Idea for next Star Trek Movie: Attack of the Terran Empire!

[Tom_Kalbfus]

How does the reboot of Star Trek affect the Mirror Universe? According to Enterprise, the Terran Empire aquires the Constitution Class Star ship "Defiant" Someone in the Mirror Universe, perhaps Hoshi Sato or her descendents know of the Federation, perhaps they may be looking for more territory to conquer. How to start this off?

Well the Elder Spock of Spock Prime brought some original timeline knowledge with him, including perhaps the location of the Bajoran wormhole, and since this is another timeline, there is no reason why this wormhole could not be discovered in the 23rd century instead of the 24th. Someone might forget to mention that if you enter that wormhole at warp speed, you could end up in the Mirror Universe, as was demonstrated on one of the episodes of Deep Space Nine, now suppose this hapless Federation character, lets for argument sake assume it is Harry Mud. Now Harry Mud learns of the existance of the Bajoran wormhole, perhaps Spock Prime mentioned in passing to one of Harry's associates, and he in turn relayed that to Harry Mudd himself, Harry saw profit in this and decided to take advantage of this propritary information, so he travels to the alleged site of it, but he accidentall hit is before he disengages his warp drive. The Terran Empire captures him, and the evil Captain Kirk makes him an offer he can't refuse, it doesn't really take much. Kirk offers him a planet for information on how to use the wormhole to get to the Federation Universe, Harry Mudd being the unscrupulous sort readly accepts, well he figures a planet is better than time in the agonizer booth.

So lets suppose the Empire Fleet manages to reach the Federation universe and lets take it from there.

[Patrick Degan]

Fuck the Mirror Universe. It was alright as a one-off concept to test a philosophical idea. Past that it's become a cliche and a tedious one.

[Uraniun235]

Yeah, seriously. There's any number of possibilities available, even more seeing as it's a "reboot/rebranding", and they should go meet their cartoonishly-evil doppelgangers flying the slightly-repainted doppelganger starship?

[Stofsk]

I'd rather see a remake of 'The Cage' than 'Mirror, Mirror'

That said, I don't have a problem with a Mirrorverse movie. It would be something different to more Klingons or Romulans.

[dworkin]

I would much rather have Kirk, Spock and the rest do what it says on the damn tin. Some seeking out of new life and new civilisations, some boldly going where no-one has fucking gone yet? In a galaxy apparently teeming with wonders can we see something new?

That's my want. Something not yet seen. In a franchise where the premise is 'space explorers' is it too much to expect?

[Temujin]

The mirror universe has just become another excuse for lazy writers to get cheap pop by showing the established characters in situations they wouldn't normally be, behaving in ways they normally wouldn't and even having some of them die; all without really effecting the established universe. It's akin to time travel in that it's another form of reset button, and has been abused just as badly. Other shows have learned to get away from this kind of crap by actually having their characters evolve and grow more over time rather than remain relatively static.

I would much rather have Kirk, Spock and the rest do what it says on the damn tin. Some seeking out of new life and new civilisations, some boldly going where no-one has fucking gone yet? In a galaxy apparently teeming with wonders can we see something new?

That's my want. Something not yet seen. In a franchise where the premise is 'space explorers' is it too much to expect?

The franchise has really gotten away from the feel that TOS had. Back then space felt vast and unexplored, since TNG it feels small, crowded and too familiar.

[Marcus Aurelius]

That's my want. Something not yet seen. In a franchise where the premise is 'space explorers' is it too much to expect?

Space exploration is not a commercially viable premise for feature films in the 21th century. It's fast paced adventure or nothing. Now, theoretically you could combine that with space exploration, but in practice it's difficult, since space exploration means introducing new things, which requires some time to do properly. So if there's going to be any exploration in the reboot ST universe, it's going to be secondary to the "exciting", slick and fast moving adventure.

[Skylon]

Space exploration is not a commercially viable premise for feature films in the 21th century. It's fast paced adventure or nothing. Now, theoretically you could combine that with space exploration, but in practice it's difficult, since space exploration means introducing new things, which requires some time to do properly. So if there's going to be any exploration in the reboot ST universe, it's going to be secondary to the "exciting", slick and fast moving adventure.

