As i understand the situation right now, star trek: the franchise is currently taking its foot of the gas right now and producing no new shows or movies for at least 5 years.

what i want to know is wether you think this is a good thing or a bad thing?

From my point of view it's necesarry, since the public market was too contented with the four series (TNG,DS9,VOY,ENT) following each other directly. Don't get me wrong, "we" as (more or less) real trekkers there can't be enough of that stuff, but finally the audience rating is the thing that matters.

Thus this break was absolutely neccesarry and will help a new movie (and eventually a brand new series) to find acceptance.

Orig,TNG, DS9, all were great shows, voyager ehhhh kinda left me wondering what they were thinking of, Ent. Sorry but that was a total waste to good programing. It could have been done so much better. I think they need a huge break. Perhaps get back to basics. I would enjoy remakes of the original, just modern. Compared to the 60's when it first aired, now WOW what a blast it would be. But thats just me.

i think the problem is that they've done the current trek timeline to death, things are so involved and hard to get into. They need to have a tottaly fresh aproach, mayb do a mini series from the perspective of section 31, or from another race.

you say here that they need to get back to basics, what do you mean by this? and what was it about voy and ent that lost the basics? (btw im not disagreeing im just stoking the conversational fires)


one of the basics of TOS was that it pushed the boundaries of the time. Russians and japanese and americans (black and white) and an alien working together was big stuff back then, trek had the first interracial kiss on television. TNG similarly pushed the boundaries i reckon, there were a good couple of episodes concerning disability, human rights, euthanasia, terrorism on top of themes from TOS... episodes like Darmok were IMO an improvment on anything TOS had to offer. DS9 added religion versus science, racism, facism and the horrors of war.

voyager started to slip in this field i reckon, all the good episodes of voyager concern important issues, like when neelix meets the man who killed his family with the genocide device, or when the doctor realises his memory has been blanked due to trauma... These episodes, the ones trekkies really like they just never realise it, were fewer and farther between..

In ENT im hard pressed to think of a single episode that really goes for something controversial, or tackles an issue. I didnt watch them all i admit, but all i can remember was difficult to pick up story and phaser fire.. Then my non-canon sensor blew up on overload

so i think that stories that actually hit issues other programmes arent comfortable dealing with is one of the basics that trek has been recently missing , a break may be benificial, but any new incarnation as you say, must not look to Voy or ENT as its base, id say look at TNG TOS and DS9

Mark_campbell,


As you posted above. Tos is that original trek? I grew up watching the original series. "The CREATOR" himself stated that it was a speggetti western in space, but for kids like myself back then, ( and even my Parents! BIG SHOCK) thats what made it entertaining. Now I understand that with the newer steps up the evo ladder that stoylines would be shifted to fit the era. thats fine. Like I said, Orig, NTG, DS9, all awesome! Voyager well to me ( me only) I saw it like the writers became Ill with PCS Politicy correct Syndrome. Yes they touched a few items that for it's time seemed taboo. But instead of taking the problem on with both phazers blasting, they dressed it up in a short skirt, make up, then proceded to "discuss it" . I E, dance around the problem with eyes closed.

Ent. Sorry, I must be the only one, but after the 3rd epsiode, and slapping water on my face to wake up. I never watched any more. Talk about boring? but then again, thats just me.


Back to the basics. IF BIG IF, they decided to make a new series, COPY the original, or better, bring it up to date with our technologies. So what if different people play Kirk, or spock, or bones, Sulu, ect. JUST give it some Gusto! Make it look like a show with a back bone! Just like the first one was, TNG, and DS9 was.

Those shows had an actuall storyline, deep plot, ACTION, Investigation, ACTION, then conclusion. In the Words of the Great AcDc, they got the biggest balls of them all! lol.



Thats what I meant. Shoot If the Hollywood minrods, cannot think of great storyboards, Let em contact US. I know with at least 20 + people here on this site, we could give them a 100 year series that would always get top ratings across the board.

