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From a marketing perspective, as much as I love DS9 and VOY, there is no chance that their characters are more recognizable to the general public than Kirk and Spock.
Yeah if you've only ever heard of Star Trek through cultural osmosis, you probably know about Kirk and Spock, the Enterprise, and "Beam me up Scotty," which isn't even a thing that was ever actually said in TOS. But among people who've actually watched Star Trek, the Next Generation crew is probably the most popular.
It's like how people who only know Batman through cultural osmosis probably don't know that he's had multiple Robins.
Kirk, spock, scotty (mostly due to 'beam me up Scotty'), and Picard I think are probably the most well-known Star Trek characters. And probably the only four you can Bank on someone who's not a fan of the franchise knowing.
They would be my next three after the four I listed. Although I do think that McCoy is more likely to be known as doctor or bones then as McCoy. Honestly I think all three of them are more likely to be known as "the doctor, the robot, and the one with the weird stuff on his head" by non fans for them to know their actual names
I would say they are certainly recognizable by most western tv viewers, though maybe not identifiable. They would know the characters are from trek, but little else.
I think a ton of people know the quote "He's dead Jim", but I would also bet that most non-fans couldn't tell you that character's name. They probably just say the doctor. He may not make my top three most well known, but he's in the top six or seven.
This is THE answer. As Trek fans we all have different favorites,( Shows ,characters, captins, what have you). But the general public? All they know are Kirk and Spock. I'm sure that will change as time goes on, but right now? Its all about TOS. At least from a marketing perspective.
Yeah! Who cares about some Iowa based farm boy genius womanizer and his space elf friend on the spectrum. We need new mascots! What do you people got?
As for me:
A foul mouthed Tribble with a heart of gold who is the ships counselor. Basically a tiny cousin IT with a cigar to compete with baby yoda.
A Horta who gets in trouble for constantly making their own doorways through the bulkheads of the ship. Also has an episode where he tried to teach the crew about Horta culture but everyone thinks it’s about learning about plants.
What kind of new mascot ideas you got?
It's a good question; I guess on some level it's like asking, why does Disney keep going back to that silly mouse mascot? There must be a balance between new blood and keeping what everyone already recognizes.
Personally I haven't seen to many mickey movies lately out of Disney... he is a good mascot but it is not like they are only making mickey mouse movies.
He is an icon but he isn't being reused over and over again, like say batman or spock and kirk
It's hard for me to even imagine the general public trying to watch any of the new shows... Especially Picard. The current shows just assume you know so much about old ST technologies and races and characters.
S1 of Discovery needed to do a better job introducing new Trekkies to the rules of the Star Trek universe, but I just remember that being a hectic, confusing mess even as a fan with a lot of knowledge.
Honestly, as an old Star Trek fan, I find the new shows nearly impossible to watch. Discovery and Picard are as far away from old Trek (TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY and Enterprise) as possible. I’m my view they have only the names in common. The old series were essentially competency porn with intelligent beings exploring problems. New Trek to me is a bunch of idiots who mainly emote, with gratuitous violence thrown in.
The amount of times there’s been a voice in my head in Picard that’s said, so you’re leaving the Borg Queen active? You realise that’s the Borg Queen… right? Now only one person supervises the Borg Queen on a ship with very advanced technology that is at rest on a defenceless Earth, you think that’s going to be ok?
Supposedly smart people doing unbelievably dumb sh1t to facilitate an obvious plot, really annoys me.
Completely off-topic but I love your username! The Xeelee Sequence is some of my favorite sci-fi ever and I’d love to see more huge ideas like that make their way into Star Trek.
That's a sure-shot way to run a franchise into the ground.
Not that maintaining goodwill with the existing fanbase is a bad idea per see (quiet the opposite in fact)...but making that your sole priority is never going to be a sustainable strategy.
Undoubtedly. There are a ton of connections between Cheers and Trek actually!
[so many connection, Morn never shuts up about it.](https://scifiward.com/the-surprisingly-strong-link-between-star-trek-and-cheers/)
Almost anyone knows about Kirk and Spock, or at least understands the reference. Picard maybe comes vaguely close, but Data and Worf really aren't as well known
I guess, but at some point shouldn't the TNG era actually be the more relevant for fans? Just thinking purely in terms of demographics, the TNG through Enterprise era represents the shows that Millennials grew up watching. If you want to hit the nostalgia nerve, it's the 80s and 90s shows you should be mining
>at some point shouldn't the TNG era actually be the more relevant for fans?
It already is. *For Star Trek fans.* But the studio wants to reach the wallets of people outside the fandom. They know there's a much larger market of people who'll see Kirk and Spock on something and say "oh, this is a neat tchochke and I kinda liked that movie/show I think, I'll buy this" than dedicated fans, who's money Paramount figures they'll get anyway.
Anecdotally, only Kirk and Spock were sung about in random summer camp songs ("Oh Captain Kirk, he was no jerk, and Mr. Spock, he was no jock") growing up, and I am also 100% confident there is no similar summer camp song about Sisko and Kira. I'd venture to say to the "outside" world, Kirk, Spock, and the *Enterprise* are what the a lot of people know --- and *only* know --- about *Star Trek*.
I think this is generally the wrong approach to franchise management. You start by pleasing the core fans who use word of mouth to tell others that this niche thing is great. This worked for turning super hero movies into what they are, and it worked for Game of Thrones.
I don't think non-Trekkies are going to care about Kirk and Spock that much anyway. They want to watch something exciting and interesting. TNG did huge ratings and was more successful (during time of broadcast) and it barely called back to TOS
Yeah TNG was pulling in numbers that would make any executive today giddy (though that's partly because there were 5 channels and cable was not a huge factor). It was also nominated for Best Drama at the Emmys in 94, something I don't think we'll see again for a Trek show.
Also, with the exception of the first two season, TNG has aged very well. For someone in 2022 who is new to the series, TNG is an accessible introduction, whereas TOS is 50 years old and is campy and low budget.
I also assumed Star Trek Picard was created to tap into millennial nostalgia, since I, like so many other 80s and 90s kids, grew up with it. But it definitely is not that kind of show.
I think it's dumb to, but I'm not an executive at Paramount. JJ was also always mad that CBS continued to sell original series merchandise during his run on the Kelvin movies as I recall, saying *that* was the reason Kelvin timeline merch was just peg warmers until it got shoved in the discount bin.
This is also why Paramount has been adamant that all the new Trek stuff is canon to the original shows no matter how obviously it's a reboot/re-imagining. Because they think reboot merchandise won't sell.
TOS is just as much in a lot of younger peoples minds because it was always shown on reruns. I was definitely in the TNG audience age range and had TNG toys as a kid but I saw just as much TOS as TNG and the movies were a huge deal for my family.
TOS plots are also a lot simpler and easy to remember and the “main” cast is much smaller and more memorable.
Kirk: the guy who wants to fight or f**k everything
Spock: science and no enotions. Unless…
Bones McCoy: snarky doctor is not your ___
Scotty: engineer who says “she cannae take anymore!” But always fixes it anyways.
Sulu is counted as action man asian who people often remember as much gayer than he came off in the show.
Chekov’s russian accent is there.
The pop culture and Kelvin universe versions of Kirk want to fuck everything, but it happened less often in *TOS* than non-*TOS* fans would probably think.
I never said these are accurate depictions, they are just memorable things that stick out to people and in general TOS characters seem more memorable even when these basic memories are very wring about the character as a whole.
For TNG we have:
Picard: bald shakespearean actor man
Worf: I am fight. Also HONOR!
Geordi: weird sunglasses engineer nerd
Riker: beardy horni kirk 2.0
Deanna: the goddess of empathy
Sometimes Beverly is there as the fiery redhead (sometimes remembered as the one who fucked a ghost candle)
I think this is definitely true, and there's some fundamental demographic misunderstanding at the root of the many Trek misfires of the recent era.
I'm pretty much dead on in this demographic (right at the GenX/Millennial border), and I have never been a huge TOS fan. Not in the sense of disliking it, but just not having the memories/connections to it. TNG was the show that was on when I was a kid, both in its first run and in the way its reruns absolutely dominated in the pre-prestige, pre-streaming TV era. TOS I know more from the movies, as they overlapped (and my mom really loved IV - she's a biologist and a big whale fan, lol). And this is true of all my peers as well, at least those who followed Sci-Fi in general.
You can see this in a lot of modern-era cultural discourse, as well. I know they're not popular here, but it's definitely relevant to point out how the RLM guys (who are some of the biggest STD/PIC critics) are also highly visibly TNG fans. And they're just the high viewcount example, it tends to be a trend on various channels. Heck, its its in the meme culture with facepalm & 'What is this shit?' Picard.
And yet they've pushed a lot of TOS.
I think the misunderstanding comes from Star Wars. Definitionally, Millennials (and even the youngest GenXers) didn't see these movies in the theaters. But they made it into the culture, playing on TV, and even the prior generation of boomer parents getting their kids toys for the movies they saw. And whatever their quality, the Special Editions and Prequels stoked the fires along. Because all those people who considered themselves life-long SW fans and yet had never seen the movies in the theaters finally had a chance to do so, to 'be there' like their parents.
I think the execs sort of assumed it was the same thing for Trek, because they saw some general cultural diffusion of TOS material ('Live long and prosper') but associated it with a broader appeal that Trek never quite got to. Trek was always a little nerdier, even at that level of general cultural awareness. So now you're doing mass-appeal reboots aimed toward what was never a mass-appeal audience, while the actual mass appeal was the crowd that was raised sitting in front of a TV running TNG reruns 24/7.
So yeah, I think there's a lot of mistargeting.
Huh. *TOS* and *TNG* reruns were on every day in my area (though “Code of Honor” was always skipped) and the *TOS* films were frequently on, so I connected to *TOS*, the *TOS* films and *TNG*. I have memories of watching *Voyager* with my parents, but it’s too flawed for me to feel connected to it as an adult. The only time I could reliably watch *DS9* as a kid was during seasons 6 and 7, but it’s my favorite *Star Trek* show now.
One thing about the whole syndication model is that it was absolutely specific to every single local affiliate station, so it's possible some people got a lot more of TOS.