Why? TOS, TNG, Stargate SG-1 and other shows all had viewers go to new worlds for one hour weekly. Shit, The Twilight Zone took us to all kinds of crazy places in 30 minutes.

Why can't this be done in a film, which has more time? Forbidden Planet, Planet of the Apes took us to crazy alien worlds. The first Matrix film made Earth practically alien, and did so with plenty of fast paced action. The trick with a film that has exploration is you need to hook the audience in and make them want to learn about this world. In the case of the Matrix the audience was genuinely hooked into finding out what "the Matrix" was. This isn't easy, but it is doable.

[Channel72]

Why? TOS, TNG, Stargate SG-1 and other shows all had viewers go to new worlds for one hour weekly. Shit, The Twilight Zone took us to all kinds of crazy places in 30 minutes.

The problem is, historically, Star Trek movies have rarely been about exploration. Arguably, the only Star Trek movies which were actually about "strange new worlds, new life, and new civilizations" were Star Trek I and Star Trek V, both of which are widely considered to be deeply flawed films. The best of the Star Trek movies are basically character-driven action flicks: Star Trek II, VI and First Contact, for example. Really, Star Trek has become more of a space opera and less of a exploration/adventure series ever since the latter seasons of TNG.

Furthermore, the recent Abrams reboot film was basically a full-fledged, mindless, popcorn action movie, and it was wildly successful. That means the studio is likely to go with what works, and give us another mindless action flick. Personally, I'd prefer a TOS-style, exploration/adventure driven movie, but I realize that's not likely to happen. We'll most likely get some more Star Wars-inspired space-opera bullshit, featuring Klingons or Romulans or whatever. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I doubt it.

[Srelex]

The Mirrorverse is good enough for TV episodes, novels also, I guess, but a whole movie? No way.

Anyway, frankly I'd like some distinguishing in content between movies and TV; if the next movie is another action piece, I'm cool with that. The nuTrek movie was at the very least fun, which puts it above the head-up-ass offerings of the TNG flicks.

[Stofsk]

Why? TOS, TNG, Stargate SG-1 and other shows all had viewers go to new worlds for one hour weekly. Shit, The Twilight Zone took us to all kinds of crazy places in 30 minutes.

The problem is, historically, Star Trek movies have rarely been about exploration. Arguably, the only Star Trek movies which were actually about "strange new worlds, new life, and new civilizations" were Star Trek I and Star Trek V, both of which are widely considered to be deeply flawed films. The best of the Star Trek movies are basically character-driven action flicks: Star Trek II, VI and First Contact, for example. Really, Star Trek has become more of a space opera soap opera and less of a exploration/adventure series ever since the latter seasons of TNG.

I fixed the above for you.

Furthermore, the recent Abrams reboot film was basically a full-fledged, mindless, popcorn action movie, and it was wildly successful. That means the studio is likely to go with what works, and give us another mindless action flick. Personally, I'd prefer a TOS-style, exploration/adventure driven movie, but I realize that's not likely to happen. We'll most likely get some more Star Wars-inspired space-opera bullshit, featuring Klingons or Romulans or whatever. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I doubt it.

Why so pessimistic? This time around there'll be no writers guild strike to fuck with the writing. I am convinced a lot of the problems with the Star Trek movie were due to the fucking writer's guild strike. Besides, TOS was always about space opera style adventuring. But it also had character drama as well. The more successful Trek movies captured the spirit well and added nice big screen budgets as well (something the show lacked).

People also like to hang shit over the motion picture, but I'll take it over any of the TNG films any day of the month.

[CDiehl]

I'd rather see a remake of 'The Cage' than 'Mirror, Mirror'

I'd rather not see a remake of anything. Surely, they didn't yank this entire franchise away from the dead weight of its canon just so they could spend hundreds of millions of dollars to remake 40+ year-old TV episodes, or 25-30 year-old movies. If they just want to rehash old episodes, they can stick the actual episodes on the big screen; I'm sure plenty of people would still pay money to see that. If they absolutely must rehash stuff from the series, I'd go with some of the one-shot alien races, like the Gorn or the Tholians, rather than more Klingons or Romulans.

