Topic: Back to Trek licenses, movies, and developments...

[Sartonius]

Seemed like the Activision thread had gotten way out of control and off topic in at least three directions.

Back to what matters (if you agee that this kinda matters, a little, since it's just supposed to be for fun...)


Having gotten tired of never being able to get SFC OP to work for the latest campaigns (because of modding and because I came to the conclusion I'd have to redo Windows to get it all to work, which I don't have time for yet) I went looking at the other Trek stuff done lately and put SFC down.  And here's what I see:  Some people (including producers and game developers) are missing the point behind Trek.

First off, the Activision thing is just another event.  Someone else will want to take up the lance.  More on that later.

Second, I think that Enterprise (and Nemesis, too, I suppose) suffers from "Voyager Syndrome".  Let me explain.  In my book there are two kinds of producers that "throw out the book".  

Type 1 is Nick Meyer, a guy that wasn't a Trekkie but became one.  (If you're interested, go watch the ST II director's edition DVD with all the neat interviews.  Lots of cool stuff and interviews.)  He was asked if he was interested in Star Trek II, and he didn't know much about Star Trek.  So he gave it a shot and sat down and watched lots of TOS and also TMP.  And he saw in it underlying cultural values and psyche that were emergent beyond Gene Roddenberry's idealistic vision.  He related Trek to the adventures of Horatio Hornblower, naval war adventure stories.  He saw the Enterprise as a naval vessel, and he said that, in the end, in spite of all of their high-flung ideals or self-proclaimed ideals, sometimes they still shoot their torpedoes at the "bad guys" anyways.  He compared it to America.  Now, not to get too political, but he had a point:  it's a North American franchise about a future where the world is united in a very western-oriented sort of unified government, out there, running into alien species that personify "other un-Western cultures" (often on purpose) and sometimes making peace, sometimes making war, and sometimes making deals.  Nick Meyer put all of this philosophy into the look, feel, and attitude of Star Trek II, the people working with him loved it, the actors ran with it, and it saved Star Trek.  No joke.  TMP was cool in an Isaac Asimov kinda sci-fi way, but it was way "out there" whereas Trek II took all that had gone before and showed us the human side.  They used and tweaked all of the stuff from prior work, made it a bit better, and off they went.  Good story, good movie, etc.  

Type 2 is Brannon Braga.  This man was hired to shake things up and try new ideas.  Unfortunately, he has total disregard for _actual_ continuity of storylines.  (Someone before mentioned "superficial continuity".  I agree).  With Enterprise, they _should_ have made it look like a cross between a nuclear submarine and a TOS set, with funny colours and everything.  They should not have conceived of a transporter.  They should have been armed with nuclear missiles, not proto-phasers.  The ship should not look like a retro-version of an Akira-class cruiser.  Etcetera etcetera.  The current producers do not revere the "good old days" enough.

More later, I have to save this message now.

 

[Sartonius]

To continue.

My point about the new stuff is that they have the potential to make something neat and have fun doing it.  They casted good actors, and feed them lousy storylines.

There should have been a nuke-fest between the Romulans and early Earth fleet ships.  Not this other weird stuff.  Why?  Because of "Balance of Terror" that's why.  Enterprise should fill in back-story not make up crap story.  Someone with vision is required to try to bring the show back into line, but it's almost too late.  Perhaps it would be better if they never went "backwards" instead of "forwards" in time again.  It's easier to get things right when you're facing an unwritten future instead of contradicting what is supposed to happen and making weird stuff up.  I never liked prequels for that.  They seldom truly work.  

However, the reality is, bullsh*t almost killed Trek in the first place.  If you read Leonard Nimoy's books, he describes how seasons 1 and 2 of TOS were really good stuff, and Nimoy got into it.  He became Spock.  He wrote a book about his Spock Separation Anxiety (Spock and Trek leaving the screen and getting into his real life and personality).  I like him as an actor, because he is a HARDCORE ACTOR.  But then, he said when network, license, and contract disputes arose between Roddenberry and Paramount, etc., the replacement "killers" sent to keep writing the show were awful.  They disregarded important things, and so the aborted season 3 sucked, in Nimoy's opinion.  They cancelled the show, and you know the rest of the story.  But Nimoy had a big hand in resurrecting Trek once more with later installments, and he "un-killed Spock".  He insisted that Spock's death be poignant and meaningful.

