST is not a religion, for pity's sake; it's just a TV show we all grew up with.

Yeah it's about time...

[greymond]

Star Trek and Next Generation were really original and held my attention as well as made me want to go pay $9 at the theatres to see them.

Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise just seemed to go downhill becoming even more cheesy feeding the strange habits of trekies at conventions. I stopped watching around this time.

The conventions have gotten to be a joke, I don't want to hear about some guy who met Howard Stern once or some fat sweaty meathead talk about the latest designs of Vulcan Ships.

The only people who really enjoy watching star trek now are the zealots, or people who will watch it if nothing else is on. No normal person actually thinks to themselves "oh hay Enterprise is on at blah on blah I better stay home and watch it"

Get rid of it, and lets put more effort into other shows that are just as good or better...

Turn the page....

[moorley]

Hmmm... I actually liked Voyager but Deep Space Nine sucked. Enterprise is not much better.

What made Star Trek great is that rode a wave. At the time it portrayed a positive view of the future that we wanted to see, mixed in with some good ole 50's esque SciFi plots.

I'm not sure the next Star Trek is really meant for die hard Trekkers, since we all have varying views as what we want.

But I think it's time for Star Trek to turn the page. The 5 year mission of exploration as a structure for the stories is kinda broken. I didn't really get into ST:TNG until season 3 when the characters were established and I started to see what was going to happen to them next.

Somehow Trek has to turn the page. Maybe eschewing starships for a mass transit / wormhole system (I know it's not SG1, but that's the tuff part.) Maybe it's time to take some of those old universe shattering story lines and let the Trek universe have a "shocking change". Not just the Klingons becoming an ally, of sorts, but something that changes the entire context of the stories.

That always seemed the weird part of Star Trek, they kept meeting/finding people or technology that could change "everything" and nothing changed.

The only other thought I could think of would be a montage of "mini-series". Look through the multiverse of star trek literature out there and pick a few of the gems of smaller stories and make some mini series or episodes out of those. See what takes off, see what doesn't. Allow the stories to stand by themselves, and not always have a continuation.

Trek is fine, the Exec Producers are NOT

[Kagato]

It's not that Trek itself is bad, it's the exec producers. Mainly Rick Berman. His direction for the series has been all wrong. Hand the helm over to someone else.

Andromeda Enterprise and Everybody loaths Raymond

[infonography]

Lots of stuff should be gone from the air. It is the cycle of life(?) At least they finally killed off Fiends.

Yes, and the money needs to be redirected to...

[what_the_frell]

Bringing Farscape back permanently on another carrier. Imagine all that $$ being wasted on Enterprise that could be spent on other, better endeavors??

"It will die." "It's dead already."

[GrouchoMarx]

Funny, I thought Trek died when DS9 turned into a horrid soap opera that revolved around Sisko being a demi-god with writing that wasn't even internally consistent, much less good.

Then I thought Trek died when every third episode of Voyager was "7 learns to be human thanks to time travel".

Then I thought Trek died when the best example of Enterprise was "Let's find some way to get the Vulcan chick nekkid on camera."

Then I thought Trek died when to improve ratings they ran off to fight the terrorists in the Bermuda Triangle in Space.

Then I thought Trek died when the terrorist plot (Xindii) was word for word predictable based on a thousand scripts before it in a thousand different genres.

Then I thought Trek died when the best they could come up with for the season finale of Enterprise was "We've done aliens and they're bad guys, Nazis aren't cool enough as bad guys, so how about aliens AND Nazis!"

So I figure if Star Trek is a cat, then it has to die three more times under Rick Berman's leadership (and I use the term very loosely) before it will finally be put to bed. Given the rumored plans for Enterprise Season 4, that should be "Shatner returns!", "Spiner returns!", and "Temporal Cold War Part 31!" After that, Trek should be dead by any possible metric.

I grew up on Star Trek, I love Star Trek, I learned a love of science from Star Trek. Berman is not writing Star Trek, he's writing crap. Fire his ass, give it a rest for a few years, then bring in a new staff of professional writers who have a clue. They're out there, Berman just doesn't know how to find them.

Things I'd do to revitalize Star Trek

[brainee28]

1) Fire Rick Berman and Brannon Braga...I'm sorry guys, but your time to try and make this work has passed. Not only that, but you keep missing the main point of creating Star Trek stories. It's not just about what sells or what doesn't sell, it's about the story and how it relates to the joe watching the story. Also, and this is a big one too for long-time fans, it's about the timeline or the mythology you create.

This story, like many long standing Sci-Fi shows, (Star Wars, Farscape, Stargate, X-Files, B5, etc...) create a mythology with it's story telling. Berman and Braga have consistently compromised that mythology for the sake of ratings. "It's our idea of it, so we'll make changes any time we want." Sci-Fi viewers are technical people; they like things that make sense to them. Screw up timelines and mythology with your "reinvention" and those fans go away.

2.) Let Manny Coto take a stab at Enterprise. He seems to get the idea that mythology and timelines are important. Let Coto deal with the rest of the run of Enterprise.

3) Wait 3 years before putting out a feature film and a new series. 3 years should be enough time to get fans interested in something new.

4) Hire Nicholas Meyer to direct and write the next Star Trek feature. His movies, not only being the most successful, but his stories seemed to capture exactly what Roddenberry wanted to expose the world to; human stories wrapped up in the distant future dealing with simple subjects, twisted with complex situations.

5) Release the Movie 3 weeks before the release of the TV show, and bill them both together with trailers in movie theaters.

6) Find a good cross-section of existing and new sci-fi writers, and give them a shot at creating character stories for the new series, like JMS or Nick Sagan, or Joss Whedon, or even Shatner (not a half-bad writer with his Tek-War series).

7) Build an audience with another strong Sci-Fi influenced show. Nobody seems to be doing the "blocks" of TV shows anymore together.
Buffy and Angel on the same night was a guarantee for Sci-Fi fans to be tuning in.

8) Most important of all...Pay attention to the fans. Sift through some of the conjecture, and find some common opinions from fans that will guide how you build both a movie and a new series.
Berman and Braga have visibly shown that fans should have no bearing on their attempt at storytelling. This is the reason that Trek has gotten where it is.

"It's better to burn out than fade away"

From which movie and which song?

Brainee28

Star Trek Future

[d-e-w]

At this point, Enterprise should die and the producers should take a look at how to make the next Star Trek "different."

Star Trek is about a universe and a history. Somehow, they've established this history without showing us much of what went into the history. Ent could have shown us the events leading up to the foundation of the Federation (and kept implying that those events were a foundation for the series) but it's four years in and it hasn't kept that promise.

The possible upcoming movie with a new crew that might show us the Earth-Rom war? Now that sounds interesting to me!

Why Not?

[filmguru]

What is there about Enterprise (or Voyager or DS9) that fans want to see that couldn't be offered by a new, fresh, science fiction show? The characters are all different. The villains are mostly new. The only connection between Enterprise and TOS is a ship named Enterprise and a pointy-eared science officer. There's not even a Federation.

Don't get me wrong, I love Enterprise. But not because it is part of some long-loved franchise. I like it because (when it's good) it tells good SF stories. Remember when SF used to be about the stories? It's not about certain costumes, certain alien races, or certain characters. It's about good writing.

The best TOS episodes could have been written for any show. Captain (insert Captain's name) goes back in time to save a crewmember. Captain falls in love. Captain discovers that to save the future the woman must die. That's GOOD storytelling! All the franchise stuff is unimportant.

I would rather see three new, clever shows on UPN (the ill-fated Jake 2.0, for instance) than to see Star Trek continue just because it is Trek. Babylon 5, Stargate SG-1, and Farscape all offered science fiction fans an alternative to Trek and were very well received. Maybe it's time that Trek producers (and fans) tried something different.

Re:should star trek die? yes

[lcsjk]

You made me miss the whole point of the story. I just spend all my time searching to see if clevernickname responds and gets a +5.

Mass Media Should Die

[Baldrson]

Star Trek? Who cares. What really should die is mass media.

Should Star Trek Die?

[Silverlancer]

Don't know, but if Enterprise is any hint of the future, it deserves to die just about now.

Plus, with Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis... who needs Star Trek anyways? :)

Tell Nemoy to Shut the Frakes Up

[CristalShandaLear]

Should there be another Trek TV series?
Definitely not. They've bled them dry and if Voyager and Enterprise are any indication of where the series is headed, then by all means, no more tv shows.

Should there be another Trek Movie?
Not until Jonathan Frakes is either dead or otherwise incapacitated.

No matter about the movies and tv series, the Fandom will rock on under it's own steam for another few decades or until every last series is out of syndication and even then I'm not really sure that the Fandom can die.

People will still have conventions and websites and the multiplayer game if they want the "Star Trek Experience", speaking of which, has anyone visited Deep Space Nine in Las Vegas?

At any rate, Leonard Nemoy is the last person to look to for objective commentary on whether the franchise would die. He's been campaigning for it to die in one way or another since "The Search for Spock". I guess being an icon sucks but if he no longer wants to participate he should just quit showing up at conventions and crap instead of putting on the "woe-is-me" act.

Re:Tell Nemoy to Shut the Frakes Up

[man_ls]

Speaking as someone who hasn't watched *any* Trek since TNG was still being placed in new circulation, my take on Nemoy is that he attends Trek events because if he didn't, that would be the death of his public image.

Without that image, he'd probably never get any acting or promotional stints again.

