New Star Trek TV Series Coming In 2017 (hollywoodreporter.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Star Trek is returning to television. In January, 2017, a new series will begin. The first episode will air on CBS, and subsequent episodes will appear on CBS's online platform, "All Access." "The new Star Trek will introduce new characters seeking imaginative new worlds and new civilizations, while exploring the dramatic contemporary themes that have been a signature of the franchise since its inception in 1966." The show will be produced by Alex Kurtzman, who produced the two recent Star Trek films in 2009 and 2013. No details have been released regarding what the show will be about, or who will star in it. CBS is currently looking for a writer to helm the show.

Comments

10 years was a decent rest

[peter303]

Running the 2nd thru 5th season in a row and overlapping probably exhausted the genre. Its had enough rest now for new ideas.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Austerity Empowers]

I dunno, I think it may be lost in space after the passing of the creator. It feels like yet another franchise now, willing to compromise its vision for whatever sells. Unlike the other "Star ..." franchise, in this case I think it's probably a bad thing.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Tx]

It can't get any worse than Enterprise.

Then again, I thought it couldn't get any worse than Voyager, so I could be wrong.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Anonymous Coward]

Enterprise was vastly superior to Voyager.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[ArmoredDragon]

Actually its creator wasn't that great. TNG seasons 1 and 2 were kinda bad, and those were the only two seasons that he had a heavy influence. After that, the writers started breaking some of the rules that Roddenberry had established for the series.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Grishnakh]

Oh please. Enterprise was actually a pretty good show. I'm only sorry I listened to people like you and didn't watch it until about a year ago on Netflix.

There's two main problems with Enterprise: 1) the opening theme song sucks donkey balls (except for the two mirror-universe episodes in season 4, that opening sequence is fantastic). 2) the whole Xindi arc in season 3.

Voyager was pretty bad, especially because of the annoying captain. It was far worse than Enterprise.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

It can't get any worse than Enterprise.

Then again, I thought it couldn't get any worse than Voyager, so I could be wrong.

Rule #1 of sequels: It can always get worse.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch "A Night in Sickbay" again, then say that with a straight face. Voyager may not often have risen very high, but it never sunk anywhere near that low.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Anonymous Coward]

Voyager was crap, but Enterprise wasn't that bad at all, especially the last three seasons.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[__aaclcg7560]

Enterprise was awesome as all the technology from the original Star Trek series wasn't fully developed yet. The transporters were still experimental for human transport. Tactical alert — RED ALERT! — took several seasons to fall into place. The captain chair needed tweaking to get just right.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[BarbaraHudson]

It can't get any worse than Enterprise.

Then again, I thought it couldn't get any worse than Voyager, so I could be wrong.

Rule #1 of sequels: It can always get worse.

MOAR LENS FLARE!

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you go watch "Threshold" and say that with a straight face.

I actually liked "A Night in Sickbay". It was humorous and provided insight into the doctor's character.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Grishnakh]

Rick Berman saved TNG and made it what we came to know and love. When Roddenberry was in charge along with his henchmen Maurice Hurley, the show was pretty lame; that's what happened with seasons 1-2. Hurley even pushed out Gates McFadden (Dr. Crusher); when Hurley left the show after season 2, Berman asked her to come back, replacing the unliked Dr. Pulaski.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[peter303]

There was a Hollywood writers strike during much of the first two years STNG too.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[SJHillman]

I liked the concept of Voyager, but the implementation was meh at best. Enterprise was sort of the same. Both series went in a different direction than I would have liked to see.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[__aaclcg7560]

The episode was nominated for the 2003 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (short form) and received the highest Nielsen ratings for any episode of Enterprise during season two at that point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Night_in_Sickbay

A highly rated low point for the series.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Anonymous Coward]

T'Pol > Seven of Nine.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[sycodon]

I did tire of them always getting their asses kicked.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Z00L00K]

And then we have the Wesley Crusher episodes. Makes even JarJar Binks in Star Wars seem to be a relief.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[magarity]

Every ST series has a low quality episode or two. That being said, Voyager and Enterprise BOTH had issues. And that being said, it's hard to beat Voyager's use of absurd plot devices to wrap up the last episode.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[__aaclcg7560]

I thought that was a rather interesting episode. You have two species of intelligent life that evolved and coexisted on the same planet, which is probably not a common occurrence in the cosmos. The species that looked down on the other species was dying out from a genetic defect. Providing a cure would only prolong the inevitable outcome by a few hundred years. This was the first episode that formed the basis for the Prime Directive to not interfere with emerging cultures.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[MightyMartian]

No, they both sucked equally.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[MightyMartian]

Enterprise could best be described as "Run Away! Run Away!"

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[MightyMartian]

Meesah loving Wesley Crusher!

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[__aaclcg7560]

Every time they got their asses kicked, they picked themselves up, found a solution and moved on. It's Star Trek, not Star Troopers.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[ripvlan]

Yeah - I liked Voyager too. Enterprise didn't get good until the last season - maybe the fire of cancellation allowed them to Go Boldly !

Granted Voyager did have a few weak seasons and slow story arcs. Overall I liked it.

Enterprise though suffered from being weirdly outside the 'Verse. The whole Kinder Gentler thing was weak. Just thinking about the World and current state - I expect we'd be more Military in our approach to space exploration "v1" - not a bunch of scaredy cats. Sure I know that we as human's in Star Trek land have put aside monetary and other issues in society - but I don't believe that will happen pre-Star Trek. And no version of Star Trek has ever been kinder & gentle. All Captains have pushed the "fire" button when necessary.

In the final season they became angry and focused on a mission. That's when the show became good.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[smooth wombat]

So like the U.S. navy or military got its ass kicked in our formative years? You mean like reality?

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[AmiMoJo]

Enterprise was a return to what made Star Trek good - the ideas. Voyager had some, but always copped out by resolving every moral or philosophical question by firing an inverse tachyon beam at it.

My worry is that this new TV series will suck like the new movies did. They were okay as action movies I guess, if you like being blinded by lens flare, but as Star Trek they were the worst of what Voyager wanted to be - an action driven show. DS9 had action but you actually cared about it, not so much in Voyager or the two new movies.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Dragonslicer]

And that being said, it's hard to beat Voyager's use of absurd plot devices to wrap up the last episode.

I pretty much abandoned Star Trek after the last episode of Voyager. It was the kind of story resolution that I'd expect from a movie on MST3K.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

MOAR LENS FLARE!

And gratuitous explosions, don't forget the explosions!

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[peted56]

Jolene Blalock and Linda Park not interesting, what planet are you from?

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Kichigai Mentat]

Also the egregious abuse of the reset button.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Princeofcups]

It can't get any worse than Enterprise.

Then again, I thought it couldn't get any worse than Voyager, so I could be wrong.

I suspect the majority of folks here really like TNG, since that is what they saw as kids. As someone who grew up with Star Trek (I refuse to use TOS), I found TNG lacking in just about every way. They took the superficial aspects of the series, and lost the real content. Enterprise may have lost their way, but the basis of the show was sound. So for me, Star Trek > Enterprise > Voyager > TNG. And DS9? I don't see how that was even a Star Trek series.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[SQLGuru]

Iâ(TM)ve been trying to champion a series called Star Trek: Ferengi Traders. Think something like Trade Wars (old BBS game) where Quark et al are constantly dealing with shady people in order to get the most latinum for their product. I think thereâ(TM)s huge possibilities here. You get the exploration aspect. Thereâ(TM)s intrigue. The occasional space battle.

I know, I know â"- this could have just as easily been Firefly, but believe it or not, I had the concept in my head before I ever knew what Firefly was.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[metlin]

Voyager was pretty bad, especially because of the annoying captain. It was far worse than Enterprise.

But Neelix was awesome, right?

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Tactical alert â" RED ALERT! â" took several seasons to fall into place.

Why would that be the case. Alerts are a fucking common thing IRL. The idea that it would take a while to think you had to be prepared "In Case Shit" seems far-fetched.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[willworkforbeer]

Meesah loving Wesley Crusher!

Are you implying Wesley was a covert operative of Species 8472, analogous to Darth Jar-Jar ? https://np.reddit.com/r/StarWa...

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[godrik]

Actually, I pretty much enjoyed the Enterprise show. It is revises the history which might irritate fans. But overall I think it was a solid show. I found the Xindi arc good in the "survival/heroic" genre with lots of character development on the "what would I do to save my planet" theme.

Everybody being angry at vulcans was an interesting recuring plot line that was pretty well constructed.

The interaction between the MACO and the ship security officer was a bit overplayed but still enjoyable.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[David_Hart]

Enterprise lost me on two fronts.

The characters pretty much followed the Prime Directive even thought it barely existed as an idea let alone an ingrained belief. This was supposed to be the wild west version, similar to the original Star Trek. Instead, it was the politically correct version.

The whole Xinidi arc...

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[__aaclcg7560]

In 2152, "condition red" was amongst the possible names that Lieutenant Malcolm Reed considered for the security protocol that was eventually dubbed "tactical alert". Because of Reed's obsession with the security protocol Trip suggested "Reed Alert", which was also rejected by Reed. (ENT: "Singularity")

ahref=http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Red_alertrel=url2html-18221http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/...>

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Actually its creator wasn't that great. TNG seasons 1 and 2 were kinda bad, and those were the only two seasons that he had a heavy influence. After that, the writers started breaking some of the rules that Roddenberry had established for the series.

You have really spoken the truth here. It was only as Roddenberry's health went downhill and he was unable to do much to the show that it got better. Gates McFadden was fired after the first season (it's only been in recent years as far as I know that she anybody else connected to the show was willing to admit it) because she - gasp! - had the temerity to complain about the sexist scripts they were given. Roddenberry certainly did her no favors by letting the writer who demanded her exit have his way. Then he replaced her with the very unpopular Diana Muldaur, who was really in a no-win situation on the show. Finally between Michael Piller and Rick Berman somebody brought back McFadden and the stories were getting consistently strong, except for the final season where Piller's attention was elsewhere. Roddenberry made the decision to have a kid (Wil Wheaton) on the show and while now everybody loves Wheaton, I've always wondered if he left the show because he was tired of all the very negative comments his character consistently got while the show was on. Roddenberry was notorious for demanding re-writes on everything even back to The Original Series, not always for the better. I respect Roddenberry for the general vision and ideas but no more.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[grimmjeeper]

Barbie of Borg was there only to rescue the failing ratings. The character added nothing of significant value beyond looking good in a tight jumpsuit.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[__aaclcg7560]

Corrected link: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Red_alert

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[kuzb]

I completely disagree. I watched Enterprise, and after 2 seasons of convincing myself it would get better I stopped trying and turned it off for good. It was a steaming pile of shit.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Snotnose]

Enterprise finally got it's feet under it in the last season. Too bad the writing was already on the wall.

But dear god did Enterprise have a crappy intro song.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[newcastlejon]

I thought that was a rather interesting episode. You have two species of intelligent life that evolved and coexisted on the same planet, which is probably not a common occurrence in the cosmos. The species that looked down on the other species was dying out from a genetic defect. Providing a cure would only prolong the inevitable outcome by a few hundred years. This was the first episode that formed the basis for the Prime Directive to not interfere with emerging cultures.

Is that the one that came immediately before the one where Phlox calls the Organians "appalling" because they won't cure his patients for him?

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[UnknownSoldier]

> TNG is bland, tasteless drivel.

What the fuck are you blabbering about? These were some of the best episodes bar none:

  * Chain of Command,
  * Darmok,
  * Frame of Mind Long before Deception gave us a mind-fuck, Jonathan Frakes gave us a stellar performance,
  * The Inner Light,
  * The Measure of a Man

Along with the 6 episodes with Q:

  * Encounter at Farpoint,
  * All Good Things ...,
  * Q Who,
  * Deja Q,
  * Qpid, and
  * Tapestry

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Gr8Apes]

It took me 5 minutes to get over the cringe factor of reading your post: They made a third starship troopers? How much pain can one person take?

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[oh_my_080980980]

No they can stop. Stop beating a dead horse and develop new ideas.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Zontar The Mindless]

That implies that they made a *second* Starship Troopers. Let me deal with *that* bit of trauma first, then I'll get back to you.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[jdavidb]

If you ever read the TNG series bible there are some things in there you'll be quite glad they departed from. And some of the tone just doesn't make sense - exploring Riker's reaction to women's liberation - hundreds of years after the fact? In a tone that sounds like it's objectifying women?

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[lexman098]

I doubt this is based on "new ideas" as they're still looking for a writer apparently.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[CanadianMacFan]

DS9 beat B5 to air by a couple of weeks but B5 was in concept phase at least a couple of years before DS9.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re: 10 years was a decent rest

[hackwrench]

I found Enterprise entertaining, but it introduced itself as a somewhat near future sort of a thing but then the whole time war thing made the main cast seem like second-class citizens in their own show. If you want to do a show with time travel as a main element the time travellers should be front and center, not some characters from a bygone era that ripples from the time war are just beginning to inconvenience.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[lgw]

In Enterprise, the "exploration of contemporary themes" often devolved into "dictating correct moral values through episode-end voice overs".

The beauty and genius of the original series was the way they sidestepped just that. Kirk would be forced to make some important decision of great moral consequence, and as a military leader, he'd make whatever decision made sense to him at the time and the crew would go with that. Only rarely were there even arguments over the right course of action.

What made that work so well was that they explicitly weren't presented as moral paragons. At the end of many episodes there'd be some quick conversation between Kirk and another officer or two along the lines of "Are you sure we really did the right thing there? No, but it was the best idea we had, and maybe it will work out for the best" Much less arrogant writing.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[BaronAaron]

The Xindi arc had it's problems (time travel for example) but at it's heart was a good old Star Trek style social commentary. The whole plot was a mirror on the US's reaction to 9/11. I liked how the Enterprise crew left space dock with an idealistic view of the Universe only to have to take less than noble actions when faced with realities. It was good stuff.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[lgw]

To be fair, the problems with the movies was that J J Abrams really wanted to make a Star Wars movies, and make Trek as if it were Wars (he says as much on the commentary track). Since he has moved over to a Star Wars movie, it's great news for both franchises.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

https://youtu.be/n3MKIfXKotg?t...

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[drewsup]

Neelix, the Jar Jar Binks of the trek universe...

