Is Star Trek dead on TV?

KenSwee

Wondering how you all feel?
It's probably been raised too many times here but with all of the changes in the way TV is presenting drama, weather it be Sci-fi or otherwise, is it now impossible to bring back ST to TV and make it presentable to the standard of the last movie. All arguments about the storyline, actors and General destruction of the how ST looks, feels and played aside, no one can deny that the production standard was way beyond anything we saw before for ST.

And given the way that drama is being produced now on TV, how would Paramount or another studio do it?
Could a new ST match Lost, Heroes, The Event etc?

My two cents would be to leave it on the big screen for the foreseeable future. The cast are young, there's lots of story-lines, and new life and civilisations to discover now will provide us with plenty to see.

Although it now seems too late, I would forget about the Khan thing and come up with new storyline but of course, if Paramount is going to invest, they will want to play it safe, hence the 3rd re-hash of 'Space seed'.

I would also put to bed once and for all, the bloody Starfleet academy thing. I hate the idea of watching kids bounce around, falling in love, missing their parents and generally making asses of themselves before they are raillroaded into captaincy .

Myrddin

KenSwee wrote: »

Wondering how you all feel?
It's probably been raised too many times here but with all of the changes in the way TV is presenting drama, weather it be Sci-fi or otherwise, is it now impossible to bring back ST to TV and make it presentable to the standard of the last movie. All arguments about the storyline, actors and General destruction of the how ST looks, feels and played aside, no one can deny that the production standard was way beyond anything we saw before for ST.

And given the way that drama is being produced now on TV, how would Paramount or another studio do it?
Could a new ST match Lost, Heroes, The Event etc?

My two cents would be to leave it on the big screen for the foreseeable future. The cast are young, there's lots of story-lines, and new life and civilisations to discover now will provide us with plenty to see.

Although it now seems too late, I would forget about the Khan thing and come up with new storyline but of course, if Paramount is going to invest, they will want to play it safe, hence the 3rd re-hash of 'Space seed'.

I would also put to bed once and for all, the bloody Starfleet academy thing. I hate the idea of watching kids bounce around, falling in love, missing their parents and generally making asses of themselves before they are raillroaded into captaincy .

Thats essentially what TOS did, left the small screen and went on a six movie run that spanned years, and eventually returning in a new incarnation (TNG). For me the likes of LOST raised the bar so high, that any future Trek show will have to be streets ahead of recent Trek (Voy/Ent). Could it return? It's likely, however don't hold your breath. And it's likely to be vastly different to Trek on tv as we know it, which died some time ago now.

KenSwee

Can we move this to the "star Trek Series What's Next?" post?

Dude111

I would like to see THE ORIGINAL SERIES back again on TV

I remember watching it just about everyday in the 80s!

nyarlothothep

I think star trek benefits from taking breaks, in the respect that it has new technological ideas to play with, for example the borg would have been unimaginable for TOS writers but not so for TNG, with the advent of the idea of the cyborg. Or touch screen which was another TOS idea. Until it has about 10-15 years worth of tech ideas to play with it will suffer the problem of being quickly outdated.

It wouldn't have much trouble rivalling current TV shows, most of them are crap, Lost is just boring, never really got 24, nuBSG is hysterically dark and silly for it. Different genres here but the best drama/shows involving human actors/actresses have been 6 feet under, niptuck and Spartacus and the last two are not without their flaws. In fact one of the reasons I like Spartacus is that its unintentionally funny. Smallville was superb, Buffy was also generally good, I think if they were to do an academy type show if they could keep it to the level set by those two shows in their prime it would be awesome. What they need to avoid are annoying characters like Neelix and Janeway ( I actually prefer Ent because it doesn't have these two characters that I absolutely abhor), stupid scripts which justify bad decisions under the aegis of moral superiority, preachiness, stuffy and dull plots, rehashes of old episodes etc. A new series would also benefit by having some fine British actors/actresses, preferably Shakesperean and a more European or multicultural cast given that (a) actors from abroad seem to be better in American tv shows, probably because they've had to prove their mettle, and secondly I was getting very tired with all american casts especially in the case of Ent which represented almost a regression of sorts with Trip and Archer being akin to hillbillies.

In fact it comes back to the 10-15 years thing, Star Trek partly trades on new tech ideas in order to explore social/philosophical issues in a new ways.

Josh_Calvert

DS9 should be brought back or made into a couple of movies...it was the last good and possibly the best ever ST franchise.

They should make a Star Trek-Borg series where all the alpha quadrant races have to ally against a common threat and there could be load of political intrigue like in Babylon 5.

They could also show what we already suspect that the Borg were originally humans...they could make an awesome arc about how it came about...

hogflem

I agree with you about DS9,there's loads of potential there,the Borg Idea is pretty good too!I'd like to see the Andorians involved a bit more next time around,they were interesting enough,they could evolve in time ,the same way the Klingons and the Ferengi did.

norrie rugger

Josh_Calvert wrote: »

DS9 should be brought back or made into a couple of movies...it was the last good and possibly the best ever ST franchise.

They should make a Star Trek-Borg series where all the alpha quadrant races have to ally against a common threat and there could be load of political intrigue like in Babylon 5.

They could also show what we already suspect that the Borg were originally humans...they could make an awesome arc about how it came about...

Read the Star Trek Destiny trilogy of books

Cookie_Monster

The Borg have been done to death and are at the heart of it a pretty **** badguy race. They just sledge hammer their way through and fail eventually at the last hurdle for some inexplicable reason.

Destiny was the closest thing to what the Borg would actually do, simply turn up with thousands and thousands of ships and spend 5 mins taking over the place.