Re:yes

[dmouritsendk]

Enterprise NX-01 doesn't have a tractor beam, it has a harpoon! The low-tech scenario means the writers can't use bullshit physics to resolve a plot quite so often.

Correct me if Im wrong, but doesn't that ship flyv > the speed of light? Personally I find the idea of a a ship which flies way faster than the speed of light armed with a harpoon down right ludicrous..

Imagine a F-16 fighter that had to pop open and the pilot show throw stones, spears and stuff thorwards his enemies. It just wouldn't seem right would it? :D

Noooooooo!

[huchida]

Star Trek can't die! I'm still two hundred after fifty pages away from completing my magnum opus fan fiction novel in which Q brings Kirk, Picard, Janeway and, uh, the other ones together to assist the Sith in an alternate universe that finally explains the link between Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica!

If anyone wants to read some sample chapters it's available at:

http://www.geocities.homestead.tripod.angelfire. co m/users/homepages/sciencefiction/startrek/alternat iveuniverses/fiction/fanfiction/DamnYouQ.html

Babylon 5 Creator....

[sadler121]

Didn't he say he had a plot and everything for a series?? Kill, errr, *replace* Bermen, with him and then we won't have any more problems.

and just to throw in my two cents, I actually *LIKE* Enterprise (ok not all of the Episodes, but then agian, I don't like every episode of TNG, which is my favorite (yes even over DS9)).

Another race - the romulans perhaps?

[jg_elliott]

With a whole universe and a whole timeline to play with, they could be creative and keep the startrek franchise around by trying something different, like not having the main characters as humans.
The suggestion of a story with the romulans is a good idea. Why not a series that focused on the romulan wars? Or another point in history like the romulan split from vulcan?
Maybe they should consider only commisioning six or eight episodes, like british tv shows, so they can focus on getting the writing good for those episodes?

B5 was ruined by the networks.

[Viol8]

The networks told the writer (strazinsky?) that there wouldn't be a 5th series so he hurried to get his story arc shoe horned into the 4th series which in my opinion made the last few episodes so bad as to be funny - "Get the hell outta our universe!". Umm yeah. Then the network comes back and says "hey , you can have a 5th series after all. So what does he do? Does he tell them to get stuffed , theres nothing left to do , just leave the story complete even though its been spoilt? Or does he smell money and do a 5th series which meanders around going nowhere and just treading water , paying the actors wages? Well we all know the answer to that. B5 was good but it could have been great. Pity.

Forethought

[MouseR]

LET GO OF THE FOREHEADS!

Geez. I really enjoyed TNG when I was in my early 20s but even then I quickly grew tired of foreheads being the only feature that differentiated races.

We need a ST series that doesn't care about warp. One that pop through universe bubbles and discover REAL NEW STUFF. Not just a forehead.

And for crying out loud, we could do away with the character repeats. Every ST series has had it's

1. 
   comical doctor
   bombshell bimbo
   nerdy teen
   over-compassionate captain
   stick-shoved-next-to-spine emotionless moron
   scores of NPG meat-grinder-ready ensign
   

Sick of it!

Bring back Spinner/Data. THAT was both a good actor and character wich doesn't need to be brought back through a stupid plot to appear in a show to spur up interest (Dysan sphere anyone? Nexus?)

Turn Voyager around damnit! They're explorers. Not whiners that ought to go back to mommy. They have deep space communications now. No need to go back home. Turn around damnit and see if there's more to this universe THAN FOREHEADS!!!!!!!

Arf.

Re:Forethought

[drinkypoo]

• comical doctor
  This one makes sense, really. In a secular society, who's your chaplain? The only person who has time, the doctor. Remember, this is the future, they have nifty medical technology that means the doctor is basically a computer geek most of the time.
• bombshell bimbo
  Bimbo? They've never really been bimbos, they've always been hardasses. Personally I'd like to see them have someone who's asexual in the sense that they don't have sex - whatever the real world for that is, I don't know. And she should be insanely hot and stacked but always wear full length clothing, and be really bitchy when people try to pick her up. You'd have legions of geekboys humping the screen waiting for the day when she takes her sweater off, which must never come. This provides the forbidden fruit that Spock represented in TOS.
• nerdy teen
  If you're going to have a teen in the show, they'll be bloody dull if they're not a nerd. Frankly I liked weasely^Wwesley. He was generally right about stuff, though obviously he made plenty of boneheaded manouvers so the adults could pretend they wouldn't have fucked it up worse. This is a pretty unavoidable character really.
• over-compassionate captain
  I heartily agree. I nominate the above pissed off female character as captain.
• stick-shoved-next-to-spine emotionless moron
  Who?
• scores of NPG meat-grinder-ready ensign
  If people aren't dying, people won't watch. What do you think is so special about NASCAR and the WWF?

Re:Forethought

[MouseR]

1. stick-shoved-next-to-spine emotionless moron

Who?

The black vulcan in Voyager. The puddle-in-bucket guy in DS9.

Spock gets credits for having set the character type but enough with it. Data saves criticism by the fact that he was humorous and more like a child wanting to discover emotions. Data is the one stick-up-the-spine that was most interesting.

The two other ones, I care so much NOT that I refuse to learn their character names.

Re:Forethought

[MouseR]

Oh yeah. There's one in STE as well. But you figured that one out already.

Nah...

[Kreebog]

I'm still enjoying the franchise and, for the most part, I really like ST:E! I find the story is interesting and I like most of the characters. Some of the episodes are obvious rip-offs from previous series but even that is better than most of the tripe that is being aired!

No...Rick Berman should retire...

[PortHaven]

I am sorry...

I feel Rick Berman is killing the franchise. I believe him to be all about the $$$.

A few main things killing the franchise:

1) Lack of creativity. Although Enterprise has shown some.

2) Failure to adhere to cannon. So often now it seems like in order to have a plot the writers toss out previous cannon. Often contradicting the orinal series. This irks die-hard fans in hopes of garnering newer weaker fans.

3) Failure to integrate the Treks. I am sorry I can sit down and within an hour come up with more decent plots than Rick Berman has in 5 yrs.

a) ENTERPRISE EPISODE: Time travel back to medieval age to encounter Merlin "Q" (John DeLancie)

b) MOVIE: ST:TNG Enterprise destroyed. Crew enroute to starbase on Excelsior class. Encounter new Romulan ship generating a wormhole. 4 warbirds uncloak as hailing message from Commander Sela (Tasha Yar's daughter). She explains that they plan to send the ship back to destroy the Enterprise C before the Khitomer massacre. Picard creates a distraction allowing Geordi and Data to beam aboard the new Romulan ship. Meanwhile, Data see Tasha Yar being hauled away and must make a decision to save her or not. They manage to destroy the Romulan ship that generated the wormhole. This collapses the wormhole and the remaining temporal energies cast the Enterprise C into the future. (Thus explaining the episode in ST:TNG.) This was originally conceived after "Generations" and is not really possible with the loss of Data.

c) SERIES: Star Trek: Empires - this series would re-juvinate the Star Trek franchise. Follows two ships (alternating weekly) one a Romulan warship and another a Klingon warship. Episodes can diverge from the traditional "perfect world". The series would be a two year limited series. Imagine watching a diplomacy situation in which the Klingon crew decides to handle things with a planetary bombardment of the colony's moon killing 40 million inhabitants? very atypical from the normal view of Star Trek. (Yes, Klingon humor would make this much more of an adult show.) The 2-yr story arc would result in the re-unification of Romulans and Vulcan and explore a lot of the history. Including a a multi-part story arc to the exodus and the witnessing of the Vulcan mindlords and the arisal of logic.

Just imagine an episode each in which we see how "Q" toys with the Klingons and the Romulans. *lol*

d) ENTERPRISE EPISODE: Caught on a warp wave and brought far into the unknown reaches. The Enterprise encounters an advanced alien race of humanoids. Benevelont, wise, kind, even a willingness to share technology in a mentoring program. Discussions to retrofit the Enterprise with more advanced warp systems and send along a mentoring group occur and all seems perfect until they are informed of a change of plans. Apparently, said race is engaged in a war and are losing. Their main protective defenses have been breached and it's only a matter of time before the enemy reaches their homeworld. The alien race decides that giving Enterprise advanced technologies would be too dangerous without their ability to help to mentor the younger earthlings. They do debate and decide to have one of their ships return the Enterprise to it's own space. The council also decides to launch the prototype of the great weapon. The final version of the weapon is not expected to be ready for several years. On the screen in the council room one can see a comparison of the prototype weapon and the much much larger but only half constructed "Great Weapon". (The prototype being none other than the "Doomsday Machine"...a.k.a. The Killer Ice Cream Cone from ST:TOS.) The Enterprise is returned. Meanwhile...Captain Archer sits with the alien captain as they watch their homeworld being attacked and destroyed by a strange "cube-like" structure. (Yes...the Borg.) This plot may need a slight time shift (easily explain by the warp wave). And would really be a pre-cursor to the Vendetta novel.

Boycott ENTERPRISE .. it's just that bad.

[jeff13]

Since ENTERPRISE began it has been hailed as being the very worst Star Trek ever done... and after Voyager that's quite an accomplishment. Now, after three seasons of fascistic, racist, and horrifically mysoginistic story lines the TV viewing public, who avoided this show like dog shit on the sidewalk, will get more.

Why?

Well, we don't know why. But we can guess. And the best guess always goes with the money.

