Star Trek

[Guy Nacks]

The only way I see that happening is if it's in the vein of the "all style and no real substance" ilk of the current films, which are popular and I don't want that much at all.

Our best shot at this point, in all honestly, is lobbying by Seth MacFarlane.

[EvangelionFan]

Sorry but I don't see Paramount forking out the cash to produce a new series in the near future. It's just a feeling that I have; what with the long development cycles and production costs of the recent ST films and the troubles they had with developing series in the past it's something that I feel they aren't going to invest in again any time soon.

I'm certain about this to the point that, if in the next twelve months Paramount comes out and announces that they are developing a new Star Trek TV series, I'll change my avatar back to Tessa for a year.

[Dataprime]

But I thought CBS owns the rights to the TV series while Paramount owns the movies rights?

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Star_Trek_corporate_history

[EvangelionFan]

I didn't know that! But it doesn't change how I feel about it.

[Dataprime]

Of course Trek helped saturate the sci-fi market
Just think how many Trek movies and tv shows they were from 1993-2002
Not to mention all the other sci-fi shows airing during that time.

People got burned out.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

But I thought CBS owns the rights to the TV series while Paramount owns the movies rights?

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Star_Trek_corporate_history

Both companies are by Viacom.

[Chuckman]

Both companies are by Viacom.

From what I've seen that doesn't make it any easier.

Honestly I don't think a Trek television series has anything to say. The idea of a show of naval adventure in space delivering hamhanded hippie allegories is played out and the concept is better left to the more action oriented format of movies.

Another series of veteran actors emoting at viewscreens in a heavily armed space minivan would flop miserably.

[Dataprime]

I think it will come back eventually... and hopefully soon, but as of right now there's no one who
can really take up the mantle of Star Trek successfully I think, as far as a TV series goes.

[Chuckman]

It would be neat if they followed a whole other crew and ship, kind of like that Avengers show is doing.

[Guy Nacks]

Looks like they might need some Heisenberg compensators for the next film.

Also Simon Pegg is being brought onto the writing staff.


Honestly, I hope they don't do a villain-based film unless it's a significant departure from that standard type of plot. They've done that for the past three fucking films....since NEMESIS in 2002! The Star Trek series is not James Bond, they don't have to go up against a bad guy wanting world domination/revenge in every fucking film. The fact that this same plot has been used for three films in a row is a big part of my disdain for the writers involved and the new series in general. Just Nemesis was bad enough.

Star Trek films can have interesting plots, you know. Allow me to link a post from two years ago when the trailer for Into Darkness was first released detailing this:

Although my one main gripe is how the plot seems so incredibly cliche for the series: Pissed off dude wants to get revenge. When you boil all of the films down to their most basic plot element, you get this:

I: Stop a mechanical lifeform from destroying Earth
II: Pissed off superhuman wants to get revenge
III: Return to Genesis and find Spock
IV: Stop a probe from destroying civilization
V: Find God.......
VI: Unravel the mystery of a political assassination.
Generations: Stop madman from destroying a civilization so he can snort some coke and get a fix.
First Contact: Prevent the Borg from assimilating Earth.
Insurrection: Save an alien race being taken advantage of.
Nemesis: Pissed off clone of Picard wants to get revenge.
Star Trek (2009): Pissed off Romulan wants to get revenge.

See what I mean?

And now I can add to that list:

Star Trek Into Darkness: Pissed off superhuman wants to get revenge (again)

[BrikHaus]

^ I didn't realize that, but you're right.

I imagine it will follow a similar structure to the last two films in the reboot. They have been financially successful, so Paramount has no reason to change things at this point.

[EvangelionFan]

Insurrection: Save an alien race being taken advantage of.

If I am not mistaken the main motivation for the alien villain and his buddies in Insurrection happened to be to exploit the resources of his original home so that he could deprive his former kin of their apparent immortality and in doing so get revenge for being exiled from that community several decades prior.

Of course, it has been seven years since I saw it last so perhaps I am not remembering it right ... though I suppose, you know, in a movie that also contains a series of interactions with Data that seemed to lack sense, an invisible ship submerged in a lake, a freshly shaven Jonathan Frakes, a joystick, a Worf who may as well have not have ever been on Deep Space Nine, and a series overly long glances between Picard and a really old but apparently young woman ... I admit the villain's motivation would not be among the chief things that one such as myself might remember right about the film.

