"We're tired of the clueless wanker with Asbergers who teaches us what it means to be human."

OMG so true! Though I still love all those guys, especially the wry holographic doctor.

I think they could reinvent Trek -- it's a pretty big universe, with room to modernize and grow, as it did with TNG and DS9. But I still can't believe they got somebody as good as JJ Abrams and then stuck him making a nostalgia-trip movie. He would've been a great person to genuinely come up with something NEW that might make Trek relevant again.

star trek actually died in 1994. everything star trek related since then has been some sort of reanimated zombie star trek wandering the air waves searching for the brains of aging fanboys.

@TruculentandUnreliable: All excellent characters, but symptomatic of Trek's plunge into the formulaic. That's why I hooked onto Babylon 5 -- it worked with its past, not just dredging it up when it was convenient, even as it pushed the envelope of discovery.

Trek suffers mainly as Marvel Comics is suffering: because the driving force behind it, that made it what it was, is gone. Roddenberry's death spelled death to ST as we knew it and as it could become.

The best Star Trek is being made by Ronald Moore over at BSG. Topical, controversial, and delightfully ambiguous. Berman should have been shoved out an airlock about a decade ago.

Ouch.

@picardia: As good as JJ Abrams? MI3 suggests otherwise. He's one of the biggest mistakes they could have made.

@tetracycloide: I'll go with that assessment.

Tribbles and GoF? Yes I was once a Trekkie. And that's just sad. the plot, not me being a former trekkie. So many reasons this should not have happened. But Abrams has been put on record, don't know if he voluntarily knew it at the time, but he has been quoted as saying that even when he thinks of new and better ways to rewrite whatever script they gave him, he can't. >>> The Strike! While there may still be features for another year and a half, after three to six months they'll stop being good.

It was always horrible, and an offense against Science Fiction. Its success has helped set back Science fiction, and kept SF movies firmly stuck in the 1950's. Ok, so "Blade Runner" was "The Space Merchants", which was 50's and "Star Wars" was a slight update of "The Lensmen" which was 30's, which makes "Star Trek" "Buck Rodgers" with a little Cold War and "Twilight Zone" stirred in.

Who cares? We need "The Eintseinian Intersection" to get us up to the real 60's, or Gibson's Cyber punk for the 80's. I don't even dare dream of "Old Man's War" or "Companion to Wolves" for another thirty years.

Well maybe "Red Thunder"

Bah.

i blame the boring theme music and lack of miniskirts.

i don't know, i just got nemesis on dvd for christmas, and i liked it a lot. granted it's not a prequel, but it is post early 90's.
i am a fan though, so as long as it doesn't really suck bad, i'm always up for new star trek/wars movies.

@dave the wet sprocket: lol. great handle btw.

@wishnevsky: Tribbles are totally ribofunk.

@NefariousNewt: So true. And this is why DS9 was on the verge of being ass, and why everything after it is ass.

@Macloserboy: I am frightened of this movie. Very frightened.

I liked Star Trek once, too. When I was a kid. But it didn't hold up as an adult.

In other words, YES...

@wishnevsky: or dare I say Niven's "Known Space" even?

Though the Kzinti are a bit Klingonesque in some respects, the "Man-Kzin Wars" alone covers a lot of ground.

@EMoShunz: OMG. Nemesis was SO BAD.

Me sending empathic instructions to Riker throughout the entire final fight scene: "Turn the lights up. Turn the lights up. TURN THE LIGHTS UP! TURN THE GODDDAMN LIGHTS UP!" Horrrrrrible movie. It couldn't even stay focused on its own internal plot "logic" long enough to have Riker outthink the bad guy rather than just have a stupid slugfest.

@Macloserboy: MI3 was pretty awesome, actually -- definitely much better than the first two installments. People stayed away in droves, but it was Tom Cruise they were steering clear of. (And who can blame them?)

"Lost," "Alias" -- all significantly fresher and more fun than anything the Trek franchise has offered in a while. A long while.

I think Paramount's decade-long insistence that somebody make a prequel movie is evidence of the kind of dumbfuckery that's turned Trek so stale since DS9. JJ Abrams is the only reason that I have any hopes for the film.

@NefariousNewt: Oh, come on. B5 had the worst cop-out ending to any series ever, INCLUDING THE SOPRANOS. And then they tacked-on that fart of a season 5. Way to not pay attention to everything you said was wrong with Trek, there, JMS.

@dave the wet sprocket: Excellent point, but I do believe the miniskirts are powerless without accompanying go-go boots.

