Star Trek XI .. after all?

Nice chicks being evil is generally seen as a HOT thing, it worked for buffy...

I think everything about this, (creators, timing ) except the concept is ace.

The concept is naff. They could ask any fan-boy what they would want for the next trek movie, it should not be anothe prequel.

I still say, go into the Mirror Universe, very little canon there to get in there way, and after the DS9 Mirror Universe episodes, they already have a war/insurgency building up.

Too many good characters are dead in the alternate universe in DS9, though.

Well, they don't neccessarily need to start at the end of DS9 Mirror Universe Canon. They could rewind to any point in the brief canon and start from there. (Or even end up in an alternative Mirror Universe where some stuff didn't happen the same, or maybe Voyager's and Enterprise's "rewinds" altered something

Too many good characters are dead in the alternate universe in DS9, though.

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Surely that's a good thing though? I think they should definiely do a film with characters no-one has heard of. Start afresh. Plus it might make it easier for non hardcore fans to get into the film as they wouldn't need knowledge of the background for these characters.

As hated as DS9 is by some, I must say I thought they did a good job in casting. Take one minor character (O'Brien) and make him a major character in the new one. Other than that, for years, he was the only regular tie-in.

The of course Worf was added, but that was years into the series.

I've heard it said they'll never follow up on DS9 for some reason. Although those were comments from actors, and I have no idea how accurate they might have been.

Oh no, I didn't mean to imply that I didn't like DS9. That was my favourite trek.

I just feel that they should start afresh with totally new characters.

I think the fact that the Federation was hit so hard in the Dominion war would mean that stories set while they are rebuilding would be a good place to start.

Why would a studio do something so narrow that few people are going to understand, instead of appealing to a wider audience? I watched DS9 fairly regularly, but I don't recall a "Mirror Universe." And, I'm going to say that a good portion of movie goers won't know either. Seems like they would shoot themselves in the foot if they did that.

At least a prequel with Kirk, Spock, etc.... people know those names--whether they watched the series or not as a true fan. As a studio exec, I wouldn't start off right in the middle of something that only a small percentage of the population is aware of.

As for people disliking DS9, I'm inclined to think that only people who loathed it were the folks who enjoyed happy-go-lucky, faerie-tale ending formula shows. It was chaotic and it showed warring factions and messy conflicts. I liked it the best of all the Next Gen stuff, personally... because it wasn't so cookie cutter and "we will all live in a better place" fluffiness.

Alluveal, you don't remember the Mirror Universe, even from the Original Series?

For the B5 fans, I think the main reason to dislike DS9 is the rivalry between B5 and DS9 and the beliefs by DS9 hard core fans, and B5 hardcore fans that each show ripped the other off.

DS9 was my favorite of the spin off Trek series. I thoroughly enjoyed watching DS9 and B5 back to back, back in the day, and still think it was one of the best nights in SciFi television history. I had no animosity for either show, but, lots of folks hated one or the other.

I quite enjoyed both shows .. though I do think DS9 got some "help" from B5 content-wise, the shows were so different in feel that I didn't really have a problem with liking both.

Sind, really? I didn't know any of this. =) See, I never watched B5 on television. I watched on DVD's. I had a really bad sprained ankle and a friend bought season 1 for me to watch while I was laid up. I was pretty hooked and bought seasons 2 and 3 i one shot. Season 4 wasn't out yet on dvd, so I had to borrow a friend's VHS tapes (she had the whole series recorded on tape) to see what happened to Captain Sheridan at Z'Ha'Dum. =)

That's a pity that some of the fans were like that. I guess I wouldn't care who ripped off what, I just like my sci-fi!!

As far as the TOS movies, their success owes more to the contribution of Nicholas Meyer than to odd and even numbers. He directed 2 and 6, co-wrote 4. Strangely, despite my once pure love for the Borg, the only TNG film I liked was Generations. Not that it was without flaws, and certainly would have benefited from about 20-25 minutes of editing (same as ST:TMP), but it felt the most like the series it was based on. The subsequent movies, to me anyway, seemed to lose their identity somewhat.

I also don't see a problem with continuity. If there are 8 million stories in the Naked City, then how many are out there in the galaxy? It's not really that hard to come up with a fresh and engaging idea whan you have the whole galaxy to play with. Any stand alone crisis or event will do. I doubt JJ Abrams will be so desperate as to rape the rotting corpse of the Borg like B&B did.

It's odd to note that Mission: Impossible and Star Trek were Paramount's two sister shows and now Abrams has them both. Preliminary reviews of Mi3 have been quite good, too.

The thing about DS9 is that once Voyager started up the people in charge seemed to have stopped paying attention to DS9. This of course led to an improvement in the show. I do think DS9 got some 'help' as earlier said but since the show didn't become interesting until they started changing things I don't hold it against the show itself. Of course I didn't find out either B5 or DS9 were actually any good until catching each near the ends of their respective runs.

