New Star Trek Series in 2017

[Driver]

I feel like time travel is one of the things that killed Star Trek.

[Driver]

 

Netflix is doing foreign distribution, and their cut of the trailer is SO much better.

[CoLA]

I feel like time travel is one of the things that killed Star Trek.

I cannot agree! Two of the best movies involved it, The Voyage Home and First Contact.

 

Wait! They should do a series that takes place in the mirror universe instead! I'd watch an evil Federation show!

[Guest El Chalupacabra]

 

I feel like time travel is one of the things that killed Star Trek.

I cannot agree! Two of the best movies involved it, The Voyage Home and First Contact.

 

Wait! They should do a series that takes place in the mirror universe instead! I'd watch an evil Federation show!

 

Time travel was used too much in all the series after TVH, though. Even Enterprise.

 

I don't want to see a show focused on an evil Federation, but it would be an awesome idea to use for the next Kelvinverse movie. Basically a reimagining of the TOS episode Mirror, Mirror would be something I'd like to see.

 

 

 

 

Netflix is doing foreign distribution, and their cut of the trailer is SO much better.

Not saying to be flip, but that didn't make me like it any more. Same footage, just reshuffled.

 

 

Agreed across the board. They can't just say Primeverse and expect Trekkies who are sticklers for detail to hang.

I can forgive minor continuity holes and retcons. Enterprise had them, and I didn't mind them too much. But calling this primeverse is asking too much.

[Driver]

There are certainly examples of time travel in Trek that are awesome-- in fact some of the best Trek stories use it. But VOY and ENT way over-did it to the point I just felt like it should be called Time Trek.

[CoLA]

The lame thing about the time travel stuff in Enterprise was that it never went anywhere. Who was the person in the future helping out those aliens in the first couple seasons? They purposely hid their identity and never bothered to reveal it! There's no reason to hide their identity if it's going to be no one important. :|

[Poe Dameron]

No doubt that time travel can be great. City on the Edge of Forever (TOS), Yesterday's Enterprise (TNG), and The Visitor (DS9) can all be legitimately argued as the best episodes of their entire series and could all be included in a Top 10 of the entire franchise without courting controversy.

 

But an entire series on it? No, just no. Time travel needs to be used sparingly because it's really one big plot hole waiting to happen. Unless it's specifically tailored to a storyline, then it's just too unwieldy. Both Enterprise and Voyager used it too often and paid the price for it.

[Driver]

exactly

[Guest El Chalupacabra]

The lame thing about the time travel stuff in Enterprise was that it never went anywhere. Who was the person in the future helping out those aliens in the first couple seasons? They purposely hid their identity and never bothered to reveal it! There's no reason to hide their identity if it's going to be no one important. :|

Well, they were planning on addressing that. I personally believe "Future Guy" (as some fans dubbed him), was clearly Les Moonves.

 

Unfortunately, seasons 1 & 2 dragged it out too long, and they got side tracked with the Xindi arc in season 3. However, to answer your question, I have read that Future Guy was an alternate future and bitter version of Archer, according to Brannon Braga (long after the series was over). Whether or not that was the actual plan, I don't know, I just know that Braga did tweet that. I personally think it would have been a cool twist that it was Archer from the Mirror Universe, but he dies at the end of that episode, so not really possible. But it would have fit, since Mirror Archer seemed to express a certain amount of jealousy and hatred towards the Archer Prime.

 

I have also read fan theories that it was Capton Braxton, from Voyager, and others who theorized it was a Romulan. Both of those would have worked,too. Braxton would have been a cool tie in to the Voyager "time police" episodes. A Romulan would have worked, too, considering they were setting up a Romulan arc in season 4, but was cancelled before they could flesh that out.

[Driver]

The Federation Time Ship stuff was right where I got fed up with it.

[Guest El Chalupacabra]

I agree those Voyager episodes were mediocre at best. I probably should have said interesting, instead of cool, in that if they had made that connection, it would have made sense. I was always surprised that they were willing to make a connection on Enterprise to TOS (kind of had to, since it was the original), to TNG (cast members showing up), to DS9 (Section 31), but no connection to Voyager, and it was the only other UPN show.

