Star Trek

Scott Horowitz | July 30, 2004
Just thought I'd drop my 2 cents on something non-political so I won't get my head chewed off for once :).

I noticed there are quite a bit of Star Trek fans on this site, and thought I'd gauge people's opinions about where the franchise is and where it is going?
Do you like what's been going on? etc.

BTW, We're having a slow period at work right now... that's why I've been writing a lot lately.

Anna Gregoline | July 30, 2004
I'm sorry if you feel like your head is getting chewed off.

Scott Horowitz | July 30, 2004
It's alright... just wanted something a little light hearted for a change.

Anna Gregoline | July 30, 2004
Not a problem, I was trying to think of something fun to post too.

John E Gunter | July 30, 2004
Star Trek...hmmm.

Well, much as I like the franchise as it were, I think it's in trouble. Why, because those writing it keep churning out the same old sh*t over and over again. I like the franchise, don't get me wrong, have a number of the shows, and even the bad ones on VHS tape.

Also, I'm looking at buying DVDs of the different series. But I'm so tired of the same old, look, we've found this incredibly powerful alien species that are going to come and destroy the Federation. Ah, but the Huumaans will find a way to stop those nasty powerful aliens and save the day.

Not that I want to see the Federation get pasted, mind you. I don't like movies where the bad guys win, by any stretch. But I also have gotten really bored knowing that within the last 10 minutes of the show, they'll win.

I did so like the way they defeated the Remans in Nemesis. Though I didn't like what happened to the characters, (NO SPOILERS HERE), it was a very Human way to handle the situation! At least I see it as one of the most, if not the most, human thing that could have been done in the Franchise!

But I don’t think the Franchise will ever die completely, you’ve got way to many fans who will keep it going, buying or watching the incredible sh*t that they keep releasing. Not that all of it is sh*t by the way.

John

Erik Bates | July 30, 2004
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Anthony Lewis | July 31, 2004
I'll just come out and say it...

Star Trek sucks.

:-p

Scott Hardie | July 31, 2004
This from a man who doesn't even like Survivor! :-)

I can't stand the original series, for its melodrama and blatant sexism (it came from a different time). But I adored the later shows, and I'm happily making my way through them now, midway through TNG season five. TNG captured an essential element of the series as entertainment, that it's a place we'd like to escape to. DS9 and Voyager always looked like depressing places to live with everybody wound up with angst, and Archer's Enterprise comes across as primitive by comparison. But anyone who has seen an episode of TNG knows the draw of that world, the desire to live on the Enterprise D, to play in the Holodecks, to hang out in Ten Forward, to have one exciting adventure after another. TNG was sci-fi escapism at its best.

My favorite was DS9, though. It was more sophisticated and a hell of a lot darker. Picard the diplomat was interesting (surely more so than Kirk the brawler), but Sisko exceeded him by being a once-decent man who had grown cold-hearted through his bitter life, even ordering an assassination against an enemy late in the series. The Worf who served Picard was upstanding and committed to Federation ideals; the Worf who served Sisko was a killer. Picard's O'Brien was a happy-go-lucky fellow; Sisko's O'Brien was an alcoholic who nearly committed suicide. The most innocent characters, Jake and Bashir, even got some shades of gray as the series progressed. As a writer, one of my favorite methods of characterization is to establish morality and then test it with increasingly impossible choices, and that's what the DS9 writers did to their characters, send them to moral hell and back. It was by far the most interesting of the shows.

Most fans don't know it because they gave up early in Voyager's run (I sure did), but it actually got pretty damn good in the final two seasons, and had glimmers of hope earlier than that, like the Hirogen-based six-episode arc. By the end of the series, most of the characters were finally well-developed enough that the writers could do things with them as individuals; prior to that, they were interchangeable, such that a Paris episode could be a Chakotay episode and it would make no difference at all. Jennifer Lien got a raw deal (she was a good actress and Kes had real potential), but Jeri Ryan gave the show a badly-needed shot in the arm, and set it on a path that eventually took it to a realm of quality television. Long journey home indeed.

I haven't gotten into Enterprise, but it isn't for lack of trying. The five or so times I've tried to watch it, the episode has either been deathly stale and predictable because it's so standard for Star Trek, or boring because the Xindi superweapon plotline is dull, dull, dull. John Gunter and I have discussed it at length and agree that the people in charge no longer evince the creativity necessary to revive the franchise, and Enterprise's near-cancellation last season is proof. Until someone wrests creative control of the franchise from Berman and Braga's cold, dead hands, Enterprise is going to be about as stimulating as an afternoon in a law library, and having the biggest budget on television won't mean a damn thing. There's an effort to shake it up this fall with a new producer, big guest stars (Brent Spiner in episodes 4-6), and independent storylines for most of the episodes, but I still expect it to be the final season.

I think what's missing from the franchise is a sense of imagination and excitement. Setting the current series so close to present day removes much of the technology, many of the alien races, and gives the characters a modernity that makes them boring. Instead of setting the upcoming eleventh film before Kirk, they should be running as far in the opposite direction as they can go. Give us a few generations after Janeway, where ships travel via a jump drive that creates temporary wormholes on the spot, and alien races that aren't obviously humans in makeup, whether created by CGI or animatronics or anything else the FX team can invent. One thing I'd love to include if I were in charge would be Hong Kong style action, some wire-assisted stunts. Create an alien race with an inherent magnetic resonance that allows them to glide on air, and also deflects phaser beams away from them. Cast one as the chief of security and give him or her a few big fight scenes per season, with reduced screen time in the other episodes to allow for the extended filming schedule. This edge-of-your-seat spectacle, so wild and unpredictable you tune in just to see if next week can be even cooler, is the kind of juice the franchise needs now, instead of dragging out old shit like Brent Spiner or the Borg, and then only when it's ratings week. They need to stop looking into the past for inspiration, because it only makes the series seem progressively more stale and more inbred. They also need to start taking advantage of the fact that it's in space! and there are aliens! and the many possibilities of bizarre encounters and bizarre alien worlds, instead of making every episode about as varied and engaging as an open-floor debate in the UN. To paraphrase Saint Augustine, the Star Trek creative staff could be writing an entire book, and instead they're content only to keep writing the same page again and again.

Erik Bates | July 31, 2004
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Anna Gregoline | July 31, 2004
I love the original series, because it's just so overdramatic. Now, I haven't watched it all, of course, but an occaisonal episode is hysterical.

Lori Lancaster | August 1, 2004
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Melissa Erin | August 2, 2004
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