Star Trek XI In Two To Three Years.

Tycoon Guy writes "It seems rumors of the franchise's demise were greatly exaggerated. TrekToday reports that according to Trek head honcho Rick Berman, a new film might come sooner than you think: 'If it gets done in two years or three years I think that timeframe for a new, fresh feature with a whole different outlook would be fine.' He's previously said that the film will feature a whole new cast and ship; it's being written by Band of Brothers screenwriter Erik Jendresen."

Comments

Divided expectations

[Odo]

> He's previously said that the film will feature a whole new cast and ship;

That has the potential to be very good. The writers would have the freedom to kill off or transform any crew members they wish, not just the ones wearing red shirts. With everyone and everything (including the ship) potentially expendable, it could be a wild ride with lots of plot reversals.

It also has the potential to be very bad. Many viewers don't realise how much the regular Trek actors influence the show by keeping an independent reality check on their characters. Multi-season arcs in TNG were actually actor driven (like Troi quietly disliking Worf for most of the show).

So while it might be a great movie, it might be Trek only in name. We'll have to wait and see. Too bad it will be an odd number movie.

Re:Divided expectations

[thryllkill]

"With everyone and everything (including the ship) potentially expendable"

For a while there it looked to me like they were just blowing up enterprises left and right.

Re:Divided expectations

[dgatwood]

Every time Deanna took command....

(*mutters something about the car insurance industry having it exactly backwards....*)

Re:Divided expectations

[Malfourmed]

Worf and Troi got together in season seven.

Some years earlier Michael Dorn and Marina Sirtis postulated some friction between the two characters that they played out for a while (between the lines) as a result of Worf advocating the forced abortion of Troi's unborn child in the beginning of season two, in the episode appropriately called "The Child". (Which was, as it so happens, a story recycled from thea aborted - no pun intended - Star Trek Phase II series from the 70s.)

There was a scene later in the series where they decided the two reconciled, but I can't remember which one that was.

My geek got outed a long time ago... :(

Re:Divided expectations

[SeventyBang]

If James Kirk isn't in it, perhaps another cast member could wear Bill's rug so there would at least be a cameo appearance of him on the screen.

Re:Divided expectations

[operagost]

That's post-hoc reasoning buddy. She was the only one left to command BECAUSE the universe collapsed!

3 years sounds good.

[Leroy_Brown242]

Well, maybe the film will do well if it takes 3 years to get it up on the screen.

The best thing that could happen for the StarTrek franchise, is to starv the world of ST stuff for a while.

Re:3 years sounds good.

[ciroknight]

Worked for Star Wars.

Tell a great story, but leave it wholy unfinished, sit back on it for a good 20 years, and then decide the technology is there to finish it. Make billions.

For Star Trek, I believe it will help to give it some time, but it's more risky. The public expects so much already, and a pause in the franchise may bring people into thinking it was a sellout.

Besides, they have great grounds for more movies. Star Trek has much more unexplored space than Star Wars in my opinion (Star Wars tends to be a linear story, whereas Star Trek is a story following small subsets of the universe at a time; you could have a Star Trek completely without humans if you'd like), and I think they should be exploiting that advantage.

Berman?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm already scraping up $20 for the effort to save this movie.

Band of Brothers

[Misanthrope]

"Band of Brothers screenwriter Erik Jendresen"
Hrm, perhaps I'll go and see this if I get to watch Picard kill some Nazis while dodging machine gun fire. On a more serious note, exactly which cast/era will the movie feature?

Re:Band of Brothers

[schizm]

Hrm, I'd be interested to see them do a young Picard...we saw that he was a bit of a hellion when he was young, ie getting his heart stabbed through in a bar fight, and didn't he have a move named after him for doing something brilliant in battle?

Explore his younger, more reckless days, when he was more of the Kirk type.

Re:Band of Brothers

[MagicDude]

The picard manuver came from when he was captain of the Stargazer. It happened such that the stargazer was about 30 light-seconds away from a Ferengi ship. So whatever image the ferengi had was 30 seconds old. Picard used this time discrepency to make a warp 9 jump right next to the ferengi ship. Thus, the ferengi saw the 30 second old image of the stargazer from it's initial position and from the Stargazer's actual position right next to the Ferengi ship. The Ferengi thus saw two ships on their sensors and were unprepared for the possibility of having to face two starships. In this moment of confusion, the stargazer was able to open fire into the unprepared Ferengi vessel.

