Download the JMS/Zabel Star Trek treatment

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I like the idea of rebooting Trek, mostly to knock off some silly premises (no money on Earth and the like), introduce a bit more internal consistency (both ships and subspace radio seem to travel at the speed of plot, and there was a strong tendenancy for tech discovered in one episode to be ignored for the rest of the series) and rework future history (because there aren't going to be any sanctuary districts in 18 years, there was no WWIII or Eugenics Wars in the 1990s, etc.; I think a good rule of thumb for distant-future SF is to leave the next 50-75 years blank)

I think the general inconsistencies with our reality is acceptable - if Startrek is supposed to stay a franchise, this problem will always return. Bot the internal inconsistencies and silly premises might indeed be improved on (though I somehow like the "no money on Earth"-issue. Unfortunately, it is as hard to explain as the Heisenberg Compensator or the Warp Engines...)

And once again, no love for the wizard... (I suppose that would be Scotty)

Nor the rogue.

 

[satori01]

I think a 'reboot' might be appropriate where a particular show dominates a thematic idea. Beyond premise and name, BSG 2 has very little in common with the original show. Yet if you did a completely original show about the last survivor of a civilization fleeing a hostile force, you would hear many cries about "ripping" off the original BSG.

I would have watched the proposed treatment. The hidden mission idea is brillant. The hidden message in our DNA idea is straight from ST:TNG. However, I am not sure we need to "reimagine" Kirk and the rest of the bunch. People respond to TV characters in a very intimate manner, they see them in their homes on a weekly basis. I have no problem with the fact that Dartagnan has been played by many different actors over the years, my intial meeting with the character was through literature, the depth and subtext of the character was presented through words.

Kirk, Spock, Mccoy...their subtext was presented through the choice the actors made, it is intimately tied up to vocal inflection, body posture, looks.... you can not recreate that...you can not put someone into a Kirk suit, do not even bother.

 

[Vigilance]

Sorry. Not interested in rebooting TOS. It's pretty well-established in both TV series and films, and it is not the problem with the franchise.

To be brutally honest, if their stories cannot work without NCC-1701's Kirk & Co., then they're hopeless.

I dont think it's a matter of only being able to tell your stories through those characters.

I think it's a matter of those characters just plain being cool.

How many actors have played Sherlock Holmes? Richard III?

Sacriligious to put Kirk in that category perhaps, but he's certainly close. It was inevitable that other actors would play him and/or that he would be reimagined.

So since it's inevitable, why not now?

Id also argue that Trek has already been rebooted once.TNG is VERY different from TOS. The crew on TOS were boozing (how many times does McCoy come by Kirk's with hard liquor?) whoring (not just Kirk) and at each other's throats CONSTANTLY (and I don't just mean the McCoy-Spock dynamic either- take a look at how often Kirk and McCoy go at it sometime).

TNG started all this BS about the future being "utopian" and federation citizens being "elevated". TOS was highly dysfunctional.

So the rebooting of the actors is inevitable and the rebooting of the universe already happened.

 

[DreadPirateMurphy]

Yet if you did a completely original show about the last survivor of a civilization fleeing a hostile force, you would hear many cries about "ripping" off the original BSG.

Yeah, that is such a rip-off. It was so totally like Moses leaving Egypt, or Xenophon leading the 10,000 out of Persia.

There is NO story that isn't based on snippets of other stories.

Having said that...the character of Star Trek would have changed under this treatment. JMS, for one, never had a utopian vision of the future. Some people watched TOS and TNG because they LIKED Roddenberry's vision of humans overcoming their own petty differences and forming a Federation in the stars. The B5 vision of the future is more believable, and more depressing...humanity barely survives its own hubris and internal fighting.

Personally, if I were going to be shoved in a cryogenic chamber for a couple of hundred years, I would MUCH rather wake up in the Star Trek universe of Roddenberry.

 

[Eridanis]

An interesting precis. Sounds like an interesting setting for an RPG campaign, at the very least.

