Star Trek 4

[pengbuzz]

56 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

When they fit with the story, sure.

Being a more cerebral sort of sci-fi, Star Trek doesn't offer quite as many opportunities to work that kind of thing into the story and when they become a bit too frequent it starts to feel out of character for the series and the franchise.  Deep Space Nine balanced it with a lot of character-heavy breather episodes in the Dominion War story arc, though Voyager's story got criticized a lot more heavily for its increased emphasis on action in later seasons and Enterprise really felt the impact of (relative) darkness-induced audience apathy as the Temporal Cold War story arc dragged on.

The space battles and other action sequences were a lot easier to justify when it was the TOS crew under Jim Kirk, since they were always more a "cowboy cop" outfit.  When the movies turned to the TNG cast under Jean-Luc Picard it got a lot harder to take seriously.  Picard was a consummate diplomat who always had a vocal disdain for violence, so to many fans it felt like a bad fit when Insurrection and Nemesis tried to turn him into an action hero.  (After all, he had Riker for when things needed to get physical...)

 

It's more a bell curve sort of situation, really.  The producers and writers had Roddenberry on a short leash because he, like George Lucas, was a good idea man but a desperately awful writer.  TOS was a lot of allegorical morality tales, but it was tempered by the staff reining in Roddenberry's excesses.  When he slipped the leash and secured full control of TNG in its development the staff really struggled under his rather dictatorial edicts as he took the utopian concept to its illogical extreme by mandating that the crew were all just such consummate professionals that interpersonal conflicts weren't a thing anymore.  Everyone had to be a Saint, and that made the series boring.  After he was ousted, the new showrunners reversed course back towards the more nuanced and tempered version of that utopian vision that'd been used in TOS.  DS9 was itself an act of rebellion against his crazy edicts, and spent a lot of time exploring the logical implications of that kind of setting without actually compromising the core of that vision of a more enlightened future.  Sisko's "Saints in Paradise" speech is basically a distillation of what DS9's showrunners thought of the unchecked Gene Roddenberry's creative edicts.

 

Whether or not it goes over well is all about managing audience expectations.

People expect to see amazing space battle action sequences in, say, Star Wars... it's right in the title.

It's not something people usually come to Star Trek for... which was part of why the action-centric Abrams movies didn't test well.

Agreed. The thing about Trek was not a "shoot-em up" for the sake of violence, but only when it had a reasonable and logical place in the action.

7 hours ago, DewPoint said:

Many SciFi fans are big fans of space combat scenes. I myself do like them, but I am more character and story driven.

I like them, but when they are gratuitous it hurts the story and makes characters and even whole groups out as violent sociopaths with uniforms and a ship. I don't like space combat simply because of the perceived need for "pew pew pew".

 

7 hours ago, DewPoint said:

As far as Star Trek goes, the writing took a noticable turn following Roddenberry's passing. The stories got darker and moved away from having a his signature moral aspect to the stories. While I was never a big fan of DS9, that show in particular, showed the biggest change on direction. The story concept was initially way too restrictive. Everything was to happen on the station or with runabouts. That show eventually turned into a shooting war. The show seemed to hit its peek of popularity at that point.

I would not say "darker" so much as recognizing that the "edges of the plate are not as clean as the center". In other words: per Sisko's "saints in paradise" discourse, it's easy to be "squeaky clean in front of the throne". That's where the rules are enforced the most and peace reigns the strongest. But in the distances away from the seat(s) of power, where the concepts and rules aren't as firmly entrenched, people face situations and scenarios where the "official" way isn't going to necessarily work, and the "dirt of life" with all its' imperfections really shows.

As an example: there's the way things are done at the Pentagon, and there's the way they are done on the frontline. Dark? Perhaps. Does it depart the core values that made the people who they are? No; it just means that doing what it takes to "get the job done" may require a different modality than the "spit and polish" required at the higher levels of the service.

 

7 hours ago, DewPoint said:

So yeah, people love seeing shooting wars. It sells tickets. Will it keep a lasting fan base? Who knows.