Did you know...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, Dead Horse beats you!!

Show us more

[Y-Crate]

One thing I noticed about the Trek movies is that the ones that really made you feel as if there was this huge universe out there around the characters brought in the most money at the box office. The size of the canvas seemed to be proportional to the size of the returns.

The problem with movies like Insurrection and Nemesis - to name a few - was that in the end it was one ship vs one ship and the whole feeling of this bustling galaxy filled with all sorts of different characters was gone. Sure, the Enterprise alone verses the Scimitar was pretty cool, but the whole movie never developed that sense of grand adventure that The Wrath Of Kahn (which mixed the isolation of the Enterprise in latter parts with a much wider view of things early on), First Contact or The Undiscovered Country had. The scope of the universe seemed to be scaled-down to TNG-episode proportions. Insurrection was arguably the worst at this - the whole thing felt like a 2 part TNG from one of the latter seasons.

Re:Show us more

[MemoryDragon]

Actually insurrection just was awful because the plot was more or less lousy to the extrem (although the main acress was a cutie and also quite good at acting) Nemesis just was plain awful. I fell from my chair when the main villain suddenly appeared as a Dr. Evil ripoff, the acting was awful (Stewards being the exception), the plot basically dumped the entire non interference directive into the garbage bin the first five minutes and overall it was just a lousy copy of Wrath of Khan, which is a shame in itself. Khan replaced by Dr. Evil and beings an evil race copycatted by Nosferatu and a plot copycatted by Wrath of Khan. The whole movie basically sounded like, we dont can think of anything new, but wanna milk the cash cow and it also feeled like it.

Re:Show us more

[kylemonger]

The flip side of your argument is that the writers have to be able to maintain a complicated universe and keep it reasonably consistent. Look at everyone's favorite Trek movie, The Wrath of Khan: In it the writers introduced an unstoppable weapon, the Genesis torpedo. This was a weapon which, much like the Death Star, would make war obsolete. Despite all the subsequent wars with the Borg, Klingons, Cardassians, etc. we never saw the Genesis torpedo again.

And that's not all. Whatever happened to TNG's metaphasic shielding, which swould let you safely fly right into the sun? What happened to the finding that warp drive destroyed the fabric of space and would make subsequent space travel hazardous? What happened to that soliton wave technology that was supposed to replace warp drive but would have made a dandy weapon? On two or three occasions we've seen technology that could destabilize stars! I've lost count of the number of near omnipotent races the Federation has run into--- lessee, the Metroids, the Organians, Trellane's parents, Charlie X's guardians, the spinning ball of that loved anguish, V'ger, Q's people, the Doud, the Traveler, the Cythereans... what about them?

Who could write sensible stories with all these technologies and gods and societies interacting? It's a mess and it all just needs to be put to rest.

Re:Show us more

[geminidomino]

the Metroids...

I think I'm glad that I missed that particular episode.

"Captain, it appears that the indiginous creature of SR-388 is feeding off of the neuro-electrical energy of Commander Riker."

"Data, shut up and get an ice beam!!"

Re:Show us more

[Bongo]

Whatever happened to TNG's metaphasic shielding, which swould let you safely fly right into the sun? What happened to the finding that warp drive destroyed the fabric of space and would make subsequent space travel hazardous? What happened to that soliton wave technology that was supposed to replace warp drive but would have made a dandy weapon? On two or three occasions we've seen technology that could destabilize stars! I've lost count of the number of near omnipotent races the Federation has run into--- lessee, the Metroids, the Organians, Trellane's parents, Charlie X's guardians, the spinning ball of that loved anguish, V'ger, Q's people, the Doud, the Traveler, the Cythereans... what about them?

Who could write sensible stories with all these technologies and gods and societies interacting? It's a mess and it all just needs to be put to rest.

Amen.

I prefer and admire a sci-fi show where the universe is fantastic but consistent. For me that's what puts the "science" into the "fiction". Otherwise it becomes arbitrary and fairy-magic like; stuff just happens because it's in the script.