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[TomGreenhaw]

There is a huge body of work of very well written Star Trek paperbacks. I hope they draw from that and maintain consistency.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[The-Ixian]

What?!

In my opinion Star Trek is ranked:

1. Voyager
2. STTNG
3. DS9
4. Enterprise
5. TOS

That isn't to say that TOS is the worst sci-fi, it is just the worst Star Trek TV series.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[j2.718ff]

Enterprise was awesome as all the technology from the original Star Trek series wasn't fully developed yet. The transporters were still experimental for human transport.

I've been re-watching TNG and DS9 recently, and one of my complaints is how they have so much magic available (transporters, replicators, etc.) that plots are sometimes contrived so as to have problems that these devices can't solve. Oh, uh, we'd just beam him up, but this particular planet has some weird rocks that we can't beam through. If transporters didn't exist in the first place, they wouldn't have to make up so much convenient tech babble.

I'll have to give Enterprise another look.

Oh, and don't even get me started on the Holodeck. I think it had 2 purposes: 1. To impress audiences with all the cool stuff during the first episode of TNG. 2. To give writers a way to quickly come up with a really lame episode.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[epyT-R]

Oh goody I can't wait. Glee Trek: The Heterophobic Generation

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[sycodon]

No, I mean like a TV show

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[epyT-R]

They did the same thing with T'pol. Every other episode she was losing her cool, crying, or running around with nothing on. Nice eye candy, but that's not the reason I would want to watch a sci-fi show.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[sycodon]

Kinda like the opposite of Waterboarding.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Captain Splendid]

The Heterophobic Generation

I was going to give you shit for being hyperbolic but then I realized I would very much like the future to be that way. OK, maybe heterophobic is still a little strong, but a world where the human race has way more choice in sexual partners, and indeed regards those wedded to bedding only the opposite sex as fuddy-duddies would be a lot more chilled out and interesting.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[grimmjeeper]

It's hard to argue with success. Put in a supposedly emotionless woman who looks good and the nerds and geeks will line up to watch it.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[grimmjeeper]

Elevating her character to that level wasn't a challenge given how bad the series was. And the implicit joke of naming her 6 of 9... er, "seven of nine" was not lost on a lot of us.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[grimmjeeper]

Oh, and you do notice that they just went ahead and wrote in the babe in tight clothes from the start with Enterprise. They learned from the success of adding 6 of 9. (typo intended to make the joke more obvious).

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[grimmjeeper]

I dunno. If the only reason to watch a show is so I can see some babe in tight clothes, I think I'll spend my time elsewhere. There are better ways to see more than that which don't involve sitting through really mediocre Sci-Fi.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[TemporalBeing]

It can't get any worse than Enterprise.

Well, I think they managed it with the movie reboot - same problems for the same reasons. They had a good chance in both cases to tell some very good and interesting stories, but decided to go their own with time-travel instead, ultimately rewriting the entire story in the process.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Darinbob]

To be honest, I liked Enterprise. At least the first season. I was not too fond of Voyager or even Deep Space 9. The concept of being less high tech and more of a bumbling about the universe experiment wasn't a bad one. The problem came from the mixing up or ignoring the "lore" of the whole Star Trek universe, however that screw up began at the very beginning of the orignal series, it was not an invention by Enterprise.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[mjwx]

Barbie of Borg was there only to rescue the failing ratings. The character added nothing of significant value beyond looking good in a tight jumpsuit.

It was the same with Jolene Blalock in ENT. Why the hell was a logic driven, emotionless Vulcan dressed in impractical tight clothes?

Even Marina Sirtis and Nichelle Nichols fulfilled the role of "eye candy" in their respective series.

The only real exception to this was DS9... or maybe it's just that I didn't find Terry Farrell that attractive.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[bill_mcgonigle]

DS9 was a Babylon 5 ripoff

Oh, the banality of this old trope.

B5 explores a huge mythological arc leading to "the third age of Mankind" built on Jungian archetypes. DS9 is allegorical to current events and social commentary. They're thematically and dramatically different creatures.

Yeah, they both used a space station. And, um, aliens (derp). But do try to keep up.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[dbIII]

Q?
Well acted, but still a universe changing plot device that does not change the universe gets a bit old after the third time.
Farscape saw that failing in Trek and took that plot weakness head on:

Crichton: Godlike aliens, man, do I hate godlike aliens! I'll trade a critter for a godlike alien any day!

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Grishnakh]

Yep, especially the mirror universe ones.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Grishnakh]

I disagree. I really didn't like seeing such an obvious parallel to 9/11, rather shortly after 9/11 itself. It was really too in-your-face with the parallelism, and it didn't really paint their response in the best light: they brought the MACO soldiers on board, echoing America's increasing militarism, but basically they ended up sticking around for good. And then they finally figure out who's behind it all and why, and it's an extremely contrived story. People from an alternate universe convince the Xindi to make a superweapon to wipe out the Federation before it's created by destroying Earth, and the Xindi are dumb enough to fall for this?

If they wanted to make some commentary, I'd prefer them to find another culture on their travels which has gone down some dark road. That's what they did in TOS, like the episode about the two sister planets at perpetual war with each other, having a virtual war and "casualties" have to report to the nearest disintegration chamber, or the episode about the Nazis, or the episode about the Chicago gangs.

Re: 10 years was a decent rest

[g1nG3Rj0urNAl157]

*milliseconds ticking* uuuuuhm, T'Pol perhaps?

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Grishnakh]

The only good character on that series was Seven. And really only because she was so hot.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Grishnakh]

Just a technical note: spandex and lycra are the exact same thing. Lycra is a trademark, spandex is the generic name for it.

And this is exactly correct too. The biggest problem with TNG overall (aside from the first two seasons, Wesley, and Pulaski) is the uniforms: they went to women wearing pants. Blah. Luckily Troi had some sexy tight-fitting outfits sometimes, but that was it.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[psyclone]

Wait, DS9 had action? I missed it.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Grishnakh]

Yes, absolutely! If you hate the Xindi arc, skip straight to season 4. It probably has the best episodes of the whole series. Definitely don't miss the "In a Mirror, Darkly" episodes, but most of the others are well worth watching too. You will see some wind-down from the Xindi stuff though in the first few episodes, but it doesn't ruin it.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[antdude]

"... two mirror-universe episodes in season 4, that opening sequence is fantastic..."

I think it would have been awesome if the whole series was like this. Alternate timeline and reversed roles.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[tbannist]

I have to give Voyager the edge here, it had three decent seasons. Enterprise had roughly three-quarters of a decent season.

More over I could bear to watch Voyager even when it was stupid and underachieving. I stopped watching Enterprise, the mind-numbing stupidity of every character on the show was just too horrible to watch. The best example of what was hideously wrong with the the terrible, terrible scripts for most of the show is this: A crew member is trapped on a planet, he refuses to be beamed up because his companion would be killed by the rapid temperature change. What do you do?

If you answered make him wait 8 hours on the side of a mountain while you retrofit a shuttle with a refrigeration unit, you chose wrong. What can't they cool or heat the transporter room? It's a spaceship, one would assume it they have some kind of temperature control on the rooms. Failing that, they have more than one shuttle, why didn't they send someone down with water and a tent? They were literally dying on the mountain side.

It's not just that one episode but that episode was emblematic of the problems with Enterprise that came up over and over and over again. The Enterprise personnel were hyper competent in narrow fields while as a team they failed do everything correctly. It only became watchable in the final season when they got a new head writer and he started trying to clean up all the crap from the previous seasons. Like, actually trying explain why all of the Vulcans on the show acted more like short-tempered hormonal teenagers than the cool detached logicians they are supposed to be.

So in summary, Voyager is marginally less worse than Enterprise. In both cases, you probably want to watch a different series.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Etherwalk]

T'Pol was somewhat interesting in a repressing emotions way, although not nearly as interesting as she could have been in they had written her differently. The half-human part of Spock was important to making him an interesting character, which was why Tuvok was not engaging. With T'Pol, you saw some influence on her character from living with humans, and that was somewhat interesting.

Linda Park could have been interesting--pretty, smart, and well-travelled language genius--but they managed to pull a Uhura and turn her into the ship's receptionist. We hardly see her at all in good character development stories. It's like the writers didn't know how to write strong women.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Etherwalk]

Enterprise was a return to what made Star Trek good - the ideas. Voyager had some, but always copped out by resolving every moral or philosophical question by firing an inverse tachyon beam at it.

My worry is that this new TV series will suck like the new movies did. They were okay as action movies I guess, if you like being blinded by lens flare, but as Star Trek they were the worst of what Voyager wanted to be - an action driven show. DS9 had action but you actually cared about it, not so much in Voyager or the two new movies.

Absolutely. Enterprise was mostly a return to the Greek morality play model of traditional trek or TNG, with the occasional shark-jumping. Alien Nazis somehow didn't make it as bad as Voyager, and Scott Bacula with his Quantum Leap background fit really well into the morality play aspect of it.

The new Trek movies are fun but not intellectual; I'll appreciate them for what they are but know they're not designed to provoke thought.

A new Trek could go too many ways for us to know how it'll be at this point. I don't trust CBS, and Trek has had obvious writing problems in the past, but TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, and Enterprise all added something meaningful to television. And even Voyager had the doctor. So hopefully they'll come up with something worth watching.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Etherwalk]

Q?
Well acted, but still a universe changing plot device that does not change the universe gets a bit old after the third time.
Farscape saw that failing in Trek and took that plot weakness head on:

Crichton: Godlike aliens, man, do I hate godlike aliens! I'll trade a critter for a godlike alien any day!

Actually, I find it much more interesting than one that *does* change the universe. Changing the universe is the lazy part.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[dbIII]

Changing the universe is the lazy part.

Not changing it is a severe continuity error that is just annoying. It's like having Cortez show up, conquer everything, but have it all reset with the Aztec empire continue on waving spears around as if nothing had happened.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[greenfruitsalad]

Why does every tv series these days HAVE to have a happily married homosexual couple in a prominent place? Is there a recently passed law that forces writers/producers to do this? I personally don't care if somebody marries a transgendered 6 legged donkey but this recent trend just feels so forcible - e.g. the flash, the arrow.

It is almost as preposterous as having a black norse god Heimdall in Thor. Just why?

Gay people I know don't go around saying: "Hello, I'm Paul and I'm GAAAAAAAY and I have a husband and we're happy!!!" They say things like "I'm f*cking tired and this sandwich is f*cking awful. I need to take a piss and buy oranges after work."

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[greenfruitsalad]

what about first commander chakotay's arc spanning the entire series? i thought his struggle was the hardest of them all. the doctor performed so many miracles, yet he was unable to change chakotay's gender through the entire season. that poor gentle woman trapped in a man's body... it broke my heart.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[greenfruitsalad]

s/season/series

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Anonymous Coward]

I miss Clevernickname

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[tehcyder]

There was one series of Star Trek, in the 1960s. Just like there was one Matrix movie.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[tehcyder]

It is almost as preposterous as having a black norse god Heimdall in Thor. Just why?

Why not?

Seriously, you're watching a show about norse gods and you care about their fucking skin colour? How about the fact that they're talking in American English? Or that they exist at all?

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[tehcyder]

There was a Hollywood writers strike during much of the first two years STNG too.

Shame there wasn't a fucking actors strike too.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Big Hairy Ian]

These are the voyages of the star ship enterprise on a 10 year mission to squeeze every last penny out of a dying franchise

Re: 10 years was a decent rest

[jaq1an]

I for one, liked Voyager and DS9 but wasn't a big fan of NG. Looking forward to the reboot in 2017

Re: 10 years was a decent rest

[sevenisloud]

I'm gay, and I dislike characters on TV that are gay-for-gay's-sake. Recently, the television series that has, bizarrely, most impressed me with their portrayal of a gay character is Brooklyn Nine-Nine. It's a stupid sitcom but it has its moments and it does a good job of having a gay character in its ensemble who is just like everyone else, except for the sex of their partner.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[el_chicano]

The Enterprise personnel were hyper competent in narrow fields while as a team they failed do everything correctly.

Let's see, Enterprise 1.0, the first one ever, nobody knows what the ship is capable of, nobody has written the book yet. So you are wrong, there is no correct yet as they are playing it by ear.

Fanatically anti-fanatical

Nope, your sig is a lie. You are fanatically anti-Enterprise and anti-Voyager. Two thoughts come to mind:

1) The worst Trek is way better than your average TV show today, and

2) If you think you can do better they why don't you make your own science-fiction TV space show and get it on the air so you can prove it to us.

It is easy to criticize from the cheap seats as it costs you nothing but then again it also adds nothing to the conversation.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[Damouze]

Enterprise was by far the best Star Trek series since TNG. As for Voyager, it was, at times, decent at best.

Re:10 years was a decent rest

[tbannist]

Let's see, Enterprise 1.0, the first one ever.

And?

nobody knows what the ship is capable of, nobody has written the book yet.

It's a space ship. There would literally be a library of technical specifications for everything on the ship.

So you are wrong, there is no correct yet as they are playing it by ear.

You conclusion doesn't follow. The point, which you obviously didn't understand, was that while the crew was perfectly capable in their imaginary skills, they consistently failed to show any level of common sense or rational problem solving skills. By repeatedly demonstrating gross incompetence at basic human tasks, the writers consistently broke my suspension of disbelief. I can't tell you how many times I saw them take unnecessarily convoluted approaches to simple problems.

In the specific example, that I already provided, the crew knows how refit a shuttle with a refrigeration unit, but can't figure out that they should give the guy who's dying of thirst a drink of water.

Nope, your sig is a lie. You are fanatically anti-Enterprise and anti-Voyager.

If you think I'm fanatically anti-either of the shows, you're quite mistaken. I'm reasonably sure that I've watched every episode of Voyager (and I wasn't hate-watching it), I watched the first season, season and half of Enterprise before I couldn't tolerate the show's many, many problems. I watched the last season because they hired a new head writer (who happened to have been the head writer on the lamentably cancelled Odyssey 5).

1) The worst Trek is way better than your average TV show today

That might be true, I don't watch the "average TV show today", either.

2) If you think you can do better they why don't you make your own science-fiction TV space show and get it on the air so you can prove it to us.

Do I also have to write, direct and star in the show? Or is merely organizing the money and hiring the talent sufficient to meet your expectations?

