New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017
startrek.com
startrek.com
I'm really hoping that the web production will be more akin to Netflix or Amazon Studios quality and budget rather than the usual network webseries tie in.
Also anyone has any ideas about the cast? there was a very long standing rumor / pre-production "Captain Worf" show that was supposed to happen but never did, I really hope that this won't be in the rebooted universe because it was well kinda meh.
Enterprise wasn't great (4th season was amazing tho), if this will be of the same quality as TNG/DS9 or even "mom we got stuck in the holodeck again" Voyager this would truly blow my mind, but as of now I am pessimistic beyond hope until I can see the cast, writers, and canonical premise.
Everything on a Sci Fi (or fantasy) show has to be custom-made; from the costumes to the wall decorations to the light fixtures to the furniture. Custom making these things isn't easy, because they first have to be designed so they look like they "fit" stylistically, then built. A show like Star Trek will also have extensive makeup / prosthetics to depict the many different races.
Besides, Star Trek is an active franchise with two recent, very successful movies. No studio exec would ruin a franchise like that with a half-assed, underproduced web series. Because you can't do Sci Fi cheaply without becoming B-movie quality, this show will have to have at a minimum Stargate Atlantis levels of production value. They may just be putting it on the web because the Star Trek demographic doesn't watch network TV and the web is a better way to reach the core audience for the show.
So never saw the Dr. Who series int he 1970s and 1980s :)
Personally I loved the campy Dr Whos a lot.
BBC - "Your almost Out of Budget and you have 3 part series to finish"
Producer - "No problem we will put a trash can over that guy and tape up a few trash bags, throw some kids paint on it and there is our new monster." "We will also call the gravel pit see if we can use it as a location during there lunch breaks."
And even with Dr. Who, most of the action takes place in the present day -- which helps with saving money on costumes and sets.
Seriously I think I would have loved working on those shows, or really really hated. I can't decide which.
It's not always the budget it's also the production Firefly managed to make very good use of VFX with relatively "small" budget, BSG didn't had an explosive budget either, Star Gate had also a relatively small budget with the VFX heavy episodes having less than 400,000$ effects budget they just used it rather well.
On the other hand you can have very high budget shows looking like B-movie quality, Terra Nova, Falling Skies and Fox's attempts at scifi Almost Human (which was a freaking amazing show and Fox exec's need to pay in blood) and their current Minority Report shows are very expensive but have very low quality looking effects.
And if you want the best example of how budget can easily be misused well then Agents of Shield had a 14M budget for the pilot and even the per episode budget was considerably lower it was still pretty damn high and they still managed to completely cock it up both in the visuals and the story/plot departments.
IF they'll build a solid production team hopefully there are some folks at Paramount Television that worked on previous shows and are still either alive and or working in TV production and give them budget and creative freedom to work then we might get a good product, if this is going to be brand managed like AOS then it's going to be completely bonkers.
AOS is tethered to the cinematic Marvel's universe and it's it's biggest flaw, it's plot is completely dictated by the movies and it spoiled Cap 2 for me and just became a running joke.
Agent Carter was considerably better because it was set back enough in the past that they can do anything without having to tie it in with the movies.
And this is my biggest must have for this show, either put it in the original canon, reboot it again, or throw it so far away from the movies that it couldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole or don't make it at all.
Sci Fi shows are the most expensive in their first season, because you have to design the universe up-front. A network exec doesn't know if the show is going to pull an audience, but he does know he's got to drop a whole lot of money to even find out. Which makes other options a lot more attractive, and explains the lack of high-quality Sci Fi on TV right now.
And like it or not, the cinematic tie-ins and continuity within the universe are what make Marvel appealing as a brand. DC has done a terrible job at this; the upcoming Batman vs. Superman movie has different actors and takes place in a different universe than the last (or really, any) Batman movie. Having multiple Batman characters confuses audiences, and Marvel has done a really good job keeping things consistent.
Worth noting: for sitcoms, staff costs are often as high/higher than the SF shows that make it to the screen. For example, actors on _The Big Bang Theory_ are rumored to earn $1m per episode each. Ditto other shows like _Modern Family_.
Likely there are relatively few Sci Fi shows because the Sci Fi writ large has yet to figure out how to connect with audience sizes beyond a niche. If they achieve mainstream reach, the cost of the sets will not matter as much.
But yeah as soon as you introduce alien worlds, having high quality on a small budget does get difficult.
Maybe worse, actually.
The "Captain Worf" show was AFAIK never in serious consideration. Michael Dorn was a huge fan of the idea and kept proposing it everywhere he went, which is the only reason it gained as much publicity as it did, but as far as I can tell it was never taken very seriously in the studios.
And I'm kind of glad for it - Worf is great, and Michael Dorn seems like a great guy, but Trek has always been about the ensemble crew and not revolved around any singular character. "Worf feat. crew" would've been a huge thematic departure.