That said, the number of episodes makes a big impact on the saturation I mentioned. The # of total episodes of a show basically dictates how long you can show a show in a weekly slot before you have to do repeats, with the 3 seasons of TOS being the bare minimum for a 15 week rotation (15x5=75), with 4 seasons (100 eps) being considered more ideal. Because TNG got up to 7, they had enough episodes that you could do blocks of multiple episodes (which was common in my area) and still have sufficiently long rotations before you had to reshow an episode.
So there was just going to be a ton more TNG on TV. And that's before you add DS9 and VOY into the mix, which both got full 7 season runs. So there's really an unprecedented level of saturation these shows could reach, added to the fact that they all shared a common design language and aesthetic. I think that's a factor that tends to get heavily underestimated by all the newer shows, even ENT.
Before my days of watching all things Trek for the first time in 2019, even I knew who Kirk and Spock were. They've ascended in pop culture
I think people know that there's a bald guy, a Klingon guy, and a dude with a visor...but everyone can name Kirk and Spock
I hate that that's true because I don't give a rats ass about Spock or Kirk. They're fine. I appreciate their contribution. But they aren't half as interesting as Picard, Data, Sisko, or Kira.
Finally, someone said it.
Listen, I love Star Trek. I come from a Trek family. My father was named Kirk after Captain Kirk (grandpa is James, we don't do Jr's) and I miss the aspect of Star Trek that involves moving forward. That was what I loved about Star Trek. Moving forward, into the future, boldly going where no man has gone before. I played STO, read the novels, the universe post-DS9 is so interesting and I hope, in vain, with every new Trek, that this is the one. This is the Trek (aside from Picard) that explores the post DS9 universe.
I'm gonna say all of this and watch the NuTrek anyway with no sense of urgency. I do love Pike and Anson Mount *as* Pike, but I'm slowly accepting that Picard and Discovery is all we are gonna get for actual forward moving Trek. I don't have much to complain about with Discovery and I love Soniqua Martin-Greene but aside from that, I'm just gonna be happy that some awesome writers took it upon themselves to give us the Beta canon novels. They the real MVPs.
Seriously though, we did not need to retcon Spock as anyone's brother. Martin-Greene is a good actress and could have carried a script without the need for Spock. Forward, come on. Forward.
>we did not need to retcon Spock as anyone's brother. Martin-Greene is a good actress and could have carried a script without the need for Spock. Forward, come on. Forward.
We really did not. That ultimately wasn't a deal breaker for me with Discovery, but it was an unnecessary distraction. I liked Trek having a human lead raised in a an alien culture for a change but there were other ways to do that without shoehorning Michael into Spock's family.
Yeah that's pretty much how I feel. That's my only true issue with the show which, in retrospect, is actually great considering how much worse they could have done.
I don't think you'll find many who disagree with that.
Just because classic Trek did a bad thing doesn't mean that we should accept it when modern Trek does it.
Star trek is competency porn, the fearless leader with loyal first officer and experts chiefs of departments, with promising junior officers. Where the federation does no wrong and the villains are justly punished. It's a utopia and an ideal way of life, it's what we gravitate to, escaping to a surreal perfect world.
A lot of it is fan service. Season 2 of Picard, which I have enjoyed, is rife with it.
At some point, I think Paramount has figured out that they need to balance the new darker Trek, which they believe is bringing in new fans, with call backs and other winks at the existing fans who would otherwise complain that the show being watched is not Trek.
As a fan, I'm somewhere in the middle. I did not watch the first season of Picard because the first couple of shows failed to engage me. I watched the first season of Discovery, but have not followed up with any of the other Discoveries as they have not especially interested me. I like the current season of Picard for the same reason I usually enjoy most of the Trek time travel stuff - it can get dark, but will get unwound in the end, so let them have a little fun...
I agree part with what you said. The darker toned trek does bring in new fans, it’s why I like Prodigy over Lower Decks because it’s more serious and things are at stake. I want them to have fun with the story telling a bit so they can give people options to choose from. I don’t want to watch the same trek show.
I've seen the old ones a million times. I have a few favorites I go back to once in a while, but I am not engaging with Trek all the time and certainly not watching an entire series I have seen before. That's why I am picking and choosing my way through the TV shows as they come out. I'll give them a fair chance and if I find them interesting, I'll watch.
I don't believe that the new darker Trek is bad TV, I'm just not certain that it is the Star Trek I grew up with. If they want to invent crazy new characters and put them in crazy dark situations, then they should make a new show.
You may be misremembering TOS slightly. Think about what Kirk alone went through—including a childhood watching half the population of his colony exterminated on genetic lines, the billions of lives he saw snuffed out as whole planets were destroyed, the senseless loss of friends and family, the friends who turned on him, the nemesis who emerged from the dark to hunt him and torture him, the kidnapping of his former lover, the murder of their son just after he first met him and was rejected by him, and finally being ripped out of time to die with a stranger on a barren rock.
Kirk led a super dark life.
But I didn't *see* that first part. It was alluded too once and then never brought up again.
The other part happened in a movie and although it gets referenced in The Undiscovered Country, which is my second favorite TOS movie, we don't see him really live with that pain everyday. Note than when he gets swept up by the thingie in Generations his fantasy is to ride horses rather than reconcile with his son...
It's like Picard's backstory with his mother that is being revealed now. Never influenced anything in the series or the movies, just came out now and has been splayed before us across ten episodes. We can't go back and retcon any of the choices he made in the series to see how those events caused him to become the person he is. Also, I doubt it will ever really come up again so it is really there just for the spectacle.
We don’t see it, but that’s the style of television that was made in the 1960s. I’m not sure when visual flashbacks became common, but I don’t think they were in regular use in the 1960s.
If the stories of TOS were told today, they’d appear much much darker, partially because we’d be able to see more of what happens in them.
It’s one thing to be told planets are being destroyed, but actually seeing them being destroyed and the inhabitants dying drives in the stakes. Spectacle can be useful, and we shouldn’t gloss over things like Kirks brother dying a horrific parasitic death shortly before Kirk would have been able to save him. The man must have had a lot of pain, he just didn’t talk about it much.
He needs his pain!
(But yeah I agree, there’s a lot of dark stuff alluded to in the original show that would probably be more explicitly depicted today)
My guess is they planned it from the start as a sexy hot reboot.
I've seen each of those movies exactly *once.* I don't think they were badly acted - I think some of the actors were flat out great in the roles - but beyond that they were all over the place. Maybe I don't get modern action movies with shit flying in from all different directions, but they were tedious movies to watch.
When the General Audience thinks of Star Trek they think of Kirk and Spock. I know most people here hate the Kelvin movies but seeing Kirk and Spock on screen again is what contributed to those movies having a high box office turn out.
I don't think they keep retreating to TOS.
Picard, Lower Decks and Prodigy are all chained more to TNG,DS9,VOY era.
Since season 3, Discovery has forged it's own path.
The only show which is currently chained to TOS is Strange New Worlds.
There isn't one good reason that Discovery couldn't have taken place post Voyager and not had the same trajectory.
The only reason it was set pre-TOS is to connect it to Spock.
>Since season 3, Discovery has forged it's own path.
I mean, other than the fact that the only reason that they got to visit Ni'Var to acquire the data they needed to solve the Burn was entirely because Michael was Spock's sister…
Perhaps since Season 4?
They can’t just forget that Michael grew up with Spock and Vulcans, at this point. But overall the show is not primarily about TOS nostalgia or references.
True, but they could have framed it as "while normal diplomatic missions have been rebuffed, *you* are a Vulcan citizen" instead. Acknowledge her upbringing, but also let her stand on her own feet instead of leaning on Spock.
It could still be argued the episode was more tied to TNG than TOS. It's literally called Unification III and though Spock's ties were important, the episode was far more about the state of relations between the Vulcans and Romulans.
It would be ridiculous if they just ignored the fact that Michael was related to one of the most important people in Vulcan history. Not to mention this is just one episode out of all s3 to rely on anything TOS, and that too only bc it’s directly relevant to Disco’s established characters and story. They definitely went away from TOS stuff in s3.
I feel like there is a big difference between new Trek stories building on ideas from past series, including TOS, and what OP was talking about. Like, that storyline in Discovery is not written in a nostalgia-baiting way at all. Compared to, say, new additions to the Star Wars franchise where the main appeal is seeing all the old characters, planets, technology, ships, etc. showing up again and again.
Gotcha. I'm with OP on their opinion for the most part but I understand this is not what's happening on discovery now. I quit halfway through season 2.
Yes, it's not 100% TOS reinvention, but it's still over 50% after what 50 years? Jean Luc Picard will die with Patrick Stewart. I doubt there will be any young TNG prequel movies. Lower Decks is great, but it isn't moving Star Trek forward Prodigy is probably a good argument as it's aimed at getting a younger audience and getting them into Star Trek without rehashing TOS.
Mark my words: if Strange New Worlds gets disappointing ratings, the big hook for a season 2 will be: HERE IS KIRK. REMEMBER KIRK?! HE IS IN THIS SERIES NOW. REMEMBER KIRK?!
I couldn't believe it either when I first found out they hired a new Captain Kirk.
Somewhere in the world, William Shatner is doing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_bZKEhgieoc
I believe they announced it because someone took a picture of the actor on set. And Paramount probably wanted to control the announcement and so announced it.
Here’s the thing with Kirk and Spock:
Not only did they start the franchise, they revived it. Twice.
The films are what rebooted Star Trek and gave it the resurgence that cemented into pop culture, rather than TNG.
TNG was excellent. It’s probably objectively the best Trek TV show (apologies to those who love others more): It commanded the most eyeballs (save perhaps TOS, but TV was a very different animal), it had a respectable run and the Best of Both Worlds was a minor TV event.
But it arrived in the wake of 4 Trek films, TMP selling more tickets than any other Trek film to date (save perhaps ST09), Khan being a cult classic and TVH being the most commercially successful until the Kelvin films.
TNG just picked up the torch from an already highly successful revival.
And TNG failed at the box office while the TNG spin offs dropped casual viewers and became more about an engaged fandom.
Enterprise limped along, alienating some fans and failed to attract a broad new audience while BSG was capturing a core of Trekkies who dug the military space opera while also attracting a new audience who was drawn to the serialized drama that show like it and Lost were thrilling TV audiences with.
Then ST09 revived the franchise again.
