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William Shatner Pitches 'Starfleet Academy' Show
Tycoon Guy writes "TrekToday reports that William Shatner recently pitched an 'Academy' show to Paramount. The series would feature teen versions of the Classic Star Trek characters Kirk, Spock and McCoy, and be set at Starfleet Academy. The studio turned Shatner down, but he's not letting go of the idea: Pocket Books has asked him to write a two-novel series based on the 'Starfleet Academy' concept. Also, Shatner apparently went over the head of Trek head honcho Rick Berman to pitch his idea straight to the head of Paramount - maybe after Enterprise ends and Berman leaves the franchise, the studio will be more inclined to listen to Shatner?"
Beer me up Scotty!
I wonder if Shatner will use the same ghost writer this time?
Um.. I read this and immediately had a disturbing vision
The series would feature teen versions of the Classic Star Trek characters Kirk, Spock and McCoy, and be set at Starfleet Academy.
Ah, not what I thought, but not exactly a thrilling concept.
The studio turned Shatner down, but he's not letting go of the idea: Pocket Books has asked him to write a two-novel series based on the 'Starfleet Academy' concept. Also, Shatner apparently went over the head of Trek head honcho Rick Berman to pitch his idea straight to the head of Paramount - maybe after Enterprise ends and Berman leaves the franchise, the studio will be more inclined to listen to Shatner?"
Maybe if he pitched it as a reality show, a la The Apprentice. That might be entertaining...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
That has to be the worst idea I've ever heard.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Just let Kirk die already!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
You gotta give Shatner credit for totally dissing Berman like that. :-)
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
"They're tiny, they're toony,
they're all a little loony"
I think Shatner is by far, by far, my favorite Trekker. He's got a sense of humor about himself and his work, yet he's not even remotely afraid to take chances.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
The OC meets Star Trek. May God save us from such garbage.
(Its not like the women's starfleet uniforms are all that revealing anyways)
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Which one of them will be doing all of the crazy sound effects? And what about the crazy gun nut? "Tackleberry!"
On a more sobering note, I find it deeply disturbing that I was able to remember this much about Police Academy, at a moment's notice.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
I think, as sad as it might be, that StarTrek has really come to an end. It has had a good 50 some odd years of episodes. Let it die with at least some dignity.
...the idea would be better served in the pre/post TNG/DS9 time frame and with new characters....perhaps with camio here or there from the established charaters.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
This is a horrible idea. Just what would be needed to completely kill off the franchise. How about a whole show full of Wesley Crusher teen angst in a Federation uniform.
Visually it would be hard to jive with the old series, and having actors who are trying to potray the old characters might lead to pure campiness.
Ok so now everyone can tell how it would be great if they did it right - but come on people, you KNOW they wouldn't do it right.
I'm just hoping whatever new series comes out has Shatner singing the theme song. Hell, just have him sing the lyrics to the orignal theme from the '60s series.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
I'm surprised Paramount turned this down. Sure, it'll be 90210 set in space, and it will be crap to Trekkies. However this is the exact type of teenage soap opera drama they run on UPN all the time.
I think it'd be hilarious. Let's get a bunch of Star Trek addicted weirdos together in a trailer home or something like that and watch them interact and stuff. I think it'd be utterly memorable and hilarious. And when they start speaking in Klingon, there could always be subtitles right?
Frat parties with green slave girls and rumulan ale.
All these new teen shows on the alternative networks are the big ratings getters because of 'teen girls'. Purely a niche play.
I think he is putting money before the vision of Rodenberry.
Maybe he will have a ton of models be the crew. Should get good ratings for a while until teen girls viewers get bored by scifi which takes about a year for these demographic shows.
Instead, why not do it with new characters? The only problem there is getting all the horrible "Next Generation" style moralizing out of it and keeping every character from being a different version of Wesley Crusher (jock Wesley, flirt Wesley, misunderstood loner Wesley, etc.) Hell, if you did it right, you could even bring back Wesley as an Academy instructor... why not?
Not sure I'd actually watch such a show, mind you, but it certainly doesn't sound any worse than the crap that's been passing for Star Trek in recent years.
Breakfast served all day!
Also, Shatner apparently went over the head of Trek head honcho Rick Berman to pitch his idea straight to the head of Paramount
Dark Helmet: You went over my helmet!!!!!
