Save Trek
Per Lain's request, I'm entering this post as a forum for discussing how to save Star Trek (see this article).
Let me begin with a caveat: I don't know to what extent Trek needs to be saved. Certainly I want it to keep high enough ratings to continue, but I don't know that I want it to have mass market appeal. I would hate for Apple to say, hey, we only have a small market share, how can we make our computers more like PCs. Plus, some market share can be regained just by producing better Trek, not better-engineered Trek. Nemesis had action and effects and sex and a supervillian and all the blockbuster ingredients, while Star Trek IV had basically none of those. This above all else, to thine own Trek be true.
That said, I would continue to play up the adventurer aspect of Enterprise. It's interesting the way that, to me at least, the Trek series alternate between frontier series and scientist/diplomat series. Lay off the cerebral, we're-so-civilized aspects of TNG and Voyager, and play up the "boldly go" aspect. Require every Trek writer to watch "The Right Stuff" every year. Ignore the old Trek tropes. We don't have to have the Borg on Enterprise. Better yet, ignore the new Trek tropes, and pull some old ones back out. Make the writers watch TOS to refresh themselves on what the galaxy was like at that time... who were the major players, and who had we not heard of yet. By and large, I really like the direction Enterprise is going. I like the characters, and think the show is second only to DS9 in using the characters to drive plots, rather than vice-versa. Basically, just do more of the Enterprise-y type stuff, and less Trek type stuff.
So, what are your thoughts?

:: :: 12:31 :: David :: [permalink] ::