# Let Star Wars and Star Trek Die **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 29, 2015, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285 "2015-03-29T18:25:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2015, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/21 "2015-03-29T22:50:45Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > How many of those current films will still be making a cultural impact 40 years from now? Well, that seems to be a different question to what I was answering in the OP. It’s hard to say, really, if any of them will capture the public’s imagination like Star Trek or Star Wars. I was a a kid when Star Trek first came on TV, and it wasn’t as popular then as it became later. When Star Wars came out I was in college and I remember going with my uncle to the first showing in Las Vegas and the theater being pretty empty. I was totally blown away because I hadn’t really heard much about it (or any really) before going…we really just went on a whim since it seemed to be sort of sci-fi-ish. What movies today might have similar impact? Well, depending on the followup maybe Avatar…it was visually stunning and people seemed to really like it (I was less impressed, but then I couldn’t help but pick it apart as I was watching it). As you said, the Matrix, though it’s sequels didn’t really help the franchise. The Marvel universe and possibly the Guardians of the Galaxy might have a similar impact if Marvel follows up with another block buster. The thing is, movies that have that level of impact are very rare. But the question I thought you were asking was whether we’d have any new non-Star Trek/non-Star Wars sci-fi franchises, and the answer to me seems clearly ‘yes’. As Simplicio says: > [@](#): > > One can argue that there haven’t been many good sci-fil films lately, but its hardly been for lack of studio willingness to try and fund non-franchise sci-fi films. I think that pretty much sums things up at least from my perspective. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2015, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/22 "2015-03-29T23:00:03Z")
There’s another HUNGER GAMES movie on the way, and another TERMINATOR, right? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2015, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/23 "2015-03-29T23:05:27Z")
> [@Master\_Wang-Ka](#): > > When _Star Trek_ came out, the most sophisticated science fiction/interplanetary stories being told on TV were on _Captain Video_ and _Space Patrol_\*. The general idea was that spaceships were for kids. Some people would STILL have this idea if not for the fact that the same summer Trek was cancelled, Neil Armstrong and his posse done surprised everyone with his Giant Leap For Mankind. I’ll dispute this. The most sophisticated science fiction on TV was arguably **Man Into Space** , which is virtually forgotten now (It’s never been in syndication, or on popular video format). It was hard near-future SF about Man exploring our own solar system. After that, you had **The Twilight Zone** and **Outer Limits** , both featuring some top-notch SF (although TZ had a lot of fantasy, as well) by some impressive writers. I still think that Harlan Ellisoin’s _Demon with a Glass Hand_ from Outer Limits is the single best episode of any SF I’ve ever seen on TV. There were others, too, if not as good – **One Step Beyond** (which, like TZ, was mostly fantasy and hortror, but had some SF, and **Science Fiction Theater** (which was generally pretty sub-par, but was directed at adults, not kids). It was even mentioned in **Backj to the Future**! > [@](#): > > When Star Wars came out, the most sophisticated science fiction films to have hit the mass market were… the _Planet of the Apes_ movies. And the first one was supposed to be an allegory. And the second one kind of tried to do the same. And the other three were just monkey fests, guys in fancy makeup running around in the woods.\*\* The message was plain: SF was just simpleminded crap. Wrong again. Did you forget **2001: A Space Odyssey**? Definitely a Big Time Mass Market film. There were plenty of others, although you can argue about how mass market they were – **Forbidden Planet, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Destination Moon, When Worlds Collide, War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, Robinson Crusoe on Mars…**. Even if youy restrict yourself to the decade before Star Wars, you had \*\* The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, Logan’s Run\*\* and others. > [@](#): > > Wars was a BOMB. No argument there. > [@](#): > > \*Yes, I remember The Twilight Zone. I also know that it was an anthology show, and only reached the level of bein’ an iconic classic YEARS after it came out. Not true. It wouldn’t have run as long as it did if it weren’t “iconic”. It was immensely popular. > [@](#): > > \*\*Yes, there were others – Westworld did well, as did others – but now that I think about it, seems like most of the popular SF films of the seventies were invariably postapocalyptic. Star Wars and Star Trek were among the few to portray the future as being a place where people lived and worked and continued on a daily basis without having to fight mutants for cans of dog food. As I observe, they weren’t all postapocalyptic. There were LOTS of After-The-Bomb films, but it was the times. The atomic bomb and its tensions were everywhere. But even something as awful as **Moon Zero Two** depicted an optimistic future, not a postapocalyptic wasteland. You jusat weren’t THERE, son. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2015, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/24 "2015-03-29T23:45:28Z")
