Babylon 5 Creator Pitches Trek 868
pdawerks writes "According to Sci-Fi Wire, Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski told fans on a B5 Usenet group that he and Dark Skies creator Bryce Zabel have put together an idea for a new Star Trek series, which he said would revive the ailing franchise. 'I got together [with Zabel] and wrote a treatment earlier this year that specified how to save [Star Trek] and develop a series that would restore the series in a big way,' Straczynski wrote. 'I actually think it could be a hell of a show. Whether that ever goes anywhere with Paramount, who knows?'"
This is great! (Score:1, Interesting)
Heres a treatment (Score:3, Interesting)
Holy shit, B5 always rocked ST (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't wait to see Straczynski take up a new ST series. He's one who can revive the ST franchise.
let me try to remember (Score:5, Interesting)
Bab5 guy first went to Star Trek guys with the idea of Babylon 5. But they didn't accept the "space station" suggestion at that time, so Bab5 was born independently.
Later Star Trek guys came up with DS9. (no comments here)
Now, I wonder what will be different.
All teh world needs now is (Score:3, Interesting)
Ya know... (Score:3, Interesting)
That episode of ST:TNG was one of the most spiritual. Here's Wesley, trying to be like his Dad. He finally figures out that he's not his dad and his destiny is somewhere/something else. I'm kind of disappointed that he had to be turned into a demigod of sort, but the underlying(grammar?) theme is all the same - he has to become his own man.
Think about it, Star Trek is all about being in Star Fleet. What if you don't want to be in Star Fleet in the Star Trek universe? Do you go around and work for the Forangi(sp?)?
There's a lot to be done still with the ST Universe.Re:Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not a scriptwriter! (Score:4, Interesting)
It's after the Dominion has started to make in-roads to the alpha quadrant that Cisco and Odo go back to earth to head up security.
During the course of events, it becomes clear that a high-ranking Starfleet official is using the paranoia surronding the possibility of 'changling' terrorist attacks to repeal rights and declare martial law on earth.
Seeing it on SpikeTV a month or so ago, it really struck a nerve with the current state of affairs and the 'Patriot' Act.
DS9 explored similar questions (Score:1, Interesting)
Star Trek is a Sci-Fi Soap (Score:3, Interesting)
Most episodes were a simple science fiction idea, combined with lots of character interaction and development.
Good characters made people identify and stick around.
An interesting idea, or bit of action would get people to pay attention and potentially buy in.
DS9 payed too much attention to the characters and lacked the variety of different ideas.
Voyager I thought did a pretty good job moving back to ideas and characters.
Enterprise I don't know, kinda stopped watching TV, this whole "grown up" life thing gets in the way a lot.
It looks like Trek may be fixed yet... (Score:3, Interesting)
Rick Berman can't do it. He's proven it. Trek started heading downhill once Michael Piller quit running the show. Bringing in some new blood can only help.
I'd like to see a JMS-run Trek. If the powers that be stand back and let him run the show, or, heck, anybody with a track record better than Berman's, things will get better.
That said, there's something about Enterprise. I still watch it, and I'm still not sure why...
-JDF
Re:What Star Trek needs (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What Star Trek needs (Score:5, Interesting)
BEEP! Wrong!
Think back to when ST:TNG came out. It was slick to look at, but the stories were very tame and seemed to dwell heavily on gizmos and soap opera moments. Time did the show no favors. After the first season I gave up on following it regularly, and checking in from time to time found it getting scarcely better (about 20 minutes of material stretched into 1 hour show most of the time.)
It needs to get back to its roots. Let the characters have flaws, let them make mistakes. Put irony and humor into it in difficult situations. Make the leaders make difficult choices. Make it interesting again with good stories, not practically perfect people and a lot of references to Shakespeare.
Heck, Klingons were a cold-war type adversary -- make up some nasty race like Al Qaeda and have the characters discuss how the federation got into a mess with them and try to find a way out of it.
Roddenberry should get some of the blame (Score:5, Interesting)
This belief of his is also why Star Trek is chock full of evil madmen, but has few interesting large scale conflicts.
It was only as Roddenberry gave up control of the series that the show became more dramatic. Roddenberry was deeply uncomfortable with the idea of the Borg, and presumably he would have hated the way Deep Space Nine went once the Dominion War began.
