New Star Trek Series Rumblings

Tycoon Guy writes "TrekToday just posted a write-up about the next Star Trek series, containing info on all the characters. Here's a quote: 'Series V will indeed be set on a Starship Enterprise, under the command of human Captain Jackson Archer. The backdrop of the series will be the 22nd Century, at a time when starship travel was a relatively new endeavour, humans and Vulcans still had much to learn about each other, and the universe really was still filled with strange new worlds, new life and new civilizations.'" I guess I'd care more if the last 2 Trek series, and the last Trek Movie maybe, didn't suck monkey. The casting information reads just as bland as you would expect. I'm actually much more interested in tonight's premiere of The Lone Gunmen (X-Files spinoff). Please don't suck!

Hoax?

This seems very unlikely. The NCC-1701 that Captain Kirk commanded was the very first starship enterprise... and even the Enterprise B and C have been given crewnames(not matching that list). Also, didn't the producers previously deny the 22ng century setting?

Tired of the same old crap.

Maybe people are just tired of the same old political correctness, deus ex machina problem resolution, goofy technology (thousands of weapons, and not a one that leaves gibs; stuff that works or doesn't work as the plot demands), and utter lack of continuity.

The same old plots come up over and over again: resolving generations-old blood feuds in a few days, refusing to take or use over-powerful weapons, facing trial by god-like aliens, respecting alien culture (no matter how stupid), forced alliance between old enemies, etc.

TOS was okay when it was new. TNG was okay for those who hadn't seen TOS, or were pathetically desperate fans of the sort who can watch the same second-rate show a hundred times without getting bored of it.

Going from loading an optical illusion into the borg so their computers will crash to giving the shapeshifters an incurable virus is not creating a new story. We've heard it all before, the players just keep putting on new masks.
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Re:Please! No more Trek!

Remember the TNG episode where it turns out that key high-ranking federation officials had been taken over by little bug beasties? With their little bug beastie asses sticking out of the backs of necks? And how they managed to send a signal back to their homeworld, but were never seen or heard of again? That's because too many people wrote in saying it was too dark, too sinister, not 'Trek' like. Lots of people like their 40 minutes of spoon-fed morality play and nothing bad happening. Everybody else is too busy preaching to the choir on Slashdot to actually write in and express some dissatisfaction to the people who can do something about it.

Obvious Hoax, People!

Open your eyes!

Tell me where this supposed 'Enterprise' would fit into Trek History?

The first Enterprise, NCC-1701 was commanded by Christopher Pike, Robert April, then James Kirk.

The second Enterprise, NCC-1701-A was commanded by James Kirk.

The Third, NCC-1701-B was commanded by Captain John Harriman.

NCC-1701-C was commanded by Captain Rachel Garrett.

NCC-1701-D and NCC-1701-E were commanded by Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

None of the official Star Trek documentation lists anything of a ship called "Enterprise" prior to NCC-1701, and after the Barbados Patrol Craft commisioned in 1981. They're trying to come off as saying that this new series is Pre-TOS, but it doesn't fit.

Then, there's the crew. The doctor is supposedly an Exotic Alien. Prior to TOS, people from Earth had limited contact with extra-sol life forms. "The Doctor has filled Sickbay with all sorts of bizarre medical instruments, alien plants and spores, and stasis chambers with small, living creatures." No doctor would create a sickbay like this. Even Dr. McCoy's sickbay was a clean, sterile environment.

Then, we have names. The author of the hoax couldn't come up with any creative names, so they stole the names from various Star Trek sources:

Sub-Commander T'Pau (Sub Commander? This isn't a Romulan Ship...)
Admiral Forrest (DeForest Kelley, or "Leonard McCoy")
Admiral Leonard (Leonard Nimoy, or "Spock")
Commander Williams (William Shatner, or "James Kirk")
Tos (Well known acronym for 'The Original Series')

Plus, the sheet goes on to say that shooting begins in May - before casting is even complete?! For a series that debuts at the end of the year? Not likely.

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Re:The new Lone Gunman series...

The "fudging of technical aspects" is pretty annoying. In the pilot, the good guys are worried because the bad guys are "modulating our bitstream" and "scanning our services".

It's almost as bad as when the TNG crew solved problems by "reversing positronic flows". The difference is that 23rd century technology is completely fictional, whereas Lone Gunmen addresses real technology that many viewers are familiar with.

I expect that every episode of this series is going to have a couple of hacking-into-computers sequences, and I hope they're not all as silly as this. I don't expect technical accuracy. But why not put in somewhat-believable gibberish rather than complete gibberish? Non-techie viewers won't know the difference, but it won't turn off techies..

Sigh..

Sorry Taco - The Lone Gunmen sucked. Does anyone else have this urge to become a hollywood special effects supervisor so we can put an end to shit like this?