( Stands on Soap Box)
Better yet, you got an address? I'll be happy to get with a few of you and we can make our own then sell em to them. At least we would have some seriously great shows to see then discuss for years to come.!
(Steps off soap Box) Sorry I hate sounding like I'm ranting!

Matress???? Back me up here! lol.

Don't worry, i'll always help fellow Romulan blood, Winterhawk!

I actually wouldn't mind seeing TOS updated - as long as they did it respectfully. I wouldn't want the Enterprise being suddenly equipped with a Multi-Vector Assault Mode, a Cloaking Device, or have them up against the Borg! 8O

Perhaps a new series could be set in the same era, but aboard another ship, like a Miranda or something. (Perhaps even the Excelsior? )

What i'd really like though, is a series either set on the Enterprise-C (To fill in the gap, even though some people might think it was a 'boring' era, since we know there were few major battles/wars) or perhaps even a series based on another race (Like a Romulan one! )

I agree that Trek could do with a break though, so they can regroup and decide what to do with the writers (Just give them to me! )

Trek needs new blood, or else it will sadly be a thing of the past. The producers at Viacom and whatever really need to listen to what we want, not to what their pockets say for once. (However little chance there actually is of this )

you could always ask harry lang what the plans for the future are, he has an ongoing thread over at the stg. or whatever it is called these days.

Well, you boys have a good point about trek going back to its basics, to an extent. The strong points of TOS and TNG were the well made stories. Most of those eps were well written, but to me, espically recently since I've seen all of TNG and a good chunk of TOS , the majority of these series episodes are exceddingly boring.

DS9, now there was a series! Action, many great stories, but I think the one aspect that I liked the best was that the episodes felt like they were more connected to each other, espically compared to TNG. The majority of TNG episodes (exept for the to be continued ones) felt like they had no direct connection between eps that have already aired, and the episodes yet to come. That was something DS9 excelled at, building upon each episode as the series goes on.

VOY, I felt was a good series overall. I liked the fact that, like DS9, this series was 'connected' much more to their earlier episodes. It was also much more action orienteted, which helps hold this guys interest. Sometimes it was a little lacking on the quality storylines, but overall it did a good job, IMO.

ENT. Some of you probably already know how I felt about the series, so I wont go into detail. I just thought it was a series with great potential, and it lived up to that somewhat. It was hindered by boring stories, and bad writers early on, but once you got to the end of season 2, , season 3, with the Xindi 'conflict' (because war is a little much for what it was), and season 4, the stories really picked up. The majority were well written, and some had some nice action in them.

No matter what the premise of the next series will be, to be truly successful with as many trek fans as possible, it needs to combine the well thoght out and insightful episodes of TOS and TNG, with the episode continuity and more action based stories of DS9 and VOY. And a lesson the new series could learn from ENT? Dont fire your phasers at warp!

Matress, you have a point, a series in the 'Lost Era' would be very interesting. But I see no reason that this would be a boring era. Just because there was not much mentioned about any battles or wars does not mean none happened. I see this as a great place to show some of the relationships with the minor empires, like the Tholians, Gorn, Tzenhiki, etc. Plus, I've read a few books set in this timeframe, while they may ot be cannon, they were pretty action packed, and could serve as a good basis for othr stories in this timeframe. One of the best is called The Valiant. It deals with Picard on the Stargazer, during thwe first mission when he was in command. Great story, and very much action packed, that little Constelation class kicked some major ass.

Sorry, more of a rant than a post guys.

the only time i though ent did stuff on issues was in series 3 where archer tourtured a prisoner and went through the moral implications. Also where he straped some photons onto his back and went in as a suicide bomber.

everything else was to abstract, some messages about getting along, and i have to say ent was a good series far superior to voyager, which was let down by boring backroungs and props. But the last episode of ent has to be the worse episode of trek ever, when it finished i though i had been sodomised.