My objection to Star Trek and Star Wars is that they seem to have pigeonholed science fiction so that people tend to think that SF is one or the other, while fans like me feel that science fiction is _a lot of other stuff, too_. Both series, when they started, were extremely fresh, in part because they introduced the general public to ideas that were common coin in literary SF, and might have made it into a couple of films, but which Hollywood types had avoided because they were afraid people wouldn’t “get it”, or wouldn’t accept. The classic example is Mr. Spock’s greenish skin and pointed ears, which the publicity goons at NBS airbushed out and recolored in the publicity stills sent out, until Roddenbery confronted them. But there was a lot of other stuff, too. As I note above, Star Trek wasn’t the first SF for adults. It wasn’t even the first non-anthology SF show for adults, but it was considerably splashier than its predecessors, and featured humans on a non-cigar-shaped spaceship flying at faster-than-light speeds\*. What’s more, they got a lot of noted SF writers (and the to-be-noted ones) to write for the series – Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, Normal Spinrad, Robert Bloch, David Gerrold. They credited one to Fredric Brown. That’s something the later Trek series really didn’t do (although the aborted _Star Trek – Phase II_ had scripts and treatments by known SF writers, as well, as did the short-lived animated series, which had stuff by David Gerrold and Larry Niven). I do love the Trek seriues, asnd the movies, but the Trek universe ios too caught up in itself, and people need to be reminded that this isn’t the only possible image of the future. **Star Wars** , on the other hand, came when, despite other SF properties being around, there wasn’t any big thing going on. Trekkies were holding their conventions, but the hoped-for Star Trek movie looked no closer, and Harlan Ellison had even written an article saying why he didn’t think it was ever going to happen. Star Wars was unique because it embraced all those tropes that Hollywood had been avoiding for years – the Spaceport Bar with multitudinous aliens, some VERY non-human aliens, dogfights in space, weird space religions, robots as part of everyday life – lots of robots, not just one or two. The public ate it up, despite the fears of the head honchos that they wouldn’t Get It. Of course, it’s a kid’s-eye view of Science Fictioin, as Lucas admitted at the time. Heck, he’d made an adult science fiction film before – **THX-1138**. He then said he retrogressed to his teen years for **American Graffiti** , before embracing his inner child with **Star Wars**. SW took those SF tropes and strung them out on the Planetary Romance framework that had evolved into Flash Gordon, and which SF writers had been making fun of in the 1950s. Heinlein has Hazel Stone writing serials about rebels fighting the Galacti Emperor in her spare time in _The Rolling Stones_. Arthur C.; Clarke made fun of Space Epics where they still fought with swords in _Tales from the White Hart_. L. Sprague de Camp inveighed against SF Nobility with made-up names like Darth Vader and titles like Lord of the Sith and nouveau Ruritanian fiction. The public didn’t care – they hadn’t read that stuff, and SW had a visceral good-vs.-evil punch, with obvious Bad Guys and underdog Good Guys. For the sequel, he persuaded Golden Age SF writer Leigh Brackett (who’d been writing John Wayne scripts since she gave up SF) to get back in the SF saddle to writer **The Empire Strikes Back** \*\* Despite their problems, the original SW trilogy really hit home, and I’ve watched them more times than I can count. The sequels and spin-offs didn’t quite do anywhere near as well. I don’t rewatch the second trilogy, or the animated series. Again, though, the SW vision from the earliest films is a pretty childish place, while the second trilogy is a confusing one. But it’s a peculiar mishmash of ideas making up its reality. I’m not satying mainstream SF doesn’t have its share of illogical and questioinable premises, but not as many as the concentrated Sytar Wars franchise has. Because of the concentration on SW, I suspect other, very different visions haven’t been able to come out, possibly because they are too different from the SW/ST model, and the Hollywood suits don’t like taking chances. We’ve been lucky to get two different