One comment in there is one that lots of folks - especially TV execs - tend to forget about. The original series had great science fiction writers creating stories that were turned into scripts (sometimes by them, sometimes by others). All the sequel series were written by Hollywood script writers who, in some-but-not-all cases, were sci-fi fans. They wrote serviceable scripts, and some of their stories were top-flight SF, but too many of their scripts could have been dropped into any other prime-time non-SF series with a minimum of change.

I love the Kirk-Spock-McCoy characters as much as anyone else, but I loved the starships and exploration aspects of the original just as much. A lots of times, later ST let that go in favor of the soap-opera story of the week, with sci-fi trappings.

 

[Ranger REG]

I think a part of the idea is simply taking a "familiar" situation and put a new spin to it. When TOS aired, nobody asked why they were send to "Explore strange, new civilisations" - it was a given.

Yeah, and I like to keep it that way for the NCC-1701 crew. I would tell JMS to just pick another "Connies" ship and crew.

 

[Ranger REG]

I dont think it's a matter of only being able to tell your stories through those characters.

I think it's a matter of those characters just plain being cool.

I know. And I like to keep it that way.

How many actors have played Sherlock Holmes? Richard III?

Count Dracula? James Bond? Zorro? The Lone Ranger? Starsky and Hutch? Anakin Skywalker?

Sacriligious to put Kirk in that category perhaps, but he's certainly close. It was inevitable that other actors would play him and/or that he would be reimagined.

So since it's inevitable, why not now?

Because I'm alive.

As long as I still draw breath, I will delay any rebooting of Trek universe. Didn't want to happen to Kirk like Lucas did to Darth Vader.

 

[Vigilance]

As long as I still draw breath, I will delay any rebooting of Trek universe. Didn't want to happen to Kirk like Lucas did to Darth Vader.

Except, as I pointed out, it's already been done. TNG is not in the same universe as TOS.

Watch the Corbomite Maneuver some time, and while you watch it, try to imagine how little of the character interaction in that episode would apply to TNG.

Let's see:

McCoy doesn't tell Kirk the ship is at Red Alert because he "doesn't jump everytime a light flashes".

Kirk doesn't like having a female Yeoman because he "doesn't trust himself".

Kirk and McCoy are drinking liquor during a red alert.

McCoy argues with Kirk about promoting an officer too quickly.

That officer then suffers a full-scale nervous breakdown ON THE BRIDGE.

At which point McCoy threatens Kirk in full hearing of the entire bridge, prompting Kirk to yell at him.

Seriously, most of these things would be serious breaches of protocol on our modern warships.

Cut to DS9 where they wanted non-Federation types like Kira, because if the entire crew was starfleet there would be no arguing.

So one show has people MORE disfunctional than us, and the other is utopian.

Seriously, the universe got rebooted already, I guess you were too busy getting high from those borg nanites to notice you'd been assimilated.

And if the entire universe can be rebooted and thrive, I think a few iconic characters can make that leap too.

Chuck

 

[Moonstone Spider]

I don't think I'd want a dark distopian Star Trek.

Not to be insulting but anybody can write a horrible future where everything's broken and sucks. It's been classic to talk about past glories of the "Golden Age" for about ten thousand years. It's much, much harder to write about a bright hopeful future where things, if not perfect, are still looking up all the time.

That's what Star Trek did and that's what i feel makes it special, it's a future where politicians care about the people, starship captains wonder about the morality of their actions and try to do the right thing even when it's inconvinient, and violence is usually a last resort. Even in the dark and gloomy DS9 (Which I'll admit, hypocritically, is my favorite of them all) was a pretty utopian future compared to a lot of sci-fi.

 

[satori01]

Thus Vigilance should we say because the we no longer have the Martini Lunch, Smoking in offices, and term sexually agressive behavor as coercive and harrasing, do we know, in the real world, live in a different universe than say in the 60's?

The world changes, but continuity keeps it from being alien. TOS ->ST:NG is nothing more than it going from the 60's to the 90's, even in space. So take that you green blooded bastard!

For the record, ST:NG had a larger cast than TOS, and everyone got laid in that show, (sometimes twice), even the android.