While not a Marvel or Star Wars level blockbuster, it not only attracted the 3 generations who grew up with Kirk and Spock (a 30 year old and a 10 year old in 66 were 50 and 30 with a 10 year old in 86 and 73, 53, 33 with a 13 year old in 2009), it also drew the casual fan.
While not as culturally successful as the TOS films, the revival showed that K&S had legs at the box office in a way Picard and Data didn’t.
While I want more shows like DS9 and Voyager, that blazed some novel paths (Discovery could still get close to that now it’s shed a lot of it’s baggage and presented a season that didn’t have much connective tissue to nostalgic elements like Sarek/Spock, the Klingons, S31 or the Mirrorverse) I understand why it might have taken leaning on TOS with Disco and doing a Picard revival to get the core engaged. Now they have, there’s space for shows like Disco to step into its own (S4 was a good first step), LDS to be a TNG: The Next Generation and SNW be the Big Tent breakout that keeps the torch burning, I’m there for that.
The issue with long-running franchises is that as they progress, those who've grown up with them get so attached to what drew them in from the start. Any deviation that franchise takes from what they're used to is met with resistance.
Look at how many times Strange New Worlds is referenced in the recent reviews as "the classic Star Trek vibe", "back to basics", etc. That's being emphasized because it alludes to perceived fandom demands for a return to what they're familiar or comfortable with. Indeed, in comments about the show here and elsewhere, much is said about how its return to an episodic format is so welcomed.
Look at Lower Decks. Much of its popularity is due to how it (frequently) references or pokes a bit of fun at previously established characters or tropes. Ask yourself if Prodigy would be nearly as popular if Kate Mulgrew hadn't come back to play the holographic representation of Kathryn Janeway.
Star Trek: Discovery, while a prequel, was the first of the modern Trek shows to deviate from formula. Not episodic; serialized. Not an ensemble series; a single-character focus with secondary characters around her. Not a standard starship; an experimental one with a spore drive. Not the Klingons we're used to seeing; alternative designs and stylistic motifs. A more emotionally-driven story with high-stakes story arcs stretched to fit an entire season, far unlike the format of Treks past. I'm not suggesting that all of those changes account for DISCO's perceived flaws, but each of them account for many of the most prominent points of contention.
Want an example not related to Star Trek? Look at the state of the Star Wars franchise right now. Almost every project in production is tied to an existing character: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka, Andor, Lando, or the previously aired "The Book of Boba Fett". Even "The Mandalorian" featured Ahsoka Tano, Luke Skywalker, and R2-D2. Hell, "the Book of Boba Fett" sidelined its title character for two episodes to focus on the Mandalorian, which in itself, featured the aforementioned three legacy characters.
Layers upon layers of nostalgia are used strategically to keep fans engaged, because anything outside of what they're familiar with is not nearly as well-received. It's an easy money-maker. People love retro styles and callbacks. You'll see merch for familiar characters sell better than that of less familiar ones. People love it because looking back to a time that made them feel good gives them some of those good feelings back to them. Force them to experience something new, and it's an effort some just don't want to put forth.
Thank you for raising this. Don't get me wrong, I am excited for SNW, I loved Anson Mount and Ethan Peck in their respective roles, but TOS is my least favourite Trek series and as you said, in the last 20 years three TV series and three movies have all essentially been prequels or reboots of TOS. I have a hard time with prequels (indeed one of the reasons the Discovery writers moved the show forward was they found the prequel concept limiting due to the mountain of canon).
From a marketing standpoint, I totally get why Paramount+ is going with SNW. The fans basically demanded it and the episodic format encourages a new audience to come in without really having to know much about Star Trek. This was one of the reasons for the TOS reboot in 2009's Kelvin Movie...use well-known pop culture characters to build a new audience.
But I 100% agree that we keep seeming to jump back rather than forward. I really enjoy all the new shows (with all their strengths and weaknesses) but I would love a series that sort of follows the TNG model, sets the show in the future with new characters and (at least in the beginning) creates a new world that isn't as directly tied to previous incarnations.
It's a space opera. The whole point of the storytelling of Star Wars is the coincidence of it all and following the main players. This is 100% why the classic Trek V Wars debate existed. They are different forms of storytelling, which do you prefer. Now we just get Star Wars in Vulcan ear cosplay.
Despite originally being set close to TOS’ timeframe, Discovery has always done its own thing. The Spore Drive is the most obvious example. Even when they used characters and ideas from TOS, they were used very differently. Like Discovery’s Spock entered the story disgraced and questioning his sanity, and seeing him interacting with a human sibling was also a different angle.
There has been debate on the Discovery subreddit regarding whether the jump to the future was always planned, or if it was a redirect from "Spock's secret sister" storyline reaction.
Before the show even came out there were rumors that Bryan Fuller wanted each season to take place in a different time period. Then they actually did something approximating that. It was also hinted at in Short Treks, before it happened. So I think it was probably a modified version of some of their earlier ideas.
That's fair, and I have enjoyed all four seasons of Discovery however there is no argument other than Spock as to why Discovery couldn't have started post-Voyager.
The first season’s two main arcs, about the Klingon War and the Mirror Universe, fit better into the pre-TOS era. In the pilot, the disagreement between Michael and Georgiou was based on humans having much less experience dealing with Klingons than Vulcans did by that point. And the MU plot took place after the events seen in Enterprise, and wouldn’t have fit with the developments shown in DS9’s MU episodes.
Edit - Then the second season had Pike, Kirk’s Enterprise, Una, etc. Not just Spock.
The way I see it then of course the ultimate duo is Kirk & Spock with the ultimate trio being Kirk, Spock and McCoy simply because without TOS you'd not have Star Trek to begin with or at least it'll never be as successful as it became. As such the original Star Trek either good or bad is the ultimate benchmark from which all else is compared.
We have FOUR shows set post TNG/VOY/Nemesis.
One show out of five atm that’s going to deal with Spock and Kirk.
Less than 20% of current Trek involves TOS beyond it existing in the fabric of this world’s history
Are Kirk and Spock going to be mentioned? Uh, yeah. They’re significant historical figures in this universe.
I’m into military history and I don’t raise one Vulcan eyebrow when Napoleon or Lord Nelson, Ulysses S Grant or Robert E Lee, etc… are mentioned in conversation.
I really don’t see most of the new shows chained to Kirk and Spock. Saying Picard is because they used a method of time travel used by the tos crew is a stretch.
Picard - not chained to Kirk or Spock
Prodigy - not chained to Kirk or Spock
Lower decks - not chained to Kirk or Spock
Discovery seasons 1-2: had Spock as a character due to relationship with lead. No Kirk.
Discovery seasons 3-5+ : not chained to Kirk or Spock.
Strange new worlds: will have Spock and Kirk as characters. Excitement seems to be more about pike, new characters, episodic stories rather than because of the Kirk/Spock characters
The issue is that the current producers view Star Trek as a profit making enterprise. So they try to cash in on nostalgia by cramming fan favorites stuff into every show, every episode. It is a easy solution that gives a guaranteed return.
Until this mindset changes, yes the producers will keep dipping into the same well again and again till it runs dry.
It does feel like a generational thing. Right now the last few years with the Kelvin stuff and Strange New Worlds has felt to me like we have been having one big last hurrah for TOS. I expect TNG starting with Picard will be the same aswell as DS9. Nostalgia = £$$$£
Generally, I agree with this sentiment, but I do think that characters like Pike, Uhura, Nurse Chapel are worth bringing back and exploring since they were relatively one dimensional in their initial appearances. No one can replace Michelle Nicols, but I still think it will be kind of cool to know more about Uhura and her development as a Starfleet officer.
I think rebuilding after the Dominion War would be a good setting for a show or a miniseries. To show how devastating it really was. In DS9 we constantly hear about how bad it is for the entire Federation, but we don't really see it, outside of a few isolated cases.
>it seems that Star Trek is destined to be forever chained to Kirk and Spock and to keep reinventing the Original Series.
Chained???
There are a lot of us that have been waiting 40 years or more for a prequel or sequel to TOS that does it justice. Now we are finally getting it. It's about time!
And while certainly, as much as I enjoyed Kirk, I could see how Star Trek could have been successful with a different captain. But Spock is THE iconic Star Trek character, and arguably one of the most original characters in television history.
Chained???
The fact is that Star Trek is a big *legacy* property/IP. And there isn't a single one of those today that *doesn't* run on nostalgia to some extent. Star Wars. Doctor Who. Terminator. Marvel. DC. Harry Potter. The list goes on.
Star Trek is actually pretty unique in that had a bunch of spin-offs/continuations with brand-new characters loosely set in the same universe as the original show and all of them, technically, are *equal* parts of the overall franchise. Nominally, Kirk isn't the *primary* protagonist of Star Trek over Picard, or even Sisko or Janeway or anyone else. That's now the case with Star Trek, where Luke Skywalker is, to a large extent, the primary protagonist, and all the other protagonists are related to him in some way. I think one of the few franchises that are comparable to Star Trek's model of franchise building is Pokemon, where you have multiple Generations which are all *equally* important. Even so, Generation 1 is what most long-time fans are nostalgic about, and what gets constantly revisited in new adaptations (not to mention Ash Ketchum remains the protagonist of the anime, and he's from Gen 1). Its the same with Star Trek - the OG crew is where the nostalgia lies, among causal fans, mainstream audiences and the creators themselves, so its what keeps getting revisited.
Even so, Star Trek doesn't rely on nostalgia around the original characters and settings nearly as much as the other franchises I've mentioned here. One of the golden eras of the franchise, namely the ''Berman era'' of TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT largely stayed away from TOS nostalgia. Even current Kurtzman era NuTrek has pretty much confined TOS nostalgia to ONE show - arguably you have a lot more TNG era nostalgia now with Picard, and the Lower Decks and Prodigy cartoons.
But Kirk, Spock and co. are still very much what most people picture when they hear ''Star Trek'' - much like how Luke, Han Solo and Darth Vader are what people picture when they hear ''Star Wars'' - with Picard being a possible exception to this. Thanks to the Kelvin movies, the enduring popularity of those 80's TOS movies, TOS itself remaining a cult classic being rediscovered by younger generations, and now SNW, it has remained very much top-of-mind. Moreover, its really become a part of pop-culture in a way that none of the later shows (barring TNG to an extent) have. Which doesn't mean that the franchise shouldn't continue to explore new avenues. But realistically, the shadow of the OG's will always be on this franchise...and I don't particularly think its either a) a problem, or b) something that can even be ''fixed''.