My main gripe about Space 1999 was the way the moon travelled, nay, drifted dozens of lightyears between episodes. But one of the things I loved most about it was the design of the Eagles; everything looked like it was there for a reason. It was so well done as a ship that you can actually spot the one mistake, which is that the command module's floor is higher when viewing the model from the outside, but appears level in interior shots. But again, the fact that you can build the model and spot the discrepancy is just great.

My favorite to date in terms of creating a consistent multi-layered universe is Babylon 5. Ok, ok, it has it's dire aspects--long meaningful speeches in lifts about generals who wanted to be painters--but the universe had rules and if you blew up a jump gate then that had specific tactical implications.

The same bits of alien tech kept coming back in different stories for different purposes. Just like in the real world, someone could discover an ancient artifact, start to exploit it causing curious ethical issues, and factions would later find out about it and try to weaponise it, which could happen in secret until it was discovered via another plot line by different characters. All that could happen over the period of months.

B5 even managed to include telepathic powers as a specific ability while keeping specific boundaries on what telepaths were able to do without it getting too magical and arbitrary. Rather, they added a social and political dimension to it so it actually became an important part of the B5 universe.

In contrast, one of the most annoying aspects of Trek is the abuse of so called "time travel stories". Putting aside that philosophically I don't see how time travel is possible--there's no timeline anyhow, it's just an ever-changing present--and putting aside the questions about, well, if you can travel in time, how come you appear to be so limited and dumb in what you accomplish Mr. 28th Century man?--putting aside those two issues--the stories just end up feeling really hollow and sickly.

Re:Show us more

[RubberDogBone]

That's because they got in a rut of inventing the "gadget of the week" for every episode and that, in my opinion, is one of the weakest parts of TNG.

When faced with some horrible challenge or new enemy, they would suddenly whip out -no, not a penis- but some new gadget that they suddenly invented just that second, which happened to be EXACTLY the gadget they needed! Wouldn't you know it had been sitting here all along!?

Once, OK. Twice, eh. But over and over and over? Suuure.

The A-Team did similar things but sort of got by because at least they attempted to show the team MAKING the device. TNG just opened a damn box as if they ordered it via UPS.

Worse, having come up with supergadget of the week, they use it and throw it away never to be seen again. It's a sign of weak writers stuck for a fancy, flashy gimmick, and weak producers who allow or promote this sort of thing.

As for the super-enemies who could wipe out the Federation just as soon as sneeze, well, yeah, there are too many of them too and funny how they don't seem to fight with each other much less even know about each other. With as many super-powerful races running around (considering how many they find), you'd think these superraces would eventually go to war against each other.

Might make for an interesting story -perhaps they have done this, I'm not as big on ST lore as some- and reduce the superrace overpopulation a bit.

Not that I want to give Berman ANY ideas. Firing his butt should be step one, IMO.

Yikes!

[dgatwood]

Okay... the first post was on-topic... and a Star Trek movie that won't retread the same characters as a prior series? Hmm. Next you're going to tell me that... nope, it's 51 degrees in Hell, MI. Oh, well. Guess that girl who said she would go out with me when Hell froze over has a reprieve....

Philosopher's Axe

[CleverNickedName]

So if they change all the actors, the writers and the style of the show, is it still Star Trek?
Sure, it'll have some of the same races and politics, but these are only ever used as plot devices.

Personally, I'm happy as long as it's well written. If labelling a new show "Star Trek" is what it takes to get it on the TV, then go right ahead. Just make sure it's good enough to stay there.

Space the final frontier

[el_womble]

where all men have been before (and bought the t-shirt).

Please, Mr. Berman. Please get this one right. I really, really miss loving Star Trek. Star Trek is not not just about emotionless women in tight clothes... it just helps.

Bring back Kirk!!!

[John Seminal]

He's previously said that the film will feature a whole new cast and ship

I don't want new characters and a new ship for a MOVIE. That would be okay for a tv show, where we have years to get to know the crew.

Bring back Kirk. Find some way to incorporate him in the story.

Here is a free story to use for the movie. The Borg are attacking, in the most massive invasion ever. Kirk is retired, but is called back to help set a defesne gird. Hey, Kirk will be old enough for the timeline to work. Maybe while kirk was retired he was a police officer, so they can have him in his T.J. Hooker uniform and work Heather Locklear into the storyline. How cool would that be, to have Kirk on the bridge of the Enterprise dressed as TJ Hooker, with Locklear next to him.

