SergioWebster
New Member
It sounds strange to me. I will be glad if they manage to make a good series, but I doubt that everything will be OK
Star Trek comedy series in development
- Thread starter NakedMoleRat
- Start date
Robot Monster
Sr Member
Why make a comedy series.... because they don't seem to be able to consistently write a serious one. It's like everyone has to be a Marvel wise ass line..
Yeah, self-parody is often the last gasp of failure.
In all fairness, we already have a Star Trek comedy series....Below Decks. And it's not half bad once you get past the typical "early-first-season-itis" that plagues most new shows.
Also, The Orville is a Star Trek-styled comedy, much of which is also quite good, IMO.
Black Mirror's "The Callister" is Trek-style, and funny and horrific at the same time...it's possible to do!
"The Trouble With Tribbles" and "Q-pid" are still hilarious...have we forgotten?
These examples have demonstrated that there is a way to find balance between serious and comedic, and still give us something compelling.
I'm all for negative when something is really bad (I'm looking at you, The Acolyte), but come on guys, are we just getting off on hate for the not-yet-aired? Even when it's not really new?
Also, The Orville is a Star Trek-styled comedy, much of which is also quite good, IMO.
Black Mirror's "The Callister" is Trek-style, and funny and horrific at the same time...it's possible to do!
"The Trouble With Tribbles" and "Q-pid" are still hilarious...have we forgotten?
These examples have demonstrated that there is a way to find balance between serious and comedic, and still give us something compelling.
I'm all for negative when something is really bad (I'm looking at you, The Acolyte), but come on guys, are we just getting off on hate for the not-yet-aired? Even when it's not really new?
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Starganderfish
Well-Known Member
Comedy can be much harder to pull off than drama - especially with an IP like Trek, which is grounded in serious, thought-provoking social commentary, high-brow ethical concepts and a solid underpinning of semi-scientific rigour.
I know Lower Decks gets a lot of praise but to me, it felt like someone trying to do Rick & Morty style confrontational humour without having the guts to actually be confrontational. Plus, to create a cast of fan-favourite characters in comedy you need a willingness to be self-deprectaing and poke a little fun at yourself and your franchise. That's VERY rare in this era.
Mary-Sue/Gary-Stu "perfection" becomes grating really quick, which doesn't bode well in the current era of lacklustre writers who produce what often feel like bad fan-fic. And given that's where the Mary-Sue term originated, it's pretty telling.
This fumbling with protagonist relatability was my biggest gripe with Lower Decks. The main female character felt like not only a classic "Miss Perfect" Mary Sue, trying unsuccessfully to hide behind a comedic lens, she was also objectively mean and even abusive to her crewmates. I just found her utterly unlikable and that tainted the entire show.
Producing a good Sci-Fi comedy takes solid writing chops. Heavy parody like Red Dwarf or Galaxy Quest still needs to be engaging and pull the viewer in. A semi-serious "dramedy" effort like the Orville is something else again. Seth McFarlane, whether you like him or not, has an undeniable resume, and successfully walked the fine line between humour and drama stakes throughout the Orville, something that I myself was unsure he could do, given his previous projects.
The complete nobody that Paramount has hired? I'm not holding my breath.
The other telling point is that Trek is now one of those "made by a committee" shows. I think I counted somewhere between 20 and 30 Producer and Executive Produce credits in the opening of an episode of Discovey, and they're just the people with enough clout to get their names in the credits. Good luck writing homour under those circumstances.
I know Lower Decks gets a lot of praise but to me, it felt like someone trying to do Rick & Morty style confrontational humour without having the guts to actually be confrontational. Plus, to create a cast of fan-favourite characters in comedy you need a willingness to be self-deprectaing and poke a little fun at yourself and your franchise. That's VERY rare in this era.
Mary-Sue/Gary-Stu "perfection" becomes grating really quick, which doesn't bode well in the current era of lacklustre writers who produce what often feel like bad fan-fic. And given that's where the Mary-Sue term originated, it's pretty telling.
This fumbling with protagonist relatability was my biggest gripe with Lower Decks. The main female character felt like not only a classic "Miss Perfect" Mary Sue, trying unsuccessfully to hide behind a comedic lens, she was also objectively mean and even abusive to her crewmates. I just found her utterly unlikable and that tainted the entire show.
Producing a good Sci-Fi comedy takes solid writing chops. Heavy parody like Red Dwarf or Galaxy Quest still needs to be engaging and pull the viewer in. A semi-serious "dramedy" effort like the Orville is something else again. Seth McFarlane, whether you like him or not, has an undeniable resume, and successfully walked the fine line between humour and drama stakes throughout the Orville, something that I myself was unsure he could do, given his previous projects.
The complete nobody that Paramount has hired? I'm not holding my breath.
The other telling point is that Trek is now one of those "made by a committee" shows. I think I counted somewhere between 20 and 30 Producer and Executive Produce credits in the opening of an episode of Discovey, and they're just the people with enough clout to get their names in the credits. Good luck writing homour under those circumstances.
Yeah, I’m no fan of “Tribbles”, “”I, Mudd”, “A Piece of the Action”, “The Voyage Home”, etc..