While top officials at Paramount were unavailable for comment at press time, William Shatner has released this official statement in regards to Paramount's dismissal of his show concept:
"KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN"
What about the twinkie? - Dr. Peter Venkman, PHD
I heard that one of the futuristic features of the Starfleet Academy was that you could name your own price for tuition.
Read any good sonnets lately?
I can't get behind that.
Skip the Kirk/Spock tie-in and stick with the major premise:
There are a number of coming-of-age shows on TV right now that are well accepted (if not well done). Hospital shows about young doctors in training, for example. So long as it is more like a military academy drama setting sans the militaristic feel, and not like "Police Academy", I think it could fly.
-- Scott
It's like Muppet Babies. Only preachy and more farfetched.
Promote civility: mod down any post starting with 'ummm'.
Do NOT do a prequel to the TOS cast. If enterprise has taught us anything, it's that trying to write history to canon is full of pitfalls, and the nerds will never forgive even the smallest of errors. You'll also run into the problem that people had with enterprise in that the technology looked more advanced than TOS, simple because computer graphics were more advanced.
Also, it's a bit of a stretch to presume that all the TOS cast would be at the academy together. Kirk and Spock maybe, but all the junior officers are much younger than Kirk, Spock, and Bones (McCoy would have been at starfleet medical anyway).
An awesome show would be an academy show during the dominion war of an unknown group of cadets. So rather than being a futuristic "Saved by the Bell", you can follow these cadets in some of the extended duties they would have had to undertake during the war. We could even see how the attack on Starfleet Headquarters happened, since we only saw the aftermath in DS9.
The only idea I would be at least interested to see is maybe a Romulan based show. As far as major races, they are one of the few that have not actually been explored extensively. You could still have the flavor of ST with meetings with Starfleet and all that but the other side of the story. Of course it doesn't have to be Romulan. Just any other storyline. How many ways can we depict how wonderfully perfect the Human race is (/sarcasm off)
Considering the vast age differences and career paths (before joining on the Enterprise) between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, I seriously doubt they were in Starfleet Academy at the same time.
Also, I would think that Starfleet Academy would be like other military academies, which means most of the student population would not be teenagers, but that's just a nit.
I do believe, however, that this would make a great replacement show for Smallville, once that gets cancelled.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Must......study for.......midterm.
KHAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!
quote "Presumably, the Reeves-Stevenses are again co-writing these novels with Shatner."
:)
hum... interesting ain't it
...would see the casts of cancelled shows (both past and present) battling it out to win a new show with Paramount. ... in some foreign US-hating country like Iraq or N Korea (US-hating Europe would be exempt but UK's Manchester would not because they have guns). The show would then spawn multiple spin-offs following the fortunes and hilarious misfortunes of the various expelled casts as they struggle with the lack lustre material, lazy stage hands, and random assasination squads. Yes, I did say random.
Enterprise vs. TOS vs. B5 vs. etc; with a special bye for Futurama - naturally the whole thing would be rigged in favour of Futurama because we all know cartoons are so much better than real-actors.
The end of each show would see a team eliminated and sent to a community theatre for a year to act out classic plays such as Death of a Salesman or classic TV series such as Magnum and Tour of Duty
As an added bonus each cast memeber who ever tried to resurrect their original TV show will be required to accompany the local US ambassador where ever s/he goes but without a bullet proof vest.
It would be very funny and allow us to let go of cancelled TV shows that should be treated like sleeping dogs and stop old actors from trying to resurrect old TV shows.
I say this having just recovered from the first Ep. of the new Dr Who (I knew Billy Piper liked older men but this is getting ricockulous).
Go watch Boston Legal sometime. Shatner rocks in it.
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
O.K. I suck...but I want to see this show. Uhura in tight, booty-showing capri-pants. Nurse Chambers when she was just plain old Betty. Yum..
No...it's okay...I wasn't using my Civil Liberties anyway
I personally think that J. Michael Straczynski should have a go, he pulled off B5 on a shoestring. See his comments here http://www.joeuser.com/Forums.aspx?ForumID=10&AID= 65211. Imagine what he could do with Paramounts financing and marketing muscle.
Like wise I would like to see Jose Whedon thoughts and Quentin Tarantino's ideas. Even Jonathan Frakes has demonstrated enough talent as a director and producer with Roswell to put together a good team.
Teen versions of McCoy and Kirk? Aren't their characters like, 20 years apart in age?
Now, I don't know the details, but isn't Spock like, older than all of those (using the "every race is longer lived and better than humans" rule that applied to all sci-fi fantasy since forever, especially those with pointy ears)?
