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New Star Trek TV series

Started by Deanjam, November 02, 2015, 04:58:55 PM

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Famous Mortimer

I guess CBS think that they've got enough hardcore fans to keep their $5.99 / month plan going until...I don't know? CBS has tons of shows, but if they're also available via Netflix or whatever, I'm not sure who's going to pay another fee to see them. I wish the online streaming model was moving towards centralisation and not fragmentation like this, but whatever.

Alberon

The CEO of CBS, Leslie Moonves, seems very confident it will pay for itself.

Quote"All the series have done well in terms of streaming," he said. "Added in to that, Star Trek is a huge international franchise. Our international distribution guy is going crazy; he can't wait to get out to the marketplace and sell that. Right away, we're more than halfway home on the cost of the show from international alone. The risk is small in seeing the track record. We think it'll be great and bring in a lot more subscribers. We're really excited about it."

The guy has a point. As long as they don't let the budget go bonkers (and they won't) then this series will turn a profit even if the streaming service fails.

Dr Rock

This is going to make the Star Wars prequels look like

Couldn't think of a joke there. Reckon this will fail due to lack of correct definition and tone, and will probably fail with the 'hook' character (Spock, Data) as everything's been done. But I could be wrong, I was wrong about TNG.

Mister Six

It'll be interesting to see what tone they take. The model that's been proven to work on TV is the standard Star Trek one of talky moral quandaries occasionally interspersed with slightly incompetent action, but the model set out by the new Star Trek movies (and we know how much companies like their brand coherence and consistency...) is woosh-bang jokey violent spectacle.

Obviously the budget won't allow for the kind of CGI razzle-dazzle that you'd get on the big screen, but it'll be interesting to see whether they try to skew towards the latter as much as possible, or whether they embrace the old ways.

(Also, the more I think about it the more I appreciate what Doctor Who attempts, even if it's not successful. So many US and Canadian live-action sci-fi shows - Warehouse 13, Agents of SHIELD, Eureka, Orphan Black, Almost Human, Person of Interest - seem to be designed so that the climax of any given episode could easily consist of a person in a suit punching or shooting at someone in a concrete warehouse. It's hard to think of many - even any - non-Star-Trek shows that force the production teams to create new worlds or strange creatures with any regularity.)

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on November 05, 2015, 04:42:19 PM
I guess CBS think that they've got enough hardcore fans to keep their $5.99 / month plan going until...I don't know? CBS has tons of shows, but if they're also available via Netflix or whatever, I'm not sure who's going to pay another fee to see them. I wish the online streaming model was moving towards centralisation and not fragmentation like this, but whatever.

I feel like that a bit, and then I remember that if Netflix had a monopoly it wouldn't have any reason not to charge $50 a month or whatever.

This article suggests that as the rights are held by different parties since the Viacom split - the film rights by Paramount, the TV rights by CBS - this would rule out any possibility of the series being set within, as some may put it, the 'rebooted universe' of the films.  It would have to fit in with the various TV series of it instead.

http://www.tvwise.co.uk/2015/11/cbs-developing-new-star-trek-series-from-alex-kurtzman/

Alberon

Quote from: Alternative Carpark on November 06, 2015, 06:24:59 AM
This article suggests that as the rights are held by different parties since the Viacom split - the film rights by Paramount, the TV rights by CBS - this would rule out any possibility of the series being set within, as some may put it, the 'rebooted universe' of the films.  It would have to fit in with the various TV series of it instead.

http://www.tvwise.co.uk/2015/11/cbs-developing-new-star-trek-series-from-alex-kurtzman/

Stop giving me hope!

Having Alex Kurtzman on board does make me think some sort of deal has been done between CBS and Paramount.

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: Mister Six on November 06, 2015, 05:38:24 AM
I feel like that a bit, and then I remember that if Netflix had a monopoly it wouldn't have any reason not to charge $50 a month or whatever.
Good point. Although how much would you have to pay for full coverage of all the various streaming services?

