Star Trek Update: J.J. Abrams Going Boldly Where No Trek Has Gone Before!
Robert Sanchez, writing for IESB.net Movie News is reporting that J.J. Abrams may be taking the Star Trek universe in a whole new direction that avid fans of the 40 year old franchise may not recognize or appreciate. How much of what Sanchez is writing is still speculative and should be relegated to the rumor pile, but here are a few excerpts from his report.
“What is known is that we will be seeing Kirk and Spock in their early Starfleet years. The new movie will chronologically take place before The Original Series. There are quite a bit of problems with this specific storyline since it goes against established Trek mythos from the last 40 years but that’s a whole other story.
“The interesting note about his [William Shatner’s] recent interview with the Toronto Star is that he mentions he would be interested in coming back for the next film. So is there any chance of that? ‘Absolutely not,’ is what we have been told by an unnamed studio source. ‘This is not just another Trek movie but instead a total reboot, we will see things that are similar to what is known in the Trek Universe but we will not be held to every aspect of the last 40 years. We are going to introduce Star Trek to a whole new generation and many more generations to come. We have total faith that J.J. and company will take Trek to a whole new level. Trek has been going downhill for the last 10 years and if we expect it to be around 20 years from now we will have to take some bold steps that might be controversial at first but we are sure to bring new fans to the dying franchise.'”
“So when asked about the existing fans of Trek and if they would like the direction the new Trek is headed towards I was quickly told that, ‘Trek fans were not able to keep the last show (Enterprise) on the air and we are looking on bringing over Alias and LOST fans and if the old Trekkies like the new movie great, if not too bad. We have to boldly go were no Star Trek has gone before.'”
To read more of this disturbing article go to IESB.net.
I feel a great disturbance in the force, oh wait, wrong movie.
Star Trek wasn’t in the same place that BSG was, it doesn’t need a reboot.
They just need a decent writing team. Enterprise was pretty lame for three seasons and then they brought on the genius that was Manny Coto who did what we really wanted out of the ‘early years’ style of writing – a look at the introduction of every part of the universe that was ‘familiar’
The 100 year romulan war…all sorts of things they could have worked out with, but they didn’t. No, they decided to play with Time Travel, introduce a race and destruction on earth that was never mentioned before, and do a lot of stupid things.
No wonder fans fell away from it.
I didn’t fall away. I became a Trek fan around Season 3 of TNG and I’ve watched every Trek series since then. All the way to the end of Enterprise. I’ve noticed that most Trek fans like one show, but hate another. I don’t get that.
Apparently I’m the only one that watches Trek no matter what form it’s in.
Except a reboot, of course. Just the idea that all that I watched will just be erased sickens me.
First off, Kyle, I’m one of those fans that watches all Trek too. 🙂
Secondly, I don’t understand how they think a reboot will bring back Trek’s “former glory.” It is merely sweeping everything that Trek was underneath a rug and basically stabbing all the long time fans in the back! I don’t see this ending well at all, it is merely going to cause a rift between old fans and the new ones that will potentially be brought in because of Abrahms.. they won’t be the true fans, but will be treated as such. Trek has had quite a few problems I’ll admit.. but they all didn’t occur in the last 10 years alone! What we need is someone in charge of the series that knows Trek and doesn’t pretend like they do.. we need Manny Coto back!
I will withhold judgment until I see what they do.
After all, I couldn’t believe it when word came from The Powers That Be that said they were going to remake BSG. I was speechless and openly mocked the idea. Its not that I was a huge fan of the old series, I just figured that was so lame it was doomed to fail.
Of course, I saw the pilot movie and like so many others, I’m hooked. It was the first time in a LONG time I was pleasantly surprised by a reboot of anything done in TV or the movies.
Who knows, maybe with the success of BSG the people at the networks might look at sci-fi in a new way, Trek included. You can’t argue with the successful reboot of BSG, and I have to think the Trek people are watching that closely.
./D
That’s not even the same thing. The original Battlestar Galactica only lasted for ONE season, whereas all of Star Trek has lasted for a combined TWENTY EIGHT seasons, plus TEN movies. They would essentially be chucking all of that away and starting over.
Looking at it another way, I don’t think fans of Star Wars would like it if Episodes 4-6 were redone with new actors. So why expect the same from Trek fans?
i think this is great news. im a fan of the original series, tng and the movies, but not much else. trek definitely needs a reboot in a big way.
and please, bring shatner and nimoy back? are you friggin’ kidding??
