Star Trek Discussion

With B5, you really don't want to completely skip the first season. There are several episodes that are important to the overall story arc. Missing those will leave you confused later on. But there are also plenty that could be skipped.

My suggestion would be to watch the following episodes in Season 1.
Ep. 1, Midnight on the Firing Line (Sets up the whole Centari-Narn conflict)
Ep. 6, Mind War (Introduces Bester and the telepath conflict)
Ep. 13, Signs and Portents (Major foreshadowing and introduces Mr. Morden)
Ep. 18-19, A Voice in the Wilderness Pt. 1 & 2 (Sets up stuff that is used later in the series)
Ep. 20, Babylon Squared (Sets up the season 3 episode War Without End)
Ep. 22, Chrysalis (Major plot points that sets up season 2)

I'm guessing that seeing it on DVD will also allow things to tie together better since I don't wait a week at a time for the story.

Small, gentle correction: Richard Biggs.

Aortic dissection took him. Unfortunately, it's almost always fatal and even if it's detected in a hospital, odds are you're not going to make it.

RIP Richard. Personally, I thought you did a great job.

Well, a lot of Star Trek news in the last few months that I haven't seen discussed in here. So lets recap recent events, and see what this might mean for the future of Trek.

First off there is a new Trek series, due to air in 2017. Something I predicted, at least in regards when to expect a new series, quite some time ago. (Go look at page 6). As I also predicted this new series will be in essence a mini series of some 13 episodes and with season wide story arcs. It will be set between ToS and TNG and the indications are that it will follow several crews, possibly not just those from Star Fleet, and might not include the Enterprise. (Although this would be a possibility as the Enterprise in question would probably be the Enterprise B, who's history is unknown and who's model still exists.)

So far so good, right?

Well no.

The pilot episode will air on CBS, the other episodes on CBS all access their online streaming service that has a monthly subscription. So their potential viewership is going to be die hard Trek fans willing to hand over the money or those who already subscribe.

Humm. Seems CBS/Paramount didn't learn from Voyager that people are for the most part not interested in subscribing to a channel just to get Trek.

To make this worse Paramount/CBS seems to have made a point of aggravating the very people this new series would be relying on...


Axanar was/is a fan made project set in the Enterprise Era. With a talented cast of actors, including Trek veterans. This project got an unprecedented amount of finding through kickstarter, promising professional quality scripts, acting and effects.
Unfortunately Paramount had issues with where and how the money was being spent, not helped by the apparent disorganization on the production. So they did what any responsible company would do and took them to court, citing a list of copyright infringements. To be fair they had little choice but to take this route, although it raised a lot of concerns with the makers of fan films.
A few months ago the directors of the current and last Trek films came out with an announcement that, to the joy of a lot of people, Paramount would be dropping the lawsuit and coming to an agreement.
Hooray! Everyone wins! Right!?

Nope.

Paramount instead came out with a list of 'Guidelines' www.startrek.com/fan-films

Everyone, meaning EVERYONE who's taken a look at these has decreed these as draconian, heavy handed and an end to all Trek fan productions.

They may well be right in the latter case, as out of some 20 known Fan film projects, and radio dramas (which were not covered) all but three or four of them have been cancelled or placed on indefinite hiatus. One of those, Renegades (which stars both Tim Ross and Walter Kayong) has simply stated they will remove all Trek references.

These 'guidelines' prevent serials/series. Stories longer than 30 minutes. The use of professional, well anyone. Use of any props or costumes not not bought from Paramount. The inclusion of anyone who's worked on Trek...or for Paramount or CBS in ANY capacity.

As if this wasn't bad enough it turns out that Paramount has made liars of its two Trek directors because they have not, in fact, dropped the law suit against Axanar nor show any intention of doing so.

So Paramount at this point has managed to anger all of the core fans, the very ones they are hoping and relying on to go see the latest film and pay money to see the new series. Everyone who's ever worked on Trek, and if they don't drop the lawsuit and end up wrecking fan films for other IP's probably every other Studio in North America.

So what does this mean for the future of Star Trek?