The Borg by the end of Voyager were an entirely flawed concept, Voyager showed they had so much tech and could get around the galaxy with ease within minutes via the trans warp hub. Why did they never just send 50 cubes through that to earth instead of one every now and again? The Borg have been turned into an un-writable race cos they are so overly powerful and there is only so many ridiculously un-believable ways to defeat them at the last desperate second.

The problem with Star Trek movies now a days is they have to be about massive conflict with worlds getting destroyed and lots of random needless deaths, a TV show could change that back to something more intelligent, with adventure and discovery, plot and character development and proper intrigue without simply blowing everything up constantly.

I'm watching through TNG again on Virgin and the diff compared to Voyager and later DS9 is just incredible, so much more intelligent and watchable. Voyagers is just **** and later DS9 is just an entirely different direction, which while great is also a little to gung ho and explosion driven at times.

Optimus Prime

Agree with you about the Borg totally used up. The problem is, that ironic as it may sound, the Star Trek Universe is now a pretty small place thanks to TNG, Voyager and DS9. With the wormhole in DS9 they introduced new aliens via that and with Voyger they fired the ship right across the Universe so they could bring in new races, add to that everyone encountered in TNG and its pretty hard to introduce a new race we havent seen before, or that wasnt at least mentioned. A new tv show would just be re-using the same races we already know because in fairness they cant really just invent a new one that we havent seen already over the span of about 15 years of Trek Tv. All of a sudden some new major race no one heard of before appears out of no where and starts causing problems!!

Something drastic needs to be done to bring back a fresh trek show and with the success of the new movie and another one in the works i cant see a new one on tv for a good few years. Its a pity enterprise was cancelled because while it was poor at the start i really thought it was starting to pick up pace in its final season.

norrie rugger

keithgeo wrote: »

Agree with you about the Borg totally used up. The problem is, that ironic as it may sound, the Star Trek Universe is now a pretty small place thanks to TNG, Voyager and DS9. With the wormhole in DS9 they introduced new aliens via that and with Voyger they fired the ship right across the Universe so they could bring in new races, add to that everyone encountered in TNG and its pretty hard to introduce a new race we havent seen before, or that wasnt at least mentioned. A new tv show would just be re-using the same races we already know because in fairness they cant really just invent a new one that we havent seen already over the span of about 15 years of Trek Tv. All of a sudden some new major race no one heard of before appears out of no where and starts causing problems!!

Something drastic needs to be done to bring back a fresh trek show and with the success of the new movie and another one in the works i cant see a new one on tv for a good few years. Its a pity enterprise was cancelled because while it was poor at the start i really thought it was starting to pick up pace in its final season.

The Founders did seem to have most of the Gamma quad taken, or would know of any threats
Borg would never have let any MAJOR threats in the majority of the Delta

Fed Space spreads well into Alpha and a good bit into Beta. So you imagine that they should have heard of any Alpha threats

Roms and Klingons are Beta Quad powers. You would think that they would know of any big powers on their far borders.

Strange thing for me was always that the Klingons and Romulans never semed to be worried about space on the far side of their territories, which made me think that there were not huge threats there

Cookie_Monster

norrie rugger wrote: »

Strange thing for me was always that the Klingons and Romulans never semed to be worried about space on the far side of their territories, which made me think that there were not huge threats there

funny that. Or else just were never shown as it didn't impact on the fed.

there are plenty of minor alpha races that could be more involved in stories, Gorn and Tholian spring to mind, both deceitful crafty buggers from what we've briefly seen. Also plenty of scop for new threats/allies/encounters/races/etc to Fed as they constantly push out their borders.

Lots of potential for happening within the Fed too, how many worlds are there and how many have we ever seen? The like of the Maquis offered great story potential, I'm sure a similar internal group could be thought up. Or newly independant sectors and so forth. Not to mention any of the spacial bits and bobs that can always just randomly turn up.

The da Vinchi books about about the engineer corp (I haven't read any) sound like a great platform for a tv series based within Fed territory while offering plenty of scop for moving about, new plaents, new tech, new problems etc

Optimus Prime

Problem is though its rare these days for a scifi show to get into a third season, most are cancelled during the 1st or 2nd unless they are a major hit. So many shows ive watched the last while have been cancelled due to low ratings. Firefly, Stargate Universe, Terminator Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Event, Caprica and Enterprise. It would be the last nail in the coffin if they brought in a new trek tv show too early and it was cancelled. with so many people downloading etc a show has to be a huge hit to keep it on tv. id say they will release a few films to get some new fans on board before they even think about bringing out a new tv show.

Goldstein

keithgeo wrote: »

release a few films to get some new fans on board before they even think about bringing out a new tv show.

Problem there is that 99% of the new movie fans aren't now nor will ever be Star Trek (or even science fiction) fans.

norrie rugger wrote: »

The Founders did seem to have most of the Gamma quad taken, or would know of any threats
Borg would never have let any MAJOR threats in the majority of the Delta

Fed Space spreads well into Alpha and a good bit into Beta. So you imagine that they should have heard of any Alpha threats

Roms and Klingons are Beta Quad powers. You would think that they would know of any big powers on their far borders.

Strange thing for me was always that the Klingons and Romulans never semed to be worried about space on the far side of their territories, which made me think that there were not huge threats there

Another galaxy then?
Maybe extra-galactic is the logical way to go for new antagonists. Trek hasn't gone there before (Not really)

I've always wanted to see a show about the Utopia Planitia yards on Mars - We could get to see the new ships, emergency missions, secret projects, testing out new tech, political stuff/funding etc, the chaos during wartime trying to get anough ships out.

The tricky part would be justifying the other races being involved all the time but there are ways - an elite shakedown crew testing things out in various places or the "we do secret missions" elite squad or what have you.