Star Trek 2008 Prequel

Sven Groot wrote:

Actually, forget about Star Wars and just watch Star Trek.

OK, as you brought it up here is one for you.

For the 2008 prequel would you rather see:

1) New actors that look a bit like young Kirk and Spock?
2) CGI versions of young Spock and Kirk voiced (and overseen) by Nimoy and Shatner?

I quite fancy the latter ...

Since they already announced who's going to play Spock, it's going to be 1.

Neither.

The original Star Trek is awful. The movies were good, but only because they had extremely good scripts with some solid special FX. I really don't want to see new actors playing old characters, or CG graphics of the same.

A movie set around the time the original Star Trek happened wouldn't be bad, but you'd need to find someone to write the scripts who's willing to shake things up a little.

I know it sounds nuts, but I'd love to see what Joss Whedon would do with the show.

Bringing in the screenwriters and Executive Producer from Alias to make a prequel to Star Trek just screams of cookie cutter lameness. It is going to be about as interesting as Star Trek: Nemesis if you're lucky (And that is not a compliment).

The entire cast both behind and in front of camera are basically TV people trying to do the movie thing. Expect a "Made for TV movie" that you pay $10 to go see.

ManipUni wrote:

Neither.

The original Star Trek is awful. The movies were good, but only because they had extremely good scripts with some solid special FX. I really don't want to see new actors playing old characters, or CG graphics of the same.

A movie set around the time the original Star Trek happened wouldn't be bad, but you'd need to find someone to write the scripts who's willing to shake things up a little.

I know it sounds nuts, but I'd love to see what Joss Whedon would do with the show.

Bringing in the screenwriters and Executive Producer from Alias to make a prequel to Star Trek just screams of cookie cutter lameness. It is going to be about as interesting as Star Trek: Nemesis if you're lucky (And that is not a compliment).

The entire cast both behind and in front of camera are basically TV people trying to do the movie thing. Expect a "Made for TV movie" that you pay $10 to go see.

Well ST OS was made a while back, had many issues even staying on the air...

if you look past the effects and props many of the stories were outstanding.

a few of the writers included folks like Alen Dean Foster and Theodore Sturgeon ... and Rodenberry himself.

granted looking at the old shows today some things seem hokey.
but even so most of the stories roots are still valid.
war, predujudice, greed, fear, intolerace and all the rest....

We the people (Yang Vs Cong) , bread and circus ( Modern Rome and the Sun) , space seed (Kahn )  just to name a few if I have them right (after not seeing them for years)

but IMHO the last Trek was not what I would have done.
and the new one ?? time will tell.

Enterprise as I would have done it would have started just a few years after First Contact; would have been much less tech.
no phasers, no transporters, no universal translators
gavity on the ship -- just barely working.

in ST OS  there is a reference to the first encounters with Klingons and Romulans  as not having visual comms with them for example.

thats the era I would have set "Enterprise" into.
then a later show could have done what Enterprise did with a backstory that shows how hard it was...

my idea anyway...

That is the era Star Trek Enterprise was set in though. The Enterprise pilot episode showed first contact with the Klingons (and they did it wrong; Picard once said that first contact with the Klingons was disastrous, it didn't look like that at all in Enterprise, plus they placed the Klingon homeworld 4 days away at warp 5 which is about 1.5 lightyears...)

The Romulan war that was mentioned in TOS took place shortly after the period Enterprise was set it, but I do believe it was the Romulans who didn't have visual communications, not Starfleet.

Enterprise did do some nice stories in its fourth season but it was too late to save it.

If anyone gets a chance I would reccomend the Star Trek exhibition/rides at the Hilton in Los Vegas - they have the definitive 'timeline' of Star trek alongside props from the films and shows.  The costumed characters that wander around always stay in character and have a degree of realism that is almost scary (lots of Klingons, Ferenghi and Borg).  They also have some sets from the series and films including an original Borg regeneration unit. 

How geeky is all that?

As for Enterprise I thought it was great,  especially the last series.

I know that JJ Abrahms is a big Trek fan so I am expecting great things from the next film.

I want them to move forward, give me some 25th century ST. The quadrant is in bad shape after the Dominion war, enough possibilties for intrigue and if they put some technology in there to explore the other quadrants, stories enough I´d say. Stop going backwards.
I like the ST books better anyway and those are moving forward. If only I had more time to read them.....