It is easy to criticize from the cheap seats as it costs you nothing but then again it also adds nothing to the conversation.

You are basically saying "Only people who agree with me are allowed to express their opinions".

"TV series"

[DarkEdgeX]

I think it loses the ability to call itself a "TV series" when it refuses to air over a conventional method for getting television into your home... Just sayin'. I love Trek, but I hope this flops so CBS will know their service is lame. (But if it flops, CBS will likely blame Trek and keep pushing ahead with the service anyways).

Re:"TV series"

[Jason Levine]

We actually tried CBS's All Access service after getting a month free promotion. I've found the selection limited and there are a lot of ads. Every commercial break is about 1.5 minutes of ads. Contrast this with Hulu which has 20-30 seconds of ads in each break. It's amazing how quickly you lose your tolerance for long commercial breaks when you cut cable.

Re:"TV series"

[Joe_Dragon]

free online better then showtime. Or putting it on cbs sports network.

Re:"TV series"

[cruff]

Every commercial break is about 1.5 minutes of ads.

That sounds like a much more reasonable amount of ads than the common 4-6 minutes of ad breaks in some broadcast TV shows recently. I find myself routinely queuing up 4 minutes of ad skip on my Tivo Roamio.

Re:"TV series"

[Grishnakh]

Who are they going to sue? The citizens of the US collectively?

Re:"TV series"

[rtkluttz]

Yes, this. As much as I love Star Trek, I'll be forced to either pirate or unintentionally boycott. I don't live in an area with fast enough internet to stream and I also use linux, not Windows or Mac. So all the "controlled and approved" streaming sites like Netflix, Hulu etc that don't give you a "download in advance and watch in the app of your choice" option will never be able to get my business. Nevermind, I'll just download the torrent.

Re:"TV series"

[Nukenbar]

I understand your idea, but I think most people consider House of Cards and Orange is the New Black TV shows, even if you have to stream them.

This is CBS's attempt to enter that arena of on-line hit shows.

Re:"TV series"

[amRadioHed]

None of the streaming services I've used are $15 a month, Hulu is $12 for their ad free subscription. CBS is only $5, but still not worth it at all. It deserves to fail.

Re:"TV series"

[ArmoredDragon]

Well sickbeard has been my conventional method for 5 years now. Are you saying that I won't be able to get it on sickbeard?

Re:"TV series"

[93 Escort Wagon]

Contrast this with Hulu which has 20-30 seconds of ads in each break.

A couple years ago I paid for Hulu Plus for a couple months, but the ads drove me crazy - and the number of ads and the frequency of ad breaks actually was increasing during that two month period! It was ridiculous. I quit, and even though I knew they'd never read it... I wrote a fairly long screed telling them why.

Apparently I wasn't alone in my sentiments, though, because they now have an ad-free tier that's priced somewhat reasonably (considering the breadth of content available on Hulu). We've been subscribed to it almost since day one, and between the three of us we seem to be using it quite a bit.

Now this CBS All Access garbage... there's no way I'm ever paying for that. Between Netflix and Hulu we've already got more than enough to watch - we're not gonna "a la carte" ourselves back to the days when we used to pay $140/month for cable plus internet.

Re:"TV series"

[Kichigai Mentat]

I think it loses the ability to call itself a "TV series" when it refuses to air over a conventional method for getting television into your home... Just sayin'.

How come? Consider the source of the word "television," tele meaning from a distance, and vision being to view something. The show is still being presented to a large audience over a great geographic distance, you're still viewing something remotely from where it's produced. Only the technology behind it has changed, moving from radio frequencies over the air to radio frequencies over a coaxial cable, and now to pulses of light over fiber.

I love Trek, but I hope this flops so CBS will know their service is lame.

In what way is it "lame"? Shows cost money to produce, and that money has to come from somewhere. Consider that a lot of scripted prime time shows cost in the $3-4 million range to produce. You'd need 3-4 million people to chip in a buck to cover the cost of a show, but consider how many shows CBS is running and how many shows people watch. Scorpion, The Big Bang Theory, 2 Broke Girls, NCIS and its two spin-offs, Blue Bloods, The Good Wife, Code Black, CSI and CSI: Cyber, Extant, Limitless, Hawaii Five-O, Madam Secretary, Elementary, The Mentalist, Mom, The Odd Couple, Person of Interest, Stalker, Supergirl, Life in Pieces, Criminal Minds, and the pending Angel from Hell, plus a few more. That's a lot of money, and considering that ads on the web don't snatch nearly the same kind of value as ads from OTA/MSO grab they have to make up the deficit somewhere.

So that's $6/mo to cover the production of more than twenty five different scripted television shows (not to mention the cost of licensing NCAA games, game shows, news programs, and reality shows). Assuming an average run of 25 episodes per season for each show, and a 12 month run, that's 12 per episode that CBS is getting to cover the cost of production of everything, advertising/promotion, and bandwidth for streaming. Even if you only watch three shows, you're paying 96 per episode which is cheaper than the going rate on iTunes, Amazon Prime or Google Play.

Re:"TV series"

[AmiMoJo]

Wait, you had to pay a subscription AND there were adverts? What is this, cable TV or some crappy DVD? If I pay, I'm not watching ads, simple as that.

Re:"TV series"

[rsmith-mac]

Sure. But Netflix and Amazon are the equivalent first-run, top-tier channels for their programming. CBS All Access is the B-team; it's UPN/CW where reject shows go.

The fact that the show is premiering on All Access means CBS doesn't think it's good enough to run on their main channel, and that implies to me that CBS isn't going to give this the kind of resources they'd give a proper Star Trek TV show. Budget Star Trek, perhaps?

Re:"TV series"

[LunaticTippy]

I stopped using Hulu when their ads got excessive. At first they were 15-30 seconds, but once I started using it a lot they crept way up. At the end of my usage there were 5 ad breaks in a 30 minute show, each one 2-3 minutes! To make things even more annoying, sometimes the ads would break and the show would stall. I'd reload the page and be treated to a fresh ad. That BS taught me you could reload the page and get a single ad, so when I'd see 180 seconds until my show resumes I'd refresh the page.

That is when I decided if they want to be so disrespectful of my time I will find another way to watch video.

Re:"TV series"

[DarkEdgeX]

Whoops, my bad, no idea where I got $15 from. :( Still, other than being able to watch whenever I want, I can see this turning into an expensive thing to do if every individual network has just one show you want to watch.

Re:"TV series"

[DarkEdgeX]

I think it loses the ability to call itself a "TV series" when it refuses to air over a conventional method for getting television into your home... Just sayin'.

How come? Consider the source of the word "television," tele meaning from a distance, and vision being to view something. The show is still being presented to a large audience over a great geographic distance, you're still viewing something remotely from where it's produced. Only the technology behind it has changed, moving from radio frequencies over the air to radio frequencies over a coaxial cable, and now to pulses of light over fiber.

Yes, but the model up until now has mostly been either free (OTA) or paying for an entire service (cable, minus the odd premium channels). This is streaming, which inherently limits the available quality to whatever CBS feels like providing and whatever your available bandwidth can handle; with ATSC OTA there's little reason to made content look worse on purpose, though cable/satellite is a mixed bag (cue up the stories of Comcast squeezing more and more channels into smaller space).

I love Trek, but I hope this flops so CBS will know their service is lame.

In what way is it "lame"? Shows cost money to produce, and that money has to come from somewhere. Consider that a lot of scripted prime time shows cost in the $3-4 million range to produce. You'd need 3-4 million people to chip in a buck to cover the cost of a show, but consider how many shows CBS is running and how many shows people watch. Scorpion, The Big Bang Theory, 2 Broke Girls, NCIS and its two spin-offs, Blue Bloods, The Good Wife, Code Black, CSI and CSI: Cyber, Extant, Limitless, Hawaii Five-O, Madam Secretary, Elementary, The Mentalist, Mom, The Odd Couple, Person of Interest, Stalker, Supergirl, Life in Pieces, Criminal Minds, and the pending Angel from Hell, plus a few more. That's a lot of money, and considering that ads on the web don't snatch nearly the same kind of value as ads from OTA/MSO grab they have to make up the deficit somewhere.

So that's $6/mo to cover the production of more than twenty five different scripted television shows (not to mention the cost of licensing NCAA games, game shows, news programs, and reality shows). Assuming an average run of 25 episodes per season for each show, and a 12 month run, that's 12 per episode that CBS is getting to cover the cost of production of everything, advertising/promotion, and bandwidth for streaming. Even if you only watch three shows, you're paying 96 per episode which is cheaper than the going rate on iTunes, Amazon Prime or Google Play.

The money they make off of television advertising (OTA/cable) is pretty big, IIRC. Also, FWIW, CBS made a profit of $1.4 billion last year... hardly sounds like they're hurting. I guess what I'm getting at is... they appear to be forcing people into a specific service using a name brand they know will get at least some people to bite. You have a loyal fanbase, why potentially ruin that by forcing them on to your platform? To make it so you have to pay for it AND can't skip ads?

Re:"TV series"

[RyoShin]

Contrast this with Hulu which has 20-30 seconds of ads in each break.

Eh wut? Before I subscribed to Hulu Commercial Free when it started a few months back, Hulu was pushing 2 minutes of commercials for most shows, especially the more "mainstream" ones that air on regular TV channels. Some of the lesser known/older series might only have one or two 20-30 second commercials per break, but prior to switching I found that the exception rather than the rule.

It was quickly approaching the amount of ads for regular cable, to the point that I could use the commercial breaks as bathroom/food breaks and still get back before they were over.

Re:"TV series"

[AvitarX]

I just purchased The Walking Dead, it was $28 for the season (I assume this cracks out to just under the $2/episode they charge if purchased individually). It's more than I want to pay, but the only part of the price that's outright offensive to me is that the HD version was nearly $50.

A TV show with ads gets about $2/viewer (for prime demographics, I did the math on Grey's Anatomy once), so the pricing is fair I guess.

What's always shocked me is that Hulu, with their ads, and base subscription isn't making companies extra money.
1) the ads are unskipable
2) view whenever means more viewers

They generally only have the same small handful of ads, and half are for Hulu itself, so clearly it isn't working, but I don't get why.

I will say that I'm a happy subscriber to the ad free version, and am still tens of dollars less a month than cable (I have Hulu, HBO, Netflix, and Internet, I'm actually contemplating dropping HBO and Hulu, and Internet and using free netflix streaming on Tmobile exclusively.

Re:"TV series"

[lgw]

This is why I love the Netflix DVD service. It's not timely, but it works out to less than $0.50 for an episode of TV in HD, and I never see any ads (but then, I don't use a consumer DVD player).

Re:"TV series"

[mattack2]

It's amazing how quickly you lose your tolerance for long commercial breaks when you cut cable.

What tolerance? I was using VCRs long before DVRs, to avoid ads.

I *do* sometimes use On Demand, with forced commercials.. Relatively rarely. But some shows are there WITHOUT commercials OR are FF-able.. (Manhattan has had completely commercial free episodes for virtually all.. The first season premiere had a couple of FF-able ads.) So having the option is good, but forced commercials always, that I pay for? Nope.

Re:"TV series"

[Jason Levine]

It is more reasonable than normal TV, but still so much more than I'm used to with Netflix, Amazon, or even Hulu.

Re:"TV series"

[Jason Levine]

Yup. I can actually deal with Hulu's ads as they seem minimal, but CBS has a ton of ads. I'm not going to watch 6 minutes of ads for a 22 minute program. If I wanted to do that, I'd go back to live TV.

Re:"TV series"

[Jason Levine]

I haven't had that many ads using Hulu. Was this their "Hulu Plus" service (which has since dropped the "Plus" in the name)? Maybe they had different ad lengths for Hulu (free) and Hulu Plus.

Re:"TV series"

[LunaticTippy]

Regular Hulu. I have watched in different geographic areas, although always with the same user. I am not sure why things would be so different for different people!

Re:"TV series"

[AvitarX]

If I wasn't stressing timeliness, Netflix streaming would work too.

Which continuity?

[timholman]

From the article:

The new television series is not related to the upcoming feature film Star Trek Beyond which is scheduled to be distributed by Paramount Pictures in summer 2016.

So will this show be set in the original TOS / TNG / DS9 continuity, or in the Abrams continuity?

Lots of plusses and minuses either way.

Re:Which continuity?

[Grishnakh]

That's not possible. This thing is being produced by the dolts who made JJ's two crappy movies, so you're not going to get good stories.

Re:Which continuity?

[prefec2]

Well in that case. Why call it Star Trek when it is not Star Trek. It would be fine to make a new TV sci-fi series, but using the name Star Trek requires that you interconnect with the rest otherwise it looks fake. And there is a enough space out there to either make something new in Star Trek or invent a new series.

And any inconsistencies are fun to discuss or to point our in the series, as long as you do not try to answer, like the non walnut Klingons in TOS, which where fun mentioned in DS9, but lame when explained in Enterprise. What Star Trek definitely is not, is an action peng biong chack series, as the humans life in a positive alternate reality.

And while they addressed, racism, sexism, greed, stupidity, imperialism, lying, and other moral issues, there are enough nice things left which are totally present in the here and now, like refugee treks, proxy wars, climate change, science replaced by bigotry, drug lords, divide in the rich and the poor (states, worlds), limited resources, etc.
And then you can combine that with all the fears people have with that. Migrants and refugees => lower wages, no retirement, no healthcare (a yes this is a European fear, as we currently have that), violence, losing identity, hunger, wars, all the dark ages again, etc.
So that should help to create 20 to 30 episodes alone. And then there are all these personal issues which can discuss in a fiction series. Personal greed, anger, hate, egotism, chauvinisms (and there are plenty of them), ignorance, hardheartedness, jealousy.

So where does ST limit you to write a series? That you could use Ferengi to represent greed? Come on. You could invent other greedy species.

Re:Which continuity?

[MightyMartian]

It will Abrams Trek, so we'll have lens flair and quick cuts so bad that the show will have a warning "Can cause seizures and brain damage"

Re:Which continuity?

[ripvlan]

While the show needs to grow and match the desires of a modern audience - I look at the shows that they reference the director/producers having been a part of. Would I want to watch a Star Trek that looked and felt like Scorpion? Fast conclusion jumping & non-plausible stories? (I watched 1 episode of Scorpion this year and it seemed more of a comedy/don't-take-this-serious than the few I watched last year).