Paramount, rather like NBC losing 'Friends', is horrified to learn that their long standing Star Trek franchise is dead. Dead dead. No one cares for the material except a very, very, smelly and small number of Fan boy freaks. You know... the kind who have no life but fetishizing dolls and other 'collectibles'. Forget those who appreciated the intricate and smart stories from the original series 40 years ago... those people are looong gone. Paramount has opted to do what all giant Corps. do when faced with an artistic crisis... they buy more. They market more. They keep it going even if it looses millions simply because they still have no idea what to do. So they keep doing what they are doing.

Notice how popular shows (can we think of one? Hmm... something by that Joss guy) get the shaft while "franchises" get perpetuated as if they deserve too. The lesson being that a brand name is far, far, more important than a good show.

Worse, Enterprise is also the producers sycophantic pro George "Dubya" Bush cream dream. Notice how the protagonist, Capt. Archer, is the son of a "great man" who was held back by the (liberal) Vulcans. As the show progresses, Archer becomes increasingly more angry and with a terrorist attack on Earth by an alien race he agrees to "do what it takes" to ... well, the actual goals aren't defined. Stop the bad guys? Sound familiar? Propoganda is not what I watch Star Trek for let alone a soft sell for the War in Iraq. It's become painfully obvious that Enterprise means to present the 'War against Islam" as a great adventure. Sick.

Then, just to undermine the characters rather like on Voyager... soldiers are brought into the show to "solve the problem". Enterprise just failed first year English... sad.

Looking at the original Trek compared to ENTERPRISE one has to wonder why in 1965 they had a multi-racial show that portrayed a ship full of different people while today they can't even give the one black guy on the show lines. The producers lack of giving a shit or even basic morals becomes more apparent. There is an asian girl who is portrayed rather like all women on Enterprise; a weak willed child who's job is so unimportant the stories forgot about her main skill early on. And just when you thought you'd seen the main characters turned into put upon tokens Enterprise will come along with an ep about fundamentalist suicide bombers that deserves an award for being the most racist and ignorant story put on TV in some years.

If this weren't bad enough I can't leave without bringing up the horrifically mysoginistic undertone of Enterprise that is personified by the character T'pol. Even from the first show we see a woman who is attacked by Archer and yet she is drawn to him like a battered wife (and is a psychology T'Pol demonstrates consistantly. I think it's the producers true feelings about women. Scary). Make sense? Only to certain sexually twisted fanboy writers. Anyho', this has continued and is sure to keep on going. Lately, T'Pol has inexplicably decided that wearing a silly cat suit isn't enough to degrade herself so she has become a sort of ships whore by fucking the engineer... again for no apparent reason.

And now for what might be the real reason ENTERPRISE should go away... it's a joke on the Star Trek fans! The producers of this show have, I can only divine, seemingly tried to turn Enterprise into a kind of childish 'Capt. Proton' (if you get me) that takes gleeful joy in ignoring, destroying, or just plain making fun of everything Trek that came before. Noticeably all the good stuff Paramount doe

Re:Boycott ENTERPRISE .. it's just that bad.

[Tie_Defender]

You do have some interesting points, but overall, you post makes me believe you dont understand star trek at all. Archer is attacking the Xindi because he is ordered to. He is a soldier fighting a war. The Xindi attacked earth, and are going to attack it again. Humans have no hope of defending themselves against this war machine, not anything like the Superpower US attacking small nations, who support our enemies. Furthermore, what right do the Vulcans have to tell humans whether we are ready or not to explore space. The Vulcans seem much more abusive and bully-like than the Humans in Enterprise because they consistently believe that they have the authority to decide the fate of other races. True Humans may not have been ready to enter cosmic society, but that is not the responsibility or the right of the Vulcans to decide.

I do think that Sato and Mayweather should expand their roles as they happen to be my favorite characters. T'pol was not verbally assaulted by Archer for being a female, it was because she was a Vulcan and he held a tremendous grudge against them for holding Humans back, which he later was able to put aside (for the most part). I think T'pol has come to see Archer as a good friend, rather than someone she is attracted to. I do not in any way see T'pol as a ships whore, just for developing a relationship with Tucker. They are developing a real relationship in the series and i think it will be even more interesting when we see him go to Vulcan with her at the premier of season four.

I think Enterprise is a huge improvement over Voyager because Voyager had far too much emphasis on one ship and one crew alone. Star Trek is about what humans may become, if we attempt to better ourselves. If you had read anything about Gene Roddenberry and why he created the saga, perhaps you would not hold the opinions you do. I think Roddenberry was tired of seeing humans in the position we are. Generalizing we are greedy, self centered, immoral people as a whole, and i think Roddenberry wanted to make a series to inspire people to want to better themselves.

Star Trek is not pro-war, and in the end Archer was able to come to a diplomatic solution with the Xindi. The Xindi attacked because they feared for their survival. They were simply afraid.

I am truly sorry that you are blinded by your own opinions and cannot enjoy Enterprise for what its producers intended it to be.

Best regards,
Tie_defender

Re:Boycott ENTERPRISE .. it's just that bad.

[mariox19]

But, tell us how you really feel ;-)

Re:Boycott ENTERPRISE .. it's just that bad.

[Tablizer]

No one cares for the material except a very, very, smelly and small number of Fan boy freaks. You know... the kind who have no life but fetishizing dolls and other 'collectibles'.

Um, you do realize that you are on Slashdot, don't you?

Re:Boycott ENTERPRISE .. it's just that bad.

[Anthony Boyd]

The producers of this show have, I can only divine, seemingly tried to turn Enterprise into a kind of childish 'Capt. Proton' (if you get me) that takes gleeful joy in ignoring, destroying, or just plain making fun of everything Trek that came before.

I actually think most of your rant is off -- the whole T'Pol issue is a non-issue, IMHO. But the part I quoted above I think is spot-on. It's why I hate the new Trek. Enterprise has a transporter, even though on TOS they called them "new-fangled" and error-prone. They shouldn't even exist in the Enterprise timeline. And our first meeting with the Klingons was supposedly disastrous (based on what has been said in the previous movies and TV shows). But on Enterprise, humans handle their first interaction with Klingons pretty OK. It's crap like this, over and over and over again. They just ignore all the stuff that came before, and hope the fans won't think about it. In a handful of cases during the first season, they were inconsistent with their own episodes. I can't suspend my disbelief that much. It just feels sloppy. And I blame B&B for it.

Star Trek doesn't need to die...

[KnarfO]

...but Rick Berman and Brannon Braga need to die in order for Star Trek to recover from the horrible damage those two have inflicted upon it!

Let's have a series that allows viewers to see Kirk as an Ensign or a Lt, hearing about the Enterprise when it was captianed by Pike or April, and wishing he could some day be as cool as those guys...

Do not resuscitate

[EvilAlien]

Star Trek should be allowed to die. The quality of life Star Trek would be expected to have, should Star Trek ever recover, is minimal. We believe that significant brain damage has been incurred durring previous attempts to bring Star Trek back from the brink of death.

I think it is time we discuss organ donation with the patient's legal guardians. Star Trek, through such altruism, could allow others to have the second chance that we believe Star Trek does not at this stage of illness. We regret that Babylon 5 could have been saved if only the DNR order for Star Trek had been given years ago. Let us not make the same mistake again... *sniff*

Re:Do not resuscitate

[drinkypoo]

B5 was lost for the same reason that Netscape was: Too little effort expended. I refer, of course, to Crusade. Boy, I wanted to like that, but it had nothing to grab me with whatsoever. The acting was awful, you'd have thought that after that almost killed them in the first season of B5 (I've had to show people season 2 after just a couple episodes of season 1 because they were going to give up on the show based on the woodenness of the characters) they would have considered that when they made the spinoff show. Netscape killed itself by starting to suck ass in version 4, and Babylon 5 killed itself by failing to execute on Crusade.

Re:yes

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

It's worse. Without good scifi, I'm forced to watch things like Andromeda. Even it is far deeper.

Lexx is more watchable, and only 10% more campy.

The only show I can find that is consistently worse, is the last season of Earth: Final Conflict. For those of you that haven't watched it, let me clarify. The first season is superb, the second and third seasons mediocre, but not bad as a whole. Only the last season (and I can't remember if this is #4 or 5) is horrible... seems they literally scraped the bottom of the barrel and had nothing left to work with. I do recommend watching the show, with one caveat. Use your satellite/tivo/cable "info" mode, to check on the plot and if the word "atavus" is anywhere in it, pull the plug.

too late

[rpillala]

it's too late because of Brannon Braga

Should Star Trek Die?

[panic911]

Yes! It has been nothing but shit since TNG.

I don't have any mod points right now...

[WesternActor]

...but I wouldn't mod you down even if I did. Voyager is infinitely superior to Deep Space Nine, with generally better acting and, in its middle three seasons or so, better writing. The early years and the later years weren't so great, but it was real Star Trek, and played very, very well. Could it have been better? Absolutely. But it also could have been much worse, as both Deep Space Nine and Enterprise have proven.

Fox

[glass_window]

Remember, you're talking about fox here. If it doesn't immediately attract 99% of america, they drop it. Just look at the Family Guy and Futurama, immediate hits that they just threw away after an insanely short run. And even after large mobs of people complained to burn down fox's building, they have yet to give them the credit they deserve. Maybe if they could hand it over to some other station like Scifi that actually cares about the quality of the show. It has come to the point where I don't expect a tv show on Fox that requires the use of my brain.