Excuse me - I have to go secure my cookies with my new sector editor so the spooks don't steal my new Socket-7 CPU or my USERDATA.INI file. Maybe I should defrag it to make sure the modem inside my CPU doesn't upload any information to the internet..

Re:Please! No more Trek!

Wow, those are a lot of points you make... and exactly how many episodes of the various series did you watch to figure all that out?


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Re:The new Lone Gunman series...

Not to mention the six or seven totally leap-of-faith correct conclusions that Byers draws during the episode. I really like TLG on X-files, and was dissapointed with the pilot. Lee Harvey Oswald having sex-changed into a hacker babe was the nth straw too many.

I hope it picks up, because, man, what a great show concept for nerds.

-m

Hrm...

So this would be Star Trek, the 0th Generation?

The new Lone Gunman series...

The new Lone Gunman series is gonna suck.

The problem with really great supporting characters is that they're really great supporting characters -- you usually just can't give 'em enough to do on their own. Think of all those spin-offs that failed horribly; the only ones I can think of which succeed are complete departures from the original premise (for example Fraiser is technically spun off from Cheers, but is in all important respects completely unrecognizable as a derivative).

The Lone Gunman were barely enough to pull off an episode that was mostly them (the DefCon Vegas convention epp, and even that one had a lot of help from Scully).

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Re:Tired of the same old crap. _ what I'm sick of

I agree totally! the worst thing about star trek is the politically correct puppy loving pink plastic crap they do!

On voyager, every other show someone mutinys for 40 mins and they appologize to janeway in the last 5 and its all cool.

Id like the show to be a bit more like the real military. Anyone who mutiny'd would be dead by morning.

It's Arnold Rimmer!!!!

Lt. Commander Malcolm Reed: Armory Officer. British. Late 20s - early 30s. In the new age of humanity's enlightenment, Reed is a bit of a throwback. He's a 22rd Century "soldier", all spit and polish and by-the-book. Reed is filled with contradictions. Despite his near-obsession with munitions, he's soft-spoken, shy and awkward around women. When testing a new weapon, he's liable to put on a pair of space-age earplugs because he doesn't like loud noises.

Does he also invent new types of salutes, and unclog chicken soup dispensor nozzels?

--
"How many six year olds does it take to design software?"

Re:It could be interesting....

Voyager is nothing compared to DS9.

I used to have a very low opinion of Voyager, but recently I started watching a few episodes, and I'll be damned if it hasn't greatly improved. Of course now that they finally get some decent storylines the series ends.

Havn't you ever noticed that all the episodes of Voyager are the freaking same???

I guess TNG inured us to that. "Another entity made from pure energy? What if we reconfigure the sensor array to produce ?"

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ST Historians: Please Help Me...

I'm not totally clued up on my ST History, but:

Is this series before or after the set up of the UFP? If it is after, then logically the Enterprise would have an NCC designation.

However, we know that the TOS Enterprise must be the first NCC Enterprise, otherwise they wouldn't keep putting on the A, B, C suffix...

And another thing... in ST:TMP after the alien intelligence infilitrated the crew member's body, they took her on a tour of the Enterprise and they passed through a rec lounge (or similar) and mentioned "all these craft were called Enterprise" with pictures of the AC, Space Shuttle, and a few others. I can't remember the details exactly, but is this new Enterprise going to look like one of those, or are they going to fix that in the Directors Cut?
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Re:Please! No more Trek!

Actually, from what I heard at a Trek convention, the reason these aliens were never heard from again is that the Trek story editor changed soon afterward. This is partly why Trek TNG had trouble getting and keeping cohesive continuing storylines--they went through something like 15 different story editors, and with each change, old story elements that were the former story editor's favorite project got lost. The same thing happened for those fish-like aliens that were kidnapping members of the Trek crew into another dimension and performing anatomical experiments on them in a later season--they dispatched a probe into this dimension, but were never seen again.
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Re:I Seriously Doubt This...

"You just can't bring back the 60's mentality. Star Trek is an issues show, and any issues that correspond with the TOS era from the 60's just don't exist anymore."

The 60's thing has been done. The logical next step is obvious:

Q: What predates the 1960's?
A: The 1950's!

They could dress all the girls in poofy pastel dresses, all the boys would wear either light blue college jackets or black leather, depending on if they're good guys or bad guys, and all the people in engineering could wear black horn-rimmed glasses.

And I'm sure they could squeeze out a least a season or two with just the storyline of pinko aliens trying to take over the universe.

Scary thing is, I'd probably watch that.
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Re:Please! No more Trek!

Holy Cow! That was the best episode of The Next Generation IMHO!

I always wondered what happened with that line of the story and why they never further developed it, after all, at the end the worm creatures had managed to send a signal out into deep space before Riker and Picard could blow his host up.

I was eagerly awaiting a follow up with some sort of invasion force that was to do battle with the Federation.