I'd laugh at your last line if it wasnt so true.

the alt universe episodes were really good, and then it just dropped, i dont get what happpened

I remember hearing that it was during the filming of Pt 2 of the Mirror uni episodes that the ENT cast and crew got the message that they had been canceled. After that, I think the writers just half-assed the episodes before the finale. As as for the finale, well I just dont know what the $%!@ they were thinking.

I agree with all of you. I like what Matress stated make a romulan one! or even better, set a series with all the major players, each part interlinks with the upcoming shows to a super climax Battles over terrorties or something! Show us alliances that are built or that start then fall apart due to deciet or something.

So is there an actual web address we can write to? With everything above, Whoa! I saw the possabilities of over 100 great shows. Perhaps even more. I have read up on screen writing, and it is not diffcult at all.

Well no worse then novel writing, which I have been doing for several years, although not about trek.


Worse comes to worse. With this new game soon to be out. WE Could even build a story line(s) just from actual games we will play in the near future! Concept wow! what a reality! lol

paramount hates trekkis, the seem to always dissregaurd fan ideas.

Well, I guess this is the reason why ENT was cancelled. I can realy not understand it. The last season is on television right now until the end of July over here. I watched EVERY episode and I loved them all. Granted, there were some episodes which were less fun, but the same is true for all other series. ENT has a lot of in dept stories, a lot of humor. Lots of clues to future series, lots of morality issues, etc. etc. It can be me, but I think it is a real waste that it has been cancelled.

About the other series, I never saw a single TOS episode. I started watching Star Trek with VOY. And after that I saw a few random TNG and DS9 episodes, but I never realy followed them. They were cool, though. But TOS I think is just too primitive now. I cannot watch them anymore without screaming away at the bleeps and other stupid sounds they make. Just too awful!

So where does Star Trek need to go? In my opinion, just continue on their current track. Or go ahead and expand the timeline. Watch the developments after the Dominon war or a few 100 year later. They don't need to stop for me...

Totally agree, but they do certainly need to have a...'power break!'
Of course, what they really need to do is shoot the writers...

It's just such a shame Roddenberry died. I bet he'd have the answer as to how Trek could carry on! (Although he would also have some words to say about Enterprise...)

My ideas stand though - they are all possible. So why can't they come up with similar ideas of their own?

Because it means Paramount would have to foot the bill for another series that could hurt their pockets from their point of view, because the writers need killing off themselves, because they are 'Professionals' and know better than us...whatever the reason, they've got it wrong.

Either Paramount listens to us for a change, or as much as I hate to say it, Trek is 'officially' dead.

Of course, it will still be alive on the internet, in the game, and so on, but that isn't exactly enough, is it?

I didnt like ent. it had some greta ideas but it was poorly implamented. Its before TOS but just looking at the bridge it looks like the technology is much better with touch screens no buttons etc etc. that was an instant mistake. Wrecked continuity. star trek peak at ds9, that really was an exceptionally welll written series and had some great characters.

Most of that is just caused by the primitive and oldfashoned nature of TOS. I mean the bridge is just awful! It has nothing to do with science fiction. We use touch screens all over the place now (anno 2005), why would we be using that crap in the future.

But as I said, I am a bit of a new generation. I never saw much of TOS and those I saw just hurt my eyes. To me, startrek began with TNG and there is no arguing that TNG is more advanced than ENT.

No good saying its all out of date now though cause as u watch you can't in any way connect itw ith the origional series or belive for one sec taht kirk is yet to come. i feel they just dumped the new graphics in and hoped no one owuld notice much like they did in the new star wars films.

As I was trying to explain, you can't imagine bad technology to make movies a while ago be an excuse to not make it good this time? I just watched an episode of ENT in which they go to "the future" and land on a constitution class ship. Well, indeed: enterprise itself looks more advanced. Just imagine it is not, as you would do a lot of imagining with TOS.
Enterprise is a logical and accurate extrapolation of our current existance. TOS was not.