To an extent. But movies just about blasting people into FRM get old after a while, and JJtrek has yet to solve any conundrums such as:

- The existential dilemma suffered by an alien entity which is in actuality an old earth probe;

- Debating the morality of using an unimaginably powerful terraforming device on a populated planet;

- The harrowing pursuit of an old enemy who now has a tremendous vendetta against you personally (not just "the service you are serving in);

- The limits one will go to, even the loss of their career and everything they have worked for, to save someone whose life meant so much to them, the duty to save your homeworld from an alien threat, even though returning most likely means imprisonment and punishment;

- The pursuit of the relative of one of your group, whose "visions of God" may or may not be "insanity";

- Having to lay down your old vendettas in the spirit of fostering a possible peace between two great warring factions, even though one of that faction murdered your only child.

So far, all PineKirk™ has managed to do is: get drunk, catch space STD's, swipe command, wreck the ship he swiped, and act like a smug, pompous @$$ along the way.

[tekering]

9 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

So far, all PineKirk™ has managed to do is: get drunk, catch space STD's, swipe command, wreck the ship he swiped, and act like a smug, pompous @$$ along the way.

Very well-stated. 

Turning James T. Kirk into Peter Quill pretty much doomed the "Kelvin" films from the outset.

[DewPoint]

So Department of Temporal Investigations where?  Then again, that could make things worse. 

[pengbuzz]

3 minutes ago, DewPoint said:

So Department of Temporal Investigations where?  Then again, that could make things worse. 

More like when. lol

[Seto Kaiba]

31 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

So far, all PineKirk™ has managed to do is: get drunk, catch space STD's, swipe command, wreck the ship he swiped, and act like a smug, pompous @$$ along the way.

Now now... his other achievements include getting the sh*t kicked out of him repeatedly, getting accused of having sex with farm animals, and admitting to having sex with farm animals (allegedly in jest, but I have my doubts).

 

12 minutes ago, tekering said:

Turning James T. Kirk into Peter Quill pretty much doomed the "Kelvin" films from the outset.

Maybe they can salvage it down the road by reinventing him as Harry Flashman... he's certainly enough of a tosspot to walk into that role without issue.

 

Just now, DewPoint said:

So Department of Temporal Investigations where?  Then again, that could make things worse. 

It couldn't possibly be as bad as the proposed Section 31 series... 

Though time travel in Trek is messy enough as it is, and I'm still waiting for the 29th century Temporal Integrity Commission or 31st century Federation Temporal Agency to roll up and make the Kelvin timeline un-happen.

[DewPoint]

[Chronocidal]

2 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It couldn't possibly be as bad as the proposed Section 31 series... 

Though time travel in Trek is messy enough as it is, and I'm still waiting for the 29th century Temporal Integrity Commission or 31st century Federation Temporal Agency to roll up and make the Kelvin timeline un-happen.

Nothing quite like deleting your own past terrible content using previously established canon means.

[Seto Kaiba]

5 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

Nothing quite like deleting your own past terrible content using previously established canon means.

Considering preventing alterations to the timeline - retroactively or otherwise - is literally their job, it's kind of amazing they haven't stepped up to do something about it.

(The DTI novels, amusingly, did have the TIC retrocausally prevent the existence of a timeline based on the rejected series pitch that became Discovery's 3rd season... and get rather cross about having to do so.)

[pengbuzz]

58 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Now now... his other achievements include getting the sh*t kicked out of him repeatedly, getting accused of having sex with farm animals, and admitting to having sex with farm animals (allegedly in jest, but I have my doubts).

 

Maybe they can salvage it down the road by reinventing him as Harry Flashman... he's certainly enough of a tosspot to walk into that role without issue.

 

It couldn't possibly be as bad as the proposed Section 31 series... 

Though time travel in Trek is messy enough as it is, and I'm still waiting for the 29th century Temporal Integrity Commission or 31st century Federation Temporal Agency to roll up and make the Kelvin timeline un-happen.

 

Here you go:

 

 

Edited February 18, 2022 by pengbuzz

[sh9000]

4 hours ago, Thom said:

And I liked Nemesis. The only parts I didn't like were the empath-stuff, the world-ending stuff and the one-on-one with Riker and the gargoyle-guy.

I thought the stuff with Shinzon and Picard were great, as well as the overthrow of Romulus. If they had left it at that, it would have been great. Oh, and have the Scimitar be just a more suped up version of the Valdore-class - without the super weapon that takes ten minutes to charge up...