[RedImperator]

Pretty sure there's no reason why Enterprise couldn't be exploring a brave new world and get into trouble that requires WHIZ BANG ACTION ADVENTURE to escape.

[Skylon]

The problem is, historically, Star Trek movies have rarely been about exploration. Arguably, the only Star Trek movies which were actually about "strange new worlds, new life, and new civilizations" were Star Trek I and Star Trek V, both of which are widely considered to be deeply flawed films. The best of the Star Trek movies are basically character-driven action flicks: Star Trek II, VI and First Contact, for example. Really, Star Trek has become more of a space opera and less of a exploration/adventure series ever since the latter seasons of TNG.

In the case of post-TNG Trek I'd say the writers ran out of ideas (the writers of DS9, VOY and ENT had been the writers for TNG...I'd run out of ideas too at that point) and except for DS9, didn't really try anything new. TMP would have worked as an episode, but was instead bloated up to fill two hours and tried to be 2001: A Space Odyssey. ST V....just blew on every level. ST IV, the most commercially successful TOS film had "new life" you could argue (the Whale Probe).

Pretty sure there's no reason why Enterprise couldn't be exploring a brave new world and get into trouble that requires WHIZ BANG ACTION ADVENTURE to escape.

I'm hoping for something like this. Indeed, that summarizes almost every TOS episode. Exploration seldom equaled boring on TOS, as it was handled more like gunboat diplomacy.

[RedImperator]

The problem is, historically, Star Trek movies have rarely been about exploration. Arguably, the only Star Trek movies which were actually about "strange new worlds, new life, and new civilizations" were Star Trek I and Star Trek V, both of which are widely considered to be deeply flawed films. The best of the Star Trek movies are basically character-driven action flicks: Star Trek II, VI and First Contact, for example. Really, Star Trek has become more of a space opera and less of a exploration/adventure series ever since the latter seasons of TNG.

In the case of post-TNG Trek I'd say the writers ran out of ideas (the writers of DS9, VOY and ENT had been the writers for TNG...I'd run out of ideas too at that point) and except for DS9, didn't really try anything new. TMP would have worked as an episode, but was instead bloated up to fill two hours and tried to be 2001: A Space Odyssey. ST V....just blew on every level. ST IV, the most commercially successful TOS film had "new life" you could argue (the Whale Probe).

From the perspective of the characters, 1986 Earth was a strange new world. That was part of the fun for the audience; seeing these guys from the perspective of the natives on the planet-of-the-week.

[Cecelia5578]

I guess this risks putting me in the minority, but I'd like original ideas for the next Star Trek movie, not recycled TOS or TOS movie ideas. I just don't see the point, given all the hoopla about this being a new timeline, a reboot, whatever- in remaking the best of TOS and hoping that audiences nowadays will like it.

[dworkin]

Space exploration is not a commercially viable premise for feature films in the 21th century. It's fast paced adventure or nothing. Now, theoretically you could combine that with space exploration, but in practice it's difficult, since space exploration means introducing new things, which requires some time to do properly. So if there's going to be any exploration in the reboot ST universe, it's going to be secondary to the "exciting", slick and fast moving adventure.

I was going to say something smarmy about a minor 2010 movie concerned with exploring an alien world but I gave up.

Because you're right. It will be special effects, bad science, dumb action and villians so old and used they should be on zimmer frames.

[Themightytom]

Fuck the Mirror Universe. It was alright as a one-off concept to test a philosophical idea. Past that it's become a cliche and a tedious one.

I agree with Megatron, but because Old school Trekkies would never shut up if the mirror universe were rebooted.

The TOS episode was entertaining in its innovation, and because Spock + goatee = Evil Spock, most of the follow ups to it completely sucked balls. This is because the premise of Mirror Mirror was that there must exist an alternate universe where personalities are flipped.

Entertainment has gotten a little more complicated since then. Such a simplistic concept would not be considered entertaining, but rather cheesy or campy. Unless you want the next movie to be rated B, you have to do something different with the Mirror universe conceptually. This became apparent in DS9 when they tried to have "good" Evil twins versus "Bad evil twins.

The results were Julian the retard Kira the slut and to be honest I'm not sure what they were trying to do at all with Sisko.