It's not that there's anything wrong with Star Trek, it's that the best thing for it would be to take a break and get people with vision to take it in a new direction.  I liked Nemesis, I just think it ended funny, and they portrayed the Enterprise a bit wrong.  And they have to bring Data back.  Data's death was not like Spock's death.  It was done the wrong way.  Nemesis was a movie like Star Trek V:  Has its highlights, but it's not Trek at its best.  Patrick Stewart has become a die-hard Trek fan himself.  He loves the role.  Of course he defends it to the death.  They should have guys like Patrick Stewart more deeply involved in finding solid people to put projects together.  Set the story a couple years in the future, bring in some memorable characters from the other shows.  What made the TOS movies neat was that it showed that life could go on but old comerades could come back twenty years later and still have an adventure.

So, on to computer games.  I read about Totally Games taking on a Star Trek project, and I went right out and bought Bridge Commander.  It's wonderful.  Lawrence Holland, the producer of the project and the creator of the X-Wing series, is a game producer like Nicholas Meyer:  he's a perceptive guy that's very good at what he does, and he's a man with vision.  And he understands that what makes a game is all in the details.  Go check out X-Wing Alliance if you haven't yet.  It's got better, more logical backstory to it than the prequel Star Wars movies have.  It's consistent and makes sense, is a lot of fun, a challenge, and has a good storyline.  No offense to anyone, I always liked the SFC games, but I like BC more, just because I'm into one player computer games with depth and personality, and because I love Totally Games for their work.


The real trouble is, most games now are no good, or at least not as good as they should be.  (You can make the same arguments about most new movies and new music for that matter.  "They just don't make em like they used to!" ) For lots of reasons.  Many of them lack vision or the development team is not given the time or the resources to do what is necessary to get the best results.  You can't build Rome in a day.    

So, I don't think Star Trek is finished.  Star Trek just had another of its "Star Trek V moments" where the current situation made it so that it wasn't their best work, but Paramount / Viacom wanted to try to sell it anyways.  Same deal with Activision's problems.  Some people just missed the point and forgot that Star Trek is all in the details.  I have faith that eventually someone very talented will pick up the ball where Paramount / Viacom (and a whole host of interlopers) dropped it and we'll look back at Enterprise and Nemesis and SFC3 and everything else and remember their shining moments a bit better than the low points (just like the rest of life).  It'll probably just take five years or so.

[Dash Jones]

Good Commentary.

Am almost tempted to say some nice things about BC...but that would get off topic...only will say...sad how it ended before it got an expansion (but somewhat understandable from economics point of view).

You make some really good points about why Trek is having it's dilemmas.  Personally, I think they should state out and out Enterprise is not Trek and run with that idea...kill a lot of antagonism towards it.  I also would like to see what would happen if Star Trek got some new blood to run it...Wouldn't mind seeing what Patrick Stewart has in mind.

[Mr. Hypergol]

I pretty much agree with everthing you said.  The real problem with Trek right now is the people running it have no respect for it's continuity.  The continuity is what makes it seem so real and gives it that larger than life feel.

When I heard "Enterprise" would be a prequel, the first thing that came to my mind was "Balance of Terror" and the "Earth-Romulan War".  So far I have been disappointed.  My only hope now is that, since it's still early in the show, there's still time for an Earth-Romulan War arc that hopefully will rival DS9's Dominion War arc.  If Berman and Bragga blow this part of Trek history off without a reasonable explanation (i.e. some alternate timeline or something like that) I'll never watch their crap again.  

[Tulwar]

This post was not an indictment of Activision, but the example of SFC3 fit so well into my commentary that it could not be avoided.

I think we've forgotten the cooperate mentality, here.  They think that fans are just a ready group of people to be exploited.  SFC is an example of what happens.  When Taldren created SFC, they were fans with skills and capital to invest in a franchise to reach other fans.  Activision had the financial mussle to buy the franchise and they are doing whatever they want with it.  Some people like the new game, I can't argue against that, but it is apparent, that Activision does not understand or care what a substancial number of SFC fans want out of it.  They simply expect the fans to buy what they are being sold.  That is why there is a schism here on this forum.

This is the whole, sorry history of Star Trek.  Somebody with the money and resources buys into it, keeping the rights very expensive, while imaginative, talented people have to work with the crumbs they are allowed.  Once someone developes something comercially viable, maybe only on a modest scale, big money steps in and tries to make something really big, simply counting on the fans to spend thier hard earned dollars, euros, ect. on whatever they are presented.  This is an obsolete, Twentieth Century buisness model that is failing to reap the potential of Star Trek.

The reason that most Star Trek TV series have done well is that it requires a number of deticated professionals,  to make a TV series work.  The owner of the rights have to ceed control of the franchise to those professionals, and let them run with it.  That is also why most  movies (Star Trek or otherwise) are so poor.  The people with the rights have the power to produce a one shot deal, and go out of their way not to deal with any single writer or anyone with their own ideas.

