Posted on 06/19/2006 5:51:29 PM PDT by KevinDavis
All of the other Trek TV shows are PC pap. Let it die already, and come up with something as startlingly original as the adventures of a futuristic naval officer in space, which had been done to death in the pulps decades before.
That's OK, all the Trekkies I've ever met in person were wimps. ;)
I'd like to see more Star Trek shows especially since the science of special effects has come a lot further then models on a string, balls of hair, and green painted females.
They have had great FX at their disposal since the first Star Trek movie. I don't see that it's helped them any. In fact, it's hurt. The original Trek had relatively primitive FX available so they were forced to use them only to set the scene in most cases. To be perfectly honest, those cheesy old FX had more of the feel of SF for me. The new ones look like radily-available computer game imagery, and don't convince in the slightest.
The original's FX were like the sets--not only were they not realistic, they were part of the whole unreality of the show itself, and actually helped the storytelling.
Perhaps a series when the Enterprise was first commissioned before Kirk, maybe before even Pike, when it's purpose was that of a warship defending the federation against the barbarian enemy we saw only pieces of during the Pilot (The Cage).
They tried that with the flop Enterprise show. I am completely against the whole idea of "prequels" of any kind--they're useless. Who really has to see someone else's interpretation of past events when we already know how they turned out? move forward, I say.
Star Trek was best when it mimicked the events of the day, they could explore the mindset of terrorism and our reasonings for defending ourselves against it
I didn't see much of that in the few shows I saw of the other series'. I've never seen or read SF that was about our reasons for defending ourselves against terrorism--the reasons all seem pretty self-evident to me, and Trek would probably be more about the reasons the terrorists have to attack US.
In the old series when they got into contemporary issues like the drug culture and Vietnam they failed, but when they dealt with racism and more basic ideas like the need for humanity to explore, they did OK.
I just don't think a weekly series with a cast you know will be back next week is the place to deal with moral issues. Anthology shows seem to be the best place for this, but the market for those is dead.
Didn't think much of Starship Troopers the movie--it was like having the director sitting next to you and digging a finger in your side and saying "Get it? GET IT?!?!?!" throughout, it was so heavy-handed. I don't think its examinations of values were anything special.
But you've brought up Heinlein, whose juveniles I've recently started reading. I'm 40, and these don't read like kids' books to me (I know STroopers was originally supposed to be one of that series but was published for adult audiences because of the content).
If I had the bankroll, I'd finance a cable series called Henlein Theater. Each season would be, say, 8-12 episodes, and would adapt a different Heinlein novel, ending before he got into his weird later works. (I think the best recent SF adaptation was Children of Dune, which was superior to the first Dune miniseries.)
I just think Trek has been done to death.
I thought that movie sucked as well.
You could create a terrific Sci fi series from Time enough for Love all by it's lonesome.
I wish the potential writers for a revived Star Trek series would READ this stuff, because the shows have all the gimmicks but little of the feel of good SF, for me.
Heinlein's books, like some of Clarke's, Asimov's, and others, FEEL like SF--the sense of possibility and wonder, and in REH's case especially, the harsh realities of space exploration. In Star Trek, if someone dies it's either an extra or someone who's leaving the show for contractual reasons.
One reason I liked Farscape is because when someone left the show because the character died, the character actually died and didn't come back like Spock. The test for serious fiction is the handling of mortality, and most TV SF fails that test.
I'd pay money to watch that one; and when you ran out of Heinlein, there's plenty of Asimov or even goodly chunks of Bradbury and Niven to play with (I'd give good money to see a film version of "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex," but I know that most other fanboys would have kittens if it was tried).
Actually, it sounds more like an actual TNG episode.
Classic Trek was every bit as corny as original BG, even more so in some ways. I would have rather liked it however if Andromeda took place in the Trek Universe as originally intended, with the Federation long fallen and the Vulcans gone feral. It would have been nice too if they didn't swap Vala in for Savik in ST6 too.
How about a mirror universe trek series?
Ding, ding, ding.
I quickly scanned through the posts to see if anyone else remembered this particular episode.
We need a massive crossover from hell: The Wraith, the Gaould, the Borg, the Cylons, Aliens, and Darth Vader's clone against all the good guys. Sorta like a Sci-Fi Secret Wars. Except the Beyonder would be played by Alf.
Hey, I should be working for NBC!
The Honor Harrington books come to mind (Written by David Weber). There is enough in those books to get a few years of shows, imo--or some great movies, if they are done right.
I'd like to see something done with the BOLO stories as well.
They did a version of that on the original TREK: Kirk, Abe Lincoln and Surak against Genghis Khan, Kahless [without the horsehoe crab on his head] and a female villain whose name and species I can't remember.
I'm interested in seeing what DC Fontana has in store for the Enterprise crew.
http://www.newvoyages.com/
Maybe a series made from Poul Anderson's Flandry series would be a good one? I enjoyed almost everything Anderson wrote and he was a good conservative writer.
Well, at least that would fit in with the already established deal!
LOL! In the mid-90's I grew a goattee, and my friends were asking me if I was the eeeeeevil, alternate version.
I told them, "No. I'm already ee-vil."
B5 is my alltime fave tv SF show. That being said, why don't they just think up something new instead of rehashing something like Trek?
I really think Trek needs to be shelved for a good 20-25 years or so, then air it out again. New adventures. 'Reboots' aren't that satisfying, especially a classic like TOS.
Yeah! I remember that one. The dominant empires of the Alpha Quadrant put together the DNA fragments from different planets, a hologram appeared telling them they were all "brothers" and that humanoid-form intelligent life was hard-coded into the genetic seeds they had spread.
Good episode, IMHO.
Corny and campy as it may have been, I owe it to Trek for exposing me to science fiction at a young age.
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