You make a good point, and here's to hoping that you get moderated above the noise.
Star Trek has had to live with enormous expectations of the fans for years. Hell, they brought the francise back after being dead for 10 years.
But inevitably, the fans see something that not everyone else sees. They actually like when Jordi goes into some technical mumbojumbo. They actually want to hear more about Troi's love life. They want a new show to be just like Next Generation or the Original Series or whatever show got them hooked.
The problem is that the fan base is not big enough to carry the show. It's network TV -- they need to attract a significantly sized general audience or the thing fails. That means not doing everything that the fanbase might want them to do. That means making sure that it's interesting.
I think that is what they tried to do with Voyager -- failing mightily. Not only did they piss off the fans, they produced some pretty damn poor TV. Voyager actually gets worse ratings than the horrid sitcoms UPN puts on.
On the other hand, Next Generation did this well. It was actually pretty poorly recieved by the hard core Trekkies, but was able to keep them watching while it built an audience. They need to pull that trick again, and it will be tough.
Bottom Line - the Matrix is as intellectual as the really stoned guy who says "Wouldn't it be trippy if everything that we like thought was real was fake, and there were different realities and we just like lived in one but didn't know, and it was like set up by evil robots or space aliens or someone man?" Still a good movie though.
The set design of the original series is much cleaner and more military looking than the gaudy 1980s design of the sets for the Star Trek movies.
Actually, the sets for the original Star Trek movie were pretty nice -- same spirit as the original show, except a little softer. And the uniforms didn't look incredibly stupid either.
Lets try that again... As for "good writing", I think that might be a little too generic of a solution to really be much of a suggestion. (Ignoring the obvious examples of about 1/3 of DS9 and 3/4 of Voyager episodes.) What made the original show interesting was an almost single-minded focus on a small number of core characters. The characters had to be complex and strongly written. Furthermore, the plots were almost always conflict-driven, which allowed the acting and writing to reflect more extreme emotions. One thing you notice about the original show is that there is almost no focus on the technology. Things like warp drive, transporters, and phasers are treated like totems and never explained (which is odd for science-fiction). Compare this to the modern shows where the engineers will have a 5 minute discussion on how to reverse the polarity of the tacheon beam pulse. Boring. And one way that the "fans" with their endless technical manuals and letters pointing out minor inconsistencies really have made the shows dull. Another 'problem' is plainly demographics. The original show had an audience that was 90% male. The "Star Trek Lives" period of the 70s was 99.9% male. The first couple seasons of Next Generation had a 90% male audience. It was only when Star Trek V found a cross-over female audience did the franchise really stumble on something. Next Gen softened the plots and their audience doubled with a huge influx of female viewers. Voyager has pretty much took this trend to the logical extent a couple years ago, to the point where you almost expected everyone to start talking about their menstrual cramps or something. Sometime ago I saw some interesting graffiti on a subway train: "Less Jaw Jacking and more Butt Kicking on New Star Trek". At this point, that's the only way the can save the franchise -- more action-oriented plots, stronger characters, and more of a play to the hardcore (mostly male) audience. The Soap Opera In Space idea has pretty much run out of gas.
As for "good writing", I think that might be a little too generic of a solution to really be much of a suggestion. (Ignoring the obvious examples of about 1/3 of DS9 and 3/4 of Voyager episodes.) What made the original show interesting was an almost single-minded focus on a small number of core characters. The characters had to be complex and well-written. Furthermore, the plots were almost always conflict-driven, which allowed the acting and writing to reflect more extreme emotions. One thing you notice about the original show is that there is almost no focus on the technology. Things like warp drive, transporters, and phasers are treated like totems and never explained (which is odd for science-fiction). Compare this to the modern shows where the engineers will have a 5 minute discussion on how to reverse the polarity of the tacheon beam pulse. Boring. And one way that the "fans" with their endless technical manuals and letters pointing out minor inconsistancies really have made the shows dull.