versions of _Dune_, but I don’t think they did really well. Heinlein ( **Starship Troopers, The Puppet Masters, Jerry was a Man** ) and Asimov ( **Nightfall, I,Robot** ) have only reached the Big Screen in grotesquely altered versions. James Cameron and the Wachovskys, Ridley Scott, and Veerhoeven have produced very different visions of the future. But we need more. And different. \*I, and plenty of others, feel pretty sure that Roddenbery strip-mined the film **Forbidden Planet** for a lot of the details, despite his claims to have searched through SF magazines an illustrations. But watch that film and then watch an episode of ST. He even stole the flying-saucer ship shape from FP! \*\*I know others say that others rewrote her script after her death and before filoming, but the claim that none of her innovations survived vto see celluloid isn’t true – there’s Brackett stuff in the version I saw. ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/25 "2015-03-30T00:44:04Z")
I liked Mel Brook’s idea --------- SpaceBalls 2: The Search for More Money ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/26 "2015-03-30T01:07:40Z")
The thing with the New ST reboot is that it pretty much killed any chance of a new ST based TV series happening. Unlike a lot of ST fans, I enjoyed all of the TV series that came out. Even Voyager! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![boffking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/858c86/32.png) [@boffking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boffking)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/27 "2015-03-30T02:05:38Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > There’s another HUNGER GAMES movie on the way Hunger Games was a complete and utter rip-off of The Running Man. Just because it was in a forest instead of a city does not make it an original story. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/28 "2015-03-30T03:19:51Z")
> [@wolfman](#): > > How the hell did my “M” get moved there, I definitely left it in front of the “ass” That’s what she said. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/29 "2015-03-30T10:25:33Z")
By 1990, I thought Star Wars was basically over. Well, in some ways it was. Originally, Star Trek was a big deal for being actual no-kidding science fiction on television. But it’s been mishandled a bit, and got seriously overblown with the whole ‘Trekker’ thing. I guess I agree with you. Or at least they can be put on a shelf for a bit? I’d add that I don’t really want to see another DC superhero TV show right now. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/30 "2015-03-30T10:41:08Z")
> [@boffking](#): > > Hunger Games was a complete and utter rip-off of The Running Man. Just because it was in a forest instead of a city does not make it an original story. I haven’t seen _The Hunger Games_, so I can’t say. But _The Running Man_ (the movie) is a bit different from _The Running Man_ (the novel) and both resemble an old short story by (I think) Robert Sheckley. And _The Hunger Games_ is very often compared to Takami Kōshun’s _Battle Royale_, which it fortuitously resembles. TropesAreNotBad. Tezuka Osamu even riffed on the concept once, I think. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/31 "2015-03-30T10:47:02Z")
Well, what hasnt been done yet? Not just Star Trek and Star Wars but also Aliens, Starship Troopers, War of the Worlds, Stargate - its all been done. Its darn tough to come up with something new. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/32 "2015-03-30T11:38:09Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > I haven’t seen _The Hunger Games_, so I can’t say. But _The Running Man_ (the movie) is a bit different from _The Running Man_ (the novel) and both resemble an old short story by (I think) Robert Sheckley. > > And _The Hunger Games_ is very often compared to Takami Kōshun’s _Battle Royale_, which it fortuitously resembles. > > TropesAreNotBad. Tezuka Osamu even riffed on the concept once, I think. The 10th Victim by Robert Sheckley, which was both a short story and a novel. I was surprised to learn just now that there is a movie of this: > **[The 10th Victim (1965) ⭐ 6.6 | Action, Comedy, Romance](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059095/)** > > 1h 32m | Not Rated ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/33 "2015-03-30T12:51:51Z")
I’m pretty sure I was actually thinking of Sheckley’s “The Prize of Peril,” wherein the protagonist is a game show contestant, and dodging the general public, who can phone into the game show and report his whereabouts while he tries to avoid being nabbed (and killed!) for a defined length of time. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/34 "2015-03-30T16:34:31Z")
