:: Captain's Personal Blog ::

Stardate: Thursday, October 31, 2002

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

This is my favorite holiday (when I get a chance to do something about it which, alas, this year I do not.)

That being said, I would like to take this opportunity to go on a rant about something I thought about on the train ride this morning. I call it:

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE STAR TREK PEOPLE

I started wondering, this morning, why STAR TREK was so bloody unpopular nowadays. STAR TREK is by NO means dead, but it does seem to be slowly headed in that direction. To that end, I blame this on the one man who always takes blame for this sort of thing: RICK BERMAN.

Now I wish no ill will towards Mr. Berman. To be quite frank, for what he has been doing, it has been a good job. I just don't agree with what he's doing. STAR TREK has become a niche franchise. It does what no other franchise used to do, but more and more are now doing, and that's cater to it's own audience.

I'm sure that last sentence sounded stupid, but hear me out for just a moment. The original STAR TREK was not aimed at any real audience in particular (sensibility-wise) It was put out there as a source of entertainment, and hopefully, enlightenment. The writers told mini-morality tales, cautionary tales, and sometime just pure adventure or love stories. The characters were not selected out of a desire not to piss off anyone who might have felt left out, but because it was felt that these characters needed to be there. The alien was there to point a magnifying glass on ourselves. Any minorities were there in an effort to show that we progressed as a society and that anyone could do anything they wanted to. The science technobabble was thrown in when necessary to advance the plot and was not there to kill time.

Now on to STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. This sequel series was roughly the same. You can tell because in the grand scheme of things, the ORIGINAL STAR TREK (TOS) was probably mentioned no more than 10 times over the course of a seven season run (now, you know you are a hardcore Trekker if you are actually checking the aforementioned statistic -- shame on you.) To make everyone happy, let me amend that figure to no more than 15 times.

While the technobabble increased exponentially (by each season) the core of the show was still to appeal to the broadest audience possible. (Or at least it seemed that way.)

By the time STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE came on the scene, things started to get a little bumpy. The show was so steeped in canon that it was hard for someone to jump on board. Yes, we met few new species, but Trekkers themselves had helped to contribute, with their fanaticism, to the overall notion that STAR TREK was for TREKKERS. It got to be complex enough between backstory and taking for granted that the audience knew what everyone was talking about that people were turned off. ESPECIALLY considering that they could get a canonless version over on BABYLON 5.

STAR TREK: VOYAGER, with it's "we're all alone out here" plotline tried, ever so slightly, to amend that. Unfortunately, this series was hurt by the fact that the fledgling UPN network was not available everywhere and that the technobabble had reached it's apex. In the book THE MAKING OF STAR TREK, Gene Roddenberry and a scientific advisor discuss, via memos, the fact that when Spock is scanning something, he should be using the ships "sensors." It is not necessary to say what kind of sensing device, because the more technical you get the easier it is to lose the audience. Now will someone please tell me how an "Inverse Tachyon Pulse" fits that description? (It was in "All Good Things...." - TNG.....Look it up)

At this point, it was flat out public opinion that STAR TREK was for TREKKERS only because they were the only ones who could understand it.

Now, ENTERPRISE comes along, with the promise of giving STAR TREK back to the people. Unfortunately if fails miserably in that respect. Moving past the stygma of being a STAR TREK series, I ask you: Who would be interested in a prequel if they weren't interested in what is already out there? For the most part, no one. How do you cure that? Add a sexy alien in a skin tight outfit. A clever ploy, but fleeting at best.

Don't get me wrong. As a standalone show, ENTERPRISE is pretty good. For a STAR TREK show, it's marginal.

Final point: What revitalized that STAR TREK franchise the most? STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME. And how did it do that? It brought STAR TREK back to the people. Back to the general audience of anyone out there who liked a good story. It was a film for everyone. Of course, that budding audience was killed by the abomination that was STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER (which at least a few people I know liked,) but who's counting?

I don't know if there is a simple solution to this problem anymore. If there is, I don't know if it can be done on television. Maybe in the theatres. At any rate, STAR TREK has, to me, become TOS and it's films. Anything else I can't bear to watch. It's like watching a beloved relative slowly dying of a disease. At first there's hope because things are looking up. Then, slowly, things start to get worse and worse, and you don't know if there is any hope left.

Fatalistic? Maybe. Ah well. It's just a TV show.......
:: J 8:50 AM [+] ::
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