The thing about Star Trek is that it’s never really been about space or aliens. It’s always been about us. The crew plays out little dramas and asks the audience to judge them. And as much as I love TNG, I can’t help but imagine it would struggle to capture an audience if it first aired today. The dramas it performs, ones which assume a better future is possible, are harder to believe than the warp drives which power it.
I am not sure about this, with all the streaming sites pumping out so much garbage it is not that hard to pull ahead if there is quality behind the production.
And that is assuming a Trek like show without the actual Trek franchise weight behind it.
In general I remember seeing these arguments years ago when Discovery premiered, the justifications behind the modernization to basicaly justify that "old Trek" wouldn't sell and it was never an appealing argument. In the end that was just literal capitalist apologetics as if gutting creativity is justified in the name of making money. It is now clear that taking the gamble of accepting this new Trek because people were desperate for the TV return proved to be a horrible mistake. Turns out between comprimising and hoping it wont be shit and nothing it was far better to have nothing and let Trek remain dead.
I also think that while this is a good essay it does not even begin to touch some of the more real issues behind all the changes to Trek that are much more tied to material reasons.
The whole complicated relation between CBS and JJ and then his production company headed by Alex Kurtzman is about 70% of the reason behind all of it. There is a lot of information about it on the internet(some truths, some conspiracies).
When it comes to Picard the worst part about it is that Patrick Stewart was adamant that it was all about bringing back Trek optimism exactly because of the Trump/Brexit era, the world needed Trek... well look how that turned out. It is worth remembering PS troubled relationship with Trek during the movie era and the idea of putting all hope on his benevolent view of Trek's ideals was already a silly expectation.
If you want to read more about the movie era I highly recommend Michael Pillar's book FADE IN: From Idea to Final Draft The Writing of Star Trek: Insurrection(pdf here).
My disillusion with Trek was solidified after reading that book and Patrick Stewarts comments regarding the script in it. All the way back then PS was already pushing for Trek to head towards the new dumb action era, he regarded the TV era as basically over.
A few PS quotes from his correspondence with the writers regarding the early Insurrection script in the book.
I don’t agree about our being explorers again. I think that is
series material but not movie material. Heresy though this may
be, I do not think our movie duty is “to seek out new life and new
civilizations...” though it still is “to boldly go...”
Yes, the Romulan question does mean a lot to me. I think it is a
deadly idea to have even an ‘overhauled’ Romulan villain. After
the Borg Queen it will look as if we just couldn’t come up with
any new bad guys. But we must. Could they be the Federation
Executive Council? (Gene, stop spinning.) Or a cadre inside
the Council? The bad guys are right there in the heart of the
Federation. That is certainly contemporary and, God knows,
depressingly relevant.
Some 20 years before Picard.
Honestly I think it is a waste to engage with modern Trek philosophy and try to find complicated reasons for why the shows went towards this new direction. The reasons are mostly personal and dictated by the few people at the top. The end.
The whole complicated relation between CBS and JJ and then his production company headed by Alex Kurtzman is about 70% of the reason behind all of it. There is a lot of information about it on the internet(some truths, some conspiracies).
Can you expand on this? Haven’t heard about it before and I’m now incredibly curious.
-It was originaly under production by Bryan Fuller who had a completely different vision, it was going to be more episodic and perhaps more extravagant(full CGI crewmembers) but for whatever reason he was kicked from the production and Kurtzman crew took over with a complete mandate to do whatever it takes to save the show.
-The production was so disorganized that they were likely literaly googling for ideas and managed to land on some random Steam game page. Some poor guy called Anas made a game Tardigrades and he sued CBS for copyright over the STD S1 story. The plagiarized characters(looks like they literally copy pasted 3 characters) and setting is pretty fucking obvious and once again you have to be a legal ghoul to not see it. You can have one similarity, two maybe, three is pushing, fucking half a dozen or more is just obvious. Anyway he obviously lost.
-There were many theories whether STD was part of the prime timeline or not and there were some conspiracy theories that it wasn't prime timeline because of a licensing deal with JJ/Kurtzman.
The idea was that some of the designs are different simply because Kurtzman/JJ had a seperate license that gave him some profits from merchandising, however that would require his stuff to be "different".
CBS of course denied all of it, but then even if it was true what would they say? Either way it explains that some changes are completely arbitrary and nonsensical for money only.
Finished reading through this and I now understand Stewart’s part in making Picard the way it was much more clearly. I’ll also be reading through that book you linked this weekend, thanks for sharing a pdf copy of it.
My personal theory is that Patrick doesn't realy care about Rodenberry's vision, to him it is dead since All good things.
At first he wanted to be an action star, RLM talks about this so much, basicaly Nemesis was mostly him.
Then I believe with his success as Professor X(specialy Logan) he fancied himself as a much "greater" actor then simply "Picard the diplomat". It makes sense that since Nemesis he would only come back if he was the main star but fans would only tolerate a TNG reboot with at least some of the old cast.
And here we see that he realy would never accept going back to the 80s TNG, it was either a "modern" version or nothing.