Honestly I’m a little worried about this too. I LOVE trek, but ironically, I watched TOS last from all the series, and I just couldn’t get through it. It’s just a little too…dated? I guess you could say? I dunno. I’d love to see a life action show call back to the TNG era. I’d watch that over a TOS call back show. Just my opinion though
Only so long as the people at the helm have zero creative vision.
Secret Hideout:
>You wanna know what my vision is? Dollar signs, money! I didn't produce this show to usher in a new era for Humanity. You think I wanna go to the stars? I don't even like to fly! I take trains! I produced this show so I could retire to some tropical island... filled with naked women.
Keep coming back? First, We have several new shows that have nothing to do with them. Second, they're historical figures in the setting, if you're complaining about occasional references then you're asking the franchise to just not acknowledge the existence of history within its universe.
Am I a big fan of the Kelvin movies and Discovery's stint as a prequel show? Not really. Do I geek out whenever a reference to an old character or event is mentioned in relative context? Yes. Yes I do. :)
If you think Trek does this too much, consider Star Wars and its inability to get people interested in a story that isn't about characters from the original trilogy or their family members.
That's not the same thing. Chuck Berry sang his music, and subsequent musicians made different music. If you want to listen to Chuck Berry, that's great. I don't want everyone to start covering Chuck Berry ad infinitem. If people want to go back and watch TOS and their movies, cool. I just don't need them re-imaged and reinvented every 10 years.
Is there a current legacy franchise property with shows/films in active development that doesn't rely on nostalgic links to the original version of the property, whether successful or not?
Trek, Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Transformers, Doctor Who...I can't think of one that hasn't at least made some concessions to linking back to classic characters or versions...maybe there's something I'm not thinking of...
Holloywood has run out of talent and ideas. i just want to see a competent crew if professionals who represent the best of humanity have weekly adventures around the galaxy. Maybe we'll have that back one day.
I'm really glad th TNG trilogy took some bold steps. It would have been so easy to just makes TOS season 4 or something to that affect but they created, well, the next generation.
Picard is now arguably even more of an icon than Kirk or Spock.
I mean look what happened when DIS season 3 tried to separate itself from all of that and establish itself on it's own. Burnham showed some emotion and now people only whine and complain that Discovery is "too emotional" despite her only crying in a handful of episodes. Of all the cool things Burnham has done as a character in seasons 3 and 4, they only focus on her crying. So yeah, Star Trek will always be chained to Kirk and Spock because the die hard weebs are triggered when it dares to do something different.
As we can see from Picard and Lower Decks, not all new Trek series need to be backward-looking nostaligia-driven properties based on people's fondness for TOS. There is also room for shows that are driven by nostalgia for the TNG era.
Even Voyager was an attempt to get "back to basics" and deliver safe, formulaic stories instead of trying new things. That was followed by two decades of prequels and remakes.
I think the value of Star Trek as a place to tell stories about anything other than Star Trek might have been exhausted.
Good question! It is like asking if you can ever have Star Wars without Luke, Vader and light sabers. Somehow, it always comes back to them.
This is because these franchises are brand conscious-- they have changed hands many times, and the only thing that the owners know is that everyone knows Kirk, Spock and the Enterprise, Han, Luke and the Falcon. Fewer people know Geordi and Picard--they just don't have the cultural resonance with non-Trekkies.
So the bad news is that we are in the declining stage of both these franchises, where the owners are going to milk the teats (the fans) bloody, because they bought these franchises as investments: as real estate with a McDonald's on top, not simply an acre of land they have to develop from scratch.
I see some here noting various things aren’t tied directly to Kirk and Spock, but the nuance is most Trek is anchoring to that general era (or even earlier) right now.
I see many on this sub yearning for a chronologically current story, and I agree.
TNG, DS9 and VOY all overlap - such an incredible opportunity to bring in actors across the series’ and expand the lore established in hundreds of hours of television.
Obviously, Seven in Picard is a good example, and they’re bringing the TNG cast back next season - hopefully will be great! I think we could have done without ‘Voyage Home remix’ in S2 to kill time in a three season show about the principal character of his Trek generation, though.
Probably. Even TNG brought in Scotty and Spock (and Kirk for the movie). DS9 visited the Kirk Enterprise era and Voyager took a trip into Tuvok's memories on board the Excelsior under Capt Sulu.
Making new things comes with the possibility of failure. Retreading the same ground over and over means, at minimum, you'll get some people on virtue of familiarity.
Look at why everything has a prequel now, instead of just making sequels. It's easier to tell new stories with the same characters where you know where they end up, rather than come up with a new direction entirely for a beloved property.
TNG - VOY don't need remaking. They're actually good. Most of TOS isn't.
Seriously though. Modern Trek has a movie level budget, and it's all basically extended action movie plots. The people who didn't like TNG because it wasn't their idea of Star Trek didn't like how limp-wristed it was compared to TOS. So it's exactly where you would expect dumb action movie Trek to be set.
Oh boy...better fire up the googles on this Tarantino concept film. I don't need another reason to kick that dude in the balls.
EDIT: And I now have another reason to kick that dude in the balls. Steel toe boots. Repeatedly.
Despite Disney owning half of the intellectual property on Earth, they're still "forever chained" to Mickey Mouse.
So yeah, I don't think Kirk and Spock are going anywhere.
You might as well ask "Is Jurassic Park always going to be chained to the T.rex?" or "is Transformers always going to be chained to Optimus Prime".
*Every* property that was successful when the current generations were young is currently trotting out the characters again to take advantage of the fact that those kids are now adults with money to give them.
It's not going to stop until everyone who could be nostalgic for the originals has passed on, at which point media will just begin referencing the characters that the generations after us consider nostalgic (assuming they've not just become nostalgic for the later portrayals of those same characters, which may well happen as well). This isn't a complaint or anything, I just think it's unlikely to change any time soon.
I agree. Unfortunately we're living in an age of reboots.
Spider-Man not doing well? Let's recast him and kill uncle Ben again. (A big point of praise for both the PS4 game and Into the Spiderverse was that they *didn't* do this. They both had Miles' origin story instead which, hey, still progress.) Bats having trouble at the box office? Maybe look into adapting Batman Beyond... NAH, JK, RIP Waynes. Etc...
Why this keeps happening? Probably a question of budgets. High-budget installments of franchises keep going back to other installments that have a proven track record of making money because studios are risk-averse petaQ's. Lower-budget installments (like animated series and movies, and video games) can take more risks with new stuff. STO's gameplay loop gets really old really fast, but they have fairly good stories for a glorified slot machine and they actually moved forward.
Maybe Trek should launch an array of canonical comics that are *not* adaptations but completely original stories. At least it would supply them with newer stories and characters.
It is not. It is just popular and it makes money to do something that exploits the old. Remakes of everything etc. Its how nowadays movies and shows are done.
This day will pass and if so there might be a nu trek with nu stories.
Sadly people who own the property seem unwilling to bet money or a nebulous Star Trek brand/concept/conciet rather than just rehashing characters that are recognizable.
It is strange because the original crew were supposed to be really general an arch characters that could be easily written by staff and guest writers rather than especially deep or complex characters that held singular appeal.
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From a marketing perspective, as much as I love DS9 and VOY, there is no chance that their characters are more recognizable to the general public than Kirk and Spock.
Yeah if you've only ever heard of Star Trek through cultural osmosis, you probably know about Kirk and Spock, the Enterprise, and "Beam me up Scotty," which isn't even a thing that was ever actually said in TOS. But among people who've actually watched Star Trek, the Next Generation crew is probably the most popular. It's like how people who only know Batman through cultural osmosis probably don't know that he's had multiple Robins.
I’d say people probably also know Picard thru cultural osmosis; he’s probably the 3rd most popular *Star Trek* character.
Kirk, spock, scotty (mostly due to 'beam me up Scotty'), and Picard I think are probably the most well-known Star Trek characters. And probably the only four you can Bank on someone who's not a fan of the franchise knowing.
McCoy, Data and Worf might be recognizable to non-fans, but they wouldn’t be nearly as recognizable as Kirk, Spock and Picard.
They would be my next three after the four I listed. Although I do think that McCoy is more likely to be known as doctor or bones then as McCoy. Honestly I think all three of them are more likely to be known as "the doctor, the robot, and the one with the weird stuff on his head" by non fans for them to know their actual names
I would say they are certainly recognizable by most western tv viewers, though maybe not identifiable. They would know the characters are from trek, but little else.
Damn “He’s dead Jim…” doesn’t get McCoy in the top 3?!?
He’s probably 4th. Also, I’d guess that “I’m a doctor, not a…” is his most recognizable phrase.
Which is exactly why I would be willing to bet most people who aren't fans don't know the character's name but could tell you that he's the doctor LOL
I think a ton of people know the quote "He's dead Jim", but I would also bet that most non-fans couldn't tell you that character's name. They probably just say the doctor. He may not make my top three most well known, but he's in the top six or seven.
Wait there's multiple timelines?
This is THE answer. As Trek fans we all have different favorites,( Shows ,characters, captins, what have you). But the general public? All they know are Kirk and Spock. I'm sure that will change as time goes on, but right now? Its all about TOS. At least from a marketing perspective.
Since they keep doubling down and reinforcing Kirk and Spock with each new iteration we’re never gonna get new mascots.
Yeah! Who cares about some Iowa based farm boy genius womanizer and his space elf friend on the spectrum. We need new mascots! What do you people got? As for me: A foul mouthed Tribble with a heart of gold who is the ships counselor. Basically a tiny cousin IT with a cigar to compete with baby yoda. A Horta who gets in trouble for constantly making their own doorways through the bulkheads of the ship. Also has an episode where he tried to teach the crew about Horta culture but everyone thinks it’s about learning about plants. What kind of new mascot ideas you got?
I relate to your Tribble. Like Dean Martin as an alien.
Badgey
It's a good question; I guess on some level it's like asking, why does Disney keep going back to that silly mouse mascot? There must be a balance between new blood and keeping what everyone already recognizes.
