Text 2902, 98 rader
Skriven 2006-06-27 11:31:00 av Robert E Starr JR (3375.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Trek treatment is out
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On Wed, 21 Jun 2006 20:17:33 +0000 (UTC), skrbicb@gmail.com wrote:

>Just a couple of days ago I remembered the existence of this treatment
>and my speculations of what a JMS or partly-JMS Star Trek would involve
>(after a while it's inevitable that you'd try to derive those things on
>the way to work), which I obviously cannot share here as they would
>constitute story ideas. Since there absolutely *had* to be an arc with
>changing characters, the characters would certainly be looking for
>something, and a reboot would be inevitable, but I never imagined that
>the main characters of TOS would be seen as an essential component.
>
>Star Trek is basically about the consistent opening monologue that
>doesn't change regardless of characters. As David Gerrold put it the
>purpose of Star Trek is simply "to explore strange new worlds, to seek
>out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone
>before!" Whatever else it was in the specific original incarnation,
>Star Trek has its roots in anthology shows such as "The Twilight Zone"
>or "The Outer Limits". The initial concept is a thin layer of glue
>attempting to bind an anthology series and one with recurring
>characters. Need a different universe for a different short story? No
>problem, just travel to another planet and say your mission is to
>explore strange new worlds.
>
>The notion of the Kirk-Spock-McCoy trio, while an interesting aspect of
>Star Trek, had evolved to the point of completely supplementing the
>anthology by the time of the movies, and afterwards science fiction
>began to take a secondary role to character development, which is one
>of the weaknesses of later shows when compared to the first season of
>TOS. Science fiction aspects became degraded into technobabble, the
>necessity to have something that made it "sci-fi" without really being
>science fiction.
>
>I'm not going to comment at this treatment because judging a final
>product by its treatment is quite impossible. There are a number of
>possible permutations for the basic concept, but as with any TV show,
>it would have been watched or not watched based on its week-to-week
>execution. Star Trek succeeded because it was a good TV show and its
>incarnations were no longer household words when they became bad TV
>shows. I have Region 1 and Region 2 releases of nBSG DVD's and can't
>wait for the season two DVD's, but there would have to be a pretty good
>reason for me to waste the required number of hours to watch the old
>series. The reality is that only a small specialty audience cares about
>the specifics of canon and continuity -- for anyone else it would just
>be a new and different Star Trek.
>
>I'm actually a part of that small audience, yet it doesn't bother me
>that there would be another show. Being that small audience, it is
>quite obvious that Gene Roddenberry's Trek is not the same as Gene
>Coon's Trek or Nicholas Meyer's Trek or Michael Piller's Trek or Ira
>Steven Behr's Trek or Brannon Braga's Trek. There were a lot of
>different showrunners over the years, all of whom have had a variety of
>different POV's on the show. The fact that they officially belong to
>the same universe doesn't mean that one or the other showrunner won't
>choose to emphasize or ignore completely different aspects of it. Some
>shows are more character-oriented, others are more situation-oriented,
>some want to maintain continuity with TOS, others don't feel it
>necessary to even mention anything from TOS. I may not feel it
>necessary to recast the original characters, but then again it's just
>another TV show that I would watch if it is good and not watch if it is
>bad.

Glad to hear someone mention the anthology aspect of Trek, but I
respectfully submit that you've gone too far in the opposite
direction: Trek was an anthology series built around a single cast and
crew (and one might argue the collective consciousness and
philosophical ideals of a single country), and the Kirk-Spock-McCoy
trio (and the superbly cast secondary players) were as much a key to
its success as the anthology. And it's rare that a show succeeds at
uniting those two facets -- the "literature of ideas" and the
literature of people.

I forget which prominent SF writer it was who said, in effect, that if
an aspiring writer can master the science, he'll do well, and if he
can master character, he'll do well, but that if he masters both he'll
be unstoppable.

-- 
Josh

"I love it when I'm around the country club, and I hear people talking about
the debilitating
effects of a welfare society. At the same time, they leave their kids a
lifetime and beyond
of food stamps. Instead of having a welfare officer, they have a trust officer.
And instead
of food stamps, they have stocks and bonds."

- Warren Buffett
                                                                               
        
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