The result is something that doesn't please the very people they are trying to exploit.  That is why Nemesis bombed at the box office.  There was no room in the cooperate structure at Paramount for any real creativity, so they produced a film that could only be derivative, following the current Hollywood style.

To make matters worse, Star Trek has already been over-sold.  After DS-9, there is not a whole lot that can be done with the franchise.  Voyager was not lousy because of the bad writing and format, it was lousy because there was very little left to do with the series.  Since Star trek couldn't go forward, they turned back, hence "Enterprize."  The coming war between the Earth and Romulus is going to become a focus of the series, simply because there is nothing else to work with.

To sell Star Trek, the owners of the rights have to accept a simple fact:  Star Trek fans are not starving for new products.  If they want a successful enterprise (he he), they must learn to sell to a boutique audience.  "Trekkies" will pay handsomely for the right product, but only the right product, and nothing else will do.

It is hard to shake the coorperate mentality, but current buisness thinking is beginning to change now that buisness leaders have to compete for pieces of a shrinking pie.  A small piece is better than none, and many small pieces....  Well, they add up.  Activision changed SFC, because they thought that only a handful of geeky people could, or would want to play SFB based version.  They may now be realising that only a handful of geeky people would want ANY version of SFC.  There are so many other games.

Then again, Activision is sueing Viacom.  Reality may be far beyond the well insulated.  GM, Ford, and Chrysler didn't read the writing on the wall when VW was selling so many of those horrible little cars thirty years ago.  The Japanese sure did.  The rest is history.

Unlike the auto industry, the fans will keep Star Trek alive, no matter what Paramount, Viacom, or Activision do.  Then again, maybe I'm done with Star Trek, just waiting to be hit with some better Sci-Fi, something less coorperate, more imaginative.    

[Wolf2525]

Hey!  I like those horrible little german cars!

Hehe, and some may already know this, but after World War II, they offered the factories and all the tooling to make those beetles to Henry Ford for free, just to help the economy in Germany along and provide jobs for the people.  Ford's advisor told him "I just don't think what they are offering us is worth a darn."

Oops....

[Tulwar]

Sorry guy, didn't mean to rag on your car, I'm just too tall to fit comfortably in one those things.  I bet you're a good three inches taller than me, too.  

[Sartonius]

Seemed like the Activision thread had gotten way out of control and off topic in at least three directions.

Back to what matters (if you agee that this kinda matters, a little, since it's just supposed to be for fun...)


Having gotten tired of never being able to get SFC OP to work for the latest campaigns (because of modding and because I came to the conclusion I'd have to redo Windows to get it all to work, which I don't have time for yet) I went looking at the other Trek stuff done lately and put SFC down.  And here's what I see:  Some people (including producers and game developers) are missing the point behind Trek.

First off, the Activision thing is just another event.  Someone else will want to take up the lance.  More on that later.

Second, I think that Enterprise (and Nemesis, too, I suppose) suffers from "Voyager Syndrome".  Let me explain.  In my book there are two kinds of producers that "throw out the book".  

Type 1 is Nick Meyer, a guy that wasn't a Trekkie but became one.  (If you're interested, go watch the ST II director's edition DVD with all the neat interviews.  Lots of cool stuff and interviews.)  He was asked if he was interested in Star Trek II, and he didn't know much about Star Trek.  So he gave it a shot and sat down and watched lots of TOS and also TMP.  And he saw in it underlying cultural values and psyche that were emergent beyond Gene Roddenberry's idealistic vision.  He related Trek to the adventures of Horatio Hornblower, naval war adventure stories.  He saw the Enterprise as a naval vessel, and he said that, in the end, in spite of all of their high-flung ideals or self-proclaimed ideals, sometimes they still shoot their torpedoes at the "bad guys" anyways.  He compared it to America.  Now, not to get too political, but he had a point:  it's a North American franchise about a future where the world is united in a very western-oriented sort of unified government, out there, running into alien species that personify "other un-Western cultures" (often on purpose) and sometimes making peace, sometimes making war, and sometimes making deals.  Nick Meyer put all of this philosophy into the look, feel, and attitude of Star Trek II, the people working with him loved it, the actors ran with it, and it saved Star Trek.  No joke.  TMP was cool in an Isaac Asimov kinda sci-fi way, but it was way "out there" whereas Trek II took all that had gone before and showed us the human side.  They used and tweaked all of the stuff from prior work, made it a bit better, and off they went.  Good story, good movie, etc.  

