Star Trek: Discovery

And that answers that

So in other words don't even bother watching the first episode because we're not signing up for a CBS service either? Thanks for nothing, Obama.

You mean Thanks for nothing Hillary.

don't worry President Trump will declare the Klingons a terrorist organization and make all Star Trek episodes mandatory viewing in Trump cubes across the nation, in preparation for our invasion of Uranus

So Bryan Fuller (DS9, Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls, Dead Like Me, Hannibal), Nicholas Meyer (Wrath of Khan), Alex Kurtzman (Hercules, Xena, Fringe, Star Trek reboot movie) are running this and they brought in Gene Roddenberry's estate in the form of Rod Roddenberry who runs that end of things.

Seems like they have all their bases covered, yet no casting or any other production info

You had me at Bryan Fuller.

I dunno after Voyager and Enterprise were mishandled and the reboot basically turned the franchise to generic action sci-fi, I am firmly dubious. Don't get me wrong, the new Trek movies were pretty decent AND they were 100% necessary to save the IP but the mistake of turning the entire franchise into shallow sci-lite-fi is almost assuredly going to happen. Just look at how well all the fancy-pants super hero shows are doing and I am skeptical that they will come away with anything as good as TOS/TNG/DS9 (adjusted for creative inflation).

this will be the greatest show in the history of mankind and some BitTorrent server downloading it will become sentient from analyzing it and benevolently create a Utopian society for humans

and then President Trump will send in an AI kill squad to destroy it and so will begin the skynet wars

I think that despite very successful standalone movies like Wrath of Khan, the Star Trek story is better served as an episodic piece. That allows long term character development and a variety of stand alone adventures. Ideally at some happy medium between the status-quo enforcement of the original series and the Babylon5 mega arc of DS9. I think by the end that Enterprise had settled on a viable framework, it just took them too long to get there.

I hope I'm wrong, because TNG and DS9 are two of my favorite shows, but I think Star Trek is past it's time. You have us nerds who will watch, but studios want more than just nerds. They want Joe and Jane Random to boost rating numbers. That why we ended up with the JJ movies. More action, more grit, more CGI. I personally like the JJ movies for what they were. I enjoy the cast and how they play off eachother. But I certainly see how they can turn off die hard Trek purists. Even liking them I cringe at parts.
Look at Sci-fi shows lately. Lots of grit and grime, sex, and violence. It works sometimes, but that's not Trek.
Shows like GoT and movies like Deadpool just add fuel to they "make everything R" crowd's argument. You see it almost every thread here. "Man I'd love to see an R rated Vader movie" "This show would be so much better on HBO with tits" etc... Studios see and hear this and that's what they try to deliver, and in certain cases it works, but not for Trek. Looks at SG:Universe. They saw how Casuals liked BSG and they tried to copy that. It didn't work. It was a decent show, but it wasn't Stargate.
Like I said, I hope I'm wrong because I really want new Trek. I just feel we're going to get a show like Scandal... in space.

Also, screw CBS All Access.

Drakain_sl said:

ILook at Sci-fi shows lately. Lots of grit and grime, sex, and violence. It works sometimes, but that's not Trek.
Shows like GoT and movies like Deadpool just add fuel to they "make everything R" crowd's argument. You see it almost every thread here. "Man I'd love to see an R rated Vader movie" "This show would be so much better on HBO with tits" etc... Studios see and hear this and that's what they try to deliver

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This just isn't true. For starters, what people want is for movies that should be rated R to be rated R, not PG13. And as for the studios trying to deliver, lolwut? Deadpool is the first superhero movie to be rated R since Blade 3. PG13 Die Hard was a travesty. Studios don't try to deliver R rated content, they do everything they can to avoid delivering R rated content.

I agree that the new movies have gone in the wrong direction for Star Trek though and have pretty low expectations of a new Trek series.

Gavinmad_sl said:

And as for the studios trying to deliver, lolwut?

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I guess I meant what they are try to do with movies now. "Holy shit Deadpool made money! R rated Wolverine! R rated Superman! What other movies can we make R rated?"

My main point was TV though... GoT has been out for 5-6 years now and there are so many shows trying to be the next GoT. But when you try and put them on basic cable or network TV you get crap. For example this Gods and Prophets crap they advertise on ABC non stop. I'm guessing it's David and Goliath? It's a fucking bible story little kids in Sunday school learn about. But why is it Viewer Discretion is Advised? Becsuse they're going to try and pump in sex and violence to appeal to a younger broader audience.

I love DS9 so much I basically just want them to do another story very similar to that.

But it would also be really cool if they set this series in the parallel universe where there is no longer a federation cause president spock went all pacifist and then the klingon cardasian alliance fucked them up.
oppressed terans fighting to create a new federation or something.

So what you're saying is... bring back Firefly

They saw how Casuals liked BSG and they tried to copy that. It didn't work. It was a decent show, but it wasn't Stargate.

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Come on - I love me some Stargate, but strip away nostalgia and I think BSG (especially before it went weird towards the end) was absolutely a better show by more or less any metric, as much as you can objectively rate things like that.

BSG did something rare for a scifi series and actually really tapped into the zeitgeist of the whole post-9/11 era, as well as creating an engaging cast of characters and emotionally involving story arcs for them, whereas Stargate, as much as I enjoyed it, was really generic "a bunch of heroes fight evil aliens in space (aka: Canada)" show, outside of the whole "ancient aliens" premise and the ability to throw in some decent humor here and there without cheesing up the show any further.

Azrayne_sl said:

Come on - I love me some Stargate, but strip away nostalgia and I think BSG (especially before it went weird towards the end) was absolutely a better show by more or less any metric, as much as you can objectively rate things like that.

BSG did something rare for a scifi series and actually really tapped into the zeitgeist of the whole post-9/11 era, as well as creating an engaging cast of characters and emotionally involving story arcs for them, whereas Stargate, as much as I enjoyed it, was really generic "a bunch of heroes fight evil aliens in space (aka: Canada)" show, outside of the whole "ancient aliens" premise and the ability to throw in some decent humor here and there without cheesing up the show any further.

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BSG was easily the better show production wise but it got so preachy and ridiculous by the end it was really a disappointment.

Without going into it too much I thought the pacing of the show was more like a soap opera and every once in a while they'd go "oh shit, we've been doing this for 6 episodes" then just throw crazy stuff into the mix. It was still a great show but it had problems just like SG.

I dunno about preachy, I think it just hit the "oh shit we've actually got to find a way to end this", and instead of sitting down and working it out to put together an ending that made sense, they just threw together a bunch of stuff inspired by the creator's religious beliefs and some metaphysical mumbo jumbo and called it a day. Lazy and incoherent? Sure. But it never felt preachy.

That said, I think if you ignore the way they winged the main storyline for basically the last 2 seasons, a lot of the smaller arcs were still great and had a ton of emotional resonance. Like when they found Earth and it turned out to be a nuclear wasteland and the way everyone reacted to that (the scene where Apollo's wife killed herself was intense), watching them forced into working with one of the Cylons, watching the Cylons splinter as they tried to learn how to function as a society and failed, the Zarek/Gaiter mutiny, watching the Galactica fall apart, etc. Even the ending, although it made no sense from a narrative standpoint, was fairly touching emotionally, with Adama flying off with Roslin, Starbuck's disappearance, Tyrol bailing on humanity, etc.

Like I said, I'm a big Stargate fan, but it just didn't have anything like that. It was great for what it was, but they're on completely different levels.