In my opinion Enterprise failed simply because of poor writing. The acting, sets, direction, and CGI were all top notch.

The series didn't do the whole "Story per episode" thing very well, and often times you would have a multitude of stories spanning the entire season(s).

They also created some of the most boring characters in ST. For series 1 they did the whole Women=Sex Objects thing, and in series 2 it got a little better as they added some depth but because the characters were so poorly defined they didn't give themselves much to work with.

The characters had no chemistry, and I don't blame that on poor acting, the stuff just didn't exist on paper. You had all these nice friendly robot characters that all loved one another and hated the bad evil aliens trying to kill them.

Now the next gen had poor characters in the first series too, but they got the stories very much right. They also did a better job of building up some characters (e.g. Data, Worf, Picard et al). They weren't all robots like in Enterprise.

What Star Trek needs as I said is a screen writer who is willing to shake things up. Ideally a non-Star Trek fan.

I'm thinking kind of like "What if Star Trek was set in the Batman Returns world." Meaning gritty, real, and where everyone isn't a happy dancing bundle of love.

Oh and make the Star Trek crew the underdogs ... No more "We have better technology, faster ships, bigger guns." That is why the Borg was so popular, they were finally a big bad bully who would test the crew (until somehow Voyager destroyed that by making the Borg look like wussies).

ManipUni wrote:

Now the next gen had poor characters in the first series too, but they got the stories very much right. They also did a better job of building up some characters (e.g. Data, Worf, Picard et al). They weren't all robots like in Enterprise.

Are you kidding? TNG in its first season was much too preachy. Sure, they had a few good episodes but TNG didn't really get into its stride until the third season.

ManipUni wrote:

I'm thinking kind of like "What if Star Trek was set in the Batman Returns world." Meaning gritty, real, and where everyone isn't a happy dancing bundle of love.

That'd be Deep Space Nine, then. The best of the Treks imo.

Sven Groot wrote:

That'd be Deep Space Nine, then. The best of the Treks imo.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of DS:9 too... The first season is total trash... But it really gets better. It is surprising how many interesting stories you can spin out without ever leaving the space station.

ManipUni wrote:



Sven Groot wrote: That'd be Deep Space Nine, then. The best of the Treks imo.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of DS:9 too... The first season is total trash... But it really gets better. It is surprising how many interesting stories you can spin out without ever leaving the space station.

Actually I think the first season had some great episodes. Emissary, Captive Pursuit, Battle Lines, Progress, Duet and In The Hands of the Prophets are all very good. Especially those last two are among the greatest episodes in all of Trek.

Sven Groot wrote:

Actually I think the first season had some great episodes. Emissary, Captive Pursuit, Battle Lines, Progress, Duet and In The Hands of the Prophets are all very good. Especially those last two are among the greatest episodes in all of Trek.

Actualy Tapestry from TNG is one I really liked. Makes you wish there was a series in that timeframe with those older uniforms. Like the ones also worn in the ST:6 movie. A cool show on an Excelsior Class ship set in 2390 or something like that

ManipUni wrote:

Neither.

The original Star Trek is awful.

The original has some of the best and most original story lines.

two of my favoret as a kid, and now.

The Savage Curtain- Aliens force Kirk and Spock to battle illusionary villains in a test of good versus evil.

Wink of an Eye- Invisible "time-accelerated" aliens take over the Enterprise and attempt to abduct the crew for use as "genetic stock".

Just announced:

Zoe Saldana is in final negotiations to play Uhura, who is the chief communications officer on the USS Enterprise.

Plot details for the Paramount Pictures film are begin kept under wraps, but it is understood that the movie chronicles the early days of the Enterprise crew. Saldana will join Anton Yelchin as a young Chekov, the Russian-born navigator, as well as Zachary Quinto as a young Spock. Leonard Nimoy, who originated the role of Spock, is on board as well.

On the original TV series and in the movies, Uhura was played by Nichelle Nichols.

The untitled "Star Trek" film is scheduled to open on Christmas Day 2008.

Saldana, who played one of Britney Spears' pals in the road movie "Crossroads," is one of the stars of James Cameron's sci-fi epic "Avatar," which is currently filming.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
© Copyright 2007 Reuters.