Yer damned right!

[RatBastard]

Star Trek was been a moras of crap for way too long. Neither Voyager or Enterprise should have been made. And the movies should have stopped at 6. All of the newer ones have been tripe. (Yes, I know, 1,3, and 5 were tripe as well, but EVERYTHING past 6 has been utter crap.)

You're absolutely right!

[WesternActor]

Berman, Braga, and whoever else is involved with Star Trek these days (it's been a while since I followed it actively) don't really understand what the original point of the show was. You only need to watch the original series in order to find it: it's to tell stories. Actual stories with real characters, real plots, and real meaning. TOS wasn't even really a science-fiction show when it came right down to it--it was just speculative fiction (SF) that happened to be set in space. And that's why it worked, why it proved captivating. That's also why, at least in the first several years, The Next Generation worked as well as it did.

But somewhere along the line--maybe with Roddenberry's death, maybe a little bit after--people started getting the idea in their heads that Star Trek needed to really be sci-fi, and that's when things blew up. You got ridiculous stories it was impossible to care about. You got endless political arcs with no beginning, middle, or end on Deep Space Nine that provided little entertainment or sense of purpose; all those things were provided, and much more interestingly, on Babylon 5. You got the very concept of Voyager, which only became interesting when they discovered they found a back door into the original point of Star Trek: "To boldly go where no man/one has gone before." As for Enterprise, it's all about ret-conning this and setting up that. There's no real substance to it. That's not what it's about. What it is about, though, I couldn't begin to tell you.

They need to hire actual writers to write Star Trek again. Make it intelligent, literary, provocative, forget all the crap that's started seeping into the very fabric of the franchise, that's forced everything to be so boring and sanitary, and let it be again what it once was. They want to ignore Roddenberry's ideas because he was of the past, and that time is gone. But when he was around, Star Trek worked. It just doesn't anymore.

Re:You're absolutely right!

[MadChicken]

hey need to hire actual writers to write Star Trek again.

Yep, and more importantly, NOBODY writers. Like the college students that wrote many of the episodes in TOS.

Yes, pull the plug.

[everklear]

Star Trek should be let lie fallow. Ten or fifteen years would be enough. If there's any real interest after that time, it can always be resurrected.

Besides, any continuity problems can be patched with another time travel story or two.

Re:Enterprise is OK.

[operagost]

ST: The Legend Continues?

We need a new space opera

[Animats]

I'd suggest the Honor Harrington series.

(No, not Battlestar Galactica).

What they should do

[Snaller]

Is get rid of Berman, and hire someone who gets it - like me :o)

We Would All Watch It, If It Was Good -- New Ideas

[asukaikari]

If Star Trek was good, you would watch it. You know this is true. I wouldn't call any of the later series flat out bad, but clearly none have been on the level of TNG. TNG and OS both reflected the times and talked about issues in intelligent ways and hey, we still have issues therefore we still need Star Trek. The problem with Star Trek is their inability to try something new. The universe is so big so why are we always focused on the Captain of a spaceship (minus DS9...to a point, it was practically the same formula just on a spaceship that didn't move). Supposedly, JMS has pitched something to them for a new series. We all know Babylon 5 was the real followup to TNG. (And supposedly DS9 was stolen from JMS's B5 pitch). I think he could do a lot for them if they accept him. But I've always wanted to see StarFleet Academy. Berman/Braga won't do it because it's "Dawson's Creek In Space" but so what. Buffy was about teenagers and still managed to be about more. You want new viewership for Star Trek? Well, attract the teens. I want to see supersmart kids duking it out to be the next Jean Luc Picard. You know, something super-competitive like Ender's Game, but in High School. I think this has been the answer for years but they're too closeminded. The close-mindedness is the problem. Star Trek only needs to go away when we don't need it. We still need it, and we'd all be there to watch it, if only it was good. It can only be good if they get of the myopic path they're stuck on.

Re:yes

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

The hard moral choices?

Hmm. Let's see, the captain wants to save a dying race, the doctor disagrees. And the entire debate gets all of 30 seconds. The doctor doesn't relent even though the first sentient species seems quite civil and peaceful with the second, not abusing them in any way other than "crowding them out". I'm sorry, but there was more moral ambiguity left unexplored than there should have been, and the decisions made were crafted to conveniently fit in with the "prime directive" that Berman just has to introduce.

Just like he's been introducing everything from the ST universe one episode at a time. We only need him to use a few from TNG that were discovered only in that show, and his shitfest will be complete.

I know retards that could explosively shit diarrhea onto manuscripts better than these guys can write.

Farscape wasn't canned

[Gary Destruction]

Haven't you seen the ads for the Farscape Peacekeeping Wars coming in October?

Re:Farscape wasn't canned

[ThosLives]

Yes, I have and am looking forward to it. However, as good as I expect it will be, it will not be the same as a 22-episode season 5.

Time to invoke The Two Sentence Rule

[gaylenek]

The Two Sentance Rule:
When any TV show can be summed up in 2 sentences, preferably short ones, it's time to kill the show.

While I watch TV on and off, time doesn't permit me to be glued to it. Deep down, I'm happy my local cable carrier dropped the channel that carried Enterprise. Judging by the first few episodes, I haven't missed a thing.

The Two Sentences for Enterprise:
Spaceship crew beats down recycled plots from previous franchised series. Only this series is beating down its own franchise.

Time to stop beating a dead horse.

Re:yes

[fnj]

TOS drew a bit on western plot devices ... and with maybe one notable exception, it did this without referencing the 20th century directly ...

Well, I can think of two notable references right off the top of my head: the one set on the Nazi planet, and the one set on the Chicago gangster plant. I'm pretty sure there were a lot more than these.

Can we complain about lack of options in this one?

[tdye]

I pick Cowboyneal!

Re:"First Contact" with Romulus or Cardassia.. wha

[Moofie]

Gosh, I wonder if that's because all the Star Trek baddies are foils for social commentary of present-day Earth!?

What a staggering notion. It's almost like it was a piece of fiction, written by human beings!

Creative Fatigue?

[Specks]

Hollywood in general has creative fatigue. Look at all the crappy movies that have come out lately. You don't see anyone saying it should die.

Vulcan civil war?

[uvsc_wolverine]

Aside from the overall discussion of whether Star Trek should die or not, did anyone really notice what they were saying about those upcoming episodes of "Enterprise?" A vulcan civil war? Are they serious? What is it going to be? The only thing that I can see is a constant barrage of "That is illogical" being shouted back and forth between two large groups of vulcans. And I seriously doubt if this will be the thing that splits the Romulans off from the Vulcans. That should have happened a long time before "Enterprise" started. Vulcan civil war...right.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Writer]

The lame theme song for Enterprise alone is worthy of burying the entire franchise.

The electric guitar riffs and vocals were utterly horrific. I couldn't believe how bad they screwed up the first time I saw the show, just from the opening sequence.

ST: deconstruction

[bukys]

The only thing left is to follow the zeitgeist and produce a postmodern deconstructed paranoid conspiracy Star Trek in which all previous assumptions about what's really happening are blown away, revealing a whole new layer of technology and society manipulating the public face of the Star Trek world for its own ends. Put a whole new spin on the rise and fall of empires, the attacks of puppetmasters and Borg, and create some new backstories for the most unusual events including time travel, alternate universe, and yet-another omnipotent-being stories. It's basically Star Trek meets Foundation. The main challenge is to create likable characters within this shadow world, and avoid technology deus ex machina.

Explored fully, the Galaxy has not.

[Matarick]

Honestly, there is a good bit of life in the Star Wars Galaxy. Take a notice of the Jedi and Sith Wars in the Knights of the Old Republic or the rumored Spielberg Star Wars Miniseries.

The "Rise of Vader" done in HDTV format would be impressive due to Speilberg getting his directing/producing chops in made for TV movies and a wealth of experiance.

With the animation studio ready and there is plenty of Star Wars lore to be explored. The difference between the Lucas Empire and Viacom is that LucasFilm/Arts/IML/Skywalker Sound/Lucasfilm Animation is all in house and focused on Star Wars while Star Trek is nothing more than a former Desilu Production under the Viacom Empire.

should it die? no. go to sleep? yes.

[admiralfrijole]

when I was growing up, ST:TNG was the only Trek on TV other than reruns of TOS.

It was great, I (and other fans) anticipated each week for a new episode, and it was always a good time.

Then DS9 came along, and it was OK, I mean, everyone knew TNG was ending, and most of us were bummed, we thought we'd have to wait till DS9's 7th season for another series.

But no, someone was like "oh, theres money here" and along comes Voyager (which I liked better than DS9, but most people didn't) and then a few years later, the shitpile they call Enterprise.

Now DS9 is over, as is Voyager (and what a shitty ending too), and we're stuck with this piece of shit Enterprise. As much as I'd like a new, quality, series, I think its time to shitcan it all, ditch the Romulan Wars, and let it ferment for a while, get people fired up again.

Plus, maybe we'll get some new talent next time instead of recycled Quantum Leap...

article translation for the trolls:

[MolecularBear]

article translation for the trolls: *Trek is dying

Quote directly from Michael Dorn:

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you were any other TV show, I would kill you where you stand"

"It's death, Jim, but not as we know it."

[InvisibleCola]

"It's death, Jim, but not as we know it."