In any case, I'm pretty sure this will be in the alternate universe (JJ Abrams-verse). It just doesn't make sense to have something in the Prime universe anymore, commercially at least. This makes me sad. The fact that Kurtzman is involved IMO suggests this is definitely a reboot-universe thing, as does the rumor that Bryan Singer might be producing.
That said, Brannon Braga and Rick Berman not being involved might be a good thing...
This is just standard operating procedure for CBS/Paramount, who have viewed Star Trek as a big enough draw to attract audiences to new distribution channels for decades.
Back in the '70s they planned to use a Star Trek: Phase II series to launch a new network that never got off the ground (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Phase_II).
Then in the '80s they used Star Trek: The Next Generation as the flagship for a new, syndication-only system of network-unaffiliated TV stations.
Then in the '90s they revived the dream of a Paramount network in the form of UPN (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPN), and created Star Trek: Voyager to attract viewers to that.
These efforts have had varying degrees of success, but they've never failed hard enough to shake CBS/Paramount from the conviction that new Star Trek is something people will want to see so badly that they'll be willing to change their viewing habits to get it.
Berman and Piller were a much better team.
I'm not a hardcore Star Trek fan, but was very disappointed with the new films. They're mostly generic action in space with some familiar names and Starfleet uniforms.
Every little thing that made Star Trek entertaining has been stripped away.
Not too surprising considering JJ Abrams told in an interview that "I would watch episodes but it always felt too philosophical to me".
Shows like BSG are pretty much unicorn's these days no one seems to want to make serious scifi the best we can hope for is for the random Canadian show to be picked up by SyFy and not being shredded (Continuum was good, Dark Matter seems interesting but very goofy).
SyFy is also trying to get of their asses together I'm still hoping that they'll pick up Ascension it's backdoor pilot / mini-series was one of the most interesting Scifi concepts of late and if they don't screw up 'Childhoods End' (which from the trailer looks like an HBO show which is great) I might actually believe that they still can produce something besides fake reality shows and wrestlemania.
The Christmas special in particular was pretty mind bending.
The new season on Netflix will hopefully be at least 10 episode long so I might actually take another spin at it, waiting 10 years for another 3 episodes of Luther or Sherlock is bad enough I'm not going through this again.
With US TV shows I usually wait until at least the mid season or the 9 episode pickup because lately US TV shows especially from the bigger networks have less job security than the offspring of JRR Martin novels and the Walking Dead characters.
So far we had quite a "decent" year, 12 Monkeys has been renewed, Childhoods End and Westworld are coming, the CW actually managed to make comic book shows (never was a huge comic fan, infact i never had a chance to read a single book i think) cool, we are bloody getting The Man in the High Castle show on Amazon and Marvel's Netflix production is in full gear.
yup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_%28miniseries%29#Pot...
I will fully admit that if there was any other legit Sci-Fi on TV I might not care as much about Dark Matter, but since there is slim pickings in that genre I await season 2.
You've just described the Wrath of Khan, considered one of the finest films in the franchise.
Hell, a good number of episodes in every series in the franchise were just action in space... the Best of Both Worlds is literally just Us vs The Borg.
Fans have incredibly rose tinted glasses regarding ST. For every City on the Edge of Forever or The Inner Light there's at least one The Doomsday Machine or, worse, Spock's Brain...
Edit:
BTW, I actually think Into Darkness was pretty interesting. It reminded me of The Drumhead or similar, where they used an enemy or a crisis to examine the nature Star Fleet itself. It's just a pity they, once again, didn't actually use someone of Indian descent to play Khan...
And at least a handful of good episodes exist. There are no such specimens among the (two) new movies.
So you're a "Trouble with Tribbles" kind of a guy/girl.
Nothing wrong with that at all, everyone has different tastes!
But we'll agree to disagree. While Khan is clearly an action film first, it's an exploration of Kirk as a character, which is interesting. And that ending...
Frankly, I'll put myself in the minority by stating that I personally think The Voyage Home was frickin' awful... really, a fish-out-of-water tale (well, mammal-out-of-water...) via time travel? sigh
But that's just my opinion. :)
Finally, we get to the end, and the most egregious difference between the two. In TWOK we get a tense cat and mouse chase through the nebula, which is won, CRUCIALLY, by out-thinking your opponent. The whole "2d thinking" thing and what not. I admit it's probably not the most air-tight of plot points, but it perfectly demonstrates the difference between the two movies, because ID ends with a loud (visually and sonically) fist-fight that is won by the person who punches hardest. Yay I guess.
