JackfnBurton

PET PEEVE: I have a problem with people who have a problem with "moral of the story" as a plot point. Why the bad reaction to morality, anyway? Like sunlight on a vampire to some of you. Morality is only ambiguous to the cruel, the dumb and the intellectually lazy.

I never remembered preaching in any episode, just characters who laid down their convictions with public clarity.

If strong-willed characters don't appeal to you, go watch your characters (who ironically don't seem to have much character) as they weakly meander their ways through life on another show if you must, but is it really necessary to try to shit all over other folks' good time?

munkles

If its common phrases have entered the pop culture language
it dosent necessarily make it cheesy.It a testiment to its enduring popularity

The aspergers characters allowed them to ask interesting questions about human nature.To my mind only data fulfilled this role,spock classed himself as full vulcan and barely tolerated his human crewmates.exploring humanity?not really.Odo barely tolerated solids either he was only interested in them in so far as he could predict thier actions and behaviour and do his job better and of his kira obsession.
seven of nine ex borg barbie an terrible actor she was more about catsuits and anger than exploring humaity.

It has alot of potential and could still be as relevant today as it was in the 90s .
Countinuity bad??would first contact have had half the impact if they hadnt already set up the borg in the series?sorry dont believe it for a second its merely helps create a consistant fictional universe.

Takes specail talent to so completely miss the point KUDOS to you

jesustonight

...and hey, there's a character with Asperger's doing much of the dramatic heavy lifting on Boston Legal as we speak. ;)

TheAlmanac

As for Star Trek's various incarnations. DS9 and VOY were actually my favorites. I didn't love any of them because every single envisioning of star trek is horrendously sexist and racist. It makes me ill. DS9 and VOY were the lightest offenders - it allowed me to actually watch the shows without wanting to put my foot in the TV. So I didn't catch all those 'but they did this EXACT PLOT' in TNG/TOS episodes that most people complained about.

And I do concur about Voyager being filled with missed opportunities. A little crew revolt, Maquis subversion, desertions, or actual peril due to inability to resupply. Granted, such...continuity errors....are staples of the Trek franchise.

Babylon 5 was amazing. BSG is superb. Firefly will always hold a dear place in my heart. Star Trek? meh.

draconismoi

MonsantoWestinghouse

oldandintheway

tristansluthien

notafan1

NeoPoliticus

The Federation, clearly, is meant to represent the alliance of the good western democracies, although the subtler point is that the dominance of humans (remember the Klingon ambassador ranting about the Home Sapiens clearing house?) mirrors how the USA dominates NATO, G8, NAFTA, WTO, and all the other western states. And every time we see Earth it's clean, safe, temperate, nicely landscaped, full of pleasant well-dressed people - as if the whole world had become Northern California. No wonder SFHQ is in San Francisco.

Klingons were originally stand-ins for the Soviet Union, but after that evil empire collapsed they were replace by the just-slightly kinder and gentler Klingons we know now, with whom there are many parallels to contemporary Russia.

Romulans, though idiomatically Roman, are the Chinese. Originally the poorer allies of the Klingons, they are now bigger and badder - just like the real PRC. Lots or oriental allusions about them, starting with the eyes.

Vulcans are the Japanese. Originally highly militaristic, they are now peaceful, rational, philosophical and into aesthetics. They're cousins of the Romulans, just as Japanese culture is related to China. Roddenbury spent some time in Japan and developed a great affection for the country.

Ferengi are the Arabs. Wily traders who always squabble among themselves, they like living large and occasionally make great scientists.

Cardassians are the Germans. Conquerors with class, they always end up losing their wars. Especially bad blood between them and the...

Bajorans are the Israelis. They rule just one planet (but have a large diaspora) that was recently liberated after a horrible oppression, and are pulled between modernism and their religious traditions. The Fed/USA is their protector.

The Dominion is India. A conglomeration of many different peoples - just like the Subcontinent. Their social/political organization mirrors the caste system, which would make the Founders the Brahmins, the mystical priestly class that is ultimately in charge. By extension the Jem'Hada could be the Sikhs, which is a traditionally military, while the Yorta represent mercantile castes.

