David Foster deadly serious about a new Star Trek series...

[Thanas]

I found the 09 movie to lack very much in script polish (especially dialogue and internal logic) and in general being about on the lower end of decent. It wasn't bad, but many of the scenes that were supposed to be moving just were not (destruction of Vulcan) and the effects kinda took over from the story.

And the main story isn't that good either.

[Stofsk]

I kinda like it because it shows potential, and it was fun. Nothing about it slammed me into the face as being offensively stupid or awful. Sure the plot is rubbish and there are contrivances to make your head ache, but if you just switch off and enjoy the ride it feels good.

But certainly the script was unpolished. I heard the writer's guild strike may have had a hand in that, but who knows. I hope the next one is more lucky.

[Thanas]

I kinda like it because it shows potential, and it was fun. Nothing about it slammed me into the face as being offensively stupid or awful. Sure the plot is rubbish and there are contrivances to make your head ache, but if you just switch off and enjoy the ride it feels good.

Sorry, the awful vulcan scenes completely made it impossible to do so. I will state though that everything up to kid Kirk was pretty enjoyable, though. Though the whole revenge plot thing is completely stupid.

But certainly the script was unpolished. I heard the writer's guild strike may have had a hand in that, but who knows. I hope the next one is more lucky.

I don't know. Seems more typical JJ Abrams fare whose projects always have a problem with script quality (see Alias).

[TOSDOC]

What the hell does "original series roots" mean?

The Cold War militarism, the sheer goofiness, what?

I'd take it to mean the TOS/TNG prologue (please don't make me type it)--to watch humanity and friends explore uncharted space, taking risks along the way. And do so with well-written stories that explore social issues (of our time and/or honest speculation) in a science fiction setting. It's where sometimes the villians are really just overprotective mothers, a super-science amusement park, or a pint-sized midget behind the curtain, and a step away from the tedium of administering interspecies politics and border disputes (TNG--gotta love Picard's line from one of the movies when he says "Can anyone remember when we were just explorers?"), interstellar war (DS9), lost in space (VOY), or just getting established (ENT).

The Abrams film didn't approach this angle either, but Stofsk brings up a good point. For a lot of people, it was a fun ride.

My pet peeve? I hope it means less forehead aliens--even at very low budgets, TOS gave us the Gorn, Tholians, Yarnek, the Horta, the flying parasites, tribbles, and even the Mugato for some variety from the humanoids.

[StarSword]

It seems whenever a talk of Trek's future comes up, some limp dicked retard pipes up about having a POWERFUL COMBATANT for a ship. Why is it important that it's powerful?

It's important that it's a strong combatant for the simple reason that, despite continually calling themselves explorers and scientists, Starfleet is the military arm of the Federation, and thus any ship that a series focuses on is expected to be able to fight, and fight well. That has been the reality all the way back to TOS, regardless of what the "explorers not soldiers" crowd says.

I'll explain it again. I suggested the Akira-class because using something that is too obviously a warship, like the Prometheus-class, looks dumb when they try using it for science-based episodes (and pisses off the "explorers not soldiers" die-hards on general principles). I note that the majority of the science episodes of DS9 took place aboard the station rather than the Defiant. On the other hand, using something that is purely a science ship, like the Oberth-class, insults the viewers when they try using it for battles (except as target practice for the bad guys, as in The Search for Spock). A ship like the previously used Galaxy-class, Intrepid-class, or Sovereign-class, or my suggestion of the Akira-class, strikes a good balance: We know from First Contact that the Akira can hold its own in combat (at least one was still active by the time the Enterprise arrived), but as I said, it isn't so obviously a warship that they can't use it for science episodes.

Additionally, it's a simple fact that a lot of people, myself included, tune into sci-fi shows mainly for the battles. You cut out the combat, you alienate a sizable market segment. Smaller market means smaller ratings. Smaller ratings means the series goes the way of ENT (killed just as it was coming into its own), Stargate: Universe, Firefly (barely got off the ground), Eureka, and so many other sci-fi shows.

[StarSword]

I'm in no way saying "all space battles, all the time" is a good thing. I agree, that wouldn't be Star Trek. Even more militaristic sci-fi like Stargate and presumably Babylon 5* has its character episodes and its exploration/science episodes. I'm just noting a reality of the sci-fi market: to wit, raygun lightfights and cool explosions attract viewers. There's always going to be a market segment that watches a show or movie just to see things blow up in spectacular fashion. Again, that's why I like the Akira-class for the series ship: it lets you do all three plausibly.

