Happy Birthday, Star Trek
So... Some Numbers.
Exactly 40 years ago, NBC debuted a little show called Star Trek.
It ran 79 episodes over the course of three seasons.
20 years later, it came back and ran 647 episodes.
There were also movies--10 movies.
I am a huge Trekkie, as you can imagine. Also a fan of stating the obvious. I didn't watch uncritically--I hated the last two shows called Star Trek, and six out of the ten movies called Star Trek--but I did watch.
(My favorite is the one casual viewers seem to loathe: Deep Space Nine. But Trek's finest hour--to date--is unquestionably The Wrath of Khan.)
Now, the team that created Lost--JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof--have teamed with Alias screenwriters Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci to revive the original Kirk-Spock incarnation in a big budget movie slated for Summer 2008. There's a rumor--which may well be bullshit--that Matt Damon wants to be the new Kirk.
I have high hopes for this production.
Exactly 40 years ago, NBC debuted a little show called Star Trek.
It ran 79 episodes over the course of three seasons.
20 years later, it came back and ran 647 episodes.
There were also movies--10 movies.
I am a huge Trekkie, as you can imagine. Also a fan of stating the obvious. I didn't watch uncritically--I hated the last two shows called Star Trek, and six out of the ten movies called Star Trek--but I did watch.
(My favorite is the one casual viewers seem to loathe: Deep Space Nine. But Trek's finest hour--to date--is unquestionably The Wrath of Khan.)
Now, the team that created Lost--JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof--have teamed with Alias screenwriters Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci to revive the original Kirk-Spock incarnation in a big budget movie slated for Summer 2008. There's a rumor--which may well be bullshit--that Matt Damon wants to be the new Kirk.
I have high hopes for this production.
posted by Scott at 11:30 PM
5 Comments:
DS9 was my favorite. I can only hope the new movie pulls the franchise back up to it's glory.
Ugh...why go backwards? They tried that with Enterprise, and it failed. The mantra of the show is "to boldy go where no man has gone before", right? So why recreate Kirk/Spock's past when we're not really all that interested in it in the first place? Bigger! Faster! Brighter! The line must be drawn hee-ah!
Btw, DS9 did come into its own eventually, but none of the shows could hold a candle to TNG. Especially the last three seasons.
Except for Picard and Data, TNG featured unbearably bland characters (played by terrible actors) sleepwalking through tired, politically facile plots.
And while I thought the fifth season of TNG was one of their best, the sixth and seventh were so bad I became an irregular viewer. (The showrunner for those last two seasons, Jeri Taylor, was the main mover and shaker during the early seasons of Voyager--which perhaps explains the mediocrity).
DS9, on the other hand, was everything TNG was not: it featured bold, interesting characters with complicated relationships (and played by good actors). The politics were sophisticated--Dangerous, even. (A writer friend of mine on the Ex Isle Message Board likes to point out that DS9 was the most popular show in Lebanon).
Ah, DS9--We miss you.
As for why they should remake the Kirk-Spock incarnation, the answer is simple: because that's the one a huge number of people liked. The rest were varying degrees of diminishing returns.
I refuse to argue with you any further, simply because I respect any viewpoint that includes the phrase "varying degrees of diminishing returns". ;-)
I looked at that after, like, "fuck--you can't do that to the english language." (too late).
Post a Comment
<< Home