Anyway, Star Trek is definitely not all sunshine and rainbows but it is crucially several things that the new movies are not: It prioritizes communication and curiousity over violence and dominance. It is not trying to be cynical or "edgy" in an attempt to be mature. The struggle of people working together to overcome a problem and find a positive solution or compromise can and is every bit as exciting as a phaser battle. And finally, that it is fundamentally optimistic, not in a the sort of "magic technology makes everything awesome" way that the new series seems, but that humans can come together and make things better for each other, the no-win scenario does not exist (mostly) and that we have to work hard to make this come true, but it is do-able.
In the context of the series, sure, where you have an hour a week to wax philosophical.
The movies are far more uneven in that respect. They attempted it in The Motion Picture. Result: total snoozer.
Khan is an action/revenge flick.
Search For Spock is another action/revenge flick.
Voyage Home is far more in the original mold, humans trying to make peace with an unknown alien force. But it also wavers between comical and absurd... no character development to be found here.
The Final Frontier... I'm not even sure where to begin. It's terrible. :)
The Undiscovered Country is, to me, the best mix of the lot... a bit action, a bit politics, the origin story of the Federation and the Klingon peace, commentary on racism, etc...
But that's one film out of five.
So be fair: you're comparing two movies to an entire franchise and then complaining they aren't what you want them to be. If you more fairly compare them to just their film contemporaries, my opinion is that they stand up reasonably well.
That's not to say they aren't clearly designed for more mass-market appeal. The Undiscovered Country, for example, is pure fan service, whereas Star Trek or Into Darkness are clearly aimed at a broader audience. I just don't think they're significantly worse than their peers simply because they don't talk it out... ;)
Structurally, yeah, obviously they're very different.
However, thematically, they share a lot of similarities.
In The Drumhead, Starfleet begins a witchhunt to track down a suspected spy they believe is working with the Romulans.
Into Darkness involves a group of people who attempt to manufacture a war with the Klingons, whom they perceive as a fundamental threat to the Federation.
Both examine racism, fear, and xenophobia in the context of the Star Trek universe, and the lengths people will go to if they feel they're morally justified based on those perceived fears.
Well, I can tell you're open minded and not too critical. I'm sure continuing this conversation will be incredibly productive and enlightening...
Best of both worlds also showed Picard becoming the enemy, riker as captain having to try to stop the Borg at the cost of his friend, and some more good background on the Borg.
Plus the effects of that episode lasted into ds9 and first contact.
[emphasis mine]
Sounds like it is going to be on TV.
It's the old drug dealer sales approach: you always want to make the first hit free.
When I first read it I thought it was going to be US exclusive. Luckily I managed to calm down and re-read before I went on the rampage.
This sentence annoys me more every time I read it:
>"This new series will premiere to the national CBS audience, then boldly go where no first-run Star Trek series has gone before – directly to its millions of fans through CBS All Access,”
Why can they not simply write in a way is comprehensible?
"The first episode will be on CBS. Subsequent episodes will be on "CBS All Access"”.
Although it says that it will only premiere on TV and then move to the streaming service, I wouldn't be surprised if it is later added to the TV schedule, maybe once the second season starts, in a reverse trend of the current TV->streaming release delay.
I'd bet money that it will be. The potential for movie tie-ins alone will make it irresistible. (also the producer of the movies is involved)
BSG spoiled me because it showed, credibly that a space-faring future is unlikely to be clean and sanitized. I think one of my favorite aspects of BSG were the mundane ones, such as how having everyone spread out on different ships hampered logistics and communications. In Star Trek, of course, this was solved with instant communication devices, though the impact of instant communication in TNG-and-on seems rather limited compared to what we experience in the Internet-age.
Since the OP states that the new series shares the same writers as the rebooted movies, I'm assuming that the altered timeline will be adopted by the new TV series? The reboot Star Trek films were flashy and entertaining in the way that modern action films are entertaining...but they took up the technology-as-deus-ex-machina to the next level...Scotty created a teleportation device that rendered starship travel moot and, of course, life-giving Tribbles.
some tech the tech solution that works one week is ignored the next week.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/why_i_ha...
> former Star Trek writer and creator of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica Ron Moore revealed the secret formula to writing for Trek.
> He described how the writers would just insert "tech" into the scripts whenever they needed to resolve a story or plot line, then they'd have consultants fill in the appropriate words (aka technobabble) later.
> "It became the solution to so many plot lines and so many stories," Moore said. "It was so mechanical that we had science consultants who would just come up with the words for us and we'd just write 'tech' in the script. You know, Picard would say 'Commander La Forge, tech the tech to the warp drive.' I'm serious. If you look at those scripts, you'll see that."
> Moore then went on to describe how a typical script might read before the science consultants did their thing:
> La Forge: "Captain, the tech is overteching."
> Picard: "Well, route the auxiliary tech to the tech, Mr. La Forge."
> La Forge: "No, Captain. Captain, I've tried to tech the tech, and it won't work."
> Picard: "Well, then we're doomed."
