Concept Art For Trek XI Enterprise

[Ranger REG]

I'd like to get other people's opinions.

I dunno. Are their ships using "battleship-style" phaser turrets?

 

[Darrin Drader]

I dunno. Are their ships using "battleship-style" phaser turrets?

No, but in their early episodes, the ships do barrel rolls.

 

[Ranger REG]

No, but in their early episodes, the ships do barrel rolls.

Now THAT's Star Trek.

 

[Meloncov]

It makes a lot more sense than having just one or two gun emplacements on a huge ship.

Not necesarily. Navel battleships have been steadily moving towards a smaller number of larger guns.

 

[D.Shaffer]

Not necesarily. Navel battleships have been steadily moving towards a smaller number of larger guns.

They were until aircraft began to dominate, at which point battleships started to bristle with guns albeit of much smaller caliber then their main battery.

 

[Villano]

Reimagining is not what Trek needs. What it needs are executive producers that can recognize a good script when they see one. There are still plenty of stories that can be told without reimaginging things.

True. What I don't understand is why they are going backwards. First, Enterprise and now this. Why not take the Next Gen route? If they can't do any stories set in the same time frame as Next Gen/Voyager/DS9, why not jump ahead 100 years? If they want to tell deifferent stories, why not start with a real blank canvas instead of painting over everything that came before?

 

[Umbran]

True. What I don't understand is why they are going backwards. First, Enterprise and now this. Why not take the Next Gen route? If they can't do any stories set in the same time frame as Next Gen/Voyager/DS9, why not jump ahead 100 years? If they want to tell deifferent stories, why not start with a real blank canvas instead of painting over everything that came before?

Well, this is roughly the same question as - why do Trek at all? Rather than jump ahead 100 years, why not do a completely new series, set in a new universe that nobody's seen before?

I think old names are seen as a bit easier to sell to the public, and the financial backers. Same thing drives so many remakes and sequel movies, I expect. It isn't that they really need to tell a story in that setting, as that there's a proven market for stories in that setting.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

It might also be question of the association we all have with Startrek and all its cool stuff.

Transporters, Shields, Warp Engines, Vulcans [logical minded people], Klingons [warrior race]

If you made a entirely new series set in a different Universe, but wanted to use several of the base ideas of Startrek, it would feel strange. People might call it a rip-off and dislike it just because it "steals" ideas from Startrek.

It's the same question as with Battlestar Galactica TNS - why do a re-imagination and not set new show They could have called the show "Exodus" and made it about a group of human colonies being overrun by a robotic army and fleeing to find Earth - but who wouldn't have noticed that it's the same basic plot of the original series?

Maybe it would actually be a good idea to re-imagine Startrek, instead of making prequels and having to worry about not messing with the timeline or messing the timeline and getting fans angry, but in the end, no solution is optimal.

Maybe it's time we lose our focus on having only one original version of a universe or show - It worked in other areas (comics reboot, plays are played with different actors or different locations, songs are interpreted by different musicians...) Maybe one reason why it is so hard is because we invest so much more in a series/universe then we do in a single book, play or song...

 

[Darrin Drader]

Honestly I think that all this talk of reimagining things is just a bunch of hype. Sure, I think the sets should be updated so they look better than the old 1960s budget sets, and I wouldn't mind it if the Enterprise gets a little bit of a facelift - maybe bridge the gap between where it as at in the series and where it was at in the movies. I mean let's face it, the original ship design was a little on the boring/slightly awkward side. The deflector dish looks so much cooler as a space flashlight than it does a regular looking satellite dish. The warp nacelles were kind of clunky, being perfectly round and all.

Personally what I would like to see is for the new movie and any possible sequels to pick up where the series left off and finish off the five-year mission. I'm not interested in starfleet acedemy, or a Kirk - Spock prequel. I really don't even care if they use Shatner (though I certainly wouldn't mind at all if they make it official that Kirk wasn't killed like a punk in Generations.

I'm really looking forward to this movie and I have every confidence that JJ Abrams will do a good job with it.

 

[Umbran]

Maybe it's time we lose our focus on having only one original version of a universe or show - It worked in other areas (comics reboot, plays are played with different actors or different locations, songs are interpreted by different musicians...) Maybe one reason why it is so hard is because we invest so much more in a series/universe then we do in a single book, play or song...

Another reason is fan lifetimes.

Comic books turn over readership quickly - your average comic book reader follows a line for a handful of years (a few years in Jr. High and High School), and then stops reading. There are some diehards, but the bulk of sales is to folk who you know won't be reading three years from now.

If you reboot only well outside the lifetime of the typical fan, you won't meet much resistance - the people who are invested in the old version are no longer your customers, and you don't need to meet their expectations.

Genre TV fans, however, are longer lasting and rather rabid. We will follow a show for three, or five, or seven years. And the industry continues to trade on the fandom well outside the lifetime of the show on the air with conventions, print fiction, and so on. The fandom lifetime is thus rather long - decades. So, you need to go a long, long time in order to reboot. Given the original series movies, we are still within the lifetime of TOS fandom - it isn't time to reboot yet.