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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.
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 );
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 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 The electric guitar style theme music was incredibly outdated and wreaked of a routinely formulaic bad-taste Hollywood production.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 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
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
The potential for Crusade was never realised. Consider the first 15 episodes of B5 and remember how the focus was Jeffery Sinclair's missing 24 hours and the reason the Minbari surrendered during the Battle of the Line? How much of that was really relevant to the subsequent years with the Shadow war?
Crusade was about the Shadow virus that would wipe out Earth in five years. By the end of the episodes made, the structure of the virus (nano-tech) was understood. I've read that the virus would be cured fairly early in the series.
There were also glimpses of what was to come - the Apolcalypse box - whatever that was, was a mystery waiting to be solved, and there was the revelation that Galen (the Technomage) has some sort of implants. The unfilmed episodes pushed the series up a gear with the revelation that the Technomages were being hunted by Earthforce for their tech.
The opening dialogue to each episode contained some stuff that was familiar, but other lines that would have probably been explored throughout the series:
Who are you? (Vorlon)
What do you want? (Shadow)
Where are you going? (Lorien?)
Who do you serve and who do you trust?
The last one being probably the most important. Crusade was much more than we ever saw and to see it killed before being aired is very sad. I, like many B5 fans, would love to see it return and hope that TMOS (The Memory Of Shadows) will be the catalyst for this.
Of course, Koenig is also about 70 now. He's young-looking, but with the rest of the original Trek players dying off in the last decade, he may not be around long
First of all he's only 68. Second the only regular from the Original series to die has been DeForest Kelly who was 84. James Doohan is sick, yes but he's also turning 85 years old this year.
What you say is true for most TV series that are seriel in nature, However they don't have to be. 24 is pretty good example of this. The first couple minutes of every show gives a quick run down of what important events have brought you to the current point in the show. I have introduced several friends into watching 24 becuase of this. They don't have to worry about what they missed, becuase the lead in brings them where they need to be for the current show. It's not perfect, but it is a lot better than having to tell someone, oh yeah, you should watch show XYZ, but I'll have to let you know when a good starting episode will be on, other wise you won't know where you are at.
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.
sportsdot
The slashcode sports site
Trekweb
Or maybe not.... :p
He says it's all moot now.
#define sig "Every social system runs on the people's belief in it."
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.""