I love how Star Trek conversations, unlike other types, don't exactly end so much as they are won or lost.

Making my intentions clear, then, I have to jump in and defend Enterprise. All this Enterprise hatin' is giving me indigestion.

The flat characters, dull stories, boobity boobity boo...

That show rocked. Maybe the Xindi thing was all kinds of stupid, but other bits weren't.

And, all the way through: Jolene Blalock. Yeah, as someone pointed out, it was very women-as-sex-objects, but I think that would be the first reason to hire someone like Blalock.

I, for one, was freaky happy about it. She wasn't just a woman-as-sex-object, but a smart woman with a lot of smarts, emotions (eventually), internal struggles (that'd be the emotions), a drug habit (that caused the emotions), and shoes that always - ALWAYS - matched her outfit.

To only see her as the sex object isn't a wrong done by the studio, but by the people who don't see her any other way. Granted, she's such an awesome woman-as-sex-object that it can be distracting to the point that it's quite hard to see other parts of her even when focusing your attention on what's hidden doesn't reveal what's more than skin-deep, but... it's a pleasant search.

Just because a woman is unfairly hot doesn't mean she can't also be other things. And T'Pol was unfairly hot and other things.

Her character was actually the most interesting - she was a disliked minority who tried to become part of a culture completely different from her own, while dealing with all that internal stuff that regularly derailed her. Which, I guess, makes her a lot like Pinocchio.

Also, Enterprise had other characters who were OK.

The dog, for example, was far more interesting than its owner. Kudos to that dog, whatever its name was.

Seriously, though, I loved Enterprise. I think I started watching it in July or something (right after going crazy), and I have since watched the entire series a couple times more.

As a bonus, the first three seasons are available from Xbox Live Video Marketplace in HD. I still bought the DVD sets for the extras, but the HD stuff is way spiffy.

One point for Enterprise

Enterprise started out cool, but then the story line just went bad.

I only like futuristic star trek, because it can open your eyes to new possibilities.

I think 7 of 9 is way more cooler than Sub-Commander T'Pol.

Next Generation was the best of all

then
Deep Space nine

Then

Voyager

Then
Enterprise

SecretSoftware wrote:

Enterprise started out cool, but then the story line just went bad.

I only like futuristic star trek, because it can open your eyes to new possibilities.

I think 7 of 9 is way more cooler than Sub-Commander T'Pol.

The story did go bad. I'm with you there. I liked it best when it was still a bunch of innocents bumbling around in their naive way. I wasn't bothered that they became the heroes of the universe or whatever, but what did bother me is that captain what's-his-face didn't strike me as much of a leader.

When John Chrichton of Farscape turned into Mr. GalacticSuperhero, I dug it. He started off without a clue as to what was going on, but had a knack for herding cats that eventually earned him the role of a leader.

But Captain BlueTrousers... not so much.

If they hadn't done the stupid Xindi story, the series would have continued to rock. But the reptilian Xindi looked like they had just walked off the set of Michael Jackson's "Rock with You" video, except that Michael Jackson looked cooler in his sparkling moon boots.

However, I totally disagree about "futuristic star trek." I used to play a lot of chess, and every so often I met someone who told me that chess was a simple game, and that real thinkers play go.

It astounded me - it implied that these guys had chess figured out. Given the kind of money that can be made for having an expert understanding of the game, I'd expect someone who found it so simple to be able to live off of it.

Had another friend who once told me that there were no new songs that could be written with a guitar because they had all already been written. His guitar might have been missing a few strings and frets, but I'm pretty sure there are still songs to write with the thing.

Similarly, the universe in which Enterprise was set was so much more advanced than the one we live in that there are many, many more stories to be told there, and the options were just as plentiful as they would have been in a "futuristic star trek."

They just didn't touch the interesting storylines. The Expanse could have carried the show for another couple years, as it gave them an excuse to try things you wouldn't have seen on another Trek show. Instead, they wasted the opportunity by telling the same old humans-save-the-universe story.

I guess they made quite a few mistakes.

But Jolene Blalock wasn't one of 'em! Let us never forget that. I know you didn't contest her greatness - it's just a public service message for anyone who comes by here.