Saving Star Trek
Club Jade pointed to some posts about how to save Star Trek. They reminded me of my post Star Trek After Roddenberry… I cannot resist the urge to comment on them.
Mixing Star Wars and Star Trek
The Official Star Wars Blog highlighted an interview with the writers of the new Star Trek movie, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman by Wired:
Wired.com: J.J. Abrams makes no secret that he’s more of a Star Wars guy and not so much into Star Trek, but you two were full-tilt fans.
Orci: In terms of fandom, yeah, and Damon too is a fanatic - we’re not going to drop the ball out of ignorance. Nobody can say that we don’t know Star Trek. There might be some things we do that people could question, where they go, “I hate them for some other reasons,” but they can’t say, “They didn’t know their stuff.”
Orci: And it’s controversial to even mention Star Wars and Star Trek in the same sentence, but Alex said, “We have to bring more Star Wars into Star Trek.”
Kurtzman: (joke-coughing) Original Star Wars.
Orci: Original Star Wars. I want to feel the space, I want to feel speed and I want to feel all the things that can become a little bit lost when Star Trek becomes very stately — which I love about it , but….
Kurtzman: Star Trek is often the space equivalent of sub battles, which is what makes it unique and different from Star Wars, so you can’t blow that away, either.
Orci: It’s somewhere between that the truth lies.
Really? Again with people thinking that Star Trek is suppose to be an action series! It sounds like the new film will be, but that is not the original concept for the series.
I feel like I have to say something:
Science Fiction ≠ Action
I know this is a hard concept for some people to understand. While science fiction can have action scenes in it, one is not equal to the other.
Star Trek was intended to be a Science Fiction show, and many of their best episodes did not have any action scenes at all Like the City at the Edge of Forever.
Roddenberry wanted the show to highlight how diplomacy should be our first resort rather than violence.
5 Ways to Ruin Star Trek by Adding Star Wars
io9 added fuel to the fire with its own wishlist.
Make Your Heroes Less Perfect
Yeah, that is a great suggestion. Instead of trying to show a future that actually lives up to the ideals you have set for it, and that you are hoping your audience will also aspire to, throw all your ideals out the window and make your characters flawed and while your at it, make the future something no one will ever want to aspire to.
Less Talk, More Action
Diplomacy is overrated, lets just beat the crap out of each other for no good reason. A puerile show filled with hate and violence is better than a show that sets reason and self-control on a pedestal.
There is no way that a Star Trek with more space battles and less attempts to sit down and talk things through like grown-ups would be a bad thing (io9).
Except it would have to sell out all of its ideals in order to do it. For some people selling out seems to come easier than for others.
Ignore the Laws of Physics
Ok, Star Trek was a Science Fiction show. Science Fiction is a subgenre of Speculative Fiction where science plays and integral role in the plot, and it would not be possible to tell the story without it.
Ok, so, we take that away and Star Trek is nothing but a run of the mill Space Opera.
Have At Least One Sequence That Will Make A Good Video Game
That’s right. Think about the merchandising first. Stop thinking about the plot and the characters. Just think about the money you will make with the crappy game based on movie. (honestly, has there ever been a good one?)
Think about money, nothing but money. Nothing matters but money, and entertaining people who are so emotionally dead inside that they could not be moved by anything.
Put Uhura In A Metal Bikini At Some Point
Because, I am sure it is better to turn an important character into nothing but a vapid sex object that only hormonally brain damaged men will care about. What where they thinking trying to give women a role model to look up to. I suppose Graeme McMillan thinks that women should stay in their bikinis and not have all those pesky opinions.
IF this is the new Star Trek…
…then I know it is nothing that I want to see. My snarkiness aside, these truly are bad ideas.
If Star Trek was to be rebooted, I wish people would have listened to J Michel Straczynski and Bryce Zabel who wanted to keep the spirit of the original alive. (see there concept here)
What these people have described is not a reboot for Star Trek, but a different show with the same name.
May the Great Bird of the Galaxy save us all.
Update
JJ Abrams told Entertainment Weekly:
Plus, at heart, Abrams is still more of a Star Wars guy. ''All my smart friends liked Star Trek,'' he says. ''I preferred a more visceral experience.'' Which is exactly why he accepted Paramount's offer in 2005 to develop a new Trek flick; creatively, he was engaged by the possibility of a Star Trek movie ''that grabbed me the way Star Wars did.'' That meant a bigger budget and better special effects than any previous Trek film, plus freedom to reinvent the mythos as needed. ''We have worldwide aspirations and we need to broaden [Trek's] appeal,'' says Weston. ''Doing the half-assed version of this thing wasn't going to work.''
So everyone involved in the new movie wants to see these sort of changes... Grr Argh.
Check out my Star Trek Review.