I'd be very surprised if this new series was anything like TNG - that vague idea of progress and optimism has been replaced with staring into the abyss of poverty and war and the rich fucking us over, forever. Perhaps they'll rip off "Andromeda", which was clearly supposed to be a Star Trek series anyway - fragments of the Federation try and rebuild in the wake of a galaxy-spanning war, or something.



Mister Six

#67
I don't think that's necessarily an issue. Star Trek started out as an image of a united and peaceful humanity, with black and Russian crewmembers, but it first ran during disturbances caused by the Cold War, Vietnam War and US civil rights movement.[nb]EDIT: And of course it had Mr Sulu, within living memory of WWII and the Japanese-American camps.[/nb]

I imagine the Federation will be a bit less clean and sparkly this time around though - something only occasionally hinted at in much of the pre-DS9 Star Trek stories.

Cloud

That reminds me, it's a sight to behold when you realise certain parts of Enterprise were filmed just after 9/11.  The tone suddenly went "I'M SO ANGRY I WILL SUFFOCATE YOU IN AN AIRLOCK IF YOU DON'T TELL ME WHERE I CAN GO AND BOMB THESE FUCKERS", it was kind of surreal

Mister Six

Never made it past the pilot (not that it was bad, just that I was a bit Trekked out by that point). Sort of wishing I had now.

greenman

#70
Watching a bit of it recent and Enterprise wasn't really that bad, probably better than Voyager(which had the odd good episode when they had a decent plot but had a dull crew for the most part IMHO) even with the added jingoism, the early episodes were pretty dull though.

Quote from: Mister Six on November 06, 2015, 05:38:24 AM
It'll be interesting to see what tone they take. The model that's been proven to work on TV is the standard Star Trek one of talky moral quandaries occasionally interspersed with slightly incompetent action, but the model set out by the new Star Trek movies (and we know how much companies like their brand coherence and consistency...) is woosh-bang jokey violent spectacle.

Obviously the budget won't allow for the kind of CGI razzle-dazzle that you'd get on the big screen, but it'll be interesting to see whether they try to skew towards the latter as much as possible, or whether they embrace the old ways.

(Also, the more I think about it the more I appreciate what Doctor Who attempts, even if it's not successful. So many US and Canadian live-action sci-fi shows - Warehouse 13, Agents of SHIELD, Eureka, Orphan Black, Almost Human, Person of Interest - seem to be designed so that the climax of any given episode could easily consist of a person in a suit punching or shooting at someone in a concrete warehouse. It's hard to think of many - even any - non-Star-Trek shows that force the production teams to create new worlds or strange creatures with any regularity.)

I feel like that a bit, and then I remember that if Netflix had a monopoly it wouldn't have any reason not to charge $50 a month or whatever.

One advantage Trek does have is that its action can be largely limited to space battles that tend to be a lot easier on the budget than more complex CGI involving actors and sets, you look at DS9 for example and the action there still holds up pretty well. I would guess with a decent TV budget you could probably produce a reasonably good looking Trek with a fair bit of action in it every week.

Attila

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on November 06, 2015, 10:43:38 AM
Good point. Although how much would you have to pay for full coverage of all the various streaming services?

I'd be very surprised if this new series was anything like TNG - that vague idea of progress and optimism has been replaced with staring into the abyss of poverty and war and the rich fucking us over, forever. Perhaps they'll rip off "Andromeda", which was clearly supposed to be a Star Trek series anyway - fragments of the Federation try and rebuild in the wake of a galaxy-spanning war, or something.

Star Trek goes all Blake's 7?

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: Attila on November 07, 2015, 07:22:42 AM
Star Trek goes all Blake's 7?
I'd be fucking delighted if they took any inspiration from Blakes Seven, as I love that show.