Same here.  There were parts that I enjoyed from all of the TNG movies.

[Podtastic]

14 hours ago, DewPoint said:

While I was never a big fan of DS9, that show in particular, showed the biggest change on direction. The story concept was initially way too restrictive. Everything was to happen on the station or with runabouts. That show eventually turned into a shooting war. The show seemed to hit its peek of popularity at that point.

Indeed. It went from "Its boring, there's nothing happening" to "Am I watching Star Wars this is so good?" from the end of season 3 onwards. The conflict involving all the different alien factions made it a visual treat for a change.

14 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Usually, you'll hear that the even-numbered movies (Wrath of Khan, Voyage Home, Undiscovered Country, First Contact) are the good ones and the odd-numbered movies (The Motion Picture, Search for Spock, Final Frontier, Generations, Insurrection) range from "less good" to "just plain bad".  It wasn't until Nemesis - the 10th and final Trek movie - that the pattern finally broke with a lamentably bad even-numbered movie

Undiscovered Country is the best of that list. But I wonder about the red-pink Klingon blood inconsistency thing. Was there ever an in universe explanation?

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Deep Space Nine balanced it with a lot of character-heavy breather episodes in the Dominion War story arc

OTH I see the momentous events balancing out all the "character heavy" episodes and preventing them from making the series a drag. Ultimately the same thing I guess.

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Voyager's story got criticized a lot more heavily for its increased emphasis on action in later seasons

But not for Janeway's lousy decision making and the endless technobabble? 

BTW as a "lifelong Star Trek fan" do you know if there is a novelisation of the "Scorpion" episodes? My Voyager interest is centered around Species 8472 and the Hirogen.

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The space battles and other action sequences were a lot easier to justify when it was the TOS crew under Jim Kirk, since they were always more a "cowboy cop" outfit

For all its quaint and dated effects, and lack of Troopers and Starfighters, I was still able to enjoy TOS to a certain extent.

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

When he slipped the leash and secured full control of TNG in its development the staff really struggled under his rather dictatorial edicts as he took the utopian concept to its illogical extreme by mandating that the crew were all just such consummate professionals that interpersonal conflicts weren't a thing anymore

So is it true that Roddenbury was a bloody commie?

The Federation Utopia seems a lot like the communist utopian fantasy (LIE) sold to the gullible and naive. (Its beyond me how anyone can be conned into believing that losing their property rights and autonomy could ever be a good thing.)

Edited February 18, 2022 by Podtastic

[JB0]

1 hour ago, Podtastic said:

BTW as a "lifelong Star Trek fan" do you know if there is a novelisation of the "Scorpion" episodes? My Voyager interest is centered around Species 8472 and the Hirogen.

Doubtful. Trek has very few episode novelizations. Aside from the animated series, I can only think of one(DS9's "Far Beyond The Stars").

 

1 hour ago, Podtastic said:

So is it true that Roddenbury was a bloody commie?

The Federation Utopia seems a lot like the communist utopian fantasy (LIE) sold to the gullible and naive. (Its beyond me how anyone can be conned into believing that losing their property rights and autonomy could ever be a good thing.)

Not really per se.
He believed people could be better than they are, able to set aside petty and stupid differences and just get along with each other. And that science would inevitably solve problems of limited resources.  Property rights are meaningless when property is infinite, though certainly people are shown to own things(often of sentimental value).

 

No one I can recall has been asked to sacrifice autonomy. Except the robots, but they're legally real boys with real rights.

[Dynaman]

The blood bit - best to handle the way Worf did with the Klingons in "The Trouble with Tribbles".  That was a brilliant bit of writing there.

Star Trek and property - one of MANY inconsistencies between what the reality of what they show on screen and what the say it is like.  Kirk owned his house(s) - and did EVERYONE get a NICE house in the middle of the best view of the mountains?  Even with replicators you can't replicate that.  Sisko's dad owned the restaurant, etc.  So it was more than just things of sentimental value.

[TangledThorns]

Nemesis was decent though casting baby faced Tom Hardy as the villain several years before he became really famous as a star didn't help, lol. That being said, I'd love to see Tom Hardy back in a new role for another Star Trek film.