And is it Abrams? Great question. It was supposed to be a Reboot Franchise film - you can't have the TV show straying from the now New-Original that started it all :-P

I find that the films have been Action Adventure ala Die Hard and lower on Thought process.

Re:Which continuity?

[Bosconian]

To save on initial production outlays, the show's bible is comprised of alternating chapters of the "Beverly Hills 90120" and "21 Jump Street" writers' guides. This is to keep the action "electrified," if I may borrow a description from the always-late Harry S. Plinkett.

Re:Which continuity?

[willworkforbeer]

It will Abrams Trek, so we'll have lens flair and quick cuts so bad that the show will have a warning "Can cause seizures and brain damage"

...from all the green chicks showing bewbs? I see your point, this could be interesting.

Re:Which continuity?

[JohnStock]

Ohhhh I missed that!! Fingers crossed it's in the "real" Trek universe we all know and love for 50 years, not abramscrap

Re:Which continuity?

[SvnLyrBrto]

I think you're looking back at early TNG and DS9 with rose-colored glasses. Neither were good in their second seasons.

TNG actually got *worse* in season 2, when they brought in doctor #2 to pretend to be a female version of McCoy... baiting and arguing with Data, the way McCoy did with Spock... but without any of the charm or chemistry that DeForest Kelly and Leonard Nimoy had together. It really wan't until the 3rd season that it got good.

DS9 didn't get any better its second season either. And even the third was pretty dreary. The 4th season, is when it started to get watchable; getting better pretty reliably as they handed more control over the stories to Ronald D Moore.

Re:Which continuity?

[j2.718ff]

Well in that case. Why call it Star Trek when it is not Star Trek.

Two words: name recognition.

Trekkies will watch it because it's Star Trek. Even if they hate it, they'll still watch it so they can complain. Non-trekkies will watch it because they've at least heard Star Trek is good, but they're not willing to watch some old TV series from 20 or 40 years ago. Whether it deserves it or not, it'll get a lot of publicity when it starts.

I'm reminded of some horrible movies "based upon" (but not really) popular books. For example, Starship Troopers, or I, Robot. I'm not sure if a new Star Trek will be horrible - I hope it won't, but by using the Star Trek franchise, its producers are playing it safe, rather than trying to make something really good that could stand on its own.

Re:Which continuity?

[Grishnakh]

To be fair the JJ movies are getting slightly better (Into darkness is about as good as Star Trek V).

You made a mistake there, there's supposed to be an additional "I" there somewhere. Either you meant "Star Trek IV", or "Star Trek VI". There was no movie named "Star Trek V".

And I seriously doubt that Into Darkness was remotely as good as those two classics.

Re:Which continuity?

[Grishnakh]

I think you're looking back at early TNG and DS9 with rose-colored glasses. Neither were good in their second seasons.

He never said that TNG (or DS9) was good in its second season. He just offhandedly said that at this rate, this new show, in *its* second season, might be as good as TNG. (Although you bring up a good point: maybe after two seasons at this improvement rate it'll only be as good as the Pulaski episodes, which of course is far short of the classic 3-5 seasons of TNG.)

It really wan't until the 3rd season that it got good.

You can thank Rick Berman for that miracle. Rick Berman took over TNG, Maurice Hurley (Roddenberry's drinking buddy and lead writer) left the show, and since Maurice had forced Gates McFadden out (because he was a dick), now with him gone and Roddenberry taking a back seat, Berman asked McFadden to return, reprising her role as the doctor, which of course likely saved the show since no one liked Pulaski.

I never really got into DS9, but was Roddenberry heavily involved there too? Honestly, it seems like the more control Roddenberry has over something, the worse it is. He's just like George Lucas: he has some good high-level ideas, but he needs other people to turn them into something really great, and when he gets too involved it turns to shit. Even the first season of TOS was pretty bad a lot of the time, especially the early episodes. After that, Roddenberry wasn't so involved and it was great. It sounds like DS9 was the same.

Re:Which continuity?

[prefec2]

You are absolutely right. Could someone please mod that up. Thanks.

Re:Which continuity?

[wienerschnizzel]

Gene Roddenberry had nothing to do woth DS9 - not even in the first seasons. I think the creators were just still searching for the right tone and themes for the show for the first one and half seasons. The problem was I think that the characters were not fleshed out yet. For instance, the ferengi merchant was pretty much just a caricature at first but later they added some deeper qualities to him. Similarly, the main villain, who was played wonderfully Louise Fletcher (a.k.a. nurse Ratchet from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest) was just too despicable with no redeeming qualities. You can empathize with the later villains much better.

Generally they added more memorable recurring characters and that gave them much more room for good stories. And maybe it's not just that they had to learn how to do that, you have to give a large cast some time to flourish. All in all the quality was already pretty good at the end of Season 2 with some great episodes like The Maquis 1&2, The Jem Haddar or The Wire.

First salvo!

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess with the reboots being successful this makes sense, that said, I assumed Star Trek on TV died with enterprise.

As this is inevitably going to turn into a "why did star trek on TV die anyway", and specifically what was wrong with Enterprise:

Personally I thought they absolutely nailed the feel of the ship. It's the most realistic looking ship of all star trek (including the reboot movies). They way they used the consoles and the general look and feel of everything felt very realistic. Also the way the crew worked, especially in the engine room was really well done. You had a large number of people who were specialized in specific areas all working together, and the chief engineer kinda knew it all but it was very difficult or almost impossible for him to do everything himself. He needed a bunch of people because there was a bunch of stuff that had to be monitored and regularly maintained. It felt very much like an actual crew.

They also really pulled off the whole early exploration vibe. I'm not a space nutter by any stretch of the imagination, but the intro alone just gets me hyped about futuristic ideas of exploration.

So where did they fail? Characters and story. Both were flat, boring, and predictable. They ruined the vulcans, and everyone else was just dull, cliche, and unrelatible. The lack of an effective way to communicate (universal translator) is realistic but got old quickly. The reason they have a universal translator in all the other treks is because without one every story becomes about trying to establish communications (which is pretty much what happened). In short, they built a cool world and a cool ship and then did nothing interesting with them.

Also because may as well get the flame war going, I still contend that DS9 was the best of them all. Sure it was a cliche war story in space, but it was a really well done cliche war story in space. It had actual characters and a consistent universe and real tension. TNG was alright but it hasn't aged well at all, and while the characters are reasonably well rounded, the universe is fairly inconsistent between episodes and technology is very much as convenient for the current story. Voyager had some good story lines, but the characters were bland and they over-did the whole powerful female character thing to the point of ridiculousness. Original series: still watchable but kinda dull.

Re:First salvo!

[Grishnakh]

Good luck with that. This series is being headed by the producers involved with JJTrek.

It'd be interesting to see more episodes in the mirror universe though, even if it is a little depressing because that's actually our universe. The "prime" universe you speak of, where most Star Trek occurs, is actually a parallel universe for us. Humans in our universe are nothing like that; we're really a bunch of evil, power-hungry murderers just like depicted in the mirror universe episodes.

Re:First salvo!

[njnnja]

get the flame war going, I still contend that DS9 was the best of them all.

I doubt you will get a flame war going for contending that http://io9.com/5016403/how-bat...">Ron Moore's DS9 was a great series.

Re:First salvo!

[sycodon]

You two must be Gay.

T'Pol was HOT. So was Hoshi Sato

Re:First salvo!

[khasim]

How about a real story arc? DS9 was good until the end.

Also, how about real science? Not plot stupidity? Use a real map of the galaxy. Either the Klingons are right next door or they are not. How long does it take to go how far at what speed? Is "deep space" a week away by shuttlecraft?

Don't create a new tech to solve the crisis this week and then abandon it next week.

Hire some real writers to write for the show. NOT people who write scripts. The stories can be turned into scripts. But starting with scripts always gives the same feeling to the show.
1. Hi new guy! Oh noes it is bad! New guy died! Followed by:
2. Oh noes it is still bad! Recurring character is in danger! Followed by:
3. Well solved that problem. Everyone laughs/mourns new guy. Run credits. Repeat.

Have the characters go through arcs themselves. REAL ARCS. Not just moral lessons that will be contradicted later. Or stupid sitcom episodes.

Re:First salvo!

[DutchUncle]

Too bad DS9 was a knockoff of Babylon 5.

Re:First salvo!

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Personally I like DS9 the best because of the episode "In the Pale Moonlight". Apart from that there did seem to be more character development as well as depth to the characters than with the other star treks. I never did like the whole Sisko becomes a godlike thing though.

Re:First salvo!

[Anrego]

Yeah, the whole prophets thing goes a bit off the rails for sure, definitely my least favourite aspect of the series, though they do kinda bring it back down to earth a bit later on.

Re:First salvo!

[sycodon]

Kaylee - Your friend's little sister you want to do.

Re:First salvo!

[dissy]

How about a real story arc?

Wow! I mean sure that would be wonderful and amazing after all, but that's still quite a big demand from most of those involved.

And here I was going to plead and beg just for no Neelix, no warp ten salamander sex, and no stories revolving around any child actors.

Re:First salvo!

[sycodon]

I bet that's on Pornhub.

Re:First salvo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Blakes 7 was pretty well Trek, or at least the Federation in that parallel universe :)

Re:First salvo!

[cbhacking]

Because, of course, the sexual attractiveness of the actress (and only actresses, of course) is clearly a relevant point - in fact, *the* relevant point - when determining what makes a good character, yes?

Bloody hell you're pathetic.

Re:First salvo!

[DRJlaw]

Humans in our universe are nothing like that; we're really a bunch of evil, power-hungry murderers just like depicted in the mirror universe episodes.

Dude, that totally explains my goatee!

Please, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, no. Just let the poor thing rest in peace.

Re:Please, no.

[kheldan]

Disclaimer: What follows are my personal opinions; hurt feelings of all different types may result from consuming this content. People with over-sensitive feelings on the subject may wish to avoid it. You've been warned.

Please, no. Just let the poor thing rest in peace.

I second the motion.

Last night I saw a Maybelline commercial, advertising Star Wars-themed makeup. Note that this was aimed at adult women, not little girls or teenage girls. That by itself was the Writing On The Wall, telling the story of what's become of the entire Star Wars franchise: It's turned into some sort of a joke.

That's where the Star Trek franchise has been going, since the two newest films: They're 'Star Trek-themed science fantasy films', not Star Trek films. Granted, the younger generation of viewers are likely scratching their heads in confusion, wondering what the hell I'm talking about, because they thought they were good movies. Yes; they were decently entertaining films, if you ignore what came before them, but they really weren't Star Trek, either. If CBS is going to base a television series on those films, then it'll really be more of a 'Star Trek-themed television show', not a 'Star Trek television series'. Probably won't bother with it, any more than, after the aforementioned Maybelline commercial, I'm likely to bother with this new Star Wars film that's coming out.

Meanwhile, Star Trek Continues, the fan-based production, based on (and following as closely as possible to the original series) has great merit, and I can highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in Star Trek. It may not be as flashy and high-tech as current offerings, but if that's all someone thinks is important or necessary, then I'm talking to the wrong person anyway.

Re:Please, no.

[Dragonslicer]

Last night I saw a Maybelline commercial, advertising Star Wars-themed makeup. Note that this was aimed at adult women, not little girls or teenage girls. That by itself was the Writing On The Wall, telling the story of what's become of the entire Star Wars franchise: It's turned into some sort of a joke.

Um, really? Star Wars has been all about the merchandising potential since the mid-80's. Where do you think "Spaceballs: The Flame Thrower" came from?

Re:Please, no.

[Mr. Slippery]

Last night I saw a Maybelline commercial, advertising Star Wars-themed makeup. Note that this was aimed at adult women, not little girls or teenage girls. That by itself was the Writing On The Wall, telling the story of what's become of the entire Star Wars franchise: It's turned into some sort of a joke.

Meh. Is that any more ridiculous than the Burger King Star Wars glasses that were out in the 70s?

I agree that the ST reboot movies were bad (the first could just be taken as fun, but Into Darkness was awful) and I've got a bad feeling about Abrams and Lucas and Disney and taking a crap on the corpse of the original SW trilogy, but I'm not seeing that merchandizing deals tell us anything about the movie.

Beating A Dead Horse?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, the universe has already got enough of the shows. We do not need another bunch of poorly written Trek. Didn't they get that memo when "Enterprise" was suddeny cancelled by UPN a few years back?

Re:Beating A Dead Horse?

[Zontar The Mindless]

One of the strengths of the original series is that many (maybe most) of the really good episodes *were* morality plays.

Also, what you consider "hysterics" was the overacting that was fairly typical for 1960s American television.

great, I'll skip it.

[Anonymous Coward]

" The show will be produced by Alex Kurtzman, who produced the two recent Star Trek films in 2009 and 2013."

So basically it's not going to be "Star Trek". I'll skip this series. One for the kiddies I guess.

Re:great, I'll skip it.

[OverlordQ]

"Shitty stories in Space: The Next Generation"

Ob

[Hognoxious]

Do the TV series follow the odd/even rule, or is that just the movies?

Re:Ob

[LWATCDR]

I would say no.
I really liked DS9. I might have liked it better than TNG because I found it more realistic. Frankly early TNG had to much of the Hippy 1960s feel of TOS for my taste. But then to be honest I believe that any Utopia will be someone's hell. DS9 showed a universe that seemed more real than TNG.
I really did not like Voyager all that much and really disliked Enterprise at all.
I am also not a big fan of the new movies but that is just me.
And yes I will keep watching them and the new shows hoping that it will be good.
Now ST:TAS was actually had some great episodes.

Re:Ob

[Kichigai Mentat]

Just the movies. TOS was enjoyable, TNG was enjoyable, DS9 eventually became enjoyable, but Voyager was spotty throughout (maybe 40-50% of the episodes not being totally cringe inducing), and Enterprise had some good arcs.

The Prime-verse series just degraded over time, as the core crew that contributed to the best parts of the earlier series just drifted away. TNG was a clean break from TOS, but the fact that they still had some of the original writers and Gene behind it meant it still had some roots in the series before it. Same story with DS9, carrying over a lot of the iconic writers. Voyager was where we saw them drift away and the franchise was never the same after that.

Re:Ob

[UnknowingFool]

For me it was clear that the problem for Voyager was the Gilligan's Island main storyline. As soon as they made it back to Federation space, the series was going to be over. So they had to make more and more obstacles as Voyager got closer.

