The Star Trek Franchise has been an icon of science fiction for 42 year, for better or worse. We've all seen at least one episode, movie, or a nerd reading one of the books. Unfortunately the franchise is dying, and as a hardcore Trekkie, I have the right and will to say that. The franchise is losing ground in all areas; movies, TV, and literary. I hope that with Star Trek Online drawing attention, so will this article and that some of these solutions may find a way into the world.
Let's start with the television series'. Gene Roddenberry had a strong conviction that in the future, there would be no poverty and every child could read. He wanted to show this amazing future to people through his original Star Trek, and in the second series Star Trek: The Next Generation. Unfortunately, his death in 1991 took away that vision. His replacement, Ira Stephen Behr, did not share this vision. In fact, he believed technology would lead to ruin. This change in leadership caused the creation of the Borg, a race of machine-person hybrids looking for perfection through assimilation. While TNG worked out fine and ended on a high note. The next series Deep Space Nine started to lose ground early. It had a similar premise to the series Babylon 5 in which it took place on a space station. Unfortunately, it lacked Babylon 5's focus and overarching plot. DS9 tried to create one in it's last few seasons with the Dominion War, which allowed Star Trek to explore the darker reaches of humanity. It did well, just not well enough to recover all the lost ratings the series had allowed. Then came Voyager. It's "Lost in Space"-esque plot and spotty acting didn't help. Whether unfortunately or fortunately, the series pulled it together and made the last 2 season's interesting again, but yet again, too late to save ratings. TNG, DS9, and VOY all had 7 seasons.
Enterprise. I could write a whole article on just this not-so-little faux pas. Roddenberry always looked toward the future, so we continue his legacy with....a prequel? Ok, a short story or movie prequel is fine, just not a whole series. It felt wrong to be going back, and it also put some events in a different light that described in previous series...or later series if you want. There was no focus until the Xindi plot, which was an attempt to have people empathise with the crew after a 9/11-esque event. Let's go over that again, you want viewers to watch because they can relate it to 9/11. WRONG. Viewers go to television for relief, not to be reminded of tragedy. This series lasted 4 seasons for obvious reasons.
What is needed to revitalize Star Trek in television is first, good writing. A good story can cover up some bad acting and effects moments rather well, so whoever creates the next series better know some good authors or visionaries to write the plot. Next, the plot needs to be big. Let's take a page from Babylon 5 and Star Wars and have each episode relate to each other. You can still have the 'problem of the week' episodes, but have them reveal something about the universe or a character. Don't do a plot about what a crew member's favorite food is. (They tried that on Enterprise) Each episode needs to feel special and worth watching, otherwise, why watch at all? Last, 1 or 2 good actors. Namely the Captain and whoever will do the most expositional dialogue. These people need to be believable.
Let's move on to the movies. While I didn't find Nemisis bad, it could have been better, and I don't have truly high hopes for Star Trek 11 coming next year. Instead of taking some years off to try and soul search what Star Trek is, they're making a prequel and replacing all the original cast with lookalikes. I truly hope this does well, simply for the help in keeping the franchise alive. Movies need to pioneer the future, not rehash the past.
Star Trek novels. Star Trek is now more of a literary movement more than anything, with nothing new on television and the movie trying to recapture the lightning of the original. For a while, Star Trek novels were great. Namely the "A Time To..." series, which helped build hype for Nemisis. Each of the 9 novels working with each other and effected each other. The plots interwove and it felt like a huge, epic drama. This even carries into Death in Winter and the Titan series. Then came Resistance, Before Dishonor, and Greater than the Sum. I'll call this the ONTBAB (Oh Noes, the Borg are Back) series. This is where the franchise makes it's common mistake. The books lost cohesion. While the enemies and characters were the same, there weren't consistant. Two characters hated each other at the beginning of one novel, made up at the end....then immidiately started hating each other the first page of the next book. This does not make a good series! Also, the authors were chosen based on previous performance instead of their knowledge of characters. Authors used to one crew were forced to write the lines of another and it came out horrible. Meanwhile, all the good authors who know what they're doing are constantly re-drafted for short story anthologies that, while really good, don't move the franchise forward. Pocket Books has it backwards. Give the experienced writors their crews and let the authors play with a new crew in a short story, then wait for the praise or phaser fire from the peanut gallery. Star Trek should be living strong with the novel series, and yet each new one is now just confusing and annoying people with really odd plots (The Borg ate Pluto?!) and inconsistant character work. This need to be fixed.
My idea for the franchise is to take a break. Spend a year or two with nothing coming out at all. Just spend that time looking for good writors who also love the series. Look for fans who can think up good, plausible stories and instead of trapping them in fan-specific anthologies, try hiring them for an episode or two. Spend the time to create a plot that takes 7 seasons to unveil. Many say it cannot be done, yet Babylon 5 did it spectacularly, and that was only on a space station. A starship-based series would be able to do even more. My final piece of advise is, "Remember when Star Trek was fun to watch, not a reminder of reality, but a dream? What happened to that?" I feel like Star Trek is dying a death of negligence and very few people can see it.
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