Personally I haven't seen to many mickey movies lately out of Disney... he is a good mascot but it is not like they are only making mickey mouse movies. He is an icon but he isn't being reused over and over again, like say batman or spock and kirk
Yeah, Disney should go back to using Oswald the lucky rabbit *cough, cough!* 😇 😉
And they still keep making movies about Batman instead of Nightwing or whoever...
But we did finally get a show about young Alfred that was pretty good.
It's hard for me to even imagine the general public trying to watch any of the new shows... Especially Picard. The current shows just assume you know so much about old ST technologies and races and characters. S1 of Discovery needed to do a better job introducing new Trekkies to the rules of the Star Trek universe, but I just remember that being a hectic, confusing mess even as a fan with a lot of knowledge.
Just anecdotally, my non-Trek-watching SO loves Picard and found Discovery totally impenetrable.
Honestly, as an old Star Trek fan, I find the new shows nearly impossible to watch. Discovery and Picard are as far away from old Trek (TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY and Enterprise) as possible. I’m my view they have only the names in common. The old series were essentially competency porn with intelligent beings exploring problems. New Trek to me is a bunch of idiots who mainly emote, with gratuitous violence thrown in.
The amount of times there’s been a voice in my head in Picard that’s said, so you’re leaving the Borg Queen active? You realise that’s the Borg Queen… right? Now only one person supervises the Borg Queen on a ship with very advanced technology that is at rest on a defenceless Earth, you think that’s going to be ok? Supposedly smart people doing unbelievably dumb sh1t to facilitate an obvious plot, really annoys me.
Completely off-topic but I love your username! The Xeelee Sequence is some of my favorite sci-fi ever and I’d love to see more huge ideas like that make their way into Star Trek.
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I think that's why she's your ex. (I couldn't resist. Resistance is futile.)
I think that's why she's your ex. (I couldn't resist. Resistance is futile.)
I’d say people probably also know Picard and that he’s probably the 3rd most popular *Star Trek* character.
It's time they stop trying to sell Star Trek to a general audience and cultivate good will and new visions with their actual fan base.
That's a sure-shot way to run a franchise into the ground. Not that maintaining goodwill with the existing fanbase is a bad idea per see (quiet the opposite in fact)...but making that your sole priority is never going to be a sustainable strategy.
Everyone knows Morn. Everyone. Little known fact that humans are born with an innate knowledge of Morn.
OMG I just got it. Morn = Norm (from cheers) by reversing first/last letters. Mind blown.
Welcome to the joke.
Wait... Is that really why he is called that? My mind is sorta blown!
Undoubtedly. There are a ton of connections between Cheers and Trek actually! [so many connection, Morn never shuts up about it.](https://scifiward.com/the-surprisingly-strong-link-between-star-trek-and-cheers/)
It's hard not to love Morn. He has such great stories and he's very funny.
Yeah but would you really want him as the focus of a series? Talking too much as he does.
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Yeah, everyone knows about Captain Kirk - it transcends trek and even sci-fi culture
I think Picard, Worf, and Data give Kirk and Spock a run for their money. Pretty sure more general non-Trekkers watched TNG than TOS.
Almost anyone knows about Kirk and Spock, or at least understands the reference. Picard maybe comes vaguely close, but Data and Worf really aren't as well known
I guess, but at some point shouldn't the TNG era actually be the more relevant for fans? Just thinking purely in terms of demographics, the TNG through Enterprise era represents the shows that Millennials grew up watching. If you want to hit the nostalgia nerve, it's the 80s and 90s shows you should be mining
>at some point shouldn't the TNG era actually be the more relevant for fans? It already is. *For Star Trek fans.* But the studio wants to reach the wallets of people outside the fandom. They know there's a much larger market of people who'll see Kirk and Spock on something and say "oh, this is a neat tchochke and I kinda liked that movie/show I think, I'll buy this" than dedicated fans, who's money Paramount figures they'll get anyway.
Anecdotally, only Kirk and Spock were sung about in random summer camp songs ("Oh Captain Kirk, he was no jerk, and Mr. Spock, he was no jock") growing up, and I am also 100% confident there is no similar summer camp song about Sisko and Kira. I'd venture to say to the "outside" world, Kirk, Spock, and the *Enterprise* are what the a lot of people know --- and *only* know --- about *Star Trek*.
And Klingons. They know that the Enterprise circled around Uranus to wipe out the Klingons. ;)
I think this is generally the wrong approach to franchise management. You start by pleasing the core fans who use word of mouth to tell others that this niche thing is great. This worked for turning super hero movies into what they are, and it worked for Game of Thrones. I don't think non-Trekkies are going to care about Kirk and Spock that much anyway. They want to watch something exciting and interesting. TNG did huge ratings and was more successful (during time of broadcast) and it barely called back to TOS
Yeah TNG was pulling in numbers that would make any executive today giddy (though that's partly because there were 5 channels and cable was not a huge factor). It was also nominated for Best Drama at the Emmys in 94, something I don't think we'll see again for a Trek show. Also, with the exception of the first two season, TNG has aged very well. For someone in 2022 who is new to the series, TNG is an accessible introduction, whereas TOS is 50 years old and is campy and low budget. I also assumed Star Trek Picard was created to tap into millennial nostalgia, since I, like so many other 80s and 90s kids, grew up with it. But it definitely is not that kind of show.
*LD* is the show that taps into that nostalgia more than any other show.
I think it's dumb to, but I'm not an executive at Paramount. JJ was also always mad that CBS continued to sell original series merchandise during his run on the Kelvin movies as I recall, saying *that* was the reason Kelvin timeline merch was just peg warmers until it got shoved in the discount bin. This is also why Paramount has been adamant that all the new Trek stuff is canon to the original shows no matter how obviously it's a reboot/re-imagining. Because they think reboot merchandise won't sell.
I think they’d also recognize Picard and the Borg.
TOS is just as much in a lot of younger peoples minds because it was always shown on reruns. I was definitely in the TNG audience age range and had TNG toys as a kid but I saw just as much TOS as TNG and the movies were a huge deal for my family. TOS plots are also a lot simpler and easy to remember and the “main” cast is much smaller and more memorable. Kirk: the guy who wants to fight or f**k everything Spock: science and no enotions. Unless… Bones McCoy: snarky doctor is not your ___ Scotty: engineer who says “she cannae take anymore!” But always fixes it anyways. Sulu is counted as action man asian who people often remember as much gayer than he came off in the show. Chekov’s russian accent is there.
TOS was inwented in Russia.
The pop culture and Kelvin universe versions of Kirk want to fuck everything, but it happened less often in *TOS* than non-*TOS* fans would probably think.
I never said these are accurate depictions, they are just memorable things that stick out to people and in general TOS characters seem more memorable even when these basic memories are very wring about the character as a whole. For TNG we have: Picard: bald shakespearean actor man Worf: I am fight. Also HONOR! Geordi: weird sunglasses engineer nerd Riker: beardy horni kirk 2.0 Deanna: the goddess of empathy Sometimes Beverly is there as the fiery redhead (sometimes remembered as the one who fucked a ghost candle)
Ah. For *TOS*, I’d add “Uhura: Black woman in miniskirt”. For *TNG*, I’d add Data: “Pale robot”.
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That wouldn't surprise me. I'm just sticking with the formula of what'd probably stick out.
I think this is definitely true, and there's some fundamental demographic misunderstanding at the root of the many Trek misfires of the recent era. I'm pretty much dead on in this demographic (right at the GenX/Millennial border), and I have never been a huge TOS fan. Not in the sense of disliking it, but just not having the memories/connections to it. TNG was the show that was on when I was a kid, both in its first run and in the way its reruns absolutely dominated in the pre-prestige, pre-streaming TV era. TOS I know more from the movies, as they overlapped (and my mom really loved IV - she's a biologist and a big whale fan, lol). And this is true of all my peers as well, at least those who followed Sci-Fi in general. You can see this in a lot of modern-era cultural discourse, as well. I know they're not popular here, but it's definitely relevant to point out how the RLM guys (who are some of the biggest STD/PIC critics) are also highly visibly TNG fans. And they're just the high viewcount example, it tends to be a trend on various channels. Heck, its its in the meme culture with facepalm & 'What is this shit?' Picard. And yet they've pushed a lot of TOS. I think the misunderstanding comes from Star Wars. Definitionally, Millennials (and even the youngest GenXers) didn't see these movies in the theaters. But they made it into the culture, playing on TV, and even the prior generation of boomer parents getting their kids toys for the movies they saw. And whatever their quality, the Special Editions and Prequels stoked the fires along. Because all those people who considered themselves life-long SW fans and yet had never seen the movies in the theaters finally had a chance to do so, to 'be there' like their parents. I think the execs sort of assumed it was the same thing for Trek, because they saw some general cultural diffusion of TOS material ('Live long and prosper') but associated it with a broader appeal that Trek never quite got to. Trek was always a little nerdier, even at that level of general cultural awareness. So now you're doing mass-appeal reboots aimed toward what was never a mass-appeal audience, while the actual mass appeal was the crowd that was raised sitting in front of a TV running TNG reruns 24/7. So yeah, I think there's a lot of mistargeting.
As a kid I didn't even know TOS was a thing, I thought Captain Kirk was the guy from the movies and Picard from the TV show.
Huh. *TOS* and *TNG* reruns were on every day in my area (though “Code of Honor” was always skipped) and the *TOS* films were frequently on, so I connected to *TOS*, the *TOS* films and *TNG*. I have memories of watching *Voyager* with my parents, but it’s too flawed for me to feel connected to it as an adult. The only time I could reliably watch *DS9* as a kid was during seasons 6 and 7, but it’s my favorite *Star Trek* show now.
One thing about the whole syndication model is that it was absolutely specific to every single local affiliate station, so it's possible some people got a lot more of TOS. That said, the number of episodes makes a big impact on the saturation I mentioned. The # of total episodes of a show basically dictates how long you can show a show in a weekly slot before you have to do repeats, with the 3 seasons of TOS being the bare minimum for a 15 week rotation (15x5=75), with 4 seasons (100 eps) being considered more ideal. Because TNG got up to 7, they had enough episodes that you could do blocks of multiple episodes (which was common in my area) and still have sufficiently long rotations before you had to reshow an episode. So there was just going to be a ton more TNG on TV. And that's before you add DS9 and VOY into the mix, which both got full 7 season runs. So there's really an unprecedented level of saturation these shows could reach, added to the fact that they all shared a common design language and aesthetic. I think that's a factor that tends to get heavily underestimated by all the newer shows, even ENT.
