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New Animated Star Trek In The Works
Philias writes "A new web-based Star Trek Animated Series may be in the works. CBS is considering a pitch by veteran Trek producer Dave Rossi for a 'Clone Wars' style animated series for StarTrek.com. Like Clone Wars the episodes would be just a few minutes long. Unlike the old animated Trek show from the 70s, this one would be with a whole new crew set in a new time period. The setting is to be a war-torn post-9/11-like Trek universe 150 years after the time of Picard." From the post: "The Zero Room team felt that the time was right for a new approach to Trek. The setting is the year 2528 and the Federation is a different place after suffering through a devastating war with the Romulans 60 years earlier. The war was sparked off after a surprise attack of dozens of 'Omega particle' detonations throughout the Federation creating vast areas which become impassible to warp travel and essentially cut off almost half the Federation from the rest. During the war the Klingon homeworld was occupied by the Romulans, all of Andoria was destroyed and the Vulcans, who were negotiating reunification with the Romulans, pulled out of the Federation. The setting may seem bleak and not very Trek-like, but that is where the show's hero Captain Alexander Chase comes in."
Dumbest Star Trek captain name, ever.
Can we start a pool on when the first time travel episode will be? I'm betting 5th show of the first season.
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
Cartoons + Star Trek? Man, this is going to be the nerdiest show ever.
I would personally rather see something between the first faster than light voyage and NCC-1701. Eric
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
Star Trek became closer to Star Wars as time went along. And a new series based after a war? No shit....You'd think they would actually sit down and try to come up with a thought provoking story at some point.
Not in the cartoon version, they'll just be made out of pixels arranged to look like velour.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Hopefully it will be well written to spawn the imagination of scientists to be. Looking back a good number of the star trek technologies have come to be a reality simply by nudging the creative energies of young minds.
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
You know, if Viacom keeps pulling on those teats like that they're eventually just going to break right off. I mean, there's milking it and there's milking it.
Does new Trek content really have dominion over any part of our cultural consciousness anymore? Go on: quote me a well known line from Voyager. No, no -- the show. Remember? How could you forget? It not only featured the worst series finale of any TV show ever produced, it also made my ears bleed whenever the quavering caterwauling of that shifty-ass captain sounded.
And let's not forget Enterprise...no, wait -- let's.
Anyone who sat through Deanna and Riker's wedding in those waiter uniforms knows what I'm talking about: the whole idea has seen its day, and Star Trek should be buried alive...buried alive...buried alive...
The franchise peaked with "There are four lights!"
These stories are free but worth money.
Why can't they make the Trek spinoff we really want to see: the late 19th century escapades of Mark Twain and Guinan.
Actually if they start monkeying about with the main deflector dish then for once I would like to see a star trek character say 'What?' instead of 'Yes, that might just work'. 'Run a reverse polarity inverse jellybaby through the main deflector dish!!! WTF are you babbling about???, is that even possible?????' seems like a much more natural response.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
There are many other series out there, such as Stargate, Babylon 5, Firefly and so on.
So, is there a reason that we have to keep coming back to Star Trek - The Search for More Money every damn time?
The franchise is dead. People just don't seem to get it.
What the fuck? They have an entire section going trans-human with Borg technology
Instead
That makes no sense what-so-ever.
And
Captain's Log, Stardate 2528 point 4. I have beamed half the crew into space during a mutiny. They had forgotten that this was a Star Fleet vessel and not a Democracy. I will
Star Trek is dedicated to the idea that every species has one culture, one religion, one government, and they all belong together on the same planet (or at least the same star system). Anybody who dares to marry outside of their race, err, species, will have children that are horribly torn between their two distinct and apparently utterly immiscible heritages. "Oh, woe is me, shall I be Vulcan or Human because it isn't possible for me to forge my own distinct identity, I must only belong to one race, err, species!"
What other reasons would the Vulcans have for re-uniting with the Romulans? The Vulcans may be the same species but in almost every other way they are night and day; their culture, their philosophies, their approaches to problems, everything except maybe general arrogance. They're geographically separated so far apart that there was enough time before they re-discovered each other that they forgot they were related. They share few to no strategic interests.
