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Nimoy May Be the Star of the Next Trek Film?
ajs writes "Moriarty, over on Ain't It Cool News is running a column about the upcoming J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie. In it, he discusses some theories about where the movie is going, but doesn't reveal his sources. He claims that Nimoy's Spock, not the younger versions of the original Trek trio, will be the primary star of the film; and that the movie will make some very substantial changes to the Trek lore in a way that is internally consistent with what went before, but opens up many more options for future franchise films or series. If he's right, there are some pretty substantial spoilers in the column." Obviously, as unverifiable speculation this should be taken with a grain of salt. Live long and prosper.
At the end of Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan. He comes back to life in III, though.
I sure hope they don't pull a George Lucas by changing the past storyline to better align with the future series that have already been produced (eg. TNG, DS9, Voyager).
And with Doohan having passed on, there's already a very essential element missing. You just can't have Spock without Scotty.
someone may remake the vaunted 'Spock's Brain' episode into a feature-length film! THERE'S A PLOT!
[...]Nimoy-aged Spock, mind you.[...] ..yeah so it,s consistent since spock should be just below 100 years in TOS, ...give or take a couple o'decades(nothing for a vulcan)
...how primitive..
so 30 years back in kirk's academy days that'll fit
captcha "fission"
He's 76 years old. Kind of hard to do action scenes, ain't it? What will he be doing the whole movie? Debating Vulcan philosophy?
"very substantial changes to the Trek lore in a way that is internally consistent with what went before, but opens up many more options for future franchise films or series"
There will be a tachyon anomaly that will give all the old characters characteristics of the new actors that play them.
This is just baseless speculation. It sounds like this guy just pulled the whole thing out of his bunghole. Then again I have to admit I've always hated AICN.
An article that is definitely News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters.
Cool.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I've never seen star trek
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
...because Vulcans take Centrum Verde!
I thought this particular trope is what killed TNG and Enterprise among other Star Trek franchises. AICN and other associated media are simply hyping Abrams because he's the new hot writer and producer and directory on TV thinking it will invigorate the franchise.
Abrams is simply doing a retread and once the dust settles people will go back to being tired of Roddenberry's creation.
Hopefully it will not be a musical Aaaahhh!
Although if Captain Kirk shows up, even properly aged, he can sing amusing songs, now and then.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Or would this be 3.0? I can certainly see an attempt at re-vitalizing star trek happening. It's also obvious that just another series isn't going to do it. Aside, it appears the studio has gone through a lot of trouble putting this movie together, I wouldn't be surprised if they had more than just making a single movie about a series that was over decades ago in mind.
You can't exactly expect someone who isn't Roddenberry to be Roddenberry. Abrams will have his 5 minutes of fame here; but I really don't see his movie being a box office hit. Maybe it will have a strong opening day due to nostalgia; but other than that, it will flop if he's really changing things. I have over a year to tie the noose. Who else wants to be in the lynch mob?
The game.
I'm fine with JJ blowing the canon open. Caveat: I'm not a Trek fan.
I appreciate that die hard fans will be upset by that, however my feeling is that Star Trek has basically had about 12 plot lines that have essentially been recycled in various guises throughout all the seasons. They've finally flogged that deceased horse one too many times.
The fundamental issues I see is the utopian nature of the universe Roddenberry created. Ignoring the probability or possibility of human nature being so utterly warped into an utopia (I personally can't suspend my disbelief that far), as a basis for a TV or movie it's all very nice and all, but it makes for dull writing and little drama.
You're left with creating drama by have characters behave out of character by alien possession or secret starfleet order etc etc etc. Or time travel (which is a clichéd story, almost always in any medium - paradox, protect timeline, yawn blah blah, seen it a thousand times)
No, Star Trek needs its ass kicked. I'm not entirely sure that JJ Abrams is the best guy to do that, but he's probably better than anyone who's been in charge of that franchise for the past 20 years.
This has to mean there's more time travel. They should have renamed the franchise "Time Trek". Let me guess, old Spock travels the to past, ie the era in which the film is set, and does something that (supposedly) ties up assorted loose plot ends. Sigh.
(Mind, I've got nothing against a good time travel yarn. Operative word being "good".)
-- Alastair
...wasn't he always?
Frankly, the biggest problem the Star Trek franchise has is its own fans.
There's a big difference between being respectful of a story and hamstringing yourself to meet some fanboy's idea of "canon." There are long and drawn-out discussions all the time in Trek fandom about how this one inconsequential element of some story doesn't mesh with years of backstory which is itself internally inconsistent. They can't seem to let go of these whiny nitpicks.