I don’t think shatner and nimoy should be in this one at all… They are just to recognizable from the series and other movies… Only way I see they could fit is if there was some jump to the future sequence in the movie or maybe dreams of the characters playing them of future events or something…
Rebooting Star Trek is like translating Shakespere into Esperanto. I’ve been a trekker since the first episode aired on NBC on Friday night. My constant complaint about anything done in the name of the Star Trek franchise is “lack of continuity.” Which is why Enterprise failed. The best of Star Trek, series or film, payed proper reverence to that which came before.
The Wrath of Khan and First Contact both payed that respect. After Voyager screwed up by letting Janeway and Paris turn into giant chameleons, that series got back on track with some sense of continuity.
Instead of a reboot, how about a revisit? What has Sisco been doing lately? How about a new crew on Voyager? There is plenty of material in the Star Trek universe for something new without having to go back to the Original Series or the Next Generation. All that’s needed is a GOOD TEAM of WRITERS that know the material.
If they do a film with a young Kirk and Spock, Shatner could come back and play George Kirk, Jim Kirk’s dad, who had such a profound influence on James T. Kirk’s life.
The reason why Trek fell down the past ten years is simple — NO RODDENBERRY! Rick Berman and his merry band moved the series far far away from Gene’s original vision. Star Trek morphed into a bunch of technobable and predictable plotlines that left a lot of fans, like myself, out in the cold.
Rebooting Star Trek will be one of the biggest failures this side of New Coke. If they want a movie that is successful and actually expands the fan base, just take it back to Gene Roddenberry’s original vision.
I really don’t see anything wrong with reimagining and thereby rebooting the series.
But…
There is a difference between rebooting the series to remove clutter but keep the original optimistic Roddenberry vision and rebooting just to make it more appealing to some demographic group.
I will reserve judgment until I learn more of which way things will go.
As far as rebooting Trek, there was a treatment done in 2004 by J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5) and Bryce Zabel (Dark Skies). Check it out here:
http://bztv.typepad.com/newsviews/2006/06/spaced_out_star.html
As for the problems with recent series, I have to agree with Michael L. Wentz above. Rick Berman and company could never accept Roddenberry’s original premise that humans could evolve into something better. What I to see is a Trek that is optimistic about the future. There is enough SF that paints a bleak picture, something Roddenberry incorporated in TOS. But he focused on what life could be like once we got passed those issues and hopefully become better people.
I like the idea of a reboot, IF, and I mean IF, the writing is good, and they stay true to what Trek is.
Lets face it, Trek has a lot of plot holes and time line inconsistancies. If they can do a new version that doesn’t have that, I see that as an okay thing. Marvel Comics did a reboot of their whole universe and their Ultimate line is selling very very well.
Paramount is taking a very big risk this time, you have to give them credit for finally getting some guts and trying to do something different with the franchise. I just hope that all involved know what they are doing and what the expectations will be.
I think that going to the early years of Kirk, Spock, or McCoy is very tricky at the least. Spock spent over 11 years as Science Officer on the Enterprise under command of Captain Christopher Pike (The Menagerie, Part 1), McCoy had a family and private practice before he had a divorce and entered Starfleet to get away from the pain and has a daughter who followed him into medicine (Crisis on Centaurus)who is not that much younger than Kirk and Kirk was also serving on both the Republic (Court Martial) and Farragut (Obsession) before getting command of the Enterprise. If we follow the logic and order set forth by The Great Bird of The Galaxy himself, then who will play a younger Sarek and Amanda? or Captain Robert April, first commander of the Enterprise? (Final Frontier, Best Destiny) And who will play Kirk’s parents? And if we are to see any interiors of the Enterprise, how much will they look like what we saw in the Cage or the original show? As much as they would like to reinvent the mythos surrounding Star Trek, those of us won’t be very happy if it goes too far away from what Gene Roddenberry has shown us and told us. If the Studio needs a reminder, they need to watch Enterprise, which had bad writing and hardly any resemblence to anything in the Star Trek universe after the first season.
Star Trek is about hope and a grand vison of the
future. I believe going back to the beginning of Kirk
and Spocks days is a great error in judgement of the
powers that be. There will be no true danager, for we
already know their outcome, unless the studio plans to
forget all that has already been. Look at Enterprise
they forgot what Star Trek was about, so the fans forgot
about it. If they choose to go back it will be the end
of Star Trek as we, the true fans, know it. Star Trek
11 will be the final nail in the franchises coffin.