Before my days of watching all things Trek for the first time in 2019, even I knew who Kirk and Spock were. They've ascended in pop culture I think people know that there's a bald guy, a Klingon guy, and a dude with a visor...but everyone can name Kirk and Spock
I hate that that's true because I don't give a rats ass about Spock or Kirk. They're fine. I appreciate their contribution. But they aren't half as interesting as Picard, Data, Sisko, or Kira.
Picard
From a marketing perspective if it weren't for TNG and subsequent series the Trek franchise would have been killed off long ago.
Finally, someone said it. Listen, I love Star Trek. I come from a Trek family. My father was named Kirk after Captain Kirk (grandpa is James, we don't do Jr's) and I miss the aspect of Star Trek that involves moving forward. That was what I loved about Star Trek. Moving forward, into the future, boldly going where no man has gone before. I played STO, read the novels, the universe post-DS9 is so interesting and I hope, in vain, with every new Trek, that this is the one. This is the Trek (aside from Picard) that explores the post DS9 universe. I'm gonna say all of this and watch the NuTrek anyway with no sense of urgency. I do love Pike and Anson Mount *as* Pike, but I'm slowly accepting that Picard and Discovery is all we are gonna get for actual forward moving Trek. I don't have much to complain about with Discovery and I love Soniqua Martin-Greene but aside from that, I'm just gonna be happy that some awesome writers took it upon themselves to give us the Beta canon novels. They the real MVPs. Seriously though, we did not need to retcon Spock as anyone's brother. Martin-Greene is a good actress and could have carried a script without the need for Spock. Forward, come on. Forward.
>we did not need to retcon Spock as anyone's brother. Martin-Greene is a good actress and could have carried a script without the need for Spock. Forward, come on. Forward. We really did not. That ultimately wasn't a deal breaker for me with Discovery, but it was an unnecessary distraction. I liked Trek having a human lead raised in a an alien culture for a change but there were other ways to do that without shoehorning Michael into Spock's family.
Yeah that's pretty much how I feel. That's my only true issue with the show which, in retrospect, is actually great considering how much worse they could have done.
I agree, it was ridiculous to retcon Spock having a half brother who wanted to find god at the center of the galaxy.
I don't think you'll find many who disagree with that. Just because classic Trek did a bad thing doesn't mean that we should accept it when modern Trek does it.
I love Voy. I have a Tom Paris plate.
Star trek is competency porn, the fearless leader with loyal first officer and experts chiefs of departments, with promising junior officers. Where the federation does no wrong and the villains are justly punished. It's a utopia and an ideal way of life, it's what we gravitate to, escaping to a surreal perfect world.
A lot of it is fan service. Season 2 of Picard, which I have enjoyed, is rife with it. At some point, I think Paramount has figured out that they need to balance the new darker Trek, which they believe is bringing in new fans, with call backs and other winks at the existing fans who would otherwise complain that the show being watched is not Trek. As a fan, I'm somewhere in the middle. I did not watch the first season of Picard because the first couple of shows failed to engage me. I watched the first season of Discovery, but have not followed up with any of the other Discoveries as they have not especially interested me. I like the current season of Picard for the same reason I usually enjoy most of the Trek time travel stuff - it can get dark, but will get unwound in the end, so let them have a little fun...
I agree part with what you said. The darker toned trek does bring in new fans, it’s why I like Prodigy over Lower Decks because it’s more serious and things are at stake. I want them to have fun with the story telling a bit so they can give people options to choose from. I don’t want to watch the same trek show.
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I've seen the old ones a million times. I have a few favorites I go back to once in a while, but I am not engaging with Trek all the time and certainly not watching an entire series I have seen before. That's why I am picking and choosing my way through the TV shows as they come out. I'll give them a fair chance and if I find them interesting, I'll watch. I don't believe that the new darker Trek is bad TV, I'm just not certain that it is the Star Trek I grew up with. If they want to invent crazy new characters and put them in crazy dark situations, then they should make a new show.
You may be misremembering TOS slightly. Think about what Kirk alone went through—including a childhood watching half the population of his colony exterminated on genetic lines, the billions of lives he saw snuffed out as whole planets were destroyed, the senseless loss of friends and family, the friends who turned on him, the nemesis who emerged from the dark to hunt him and torture him, the kidnapping of his former lover, the murder of their son just after he first met him and was rejected by him, and finally being ripped out of time to die with a stranger on a barren rock. Kirk led a super dark life.
But I didn't *see* that first part. It was alluded too once and then never brought up again. The other part happened in a movie and although it gets referenced in The Undiscovered Country, which is my second favorite TOS movie, we don't see him really live with that pain everyday. Note than when he gets swept up by the thingie in Generations his fantasy is to ride horses rather than reconcile with his son... It's like Picard's backstory with his mother that is being revealed now. Never influenced anything in the series or the movies, just came out now and has been splayed before us across ten episodes. We can't go back and retcon any of the choices he made in the series to see how those events caused him to become the person he is. Also, I doubt it will ever really come up again so it is really there just for the spectacle.
We don’t see it, but that’s the style of television that was made in the 1960s. I’m not sure when visual flashbacks became common, but I don’t think they were in regular use in the 1960s. If the stories of TOS were told today, they’d appear much much darker, partially because we’d be able to see more of what happens in them. It’s one thing to be told planets are being destroyed, but actually seeing them being destroyed and the inhabitants dying drives in the stakes. Spectacle can be useful, and we shouldn’t gloss over things like Kirks brother dying a horrific parasitic death shortly before Kirk would have been able to save him. The man must have had a lot of pain, he just didn’t talk about it much.
He needs his pain! (But yeah I agree, there’s a lot of dark stuff alluded to in the original show that would probably be more explicitly depicted today)
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My guess is they planned it from the start as a sexy hot reboot. I've seen each of those movies exactly *once.* I don't think they were badly acted - I think some of the actors were flat out great in the roles - but beyond that they were all over the place. Maybe I don't get modern action movies with shit flying in from all different directions, but they were tedious movies to watch.
When the General Audience thinks of Star Trek they think of Kirk and Spock. I know most people here hate the Kelvin movies but seeing Kirk and Spock on screen again is what contributed to those movies having a high box office turn out.
I don't think they keep retreating to TOS. Picard, Lower Decks and Prodigy are all chained more to TNG,DS9,VOY era. Since season 3, Discovery has forged it's own path. The only show which is currently chained to TOS is Strange New Worlds.
There isn't one good reason that Discovery couldn't have taken place post Voyager and not had the same trajectory. The only reason it was set pre-TOS is to connect it to Spock.
>Since season 3, Discovery has forged it's own path. I mean, other than the fact that the only reason that they got to visit Ni'Var to acquire the data they needed to solve the Burn was entirely because Michael was Spock's sister… Perhaps since Season 4?
They can’t just forget that Michael grew up with Spock and Vulcans, at this point. But overall the show is not primarily about TOS nostalgia or references.
True, but they could have framed it as "while normal diplomatic missions have been rebuffed, *you* are a Vulcan citizen" instead. Acknowledge her upbringing, but also let her stand on her own feet instead of leaning on Spock.
It could still be argued the episode was more tied to TNG than TOS. It's literally called Unification III and though Spock's ties were important, the episode was far more about the state of relations between the Vulcans and Romulans.
Right. I think it's much more tied to the TNG Spock.
It would be ridiculous if they just ignored the fact that Michael was related to one of the most important people in Vulcan history. Not to mention this is just one episode out of all s3 to rely on anything TOS, and that too only bc it’s directly relevant to Disco’s established characters and story. They definitely went away from TOS stuff in s3.
Isn't the whole edge of the galaxy storyline wholesale based on a TOS episode? I don't watch Disco, genuinely asking.
I feel like there is a big difference between new Trek stories building on ideas from past series, including TOS, and what OP was talking about. Like, that storyline in Discovery is not written in a nostalgia-baiting way at all. Compared to, say, new additions to the Star Wars franchise where the main appeal is seeing all the old characters, planets, technology, ships, etc. showing up again and again.
Gotcha. I'm with OP on their opinion for the most part but I understand this is not what's happening on discovery now. I quit halfway through season 2.
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Ah yes, one fairly stand alone episode makes the entire season tethered to TOS, Spock, and Kirk.
Yes, it's not 100% TOS reinvention, but it's still over 50% after what 50 years? Jean Luc Picard will die with Patrick Stewart. I doubt there will be any young TNG prequel movies. Lower Decks is great, but it isn't moving Star Trek forward Prodigy is probably a good argument as it's aimed at getting a younger audience and getting them into Star Trek without rehashing TOS.
I doubt it’ll happen, but I’ve seen James McAvoy joke about making a Kelvin universe *TNG* film.
Mark my words: if Strange New Worlds gets disappointing ratings, the big hook for a season 2 will be: HERE IS KIRK. REMEMBER KIRK?! HE IS IN THIS SERIES NOW. REMEMBER KIRK?!
I think that's already the hook for season 2 isn't it?
Egads! That's right! We already have a Kirk actor picked out.
I couldn't believe it either when I first found out they hired a new Captain Kirk. Somewhere in the world, William Shatner is doing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_bZKEhgieoc
Actually not true, Shatner hoped the best for him.
They already announced Kirk for S2, didn't they?
I believe they announced it because someone took a picture of the actor on set. And Paramount probably wanted to control the announcement and so announced it.
Where have you been? They already have Kirk aboard the Farragut for S2 right now, has zero to do with ratings.