But blood will out, apparently.
I bet Vulcan or Romulus ends up destroyed at some point (probably Vulcan) and all of the Vulcan refugees go live on Romulus, cause the post-TNG Star Trek mythos can't tolerate races living in two places.
The REAL Star Trek TAS.
6 70.torrent/Star_Trek_Tas_-_Entire_Series.3378670.T PB.torrent
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Andromeda was a perfectly good show until Kevin Sorbo turned it into Hercules in Space.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
There you go. See how much better than is?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I know someone will mod this "-5 send him to Gitmo!", but:
I didn't watch ANY of the spin-offs after they stopped making ST:TNG.
Why?
I recognized the horse, as it were, was dead. Sometimes, even most times, it's better to let the thing rot and disperse back into the environment, instead of resurrecting it over and over again. It's looking a bit tatty now.
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
"My idea of the perfect living room would be the bridge on the Starship Enterprise. You know what I mean? Big chair, nice screen, remote control.. that's why Star Trek really was the ultimate male fantasy. Just hurling through space in your living room, watching TV. That's why all the aliens were always dropping in, because Kirk was the only one that had the big screen. They came over Friday nights, Klingon boxing, gotta be there."
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"The setting is to be a war-torn post-9/11-like Trek universe 150 years after the time of Picard."
So there will be no liquids or gels allowed on starships? "Tea Earl Grey powdered"
I'm not even American and it still pains me to see how diluted 9/11 is becoming. Call it war-torn or whatever, but at least reference an event that occurred in a warzone.
Come on? Seriously! That is the premise for a new Star Trek series? If TPTB are listening, don't do it! It's bad enough that you ran the franchise into the ground with Voyager and Enterprise. Don't compound your mistake with this idea.
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Data. He was supposed to have an indefinite lifespan, which gives it instant plausibility. And if this series is about a troubled Federation trying to find its way back, what better character to give his blessing (and sidestep the cliched time travel plots)? To top it all off, it also solves the big issue about Brent Spiner's portrayal of the character, which was his aging. Too bad they %$$#@& it up and killed Data off.
Deep Space Nine was more about politics than exploration. But in my opinion that's okay, because it still made good sci-fi (it was alien politics)! For example, they "explored" the ethical situation regarding the Tosk, the dichotomy between science and religion on Bajor, the drug dependence of the Jem'Hadar, biological warfare (Section 31 infecting the Founders with that disease), etc.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Run a reverse polarity inverse jellybaby through the main deflector dish!!! WTF are you babbling about???, is that even possible?????' seems like a much more natural response.
Someone always does reply that way. And then someone else says "Yes, it iscrazy... crazy enough to work!"
Even you're even a minor trek fan and enjoy/can tolerate house I recommend tracking
down some Star Pilot on Channel K (S.P.O.C.K), a nifty little Sci-Fi Swedish band.
"Never Trust a Klingon" and "The Trouble with Tribbles" are especially good.
Were that I say, pancakes?
However, over the decades, Star Trek has had many memorable themes, characters, settings, etc. If the IP holders would be willing to consider not turning a profit on Star Trek in the short term (and that's a big if), I believe, one or two decades down the line, an entirely new Star Trek series that drew on the best and brightest ideas throughout "Trek history" could possibly prove financially and artistically viable.
Ok so now we're in the 26th Century. Time travel, trading bodies on demand, immortality, whatnot. The further you push this stuff into the future the more it becomes a Science Fantasy Chick Flick Soap Opera. Everything will get magically solved with magic science at the end of every episode. Engines going to blow up? Push the 17th dimension button that supercools them to 1 billion degrees below absolute zero. Then fly through the sun with your sun protector shield. Naturally.
The original star trek was about how the human race had unified and was attempting to unite with the galaxy as a whole. The reality was wagons in space.
But, you had a russian on the bridge during the 60's, the height of the cold war. You had black commanders and admirals. You had female commanders and admirals.
This new series kind of pisses on the original intent of star trek.
Oh, and it's not the first time that paramount has ripped off the plot line from another show. The creator of babylon 5 pitched the series to paramount, they rejected it, but.... lo and behold DS9 has almsot the same plotlines as B5.
