h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Good article - I enjoyed it.
Does anyone know any rumours about the next Star Trek film?

Yeah.. go to http://www.phoenix50.com/news.html (when the server is working)

Thanks.
What does it say when working, roughly?

Roughly, it says that no one is sure what the hell is going on as far a Star Trek is concerned, or if they do, they refuse to tell each other.

In response to the author of this article, perhaps you might be interested in the fact that Paramount were working on a cut price series called "Star Trek-Phase 2", without any pressure from the fans, until "Star Wars" became a runaway financial success. Paramount had turned down George Lucas, and suddenly realised there was MONEY to be made in the old science fiction lark. So, the series was dumped just a couple of weeks before shooting began, and the sets used for the Motion Picture.

Disney came to much the same conclusion, and rushed out with the appalling "The Black Hole."

I think interest in the franchise has now diminished to a point where it will be quietly dropped, after all, if Paramount sees it's returns diminish, why carry on?

And Yes, I am a fan. So There!

I disagree with you that interest has diminished. I heard that UPN was thinking about having another series take over when Voyager is over. I was never very fond of Voyager, but enough interest has remained for UPN to consider another series. I would love to see another next generation movie. Insurrection was awesome.

The rumour I heard was that the next movie will be a TNG/DS9 cross-over... A sort of "Star Trek Pension Plan" for all the out-of-work DS9 actors.

There was a rumour a long time ago that Voyager would make it back through the wormhole to DS9... Sadly that'd now be too late for Odo to teach the Doctor the joys of shape-shifting... (Well, why not?!?)

I just read that they ARE working on a new series! Nothing is established yet, they're just thinking things out. Apparently, it will be Star Trek, but not as we know it.

Oh, Battlestar Galactica and the bloody awful Buck Rogers in the 25th Century should be added to the list of bandwagon jumpers...

Big kid alert!!!!!

I admit to being an anything related to "Star Trek" addict and even the not so good episodes, I'll sit through.

Back in the early 70's, I lost my first boyfriend when he had the audacity to telephone me during my weekly fix of "Star Trek" and snapped at him to call back later (he never did)! My first teen crush was Mr. Spock related and I'm still enamoured by weird, alien types as a result! You should feel sorry for my long suffering hubby who has to slap a cornish pastie of his forehead and start talking Klingon every time he wants to get his "leg over"!!!!!!!!

My two sproggs hate it when Mum's out of commission during "Star Trek" episodes/movies and are developing an aversion to the series as a result!

I've read rumours that ideas for a new series are being discussed and that another "Next Generation" film is in the pipeline...... It would be really nice if Paramount did continue with the franchise...

I have been known to sit through hours of the "Classic" Trek, and that bunch of cowboys is still my favorite crew. Kirk, Spock et al. will always be the quintessential crew of the 'Enterprise', and all others have to measure up to them.

This said, I think 'DS9' has been the best of the TV fare since, with 'Voyager' a slightly distant second. My problem with the later series is that they spend so many episodes dealing with the same adversaries ('Q', etc.), though 'DS9' with 'The Dominion' and 'Cardassians' had enough action, plot twists and good actors to pull it off. Ben Cisco is almost as good as Kirk as a captain - excellent casting! I got lost with 'ST:TNG' when 'Q' started showing up so much, and I really don't think a starship can be effectively run by committee! The movies ("Generations" & "Insurrection") made up for some of this and convinced me to search out some of the old episodes.

Well, that's my two cents worth, as it were. Paramount and/or UPN, MORE PLEASE!!
Trogly

I was a fan of Star Trek as a child - discovering it just after the series ended and went into repeats - and became more and more disconnected from it as I grew older...
This may be because I was reading more sophisticated sf in novel form and ached for television to catch up, or it might be because I was learning a great deal about how to write and found that most of the telly-episodes were rather simplistic....which goes back to the first point.
When I was watching, I knew that Kirk, Spock and McCoy were inseparable and would ALWAYS come through. Watching the first film was a bit of a let-down, although I liked it more than many of my friends.....which was strange, since the screenplay was cobbled together from an ill-fated attempt to ressurect the t.v. series, and was terribly slow (hence the nick-name: The Motion Sickness Picture/ Motionless Picture).
With the arrival of the Next Generation, I held high-hopes; the message of the first series was that our planet had a future, and it was in the hands of professionals who actually behaved semi-intelligently, worked with technology, and got on with people of other cultures (provided those cultures were American-friendly). The message of the Next Generation was similar, although slightly more xenophobic...I was quickly disabused of an illusions with TNG:
The show was so poorly written that I needed to see only five minutes of it, in the middle, to work out what was going on and who the bad-guy was....and usually could guess at the ending. The most interesting characters Whorf and the Captain, since they had a cultural-acceptance and a lonliness-in-command/tremendous backstory-potential to work with.....I grew bored with it and gave up on it.

The immense popularity of the show is born of the fact that the action ALWAYS stopped so that those with no clue at all could be brought up to speed before anything else happened....really annoying to those of us (me) who knew exactly what they were on about and wanted them to get on with it.