[Keith]

The biggest problem with Nemesis is Data trying to commit suicide every other scene he appears in. There are telegraphed deaths, and them there's Nemesis.

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, Podtastic said:

Undiscovered Country is the best of that list. But I wonder about the red-pink Klingon blood inconsistency thing. Was there ever an in universe explanation?

Not that I'm aware of.

The production reason was that the MPAA of the time would have slapped an R rating on Undiscovered Country had the blood been red.  I know the production staff have excused or dismissed it on occasion by claiming it was an effect of microgravity on the blood.

 

6 hours ago, Podtastic said:

OTH I see the momentous events balancing out all the "character heavy" episodes and preventing them from making the series a drag. Ultimately the same thing I guess.

... eh, if you completely miss the point of Star Trek, maybe.

 

6 hours ago, Podtastic said:

But not for Janeway's lousy decision making and the endless technobabble? 

The endless technobabble is iconic of Star Trek, so to most viewers that's a feature not a bug. 😉 

Janeway's inconsistent characterization was partly just bad writing and partly executive meddling, but it is an oft-cited complaint with the series even by its cast.  Kate Mulgrew has previously opined that inconsistent writing makes Janeway come off as having an undiagnosed bipolar disorder.

 

6 hours ago, Podtastic said:

BTW as a "lifelong Star Trek fan" do you know if there is a novelisation of the "Scorpion" episodes? My Voyager interest is centered around Species 8472 and the Hirogen.

Not that I am aware of.  Species 8472 largely buggers off after "In the Flesh" and aren't really heard from again afterwards.

 

6 hours ago, Podtastic said:

So is it true that Roddenbury was a bloody commie?

The Federation Utopia seems a lot like the communist utopian fantasy (LIE) sold to the gullible and naive. (Its beyond me how anyone can be conned into believing that losing their property rights and autonomy could ever be a good thing.)

I don't recall Roddenberry ever putting a label on his personal political views.  He is on record as saying that Star Trek reflects his philosophy on things like politics, racial justice, and social/religious matters.  The United Federation of Planets was always Gene's allegorical stand-in for the United States... albeit a future, "perfected" version of the United States that actually practiced what it preached regarding equality, liberty, personal responsibility, etc. and had resolved all contemporary sociopolitical problems like racism, sexism, inequality, and so on.

If you were to put a modern label on it, the Federation is a post-scarcity democratic socialist state not a communist one.  They've gone back and forth on whether or not there was money in the Federation depending on the writer, but they've never depicted an absence of property rights or autonomy... only that, in an enlightened post-scarcity society, there isn't a social emphasis on accumulating material possessions anymore.

Mind you, Roddenberry was an educated man and knew full bloody well that the Red Scare was nothing more than a convenient and well-traveled boogeyman politicians used on the naïve and credulous to justify the ever-escalating Cold War defense spending that was returning to them as kickbacks and donations and as a way to demonize any movement intent on sociopolitical reform like labor unions, feminism, and the civil rights movement.  In modern terms, much like insecure 90's kids falling back on "gay" as the I-don't-have-a-decent-comeback comeback, calling someone a "dirty commie" was nothing more than a cheap ad hominem used by people who didn't have a cogent counterargument. 😉 

He displayed his disgust for such blatant chicanery in "Encounter at Farpoint", when one of Q's attempts to cajole the Enterprise into returning to Earth took the form of dressing up like a Cold War-era USMC Captain and imploring Picard to "go back to [his] world and put an end to the commies".  Picard casually dismisses it as nonsense with barely disguised incredulity.

[mechaninac]

The alleged KTLST4 and more, from a secret bunker at the center of the Earth:

Spoiler

 

 

[TehPW]

I listened to this earlier today on YT but I'm not stock smart... but i also listened to the John Wayne as HAL-9000 impression. Snort-worthy viewing...

[JB0]

13 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The production reason was that the MPAA of the time would have slapped an R rating on Undiscovered Country had the blood been red.  I know the production staff have excused or dismissed it on occasion by claiming it was an effect of microgravity on the blood.

So that's what happened with the pepto!

