ALL SCI-FI

[bulldogtrekker]

The Next Generation of Star Trek Should Be a TV Show
By David Sims, the Atlantic

It's hard to believe, but right now we exist in a world where Star Trek is only a film franchise. For the last half-century, Stark Trek has operated mainly on the small screen, including a recent 18-year run. Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered in 1987, and some form of Trek stayed on the air until the finale of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005. That's a TV legacy only matched by The Simpsons and Law and Order for a generation of viewers. But since 2005, there have been exactly two pieces of Star Trek entertainment to chew on: the installments of J.J. Abrams's rebooted film series, which he's since dropped to take up work on Star Wars Episode VII.

Paramount is now searching for a director to helm a sequel to Abrams's Star Treks. But here's a better idea: Why not make a new Star Trek television show?

Abrams's 2009 Star Trek was a success — a rollicking adventure that tapped into the rascally side of the Kirk-led U.S.S. Enterprise. The director openly drew influence from the original Star Wars trilogy to breathe new life into a franchise that had petered out with increasingly staid films featuring the Next Generation crew and with the prequel series Enterprise, which never gained more than a devoted cult following. But Abrams's 2013 sequel Star Trek Into Darkness undid everything its predecessor had gotten right. Drawing influence from the film The Wrath of Khan, it relied on a series of bombastic action sequences, many of them set on planet Earth (guys, the Enterprise is supposed to be in space) to paper over a thin plot about a terrorist conspiracy in Starfleet. .....





LINK:
http://news.yahoo.com/next-generation-em-star-trek-em-tv-show-174128698.html

[Bud Brewster]

Couldn't agree more, Bulldogtrekker, and yet we've heard exactly nothing about any plans to create a Trek tv series.

Years ago I came up an idea for a Trek series that involved a captain and a group of his officers who were unjustly drummed out of Star Fleet as scapegoats for a colossal blunder by a high ranking officer who caused a space battle to go very badly.

The story is about how the group banded together and crewed a small private ship called the Renegade — yes, the series would be called Star Trek: Renegade, and yes the name has since been chosen for another project.

The big story arc of the series would be the efforts by the group to prove their innocence and reveal the truth while they operated as a band of interstellar traders. There would be plenty of scenes of Star Fleet ships as well as the Renegade, and the main characters would frequently have to deal with the disdain of Star Fleet personnel who believed they were guilty (and treated them as outcast), as well as people who didn't believe they were guilty and often had to pretend they weren't still friends with our heroes.

The fun thing about the idea, for me, is the way this tight-knit group could act independently, dealing with situations without worrying about how their actions would look on a report sent back to Star Fleet.

And throughout it all, they would have to figuratively hold their chins high and wear brave smiles when faced with people (in and out of Star Fleet) who believed they deserved the sentences they received.

A few of the people in this group actually chose to resign from Star Fleet and join the people who were discharged, and these characters would take a lot of heat from family members and friends who thought they had made a terrible mistake, siding with disgraced officers.

When it came time for the series to end, the big climax would be the redemption of the outcast, as well as the disgrace of the admirals who were part of the cover up and false charges.

I made my pitch for this show back in early 2000 on the IMDB Trek message board, and one of the replies was, "Sounds like Firefly to me . . . ".

I'd never even seen Firefly — and despite a few similarities, they are really very different ideas!

What do you guys think?












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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[bulldogtrekker]

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Why Star Trek Needs to Come Back on TV
IGN

Is Star Trek better suited on TV? We think so, and we also think now's the time to bring back Picard, Riker and the rest!...

LINK:
http://www.ign.com/videos/2015/02/11/why-star-trek-needs-to-come-back-on-tv-ign-conversation

[Pow]

The basic premise for your ST: Renegade is nothing like Firefly.

It is similar to the 1965 TV western show Branded starring Chuck (Rifleman) Connors. His character on B was a West Point graduate named Jason McCord. During a fierce battle with Indians his regiment was slaughtered due to his general's decisions. McCord was the only survivor.

He was court-martialed & dismissed from the army. He wandered the west & hoped to prove his innocence as he dealt with people who reviled him for his alleged desertion of his superior officer & the men he served with.

[Bud Brewster]

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A series called Star Trek: Renagades was released in 2015, and I watched it with Bulldogtrekker.

Neither of us was very impressed. Frankly, my concept was "light years" ahead of that pathetic effort (pardon my ego . . . ).

My concept has the nobility of Voyager, with the crew of a ship who remain true to Starfleet principals just because those principals constitute their own core values.

It has the adventure of Enterprise, because the crew is constantly traveling into regions of space whose lifeforms and civilizations aren't intimidated by the Federation, nor by the technology their modest starship possesses.

And it has the bold and sexy bravado of TOS, because these ex-Starfleet officers aren't afraid to place moral right above legal restrictions whenever intelligent lifeforms need their help.

Folks I love Firefly, and I enjoy the way the crew and their captain focus on surviving in an extremely unjust universe.

But the big difference between Firefly and my concept for Star Trek: Renegade (singular, not plural, because it's the name of their ship) is that the crew is fighting to survive outside of Starfleet while they struggle to uncover the truth behind their own court martial and the corruption within Starfleet that caused it.

Meanwhile, they experience a wealth of unrelated but very exciting adventures which we get to watch on a weekly basis!

My idea for this series is that after two seasons it concludes with a dramatic story in which the crew of the Renegade finally succeed in purging Starfleet of its corruption and redeeming themselves, so that they're triumphantly restored to active duty!

In other words, this group of Starfleet outcast manage to save both their own reputations and the honor of Starfleet as well!

And of course . . . the series doesn't need to end there!
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)