Look at the new Battlestar Galactica -- Ronald D. Moore took the old BSG "canon" and completely ignored it. He realized that from a storytelling standpoint it would be too limiting to bother sticking with the old story -- after the destruction of nearly every human being, going to a "casino planet" is a betrayal of what could be an incredible storyline. RDM took the essence of what BSG was -- humanity is on the run against an insidious and implacable enemy and reduced it to its essentials. The result is infinitely better than what came before.
I hope J.J. Abrams has the pure chutzpah to do just that with Star Trek. Reinvent the franchise. Give it new life. Change things around and craft a story that can attract a new generation of fans rather than appealing to the people who spend all their life studying the minutiae of the shows.
At its core, Star Trek is Horatio Hornblower in space -- a valiant young captain and his intrepid crew going out an exploring a new frontier. The new film should be true to that spirit, but if J.J. Abrams just sticks to what comes before, he's passing up on an artistic opportunity.
I've been a fan of Star Trek all my life, but the franchise grew stale and repetitive. This is the chance to give it new life, and in order to do that J.J. Abrams will have to royally piss off a lot of Star Trek fans who indignantly demand that the series match their vision of what Star Trek should be. If he does it right, a whole lot of Trekkers will be calling for his head, but the franchise will (dare I say it), live long and prosper after years of neglect.
It's crap, Jim, but not as we know it.
Startrek has a problem. Wait, before you gather your torches and pitchforks hear me out.
The problem is: Startrek is really old. That is not said that it is bad - I quite enjoyed TOS when it ran on TV, and I rather liked most of the "sequels" (like TNG, DS9, Voyager, etc.) to a certain degree. I loved the movies. But Startrek, or rather the Startrek universe has become the equivalent of really old code. The kind of code that was written when C was at it's peak and because the application was good and functional it just has been extended and rewritten over the time. And now you are standing in from of 50k lines of code, some in C, some in C++, some ported from C to C++, all written by several dozens of different editors (with different styles and paradigms) with over the last two decades. And someone had the bright idea to use assembler to squeeze some out some MS from an inner loop. Short, a demonic cross between a patchwork quilt made from used yarn and spaghetti-code. And now you are supposed to implement that new shining feature - without breaking anything.
The Startrek universe is riddled with minor and major plotholes and inconsistencies. Of course, many of the got patched and re-patched when the popped up, but every time a new story is added to the canon some more or less obscure fact will exist to prove the inverse. Of course, the tools to patch them up exist - including the dreaded RETCON - but still there is too much too contradictory information.
So what would you, the programmer do, if faced with the demonic code mentioned earlier and the prospect of managing it for the next forseeable future. Use the well-know way and write on or be bold and pull the plug and start from (almost) scratch?
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
Honestly, and I've been following this kind of crap my whole life (30 + yrs.), so please don't take this the wrong way. But we, as a few of the better minds around, should have something better to do with our time. Do what we can with the limited resources we have to make this a better world. Don't screw around with this garbage YET AGAIN. We've been over this fantasy shit over and over and over. We have more important and complex issues to occupy ourselves. /plea
I am not an animal! I am something worse!
Does this mean that Spock will become the new R. Daneel Olivaw? babysitting the galaxy until in grows up enough to get by without him?
Yep, they worked well together and gave that series most of its charm.
But they aren't required for a "Star Trek" episode or movie or series.
There is so much material out there. Why don't any of the "writers" use it? Look at what most people consider the "best" Star Trek movie. You know which it was. And it was written with the restriction of being based off of a single episode.
Why does it always come back to getting the original cast into the "new" material? I'm sure that people here can come up with ten different, decent concepts that do NOT involve any of the established characters or contravene established canon. Why can't the writers do that?
PP is not a troll, he's right.
Star Trek has been out of new plot ideas since about season 4 of TNG. It was apparent when they made DS9 into a Babylon-5 ripoff, it was obvious all throughout Voyager and and it should have been apparent to even to a retarded 3-hour-old tribble after the Nazi episode of Enterprise. Departure from canon = good.
Sincerely, a former Trek fan.
0 1 - just my two bits
Better than that Gandalf guy, though he wasn't bad.
Also, I'm not a big trekkie, but I thought Nimoy had a literally emmy-level performance in that episode of STTNG, where he played an aged Spock on the planet of the Romulans. I suppose he probably never even got considered though.
- Alaska Jack
Nothing is inexplicable; only unexplained -Tom Baker, Doctor Who
Have you seen any of that? They have him getting a JOB. That is beyond stupid. He shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a script or camera or editing room.