> [@boffking](#): > > Hunger Games was a complete and utter rip-off of The Running Man. Just because it was in a forest instead of a city does not make it an original story. And just because its in a City instead of the Colosseum doesn’t make it an original story. > [@foolsguinea](#): > > Originally, Star Trek was a big deal for being actual no-kidding science fiction on television. But it’s been mishandled a bit, and got seriously overblown with the whole ‘Trekker’ thing. It was sort of a victim of its own success. TNG was an incredibly successful TV show, and so Paramount decided to launch three over-lapping spinoffs and six features films in the same relatively short span of time (not to mention a glut of similar space opera shows from various imitators). Some of these were great, some of them terrible, but we hit Trek-saturation pretty quickly, and there’s only so many interesting plots you can churn out for what’s basically re-iterations of the same setting. By the end of Enterprise, I think even most hard-core fans were pretty happy to let the franchise rest for a while. That’s hardly true now though. Over the past ten years there’s just one (not very good) film franchise still around, releasing one movie every couple summers. So I’m not sure I really see where the OP is coming from. We’re hardly being inundated with Trek stuff anymore, and that’s been the case for more than ten years. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/35 "2015-03-30T18:40:21Z")
No, in fact we need more Star Trek. Real Star Trek. A show that shows a future where people are at their best and that you would want to live in. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/36 "2015-03-30T19:34:12Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Star Wars was unique because it embraced all those tropes that Hollywood had been avoiding for years – the Spaceport Bar with multitudinous aliens, some VERY non-human aliens, dogfights in space, weird space religions, robots as part of everyday life – lots of robots, not just one or two. The public ate it up, despite the fears of the head honchos that they wouldn’t Get It. Not only did the public get it but a new generation of film critics also got it. The reviews of 2001 reprinted in Agel’s book show a bunch of top line critics who had no idea about what was going on, even stuff that was pretty obvious. As for everything else you said - you saved me a lot of writing. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/37 "2015-03-30T19:41:39Z")
There is a big difference between the two franchises. SW has a universe, but it is build around a story arc. You can obviously keep adding stuff to make money, but it is a bit artificial. I don’t know how the sequels will be, but I’m not that hopeful. I’m for stopping when you get to the end. We don’t need Harry Potter and the Real Estate Agent, do we? Star Trek on the other hand is in a basically open universe. Even when you have arcs, they are not dominant. I’m beginning to watch DS9 all the way through and I’m enjoying that it is firmly in the ST universe while having a very different flavor from TNG. The big problem I have with the reboot is that they show a lack of imagination. Find us new characters in a new part of the galaxy, not the same old characters with a new paint job. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/38 "2015-03-30T19:44:25Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > That’s hardly true now though. Over the past ten years there’s just one (not very good) film franchise still around, releasing one movie every couple summers. So I’m not sure I really see where the OP is coming from. We’re hardly being inundated with Trek stuff anymore, and that’s been the case for more than ten years. But there seems to be nothing else which will be that game changer to surpass Trek or Star Wars, so those two cultural icons are now dragged out of retirement, given a rinse down, and shoved out again and again to top up their pension money. It’s not so much about being inundated, it’s about them both being a block on creativity. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/39 "2015-03-30T19:53:15Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > But there seems to be nothing else which will be that game changer to surpass Trek or Star Wars, so those two cultural icons are now dragged out of retirement, given a rinse down, and shoved out again and again to top up their pension money. It’s not so much about being inundated, it’s about them both being a block on creativity. I don’t really see that. We’ve listed tons of non-SW, non-ST sci-fi films that have been made in recent years. Far more than the number of SW and ST films that have been made over the time period (or total, even). I don’t see how you can perceive the existence of those two franchises exercising some sort of “block on creativity”. ---
**Author:** ![Anon01245](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b77776/32.png) [@Anon01245](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anon01245)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2015, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285/40 "2015-03-30T20:25:01Z")
I wouldn’t mind seeing a new Star Trek series. That would be cool. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-star-wars-and-star-trek-die/716285.md?page=3)