Straczynski on Trek

[S'mon]

Sounds like you want JMS to recycle the unaired scripts of Babylon 5: Crusade.

The 'feel' of Crusade was very wrong, I thought. Not sure why, maybe something to do with the acting style, and the scripts seemed leaden ; but what I'd like would be the more melodramatic approach of TOS; I love Kirk hamming it up! Or "The Forbidden Planet", which I watched a bit of a few days ago - now _that's_ sf. For some reason JMS seems to reserve the meaty writing & acting for the alien characters like Londo & G'kar, his humans seem very flat & wooden, which could be a big problem for any JMS-Trek.

 

[Umbran]

but what I'd like would be the more melodramatic approach of TOS; I love Kirk hamming it up!

While old trek has good points, a new show would have to be able to survive in today's mass market. And Kirk-style melodrama is gonna flop big-time with them overall public. Fiction style changes with time, and Trek has to change with it if it wants to survive.

 

[S'mon]

Hmm. Mebbee. Like I said, Londo & G'kar were very theatrical characters, and popular enough AFAIK. And it certainly wasn't too much melodrama that killed Enterprise, it was the feeling that it was no different from bland TNG or Voyager, with touchy-feely characters devoid of emotion (though Trip certainly had promise in s1 & we haven't had s4 here). Buffy has the melodrama, but combined with postmodernist 'knowingness' - that could work ok in sciffy, esp if you had a straight-up Captain and reserved the wisecracks for other characters (I was a big fan of Riley in BtVS, admittedly I was probably in the minority).

 

[Mallus]

And Kirk-style melodrama is gonna flop big-time with them overall public.

But John Crighton-style melodrama would do just fine...

Kirk's semi-barechested, internally-rhyming humanist speechifying evolved into Crichton's clad-in-castoff-festishwear, self-reflexively snarky humanist speechifying.

They're really pretty similar, once you get to the creamy nougat center.

 

[Umbran]

They're really pretty similar, once you get to the creamy nougat center.

Yeah, but as they say, the devil is in the details. Whether that nougat is covered in rich dark chocolate or cheap carob maters. Londo, G'Kar, and JC all have melodrama, but they also react to things in a plausible manner. And their melodrama has consequences. Kirk was not presented as a plausible person, but instead as an icon. And consequences didn't arrive in TOS until they started doing movies.

They noted that times had changed when they did movies. Why should they ignore it when doing new TV series?

 

[Darth K'Trava]

Hmm. Mebbee. Like I said, Londo & G'kar were very theatrical characters, and popular enough AFAIK. And it certainly wasn't too much melodrama that killed Enterprise, it was the feeling that it was no different from bland TNG or Voyager, with touchy-feely characters devoid of emotion (though Trip certainly had promise in s1 & we haven't had s4 here).

I liked Londo Mollari and G'Kar. Their hatred of one another made for great storytelling, even to the "bitter end".... They had probably the most flavor of anyone on the B5 cast. I haven't seen all the eps and came in during, I think, season 3, but I got hooked from then on. TNG was pretty good as well, especially later on when they decided to flesh out the characters more than they ever had before. DS9 was ok until the last 2-3 years when they started the Dominion War arc (mostly to compete with B5's stellar storyline and plotting that was stomping it into the ground ratings-wise) and kept on with the great stories from there.