I’m basically one of those insufferable cerebral types that prefers “the serious stuff” like “The Motion Picture”.
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Totally agree, which is why I originally never made it past the first 3-4 episodes. Took me 2 years to give it another shot. But they started to explain, develop and grow her character late in season 1, as well as the other characters, that I was finally won over. She is arguably the most flawed of them all. She is the way she is because she is seriously broken and maladjusted. That is explored.
BB43MAN
Sr Member
It just seems to me at this point that Paramount/CBS has reached the bottom of the Star Trek barrel and is now throwing anything they can at the wall to see what sticks.............which isn't much at this point. They need to just let it lay quiet for a while, and concentrate on making SNW the best it can be. If they keep it up, failing as they constantly are, they're going to have an "Acolyte" on their hands.
Starganderfish
Well-Known Member
I'm skeptical that even if they could improve SNW it wuld be enough to keep things going.
It and Lower Decks have tended to get more positive reviews than other recent Trek, but neither of them really blow up (good or bad) the way that Star Wars and Marvel stuff does for Disney, Rings of Power or Wheel of Time did for Prime etc.
Good Disney get's rave reviews, bad Disney gets frothing rage... Trek just kind of get's "meh"... whether it good OR bad.
Star Trek has never had the same broad level of appeal as Star Wars, but it was at least a part of the cultural zeitgeist. Now it feels like Trek's place in the wider viewing audience, is that people seem fatigued and uninterested. I don't think Nu-Trek has enough enthusiasm or audience left to even get an "Acolyte" style situation.
Locking their shows down to Paramount's faltering Streaming platform sure doesn't hep with that.
Starganderfish
Well-Known Member
An interesting idea. Would you want a real version of the Galaxy Quest TV show from within the movie or more of the adventures of the actors ? A large part of the charm of Galaxy Quest was the dichotomy of the washed-up actors, doing the convention scene, and getting drawn into a zany space adventure. That could be tough to pull off in an ongoing series, and there aren't too many TV writers and producers these days with the ability to pull that off.
In contrast, just recreating the in-movie Galaxy Quest show, runs the risk of a studio just pumping out another mediocre sci-fi show.
Galaxy Quest is a uniquely charming and enjoyable movie, a product of it's time and an appeal directly to the Trek fan community. Be tough to pull that off again, especially in an ongoing series.
Be awesome to see someone actually competent try it though!!
NakedMoleRat
Legendary Member
Even The Orville lost it’s initial charm halfway through the second season.
Galaxy Quest worked because it was a parody of itself. But to pretend it was a ‘real’ space show wouldn’t have worked as well.
Galaxy Quest worked because it was a parody of itself. But to pretend it was a ‘real’ space show wouldn’t have worked as well.
Callister fits in that discussion as well, a little more Galaxy Quest-like.
I loved that it could be both funny and horrific. That's the right tone, IMO.
drusselmeyer
Master Member
I don't know why you complain about ANYTHING they do. They were so genius in the past as to keep st from falling into public domain by retroactively copyrighting the entire property!
You should bow down to them and pay extra to watch commercials happily.
Shame on all of you critics.
You should bow down to them and pay extra to watch commercials happily.
Shame on all of you critics.
‘Section 31’ Actor Worried Fellow Fans Will Reject Movie For Being A Different Kind Of Star Trek
Being in star Trek is a dream come true for Robert Kazinsky, but he is "terrified."
trekmovie.com
“I’m terrified of how it’s going to be received, because it’s not the Trek people want. The Trek that people want, the Trek that we all want, is just 1,000 more episodes of TNG. Everyone’s always furious that they’re not getting more TNG, whilst at the same time, when TNG came out, everybody hated it. So this is going to come along and it’s not going to feel like any Trek that they’ve ever seen.“
Stop, “Captain Power Villain / Generic Sci fi Suit Guy”, you had me at “it’s not the Trek that people want”…
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drusselmeyer
Master Member
Nope. Never liked TNG. Why should we have a Trek series about people who just sit around talking about celebrities? That's just crazy!
Starganderfish
Well-Known Member
Yep, that sounds about right. “We know what the fans want and what will succeed. We just don’t want to do it.” Doesn’t really matter if this ancillary character is a “true Trek fan” when the show-runners, writers and directors all seem to want to work on a 2000’s era Battlestar Galactoca reskin, though one seemingly without the charm.‘Section 31’ Actor Worried Fellow Fans Will Reject Movie For Being A Different Kind Of Star Trek
Being in star Trek is a dream come true for Robert Kazinsky, but he is "terrified."
“I’m terrified of how it’s going to be received, because it’s not the Trek people want. The Trek that people want, the Trek that we all want, is just 1,000 more episodes of TNG. Everyone’s always furious that they’re not getting more TNG, whilst at the same time, when TNG came out, everybody hated it. So this is going to come along and it’s not going to feel like any Trek that they’ve ever seen.“
Stop, “Captain Power Villain / Generic Sci fi Suit Guy”, you had me at “it’s not the Trek that people want”…
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If you’re going to make a Trek show, just hire people who want to work on a Trek show. If you want to make something new and dark and gritty … just do that and stop trying to plaster a Trek sticker on it?
