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Straczynski Offers To Re-Boot Star Trek [updated]
EvilMagnus writes "I just came across this thread over on usenet where J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5 and Jeremiah, talks about the cancellation of Enterprise. It seems he and a collaborator have already written a series bible and treatment for a new version of Star Trek - but it's not been pitched to Paramount out of 'political considerations' (Berman refusing to give up his dead horse?). JMS calls for everyone who thinks a JMS-run Star Trek series would be a good idea to write Paramount and let them know." Along similar lines, yonnage writes "Last week there was an article posted here about Enterprise fans atempting to pay for the next season of Enterprise. It seems that all the efforts have been pulled together and a new website has been created and has started collecting contributions for Enterprise's next season." Update: 02/16 19:47 GMT by T : Read the rest of the thread to see JMS's followup; he's decided to at least postpone this endeavor.
The nice thing about JMS's work is how he weaves complex themes into the story arc, rather then exploring and discarding them in single episode blips. That was great for the original Star Trek and early science fiction on tv (time tunnel, that sub show, quantum leap, etc) but the work of series like Bab5 has raise sci fi on tv to a higher level - where they take advantage of the serial esque nature of weekly broadcasts.
I'm in.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
...That they now have a unified site to try and save Enterprise. *sigh* I wish they'd stop, it makes Gene Roddenberry's (SP?) corpse cry. As for there being another trek, I think the series needs to rest for a while.
This article should be from the "beating a dead horse department".
Seriously. Outside of The Next Generation, all Star Treks (including the original) are pretty lame, uninteresting, boring, cookie-cutter and about as sci-fi as "Little Wonder" with the robotic Vicki.
*yawn*
It's Berman's fault the series on TV is as stale as it is. Proof is that some of the ST novels are tremendously well-written, proving their are plenty of new, fresh, and quality stories left to tell in the final frontier.
Of the best, are the DS9 relaunch, which continues the story of Deep Space Nine directly after the TV series ends, and Peter David's remarkable New Frontier series with it's Xenexian captain Mackenzie Calhoun. This series has proved, IMHO, to be one of the best out of all the Trek series.
Sugapablo
How about bringing back a show that was interesting and original, like Firefly?
That would be worth the money. Not watching YATS (Yet Another Trek Show).
Cue all the "Let it die already!" and "Trek needs a rest" comments...
These people have nothing to lose by pitching another series to Paramount. Enterprise is dead, and I'm sure Paramount would eagerly pick up anything with the slightest chance of turning a profit.
Since the article mentions they're taking their idea "to the public" I think they'd get a better reaction by releasing a preview of some type. Kind of hard for an audience to approve and support a project without knowing what it is! (Because we all know counting on the Trek name alone doesn't always work)
More Wil Wheaton!
Given JMS's sucess in creating followups to B5, I think I'd be happier to hear he was working on something new.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Here is the Feb 2nd trektoday article about the cancellation.
Enterprise fan ?.. join here to support.
fifteen jugglers, five believers
He has already recanted this offer. http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17287/
From here
------- Code to try when you're bored: qsort( 0, UINT_MAX, sizeof( int* ), IntCompare );
Then he replied to himself saying the powers that be will be letting it lie for a couple of years and he's going to do something else. Geez, talk about jumping the gun people. Move along, nothing to see here.
..Voyager, and then Enterprise proved that the producers have completely lost their marbles, and totally lost touch with the core audience.
As soon as I heard the Enterprise opening theme, I knew it was dead.
I think trek needs to die, and stay dead for another 15 years or so. Only then will it be ready for another revival.
Such wasted effort on tripe like Enterprise, when stuff like Firefly is far more deserving.
JMS quickly followed up this with a retraction of his call for fans to contact paramount. He was told that Trek was now going on a hiatus for a year or so and NO new Trek would be considered for commission until then.
Maybe JMS can sell one-year long mini-series or something ? Bab5 was overlong, although the idea of a multi-episode script was nicely exercised .
This is not a signature.
I have a feeling that it would be something amazing if JMS was to "reboot" Trek...
It's become increasingly obvious that the franchise has run out of steam in it's current incarnation. There's just nothing left that feels new or exciting... So I'd be happy to see this happen. That said, I think there's a number of obstacles, not the least of which is the fear of the star trek establishment to try something new for fear of "breaking something".
Here's a newsflash folks. It's already broken, and staying with the status-quo is going to ensure that it remains broken. I suppose they could always take another 5 year hiatus and come back with another rehash, but they'll know it, and so will we.
I quite enjoyed Voyager because they had more free reign in the series to try new things, and trying new things is what keeps the show fresh...
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
JMS already pulled the idea (Paramount decided to give Trek TV a rest).
Check out the updated info at TrekWeb
Je ne parle pas francais.
That link's broken. I thnk you meant this: http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17287
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
I liked Star Trek TNG, Voyager and loved Deep Space 9 but I really think they need to let it rest for a while. I could not get into enterprise it always felt like they were nudging me in the side saying "See we are in the past we can only go to warp level 5! See?!?" As much as I would like to see what JMS could come up with (big fan of Babylon) I am just as happy watching reruns of old Treks.
Michael Straczynski is among the few people that, I think, could save Star Trek and bring it back to its former glory.
Of course there are MANY people who could improve the current situation (for while I can image quite a few worse than Berman, yet most of them aren't in the TV biz) but Michael Straczynski is among the few that have the skill to revive a franchise that badly beaten.
So let's see the good part - either Michael gets to do the new series, or Berman drives another series in the ground and then - finally - is fired - even the most ignorant bosses don't like dropping ratings, and the cancellation of Enterprise shows that something is fundamentally wrong with the ratings and that the bosses noticed.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
Once the execubots decision has been commited to tape and the write protect tab punched out no force known to man can save a series.
Beep beep.
I continously hope for enterprise to be ended in it's seven season as a Star Trek series ought to be ended! I must admit though that some seasons were really lame, I liked enterprise at first. When they didn't have any equipment that worked and their was no experience in anything of what they did had political problems with klingons and vulcans as well as andorians, pretty much the starting seasons. later on as they got photonic torpedoes and other technologies to their usage so that the humans wouldn't seem so inferior, that was when the show started to go bad and it's anticlimax must in my opinion been the whole time wars shit. This season been quite good though with Vulcans having internal problems and dealing with Andorians and Romulans starting to look like something good again, and hence I would like to have the series continue. Hopefully a new Star Trek series will also be made, I seem to never be able to get enough of Star Trek. I would have nothing against a remake of the old series, but I think they need to cram in some more juice into it, better scenery and Klingons that actually look like they should do and not human!
Only hours ago a Slashdot told me that Usenet is dying and now this?
For my peace of mind I searched on Google for Netcraft confirms Enterprise is cancelled and it's ok, I got lots of hits.
I'm trying this via google to see if I can access the groups, since
I've been offline since AOL stopped carrying newsgroups.
I don't normally do this...in fact, I don't think I've ever done this
in any group before, because I've always kind of waited to make sure it
was worth doing, and that it would make a difference.
I'm sending this to both the B5 folks reading this and any Trek fans
looking on.
Bryce Zabel (recently the head of the Television Academy and
creator/executive producer of Dark Skies) and I share one thing in
common. We are both long-time Trek fans, from the earliest days, who
felt that the later iterations were not up to the standards set by the
original series. (I'm exempting TNG because that one worked nicely,
and was in many ways the truest to the original series because Gene was
still around to shepherd its creation and execution.)
Over time, Trek was treated like a porsche that's kept in the garage
all the time, for fear of scratching the finish. The stories were, for
the most part, safe, more about technology than what William Faulkner
described as "the human heart in conflict with itself." Yes, there
were always exceptions, but in general that trend became more and more
apparent with the passage of years. Which was why so often I came down
on the later stories, which I did openly, because I didn't feel they
lined up with what Trek was created to be. I don't apologize for it,
because that was what I felt as a fan of Trek. That's why I had Majel
appear on B5, to send a message: that I believe in what Gene created.
Because left to its own devices, allowed to go as far as it could,
telling the same kind of challenging stories Trek was always known for,
it could blow the doors off science fiction television. Think of it
for a moment, a series with a forty year solid name, guaranteed
markets...can you think of a better time when you take chances and can
tell daring, imaginative, challenging stories? Why play it safe?
When Enterprise went down, those involved shrugged and wrote it off to
"franchise fatigue," their phrase, not mine.
I don't believe that for a second. Neither does Bryce. There's a
tremendous hunger for Trek out there. It just has to be Trek done
*right*.
Last year, Bryce and I sat down and, on our own, out of a sheer love of
Trek as it was and should be, wrote a series bible/treatment for a
return to the roots of Trek. To re-boot the Trek universe.
Understand: writer/producers in TV just don't do that sort of thing on
their own, everybody always insists on doing it for vast sums of money.
We did it entirely on our own, setting aside other, paying deadlines
out of our passion for the series. We set out a full five-year arc.
But when it came time to bring it to Paramount, despite my track record
and Bryce's enormous and skillful record as a writer/producer, the
effort stalled out because of "political considerations," which was
explained to us as not wishing to offend the powers that be.
So on behalf of myself and Bryce, I'm taking the unusual step of going
right to the source...right to you guys, fueled in part by a number of
recent articles and polls, including one at www.scifi.com/scifiwire in
which nearly 18,000 fans voted their preference for a new Trek series,
and 48% of that figure called for a jms take on Trek. (The other
choices polled at about 18% or thereabouts.)