Well, there were already concerns and complaints over the paywall for the new series. Not helped by them more or less admitting the only reason for this was to get money from the millions of fans out there. That would be the millions of fans their actions have angered to put it mildly. People are already calling for a total boycott of both CBS and Paramount, including a commentators normally known for being level headed. Projections for Star Trek Beyond, the next film, seem to be saying the opening weekend will only net around $50 million (which would be about a third to a quarter of its budget).

At this point Trek has to be seen as being in critical condition. I don't see the film being all that successful, not enough for them to make a fourth film. And the Series seems doomed to fail due to a litany of short sighted and greedy decisions made by out of touch executives. So expect maybe two seasons of this new series before they have no choice but to either remove the paywall and put it on CBS or in syndication or call it quits with some line about how they did what they intended to do.

Worse may be in store for Paramount though. As I mentioned should they win the lawsuit it will affect ALL fan films. Something that will not go over well with other studios. Just as importantly these guidelines are probably not going to go over well with any professionals, be that script writers, producers, actors or camera crews Paramount and CBS rely on to make their shows and films. If Paramount sticks to its guns they might lose far more than their main franchise in Trek. They could effectively end up getting blacklisted within the entertainment industry and find it increasingly more and more difficult to hire talented people to work for them.

I think at this point Paramount could learn a lesson from Hasbro.

I'm trying to find an official statement, but their policy on fan works is pretty well thus:

1. We don't care what you do so long as you're not making money off our stuff or otherwise challenging our ownership of the respective franchise

2. We don't want to see what you do unless we specifically call for it

As a result, Hasbro's franchises support an absolutely generous amount of fan-created works. A few lucky creative talents have even made the jump to producing official material; for example, Guido Guidi's fan artwork was so well-received that Dreamwave Productions actually hired him on to do art for their "Transformers" books, and when Dreamwave went bust IDW picked him up along with the license. And an upcoming G. I. Joe figure was actually the winner of a contest involving fan-characters.

Because of this, many of their bigger brands have such a large fan base - and so much in the way of fan-produced material - that they're able to buoy up entire franchises; for example, G. I. Joe would be dormant right now due to real-world political sensitivities, yet the fan base is large enough to merit an ongoing comic book and a token amount of mass-released toys in addition to the usual fan club offerings.

It's not a perfect situation (I'll be the first to admit that "Transformers" and "My Little Pony" are getting to be bad about fan-produced "adult" material, the latter especially), but it's about as good as you're going to get under American-style intellectual property laws.

HBO has earned itself a reputation for producing very high quality mini series over the years. So when they released Game of Thrones the network was relying on its own reputation to sell the new series rather than the other way around.
In the case of Game of Thrones you can see the quality of the production from the start - This from someone who actually hates the series, but is more than happy to say it has earned every award its received.
Here the actual viewer figures per season show a gradual then fairly sudden raise in numbers season to season. These figures would be consistent with word of mouth, and home releases of the seasons. (And people watching the pirated version) bringing new viewers in over time.

With NetFlix and Dare Devil you have a 'channel' that likewise had been around for a while offering a series that was based on one of the most popular film franchises in history, and indeed technically part of it.

For both those networks were introducing something new; an adult/serious version of the Marvel universe and a fantasy series. Plus they both offered more than just those two shows (in the case of Dare Devil its now four series, or shortly to be that). Meaning that people who subscribed to either of them were likely to find something else on there they would like.

CBS...not so much. They are trying to sell a network off a single series, and there doesn't really seem to be anything else on there to justify people hanging around. This is more or less the exact same situation they found themselves in with the old Paramount Network, where Voyager was used to promote the channel as its flagship program*. When Voyager ended there just wasn't enough else on the channel for people to stick around and watch.
Reputation wise Paramount/CBS doesn't have a good one, even before the whole fan film mess the most positive thing you could say was that they were regarded as being better than FOX. Certainly as far as Trek goes their reputation was in decline since Voyager hit screens**, and the TNG films onwards appeared. The reboot films didn't improve this reputation with the more die hard fans - 'Fun but not Trek' is probably a fair description as to how most fans reacted...or at least those who were not calling for people to die***. If you can't sell a network based on Trek pre-Netflix and streaming services. You are unlikely to be able to sell a network in the steaming age when you have considerably more choice and options.
Films are, in any case, not a great basis for bringing in viewers for a TV series and holding onto them. Agents of Shield is a case in point, if for no other reason than no TV production can match the time and money spent per hour of entertainment that a film has****.