Quote from: Mister Six on November 06, 2015, 11:58:15 PM
I don't think that's necessarily an issue. Star Trek started out as an image of a united and peaceful humanity, with black and Russian crewmembers, but it first ran during disturbances caused by the Cold War, Vietnam War and US civil rights movement.[nb]EDIT: And of course it had Mr Sulu, within living memory of WWII and the Japanese-American camps.[/nb]

I imagine the Federation will be a bit less clean and sparkly this time around though - something only occasionally hinted at in much of the pre-DS9 Star Trek stories.
I feel the changes to how we view the future are pretty fundamental, to the point I just doubt anyone would make a show in 2015 where we're optimistic about mankind's progress, but I hope you're right. And I hate making sweeping generalisations, so I'll shut up.

Deanjam

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on November 07, 2015, 08:42:10 AM
I'd be fucking delighted if they took any inspiration from Blakes Seven, as I love that show.

Then it wouldn't be Star Trek anymore. The positive outlook at our future is fundamental to the shows idelogy. Would be like making Doctor Who with the Doc as a gun toting, alcoholic womaniser. Even the supposedly dark DS9 wasn't that dark really. If you want to see a truly dark Star Trek then watch Ron Moore's BSG reboot.

Endicott

Quote from: Mister Six on November 06, 2015, 05:38:24 AM
(Also, the more I think about it the more I appreciate what Doctor Who attempts, even if it's not successful. So many US and Canadian live-action sci-fi shows - Warehouse 13, Agents of SHIELD, Eureka, Orphan Black, Almost Human, Person of Interest - seem to be designed so that the climax of any given episode could easily consist of a person in a suit punching or shooting at someone in a concrete warehouse. It's hard to think of many - even any - non-Star-Trek shows that force the production teams to create new worlds or strange creatures with any regularity.)

What about Farscape? Which was made by some ex Trek writers, freed of the straight jacket of having to adhere to the Trek house style.

Quote from: Mister Six on November 07, 2015, 03:26:13 AM
(re ENT) Never made it past the pilot (not that it was bad, just that I was a bit Trekked out by that point). Sort of wishing I had now.

You missed nothing. It wasn't offensive in the way Voyager was, but boy was it bland.

Anyway, I'm expressing interest in this new series but my expectations are low.

Mister Six

Quote from: Endicott on November 07, 2015, 12:23:05 PM
What about Farscape? Which was made by some ex Trek writers, freed of the straight jacket of having to adhere to the Trek house style.

I was thinking more of modern-day stuff, but that's a good call. There was a bit of this in the 90s - Farscape, Andromeda, Cleopatra 2021, Stargate, plus the fantasy gubbins like Xena. But recently - especially since TV started getting more filmic in its ambitions - genre telly has hewed disappointingly close to concrete car park telly. Maybe we're still just shaking off The X-Files.

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: Mister Six on November 07, 2015, 01:32:08 PM
Cleopatra 2021
Cleopatra 2525, but you're right, I enjoyed that (and the rest of the shows you listed). I'm rather looking forward to some fun sci-fi again.

Quote from: Deanjam on November 07, 2015, 12:03:47 PM
Then it wouldn't be Star Trek anymore. The positive outlook at our future is fundamental to the shows idelogy. Would be like making Doctor Who with the Doc as a gun toting, alcoholic womaniser. Even the supposedly dark DS9 wasn't that dark really. If you want to see a truly dark Star Trek then watch Ron Moore's BSG reboot.
I don't particularly want to see a dark Star Trek, but what I was getting at was that if it's going to be a less optimistic show, then it could do a lot worse than take inspiration from "Blakes Seven". I don't know, of course, and I look forward to watching it anyway.

While we're on the subject, "Dark Matter" is chuffing brilliant, and definitely takes some inspiration from Blake and his lot. Give it a go, if you haven't already.

Still Not George

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on November 06, 2015, 10:43:38 AMI'd be very surprised if this new series was anything like TNG - that vague idea of progress and optimism has been replaced with staring into the abyss of poverty and war and the rich fucking us over, forever. Perhaps they'll rip off "Andromeda", which was clearly supposed to be a Star Trek series anyway - fragments of the Federation try and rebuild in the wake of a galaxy-spanning war, or something.