See, if somebody doesn't like a story, doesn't want to buy it, that's
all well and good, that's terrific, that's the way it's supposed to be.
But when "political considerations" are the basis...that just doesn't
parse.
So here's the deal, folks. If you want to see a new Trek series that's
true to Gene's original creation, helmed by myself and Bryce, with
challenging stories, contemporary themes, solid extrapolation, and the
infusion of some of our best and brightest SF p
... tripe on Slashdot. People go on and on about how "It has all been downhill since TNG" and it has all been Berman's fault, etc.
For one thing, Roddenberry died midway through TNG. Berman was basically the man at the helm for what was argueable the best portion of the series, the last 3 seasons. Even before that, he played a very, very large part in TNG. So to say that "Berman is Death" of everything, than to praise TNG, borders on the edge of ridiculousness.
For another, DS9 (the first series run soley by Berman) was actually very good (once it got going - the first season or two were quite.. icky).
Voyager, well..... what can you say. An amazing capability for a plot line, but it descended into fodder. Basically, the same thing with Enterprise.
So from *my* point of view, he is batting 0.500 - a decent average the way I look at it.
Aside from all this - you people seem to believe that the whole series lives and dies by Berman's word. Shouldn't some of the blame be put on the writers? The writers are the ones coming up with the same old crap over and over again.
B5 was mostly fantastic, Jeremiah was cool from what I saw of it, but Crusade was awful, so I have mixed feelings about this.
Once the execubots decision has been commited to tape and the write protect tab punched out no force known to man can save a series.
Except Family Guy.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Maybe they could make Star Trek miniserie every other year with only good episodes and not of that day to dayt crap. Or they could relax the format a little and ask Quentin Tarantino and others direct episodes like Ltn. Worf and planet of samurai swords.
Dyslexics have more fnu.
i'm sure slashdot readers are smart enough to know not to give a large corporation money to keep a television show around. these people milk you day in and day out with television ads already. try donating to a charity before you piss away cash on some filthy media corp.
It's generally thought that DS9 was a pretty good series, getting better as it went along and getting a story arc.
However, JMS might be reluctant to speak about DS9 for a personal reason. JMS had tried to pitch Babylon 5 to a number of studios, such as Paramount, but they wouldn't have it. After years of work, WB finally took up the show. After the Babylon 5 pilot was shot, Paramount just happens to shoot a pilot of their own new show that just happens to be set on a space station, and get the pilot to air just before the Babylon 5 pilot. (Why are some of the sets from the Enterprise?)
Although this had happened, JMS vocally disliked rivalry between the fans of Trek and B5 and advocated that one could like both.
DS9 turned out quite different in the end, so the competition from B5 was kind of good for Trek, wasn't it?
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
You'd prefer something more enlightened? Another series of Survivor, perhaps?
If you don't like it, don't watch it. Some of us do like it, and are doing something proactive to see if we can keep it around for at least another season.
There going to have to gain about $66,000,000 to cover 22 episodes at what I estimate at about $3,000,000 per episode... Paramount proly woudlent even accept it if they managed to get that much anyway. There not going to want the libility of it. That almost sounds like somones trying to scam fans out of there money to me but I dont think it's the case.
No, Bermen is the dead horse. His episodes have always sucked mostly. You can identify the bermen episodes from the Roddenbury one in TNG without too much difficulty.
Bermen always wants to write/choose a love story of sorts, and fails every time.
Look at what Majel Roddenbury has done. Her stuff is much better than Bermen even. ST will continue to suck as long as Bermen is at the helm, so if other producers get the chance, pray they are accepted...
> Paramount would eagerly pick up anything with the slightest chance of turning a profit.
If Paramount is afraid about losing money - it's problem with Paramount, not Star Trek. I'm sure there is a lot of producers around to find somenone with capabilities of making another season or two. But Paramonut will not sell rights (for obvious reasons) and will not produce it (for less obvious reasons). Don't you think shorter copyright time would solve the problem? Star Trek could be in public domain now, and anyone could pick this up.
This Is Not a Sig
Was I the only one who read this headline and thought "How could the Unibomber want to help with a Star Trek series?"
Kaminski, Strazynski... Whatever.
I think I speak for many Trek fans that when I first heard about Enterprise, the possibilities for a prequel series seemed very interesting, and after Voyager we deserved something decent.
Like many I was worried about Berman being involved. I became more worried when the opening credits feature a dreadful recycled pop song instead of something symphonic. Then the temporal cold war silliness starts. Meanwhile, all along has been little effort to remain consistant with the Trek universe.
I will admit, I have not laughed so hard in a long time as I did when I saw the Xindi Nazi at the end of last season. But I don't think that was the intended effect.
For everyone who who is proclaiming this season is much better, how could it get much worse. Paramount and Berman especially should be ashamed at how they have treated such a large and loyal fanbase.
That said, I'm actually surprised that UPN killed it. They kept Voyager going for seven years and it was horrible most of that time. Enterprise seems like the high spot on their garbage filled network.
Trek needs a rest. If you want to send someone your money give it to http://www.eff.org/ or some other worthy cause. Don't worry, there will be more Trek, it has made too much money to be ignored forever.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
Best. Show. Ever.
I can recall a few years ago anxiously waiting to see "Enterprise" for the first time on television, having been a fan of the franchise. I immediately grimaced upon hearing the theme song and new it was going to suck. The electric guitar style theme music was incredibly outdated and wreaked of a routinely formulaic bad-taste Hollywood production. And as I recall, it didn't even have lyrics in that broadcast. The lyrics made it even worse when I eventually heard that vesion, just when I thought it couldn't get any worse.
That episode started with that one crew-member yapping about how she couldn't sleep because the stars were moving the opposite direction she was used to in her quarters. I kept thinking she was going to whine "but Dawson!" any moment. As for Scott Bakula, he was already typecasted from "Quantum Leap" and didn't fit the role. The whole concept of a series that was supposed to happen before the original series should have been a warning, since one of the big attractions of Star Trek was the fictional technology, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt when I first heard that.
But they just royally screwed it up. They really overdid the large breasts thing, blatantly pandering to an adolescent demographic. And the writing was awful. As an example, there was that episode where Archer tells a ship of Klingons that they have a defenceless alien vessel riding in the wake of their ship. I recall thinking that no character with half a brain would ever do that and it was just plain ridiculous, even to anyone who wasn't familiar with the franchise. I just recently saw an episode where Archer speaks with a senior Starfleet officer who's uniform had a friggin collar. A jump-suit with a collar. Another mistake. They just keep making them.
It takes some serious stupidity to screw up a franchise that had such a dedicated fan base as Star Trek, yet the people behind "Enterprise" have managed to do just that. Even if they manage to improve the writing now, bad first impressions last. I don't think this series is worth saving. I think people are clinging onto it out of dedication to the Star Trek franchise. If that is the case, they ought to just cancel this series and come up with a completely new one, or just focus on the movies. I'm personally a fan of the franchise, but it has gotten off-track in a direction I don't care to follow.
I've only watched Star Trek "part time". I watch reruns of Voyager and Next Gen quite often and enjoy both of them quite a bit. Even with the old "away team is screwed" or "lookit Jim, theres aliens in that there alien!" plots we seem to see alot, it's kinda like a inside joke now more then anything. But Enterprise made me cringe, I couldn't stand it from day 1. It doesn't FEEL like Star trek, it feels like Krikkit has been renamed "Earth" and they forgot to build their battle robots. All the "OMG TEH VULCANISM IS HOT!" just doesn't seem to work for me as I'm sure many others will agree.
Some hot nerd + no feel to the series or intresting plots = a failed series.
If they want to revive Star Trek maybe they should look at continueing the adventures of Picard outside of the movies. The movie cast is starting to dye off or get sick of it, so why not do a short series (straight to DVD would do) or 20 episodes say, restock the crew, fill in some plot holes, give the fans what we want (real Trek) and then continue on the movies for another 5 years (2 movies maybe?) and use it to set up the next Enterprise. In the second film introduce the guy as a trainee, the series would then start 20 years later when the guy has command of his own ship. Picard could be his mentor and would pop up from time to time with other series spin offs to give advice, but rather then the "lets go look at the same 12 sets every 2 weeks!" put it in a war where Earth is being attacked on pass and the new enterprise is trying to defend it untill re-enforcements arrives. Once it's held off and got support it could go on the offence and try and find out information about the attackers (could be mysterious or some rebel faction of a friendly group). Throw in linked episodes (so you meet a character in episode 1-3 and he does some helpful stuff, only to find out in ep 24 he was infact a spy), if it was this well thought out geeks would adore it and the idiot fanbase who watched Enterprise just for the Vulcan ass and edited porn would all get confused and fuck off back to their little hell hole to oogle more poorly edited porn leaving the real Trekkies and geeks to enjoy their new series which isn't 4 sluts doing whatever or yet another cop drama,
I like muppets.
Some think that this is also a hidden message to the fans that their campaign KeepB5Alive has worked.
The campaign was calling for the original cast to play their roles in the upcomming Babylon 5 theatrical movie "Babylon 5: The Memory of Shadows"
He was calling for a letter-writing campaign when it's "common knowledge" that those campaigns have become devalued because everybody is doing them these days.
