Star Trek: Continuing Spiral Towards Crap

I agree. I simply don't understand why they keep mining Star Trek's pre-history instead of basing stories in an already amazing period of time. C'mon, they have an entire UNIVERSE to explore, yet they keep going backwards, screwing up the timeline, and reusing aliens species over and over and over...

I'm not looking forward to the new movie, and I seriously doubt it will revive the franchise. Until some fresh blood comes in, we may be witnessing the death of Star Trek.

The problem with placing new stories at the end of the current timeline is that there are no challenges. Time travel has become almost commonplace, machines become humans, humans become machines. Creative use of transporters, tangible holograms, and tractor beams mean there is almost nothing that cannot be accomplished, if it can be imagined. In a universe like that, one would have to think up truly bizarre and probably unfilmable ideas for plot points. Even in ST:TNG, notice how for anyone to be in danger or have an adventure, the ship's systems have to fail? There's no suspense if everyone is flying around weilding god-like powers over a tamed galaxy.

I think the idea of going back in time for stories is about bringing danger and adventure back. Just like when we tell adventure stories or play video games, they are so often set in a medieval-like time period. Before cell phones and 911 and the FDA and state regulations, life was more unpredictable and dangerous.

DavidCubed,

I hate to say this, but you don't get ST.

No, I'm not a Trekkie in any sense. I grew up on ST, agree with a number of your points, but they are in the context of miscomprehension.

First, you should go and watch some of the key ST:TOS episodes. City on the Edge of Forever. Let That Be Your Last Battlefield. Other key and central episodes that well exceed anything any subsequent series had to offer. Hell, throw in Trouble With Tribbles for its humor.

Second, how, how, how could you leave that disaster called Voyager out of the mix? It ranked up with Enterprise as Things That Should Not Have Been.

DS9 was, on the whole, the best series of the lot. Yes, it had the most character development. It also had the most plot, the greatest sense of the alien, the most mood manipulation. And, one of the darkest episodes, In The Pale Moonlight. The Federation loses all of the polish it has gotten from ALL of the other series in this one episode.

Have you checked out Star Trek: New Voyages? You should, you'll have a better understanding of ST as interpretable literature.

Live long and prosper,

Ostwal

@ beansworth

I've been reading a lot of post-singular type Sci-fi lately, and even though people have god like powers, there's still great conflict, characters, and suspense.

It's Star Trek's fault for not evolving with sci-fi.

Ostwald hit it right on the head. Voyager was terrible, enterprise could have been excellent but failed, TNG was my favorite growing up but some times you need more than a 1 episode story arc.

I actually sat down and watched all 7 season of DS9 a couple years back, and was blown away by how much I had missed out on and how much I had misread the show. It is by and far the greatest trek, awesome characters, great story line and it shows you that deep down, even the federation has to get it's hands dirty when it comes down the the line.

TNG was my favorite, I hated DS9 while it was on and haven't seen it since - although I might consider watching it now. Voyager just plain stank, Enterprise, well, I didn't quite get it.

I don't know what the new movie is going to be like - maybe it will be a bit like BSG in its re-imagining of things so we don't have to look at the 1960s technology. Actually, I really hope they do that, because it would just be painful to watch.

How could you even write this without mentioning Gene Roddenberry? Since Roddenberry's death, Star Trek has been just another intellectual property that the studio tried to milk. Without a creative person feeling creative ownership of the concept, it's just another property.

While I certainly agree with DavidCubed's assessment of "Enterprise" and "Nemesis," I have more sympathy with Ostwal's views, particularly that "Voyager" was a disaster.

When I watch Star Trek -- or any dramatic series, for that matter -- I'm looking for a story that affects me strongly in both an emotional and intellectual way. Granted, we're talking about television, so Trek is never going to approach the level of great science fiction. But I object to what I perceive as latter-day Trek's unwillingness even to attempt a powerful story.

DS9 had its flaws, and may not even qualify as real Trek in some ways, but it often tried to explore the boundaries of tv storytelling. It wasn't afraid to portray sympathetic villains, morally ambiguous heroes, or uncomfortable ethical issues. Characters experienced change: growth, death, trauma, etc.