> "And then Data pops up and says, 'Captain, there is a theory that if you tech the other tech ... '" Moore said. "It's a rhythm and it's a structure, and the words are meaningless. It's not about anything except just sort of going through this dance of how they tech their way out of it."
Also Alexander siddig is a pretty good actor.
Total internal consistency isn't necessary, and can actually be harmful to a show if you take it too far. Sometimes it's better to conveniently paper over an earlier mistake. But this is just plain laziness in writing, and it hurt the show by removing a lot of material for conflict and drama.
Ronald Moore was a big driving force behind the new BSG and previously did a lot of work on various Star Treks, including a brief stint with Voyager. In many ways, BSG is "how Voyager should have been."
I get where you're coming from, and they definitely would have been better served to a) not say that, or b) resolve it at some later time. That said, part of what made Voyager interesting (to me) was that they had basically taken house cats and thrown them into the wild. In Federation space there was never a need or desire to make new photon torpedoes on the fly, but in the Delta quadrant for seven years they probably figure something out.
How you cope with conflict when your supply of weapons is inherently limited can make for interesting stories. How to find a new supply of weapons could make for interesting stories. But they couldn't be bothered to go either way, and just went straight for "the characters figured it out somehow, offscreen, and implied."
To stretch your house cat analogy way too far, it's like if the show constantly had the cats eating kibble, but without ever addressing the question of where it came from, even though that's a pretty important part of surviving in the wild and has lots of potential for good stories.
So much wasted potential.
I didn't find DS9 picked up that problem in the later seasons though, so I've got to disagree with you there.
As for DS9, it was great, but it wishes it was Babylon 5. B5 was superior in every way except budget.
1. Isn't afraid of being slow, talky, and philosophical (Sorry J.J.). TNG had many excellent episodes specifically because it was willing to risk being "boring", while DS9 evolved Trek into the homogeneous "action" formula that has dominated Voyager, most of Enterprise, and the recent movies.
2. Is a force for idealism. The captains of Star Trek are paragons of humanity, and are supposed to find the high ground when tackling murky issues. The original series featured the first on-screen interracial kiss. TNG dove into many thorny ethical issues. While TNG took a hard stance against torture, Enterprise portrayed it as a useful tool.
3. Boldy goes to new places. Star Trek (2009) did nothing new geographically, but at least it went off the reservation by destroying a storied and beloved Trek locale. Not everyone liked that, but at least it was daring. Into Darkness (2013) aped Khan badly, completely missing out on what made the original character and movie special. In general, the Trek movie franchise has been chasing Khan for too long, and needs to focus on other aspects of Trek.
4. Is smart about technology, and self consistent. Nerds pay attention to this stuff. Khan beaming directly from Earth to the Klingon homeworld functionally obliterated the vastness of space in the rebooted Trek universe. Trek doesn't need to blow previously imagined sci-fi tech out of all proportion to be interesting. It's strength, historically, has been inventing new technologies and examining their impact on humans. Is there anything in the new Trek movies that, in a few decades, we're going to be saying, "Hey, Trek predicted this!".
5. Doesn't solve everything by modifying the deflector dish. (Corollary to 4) Voyager, I'm looking at you. All of the series occasionally penned "tech" into their scripts to lazily magic their way out of situations. At some point this became standard practice and as much a part of the formula as always having at least a few minutes of "action trek", no matter how inappropriate it was to the episode. This is a crutch that should be used as sparingly as possible.
6. Features interesting, well-developed alien cultures. The original series may have debuted the Klingons, but it was TNG that fleshed them out into a living, breathing culture. TNG debuted the Cardassians and Bajorans, but DS9 benefited greatly from exploring the cultures of both these races. The formula of Voyager forced a return to shallow portrayals of "species of the week", and the show suffered greatly as a result.
7. Results from a tension between competing visions between writers and creators. Examples: TNG was campy and unwatchable, mostly, until Michael Piller took over as head writer in the third season and started focusing on characters and more traditional drama. Piller had an inclination to be too soap opera-y but was held in check by Roddenberry's presence and later, spirit. DS9 was the result of the tension between Ira Steven Behr and Berman aided by Ronald D Moore, and worked well until it became the all-war-all-the-time series. Voyager is the result of Berman, Braga and Jeri Taylor running wild without any counteracting force. Enterprise is the same (minus Taylor).
As for relying on tech deus-ex-machina TNG writers used to send off scripts to physics professors and have them fill in gaps about nanotechnology and other unknown late 80s technology. They were replaced in Voyager by studio cronies which is why everything is solved by "re-polarizing the deflector dish".
Enterprise started kinda ok (not great) but then 9/11 happened (which happened technically like a week or 2 before the 1st season aired, but it was too fresh to touch) which meant that it had to deal with that thing with it's very own 9/11 in the 3rd season.