The retraction also references a TV show for the fall of 2006. A TV show. One that sounds like a done deal. Which probably means that it's a new show that they believe so strongly in that they know it'll be picked up (a B5 universe show maybe), or that it's an existing TV show.
PS: When it comes to his reading of the poll on ScifiWire: "This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane."
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Honestly I feel that babylon 5 really lowered the bar for sci-fi. I know a lot of people liked it but I think it was a step backwards; an emphasis on ships and energy cannons more than the themes and purpose. I believe that during its run it really prompted a sort of "lowest common denominator" ratings war with other shows of its time, when it started getting popular other shows *cough* Deep Space Nine developed a similar tendency. I think the more cerebral approach to sci-fi the better, it's supposed to be about ideas and human nature. I really think Bab5 was sorely lacking in that department. (besides there were a lot of hammy performances) I don't mean to start a flame war, but I think if science finction's credibility were a car, Babylon 5 put a nasty dent in it's fender.
would be... some sort of... anomaly... and it would be... interesting...
I don't care what anyone says even JMS. I personally think if there's enough intrest, and if Paramount decides to jump, I think JMS would even re-consider. Paramount is just giving it a rest because Berman and crew that are the current keepers of Star Trek have no frickin idea what to do. They have SO lost sight of what Star Trek is supposed to be that even if they gave it the 2 year rest they are saying, they will still create another steaming pile of goo.
:D Anyway, give me soemthing we can be proud of. Something to compete with Battlestar. I bet if NBC DOES pick up BSG, then maybe, just maybe, Paramount may start working on a Trek series.
No, I don't think there's a loss of intrest in Star Trek. the only reason their seems to be is we have not been given something even remotely similar to Star Trek (Enterprise was so different and so bad.....the only reason it was Star Trek was because it had Vulcans, Romulan's and Klingons in it....). The NX-01 is so small scale to what we're used to....the gradioise in scale Enterprise NCC-1701-A-E's were what we WANTED to see. HUGE ships capable of not only exploration, but of defending itself. Why is it that from ther tail end of TNG onward the Federation routinely got thier asses handed to them? In any case, it's more then about the ship. It's about the people. The Best of Both Worlds episodes was some of the best trek there was with Commander Shelby and Riker trying to get Picard back from the Borg. Encounter at Farpoint was so much better of a start then the forgettable episode Enterprise started with. If we actually HAD a good trek series though, it woud likely not be good by our standards now though. There's too much at stake. They gotta try and make trek something many people would like. Unfortunately, that makes it a lousy series. Case in point, a friend of mine who is not a big fan of SciFi religiously watched Enterprise while I lost interest somewhere around 1st season. If I remember right, I caught myself many times watching TNG repeats on the old TNN network!
Gorkman
Further along that string was posted this further update.... From: jmsatb5 at aol.com Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 11:03:38 +0000 (UTC) Lines: 36 > > The rest I leave to the quiet turning of your considered conscience. > > J. Michael Straczynski Actually...belay everything I just said. In the 24 hours between the time I composed the prior note, and sent it, and it made its way through the moderation software, two things happened: 1) I heard from a trusted source that Paramount is giving the Trek TV world a rest for maybe one to two years, depending on circumstances, no matter who would come along to run it. So it's not right to have folks putting in time doing something that ultimately would be pointless, I don't think that's a proper use of anybody's time. 2) At the same time as the above, an offer came in to run a new TV series for fall of '06, and since there's no way anything Trek can happen in the interim, I've said yes (now we have to negotiate the deal, but that should be fairly straightforward). So on two counts, the whole thing is kind of moot. We can reconvene a year or two down the road to see where this takes us, but in the interim...my apologies for waking everybody up in the middle of the night. As you were. Thanks and with great chagrinedness -- jms
"I drank WHAT?!"--Socrates
I'm not the one to excuse his every failing, even JMS doesn't do that. (He has said that he wouldn't be sad if some of the less good episodes of B5 were lost off a pier somewhere). And the Legend of the Rangers pilot wasn't great.
However: Crusade is a special case. Crusade was deliberately killed by the network.
It turned out that TNT-Atlanta had looked at the demographics from season 5 of Babylon 5 (which they actually saved from the failing PTEN), and saw that those who watched B5 wouldn't watch their wrestling. So they decided to get rid of the show. One of the ways to get rid of the show is to back out of the contract. But that would cost money. So instead, they sent insane network notes to JMS and sent the episodes out of order. That doesn't make for a good viewer experience, now does it?
So thanks to TNT for giving us an extra year of Babylon 5. And thanks to TNT-Atlanta for making a mush of Crusade.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Hey All ...
... SG1 ... Atlantis ... Battlestar Galactica ... Andromeda ... (He he ... that's kind of gone down the toilet too ... but I still watch hopeing it will get better.)
I am disappointed w/ what's happened to Enterprise. Both the story lines and the cancellation.
However, There's plenty of good SciFi TV going on until the franchise gets it's act together.
Might I suggest SciFi Friday
Cheers,
-- The Dude
Has a nice ring to it. Anybody who was disappointed that it wasn't until the 3rd season of Enterprise when Archer finally won a fight, won't be surprised if Crusher never wins a fight at all.
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
The story of two Chinese laundry truck drivers. Their 5 hour mission, to deliver clean lanudry, to seek out new customers and clients, to Boldly Go® where no chinese laundry truck drivers have gone before!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Just because Gene Rodenberry visualized humankind exploring the universe in what seemed to be their pyjamas, all subsequent series have assumed a starship would have to be a military operation with everyone in uniform. This does not actually reflect very well on us.
Science fiction for grown-ups...
Quote: According to Sci-Fi Wire, Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski told fans on a B5 Usenet group that he and Dark Skies creator Bryce Zabel have put together an idea for a new Star Trek series,2 1/171255&tid=214&tid=14
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/
has started collecting contributions for Enterprise's next season
what better way to say "fuck you" to the tsunami victims?
Since it sounds like JMS isn't interested, I wonder more and more if Trek needs a 5-10 year TV hiatus. They've got novels, games, etc., they can still rake in the $$$.
But after Enterprise (which I think didn't get a fair shake), what can they do? I can't think of anything. The well's dry.
Give SF a few years without a Trek. See what else pops up - fresh ideas, new takes, old concepts revived. Then perhaps something else can be tried.
I also wonder - and dare to ask - if the unspeakable could be done. From what I've seen the new Battlestar Galactica is quite good - could someone imagine a reboot of Trek TOS?
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Assuming Trekkies actually manage to pull together and find all the money it will take to produce an entire season of Enterprise... The producers have to spend no money doing what they do: producing. Yet they own the show, get paid per episode by the television broadcasters broadcasting the show (networks buy shows to put on the air)... and they will get paid residual income forever as the show goes into syndication.
Someone, in one of these past threads, posted the idea of floating bonds to finance the show, giving those donating real ownership of the show. If the show takes off and makes a lot of money, the bonds would be worth more, thereby repaying those investing.
But the idea of donating strictly because a trekkie likes the show is the dumbest idea I've ever heard. And don't expect to get your money back from TrekUnited when they fail to raise an entire season's worth of cash.
They cancel it. The last few episodes have been pretty good. A shame it has to go away. Maybe Archer will leap back into the series as Tucker...his mission to have hot steamy sex with the vulcan and Hoshi in the decontamination room and...
uh, I'll be right back.
Minor corection to the blurb: Jeremiah was a European comic a long time before US TV found out about it. My Yugoslavian friends used to read it in Belgrade in the 1980s.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
And the girl creeps me out...monotone robots trying to be cute to gain our trust...they've got to be trying to take over the world! Have we learned nothing?
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
How about "The Real Starship Enterprise" where contestants spend 3 months on a mockup of the real ship. One is a Human, a Vulcan.......
Babylon 5 never ceases to amaze me, even though its now what, a decade old? The story that deals with real issues (lots of politics), the world which was amazingly thoroughly detailed, and the special effects which gave a harsh, "real" look to even the most fanciful of ships.
JMS should definitely write/direct/produce/whatever a new Star Trek. (or, hell with that, a new B5.)
A 0.500 batting average might be good in the creative world; a writer that churns out really great stuff half the time is probably a really good writer. But the executive producer position is basically a "CEO" of a business, in this case a business that we call "the Star Trek franchise" -- with UPN basically a holding company for many such businesses. When your job is running a business, a batting average of 0.500 is pretty bad.
I hope that after I die the one word people use to describe me is "resurrected."
When I first read about Babylon 5 all those years ago, about how it was going to be a different Science Fiction series with a clear beginning, middle and end, I was blown away.
...then there was the special effects. Granted full CGI was an impressive goal, but the technology of the day was severly lacking and put a serious damper on the believability of the series. They would have been better off building scale models of everything and filming it all 'old-school', like the Star Trek series of the time.
I thought it was going to be the most impressive thing that I would ever end up seeing on television. I waited with intense anticipation...
Then... the first episode came and went, the second one came and went, the third came and went...
I watched it a bit, on and off for a season or two, the stories, the characters, they just weren't anything overly impressive. The whole thing seemed incredibly forced.
So, you have these technology primitive humans building a massive 'UN in Space' space station and they somehow get all of these more advanced and terribly militaristic civilizations to live 'peacefully' with one another.
In my not-so humble opinion the "Reimagined Battlestar Galactica" is a much better implementation of this idea then Babylon 5 was.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I like Star Trek as sci fi. When it was being totally unplausibley nice - blech - I felt somehow violated (actually I wanted to claw my eyes out).