Besides does anyone expect quality from paramount after watching the series "Enterprise". They ought to rename paramount to miracle movies, because if they can make an orignal and good series it's a miracle.
Consider redesigning the premise of the Federation, taking into account the critique that it's basically a fascist state.
Wow. Just wow. That was just... horrible.
The author of that critique seems to be some kind of religious conservative who takes offense at the fact that the Federation doesn't use money and talk about God all the time. Nevermind the fact that they have replicators and thus there is no scarcity and no need for money OR for communistic redistribution of wealth - just throw your garbage into the recycler and replicate whatever you want. In the Star Trek future, everything is as plentiful and reusable as air, and so there is no more need for any economic system to regulate it than there is to regulate the distribution of air here today. We don't have air banks or air credits because we don't need them, and neither to we strictly ration out the use of air in equal parts, because there's plenty of it and people can just take whatever they want. Economic systems are just a solution to problems of scarcity - where there is no scarcity, economics disappear.
But what really gets me is that the author seems to be somehow offended by the notion that you might have a nontheistic society. Not militantly atheistic - you don't see Federation people ridiculing anyone for their religious beliefs or trying to convince them that God doesn't exist. They just don't seem to have many such beliefs of their own. I'm sure there's still philosophy classes in their academies, and old religious are taught as history... but this whole thing sounds like some old polytheist complaining about our (contemporary, western) society because we don't sacrifice livestock to the local fertility gods. So? What's the problem if we don't? And what's wrong with "explaining away" disembodies entities as "energy beings" or whatnot, if that's a real explanation in the (fictional) science of Star Trek? Should they just ignore their scientific explanations so that there are still some mysteries to "wow" people?
He seems to think that without such mysterious religious doctrine, and without some sort of capitalist economic system, everybody would have nothing better to do than... well... join the military I guess. The series is set on a military ship, of course you're going to see military lifestyles there! But the ordinary people living planetside, in a world of plenty with no scarcity - what, you think they won't have anything interesting to do? What about art or science for it's own sake, not for profit? Taking up some occupation that you enjoy doing for it's own take, like cooking, designing clothes, writing software, etc? In a world of plenty, people don't *need* to be paid to do things - they'll do whatever they enjoy doing, and if something needs doing, someone who needs it done will do it, if someone who enjoys doing it hasn't done it already. Heck, what about just playing games for fun?
I have to wonder if this person's vision of heaven is of some job where he gets to work really hard and gets paid lots of money which he can then turn around and give straight to some incomprehensible mysterious God, who he spends all of his free time worshipping. Seems like it must take a serious lack of imagination not to be able to envision enjoying a life of luxury where money isn't needed, where everything is there free for the taking, and nothing is an indecipherable mystery that couldn't be solved with sufficient investigation. Wouldn't that be nice? It's a stretch of the imagination to think that it could practically happen, but in Star Trek the basic premise is that that HAS happened - and look at the awesome society that has followed. How could anyone think that such a society is bad?
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
I was first in line to get a signed copy of Dawkins' The God Delusion when he spoke on campus, so I sympathize with your reaction, but I also mostly agree with the critique. I don't think his point is that his religion (whatever it is) was left out, but that it's a bizarre continuity breach to assume, without explanation, that religion has vanished altogether from human culture. I've written a related column arguing that religion should play a greater role in a particular SF/fantasy subgenre, not because I'm a fan of it but because it's both a rich source of story material, and such a universal part of human life to date that ignoring it weakens a story setting's plausibility. Look at the "Firefly" essay below the Trek one -- the author approves of a story where there's just one character who's got a Bible and makes offhand references to Jesus and Buddha. That's a far cry from turning the show into BibleMan. So, a writer can incorporate religion into a story without bludgeoning the audience with their own personal views. Its total absence among humans in the Trek world is mysterious to the point of being implausible.