That two part? episode had the best suspense of any of TNG episodes. Too bad people thought it was too dark and ruined it for the rest of us.

Besides people shouldn't say that Star Trek doesn't have it's dark side. The old series had dark moments like when Kirk was split in two with a good half and an evil half, or how about when innocent seeming kids killed their parents via a supernatural force and then tried to take over the Enterprise? Or how about "Cat's Paw" or the "Gamesters of Triskelion"? Two other very dark and medievalish episodes from the original series?

Non-recurring characters

Commander Williams

Admiral Leonard

Admiral Forrest

Anyone else see a pattern here?

Re:Obvious Hoax, People!

At the end of Kirk's 5 year mission, the first Starship Enterprise (NCC-1701) was about 20 years old. Assuming that Robert April (first Captain of that ship) and Christopher Pike (who was Captian immediatly before Kirk) each flew a 5 year mission, that leaves 5 years between Captain April and Captain Pike that is unaccounted for. I think that this is where the new series will be set.

As for your implication that the names are a hoax...

Yeah, you're probably right.

Star Trek in the 29th century

While I think the premise of showing the future history of Trek in Series V will be cool, what I'd really like to see is the Trek universe several centuries after the TNG, DS9, Voyager escapades. Similar in with what they did for TNG with respect to TOS. Set it 78 (or 500!) years in the "future" and let us know what has happened in the meantime and what new challenges await.

Let's see some more of the 29th century Federation Timeship Aeon! ( Future's End, I & II [startrek.com] , Voyager, Season 3). How many more wonders of space can they create for Series V? Let's see the wonders of time that confront the crew of a Federation Timeship. Hell, if they wanted to show some Trek history, then write an episode w/ Cpt. Braxton returning to "fix" the timeline in the 22nd century and do it there.

I just wonder how soon the premise for Series V will wear itself out. A 29th century will at least give the writers a whole new playing field. I honestly think a radical departure from what they have done in the past is the only way this francise can keep itself going without a break after 14 years.

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Pre-Kirk Star Trek

As soon as Roddenberry was too sick to maintain creative control TNG got all sickly liberal. Even the Ferengi turned into cute Munchkins. So is there hope it will go back to the original idea and maybe, just maybe, actually kill the bad guys instead of understanding them? Is the creative talent of Hollywood actually creative?

Maybe it will be before they have a prime directive to circumvent as a plot gimmick every other episode. Maybe there will be "insensitive" ear jokes about the Vulcans and vice versa. Maybe there will be pre-catastrophe Klingons who still look like humans.

Maybe there will be only one plot per episode.

Re:ST Historians: Please Help Me...

I know it really ticks you nerds off when Star Trek isn't logically consistent, but who the fuck really cares? Take off your spock ears.

I suppose they should do a special Directors Cut of Wrath of Khan because a genitically engineered superman didn't really rule half of Asia in 1986.

Why all the negativity?

It seems like many people think anything since the TNG series sucks. Why?

Do you even know *why* DS9 was so different from TNG? Because TNG was starting to get boring with all those nice and almost flawless characters and another series like that would be very boring. Instead, DS9 was different. A lot more shades of grey, flawed characters with dark sides and yes, perhaps not always the most positive view of the future.

Gene wouldn't have liked it that way. Well, wake up: we were not exactly getting along with the Klingons and Romulans in TOS, are we? Sure, there was no large war like the Dominion one, but there was conflict. (actually there was plenty of war, just not during the timespan of the series)

I'm glad DS9 explored some new grounds. Not yet another starship, but a station. Many reoccuring characters. True, a soap-like arc, but therefore also bigger story arcs and some continuity I *like* in TV shows.

As for Voyager: again something else. Away from Starfleet. While I would agree that could have played out better at times, the concept was good and it created some nice shows. The whole Hirogen arc was terrific. Seven of Nine is a babe but also gave us room to explore the Borg and I think they did a fine job there most of the time.

Last but not least, Insurrection. Come on, it wasn't that bad. Stop comparing it to First Contact. We all know that one was better. Look at it this way: it was definitely the best odd-numbered movie.

I am sure the new series will have shows that suck. And I am sure some shows will be very interesting and exciting to watch.

And if you really think Star Trek sucks nowadays, just ignore it and watch reruns of the shows you did like or watch other series and movies.

Re:I Seriously Doubt This...

Also ... am I the only person to nice this: take a look at the names of the 'Admirals' toward the casting list. Admiral Forrest. Admiral Leornard. Admiral Williams. Make the last one singular ... and don't you have the first names of the actors playing the lead charaters in the original series? I find this very suspicious.

Note: The Admiral names may be placeholders (i.e. they haven't decided on names quite yet for the ancillary character)

Best reason not to: time travel SUCKS!

