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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?"
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.
a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...
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.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The good of the many outweighs the needs of the few...
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.
Can someone just mod this whole "story" a Troll?
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.
Money for nothing, pix for free
Sorry this is so cruel, but it made me laugh.
John
If Star Trek would die, so would half of the conversations on Slashdot!
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.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
I've seen this post several places on the Internet before, same spelling errors and all. Where'd you get it?
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
.. 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...
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
... but not as we know it!
Sorry, had to.... Now mod me down.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
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.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
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.
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.
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
[Insert pithy quote here]
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.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
I think Timothy should have posted this story here
--
We are the collective Slashbot HiveMind
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.
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:").
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
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
+++ATH0
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.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I mean, come on!
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
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.
John
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.
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
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.
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.
Thats pretty much all that can save it. Marina Sirtis should get naked and service Brent Spiner.
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.
... 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.
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
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
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*
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
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.
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. : )
You can't take the sky from me...
and take Star wars with it.
[ I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance ] -- Isaac Asimov
stopping startrek...
stopping starwars...
stopping stargate...
"kill -9" 'em all!
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
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
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?