<off-topic> I am now reminded of a particularly goofy episode of SG-1 where the team has to help a producer sell a Stargate TV movie to Hollywood (supposedly to get SGC a measure of plausible deniability in the event of a leak). Classic line from Teal'c: "I do not understand why everything in this script must inevitably explode." </off-topic>

Change of topic: if this does get off the ground, any thoughts on whether or not they're going to borrow plotlines from Star Trek Online?

* I'm guessing here. I really know of B5 only by reputation so I could be wrong.

[ThomasP]

I'm on the fence. B5 was a massive and unparalleled achievement in US TV sci-fi. But what has he done after it that has been as good?

Having said that, I would like to see what he can come up with in the Trek setting.

He pitched it a few years ago:

Star Trek Reboot (PDF)

[PREDATOR490]

Not going to happen.

Star Trek is done and buried, trying to redo it is akin to B5 attempt to keep the franchise going. The casts are dying, off doing other things or not going to return.

A Star Trek reboot would be more possible but it would have to be waved away in another timeline cause STO already has determined the past, and future of Star Trek until centuries in the future. Re-write it and STO gets effectively screwed in the ass... which I would laugh so hard at.


After Voyager - Completely vague but one would expect the situation to occur after the newest movie so they can have a fresh slate AND some threads to build on from those events.

Really doubt it will be the Enterprise again unless they decide to kill / retire all of the TNG crew which I wouldnt be surprised results in the U.SS Fail from the start. Not the best climate or market to make a new ST series and the latitude for developing into a good show is not great for shows these days. Quite a lot of shows have been shitcanned for failing to live up to expectations and even the good ones got canned for not getting enough viewers.


Frankly, I see no grounds for Star Trek to return that hasnt been done already.
They did the B5 / station arc
They did the Voyager / lost in space arc
They did the TNG / TOS Explore humanity and preach messages

The only Star Trek return that would be hilariously interesting will be branching out into Star Trek meeting another universe like... Star Wars. The shitstorm would be epic.

[Batman]

Why, exactly, should a TV series pay attention to what happens in a computer game based on it? So far Trek didn't exactly go out of its way to incorporate the stuff that happened in 25th Anniversary, Judgement Rites, Final Unity, Starfleet Academy, Away Team etc, why should they pay any heed to the stuff going on in STO?

[The Romulan Republic]

Not going to happen.

Star Trek is done and buried, trying to redo it is akin to B5 attempt to keep the franchise going. The casts are dying, off doing other things or not going to return.

The last film was highly successful. And didn't someone already mention Doctor Who as an example of something like this working?

As for the cast, they don't need the old actors for a new series. If they want a few for guest appearances, their are plenty still alive who could probably be persuaded to come back.

A Star Trek reboot would be more possible but it would have to be waved away in another timeline cause STO already has determined the past, and future of Star Trek until centuries in the future. Re-write it and STO gets effectively screwed in the ass... which I would laugh so hard at.

Games aren't canon for Star Trek.

After Voyager - Completely vague but one would expect the situation to occur after the newest movie so they can have a fresh slate AND some threads to build on from those events.

As I said before, I want to see the destruction of Romulus.

Really doubt it will be the Enterprise again unless they decide to kill / retire all of the TNG crew which I wouldnt be surprised results in the U.SS Fail from the start. Not the best climate or market to make a new ST series and the latitude for developing into a good show is not great for shows these days. Quite a lot of shows have been shitcanned for failing to live up to expectations and even the good ones got canned for not getting enough viewers.

Who cares if its the Enterprise?

Frankly, I see no grounds for Star Trek to return that hasnt been done already.
They did the B5 / station arc
They did the Voyager / lost in space arc
They did the TNG / TOS Explore humanity and preach messages

Just follow up on what's happened in canon.

The only Star Trek return that would be hilariously interesting will be branching out into Star Trek meeting another universe like... Star Wars. The shitstorm would be epic.

I can honestly say that if I had the rights and the money, I would do this. But sadly, Paramount and Lucas don't seem interested.

[Uraniun235]

I liked how The Atlantic put it:

As Forbes noted, movies written by Orci and Kurtzman—including the first two Transformers films, the third Mission: Impossible, and Star Trek—have made $3 billion at the box office over the past six years. But while this figure is certainly notable, it is perhaps less notable than method underlying this success, which consists, essentially, of a phenomenally successful two-man war against narrative clarity and continuity.

[Metahive]

It wasn't bad, but many of the scenes that were supposed to be moving just were not (destruction of Vulcan) and the effects kinda took over from the story.

I presume that particular scene didn't work because they portrayed the Vulcans once again as stuck-up, arrogant, racist space elves. When Vulcan imploded my reaction wasn't "O no, how tragic" but more "Good Riddance". Even ENT eventually learned the lesson that Vulcans are not space elves FFS.