I've always thought it would be great if there were a Federation Civil War. After all, the Federation appears to have an incredibly weak central government (that Prime Directive has actually been invoked to describe why the central government can't interfere with a member planet) and the Federation is spread over a large area, with only slow travel between the edges (apparently, it would take years to cross the Federation).
But because of Roddenberry's guiding principles, that'll probably never happen. "Enlightened people of the future will never fight each other."
Yawn.
Re:Here's an idea (Score:1, Interesting)
JMS makes new star trek (Score:1, Interesting)
If there's a problem ... (Score:5, Interesting)
How many stories are there, really, that will fit into a one-hour TV slot? The universe may or may not be finite, but plot possibilities certainly are.
Which is why new shows seem like such dreadful, bloodless retreads of old ones. We've seen all the characters and pretty much every idea you could ever squeeze onto the deck of a starship.
There's nothing really *wrong* with ST. It's just played-out.
If ST could learn one thing from Babylon 5, it would be plot and character development. In the original series, the fact that Kirk and the others were flying through space was somewhat incidental. We might have enjoyed it just as much if the same actors had been set in a western.
Perhaps ST could move toward the sort of long-term plot arcs we saw in Babylon 5, and have come to expect from series like the Sopranos. Freed from the format of episodic drama -- and the crushing weight of our expectations -- Star Trek might be free to again explore the Undiscovered Country.
That would be kinda nice.
Re:Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not a scriptwriter! (Score:4, Interesting)
What's worse, is that they did make it topical, but never actually explored the moral implications that arose from the situation. This last season's arc was about what was essentially a terrorist act that destroyed half of Florida.
So you can see where they were trying to be topical. They just didn't do a good job of exploring the moral implications of Archer's actions, such as torture, theft, and possibly even murder, but I can't remember. All in the pursuit of the terrorists. The ethical debate on the use of torture is even more important now, and that debate was simply missing.
I wanted to see some actual ramifications, some thoughts, possibly even some regret that it had come to this. The Federation as presented in TOS, TNG,DS9, and even Voyager would be appalled at those actions. A lot of people disliked Voyager, but at least the discussion of the morals and ethics of the Federation in that situation. That was horribly missing in Enterprise.
I'll admit that they did at least show that some of the Xindi were compassionate individuals who were trying to protect their people.
BORG Species 000 (Score:5, Interesting)
Nick Powers
Re:Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not a scriptwriter! (Score:4, Interesting)
Its pretty much like every single episode of the West Wing, except there at least they don't have to put alien spots on the non-traditional polygamous union of free spirits they want us to be ok with.
re: what star trek needs (Score:5, Interesting)
ed
Re:Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not a scriptwriter! (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that he was a bad character, I always thought the Picard-Q fight was the brightest point in the series, Picard's humanity being a perfect foil to Q's view of humans as worthless. It's just that there's a whole bunch of humans, and only one Captain(Admiral Selectee) Picard of the Federation Starship Enterprise. Contrast that with the characters on B5, and we're talking doctors, policemen, Ambassadors and Politicians too, but the doctors and soldiers and policemen and "Joe Random Aliens" usually lead the show, with the bigwigs just trying to balance the politics out so war doesn't break out.
Some of the early movies had great material to start with(the Klingons joining the federation could have been a great movie), yet turned out to be not as good as they could be, mostly to leave more room for special effects and fight scenes. The problem is that the Star Fleet/Federation of Planets gimmick means that fight scenes shouldn't be that common, except for the villain of the week, and few things kill a story as fast as a villain of the week. Q was a great villain, he kept coming back, we could defeat him, but never kill him and he went away only when he wanted to. He kept making humans be as human as they could be, only to prove him wrong, and that usually makes for a great story. Few B5 characters needed help in being more human, except maybe for the Vorlons(and with such help, they were downright interesting), and that's probably a design decision on their part(a good one in fact).
Prequels (Score:3, Interesting)
Taking the fact that it came after 3 concurrent sequels into account, a new prequel would have been better if it didn't actively follow the formation of the Federation. How awesome would a series about the rise of the Klingons or the Romulans be? There's so much there that's never been explained and it would be DIFFERENT. The whole feel of a Klingon or Romulan show would peak new interest because we'd see the Federation from a different light. That would be fresh, that would be new.