Finally the Borg represent Globalization. This is the relentless and unstoppable movement that obliterates all cultures and societies before it, incorporating aspects it finds useful and homogenizing everything and everyone else into a soulless, high-tech nightmare. Imagine the multinational suits sitting high in their great, black, angular skyscrapers, peering down at the protesters and muttering "resistance is futile."

Burncrafter

BTW, Star Trek is just a damn TV show/movie franchise/cash machine, not a way of life. Maybe a cult. But not a religion.

victheremin

Setting aside the fact that none of you working on this would have jobs blogging about science fiction were it not for STAR TREK bringing it into the mainstream culture, prejudice against those with a genetics-based disability is just SO personally attractive.

Demeaning someone based on a personality disorder is too subtle for a mass audience, though. You might want to try a genetic factor which can't be missed, say, skin color. After all, some people prefer their entertainment bigotry to be "more honest, more open."

Davidkevin

And don't get me started on beaming! I'm the last one who'll voluntarily jump into an atomic faxmachine! Food, yes. eBay Orders and Mail, yes. Me? Hell naw!

Klappstuhl

Instead they ran back to the old cliches, old ideas, old aliens.

Let's face it, whether because of fear of the fandom or creative drought, the franchise simply has no new ideas.

AslansTraveller

assho

The illest wind

Holly/Magnolia/Stabby

Yes I know everyone is entitled to their opinions, but if you're going to bash on the movie because you think it's a bad idea that's one thing, calling us names and firing up every single anti-trek commenter is something else entirely.

I agree with you in the fact that the new Trek movie so soon after Trek's second near death experience is a bad Idea, and that Trek needs to go away for awhile to have it's fanbase resurge and hopefully prevent the franchise from eternally dying. But I think this was a stupid way to make that point, Charlie.

~JYH

JYHASH

dave the wet sprocket

Thank you.

Goldnite

It's just as well. I grew up with TOS in reruns and loved it. Liked some of TNG and DS9. But it really should just die. There's no point to it anymore.

pandaba

destiny614

I grew up with TNG, enjoyed DS9, and gave Voyager a sincere try until bailing long before Seven of Nine came on the scene. It was poorly thought out story-wise, with shallow character development. For all the hoo-ah about the first female starship captain, they sure as hell didn't do anything QUALITY with it.

I agree that ST should move forward rather than dwell in the past and backstory, because that well is dry. Problem is, most anyone who has the imagination, vision, and talent to construct a newer, future-based Trek is off doing something else.

Lastly, ST is dead because most of the ideals that launched it to the forefront are dead and gone. Back then, Americans still believed in something larger than themselves; we were more idealistic and hopeful regarding the future. Now we're jaded cynics who severely doubt humanity will ever consistently live up to its potential as a society.

Dave, I am confused by your comment. Are you confusing Young Crusher (who did have arrogant douchebag moments) with current day Wheaton? Because by most accounts these days he's a talented author and an all around great guy.

SweatsuitHaven

what an arrogant, rude little prick. anything that would contribute to his having a future in acting should be avoided at all costs. i don't begrudge the character his fans, but the man himself doesn't deserve acclaim.

dave the wet sprocket

So many stories can be worked from a new angle of his position as a Traveler. Wesley Crusher, as a teenager was most aspiring to be an Federation insider and completely internalized all of those beliefs. As an adult, with some non-star fleet experience and now an outsider in the federation, he could become a character who is reexamining all of those beliefs and retesting them.

Wesley's reinterpretation of what the federation means to him as an adult could serve as a proxy for the audience.

We use the character to ask, If the federation is decaying from within- are there ideals worth fighting for?

tallcat601

The former is what those who marked its decline devoutly wish; the latter is what those who saw something good in it would welcome.