I find this choice of lead actor to be highly illogical.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
They've already done a Trek where they used the "but its not the same timeline" excuse to muck up the history. It was called "Enterprise", and it tanked. I saw nothing in TFA that would indicate this idea would do any better. Yes, Paramount needs to attract new fans. But they need to do so without pissing off the old ones.
;-)
Instead of trying to redo the same old story with whats left of a aging and thinning available cast, they should take a hint from "The Next Generation" and move further in to the future with a new series and new characters.
Or give us a movie based on DS9
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Eww. Is K/S going to be the new goatse.cx around here? :-P
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
If they set it "in the future" of the franchise, when Kirk, Bones and Scotty have all died, then it could free them from the usual constraints. We may even see an intelligent story result from that.
Oh, come on. You're telling me that Welshie isn't a good enough replacement for Scotty?
before it becomes as idiotic as episodes I - III or even Dragon Ball Z ...*shudders*
'when i was young all i cared about was ideas, and now that im old all i care about is money'
'you humans and your primitive emotions'
On these boards. Abrams or writers are reading here.
I fear that we'll soon have a market for "Kirk shot first!" T-shirts.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Since the existing Star Treks are not internally consistent it is not logical to propose that a new one can be.
The part where Sylar eats his brain and takes his powers!
I'm sick and tired of the maintainers of the Star Trek franchise trying to recapture the Original Series style and universe. That series failed for a reason. It had such a good movie run due to Shatner, Nimoy, and DeForest Kelly, as well as the epic nature of the stories. In the latter respect, the movies were successful because in style and substance they were the opposite of the failed series.
Star Trek: TNG was by far the most expansive and interesting universe, and has always been far and away the fan favorite. I don't mean by self-styled critics who ramble on about emotional dynamics and relationships. Star Trek: TNG was popular because first and foremost because of Patrick Stewart, but second because it, like the Original Series movies, cast the ordinary in the extraordinary.
Teenage boys and middle aged men and women did not watch Star Trek: TNG for character development and intricate relationships. They watched it because it rose above the trash on the rest of television, because it had ethics and virtue and told us what was right and what was wrong, and set things right by the end of every hour. Star Trek: TNG was a Greek morality play in a fantastically imaginative, yet intimately believable universe.
It was NOT Dawson's Creek or Buffy the Vampire Slayer in space. It NOT not a campy western in space.
Until the caretakers of the franchise look back and understand this, they will continue to fail to recapture that success.
I don't even watch Trek anymore but I swear to God, if they make this movie all Kirk/Spock I'm going to beat Abrams to death with his own severed limbs.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
The ultimate problem with the Star Trek world is its episodic nature. Granted, DS9 had its plot arcs, but for the most part nothing ever happened. The slate was essentially wiped clean at the end of every episode. For instance, TNG tip-toed around Picard and Crusher's romance for most of the series, then treated us to one episode near the end that still left everything as unresolved as it was at the beginning.
Say what you like about JJ Abrams, at least he'll move the whole thing closer in spirit, in style, to Firefly, which is what I think we all want.
Nearly 100 comments and no one has mentioned Firefly yet? Slashdot...you're slipping.
Live long, and milk a series for all it's worth. I lost interest after First Contact.
http://www.firsttvdrama.com/enterprise/index.php3
... well there were two problems.
Excellent reviews of Enterprise and WHY it sucked. Not really about the Star Trek universe. More about telling the stories in that universe. And isn't that what this is all about?
http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/trek/0.html
I hope that guy's bandwidth can take the hit. He has GREAT ideas about how to "fix" the Star Trek universe itself. Why DOES a phaser heat rocks AND vaporize enemies? How does a trasporter work? "Logically" within the framework provided.
The problem that Star Trek had
#1. It was episodic and the "technology" was altered from episode to episode to suit the writer of that episode.
#2. Roddenberry was fixated on the current (at the time) social issues and how to portray them in his series. That's why you have the first inter-racial kiss and a Russian working with a Chinese on a "USS" ship. Where's the gay captain today? The Islamic first officer?
Star Trek sucks now because the stories suck. And the stories suck because they aren't challenging. And the stories aren't challenging because Hollywood doesn't want the RISK of challenging stories.
If they want to bring back Star Trek they need to completely change the WRITING. Get the best writers and give them 4 hours to fill. With the only limitations being that all the techno-babble needed to be vetted by a real Star Trek geek and they couldn't alter the established time lines.
