I had a clever title, but now it's gone.

[thebitterguy]

Thanks to the ever vigilant gamera_spinning, I was pointed to this proposal for a new Trek series by Joe Straczynski and Bryce Zabel. JMS was the creator of Babylon 5, and Zabel created Dark Skies and the TV version of The Crow, so they both have strong groundings in genre TV.

It looks like a cool bunch of ideas. I think it would be strange to see other actors playing the cast, but it still would have been more enjoyable than Enterprise. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have turned Trek into "attack of the Space Arabs", either.

Of course, we could have ended up with another actor whose greatest desire was to become a real boy as Captain, but then again we might have ended up with Chairman Kaga's nephew as Spock. So, yeah, some good, some bad.

Comments

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

So... New Voyages?

[thebitterguy]

I dunno, New Voyages has that horrible touch of 'fan' on it and I just can't get past that.

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

As opposed to the touch of Straczynski? : P

[thebitterguy]

I know two things about JMS: He's a dick, and he makes good TV shows. That's enough for me.

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

He made a decent four seasons of B5.

That's not enough to make me think that a remake of Trek (especially TOS) is doable.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I would love to have seen this. There are definitely times I want my TV to pick up broadcasts from alternate universes.

[mytholder.livejournal.com]

It's very, very similar to the BSG relaunch, isn't it?

[thebitterguy]

Oh, yeah, the parallels between the two seem strong, but since the premise of Trek is naturally less depressing than BSG, it would probably be much less of a downer.

[uniquecrash5.livejournal.com]

As much as rebooting the original series makes sense (as the Marvel Ultimates example shows), and I think it would work, I'm uncomfortable with the overall story arc as described. Star Trek: the Search For Vorlons?

I personally think the current Star Trek Universe still has a lot of potential for the non-lazy. As I keep saying, a Starfleet Intelligence series would rock. Or an animated series with Excelsior, or even a new ship.

[thebitterguy]

Excelsior would have been neat, particulary after Undiscovered Country, but that's because of Takei's charisma. An animated series of Trek just brings back too many bad memories.

Wasn't there an "ancient race" that got referenced in Classic Trek on occasion, though?

[uniquecrash5.livejournal.com]

Awww, The Animated Series shows were fun. Severely limited by budget and the syle of the day, but fun. Remember how cool Star Wars: Clone Wars was? No reason an animated Trek couldn't be just as cool!

I actually downloaded The Animated Series & shrunk 'em down to watch on my mobile phone! It was great fun!


Wasn't there an "ancient race" that got referenced in Classic Trek on occasion, though?

Not a specific one, unless you mean the Slavers in The Animated Series!

[(Anonymous)]

I, personally, would be desperately afraid that such a series would dip all too often into the "what if tribbles had teeth?!" well. Frankly, I don't want to see a pastiche of TOS, or a postmodern TOS: I think, fundamentally, that this is a creatively bankrupt notion. IMHO, the new BSG works despite the original series, not because of it, and is probably saved because the original series was so damn thin to begin with that there really wasn't all that much to "refer to".

If a reboot could really apply referential riffs sparingly, and avoid the horrid side-streets that do little more than ask "what if" questions based on the original series, then I might be inclined to like it. But I found these moments far and away the weakest elements of Enterprise (a series that I, otherwise, found quite interesting). And I highly doubt that a new creative team could resist the tribble-with-teeth.

I don't want to see what would amount to televised fanfic. (I recognize that some folks like fanfic; I do not.)

Please: if we're going to convince studios to sink money into new SF series, can we please not mine other creative seams? Think of all the established SF written properties that don't yet have a TV or film treatment (Lensman? Ender's universe? Robinson's Mars? Piper's Fuzzies? Sector General? New Sun/Long Sun/Whorl? The Culture?)

Think of all the really creative minds out there that could give us a fresh universe! I don't want to see Captain Kirk Redux, unless it's really well done. And I highly doubt that the project could really get off the ground without the frequent appearance of tribbles with teeth...

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I originally wrote a long screed about how I wouldn't want to see a reboot series unless it managed to steer well clear of pastichey "tribbles with teeth" moments. I remain pessimistic that a reboot series could avoid this kind of creative bankruptcy. I'd rather see SF television spend creative resources on new stuff that we haven't seen than pastiche of venerable old "tried n true" IP.

Then I realized I had sent it anonymously. I'd far rather just have this simple comment appear: it makes my point without all the rant. 8)

[michael-b-lee.livejournal.com]

I was dubious about the proposal at first, but after reading it, I think it had a lot of potential to tell cool stories in a setting that hadn't been totally neutered by Roddenberry's well-intentioned but creatively stifling Utopianism. The Trek of the 60's still had rough edges and sharp corners to it despite the shiny chrome overlay of idealism, and that's one of the things that made it cool.

I really disliked the whole "ancient progenitor" angle, though. Why JMS feels the need to stick that into every sf story he touches is beyond me. With the premise they've got, they could cut out the mystery completely and still have a damn interesting series.

[aarondb.livejournal.com]

As long as it isn't "God" that's the ancient progenitor, I couldn't much care what JMS does. But the sheer religious weight that featured so heavily in Babylon 5 really should be absent from any Star Trek reboot. I don't know any Christians now apart from my Grandma (outside of American online acquaintances, that is) so I always have vast difficulty believing that all these futuristic folks 250+ years in the future are so religious.

I'd like to see a Trek that reflected humanity in the future, not America. Even Firefly made a huge deal about faith, which ground my gears a little.

7% of British people attend church and the figure isn't that much different across Western Europe. I think it might be time to reflect in sci-fi the effects of the slow erosion of religion in the more developed parts of Earth. Outside America, that is. And surely even America will rise from its New Dark Age at some point.

[thebitterguy]

I like the idea of a new Prime Directive that isn't the equivalent of an animated weasel with blue hair going "Don't do that! Don't do that!"

I think Trek had previously established an ancient progenitor bit, so that's no big whoop. I think Joe just likes to have great races moving in the background.

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

I liked the fact that the proposal recommended raiding contemporary SF writers to come up with some of the new Trek scripts.

There were so many excellent writers involved with the original series, and far too many tired TV hacks involved with the recent spin-offs (Enterprise being the latest, which I gave up midway through season 2).

That being said, I think it's time to put Star Trek itself to bed for a while and allow some other SF series to have a chance to grow without all the emotional and historical baggage that the Trek universe is stuck with.

::B::

P.S. I thought that someone could steal this premise to come up with their own cook Star Trek RPG campaign.

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

I also don't like that he completely reversed the Prime Directive from an advocation of self-reliance to the need to steal super-tech that we're too lazy to develop ourselves.

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