Alien Profit Sucking Leeches, Ep5, Season 2

[Mulletproof]

"reporter William S. Kowinski writes about questions of the Star Trek franchise's viability due to overexposure, audience fatigue and creative exhaustion."

Frankly, there is no other reason. The fans are there, thirsty for a great new series. They will always be there... As long as the franchise owners stay true to the spirit of the creation. Sadly, that's not the case. Right now it's being ass-fucked, and everybody knows it. Should Trek die? Of course not. It should recieve a drastic change in ownership however, anything that would stop the raping it's recieving now. And don't let Shatner near it either. If Tek Wars and Star Trek 5 are any indication of his writing and directing abilities, the best you'll be doing is adding some KY.

But if the only way to save Trek is to kill it and starve the owners out of such a huge revenue stream just to get the point across, so be it.

Some yin in your yang

[Scrameustache]

I like Voyager.

I think I like about 1/6th of Voyager...
The thing is, there are some good episodes and a few rare really good episodes, dilluted in all the "Well, there's 5 minutes left, many people died this week...lets go back in time and forget all bout it" episodes, the "17 Borg Cubes! Yellow alert, shoot them down, I'll be in my office doing my nails, call me when its over" episodes and the "Hi, I'm Chakotay. I'm an american indian from another planet. I'll take this space shuttle to go practice a ritual of earth worship, in space. Oh no, I've blown up the shuttle...meh, its just the 4th, or 6th or something I've blown up in this exact same way. The captain will give me another one next time I feel religious all of a sudden." episodes.

The Year of Hell episode and follow ups were fun, despite being time travel shows. The Doctor had a few good moments. 7 was hot...
I liked the aliens with the space-leprosy, they were creepy...

But, in all honesty, it was mostly bad. Some good, most bad.

I'll also cop to liking Dharma and Greg.

Well, I like watching Dharma. : )

Ancient Klingon Proverb....

[ThinkTiM]

"All good things come to an end (preferably an honorable death)" I love Star Trek and would love it to continue forever - but a hiatus might be a good idea for a while.

Re:Um... the Borg?

[Clock Nova]

I've only seen a handful of episodes of this show, all from the first season, but I have heard that the writers have been taking liberties with Trek canon and the accepted timeline. But how could they possibly introduce the Borg to the 22nd Century? It was Picard and his crew who made first contact with them in the Delta Quadrant. How did the writers manage to pull this on off?

don't we have an TNG alum in the crowd?

[circusboy]

I could swear that at some previous ST discussion will wheaton was identified as a regular slashdot reader.

has he chimed in here yet?

personal feelings about wesley crusher aside, I would be curious to hear from him, given that the last comment I recall from him was a transcript of a script where every third word was "(tech)"

Times like this I miss babylon 5 and farscape, shows that could actually sustain a story line for more than just a 2 parter. It's a good thing that B5 died when it did though, it was beginning to come apart a bit.

good TV shows and rock stars have a lot in common, they are frequently remembered better when they die too soon.

Star Trek needs.....

[torok]

to be remodulated. As we know from watching the show, there's almost nothing wrong that can't be fixed with a little remodulation.

It should not die. It should take a new direction.

[master_p]

There has not been a science fiction/space opera series that lets the characters develop from episode to episode and that demonstrates how interstellar war may be and its consequences. I think Star Trek can take that direction; with carefully chosen characters, plot lines and story, it could still be a success.

Lets take a break

[wyseguy]

I concur with many here who have posted a hiatus on production of Star Trek. I think 10 to 15 years would be sufficient to generate some new ideas. However, the Trek Universe is a very rich one with many different angles that could be explored. So dumping the whole thing seems a bit wasteful.

What I would prefer is to create a Sci-Fi series that appeals to both the geeks, and the normal people enough for a good run on a major network. I applaud Fox for trying with Firefly, but there hasn't been a popular Sci-Fi show on prime time networks for quite some time. Even Trek wasn't popular when it first aired. There are some very good writers out there that could write a fantastic series.

My big concern is that Sci-Fi isn't really for television anymore. Special effects are expensive (even the CGI ones). You can't really have a good Sci-Fi show with stock footage like Battlestar Galactica did. Babylon 5 (from what I've seen of it) was a great show, but no TV network is willing to risk even a good show like that on a prime time slot. If it doesn't involve situational comedy or "reality" programming, its just not going to see air time. Lets face it, the popular TV marketplace doesn't really want characters that are well developed. Everything you need to know about the characters should be part of the premise of the show, or included only in the episodes where it is relevant. How many characters on TV are well developed? We shouldn't be surprised then when we don't know much about what makes Archer or Janeway tick.

I'm wondering if all this frustration isn't so much about a perceived lack of writing talent, but that the core Sci-Fi audience has grown up. The old formulas don't work anymore. Campy plots with big holes just don't cut it. Big words don't impress as much as they used to and don't satisfy as a means to solve the conflict within the story. Our expectations are higher. And the marketplace hasn't adapted yet.

Re:yes

[Dr. Evil]

Quite right, I was really speaking of the space race in the 20th century. Too much boolean logic :-(

It bugs me when ST makes proud references to 20th century American achievements in space. IIRC, the closest they got to this in TOS was that time-travel episode with the fellow and his cat.

The show should be put on hiatus, not retired

[tuxlove]

But Rick Berman should be permanently retired with a bullet to the head. He's the source of most of the problems, IMHO. He has no clue what Star Trek is and should be. There are millions of talented, creative fans out there, many of which could do a superior job running the creative side of the franchise. Berman's lack of ability would be irrelevant if they could just harness some fan power to replace him and others who have lost, or never had, the right stuff.

Re:yes

[master_p]

I like the idea of Enterprise. A primitive starship does away with all the ridiculous technological dei ex machinae that plagued Voyager's plots: Enterprise NX-01 doesn't have a tractor beam, it has a harpoon! The low-tech scenario means the writers can't use bullshit physics to resolve a plot quite so often.

That's what makes old flicks like Space Battleship Yamato very enjoyable.

To everyone badmouthing Voyager...

[Cyno01]

It wasn't that bad! At the begining anyway, new side of the galaxy, new characters, new plot devices. The show however jumped the shark when Kes ascended. Then they brough on Boobs of Borg and started relying on 3 plots (holodeck, borg, something weird hapening and only 7 and the doctor knew what was going on). But before all that, it was excelent, decent casting (admit it, harry wasn't as bad as wesly (apologies to will:P)), new enemies, new situations, the interesting play between the maqui and federation crews, the constant attack from the kazon who were less technologically advanced, but had superior numbers. But yeah, the last few seasons of Voy were as bad as or worse than enterprise, which i had hope for with the pilot, until they brought up that temporal cold war BS. That said, my favorite is still DS9, it was dark, it was different and it wasn't the utopian socioty that TOS had been. Besides the fact that there was an good old full scale war, i think 2 lines sum up why DS9 was so great, Q:"You hit me?!? Picard never hit me!!" and quarks line about the federation not liking ferengi because it reminded humans of a time when they were even worse that the ferengi. DS9 got better with time, unlike voyager... Plus the last few seasons were (quite obviously, not that thats a bad thing) almost entirly WWII in space (bajorans jews, bajor poland, the cardassians nazi germany and the dominion japan, the federation the allies and the klingons the russians)

I'm torn...

[SeanDuggan]

On one hand, the New Frontier books are some of the best Star Trek books I've read in a long time. On the other hand, one of the reasons they're so enjoyable is that they're essentially pulp sci-fi. We have a captain who's more charismatic than Kirk, fights better than Worf, and shows better tactical skills than Picard. We have the requisite half-Vulcan who struggles with her emotions. There's crew members with immortal relatives, crew members who are members of cosmic collectives... *shrug* It's fun reading, but isn't the main criticism leveled at current Star Trek series that they're not cerebral enough, that they're relying on cheap thrills?

That's not even considering the money they'd have to go through to get Ashley Judd back as Lieutenant Robin Lefler...

Yes, it's time.

[FridayBob]

... overexposure, audience fatigue and creative exhaustion ...

I started watching Star Trek when I was a kid and have long considered myself a fan, but not anymore. In recent years it's all become too much for me -- like an overdose. They now have a new series, Enterprise, which looks to be an improvement, but at the same time you can also catch endless re-runs of the original series, the Next Generation, etc, etc. Enough!

On top of that, all this exposure has made me realize how silly it all really is. I mean, from a Sci-Fi point of view, Star Trek really has very little to do with science -- it's more like "The Bold and the Beautiful" in space with pure fantasy standing in for science. As far as I'm concerned, the best Sci-Fi is based more often on current technology and scientific theory (either that, or it's just exceedingly well written). Nowadays, Star Trek seems to me too much like 1950's Sci-Fi: outdated and badly written at that. For instance, according to the Star Trek universe, our galaxy is just crawling with advanced, humanoid civilizations inhabiting temperate-zone, 1G-planets with breathable atmospheres. Today, we know this to be a ridiculous premise and it's just one more reason why it has become increasingly difficult for me to suspend my disbelief for this particular series.

IMHO, they should pull the plug altogether, or at least wait for a decade or so before even thinking about reviving the series.

Star trek should die...

[slimyrubber]

and take Star wars with it.

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!!-Free cooks.

[nine-times]

Star Trek really doesn't need lots of cooks, but one good cook. And Berman isn't it.

Yeah, but if you increase the number of cooks who can freely and independantly cook what they like, you increase your chances of at least one cook making something good to eat.

