4 ms·
Trek at it's best: 1. Isn't afraid of being slow, talky, and philosophical (Sorry J.J.). TNG had many excellent episodes specifically because it was willing t
by beloch 11y ago
Trek at it's best:
1. Isn't afraid of being slow, talky, and philosophical (Sorry J.J.). TNG had many excellent episodes specifically because it was willing to risk being "boring", while DS9 evolved Trek into the homogeneous "action" formula that has dominated Voyager, most of Enterprise, and the recent movies.
2. Is a force for idealism. The captains of Star Trek are paragons of humanity, and are supposed to find the high ground when tackling murky issues. The original series featured the first on-screen interracial kiss. TNG dove into many thorny ethical issues. While TNG took a hard stance against torture, Enterprise portrayed it as a useful tool.
3. Boldy goes to new places. Star Trek (2009) did nothing new geographically, but at least it went off the reservation by destroying a storied and beloved Trek locale. Not everyone liked that, but at least it was daring. Into Darkness (2013) aped Khan badly, completely missing out on what made the original character and movie special. In general, the Trek movie franchise has been chasing Khan for too long, and needs to focus on other aspects of Trek.
4. Is smart about technology, and self consistent. Nerds pay attention to this stuff. Khan beaming directly from Earth to the Klingon homeworld functionally obliterated the vastness of space in the rebooted Trek universe. Trek doesn't need to blow previously imagined sci-fi tech out of all proportion to be interesting. It's strength, historically, has been inventing new technologies and examining their impact on humans. Is there anything in the new Trek movies that, in a few decades, we're going to be saying, "Hey, Trek predicted this!".
5. Doesn't solve everything by modifying the deflector dish. (Corollary to 4) Voyager, I'm looking at you. All of the series occasionally penned "tech" into their scripts to lazily magic their way out of situations. At some point this became standard practice and as much a part of the formula as always having at least a few minutes of "action trek", no matter how inappropriate it was to the episode. This is a crutch that should be used as sparingly as possible.
6. Features interesting, well-developed alien cultures. The original series may have debuted the Klingons, but it was TNG that fleshed them out into a living, breathing culture. TNG debuted the Cardassians and Bajorans, but DS9 benefited greatly from exploring the cultures of both these races. The formula of Voyager forced a return to shallow portrayals of "species of the week", and the show suffered greatly as a result.
- seehafer 11y agoOne addition in terms of how Trek becomes great, from a behind-the-camera perspective: 7. Results from a tension between competing visions between writers and creators. Examples: TNG was campy and unwatchable, mostly, until Michael Piller took over as head writer in the third season and started focusing on characters and more traditional drama. Piller had an inclination to be too soap opera-y but was held in check by Roddenberry's presence and later, spirit. DS9 was the result of the tension between Ira Steven Behr and Berman aided by Ronald D Moore, and worked well until it became the all-war-all-the-time series. Voyager is the result of Berman, Braga and Jeri Taylor running wild without any counteracting force. Enterprise is the same (minus Taylor).
- pakled_engineer 11y agoA TNG episode was censored in the UK for about a decade too, where the character Data talks about the "Irish Reunification of 2024" as an example where terrorism as a strategy worked. JJTrek doesn't need to worry about censors there's nothing of substance in love triangles set in space. As for relying on tech deus-ex-machina TNG writers used to send off scripts to physics professors and have them fill in gaps about nanotechnology and other unknown late 80s technology. They were replaced in Voyager by studio cronies which is why everything is solved by "re-polarizing the deflector dish".
- dogma1138 11y agoDS9 had to deal with the "grey" areas of civilization and military organizations in the latter seasons and they did it very well, as well as what happens to society when it has been griped by fear (e.g. shapeshifter agents on earth). Enterprise started kinda ok (not great) but then 9/11 happened (which happened technically like a week or 2 before the 1st season aired, but it was too fresh to touch) which meant that it had to deal with that thing with it's very own 9/11 in the 3rd season. With the 4th season they pretty much went into "concept-album" fan service type of self containing arcs and it was pretty damn freaking good, they brought allot of excellent talent specifically Manny Coto which pretty much made the biggest fan service production once he was made the executive producer and the exclusive writer of the show. With maybe 1 or 2 exceptions i put every episode of Season 4 of Enterprise in my personal hall of fame both in terms of Star Trek and general Scifi episodes. Episodes like In a Mirror, Darkly, These Are the Voyages, United are what Star Trek should look like and they had a full season of them.