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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.
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!
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 );
..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.
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.
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.
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 +++
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!
... 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.
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.
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!
Well, lets' see... Could the fact that QL was a formulaic remake of Highway to Heaven with smaller hair and some special effects be relevent here?
People involved in one crap series are often a good indicator that another will be crap IME.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
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!"
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.
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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...
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.
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.
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.
... 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.
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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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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.
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.
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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
Trekweb
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
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