With the 4th season they pretty much went into "concept-album" fan service type of self containing arcs and it was pretty damn freaking good, they brought allot of excellent talent specifically Manny Coto which pretty much made the biggest fan service production once he was made the executive producer and the exclusive writer of the show. With maybe 1 or 2 exceptions i put every episode of Season 4 of Enterprise in my personal hall of fame both in terms of Star Trek and general Scifi episodes.
Episodes like In a Mirror, Darkly, These Are the Voyages, United are what Star Trek should look like and they had a full season of them.
http://www.startrekaxanar.com/
I, for one, am really looking forward to Axanar as much or even more than these official series.
Edit. Typo.
In this day and age we have the privilege to pay for what we want to see, if we feel like it. People love to complain, but seriously, if we aren't willing to pony up the cash for something, why should we expect to studios to produce what we want to see? Even paying for a Netflix subscription will split your money so many different ways that the studios aren't going to be getting that much at the end.
It would be perfect to introduce a new crew and follow them through the Academy years. They could either do the backstories of existing characters to introduce new ones. You can combine the fun of Hogwarts-eque school, with younger drama, and still throw in lots of science and adventures.
Although the series is aimed more at the US than the rest of the world, What if they decided to tackle the current migration issues? Those will only become bigger in the future as climate change will provoke more mass migrations.
Aside from being contemporary, the topic is a great source of material for dramatic stories too.
EDIT: Could tie in neatly to the Vulcan planet being destroyed in the new timeline.
(I only mentioned the new timeline because a Star Trek centered around the troubles of the migrating remainders of Vulcan civilization is just about the only thing that sounds like an appealing hook in that setting. Like others have mentioned, it's an Space Action Movie timeline, not a cerebral Star Trek timeline)
Though actually, that would have made a decent episode of tng
What's really surprising is that as of the first part of the story, Doctor Who seems to, for the first time ever, be taking a more right-wing than left-wing approach to the political metaphor. It turns out that letting twenty million shape-shifting Zygons settle on Earth actually was a terrible idea after all! Not all of them are bad, but a sufficient number are, and you can't tell the bad ones from the good ones.
They'll probably find a way to twist it back to a leftism-compliant story in the latter part, but it's interesting that the first part of the story at least is a pretty convincing argument against letting large numbers of potentially-dangerous foreigners into your planet/country.
[1] And really Amazon is only acceptable because it's free.[2]
[2] Given that having Prime is pretty much non-negotiable anyway.
The amount of content Netflix and Amazon can create is limited. They cannot pay for every tv show for 100-120 bucks a year. Look at what a mature company like HBO produces for 180 a year. 3-5 hour long prestige dramas. 5-8 half hour comedies. Some low expense reality tv like Bill Mayer or Real Sports.
Netflix may be able to scale better, if they get 80% of households they can go cheaper. But they aren't going to be q total replacement for all media.
And you don't want them too. One company with control over all media would be a disaster.
On the plus side, the quality of ensemble-cast science fiction tv writing has exploded over the past 15-20 years, starting with how Babylon 5 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer built season and multi-season story arcs that depended on character growth. I would love to see the sort of rich, passionate writing that made Firefly, Walking Dead, and other shows so effective applied to Star Trek!
And I'm a little biased toward the development of web-only series - some friends of mine are doing Cartoon Network's first web-only series, and I'm really hoping it succeeds spectacularly and points a new direction for CN. Fixed timeslots in general are a dated way of doing shows now. Timeshifting is the norm.
So yeah, hope for a bright future. And screw the Prime Directive.
edit: others in the comments have noted that the reboots are basically just action sequences with none of the underlying social themes that made Star Trek significant in the first place.
And personally, I have zero interest in seeing Captain Kirk again. I feel like it was a backwards step to take a broad universe and refocus on the original iconic characters. There are a lot of stories to be told, the Borg are still one of the most fascinating sci-fi creations in years, etc. etc.
Basically my objection is that they don't really "boldly go" anywhere, they just retread.
Granted, this has often been the case with Star Trek films (First Contact was sort of an action movie for example).
This is a point Trek fans rarely acknowledge.
Star Trek the TV show is often more thoughtful and deals with social commentary well. However Star Trek movies rarely are.
Let's look at the classic Star Trek movies: Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock, and The Undiscovered Country are all action films. The Voyage Home is a comedy.
Which leaves just two: The Motion Picture and The Final Frontier which both reviewers and audience alike pan for being some of the worst classic Trek films.
Next Gen isn't much better: Generations, First Contact, and Nemesis are all action films and Insurrection is extremely borderline.
So when people say "JJ Abrams ruins Star Trek by producing an action-adventure" they're really ignoring the history of Star Trek films which are full of only that.
"First Contact" also played fast and loose with established canon a lot more than any other movie had done. I didn't care for the portrayal of Cochrane as a drunk loser (although this has no bearing on James Cromwell's performance... he is always great).