Re:let me try to remember (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyway in my opionion DS-9 was much more watchable than B-5 ever was. The acting on B-5 was not tolerable to me (Andreas Katsulas excepted... but hey, I consider him a Star Trek actor anyway...). Nor was the writing. The ideas, plotlines were good.
Maybe these guys are good in the broad strokes, and maybe with star trek production crews and budgets behind them they could pull something off.
Dunno.
The "W" Word (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps just a total re-engineering... (Score:5, Interesting)
Easily the best 5 years of SCI FI on television ever. Ok maybe 4, season one was iffy.
Re:I watched..."The Cooler" last night... (Score:3, Interesting)
DS-9 was the best of the trek series IMO, for the following reasons:
Fantastic writing, acting right out of the gate
Awesome story arcs
Politics & religion in the same show... real tension between people and individuals that reflects reality more than any other trek I've seen. A previously militaristic Cardassian station after the Occupation, now Bajoran, under Federation administration. Remind you of anything? It's layered, complex, interesting. THere were very few bad/cheesy episodes unlike TOS and Voyager. TNG is the only one that compares and I like it for orthogonal reasons.
Re:Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not a scriptwriter! (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah yes, one of my favorite exchanges was probably from the worst Q episode ever (Hide and Q):
Picard: Oh, I know Hamlet. And what he might say with irony, I say with conviction. "What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable. In action, how like an angel. In apprehension , how like a god..."
I see us one day becoming that..."
Re:Finally! Someone with skill (Score:5, Interesting)
What's wrong with that? Many people have written that Hitler claimed that he himself was receiving orders from "The Old Ones." And then we have the social anomaly with the Third Reich. Many people speculate that such totalitarian societies should not produce such brilliant scientific breakthroughs (in terms of weaponry for them) as the Nazis did. Look at their helmets from that era and then look at what the US military uses today. Look at the B2 and look back to the Nazi flying wing designs. The Panzer tanks, the V1 and V2 rockets, jet fighters, saucer designed aircraft, and the atom bomb they would've had if their own scientific team didn't sabotage the results. Then you have Hitler's (and many other Nazis) obsession with the occult. So that leads to much speculation for a writer with imagination, with or without a tin foil hat.
Re:Perhaps just a total re-engineering... (Score:3, Interesting)
With Voyager, you knew they were went off into the middle of nowhere and you knew that they wanted to get home and that eventually they probably would. But there was no real sense that anybody working on the scripts knew precisely how they were getting there. And so, for the most part, once again, it was random encounters with aliens interspersed with the occasional plot forwarding episode.
Star Trek Villans (Score:2, Interesting)
I mean look at what he did to them
1. He was the first villian in the show.
2. He introduced the Enterprise to the Borg. Until then, the Borg were at the outskirts of Federation space in the Romulan Neutral Zone. Now, they were on the way to Earth. All Q's fault.
3. He was the villian in countless other stories.
4. He was the final villian in TNG's finale.
Or if not Q, work Q in with him running to the Enterprise for help again. The only trap such a story holds, is how to create a threat with someone so powerful and not have a plot device, etc to save the day in the end (I believe that is called a McGuffan or something).
But the TNG writters have already delt with that issue before. They'd have to expand it, just do it carefully.
Honestly does anyone watch Enterprise (Score:3, Interesting)
What makes Enterprise different from Next Gen is that the episodes are more serial (less episodic). The previous episode usually impact the next episode. And past episodes have frequently impacted following episodes (Andorians, Star Fleet politics, gaining the trust of Vulcans, not to mention the whole Temporal War)
Finally, Star Trek is seems to be gaining the social comentary it once had in the original series. The Xindi war, especially the last few episodes, seemed to be makeing the same arguement those who support and those who are against the Iraqi War are making.
I really think folks should give the show a chance. Tivo a few reruns. Like Farscape, watch at least three to get what's going on.
Re:Can we finally have a Star Trek topic icon now? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What Star Trek needs (Score:2, Interesting)
4) "Oh My god! This guy is Nuts!! We have to stop him at all costs! That means you die, and you die, and you die, in fact the whole ship is gonna probably be destroyed! Hmm. I always wanted a new ship. Boy I love that new ship smell! Hope you live to smell it with me!"
Re:Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not a scriptwriter! (Score:2, Interesting)
Now substitute "Americans" for "Klingons", "Iraq" for "Cardassia", "WMD" for "Founders", and "United Nations" for "Federation".