Type 2 is Brannon Braga.  This man was hired to shake things up and try new ideas.  Unfortunately, he has total disregard for _actual_ continuity of storylines.  (Someone before mentioned "superficial continuity".  I agree).  With Enterprise, they _should_ have made it look like a cross between a nuclear submarine and a TOS set, with funny colours and everything.  They should not have conceived of a transporter.  They should have been armed with nuclear missiles, not proto-phasers.  The ship should not look like a retro-version of an Akira-class cruiser.  Etcetera etcetera.  The current producers do not revere the "good old days" enough.

More later, I have to save this message now.

 

[Sartonius]

To continue.

My point about the new stuff is that they have the potential to make something neat and have fun doing it.  They casted good actors, and feed them lousy storylines.

There should have been a nuke-fest between the Romulans and early Earth fleet ships.  Not this other weird stuff.  Why?  Because of "Balance of Terror" that's why.  Enterprise should fill in back-story not make up crap story.  Someone with vision is required to try to bring the show back into line, but it's almost too late.  Perhaps it would be better if they never went "backwards" instead of "forwards" in time again.  It's easier to get things right when you're facing an unwritten future instead of contradicting what is supposed to happen and making weird stuff up.  I never liked prequels for that.  They seldom truly work.  

However, the reality is, bullsh*t almost killed Trek in the first place.  If you read Leonard Nimoy's books, he describes how seasons 1 and 2 of TOS were really good stuff, and Nimoy got into it.  He became Spock.  He wrote a book about his Spock Separation Anxiety (Spock and Trek leaving the screen and getting into his real life and personality).  I like him as an actor, because he is a HARDCORE ACTOR.  But then, he said when network, license, and contract disputes arose between Roddenberry and Paramount, etc., the replacement "killers" sent to keep writing the show were awful.  They disregarded important things, and so the aborted season 3 sucked, in Nimoy's opinion.  They cancelled the show, and you know the rest of the story.  But Nimoy had a big hand in resurrecting Trek once more with later installments, and he "un-killed Spock".  He insisted that Spock's death be poignant and meaningful.

It's not that there's anything wrong with Star Trek, it's that the best thing for it would be to take a break and get people with vision to take it in a new direction.  I liked Nemesis, I just think it ended funny, and they portrayed the Enterprise a bit wrong.  And they have to bring Data back.  Data's death was not like Spock's death.  It was done the wrong way.  Nemesis was a movie like Star Trek V:  Has its highlights, but it's not Trek at its best.  Patrick Stewart has become a die-hard Trek fan himself.  He loves the role.  Of course he defends it to the death.  They should have guys like Patrick Stewart more deeply involved in finding solid people to put projects together.  Set the story a couple years in the future, bring in some memorable characters from the other shows.  What made the TOS movies neat was that it showed that life could go on but old comerades could come back twenty years later and still have an adventure.

So, on to computer games.  I read about Totally Games taking on a Star Trek project, and I went right out and bought Bridge Commander.  It's wonderful.  Lawrence Holland, the producer of the project and the creator of the X-Wing series, is a game producer like Nicholas Meyer:  he's a perceptive guy that's very good at what he does, and he's a man with vision.  And he understands that what makes a game is all in the details.  Go check out X-Wing Alliance if you haven't yet.  It's got better, more logical backstory to it than the prequel Star Wars movies have.  It's consistent and makes sense, is a lot of fun, a challenge, and has a good storyline.  No offense to anyone, I always liked the SFC games, but I like BC more, just because I'm into one player computer games with depth and personality, and because I love Totally Games for their work.


The real trouble is, most games now are no good, or at least not as good as they should be.  (You can make the same arguments about most new movies and new music for that matter.  "They just don't make em like they used to!" ) For lots of reasons.  Many of them lack vision or the development team is not given the time or the resources to do what is necessary to get the best results.  You can't build Rome in a day.    

So, I don't think Star Trek is finished.  Star Trek just had another of its "Star Trek V moments" where the current situation made it so that it wasn't their best work, but Paramount / Viacom wanted to try to sell it anyways.  Same deal with Activision's problems.  Some people just missed the point and forgot that Star Trek is all in the details.  I have faith that eventually someone very talented will pick up the ball where Paramount / Viacom (and a whole host of interlopers) dropped it and we'll look back at Enterprise and Nemesis and SFC3 and everything else and remember their shining moments a bit better than the low points (just like the rest of life).  It'll probably just take five years or so.

[Dash Jones]

Good Commentary.

Am almost tempted to say some nice things about BC...but that would get off topic...only will say...sad how it ended before it got an expansion (but somewhat understandable from economics point of view).

