Can Star Trek Be Saved? (lighter topic alert)

TV Guide ^ | 2/03 | Nollinger

[Bogey78O]

IMHO there is some good episodes of Stargate out there. And they actually have guns and shoot people. If wonders ever cease.

However to be PC they always break out the eye shields whenever they take out their weapons.

[clamper1797]

This is a quasi-military ship representing a government, not the Love Boat in space.

You got that right ... one thing I absolutely DO NOT MISS is the STUPID holodeck

[Bogey78O]

StarTrek 24?

[537 Votes]

As you can see, there doesn't appear to be much of a market for decent SF on TV.

Stargate SG-1 is cool. It amazes me how much this show, the most popular SF show on TV, gets overlooked in Internet forums, even though its mythology is orders of magnitude better and more consistent than anything to plop out of X-Files.

[discostu]

The movies have been the exception to that rule, which has helped them out. In a TV show you can't blow up the Enterprise, what are they going to ride next week? That would be like blowing up Adam-12 or the fire station in Emergency. And on some level the audience knows this, which makes threats to the ship less interesting. Killing off a character without there being a well publicized contract dispute with the actor would be nice too. One of the things that makes The Sopranos rock is that anybody can get offed, it's so engrained in the series that the first thing the actors look for when they get a new script is to see if their character survives. If Trip (a character I really like, not picking on anybody here) died the dramatic tension of the entire show would step up dramatically.

[Cold Heat]

It needs more testosterone. I need more testosterone

A tough thing to do with a gay actor.

In fact, most of the shows episodes have little in the way of testosterone.

It is a very feminine show throughout.

Not impressed by this series at all!

[Question_Assumptions]

Klingons worship battle, conquest and honor.

Bear in mind that the original Klingons were not beyond cheating, lying, and killing innocents to get their way. They poisoned the grain in The Trouble with Tribbles and used a disguised agent. Kor was killing large numbers of Organians to terrorize them. And let's not forget Kang's crew had agonizers to cause pain. Honorable? That's all the fault of that bloody music from the opening from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The Cardasians followed a similar path from scummy to OK.

[mikegi]

Jim, it's dead.

I didn't like the Next Generation and haven't watched any of the others. The characters and stories just weren't interesting. The future is boring! No sense of exploration, danger, etc. The only episodes I remember are the "Time Loop" crash-with-another-ship and the one where they pick up people from the 21th century who had died and were stored on a spaceship. I couldn't stand Picard with his condescending know-it-all crap (Stewart is possibly the worst actor around).

[AngryAmerican]

How to save Star Trek?

1) More violence
2) More sexual innuendo
3) Even more violence
4) Even more overtly obvious sexual innuendo

But all seriousness aside here

Give me a hero I can cheer for and a bad guy I can hate. THEY DON"T HAVE TO BE THE SAME PERSON EVERY WEEK!.

How about Star Trek - Special Aliens Unit?

[Bogey78O]

Heh...glad I'm not alone.

BTW...do you know England actually is a wekk ahead of us in the last half of every season. They actually know the secret behind Anubis. I read the spoilers and it's pretty intriguing.

[Republic of Texas]

You're correct there. If this was the covered wagon period of space exploration, you'd never know it watching Enterprise.

[Redcloak]

Captain Archer needs work. Others have made similar comments and for good reason. I just can't picture this guy's exploits one day inspiring a young Cadet Kirk.

[ArrogantBustard]

However, an overriding "story arc" would be an asset to a production like this, IMHO.

That's what made Babylon-5 excellent. They had a story to tell. They told it, episodically, over the course of five seasons, and then they ended it. They did the one thing far too many authors, producers, etc. in the SciFi/Fantasy realm cannot seem to do: STFU.

(I know, there was an abortive attempt at a follow-on series. It went nowhere. It also wasn't very good.)

[Billy_bob_bob]

Hmmm. That "real-time" premise just might work for an episode or two, I don't know about applying it to the entire series. Perhaps two or three episodes could be tied together in "real-time", and then the clock shifts forward a few days/weeks/months to the next set of "real-time" episodes? I could see that working.