The analogy falls down after the Dominion handed the Klingons a major whuppin', though
Re:What Star Trek needs (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I think JMS should take that Trek idea and run with it in a new Universe, the way they did with Babylon 5. Bab-5 is by far one of the best Sci-Fi series ever produced, and it came from a rejected Star Trek idea pitch.
JMS did this already (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, all the good aspects that people rave about in DS9, B5 did first. DS9 was just a Paramount copy of B5, quite frankly -- almost to the point of lawsuit.
Interesting... (Score:2, Interesting)
My favorite episodes involved exactly the kind of stuff you're calling for, leaders making tough decisions and mistakes (Picard is assimilated, Riker orders a kamikazee attack) and real irony beyond "damn that prime directive".
I like the idea of conflicts that echo current world adversaries. Political fragmentation to the point of rebellion within the Federation could be quite interesting too. Sort of a macro extension of allowing character flaws.
I really wanted to like Enterprise, but pretty as it is, it doesn't do it for me. I think the series could be revitalized, without "giving it a rest", if some philosophical changes are made rather than putting a different cast in the same polarity-reversing and particle-du-jour physics scenarios where every Star Trek has gone before.
Starfleet Academy (Score:2, Interesting)
My problem with DS9 (Score:2, Interesting)
But DS9 (and season-3 Enterprise) is one long multi-part story. Miss one episode and don't get the tape (pre-Tivo, sorry) watched before the next one, and you've lost some continuity. Do it too often, and you lose the thread, and episodes become less enjoyable - making it more likely to de-prioritize another episode. Or watching the tape, I still have 2 or 3 season-3 Enterprise shows that my son and I haven't watched, yet.
I dunno about this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile, JMS wrote nearly all of b5. And that was in fact one of the things that I felt worked to its detriment. The wrtier's flaws quickly become the show's flaws, and that's one of the things killing trek right now.
Follow the Gundam example (Score:2, Interesting)
The anime franchise Gundam [wikipedia.org] has been running much longer without interruption than Trek, and unsurprisingly, they ran into the same problem: an over-complicated timeline which advanced the clock but did little more than retread the same territory.
Give them credit for the way they got out of this mess: they shut down the original timeline and brought in outside creators, giving them the keys to the Gundam franchise for a year, letting them do new shows in alternate universes, using whatever elements of Gundam they liked and dispensing with the rest. The resulting was a nice revival of the franchise: Yasuhiro Imagawa based "G Gundam" in a crazy international robot-fighting competition, while Masashi Ikeda took the "pretty boy team" approach of his "Ronin Warriors" ("Yoroiden Samurai Troopers") to create the five troubled pretty-boy pilots of the atypically girl-friendly "Gundam Wing". And when they flop, like "Gundam X", you only burn off a year of the franchise (et tu, Enterprise?)
You can see the same approach in the recent "Gundam Seed". Details are different - psychic "newtypes" from the original series have given way to genetically modified "coordinators" - but there's a pleasant mix of the familiar and the new.
Bringing in JMS would be a commendably daring move. But for my money, give him one season in an alternate universe and then bring in someone else. Imagine what Spike Jonze... or Spike Lee, for that matter... could do with the Trek franchise.
--realinvalidnameRe:Roddenberry should get some of the blame (Score:5, Interesting)
Andromeda was originally intended to be a 'Star Trek: Fall of the Federation' series. Wasn't a bad series, until Kevin Sorbo turned it into Hercules In Space, firing that writer from DS9.
But an actual series dealing with the fall, rather than the results, would be good. Easy enough to do, too; two member factions get in a fight, the Federation Council tries to intervene, doesn't work, Starfleet is sent in to 'keep the peace,' there's an incident, the Vulcans walk in protest, people draw up sides, and the Federation turns, over the space of a few years, into, say, about six to ten separate groups.
The Federation: Earth, Andoria, and a few other 'core' members, they attempt to cling to the original tenents.
Vulcan, and others; view the Federation as a good idea ruined by bad species; they revert back to isolationism; not all Vulcans agree, though.
Antagonist A and Antagonist B, and assorted hangers-on; obviously, they're at war. One side invites in the Klingons to help out, the other side invites in the Romulans, and it all goes to pot.
