Tuesday 18 November 2008

Why I Can't Get Excited About Star Trek?

Paramount will soon be releasing their "reboot" of the venerable Star Trek franchise with a new, younger, prettier, cast taking over as "young" versions of the characters from the original series, and I just can't get a full blown geekasm built up about it.

And that means something, because I was raised on the Trek, not only the original series, the Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager, and I was one of the few who supported the short-lived Enterprise.

This new version strikes me as the Muppet Babies version of Star Trek, an attempt to rehash the chemistry of the original show in a younger package.

Judging from the trailers and publicity material every character looks like their pretty much fulfilling the same roles they played in the original series with very little consideration for the age differences. When Kirk would have been a recent Star Fleet Academy graduate, Sulu, Chekov, and Uhura would have been in high school at the most, not Star Fleet, newbies or not.

Part of this I blame on Hollywood's ongoing case of Juvenile Dementia where they think that all problems can be solved, and all movies sold if ieverything just appears to be young and hip. Got a franchise that lost its lustre, make it "young" again. Forget about the history of the characters established in the original show, just get someone who will get the tweens to coo about how "dreamy" he is when they see his picture on the cover of a magazine.

The other part of the blame I lay at the feet of Star Trek's fans, or Trekkers as the prefer to call themselves. They love to talk about the show's social commentary, and how the utopian society of the federation (
despite it's fascist undertones) could be an inspiration for our own.

Yet when any deviation from that utopian vision, is spurned by the Trekkers as they would spurn a rabid dog. Case in point: Enterprise. In it there was no Federation, Vulcans were helpful, but had their own agendas, and the captain and crew had to fight, sometimes dirty, to not only lay the foundation for their future utopia, but often for their simple survival.

Trekkers were repelled by the lack of arrogant self-satisfaction and smug superiority on the part of the Federation characters in Enterprise that dominated all of the Next Generation shows and movies.

(Except for Deep Space 9, whose frequent toe-dipping into moral ambiguity, and stories built on the frequent failing of technology and diplomacy kept it from being as popular as the others, which I think proves my point even further.)

All in all, the new film might be great, it might be awful, but either way, I just can't get myself excited over it.

8 comments:

  1. I'm wondering if they are going to completely ignore Spock serving under Captain Pike.

    I'm also wondering if they are planning to put Kirk in command of a freaking starship directly out of the Academy.

    I'm wondering many things, most of them boding ill for the ragged tatters of continuity that the Trek universe still has.

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  2. I partly agree with you Furious D, but also disagree.

    First of all on Enterprise... well have you ever seen Agony Booth's "Worst of Trek"?
    http://agonybooth.com/recaps/Star_Trek/
    I have to agree with Albert, Enterprise was a show full of great ideas, poor execution. To quote him in
    http://agonybooth.com/recaps/Star_Trek/Enterprise/A_Night_in_Sickbay.aspx

    1) Just like Voyager before it, Enterprise ignored its premise.
    2) Everything on Enterprise was about playing it safe.
    3) Enterprise completely changed the dynamic of human exploration in the Star Trek universe.
    4) Despite the prequel setting, Enterprise fell back on telling stories that could have just as easily been told on any of the modern Star Trek shows.
    5) Enterprise was a clone of Voyager.

    And the rest is a discussion on originality, being "fresh" etc.

    Anyway, the other problem with this "relaunch" idea is that we're not dealing with mythic, larger than life characters (such as Batman, Superman, James Bond, etc), we're dealing with characters that were created and built upon the actors that played them. Shatner CREATED Kirk. So anyone since then attempting to play Captain Kirk will end up acting like Shatner acting like Captain Kirk. It's a formula for failure.

    Got a franchise that lost its lustre, make it "young" again.

    I do entirely agree with this. What caused the age stratification in Hollywood? Shows for young people have to feature people their age, while shows for old people (Matlock anyone?) have to have old people. Why can't we have realistic tales with a wide age range in them? (one of the reasons I like reading Spider-girl the comic. I like having the interactions between an older, wiser Peter Parker and the young hip daughter.)

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  3. I have to disagree with Enterprise being a clone of Voyager. You never saw Capt. Janeway threatening to toss someone out of an airlock if the didn't talk, in fact she always had a speech ready to poo-poo such tactics. Capt. Archer of the Enterprise did it.

    With Voyager there was always a technological-diplomatic solution to the problems they faced, often very deus ex machina, in the first seasons of Enterprise they didn't have that.

    You do make a good point about how Enterprise did end up playing it safe, much to its own detriment. I think it was because of the overwhelmingly negative reaction of the fanboys to its rougher edge. The studio freaked and tried to smooth out that edge, and ended up costing the show it's potential to be truly different and groundbreaking.

    But, we can always agree to disagree, in fact there are probably entire forums dedicated to it. It's a free country, at least until the day I seize ultimate power, then what I say, goes. ;)

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  4. I'll get the ultimate power first D!

    Actually, let's switch topics (because I could never watch Enterprise enough to successfully argue this):

    I say Firefly was the series Enterprise should have been.

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  5. Yes, Firefly was the best "anti-Trek" ever done. Especially with the Federation like Alliance being the villain.

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  6. DEEP SPACE NINE is not the only Trek series that engaged in moral ambiguity. I think you're exaggerating. And whenever DS9 portrayed moral ambiguity in Humans, it usually ended up backtracking and focusing on some other species in other to make the viewers forget about humanity's complex nature.

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  7. 1) Just like Voyager before it, Enterprise ignored its premise.
    2) Everything on Enterprise was about playing it safe.
    3) Enterprise completely changed the dynamic of human exploration in the Star Trek universe.
    4) Despite the prequel setting, Enterprise fell back on telling stories that could have just as easily been told on any of the modern Star Trek shows.
    5) Enterprise was a clone of Voyager.



    What . . . utter . . . BULLSHIT!!!

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  8. Yes, Firefly was the best "anti-Trek" ever done. Especially with the Federation like Alliance being the villain.


    I disagree. I feel it was BABYLON FIVE.

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