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.

Comments

Great idea

[Fox_1]

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.

Re:Great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I think that cancellation threat was the real reason that everything got screwed up. He had the original idea that it should take 5 seasons (which is great, you make this story with a fixed duration, you can make things work out nicely) but had to rush everything to fit into 4 (which showed), then had to append an entire 5th season when the whole story had already been told.

The sad thing is that Enterprise got cancelled when they had found some kind of nice equilibrium, building depth into the very foundations of the Star Trek universe. It was nice to see the strife on Vulcan, and exploring the Andorian civilization. It would have been nice to see the establishment of the federation etc (the first two seasons with the temporal cold war theme were simply pathetic).

Still, JMS does excellent work if the networks don't keep changing the allotted time. I got hooked into Bab 5 right from the pilot movie as it clearly indicated that there was a complex story behind the scenes... and you could feel that it had an end. A series that is too open ended without an end in sight automatically builds inconsistencies.

Re:Great idea

[drsquare]

On the other hand, it makes it so that people who aren't obsessive TV viewers who religiously watch every single episode, all in order, can't get into it. If you sit down and watch a single episode, you won't understand it. That doesn't make it a better programme, it doesn't 'raise it to a higher level', it just narrows its appeal, and turns it more into a soap.

Re:Great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry but all of his projects were never allowed to see their end properly.

B5 was screwed with by the morons in the suits.

and Jeremiah was utterly destroyed by the idiots that run Showtime.

the first season had people rivited and giving up what they did on friday nights to watch it. The second season was finished but not with JMS's control and anyone can easily see that. He made it exactly like how the suits wanted it in the 2nd season and it sucked horribly because of it.

he did that because it was his proof to themthat the suits know absolutely nothing about Television and a good story. which is 100% true.

management will fuck up something good whenever they get the chance to.

JMS is a great storyteller, his book is a great insight into the PITA the industry is..

Re:Great idea

[JWW]

Deep Space 9 was forced to adopt story arcs because of pressure from Babylon 5.

It made DS9 far stronger a show than it would have been without the competition.

Now, with Enterprise, it looks different. Instead of stepping up to the plate and doing better, they're just packing up.

I see...

[Anonymous Coward]

...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.

Re:I see...

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not believe there is any need to "rest" Star Trek, I think what it needs is creative talent that can improve the quality of the episodes, and it needs a series that is set after the DS9 and Voyager. I think Enterprise was a bad idea, creating a series which is set long before the other star trek series, it allows for a lot of trouble with messing up the timelines, and takes away some of the value of moving the star trek timeline forward into the future, new territory, and instead must dwell within an already defined past timeline.

In a sci-fi series like Star Trek, accuracy in timelines, events, facts and detials is very important and errors in the timelines, which they seem to have a hard time avoiding in Enterprise since it occurs previous to the other series', can shake ones confidence in the series and introduce paradoxes which weaken the entire structure of the franchise.

A new series I believe as well should incorporate the exploration and discovery aspects of Star Trek, finding strange new worlds, new civilisations, strange distant reaches of the galaxy filled with odd pecularities and phenomena. Integrating a sort of mystery-genre aspect into many episodes where the crew encounter odd mysterious and wierd phenomena and discovering what they are can be quite fascinating. There are so many creative possibilities for plots that don't involve pure action and violence but offer a deep and involving plot line, with mysteries, strangeness, and oddities, that there is no reason Star Trek cannot be revived. Furthermore we do have today far more resources avialable than in the original series in creating compelling renderings of these strange worlds and different races and beings that werent avialable in the original star trek. While the series should be based on a ship, there should also be episodes allowing the viewer to see other parts of the federation, such as the crew visiting space docks, and federation planets. In addition to exploration and discovery of distant corners of the galaxy, it would also be nice to see in several episodes the ship visit several core federation planets which we seem to see little of, like Vulcan and Earth.

Forget Trek

[imag0]

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).

Go for it

[nuclear305]

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)

They lost it after DS9...

[bani]

..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.

Re:JMS - PLEASE READ THIS!

[Nogami_Saeko]

And more Walter Koenig :)

One of Trek's nicest guys played the B5 villain that everyone loved to hate! But I loved how JMS actually gave him a bit of a human side when you understood what made him the way he was...

Even villain need motives and factors that drive them - very few people are just inherently nasty for the sake of being mean :P

Re:Wrong department.