 

I'd assumed the other direction, and the makeup team on NextGen just used normal fake blood instead of pepto-bismol because of time constraints and it being readily available in their "normal" stock.

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, mechaninac said:

The alleged KTLST4 and more, from a secret bunker at the center of the Earth:

52 minutes ago, TehPW said:

I listened to this earlier today on YT but I'm not stock smart... but i also listened to the John Wayne as HAL-9000 impression. Snort-worthy viewing...

... I see the dial marked "DRAMA" in Doomcock's lair still hasn't been turned down to a reasonable level.

As far as I can tell, there is not a (direct) reaction to the announcement of Abrams Trek 4, Strange New Worlds, the impending cancellation of Picard, or Discovery's terrible reviews.  It's a reaction to three factors:

• ViacomCBS's decision to rebrand itself again... this time to "Paramount Global".  (Multiple rebrandings in a short span of time not being indicative of stability.)
• A lukewarm 2021 Q4 earnings call that confirmed that, while total revenues and subscribership are up, direct-to-customer (streaming) is hemorrhaging money like nobody's business and the rate at which it's hemorrhaging money is expected to increase for years to come.  They're losing over $1B a year on Paramount+ and that's expected to go nowhere but up thanks to significant increases in spending on new content development.
• Guggenheim Partners, Bank of America, and other financial institutions downgrading the stock's rating based on reassessment of its risk level.

This is actually the third time since December last that the stock has dipped this low... which is nothing compared to the 62% plummet the stock took back in mid-March 2021 after ViacomCBS execs moved to raise $3B for streaming development by selling stock.  That dip had nothing to do with anything except the erosion of shareholder positions due to the massive spike in the number of shares in circulation.

Granted, that Paramount+ is losing over a billion dollars a year does reflect rather poorly on its incredibly expensive, poorly-received, flagship shows Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard... but that doesn't really have any connection to the proposed Star Trek XIV, which is almost certainly not going to be bankrolled by Paramount to begin with.  (Finding someone willing to fund it is a whole other kettle of particularly odious fish considering the last installment finished well in the red... but hey.)

 

48 minutes ago, JB0 said:

So that's what happened with the pepto!

 

I'd assumed the other direction, and the makeup team on NextGen just used normal fake blood instead of pepto-bismol because of time constraints and it being readily available in their "normal" stock.

Yeah, the old Trek movies did a lot of strange things to work their way around various aspects of the MPAA's guidelines.

[Podtastic]

On 2/18/2022 at 5:38 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

... eh, if you completely miss the point of Star Trek, maybe.

My view is that point of any fiction is to entertain me.

If you mean the social commentary that the creators intend, it usually just offends or irritates me. More and more so as the decades march on.

On 2/18/2022 at 5:38 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

In modern terms, much like insecure 90's kids falling back on "gay" as the I-don't-have-a-decent-comeback comeback, calling someone a "dirty commie" was nothing more than a cheap ad hominem used by people who didn't have a cogent counterargument. 😉 

That may be, however the millions of dead under the 20th century's communist and facist regimes are more than enough argument that these dystopian social engineering horrors that must never be allowed a foot in the door. Not in any form. 

And anyone who defends these systems in any way, and for any reason, is highly suspect. So I unfortunately this is a black mark next to Roddenbury's name in my book.

[Big s]

I think there are  ideas of communism that aren’t that bad and are being used and defended by our own country. There is a difference with dictatorship though.

[Thom]

There are numerous examples of how dictatorships benefit a very few, usually those in charge. The signs are easy to spot and just need to be heeded. The strongest democracies are based on capitalism, but with a strong social underpinning to keep one or the other from getting out of control. Personally, I think it is a mistake to embrace one to the whole exclusion of the other, where a strong blending of the two is best.

[Big s]

I have to agree with Thom. Here in the U.S. things aren’t perfect, but they’re pretty good and it’s mostly because we aren’t 100% capitalist or socialist. We try to take things that work from both spectrums and sometimes we fail, but for the most part we make it work 

[jenius]

I have lots of strong opinions on modes of economy and their intersection with politics... but MacrossWorld isn't where we discuss such things.