Several other 'balkanized' areas which revert to sectoral or species lines, rejecting the Federation as being ultimately ineffective. Think League of Nations at this point. Others reject the Federation for trying at all to intercede, or blame the 'incident' on official Policy, rather than Shit Happens.
The next thing you know, some of these groups are attacking the core worlds, because they want Starfleet technology and knowledge that was withdrawn when they broke away from the Federation, there are old grudges flaring up, the Klingons and Romulans are nibbling at the edges, gleefully taking advantage of the Chaos, Starfleet are trying to maintain their principles and dignity while their ideals are collapsing around them, and so on.
Re:What Star Trek needs (Score:5, Interesting)
Rick Anderson is fantastic in that show. Amanda Tapping is damn cute. Sometimes they smooch!
B5 needed better comedic timing, SG1 has it. Anderson brings that, but the writers are actually good, too. See "The Other Guys." Hilarious!
It was the first series in a long time that I actually looked forward to seeing.
(there goes my karma!)
Re:Perhaps just a total re-engineering... (Score:3, Interesting)
Eric
Re: what star trek needs (Score:3, Interesting)
Tha Suliban and their Kabul were launched on the american public as a freaky co-incidence.
A mildly alternative opinion (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What Star Trek needs (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, TOS was so horrible they made a few movies and brought it back after 20+ years as another group of space crusaders.
As I mentioned in another post, the original audience was not the audience TNG attracted. At the time TOS was on it appealed to radical thinkers, college age people, not geeks. TNG seemed to appeal exclusively to geeks, children of the generation that avidly followed TOS to the day the network killed it (there's plenty of information about this topic, the network moved it around, effectively trying to bury it out of site because it was so controversial.)
Re:Holy shit, B5 always rocked ST (Score:3, Interesting)
Time travel can produce interesting plots. It just has to be co-ordinated at the entire series level, in order to (a) prevent inconsistencies from appearing (there are _way_ too many inconsistencies in trek already) and (b) allow for the most cool effect it can have: the fact that there have been little things throughout the entire series telling you it's going to happen.
JMS understands this. He did use time travel to good effect in B5. Doing it in trek would be harder, because of the larger amount of backstory he'd have to agree with, but he might still be able to do it. And if he does, I'm sure it'll work.
Romulus (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What Star Trek needs (Score:5, Interesting)
How about the one where the Maquis are poisoning Cardassian planets with a chemical that isn't toxic to non-Cardassians...so Sisko poisons THEIR planets. Actually fires missiles full of poison gas onto them, with the whole crew of the Defiant looking at him like "whoa, dude! way out of line!" The look on O'Brian's face...and the fact that Dax actually refuses the order at first...made this an awesome episode, one that changed your opinion of the captain.
Re:Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not a scriptwriter! (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, but in the moral analogy they are supposed to be like terrorists. Just like Frank Gorshin wasn't African American, but the struggle in that episode was analagous to the Civil Rights struggle. Sort of.
The idea of having to cross the line when the stakes are high, including the use of torture, is central to the whole 3rd season. I think you just missed it
It wasn't that I missed the ideas, what I said was missing was the debate. In other ST shows, there would have been more exploration from various characters about the decisions being made. It seemed like very few people, except for Phlox who got little screen time most episodes, actually questions and debated Archer and his actions.
I'll admit I only watched the episodes once and that was months ago, so I'm not right up there with every thing.
Since we're talking about this in comparison to JMS and B5, it reminds me of a B5 episode. In it, a child has an easily cured disease that requires surgery. In his culture, have surgery means the child is demonically cursed and his soul will spend eternity in Hell. Like some Earth religions oppose blood transfusions. The episode revolves around Dr. Franklin's desire to cure the child via a minor surgery (think appendicitis -- easy to fix, but deadly if not treated). There's a great debate about medical ethics, respect for culture, etc. The Star Trek version is the one with David Ogden Stiers who falls in love with Troi's mother (can't spell her name) but has to commit ritual suicide in a month because his people do that on their 60th birthday.
In B5, the doctor performs the surgery thinking that the loving parents would be happy to have their child back and would forget their silly religious objections. Nope. They kill their son to save his soul.
These two episodes really discussed and explored the issues from multiple perspectives and showed the debate.
I just thought that exploration was missing from Enterprise. Maybe it's that I disagreed with the Enterprise message. Nothing Archer did came back to haunt him. No matter what moral precept he violated for the greater good, he continued to succeed. He destroyed the weapon with relatively minimal loss of life and it didn't look like he'd ever face the consequences of torturing prisoners and murdering innocents.