There's nothing wrong with action in Trek... it's built into the concept, but the action was always less important than the Big Ideas... at least until some of the movies, and especially the vapid JJTrek reboots came along.
Into darkness was a shallow action movie that tries to bludgeon the audience with its themes about the military then devolves into a shitty ripoff of a classic moment from a different movie. I don't actually hate into darkness, but tossing it and first contact into the same bucket as action movies is ridiculous.
And just in general, it failed to move with any heart. Now, I'm broadly critical of JJ Abrams in general - I don't think he ever thinks through the consequences of his writing decisions, which is why his tv shows always jumped the shark in season 2. But Star Trek is just more proof that he doesn't get it, as a writer or as a fan.
> will also be distributed concurrently for television
So, is it on TV or not?
> will also be distributed concurrently for television and multiple platforms around the world by CBS Studios International.
- CBS Television Network first, then
- United States - exclusively CBS All Access
- International, except United States - multiple other platforms
I watch way too much TV but am finally getting sick of it, the commercial requirements end up favoring safe stuff.
as for your "Utopian" comment, in the last few decades we have entered the era of plenty, the main problem encountered by startups we see here in HN is not that they are not innovative its that their products/services get drowned out in a sea of plenty
Given a few hundred years and plentiful+cheap energy it is not beyond the realm of imagination to imagine replicators, hell on a recent cruise i nicknamed then soda vending machines "the replicator" because the thing could spit out hundreds of different drinks with a few taps.
So a world of the future would be fairly "socialist" as machines and cheap energy allow people to devote their times towards science, exploration, art etc, we are already seeing this happening today and further mechanization and robotics will only speed up the trend
My utopian thoughts aren't really around the economics. Star trek humans are all pure of motive and work to do the right thing in all circumstances, modulo plot-necessitated black hats. I'd prefer a bit more humanity there. Humans are far more complex than the black-and-white morality plays star trek tends to be.
If they make a show that has "wrath of Khan" level pathos to the characters, I'm in. If it's action schlock or morality plays, the star trek brand isn't enough to attract me, particularly if the technology alternates between "stupidly unreal" and banal.
Even in-universe, it doesn't make sense. The Holodeck is sophisticated enough to fly ships through physically real environments. (They do physics tests in the deck.) So just use whatever great AI system powering the Holodeck to do whatever advanced maneuver you need.
Also, the biggest fake tech: The communicators. The show clearly shows a person hailing another on the comm badge. BUT there's no delay in the response. "Captain to LaForge" - "LaForge here". We see that the recipient always hears the entire message. We also see there's no delay in the reply, much less than "Captain to" takes. I suppose this is easily solved by the commbadge just reading neural patterns and determining who you're gonna call. But there's no mention of that, and the badges don't seem to function that way.
Far too many characters are (conveniently) interested in Shakespeare or 20th century culture.
That is likely why the Abrams films rebooted the universe--restarting from the Captain Pike era--with a big enough change to justifiably say it changes everything that the previous continuity ever did.
And that is rather fortunate, because if they had made first contact in 2016 rather than 1996, people might conceivably be throwing money into the Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter interfaces to the Borg-net, rather than foolishly engaging in any futile resistance. The cube-ships would be ruthlessly harvesting our most shareable lolcat videos, and everyone would be walking around in identical jeans-and-hoodies outfits and calling everything "amazing".
A reboot is really the only way to restore the franchise to its original mission to simplify today's social issues and frame them up against the backdrop of a more progressive starfaring society, so that people can get some perspective on those things that might otherwise be too close to home in a somewhat entertaining way.
For instance, given the South China Sea situation, I would guess that at some point, the new Star Trek series would introduce some alien species as proxies for China, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Japan, and maybe even Brunei, and the China-aliens would be constructing artificial dwarf planets out of hazardous nebulae using unlicensed Genesis devices, and using them as bases to harass passing scientific and mercantile traffic. Then some of the people watching would obsess over details and completely miss the broader point.
Oh god, that would be tragic.
That being said I thought it was quite good when you didn't think of it as 'star trek'
Sure, every movie is going to be action-packed for film screens, but those two I felt stuck to Star Trek's ideals more than the rest, where the movie focused on stopping a specific evil villain.
Spock was okay at times. Kirk was okay at times. Scotty was comic relief, with very little of him being a badass
>The new television series is not related to the upcoming feature film Star Trek Beyond which is scheduled to be distributed by Paramount Pictures in summer 2016.
...they'd have to some serious retconning to place it anywhere before Voyager. Too much existing canon to take into account when writing the scripts.
It could be that they need to be clear that they aren't associated with the next film. Different characters, etc.
What is "tired" about existing canon? What stops people from writing new stories with new characters in the "old" canon? How, for example, was Voyager burdened by the old, tired canon in TNG or DS9?