Each month you'd get an entirely new, but still coherent, Star Trek. Some would suck. Some would not. And the ones that didn't suck could be expanded.
i was hoping for "the rock" dwayne johnson to play spock
they both got that eyebrow raise
"DO YOU SMELL WHAT THE SPOCK IS COOKING?"
the vulcan nerve pinch could segue into a chokeslam and a powerbomb followed by a pummeling by a folding chair
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
A reboot isn't really needed. What should be done is to get together a large amount of people who worked on Star Trek in the past and put together a large fan forum online. Then go about examining every Star Trek TV episode, movie and book to classify what is cannon and what isn't. If a TV episode or movie could be minorly cut to make it cannon, then do so, if it steps too far outside the redefined cannon for the series then it would be considered to have happened in an alternate universe or to be just non-cannon Star Trek entertainment. From then on, all books, movie/TV scripts or comics would have to go through a process to see if they fit into the cannon of the Star Trek universe. One of the things they could look at is if it boxes the universe in too much and prevents people from writing other stories.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
This article is not only unsourced, it's unsourceable - the man begins his speculation with "I think..." and goes on with his reckless speculation without even a slight intimation that any of this originated with someone working for Abrams. My friends, Moriarty has just served us up a heaping spoonful of bullshit, so I hope no one reading is willing to swallow.
That said, Moriarty's speculation also appears to be unlikely. Abrams is a big fan of using flashbacks as a narrative device, and it would not be unheard of to have an aged Spock telling the story of how he and a young James T. Kirk met so many years ago. Such a premise would allow Leonard Nimoy to play a substantial role in the film, and would also explain why William Shatner has not been asked to reprise his role as Kirk (Kirk's character having died in Generations).
A lot of people writing on this board want Star Trek to become more dark, the characters less gung ho and somehow, that will make them "more realistic". That's patently absurd.
Let's understand this, guys that get to command state of the art "ships-of-the-line" are better than the rest of us average joes, just as much as guys that make it through Annapolis, then, work their way through years of active duty, to command an aircraft carrier or a ballistic missile submarine, are better than the rest of us. The whole point of the existence of military culture is to vett through thousands of young men to ultimately produce a handful of people that know how to take a state of the art system costing billions of dollars into battle. We expect these people to be gung-ho, idealistic, and confident, and our expectations of the bridge staff of one of 13 ships of the line in the Federation should be more, not less. After all, if you figure that the likes of NCC-1701 had only 400 or so crewman, out of a Federation population of tens of billions, you would expect that every man or woman on that ship would be of first rate education, character, and quality.
Roddenberry, for all of his other faults, nailed this exactly right on the head. Writers that want to have officers dragged down by "personal issues", filling people with all manner of dark character conflicts, really, are just catering to the masses. Yes Virginia, not everyone has mommy issues, and those that don't, get picked for the big jobs that you don't.
This is my sig.
I think the slashdot summary distorts what the AICN article said, just picking up on the "Spock is the main character!" angle. Slashdot is making it sound like Nimoy is going to be carrying the film or something.
Yes, the AICN article says he's the main character, but if you read the ponderings about the time travel plot, it's clear that they're not saying the Nimoy-Spock will even have more screen time than the Quinto-Spock. That's... illogical. What they're pointing to is the idea that the story will focus on Spock stumbling on some time-assassination plot against someone, and most of the film will probably focus on Quinto-Spock dealing with ground zero of the plot, with Nimoy-Spock playing a part in the future, via flash-backs or flash-forwards or actual time travel.
"Nimoy may be the start of the next Trek film?" is an extremely misleading headline, You just don't get that sense when you read the AICN article.
Star Trek failed for the same reasons many TV shows fail. Some of them air in the wrong time slot, some of them fail to find sponsors, some of them are gutted by shortsighted producers ... Star Trek arguably experienced all of the above.
... one drunken country doctor was good enough for them, 'nuff said.
I read Shatner's book about his years with the Star Trek TV show. He said that the reason the show was canceled was ratings... more specifically, the way they used to do ratings at the time.
In the days of the original series, ratings were simple: what show has the most people watching it? That's the winning show.
These days, they slice the ratings much finer. They break ratings down by "demographics". And if they had done that with the original Star Trek it would have run for many more than three seasons, because it had a total lock on several very desirable demographics (people with lots of money they could spend).
If I recall correctly, Shatner said that the change to how ratings are calculated came just a couple of years after the original series was canceled. Just another way in which Star Trek was ahead of its time.
The original Enterprise didn't need no damn social worker
What I liked was that they got scripts from all over, including scripts by noted science fiction writers. Norman Spinrad, Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch, and more... there were some weird and really different scripts, and it was great. The modern Trek series were much more constrained.