Re:Ob

[Guspaz]

The original TOS crew that came back for TNG were a big part of why the first two seasons were so weak, and the show only became good in the third season, when all of the TOS crew had left. As such, I don't think that having that connection to the roots of the series was at all helpful. Quite the opposite.

Re:Ob

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The serieses normally required some time to come into their own. Is CBS willing to go a a few years til the beard gets grown on this new series, or will they pull the plug if it takes a while to catch on.

Re:Ob

[tnk1]

Having the roots is the only reason there was a TNG to begin with. I agree with your assessment of their actual implementation of TNG in the first two seasons, but you weren't going to restart Trek without Gene. Now once TNG got on the rails, you had other people who could keep it going, although it eventually went to shit.

Of course, Trek was destined to go to shit because it was formed with the premise of a Mary Sue Federation. Shows like DS9 helped by being on the edges of that, and that was a plus. Voyager failed because ship was thrown far away from it (promising), but still managed to be superior even 70,000 LY away from the Federation and their struggles were all quickly resolved without any real sacrifice.

value

[internerdj]

I loved watching various incarnations of Star Trek, but $6/month is a bit steep for 1 show.

Re:value

[LWATCDR]

$1.50 an episode is a bit much?

Re:value

[smooth wombat]

$1.50 an episode is a bit much?

Cue the people who will say to steal it from a torrent.

Re:value

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> $1.50 an episode is a bit much?

Yes - I'll bite. I currently pay $8/mo for Netflix and my family watches perhaps 5 episodes of something off it per day. That's about 150 episodes for 800 cents, or $0.05-0.06 per episode. For a new Star Trek? That's probably worth a good $0.10/episode to me. Otherwise, yeah, it's coming down the same I get GOT.
 

Re:value

[LWATCDR]

That is if you only watch one show on CBS all access. I do not have cable and can not get CBS with my antenna so it is a good deal for me.

Social Justice Warrioring

[Tokolosh]

Why do I have this nagging feeling that will be less of going boldly?

Re:Social Justice Warrioring

[quantaman]

Why do I have this nagging feeling that will be less of going boldly?

Fine I'll take the bait.

Star Trek has always been highly progressive. In the 60's they had black women and Russians at the height of the Cold War. They had the first on-screen inter-race kiss.

In the late 80's and early 90's they continued with their cashless society, they were an explicitly diplomatic vessel that was actively trying to find peaceful solutions to violent confrontations.

DS9 was based around something that looked very similar to the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Star Trek has always embraced tough social questions. If a new series has any claim to the Star Trek tradition is should absolutely be exploring questions such as gender equality, non-traditional relationships, and debates over what kind of language is proper.

Of course if they're up to the standard of previous Star Treks they'll do it with a lot skill so people won't be ranting against them as SJW. Then again if they're up to the standards of the JJ Abrams movies they won't be able to recognize a social controversy if it hit them with a photon torpedo.

Re:Social Justice Warrioring

[QuietLagoon]

Why do I have this nagging feeling that will be less of going boldly?

If CBS had any confidence in the series, they'd give it a spot in their television lineup, instead of only streaming it.

.
The current handling of the series does not bode well for going boldly, indeed, it's more of a going timidly, toe in the water type of thing.

Re:Social Justice Warrioring

[willworkforbeer]

75% chance there will be an outwardly Gay character or maybe an alien who is all three sexes at once.

Kinda been there and done that in 1992. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Social Justice Warrioring

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Also when Jadzea had the former lover who crossed current gender lines show up. And Roddenberry wanted to include a gay character in TNG, but dies before it could be put in.

Re:Social Justice Warrioring

[Bob the Super Hamste]

In the 60's they had black women and Russians at the height of the Cold War. They had the first on-screen inter-race kiss.

Only on US television. The British got there almost 4 years earlier

Re:Social Justice Warrioring

[quantaman]

>Star Trek has always embraced tough social questions. If a new series has any claim to the
>Star Trek tradition is should absolutely be exploring questions such as gender equality,
>non-traditional relationships, and debates over what kind of language is proper.

I very much want an episode where they find a planet that has gone so far down the PC speech tunnel that saying the slightest wrong thing, or even having a micro-aggressive intonation, is grounds for execution. Because Star Trek should be exploring both the good and bad ideas in society.

I want that, but it will really be about cool space explosions and techno-babble.

And holodeck things coming alive.

They did something similar, it was Season 1 where the show was fairly awful but they had a lefty paradise with a very easily triggered death penalty.

Part of the reason that episode (and S1 in general) was so awful is that the premise was absurd, heavy handed, and generally dull. Similarly "a planet that has gone so far down the PC speech tunnel that saying the slightest wrong thing, or even having a micro-aggressive intonation, is grounds for execution" would also be very heavy handed and dull. Where's the conflict? Of course micro-aggression death penalty planet is wrong!

More interesting would be a Federation military campaign where there had been an atrocity at some point. An alien delegation is visiting and one of the delegation members was present for the atrocity and is still severely traumatized. An group of Enterprize crew members talking about the campaign, start recounting that incident in very insensitive pro-Federation way, the traumatized alien loses his temper and attacks, and now everyone has to figure out how to deal with it.

So there you go. You have PC speech (biased retelling of history), microagressions (telling that history in the alien's presence), trigger warnings (alien didn't know that topic would come up), and victimization (should the trauma and provocations give the alien an excuse?).

Best yet you can adjust the scenario so there isn't a clear outcome, maybe the atrocity wasn't the Federation's fault, maybe the alien kills the crew member, etc. You end up with a story you can actually think about, the kind of story Star Trek should be telling.

Re:Social Justice Warrioring

[cbhacking]

Counterargument: by placing the show on their near-limitless Internet offering (streaming bandwidth at any given time is limited, options for what to send over that bandwidth is not, but options for what to *broadcast* at any given time *is* limited), they are freeing themselves of the *need* to produce a high-ratings, universally-appealing show. They can take more risks with an online show, focus on things that will appeal to a core audience even if it loses the more casual viewers, monitor the appeal of (and even solicit feedback on) each episode in the show quite directly, and generally let a narrow but highly-appreciative audience guide the show more than is possible for something that needs to be as mass-market as possible.

Not that they necessarily *will* do any such thing, of course. Doing it right has a bunch of challenges, starting with creating something that the core audience will find appealing (and remember, a lot of today's viewers weren't even alive during the golden years; to many, Star Trek means the Abrams movies, Enterprise, and "that old series" Voyager). If they stick to the rebootverse but make a play for the old-school viewers, the shows will likely seem slower and more cerebral than the fans of Abrams' movies expect. If they stick to the rebootverse and keep its style, they may create a following among those who thought Into Darkness was anything other than an utter failure (second only *barely* to Nemesis, IMO) but they will entirely lose sight of the point of calling it Star Trek. If they go back to the prime universe or to before the timelines forked (something between ENT and TOS, timeline-wise? The Romulan war?) they might have a better shot at interesting the older viewers, but will likely miss the crowd (and it is a substantial crowd) to whom the Abrams movies formed the core of their interest in Star Trek. If they do something *really* different - like setting the entire series primarily in [the/a] mirror universe - they get a reasonably clean slate but have an uphill battle to convince the existing fans of the franchise that their show is worthy.

Even if they pick a good setting and a good premise, and stick (as close as any show ever does) to some canon that will come with an automatic base, they risk the same things any show does: the desire to make more money by broadening appeal and making the show more of a crowd-pleaser at the expense of ]the interesting questions and dilemmas that make Star Trek actually something special. The fanbase will be divided, too; even without the rebootverse and the multi-generational aspects, if you keep to the sort of social progressivism that defined the earlier shows you'll have some people crying "the SJWs ruined everything" and if you don't you'll have people claiming it's only superficially Star Trek at all. Another DS9-esque show could be quite appealing to people who liked the mixture of diplomatic and moral issues plus darker and more violent times, but would risk losing those who feel that the core of Star Trek is in the exploration; another TNG might feel too idealistic and out of touch to today's viewers, etc. Following what "the fans" want is far from a guaranteed success; the fans are far from a unified bunch.

Nonetheless, I think that going with online distribution likely means that the writers will have a lot more rein to produce interesting, rather than inoffensive, scripts. I'm cautiously hopeful.

Re:Social Justice Warrioring

[quantaman]

They did something similar, it was Season 1 where the show was fairly awful but they had a lefty paradise with a very easily triggered death penalty

How the fuck is that society "lefty" ?? If anything, it parallels a strict, conservative, authoritarian, religious society.

The justice system sure, but if I recall the society itself was downright libertine, it was strongly implied that the adult crew members basically spent their leave in orgies.

Re:Social Justice Warrioring

[quantaman]

Ah, because they have different sexual mores than you're used to, they must be politically left? Or did you mean it's the kind of society a "lefty" on Earth would want to live in, because they're all about hippie free love, baby?

It must be bizarre to view the rest of the world through conservative derp-colored glasses...

And on what grounds do you consider it "a strict, conservative, authoritarian, religious society"?

Sure they have a very harsh and unsympathetic justice system, but claiming they're conservative on that basis is committing the same projection you're accusing me of.

The entire point of the episode's early twist is that this outrageously open and liberal planet had an absolutely draconian justice system that no one on the Enterprise anticipated.

Re:Social Justice Warrioring

[quantaman]

> And on what grounds do you consider it "a strict, conservative, authoritarian, religious society"?

Strict: law is applied rigidly with no leniency or consideration of circumstances

We know the law is strictly applied (and in some cases as with plants is ridiculous) but otherwise people were very relaxed and the society didn't seem strict at all.

Conservative: Conformity is expected, independent thinking and change are not tolerated

I disagree, except for the law, the central plot point, they were remarkably open and invited a group of aliens who were complete strangers to come down and mingle. That is extremely unconservative.

Authoritarian: The laws are decreed by a dominant ruling entity and must be obeyed on pain of death
Religious: The people take it on faith that the dominant ruling entity is Right and not to be questioned

The fact that they can mate freely doesn't change any of this.

Well the authority is the alien playing god, otherwise I don't recall any authority figures such as a ruler or head priest, just the mediators who don't have much autonomy. An actual authoritarian society (ie Romulans) has a lot of layers of rulers, each with a great deal of control over their subordinates.

I admit I forgot about the god when I wrote my comment but I don't think strong religious belief is incompatible with leftist society. I think the best description of that society is a powerful entity trying to use the broken-window model to impose a left-wing paradise on a planet.

Note that conservatism is strongest in rural communities where law enforcement is distant and people use strong social mores to keep potential troublemakers in line. In the society from the planet you don't need to worry about enforcing social conformity because you're less worried about some weird dude doing something illegal and harming you.

It'll be aired in todays conventional methods

[future assassin]

It'll be on a torrent site 10 min after airing so you can watch it are you leisure. Now if I was them I'd put it up on a torrent site right after it aired with the commercial intact. That way you beat the pirates to the punch and people probably wouldn't care about the tv ads.

Re: It'll be aired in todays conventional methods

[SQLGuru]

But they haven't figured out how to track the viewers and charge the advertisers for that.......it's sort of the same problem that a lot of internet content has. Pay per impression is the model that they understand and when you can't easily track impressions, it's hard to turn that into a business model.

Re: It'll be aired in todays conventional methods

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I paid for it for the Big Brother live feeds. I cancel it at the end of the show. There are literally no other shows on CBS I would watch for free, much less $6/month.

Oh, wait. Star Trek! Yeah I would.

Oh, wait. Rebooted universe series.

Consuela: No, no...noooooooooo...

Re: It'll be aired in todays conventional methods

[lgw]

You'd be surprised how viewers are tracked these days. Post-broadcast-world viewer data mining is a serious business, and it doesn't only depend on counting streams.

Re:It'll be aired in todays conventional methods

[vivek7006]

It'll be on a torrent site 10 min after airing so you can watch it are you leisure. Now if I was them I'd put it up on a torrent site right after it aired with the commercial intact. That way you beat the pirates to the punch and people probably wouldn't care about the tv ads.

Dammit Jim .... I am a Star Trek fan, not a pirate!

Re:It'll be aired in todays conventional methods

[Mandrel]

It'll be on a torrent site 10 min after airing so you can watch it are you leisure.

Have hackers worked out how to rip CBS All Access streams?

I'm surprised that CBS All Access seems to be available here in Australia — the only country besides the US and Canada. But given the reports here that this subscription stream includes ads, I'd be hoping that they also made ad-free episodes available for individual or season purchase, in a timely manor.

Re:It'll be aired in todays conventional methods

[dave420]

I prefer my stately homes to be late.

Re:It'll be aired in todays conventional methods

[Mandrel]

Huh? I buy all my media at the local timely manor. Don't tell me you're forced to shop at some dump with poor opening hours.

Trek is ABOUT Social Justice Warrioring

[Etherwalk]

Star Trek still exists because the original series was all about social justice. The original series was a commentary on society as much as it was science fiction.

Let This Be Your Last Battlefield.

TOS wasn't pro-hippie in that it recognized the importance of duty and responsibility and the complexities of life, but it was pro-equality, pro-egalitarian, anti-discriminatory.

Re:Trek is ABOUT Social Justice Warrioring

[willworkforbeer]

TOS wasn't pro-hippie in that it recognized the importance of duty and responsibility and the complexities of life, but it was pro-equality, pro-egalitarian, anti-discriminatory.

And ST:TNG could be, um... like this
https://youtu.be/9JqPJBZTsXM?t...

Oh, myyyy.

Re:Trek is ABOUT Social Justice Warrioring

[Tokolosh]

SJW = equality of outcome
Boldly = equality of opportunity

Re:Trek is ABOUT Social Justice Warrioring

[Actually, I do RTFA]

e. It was basically Roddenberry's idealistic version of the USA in space. I mean, come on, the starship was named after one of the most staunchly pro-capitalist concepts ever.

Well, it's set in a post-scarcity communist utopia .The bridge crew was expressly made up of Americans, Russians and Japanese people in an era when fighting the "Japs" was a recent memory and the Russians were the new enemy, in a direct appeal to get over our differences. It featured the first inter-racial kiss as though black people and white people could get along (in spite of the still existent legal segregation). The one guy who was racist was shown as anachronistic.