As best I can tell, the only reason they don't do it is because they would prefer to cash in on the popularity of the pre-existing characters and the pre-existing stories without actually having to write as though they exist.
Star Trek is a series based on exploration. There are plenty of new worlds and new peoples to see, without throwing away the old canon, while at the same time not relying on it very much.
I honestly can't understand why people like the idea of resets and reboots. To me, it just feels lazy and unsatisfying.
You may be right, a new team of writers may be able to author a new show that adheres to these stories and still comes off as fresh and exciting.
To my mind, the Voyager series (which I did enjoy) was meant to do what you recommend: use exploration of new worlds as a way to introduce new storylines and, to some degree, to distance the show from the storylines of the past. While I enjoyed that show, I don't think it was entirely successful. Specifically, it didn't appear to generate enough interest to warrrant more films, which seem to be what keeps this series alive.
The last series, Enterprise, seemed to be trying to accomplish the same goal by going back into the past, before many of these storylines took place. To my mind, it was wholly unsuccessful. I watched every episode and felt unsatisfied after the majority of them.
In my opinion, the failure of the last two series to generate enough interest for more films was a big reason why the "reboot" idea is more attractive.
The big joy of Star Trek is speculating about the future, in these times especially I think we could use more optimism about a future we haven't thought of yet, not just a dramatic retcon of stories we already know.
Sure, they could leave it vague and have us all guessing what happened in those intermediate years, but that wouldn't be the StarTrek we know as we'd have no idea how they got to that point.
Also, they'd essentially lock themselves into an intermediate storyline that somehow leads to the universe they portray.
Hopefully ,if they do decide to make the setting "post" all the other shows by a long stretch of time, they work around some of these pitfalls and come up with a great story and addition to the franchise.
Dive in, have fun, my personal suggestion is any episode that deals with time travel or the mischievous life form called Q. You can't go wrong there.
Voyager and Enterprise aren't as sequential as DS9 but should be watched in order. There are a significant number of episodes in each you can drop from your watching order, but I couldn't tell you which ones. They both have very low points in my opinion.
As for the movies I'm sure there's a watching order. Some of the movies are very meh. If you look online you might find a good order, but if you get really into just watch them in order.
The Motion Picture (#1) is basically an elongated TOS episode. Doesn't really influence any of the other films. Some enjoy it, some find it dull.
The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home (#2-4) form a trilogy and must be watched in order.
The Final Frontier (#5)...I loved it when I was nine. Skippable otherwise.
The Undiscovered Country (#6) should be watched after #2 through #4. It and The Wrath of Khan are typically tied for the favorite Trek film.
But imo, star trek TNG with Captain Picard is the best one. Deep space nine is good but is a bit slow, I think TNG is easier to watch.
I'm from the mid eighties and can't watch the original, it's too dated for me. So take that for what it's worth.
They maybe hadn't quite found their footing yet.
Other than that I'd start with The Next Generation and go in chronological order.
The Next Generation (TNG) took a few seasons to really hit its stride, some will recommend starting at season 3 - though I personally recommend suffering through the first two seasons at least once. Like TOS, TNG is highly episodic is mostly devoid of major story arcs. My favorite series, but probably more for nostalgia than anything else. "Best of Both Worlds" is a fan favorite episode, though I will recommend "The Inner Light" for anyone - even someone who has never even heard of Star Trek.
Deep Space Nine was a bit controversial when it came out, as it moved away from Roddenberry's idealistic "Wagon Train to The Stars" model of a show and more into conflict and gritty geopolitics set in the same era as TNG. There's a story arc and the characters experience far more development throughout the show than the cast of TNG ever did. I've come to enjoy it more as an adult than when I first watched it on the air as a kid.
As for Voyager or Enterprise, I haven't really watched either of them.
Read a summary of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (actually if you can, read a summary of a summary, the pacing of the movie is so ponderous). The even numbered movies are the best, but it's probably worth watching the 3rd one as well for continuity. The majority of the fandom pretends that the fifth movie never happened, and is well worth skipping.
The Next Generation (TNG) and Deep Space Nine (DS9) are the two that seem to have the strongest following with Voyager being a bit divisive among the fandom (depending on who you ask it either sucks or is good).
You will have to suffer through the first season of TNG and just trust that it will get better.
DS9 can stand on its own fairly well, but if you want continuity you can watch any time after season 5 of TNG. DS9 enters a fairly significant tone shift around season 4, and season 1, like TNG, is not necessarily representative of the entire series.
[edit] Here's a super-short summary of the above:
TOS
Movies: 2,3,4,6
TNG: at least first 3 seasons, if you don't like after season 3, drop. If you're impatient, you can watch just the pilot than skip to season 3 and not miss too much.
