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Where No Non-specific-gender Person Has Gone Before
CBS is bringing back “Star Trek,” but it’ll cost you. Forty quatloos or whatever the price for their streaming service turns out to be. Comments at Variety are just what you’d expect: the producer is the wrong guy, they should do that other show, won’t pay, et cetera. “Star Trek” fans — at least the vocal ones — will repay the resurrection of their beloved franchise by nit-picking the next iteration to bloody bits.
Predictions: A few PC boxes will be checked to ensure peace and quiet from the critics and the perpetually aggravated. The ship will be bright and shiny inside, with lots of blue, the Official Color of the Future. Everyone will be adept at typing on glass screens during moments of crisis. There will be a Vulcan, because you have to have at least one laconic, sarcastic stuck-up character, and there will be an Engineer and a Doctor. There will be six writers who give up trying to find new ways to inhabit these archetypes. It will be set in the new Trek timeline, which gives the writers the freedom to ignore many of the things that dictated the breadth of the plot lines.
Savaged by fans keen to show they are pure, it will slowly get better, but the true fans will not accept this, and regard it as an abomination that happens when you don’t listen to people who really nailed the whole problem with Trek in the 547th nested comment on a subreddit dedicated to the third season of “Voyager.”
Me, I’m glad. It’s preferable to nothing, and I’ve found that I can actually enjoy things that aren’t perfect, as long they’re not trying too hard to push me away. (See also, “Tomorrowland.” Or rather don’t.) The big question is whether the sixth series can provide anything new. It’s going to be about a Federation vessel that explores space and runs into bipeds with similar technology but ridges on their cheeks or noses.
What’s left to tell? What’s left to show?
Published in Entertainment
I want to see Captain Riker of the USS Titan, thank you very much.
Too old now. That (star)ship has sailed.
When they got to Janeway, it cost me too much. I have no idea what they paid her.
I had a problem with Star Trek after a while. Both B5 and Farscape had story arcs that could accommodate episodic stuff occurring while moving the entire story forward. Star Trek did not have that, and was unable to generate an interest in more than the characters. Even Captain Janeway’s attempt to return home to whatever quadrant they managed to fly away from in the first place was lacking in drama. They were reduced to planning meals. It was wretched.
The Trek Universe is a pretty well-developed sub-creation, rivaling Middle Earth in detail. There should be no end to the stories you can tell. A reboot is unnecessary.
As was noted above, it’s all about filling in the quota boxes at this point. Me, I’m betting on a homosexual captain, or something along those lines. Maybe a “genderfluid” species that switches from male to female as desired, or some such nonsense. That would be very Trekkian, a’la The Outcast.
Too bad Denise “T’Pol” McAllister is no longer here. She would’ve loved this discussion.
No, but imagine if the end-game of the AbramVerse was that, thanks to the knowledge of Spock Prime, Earth was able to conquer the galaxy? It could have been the origin story of the Mirror Universe!
Or, if that doesn’t strike your fancy, imagine this: If the main Star Trek timeline has been altered, does that mean the Mirror Universe’s timeline was also altered?
If the Mirror Universe’s timeline wasn’t altered, does that mean that the Mirror Universe might be a stepping-stone for travelling to the original timeline?
And what about the Q Continuum? Surely they’d have noticed the history of an entire universe being altered so drastically. Don’t they have a say in the matter?
Mind = blown.
But, no, we’ll just remake Wrath of Khan but make it stupid. That’s a much better idea.
I’ve never seen a Star Trek outside the original (save movies with original cast).
I won’t. I just won’t.
Look, I’m as nerdy as anyone, and I offer the attached photo as proof.
But Star Trek is dumb. It’s always been dumb. And it just keeps getting dumber.
The tyrannical Mirror Universe Federation existed prior to Kirk. Didn’t you watch Enterprise?!
So many reboots. I see that “The Six Million Dollar Man” as well as “The Greatest American Hero” are both getting reboots.
What next? “Holmes and Yoyo: The Next Generation”?
Yabbut, so what? With Red Matter and black holes and whatnot they can play Jenga with any universe’s timeline to their heart’s content!
The original series “explored contemporary social issues” by having Kirk punch Commies, I mean Klingons, and then bed anything with a XX chromosome. However, if it’s going to be “Red Shirts For Social Justice”, count me out.
Now, set this new show in the Star Fleet Battles universe, and I’m interested.
What happened to the days of simply stealing an idea without bothering to pay for the I.P.?
e.g. Time Tunnel –> Voyagers –> Quantum Leap
e.g. Kolchak The Night Stalker –> The X-Files –> Fringe/Supernatural
e.g. Dark Shadows –> Buffy The Vampire Slayer –> True Blood
Etc. Etc. Etc.
Holodecks delenda est.
naDev Qo’noS chay’ ta’ je sjw DISov!
cbs ‘el latlh loD maHvaD!
I adopted the “I don’t do remakes” credo years ago and have been better off for it.
DVDs!?
Dude, all of them are always streaming on Netflix. No disc jockeying necessary.
There was talk at one point of a Captain Worf series. Michael Dorn was on board for it too.
Alas for the Lyran Commonwealth.
Just what we need: a Klingon with self image problems running a starship.
Self image problems?
It’s a toss-up. Buy DVDs, or pay for Netflix (and then whine incessantly when you can’t get a nice stream through your ISP).
I liked them a lot, too. Good director, good composer, good actors, and a good take on the original crew, which made it exciting. I even appreciated the rebooting part.
I think I can say, without hyperbole, that you two are both worse than Hitler.
Nerd.
In this crazy world, streaming seems directly proportional to R ratings. That’s the new danger – if they can’t keep a new series less-than-or-equal-to PG, it’s going nowhere before it starts.
I was right around 10 when TNG came out and it was great watching the premiere with my Dad, regardless of your season 1 and 2 opinions. He brought us up (well, me – the only other nerd of the family) watching TOS and then something new to experience together. I get this ominous feeling it won’t be fit to watch with my kids. Virtually all original series’ on the streaming services attest to that.
I have to confess that the mirror universe episodes in DS9 were some of my favorite. Using the mirror universe in the new movies would have been brilliant. We could have had old bearded Spock and mind-bending relationships to the old continuity. It could have been meta with the original continuity and geeky at the same time. Abrahms has no imagination–you don’t use Khan unless you have a script at least as good as the original Wrath. All he had was garbage, and he went with it anyway.
They sure took the Mirror Universe thing and ran with it. I think there might have been one or two too many.