It's Rick Berman J.O.B to make Star Trek episodes. This is not enough - anything less than a passion for the Science Fiction won't work. Try as Mr Berman might he just dosen't seem talented at sci-fi.
Consequently the attempt at getting Paramount to keep Enterprise is doomed for that reason.
The smart move for him would be to get writers circulating around Enterprise universe that have that passion for sci-fi. If someone with a passion for sci fi like JMS wants to do it - why not - even if he were to advise Berman. But here's a thought what if Enterprise was being directed by someone like James Cameron. It's interesting STORIES that keep me watching. What about TALENTED writers like Greg Bear, Orson Scott Card and fan submitted stories. If Enterprise does'nt have kick ass sci fi episodes there really isn't any point continuing with it - and you may as well kiss the whole thing goodbye.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I love Trek but two wash-ups (Trek and JMS) joining forces can only hurt the memory of both. Though I wouldn't mind if they'd give it a shot and finally shut JMS up about it.
I recently had the chabce to watch the series of Babylon 5, stem to stern in a matter of weeks. It's some of the best sci-fi out there, even better then Trek in many places.
With the exception of a chunk of Season 5, the series is wondergul (season 5 can be forgiven due to the planned nature of the show, having to cram all the arc into 4 seasons because of the looming Shadow (pardon the pun) of calcellation.
THe characters all had a depth to them that Trek hasn't seen in years, and the show could be humorous without it being forced humor (recently, Trek must resort to this), not to mention the strong slew of female characters, the only trek series to do this was DS9 (surprise there... no Braga) with Kira and Dax, both are equally strong when compared to Ivonova and Delenn, IMO.
B5 also pulled off the "Big 3" dynamic that the original Trek was so damn good at, although it became the Big 4 in later seasons (I don't have a problem with that).
If JMS wants to recreate Trek, I say bring it on.
Ron Moore is busy with BSG and I can't think of anyone than those two (aside from Ira Behr and Robert Wolfe) who are even remotely qualified to make a great Trek.
Logistical Chaos Officer http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL,USA
You think sci-fi should be about "ideas and human nature" and you think B5 didn't do this??
a l-problems trek universe has NOTHING on B5.
Methinks someone did not watch seasons 2-4, or at the very least didn't watch them carefully. Episodes like In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum (Season 2), Severed Dreams (Season 3), Z'ha'dum (Season 3), and Intersections in Real Time (Season 4) have more "ideas and human nature" than any sci-fi on TV today.
The touchy-feely-humanity-has-overcome-all-its-intern
JMS really? bab5 is the best sf series of all time. Perhaps the ppl at Killenterprise.com should change their site.
For better or worse, Star Trek is what it is: something that was vaguely based on Forbidden Planet, became a cult series in the 1960's, and then evolved into some politicially correct somewhat socialist utopia.
We can look at the kinds of series Straczynski has been producing, and that's not it. B5 and Jeremiah are fun series in their own right, but they are rather different, both in outlook and in style.
I'm not sure Star Trek needs to continue at all, after the success and longevity it has had. But if it should, it probably should do so in its own particular way and style, and for that, I think someone else may be better suited.
I found it suspicious that this last season spent so much time repairing the general plot and timeline of the Trek universe. And I don't mean in a temporal cold war, either.
Every. Single. Plot. Was overturned, reversed, or even erased. The Xindi, the temporal cold war, the Vulcan mind-meld disease. Anything new has been put aside for old-school plots. Tellerites? whoa. And no more trips to Klingon, thank you.
This is the PERFECT OPPORTUNITY for this property to do right by its fans, while attracting an entirely new viewing audience, while bolstering viewership with JMS's current, dedicated fanbase.
And that means more money for the franchise and Paramount. Lots. Not to mention no further suits from Activision and whoever has bought into this IP.
Why am I writing this as less a fan and more a business plan? Because that's what UPN needs to hear.
Now, let's go tell them!
kulakovich
Yes Jim, Star Trek has now joined my in the great beyond.
It died of boredom- redoing the same tired old plots for the tenth time.
... tripe on Slashdot. People go on and on about how "It has all been downhill since TNG" and it has all been Berman's fault, etc.
But it is - he is in charge, ego he is to blame.
For one thing, Roddenberry died midway through TNG.
Lies. Roddenberry died at the end of season 5.
Berman was basically the man at the helm for what was argueable the best portion of the series, the last 3 seasons.
1: He was mostly working with the talent Roddenberry had hired.
2: He didn't have the guts to suddenly change TNG to something else in the middle of the series (like he let them do with DS9)
Ie, he just continued on the course set by Roddenberry.
For another, DS9 (the first series run soley by Berman) was actually very good (once it got going - the first season or two were quite.. icky).
So DS9 became better once Berman withdrew from day to day running of the series and started to focus on Voayger - funny that. Not to mention again, he had Ira Steven Behr("Dark Angel"),Michael Piller("Dead Zone") , Ronald Moore("Battlestar Galactica") to help him. I entirely suspect he was out having lunch with management while they were writing.
Aside from all this - you people seem to believe that the whole series lives and dies by Berman's word. Shouldn't some of the blame be put on the writers? The writers are the ones coming up with the same old crap over and over again.
Yeah, except: HE HIRES THE WRITERS, his blame.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I never was a big Babylon fan, but as a Die Hard "Trekkie" "Trekker" whatever is politically correct these days, it pains me to see Star Trek go away and would be open to any possibility of a Star Trek show current or new being on TV. Seriously though. If they didnt show Enterprise on UPN it would have much larger viewership. Not everyone i know gets UPN in the states..
Star Trek has suffered from poor writing since after TNG. Even Deep Space Nine still had some good plots that made you interested. Another problem with Enterprise is that they have bores like Trip and Malcom. I loved B5. Loved it. I am sure JMS would make sure that the writing wasn't lame. How? Because with little money to work with he concentrated on the storylines. I think they should stop spending so much money on the props, sets, makeup, etc., and start spending it on the writing. I also loved the original Trek which became classic because of the writing again, certainly not the props.
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For every child that grew up to be somebody special because of Star Trek
:-)
That is kindly putting it...
LLAP
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
What you said. It's not as if there's a drought for writers in Hollywood. There are litterally thousands of out-of-work writers hovering around the studios.
They might not all be very GOOD writers, though.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I'm trying this via google to see if I can access the groups, since I've been offline since AOL stopped carrying newsgroups.
Wow, I think you just lost all credibility with your core geek audience!
They got their asses handed to them because the only warship they had was the Defiant. Powerful though a galaxy class ship is, it's not meant for full-scale warfare.
Captain Adama's speech in the pilots for example was completely ridiculous. Why do we even deserve to live? Was that supposed to inspire anyone? Crap, if any real military leaders ever did that, their soldiers would be too dispirited to fight.
Then you have the fact that the Cylons are attempting to cross-breed with Humans. But if they wanted that so much, why did they try to wipe all the Humans out with nukes, *before* getting their hybrid? It makes no sense. If they wanted to nuke all the colonies, and destroy military ships, plus evading civilian ships, how could they ever get a cross-breed?
The fact that Baltar got too tired from doing tests, so he stopped testing people was also sheer nonsense. Why didn't he just get *someone else* to do the hard labour of testing? I mean, he was supposed to have an assistant already, plus a nuclear warhead, I doubt he would not be granted spare personnel. Not to mention: who is doing the testing (supposed to take man-years) now since he seems to be only doing political work since he got to be Vice-President?
There is some good stuff in there of course. I like this Baltar better than the old Baltar in the original series. The old Baltar made absolutely no sense at all.
Might I suggest SciFi Friday ... SG1 ... Atlantis ... Battlestar Galactica
I agree. I watch SciFi Friday, although I wish it was on a different night. SG1 and Atlantis are great shows and I have followed every episode. At one time I even bought Showtime just to get SG1 and have been glad SciFi bought it so I could cancel Showtime.
My biggest gripe: Every Alien they meet speaks English. At least with Trek you had the Universal Translator. With SG1 and Atlantis they completely ignore this. After many episodes it really bothers me.
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The only reason I liked Bab 5 was the (then) cool CGI and homage to Tolkein.
However, Bab 5 was FAR superior to ST:E. I don't see how this could hurt. Just hearing the horrible theme song made me cringe. Then it just got worse for most of 55 minutes...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Yet annoyingly it's being reported without mention of JMS' followup message.
Just so that we're not exclusively on Babylon 5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer did a decent job at this too. While there was a definite story going on that had been planned out (and included a large number of references towards and fro in the timeline) and things could change quite drastically (Spike's status as enemy, then friend, then enemy, then lover, then psychotic nutcase actually made some sense in the course of the series), you could pick up any one episode and enjoy what was going on. In my opinion, any good TV show or book series, should be like that, enough going on that it rewards people who site down and view it all, enough hints to allow people to step in at the middle, and subtle enough hints that people who are watching all the way through don't get annoyed at the repeated redundancy.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Uh, hey, how about some spoiler warnings? The first season hasn't finished airing in the U.S. yet.
Donations to great causes would be more worthwhile than to executives to bring back a poorly written show. Besides, I don't trust my money with someone who just puts up a website to collect money. Who knows how much of it would go towards getting Trek back. The show was mismanaged. The stories not intruiguing enough for the smart audience that SciFi audience is. They tried to dumb down the plots and failed.
