I believe we are at a Trek impasse.
Here's where I find your position ironic. If not for the Abrams reboot, there
wouldn't even be a serious discussion about a possible new Trek TV show. No one
would be considering it after the horribleness of the last two series and the
failures of the last couple of movies. The only reason anyone is discussing any
future Trek TV possibilities is Abrams. Say what you want about "lazy story
telling" and lack of respect for "history." If new Trek comes, it comes from
the opportunity created by JJ Abrams and nothing else.
If we've learned nothing from the BSG reboot, we should have learned this; A
different vision can be just as compelling, even if flawed. I'd say with the
right pieces of the puzzle in place anything is possible. If the "cannon" and
"history" are altered in order to make way for something new and good, I'm for
it. It wasn't ever the "facts" of Trek's history that made the show compelling
for me. It was great characters and great stories. Nothing about the new Trek
precludes either of these and in fact opens the door to untold possibilities.
Bosco
--- On Sat, 5/16/09, Keith Johnson <keithbjohn...@comcast.net> wrote:
From: Keith Johnson <keithbjohn...@comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] Star Trek' Director Open To Sequel With William
Shatner Or Khan
To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com
Date: Saturday, May 16, 2009, 9:52 PM
Gotta disagree. It's not that it isn't what I want, it's that I don't see
the need to rewrite history. Y'all keep saying Trek was dead. Maybe so, but how
does Vulcan's demise reinvigorate it? You can't explore young Spock with his
planet still intact? You can't have a Jim Kirk finding himself without killing
his dad too soon? You can't tell interesting stories about Spock's struggle
with his dual nature without making him so overtly emotional?
Sorry, it is lazy storytelling. I've listened to at least half a dozen
interviews with Abrams, and in everyone he says "I didn't get Trek"..."It was
too cheesy and cheap-looking to hold my attention".. ."I never understood why I
should care about the characters". So, he couldn't figure out how hundreds of
hours of TV shows can engage, him, so he decide to simply erase it. This ain't
BSG: Trek was already rich and interesting. Fans keep saying "Trek is dead and
tired", but Abrams ain't saying that. He ain't saying "I wanted to go back to
the old Trek", he says "I never liked Trek".
I'm not knocking making it fun and exciting, but I am and will continue to say
the changes to continuity were unnecessary. You don't have to sweep away
everything already in place to tell new stories. I fear the time will come
when people will realize this isn't so much an homage and respect of Trek, but
a type of disrespect of it, of saying "It had potential, but I can do better".
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bosco Bosco" <ironpi...@yahoo. com>
To: scifino...@yahoogro ups.com
Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2009 3:33:48 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] Star Trek' Director Open To Sequel With William
Shatner Or Khan
Keith
One of the things I love about this list are your posts. I'm saying that up
front because I am gonna respectfully disagree with you.I LOVE the new Trek
Film. I will say without question it's the best Trek Film EVER. It's not lazy.
That's partly because it's Trek and partly because it's not. It's not lazy.
It's just not what you want. It's clear that a tremendous amount of research,
thought and work went into this film. Because Abrams made choices you would not
have does not make him a lazy story teller.
I have always loved science fiction because it creates other possibilities and
amazing worlds
of "what if." The constraints of reality have always been cast away for better
story telling. That's exactly what the new Trek film DOES WELL!!!
I've also made no secret of late that one of the things I love about the new
Trek Film is the way it INFURIATES the Trek nerds. It's freakin awesome that it
has been so successful, so good and produced a reaction so strong. Indicative,
I think, that Abrams got it EXACTLY right in order to breathe life into the
franchise. Let's face it, it WAS DEAD, Jim. The fact that some of the older
generation of Trek fans can't let go of the bloated corpse of
what was, simply makes me giggle. I'm sorry for your loss but unless some
"Trekditionalists" get a bunch of funds together to make another in long line
of generally subpar science fiction films, it's Abrams world now and we're just
visiting. Time to find a way to move on.
Bosco
--- On Sat, 5/16/09, Keith Johnson <KeithBJohnson@ comcast.net> wrote:
From: Keith Johnson <KeithBJohnson@ comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] Star Trek' Director Open To Sequel With William
Shatner Or Khan
To: scifino...@yahoogro ups.com
Cc: ggs...@yahoo. com, cinque3...@verizon. net
Date: Saturday, May 16, 2009, 10:52 AM
I'm sorry, but every time I listen to Abrams make statements like "The
old continuity was restrictive" , it angers me. That's just lazy film making.
The Trek universe spans five series, ten movies, and --including "enterprise"
--about two centuries. You're telling me he couldn't find something in *all
that* to fuel new, action-driven stories? He couldn't have brought together
this crew in the movie in any way other than to reset the timeline? Why not
just have told the previously untold story of how Kirk assembled his crew in
the original continuity in this movie? It's not exactly as if anyone's ever
said there was only one way that could have been done.
My point is there is no reason to change history just to use young cast
members. Kirk in the movie is about 2 -3 years younger than Kirk was in the
original timeline when he became captain, but you can work around
that. We don't know the backstories of how Bones, Uhura, and Scotty were
brought to the Enterprise, so you can write that story. Just because Chekhov
never showed up in season one of the OS doesn't mean you can't finesse things a
bit and bring him in for the movie. Only three of the original five years of
Kirk's original mission were shown on TV. Nothing there to mine?
Like them or not, Brannon and Braga jiggered Trek continuity a bit for
"Enterprise" : the Xindi attack on Earth...the Borg sphere found on Earth
(something blamed on "First Contact).... And while some of that made some of
us howl, as the series got better toward its end, we saw it was okay. Indeed,
we liked it precisely because it was exploring the themes from the OS that had
always been there. So, they changed things a bit, but at least they explored
the original universe, and to their credit, when B&B got it right, they did a
great job of updating the old, but staying
true to it. Thus, we all loved the storyline revealing the secret of the Green
Orion "slaves"...the Augment storyline, which continued the story of the
Eugenics War, and set the stage for Data's creation someday....the study of how
Vulcan pulled itself back from the brink of becoming violently emotional again,
to embrace Surak's teachings anew...the dude who was a disciple of Colonel
Green's xenophobia and racism-- All good stories, all told in *original*
continuity for the most part.
I keep struggling to understand why we have to kill Kirk's father--oh, it just
makes it easy to create a young punk Kirk for contrast with the later hero
he'll become...why
we had to destroy Vulcan.--oh, I guess it makes Spock's feeling of being lost
and alone more poignant..why we had to make Spock act like he's
undergoing ponfar all the time--oh, so we can really get the struggle, as I
guess the OS didn't do a good enough job of presenting that.
Abrams just
didn't like old Trek and he wanted to eliminate it to recreate it. There is no
reason at all you can't tell new fresh stories in Trek within the original
continuity. I have felt all along that we we've had is a guy who thinks Star
Wars is superiour to Trek, who comes from the hit-you-over- the-head school of
filmmaking. Thus he all but destroys the Vulcan race and sees it as opening up
things, rather than a critical blow to what makes Trek, Trek.
I haven't seen or heard yet one thing to make me understand why you have to
destroy the past rather than honor it. Why you tear down the old instead of
building upon it. How eliminating forty years of great storytelling is
liberating.
Sorry: just lazy filmmaking from guys who just don't get it.