Star Trek, was a pioneer. It dressed up societal observations and critiques in fun ways. TNG and the later shows were sort of grown up versions of that. My 2 cents though is that the audience is very sensitive to allegory at the moment so crafty films have to be much more subtle about such things and ST isn't a great vehicle for that. ST was able to do it in an obvious way because it was a trailblazer and then in a slightly less blatant way in later shows when it was more understood. Now? I don't know. As much as I like Star Trek, it's hard for me to imagine where it can go. Dumb action film makes sense given how much audiences want to claim they're victims to Hollywood overreach. It's also such a long-lived property that it's crippled by its own history. Fans have too many expectations. "That completely conflicts with episode 22's line of dialog..." "My Picard wouldn't say that!" yadda yadda yadda.

I think it's time for Spaceballs 2. 

[lechuck]

12 hours ago, Podtastic said:

My view is that point of any fiction is to entertain me.

If you mean the social commentary that the creators intend, it usually just offends or irritates me. More and more so as the decades march on.

Good (science) fiction provides subtle or direct comment on contemporary matters, providing me – the viewer – a different perspective and angle to reflect on. That's were the greater entertainment should come from and not just "pew, pew, pew.. I'll blast you to smithereens evil bad guy" stuff.

12 hours ago, Podtastic said:

That may be, however the millions of dead under the 20th century's communist and facist regimes are more than enough argument that these dystopian social engineering horrors that must never be allowed a foot in the door. Not in any form. 

And anyone who defends these systems in any way, and for any reason, is highly suspect. So I unfortunately this is a black mark next to Roddenbury's name in my book.

The system is not the problem, it is the actors within it. What is not taken into account is the ugly beast known as Homo Sapiens with its strong tendencies to be selfish, possessive, corruptible and power hungry, which brings us right back to the human condition that GR envisioned for human kind by overcoming and evolving from these negative traits.

And if sharing and caring is more intrinsic to us instead of  a "me, me, me and it belongs to me" attitude, then society as a whole will naturally adapt to a social structure that encourages that. GR wasn't promoting some specific social system, he was championing human kind to be better and therefore creating a better society.

[Thom]

4 hours ago, jenius said:

...

I think it's time for Spaceballs 2. 

Agreed!!

[Seto Kaiba]

14 hours ago, Podtastic said:

My view is that point of any fiction is to entertain me.

If you mean the social commentary that the creators intend, it usually just offends or irritates me. More and more so as the decades march on.

If the only thing that entertains you is mindless violence, you need help.  Badly.

The arts do not exist purely to entertain, artistic expression is a form of communication and education.  Star Trek has always been political, always been driven by social commentary, to the extent that it would not be even a slight exaggeration to say that that is very much The Point of the franchise.  How subtle it's been about it has varied over the years, but it has always been driven by that.  If that bothers you, then Star Trek isn't for you and it never will be.

 

14 hours ago, Podtastic said:

That may be, however the millions of dead under the 20th century's communist and facist regimes are more than enough argument that these dystopian social engineering horrors that must never be allowed a foot in the door. Not in any form. 

And anyone who defends these systems in any way, and for any reason, is highly suspect.

Y'see, Star Trek's creators were/are educated people... people who paid enough attention in their history, political science, and civics classes to know that western democracies aren't exactly different in that regard.  Imperialist western democracies like the US, Great Britain, etc. have perpetrated just as many horrors as the "Communist" or fascist autocracies... in many cases the exact same horrors attributed to the Communists, as a hostile joint venture with them in the great zero-sum game that was the Cold War.  Star Trek is not exactly a subtle voice on that topic.  Indeed, there's hardly any bit of scenery without toothmarks once they really get going about the Cold War.

They, and indeed most Star Trek fans, would find your argument here hilariously hypocritical.  Doubly so since you profess your favorite Trek movie is Undiscovered Country... you're basically making the exact same unconvincing argument as Cartwright or Chang, the villains of the piece.

 

14 hours ago, Podtastic said:

So I unfortunately this is a black mark next to Roddenbury's name in my book.

Nobody in this universe - or any other - cares.

 

4 hours ago, jenius said:

As much as I like Star Trek, it's hard for me to imagine where it can go. Dumb action film makes sense given how much audiences want to claim they're victims to Hollywood overreach.