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Is there any way we could take up a collection to keep Scott Bakula from ever appearing in another 'science fiction' TV show? He sucks spectacularly. Quantum Leap was a stupid concept for a show, but Bakula make it sucktacular. Enterprise might even have flown if it weren't for his insipid, saccharine performances.
This doesn't make any sense to me. I've been a big star trek fan for my whole life, this Enterprise just sucked... I mean really sucked from the beginning intro song all the way to the end of each show. There is a reason it's going off the air you know....
Hopefully the show will remain...i have to say, I was not impressed with the first season, and the second was still iffy....this season is actually pretty good and is keeping my interest. So it may have had a slow startup but it is picking up.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
The Dominion War **rocked**, IMHO the best part of DS9 - we know there is the whole Earth - Romulan War coming up, why not get into that, and give us some proper action with characters under *pressure*, rather than this non-canon temporal cold war bullshit?
I want to see nome Nukes being exchanged.
Babble On Five sucked. Bad acting. Overly dramatic. Stupid characters making decisions for no good reason. Really really bad special effects that looked cartoonish.
Enterprise suffers from bad writing and poor direction, although the current season is way better than previous ones. Multipart episodes are a crutch for those without interesting unique ideas.
If anyone else is given the Star Trek franchise, please let it be the Stargate guys. Their writers understand both drama and humor. Their actors are believable. There is occassional insight into something interesting.
Frankly I'd rather see "Law & Order: Star Trek Unit" over Babble On Trek.
If Baltar becomes the vice president I am going to hunt you down and kill you.
Or maybe just crazy glue your mouth shut.
FMI, what's with taking a perfectly workable noun and adding two extensions that convert the noun into something else then back again? If you need a noun, use "chagrin". Converting "chagrined" to a noun can be done by removing the -ed extension.
OTOH of course, you could have wonderful nouns such as: chagrinednessednessednessed- nessednessednessednessedness- ednessednessednessednessedness. That's probably longer than that poly...volcano...silly...etc wossname!
On the other hand, with only 45 minutes to tell an interesting, engrossing story each week, there really isn't time to muck around with languages, translation, etc. As StarGate and Atlantis generally provide entertainment far superior to anything else on TV (barring BSG and what's left of Enterprise) I can live with a universe of perfect American standard English speakers. At least the StarGate aliens don't have bumpy heads ...
Plus the fact that the last season of TNG sucked too. I can always tell when one of them is on; they were all psychological mind games. If it's about invisible aliens from another dimension performing the experiments on the crew, who are really androids and not crew members at all, except everything is just a holodeck simulation in disguise, but not really because it's really a hallucination --- it's last-season TNG.
LOL ...
... all the people on all of those planets are descended from humans ... so "obviously" they're all going to speak english. (whatever). Is the same explanation supposed to hold for Stargate Atlantis? It's kind of thin. I wish they'd try and introduce odd colloquialisms ... some sort of stumbling block to communication. Allthough ... there are some things you just have to let go of ... in order to allow yourself to enjoy a good scifi story ;)
I was just haveing this very conversation w/ an associate. I guess their answer was always
Cheers,
-- The Dude
I've been waiting for a series that goes another 100 years into the future past TNG. New wars, new alliances, and new tech. I'd love for it to have major characters outside of the Federation. Maybe some solo adventurers. Too much focus on damn government/military for me. Oh, and also be sure to include more than one token hot chick. The future should be densely populated with hot chicks.
I have been a fan of babylon 5. The show rivals any modern Star Trek. Yes there were a few goofy episodes, but for most parts, it was great. Straczynski also knew when to end it. If anyone can revive Star Trek, it would be him.
From the website:
...the money, minus transactional fees charged to us, is donated to Paramount/Viacom...
(emphasis mine)
Doesn't it sound just a little stupid when you phrase it like that? I mean, even with JMS working on it, why would anyone donate money to an organization that obviously didn't see the worth in producing the show in the first place?
Let me turn this around: if Paramount produced a season of Enterprise and released it exclusively on DVD for $40, and every one of the supposed 3 million fans bought it, they'd have $120,000,000 in the bank! The problem here is not that there aren't 3 million fans, it's that Paramount doesn't want to keep turning out episodes for minimal returns and a (likely) shrinking fan base.
Hybrid solution here: donate your 3 million fans' $12 to JMS, and let him make whatever he wants with it. It won't be Trek, but it won't be held at the mercy of a corporation that doesn't see the value in the show in the first place.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
He he he ...
... the folks over at http://www.saveangle.org are still going strong ... it would seem that they've hit some one year anaversary. Even though it should mark a year of failed dreams ... it's something of a badge of honor to these folks ;)
It doesn't seem like these efforts die quitely
Cheers,
--The Dude
I mean, I know that SF on TV is pretty much a kind of stage-play allegory, but it all feels so grounded in a '60s kind of shiny smarmy middle-class american morality (yes, I know all about demographics, I'm a director/producer). JMS's B5 brought a touch of biological diversity into the vidiotic galaxy.
What I would really like is a SF series that takes nanotech and extreme body customization into human -- not just evil borg -- society. One that has Samuel Delaney's sense of cultural development, Ridley Scott's visual and human grittiness, and KS Robinson's sense of the march of history. B5 had some of all that, but some truly cheesy interludes and unconvincing dialogue, and in the end fell back frequently to rely on the hollywood galactic tropes, so he should be able to cope in the ST version of 'future.' Here's hoping he can move the franchise into something more... contemporary.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Why not fire this Berman guy and hire JMS (I don't know either of these people, but Enterprise plots have been a little dull) to finish the series. If he does a good job, let him do the next ST series too. I just want to see the birth of the Federation!
The cancelation of Enterprise when it was finally getting to the event was like a kick in the balls, "oh.. here it comes.. the federation is coming.. whats going to happen next.. oh.. *over*". This is no good.
Sooner or later there must be a theatrical convention in place or else everything would be in subtitles, something only the most hardcore SciFi-er would enjoy.
Trek is not 100% complete. If the translator worked, the characters' mouths would not match up with their words. All the same, I agree that the UT idea is better than just leaving everyone speaking english.
I have seen every episode and don't recall one time they have resolved the English problem. GateWorld is a good site. (I vaguely recall them making a joke about the English problem once. Does anyone remember what episode that was?) Even the show Farscape had a great idea with injecting the translator microbe. Not to mention hordes of novels with interesting ideas. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy had the Babel fish worm. I just cannot understand why Stargate cannot come up with any idea of how to explain them understanding Alien speak. I think they realize it is to late to explain it now. Otherwise, a terrific show, SG1, that hasn't lost any humor over the years either.
Trek must work on having great storylines, new ideas, more Romulans, things it's been lacking. I'd like to see Star Trek back to the level it should be someday. I think it will be back because it's how we envision the future to be.
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The problem with most Star Trek series is that you have several writers for one show which unfortunately causes a lot of inconsistencies in the stories and timeline of events.
JMS wrote ALL the seaons of B5 before it even aired! Get that guy to write up some stuff and you have a long-running winning show on your hands! I'd definately watch it!
It's not the destination that matters, but rather the journey.
William Shatner: You know, before I answer any more questions there's something I wanted to say. Having received all your letters over the years, and I've spoken to many of you, and some of you have traveled... y'know... hundreds of miles to be here, I'd just like to say... GET A LIFE, will you people? I mean, for crying out loud, it's just a TV show! I mean, look at you, look at the way you're dressed! You've turned an enjoyable little job, that I did as a lark for a few years, into a COLOSSAL WASTE OF TIME!
[ a crowd of shocked and dismayed Trekkies.... ]
I mean, how old are you people? What have you done with yourselves?
[ to "Ears" ] You, you must be almost 30... have you ever kissed a girl?
[ "Ears" hangs his head ]
I didn't think so! There's a whole world out there! When I was your age, I didn't watch television! I LIVED! So... move out of your parent's basements! And get your own apartments and GROW THE HELL UP! I mean, it's just a TV show dammit, IT'S JUST A TV SHOW!
Charlie: Are- are you saying then that we should pay more attention to the movies?
William Shatner: NO!!! THAT'S NOT WHAT I'M SAYING AT ALL!!! HEY, YOU GUYS ARE... THE LAMEST BUNCH... I'VE NEVER SEEN... [ walks away from podium ] I can't believe these people... I mean, I really can't understand what's....
Sorry, fairly serious PG Wodehouse fan here. ;)
Trekweb
Let JMS write the political intrigues, Joss Whedon to write the characters and dialogue, and then some things from old-school Star Trek. Quite a mix that would be.
11 teams of people with an existing relationship will race around federation worlds solving problems and seeing improbable sights.
The teams are:
Captains Picard and Riker.
Dr. Crusher and all powerful son being Wesley Crusher.
