You know… with all of the on again – off again rumours of future of the Star Trek movie franchise… it’s hard to get excited about any news that comes out about it. However, this seem worthy of some attention.
It looks like Paramount is bringing back Star Trek with Spock, James T. Kirk, Scotty and Dr. Mcoy. Here’s the catch… it’s going to be them as young men when they all first meet at the Academy. Hmmmm… I don’t know how I feel about that.
It’s also being reported that J.J. Abrams is going to direct and produce the new… ummm… old adventures of the crew. The good folks over at M&C give us the following:
Banking on the success of the upcoming ‘Mission: Impossible III’ (‘MI3’), Paramount has tapped J.J. Abrams to helm and produce the 11th installment. Assisting on the production side will be the extremely successful producing team from the ‘Lost’ TV series, Damon Lindel and Bryan Burk. Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci co-writers from ‘MI3’ will work with Abrams on the screenplay.
Well, I really don’t mind these guys working on it… but I’m still ify on the whole “prequel” idea with younger characters from the original series. Can anyone other than William Shatner actually play James T. Kirk? Maybe. We’ll wait and see.
Let me get this right…. Kirk at the Academy with Flanaghan making him look like a Putz at every opportunity (TOS “Shore Leave”)- I’d pay good money to watch that…. LOL!!!
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The time for Kirk, Spock et al is past. I for one enjoyed the Enterprise series and the way it gave you a look at what was to come, and I would have enjoyed the Romulan War prequel idea that was floated earlier, with an all new crew and perhaps a cameo by an older Admiral Archer or T’Pol. But for heaven’s sake, no more Kirk, or even Picard for that matter. If they want to revive Star Trek it has to be with a new cast of people we can identify with. The one suggestion I haven’t seen here or anywhere else is not a prequel, but a sequel, maybe Star Fleet in the 25TH century, after Picard, Janeway and Sisko. Continue the story, and stay true to the Star Trek viewpoint. And this leaves plenty of room for hammy cameos by any and all of the past characters, via the holodeck.
For me, what always separated Star Trek from Star Wars was one was a science fantasy, while the other was science fiction. Yeah, there is always plenty of techno-babble, but for the most part the science is usually an extrapolation of an idea that makes sense at least. And the thing that set Star Trek apart as well was it was a thinking person’s show. The Star Trek philosophy says there is hope for the human race and its future, instead of the nihlistic viewpoint you typically see in movies such as the Matrix. Good science fiction is not just about the future, but a reflection of the times of the people writing it. So go big budget with the effects, stretch the envelope on story ideas, but stay true to the ethical dilemmas, essence and spirit that made Star Trek such a universal success.
Jeez man! I don’t want to see Kirk in another bloody uniform. Give us a Voyager movie! Pretty pls?
For every bit of good news we get, they hit us with a left hook!
Yes, I am greatly overjoyed that the previous prequel movie plan about the Romulan war is over. Yes I am glad that the new film is in Great hands, anyone who has read my posts here knows that i was dying for some fresh blood to take over.
But, Dear God! Another Prequel?!!! After Enterprise saw the lowest Trek Ratings ever and got canceled!!! Prequels suck. End of story. As much as i liked Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, I still maintain the position that the entire Prequel trilogy should never have been made.
Who the hell wants to see a story that we already know the basic plot to and the ending of?!!! Prequels are cashcows designed as a gimmick solely to pray on fans familiarity. “just give them some recognizable faces, they’ll be happy” is how the studios usually treat hardcore fans.
This is SCI-Fi folks! We are now in an era where anything that can be thought of can be done with visual effects and they want to go BACK!!! to before the original show?!!! What do they think killed Enterprise?!!
By the way, to all you die-hard Enterprise fans who petitioned to get that dead horse of a show on for that last season:Enterprise was a horrible concept that looked for every loophole in Trek Continuity and raped it thoroughly. I don’t care if it was the best acted show in TV history:It should never have been made in the first place!
Now, where was i? If in one posters opinion here, this new Academy movie wil be a Battlestar Galactica type restart for TREK,
Don’t Do it! Trek is not Galactica. There was considerable time between the original Galactica series and the new one and Galactica did not have a 10th of the established canon that Trek has. There is a whole new generation of Galactica fans who never watched the original or barely remember it. Even 2nd Generation Trek fans who started with Next Generation are not THAT old and still remember it quite vividly.
A restart that worked great for Galactica would destroy Star Trek, trust me. You cant just throw away Four TV series and 10 movies worth of history when the last series and movies are only a few years old. If they canceled Trek altogether for at least the next 5-8 years and then tried a restart? maybe then it would work, but not this soon!
This is not a prequel. Its going to be a reboot like Battlestar Galatica, the new James Bond, and Batman Begins. I think this is great news. As long as they stay true to the characters (eg make spock a woman and someone will die), and have a good story and everyone will love it. Honestly as a trekkie of old, I am more interested in the original characters than the universe setting. It would be great if they could get cameos of the original actors.
I liked the Star Trek The Next Generation. And their spin offs. I’m not sure I would be interested in this one. Maybe it will appeal to the younger crowd.
Donna A.
sounds like great fun!!
Well, first off, that’s a good creative team, but… It mystifies me why they’d want to trot out the Academy story and try to film it AGAIN. The “Kirk and Spock at the Academy” movie idea has been brought up after every single Star Trek picture and it never materializes.
The reason is because, as others have pointed it, it’s not a good idea. The original cast actors are (for good or ill) indelibly identified with their characters and vice versa. I’m very doubtful recasting younger actors to play them would go over well with the general public. But honestly I doubt we’ll ever see a Starfleet Academy movie.