For the record, Paramount has tried going the "dumb action movie" route with Star Trek several times in the past and it has never ended well for them

It was the cause of two of the three worst financial disasters in the franchise's history: Star Trek: Nemesis and Star Trek: Beyond. 

Might be four for five given Paramount+'s significant losses, poor reviews, and slow-to-minimal merchandise returns for Discovery and Picard as well.

 

4 hours ago, jenius said:

It's also such a long-lived property that it's crippled by its own history. Fans have too many expectations. "That completely conflicts with episode 22's line of dialog..." "My Picard wouldn't say that!" yadda yadda yadda.

Yeah, that's definitely been a spanner in the works for new Trek.

Though, IMO, the reason that's such a problem is because [CBS/ViacomCBS/Paramount] insisted on retrying ideas that they knew from past experience didn't work.

Spoiler

• They decided to make Discovery a prequel, despite prequels being high-risk and low-reward in a well-established property like Star Trek and the commercial failure of the last attempt (Enterprise) and the TOS soft reboot (Trek '09).
• They used the visual aesthetic of the J.J. Abrams soft reboot films as a starting point, despite knowing general audiences mocked it and Trekkies hated it.
• They made it action-centric, despite action-centric Trek titles routinely performing poorly.
• They made the protagonist an obnoxious, arrogant, self-obsessed meathead in a similar manner to Chris Pine's Kirk that fans heavily disliked.
• They ALSO made the protagonist a hereforeto unmentioned highly-emotional and mentally-unwell older sibling of Spock's, despite the last attempt (Sybok) being one of the franchise's most loathed characters and the idea being loathed on principle because of him.

It's a big universe.  All they needed to do was put enough space - literal and/or chronological - between the new developments and previous material to prevent any crossover and the creative staff would have had a lot more freedom to work.

A lot of new Trek's problems - especially with the Kelvin movies - stem from trying to simultaneously hold existing material at arm's length and lean on it to drive sales.  If they'd either just made a new main timeline Trek movie or done a straight AU story focused on an all new group of original characters they'd be in better condition than they are now because they would either be able to lean on continuity fully or dispense with it fully and do their own thing.  By trying to have it both ways, they're trying to run a marathon while dragging a bicycle behind them.  Seth MacFarlane has, at least, proven that you can do something that respects the spirit of Star Trek without any direct connection to existing material as long as you have decent writing behind it.

Kelvin Trek 4 - or Star Trek XIV - is probably not going to get made, IMO.  If it does, I expect it'll run afoul of the same problems that sank the previous three because Paramount doesn't learn from its mistakes anymore.

 

4 hours ago, jenius said:

I think it's time for Spaceballs 2. 

I dunno... Mel Brooks kind of lost his touch as time went on.  The remake of The Producers was pretty weak stuff compared to the original.

 

[jenius]

8 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I dunno... Mel Brooks kind of lost his touch as time went on.  The remake of The Producers was pretty weak stuff compared to the original.

 

C'mon, it's a sequel to a 30 year old plus movie.... obviously you would hand the reigns over to JJ Abrams. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

[Keith]

23 minutes ago, jenius said:

C'mon, it's a sequel to a 30 year old plus movie.... obviously you would hand the reigns over to JJ Abrams. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

More directly, the Spaceballs cartoon was a dumpster fire.

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

If the only thing that entertains you is mindless violence, you need help.  Badly.

The arts do not exist purely to entertain, artistic expression is a form of communication and education.  Star Trek has always been political, always been driven by social commentary, to the extent that it would not be even a slight exaggeration to say that that is very much The Point of the franchise.  How subtle it's been about it has varied over the years, but it has always been driven by that.  If that bothers you, then Star Trek isn't for you and it never will be.

 

Y'see, Star Trek's creators were/are educated people... people who paid enough attention in their history, political science, and civics classes to know that western democracies aren't exactly different in that regard.  Imperialist western democracies like the US, Great Britain, etc. have perpetrated just as many horrors as the "Communist" or fascist autocracies... in many cases the exact same horrors attributed to the Communists, as a hostile joint venture with them in the great zero-sum game that was the Cold War.  Star Trek is not exactly a subtle voice on that topic.  Indeed, there's hardly any bit of scenery without toothmarks once they really get going about the Cold War.