Get around that crap, and the idea is actually pretty cool. Well, I think so. More tech gadgets, little to no combat, all people stories...
Or maybe we'd just watch as the group bravely runs around to bars after school hours, attempting to bravely go where no man has gone before...
I think Shatner is by far, by far, my favorite Trekker. He's got a sense of humor about himself and his work, yet he's not even remotely afraid to take chances.
Really, I think that's a bit shortsighted. Shatner has only become that way in the last decade or so. Prior to that, he's tried to distance himself from the Trek fans as much as possible. Compared to how much he has benefited from Trek fandom, Shatner has given very little back. Contrast this with George Takei, Deforest Kelly, or Jimmy Doohan who have always been big supporters of Trek fandom. In a previous message, I talked about how Jimmy Doohan took it upon himself to use his fame to help a single fan back to health. Shatner would never do anything like this -- then or now. I'll admit that Shatner is likeable but that's been a recent thing. Read Takei's book sometime and listen to the shit that Shatner used to do. Shatner didn't even show up at Roddenberry's funeral, for chrissake!
You're entitled to your opinion but I'm baffled how you can consider him a Trekker at all, let alone your favorite.
GMD
watch this
"I could care less about what happened BEFORE"
:)
Who cares what you want, I wanna see the Earth-Romulus War already! I wanna see the humans take all their anti-Vulcan aggression out on the other green-blooded, pointy-ear bastards!
In the episode where the Romulans were first introduced in TOS, they show a map of the Neutral Zone and it has Romulus on it, and yet Earth is nowhere on the map, as if the Neutral Zone is a whole lot closer to Romulus than it is to Earth. I wanna see that happen.
"give me BORG again."
God... why not ask for more Janeway while you're at it? The Borg were introduced as a whim to make a particular Q episode a little more interesting, and now the dead horse has been beaten for the better part of a decade. They can't even stay consistent for three seconds. How do you resolve the whole lustful Borg Queen with the way the Borg were originally portrayed, for example? They're supposed to be Daleks on legs, not the latest pin-up of the month!
they're all a little loony" And Sunday afternoony,
We're invading UPN!
Rick Berman's adventures,
Complying with the censors,
With schedule misadventures,
It's Starfleet Academy!
So here's UPN, where crappy bling bling makes for art,
Black sitcoms and reality shows - it's like FOX, but dark!
We're spitting invective, the phasers are defective,
The franchise isn't dead, Jim, but it's lost. it's. heart.
(Kirk's toupee's from Wal-mart.)
It's dead, Jim.
Really. It'd be interesting to see a non-federation ship as the primary vessel. Better yet, make it a klingon mercenary ship to give them more plot oppertunities. Less goodie goodie prime directive, more honor.
Lets just let the whole thing be done and do something new. The problem with the trek universe is the TREK UNIVERSE every time someone tries to do something new it conflicts with the history or the prime directive or what someone thinks aught to be done. I say start fresh and different.
You can legislate morally you can't legislate morality
One of my favorite Star Trek books, called The Kobayashi Maru, involved several of the main characters re-telling stories of their academy days. It is really a compelling little book and extremely well written.
Several of the stories focus on the Kobayashi Maru doomsday scenario that's referenced in one of the Star Trek movies, but several deal with other aspects of a Star Fleet Academy education.
If Shatner had this type of material in in mind then the project might actually be worth while. Anyway, it's a great read for any Star Trek fan -- the author really captures each character's own nuances.
Just remember, it can't be any worse than the first (and for me, last) episode of Enterprise.
"Now that, my friend, is a rabbit. Denny Crane."
If I weren't already a human being, that show would make me want to go out and sign up for lawyering school.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I used to hate Superman. I liked Batman and human superheros better. What kind of a turtured soul can you have when you can't even be hurt? How about being uncorrupted by ultimate power? No, Smallville gets it right. Internal conflict between a evil destiny and being raised with a apple pie morality. Good stuff. It also helps explain his relationship with Lex Luthor.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
maybe the show will finally explain how he got that speech im[sleep(3)][2x fast]pediment
That said, I can't rule out the possibility that Shatner's concept might result in something worth watching. I'm not a fan of teen angst shows, which is another genre that's been done to death. But all genres you see on TV -- cop shows, medical shows, workplace comedies, household comedies -- have been done to death. TV doesn't have the courage to try anything really new. But if you get the right combination of good writing and good acting, you can actually do something good with even the most cliched material. As every Buffy fan knows.