But yeah, if you ignore everything and focus on the starship name, totally a paean to America!

Re:Trek is ABOUT Social Justice Warrioring

[Matheus]

...or if you look at the primary definition of the word 'Enterprise' which has nothing to do with capitalism:

"a project or undertaking, typically one that is difficult or requires effort."

Sounds pretty much like a solid definition of the original mission.

Re:Trek is ABOUT Social Justice Warrioring

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Oh, I guess I thought he was saying it was named after the USS Enterprise. Which is as iconic as US Naval ships get (at least in the modern era).

Re:Trek is ABOUT Social Justice Warrioring

[MightyMartian]

Exactly. However flawed TOS could be at times (and the third season was, with a few exceptions, incredibly dismal), it really was Roddenberry and some of the best writers working in TV finding inventive ways to challenge society on significant issues, at least as they stood in the 1960s. It was progressive in a way a lot of TV series at the time couldn't be, because it could hide the moral behind green-skinned women and all the other trappings of a science fiction show.

I re-watched Errand of Mercy a few weeks ago, and I was struck by how this episode rather handily shredded even the Federation's self-mythologizing. The way the Organians basically demonstrated that the Federation, whatever it thought of its own moral superiority, was just as quick to demonize its enemies as its enemies were. When you put that in the context of the mid-60s, at the height of the Cold War, with the Klingons clearly supposed to be an allegorical representation of the Soviets, you see how the series made the point that the West, with all its advantages, and even with some justification that it was a superior society, still could eagerly partake of ignoble strategies, and if I dare push the allegory at the heart of that episode further, that the Superpowers' use of underdeveloped nations to wage their proxy wars was wrong.

That's pretty heavy stuff to put on a television set in the United States in 1967, and while it did align somewhat with the growing anti-Vietnam War movement, I still doubt you could have put a conventional TV show where the US was shown to be just as conniving and wantonly disinterested in the actual needs of a Third World country as the feared and evil Soviet Union.

Re:Trek is ABOUT Social Justice Warrioring

[mjwx]

e. It was basically Roddenberry's idealistic version of the USA in space. I mean, come on, the starship was named after one of the most staunchly pro-capitalist concepts ever.

Well, it's set in a post-scarcity communist utopia .The bridge crew was expressly made up of Americans, Russians and Japanese people in an era when fighting the "Japs" was a recent memory and the Russians were the new enemy, in a direct appeal to get over our differences. It featured the first inter-racial kiss as though black people and white people could get along (in spite of the still existent legal segregation). The one guy who was racist was shown as anachronistic.

But yeah, if you ignore everything and focus on the starship name, totally a paean to America!

It appears you know nothing about Communism, or Star trek. The post scarcity thing was not introduced until TNG, there was still an idea of scarcity in TOS.

In TOS, the Federation represented the US with it's democracy and respect of freedom, the Klingons represented the Russians, barbaric and imperialistic. This is why The Undiscovered Country was produced during glasnost and the fall of communism. It was, at the time, quite subtle propaganda (well obvious propaganda to non-Americans like myself).

Also the society in TNG was far from communist. Post scarcity made working for a living no longer necessary, when you no longer need to work it is not communism. Communism would be where all Federation Citizens receive 5 metres of Andorian cotton each year and have to make all their clothes out of that.

gonna flop

[mrun4982]

if it's only on CBS All Access.

Re:Farscape

[Jhon]

"Asimov has a shit loads material. So does Heilein."

Asimov? Because they did so well with 'I Robot' and "Bicentennial Man", right? And The Movie About Night Falling That Shall Be Unnamed? I've no trust in ANYONE producing a good Asimov film *OR* a TV series.

And Heinlein? Do you not remember Starship Troopers? Or Puppet Masters? At least the latter had Donald Sutherland (and he nailed the 'old man') but it otherwise sucked. At least "All you zombies" had a "respectable" attempt last year with Predestination so maybe all is not lost here...

Not Really Tv

[Anonymous Coward]

And for $6/mo it'll probably be pirated at warp speed.

cautiously optimistic

[j2.718ff]

The problem with movies is they don't have enough time for significant character development. Assuming a movie tells a good story, at best, you're talking one good story every few years. The Next Generation thrived as a tv series, but failed miserably in movie form.

In my opinion, the most recent movies have too much action, without much storytelling. I'm hopeful that a TV series simply won't have the special-effects budget to make the episodes non-stop eye-candy, and will instead try to tell good stories with only as many special effects as are required.

Brilliant!

[pla]

CBS is currently looking for a writer to helm the show.

Well now, I can barely wait for this gem!

"We have the product placements all lined up; the token morality lessons of the week to push our thinly-veiled political agenda; the distribution gimmick to force fans into using our otherwise dead-in-the-water online service... Now we just need a show!"

Klingons!

[Tablizer]

Klingons are a sure ratings magnet: they appeal to both wrestling/NFL fans and geeks .

Have 2 Earth Federation rookies, a male and a female, be assigned to a Klingon ship shortly after Klingons join the Federation, in a cultural exchange program. The rookies have to be cunning both physically and socially to survive. Lots of plot room for action, showdown drama, and humor.

Re:Klingons!

[WallyL]

Definitely. I'm for this. The strong, witty characters are already basically a requirement on tv shows these days, so it makes sense to put the characters in an environment in our Star Trek universe where they need to be strong and witty. With the Klingons, it's sure to be action. I would watch almost anything with Star Trek in it, but I already like action shows. This show should be set after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis so we can see what keeps happening in the Prime universe. I vote for a human woman, and a [half-human, we learn about that later] Andorian. Guest stars should include Captain Nog and Dr. Bashir and Admiral Riker.

Better idea ...

[BarbaraHudson]

Why not skip YASTS (Yet another star treck series) and bring back Firefly?

Re:Better idea ...

[kheldan]

Why not skip YASTS (Yet another star treck series) and bring back Firefly?

There is an obvious problem with that: Castle is a very popular show; trying to restart Firefly without Nathan Fillion would be a disaster. It would at the very least have to wait until Castle ends, which doesn't appear to be anytime soon (or, at least, not for a few more years). Additionally, Nathan Fillion isn't getting any younger, and neither are the rest of the original cast of Firefly, assuming you could even get them all back together at this point. You might be thinking 'get an all-new cast for the reboot of the show', but I'd think the likelihood of finding a cast with those qualities, and with the chemistry they collectively had, would likewise be rather unlikely. As much as I liked Firefly and Serenity, I think we need to just let sleeping dogs lie, and feel fortunate that we had any of it at all.

Re:Better idea ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fillion was already publicly asked if he would return to Firefly if the show came back. From what I remember, he basically said he would drop Castle to do Firefly and that it was the most fun he had as an actor.

Who knows if he actually would or not though.

Re:Better idea ...

[RavenLrD20k]

Because the legal Idiots at CBS say they don't have and can't get the rights to a show that was canceled by the executive Idiots at Fox?

Re:Better idea ...

[BarbaraHudson]

Castle is getting really hackneyed and long in the tooth. Besides, we can have other stories set in the same universe, same as was done with star trek.

Re:Better idea ...

[kheldan]

Castle is getting really hackneyed and long in the tooth.

I don't totally disagree. I've been watching it since the beginning, and still think it's rather fun, but when they broke the tension between Beckett and Castle, I knew it would be unlikely they'd be able to keep the party going for too much longer after that, without stirring things up in some drastic way -- which they've been trying to do, first with the 'Rick's disappearance' arc, now with the 'Kate being secretive and putting their marriage on hold' arc. I get the feeling that after the latter is over and done with, they're going to start winding it down.

Re:Better idea ...

[willworkforbeer]

Why not skip YASTS (Yet another star trek series) and bring back Firefly?

Is it a little surprising none of the recent young-enough-to-love-it billionaires hasn't funded it as a vanity project? It may cost $1.5M per episode, but it would make back a chunk of that in its initial release, plus international distribution, and streaming revenues for decades.

Plus, make your enemies rage by becoming a nerd folk hero.

Re:Better idea ...

[JohnStock]

Because firelfly is an overrated fart (FIAOF) that lasted 2 minutes while Star Trek has inspired 2 generations of scientists, engineers, philosophers and "thinkers" in general. Arguably the best overall shows ever on TV.

Re:Better idea ...

[tnk1]

An interesting thought, but Fox would probably not part with the rights to it and that would be that.

In fact, that is a big reason things never get picked up, even when there is interest. The corp that owns the rights doesn't want to share or only wants to share under its own terms.

Re:Better idea ...

[BarbaraHudson]

Because the legal Idiots at CBS say they don't have and can't get the rights to a show that was canceled by the executive Idiots at Fox?

So instead of the legal idiots, let CBS use the money people. If there's enough money on the table, Fox will either license the rights for a hefty fee, or see that there's more of a demand than they thought and revive it themselves. Fox's News Corp overlords don't like to leave free money on the table any more than anyone else does.

Re:Farscape

[kheldan]

And we can't get Farscape back.
Star Trek is lame. It was never science fiction and neither is Star Wars.

Farscape was a very good show without a doubt. But one could just as easily say that Farscape was just 'Muppets in Space', and not science fiction either, and for that matter much more 'science fantasy' than either Star Trek or Star Wars.

But crap (i)s what (i)s marketable. There (i)s hope - Tolkiens stuff was made into decent movies.

You're knocking something for not being science fiction and then you talk about Tolkien, which was pure fantasy? I'm confused, now, what were we talking about? Also much of Asimov and Heinlein is over the heads of the average person, and the average person is who they're trying to get to go pay to see movies in a theater, yes. Since you don't seem to be paying attention, you wouldn't realize that they're working on a Moon Is A Harsh Mistress motion picture adaptation of the book.

By the way you apparently need a new keyboard; your 'i' key is intermittently bad.

New opportunity for inclusion

[CauseBy]

We had the woman captain, and the black captain, so I'm thinking the new captain should be transgendered. They could make the captain both transgendered and transvestite if they want to save money on costume costs.

I don't give a crap...until it hits DVD

[anyaristow]

I will not check out CBS's "online platform".

I will not jump through hoops to see programming. I will not sign up for multiple entertainment services and take on yet more monthly bills. I will not tolerate piss-poor streaming quality. I most especially will not tolerate incessant advertising, even if the service is free. *Especially* if it is free.

We have reached the point where the number of entertainment choices, the un-originality of them, the hoops and interruptions and surveillance they come with, has reduced their value to next to nothing. What we need is fewer sources, not more. We need aggregators, like cable TV services with on-demand access, at fair prices, with actual competition and no sports channel taxes.

Netflix is the best we have, but they are moving in the wrong direction, increasing prices so they can offer their own programming. They don't have an ESPN tax, but they do have a Orange-is-the-new-black tax. And their selection isn't awesome and isn't timely or even stable.

I won't see the new Trek until it has been out on DVD long enough to drop in price, a lot, because I hate even the ads they sometimes put on DVD, so I won't pay more than $17 for a season of television programming.

Or maybe Netflix will pick it up and I'll get to see it before they drop it...and re-add it...and drop it... and...

Screw it. All this wonderful technology the 21st century has brought us has pretty much been squandered by shitty business models and fucking shareholder value.

Re:I don't give a crap...until it hits DVD

[Sir_Eptishous]

Right
I don't get all these late-to-the-party types who think I'm going to sign up for their service just to watch one show...

Re:Farscape

[lister king of smeg]

"Asimov has a shit loads material. So does Heilein."

Asimov? Because they did so well with 'I Robot' and "Bicentennial Man", right? And The Movie About Night Falling That Shall Be Unnamed? I've no trust in ANYONE producing a good Asimov film *OR* a TV series.

And Heinlein? Do you not remember Starship Troopers? Or Puppet Masters? At least the latter had Donald Sutherland (and he nailed the 'old man') but it otherwise sucked. At least "All you zombies" had a "respectable" attempt last year with Predestination so maybe all is not lost here...

Bicentennial Man was descent as far as movie adaptations go.the I Robot movie was bad fan-fiction of Asimov. But I do cringe when I hear they want to make adaptions of things like foundation series, that a clearly not written in such a way as to make good movies. Now if they would do the robot series (these might be interesting as kinda scifi/film noir) or even maybe some of the empire books it could be interesting.

Heinlein as long as you ignore the his fetish for fascism or blatant racism, can be okay.

Re:Fuck

[kheldan]

They took what could have been a fun season's worth of plot development and jammed into an episode as cliche and absurd as possible.

You're not the only one who noticed that. I was left with the general feeling that the episode was fun, but that it was unlikely that they'd be able to sustain that level of energy for even one season, let alone for many seasons. Eventually they'll run out of ideas and it'll get stale and grind to a halt. There's a chance that won't happen but I don't see it being very likely at all.

The internet hates everything

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing in the scifi world that you can love that someone hasnt set up a page & a set of forums with the specific purpose of talking about how awful & terrible it is.

& you can go and read that. And once you've read enough of it, you'll hate it too.

Enterprise was the first ST series that had to deal with the huge community of fans dissecting it on the internet in real time as it aired. Voyager had to deal with this too to some degree, but not like Enterprise did. Before the episode was even over there were already hundreds of posts eviscerating every aspect of it.

Sure it had its weak points, and the first couple seasons sucked. But ALL ST series start out that way, go back & watch the first season of TNG, its downright painful!

The internets love/hate affair is what killed Enterprise.

Re:The internet hates everything

[Anrego]

Thing is I really tried to like it. I went in knowing exactly what you said, that no matter what the internet was gonna tear it to shreds and I was going to give it a legitimate chance (I can say the same about the Matrix sequels).

The intro definitely got me excited, in retrospect that and the setting (as was already mentioned) are pretty much the only thing they got right. There were a few episodes I would describe as ok, but most range from mediocre to terrible. I kept watching in the hopes that it would get better, because as you said, starting shitty and improving is kinda the sci-fi way, but unlike most I feel like the show actually got worse as it progressed. The more they explored of the Vulcans, the whole temporal war, it just wasn't pleasant to watch.. and the characters didn't really develop so much as randomly and awkwardly change as required to fit the story. It lacked the warm cuddliness of TNG and the original series but didn't pull off the darker tone the way Deep Space 9 did. You had a bunch of characters you didn't like, didn't care about, and a situation that had no tension because of the time travel element.

TLDR: I don't buy that internet hate destroyed it, it was objectively terrible from beginning to end.