So was the Ent series a big mistake then? i mean people always dismiss trekkies as a hardcore minority but it takes more than a few disenchanted trekkies to make a show cancel after its 4th season...

most people who post on this site have more than a basic understading of the inner workings of their favourite show, but how badly do you think the inconsistencies effected the majority (i.e the weekly viewer).

did canon wreck Enterprise? or did other factors such as characters/stories do it in?

*sigh*

ENT was no big mistake. Everything they do and say is according to canon (it IS canon, after all), it has no continuity issues, perhaps maybe that things look smoother than in TOS whcih has nothing to do with Star Trek but just with us mere humans in RL on earth who couldn't do better back then. The characters were good. In fact it is one of the few Star Trek series which had that much character building in it. The stories were awesome in general. It had some flaws here and there, but that's it.

Now, what I think could be the big problem about ENT has nothing to do with the above. I believe hard-core trekkies may not like it because it "is not star trek". Which is something I can agree with. ENT is different. Very different. There does not exist a federation, there is no prime directive, their are no powerfull technologies, etc. Some people cry and curse when Archer orders to "deploy the Grappler". I just love that device and can't help but laugh every time I see them use it. No, there is no Tractor beam. Do we miss it? Not at all!
Other people don't like it that Archer does not shout "engage" all the time. Or they can't stand Mister reed calling "tactical alert" instead of "red alert". Polarise the hull plating, anyone? Is "raise shields!" realy that much cooler?
I realy think those things are the reason the true trekkies don't like the series. ENT is different. And rightfully so! It was the series that could've drawn a lot non-trekkies to Star Trek. Point is that the true trekkies perhaps didn't like it and non-trekkies never came around to it, since they see Star Trek as something only nerds and geeks watch. Hence, there were fewer people to follow the series and it cancelled.

But as someone who watched EVERY episode of ENT (and note that there is no other Star Trek series I watched EVERY episode of) I can tell you that there are no continuity issues and that everything is plausible and makes sense.

Stand by my origional post, i wanst asking for something that looked as cheap in terms of effects as TOS but something that fitted wioth it. buttons and knobs dont look cheap they would fit continuity. Flashy screens and buttons in that era don't. If they couldn't find a way to make it look legit they should have kept going foward after the ds9 voyager era. There was so much to draw on there.

TOS was the brainwave of the 60's.

It may seem hard to comprehend to some people, but back then, switches and knobs were ultra-advanced and cool!

Back then, they couldn't even comprehend 'touch screens', 'mobile phones' (As we know them, since they did comprehend the communicator) and the 'Internet'. Computers were something that were only used in top secret government labs to do the counting for scientists in their experiments, and the first Satellites were only just being put up!

If we were to bring Gene Roddenberry here into the noughties and show him what we thought was futuristic and high tech, I can assure you TOS would have been more like Enterprise.

The continuity of trek isn't what the problem is, it's the continuity of real life.

Enterprise tried to do too much, tried to be too big. It should have stuck with 1950's technology (Since it's before TOS ) and gone from there.

Of course, you ouldn't have had much of a series with only 1950's technology, but at least the hardcore fans would be happy!

Seriously, the only way to be able to accept all Trek at once, is simply to do as Centurion does, and think of Enterprise as being 'different', or simply 'forget' about TOS and focus on the refit Enterprise (Films) and her more advanced technology. (Compared to the series)

Otherwise, you'll end up with nothing making sense, and we could end up with a new series being cancelled simply because people take it too seriously.

Speaking As a guy who actually Watched TOS when it was new, I offer thanks to Matress. He nailed it on the head. For many of you younger peeps, Tos Is Trek. I know and bells and bleeps and looking carefully you can see the plywood in the walk ways. Big deal. It was a weekly Science fiction series. As a kid in the Era, it was fantastic!!! Did we care if a klingon looked liked a western bad boy? NO!