What I was thinking of was, supposedly Tarentino asked to direct the next James Bond movie, and was refused. Maybe it didn't happen, but regardless, it seems to me something might be gained by having works that have worked their way into the culture to become source for other's work. That's the point of having works become public domain in the first place.

So I wasn't referring to fans writing some little short story and posting it on the internet. I was talking about a real, good, professional director making the work new again by reinterpreting it in his own vision. After a certain term, having a mythological world (yes, Star Trek is mythological) controlled rigorously by a handful of people, used for their own gain- the mythological world is bound to become stagnant, it's occupants dull and two dimensional.

So, yeah, if some other director/screenwriter thinks he can do something interesting or come up with a new twist, I'd love to see it. Sometimes, I even think that, by integrating itself so thoroughly into pop-culture, making it impossible not to think about Star Trek when you think about certain types of scifi space adventures, and impossible to write a story about a slick secret-agent without comparing him to James Bond, maybe they've pushed themselves to the front of the line for things that ought to be public domain. In another way of saying it, maybe it's already entered the public domain, but the current law fails to appropriately determine it so.

Re:yes

[Scrameustache]

Enterprise. You are missing the best parts of the show - the hard moral choices. Should the captain torture a captive to extract information from him (by putting him in an airlock)? Should they destroy an unarmed outpost because it can report their position?

Star Trek in the 60's: Defying the established political and social conventions (interratial love, international cooperation, the Prime Directive as opposed to colonialism, etc). Showing us a future where mankind has grown and become better.

Star Trek in the 21st century: Justifications for the government's policies (preemptive war is ok, terrorist are bad, so torture is ok, etc). Showing us a future where mankind is as petty and rotten as it is now, but in space.

Get a life

[Anonymous Coward]

He's dead Jim.

Should trek die?

[fudgefactor7]

No, what should die are the morons that are in charge of the franchise. What we need is intelligent writers, good plots, and something that makes Trek interesting and fun again.

Here's a free idea for the Trek producers...I give it up freely to them: I call this idea Star Trek: Tour of Duty. Instead of the standard Federation-centric viewpoint, why not run a mini-series that takes place on an all Klingon ship (or Romulan if you like) and have the majority of the speaking done in Klingonese (or Romulan)...slowly becoming all English (or whatever your local dialect here is) as we learn more of their tongue? We always see things from the Human point of view. That's very dull. How about a more "Let's kill them all, eat their eyeballs, piss on their graves, drink grog, and go pillage some more" points of view? Trek is filled with great ideas, too bad we never see them because we're stuck with the Federation-centric point of view. And we all know that already.

New blood, people; new ideas. New creativity. That's the way to go boldly...and not wuss out.

Re:Um... the Borg?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

First contact brought borg back in time, some crashed in antartica, and scientists woke them up. Enterprise is tasked with chasing them down, which they do. And they destroy them. And even though the doctor is infected with borg nanobots, he somehow manages to eliminate them before being assimilated.

It was rather lame.

kill -9 star*

[IdJit]

stopping startrek...
stopping starwars...
stopping stargate...

"kill -9" 'em all!

Re:yes

[Scrameustache]

Standard DS9 episode
Hidden agenda: None. The writers' only real agenda is to milk the Star Trek cash cow.

Hidden agenda: Bring religion to Star Trek, the series during Roddenberry's lifetime were notoriously as non-religious as he could get away with.
Also destroyed the idea of the future earth eutopia. Now its a creepy military police state with Starfleet no longer being a paramilitary space navy but the official ruling full-on military power of earth.

Standard Voyager episode
Hidden agenda: None. The writers' only real agenda is to milk the Star Trek cash cow.

Again, religion.
Also, did away with the prime directive. The ends justify the means and Janeway did anything and everything she could to get back to earth as fast as possible. Sometimes she had a conscience and would refrain from genocide, but not always.

Standard Enterprise episode:
Hidden agenda: None. The writers' only real agenda is to milk the Star Trek cash cow.

And to serve as a propaganda machine for the current U.S. administration.
With storylines ripped from last year's headlines! Terrorist strike the U.S., our brave military wiil go forth torturing and premptively conquering whomever stands in their way to protect the earth! YeeHAW!
Also bent on destroying the coolness of the Vulcans for some reson.

Re:yes

[Scrameustache]

I think the opening theme is pretty good, when combined with the scenes they show.

Try watching it on mute. And watching it on mute while playing anything else on your sound system.
The them SUCKS but the intro video montage is awesome.

Give me FireFly any day.

There you go, watch that intro with the Firefly theme on instead : )

Nautical pun

[Scrameustache]

The Galaxy-class starships are the first Federation-built space vessels built with only one conventional bathroom (in the Captain's private cabin).

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.

Now that's planning ahead!

Get it? ;-)

Re:Nautical pun

[richie2000]

Now that's planning ahead!

*groan* :-D

Re:Trash Star Trek

[dgagley]

It has been noted the there is a good chance that Firefly will return partally dependant on the intrest in the movie.

Check out the Browncoats at:

http://www.serenitymovie.com/

Top Ten Bad Things About Star Trek

[teko_teko]

The lameness filter won't let me post the joke contents, so I'll just post the link:

Top Ten Bad Things About Star Trek

It's obviously written by someone who has watched too much star trek ;).

noprob...

[SvnLyrBrto]

But in a whole topic about Star Trek nerddom, I just couldn't resist.

Cone to think of it, Chinese characters HAVE been notably scarce in Trek. We've had Japanese on two different bridge crews, a Korean on another, and a handful of miscellaneous Japanese characters amongst the rest of the crew; but I'm having a hard time coming up with even a single actual Chinese character. Curious oversight, that.

FUN FACT: Though George Takei and Gene Roddenberry have both said, in interviews, that the character is most definitely Japanese-American, Sulu is NOT a Japanese name (Hikaru is though.). In fact, you can't even SAY Sulu in Japanese. Sulu got his last name from the Sulu sea, down by the Philippines. When Star Trek is dubbed into Japanese, Mr. Sulu becomes Mr Tato.

cya,
john

We need something new like CSI: Federation

[alpha17]

A group of Federation investigators going around solving crimes.

They could even make them temporal investigators, since Berman can't write 3 episodes in a row without some time related happenings.

Re:yes

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Considering that they have artificial gravity, yes, it is rather like that. Dumb, eh?

Re:yes

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

The vulcans represent pacifism except violence is needed as a last resort. They represent logic, and true intelligence, as opposed to the pseudo-intellectial bullshit that passes for it. They represent science, and not munging the results to fit what you want to believe.

Why in the world would they *not* destroy the coolness of all that?

ST franchise messed up by not going with...

[pappy97]

Anybody remember all the talk that the next ST series (before Enterprise) was going to be Star Trek Academy, basically Star Trek meets Dawson's Creek? I think that would have been a neat show and drawn in a younger crowd.

Also, this idea sprang up BEFORE there ever was Smallville. Now if they do it looks like a Smallville ripoff, but I still want it. It can't be worse than Enterprise.

The ST franchise made a huge mistake by dumping the idea of a show based around the Academy in favor of Enterprise. People would be interested in the academy show (Set after the ST:TNG era), instead of Enterprise.

I agree with most posts. ST needs a break. A couple of years and then bring a GOOD show.

How about...something new!!

[swordgeek]

Star Trek. I'm SICK TO THE TEETH of Star Trek! Every SF show that's been created in North America since 1980 (except for Max Headroom--woo!) has either been Star Trek, or a ripoff of it. Why does every damned futuristic show have to be bloody STAR TREK????

SF is a great genre full of intelligent, thoughtful, provoking plots. Throw a TV exec or three at it though, and it all degenerates into Star Trek.

Star Trek was great in its day, but it's now been nearly 40 years since it all started. Can't we come up with ONE original SF show? StarHunter is the best we've got right now (which ain't all bad), but as long as we have Star Trek around, nearly every SF show that gets to TV will be a boring clone of it. Again.

Prequel Trek should die

[Skedoozy]

Star Trek is about technology and the future. Minus Voyager because it was utter crap, the reason the TNG series were so popular was because it was set in the future past the time of TOS and showed new technology and new effects amd that, along with great story telling on TNG and DS9 is what made it popular.

Trek fans are also mostly TECH fans, and having to dummy down technology for these prequels is what is killing trek. No one wants prequels. No one wants the technology dummed down. This isn't Star Wars. Star Trek is about technology. The instant that Paramount realizes that Prequels will just not work the sooner they will get their core audience back.

If they need to move 75 years past TNG, then so be it. But it must be done.

Here was an idea I had for a new series before they through Enterprise on us. And don't get me wrong I am an Enterprise fan, and a fan of Bakula. But I am a bigger fan of Star Trek Boldly going where no man has gone before, not going back where he already has been.

"Star Trek: Revolution. Set 75 Years after TNG. The crew of the USS Enterprise 1701-G are a newly assembled group of fresh recruits lead by veteran Captain Frank Talun. Talun chose to lead the Enterprise crew when no one in Starfleet would take on the huge task. Starfleet has crumbled at the hands of the Dominion and The Borg. What once was the strongest combined strength in all the galaxy is now forced to hide on remote planets. But with a newly designed ship that has taken them 25 years to complete there may be a chance.. The Enterprise G and her crew are Starfleets last hope to rebuild."

Paramount, feel free to steal this idea and make me happy. ;)

Nimoy: "The ideas that propelled it have run dry"

[Zhe Mappel]

But, Leonard, so have the conscience and the spirit of the culture.