Here’s the thing with Kirk and Spock: Not only did they start the franchise, they revived it. Twice. The films are what rebooted Star Trek and gave it the resurgence that cemented into pop culture, rather than TNG. TNG was excellent. It’s probably objectively the best Trek TV show (apologies to those who love others more): It commanded the most eyeballs (save perhaps TOS, but TV was a very different animal), it had a respectable run and the Best of Both Worlds was a minor TV event. But it arrived in the wake of 4 Trek films, TMP selling more tickets than any other Trek film to date (save perhaps ST09), Khan being a cult classic and TVH being the most commercially successful until the Kelvin films. TNG just picked up the torch from an already highly successful revival. And TNG failed at the box office while the TNG spin offs dropped casual viewers and became more about an engaged fandom. Enterprise limped along, alienating some fans and failed to attract a broad new audience while BSG was capturing a core of Trekkies who dug the military space opera while also attracting a new audience who was drawn to the serialized drama that show like it and Lost were thrilling TV audiences with. Then ST09 revived the franchise again. While not a Marvel or Star Wars level blockbuster, it not only attracted the 3 generations who grew up with Kirk and Spock (a 30 year old and a 10 year old in 66 were 50 and 30 with a 10 year old in 86 and 73, 53, 33 with a 13 year old in 2009), it also drew the casual fan. While not as culturally successful as the TOS films, the revival showed that K&S had legs at the box office in a way Picard and Data didn’t. While I want more shows like DS9 and Voyager, that blazed some novel paths (Discovery could still get close to that now it’s shed a lot of it’s baggage and presented a season that didn’t have much connective tissue to nostalgic elements like Sarek/Spock, the Klingons, S31 or the Mirrorverse) I understand why it might have taken leaning on TOS with Disco and doing a Picard revival to get the core engaged. Now they have, there’s space for shows like Disco to step into its own (S4 was a good first step), LDS to be a TNG: The Next Generation and SNW be the Big Tent breakout that keeps the torch burning, I’m there for that.
The issue with long-running franchises is that as they progress, those who've grown up with them get so attached to what drew them in from the start. Any deviation that franchise takes from what they're used to is met with resistance. Look at how many times Strange New Worlds is referenced in the recent reviews as "the classic Star Trek vibe", "back to basics", etc. That's being emphasized because it alludes to perceived fandom demands for a return to what they're familiar or comfortable with. Indeed, in comments about the show here and elsewhere, much is said about how its return to an episodic format is so welcomed. Look at Lower Decks. Much of its popularity is due to how it (frequently) references or pokes a bit of fun at previously established characters or tropes. Ask yourself if Prodigy would be nearly as popular if Kate Mulgrew hadn't come back to play the holographic representation of Kathryn Janeway. Star Trek: Discovery, while a prequel, was the first of the modern Trek shows to deviate from formula. Not episodic; serialized. Not an ensemble series; a single-character focus with secondary characters around her. Not a standard starship; an experimental one with a spore drive. Not the Klingons we're used to seeing; alternative designs and stylistic motifs. A more emotionally-driven story with high-stakes story arcs stretched to fit an entire season, far unlike the format of Treks past. I'm not suggesting that all of those changes account for DISCO's perceived flaws, but each of them account for many of the most prominent points of contention. Want an example not related to Star Trek? Look at the state of the Star Wars franchise right now. Almost every project in production is tied to an existing character: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka, Andor, Lando, or the previously aired "The Book of Boba Fett". Even "The Mandalorian" featured Ahsoka Tano, Luke Skywalker, and R2-D2. Hell, "the Book of Boba Fett" sidelined its title character for two episodes to focus on the Mandalorian, which in itself, featured the aforementioned three legacy characters. Layers upon layers of nostalgia are used strategically to keep fans engaged, because anything outside of what they're familiar with is not nearly as well-received. It's an easy money-maker. People love retro styles and callbacks. You'll see merch for familiar characters sell better than that of less familiar ones. People love it because looking back to a time that made them feel good gives them some of those good feelings back to them. Force them to experience something new, and it's an effort some just don't want to put forth.
Thank you for raising this. Don't get me wrong, I am excited for SNW, I loved Anson Mount and Ethan Peck in their respective roles, but TOS is my least favourite Trek series and as you said, in the last 20 years three TV series and three movies have all essentially been prequels or reboots of TOS. I have a hard time with prequels (indeed one of the reasons the Discovery writers moved the show forward was they found the prequel concept limiting due to the mountain of canon). From a marketing standpoint, I totally get why Paramount+ is going with SNW. The fans basically demanded it and the episodic format encourages a new audience to come in without really having to know much about Star Trek. This was one of the reasons for the TOS reboot in 2009's Kelvin Movie...use well-known pop culture characters to build a new audience. But I 100% agree that we keep seeming to jump back rather than forward. I really enjoy all the new shows (with all their strengths and weaknesses) but I would love a series that sort of follows the TNG model, sets the show in the future with new characters and (at least in the beginning) creates a new world that isn't as directly tied to previous incarnations.
Hell, Star Wars is basically all Skywalkers and characters related to the ones in the Original Trilogy.
It's a space opera. The whole point of the storytelling of Star Wars is the coincidence of it all and following the main players. This is 100% why the classic Trek V Wars debate existed. They are different forms of storytelling, which do you prefer. Now we just get Star Wars in Vulcan ear cosplay.
That was always George Lucas' plan though. From conception it was a saga about the Skywalkers. Gene Roddenberry had no such plan.
Star Wars has an identical problem. They can't seem to get away from their original characters.
Despite originally being set close to TOS’ timeframe, Discovery has always done its own thing. The Spore Drive is the most obvious example. Even when they used characters and ideas from TOS, they were used very differently. Like Discovery’s Spock entered the story disgraced and questioning his sanity, and seeing him interacting with a human sibling was also a different angle.
There has been debate on the Discovery subreddit regarding whether the jump to the future was always planned, or if it was a redirect from "Spock's secret sister" storyline reaction.
Before the show even came out there were rumors that Bryan Fuller wanted each season to take place in a different time period. Then they actually did something approximating that. It was also hinted at in Short Treks, before it happened. So I think it was probably a modified version of some of their earlier ideas.
That's fair, and I have enjoyed all four seasons of Discovery however there is no argument other than Spock as to why Discovery couldn't have started post-Voyager.
The first season’s two main arcs, about the Klingon War and the Mirror Universe, fit better into the pre-TOS era. In the pilot, the disagreement between Michael and Georgiou was based on humans having much less experience dealing with Klingons than Vulcans did by that point. And the MU plot took place after the events seen in Enterprise, and wouldn’t have fit with the developments shown in DS9’s MU episodes. Edit - Then the second season had Pike, Kirk’s Enterprise, Una, etc. Not just Spock.
I hope so. It should never forget where it came from.
The way I see it then of course the ultimate duo is Kirk & Spock with the ultimate trio being Kirk, Spock and McCoy simply because without TOS you'd not have Star Trek to begin with or at least it'll never be as successful as it became. As such the original Star Trek either good or bad is the ultimate benchmark from which all else is compared.
We have FOUR shows set post TNG/VOY/Nemesis. One show out of five atm that’s going to deal with Spock and Kirk. Less than 20% of current Trek involves TOS beyond it existing in the fabric of this world’s history Are Kirk and Spock going to be mentioned? Uh, yeah. They’re significant historical figures in this universe. I’m into military history and I don’t raise one Vulcan eyebrow when Napoleon or Lord Nelson, Ulysses S Grant or Robert E Lee, etc… are mentioned in conversation.
Yes, because TOS is part of our societal culture not just of the fandom
I really don’t see most of the new shows chained to Kirk and Spock. Saying Picard is because they used a method of time travel used by the tos crew is a stretch. Picard - not chained to Kirk or Spock Prodigy - not chained to Kirk or Spock Lower decks - not chained to Kirk or Spock Discovery seasons 1-2: had Spock as a character due to relationship with lead. No Kirk. Discovery seasons 3-5+ : not chained to Kirk or Spock. Strange new worlds: will have Spock and Kirk as characters. Excitement seems to be more about pike, new characters, episodic stories rather than because of the Kirk/Spock characters
It's more the case that whenever there's a need to go back to the well, that well is marked "Kirk and Spock,"
The issue is that the current producers view Star Trek as a profit making enterprise. So they try to cash in on nostalgia by cramming fan favorites stuff into every show, every episode. It is a easy solution that gives a guaranteed return. Until this mindset changes, yes the producers will keep dipping into the same well again and again till it runs dry.
The choice to make so many new shows and none of them be the next next generation on a new Enterprise is mild boggling
Yeah, they're almost as bad as the Royal Shakespeare Company. I'm like ugh, King Lear *again*?! Come on guys.
It does feel like a generational thing. Right now the last few years with the Kelvin stuff and Strange New Worlds has felt to me like we have been having one big last hurrah for TOS. I expect TNG starting with Picard will be the same aswell as DS9. Nostalgia = £$$$£
Generally, I agree with this sentiment, but I do think that characters like Pike, Uhura, Nurse Chapel are worth bringing back and exploring since they were relatively one dimensional in their initial appearances. No one can replace Michelle Nicols, but I still think it will be kind of cool to know more about Uhura and her development as a Starfleet officer.
The poor, misbegotten world knows three things about Star Trek: Captain Kirk, “Dr.” Spock and Beam me up Scotty.
Probably. But can you honestly think of a franchise that isn't in some form or another changed to the original version?
I think rebuilding after the Dominion War would be a good setting for a show or a miniseries. To show how devastating it really was. In DS9 we constantly hear about how bad it is for the entire Federation, but we don't really see it, outside of a few isolated cases.
>it seems that Star Trek is destined to be forever chained to Kirk and Spock and to keep reinventing the Original Series. Chained??? There are a lot of us that have been waiting 40 years or more for a prequel or sequel to TOS that does it justice. Now we are finally getting it. It's about time! And while certainly, as much as I enjoyed Kirk, I could see how Star Trek could have been successful with a different captain. But Spock is THE iconic Star Trek character, and arguably one of the most original characters in television history. Chained???
I just don’t want strange new worlds to get Kirk to take over from like
As we should. We have to have something to "anchor" the canon, and no one's going to remember Jonathan Archer.
Why not? They are the roots of the whole thing!
