New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017 • Hacker News Board

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#111

Post by beloch » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:45 PM UTC

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.

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#112

Post by baldfat » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:46 PM UTC

toxican wrote: post #98

baldfat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sci Fi shows are expensive to make period So never saw the Dr. Who series int he 1970s and 1980s :) Personally I loved the campy Dr Whos a lot. BBC - "Your almost Out of Budget and you have 3 part series to finish" Producer - "No problem we will put a trash can over that guy and tape up a few trash bags, throw some kids paint on it and there is our new monster." "We will also call the gravel pit see if we can use i…

Final episode of the series then features a monster that looks suspiciously like a pile of gravel.

Or it looks like the monster from 3 years ago that they found in the back closet.

Seriously I think I would have loved working on those shows, or really really hated. I can't decide which.

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#113

Post by toxican » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:46 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #45

valm- wrote: post #35

It appears we will all need to pay CBS %5.99 a month to watch this.

Yes, CBS has this weird notion that you will pay $5.99 a month AND watch commercials that you can't skip. I get that they "think" its like this now, they get paid by the cable company for their channel (the $5.99) and they send them content with commercials (which they have sold), but the new world is NetFlix which charges monthly, but has now commercials.

It's not a weird notion, considering it works fairly well for Hulu. Even their "commercial-free" tier features commercials on select episodes because "reasons"

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#114

Post by beat » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:47 PM UTC

codezero wrote: post #90

beat wrote: post #85

I, for one, am optimistic. Even though the JJ Abrams reboot movies sucked, he's not the only one who can do the work. There are hordes of people in Hollywood who grew up on Star Trek, love it properly, and want to bring back the spirit of exploration and optimism and the ensemble cast work that make the older series so compelling. I think the world needs a new Star Trek - one that isn't just shiny effects, but holds…

What did you dislike about the reboot films? I really liked them, I thought they were cast well, and were over-all pretty good. edit: others in the comments have noted that the reboots are basically just action sequences with none of the underlying social themes that made Star Trek significant in the first place.

As action films, they were mediocre. But taking the surfaces of the characters without the depth of the characters - it was the worst sort of hipster irony. That scene in Into Darkness where they role-reversed Spock's death from Wrath of Khan? I wanted to beat JJ Abrams to death with a rock for that. It was awful. It completely ditched the concept of Spock's sacrifice and Kirk's love for his best friend. It was like a Halloween costume version of one of the greatest scenes in Star Trek history.

And just in general, it failed to move with any heart. Now, I'm broadly critical of JJ Abrams in general - I don't think he ever thinks through the consequences of his writing decisions, which is why his tv shows always jumped the shark in season 2. But Star Trek is just more proof that he doesn't get it, as a writer or as a fan.

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#115

Post by KingMob » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:49 PM UTC

exelius wrote: post #78

baldfat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sci Fi shows are expensive to make period So never saw the Dr. Who series int he 1970s and 1980s :) Personally I loved the campy Dr Whos a lot. BBC - "Your almost Out of Budget and you have 3 part series to finish" Producer - "No problem we will put a trash can over that guy and tape up a few trash bags, throw some kids paint on it and there is our new monster." "We will also call the gravel pit see if we can use i…

Yeah; I'm excluding the campy Sci Fi from this -- any of the low-budget movies that the Syfy channel made, for example. They weren't intended to be good or even draw a large audience, and they did pretty well considering their budgets. But they didn't have the baggage or expectations that the "Star Trek" name brings with it. And even with Dr. Who, most of the action takes place in the present day -- which helps with…

Let's not forget all the Doctor Who episodes that take place in the past, which effectively means they can raid the wardrobes of whatever BBC period drama is being filmed that week...

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#116

Post by d_theorist » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:49 PM UTC

smacktoward wrote: post #82

d_theorist wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>" This new series will premiere to the national CBS audience , then boldly go where no first-run Star Trek series has gone before – directly to its millions of fans through CBS All Access,” said Marc DeBevoise [emphasis mine] Sounds like it is going to be on TV.

The premiere episode is going to be televised. After that all future episodes will be CBS All Access-only (at least in the US). It's the old drug dealer sales approach: you always want to make the first hit free.