Trek was the evocation of Roddenberry's liberalism. And liberalism--well, we know what has been done to that.

Successive Trek spin-offs have moved further and further away from his ideology, populated by little more than cardboard cut-outs interchangeable with any other sf series.

In an era of right wing xenophobia and hostility to the basic values of the Trek universe, who wants the franchise to be a mirror to the sickness of FOX News and JAG? Its only hope for renewal is to carry a torch again--to become an antidote to the era of Bush as it once was to its own deeply polarized and miserable era. And good luck getting that on 21st century American TV.

Captain Wesley Crusher

[n2rjt]

I think the Star Trek franchise should go down in a blaze of glory. Imagine the possibilities!

After several years of surfing the galaxy with the Traveler, Wesley returns and graduates from the Academy. He spends several more years working his way up to where he's finally captain of a starship.

Anyway, give him a character VERY MUCH like Captain Kirk, and give us a ONE YEAR series of We don't need no steenking political correctness!
Captain Crusher hits on every female of every species he encounters. This, of course, constantly gets him in trouble with the PC folks in the Federation, but it helps him make great friends among the Klingons and Ferengi. Whatever mission the Federation assigns him, he blatantly ignores the red tape, and uses bottom-feeding-scumbag tactics to Get the Job Done.

Make the series just barely tame enough for American Television. Make the spin-off movie very R-rated. The whole thing should be raw, over the top, and generally offensive. I don't know if that approach would revive the franchise or seal its demise. It would certainly be fun while it lasts!

Long Live Captain Crusher!

Re:yes

[Ignignot]

Since this all takes place before TOS (or whatever timeline happens in the craziness of their plot lines) I think the implication is that they still haven't figured out what the right things to do are, and that there is much room to improve. The way they go with the hard choices tends to come back and haunt them.

Star Trek is great

[Cinquero]

I like it much more than other futuristic movies mainly because of the following reasons:

1.) The actors are great. They are real personalities (well, except for Riker, Troy, ... and Tasha Yar left the crew much too early) with sometimes a very traditional background (Picard).

2.) The Star Trek universe at least _tries_ to be somewhat consistent. The creators do not try to paint a dumb-headed total-war or total-peace picture.

But there are downpoints:

1.) DS9 had far too many "holiday episodes" -- episodes in which only social interactions take place, nearly like a damn soap. GET RID OF THAT SHIT! Of course, the other series had quite a few of these, too.

2.) These guys can beam living biological creatures. But they still suffer from deseases and they still have a limited lifespan! That is ridiculous.

3.) Clingons have stealth shields. How can a primitive race like them invent ANYTHING? Do their scientists seek their heroic battles among formulas??? Well, science is actually quite a dirty battle, but I doubt Clingons look at it the same way *g*.

4.) If the BORG do not invent something themselves, how the hell are they doing any better than their enemies? Just taking the knowledge isn't enough to combine all the inventions of all the different species. These inventions would never fit together. And how the hell can they adopt to randomly changing field configurations? I mean, random is random. You just cannot predict or compute it. That is plane bullshit.

In general, I think since Voyager the Star Trek series are getting better. DS9 was (except its end) the very low of all ST productions. I propose to just let Star Trek get more "realistic". Don't let humans to be the only appreciable species. Give them eternal life. Take in some aspects from Babylon 5.

It should die by...

[njpomeroy]

...being turned into a cube and crushed.

I misread the title as: Should Star Trek fans die?

[jellybear]

But then the answer would have been obvious.

Viacom should DITCH Berman

[Chanc_Gorkon]

First...Enterprise sucks for me because I can never see it because it is on the WORST channel there is. Second,I can see a better Star Trek, one that does not try to coddle the number 1 demographic. A Star Trek with great writing as well as great effects so to speak. It is possible. We have seen it with many very good episodes of TNG. My idea....

should you care?

[nusratt]

Whether it lives, or limps, so what?
IT'S JUST TELEVISION, not Shakespeare or Wagner or Impressionism.

Star Trek Babies!

[EuroMike]

Dear sweet Jesus, no!

Dammit, Scotty. . . .

[Salgak1]

. . . I need mod points NOW!!!!!!

Roddenberry's daughter

[teflaime]

I have a friend who works at Paramount. Popular buzz there is that as long as Gene Roddenberry's daughter continues her hate for Leonard Nimoy, the franchise is doomed. She won't approve anything that might result in royalties for Nimoy, and Nimoy has had so much involvement in creating things in the Star Trek mythos that every project that has been proposed to revitalize the franchise has been bounced because he would wind up getting money out of it. So, unless she dies in the next couple of years (unlikely, she's only in her 60s) Star Trek will likely fade away. Paramount is desperately trying to find a film franchise type of thing to replace it right now.

Penny Arcade said it best...

[runderwo]

Remember to s/Tribes/Star Trek/g to make it appropriate.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-12 -13&res=l

Oh man, Star Trek is just another Space Opera

[Orion Blastar]

one where they keep recycling scripts from the older series. Get some better script writers, maybe those who took creative writing or something, and create more interesting stories that do not "borrow" from older Star Treks or something else.

Also why is The Federation always making peace with everyone? I liked Star Trek for the space battles and hand to hand and phaser combat. I want the old Klingons back, the ones that had hot blood, a hot temper, and didn't take anything from anyone. The ones that would never accept a Peace Treaty. You know, the ones that never became Targs of the Federation. What is up with the Romulans? They used to be as ruthless as the Klingons, only a bit more logical.

Also underdeveloped alien races like The Tholians, should be developed more. Bring back the Tholian Web! Have a Duel between Trelane and Q, for Pete's sake.

If Doctor Who cannot reach an agreement with the copyright holders of the Daleks, strike a deal with them for Star Trek. The Daleks could liven up Star Trek with a dimensional invasion force. If all other races are at peace with each other and holding hands, have them fight off the Daleks.

Re:yes

[CommanderData]

They're not ARMED with a harpoon, it is used in place of a tractor beam to grab and reel in objects of interest. And that is done usually while the ship is at full stop.

For that matter, why can you accept lasers/phasers on a faster than light vessel? How would they work? Could you only shoot to the sides and aft?

Reminds me of Steven Wright at a job interview:
Steven: If you're travelling in a spaceship at the speed of light and you turn your lights on, would anything happen?
Interviewer: I don't know.
Steven:Forget it then, I don't want to work for you.

But, the HILTON. . .

[jafac]

The guys at the Las Vegas Hilton will all have to find new jobs. . .

Farscape v. Stargate

[David Rolfe]

Damn them, damn them, damn them. And if that sounded a little crazy, my otherwise normal wife is irate about the Farscape situation and the emergence of Stargate. I don't want to get flamed since I know the fan base must be huge, but I just hate Stargate and see it as a rehash ("ooo those Coloreds in Egypt couldn't have built a great civilization without the help of ALIENS with super advanced technology, now us normal folks are gonna exploit that technology for fun!" The movie was insulting and the success of the series only enforces this.) That by merely existing, Stargate drove Farscape to extinction burns me up.

Sci-Fi (the channel) insinuates that the PK Wars are a way to judge viewership interest with this lie that they might be able to justify bringing Farscape back for a full 5th season. I think they are just throwing us a bone before they simply admit "that's all folks." At least the new rehash of Galactica looks promising.

YES

[Inspector]

YES

am i the only one...

[therealseadawg]

...who actually mods people down when they ask for it?

oh crap, now i can't

Re:BERMANNNNNNNN!!!!! That would be so cool...

[bankman]

...to have Annie "Sprinkle in episodes that tell the same story from the perspective of several different characters of different races." Hmmm....

Not just a river in Egypt

[xihr]

Is anyone really under the impression that it isn't dead already?

While we're on hiatus...

[cfl99]

Sounds like a good time for a nice Dune revival! That series is in dire need of a good adaptation...

What would a TOS 2005 look like?

[Anonymous Coward]

What would a TOS 2005 look like?

Protests. Threats of station boycotts. Continuous warfare between creative staff and the studio and network. Pushing the envelope socially and technically. Race, gender, sexuality. Showing technology no one else is even thinking about. It would have to piss people off (curiously, in the same parts of the US now as then:), and shudder under the special effects budget and plot restrictions required to make it look believable. Basically, it would have to be unlike any science fiction movie or series since.

Obviously, the probability of this ever coming out of a large studio is exactly zero.

People forget TOS was almost a half century ago. TOS was contemporary with the Civil Rights Act. Women professionals had all the universal respect that homosexual marriage does now. Lost in Space. Gidget. "Uhura" had trouble finding hotel rooms. Her uncorrupted mayor dad was almost executed by Capone during prohibition. She was spat on in an elevator for hanging with a white guy. Was raped by a rich white guy without fear of repercussion (ok, that one hasn't changed as much as the others). A black?!? And a woman!!?!! Professional??? This wasn't merely something which hadn't been done on TV. This was bizarre. Something to enrage and inspire viewers. Something one needed to fight the studio and network to include. TOS tried for a female first officer, but a woman in a command position was just too absurd for the studio/network to swallow. Who would believe it? The tech was beyond bizarre. A medical monitoring bed? You mean like a silver robot nurse with a stethoscope?

So, what would a new TOS look like? A TOS, to the contemporary Lost in Space of B5, Firefly, and Farscape.