Taking a step back, this kind of thinking is what hurt the Star Trek universe in the first place. Star Trek is supposed to be about looking forward into the future. That’s one of the reasons why Next Generation worked well as a sequel to TOS: real life had moved forward (60s to the 80s) and the Star Trek universe moved forward. I could never understand why they reversed this with Enterprise. “Let’s move backwards in the Star Trek universe!” Why??
Finally, I honestly feel Star Trek has probably run its course. Don’t get me wrong. I loved much of Star Trek (particularly DS9), but that doesn’t mean I want it to drag on forever, long after it has lost its relevancy. Star Trek and its sequels (through DS9, at least) were great and, at times, revolutionary TV. Nowadays, though, they’ve been succeeded by newer TV shows like Battlestar Galactica and movies like the Matrix. I don’t see this changing.
The style of the Star Trek universe (clean, utopian, ultra technological) and its plots (talky, techno-babble solution oriented, slow-paced space action) have fallen out of favor. (Ebert’s review of Nemesis is a great example of how people are getting tired of this kind of story-telling.) If you’re going to reboot Star Trek successfully, you really have to update a lot this, which may make the hardcore fans angry and asks the question, why call this Star Trek anymore? Just some food for thought.
I agree with all of the continuity stuff as well. But I think the bigger issue is that it’s just impossible to produce a gripping story when everyone knows that the characters will live, the earth will still exist, whatever the huge problem is must and will be solved, and we all know it because we’ve seen these characters 20 and 30 years later. Plus, if they introduce any new characters, they will pale in comparison to the established ones, and so even if they do end up being in mortal danger or even dying, who really cares? If anything it might be expected since we never heard of them afterwards anyway.
This is why prequels in most cases are doomed to disappoint.
This is absolutely horrible. This is the worst thing to ever happen to Star Trek. Yes… worse than Voyager. Yes, worse than all the continuity screwing crap they did in Enterprise.
Here’s why….
KIRK DIDN’T KNOW SPOCK AT STARFLEET ACADEMY!!! He didn’t know him until he took command of the Enterprise. This is established a million times over in every piece of Star Trek every put on television, movies, in novels, in comics, in board games, or any other damn medium you can possibly think of.
Why do you think Kirk always confided in McCoy on the original show and not Spock? Because he and McCoy were OLD FRIENDS. Not Kirk and Spock. They didn’t know each other.
But Paramount wants to make a movie with a young, hot cast. So they cook up a way to use existing characters but cast hot young actors in the roles. Who cares if they screw the continuity of the show? Who cares if they piss all over fans? Who cares if they take a gigantic dump on 40 years of established Star Trek history?
Who cares if they completely destroy the entire dynamic of the original series in the process? If they make this, now it’ll seem a little strange that Kirk spends all his time confiding in McCoy, instead of his old friend Spock on the original series. Now, half the character’s history no longer makes sense.
This is terrible. This is a massive screw you to anyone who has ever been a Star Trek fan.
I’d like to be happy that J.J. Abrams is in charge. He’s exactly the kind of guy Star Trek needs. But if this is what he’s making… who is in charge is irrelevant. I don’t care how good the movie is… this is TERRIBLE. This is really and truly terrible for Star Trek. This is a complete disrespect to everything that has ever gone before. This is rewriting history to suck in young people and cast off the old fans whose purchasing power is no longer relevant to Paramount.
First, I strongly agree with Lou. While some of the actors from past shows like TNG or DS9 could show up, there is that sucessful Star Trek novel series “New Frontiers”- featuring characters who were not part of the ST TV/film series canon.
Second, I’m not sold on Abrams, but just about anyone is better than those connected to Ron Moore and/or Brannon Braga.
Third…and I’m a little surprised that no one has put on thier thinking caps for this one. The proposed plot isn’t exactly new or earth shattering. The idea of TOS cast (or even a new cast) being in **”Starfleet Academy”** has been considered before. That idea originated just before the first ST film back in 1979. The film happened instead. This is well documented, the concept originated from the late ST creator Gene Roddenberry, it ocassionally was talked about, but when the TNG series and movies took off.
Finally, there are other problems. If this is a pre-Captian Kirk, we already know about his rebellious habits in Starfleet Academy (Star Trek II) and ‘how to cheat death’. Am I interested to see how the Kyboashi Maru sim came about or how he beat it when we already know how? No. Could Sopck be there in Starfleet Academy with Kirk? No. Spock was already serving Starfleet-under Captian Pike. Pike? Yes. The pilot, “Glass Cage” was later accepted as canon when the character of Pike came back- having dropped out of Starfleet due to a radioactive illness. Furthermore, to expand, Kirk’s crew ,with the exception of McCoy,did not all meet at the same time. Pavel Chekov, in fact, didn’t even show up until the series’ second season.
To come back to the first point. You can get any actors you want. You can free yourself of who you can and cannot knock off. Now it’s Red shirts live,and the Blue shirts die. If an actor does not want to return for the next film? No problem! It’s a big enough cast.
-Sealer
Don’t like it. Start a movie franchise with a totally new cast and ship that has no ties with any of the TV series. Give yourself some creative elbow room! I do like JJ Abrams working on it though.
Can someone say Phantom Menace?
I think the idea of focusing on the academy for a movie idea has merit, but why would it need to be Kirk and Crew?
Here’s what’s even more stupid: a movie with Shatner and Nimoy as Admiral Kirk and Admiral Spock would be infinitely more interesting.
The Bryan Singer/Patrick Stewart rumours had me excited. This is just lame. Back to the cash cow.
Here’s whats stupid about the idea. What are the chances of a future crew to all be at the academy at the same time despite them being all different ages. It just seems like an idea where coincidence is going to be a major factor.
“Hey Scotty, there’s was a vulcan class i went to and met this weird guy named spock.”
“Oh yeah, i’ll come by and bring my japanesse foreign exchange friend with me.”