 

Bringing it back around to Discovery, yet another disappointment was that I was hoping we would get flashbacks of Enterprise crew during the Romulan War. Doesn't seem remotely possible, now.

[Driver]

The only prequels I want would be a Romulan War story, or a post TUD/Generations opener era show. The look of the movie era was always my favorite.

Honestly, people have wanted a Trek anthology show for decades, but building everything from scratch per episode was never doable. Now that season long story anthology shows are in fashion, Trek should totally do it.

Every season a different era/timeline/ship/crew/whatever.

[Stevil]

I disagree. I know it can be done but history in the Trekverse suggests that we need a couple of seasons to get to know the crew and a couple more before we can decide if we like it or not.

[Guest El Chalupacabra]

The only prequels I want would be a Romulan War story, or a post TUD/Generations opener era show. The look of the movie era was always my favorite.

 

Honestly, people have want a Trek anthology show for decades, but building everything from scratch per episode was never doable. Now that season long story anthology shows are in fashion, Trek should totally do it.

 

Every season a different era/timeline/ship/crew/whatever.

I would have loved to see a show centered around the Enterprise-B or another ship during the "lost era" between the end of TUC and prior to TNG, but I agree that generally speaking, I would have preferred to go forward, not backward. I think 60+ years after Nemesis would have been a better time to set a TV series.

 

Stevil makes a good point that Star Trek series usually do take a season or three before they find their legs, but I don't think an anthology would have been impossible, if there were something to tie the stories together (IE the ship itself being the central character, and it being depicted as new in the beginning, its various missions each season and its official role changing from say flag ship to almost a reserve ship (but each season it meets a crisis), and the final season with the ship being obsolete and about to be retired, but on one last hurrah (IE how the Enterprise was depicted in Star Trek 1-3). Sets could stay the same with minor changes (IE B52 bombers of today don't look all that different from the first versions of the 1950s). Main characters could be aliens that don't age as fast, with multiple actors portraying human characters during different stages of their lives, and other characters could come and go, just like they do in real life. That's just one idea. There is tons of stuff that could be done.

[Driver]

I'd argue against that because all we know of Trek TV was from a very different time. Remember that before cable exploded with original programming or digital platforms came along to put is into the new golden age of TV we are in now, shows with ongoing serialized narratives were very rare outside of soap operas.

 

TNG and DS9 were built on the syndication model.

VOY and ENT were built on a network model.

 

Both of those basically want to churn out as many episodes as possible to hit for the 100+ episodes needed for second run syndication deals. That's what made them the huge money. Finding, growing, AND retaining an audience all at the same time meant that you took very little risks. You set up the parameters of the show, established the characters, and you don't stray too much. This is why so much of Trek is comprised of ship-in-a-bottle episodes. By the time an episodes ends, the status quo must be the same as it was last week.

 

Sure changes would happen over time, casts would shift a little, and if you have a long enough run, the actors and writers are going to make the characters evolve in a lot of ways-- but the network still wants to core conceit to remain the same. They want to give regular viewers what is proven to be liked, and they want new viewers to be able to jump in at any time and not be lost in confusing mythos or continuity.

 

This is why, at the time, DS9 became so contentious. It's latter seasons pushed into being more serialized and the syndication suits freak out.

 

My point is, under these constraints, character evolution and long form stories come together very slow-- over several seasons.

 

But the landscape is completely different now.

 

With digital distribution, syndication numbers are not as important as just having a complete season for somebody to binge. Cable dramas have destroyed all models of old storytelling and now showrunners actively try to have as much twist and evolution in a season as possible. The old model relied on a single episode to retain and acquire viewers. That pressure is now put on a complete season cause if somebody has never seen the show, they will binge it online.

 

Let me say that again-- in the old days, networks would want any given episode to be able to work as somebody's first to get a new viewer. Now, they get new viewrs by having an entire season binge-ready so somebody can catch up before the next season starts.