Re:Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not a scriptwriter! (Score:3, Interesting)
The Visitor, et al. (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree! The Visitor I refer to as the "Father's Day episode." That's a terrific, very human story that only science fiction can deliver. To me, that's the hallmark of great science fiction (and fantasy): to explore a facet of being human that rings true, but could not happen in the "real world." That's my favorite episode.
Up there with The Visitor, are two episodes worth mentioning, both featuring Miles (the engineer) as the protagonist. The first is sort of a reverse Rip Van Winkle, where Miles is punished as a criminal by some alien race and forced to serve an accelerated prison term of 20 years. In real time it lasts 6 hours, but mentally he comes out a changed man who has suffered from imprisonment and must reintegrate with his family and friends who haven't changed at all. The second episode is when Miles and Keiko's (his wife) daughter is lost in some kind of alternate time and is returned to them as a teen who has spent the last 10 years living as a wilding.
Deep Space Nine is great Star Trek and great science fiction television!
Re:but alien nazis? (Score:5, Interesting)
And alien nazis (just say it out loud, with a smile in your voice--and remember that, by the 'trek cronology, we're all slaves to Khan right about now)
Where was I? Oh, yes.
The alien nazi (singluar, remember) is a great example of the subtle fact that Enterprise brings into the central focus a topic that goes hand-in-hand with FTL travel and has been only tangentially mentioned in previous Star Treks: Time Travel.
Enterprise is ALL about time travel--it's not set "before Kirk", it's set long after Janeway, after the Federation has won and perfected time travel. It's just told from the story of a ship that blew up in the history that Kirk knew, and only launched because of an incident that never happened to Kirk's historical Johnathan Archer.
Two out of Three ain't Bad, I guess... (Score:4, Interesting)
As much as I like Michael Straczynski, having great ideas for a Trek series isn't hard when you have such a rich universe to build upon. Heck, Enterprise was a great idea, which only goes to prove that your great idea is only the tip of the iceburg. It's all about execution, something Enterprise crashed and burned in. And quite frankly, while b5 was good, Jeremiah and Odyssey 5 were steaming piles last I checked [IMO, of course]. That's not a bulletproof track record and I'm not convinced he could pull it off any better, honestly.
But after space-nazies, I'd be willing to give anything a try.
Re:Holy shit, B5 always rocked ST (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree about the continuity and depth of the storyline, but excellent script writing? B5's biggest weakness was the abysmal, horrid dialog. Full of cliches (e.g. Garibaldi talking about "crawling into the bottle," like he was a Mickey Spillane character), and just plain tripe, like when Sheridan (or was it Sinclair? I can never keep those names straight) was with his estranged wife, who scolds him, "Don't kiss me unless you mean it!" Ack. How can anyone not cringe at a line like that? Admittedly, that woman couldn't act, but with such crappy dialog, I don't think great acting would help. You can't polish a turd.
I watched B5 because of the interesting story, but the bad dialog and limp attempts at humor were a source of constant, low level irritation. Let JMS come up with the big ideas, but please, in the name of all that is good, don't let him write any scripts.
Re:What Star Trek needs (Score:3, Interesting)
Why did Earth's Trek ban baseball and organised sports? The only similar Earth that did that was the corporate-controlled America of Howard Chaykins' American Flagg which offered sponsored gang violence as a substitute. What always boiled me about Trek was that major social moves like this were tossed out with no exploration as to why these changes were done, nor the implications of such changes. We're just supposed to accept this as part of the evolution of the the paradise that Picard's Earth was supposed to have become. A paradise full of people who readily became sheep when a renegade group of officers almost succeeded in turning Sisko's Starfleet into a 24th century Gestapo.
Trek's longevity is owed not to any boldness on it's part but a clever legerdermain of appearing to be progressive and bold while playing it safe on every issue it covered.
Re:What Star Trek needs (Score:1, Interesting)
Roots... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Terrorism and WWII (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank you. Also, there are some theories that the burning was actually staged by the Nazi party itself to justify their actions.
To anyone who thinks my post was some sort of liberal conspiracy to troll about the current US Administration, please have a go at watching this excellent British documentary [imdb.com], which was produced thirty years ago and is one of the finest DVD sets that money can buy.