Time travel works for the occasional episode, or standalone work of fiction, viewed in isolation, purely for its "wierd thought" value. The paradoxes of time travel are fun to think about once or twice a year, but a series based on free-roaming time travellers would just be stupid.

Time-travel paradoxes are always resolved by fiat: "Yes, today you can go to yesterday and murder yourself; it doesn't really matter, as a time-traveller, you're insulated from the effects." "No, even if you don't do anything important, you'll return to a dramatically different universe." It gets boring and obnoxious quickly.

The only logically consistent bidirectional time-travel is one in which a new parallel universe is created every time someone makes a jump backwards. Which means that you never actually accomplish anything by time travelling, which is totally unsatisfying when you're faced with it for more than an hour or two.

There's just no way to make a good time-traveller series.
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Re: Babylon 5

Agreed.

Someone kept pestering me to watch the re-runs of B5 on Sci-Fi (I missed the entire original run), and I was very pleasantly surprised by the quality and cohesiveness (it helps that it was almost entirely written by JMS instead of an army of vying authors). I've never liked DS9 or Voyager very much, and this new series doesn't sound promising either :/.

There's a report [post-gazette.com] that the 13 Crusade episodes are getting shown on Sci-Fi (which JMS has apparently confirmed), as well as a possible new B5 movie (which is more realistic than Crusade itself being picked up as a production series I think).

I guess my point is that people looking for good sci-fi on TV don't have to settle for Star Trek or the dreck in Sci-Fi's original shows... (I also found it very amusing that TNN is getting the Next Generation re-run rights).

Please! No more Trek!

Damnit! Let it die already!

The people in charge have proven they cannot write themselves out of a wet paper bag....well actually they can, but it requires a new particle of the week and 40 minutes of pure Celine Dion-grade melodrama. And no matter how bad or potentially life-changing the whole experiance is, no one will remember it ever again. There will be no mention of it, and all it's effects will be purely short term.

This pisses me off like nothing else.

- The Trek writers cannot develop characters that are remotely believeable. Only mindless, one dimensional cliche's.

- They cannot handle character development. They tried on DS9, but it was always herky-jerky and forced. People didn't develop over time, they developed in one of their two or three designated character development episodes. Even then they couldn't convince anybody with an IQ above 74 that it was remotely natural and believeable. At the end of TNG, everybody was almost exactly the same as they were Season 1. Let's not even mention Voyager.

- They cannot handle long-term story arcs. The Trek way is to start a war in one ep and forget about it for oh......8 episodes or so, with a few infrequent cut and paste mentions here and there. Even then, you can forsee the outcome 3 seasons in advance. Their "surprises" are incredibly weak and convoluted. God forbid they start a conflict in an ep that isn't the season finale!

- No character ever dies unless the actor playing them asks for more money or quits in frustration when the writers can't think of anything to do with them. Everybody has their nice 6 year contract.

- The writers cannot come up with a new and exciting story, most of it is recycled from other Trek shows, and even if they can write a script you could consider "passable" everything is neatly wrapped up by the end of the hour.

- Did I mention the Trek universe has zero consequences?

- The surroundings are always sterile and unrealistic. Unless you count the one, single "plot-device-personal-possesion" each major character has.

- Everyone is obsessed with the 20th century and makes references almost exclusively to this time period.

- The solution to any problem is a particle-of-the week/technical thing we have never heard of before. While the "realistic" and "logical" soltion is impossible because of veteron radiation or something.

- The Federation believes itself to be infallible.

- All bad guys are one-dimensional caricatures who either die or come around to the infallible Federation way of doing things. Not to mention the fact they look like 50 other aliens we have seen.

I could go on for hours.....is it any wonder why a lot of people who watch B5 for long enough get so disgusted with Trek?

It's depressing to think the brain-trust behind the past decade of incresingly mediocre Trek has been handed the reigns once again.

Oh well, let's hope "Crusade" comes back.

Any Trek refugees are welcome in the land of Babylon 5, right now Season 5 is winding up on SciFi. Season 1 should begin again on March 9th.

I can't wait

I hope they brink back yoda, he is my favorite star trek character. Since he trained jedi for over 800 years, I am sure that he was around when the federation was formed. This would be a wonderful tribute to Gene Roddenbery: May the Force be with You.
This message was encrypted with rot-26 cryptography.

I want something DIFFERENT!

Damnit, I wish they'd come up with a storyline which DOESN'T involve a Federation crew, but still in the Star Trek universe. Something where the crew isn't all the "best of the best", and always going around preaching goody-goody stuff.

Maybe a trader-of-ill-repute (read: smuggler) operating on the fringes of Federation space, in a ship which is constantly in need of repairs and/or imaginative engineering, and where the basic goal is survival first, money second - and the great lengths they go for the second will often result in desperate moves to do the first.

They could have a female Klingon "captain", who has a tendency to get drunk, with the resultant havoc :)