A series based on more recent "optimistic" views of the future would be absolutely awesome. Wildly transhumanist stuff like The Culture, Eclipse Phase and Orion's Arm where you have to start inventing words like "sophont" because so many nonhuman species have been uplifted that old concepts of sapience don't really make sense any more and half the population are software anyway. Death is an unlikely prospect given uploads and backups (even forks). And aliens, if they exist at all, are utterly incomprehensible to anyone but a completely devoted researcher.

Trek has a peculiarly outdated view of the future, and one with its own particular charm. They might as well try to keep to that aesthetic rather than try to introduce a "gritty" feel that is now, in its own way, almost as outdated.

Mister Six

Quote from: Still Not George on November 07, 2015, 02:02:39 PM
A series based on more recent "optimistic" views of the future would be absolutely awesome. Wildly transhumanist stuff like The Culture, Eclipse Phase and Orion's Arm where you have to start inventing words like "sophont" because so many nonhuman species have been uplifted that old concepts of sapience don't really make sense any more and half the population are software anyway. Death is an unlikely prospect given uploads and backups (even forks). And aliens, if they exist at all, are utterly incomprehensible to anyone but a completely devoted researcher.

I'd love something like that, but Christ knows how your man on the street would take it. It'd be bloody difficult to make a TV show out of, too. Unless you did a season-long anthology thing like True Detective and American Horror Story (but good). That would be interesting.

grainger

Quote from: Endicott on November 07, 2015, 12:23:05 PM
What about Farscape? Which was made by some ex Trek writers, freed of the straight jacket of having to adhere to the Trek house style.

Are you sure about that? It was a Hensen production, and AFAIK, no Trek writers were involved. It's also not at all like Trek, in tone, style, or message. Aside from being a space fantasy, it really has very little in common. It's more akin to Blake's 7, and then not very much.

grainger

I felt that with DS9 onwards, the Trek producers were trying to shake the Star Trek ethos, and the limitations of the format, perhaps without realising it. Things got "darker", they moved further and further away from the Roddenberry's "vision", main characters became  more likely to break the Prime Directive in a serious way (they eventually dispensed with the Prime Directive entirely in Enterprise). They even made mystical elements a major part of DS9. I'm not saying DS9 was bad, by the way (but jesus, the more recent two were), but I prefer the brighter and more secular tone of the first two (live action) series.

Unsurprisingly, I wouldn't like to see a "dark" modern Trek. We can watch any other vision of the future in TV or film to get that experience. I probably wouldn't even watch a Trek that didn't have an optimistic setting. And bloody hell, do we need a positive vision of the future as an inspiration in 2015.

As an aside, there's another thing I liked about TNG which is something that most people (including Berman and Piller) see as a limitation - the lack of "conflict" between the regular characters. I don't see the problem: you've got conflict with the people they met, or the situation they find themselves in. Pulling together (most of the time) is a more professional way of behaving (the ship is their workplace, after all). However, viewers seem to like/expect constant bickering ("conflict"), so no doubt we'll get that. If done wrong, it'll feel shoe-horned in, too, likely as an attempt to replicate the Spock/McCoy disagreements.

Alberon

DS9 is one of my favourite shows. I'm normally against the religious storylines in this sort of thing, but I thought they stayed just the right side of the line by having the aliens exist out of 'linear time'. So the first time they meet The Sisko they've no idea what he is, but by the end they've manipulated the past so he exists.

In general the Federation characters stayed in the proper tone to the previous series. The only places they pushed beyond that was O'Brien's dislike of the Cardassians (and then even that compares pretty well to the original show's character's strong dislike of the Klingons) and in the creation of Section 31 (the black ops secret service of the Federation). Of course, being beyond the edge of the Federation allowed them many characters not restricted by that.

Endicott

#82
Quote from: grainger on November 07, 2015, 03:18:29 PM
Are you sure about that? It was a Hensen production, and AFAIK, no Trek writers were involved.