 

So this idea that you'd need three years to get to know a crew is out the window now. Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Sons of Anarchy, other cable ensemble shows with a diverse cast-- they all hit the ground running. It didn't take us 3 years to get to know Don Draper's agency mates. I'd say in this day and age you'd be cancelled if you played the long game.

 

And again-- American Horror Story, American Crime Story, Fargo, Fued... these shows kill it and it have more story in 12 episodes than old school shows would have in multiple seasons.

 

This is actually what I'm most curious about with Discovery in terms of its narrative.

[Driver]

An Chalupa-- I had an idea similar to what you are saying. Base it around a particular ship. It has one crew in the TOS era. It gets a refit, and has the junior officers from the first story, now in command in the second story. Then a third arc where the ship is pulled out of mothballs 80 years later cause Starfleet needs ships in the dominion War, and maybe a Vulcan or other long-lived alien was aboard in the first two arcs, and is brought back to help get the ship combat ready.

[Guest El Chalupacabra]

This is actually what I'm most curious about with Discovery in terms of its narrative.

 

I think Discovery is clearly going to be for binge-watchers. The question is will it be interesting to long time fans who care about continuity, and will it generate new long time fans? I can't call the Kelvin movies a flop because they did pretty well at the box office, but in terms of fans, I think it is pretty clear that Paramount underestimated the fact that the large bulk of Star Trek fans were and are fans from long before the JJ movies. Whatever new fans the JJ movies gained, they are fleeting and casual fans. CBS seems to have learned nothing. They are glomming onto the JJ movie look and feel, thinking it will pull in all kinds of new fans. It might for a little while, but if their goal is to have a long term fan base, they had better take care not to piss off the long time fans, who are already sort of pissed So far, it seems they don't give a crap, but they will find out soon enough that fans like me still matter when it comes to Star Trek.

 

I personally wanted to see the prime verse, but with all the styling queues in this trailer, I can't accept this show as the primeverse. I really hope they announce that this is either the Kelvin Timeline (...an aside, why do people call it that? Shouldn't it be the Narada timeline?), or CBS just needs to flat out say this is a new timeline or reimagining. I could accept that, and that is probably the only way I could watch Star Trek Discovery at this point.

 

But if the very minor continuity errors in Star Trek Enterprise are to blame for that show's failure (mostly or just in part), I can only imagine how Star Trek Discovery will fail. In it's trailer it says it's before Kirk and Spock and the Enterprise. Obviously, the show runners bothered to check on continuity. They never thought to look up when the Enterprise was launched, which was at least 11 years before Kirk was captain (per the Menagerie), and could be as many as 16 years , if one counts Captain April. What's more, Kirk and Spock at this point are out there as junior officers, and Spock would be on the Enterprise during this show.

[Driver]

Paramount doesn't see it much different than Lucasfilm did when they axed the EU.

 

Superfans are going to buy a ticket no matter what. Even if they hate it-- they will still go see it. Case in point, our own Zerimar. He HATES TFA and knew he would and trashes it every chance he can get. And yet-- he went to see it.

 

Fandom will show up no matter what.

 

The money is ALWAYS making the pit bigger. Trek got mired in its own continuity and being that it was only for fans, and that doesn't get you tickets/ratings. But Kirk and Spock are pop culture icons. Reboot that, make it fun = PROFIT. And it worked.

 

I'm honestly surprised Discovery is happening since the last two Trek films didn't do as well as they expected. I'm pretty sure the future of the franchise is hanging on.

[Guest El Chalupacabra]

Paramount doesn't see it much different than Lucasfilm did when they axed the EU.

 

Superfans are going to buy a ticket no matter what. Even if they hate it-- they will still go see it. Case in point, our own Zerimar. He HATES TFA and knew he would and trashes it every chance he can get. And yet-- he went to see it.

 

Fandom will show up no matter what.

 

The money is ALWAYS making the pit bigger. Trek got mired in its own continuity and being that it was only for fans, and that doesn't get you tickets/ratings. But Kirk and Spock are pop culture icons. Reboot that, make it fun = PROFIT. And it worked.

 

I'm honestly surprised Discovery is happening since the last two Trek films didn't do as well as they expected. I'm pretty sure the future of the franchise is hanging on.