Slashdot Mirror
You make a good point, and here's to hoping that you get moderated above the noise.
Star Trek has had to live with enormous expectations of the fans for years. Hell, they brought the francise back after being dead for 10 years.
But inevitably, the fans see something that not everyone else sees. They actually like when Jordi goes into some technical mumbojumbo. They actually want to hear more about Troi's love life. They want a new show to be just like Next Generation or the Original Series or whatever show got them hooked.
The problem is that the fan base is not big enough to carry the show. It's network TV -- they need to attract a significantly sized general audience or the thing fails. That means not doing everything that the fanbase might want them to do. That means making sure that it's interesting.
I think that is what they tried to do with Voyager -- failing mightily. Not only did they piss off the fans, they produced some pretty damn poor TV. Voyager actually gets worse ratings than the horrid sitcoms UPN puts on.
On the other hand, Next Generation did this well. It was actually pretty poorly recieved by the hard core Trekkies, but was able to keep them watching while it built an audience. They need to pull that trick again, and it will be tough.
Bottom Line - the Matrix is as intellectual as the really stoned guy who says "Wouldn't it be trippy if everything that we like thought was real was fake, and there were different realities and we just like lived in one but didn't know, and it was like set up by evil robots or space aliens or someone man?" Still a good movie though.
The set design of the original series is much cleaner and more military looking than the gaudy 1980s design of the sets for the Star Trek movies.
Actually, the sets for the original Star Trek movie were pretty nice -- same spirit as the original show, except a little softer. And the uniforms didn't look incredibly stupid either.
Lets try that again... As for "good writing", I think that might be a little too generic of a solution to really be much of a suggestion. (Ignoring the obvious examples of about 1/3 of DS9 and 3/4 of Voyager episodes.) What made the original show interesting was an almost single-minded focus on a small number of core characters. The characters had to be complex and strongly written. Furthermore, the plots were almost always conflict-driven, which allowed the acting and writing to reflect more extreme emotions. One thing you notice about the original show is that there is almost no focus on the technology. Things like warp drive, transporters, and phasers are treated like totems and never explained (which is odd for science-fiction). Compare this to the modern shows where the engineers will have a 5 minute discussion on how to reverse the polarity of the tacheon beam pulse. Boring. And one way that the "fans" with their endless technical manuals and letters pointing out minor inconsistencies really have made the shows dull. Another 'problem' is plainly demographics. The original show had an audience that was 90% male. The "Star Trek Lives" period of the 70s was 99.9% male. The first couple seasons of Next Generation had a 90% male audience. It was only when Star Trek V found a cross-over female audience did the franchise really stumble on something. Next Gen softened the plots and their audience doubled with a huge influx of female viewers. Voyager has pretty much took this trend to the logical extent a couple years ago, to the point where you almost expected everyone to start talking about their menstrual cramps or something. Sometime ago I saw some interesting graffiti on a subway train: "Less Jaw Jacking and more Butt Kicking on New Star Trek". At this point, that's the only way the can save the franchise -- more action-oriented plots, stronger characters, and more of a play to the hardcore (mostly male) audience. The Soap Opera In Space idea has pretty much run out of gas.
As for "good writing", I think that might be a little too generic of a solution to really be much of a suggestion. (Ignoring the obvious examples of about 1/3 of DS9 and 3/4 of Voyager episodes.) What made the original show interesting was an almost single-minded focus on a small number of core characters. The characters had to be complex and well-written. Furthermore, the plots were almost always conflict-driven, which allowed the acting and writing to reflect more extreme emotions. One thing you notice about the original show is that there is almost no focus on the technology. Things like warp drive, transporters, and phasers are treated like totems and never explained (which is odd for science-fiction). Compare this to the modern shows where the engineers will have a 5 minute discussion on how to reverse the polarity of the tacheon beam pulse. Boring. And one way that the "fans" with their endless technical manuals and letters pointing out minor inconsistancies really have made the shows dull.