CJH_esper

And for what it's worth: Star Trek did stop being relevant awhile back, but it's interesting to note that its cultural valence, if you will, has been filled in by Law & Order. It's not that L&O replaced it, but the shows are very similar. What it means exactly that L&O picked up speed as Star Trek lost it might be interesting to explore, and might offer clues as to how Trek could regain its relevance.

(If I had my druthers, it wouldn't be a reboot: I'd set Captain Wesley Crusher of the Enterprise up against a Federation that's started to rot from the inside and become increasingly hypocritical and insular, and throw in a couple of feuding major religions. To kick things off, bring back John de Lancie as an aged Q who explains that he's, um, aging because Something Big is fucking up the fabric of space-time and that Wesley needs to take Amanda Rogers under his care: her powers aren't working right, but her anomalous conception gives her some kind of protection against the Something Big, and the untrustworthy Federation leaders want her for their own purposes. Have Wesley be suspicious of Q, in standard Trek fashion, until he gets some kind of OK from the now-retired Picard. And then send the crew racing off into space with all of Starfleet after them. Just my thoughts, just my thoughts...)

moff

I take movies for what they are, i mean they are just movies. So i try to watch them under that kind of microscope. Do the story compel me, do i feel empathy for one (or more) characters, are dramatic impersonations at least good enough, etc. With DS9 i felt empathy, sympathy for various characters, not just the main ones (as with the older variations of the series). The one spin-off that "shall not be named never ever for some strange reason" grew bigger with me, but alas they canceled it before i got to love it.

To me this movie should start on the deviant universe (and since i live where english is not the main language i don't know it's name) to explore it and gain better knowledge of it and relating it to the standard one... It would make it dark, edgier and a whole lot of fun, albeit maybe not for the whole family.

Now, the most fun i got was from the cartoon series, when the crew saves the devil... But that's just me.

whiskey

I started in with Voyager - because it so happens that I was too young to get TNG (or TOS). And guess what? I love it and it's still my favorite of all the Trek series.

You can't watch 1 stray episode here or there and proclaim all of 'that' Trek is crap. On that note, I have watched them all.

I do agree that they could do better, like the current BSG but that honestly could not work in the 80s or 90s.

And BSG does have its own cheesy moments itself - S1 with Six & Baltar OTT stuff, pre-battle speeches, whatever. Sci-fi in general is cheesy and it's all well & good.

enjikunoichi

bigfoot780

@charliejane: Whatever. We (that is to say, me and whomever agrees with me, if anyone) feel differently about the matter, we does, my precious.

halloweenjack

tetracycloide

Wireless_Phil

comp_wiz101

braak

rich70734

tetracycloide

BlackConvoy2k8

Macloserboy

Kevin Pratt

More opportunities to explore the one topic that, while touched upon, they haven't explored nearly as much as they should. Sexuality.

Dax & Worf and their S&M proclivities? More out-and-out kinky sex, please!
Exploring homosexuality with actual characters instead of through Trills? That would be nice.
Polyamory, polyamory, polyamory...

So many things have been insinuated and alluded to on all of the Star Trek shows, but because certain things have been taboo, they haven't been explored to their fullest - and most of that stuff is related to sex. Star Trek has already done so much to bring ideas to the public that wouldn't ordinarily fly on television...we need Star Trek to keep pushing that envelope, and as new Star Trek shows/films are made, the way they approach controversial ideas can evolve with the times - and it will probably remain one step ahead of what the mainstream public would be willing to accept.

rafefan

Charlie Jane Anders

Thanks, I figured out the story line. Cloverfield is attached by the monster and in Clovefield II, Star Trek comes back from the future, destroys the Cloverfield monster and saves the day

Wireless_Phil

Enterprise seemed more interested in changing "known" history or just rehashing earlier scripts than dealing with the fact they were a new ship, exploring unknown space.

Voyager: after 2 or 3 episodes they just seemed to ignore that they were essentially "lost" in space and had no idea where they would be able to get repairs and supplies on their way home, no clue that people lost far from home would have problems, (would YOU be happy that your captain just had to F,Q and you would be home and she REFUSED?, where was the follow up from THAT?)

ssrat

Tribbles are fugly, that is fun and ugly.