[Guy Nacks]

If I am not mistaken the main motivation for the alien villain and his buddies in Insurrection happened to be to exploit the resources of his original home so that he could deprive his former kin of their apparent immortality and in doing so get revenge for being exiled from that community several decades prior.

Cool, so yet another revenge based film.

Fun Fact: Insurrection is the only ST film I have never actually watched. I've only been exposed to it through the Plinkett review. The funny thing is that I wasn't even aware of its existence until around 2005 or so. I never saw a poster for it in a theater, nor a single trailer for it. It just slipped past my entire awareness unnoticed, which is (funnily enough) the way most people seem to regard the film: A massive non-event.

So, it's not exactly begging to be seen, is it?

[cyharding]

From what I've read in this thread, I'm really hoping now that Axanar will be good (prelude film here).

[EvangelionFan]

Fun Fact: Insurrection is the only ST film I have never actually watched. I've only been exposed to it through the Plinkett review. The funny thing is that I wasn't even aware of its existence until around 2005 or so. I never saw a poster for it in a theater, nor a single trailer for it. It just slipped past my entire awareness unnoticed, which is (funnily enough) the way most people seem to regard the film: A massive non-event.

So, it's not exactly begging to be seen, is it?

Wow.

You know, if I had not been driven as a 10/11-year-old to find and borrow all of the cool-looking TNG/VOY video tapes from the local video stores I suspect I would never have seen Generations OR Insurrection until my father bought the DVDs of those films years later: I think it would have been more difficult to go through Insurrection as a teenager after having seen all of Deep Space Nine. Again, this brings up the point about the literal reversion of the Worf character for that film (and also in Nemesis, though that actually is somewhat forgivable in that it at least tries to work in the Worf's WAR EXPERIENCE in a single line about how Shinzon had also had WAR EXPERIENCE from the Romulan side ... actually no fuck that, that's falsely substantial to Worf) and furthermore the sense that the 'central dramatic question' of the film is actually, as you put, a non-event.

You see the whole of Insurrection is set in this special region of space called 'The Briar Patch' that has been basically neutral or untouched during the Dominion War, or indeed during the whole of TNG & DS9: the only reason why it becomes significant is because Data uncovers some shit somehow and goes out-of-character in the first scene of the film, one which lifts visuals and set design deliberately from that of the opening scene of the one of the best episode TNG episodes, "Who Watches the Watchers" (S3E04). Then there is political banquet aboard the Enterprise E in the vein of 'this is an adventure that we were previously on but are now just wrapping up' but serves the dual purpose of a) working Worf onto the Enterprise somehow as the 'Klingon Ambassador' as he had been at the end of DS9... or well 'former one', because IIRC that role is never mentioned again in the film because he basically becomes a goldshirt again, and (b) allowing there to be an interruption to normality for Picard to receive a hail from Mr. morally skewed Admiral to set up the actual story of the film.

Oh Gamorrah, I'm rambling again aren't I?
Okay so basically the thing with Insurrection is that if you're going to see it, you see it for the story that could have been a good TNG episode but is never able to be one because of all of the inconsistencies, inadequacies, and overarching incoherence that are observed in the Plinkett review. I do feel Insurrection has some merits - the CGI sequences involving the shuttle chase, and the Enterprise E battle sequence against the Son'A ships, feel as if they have a level of tension to them that the other sequences in say First Contact don't quite achieve - unlike in First Contact, in which the Borg Cube is almost is immediately removed from the stakes to advance the plot to the small time-traveling sphere, the shuttlecraft piloted by Data and the Son'A cruisers are not given any 'soft spots', and so the crew has to be more inventive or creative about solving those particular problems. It could be said that the scenes are rewarding in that sense. But again, in the context of the film's effort to be taken as a 'Trek' story of social conscience & so on, they are only acceptable as action set pieces if one observes that they more stylistically and thematically sensible for the franchise than the other ones on the planet of Worf firing a purple bazooka.
Of course, that all speaks nothing of the plot. I touched on the "Who Watches the Watchers" similarities, and although I would like to talk how Insurrection is different from that, I think to elaborate would be to spoil something you might appreciate as a first time viewer. Instead, I'll say that if you really want to get the most of out this film, I feel that the writing in the background of the setting & situation is how the 'foreground' narrative film becomes interesting, and in that one can start to see if the film is really pulling/pushing those ideas in the direction they ought to go in for the whole endeavor to be a Trek that not only works but is worth our while.