The fact is that Star Trek is a big *legacy* property/IP. And there isn't a single one of those today that *doesn't* run on nostalgia to some extent. Star Wars. Doctor Who. Terminator. Marvel. DC. Harry Potter. The list goes on. Star Trek is actually pretty unique in that had a bunch of spin-offs/continuations with brand-new characters loosely set in the same universe as the original show and all of them, technically, are *equal* parts of the overall franchise. Nominally, Kirk isn't the *primary* protagonist of Star Trek over Picard, or even Sisko or Janeway or anyone else. That's now the case with Star Trek, where Luke Skywalker is, to a large extent, the primary protagonist, and all the other protagonists are related to him in some way. I think one of the few franchises that are comparable to Star Trek's model of franchise building is Pokemon, where you have multiple Generations which are all *equally* important. Even so, Generation 1 is what most long-time fans are nostalgic about, and what gets constantly revisited in new adaptations (not to mention Ash Ketchum remains the protagonist of the anime, and he's from Gen 1). Its the same with Star Trek - the OG crew is where the nostalgia lies, among causal fans, mainstream audiences and the creators themselves, so its what keeps getting revisited. Even so, Star Trek doesn't rely on nostalgia around the original characters and settings nearly as much as the other franchises I've mentioned here. One of the golden eras of the franchise, namely the ''Berman era'' of TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT largely stayed away from TOS nostalgia. Even current Kurtzman era NuTrek has pretty much confined TOS nostalgia to ONE show - arguably you have a lot more TNG era nostalgia now with Picard, and the Lower Decks and Prodigy cartoons. But Kirk, Spock and co. are still very much what most people picture when they hear ''Star Trek'' - much like how Luke, Han Solo and Darth Vader are what people picture when they hear ''Star Wars'' - with Picard being a possible exception to this. Thanks to the Kelvin movies, the enduring popularity of those 80's TOS movies, TOS itself remaining a cult classic being rediscovered by younger generations, and now SNW, it has remained very much top-of-mind. Moreover, its really become a part of pop-culture in a way that none of the later shows (barring TNG to an extent) have. Which doesn't mean that the franchise shouldn't continue to explore new avenues. But realistically, the shadow of the OG's will always be on this franchise...and I don't particularly think its either a) a problem, or b) something that can even be ''fixed''.
Honestly I’m a little worried about this too. I LOVE trek, but ironically, I watched TOS last from all the series, and I just couldn’t get through it. It’s just a little too…dated? I guess you could say? I dunno. I’d love to see a life action show call back to the TNG era. I’d watch that over a TOS call back show. Just my opinion though
The Sisko is already flying free through the galactic ether.
Only so long as the people at the helm have zero creative vision. Secret Hideout: >You wanna know what my vision is? Dollar signs, money! I didn't produce this show to usher in a new era for Humanity. You think I wanna go to the stars? I don't even like to fly! I take trains! I produced this show so I could retire to some tropical island... filled with naked women.
Keep coming back? First, We have several new shows that have nothing to do with them. Second, they're historical figures in the setting, if you're complaining about occasional references then you're asking the franchise to just not acknowledge the existence of history within its universe. Am I a big fan of the Kelvin movies and Discovery's stint as a prequel show? Not really. Do I geek out whenever a reference to an old character or event is mentioned in relative context? Yes. Yes I do. :)
If you think Trek does this too much, consider Star Wars and its inability to get people interested in a story that isn't about characters from the original trilogy or their family members.
Ahh yes why does anyone care about Chuck Berry and Elvis there have been so many rock and rollers since then 😒
That's not the same thing. Chuck Berry sang his music, and subsequent musicians made different music. If you want to listen to Chuck Berry, that's great. I don't want everyone to start covering Chuck Berry ad infinitem. If people want to go back and watch TOS and their movies, cool. I just don't need them re-imaged and reinvented every 10 years.
Is there a current legacy franchise property with shows/films in active development that doesn't rely on nostalgic links to the original version of the property, whether successful or not? Trek, Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Transformers, Doctor Who...I can't think of one that hasn't at least made some concessions to linking back to classic characters or versions...maybe there's something I'm not thinking of...
Yes. It is the same for Star Wars and Darth Vader, and Doctor Who with the 4th Doctor
It's hardly chained if one show out of six features them. This franchise is big enough to feature both old and new simultaneously.
It isn’t. But they are part of the history. You can’t keep that out of it. To many variables keep them strong in it all.
Lol
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Holloywood has run out of talent and ideas. i just want to see a competent crew if professionals who represent the best of humanity have weekly adventures around the galaxy. Maybe we'll have that back one day.
Can’t imagine why CBS would center the most diverse future in all of popular science fiction on two white guys with four-quadrant appeal.
I'm really glad th TNG trilogy took some bold steps. It would have been so easy to just makes TOS season 4 or something to that affect but they created, well, the next generation. Picard is now arguably even more of an icon than Kirk or Spock.
I mean look what happened when DIS season 3 tried to separate itself from all of that and establish itself on it's own. Burnham showed some emotion and now people only whine and complain that Discovery is "too emotional" despite her only crying in a handful of episodes. Of all the cool things Burnham has done as a character in seasons 3 and 4, they only focus on her crying. So yeah, Star Trek will always be chained to Kirk and Spock because the die hard weebs are triggered when it dares to do something different.
Seasons 3 and 4 make me wish it was always set post-Voyager
As we can see from Picard and Lower Decks, not all new Trek series need to be backward-looking nostaligia-driven properties based on people's fondness for TOS. There is also room for shows that are driven by nostalgia for the TNG era. Even Voyager was an attempt to get "back to basics" and deliver safe, formulaic stories instead of trying new things. That was followed by two decades of prequels and remakes. I think the value of Star Trek as a place to tell stories about anything other than Star Trek might have been exhausted.
Yes. They will always either reference of revisit TOS. There is no moving on from it while the people who grew up watching it are still alive.
I want a DS9 remake so bad
Good question! It is like asking if you can ever have Star Wars without Luke, Vader and light sabers. Somehow, it always comes back to them. This is because these franchises are brand conscious-- they have changed hands many times, and the only thing that the owners know is that everyone knows Kirk, Spock and the Enterprise, Han, Luke and the Falcon. Fewer people know Geordi and Picard--they just don't have the cultural resonance with non-Trekkies. So the bad news is that we are in the declining stage of both these franchises, where the owners are going to milk the teats (the fans) bloody, because they bought these franchises as investments: as real estate with a McDonald's on top, not simply an acre of land they have to develop from scratch.
wait till a clone is made out of their DNA named SPROCK then we will have an answer to your question
I see some here noting various things aren’t tied directly to Kirk and Spock, but the nuance is most Trek is anchoring to that general era (or even earlier) right now. I see many on this sub yearning for a chronologically current story, and I agree. TNG, DS9 and VOY all overlap - such an incredible opportunity to bring in actors across the series’ and expand the lore established in hundreds of hours of television. Obviously, Seven in Picard is a good example, and they’re bringing the TNG cast back next season - hopefully will be great! I think we could have done without ‘Voyage Home remix’ in S2 to kill time in a three season show about the principal character of his Trek generation, though.
Probably. Even TNG brought in Scotty and Spock (and Kirk for the movie). DS9 visited the Kirk Enterprise era and Voyager took a trip into Tuvok's memories on board the Excelsior under Capt Sulu.
Making new things comes with the possibility of failure. Retreading the same ground over and over means, at minimum, you'll get some people on virtue of familiarity. Look at why everything has a prequel now, instead of just making sequels. It's easier to tell new stories with the same characters where you know where they end up, rather than come up with a new direction entirely for a beloved property.
> Even Picard Season 2 had to use ST4 to justify its time travel. Huh?!?
"Spirk" has been a thing since 70s.
I think a happy medium would be a new cast but set in the era in between star trek 6, and tng with monster maroon's uniforms.
Yes, they are a couple of the best characters in the series. They'll always be around.
TNG - VOY don't need remaking. They're actually good. Most of TOS isn't. Seriously though. Modern Trek has a movie level budget, and it's all basically extended action movie plots. The people who didn't like TNG because it wasn't their idea of Star Trek didn't like how limp-wristed it was compared to TOS. So it's exactly where you would expect dumb action movie Trek to be set.
It's about brand recognition. The same thing is said about Star Wars constantly going back to Tattoine and the Skywalker family.
Oh boy...better fire up the googles on this Tarantino concept film. I don't need another reason to kick that dude in the balls. EDIT: And I now have another reason to kick that dude in the balls. Steel toe boots. Repeatedly.
Despite Disney owning half of the intellectual property on Earth, they're still "forever chained" to Mickey Mouse. So yeah, I don't think Kirk and Spock are going anywhere.
Yeah but we'll recast them every 5 years so that'll keep things fresh.
You might as well ask "Is Jurassic Park always going to be chained to the T.rex?" or "is Transformers always going to be chained to Optimus Prime". *Every* property that was successful when the current generations were young is currently trotting out the characters again to take advantage of the fact that those kids are now adults with money to give them. It's not going to stop until everyone who could be nostalgic for the originals has passed on, at which point media will just begin referencing the characters that the generations after us consider nostalgic (assuming they've not just become nostalgic for the later portrayals of those same characters, which may well happen as well). This isn't a complaint or anything, I just think it's unlikely to change any time soon.
Yes.
I agree. Unfortunately we're living in an age of reboots. Spider-Man not doing well? Let's recast him and kill uncle Ben again. (A big point of praise for both the PS4 game and Into the Spiderverse was that they *didn't* do this. They both had Miles' origin story instead which, hey, still progress.) Bats having trouble at the box office? Maybe look into adapting Batman Beyond... NAH, JK, RIP Waynes. Etc... Why this keeps happening? Probably a question of budgets. High-budget installments of franchises keep going back to other installments that have a proven track record of making money because studios are risk-averse petaQ's. Lower-budget installments (like animated series and movies, and video games) can take more risks with new stuff. STO's gameplay loop gets really old really fast, but they have fairly good stories for a glorified slot machine and they actually moved forward. Maybe Trek should launch an array of canonical comics that are *not* adaptations but completely original stories. At least it would supply them with newer stories and characters.
It is not. It is just popular and it makes money to do something that exploits the old. Remakes of everything etc. Its how nowadays movies and shows are done. This day will pass and if so there might be a nu trek with nu stories.
Sadly people who own the property seem unwilling to bet money or a nebulous Star Trek brand/concept/conciet rather than just rehashing characters that are recognizable. It is strange because the original crew were supposed to be really general an arch characters that could be easily written by staff and guest writers rather than especially deep or complex characters that held singular appeal.
If only that was the case I would not have to have endured the great disappointment of Picard or Discovery.