They, and indeed most Star Trek fans, would find your argument here hilariously hypocritical.  Doubly so since you profess your favorite Trek movie is Undiscovered Country... you're basically making the exact same unconvincing argument as Cartwright or Chang, the villains of the piece.

 

Nobody in this universe - or any other - cares.

 

For the record, Paramount has tried going the "dumb action movie" route with Star Trek several times in the past and it has never ended well for them

It was the cause of two of the three worst financial disasters in the franchise's history: Star Trek: Nemesis and Star Trek: Beyond. 

Might be four for five given Paramount+'s significant losses, poor reviews, and slow-to-minimal merchandise returns for Discovery and Picard as well.

 

Yeah, that's definitely been a spanner in the works for new Trek.

Though, IMO, the reason that's such a problem is because [CBS/ViacomCBS/Paramount] insisted on retrying ideas that they knew from past experience didn't work.

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• They decided to make Discovery a prequel, despite prequels being high-risk and low-reward in a well-established property like Star Trek and the commercial failure of the last attempt (Enterprise) and the TOS soft reboot (Trek '09).
• They used the visual aesthetic of the J.J. Abrams soft reboot films as a starting point, despite knowing general audiences mocked it and Trekkies hated it.
• They made it action-centric, despite action-centric Trek titles routinely performing poorly.
• They made the protagonist an obnoxious, arrogant, self-obsessed meathead in a similar manner to Chris Pine's Kirk that fans heavily disliked.
• They ALSO made the protagonist a hereforeto unmentioned highly-emotional and mentally-unwell older sibling of Spock's, despite the last attempt (Sybok) being one of the franchise's most loathed characters and the idea being loathed on principle because of him.

It's a big universe.  All they needed to do was put enough space - literal and/or chronological - between the new developments and previous material to prevent any crossover and the creative staff would have had a lot more freedom to work.

A lot of new Trek's problems - especially with the Kelvin movies - stem from trying to simultaneously hold existing material at arm's length and lean on it to drive sales.  If they'd either just made a new main timeline Trek movie or done a straight AU story focused on an all new group of original characters they'd be in better condition than they are now because they would either be able to lean on continuity fully or dispense with it fully and do their own thing.  By trying to have it both ways, they're trying to run a marathon while dragging a bicycle behind them.  Seth MacFarlane has, at least, proven that you can do something that respects the spirit of Star Trek without any direct connection to existing material as long as you have decent writing behind it.

Kelvin Trek 4 - or Star Trek XIV - is probably not going to get made, IMO.  If it does, I expect it'll run afoul of the same problems that sank the previous three because Paramount doesn't learn from its mistakes anymore.

 

I dunno... Mel Brooks kind of lost his touch as time went on.  The remake of The Producers was pretty weak stuff compared to the original.

 

Starting to wonder if they should just ask Seth McFarlane to take over helming Star Trek. I know there's probably a lot of good reasons he wouldn't (and probably shouldn't), but it's sad when he has a better grasp of what Trek is truly all about than those who currently own it!

[jenius]

1 hour ago, Keith said:

More directly, the Spaceballs cartoon was a dumpster fire.

Lol, I had completely forgotten about that... and will return to forgetting about it now.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

Starting to wonder if they should just ask Seth McFarlane to take over helming Star Trek. I know there's probably a lot of good reasons he wouldn't (and probably shouldn't), but it's sad when he has a better grasp of what Trek is truly all about than those who currently own it!

Odd thought... if they wanted to do Kelvin Trek 4 as a comedy-focused story like Star Trek IV: the Voyage Home, Seth MacFarlane would actually be a pretty good fit given his work on The Orville. 

I might actually go see that in theaters if they did it.

I know it's been said that they've thrown out several story treatments for Kelvin Trek 4 because the studio rejected them or actors were unavailable/too expensive...

[JB0]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

Starting to wonder if they should just ask Seth McFarlane to take over helming Star Trek. I know there's probably a lot of good reasons he wouldn't (and probably shouldn't), but it's sad when he has a better grasp of what Trek is truly all about than those who currently own it!

It says a lot about the state of the franchise that I think this sounds like a really good idea.

[Big s]

McFar trek