You will learn a lot of things that aren't generally taught in history classes (at least in the US), like the aforementioned burning of the Reichstag, the Japanese requiring civilians to wear uniforms during the war era, actual film footage of the American Nazi Party at one of their rallies, etc.
One thing The World At War will teach most people with its first episode is that comparing Emperor Dubyah and his band of neo-fascists to Hitler and the Nazis is pretty ridiculous, even though it is sometimes tempting. Dubyah would never, for example, slaughter the entire citizenry of a town and destroy every building in it [oradour.info].
Straczynski could do it, but will Paramount? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's ironic, though. When Joe first came up with Babylon 5, he pitched it to Paramount. Paramount turned thumbs down on it. Joe pitched elsewhere. What does Paramount come up with next? Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, a show about a space station located on the borders of several competing interstellar powers. Coincidence?
Joe reportdly hit the roof, but was careful *not* to blame Rick Berman and the other folks directly involved in ST production. Paramount wished to protect the Trek franchise at all costs, and wasn't about to compete with itself by backing a non-Trek SF show. Whether it decided to sucker punch a possible competitor by bringing out the same idea first remains unknowable.
The problem is that Paramount got a successful franchise largely by accident. Star Trek: TOS was originally cancelled part way through, and brought back through fan pressure. It seems likely that Paramount never really understood *why* it was popular, so successive Star Trek: Whatever's have trod the same old ground, in apparent fear that any actual new ideas would kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.
Personally, I was around when the original series was being aired. It was the best SF on TV at the time, but hasn't aged terribly well.
ST:TNG had some good moments, especially when it worked through the backlog of unproduced scripts bought for the original series and started buying new material. There was at least some attempt to deal with adult themes, even if there were embarassing clunkers.
DS9 had moments as well, especially when they introduced the war with the Dominion. Trek always had a schizophrenic attitude toward Star Fleet. Pointing out that the Enterprise was a capital ship, and if there *was* a war, Star Fleet would fight it produced hand-waving and denial from a lot of folks.
Voyager was simply excreble. I think I managed to watch one episode before giving up in disgust.
I had hopes for Enterprise. A show set early in the chronolgy of the series, detailing the early days of the Federation had promise. Promise that, unsurprisingly, has not been fulfilled. I've avoided it, too.
I have a problem with television that makes an implicit assumption that I'm dumb, and that any show with a few SF tropes and some FX will get me to watch. Dramatic story lines, meaningful characters, interesting plots, good writing? Who needs them? It's got the Trek name on it. It will sell...
Well, not to me, buddy.
Joe might actually be able to create a Trek series worth watching again. I'd love to see it. I'd lay long odds against Paramount saying yes.
______
Dennis
Re:Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not a scriptwriter! (Score:4, Interesting)
Um, no. Hilter took power in Germany by leveraging nationalist and racist fervor, and working popular anger about unfair WW1 reparations treaties
(Pilkul, you ignorant slut...) Hitler came to political prominence as you describe. He did not take power until he orchestrated the burning of the Reichstag, and blaming the attack on the communists. Basically, a group of undesirables, destroying a symbol of the German "democratic" government, in order to foment civil war amongst its citizens. Its the classic method (at the time) the communists rose to power. It was that fear that certainly galvanized unity behind Hitler by its German citizenry. Just because they didn't call it terrorism back then, didn't mean it wasn't, nor any of those played out concepts which was known since Pericles.
1984 is about communism, and communism is dead. It's just not very relevant anymore.
Bullsh*t. 1984 was about totalitarianism. Yes Orwell was solidly anti-communist, and yes 1984 was an inference to communist governments. But note that there were social classes in 1984's society (proles, outer circle, inner circle), and the need to maintain control over the populace by constantly fomenting war, and using nationalism and fear to keep them in line. Its not surprising you think 1984 is not relevant anymore, you can't even use what little historical knowlege you possess to apply it to modern conditions.
Re:What Star Trek needs (Score:3, Interesting)
Which is really ironic considering what the one Starfleet officer who defected to the Maquis told Sisko: That the Federation is just like the Borg, or even worse, since once you join you can't ever leave, and to join you have to be conformant or "assimiliated" into the Federation way of life.
Through the whole conversation the character had with Sisko, you could see that Sisko just didn't get it.