It follows that if they made a movie, they'd change the premise of the mirror universe. The mirror universe wouldn't necessarily be Evil, fans would flip their shit because it was less than "true to the character" and the rest of the audience would probably be lost at "alternate universe" and have walked out.

[Marcus Aurelius]

The results were Julian the retard Kira the slut and to be honest I'm not sure what they were trying to do at all with Sisko.

Hey, I honestly think that Kira the Slut was more interesting than the normal universe Kira, despite being somewhat of a cardboard figure. But I admit that it might be so because she reminded me of LEXX... (most of which I actually saw before DS9 )

[Tom_Kalbfus]

The Mirrorverse is good enough for TV episodes, novels also, I guess, but a whole movie? No way.

Anyway, frankly I'd like some distinguishing in content between movies and TV; if the next movie is another action piece, I'm cool with that. The nuTrek movie was at the very least fun, which puts it above the head-up-ass offerings of the TNG flicks.

It features an Evil Empire, just as in Star Wars. The main difference between the Mirror Universe and the Federation Universe is that in the Mirror Universe, the human race is just another aggressive warlike species like the Klingons and the Romulans.

[Tom_Kalbfus]

Fuck the Mirror Universe. It was alright as a one-off concept to test a philosophical idea. Past that it's become a cliche and a tedious one.

I agree with Megatron, but because Old school Trekkies would never shut up if the mirror universe were rebooted.

The TOS episode was entertaining in its innovation, and because Spock + goatee = Evil Spock, most of the follow ups to it completely sucked balls. This is because the premise of Mirror Mirror was that there must exist an alternate universe where personalities are flipped.

Entertainment has gotten a little more complicated since then. Such a simplistic concept would not be considered entertaining, but rather cheesy or campy. Unless you want the next movie to be rated B, you have to do something different with the Mirror universe conceptually. This became apparent in DS9 when they tried to have "good" Evil twins versus "Bad evil twins.

The results were Julian the retard Kira the slut and to be honest I'm not sure what they were trying to do at all with Sisko.

It follows that if they made a movie, they'd change the premise of the mirror universe. The mirror universe wouldn't necessarily be Evil, fans would flip their shit because it was less than "true to the character" and the rest of the audience would probably be lost at "alternate universe" and have walked out.

Since the movie verse has its own timeline, with the destruction of Vulcan, then it stands to reason that it can create a seperate Mirror Universe timeline as well. You see in the Mirror Universe Timeline, Vulcan was not destroyed by a Romulan from the future. A Mirror Universe counterpart to Nero would have little motivation to destroy Vulcan, for the simple reason that the "bearded Spock" was not around. The Mirror Universe's Nero never knew Spock, as Spock of the Mirror Universe became Emperor of the Terran Empire and introduced reforms that caused its downfall at the hands of its enemies. The Vulcan of the Mirror Universe was therefore not destroyed, and this introduces another plot element, Spock has another chance to save his mother Amanda, or at least another version of her from the Mirror Universe.

[Ghost Rider]

Since the movie verse has its own timeline, with the destruction of Vulcan, then it stands to reason that it can create a seperate Mirror Universe timeline as well. You see in the Mirror Universe Timeline, Vulcan was not destroyed by a Romulan from the future. A Mirror Universe counterpart to Nero would have little motivation to destroy Vulcan, for the simple reason that the "bearded Spock" was not around.

Given the incredile amount of iterations you could have for a mirror universe, it stands to reason there are others. The problem is the creation of the current universe is because of Nero and his hatred for Spock.

The Mirror Universe's Nero never knew Spock, as Spock of the Mirror Universe became Emperor of the Terran Empire and introduced reforms that caused its downfall at the hands of its enemies.

Then Nero would never go...back in time. Did you watch the movie? At all?

The Vulcan of the Mirror Universe was therefore not destroyed, and this introduces another plot element, Spock has another chance to save his mother Amanda, or at least another version of her from the Mirror Universe.

So you come up with a half assed fanfic, so that Spock of the new movie can save an alternate mother who may or may not be alive given the prejudice and ideals of that Federation? Leap around the logic bush much?