Getting a little tired of this “Season 1 of TNG was bad” excuse. They’ve rolled it out to defend every poor decision they make. The biggest difference? TNG got better and developed a loyal fan base. NuTrek starts mediocre and mostly stays on that level.
Ah well, honestly I probably won’t even bother to watch this. I forced myself to wade through about a season and a half of Discovery, a handful of episodes of Strange New Worlds, Prodigy and Lower Decks and even watched most of Picard (though I groaned through all of Season 1 and fast forwarded through the 2nd season and most of the 3rd, pausing only for the occasional nostalgia berry). Just haven’t enjoyed any of it. Even the end of Picard felt forced. Kind of fun but still really forced.
Clearly though, as a lifelong Trek fan, I’m not the target audience for Trek.
bromtomley
New Member
My tuppence worth, I don't think people just want another load of TNG, but that want something that's recogniseable as Star Trek.
Now, I'll just start by saying I haven't seen all of the Nu-Trek offerings having given up after Discovery and Picard, though I've heard they improved and I never fancied Lower Decks because of the Rick and Morty-ness. My Dad who got me into Star Trek really likes SNW though, so I'll assume that's good, or at least alright.
The problem I think is that the modern writers of Star Trek want the brand recognition and I assume wage packet and budget that comes with it, but they don't want to write Star Trek, they want to write some other scifi show with flawed characters and conflict that isn't set in a utopian society.
Star Trek, and Starfleet are meant to be aspirational to us, humans have evolved to be a peaceful, welcoming people, and Starfleet are even more perfect, but that's harder to write I'd assume by how frequently they avoid it.
By doing prequels and far future stuff you can have the more cavalier Kirk era or a lawless future, but crappy or outright bad humans and conflict shouldn't really be the focus of a Star Trek series to me. For an arc, fine, but not the basic premise.
Especially now in a world as tense and dark as ours, the whole idea was to show us what could be wasn't it?
I saw that in the Starfleet Academy show they're just getting rid of the Utopia idea altogether, and I just thought "why not write something else?" What they do is write some other show and then shoehorn in a popular character, it's the EMH's turn now.
The late 80s/ 90s Trek is by far the greatest chunk of Trek, with the majority of the best episodes and characters, so while TOS may have broken ground, you could say 24th Century Trek is the foundation for a lot of people, I don't think you have to do fan service or fan fiction to tell more stories in that style of Trek. I think it'd be refreshing to be honest. It doesn't have to be in the 24th century even, or have any link, but it'd be nice to just see the lineage.
Being contrarian and trying to turn Star Trek into a load of things it isn't has just weakened the IP to the point that as above, you'd struggle to get enough people together to have any kind of social media reaction like Star Wars gets.
Now, I'll just start by saying I haven't seen all of the Nu-Trek offerings having given up after Discovery and Picard, though I've heard they improved and I never fancied Lower Decks because of the Rick and Morty-ness. My Dad who got me into Star Trek really likes SNW though, so I'll assume that's good, or at least alright.
The problem I think is that the modern writers of Star Trek want the brand recognition and I assume wage packet and budget that comes with it, but they don't want to write Star Trek, they want to write some other scifi show with flawed characters and conflict that isn't set in a utopian society.
Star Trek, and Starfleet are meant to be aspirational to us, humans have evolved to be a peaceful, welcoming people, and Starfleet are even more perfect, but that's harder to write I'd assume by how frequently they avoid it.
By doing prequels and far future stuff you can have the more cavalier Kirk era or a lawless future, but crappy or outright bad humans and conflict shouldn't really be the focus of a Star Trek series to me. For an arc, fine, but not the basic premise.
Especially now in a world as tense and dark as ours, the whole idea was to show us what could be wasn't it?
I saw that in the Starfleet Academy show they're just getting rid of the Utopia idea altogether, and I just thought "why not write something else?" What they do is write some other show and then shoehorn in a popular character, it's the EMH's turn now.
The late 80s/ 90s Trek is by far the greatest chunk of Trek, with the majority of the best episodes and characters, so while TOS may have broken ground, you could say 24th Century Trek is the foundation for a lot of people, I don't think you have to do fan service or fan fiction to tell more stories in that style of Trek. I think it'd be refreshing to be honest. It doesn't have to be in the 24th century even, or have any link, but it'd be nice to just see the lineage.
Being contrarian and trying to turn Star Trek into a load of things it isn't has just weakened the IP to the point that as above, you'd struggle to get enough people together to have any kind of social media reaction like Star Wars gets.
Starganderfish
Well-Known Member
I just came across a Reddit post from Brandon Sanderson that outlines this same issue.
Sanderson was hand-picked to finish Wheel of Time books when the author's health started failing, and he's a massively successful bestselling author in his own right.
It sums up the issue with a lot of these modern TV/Movie IP's - the folks handed the keys to these properties don't see a responsibility to honour the source material, they see it as their chance to tell their own stories. If they were creative and brilliant enough to justify that, they'd be successful in their own right, not one of a dozen hacks lurking in a "writer's room".
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