Of course I'm sure. And you're correct it was a Henson production, made in Australia.

edit fuckit it's been so long i forgot about Rockne S. O'Bannon

Richard Manning, producer and writer (10 eps) on Farscape.
Trek credits include co-producer on numerous TNG episodes, writer on 8 TNG and 1 DS9.

David Kemper, producer, main show runner, writer (16 eps and the mini series) on Farscape.
Trek credits as writer on an ep of VOY and 2 TNG.

additional

Farscape was created by Rockne S. O'Bannon who had no Trek credits. He wrote 6 eps and co-wrote the mini series with Kemper. He was the original executive producer (for the first 2 episodes) along with Manning (first 6 episodes).

Kemper took over executive producer and show runner from Manning after the first 6 episodes.

Endicott

I'm 99% sure I've heard them in interview talk about the restrictions of working in Trek, what the suits would and wouldn't let them do. But I don't have a ref for that so make of that what you will.

Alberon

Pretty sure you're right. Voyager was hamstrung badly with the message from on high to keep the show light.

DS9 was just in syndication so was mostly left to get on with it. Voyager was launching the UPN network.

Small Man Big Horse

I still have a soft spot for Voyager. It's largely shit until Seven of Nine turns up, but after that there's a fair few decent episodes. And I'm a big fan of Year Of Hell, even though it was obvious from the get go that there'd be a big reset button at the end of it seeing the ship and crew get the crap kicked out of them was a lot of fun. That said, Neelix is the worst Trek character ever, and Chakotay isn't far off either.

greenman

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on November 08, 2015, 01:01:07 AM
I still have a soft spot for Voyager. It's largely shit until Seven of Nine turns up, but after that there's a fair few decent episodes. And I'm a big fan of Year Of Hell, even though it was obvious from the get go that there'd be a big reset button at the end of it seeing the ship and crew get the crap kicked out of them was a lot of fun. That said, Neelix is the worst Trek character ever, and Chakotay isn't far off either.

I would say Voyager had some good writing at points(often the two partners) but the setting itself wasn't really conducive high quality, Seven and Torres were really the only characters who had much innate interesting dramatic potential.

The big example of a darker Trek in the 90's would obviously be Babylon 5 which if you believe the rumours had more than a little influence on DS9. Both of them got character conflict about right for me, including it when it made sense and benefited the story but not going overboard with cheap drama for the sake of it.

Kutzman being involved does again make be doubt it but you could argue that post DS9 there is significant potential for such a story. The Cardassians were by far the best of the Trek baddies anyway in terms of having some depth to them(you could argue they are actually closer to the original series/films Klingons than TNG's eras space Vikings) and post dominion war theres alot of room for having elements of them pushing for and against the federation as well as characters dealing with the aftermath of the war and the facist years prior.


grainger

Quote from: Endicott on November 07, 2015, 05:34:13 PM
Of course I'm sure.

Er... OK.

Quote from: Endicott on November 07, 2015, 05:34:13 PM
[snip stuff about Farscape honchos]

Fair enough - thanks for the info. I wouldn't say they were especially major Trek writers, though, which is probably why I never made the connection (I used to be fairly up on my TNG knowledge).

grainger

Quote from: Endicott on November 07, 2015, 05:37:55 PM
I'm 99% sure I've heard them in interview talk about the restrictions of working in Trek, what the suits would and wouldn't let them do. But I don't have a ref for that so make of that what you will.

Oh, I have not doubt about that. Most of the senior TNG people say how they rubbed against Roddenberry's "vision" and really struggled to write within it (them coming from other TV shows, rather than, say, written SF, where conflict comes from characters and not situations is perhaps a reason).

I just take the view that I'm glad that vision was there to reign them in. They pushed it a bit, but having that baseline there is what makes TNG Trek. I love Farscape, but it's not Trek (nor should it be) and different rules rightly apply to it.