[gbunch]

I consider myself somewhat of a Star Trek fan, mainly of the original series and a little of Next Gen. (Anybody else remember the '70's Saturday morning animated Trek? That was cool!) Guess I'm dating myself here...

Trek has had some great moments, but I long ago grew tired of TNG's blandness and repetition. Years after I abandoned it, I'd occasionally tune in to see how it was. It was ALWAYS, ALWAYS yet another lame episode based on a holodeck malfunction, or a mysterious planet covered in lava and noxious gases, EXCEPT for this one teeny little spot which - voila! - was inhabited by 20th-century humans. Puh-LEASE! That stuff works once, not fifty times.

Around that time (mid-late '90s), I'd seen bits and pieces of this then little known series called Babylon 5. What I saw was very very good, but I realized the underlying story was extremely deep, far-reaching, and complex. The ONLY way to watch it is from the very start, so I borrowed some tapes and did so. In a word: AWESOME! Complex storylines, terrifying alien races, characters with flaws, unpredictable and sometimes tragic outcomes, blood, guts, a**-kicking action - it's all there. I even read once that that B5 had raised the bar so much that the Trek writers were forced to take notice and act, since Trek's blandness was a stark contrast to the depth and fast pace of B5. (I never bothered to check if Trek improved; by this time I was forever spoiled!) If you have not seen B5, and want to do so, I say again: Begin with the very first episode, and watch it all in order. Questions raised in the first season or two are sometimes not answered until the fourth or fifth, so be patient. However, it's worth the wait, and one helluva ride along the way. It just gets better as you go, too.

By the way, the series was written as a 5-season arc, with a beginning, middle, and end. Sadly, it is no more. However, SciFi runs the series on weekday mornings, and it is about to start over from season 1, episode 1, beginning March 31.

The best source of Babylon 5 info is here.

[dyed_in_the_wool]

Three words: More Blue Goo!

[Bogey78O]

A great episode IMHO was the one where Picard encounters the alien device where he lives ut an entire life in a few hours.

[Question_Assumptions]

And you can't dip back into a series and try to survive by nodding to things in the original show. None of the Babylon 5 follow-ups have had any staying power.

I liked Firefly but it tried to hard to mirror Westerns. And Farscape spent too much time on disgusting bodily fluids and lost too much of its audience. Too bad, too, because it finally seemed to be getting back on track.

[Bogey78O]

Ah, I was talking more along the lines of a major storyline that follows several characters with a super-plotline but with each episode being a part of that plotline.

[neutrino]

Your suggestions are all good

1. MAKE IT OBVIOUS
2 MAKE IT MORE REAL
3 LET CAPTAIN ARCHER BE HEROIC
4 OPEN FIRE AND CLOSE THOSE PIE HOLES
5 GET US ON THE EDGE OF OUR SEATS

There are some other issues. They need to review their logic. Please recall an episode wherein the weapons officer fell down a cliff on a comet and broke his leg. Oh, come now. A comet? And the gravitational acceleration is what? Utter nonsense.

Then two episodes ago, we have T'pol getting some sort of MTD (mentally transmitted disease) due to being psychically raped by some mind melder. This is a ludicrous distortion of the original concept of mind melding; and the propaganda message was so blatant that I simply switched off the show. I didn't bother to watch the end of the episode.

The most recent episode has Archer arguing that the Vulcans and some other race should have peace and not fight anymore. One wonders if he's considered transmitting Kumbaya on all frequencies. I haven't erased it yet, but the previous episode, along with the previews of this episode, has convinced me to delete it...unwatched.

To fix the show, cut the social propaganda nonsense. Make it an interesting story. Quit making the Enterprise a warp-capable social service agency.

Maybe they could hire General Norman Schwarzkopf to teach Archer how to command...and how to talk and act like a commander.

And, next time Archer is in a fight for his life with some Suliban or other, phaser the (expletive deleted) and dispose of the body through the garbage chute!