You make some really good points about why Trek is having it's dilemmas.  Personally, I think they should state out and out Enterprise is not Trek and run with that idea...kill a lot of antagonism towards it.  I also would like to see what would happen if Star Trek got some new blood to run it...Wouldn't mind seeing what Patrick Stewart has in mind.

[Mr. Hypergol]

I pretty much agree with everthing you said.  The real problem with Trek right now is the people running it have no respect for it's continuity.  The continuity is what makes it seem so real and gives it that larger than life feel.

When I heard "Enterprise" would be a prequel, the first thing that came to my mind was "Balance of Terror" and the "Earth-Romulan War".  So far I have been disappointed.  My only hope now is that, since it's still early in the show, there's still time for an Earth-Romulan War arc that hopefully will rival DS9's Dominion War arc.  If Berman and Bragga blow this part of Trek history off without a reasonable explanation (i.e. some alternate timeline or something like that) I'll never watch their crap again.  

[Tulwar]

This post was not an indictment of Activision, but the example of SFC3 fit so well into my commentary that it could not be avoided.

I think we've forgotten the cooperate mentality, here.  They think that fans are just a ready group of people to be exploited.  SFC is an example of what happens.  When Taldren created SFC, they were fans with skills and capital to invest in a franchise to reach other fans.  Activision had the financial mussle to buy the franchise and they are doing whatever they want with it.  Some people like the new game, I can't argue against that, but it is apparent, that Activision does not understand or care what a substancial number of SFC fans want out of it.  They simply expect the fans to buy what they are being sold.  That is why there is a schism here on this forum.

This is the whole, sorry history of Star Trek.  Somebody with the money and resources buys into it, keeping the rights very expensive, while imaginative, talented people have to work with the crumbs they are allowed.  Once someone developes something comercially viable, maybe only on a modest scale, big money steps in and tries to make something really big, simply counting on the fans to spend thier hard earned dollars, euros, ect. on whatever they are presented.  This is an obsolete, Twentieth Century buisness model that is failing to reap the potential of Star Trek.

The reason that most Star Trek TV series have done well is that it requires a number of deticated professionals,  to make a TV series work.  The owner of the rights have to ceed control of the franchise to those professionals, and let them run with it.  That is also why most  movies (Star Trek or otherwise) are so poor.  The people with the rights have the power to produce a one shot deal, and go out of their way not to deal with any single writer or anyone with their own ideas.

The result is something that doesn't please the very people they are trying to exploit.  That is why Nemesis bombed at the box office.  There was no room in the cooperate structure at Paramount for any real creativity, so they produced a film that could only be derivative, following the current Hollywood style.

To make matters worse, Star Trek has already been over-sold.  After DS-9, there is not a whole lot that can be done with the franchise.  Voyager was not lousy because of the bad writing and format, it was lousy because there was very little left to do with the series.  Since Star trek couldn't go forward, they turned back, hence "Enterprize."  The coming war between the Earth and Romulus is going to become a focus of the series, simply because there is nothing else to work with.

To sell Star Trek, the owners of the rights have to accept a simple fact:  Star Trek fans are not starving for new products.  If they want a successful enterprise (he he), they must learn to sell to a boutique audience.  "Trekkies" will pay handsomely for the right product, but only the right product, and nothing else will do.

It is hard to shake the coorperate mentality, but current buisness thinking is beginning to change now that buisness leaders have to compete for pieces of a shrinking pie.  A small piece is better than none, and many small pieces....  Well, they add up.  Activision changed SFC, because they thought that only a handful of geeky people could, or would want to play SFB based version.  They may now be realising that only a handful of geeky people would want ANY version of SFC.  There are so many other games.

Then again, Activision is sueing Viacom.  Reality may be far beyond the well insulated.  GM, Ford, and Chrysler didn't read the writing on the wall when VW was selling so many of those horrible little cars thirty years ago.  The Japanese sure did.  The rest is history.

Unlike the auto industry, the fans will keep Star Trek alive, no matter what Paramount, Viacom, or Activision do.  Then again, maybe I'm done with Star Trek, just waiting to be hit with some better Sci-Fi, something less coorperate, more imaginative.    

[Wolf2525]

Hey!  I like those horrible little german cars!

Hehe, and some may already know this, but after World War II, they offered the factories and all the tooling to make those beetles to Henry Ford for free, just to help the economy in Germany along and provide jobs for the people.  Ford's advisor told him "I just don't think what they are offering us is worth a darn."

Oops....

[Tulwar]

Sorry guy, didn't mean to rag on your car, I'm just too tall to fit comfortably in one those things.  I bet you're a good three inches taller than me, too.