Re:The internet hates everything

[yourlord]

My wife still wants to start throwing things at the TV when that horrible abortion of an intro plays.

I gave up when the VERY FIRST EPISODE hinged on genetically engineered aliens from the future. They literally jumped the shark on a rocket powered jet-ski with disco balls and laser beams mounted on it, in the very first episode.

I turned it off, never looked back, and chuckled when I heard it ended up cancelled short of the obligatory 7 season mark.

You know your show sucks when the final episode ends up set on the holodeck from a preceding show that outclassed yours in every way. It's about the only way they got anyone to actually watch it. It's the only reason I ever watched it at least.

Re:The internet hates everything

[Anrego]

By intro I meant the opening title/music, and I would even expand it to include the launch speech. Agree that the premise of the first episode was absolutely horrific.

Re:The internet hates everything

[ninjagin]

My kingdom for mod points! You have successfully described exactly what led me to avoid the show.

+10 bonus for bombastic use of colorful metaphors.

Re:Farscape

[Jhon]

"Bicentennial Man was descent as far as movie adaptations go"

You have very low expectations. I'm not saying it wasn't a bad "MOVIE". It was entertaining and a kind of "corn-ball" that made me think Buster Keaton. I do not feel I wasted my time or money watching it way-back-when (tm).

However, the movie was not what I would call a good adaptation of Heinlein's story. But, we can have a difference of opinion. It appears we both thought the movie as OK...

Re:Point taken

[Jhon]

The BEST adaptation of an Asimov story I have saw was a VHS Video "who-done-it" game based on Caves of Steel. It actually was decent for "B" grade actors and "direct to video" special effects of the 80's.

Re:Farscape

[Z00L00K]

I think that both Starship Troopers and Puppet Masters weren't the best stories by Heinlein for movies anyway.

The big problem with making a good movie is that there's too much reliance on special effects and too little on acting. And both Heinlein and Asimov were more about psychology than technology even though the technology was a hook to hang the story on in their books it was never the main thing.

If you want to make an action movie or TV series - look at Keith Laumer.

Re:The show will be produced by Alex Kurtzman

[Z00L00K]

What about Quentin Tarantino?

Could have taken a page from Enterprise

[Registered Coward v2]

and made a series based on the alternate universe where th Federation was the bad guys lead by an emperor. A very different twist with a lot of potential.

Re:Could have taken a page from Enterprise

[MightyMartian]

Frankly, that's the direction I thought the TNG universe should have taken, a civil war within the Federation as the militarists seize control.

Title

[iONiUM]

New Star Trek TV Series Coming In 2017 to their online subscription based service only.

Not "on television" but "online"

[QuietLagoon]

...subsequent episodes will appear on CBS's online platform, "All Access."...

Looks like I won't be able to see the show, because all I have here is an old TV antenna clinging to the side of the chimney....

Canadians Bracing

[Strixy]

Canadians (and anyone who isn't a'Murican) are already bracing for the inevitable, "Not available in your country" error message.

Re:Canadians Bracing

[MightyMartian]

Odd, I never get such an error with bittorrent.

Re:Canadians Bracing

[CanEHdian]

Indeed. This sounds like a piracy honeypot... think CBS is teaming up with some sleazy dirtbags ^L^L^L^L^L lawfirm and "monetizing" their "assets" that way?

Re:Farscape

[Jhon]

"If you want to make an action movie or TV series - look at Keith Laumer."
Or Harry Harrison... Deathworld would make a decent "action movie". And it follow the current "herd" mentality of Man=bad -- Animals/Plants=Good.

Or maybe a SS Rat series...

Re:Farscape

[Dragonslicer]

From what I heard (I've never seen it myself), "I, Robot" was pretty much nothing like the book (which is actually a collection of short stories).

I never knew they made a movie of Nightfall. I liked the book, even though the ending was a great cliffhanger that sadly never got resolved.

Now that I think about it, Nemesis might work as a movie or short series.

Lense Flare

[ZipprHead]

... I'm sensing it'll have a lot of lense flare

Re:Renegades

[transfire]

+1 Renegades is a great setup for a show. The first episode was really good for a B-grade pilot. I would love to see it done with a big budget.

JJTrek != Star Trek

[Stormwatch]

>new Star Trek series
Yay.
>from the producer of JJTrek
Boo.

To hell with this crap. Better just watch the fan-made New Voyages.

Re:Farscape

[metrix007]

I'Robot wasn't that bad at all. Yes, it kind of made robots out to be the bad guy which is what Asimov wrote against, but it did it in a way that was consistent with his books. Remember the Zeroth law from the last book in the Foundation series? In addition, that movie had numerous nods and short stories integrated the main plot. It was actually pretty decent for a fan of Asimov's books (which are almost all I read as a kid...I still haven't read 2001...)

Bicentennial Man was also good. It was more playful and more targeted towards kids than it had to be, but the core of the story, a robot growing human and fighting for his rights was extremely well done.

Film adaptations of Asimov's works (even the old BBC stuff) is generally pretty well done. We just need something targeted towards adults, not kids or action movie fans.

Starship Troopers was also pretty great. Yes, it's very different from the book, but it works pretty well as a satire of military and government, which is kind of what the book was about anyway. Not sure why you think 'Predestionation' was only a respectable attempt...U guess you're just hard to please.

Hedging their bets

[wonkey_monkey]

In January, 2017, a new series will begin. The first episode will air on CBS, and subsequent episodes will appear on CBS's online platform

Wow, that shows a lot of confidence, doesn't it?

If it takes off, great - syndicate it and broadcast it. If not, well, it was just a web thing which we can pretend never happened when the next reboot comes along.

Re:Hedging their bets

[tnk1]

No, it's not lack of confidence, it's them trying to get into the streaming business, just like Voyager being on UPN was Paramount's attempt to get their own network off the ground. They're actually confident that it will draw viewers, although perhaps they are overconfident.

Re:Hedging their bets

[j2.718ff]

In January, 2017, a new series will begin. The first episode will air on CBS, and subsequent episodes will appear on CBS's online platform

Wow, that shows a lot of confidence, doesn't it?

If it takes off, great - syndicate it and broadcast it. If not, well, it was just a web thing which we can pretend never happened when the next reboot comes along.

Actually, my interpretation was overconfidence. They're showing the pilot on CBS. They think that it'll be good enough to hook people, and that these people will be willing to pay money to watch future episodes.

Re:Laugh

[willworkforbeer]

I imagine these days the entire crew will be LGBT, and female.

I think there's a, um, let's call it , 'fan-fiction' version of that. Star Trek: The NeXXXt Generation.

Probable spoilers!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't agree with you much, but this is one of the things I completely agree with you on.
Spoilers in case anyone also never got in to it but might want to get in to it just for completionists sake.

Voyager always had a bit of a way out of everything.
It was one thing that annoyed me about it.
It was also too nicey-nice a lot of the time.
Loved it, but it did annoy me.

Enterprise went against that, horribly so, leading to the death of some fairly major characters. (even sometimes during things where you THINK they all get out alive, but then they throw that at you and it leaves a much bigger impact on you)
Or in some cases, the deaths of millions or even billions of people. That was some crushing, powerful stuff there. (even if it was in the worst arc)
Enterprise didn't try to hide away that there were aliens out there were cruel, and basically were just an extension of niche areas of our species. Groups such as slavers selling people off to highest bidders, biohackers that may very well be the foundations to a eugenics war in the next couple centuries, violent warrior species (Russians lol) and so on.

And it also explored some things not explored very much in other shows besides DS9, inter-species relations.
I missed those from DS9. I wish there was more of inter-species relations in the new show. Those were always good story writers.

Still, nothing beats the death of Carson from Stargate Atlantis. God damn that was a crushing episode.
Manly tears shed for Carson. That just came out of nowhere.
Likewise with Doc Fraiser in Stargate.
Holy shit. All these deep wounds. Time to cuddle in to pillow and cry.

Re:Farscape

[Jhon]

"U guess you're just hard to please."

I'd counter that you are overly easy to please. I never said Bicentennial Man was a terrible movie -- it wasn't. I enjoyed it. It just was a horrible adaptation of the story. I also didn't say that I Robot was horrible. I GUESS it was an OK action movie, but it was so far away from Asimov's source material that it was frustrating to watch for most anyone who had a passing familiarity of the source material.

Totally disagree with you on Starship Troopers movie -- as you say, it was farce -- which is completely counter to the source material. That's like saying Space Balls was a good "Star Wars" adaptation, man! They are not the same thing! And the reason I think "'Predestionation' was [the] only a respectable attempt" is because it's the only one that even attempted to stay close to the original story and tone!

Great, let's sink the franchise even lower

[NotDrWho]

The first episode will air on CBS

Red flag #1. CBS sucks ass and they have 0 balls. If this show is anything like all the other bland shit that's on network TV these days, it will make even Voyager look good by comparison.

subsequent episodes will appear on CBS's online platform, "All Access."

subsequent episodes will appear on CBS's online platform, "All Access."

Red flag #2. Network doesn't even believe in it enough to put it on their regular broadcast channel. They're just using it to promote their shitty also-ran streaming channel. Hello, lots of low budget episodes.

The show will be produced by Alex Kurtzman

Red Flag #3. Let's get the fucktard behind those shitty action-movies-with-a-Star-Trek-skin to produce! He understands that REAL Star Trek ain't about all that thinkin' shit, it's about 'PLOSIONS!!!!

CBS is currently looking for a writer to helm the show.

Red Flag #4. CBS says "We don't even have a clue yet what it's going to be about, where we're going to go with it, or who's going to write it. But dammit, let's greenlight this thing! Just slap a Star Trek label on it and people will watch, right?"

Re:Great, let's sink the franchise even lower

[mfearby]

Sadly, you are right. I haven't even seen all of the new "Star Trek" movies that came out after the last one with the TNG crew. I saw the first one and the lens flares were so distracting that I haven't bothered to watch any others that might have been released. Explosions do not make up for actual plot lines. I don't even know if there were others because I'm just not into JJ Trek. I'm sure JJ Wars will be crap, too.

Re:Great, let's sink the franchise even lower

[cbhacking]

While you have a point with flag #2, let me offer a counterpoint: with the show not being on broadcast, it competes less to be one of the top dogs in their lineup and can afford to target a more niche market, or to be bolder and riskier without putting an important timeslot on the line. It also may mean that the executives are less interested in meddling, since it's not as important to the overall success of the station. Finally, it provides a good opportunity for feedback from the fans, which may let the show be more guided by those who care about it rather than just those who see it as a bunch of statistics, demographics, and cash flows.

You're not asking the right questions!

[Snotnose]

As it's streaming will they use the 7 forbidden words and/or show some boobies? No, not Scott Bakula's. The good ones.

Oxymoron

[DarthVain]

1) I'm excited to see Star Trek on "TV" again.
2) I'm disappointed that it is being released on a subscription service.
3) I think it is a bit of an oxymoron when CBS calls their subscription service "All Access", perhaps it should be called "No Access".

Re:Oxymoron

[oh_my_080980980]

You probably like Big Bang too....seriously stop living in the past and develop new original stories.

Star Trek: Ghosts and Muderous Ship Designers

[Dogtanian]

That's stupid. Lots of people are coming up with their own pitches, but in their heart everyone knows that the next Star Trek series should be more about ghosts:-

Should Star Trek be more about Ghosts? by Dervish ("Banned User" (!))

Maybe to revitalise the series it needs a more dark, ethereal spooky slant.

I have come up with three pitches for a sort of Trek meets X-files type show where Starfleet investigators delve into the supernatural.

Here are my first three ideas:

Some poossible stories to feature ghosts:

1) Starfleet Command is haunted by the wraith of a ship designer who is about to die but has projected his soul into the ship to make starships alive - Starfleet loves the new ships and the designer has to kill murderers and psycopaths to put their souls into battleships so he goes around murdering new people.

2) The Wormhole Aliens reveal to the Bajorans that all the Bajorans ever to have lived have their spirits in the Celestial Temple (wormhole) but are to be wiped out because the Prophets are cross with Bajor joining the Federation. Colonel Kira has to get Starfleets best scientists (Data, Bashir and Barclay) to send her spirit into the Temple to find Sisko and see what is going on.

3) Little Rene's gost can't find peace bercause of the horrible burning death he suffered in France. Picard, tormented by the ghosts pleas for help from his uncle, journeys back to France and discovers Rene and his famnily were murdered by Section 31 agents as part of a strange plot. Picard discovers the truth behind the reality of ghosts which has been hidden for millenia...

I think Star Trek should feature ghosts more heavily and these 3 ideas would be very exciting.

Disclaimer: No, I am not "Dervish". Fortunately. :-) I genuinely don't know if he/she is for real, but that's a strange thread. Shame that his "interesting" artist's impression of the ghost character (bad MS Paint on top of drawing of generic Star Trek ship deck, amusingly naff) is no longer on ImageShack.

I like this reply:-

Bizarre thread. It's a bit like asking whether Buffy the Vampire Slayer should be more about talking haddock - it could be, but it'd be a very different show.

Re:Farscape

[Jhon]

Yeah -- I mistyped and submitted without proofing. An 'edit' would be nice...

Re:Farscape

[oh_my_080980980]

Which was the fault of Asimov or the production company? Besides they did redo Dune, after the travesty that was David Lynch. Granted the sequel Frank Herbert's Children of Dune sucked balls.

PC TREK

[PopeRatzo]

I'll bet the SJWs are gonna force Star Trek to have like a female captain or a black guy playing a Klingon or something equally ridiculous and only tell stories that have social commentary. They'll totally ruin it, ya know? Effing SJWs ruin all the stuff we love.

Re:PC TREK

[mfearby]

SJWs must have been behind Enterprise. I'm sure this new one will be just as bad, alas.

Re:PC TREK

[PopeRatzo]

Can you imagine how bad the original Star Trek would have been if SJWs had been involved?

http://heydeadguy.typepad.com/...

Re:PC TREK

[mfearby]

One could argue that Gene Roddenberry was one of the original SJWs, but he's a lightweight compared to the abominations ruining western civilisation today.

No

[CrashNBrn]

TV Series' is more like: Good (ToS), Eventually Great (TNG), Great, Eventually Craptastic (DS9), We-Expected-Great-It-Took-a-little-while-to-realize-what-shit-Voyager-was-where-far-too-many-fucking-stories-resolved-with-ooops-alternate-universe (although some characters were interesting). Scott-Bakula-is-too-damned-familiar-to-cut-it-as-The-Captain, plus too much f'n time-travel.