@jennaw: Riker was too busy wondering where his TNG reunion cartoon "Gargoyles" went wrong.

@omg-ponies: Dude, don't knock "Gargoyles." Loved that shit.

@Antiheroine: miniskirts & go-go boots were my whole reason for liking the original series, and their absence from everything after is probably why I never got into the rest. I did once catch a DS9 episode where there was some sort of time travel to the era of the original series and Dax had to wear that uniform. Awesome.

@jennaw: I gave JMS a pass on that because trying to maintain a story arc through 5 years was a pretty trying feat, especially given he planned on stopping at season 4 but was more or less pressured by the studio into season 5.

Agree completely. Star Drek has been straight down hill since NG, and it only had its moments.

pax, smn

@picardia: It was an episode Alias pure and simple, inferior to both previous installments and given Alias was actually canceled by this time, people didn't even want it for free any longer. Cruise didn't help matters on his "crazy-as-fuck" tour, but it's a mistake to think it was only him. If being liable mattered that much, Britney's latest album would have bombed. It didn't.

They're doing the TV show again, so who better to get than a TV show guy? If you wanted something new and different he's not the person you go to.

@TruculentandUnreliable: DS9 was ground-breaking, dirt-under-the-fingernails Trek, and I was sorry to see it go. I still can't see why they didn't make a movie or two from it, rather than all this TNG or TOS re-treading.

Double ouch. I don't know that slamming Star Trek was a good way to endear readers to the blog. ;)

@jennaw: that's the problem, i'm not a typical "star trek geek fanboy" as i've heard people called. i enjoyed :Enterprise and :Voyager. the only movie i didn't enjoy (but was still worth renting) was Generations.

i now prepare for the wrath of the traditionalists.

@NefariousNewt: No, he didn't. It was the opposite. He planned on five seasons, rushed through four because he kept thinking he was going to be cancelled, and when he got a Hail-Mary renewal, he was like, "we can totally do this season five thing!" I remember hearing him talk about it with much bravado at (I think) a MarCon back in the day before Season 5 aired and everyone was asking him, "But what are you going to do with it now?" "Oh, lots. Nation-building and stuff." And then he let the network fire Claudia without FIGHTING FOR HER. Bastard.

And you don't get a pass for maintaining a story arc you planned out from the beginning and then ending it with a massive Deus Ex Machina. That's called bad writing.

@EMoShunz: It has nothing to do with tradition -- it was plain-ol' BAD. They set up that these guys are very sensitive to light and then no one thinks to just, y'know, TURN UP THE LIGHTS during the battle scenes? No one? Not one of our genius Starfleet folk? Then why did the plot spend so much time setting up that this was a vulnerability? No reason. Bad. Bad. Baaaad. And that's just the worst offense I remember all these years later. There were more.

@jennaw: to doubt the ending to B5 was as much of a cop out as evangelion's although i haven't seen B5's. to put things in perspective if the ending to B5 even made sense it's got more going for it.

@NefariousNewt: I'm not sure why they didn't, either. Maybe they didn't think it would be as commercially viable as something that re-hashes to old same shit? I thought that it had the best female characters of any of the Star Trek franchises (including Voyager, though I was glad to see a female captain).

@EMoShunz: Well, uh, there's no accounting for taste?

@EMoShunz: You may want to take a look at this review of Nemesis when you have a second or two:

[www.stardestroyer.net]

I love Trek, but this does a good job of summarizing why Nemesis is a horrible movie.

@jennaw: Angry Trek-B5 head to isle 4, angry Trek-B5 head to isle 4....
Oh there you are..

Time to start listing something about Trek & B5 you liked...

oh and... @EMoShunz:
YOU LIKED Star Trek V, the stupid god one?? You don't deserve wrath you deserve a CT-scan or a mercy killing... Shame shame...

@jennaw: Point taken. Which goes to show that even a good show can be ruined by the networks. I think if he'd been able to simply do the show the way he wanted from the beginning, the results would have been better in the end. And I was very sad to see Claudia Christian's character go. Ivanova was the single-best female TV science fiction character I had ever seen.

@jennaw: I'm so glad I didn't see Nemesis, rent it, or watch it on TV. I didn't like the idea from the start and it was just another lame attempt to keep TNG running way past its prime.

Look, I'm just going to come out and admit it: Star Trek: TNG is the reason why I bought a television. I grew up with two English teachers and we had no TV. Then when I was in college, a friend of mine said, "Hey check out this show." It was the third season of TNG. I was immediately hooked, and 5 months later I owned a TV. I miss that show, but most of all I miss the feeling that ST was relevant.