Pervasive mechanical and computational support for all aspects of human motion, communication, and thought. Wandering hallways, chatting with people, over speaker phones, is soo not science fiction. More like late 20th century radio shack.

Everyone is multiracial. Great variety of sexual morays, homosexuality, complex dynamic polygamies, real sex (not cable channel cartoonish sex) on screen. Weird non-hierarchical decision making (computer augmented of course). Let's see, what other taboos could be bashed. Toilets. Intentional disregard of gender and age roles. Body modification. Diverse religions/philosophical systems, which make christian fundamentalism look like santa clause. All of it, however progressive, rational, humanist, or taboo, being considered by the participants as unexceptional.

So we are never going to see a new Trek like TOS. Nor a new series as innovative as TOS from a major studio. But maybe, some day, a couple of folks working on a shoestring will pull it off. It's not like the best of current sf is managing to keep up with this year's Interop, let alone what's in journals.

TOS was simply a qualitatively different acheivement than all the Drek which followed.

Focus on Klingons

[Tablizer]

Make a series about 2 Earthlings serving aboard a Klingon ship which newly joined the Federation. It would be a fun, brawling culture clash.

Tried it

[PsiPsiStar]

I threw out my TV. Now I spend all my time posting on Slashdot. Heck, I don't even RTFA.

They need some balls

[Sabalon]

TNG usually had a few eps per season that would have Picard doing something atypical and possibly afoul of starfleet wishes.

I never watch DS9 much - found it way too boring, though I hear it got better.

Voyager was the wussiest show I've ever seen. It was all about "Hi...we're from earth and trying to get home...Please be our friends."

Enterprise should be grittier than it is. It is too tame as well. Though in the last season it's been getting a little better...stuff like Archer disabling a ship and stealing it's warp core or whatever.

I really did like B5 though - it was real balls to the wall. Not all polite diplomacy. ST needs to be a mix of what it is, B5 and Andromeda.

Leonard Nimoy (Spock)

[The_Steel_General]

Also quoted are Leonard Nimoy (Spock) and executive producer Rick Berman.

C'mon, this is SLASHDOT, after all.

Did ANYONE need to be reminded who Leonard Nimoy was?

In the middle of a Star Trek story?

TSG

it's Lucas

[capt.mellow]

This all should come as no surprise, given that George Lucas acquired the Star Trek franchise a few years back. He milks ST just like SW.

Needs a new scene...

[The Master Control P]

I think it would be neat to see a show centered around Starfleet Command / Federation Council. Just like the Klingons were obviously Russians, Command is obviously the Pentagon and the Council is obviously Congress. It'd be a perfect way to comment on current political and social issues. Something new and provacative to stir people up.

Uhhh. Star Trek IS dead.

[Relifram]

Seen Enterprise lately? Star Trek in name only. Star Trek is dead. Long live Star Trek.

Worn out? No, Lousy writers!

[OrionCA]

In the pilot episode "Shot from a Broken Bow", The Enterprise crew has to visit Rigel V to learn why a Klingon courier crashed on Earth. Some fan figured out that at the Ent's max speed of Warp 5 it would take 3-4 months to reach Rigel and asked the writers in a forum why they glossed over that timeframe, making it seem like "just a day or two". Their answer was, "There's really a star called Rigel?"

TV is irrelevant.

[Fantastic Lad]

The age of Star Trek is over.

We're in a new age right now. Things are accelerating, and watching speculative television fiction isn't really the way to stay on top of things. The real adventure is going on outside your front door. Time to take all the mush we learned while absorbing stuff like Star Trek, figure out which parts of it are worth keeping, and then put it into practical application. There were some excellent messages in Star Trek.

Depending on your age group, there's a good chance you're going to be carrying a machine gun by the end of next year. If you want to avoid this, it would be a good idea to disengage from the dream-box while you still can and determine a plan of action. Nobody can make you kill. It's always, always a choice.

-FL

Re:should star trek die? yes

[Sj0]

Bah. Star Trek jumped the shark in Star Trek: Deus Ex Ma-- I mean, The Next Generation.

The first one was about people, exploration, and occasionally about spocks vulcan superpowers. TNG was just about seeing which side could throw more fake techno-jargon. Got a problem? Remodulate the tachyon inverters to emit a neophineprine pulse to disrupt the enemys Oedipus array to cause transient cascades throughout their biomolecular feedback matrix.

8 seasons, and the ship upstaged them all...

First, ask the right question...

[mdz0]

The sort of fool who can ask, or seriously consider, the question "Should Star Trek Die?" really doesn't "get it".

Star Trek is, above all else, an optimistic vision of a future in which humanity has successfully addressed certain critical challenges, facilitating its expansion beyond its germinal, fragile, distressed habitat into the community of the stars.

The question Kowinski is really asking is "should the conceptually tiny, creatively moribund, and increasingly irrelevant commercial aspect of Star Trek - a greedy engine focusing primarily on pandering to an unenlightened mass audience with an oatmeal-like mush of vapid books, television programs, and movies - die ??".

The answer??

Who cares! It can't affect the vision.

Kowinski's feebleminded conception and narrow world-view would appear to rule out the possibility of his (intentionally) putting together any words which might be of relevance.

Re:Evolution: Trek style.

[master_p]

Babylon 5 was about aliens. It was about high level stuff; politics, races etc; people could not relate to that.

If you want an exciting example of a series that can hook any average person, look no further than here.

Please moderate parent +1 insightful

[ralphclark]

where are my mod points when I need them...

Dude, come on.

[StarKruzr]

It spoils continuity with the original series because the original series had *TERRIBLE* special effects compared to what we have now.

It makes NO SENSE for a 22nd, 23rd, or 24th century starship to be using knobs, dials and big clunky push-buttons as a control interface when in the 21st century we have reliable touchscreens and computer systems that sure as hell seem to be advanced further beyond what the original Constitution-class Enterprise had.

You have to look at the shows as windows onto the worlds they depict that are colored by the time they were produced. If we can do better now, we should.

I have 7 words for you.

[StarKruzr]

"Hitler had brown eyes and brown hair."

Is it surprising to you that the Nazis were dazzlingly hypocritical? Come on.

Re:I have 7 words for you.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Yeh, and the ideal Aryan is 6'+ ... but the SS height minimum was set by what's his name's height of 5'9". Notice anything here? They bent the rules a little for the guys who created the party.

OK, so bear with me here.

Ugly blue alien isn't party founder. That's a strike against it.

Ugly blue alienness isn't bending the rules "a little". That's a strike against it.

It's an alien, not human. That's a strike against it.

Seems Hitler was closer to aryan-ness than an ugly blue alien. Who'da thought?

Re:I have 7 words for you.

[StarKruzr]

Ugly blue alien is willing to give Nazis weapons and technology of astoundingly incalculable power.

That's about 500 points in its favor.

What you're really complaining about...

[StarKruzr]

... is the fact that T'Pol is not a stereotypical Vulcan.

Yes. God forbid we show that not every Vulcan is the same.

I wonder if anyone who has been complaining about the show reads the books. It's become more or less an accepted fact in general in the books that different Vulcans have different degrees of control over their emotions, and T'Pol has been having trouble because of her whole drug abuse thing anyway.

Open your Goddamned minds, people.

Re:yes

[dmouritsendk]

They're not ARMED with a harpoon, it is used in place of a tractor beam to grab and reel in objects of interest. And that is done usually while the ship is at full stop.

Still, i find it unlikely that a civilization which has figured out how to:
* Travel faster than light
* Create forcefields powerfull enough to encapsulate/enprison persons and protect ships from incoming objects.
* Can create artificial gravity

Doesn't have a better solution of tractoring something than to shoot a good' ol harpoon after it.

For that matter, why can you accept lasers/phasers on a faster than light vessel? How would they work? Could you only shoot to the sides and aft?

This is a completely different discussion, heck.. how plausible is it to go faster than light? This has nothing to do with my original comment though, what i just stated was I feelt a >>uber-tech C)

error fixed =)

[dmouritsendk]

what i just stated was I feelt a >>uber-tech C) =

what i just stated was that i felt a uber-tech civilization might be able to do better than a harpoon :)

It wasn't

[Scrameustache]

I get roasted by "hard core fans" on a regular basis for saying this, but DS9 was the best of all the Trek series. Moreover, a large part of why it was the best is because it goes directly against Roddenberry's utopianism. None of the characters are the shiny perfect people from TNG, Earth is explicitly portrayed as not a paradise, religion was handled pretty realistically, and technobabble rarely saved the day.

It wasn't Star Trek then.
Its not the best Star Trek series at all, its the first fraud. Abusing the name to draw in the fans, but it was actually something else.

That is why the "hard core fans" bash you about it. You applaud the deceit of passing an imposture for what they loved.

What else is there to watch?

[kobayashii]

Futurama was canned pre-maturely, so was Firefly and Angel and aside from two versions of Stargate and the pending delivery of Battlestar Galactica, TV is filled with reality TV.

Enterprise is a welcome, if possibly a little too cave-laden and predictable, relief from the relentless string of real-people in "real" situations & Law/Police/Hospital drama type programming clogging up our sets day and night.

If we kill Star Trek - what hope is there?

PS - Fox: Resurrect Futurama you bastards!

Re:"First Contact" with Romulus or Cardassia.. wha

[freedom_india]

What about the Chinese then? I thought Roddenberry said Romulans represent the Chinese, and the Vulcans the Japanese...? Oh hell, can't be the same all the time.