Voyager was just the opposite. To me, it seemed more like storytelling by marketing committee. The committee's consensus seemed to be that Voyager the product needed to be simplified and blunted so that delicate, stupid audiences wouldn't bump their neurons on any sharp corners. Voyager was allowed nothing but mediocrity, and whenever something even vaguely interesting seemed to happen, it always turned out to be an illusion or time travel sideline or some other scam.

I'm not opposed to examining Trek history or Trek future. In the hands of good storytellers, either direction could be compelling. Enterprise the series suffered the same blunting as Voyager, with the added problem that it seemed to undermine the backstory of its far better predecessors.

How do you deal with the past in Trek? Well, Enterprise should've recognized that the past is about awkwardness and ignorance, but not stupidity. I knew from the moment that I saw the design of the ship that the producers had no idea what they were doing. Rather than a sleek saucer shape, why not use something clunky and primitive, as you'd expect? Rather than a bridge that Captain Kirk might've found familiar, why not have something a bit more claustrophobic and nakedly technological, like the control room of a submarine? Rather than even primitive transporters... well, forget the transporters.

In the future, well, if time travel is common, then focus on time travel and establish some sort of hard rules for it. Is it complicated? Good -- challenge me. Does it raise odd ethical issues? Even better.

The point is that whether you're in the past, the present, or the future, you're not doing the audience any favors by boiling down the characters and story until even the weakest stomach can find them easily digestible. Good storytelling is about grabbing and holding the audience's interest while deliberating leading them into uncomfortable territory.

To paraphrase a paraphrasing

In the beginning they would come home with their imaginations working or carried back upon them.
Later on this practice declined, So did the plots and the characters.

The real power of of TOS was not the acting or the plots or the ships, it was in imagining the unimaginable or asking the unaskable.

TOS asked the most original questions, DS9 had by FAR the most character development, yet somehow all the other shows, (and I include Voyager in this only because it had the promise of TOS and DS9 combined but was limited by the Berman and company) is that they are derivative and shallow without the depth of thinking needed to use that derivativeness to its advantage.

What they really need is the courage to have a really strong show about the people with the technology as tool not a plot device. Have them make choices not follow rules and you might just have a show again.

TOS: Goofy w/ bad acting, but well-written (for most of the first season), and still a lot of fun.
TAS: Actually very well-done, and underrated. Forget the lion lady and the guy with the huge adam's apple.
TNG: Very well produced, acting and scripts vary, but the effects were top-notch. Wesley saves the ship too many times, but Barclay, the Borg, and Q are all classics.
DS9: Alright, let's face it, it's a space opera. The acting is usually very good, or at least over-acted like the original series, great effects, and the Cardassians are very self-centered. All-in-all, my favorite.
STV: Each of the Star Trek series are only as good as their villains, and the Kazons weren't very frightening, not to mention that plastic-looking hair. 7 of 9 and her amazing, uh, talent saved the day, with acting chops stolen from "Small Wonder".
STE: I have to admit that I bailed after the second season. I really liked the captain's dog, though. There were just too many problems. I really did like the episode called "Carbon Creek". Oh, and a Vulcan with even more "talent" than 7 of 9!
Movies: They all really suck. No exceptions. Most of them are just expanded television episodes where they slow down the pacing, and put some special effects in whenever the writers think they hear snoring.
The Future: Well, there's the fan-based episodes. The New Voyages are just starting to get really good, but it's like the difference between analog and digital audio files; the new ones are just a little bit too "harsh" to look at. Still, there's a lot of potential there.

Stop complaining about what is being dished out to you and go and cook something better.

i remember watching the original series as a kid, and thinking it was awesome. i even stayed up with my best friend for 2 days watching a star trek marathon. but that was then.

it's highly presumptuous of you to assume that fans of the original series won't like this movie because they're nostalgic. screw that. it's like comparing the new batman franchise with the old adam west series of the late sixties. there truly is no comparison.

i cannot wait for this movie to come out. i just hope the script lives up to the quality of the special effects (a given), and the stellar cast.