Trek also suffers from an image problem, being viewed as 'Camp', 'Cheesy' and 'Preachy' by those who don't know the franchise all that well. And somewhat 'outdated', 'light' and 'unimaginative' by those who do. (These are not entirely unfair views to be honest). The real success of Trek was always its syndication, which made it available for free to anyone who happened to tune in and therefore resulted in producing new fans who had no issues in watching to see what all the fuss was about. Or in the case of the Original Series found it hard to avoid. Plus the satisfaction of knowing that if they didn't like what they saw, either overall or just in that weeks episode, they could turn off or over and not have spent anything but a few minutes of watching.

For HBO and NetFlix if people don't like GoT or DD they don't feel cheated even before subscribing, since they have other shows on those channels they can check out. CBS...not so much. So CBS was going to have to rely on the existing Trek fans to subscribe to see the series, then spread good word of mouth to bring in new viewers. Right now however those fans are in no mood to subscribe, let alone say nice things about a company that has treated them with such appalling disdain.

As far as Fan Films go a better example would be Star Wars and Lucas Film. They have long supported fan films, even holding award ceremonies to highlight the best ones, and seem to understand that such fan productions are beneficial. Its free advertising, highlights talented individuals they may want to keep an eye on and also allows them to see what aspects of their franchise people really like. While this naturally dates back to before the Disney take over, it doesn't appear as if Disney - a company who once sent a cease and desist order to a Kindergarten for having painted Disney characters on the wall - has any intention of changing this. What Disney is likely to do should Paramount's hissy fit cause them problems with fan films for one of their biggest franchises...
While I can understand the concerns Paramount had about Axanar. Their reaction and actions to it show a staggering lack of sense or ability to learn from past mistakes or the success of others. As I said above I also question what effect this might have beyond Trek itself. I can't see any of the unions being happy at Paramount dictating their members can't work on none profit films/projects or be paid to do so. Plus turning two directors into liars has probably earned them considerable ill will as well. I suspect that if they haven't already, Paramount is going to come under increasing pressure from all sides to drop the lawsuit and change the 'guidelines'. Something has to give, and give quickly. This is either going to be Trek as a Franchise or quite a few people at Paramount are going to be looking for new jobs in an industry that isn't going to be looking at them in a positive light.

(*Trivia; Star Trek Phase II, the unproduced Trek series from the 1970's, was originally intended to be the Flagship program for a Paramount Network. The network idea was dropped and the pilot for the series became The Motion Picture. This idea was brought back in the 90's when Paramount finally got around to creating their own network. With Voyager becoming the flagship program)

(**Voyager is far from the best of the Trek series, and has a lot of issues. But I think its unfairly judged overall. Yes, it has some of the worst episodes of Trek, and certainly the single worst episode of any Trek series in Threshold. But overall the series is rather fun.)

(***Clearly those 'fans' calling for peoples heads to roll missed the entire principle behind Trek)

(****As a rough comparison; Deadpool, a cheap film by Hollywood standards, had some $28 million per hour of entertainment. Game of Thrones, the most expensive TV series currently in production, has a budget of between £3-5 million per episode/hour. Both the film and series have/had around 10 months or so of post production. That works out as roughly 5 months per hour for Deadpool and 1 month for GoT. So a film has at LEAST five times the budget and post production time per hour as any TV series.)

The new Star Trek film has run into some bad publicity.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-36744328

They decided to make the character of Sulu gay, to honour George Takies work for gay rights, but he has stated he is against the idea as Sulu never was created as a gay character by Roddenbury.

good for him. personally I find the insistence on having the token gay prominently featured in every show to be annoyingly pandering.

which is to say my literary sensibilities are more offended than my religious sensibilities, more often than not.

Not everyone s in your face about their sexuality, some people are private about it,

What I dislike is a situation like Stargate Universe where the writers, after they knew the program had been canned and no more episodes were going to be made suddenly announced such and such character is gay, despite never indicating it in the plot. Or J.K. Rowling for that matter.