Another thing I didn't like about ST11, besides making Kirk as repulsive and unsympathetic as possible, was the villain. Take his heritage for example. Him being Romulan was completely incidental to the story and added nothing at all, he might as well have been Klingon, Cardassian or even some Earth colonist who lost his home in a catastrophe and for whatever unexplained reason ended up with an ugly-ass, villainous battleship in the past. That's symptomatic for the lack of care that went into the script.

If there' s a continuation of Trek, it better not follow in this spirit.

[Thanas]

It wasn't bad, but many of the scenes that were supposed to be moving just were not (destruction of Vulcan) and the effects kinda took over from the story.

I presume that particular scene didn't work because they portrayed the Vulcans once again as stuck-up, arrogant, racist space elves. When Vulcan imploded my reaction wasn't "O no, how tragic" but more "Good Riddance". Even ENT eventually learned the lesson that Vulcans are not space elves FFS.

No, it did not work because the scenes and the way they were directed just fell flat. We already know there was no danger to the main cast so it really was only playing "who gets to die", combined with some bad effects and you got the end result of me not really caring about that.

[Metahive]

A so, I was more thinking of Vulcan's destruction as a plot device.

[The Romulan Republic]

I presume that particular scene didn't work because they portrayed the Vulcans once again as stuck-up, arrogant, racist space elves. When Vulcan imploded my reaction wasn't "O no, how tragic" but more "Good Riddance". Even ENT eventually learned the lesson that Vulcans are not space elves FFS.

Some of the Vulcans were dicks. So were some of the humans. How that equals the entire species deserving genocide I'm not sure.

Another thing I didn't like about ST11, besides making Kirk as repulsive and unsympathetic as possible, was the villain. Take his heritage for example. Him being Romulan was completely incidental to the story and added nothing at all, he might as well have been Klingon, Cardassian or even some Earth colonist who lost his home in a catastrophe and for whatever unexplained reason ended up with an ugly-ass, villainous battleship in the past. That's symptomatic for the lack of care that went into the script.

A character who wasn't defined by his species is a bad thing? Would you rather have had a character who was defined by the steriotypes of his species instead? Maybe a racist totalitarian Cardassian? Or a greedy Ferengi? Or an honour-obssessed Klingon?

Nero was an satisfactory villain, I thought.

Kirk was a bit of a dick, sure. I won't argue that. But Spock and Pike were cool enough to make up for it, for me.

[Metahive]

Some of the Vulcans were dicks. So were some of the humans. How that equals the entire species deserving genocide I'm not sure.

Didn't say they deserved genocide, did I? Portraying all Vulcans besides Spock and his father as racist jackasses (including the children, but that was canon in the old continuity too) made me not care about Vulcan's destruction.

A character who wasn't defined by his species is a bad thing? Would you rather have had a character who was defined by the steriotypes of his species instead? Maybe a racist totalitarian Cardassian? Or a greedy Ferengi? Or an honour-obssessed Klingon?

What I'm complaining about is that there was no reason to make Nero a Romulan and Romulus the blasted homeworld. It was a completely arbitrary choice since that factoid never played into his character or his actions at all. His character wasn't similar to any Romulans who showed up before, his ship didn't follow the romulan design aesthetic, his motives were completely generic and most annoyingly none of the history between Romulus and Vulcan played any role in his decision to bust the latter. What was the goddamned point? A yeah, accessibility for the ADD generation.

Hey, if Nero had been an earth colonist whose colony was destroyed and happened upon the squid-ship and a time portal almost nothing in the script would have to be changed. Lazy and careless.

Nero was an satisfactory villain, I thought.

He was even more of a lame Khan copy than lame Khan copy Shinzon. Except the confrontation with Shinzon resulted in a semi-decent ship-to-ship battle and Nero's didn't.

Kirk was a bit of a dick, sure. I won't argue that. But Spock and Pike were cool enough to make up for it, for me.

Pike was forgettable, Spock was the only decent character but Kirk such a veritable cancer of unlikability that it ruined the entire movie for me.

[JME2]

[The Search for Spock wasn't as fucking pure awesome as The Wrath of Khan or The Voyage Home, but that doesn't make it bad. There's scenes from TSFS I sometimes seek out to watch again (that's my definition of a great - if I go out of my way to watch it).

Yeah, I love re-watching the theft of the Enterprise and Kirk's meeting with Sarek.

I liked the 2009 film. It didn't blow my socks off, but I'm curious to where things will go.

But I feel the Prime Reality's stay on television is over and should remain that way.

