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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  29 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: November 20th, 2024

This is an interesting discussion. I've had an abiding hatred for Kurtzman & Orci for more than a decade but I actually kinda like the direction they dragged Star Trek. A buddy of mine storyboarded the first couple movies; it was abundantly clear that they were doing something completely new while also doing what they could to preserve enough canon to keep the nerds on board.

There's a tricky balance to strike there. On the one hand, Roddenberry & Co populated a pretty interesting universe that has lots of things to explore. On the other hand, it's been tromped through incautiously over the ages so you don't have enough internal consistency to explore it without tripping all over yourself unless you exercise some skill.

Star Trek has traditionally followed a nautical metaphor, which is interesting because Gene Roddenberry was a pilot. Star Wars splits the difference between aerial & nautical with fighters whizzing around everywhere (and bombers... smdh) but Star Trek, for whatever reason, rarely ventures beyond "runabout." That gives you a basic "ocean-going vibe" that, whenever Trek fucks with it, turns to shit. At the same time, one of Roddenberry's maxims was anything that happened during an episode had to be resolved by the end of the episode, returning the show to ground state and enabling the episodes to be watched in any order. Kurtzman's direction has been definitely not that which started out interesting but collapsed under its own weight after a couple seasons. There are only so many places to go if you stick with the nautical metaphor and without the nautical metaphor is it really Star Trek?

    Get some young hungry directors, producers, and writers passionate about really great science fiction TV, and tell them to pitch me the next Trek as if nobody had ever heard of Star Trek, Starfleet, the Enterprise, or Kirk.

There was definitely an attempt at this. Kurzman and Orci were the it-girls of sci fi when JJ Abrams lens-flared the shit out of Star Trek in 2009. They blew up Vulcan and tied off the entire prior universe behind a time paradox just to shut up the convention-goers. But they also ignored Ron Moore & Naren Shankar, both of whom grew up on TNG and both of whom have done some stellar shit. Gene Roddenberry was a notorious pain in the ass to work with; I have no way of knowing this but I'll bet Eugene is definitely preserving enough canon that the Roddenberrys keep control of the show.

    Set an entire series in the Ferengar. A series featuring the Marquis.

It's worth pointing out that Deep Space Nine was originally envisioned as a vehicle for Ro Laren, newly-promoted Maquis double agent, to operate as a bordertown sheriff out past the easy enforcement of Star Fleet. Unfortunately Gene Roddenberry couldn't keep his dick in his pants and Michelle Forbes noped the fuck out of working in the Star Trek universe until both Gene and his wife were safely dead so we got Hawk from Spencer For Hire instead.

    Maybe and entirely Mirror Universe series set in a fascist Federation.

Fuckin' they did an entire goddamn season of this on Discovery and it was super-tedious.

    Even the Klingon Empire could be somewhat interesting.

I definitely got the sense that there was a Klingon gambit in the first season of Discovery. Unfortunately the new Klingons were tedious, uninteresting shithead analogs for Islam, rather than the promising culture developed by Ron Moore and explored through a few movies.

    But come up with a concept that isn’t “hey, look, we got the TNG crew out of retirement, please clap”

Star Trek is home to what, 5? 6? different concepts and I agree, what started out promising with Picard rapidly became Return to Gilligan's Island. Discovery is definitely an exploration of 'return to zero' writing. Prodigy was a new direction no matter how you slice it. Lower Decks has been almost entirely bereft of vintage characters.

    or “Hey, we heard you guys like Harry Potter, but have you seen Star Trek: in school”.

The Starfleet Academy idea became Lower Decks, which knew exactly when it should quit. Clearly the team still loves that Starfleet Academy idea which, if it's done right, might be closer to Riverdale than Harry Potter. I'll withhold judgment as I have done since it first reared its head in 2009. I get the sense that they really want to make that one work which is why they keep shelving it whenever it gets dicey.

    In short, start trying to figure out the interesting settings in your universe for great science fiction series, then make episodes that fully explore the concept and the settings.

Again, I feel like they're definitely trying to do this while also servicing the "we herd you leik Spock" contingent. Keep in mind that the median television viewer is sixty fucking five years old.