[Temujin]

The results were Julian the retard Kira the slut and to be honest I'm not sure what they were trying to do at all with Sisko.

Hey, I honestly think that Kira the Slut was more interesting than the normal universe Kira, despite being somewhat of a cardboard figure. But I admit that it might be so because she reminded me of LEXX... (most of which I actually saw before DS9 )

I always felt their performances seemed forced and somewhat satirical, especially since they're supposed to be evil!

[Gil Hamilton]

The problem is, historically, Star Trek movies have rarely been about exploration. Arguably, the only Star Trek movies which were actually about "strange new worlds, new life, and new civilizations" were Star Trek I and Star Trek V, both of which are widely considered to be deeply flawed films. The best of the Star Trek movies are basically character-driven action flicks: Star Trek II, VI and First Contact, for example. Really, Star Trek has become more of a space opera and less of a exploration/adventure series ever since the latter seasons of TNG.

Furthermore, the recent Abrams reboot film was basically a full-fledged, mindless, popcorn action movie, and it was wildly successful. That means the studio is likely to go with what works, and give us another mindless action flick. Personally, I'd prefer a TOS-style, exploration/adventure driven movie, but I realize that's not likely to happen. We'll most likely get some more Star Wars-inspired space-opera bullshit, featuring Klingons or Romulans or whatever. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I doubt it.

I would argue that the only successful explore "Strange New Worlds" movie was StarTrek VI, where the strange new world only existed as a metaphor for an uncertain but hopefully better future.

There is room in StarTrek movies for exploration, the problem is that "exploring strange new worlds" more suited for a serial where the entire thing is exploration. A movie somewhat demands that you focus on one particular subject for a feature length film. You can do it, but you are only seeing where the ship stopped during its voyage once. This is what makes me tichy about the "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" movie. The third Narnia book was my favorite of the lot, but they are going from island to island and the islands may not have much to do with each other, each being a separate allergory, and I imagine it would be hard to treat each one effectively in the time they've got. Typically that means cutting out most of the "exploration" or it means including all the neat visuals but make a very superficial movie. At that point, you demand that the audience not care that the movie is hollow, but hey Eustace is a dragon! He's not going to learn anything this time, but it's TOTALLY AWESOME LOOKING!

StarTrek riskes the same thing. The best way to go is to have the ship visit some new and wonderous single setting and get mixed up in intrigues there are are alien in nature (of course, they still have to be comprehendable to human audiences) and metaphoric. Basically, the formula for better TOS episode plots, but write large. You can't get away with ALOT of that anymore*, but you could do something.

*(for example "A Taste of Armageddon" would be hopeless on a modern audience, who'd wonder why citizens would report to a real incinerator because their NPC in a glorified videogame died in a fictional war)

[Channel72]

StarTrek riskes the same thing. The best way to go is to have the ship visit some new and wonderous single setting and get mixed up in intrigues there are are alien in nature (of course, they still have to be comprehendable to human audiences) and metaphoric. Basically, the formula for better TOS episode plots, but write large. You can't get away with ALOT of that anymore*, but you could do something.

Yes, exactly - this is really the ideal formula for a good Star Trek movie. And yet strangely, it's never really been done. You can argue that Star Trek IV and Star Trek VI have elements of exploration and discovery, and while both of these are excellent films, they still don't really fit into the TOS exploration/adventure mold along the lines of Devil in the Dark or The Cloud Miners. Ironically, the only TOS episode which actually was adapted to the big-screen was The Changeling, and this caused audiences to complain that the material lacked enough content for a 2-hour movie.

At this point, I think it's unrealistic to expect the studio to attempt a film which focuses on world-building exploration/adventure stories. Really, why would they, when Abrams' recent action-flick was so successful?

*(for example "A Taste of Armageddon" would be hopeless on a modern audience, who'd wonder why citizens would report to a real incinerator because their NPC in a glorified videogame died in a fictional war)

That episode definitely works better with the looming threat of the Soviet Union in the background, but I still think modern audiences could appreciate the idea of a civilization which "virtualizes" warfare in an attempt to preserve the infrastructure of their civilization. An updated version of this episode could probably work with a modern audience, especially given all these "life-simulating" computer games we have now, like The Sims.