As for the lack of capitalism, he's right to note that the main Trek species that has recognizable business dealings is portrayed as a gang of sniveling pirates who somehow don't even have banks or letters of credit. Maybe you'd get a utopian society in the Federation if "replicator" technology were perfected, but it's strange that the show seems contemptuous of civilizations where people actually have to work for a living. Also, Trek doesn't need a magic fix-all-economic-problems technology. Wouldn't it be more interesting than the current setup to say that the Federation actually needs to explore space to create continued opportunity for a growing, ambitious population that still has poor people in it?
Replicator tech is itself implausible due to how it's handled. It seems to be an unlimited matter/energy conversion gadget! With such a device, who needs a matter/antimatter reactor or a phaser? Just throw a rock into the replicator and get all the energy you need! Even if that's not how it works, the Federation seems able to manipulate matter on the particle scale (for transporters at least), so why does their technology look as though it's built by conventional manufacturing methods? Why aren't there lots of privately owned mini-spaceships mining Jupiter for raw matter and building space habitats and ringworlds all over the place? Instead of an unprecedented explosion of human creativity and freedom, Trek seems to be about a central authority dominating all activity and building a benevolent empire no more imaginative than the average 4X space game. Sure, the shows' focus on military life gives us a skewed view, but why is there such limited imagination in looking at the implications of its technology?
Revive the Constitution.
I'll agree that it seems a far stretch of plausibility, both that religion would be eliminated from human society and that such magical replication technology would be invented, especially in the short time span portrayed in the Trek series. But that didn't seem to be the author's point in that critique. It seemed much more like a political than a science-fictional commentary - not "oh right, like that will ever happen, keep dreaming bud" but instead "this 'glorious future' is only glorious if you're a militant athestic commie-fascist".
However I will completely agree with you that the existence of their level of technology seems a bit discontinuous with the rest of their apparent level of development and social structure. Their transporters, replicators and holodecks seem to imply that they can create and manipulate mass and energy on a very fine-tuned level (and have AI advanced enough to do these things automatically and fill in the details as needed, as they can just request the holodeck to "create a chair. make these changes to it." etc as I recall from some Voyager episode). With that kind of tech it seems like the only limit they should have is available mass-energy to manipulate, and available computing power; and given enough of those, everything in the real would should be as manipulable as things in a virtual world would be. Replicate a huge biosphere in space, tell the computer to make landscape that looks like so-and-so, keep the weather like such, gimme a nice house designed to these specifications, and take a scan of those three hotties over there, make these modifications to them, and give me some repli-holo-copies of them who like to play in the field all day, dance naked in the rain and have hot foursomes all day long. Oh and computer, keep the house cleaned up, and feel free to repair any wear and tear that happens to by body - don't want to be getting old now, eh?
Heck, with that level of technology the computers should be able to interface directly with people's minds (scan the brain-state and interpret appropriately), so you wouldn't even have to ask the computer for something - you just will it to be and it's replicated for you. Combine that with their equivalent of the internet and you could get an interesting, non-collectivist sort of collective consciousness - you just wonder some question to yourself, the computer(s) check to see if anybody knows the answer to that and isn't keeping it a secret, and then tells you the answer. (I'm assuming the computers here are as they are portrayed in Trek; very capable systems that can accomplish pretty much anything processing task you ask of them, even creative ones as per the holodeck example in my first paragraph, but which have no independent will or motivation of their own). You wouldn't get a borg-like hive mind, but it would be like... like everything you ever thought was automatically blogged, except the things you didn't want to be public knowledge, and everybody had a direct neural link to a search engine which automatically scanned all these blogs for whatever you asked it to, and presented that information direct to your mind. You wonder a question, and "recall" an answer as though it was just something you had momentarily forgotten. It's just be a much faster, more comprehensive version of the sort of information exchange that we already do with the internet, and with journals and books before that.
Even in this fantastical setup, there would still be perfectly good reason to have spaceships going about and exploring: novelty! Exploration for it's own sake! Boredom is the bane of the well-off, and so these incredibly well-off people would be searching for new cultures, new phenomena, new anything to occupy their interest. You can only do so much creative art sitting at home by yourself before you need more inspiration, and you can only do so much science when your observations are only of a limited area - and what's left to do in such a utopia (besides satisfy your basic desires whenever they come up) other than art and sci
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."