Oh. I totally misread this thing. It's actually as clear as mud where, when, and how they're going to release it.

When I first read it I thought it was going to be US exclusive. Luckily I managed to calm down and re-read before I went on the rampage.

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#117

Post by sp332 » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:51 PM UTC

zzalpha wrote: post #107

hansjorg wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really hope that this won't be in the rebooted universe because it was well kinda meh I'm not a hardcore Star Trek fan, but was very disappointed with the new films. They're mostly generic action in space with some familiar names and Starfleet uniforms. Every little thing that made Star Trek entertaining has been stripped away. Not too surprising considering JJ Abrams told in an interview that "I would watch epis…

They're mostly generic action in space with some familiar names and Starfleet uniforms. You've just described the Wrath of Khan, considered one of the finest films in the franchise. Hell, a good number of episodes in every series in the franchise were just action in space... the Best of Both Worlds is literally just Us vs The Borg. Fans have incredibly rose tinted glasses regarding ST. For every City on the Edge of F…

Wrath of Khan is only good because of Mantalban. The movies didn't really pick up until the fourth one, when they stopped taking them so seriously and just had some fun making a movie.

And at least a handful of good episodes exist. There are no such specimens among the (two) new movies.

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#118

Post by peeters » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:51 PM UTC

exelius wrote: post #46

dogma1138 wrote: post #21

Kinda worried that this will be a "web-only" series, Star Trek needs quite a good production to work well, The budget for a TNG episode was 2M$ which was pretty unheard off back then and is even considered expensive these days (GOT which is currently the most expensive running show has about 6M per episode and when you count the fact that TNG had 24-25 episodes per season the overall season budget was almost the same…

Sci Fi shows are expensive to make period - which is why there aren't usually a lot of them on TV. Just think about it: for a normal sitcom or drama, costumes can be bought off the rack and shots can be done on location or on a sound stage with easily-sourced furniture / decoration / etc. Everything on a Sci Fi (or fantasy) show has to be custom-made; from the costumes to the wall decorations to the light fixtures to…

Sometimes plot creativity can get you a long way on a small budget (think Firefly).

But yeah as soon as you introduce alien worlds, having high quality on a small budget does get difficult.

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#119

Post by hansjorg » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:51 PM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #93

hansjorg wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really hope that this won't be in the rebooted universe because it was well kinda meh I'm not a hardcore Star Trek fan, but was very disappointed with the new films. They're mostly generic action in space with some familiar names and Starfleet uniforms. Every little thing that made Star Trek entertaining has been stripped away. Not too surprising considering JJ Abrams told in an interview that "I would watch epis…

I'm not a hardcore fan either I watched TNG, DS9 and Voyager as just another Scifi show back when MGM, Paramount and 20cent Fox still wanted to make television we had Stargate, Babylon 5, Star Trek, then Scifi was pretty much left to in the hands of syndicated TV productions and basic cable which resulted in well meh. Shows like BSG are pretty much unicorn's these days no one seems to want to make serious scifi the b…

Ascension was good. My favourite sci-fi series the last few years has been Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror though.

The Christmas special in particular was pretty mind bending.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jROLrhQkK78

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#120

Post by oberstein » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 5:54 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #43

I was a big Trekkie when I was younger...but I'm surprised at how poorly the show has held up when rewatching on Netflix. I think what spoiled me was the revamped Battlestar Galactica. It's not the dated special effects that bother me, it's the way the utopia of Star Trek's future and technology began to provide way too many plot crutches. By the end of TNG, it seemed like every crisis resolution involved reversing t…

They're different sub-genres. I really enjoyed BSG, but for me it didn't take away anything from TNG. The only criticism I have with TNG is that tech isn't the solution to all their non-philosophical problems -- they are a civilization with, to a first-order approximation, complete mastery over energy and matter, with even the Q wary about their further potential. Yet the pattern buffers can't store swathes of human backups because reasons? TNG is at its best when it's philosophical, that aspect is essential to its sub-genre.

As for DS9, it was great, but it wishes it was Babylon 5. B5 was superior in every way except budget.