The Death, and Rebirth of StarTrek

[kaikatsu]

The original ideas established in the original one planet / culture per episode translates poorly in large story arc formatting.

Oh for fuck's sake...

Now that I think about it that DID sound better in my head when I wrote it. What I meant to say was that the "oh look, let's visit a planet and solve the problem in a one hour episode" creates a "culture of the week" concept, and that is a lot less interesting than prolonged contact with a race.

(Provided of course that race itself is interesting. Voyager fucked up my poor Borg SO MUCH...)

Yes, nothing will help if the writers are retarded. But it's a start.

Just out of curiosity, why do you think that sophisticated, cerebral TV drama is more feasible now than it was, say, at the time TOS was produced? Special effects technology has advanced, of course, but Star Trek's writing has gotten stupider, not smarter, and so has the rest of television in my opinion.

I believe you can "talk about more" so to speak. The good guys don't always have to win. Issues like homosexuality and different religions can be brought up. I don't think these things could be as easily approached in the time of TOS. That's not to say they WERE intelligently approached in TNG+ either though.

As I said, it -can- be done, but we're not doing it.

I don't understand why anyone thinks an entire "mirror universe" series would be a good idea. It'd be the same one-dimensional arrogant morality of past Star Trek, only the main characters would be ridiculous cackling sadistic villains instead of ridiculous goody two-shoes.

A mirror universe without the stupid paradigms in star trek, and good writing, would be a good idea. The problem is, as the rest of my thread was arguing, is that a lot of these ideas would carry over.

We recently had a thread about this. The notion that the replicator invalidates economics is pure bullshit. A replicator is a convenient mechanism for transforming raw elements into foodstuffs or simple parts, and nothing more.

I don't think that the replicator destroys economics as a whole. However the majority of the economy is based on foodstuffs and goods that the replicator gets rid of. I'd like to see these ideas addressed. I'm not saying you can't have a stable economy -- but these things should either be addressed or gotten rid of. There's no reason to have it.

What difference does it make what the magic materials are named? <snip> There's nothing wrong with the Federation mining dilithium crystals to power their warp drives; there is something wrong when new materials are pulled out of writers' asses every week as an excuse to rule out use of the transporter or whatever.

I would argue that these two are closely tied. Getting rid of magic stuff you don't NEED would be the first logical step. However I'll grant the rest of your post -- it's not the name. It's the usage. I would argue that the arbitrary names create a CULTURE of pulling stuff out of one's ass.

The rest of your post follows logically from this point, and I agree.

So...
I...
say...

Bounce a gravaton particle beam,
Off the main defector dish,
That's the way we do things lad,
We're making shit up as we wish.
The Klingons and the Romulans,
Pose no threat to us.
Cuz if we find,
We're in a bind,
We'll just make some shit up.

[Spacebeard]

Just out of curiosity, why do you think that sophisticated, cerebral TV drama is more feasible now than it was, say, at the time TOS was produced? Special effects technology has advanced, of course, but Star Trek's writing has gotten stupider, not smarter, and so has the rest of television in my opinion.

I believe you can "talk about more" so to speak. The good guys don't always have to win. Issues like homosexuality and different religions can be brought up. I don't think these things could be as easily approached in the time of TOS. That's not to say they WERE intelligently approached in TNG+ either though.

Well, one could easily write a sophisticated and intelligent TV drama without involving any "controversial" topics. I don't think censorship is to blame for the sorry state of television writing; I think it's the economics of TV production, or perhaps how the economics are perceived by Hollywood executives. What they want is a show that will attract the widest audience for the lowest budget. That's why we get vapid, lowest common denominator shit like reality TV and "Star Trek: Voyager".

A mirror universe without the stupid paradigms in star trek, and good writing, would be a good idea. The problem is, as the rest of my thread was arguing, is that a lot of these ideas would carry over.

The normal Star Trek universe without the stupid cliches and with good writing would be a better idea. Replacing the "United Federation of Planets" with the "Terran Empire" and making everyone sadistic madmen is just a gimmick. It works for one or two episodes; it wouldn't work for an entire series.

I don't think that the replicator destroys economics as a whole. However the majority of the economy is based on foodstuffs and goods that the replicator gets rid of. I'd like to see these ideas addressed. I'm not saying you can't have a stable economy -- but these things should either be addressed or gotten rid of. There's no reason to have it.

All the evidence suggests that replicators are a convenience for starships in deep space to produce a wide variety of food and parts from stocks of simple raw materials. Raw materials are still scarce and nations will still trade them or fight over them. The services of people are still needed, and people can still be exploited or enslaved. The replicator doesn't get rid of any aspect of an economy which is needed to build an interesting universe.

I'm not saying that the replicator is necessarily a good thing, but I don't think that removing the replicator would help Star Trek at all. After all, they don't have replicators on Enterprise...

I would argue that these two are closely tied. Getting rid of magic stuff you don't NEED would be the first logical step. However I'll grant the rest of your post -- it's not the name. It's the usage. I would argue that the arbitrary names create a CULTURE of pulling stuff out of one's ass.

I really don't think that "dilithium" is any more arbitrary than "polymer A12". I think the culture of ad-libbed technobabble comes from writers who think it's acceptable to use excuses to force the capabilities of the technology to conform to their storyline, rather than the other way around. Other than that, I agree.

[Patrick Degan]

Quite frankly, at this point I think it's safe to say that Star Trek is actually harming the entire science fiction genre. Sci-fi writers need to extricate themselves from Star Trek's overused stifling paradigms, and in that sense, one could argue that the best thing for everyone would be for Star Trek to just die.

Harming the franchise I'd agree with, but the entire genre? Can you please elaborate? Were you thinking of any particular examples?

Ever notice how reams and reams of mastubatory technobabble have been creeping into more TV series, movies, and books in the genre? It's already popped up as a joke in Farscape and probably in several other works as well but the ones where it's done for serious are all the worse for it. It's getting to where you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a time-travel plot in genre TV anymore and at least two whole generations of fanboys have had the whole "the future will be perfect because we'll have spaceships to feed people" line of crap drummed into their skulls. SF is being warped by these influences, particularly as the commercial impulse is to copy those forms which appear to be successful formulae.

[Uraniun235]

Ironically, it's not a successful formula; IIRC, Star Trek ratings have been on the decline ever since DS9, and of course just now Enterprise got cancelled.

[Darth Wong]

Ironically, it's not a successful formula; IIRC, Star Trek ratings have been on the decline ever since DS9, and of course just now Enterprise got cancelled.

Which is why I said it will be a good thing if Star Trek just dies, as it appears to be doing now. Continued success of Star Trek would only perpetuate the monotonous McStarTrek-ization of sci-fi.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Trek's ratings have been going down since about halfway through TNG.