For those who mentioned they gag at TOS. Ponder this as you play with your ferengi dolls, Without TOS. The following would not be here today;

All the After shows of Trek. Most of your alien movies to date. babalyon 5,
and about oh a hundred other things. The Technology you all are using today, was INSPIRED by TOS!. Yes including your computers cell phones, palm pilots ect.

Now I can understand some were disadvanatged by not seeing Trek until it's way later years. Remember this, Yea I'm an original Trekkie. did the conventions and never missed a show even reruns! Yea big deal I be a founding father! lol (showing my age here) I still have my phaser, and Trek metal lunch box! I even still have my original U.S.S. Enterprise model with clear plastic Stand!!!!! Give Us some respect eh? Give TOS the respect it deserves.

Think about this. 40 years from now, some young person is going to look back at "our Technology 2005" and call it primitive!

Everything has to start somewhere.

Ent... Yes it it not Trek. From watching the pilot to the 3rd show (where I bailed out of bordom) Simply had no interest for me. Not that it wasn't Trek. Simply put I was bored, It did not reach out and grab ya to hold your interest. I feel it was not a bad show per say, moreso a show that was slapped together to squeese out every last $ the peeps at Paramount could get. And yes there were plans to make Motion Pictures and of course merchendising, but all that died. Why?

From going to Star con Conventions listening and talking with thousands of others ( well not talking to personally ) The show bombed! Plain and simple. I did not get a clear picture as to why other then the things mentioned above.

Personaly, I felt that shoved voyager down our gullets way sooner then they should have. After DS9 it was all about "Feed the Greed" and To hell with the fanbase.!!


It is my understanding ( need to verify ) that even the actors were not happy with the way the shows were "slapped together" That they were even left a bit disappointed. (As I said i need to verify this somehow or way) Saw it on a talk show.

So kids, take a deep breath, Relax and CHILLLLLLLLLLLLLLL lol. All will be fine in the world of TREK.

And if anyone calls me a geek again I'll throw my pocket protector at ya! lol (kidding) .

Least they know we are always watching

I can agree with you there, winterhawk. There is no counting for tastes. I watched the entire series in half a year. That´s right, within 6 months! I have them all on DVD and my record is five episodes in one day. (now, who´s the geek, huh? )

Anyway, if that is an argument of people, then it is valid. I only still haven´t heard what people would have liked to see then. What is the reason that it´s not fun?

Besides, I have nothing against TOS and I very well know there would have been a lot of things we had to miss without it. It´s just that when I watch TOS, I do not have the feeling of looking at Science Fiction.

Thank you. nice reply.. 6 months.. awesome!


Moving forward after DS9? Hmmm. Let us ponder that a minute. Cardi's gave up Bajor. Klingon Empire was dieing out ( if I have that correct from memory) During this time there was still little to no contact with Romulans outside of the neutrel zone. Unless there was a major push by one of the minor races to suddenly expand themselves, or the Borg did a major push again, I cannot think of any off the top of my head. does not mean that a few wont come later. One could be to focus a bit on each or the major races outside of the Federation. Get a thrid party outlook so to speak. See the hostories through thier eyes! could be interesting.

I think there should be another series like ds9, but based far away from the federation where re-inforcements couldn't come in a couple days. Make it like a soap opera, so the story is connected.

Make it simple, and base the shows on current events like TOS did. There is plenty going on in the world today that can be related to ST on screen.

I agree the franchise needs a break, but use the break constructively. Poll the audience, and find out exactly what would be best for a new series, and work on it.. Try it with a mini series, and if does good, go to full production like the old days of TV. Don't let some executive make the decision for the entire audience.

Any new series shouldn't interfere with the time line( no time travel). It has been overdone, just the the Nazi shows.

There are lots of possibilities as I've stated in the new series ideas thread. A station far away, the academy after ds9 ended (won't interfere with voyager's timeline), or even an alternate universe story. We know virtually nothing of this universe, so there would be no loss of canonicity(spelling??).

Either way, take the break and poll the audience to find out whats gonna ride with us... after all, we support the franchise, so why not give us something we like????