As you no doubt already gathered from the Plinkett review and from large swathes of this post, the consensus among the fandom is that Insurrection is a failure of a film - I'm not going to disagree with that, though I am going to suggest that you see it if only to- acquire a better sense of how it and the other TNG-era 'Berman' films began to backpedal fromsome of the sensibilities that had been set up through seven seasons worth of Trek writing in favour of 'bigger action becomes a bigger picture' modus of screenwriting. It's that same modus that, if I may say so, soured some aspects of Voyager and Enterprise and prevented those series from ever producing as good science fiction as TNG had, or more importantly, also setting the template from which J.J. Abbrams would work with for Star Trek (2009) and Into Darkness.

From what I've read in this thread, I'm really hoping now that Axanar will be good (prelude film here).

*skims through several seconds of footage*

I have the feeling that this is how I would have appreciated a follow-up to Star Trek (2009) to turn out ... if the studio had not been, you know, intent on recycling old success stories for newer audiences.

[Dataprime]

This year marks 10 years since the last new Trek series was on TV (Enterprise)

So why isn't there a new Star Trek TV series?
From what I read over the years: This is what I found

The basics:

CBS owns the TV franchise
Paramount owns the movies as well as the rights to make more
---------------------------------
The films are likely one of the bigger barriers to having a tv series right now.
Unless they tried to do a series set in that universe it's going to be seen as something
that could potentially conflict with the films appeal to audiences.
CBS would need Paramount's consent if a new series should take place in the reboot universe.
Likewise Parmount would need CBS's consent in order to make a new show
Seeing how the last Trek show was more or less a bomb and the reboot
films are making a lot of money (for Paramount) it makes sense
financially to just continue with the movies.
So Paramount isn't too keen on funding a tv show.

There have been attempts to return Star Trek to television, ranging from
Bryan Singer’s pitched Star Trek: Federation TV show – set in the year 3000 as
Starfleet has begun to collapse - to Michael Dorn’s proposed Star Trek: Captain Worf
TV series. Bryan Fuller (creator of Hannibal) has, likewise, expressed interest in
another Star Trek.
Sadly big budget Sci-fi shows are largely considered a thing of the past.
We had nearly 20 years of continuous Trek on TV, with mixed success
As I said before the last Trek was a failure and that seems to prove CBS's point.
Rick Berman (who succeed Gene Roddenberry as head of the Star Trek franchise)
who had a lot of influence, is now gone. Leaving no one to champion for a new series.

Unless both parties decide they want to go ahead with a project, secure or have
funding in place, and have all the terms sorted out for all contingencies, it's not going to happen.
With a successful movie franchise going alone, that is enough to sideline any potential tv project.
Clear that out of the way and the stars may align for a tv series. Certainly not definite.
But I think it'll happen when the demand is strong enough.

Even though CBS and Paramount are OWNED by the same freakin' company they
do not like to play nice with each other.

TL;DR: The reboot movies are stopping a new TV series from be made.

[BrikHaus]

If they ever do get around to making a new series, I guarantee it will be in the reboot continuity, and will therefore suck.

[Guy Nacks]

The only way I'd be genuinely interested in a new Trek TV series is if it was made for modern premium network cable, like Game of Thrones, but that'll never happen 'cause Trek has too much of a family-frendly image.

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

^ I dunno, guy. Trek’s family-friendly “stigma” was one of the few things that keep that show sane. I’m not sure I want to see a Star Trek series where Roddenberry’s pants-less planet episode was ever green-lit.

[Guy Nacks]

^ I dunno, guy. Trek’s family-friendly “stigma” was one of the few things that keep that show sane. I’m not sure I want to see a Star Trek series where Roddenberry’s pants-less planet episode was ever green-lit.

I'm not so sure I'd call some episodes of the show "sane."