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!!!!!

[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!!!!!

[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!!!!!

[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!!!!!

[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!!!!!

[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!!!!!

[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!!!!!

[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!!!!!

[KlomDark]

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

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.

I think it died

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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

[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

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...

[pjt33]

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

Re:Yes...

[petepac]

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

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?!

[Steve G Swine]

Bujold's the only author in SF...

Varley?

Re:should star trek die? yes

[Ansonmont]

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

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

[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.

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?

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."

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.)

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.

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.

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...

[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: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?

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.

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.

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...

[fr2asbury]

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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 :)

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.

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

[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)

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

[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.

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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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: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.

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.

Hey! Hey! Hey!

[nightsweat]

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

I mean, come on!

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...

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.

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.

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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: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.

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.

"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!

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.

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.

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.....

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.

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

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: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.

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

Star Trek Porn

[AliasTheRoot]

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

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).

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.

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?

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.

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.

"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

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.

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.

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

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*

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.

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:"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!

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.

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. : )

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)

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.

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.

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 ;).

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?

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!

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.