Lt. Commander Tuvok and Captain Kathryn Janeway
The Doctor and The Doctor
Lt. Ezri Dax and Dr. Phlox
Captain Jonathan Archer and Porthos
Constable Odo and Seven Of Nine
Chief Miles O'Brien and Lt. Cmdr. Data
Sub-Commander T'Pol and Tasha Yar
Lt. Cmdr. Deanna Troi and Commander Kira Nerys
Guinan Ensign Hoshi Sato
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
This is more in response to the idea of fans offering to "pay" for the next series of enterprise. With a finite TV schedule, and relatively few peoples ability to *easily* time shift, it's inevitable that some shows will be watched less than others. And so some shows just won't get the advertising dollars. Which again brings up the perfect idea for TV producers to offer their shows for download, directly themselves. If people are given the ability to watch it, when they want to, at ease, they will likely watch more. Add in a simple uneditable format (to preserve commercials) and it's a win for both sides. (Yes ppl say that commercials will just be ripped, but your average consumer doesn't really care, and will just get the original versions for the simplicity). Personally, this season I have rarely turned on the TV set. That being said, I have been watching more TV shows than ever before. Simply because I can watch what I want, when I want, as often as I want. The freedom makes it so I don't have to choose between competing series, or real world obligations. If your busy for a week or two, no problem, you can always catch up later, and watch several in a row. Miss half the season, because you didn't hear about the show? No problem, you can still get it (and still experience all the commercials!) What you end up with is *increased* ratings for shows, and potentially better advertising because commercials are viewed EVERY time the show is watched, not just the one time that it is aired. Aggies
>Lies. Roddenberry died at the end of season 5.
This is a nitpick, but hey, we're all nerds here.
Roddenberry died on October 24 1991, which was near the beginning of the fifth season. To be even more pedantic, much of the fifth season had already been produced.
This harkens back to the days of Bjo Trimble (Startrek Concordance) in the original days of ST:TOS, and the letter writing campaign to NBC that gave us the, uh, well, undistinguished Third Season -- AND SYNDICATION!!!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You're good with plot arcs, and managing huge projects.
But you are a *terrible* writer!
Your dialogue is so unsubtle it is akin to be smacked in the face by a hallibut every time someone opens their mouth.
Hire
someone
else
First off I love Star Trek (not hard core, but I have enjoyed the series)
But, am I the only one that thinks the best thing for Star Trek would be a break? Paramount/whoever has been milking that franchise heavily for the past several years and perhaps they just need to take an extended break (several years, not months) to rebuild interest with the general public. The break between the original series and Next Gen was huge, so why are we having series after series after series all the time (other then the obvious to squeeze every nickel out of it)?
Make them both online excludsive content.
... make shows for the damn viewers for a change!
Find two major advertisers willing to put ads at the beginning of each ep (like last seasons 24 premiere) and allow the eps to be downloaded. I'd say look to companies like Apple, GM, and maybe Sony to put these ads in.
Each season, offer the entire online season and the finalle on DVD (last ep of each season only on the DVD set) Offer an additional DVD with bonus content with the set as well. Seems to me that this would be an easier way to make money on a series that gets bad ratings... (bad rateings don't equate to a bad show all the time.. sometimes it's just idiots putting the wrong shows against each other, or bigger idiots letting shows get preempted for local sports and never saying when the show will be repeated, etc)
So maybe I'm smoking something.. shrug.. I say screw the Neilsons and the majority of the advertisers
I think I remember that one, I think it was the episode where a movie studio is filming a "StarGate" movie that seems too close to the "real thing" and they send Colonel O'Neil to figure out how the movie people could have gotten so close to the truth. That little whiny ferret-like guy with the glasses is in it also, I think.
-Lt CDR Ivanova, Voices in the Wilderness
Good idea from the viewpoint of saving a series and exploring a marketable idea with appeal to just the type of thinking for crowd that stereotypically would follow this series, but... (on to the next poster)
CNN.com now has this article regarding the save enterprise campaign. They seem to be focusing on the recent ad in the LA Times, and they mention a rally on February 25 in the Paramount lot in Hollywood.
Star Trek fans need to BUY Star Trek. They need to start a non-profit organization, and get someone like Lawrence Lessig and/or the Creative Commons people to help set up a new corporate structure for a media company dedicated to transforming a piece of corporate art into Public Art. Trek is the perfect franchise to start with. It was always supported by a rabid fan base, and so it justly belongs in the hands of fans. If a legally and economically viable system can be established to purchase those rights and successfully manage the franchise, then we might actually be able to make a change in our culture.
This SECOND post was omitted from the original copy that was posted here on Slashdot:
From: jmsatb5 at aol.com
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 11:03:38 +0000 (UTC)
Lines: 36
Actually...belay everything I just said.
In the 24 hours between the time I composed the prior note, and sent it, and it made its way through the moderation software, two things happened:
1) I heard from a trusted source that Paramount is giving the Trek TV world a rest for maybe one to two years, depending on circumstances, no matter who would come along to run it. So it's not right to have folks putting in time doing something that ultimately would be pointless, I don't think that's a proper use of anybody's time.
2) At the same time as the above, an offer came in to run a new TV series for fall of '06, and since there's no way anything Trek can happen in the interim, I've said yes (now we have to negotiate the deal, but that should be fairly straightforward).
So on two counts, the whole thing is kind of moot.
We can reconvene a year or two down the road to see where this takes us, but in the interim...my apologies for waking everybody up in the middle of the night.
As you were.
Thanks and with great chagrinedness --
jms
-- There are two kinds of motorcycles. 1: German. 2: Crap.
The last epesode of TNG had a point to it. Too bad they didn't just walk away then.
We are the Borg...
Maybe I'm just too pedantic, but no one was talking about when the season aired. Obviously it's the production that counts, so your correct is just strange.
IMO, The first 4 X-files seasons managed to balance `mythology` arcs with one-off monster-of-the-week episodes. There was a reasonable amount of character development thorughout (with some secondary ones becoming quite interesting), and the overall mood created by the writing, photography, etc was great.
Enterprise tried, and largely failed, to achieve all this (at least up to the 3rd season, I haven't watched the later seasons yet). They tried very hard to create the sense of dread/wanderlust of space exploration, but didn't manage to come up with an interesting mythology arc, and in general lacked engaging storylines.
Most great series 'brew' their characters & story over time to achieve some distinctive flavor. Enterprise had an interesting premise, but didn't really evolve, so it remained bland and uncooked.
Some spoiler warnings would have been good there!
I think your complaints with regard to the Cylon plan are, at this stage, unfair. Up to the end o the first season we still don't really know exactly what the Cylon's motivations and intentions are. They onviously have a very complex and involved plan, but we certainly don't yet know even a fraction of it. Why did they want to kill so many humans in the first place? Even that simple question is still unclear. Of course this just leaves the writers with the quandary of how to explain all of this. I must admit I have the feeling that they don't have a grand plan either and are simply putting off the inevitable by keeping everything vague. Who knows, maybe by the end of the whole show we'll have an excellent explanation of the Cylon plot that fully explains all their actions. Then again we may have a bunch of hole ridden drivel. For now we're just horribly incomplete.
I do agree that Baltar and the Cylon testing has been just silly. That doesn't bode well for how the rest will be handled.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
It is time to take Star Trek out to the edge of the woods, throw a piece of meat on the ground and while it is eating, put the shotgun on the back of it's head and pull the trigger. They could even do it next to the grave of X-Files and the shark both of them jumped.
I just laughed Coca-Cola out my nose.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Unfortunately, it's not the kind of show you can just watch here and there, or watch the first couple of episodes of, and get any kind of idea about it. The ongoing story arcs and continuity are B5's greatest strength, which you won't get any sense of if you just watch it "here and there, on and off." Unfortunately, your opinion sounds a little uninformed to me.
And yeah, the special effects are pretty dated to a 2005 audience, but in the early 90s they were really pretty decent overall, especially for a low-budget sci-fi show constantly on the edge of cancellation like B5 was.
Is this a charcoal-and-tree media write-in, or is there an e-mail / petition site set up, or what?
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
I don't know how well the show can do with out Shatner. But then I only watch the originals, even Picard with his socially engineered story lines got pretty boring after a while.
Sucat, his eyes uncovered. Chaka, when the walls fell. Darmok and Jilad, at Tanagra.
OK, I'll be a mega-geek, and respond from the directors' commentaries on the series DVDs (yes, I did go through and listen to al the commentaries too...).
The first movie actually had everyone speaking divergent languages - though largely based on Egyptian/Sumerian, and dialectualized to hell and back through isolation-induced drift.
This is why the Daniel Jackson character is the translator/egyptologist/archaeologist from hell.
Well... when they went to series production, they just couldn't justify spending 1/3 of each 44-min episode with, "pardon? say again? could you point to the noun?". So they largely dropped the whole issue.
If you watch closely, the language issue does continue in a less-prominent form. The language of the Ancients is related to Latinates, the Asgard have a Germanic Ur-language, &c.
So, in short, they're employing a bit of artistic license and series-convention in allowing everyone to communicate fairly easily. Maybe some techno-babble would help buffer our suspension-of-disbelief (and probably introduce some additional plot capabilities), but short of a radical rewrite, the horse is out of the barn...
Why can't we just give JMS a bunch of money and let him make something of his own, so that the suits don't screw it up? I loved B5, but a JMS-induced Star Trek gives me nightmares.
Ethan
Anyone who's seen his more recent project with the folks behind Stargate SG-1, "Jeremiah," knows he can project a very strong story without relying on the same old bull. I very much hope that Jeremiah has a chance to be "finished" someday (the story was very much left hanging at the end of S2), but as long as JMS gets his own high-profile show I don't care what label or brand gets slapped on it. JMS would breathe new life into Trek, and anyone who stands in the way of this project is a fool. His new Trek series will, no questsion, kick ass.
but *liked* firefly's opening theme??? (or at least are neutral enough to not complain about it)
WTF, Over??
I thought the opening sequence was the only good thing about enterprise. It captured the spirit of exploration that drives us onward and upward. just because it wasn't a swelling, throbbing (heh) symphonic number it suxxors??
