September 24, 2003

The increasing irrelevance of Star Trek.

MSNBC has a new article up talking about the fact that the long-running Star Trek franchise is desperately running out of steam. As a bona-fide fan of the first three series and most of the movies, I have my own opinions on the matter of course. But some of the suggestions in this article are just plain bad. Case in point: the article cites Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home as being the "best-received" movie in the series. It may have been a fun movie and did well at the box office, but for the record, it was Star Trek: First Contact which was the biggest box office success (and was a much better movie than IV). I think Star Trek needs that kind of goofiness about as much as the Batman franchise needs to return to the hideous tone of Batman Forever (which was similarly a box office smash). Also, guest appearances by the original cast would seem like more of a death rattle than anything else at this point.

I don't know if there's anything that can be done to save Star Trek for the general public. A new television show simply won't be able to reach a wider audience given the amount of sci-fi television that's already out there. Probably their best bet is to make another, solid movie like First Contact, which is probably the best one for non-fans of the series, as it has everything: humor, action, drama...it's a great movie, not just a great Star Trek movie.

As a fan, I'd like to see something new that didn't totally suck, but I'm at a loss for what that would be. Plus of course, as my favorite series has always been Deep Space Nine, my opinions probably differ from that of the general fanbase anyway. Hopefully they'll manage to turn Enterprise into a halfway decent show. I like the premise, but so far the episodes I've seen just haven't been very exciting, and I can't say I've heard anything about this new season that leads me to believe they've turned it around with their latest batch of changes.

Posted by jason at September 24, 2003 05:49 PM | TrackBack | Read more: Sci-Fi

Comments

I'm with you in that minority; I prefer DS9 as well to the rest of the series - TNG and ToS included. One reason - the big multi-year Dominion war was something that I wouldn't have expected from Trek at all after just those aforementioned versions, and I think that's one reason why I enjoyed it so much.

Posted by: Devster at September 24, 2003 08:16 PM

count me in the ds9 camp for the exact same reason as above. the dominion war was of epic proportions that you would expect from star wars. ok, not that big. :)


oh, and dax (either of them). droools.

Posted by: jon at September 25, 2003 12:04 AM

I'm a TNG kind of guy, with a great appreciation and enjoyment of TOS, too. I didn't last much past the first year of DS9, and then it started trying too hard to be Babylon 5, anyway... I liked VOYAGER for about six episodes, at which point it started repeating every other ST plot ever. Then they put Jeri Ryan in a catsuit. UGH

-Augie

Posted by: Augie De Blieck Jr. at September 25, 2003 11:17 AM


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