Movies are one thing, and yeah uber fans will show up. But they are the minority. Fans like me are the majority, when it comes to long time fans. Fans like me bailed on Enterprise, and were put off by Star Trek Into Darkness. I saw it, but not in the theaters, due to bad word of mouth.

 

Now, CBS All Access is literally new territory. I think what pisses a lot of people off is that they feel they are being double charged in the US. They already have online access or streaming, and netflix, and now have to pay for CBS all access. Yet, outside the US, if you have Netflix, you can see it. Pretty unfair.

[Guest El Chalupacabra]

So I watched the first episode. I did not rush out to see episode 2 online.

 

First off, this episode was a decent episode, but all the things I was afraid I would not like, came true. No they don't show the USS Discovery, beyond the opening credits.

 

Here are some observations I made:

 

1. Just consider this a reboot/reimagining :This episode does not make clear it is the primeverse, and I hope they never do. 1000% a visual reboot for sure. I think from the start, it's better to just view this show as a yet another universe. Absolutely does NOT hold up as prime verse visually. May not fit in the Abramsverse neatly (though with only 3 films, fits there a lot nicer than in the prime verse) Some can get past that maybe, but to me, visuals are as much a part of the Star Trek story as a character or a plot, so i cannot accept this as prime-verse.

 

2. CGI was pretty mediocre. Most of it looked fine but there are a few space shots (ships, space suits) that looks like AOTC level of CGI, which is to say acceptable but on the verge of looking completely fake. There is a point where Burnham is in a space suit and being raised onto they hull of the ship...totally obvious they just photoshopped her head onto a CGI space suit body.

 

However, the CGI and FX are pretty nice and polished compared to other series, over all. Unfortunately, NOTHING shares any designs with previous incarnations. Looks on par with the contemporary Abramsverse, but the styling to me is different enough to have a tad bit of trouble shoe-horning it into Abrams-verse canon. Again, think of this as yet another universe, and you will have less problems accepting the visuals.

 

3. Characters

There are only three Federation characters given enough screen time to even begin forming opinions.

 

Captain Georgiou: for all the people who wanted Star Trek to go back to its TOS roots....this Captain is very Picard-ish. Which I like, BTW, but for the 24th century haters, you might not. Just don't get too attached.

 

CDR Michael Burnham: Not once did I say "Haaayyy! It's the Walking dead lady. No, you don't hear why she has a male first name. Green is a good actress, but there are a few points in the episode that bother me how she was written. First off, she is Spock's secret adopted sister we never heard of before. She is sort of a reverse Worf: human child rescued by Sarek at an outpost attacked by Klingons, and raised on Vulcan. She seems too impulsive, and hot headed. Doesn't seem like someone who was a commander who served her captain for 7 years, nor is she convincing as a human who spent her childhood raised on Vulcan and went to Vulcan schools and comes across as too emotional, too aggressive, too insubordinate...especially the end of the first episode. I want to like Burnham, because I like Green as an actress, but so far her character has been written annoyingly to me.

 

LT Saru: The death sensing alien. They were going for a Big 3 vibe between Georgiou, Burnham and Saru there for a couple scenes Probably the only character I have any overly positive feeling about so far. At least until his death sensing speech.

 

Klingons: They completely changed the look, feel, armor, and their ships. If you have seen the spoiler photos, it confirms everything, especially your fears. In fact, you will find you have been spoiled on them almost completely. I for one, do not like the new look and does not line up with the other series. If they were another race, I would think they look awesome. As Klingons, not so much. One more reason to consider this a complete reboot.

 

Then they have a robot who has a CRT monitor for a head (a nod to Data?) that just repeats what everyone else said and whose face flashes red alert and some guy with Lobot's cranial cybernetic implants stuck to his head.

 

4. Holograms: people talk to each other in the ready room using subspace holograms, like Star Wars (or like in DS9 the last couple seasons).

 

5. Uniforms really do look THAT bad! I was spoiled on the new uniforms. Hated them when I first saw months ago. But I had a sliver of hope that maybe in action, they look better. NOPE! They look very space-cadet-ish As in a bad 1950s way.