I'm not against seeing shows set in the Alternate Reality at some point, but not now. Give it a couple of years, build up anticipation for seeing Trek on TV again.

[Multiverse]

Two problems with doing a new Star Trek show:

1. What one person likes a different person will hate.

2. Enjoyability isn't necessarily the only criteria for evaluating a show.

[Iroscato]

Two problems with doing a new Star Trek show:

1. What one person likes a different person will hate.

This is true, DS9 especially split the fanbase, but you will never, ever please everyone no matter what you do, so producers just need to crap out the best damn show they possibly can and hope for the best.

2. Enjoyability isn't necessarily the only criteria for evaluating a show.

But it's the most important, obviously. Everyone likes an enjoyable programme, on account of it being all enjoyable and that.

[Batman]

What criterion could possibly be more important (or even anywhere near as important[/i]) as enjoyability? It's freaking entertainment.
It's one and only purpose (from the audience's point of view) is to entertain. Kinda hard to do if people don't enjoy what they're seeing.

[StarSword]

What I'm complaining about is that there was no reason to make Nero a Romulan and Romulus the blasted homeworld. It was a completely arbitrary choice since that factoid never played into his character or his actions at all. His character wasn't similar to any Romulans who showed up before, his ship didn't follow the romulan design aesthetic, his motives were completely generic and most annoyingly none of the history between Romulus and Vulcan played any role in his decision to bust the latter. What was the goddamned point? A yeah, accessibility for the ADD generation.

Busting Vulcan had no real point to begin with, I think. What does that achieve, especially since the Vulcans are the ones who developed the black hole-generating red matter technobabble to begin with? No Vulcan = no way to save Romulus. Why not use the red matter to suck up the star that causes the whole mess in the first place, rather than going on some misguided crusade against the Federation?

I still think Nero's better than Shinzon, though. Hard-core procrastinator, that guy. At least Nero had the excuse for his 20-year inaction of having been captured by the Klingons. And he stays stoically at his station while the ship is breaking apart around him, whereas Shinzon is more like Baldrick in one of the Black Adder specials: "Baldrick, as I cannot be bothered to punch you, here is my fist. Kindly run into it." Moron.

[The Romulan Republic]

What I'm complaining about is that there was no reason to make Nero a Romulan and Romulus the blasted homeworld. It was a completely arbitrary choice since that factoid never played into his character or his actions at all. His character wasn't similar to any Romulans who showed up before, his ship didn't follow the romulan design aesthetic, his motives were completely generic and most annoyingly none of the history between Romulus and Vulcan played any role in his decision to bust the latter. What was the goddamned point? A yeah, accessibility for the ADD generation.

Busting Vulcan had no real point to begin with, I think. What does that achieve, especially since the Vulcans are the ones who developed the black hole-generating red matter technobabble to begin with? No Vulcan = no way to save Romulus. Why not use the red matter to suck up the star that causes the whole mess in the first place, rather than going on some misguided crusade against the Federation?

I still think Nero's better than Shinzon, though. Hard-core procrastinator, that guy. At least Nero had the excuse for his 20-year inaction of having been captured by the Klingons. And he stays stoically at his station while the ship is breaking apart around him, whereas Shinzon is more like Baldrick in one of the Black Adder specials: "Baldrick, as I cannot be bothered to punch you, here is my fist. Kindly run into it." Moron.

I think the film made it obvious Nero wasn't right in the head. Besides, didn't he say (I think it was to Pike, but I'm not sure) that he wanted to eliminate the Federation so that Romulus would be stronger?

[Skylon]

I still think Nero's better than Shinzon, though. Hard-core procrastinator, that guy. At least Nero had the excuse for his 20-year inaction of having been captured by the Klingons. And he stays stoically at his station while the ship is breaking apart around him, whereas Shinzon is more like Baldrick in one of the Black Adder specials: "Baldrick, as I cannot be bothered to punch you, here is my fist. Kindly run into it." Moron.

Nero was at least actually threatening, and had a (somewhat) legit bone to pick. He was also a little different, as being basically a working class dude. Shit, answering Pike with "Hello Christopher, I'm Nero" was more menacing than Shinzon's "I'll mind rape Troi to show I'm evil!" crap. Shinzon made Sybok look like a great Trek villain.

[Multiverse]

What criterion could possibly be more important (or even anywhere near as important[/i]) as enjoyability? It's freaking entertainment.
It's one and only purpose (from the audience's point of view) is to entertain. Kinda hard to do if people don't enjoy what they're seeing.

Porn is enjoyable but I don't really think Star Trek the porn series would be a good idea.

[Batman]

Because it wouldn't be enjoyable you twit, at least not as regular Star Trek.