To Summarize:
Good (ToS), Great (TNG), Worth Watching (DS9), I wish I could have that time back: Voyager & Enterprise.

Re:Killing Star Trek now new in slices

[Grishnakh]

Because we all know that we life in the mirror universe.

Exactly. The two mirror-universe episodes of Enterprise were excellent (with a fantastic opening theme too), but what they were really depicting was our own universe, because they showed how humans in *this* universe really are: a bunch of greedy, power-hungry murderers. The regular Star Trek universe is not the universe we live in; we are *not* a race of galactic do-gooders; that's just a universe that some of us wish we could live in.

Re:Farscape

[metrix007]

Thanks for not reducing the argument by attacking me for a typo. I appreciate that.

How? Can you qualify that? It hit every note from the short story perfectly. Literally, the only thing "wrong" with that movie was that it was geared towards kids, and so shot through that lens, with characters being a little bit more playful/humorous than they were original.

It hit every note and got the message across, so how was it a flawed adaptation?

And how in the hell was I Robot far away from the source material? Literally everything came from the source material, it was just an original interpretation, but it didn't conflict at all. It was actually pretty great to see several short stories consolidated into a larger plot.

As far as Predestination, it sounds like you're just being picky. It was a great movie and a great adaption, and can stand on it's own merits. It doesn't need another adaption to be compared to in order to be considered great. That's like saying the Lord of the Rings movies (which I haven't seen but I understand most think they are great) are "respectable adaptions" instead of great movies. They can be both, but the latter negates makes mentioning the former redundant and pointless and comes across as petty.

Re:Farscape

[metrix007]

Seems like my quote disappeared, but after my typo comment I quoted this : "It just was a horrible adaptation of the story."

Meh. Just more zap zap boom, not much Trek

[Mike Van Pelt]

The movies are just "action flicks" with a superficial Trek veneer, and it sounds like that's what this series is going to be. Not particularly interested. I liked Trek at its most thoughtful.

Enterprise should have been good, but they ruined it with the whole stinking fetid pile of "Temporal Cold War". I was really interested in the first steps into the galaxy, the whole "Boomer" culture thing, etc. The fourth season, after Berman and Bragga were dumped, was (with the exception of that unspeakably putrid final epsiode) much more what the series should have been, but by then it was too late.

If it's nuTrek in the Abramverse then

[JohnStock]

....just don't bother, it will never get a re-run like Trek has continually enjoyed for almost 50 years in all of it's forms.

Please, no political correctness this time

[mfearby]

Enterprise was insufferable! Despite some of the posts above, Voyager was OK. TNG and DS9 are obviously far superior, but Voyager is nowhere near as bad as Enterprise, which I don't even acknowledge it as Star Trek - it's that bad.

I'll know that this new series is going to be a dud if there's an alien race where one of their gender has to cover their faces and they have a holy book that leads some of them to terrorism and everybody tries to understand their point of view.

Re:Finish up the galaxy

[tnk1]

They sort of did that with DS9. That's where the Dominion lives.

I don't care

[reboot246]

I may or may not watch it, but please, God, no Scott Bakula! Nothing says bad science fiction like Scott Bakula. Besides being a horrible actor, he's simply not believable in a sci-fi role. Not nearly as bad as Dustin Hoffman in sci-fi, but close.

Cart before the horse?

[acoustix]

"No details have been released regarding what the show will be about, or who will star in it. CBS is currently looking for a writer to helm the show."

Seems backwards to me.

Don't mistake SJW for Liberalism

[poity]

Trek was very much liberal, but that didn't make it SJW. It confronted hypocrisies and injustices across the galaxy and within the Federation by measuring them against principles, and there's great internal conflict when people are placed in situations that force them to break those principles.

SJWism, on the other hand, is no friend of principles -- treating people equally is subordinate to making people feel equal.
Let's hope Trek keeps its liberal roots alive by steering particularly clear of SJWism.

Re:Farscape

[j2.718ff]

But I do cringe when I hear they want to make adaptions of things like foundation series, that a clearly not written in such a way as to make good movies.

I think Prelude to Foundation has potential. But I'm forced to agree that as a whole, the Foundation Series won't translate well to movie form.

Re:Meh. Just more zap zap boom, not much Trek

[j2.718ff]

At this point, we don't have enough data to know if it'll be good or not. I believe it has potential to be good - I just hope it can live up to that potential.

Moves and TV are fundamentally different. Movies are way higher budget per minute. TV shows actually have time to develop characters, and don't need to keep the audience excited for every second. If there's good writing and development, the specifics won't be very important.

I am curious about story arcs. TNG episodes do a good job standing on their own, with the specific character development happening in the background. DS9 (at least in the end) became very story-arc driven, such that episodes were good because they were building on an overall plot. There is a definite trend in TV today towards large story arcs, with frequent cliffhangers. I'm not sure either style is necessarily better than the other, as long as it's well played. (Though it does mean if I'm looking for an hour's worth of entertainment, I'm more likey to watch a random episode of TNG than something like DS9 or BSG)

Blame the captains

[heretical_thoughts]

The initial problem with both Voyager and Enterprise was the captains (or the actors hired to play them).

Archer - as portrayed by Scott Bakula - was too wishywashy, especially in the first seasons. He has a backbone one minute, then he doesn’t. He’s decisive, then he isn’t. The inconsistency in how he commanded the crew, in how he made decisions, was annoying, and made his character weak. He always seemed to be the wrong person at the wrong time.

Janeway - well, according to Kate Mulgrew’s portrayal - if a woman wants to command a starship, she has to speak like a man. Every time she would switch from a conversational voice to that attempt at a deep-throated captain’s voice, I winced. So unnatural, so unconvincing.

Each had good episodes.

Enterprise even had a few good ones in season one (the first P’Jem story, which helped paint the Vulcans as meddling puppet masters comes to mind.). One thing Enterprise gave us was a better understanding of the Andorrians (and Empress Sato).

Voyager was an anomaly of Star Trek in that some of it’s most promising episodes and ideas were in the first season (then abandoned or muted for whatever reason). The “One ship, two crews” theme should have been a goldmine of stories, but was quickly smothered. Neelix’s “they have such a beautiful ship. Why do they keep risking it?” [paraphrase] was spot on, and marked the point where the series abandoned originality and really became regular Trek. Voyager should have continually deteriorated so that even lessor threats would have real consequences, but it didn’t (how many shuttles did it have?). I don’t know what to make of Seven of Nine - a late addition designed to drive ratings. Her story arc took too much time in the show and in the end belittled the Borg (and by association, Picard and Sisko).

They were all flawed, even TOS, and the new one will be too. But hopefully it will be Trek at its heart and not JJ-Trek.

Interesting...

[Crixus]

I got really excited until I saw it was from a JJ disciple. But hey. You never know I think this is interesting. The old-guard TV networks are probably scrambling to get their foot in the door of the subscription/streaming thing. They probably didn't fear Netflix when they were only showing movies, but the moment they started producing their own content, things changed. Then the ante got upped when Amazon Prime signed the Top Gear guys. The question is, is it too late for someone like CBS or any of the old-guard TV network to enter this arena? CBS needed a signature show to christen the streaming service, but will anyone latch onto something not called Netfix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu? Is this a case of out with the old, and in with the new? I guess we shall see. I think a new Star Trek television show is long overdue, but I am not sure it can survive in the highly competitive streaming space. Hopefully if it doesn't thrive on the streaming service, they will have the good sense to move it to the regular network.

Re:Farscape

[MightyMartian]

I Robot was unbearable because it had Will Smith basically playing Fresh Prince of Bel Air Kicks Robot Ass. I'm not putting Smith down in general, because he has some serious acting chops when he puts his mind to it. Independence Day was kind of tongue in cheek anyways, so I could be amused by Will Smith playing a fighter pilot version of himself, much as I could forgive Jeff Goldblum for basically resurrecting his character from Jurassic Park, but the writers shit all over one of Asimov's better known works, and worst of all, they seemed to be trying to create some version of Blade Runner. The movie was a mess, and by the end I was rooting for the robots to kill all those stupid fucking humans.

Better idea than you think

[cbhacking]

Your comment smells awfully sarcastic, but I think having a trans or non-binary-gendered captain (or at least prominent bridge officer) would be quite interesting. No need to make them human, if you fear that will upset too many transphobes; the message could be gotten across very nearly as effectively (and with more room to satirize and/or compare with Earth's history) with a non-human. Give the opportunity to present a different opinion on sex and gender issues. Have somebody else - or possibly several others, since there are often more than two viewpoints - act as a foil.

Only a blind zealot thinks their cause is *always* righteous, and Star Trek has a long and glorious history of exploring the harder questions via byplay between characters. I think the show could do a lot of good to settle that particular source of rot in our society without needing to focus on it constantly, just by having a general background "yeah, that person uses weird pronouns and it's a little weird how ey are attractive without quite being either masculine or feminine... but ey do eir job and it's no big deal". Some episodes would have the issue front and center, of course, but no need to shoehorn it in everywhere or make it the central plot topic.

I suspect this could be done without being overly distressing to any but the dyed-in-the-wool bigots who will never like any show true to the traditions of Star Trek at all.

Re:Farscape

[cbhacking]

Stainless Steel Rat would be a very cool show, I think. Probably not worth making a movie out of, at least not initially, but well worth exploring. It would probably resonate somewhat with fans of Firefly, even if they'd never read or even heard of the books (jeez, those came out when my dad was younger than I am now, and I'm pushing 30). There'd be room for a little bit of tweaking the technology and otherwise modernizing the society a bit, but I don't think it would take much. They'd have to come up with a bunch more plot - the original series of stories could maybe be stretched into a single season, at best, but it has enough timeskips I think it would better be used as a framework for a multi-year season if they want to preserve it in any detail at all - but this is something that Hollywood can do. Not always do well, but sometimes they manage it.

Everybody's a Critic

[rbrander]

I read my way about half-way, started, skimming, and finally hit the TL;DR wall. It all seems to be criticism of picky aspects of previous series. So very little of it - except right at the top, before the arguments - was about what might be good ideas for a new show. None of these went over a sentence, whereas the criticism always goes on for paragraphs.

You critics should try writing sometime; it certainly seems to be hard for you to be new and creative here.

Re:Farscape

[dbIII]

The big problem with making a good movie is that there's too much reliance on special effects and too little on acting. And both Heinlein and Asimov were more about psychology than technology even though the technology was a hook to hang the story on in their books it was never the main thing.

Last year "Predestination" was made based on Heinlein's "All You Zombies", and it works on the strength of good acting (Sarah Snook does an amazing job, Ethan Hawk went for a weird accent but ignore that and the rest is excellent). The special effects are a case with a combination lock and some current hobby electronics turning up a few decades earlier than they normally should (clue not continuity error for once!). The Heinlein Space Corps idea also makes an appearance as background thing done cleverly with costumes and setting. Close to zero reliance on special effects or weird props.
I liked it and think that's the way such stories should be presented. It's not quite the same as the book but I think it works better as a movie due to the addition.

NO THANKS

[p51d007]

1. CBS paywall site 2. Will be too politically correct 3. Will have lame stories 4. CBS paywall site.

Star Trek: Renegades

[MrDoh!]

They should have a view different to the usual Star Fleet. Perhaps a small bunch of misfits trying to avoid the Federation, just making a living doing whatever needs to be done, keeping a low profile. But one of their members is more than they appear, and the Federation REALLY wants their living weapon back.
I know, I know, it'd be easy to create Firefly lite in the Star Trek universe, we had a bit of a bash tabletoping such a thing a solid 10+ years before firefly, but we had Ferengi/Romulans and a tank/Klingon. The cloaking device always needed topping up, but it was a fun campaign. When Firefly came out, we were sure the writers had been sat in some of our sessions, even some of the dialogue sounded familiar ("I'll be in my pillow fort")
But... I'm just bored of the sparkly feds, the honourable klingons, the sneaky ferengi blah blah blah, I want to see a different view of what we're used to. Firefly could almost have worked in the ST universe. Almost. Hopefully we get that, and not the filler episodes we had so much of in the past.

No thanks

[Crass Spektakel]

Alex Kurtzman is an incompetent idiot who would ruin even the emergency broadcast signal with unneccessary action and the most unfitting story board.

Every single episode of "Star Wars the Clone Wars" was more adult, more entertaining than his flicks.

Actually, most episodes of He-Man were...

Seven of Cheesecake!

[Etherwalk]

Barbie of Borg was there only to rescue the failing ratings. The character added nothing of significant value beyond looking good in a tight jumpsuit.

She didn't add anything of sci-fi value, but she added some more fun storylines. The doctor taking over her body and eating all that cheesecake was funny.

Star Trek time

[MrKaos]

I love Star Trek, Star Wars and especially Sci Fi. I say this because they are only kinda the same. I like the original Trek ideas and I want to be entertained however the caretaker of those ideas in the commercial space is now gone and whoever is making this thing certainly doesn't care about those values, it's time to put the franchise to work. Gotta make a profit - cause that's what Trek is all about.

People loved Trek because it was genuine, interesting and it challenged them a bit, but not to much. And it didn't take itself too seriously. If you try to do that now people say it's lame, which by saying makes them lame, because it's obvious it's lame because the lameness makes us remember not to get our heads to far up our asses. It's not supposed to be that serious, it's a TV show.

Personally, I think the future of Trek is with the fans who love the show, it's ideas and the belief, that maybe, if we are reeeeeeaaaaaallllllyy lucky, and we work *real fucking hard* our society could actually be that way. If the fans aren't writing the stories, then there is little point in doing it because it is not sincere anymore.

But if they do make it then can we please stop whining about what they do that you don't like and let the rest of us geeks enjoy the show. If you don't like it, then write something better yourself instead of wasting bandwidth on complaining. Personally I'd be ok with no more Trek and let's see some new stories, perhaps, Bears Darwin's Radio or even an Enders Game (Bear wrote some of the hardest sci fi versions of Star Trek that I've read - btw!), otherwise do as Shatner suggests and 'get a life'.

Sometimes it will be good and sometimes it will be crap, but if you smother it with expectations then it will never be brilliant.