Janeway races back from the future, where the Borg came from. Along with Janeway is the defiant, commanded by Picard and Dr. Crusher. This could provide good romance between two very sexy actors. I have had the hots for Dr. Crusher for years.

The excitement would not come from the Borg attack, but watching the crews work together to form a defense.

And I would not mind seeing a couple of birds of prey get in the storyline.

Or, I GOT IT!!! What was the species in A Year of Hell that destroyed the voyager? Maybe they find their way to earth??

The possibilities are endless, but Kirk must be involved. Kirk IS Star Trek. Nobody can take his place.

Re:Bring back Kirk!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot editors... if you have any shred of decency or humanity, find a way to delete this post before Rick Berman discovers it.

You ought to be ashamed...

Re:Bring back Kirk!!!

[John Seminal]

Yeah, because Kirk has so great experience with the Borg.

Most people who had experiance with the Borg are all Borg. ;)

Kirk is quick thinking on his feet. That is far more valuable to the defense.

Plus, you know there will be an order from Kirk that is not standard, there will be a clash. Someone will challenge Kirks ideas or orders. And Kirk will show why he is a stud. :)

Second star to the right, and straight on til dawn.

Re:Bring back Kirk!!!

[Dancin_Santa]

Janeway is a hottie. You can bet she could captain my Voyager inside her delta quadrant, if you catch my drift.

Re:Didn't DeForrest Kelly die about 10 years ago?

[ciroknight]

I think you're one of the few traditionalists left, but I think the time for the traditionalists in Star Trek has left. With Enterprise, we went back to the very beginning of warp travel of us humans, making a story line fully incomplete from that point, to the point of the first Enterprise's mission into deep space.

Personally, I want to know more about where it all began; they have so much technology in the future that, while we have basis for it, it's so far beyond tracing back to something we have now, that we just have to accept it as fact, and move on. Things like the transport system, the Enterprise's energy systems, etc. etc. All we need is a movie in that time period to answer some of those questions, in my opinion.

The best Star Trek movies were even numbered.

[John Seminal]

One thing I noticed about the Trek movies is that the ones that really made you feel as if there was this huge universe out there around the characters brought in the most money at the box office. The size of the canvas seemed to be proportional to the size of the returns.

The best Star Trek movies were even numbered.

Star Trek II, was there a better villan than KHANN!!!!

Star Trek III, the search for spock kinda sucked.

Star Trek IV, was okay

The best one was the Undiscovered Country. I liked the interaction of the Klingons. It was one of the best movies, I loved the shakespear quotes. Once again dear friends, into the breach!

And is it just me, or have the Klingons gone from glorious warriors to whimps?? They used to be super strong, with ships designed for WAR. Yet they seem so weak. They are weaker than the Borg by a ton, they are weaker than most Enertrpise ships which are made to explore.

Re:The best Star Trek movies were even numbered.

[John Seminal]

Of course, the fact that they've been allies with the Federation for so long hasn't helped their image either. They've grown more and more tolerant with letting the Federation dictate their policy, when Klingon common sense would've advocated no less than mass invasion of anyone that dared to mess with them.

I can't help but think, if the producers made a series before TNG, but after TOS, it would be perfect. The Klingons would be the major power and threat to the federation. There could be some very good episodes. Back when a Bird of Prey was a monsterous power, and the Federation was scared to death of cloaking.

Whoppie Goldberg

[John Seminal]

One character that is Star Trek, in any time line would be Whoppie. She was on earth at the time of Samuel Clemens, and in the future with Picard. Whatever timeline they pick, I bet they could get her involved. Her species lives for how many years? Over 500??

Re:Episode 11?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd think by now they'd be counting by 2's.

Re:without Data its gonna suck

[roseblood]

Wasn't there an episode of Star Trek where Picards ship gets caught in a time rift, and they see an older version of their own ship. Tasha goes off to fight and die with that crew.

That'd be YESTERDAY'S ENTERPRISE. The NCC1701-C shows up through the tme rift. Because it wasn't getting blown up defending a Klingon instilation the Federation and Klingons end up at war in the altered present. Tasha Yar never died in this timeline, so she's still security officer, and Worf never joined starfleet. Guinan being the odd creature she is can feel things are screwy, and prompts Piccard to get things back to where they belong.