Much as I'd like to see Star Trek just disappear and be replaced by something really original, I know that's not going to happen. Next best is to have Berman and his hack stories retired, replaced by somebody with some actual creativity. Which person is certainly not Joseph Michael Straczynski; aside from having too many names, he's even more of a cliche-monger than Berman.
William Shatner might not seem any better, since his occasional attempts at writing have been truely pathetic. But at least he knows that he's a bad writer, and knows how to hire good ones. And he seems to have some sense where the Trek franchise has gone wrong -- more so than anybody else connected with it.
Did Shatner play him or something in an obscure show and it's an "in" thing to bring it up? Kind of like bringing up Cat from Zero Wing?
I mean, come on! Shatner will always be known for one character and one character only: Denny Crane!
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
The only issue is that it has to be story with a clear beginning and a clear end. Just like a novel.
The problem is that Hollywood isn't interested in that format for TV. They want it episodic so there's always room to wiggle and try to squeeze more money out of it.
Think of it as filming a movie, in 26 blocks.
Just found this: An endless loop of Shatner shouting you-know-what.
Just open it up in a separate window and let it play in the background all day long.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
If Shatner's efforts at Star Trek V are any indication, he should stay far, far away from the creative process of any show.
Here is Shatner's monologue from the Just for Laughs festival in 2000. It is a parody of a famous Canadian beer commercial.
You sly dog: you got me monologuing! - Syndrome
The Borg were introduced as a whim to make a particular Q episode a little more interesting
Actually, no. The Borg were supposed to be the end-of-season villian for ST:TNG season 2. If you remember the (second to last?) episode of that season, the Enterprise and the Romulan were investigating planets along the Neutral Zone that had been destroyed. The last episode was supposed to be Best of Both Worlds, but the show ran out of money. As a result, we got that stupid flashback episode instead and BoBW waited until the end of Season 3.
What I really want to know is, what happened to the little bugs-in-the-ear from the Season 1 finale?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Star Trek is a very large body of work encompassing many years, many cultures, and many interesting locales. Like Stargate, it's a framework that allows a writer to do whatever he wants.
Personally, I think the Star Trek still has a lot of potential left in it, but it's the writers, the actors, the directors, and the producers of any given project who will determine whether a new franchise is worth anything.
Sometimes that mixture has to age a bit before it matures enough for all of those ingredients to start working together. Star Trek TNG was embarrasingly overacted and rough in its first few episodes, perhaps even the first season or two -- but it eventually grew to be a favorite of mine. Enterprise was decent entertainment, and was getting better. I didn't like Kate Mulgrew, so I couldn't enjoy V-ger. DS9 was too political for me, but from all accounts it also matured with age and became something worth watching. However, the Trek movies are an exercise in nostalgia and CGI, and I despise them for their cheap tricks and bland plots. Although I really didn't care for the TOS-cast movies when they came out, they at least had character and substantial plot. The TNG-cast movies just seem to be blah excuses for a lot of CGI and routine plots.
I think a Starfleet Academy could be a great series if done well. It all depends on how the casting, writing, directing, etc work out. I don't think it's a good idea to feature the big characters from ST:TOS, however. Perhaps their younger selves, maybe even via CGI, can be featured in cameos or whatnot. If they went back and tried to put Kirk and Spock as major characters in a new series, it would be an exercise in nostalgic masturbation.
Walter Koenig did a bangup job as Bester on Babylon 5. Completely convincing, completely unlike Chekov.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
...anthalogy series? In spite of the bastardization that Berman has made out of the Trek universe in recent years, I've always thought that the vast number of races and cultures touched upon during the TNG and DS9 years was enough "canon" fodder to last a lifetime of story-telling. So... Why not an anthology series, where the characters are never the same twice. (Think Twilight Zone or Outer Limits, only in Trek-space.) Each episode would tell a small story set somewhere -- hell, ANYwhere -- in the Trek universe, even at different time periods. The four-years war with the Romulans; the humanoid-possessing insectoids from the "Conspiracy" TNG episode (unfinished story!); what *really* happened to Guinen's race when the Borg attacked, and how'd she escape death/assimilation; hell, the potential war stories that could be told about the Cardassian occupation of Bajor are in themselves limitless -- think WWII mini-epics (Bajoran Dirty Dozen?? :)
I've always believed that there are far too many rich ideas in Trek to focus on just one ship or crew. Time to let the idea floodgates open...