*shrug*
I guess my musical tastes are just pervy
"It may just be that there is something fundamentally unworkable about government itself" -H. Beam Piper
Can you say "Desparate Housewives"?
Anyone who's seen his more recent project with the folks behind Stargate SG-1, "Jeremiah," knows he can project a very strong story without relying on the same old bull. I very much hope that Jeremiah has a chance to be "finished" someday (the story was very much left hanging at the end of S2), but as long as JMS gets his own high-profile show I don't care what label or brand gets slapped on it. JMS would breathe new life into Trek, and anyone who stands in the way of this project is a fool. His new Trek series will, no question, kick ass.
Donations to great causes would be more worthwhile than
And who are you to set an absolute standard of worth for everyone?
BTW, you're wasting time posting comments to slashdot, when you could be working hard to earn money which you could donate to worthwhile causes.
i agree with you that a sci-fi series should take nanotech, etc., into account. but there are all sorts of technical advancements that will happen between now and the 23rd/24th century--strong ai, genetic engineering, space elevators, and so forth. what i would like to see in a sci-fi series is how humanity has advanced its ethics to benefit from these technical advancements to promote the greater good and individual liberties.
.......... kris
for example, i always thought it was dumb that genetic engineering was outlawed in the federation because a bunch of g.e. people tried to take over the world three/four hundred years previously. i think roddenberry would have approved of stories that emphasized that genetic engineering could eliminate disease and misery. those stories would fit right into the notion of roddenberry's utopian society--it's just that the ethical angle would have to be developed and explained in order to make the trek universe cohesive. same goes for every other technology developed between now and then.
(while i'm talking about dumb things in sci-fi series, why is it that the federation would give up its rights to develop a cloaking device? and why is it that starfleet soldiers go into battle without armor or personal shields?)
basically what i am saying is that the architect of a sci-fi series should take into account the development of ethics that helps advanced technology benefit the greater good and promote individual liberties--and create a much more satisfying sci-fi series as a result.
"I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me."
The fact that Baltar got too tired from doing tests, so he stopped testing people was also sheer nonsense. Why didn't he just get *someone else* to do the hard labour of testing?
Uh...because he's batshit insane?
The cake is a pie
Berman... ego he is to blame
+5 Accidentally Funny
(A typo for "ergo", of course. But I like it the way it's actually written.)
He's not going to pitch it to Paramount for political reasons but is going to try to apply fan pressure to get them to cave? Is anyone really under the impression that that has the slightest chance of working?
Paramount is well aware of the rabid and loyal fan base -- a fan base that is willing to sit through such dreck as Voyager and Enterprise. They still cancelled it. That proves that fan pressure alone is not enough to make them change their minds.
I would like something similar to how Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is set up. You have a mix of 'Standalone' episodes which as one-off stories, often focusing on one or two characters, that has little if no relation to the ongoing story; then you have the 'Complex' episodes that feature more of the cast and progress the ongoing story arc.
Sometimes the episode types alternate and sometimes you have two standalone episodes in a row followed by four complex episodes.
Hey there, Moderator of the usenet newsgroup (rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated) that the post was originally made to. If you read the thread on the newsgroup you'll see that Joe made another post. In it he said: 1) Paramount is going to give Trek a rest for a couple of years 2) He was offered another series starting in '06
very few people are just inherently nasty for the sake of being mean (No they do it for greed, power, money) ie. Bush Jr., Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales... All the human beings operating Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, all the other unknown torture rooms...
He *did* save Star Trek from Gene Roddenberry after all.
Initially, he and Braga were the fresh voices that reinvigorated Star Trek. Unfortunately, they've long since become the stale old guard that needs to be tossed out.
From: jmsatb5@aol.com
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 11:03:38 +0000 (UTC)
Lines: 36
>
> The rest I leave to the quiet turning of your considered conscience.
>
> J. Michael Straczynski
Actually...belay everything I just said.
In the 24 hours between the time I composed the prior note, and sent it, and it made its way through the moderation software, two things happened:
1) I heard from a trusted source that Paramount is giving the Trek TV world a rest for maybe one to two years, depending on circumstances, no matter who would come along to run it. So it's not right to have folks putting in time doing something that ultimately would be pointless, I don't think that's a proper use of anybody's time.
2) At the same time as the above, an offer came in to run a new TV series for fall of '06, and since there's no way anything Trek can happen in the interim, I've said yes (now we have to negotiate the deal, but that should be fairly straightforward).
So on two counts, the whole thing is kind of moot.
We can reconvene a year or two down the road to see where this takes us, but in the interim...my apologies for waking everybody up in the middle of the night.
As you were.
Thanks and with great chagrinedness --
jms
and after 13 episodes, we don't even know half of what it is. And given that it's actually God's plan, the Cylons may not know half of it either.
I think it's related to the cycle of death and rebirth. The Cylons need the humans to find Earth and it's only through the near total annihiliation of their civilization that they would even go look for it.
That being said, you needed some serious spoiler warnings. Maybe someone could mod down the parent as a courtesy to Americans.
As long as rerun's of Kevin Sorbo fighting aliens with a super powered dildo in Andromeda are replaced with something, I'll be happy.
I remember hearing rumors before enterprise aired of the subject matter in the upcoming ST series, and enterprise is so bad i think i'd prefer the WB-style teen drama set in starfleet academy. So bring on whatever these new people have, gotta be better than enterprise.
From Comic Writer Warren Ellis' mailing list:
---------------
""Joe Straczynski suggested his fans suggest to
Paramount that he and Bryce Zabel be hired to
perform their revival of the Star Trek franchise.
Joe briefly outlined it to me over lunch in
Vancouver last summer (because I am so
fucking jetset and famous, me), and it sounded
like it could make entertaining TV.
Today, Joe's asking people to stop, because
he has been made aware that Paramount are
intending to rest Trek for an indefinite period --
"a year or two" -- and he's just taken a
showrunner gig elsewhere for a show that
launches late 2006. Which, being "a year or
two" away, means he couldn't do his Trek
if the idea were picked up.""
Last night I posted a diary entry on ipw about B5.
-- TWZ
From: jmsatb5@aol.com
Subject: Re: UPN Cancels Enterprise!
To: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Date: 2/15/2005 3:03:38 AM
>
> The rest I leave to the quiet turning of your considered conscience.
>
> J. Michael Straczynski
Actually...belay everything I just said.
In the 24 hours between the time I composed the prior note, and
sent it, and it made its way through the moderation software,
two things happened:
1) I heard from a trusted source that Paramount is giving the
Trek TV world a rest for maybe one to two years, depending on
circumstances, no matter who would come along to run it. So
it's not right to have folks putting in time doing something
that ultimately would be pointless, I don't think that's a
proper use of anybody's time.
2) At the same time as the above, an offer came in to run a
new TV series for fall of '06, and since there's no way
anything Trek can happen in the interim, I've said yes
(now we have to negotiate the deal, but that should be
fairly straightforward).
So on two counts, the whole thing is kind of moot.
We can reconvene a year or two down the road to see where this
takes us, but in the interim...my apologies for waking everybody
up in the middle of the night.
As you were.
Thanks and with great chagrinedness --
jms
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I hate shows like Survivor, and all those other stupid reality television shows also. If you want to really keep the show going, thats great for your own jerkoff reasons, but please whoever keeps submitting these stories to slashdot every hour - stop it. No one cares, except maybe like 5 of you.
Great! I can't wait to see the coverage...from Triumph the Insult Comic Dog!
screw Enterprise.
Don't get me wrong, I loved the Trek franchise when it was worth watching. DS9 despite a shaky start has got my vote for one of the finest piece of story telling on TV. Even Voyager had a few decent episodes. But in going back to the begining, the trek writers have really craped a doozie. That series should be allowed to die, how gracefully is up to TPTB.
But Star Trek aside, what I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY want JMS to do is revive "Captain Powers and the Soldiers of Fortune". Anyone remember? I really loved that show when it aired. It was just too damn bad the toy company that created it pulled the plug because they couldn't sell the toy tie-ins as well as they wanted.
peace out.
The reason Star Trek Enterprise failed..and it DID failm, was that Trip was not allowed to actually marry T'Pol. That cut the heart right out of the series. That her character was make to pander to marriage to an evil slimy oligarch went against all that Star Trek has stood for. Over thirty years of Trek has shown that goodness and honor were valued, and now comes the groom of T'Pol, a lying assassin and scheming blackguard, poor caricature of all things reputed to be Vulcan....and HE gets to marry and keep the best looking Trek lady since 'Seven of Nine' just because he is a scumbag. The series died there in the second episode of the last season for me. All the so called justifications for it are just pandering to a criminal oligarchy as depicted in the show's presentation of the Vulcan government.
A presentation, I might add, that paints a dark picture of a world where evil is rewarded and the earth is encouraged to emulate. Make no mistake,
many viewers will not really know just why they
tuned trek out. Many will say that reception of monopoly controlled UPN free to air stations was poor if one lived over 20 miles from a tower. Many others will say that they were not going to fork over thirty bucks a month to a crooked monopolist of a small dish service provider just to see UPN because that small dish provider had bought out or threatened all the competition into silence or compliance. Still others will say that they were willing to watch it on GB-603 on C-Band where KTVD, UPN20 Denver, Colorado showed it for more than a year until the monopoly threatened it into silence just two months ago. MILLIONS WATCHED IT FREE ON C-BAND UNTIL THAT ACT!!