 

6. Everything has a Federation delta on it. From the guns, to the ships, to the uniforms with tiny deltas on them. Even the toilet paper has a delta stamped on each square.

 

7. Opening credits look cool. No more complaining about a Rod Steward impersonator.

 

8. The sets look cool. The interiors of the USS Shenzhao look nice. External shot looks cool, but does not fit at all in the prime-verse, but they do look very JJverse looking. Maybe my imagination, but does look a bit like it was influenced by http://www.pacific201.com/. The gadgets (phasers, communicators) are true to TOS.

 

9. Klingons at this point have had no formal contact with the Federation for 100 years. So that basically means since the show Enterprise, where the Klingons look just like they did in the TMP films through Nemesis, and all through TNG and DS9...and nothing like they do in this incarnation (yet another reason to see this as a reboot). The Klingon houses that end up making the Great Council we are exposed to in TNG, are not united, which is what the main Klingon leader is wanting to do with a holy war against the Federation. Interesting thing is it is mentioned in one scene there has been no contact with Klingons, then we are told (implied through flashback) Burnham's family was killed by Klingons, when they attacked an Earth-Vulcan (non-Federation?) outpost. Those two revelations come off almost like a continuity error within the same episode, that someone caught, and proposed a line to fix it.

 

10. The things that I kept thinking throughout seeing the whole episode was why is this not in the 25th century (post nemesis) instead of a decade before Kirk's command, and why do we have to have Burnham have that Sarek connection? Would have worked a lot better if there were no TOS connection. I know it is probably all about name recognition. But this should have been a post nemesis setting. Therefore, I have to just pretend this is yet another timeline or universe to accept it.

 

Overall reaction is "Eh... well, I don't hate it." But can't say I find it very compelling to watch. I will likely catch the rest of the season when it finally comes to Netflix, but not enough for me to watch and pay for CBS All Access. If CBS's plan was to have Star Trek Discovery as the worm on the hook to lure in more All Access subscriptions, then I think all those who predicted a flop might be right. Also, it is basically as I feared...Abramsverse brought to the small screen. But I doubt we will see any direct connection to the Abramsverse. I also get the impression they will ignore previous canon, while remaining silent on whether it is prime-verse or not, until people just stop asking. I think if one decides early on this is a reboot or reimagining, and not the Star Trek you grew up with and love, you will have a better time accepting it. If you try to connect it to TOS, you will drive yourself crazy.

[pavonis]

You noticed toilet paper in one of the episodes? I don't recall seeing it.

 

I enjoyed the story and loved that the plot was fast-paced. The writers sprinkled it with lots of continuity details and references to other series and events in those series, and I think it works quite well as a chapter in the ST canon.

[Guest El Chalupacabra]

You noticed toilet paper in one of the episodes? I don't recall seeing it.

 

I enjoyed the story and loved that the plot was fast-paced. The writers sprinkled it with lots of continuity details and references to other series and events in those series, and I think it works quite well as a chapter in the ST canon.

I was joking there, but the deltas seem to be every where.

 

Glad you liked it. Not really my cup of tea, though. Mileage will vary.

 

Like I said, I didn't hate it. But not compelling enough for me to subscribe to CBS all access. Just seems really clunky at times, and mostly slow until the last 5 minutes.... at least the first episode. Most of it was boring exposition, or bok bok plahk mok tok Klingon speak. Let's go investigate a radiation field with an unknown ship in an EV suit, rather than sending an unmanned probe or a shuttle craft. Let's leave sickbay half naked and run to the bridge during radiation treatment because a call to the bridge won't do. Let's commit mutiny against a captain who is your surrogate mother figure, because your adopted Vulcan dad tells you a story how Vulcans dealt with the Klingons 200 years ago (not very logical!).

 

If it survives, I'll likely check STD out on netflix. But just completely confirms my misgivings that I had. Should have been marketed as a reboot from the start.