MarlboroTestMonkey7

comp_wiz101

comp_wiz101

...oh yeah, the miniskirts...

though seriously, i have high hopes for the movie, and am thus doomed to disappointment. i never liked anything but the original series, so in my mind trek is completely wrapped up in nimoy and shatner. i don't know if they'll be able to escape from the deriviative storylines, but hopefully it'll help me break out of that old-school funk.

dave the wet sprocket

comp_wiz101

telekinetyk

1) Star Trek jumped the shark a while ago, only no one can agree on when/which show that happened;

2) B5 was better/oh no it wasn't/oh yes it was;

3) We should move on and do something fresh and exciting... like Known Space or Neuromancer, both of which are decades old.

I myself think that the basic setting could still work, but that it would have been better to let it rest for a while. Voyager and Enterprise could have been OK, except that UPN tried to use them as the cornerstone of their failed network and interfered with the shows excessively.

Oh, and Charlie Anders: Have a care referring to someone else as a wanker in a post in which you repeatedly use the royal "we". It's just your opinion, Charlie; leave out your invisible friend.

halloweenjack

Kounji

sumocat

TruculentandUnreliable

Also: my friends insisted that I watch Evangelion, and they kept saying, "It makes sense if you really, really think about it."

I'm a pretty clever guy, sometimes, but that shit didn't make any sense.

braak

I got up and turned off the tv.

Why the hell do I want to watch a show about the future that's utterly safe? How can I relate to people who don't even get angry and are apparently really turned on by mapping nebula and looking at moss and lichen samples?

Sci-fi should be about ideas and character. About humans (or whathaveyou) facing uncertainty and bringing all their emotional, cultural and historic baggage too.

Alot of Star Trek started to look like corporate training videos for some creepy future cult.

shudderstep

(nice comment re: Heroes and Watchmen)

DocGratis

ganirambis

EMoShunz

Santoroski

All that's happening now is the act of going through his wallet, looking for loose change.

GreyGander

JennaW, Internet Tough Girl

JennaW, Internet Tough Girl

I LOVE-LOVE-LOVE Doctor Who, old and new. Love. Even the bad sets during the old days. I freaked when the Daleks first displayed hovering tech during Sylvester McCoy's tenure. Torchwood is wretched, but I have great hopes for season 2 with the added Freema and Spike flavorings. And The Sarah Jane Smith Adventures are made of all kinds of awesome.

JennaW, Internet Tough Girl

TruculentandUnreliable

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.

WickedGlee

TruculentandUnreliable

tetracycloide

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.

Inkymonkey

"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?

wishnevsky

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.

Malky

NefariousNewt

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!"

JennaW, Internet Tough Girl

@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)

EMoShunz

JennaW, Internet Tough Girl

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

TruculentandUnreliable

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.

Greg_Nog

Annalee Newitz

NefariousNewt

NefariousNewt

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...

DocGratis

[www.stardestroyer.net]

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

EBone

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

TruculentandUnreliable

tetracycloide

JennaW, Internet Tough Girl

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.

JennaW, Internet Tough Girl

i now prepare for the wrath of the traditionalists.

EMoShunz

Steven

NefariousNewt

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.

Macloserboy

pax, smn

stephen_newberg

NefariousNewt

Zlevee

TruculentandUnreliable

OMG! Ponies!

Antiheroine

JennaW, Internet Tough Girl

"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.

picardia

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.

JennaW, Internet Tough Girl

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

strider_mt2k

Koreanish

Koreanish

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

TruculentandUnreliable

Imipolex_G-Unit

EMoShunz

EMoShunz

dave the wet sprocket

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.

wishnevsky

aspiringexpatriate

strider_mt2k

Macloserboy

OMG! Ponies!

Pop Socket

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.

NefariousNewt

tetracycloide

picardia

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

TruculentandUnreliable