Well, I’m only 2/3 of the way through the first season. I’ll get back to you when I have finished it.
But while what you say is true, I guess what I’m saying is this - BSG is all focused or based off of one issue: the Cylons. Star Trek could afford to be much more open-ended.
I never said ST was that great. On the contrary, I also think it should be put peacefully to bed. If there is another series, I would like it to start on this premise of exploration, though.
Its just that the storyline you suggested was similar to the game’s story. It was a pretty fun game, and I think you’re idea would be a good one for a series.
Pretty much my thoughts. I want to know what happens when the humans have to deal with Bowman as the Starchild, really.
Reading about it on Wiki…Oh, i totally forgot some of the series I did like! Europa! Awesomeness. Jupiter turning into Lucifer. Dave and HAL both in the monolith.
True, but there was also **Time Tunnel **, more or less an adult show that was set up to be easy to write. Find some empty sets, dump Doug and Tony in the matching historical period, don’t change history, profit. (And writing this, I just realized that it was a clear ripoff of Mr. Peabody and Sherman.)
Serling respected the writers, and as an anthology show their stories (especially from sf writers who were also screenwriters) could be used with few modifications. Roddenberry had a harder time, which was to adapt the skills of the sf writers into his universe. Amok Time was I think the most successful example of this, taking Sturgeon’s interest in studying sex into the ST universe. Ellison showed the problems. I’ve read his original script, and I hate to say it, but Roddenberry was right. It was great, but not a part of the ST universe. The final one kept the crucial conflict from Ellison, which was a brilliant one.
BTW, Jerome Bixby was yet another sf writer who did ST scripts, and some good ones.
At least the animated series had Larry Niven involved.
Before the first movie was made, I saw Ellison on the Tomorrow Show talking about it. He recounted a story of how he and Roddenberry went to a studio exec to pitch the movie. The exec told them that he had read how the Mayans had met ancient astronauts. “Put in some Mayans” the guy said. I think by the time of the later TNG the Mayan lovers were in charge. Remember the show where alien abductions were real? Yikes.
I think the BSG spinoff “Caprica” will deal with human drama in a “not too distant future” setting.
I like the colonization as a story backdrop idea. Most of the conflict driven by conflicting political, social or corporate entities. Like a BSG prequel that tells the story of the creation of the 12 colonies.
You should check out the anime seriew Cowboy Bebop. The series takes place in a solar system where Mars, Venus, and many of the Jovian moons have been terraformed and colonized (ironically the Earth is nearly depopulated after a massive explosion destroys part of the moon). It’s actually very similar to Firefly / Serenity in many ways.
If I recall correctly, Ellison had some harsh words (big surprise, I know) about Niven-- I think it was Niven-- boasting that he just re-sold one of his old short stories as a TV script just by changing the names of the main characters to “Kirk” and “Spock.”
TAS was underrated for a long time. It seems like people are more accepting of it lately. I still don’t buy the inflatable starship decoy though.
In fairness, they also did the alien abduction thing in TOS, kinda sorta, with “Tomorrow is Yesterday.” Of course they eventually fixed things so it never happened in the first place, so maybe it doesn’t count anyway.
“I never did believe in little green men…”
:dubious: “Neither have I.”
:eek:
Goddamn, what a great show. TOS will never die.
That last made me very upset. It was clear from the first book that Bowman actually did travel to the stars. The fourth book seemed to imply that it was all an illusion from him being in the monolith. That was a real failure of nerve. He walked away from Childhood’s End into The Matrix.
It wasn’t a smooth transition or well done, but I liked the idea of the two of them interacting, ex-human, and machine, old enemies in a way, now reduced or increased to the same playing field and the same level.
Assignment: Earth did the alien abduction thing without having the ‘aliens’ be the Enterprise - Gary Seven was the descendant of humans abducted by aliens centuries earlier.
The author who got the most mileage out of a concept was David Gerrard. He did Tribbles, changed it slightly and sold it to TAS, and years later I saw an episode of The Real Ghostbusters written by him…and the conflict was Slimer being somehow broken down into millions of little Slimers and overwhelming NYC.
Ah, this is true. Although Gary Seven doesn’t really fit the classic ‘alien abduction’ model like John Christopher did… getting beamed up, medically examined and prodded, and then returned with no memory of the event. Gary was more of a George Adamski-style “Space Brother.”
Technically I suppose the “I am Kirok!” Indians rescued by the Preservers were ‘abductees’ too, now that I think about it.
Speaking of Captain Christopher: why have we not visited Saturn yet, dammit?
Hah! I did not know about the Ghostbusters episode.
It’s worse than you realize: Gerrold’s other TAS script was “Bem,” which featured the freaky alien ambassador who could disassemble himself into flying body parts. Gerrold seems to have one idea, and that idea is “fission.”
Speaking of which, I notice that Gerrold also wrote and is directing the newest fan-made Star Trek: Phase II episode, “Blood and Fire.” Apparently this episode is dedicated to AIDS victims, and the plot description suggests that it may feature those flying pancake-amoeba parasites from “Operation: Annihilate!” So Gerrold is once again on firm ground here with his cherished “cellular division” premise.
I strongly recommend the 1987 British series Star Cops, not to be confused with the comedic 1994 American series Space Precinct. It’s set in 2027 and ‘Star Cops’ is the rather derisive nickname of the International Space Police Force, a small and somewhat unrespected cadre of law-enforcement officers who have to navigate the diplomatic hassles of settling deadly-serious disputes among the various American, British, Japanese, Chinese, European and Soviet (heh) space stations and small-scale lunar bases.
The sets were cleverly designed, often upside-down, to increase the illusion of zero-gravity. The primary American station, the Ronald Reagan, had artificial gravity in the living quarters because of centrifugal spin. I noticed great care was taken to keep the science and tech plausible (though speculative) at all times. It’s more a cop show than a space show, though. One particularly clever episode spoiled:
A vessel in deep space reports an onboard explosion, making them lose most of their air supply. No-one can reach them in time and the crew’s only hope is a highly experimental suspended animation technique that might keep them alive long enough to complete a solar orbit and be picked up eight years later. Nathan Spring and his team investigate the ship’s history and eventually discover that it was sabotage, by a scientist who desperately wanted to prove his suspended animation technique would work (up to this point, his potentially lifesaving research has been thought a lucky coincidence). Spring would like to charge him with murder, but they’ll have no way of knowing if it is murder… for eight years. Star Cops was notable for messy but logical endings, avoiding the forced neatness of more formulaic cop shows, including discontent and distrust within their own ranks.
I highly recommend it for fans of serious science-fiction and police shows.
Oh, I agree. I just call that weak storytelling. What’s the artistic/literary function of using the same characters in the same (slightly earlier) setting to tell a different story? I realize that there might be many financial reasons, but where’s the pay off for the audience, other than getting to go, “oooh, look, it’s Kirk and Spock again!! Ooooh, remember all that other stuff they did that I liked so much!?!?”
If you’re going to revive/remake a story, you’ve got a couple options:
[ul]
[li]A production with the purpose of paying homage to the original. [/li][li]An adaptation that brings the themes, characters, whatever, of the original into a new setting (chronologically, culturally, etc)[/li][li]A deconstruction that points out new aspects of the original concept (ie, Galaxy Quest in regards to Trek)[/li][/ul]
A movie that can’t decide which of these it wants to be is likely going to be a bad film. I don’t know about this new one; I haven’t really read anything about it, but so far the idea of using old characters but with new character to fill in new parts of an old story that’s already done isn’t one that appeals much to me.