"The best Star Trek is being made by Ronald Moore over at BSG."

I wholeheartedly agree -- which is why I personally consider Deep Space Nine to be the last good Star Trek series. Pretty much everything interesting that's going on in BSG got auditioned in DS9: spies who can look like anyone, the balance between security and freedom, the effect of war on a fading superpower, the suave science guy with the wavy hair, etc.

DS9 represents what could have been the first stages of a newly relevant and intelligent Star Trek. Instead, we got Jeri Ryan in a damn catsuit.

I never really liked Babylon 5 in the first place. I know, I know.

And holy shit, I'm feeling insufficiently nerdy on this site.

@tetracycloide: I never finished Evangelion -- not a mecha fan and it moved too slowly for my postmodern attention span. However, its "bad" ending does not make B5's better or worse. I don't grade stuff on a curve ;)

@jennaw: weren't they running on emergency power? not sure, only saw it in theatre years ago and last weekend (i'm not the memorize the scene's type as mentioned in the article).

@TruculentandUnreliable: exactly my point. i went to a christmas party a few weeks ago and most of them there had similar tatse to me (believe it or not, this discussion was had at the party much to the chagrin of our wives). the circles i hang with just happen to have similar taste, bad as it may be.

@EBone: great journalistic integrity in that review :P

@DocGratis: story line was meh, but it was an enjoyable film. i'm actually of the even/odd school (st 1/3/5 - meh, st 2/4/6 - good)

@DocGratis: Okay, here ya go:

I loved DS9 (granting that a few episodes were clinkers) pretty much from start to finish

I loved B5 up until the atrocious end to season four. (I had a very similar falling-out with the ST:NG series with it's useless final season -- I, like Mr. Darcy find that my good opinion, once lost, is lost forever, sadly. -- but I still enjoyed the post-series movies until Nemesis came along.)

I love BSG.

I am *still* enjoying HEROES though with some reservations as season two middles. My thoughts on watching the season one finale were along the lines of, "And they said The Watchmen couldn't be filmed!"

@TruculentandUnreliable: Not everybody does. No shame in admitting it. Frankly, despite liking ST and B5, I'm more a "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" kind of science fictioner. There used to be a lot more humor in science fiction writing in the past; that never translates to movies/TV very well. ST:TOS used to have some funny bits but usually they were ant-climactic. ST:TNG tried to be funny at time but never pulled it off very well.

How about a reset?

It worked brilliantly for Doctor Who and BSG. New writing, new styles, new continuity.

Surely, in a time when people are afraid of terrorist organizations, oppressive governments and new weapons of destruction, the ideals of the original Star Trek can be made popular again.

@strider_mt2k: Right on... with the caveat that "Ringworld" was late 60's

"Mote" would make a movie. The deal now is that CGI can make anything visible, the problem is what to make visible. I would love to see VAnce's novellettes made into movies, or Cordwainer Smith. But the fact is that the industry is barely up to P.K. Dick, who died a long time ago, and wasn't a "smash planets" guy anyway.

If somebody has a few billion to waste, we could dive into "Dangerous Visions" as a start.

"Carcinoma Angels" anyone?

@annalee: That is pretty awesome, actually. I wasn't old enough to buy a tv when TNG was on the air, but my entire family (sans Mom, poor woman lost in a sea of nerds) would sit down and watch it together every week. I bought my Dad Season 3 for Christmas this year.

TNG is the only one that was any good for me, sorry to say. And nothing was sadder than watching the crew get older and fatter with each subsequent (wretched) movie that came out. Except Picard. Of course.

@TruculentandUnreliable: this site is a lot like the ocean, there's always a bigger nerd.

@NefariousNewt: Me, too, though I also gravitate toward really dark stuff, too. I like TNG, but I think part of the problem with it is that it wasn't funny, and it was almost too serious and too, I don't know...mainstream? Anyway, I loved it as a youngster, but as I get older and watch it, it's seems so unsophisticated.

I think the retro Star Trek movie is going to be fun because it looks more like a parody than an actual Star Trek movie.

Parody is good.

I agree with some of the commenters that Trek could be successfully resurrected, but you'd have to take it out of the hands of those who grip the zombie wheel of the franchise. We need to move forward, not backward, like Next Generation did.

@wishnevsky: I'll bet you five dollars that somebody's pitching Mote right now. It's probably terrible, but I'll bet it'll happen