Long story short, Yar realizes she's not meant to live, jumps onto the ENT-C, and fights on the doomed ship to try and saved a doomed Klingon outpost.

The ENT-C is destroyed, of course, Tasha is taken as a POW. She gives birth to a half-human half-romulan, and gives the ENT-D crew one hell of a suprize when her daughter shows up commanding a Romulan fleet that's trying to start a Klingon civil war. Guinan again feels something fishy, and tells Picard about it. The episode ends with Data violating a direct order and saving the day.

You know...the NCC-1701C could make for a good movie or two.

Re:without Data its gonna suck

[EdipisReks]

Wasn't there an episode of Star Trek where Picards ship gets caught in a time rift, and they see an older version of their own ship. Tasha goes off to fight and die with that crew.

it was the other way around, the Enterprise-C came through a time rift while defending the Klingon colony of Nerendra III from the Romulans. The Enterprise-C going through the rift altered the "real" present, and without the heroics of the Enterprise-C to bond the Federation with the Klingons, the Klingons fought a bloody war with Starfleet. The Tasha Yar of the alternate timeline stayed with the Enterprise-C when it was found out, and this alternate Tasha became the mother of the "real" Sela, the Romulan bitch. the episode was Yesterday's Enterprise, and i think it was one of the best TNG episodes aired.

It will definitely feature...

[McSnarf]

...scantily clad, hot babes as star fleet officers. The progressive within all the different incarnations of Star Trek so far is obvious - and Berman seems to understand one thing : Sex sells! Will ST:XXV finally claim : "Nude Vulcan babe Mud Wrestling!" ?

My new jihad...

[edunbar93]

It seems rumors of the franchise's demise were greatly exaggerated!

Honestly, I think it's high time that someone made that demise come about, whether by natural causes or not...

Re: Star Trek IX - The Wrath Of Kirk

[AliasMoze]

I should be cast in the new movie as a vulcan. But not just a regular, boring vulcan. I'd be the illogical vulcan. Just a crazy, kooky guy who goes against the grain. I'd even question authority, answering to orders like, "Fire when they drop their cloak? Why don't you wake me up when that happens, Gov." For fun, I'd record the embarrassing things officers do in the holodeck and then play them for everyone in the cafeteria. I'm telling you, I could put some life back into "Star Trek". I'd even be willing to learn acting.

new series concept

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's my thoughts for the future of star trek:

Needs a bigger budget than TV can provide, so move it to cable, specifically to HBO. Add some adult oriented content, since its now on cable. Sorry 13 year olds, Star Trek is now for adults only. This will allow a wider demographic to like the show (some women will watch it with their men, hopefully).

Make it a fleet of ships, possibly half of them Federation, the other half Klingon. We've had series with single ships, and a series with a space station, but never a series with a fleet of ships on a long multi-year journey thru an uncharted area of space.

Involve the Klingon religion. Kahless (spelling?) and others are given visions in the beginning episodes, but we are not told exactly what they are. The Federation and the Klingons get together and discuss the visions that so many of their people are reporting. They decide to follow the instructions, and gather a fleet and set off on the journey.

The overall plot needs to be kept secret until the last season.

One of the ships should be a civilian fast luxury cruiser, built with a Federation loan in return for Federation use of the ship during times of war. The series should begin at the end of the Dominion war. This ship has better holodecks, and lots of drama episodes can occur on this ship.

The Admiral that was arrested by Picard for developing the Phased cloak is a part of the crew, along with some of his scientists. They are all given visions.

A few drug addicts, and other convicts are also a part of the series since its now on cable and we can have some more adult content, including sex and nudity and graphic violence. In the 24th century poverty and hunger are wiped out, but the war on drugs continues.

Lots of teraforming equipment, anti-matter, and industrial replicators are to be included (per the visions). Along with orbital defences, and some other expenisive stuff. Before the fleet launches, lots of political arguments occur because of the cost. ("were spending all this money after a devastating war, because of visions!?!?")

When they finally arrive at the destination, only half the fleet should be left, since they fought so many battles, etc. We can stretch out the series for years before they arrive.