[Seumas]

I just think it's unfortunate that it turned out so bad. I like Scott Bakula and was thrilled that he was going to be the next Trek Captain. They squandered a potentially great character and actor on a poor iteration of a tired series. How you could have a show with someone that made Quantum Leap such a success for so long and turn it into absolute crap is beyond me. It's like being given the Dream Team and losing out to a sixth-grade play-ground team.

I only watched two episodes of the most recent series. I couldn't get past the stupid intro music. And the infatuation with the hot vulcan chick was juvinile and uninteresting.

I wasn't that interested in DS9, but from the few episodes I watched, it seemed far superior to Enterprise and Voyager. Voyager has to be the worst. Possibly even worse than the original Star Trek.

Then again, I'm just not a big fan of Star Trek. Or Star Wars. I like my sci-fi a little more X-Files, Farscape, Millenium, Red-Dwarf, Dr. Who, Blake's Seven, Outer Limits, Twilight Zone-ish... When it comes to television, at least.

Not to be a prick, but Star Trek always seemed like "sci fi" for the ditch digger, relaxing in his recliner and sweaty wife-beater, tossing back a beer. Sort of like checkers, instead of chess. TNG was unique, because the characters were typically very interesting and you cared about them. What other Trek characters since the Original are so widely known, besides TNG? That's also why Babylon 5 was so great. Aside from the wonderful story of self-sacrifice, hope and destiny - the characters were compelling.

If they could be civilians this time.

[b00le]

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.

Re:I am getting sick of this....

[Mordaximus]

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).

Actually, Ira Steven Behr and Michael Piller were also executive producers. However, I don't think that it's a coincidence that Deep Space 9 picked up steam around the time when Voyager was launched. Personally I suspect Ira Steven Behr had far more to do with the success of Deep Space 9 than Berman ; he likely got more control of the show as Berman turned his attention to Voyager.

That's not to say that I think Berman is solely, nor even mostly responsible for the downfall of the franchise : Check Brannon Braga's credits : He had his fingers in a great deal of the two worst Star Trek shows. And notably absent from my favorite trek, DS9.

Re:World Without Trek

[Teancum]

While I will beg to differ that the well has dried up for the Star Trek universe, I would have to agree that putting the series into hiatus would be a good idea.

When I hear director commentaries of Star Trek movies, or listen to actors make comments regarding their involvement with Star Trek, they seemingly have a universal theme: "I never saw Star Trek before I was hired by Paramount."

It makes me wonder about the writers as well. It is one thing to try and bring in some people from outside the Trekkies fan base to add some new and fresh ideas, but the near universality of the people producing and creating both the movies and the series doing it just as another job speaks volumes about how committed Paramount is to maintaining quality in the series.

Basically none.

One of the reasons why the Lord of the Rings was so absolutely fantastic was that the people involved with making those movies were some major fans of the work. Sure, a couple of actors may not have been as familiar with the story as die-hard fanatics, but with the rest of the production team really pulling to make it something special, those actors "caught the vision" and even added more to the passion to get it done.

I could even use the "Passion of the Christ" produced by Mel Gibson as an example of how somebody with in this case a deep religious conviction bringing something extra to the production that turned what could have been an ordinary movie into something extra ordinary.

I just don't see that kind of fire coming from Paramount these days. The attitude of William Shatner comments of "Get a Life" to fans is more typical. Star Trek has simply become a cash cow for studio executives, and they really don't care at all about the fan base other than trying to figure out how to get more money from what they percieve as a bunch of suckers. The Trek-based fan web pages legal mess is more proof of how stupid Paramount doesn't really know what they are doing other than trying to make a quick buck.

Expensive Props and Poor Writing

[bfline]

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.

Re:Great idea, Bad Implementation...

[cheesybagel]

The new Battlestar Galactica is good, but the plot doesn't match Babylon 5's by a long shot. Babylon 5 is an epic story. Battlestar Galactica attempts to be one, but at the same time we see characters doing erratic out of character things a lot of the time. There are many plot holes and inconsistencies.

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.

funny foreheaded aliens

[gobbo]

Great, one thing I appreciated about JMS was his resistance to the hollywood notion that aliens -- a whole galaxy of them -- are pretty much all white people with convoluted foreheads and a different arrangement of internal organs.

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.