DS9 just bored me. LIke all the other Berman/Braga/Etc shows the non-humans were the only remotely vivid characters, and they fell into two groups - the too precious ones who got way too much screen time (Data, Q, Kes's boyfriend, I've mercifully blanked on the name), and the actually interesting ones who didn't (Garrick, The Doctor, 7 as a genuine character as opposed to window dressing.)

Regards,

Joe

I watched DS9 fairly regularly, but I don't recall a "Mirror Universe."

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Really?

In TOS (The Orginal Series, from the 1960's) there was an episode that was titled "Mirror, Mirror". There's a transporter malfunction (naturally) and Kirk, McCoy, Scottie, and Uhuru are swapped with their doubles from a parallel universe. In that universe the humans ("terrans") have built huge, evil, despotic "Empire". If you've seen Spock with a goatee and a bunch of the crew wearing gold lamee sashes, then you have seen this episode.

DS9 did a total of 5 episodes where the DS9 crew (or various subsets of them) end up in that same parallel universe. If you have any memory of Kira looking like she had raided Catwoman's wardrobe (skin tight, black jump suits), then you are remembering something from the "Mirror universe".

I understand that Enterprise did a couple of "Mirror, Mirror" prequel episodes, but I never saw them (having given up on Enterprise before they got to those eps).


I agree that the Mirror Universe is not a likely place to continue the Trek *movie* franchise.

If you do it with new characters and from the POV of the "good guys" then it would turn out feeling a lot more like a new version of the original trilogy of Star Wars movies that happened to use the Star Trek alien race names.

If you do it from the POV of characters that we know then you have two choices. The first is to spend enough time establishing the "regular" universe, the characters, and then the parallel universe crossover so that even the complete non-fans (of all things SF) who just go to "event" movies will clearly understand what all is going on. By the time you do that, you wouldn't have enough time left to really do all that much of story in the Mirror Universe once you get there.

The other option is to dive right into the mirror universe with little or no introduction (like series episodes did). To non-SF-fans this will feel very odd. Everything about the trek universe will feel turned on its head (because it it; that's the whole point). They won't get it (by and large).

I really think that Mirror Universe types of ideas work much better in the context of a TV series (and particularly a long-ish running series) than in the context of a movie sequel/series. A good writer might (maybe) be able to make something interesting out of a Trek TV series that used the Mirror universe more extensively. Maybe a premise a little like Voyage only going to the Mirror Universe instead of another quadrant of our galaxy? However, it would be tough to do in a movie and maintain the revenue expectations for Trek franchise movies.

They are not talking about Captain Kirk but Ensign Kirk. Rank matters.

DS9 just bored me.

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You too, eh? For me, it was 3 parts bored to 1 part annoyed.

DS9 just bored me. LIke all the other Berman/Braga/Etc shows

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Well that's actually what Quagmire was pointing out- DS9 was Berman/Braga in name only. DS9 was only on TV by itself for a few years. The first and last two years it co-existed with Next Gen and Voyager, where B&B devoted their full attention.

I understand that Enterprise did a couple of "Mirror, Mirror" prequel episodes, but I never saw them (having given up on Enterprise before they got to those eps).

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Yeah they had a two-parter that took place in the mirror universe and linked with events in TOS episode The Tholian Web.


IMO there is simply no Trek movie idea imaginable that would be both interesting and true Trek. The pouring over continuity and characters is missing the whole point of Trek. Star Trek was about exploration and the unkown, along with progressive social values filtered through the experiences of loveable pop-culture archetypal characters, providing an television medium for science fiction templated story telling. With 726 episodes and 10 movies of Star Trek already having been produced and shown to the public, along with hundreds of other sci-fi shows and movies, there is simply nothing left to tell that is new. Star Trek's purpose is gone.

Even the original series lost it after its second season. And while Next Generation at its best managed to tap into that spirit successfully a number of times, it also opened the flood gates for wanna-be arc stories and drama that reached outside the parameters of what makes Star Trek special.

DS9 became interesting when the writers admitted that there was nothing really TREK left to do and proceeded to tell an interesting political/military drama tale. It was a good show but it wasn't good Star Trek.

Voyager and Enterprise were thus doomed from the start.

That's an interesting take on DS9. A good show, but not good Trek. I've heard others argue much the same, but not ever quite so succinctly.

I seem to remember a friend of mine talking about TNG with me when I was in college. I commented on how the show had gotten a lot better in the third season. She pointed out to me that Rodenberry had pretty much given up active control of the series by then (thus the Doctor shuffle).

What's wrong with Star Trek evolving? People say it won't be Trek anymore. It will be "Son of Trek" then.

And it could be a lot better. There are a lot of great stories out there to tell that have enough science fiction in them to make it to a good Trek episode.

I don't feel quite as fatalistic as Old Mighty on this one. I just think you have to start a series with good, fresh, interesting characters and ideas. And "let's make some more money off of Trek" doesn't count as an "idea".

What kind of ideas, hyp? That's the problem. What's left to do? They've already had every kind of man vs machine story, energy-ball aliens, countless body-snatching type stories, objects evolving into sentience, ethics exploration in unique ways using androids and alien cultures, a million time-traveling effecting history tales, etc.

If you're gonna make something that isn't Trek then why call it Trek?