DS9: Seasons 4 and 5 of TNG develop some of the races that are prominent in DS9, so it's best if you wait until at least season 5 of TNG to watch, if you really didn't like season 3 of TNG, then this will stand on its own though.
Voyager: It was not my cup of tea; some fans liked it though.
There are certainly episodes that suck, but the better ones are things that you will find have informed our pop culture lexicon, and are referenced in many other things. Watch it for the characters, more than the individual shows, IMO.
Yes it is slow. But space is big and the slow pace gave the characters time to bond again and work-out the puzzle. I prefer the movie to the later ones because there is no fire-torpedoes quick-solution which wraps-up the story in time for the ad break...
The characters started off awkward and cold but slowly rediscovered who they really were, just as V'Ger did.
Real problem is the standalone episodes were not good
https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/wiki/where_should_i_start
For DS9 in particular, this link was helpful for me:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepSpaceNine/comments/1fkijc/ive_m...
There are 3 episode lists in there and a user named Algernon_Asimov has a "Hmph!" comment with a link to detailed episode lists for TNG + DS9
For movies: see the Original Series movies Star Trek II, IV, and VI (watching the series first not required), see Generations once (watch some of TNG first), see First Contact (watch most of TNG first), see Insurrection (surprisingly good), skip Nemesis entirely.
If you have to pick one series to start with, I'd say either DS9 (as a marathon) or TNG. Note that you'll get a very different flavor from both; TNG presents a lovely idyllic future with occasional hiccups, while DS9 presents a darker and grittier 24th century, for better or worse.
Enterprise is probably the hardest. Very RPG-like how they operate to their self made rules in what compared to later series is extreme limitations. Life is a lot different when the fastest transport ship flys at warp 1 and everything isn't deus ex machina away with AI or technobabble. On the other hand they overdo the "wooden ships and iron men" thing a little and there is too much "pew pew" action.
Next up is DS9. Some technobabble for dramatic license but still reads like a paper and pencil RPG fiction (which is good). Some "crewman of the week" cheesy soft filler episodes but mostly hard science fiction story. Has a reasonably hard science overall story arc. Arguably the best overall series. Has the best "hard" written "soft" character in all of trek, the Cardassian "tailor". He's not really a tailor, hope this isn't too much of a spoiler. Best sci fi on TV, maybe.
TOS is all over the map. Sometimes they did a good job of both hard and soft sci fi at the same time. Then there's "space hippies" or "spocks brain" or "spock needs to get laid" which we'll pretend never happened. There is an unrealistic (by hard sci fi standards) fixation on alien planets being the wild west desert. You NEED to watch certain individual episodes, like the doomsday machine.
TNG is the softest series, its General Hospital soap opera, on a space ship. Toward the middle either its a short story arc, sometimes halfway decent, or "crewmember of the week special story". The Wesley character is kind of the series Jar-Jar and you'd do best to skip episodes where he is "crewman of the month". Also the romance episodes read like fanfic from /r9k/. The alien civilizations are bad caricatures.
Generally across all the series from a hard sci fi viewpoint if an episode involves space nazis, time travel, Ferengi, romance, or a holodeck accident, it can be ignored with little to no loss with very few exceptions.
It seems like there are couple possibilities. 1) They act like the reset in the 2009 movie didn't happen, and the new show is just set sometime after TNG/DS9/Voyager, with the same continuity.
2) Everything is reset and we get a new show set sometime after the reset.
I guess there is this: >The new television series is not related to the upcoming feature film Star Trek Beyond which is scheduled to be distributed by Paramount Pictures in summer 2016.
I say they open up another timeline. Earth explodes and Vulcan survives.
I would sort of be surprised if they decide to heft all the baggage from TNG et al.
Hopefully more like most of the series and less like the new movies.
James Doohan's son Chris even impersonates Scotty. (Stays in the family, I guess...).
You have * Fargo * Boardwalk Empire * Mr Robot * Suits * True Detective
These are stellar shows with high production qualities.
There's generally no ads on web streaming during the show.
I get that they "think" its like this now, they get paid by the cable company for their channel (the $5.99) and they send them content with commercials (which they have sold), but the new world is NetFlix which charges monthly, but has now commercials.
http://www.thestreet.com/story/13181362/1/cbss-tough-stance-...
Given the quality of digital broadcast and tendency for it to overlap cable service areas, it's pretty ridiculous that they manage to get anything. It wouldn't be so hard for a consumer friendly TV to transparently switch between sources (well, except for the cable companies making sure not to put consumer friendly features in their now required boxes).
You couldn't/wouldn't want to pay for how much current TV shows would cost in commercial free. Netflix works because they only buy cheap content.
You say "you couldn't/wouldn't want to pay for how much current TV shows would cost in commercial free.", but a show with a 10 million dollar budget and a million viewers would cost $10, not a lot more than Google Play for current season stuff (per episode), so apparently people are paying about what it would take.