To boldly go ... (Star Trek)

[LKB]

And now I'm seeing some disappointed reviews of the latest season of Strange New Worlds.  The franchise seems to be going through a rough patch.

We've been here before.

Nearly twenty years elapsed between the last episode of TOS and the premiere of TNG, with only a few films to tide us over. ( I'm not being dismissive of the films, but the experience is not as sustaining as living with characters you enjoy, and looking forward to seeing them develop within fresh content on a regular basis. )

Roddenberry had to put up with a lot, biding his time and making his living by creating and involving himself with projects which he must have recognized as inferior, but served to keep him in the game and maintain a professional profile.

Fortunately, in 1977 a little space opera came into existence, and Paramount said to themselves, " Wow, everyone is talking about that movie... what do we have that might steal a little of that thunder? "

Who knows what may or may not have happened with Star Trek, if George Lucas hadn't of inadvertently kicked some studio executives in their behinds... I like to think that TNG would have eventually happened in any event, but I've frequently been foolishly optimistic regarding the franchise.

And maybe I am being so once again. Yet, the Trek universe must surely have at least a minimal presence in all corners of the world. Somewhere, there will be a person who has seen some of the shows, has an affection for the universe and its intrinsic optimism for human survival, and is inspired by a new creative vision for relevant storytelling.

May the Force be with them. 

[Opus131]

I would argue that Nicholas Meyer saved the franchise.

He did, and then they ditched him because their ego got out of hand and we ended up getting the hippie one with the whales and that abomination that was Star Trek V.

They brought Meyer back with VI but by that point it was too little too late and while the movie was competently shot it was unfortunatly saddled with a mediocre script.

And honestly, i blame Nimoy. He gave the studio an ultimatum that he wasn't going to come back as Spock unless he got to direct Star Trek III. Now Nimoy is a great actor and Spock is one of the reasons the series was so successful but one can only imagine how far this series could have gone with Nicholas Meyer at the helm all the way through.

[Opus131]

Even worse is that Star Trek actors are apparently expected to have panels at conventions until they die of old age. Can you imagine maintaining enthusiasm about a role you played back when people were still salty over Mondale losing the election?

That was the basis for Alan Rickman's character in Galaxy Quest:

[Daverz]

We've been here before.

Nearly twenty years elapsed between the last episode of TOS and the premiere of TNG, with only a few films to tide us over.

Only the problem now is not a lack of new Star Trek projects, but that there are too many with poor writing.

[LKB]

Only the problem now is not a lack of new Star Trek projects, but that there are too many with poor writing.

I won't disagree, but keep the faith... though the present situation may be frustrating I am confident that there will be more good Trek coming, probably from an unexpected direction.

[Karl Henning]

Only the problem now is not a lack of new Star Trek projects, but that there are too many with poor writing.

Debasement by proliferation. 

[Opus131]

Only the problem now is not a lack of new Star Trek projects, but that there are too many with poor writing.

That's really the rub, isn't it?

I remember the first time i acquired my first complete edition of TNG, where i finally able to watch the whole thing in one swoop (always hard to do when catching the show on TV as a kid), it was just fascinating to observe the growth of the writers in real time.

So in the first season, there was this attempt to replicate the now dated style of TOS with a new skin "updated" for the time (in a very cliched manner i might add. I'm thinking of the scene where Tasha Yar lectures Wesley Crusher in the use of drugs which was SOOOOO 80s and not in a good way), which obviously didn't work that well and there was no chance for the show to come onto its own like this.

Season second tried to shed away a lot of TOS elements but was still struggling to find itself. The 80s elements were still kinda of cheesy and while progress was being made (especially on the part of Picard who was really coming into his own as a character) it still wasn't "there", so to speak.

Season three starts off more or less where season two left, but there's a sense the writers were finally starting to hit their stride but it wasn't until the end of the season where the show finally reaches brilliance. Especially with The Most Toys i think it was the first episode where for the first time i felt i was no longer watching mere entertainment, but something more (this was also the espide that made me realize Brent Spiner was the best actor in the show after Patrick Stewart), and while the show still had its ups and downs it was able to consistently reach this high point through out most of the following seasons, only coming down in quality in season seven (though the finale was still great).

And it wasn't just TNG as this "golden era" of the Rick Berman Star Trek era continued on in DS9, which again had its ups and downs but also inherited a lot of the brilliance of TNG, especially in the side characters which had some of the best moments in the whole show:

Unfortunatly, with Voyager the writing started to come down in quality. There were very few episodes that reached the same level found in the best of TNG or DS9, mostly any episode that allowed Robert Picardo to shine:

But it also introduced a lot of bad writing and it just got worse with Enterprise until everybody involved called it quits i guess, and its unclear to me whether the collapse of the Berman era was owning to them bleeding some key talent, or whether it was the abandonment of the values that held the series toghether. Voyager already introduced some dubious morality, with Janeway becoming more and more questionable as the shows goes along, but it's especially with Archer that it no longer feels like Trek anymore. Especially in season 3 of Enterprise where he goes all Neocon, it just left with me a bad taste. Everything he did violated any sense of morality or ethics the series had upheld up to that point and it's unclear whether the show failed because of lack of talent compared to the TNG/DS9 era or whether the changes in the ethics of the show failed to inspire the writers.

And if the problem is the latter i don't think there's going to be much hope for the new shows given they appear to have abandoned everything that made Trek great or interesting.

[Opus131]

BTW, speaking of how bad the writing is in the new shows, i think this parody by the RLM guys really sums it up:

I'm pretty sure the correct word to describe this is pretentious. And that Patrick Stewart of all people would abase himself for this was just painful to witness.