The irony I think is that he is so egotistical and/or old at this point that he didn't realize that Picard S1 had some outrageous stuff that would never make it Trek anyway, it realy feels like PS literally only read the script parts related to Picard and called it a day.
The TNG episode where Picard goes to Risa aka the sex tourism planet for a vacation, hooks up with the artifact thief and gets in trouble with Ferengi smugglers or whatever was made because Patrick Stewart wanted Picard to fuck and have punchups with bad guys
I don't think he necessarily ever entirely got the character
I am not sure about this, with all the streaming sites pumping out so much garbage it is not that hard to pull ahead if there is quality behind the production.
And that is assuming a Trek like show without the actual Trek franchise weight behind it. In general I remember seeing these arguments years ago when Discovery premiered, the justifications behind the modernization to basicaly justify that "old Trek" wouldn't sell and it was never an appealing argument. In the end that was just literal capitalist apologetics as if gutting creativity is justified in the name of making money. It is now clear that taking the gamble of accepting this new Trek because people were desperate for the TV return proved to be a horrible mistake. Turns out between comprimising and hoping it wont be shit and nothing it was far better to have nothing and let Trek remain dead.
I also think that while this is a good essay it does not even begin to touch some of the more real issues behind all the changes to Trek that are much more tied to material reasons.
The whole complicated relation between CBS and JJ and then his production company headed by Alex Kurtzman is about 70% of the reason behind all of it. There is a lot of information about it on the internet(some truths, some conspiracies).
When it comes to Picard the worst part about it is that Patrick Stewart was adamant that it was all about bringing back Trek optimism exactly because of the Trump/Brexit era, the world needed Trek... well look how that turned out. It is worth remembering PS troubled relationship with Trek during the movie era and the idea of putting all hope on his benevolent view of Trek's ideals was already a silly expectation.
If you want to read more about the movie era I highly recommend Michael Pillar's book FADE IN: From Idea to Final Draft The Writing of Star Trek: Insurrection(pdf here).
My disillusion with Trek was solidified after reading that book and Patrick Stewarts comments regarding the script in it. All the way back then PS was already pushing for Trek to head towards the new dumb action era, he regarded the TV era as basically over.
A few PS quotes from his correspondence with the writers regarding the early Insurrection script in the book.
Some 20 years before Picard.
Honestly I think it is a waste to engage with modern Trek philosophy and try to find complicated reasons for why the shows went towards this new direction. The reasons are mostly personal and dictated by the few people at the top. The end.
Can you expand on this? Haven’t heard about it before and I’m now incredibly curious.
The Discovery production was a shitshow:
-It was originaly under production by Bryan Fuller who had a completely different vision, it was going to be more episodic and perhaps more extravagant(full CGI crewmembers) but for whatever reason he was kicked from the production and Kurtzman crew took over with a complete mandate to do whatever it takes to save the show.
-The production was so disorganized that they were likely literaly googling for ideas and managed to land on some random Steam game page. Some poor guy called Anas made a game Tardigrades and he sued CBS for copyright over the STD S1 story. The plagiarized characters(looks like they literally copy pasted 3 characters) and setting is pretty fucking obvious and once again you have to be a legal ghoul to not see it. You can have one similarity, two maybe, three is pushing, fucking half a dozen or more is just obvious. Anyway he obviously lost.
-There were many theories whether STD was part of the prime timeline or not and there were some conspiracy theories that it wasn't prime timeline because of a licensing deal with JJ/Kurtzman.
Then after that one famous prop maker leaked out that he had legal requirements to make some changes to the Enterprise and it had to be about 25% different and the conspiracies went nuts.
The idea was that some of the designs are different simply because Kurtzman/JJ had a seperate license that gave him some profits from merchandising, however that would require his stuff to be "different".
CBS of course denied all of it, but then even if it was true what would they say? Either way it explains that some changes are completely arbitrary and nonsensical for money only.
Finished reading through this and I now understand Stewart’s part in making Picard the way it was much more clearly. I’ll also be reading through that book you linked this weekend, thanks for sharing a pdf copy of it.
My personal theory is that Patrick doesn't realy care about Rodenberry's vision, to him it is dead since All good things.
At first he wanted to be an action star, RLM talks about this so much, basicaly Nemesis was mostly him. Then I believe with his success as Professor X(specialy Logan) he fancied himself as a much "greater" actor then simply "Picard the diplomat". It makes sense that since Nemesis he would only come back if he was the main star but fans would only tolerate a TNG reboot with at least some of the old cast.
And here we see that he realy would never accept going back to the 80s TNG, it was either a "modern" version or nothing.
The irony I think is that he is so egotistical and/or old at this point that he didn't realize that Picard S1 had some outrageous stuff that would never make it Trek anyway, it realy feels like PS literally only read the script parts related to Picard and called it a day.
The TNG episode where Picard goes to Risa aka the sex tourism planet for a vacation, hooks up with the artifact thief and gets in trouble with Ferengi smugglers or whatever was made because Patrick Stewart wanted Picard to fuck and have punchups with bad guys
I don't think he necessarily ever entirely got the character
I think I read something similar about that episode where he is 1v3 or 1v4 aboard the Enterprise. Starship mine?