At a Trek convention, I had a chance to ask one of the executives of TNG a question. My question was "Some of the original series episodes were just plain silly, just funny; for example, 'I, Mudd'. Will there every be any episodes of TNG like that?" The answer was something like "Episode Foo was pretty funny." I no longer remember which episode was the "Episode Foo" but I had seen it and a) it wasn't that funny and b) it certainly wasn't completely goofy. And, I never saw any new Trek episode (TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise) that was.
P.S. IMHO the genius of "The Trouble with Tribbles" was that it was almost completely goofy yet there was a shred of plot that hung together and was satisfying. You got to laugh a whole bunch, and they actually foiled a nefarious plot!
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Just warning you people
I for one would like to see more of the Federation What happens to all the optimally healthy, super educated people who get booted out of Starfleet Academy for slacking and bad attitude? Maybe Keifer Sutherland could play the great-great-grandson of his father's character Oddball in "Kelley's Heros"!
Star Trek died for me anyway with Cochrane's initial encounter with the Vulcans at the end of First Contact. That was the whole point at least that part of the film; the music for that movie is very funerary in tone, if you listen to it...it was one last look back, before the end, and it was a suitably poignant and respectful way to end the franchise as a whole, I thought.
I did not see Transformers, and I do not support the resurrection of certain things when there is no creative purpose for it, and the only reason is to cynically make money. Star Trek is dead; may it rest in peace.
All a "reboot" says is that a producer is too gutless to create and popularize their own fictional creation, so they take the shortcut of starting with the good name and recognizable parts of someone else's creation. I wish people who doesn't want to follow what has come before show some cajones and create their own thing from scratch.
After Firefly, Serenity several seasons of BSG, Star Trek just seems a bit 'quaint.'
Software Wars
Make a caves of steel movie.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
To a point, the golden age of Camp is passing quickly. The world mood is too somber now for us to "suspend disbelief" properly for that style any more.
/. post to mention the Trek Economics. The entire source of that economic optimism stemmed from moving away from the classical law of supply. We are in fact just seeing the first stages of that now, over on the RIAA side. It will shake out for another ten years, and eventually something like an Ad or Sponsor model will kick in, and music will be Free as in Beer.
What Roddenberry presented was not a utopia... only a time when things were going right for once and we could take a break from total disaster. Subject to the next couple of US elections, we're growing fatigued by the path the Bush dynasty has taken us. Even if the next President is a Compromise Candidate, I expect we will work towards repairing international relations... which is *exactly* what Trek was about.
This may finally be the correct
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'm fine with JJ blowing the canon open. Caveat: I'm not a Trek fan.
At Comicon, JJ Abrams got infront of a crowd of 6500 people and proudly said "I'm more into Star Wars than Star Trek -- but the script was so good I just had to do it." Now, you may not be a Trek fan, but I am. I'm fine with blowing the canon open, but Abrams' comment was like a slap in the face to a true Trek fan, of which I count myself one. So not only is the canon being blown open, but it's being blown open by a guy who'd rather be watching Star Wars. I find that offensive.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057927/combined
I'd love to see it.
They should just wait a few more years for the tech to move forward some, then they can fully animate the actors and use the old series guys all they want (see the Beowulf trailer for an example of where this process stands, still a bit creepy looking but they're getting close).
Geezers in Space.
Have gnu, will travel.
I agree with all of that. I think that economic bounty depicted in Star Trek is based on the idea that we will eventually be able to create energy so cheaply that it's finally "too cheap to meter", and the rather more fantastic idea that we will then be able to use that power to create any object we desire, from a perfect copy of ourselves to a bowl of chicken soup.
If we can actually real that level of technology, it will solve a lot of problems, but it's hardly a utopia. There will still be plenty of reasons for us to fight with each other.
Sure. That's why I brought up Music/Videos. "Producing X Object is too cheap to meter".
But notice they haven't solved the Living Space problem. They sublimated the idea of rent based on unstated subsidized perks of a job.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was in the Star Trek DS9 episode, Tsunkatse. He had his ass handed to him on a plate by Seven of Nine.
(That really would have broken the canon!)
As best as I remember,
the original Trek pilot had a female captain.
So, how about Halle Berry in that role?
Don't forget, Voyager changed the past with Tom Paris.... when he had his incident on TNG, his name was Nick Ricardo. The name of this episode was 'The First Duty' Furthermore, don't forget Janeway made it to Admiral before Picard did, and all she had to do was break the Temperal Prime Directive to get there. In Picards defense, he never had to cheat to make his goals. I guess thats how affirmative action works in the future.
WWPD - What Would Picard Do?
... as long as Majel Barrett still plays Nurse Chapel!
(He took her job as first officer, so it's only fair.)