The single biggest difference between a and a was, as I understood it, that a would go along with absolutely ANYTHING that happened on the show and defend it to the death. A recognised that sometimes really idiotic things happened that defied explanation by an intelligent person, and that overall the series had a good heart and the occasional terrific episode. For a while, I fell into the latter camp....until the terrific episode occasion was too infrequent to spend time waiting for.

Where Star Trek ended, Babylon 5 picked up; still a duller-than-I'd-like show, but there characters were more interesting and the continuous-narrative made tuning in a little more interesting.

In case you were wondering: I'm aching for a show that assumes 1) I'm paying attention and thinking at the same time 2)That I know what they're talking about, and if I don't, that they'll tell me through CONTEXT instead of a five minute lecture 3) Takes me somewhere NEW, giving me an emotional experience like that of a good novel.....
I know that's asking a LOT of television, particularly American television, and IT IS possible....

Right, rant over with - someone'll take great umbrage with all I've said and let me have it now.

Fruitbat

My most disappointing moment with TNG was in series 2 they had those really cool insect enemies that invaded key starfleet personel, and it all came to a head in an episode where the insect parasites were defeated, but they signaled for their forces to return, but they never did. Very annoying.

Okay, so what is everyone's favourite Star Trek film? I prefer the Nicolas Meyer ones:
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

Yes I did know about Star Trek Phase II, you can't write an article like that without at least having some experience of Star Trek and Star Trek Fandom - it would be the very depths of hypocrisy.

But, what you get wrong is saying that Phase II was made without fan pressure. Not true. Phase II was made in direct response to fan pressure, as soon as the Executives heard the noise they were making and realised they could milk Star Trek for money.

Phase II was also going to drop the character of Captain Kirk after a few episodes (Shatner was asking for too much money) and replace him with Captain Dekker, later to appear in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Spock was going to be dropped altogether and replaced with another Vulcan - by name of Xon I think.

/Mike

It says that:
With regard to the new film, they aren't even thinking about it until the new series is well into production. And with regard to the series, Rick Berman and Brannon Braga keep saying to Paramount "How about we do a series about _this_?" and they keep saying "That's rubbish" so they say "How about _this_ then??" and Paramount say "That's rubbish too.." and so on.

/Mike

Star Trek: Phase II's Vulcan would have been Lieutenant Commander Sonak, who is the Vulcan you see briefly in "ST:TMP" before being scrambled into millions of tiny peices in the transporter beam...

Paramount is going through a selection-process for the follow-up of ST:VOY. They are actually inviting people to visit the premises and talk about several options. And they get paid for it !!! So far the most likely outline is a new series about StarFleet Academy. This has caused some debate because most of the involved people(audience) fear that it will be too much of a soap-opera.

BTW : Your article was very nice but there is one thing I feel obliged to point out : NBC originally commisioned only 16 episodes so they could see if it would catch on. After two years they decided to quit BUT...because of a massive mailing-operation set up by the late great Bjo Trimble they changed their minds. The big honcho at NBC was literally swamped by the response, he would typically receive thousands of letters a day !

What really f*** up StarTrek/TOS was the programming. It went fine when it was aired on monday and had a pretty big audience for an SF-series. NBC however, decided to air it on fridaynight at 22:00 hours ! This was the exact time that the StarTrek-audience would go out and have a drink...StarTrek's rating dropped like a stone and was consequently terminated.

Less than a year later the (in)famous Nielsen-system was introduced/expanded to include demographic data and what do you know ? It turned out that most StarTrek-viewers were between 18 and 35 years old, had an above average education and made quite some money. This audience was/is viewed as 'The Holy Grail' of advertising....but the six months off the air took their toll and they couldn't restart the series because lots of the props and stages had been removed to make space for another production, etcetera.

So as a matter of fact NBC sabotaged the series themselves and felt a bit like the guy who turned down the Beatles afterwards...

As for Trekkies vs. Trekkers : I am both ! Between the two of us, Shazz and I now have about 7 meters of StarTrek-videos and the books well......

What one has to keep in mind is that StarTrek is not just a series, they have created a Future History that spans centuries. In this respect it might be better to compare it to Larry Niven's Known Space or Asimov's Foundation. I think that it is inevitable that they miss out sometimes...after all there IS about 20 years of StarTrek to choose from Plus nine movies...

TM.

The notion of having created a is one of the truly promising aspects of Trek that I'd forgotten about; the idea that we CAN make this happen if we really want it to....
Of course, this is ONE possible future out of the many we're faced with....

Every time I get into a discussion of this kind I keep wondering how long Paramount, or anyone else, can keep generating such bland storylines and keep people interested? Since they don't do continuous narrative, and people are never injured (or if they are, they recover in the same episode), and power is limitless on these ships....where can they go, dramatically?

Fruitbat

Mike is correct, the new Vulcan was going to be Xon. I hadn't heard Kirk was going to go, but i remember that Leanord Nimoy was refusing to play Spock. I did hear that Robert Redford was up for the part, but surely he would have been too expensive?

I disagree with Eric the Fruitbats feeling that the scripts were too bland. OK, some of them were about nothing, but some were excellent. Of course, we all judge things differently, but what I call bland TV is along the lines of Dallas, CHiPs, Eastenders, and game shows. God, I hate game shows.

Nice to see a good, sensible discussion for a change !

Er, Guys?
Was it something I said?

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