The destination should be a far corner of the galaxy, accessible by wormhole only. The destination should be a set of (possibly) artificial solar systems, closely tied together, with many habitable planets without intelligent life. Because of the arrangement of the stars (a 3D pentagon? perhaps) it's obvious these sets of solar systems did not form naturally. This is a mystery that is never fully explained. There is lots of ore and natural resources in these systems.

The Federation and Klingons colonize the planets and have lots of kids. They are given new visions, they are to pursue weapons and ship development, and train their children to be warriors. Kahless is to be placed into suspended animation, along with a few others.

In the future, (perhaps the next series) the Klingon empire is overran by a hostile enemy, but the Federation stays neutral, until plans of genocide are learned by the Federation. The enemy starts wiping out the Klingons, the Federation invades. The Federation gets their ass kicked, and is on the brink of loosing.

Then the descendents of the Klingons and Federation folks at the far end of the galaxy (from out first series) appear from a wormhole near Borath, with Kahless as an old man who returns per the predictions of the Klingon religion. The fleet of ships are advanced and include phased cloak technology. They destroy the enemy shipyards which are in Klingon space, and since the enemy fleets are mostly in Federation space kicking the Federation's ass, this fleet inflicts a lot of damage causing the enemy to pull back from the Federation. The Federation regroups, and is supplied with technology from the advanced fleet (new weapons, phased cloak?, whatever).

Enemy reinforcements ar

Script Ideas

[fuzzybunny]

First, the standard sure winners:

-Resurrect Kirk
-Time/space distortions caused by {going too close to the sun,alien weapon,wormhole}
-The Borg
-Hot semi-naked alien chicks
-Lots of talking
-Guys in rubber monster suits

Then, my recipe for success:

-A wormhole to the Star Wars universe
-Picard vs. Vader!
-A Terminator is loose on the Enterprise. "I need your boots, your clothes und your spaceship".
-Alien vs. Predator vs. The Borg!
-The three-boobied chick from Total Recall ("Captain, I can't reach the fire button")
-Admiral Scotty
-The Borg team up with the Zerg

It can't fail.

Re:Script Ideas

[Jesus_666]

Even more Trek Wars fun!
- Darth Khan
- Worf engages Luke Skywalker in a laser bathleth battle to the death
- Data becomes a Jedi Master
- Yoda vs. Kirk
- Yoda, Obi Wan and Mace Windu vs. Picard, Kirk and Janeway (gotta love time travel)
- Yoda becomes a Borg ("Futile, resistance is!")
- "Captain, if we reroute energy to the warp drive and remodulate the main deflector we could make the Kessel run in under ten parsecs!"
- Yoda, Windu, Obi Wan, Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Darth Sidious, Darth Revan, Darth Malak and every single fscking Jedi/Sith in the Expanded Universe vs. Q, because you can never have enough pointless violence in a movie
- The Jedi and the Sith team up to kill Berman in the most horrible way possible

Re:With Berman involved....

[Craig Maloney]

I'm still wondering how they'll fit time travel, the holodeck, AND mind control into 140 minutes, and still have time to introduce the characters.

Re:How did Berman become "in charge"?

[interstellar_donkey]

Anyone know?

I've thought about this for a while, and my best theory is: Deal with the devil. Berman sold his soul to the devil in exchange for fame and fortune. Of course, true to the devil's plan of causing pain and torture as a side to his deals, he decided the fame and fortune Berman would receive would be with the Star Trek franchise.

Which causes Berman much suffering, because I'm pretty sure he doesn't like Star Trek, or the science fiction genre for that matter. Berman has likely adopted a life philosophy which states "If I have to be miserable, I'm going to make the fans of the series miserable too".

The worst part is, no matter how hard he tries, the devil (who has pre-existing relationships with just about every executive in Hollywood) has made it sure that he won't be fired, no matter how badly he destroys the franchise and alienates its fans. Then after a miserable life dealing with a series he hates, he's still going to have to spend all of eternity in hell.

That's just my theory though. It could just be that most of Paramount's execs are high on cocaine all the time. Either one provides an acceptable answer.

Again with the Klingons

[john-da-luthrun]

This franchise is running way ahead of schedule. According to the Simpsons episode "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie", it'll be at least 2025 before the release of Star Trek XII: So Very Tired.

Sample dialogue: "Captain's Log, Stardate 6051: Had trouble sleeping last night; my hiatal hernia is acting up. The ship is drafty and damp. I complain, but nobody listens."