Unless the show can be brought back on C-Band
in its natural home, the Sci-Fi Channel so that a-la-carte big dish viewers can watch it for two bucks a month; and unless the bad plots as detailed above can be changed by better writing...(read LEAVE THE GREEK TRAGEDY AND SO CALLED REALITY TV TO THE 'COPS' SHOW); and unless Trip and T'Pol can put the heart back in the series like Tom and B'Lanna did on Voyager
and Keiko and O'Brien did on STNG, I really fear that this series is dead. Future series take note! We the public will not watch the bad guys win. We watch for enjoyment and escape. We want to see the bad guys' butt seriousely kicked, and when we do not see it happen, we turn it OFF!
because it was starting to look like a short-term memory problem was also a contributing factor to your lack of Farscape enjoyment.
Not that it'd ever happen, but could you imagine Paramount publicly saying something like "Even we admit Trek has been sucking, but we love the money, What the *hell* do you people want, anyway?" and then running a season of pilots for new Trek series.
Think about it, you could try all the wildass ideas that have been floated by both the fan community and the festering pit Berman calls an imagination:
1.) Excelsior (Sulu time!)
2.) JMS goes postal
3.) Starfleet Academy 90210
4.) New Frontiers
5.) Night of the living Kirk (What are there, three different books where he comes back from the dead? It'd be like South Park in reverse! Kids like South Park, right?)
6.) Star Trek Timecop (It's the timeship Relativity! To prevent the birth of evil terrorists, they jump Seven of Nine around in time as a sexy assasin!)
7.) Data: Martian Nights (In an attempt to corner the geek girl demographic, Data retires from Starfleet and opens a Night Club on Mars. Eery episode features a four minute sequence when Spiner takes the stage and croons while the plot advances.)
And many more! After running the season of pilots, Paramount could finally gauge a proper drek-to-profit ratio from the ratings.
What does this button d$#%* NO CARRIER
Look what happened with Earth Final Conflict. Roddenberry had a back-of-the-envelope idea that could deliver maybe two episodes, and from that point on, it was talentless hackery on autopilot. If somebody started with the Known Space stuff, or serialized Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom for the first N weeks, it could be a long time before switching over to the talentless hacks, and they'd have a bunch of good writing to imitate. The stench might take quite a while to become noticeable.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
For gods sake, it's a f*cking TV show. Let it go. Aren't there more worthwhile things to save?
Correction: JMS had the story planned out for 5 years. (As well as having the storyline planned out for years in each direction.) And he knew what the main plot points for each episode was going to be before writing the season.
But he didn't write every episode. There were some guest writers along the way. Towards the end, he wrote every episode.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Yeah, "belay that"-post has been reported here several times. :-)
BTW: Let me thank you for the tremendous job you do moderating the newsgrous, keeping it somewhat sane, spam-free, and free of story ideas.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I really don't know why Enterprise is getting cancelled...it is the only one of the Trek series that has maintained the theme of the original. TNG was good but played to an action theme (limited moral issues comapared to the original series). DS9 sucked big time...a soap opera in the making. Voyager was an attempt to get back on track, but missed the mark somewhat...at least it tried.
Enterprise is back with it.
The real problem...TV audiences are fickle these days. They want action...now now now. They like lame reality shows, etc etc. They don't understand the moral issues lying behind shows, because the typical mentality of the viewing audience of today doesn't have the mental capacity to understand...or maybe they simply want to get away from issues that parallel modern society.
I do agree that Baltar and the Cylon testing has been just silly.
Why exactly? He's been jelously guarding the test from anyone so that he'll alone know the *real* results. (Case in point: Boomer)
There's also a timeframe issue. Colonial Day starts on Day 47. It's probable he wasn't elected until a day or two after the start of the episode. So he's VP day 48 or 49. The raptor he's on crashlands on Day 50. Not a lot of time to hand-off everything to an assistant.
I think they didn't have a grand plan when they did the mini-series but once they got the go ahead for a regular series, they put one together. The Cylons have multiple objectives. The hybrid is one. Earth is another. And the *humans* finding earth is another part. BSG has a role in God's plan.
From the response, I guess my comment needs clarification: 5 years to wait for a plot resolution seems overlong to me. 1 year seems reasonable.
Which is why I thought that Seasons might become Campaigns, say each beginning with an incident or a mission briefing, moving to a new locale, and (mostly) resolving at the end of the Campaign.
Am I the only one here having trouble making myself understood with terse Usenet style messages ?
This is not a signature.
I'm gonna risk the moderators' wrath and agree with you. I rented some Firefly DVDs after hearing it recommended, and upon viewing the show, I was not impressed.
Firefly was a space western, a show about wannabe cowboys in space - whoopie. Some of us actually live in the west near real live wannabe cowboys, and lemme tell you, they get old really fast. I like a little science in my science fiction.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
No wonder why Star Wars is still remembered today, the inhabitants of the "galaxy far far away" speak thier own languages. Wookies speak Shyriiwook, almost all of the Tatooniense understand Huttese, and almost everybody else speaks in "basic".
As you guys complained how the whole Star Wars franchise went downhill, just be grateful that if it wasn't for George Lucas helming Star Wars (Episode IV for us geeks), all alien lifeforms would speak in English.
take you money, and use it to by execs coke and hookers. Anything to get Berman out, and Straczynski in.
That would get me back to Star Trek.
Or Joss Whedon.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Traditionally; Star Trek characters, reminded me of "...your plastic pals that are(n't) fun to be with..." seemed to be less of an issue with the this last series, but it is still somewhat antiseptic and has many awfully goody-goody leanings. Character development was under-shadowed by fancy techno-babble that would even irritate a Telletubby. Although they finally began to give the characters some "issues" to deal with in this series it may not have been enough to keep the audience interested. It seemed that there was little joy/zest among the characters of Star Trek (not the actors but the way that universe works/was-envisioned;) they oft seem wooden lacking and dimension-impaired.
Don't get me wrong, I found the series(es) amusing and enjoyed it, but they had serious issues which was damaging as a whole. They became reliant on the many of the same rote plot devices that saves their bacon from any real consequences (for the most part.) Weebles wobble but they don't fall down, the writers treat everyone on their series like Weebles. If a character took a really, really hard fall now and then I think that it would (have made) make things more interesting.
I think that the mini-arcs that they began to use for their format was a very good start; as was the drifting to a darker tone for the series. Unfortunately the series' chronic PC nature was always a killer as was their "can't we just get along" optimism. I'm sure that the Starfleet HR department was proud in any case.
Does the series require cancellation? No, they are relying on one set of flawed numbers for their ratings. Nelson's only have something like 5,500 households in their sample. That sample is just in the United States and only takes in account for live broadcast and not those who time-shift. Also the show was move to a bad time slot. Friday evening that is against a lot of people going out and against other popular sci-fi series offerings. Just too much competition at that time period. You want a show to do well? Look at times where it won't have a lot of competition. They also are not looking at the foreign and syndication resale rights. The series may have a higher up front cost than other series but as a reseller it would have longer staying power on the market than many offerings like the current crops of reality-tv which are cheap up-front and therefore make for quicker short term profit but may never re-syndicate well and thus never make long-term returns. Star Trek as a franchise seems to be one of those shows that can be resold over and over thus bringing in a long and steady return over the life of the copyright.
Does it require a hiatus? Yes, they need to stop and rethink a few things and the directions that would make the show more interesting and more original. Less rehashing and less plot devices to safe the day. More conflict and controversy, occasionally do something shocking; less political correctness.
Maybe a little strife among the crew with a grudge that festers. T'pol could start up her little "drug" habit again. Then on arrival to a newly visited planet one of the resident aliens would appear on the big bridge screen and unexpectedly one of the bridge crew could suddenly scream "you stupid Gray, you've abducted your last human from the Iowa Boondocks and gave him a probe 'you know where,' we've warned you about not doing that... we're nuking Zeta-Reticule now" and take over the weapons console and drop a couple torpedoes on their capital city before being restrained.
I wasn't entirely 'awed' by the special effects. Granted, for the time, they were the best commercially available for the price they were willing to pay, they still looked less real then the 'old-school' work done on the Star Trek series of the time.
I did my best to watch the entire first season and watched a portion of season two. It couldn't hold my interest. Regardless of that, a science fiction, or any television series, even with a large scale story-arc, needs to make it possible for someone new to slide into the story without being so lost that they can quickly lose interest.
The X-Files did an excellent job of that, Enterprise Season Three did a decent job of that, Star Trek:DS9 did a good job of that and even though I am not so hip to Stargate SG-1, that show even does a decent job of that.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
***SPOILER WARNING***
Besides, he does not seem plain insane. He is not just seeing things in his head from his neurons, his pseudo-delusions have been seen by others too, not to mention that his delusions know things he had no personal knowledge of. It is painfully obvious he is being manipulated by the Cylon into seeing those visions. Yes, he is a coward. If he is being edgy and paranoid, well, who wouldn't be on those conditions? The fact remains, despite the artificial visions, he seems to be holding up pretty well. So sorry, but that line doesn't stick on this aspect of the plot.
I'd feel better about if I could see his treatment...besides, why does everything always have to be rebooted? Why can't anyone just do new episodes in the same continuity anymore? Reinvention and reimagination are just another way of saying someone wants to rape my childhood.