[pavonis]

The Klingon speak got old quickly. I think it was clear the actors were just not able to enunciate with the full face prosthetics (and those teeth), and not really knowing what they're saying removed a lot of the emotion from their dialogue. I can appreciate the more alien look for the Klingons, but they went a little too far with it. First look at Klingon ears, though, as far as I recall. So that was neat.

 

I think that the Klingon Empire has, since the 2160s apparently, been more self-involved than in any other era of TV Trek. Not surprising, since they love fighting so much, they'd naturally engage with each other more often than anyone else. I think that the rise of the Federation over the preceding century was so slow the Empire didn't realize that these individual species (Humans, Vulcans, Tellarites, and Andorians) were becoming a successful and unified entity. It would be a completely foreign polity to them, having usually faced individual species before, and either conquering them, bullying them, or just leaving them alone. T'Kuvma's effort to unite the Great Houses explains the intense rivalry between the UFP and KE depicted in the Original Series 2260s to the 2290s. They finally realized they had a real competitor out there and needed to stop bickering with each other. It at least has the virtue of explaining why the Klingons hadn't conquered the entire Alpha Quadrant before then - they didn't really become a unified power in the quadrant until they had something to resist together.

 

The entirety of the first two episodes is just prologue. I'm not sure what to make of that. It was a lot of money to spend on sets that will probably never appear again (except as recycled elements, or in flashbacks). Burnham's arc is some sort of redemption story, I guess? Or perhaps a growth from a purely pragmatic approach to space diplomacy (the Vulcans can get away with shooting at Klingons first because they're not hampered by emotional misgivings about attacking first if it proves necessary) to a more human approach, where you risk getting hurt by not shooting first, but it can pay off in the long run. I don't know.

 

The Shenzhou was said to not have any shuttlecraft manueverable enough to navigate the (typically ridiculously dense) asteroid field, so a person-sized craft was the only option. I guess a small probe would've been more pragmatic, but that's just typical Hollywood - send a human to do a robot's job, for the dramatic value.

 

I understand that most fans would prefer to move on to post-Voyager era stories, but I think that well is dry. The technology that was available to the characters by the end of the 24th century was so close to magic as to prevent any realistic (in-universe) obstacles from stymieing the characters. Of course, good writers would be able to find a way to make the incredibly advanced technology of that era part of the problems, rather than any easy technobabble solutions, but the science side of Star Trek's science fiction has always been way too soft. It's easier to fill in the gaps of the past, and remove any magitek that way, than to deal with the time-traveling, instant replication, nanomachinery, almost post-human tech of the late 24th century.

[Guest El Chalupacabra]

I understand that most fans would prefer to move on to post-Voyager era stories, but I think that well is dry.

 

Agreed, if they were going to connect it to TNG/DS9/VOY, but if they set it far enough after VOY like TNG did with TOS, and not referenced the 24th century, it would have been fine. In fact, a 25th century series that rarely, if ever mentioned the previous shows and movies, would have worked just as well as a hard reboot/reimagining.

 

I read somewhere that they will likely NOT connect STD to the Abramsverse because of the weird arrangement where Paramount is in charge of Star Trek movies, and CBS has control over TV shows. I also heard that there may be legal reasons (aside from just doing a visual reboot) for STD not follow the designs of TOS, TMP era, or the Berman era, where they would be required to pay royalties to those who created the uniform, sets, and ship designs (IE the reason we don't see uniforms that resemble the Cage episode). Assuming that is true, it just begs the question: why not just be up front and do a full on reboot/re-imagining?

 

Oh well, too late and water under the bridge. Hopefully, they will just either never overtly call this the "prime" timeline (so far they haven't beyond what was said when it was still headed by Fuller...now he is long gone, I guess we can assume this isn't the prime timeline, if we don't want it to be.

[D-Ray Kenobi]

I liked it. If I were a bigger Trekkie, I'd be annoyed by some of the minor retconning and such. But I'm okay with it if it's in service of making for a better show. It's really hard to say if I'm still going to feel the same since these first two episodes were basically an extended cold open for the whole show, but I'm totally interested in seeing where it goes.

Also: Not to stir the pot too much, but so far The Orville is a better Trek show.