Re:Didn't DeForrest Kelly die about 10 years ago?

[zpok]

"after hearing that James Spader slept with William Shatner, I don't think I can look at Capt. Kirk in quite the same way again"

Actually, that'd be one more reason to put him back in the chair. After all, a man who'd do that, would do anything, right?

A Couple Of Talking Points

[E-Rock-23]

First, FTA: A lot of those shows are shot with budgets not much more than half of what ou(r) budgets are

Besides the obvious typo, I highly doubt that ST:E's budget is all that much bigger than any of SciFi's original programming. Example? SG-1. If SG-1 has an operating budget of even half of ST:E's, yet still produces high-quality programming, then the whole budget issue isn't a problem, and pretty much amounts to Berman blowing smoke up our asses.

SG-1 has quite a number of CGI sequences, like ST:E. Beyond the relatively simple animation of the gate itself and a few weapons, there are quite a number of ships (including the complex Goa'uld ships, Asgard cruisers, etc.), the Replicators (simple at first, then growing more complex), and the usual space scenes such as planets, stars, nebulae and more, not to mention the minor alterations to the Canadian landscape for location shots. Now, either Gekko/Double Secret/SciFi have found a way to render these scenes (which look pretty damn good) on the cheap, or Berman is using it as an excuse, one of many.

Second: I think the decline of Star Trek can be directly attributed to Berman himself, who started taking the franchise downhill not long after the death of Gene Roddenberry. Creative control, honestly, should have been given to Majel Barret-Roddenberry. After all, she was married to Gene, and it'd be impossible to think that some of his genius wouldn't have rubbed off on her during thier marriage. Berman was responsible for the lesser series DS9 and VGR, and obviously, those didn't do as well as TOS and TNG did, both in the ratings and creatively.

Third, according to quite a number of folks, Berman's not an easy guy to deal with. Slashdot's own Wil Wheaton can attest to that personally, and does so in his books. Granted, working with someone (relatively) new will bring about changes, but from most accounts, Berman was almost the direct antithesis to Roddenberry.

And no, I'm not trying to kiss Wheaton's ass.

My point is, Berman is giving us every excuse under the sun (some work slightly, others don't hold water) as to why Star Trek is in its waning years, instead of owning up to the fact that he took Roddenberry's vision and drove it into the ground himself. The slow demise of Trek can be traced back to when he took the helm (no pun intended).

I agree that Trek does need a rest. Oversaturation does play a part, but not as great a part as Berman would like us to believe...

and my DS9 fandom...

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Cries out in pain.

DS9 has a great bunch of characters. Bring back Sisko dammit!

A couple of posts from a 1984 BBS

[Faust7]

Back when The Search for Spock was just coming out, if you can imagine that.

Numb: 6
Subj: SEARCH FOR SPOCK
From: St. Paul c64 & IBM
Date: 06-04-84 at 11:38 AM

trekkies, don't waste your money - the search for spock is boring, not really
believable, and by far the worst of the three. the only high point is seeing
christopher lloyd ('jim' from taxi) dressed up in monster makeup and costume,
still talking like a spaced druggie. score now: 1 for 3 on trek dreck -- only
the wrath of kahn was any good!

He doesn't mention Christopher Lloyd's "Back to the Future" role because that movie hadn't even been made yet. It boggles the mind!

Numb: 7
Subj: Pound a tribble in your ass.
From: APPLE AVENGER
Date: 06-04-84 at 06:34 PM

To the above ruggie:

I found that Star Trek /// was far the best* of all of them. Star Trek / was to
much special effects and no story. Star Trek // was great, but the ending was
stupied (play 'amazing grace' at spocks funeraul was stupied!). I found star
trek /// at times boring, but the actors got to play the roles as they wanted.
The other 2 movies the directors ran the characters. Star trek /// was more for
the characters and the people that play them.

The movie gave us a new way to think about star trek. Is it totally over for
the entire crew? Will they get a new enterprise? Will spock fully return to us?
This we will never know or maybe we will soon know because paramount studios is
talking about star trek ////.

-Avenger

Loyal trekkie for life

Long before Berman and Braga got their grubby little hands all over it, Star Trek involved eager anticipation. Anyone remember that? *sigh*