Comments

Right at the top of the blog I saw those marvelous Roddenberry images and all the positive reinforcement of attitude about the world he brought to all his projects came to mind and then you tell us Hollywood wants to make a young Kirk, young Spock prequel. You said all they do is “circle the drain”…what you didn’t say was what drain, and it’s looking more and more like circling the bowl. Where do suppose the creativity has gone?

@Diego: Hello and welcome!

About the drain: the ‘classic’ Trek setup with Kirk, Spock and McCoy still has a lot of marketing power. They are worldwide cultural icons. So there is a lot of money in it, because these figures are established and easy to (ab-)use for new stories – not matter how wacky they are.

Creativity: I simply think that the classic Star Ship and outer space plots have been used by so many different Star Trek and other science fiction shows that they are ‘empty’ and without interest. Most story lines are to predictable or are usually solved by a lot of boring technobabble.

It’s not only Star Trek that suffers from that story burnout: the british Doctor Who series recycles the same threats, monsters and evils again and again. The only good bits are excellent actors who still can intrigue us.

Most science fictions television is stuck somewhere in the scifi literacy of the 1930’s to 1950’s. A few progressive stories have been touched – mostly famously by Philip K. Dick. But overall we are mentally in a 1930’s mindset about spaceships, evil monsters and sexy woman …

Here is one old “trekkie” who will go see any adaptation of Star Trek. Although I can rarely stomach the original series any longer, my husband and I are still watching reruns of “The New Generation”, “Deep Space Nine”, “Voyager” and “Enterprise”.

Of course, I grew up reading Science Fiction. The kind that was not about “Monsters”.

@Judi: Good to see you again my dear! Hope all is well?!

Well, I don’t really watch any old classic Trek these days – I know them all by heart. I did like DS9 a LOT. Voyager was already terrible and Enterprise REALLY pissed me off.

If you look at many TV shows in recent years they have been pretty good and some excellent scripts have been made: 24, Sopranos, Boston Legal, Scrubs and so many more.

I think one should expect from a SciFi program more then explosions and a bit of Soap Opera in Space?

I don’t so much dislike the plot reruns; I’m not sure that that isn’t inevitable…didn’t someone one say that there are really only seven plotlines or something like?

The thing that bugs me is the pollution of the Roddenberry ideal. He saw a future that may have been more optimistic even if it was a let-down for the hawkish.

As for the 1930-40 sci-fi, don’t you think there were a lot of those stories that were just plain skipped over in favor of the more general public appeal? I’ve always thought A.E. Van Vogt’s stories would have great appeal as films, or Asimov’s Foundation series would probably make a formidable counter to the Star Wars films.

@Diego: Yeah, the number of plots don’t seem so big. Here some websites who wrote about that …

http://www.tvsquad.com/2006/09/08/the-five-most-common-star-trek-plot-gimmicks/

Or use the Plot Generator: http://www.bargaintuan.com/startrekplotgenerators.php

Star Trek has kept it’s Optimism – but I didn’t offer any new outstanding visions of the future.