Maybe they should have John Byrne write the next Trek series. That way, he can casually ignore all of Voyager and Enterprise.
Of course, knowing Byrne, he’d probably ignore most of the other three live-action series as well.
Even without a cite, you forget Journey to Babel.
^ :dubious: ^
Indeed. If Spock is older than McCoy, Amanda would have to be a lot older than McCoy.
Offhand, aside from Kirk being specifically 34 (“Whaddyamean I’ve got arthritis and senility? I’m only 34 years old!” - “The Deadly Years”), I don’t think any of the characters’ ages were given in the original series. Personally, the whole “Academy” thing is creepily 1984-ish: “Kirk was Spock’s superior, therefore Kirk was always Spock’s superior. Ignorance is strength!” Because the relationships of the characters has been presented in a particular way, that way has to extend indefinitely into the future and retroactively into the past. The concept of character development goes bye-bye, lest it make longtime viewers nervous, like the way a cat gets when you rearrange the furniture.
Fuck the Academy idea. “Captain Sulu of the Excelsior” is the way to go.
Indeed. “Captain Sulu of the Excelsior” has been the way to go since the 1980’s. It’s been the way to go for so long, that now Takei may be too old to do it.
Indeed, he’ll be 70 this year. Tragically missed opportunity, in my opinion. His show could have run concurrently with TNG with episode tie-ins like showing how the Klingons managed to recover after Praxis and Sulu solving some problem the best way he could and the TNG guys coming in 70 years later all, like, “wow what was he thinking?”
Indeedily-do.
How about “Admiral Sulu (ret.) and the Setti Alpha Five Kennel Club Dog Show.”
knew I shouldn’t have asked… perhaps what I am vaguely recalling was a reference to the extended vulcan lifespan or somesuch…
my trekfu isnt what it used to be…
Maybe not to write the screenplays, but the source material: Chuck Palahniuk.
After a hull breach is sealed, the room could be covered in blood and fecal matter.
I’d rather see Joss Whedon do another six seasons of Firefly instead of seven seasons of Trek. He wouldn’t be able to work within Trek’s immensely complicated continuity and his science fiction tends to be light on the science. For example, from “Out of Gas”:
Kaylee: (techonobabble)
Capt. Reynolds: Can you give that to me in captain dummy speak?
Quentin Tarantino? I’d love it but it would never fly. Just imagine:
Vincent: You know what they call a quarter pounder with cheese on Vulcan?
Jules: What?
Vincent: An Illogical with Cheese
Julies: Illogical with Cheese! What do they call a Big Mac?
Vincent: A Big Mac’s a Big Mac but they call it T’Big Mac.
I would pay money to see Samuel L Jackson as the captain of a starship though:
“I’m a quantum torpedo laying motherfucker, motherfucker!”
Personally, I think Judith and Gar Reeves-Stevens were doing just fine with season 4 of Enterprise and if there is another Trek series they should be the ones writing it. They know and love the material and they have good stories to tell.
But that would kill the thriving Star Trek slash fanfic subculture, since the fanfic writers’ wildest dreams might well become canon. 
Technobabble != Science
Joss actually tried reasonably hard to keep the science . . . well, realistic isn’t the right word, not even plausable, but . . . better than Star Trek, anyway. Avoiding technobabble actually helps this, since it shifts the focus away from the always-questionable science, and because any explanation of how a futuristic device works will almost necessarily be less believable than the device itself.
Besides, technobabble kills drama. I swear, I would have kept watching Enterprise after the pilot if they’d just had the one scene I most wanted:
TRIP: Captain, I’ve got it! If we reverse the polarity of the tachyon stream and reroute it through the deflector dish–
ARCHER: Damn it, Trip! I’m a starship captain, not an engineer. I don’t care about the technobabble, just tell me what will happen!
TRIP: Um. . . the bad guys will go boom?
ARCHER: Good, do it.
TRIP: Ok, but are you sure you don’t want to hear about the tachyon stream? It’s really neat!
ARCHER: Dismissed!
I am entirely convinced that any new Trek, whether it comes next year or in 50 years will succeed if and only if they not only have that scene (or the equivalent) but stick to it and ban all technobabble completely.
Weren’t Spock and Kirk vitually strangers when Kirk took over the Enterprise? Spock came with the ship.
I say author Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle) should write some Trek. Let’s face it: Trek has to be geeky - otherwise it wouldn’t be Trek - and Stephenson is the only writer I know who can make geekiness sexy.
You’d have to drop the whole “post-money society” thing, though. If there’s something Stephenson cares about as much as technology, it’s currency.
And star trek isn’t light on the science? Having [technobabble] tags in the script filled with random scientific-sounding words does not make you heavy on science - it makes you light on writing.
Firefly was actually probably closer to hard sci-fi than Star Trek. I mean, at least it created reasonable technology, didn’t violate the laws of physics, didn’t use random sciency sounding words to resolve plots, etc.
*Finding Serenity: Anti-Heroes, Lost Shepherds and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon’s Firefly * is a collection of essays about the TV show. It’s somewhat uneven, but one of the pieces is truly funny. Using an old Startrek device, a cosmic doo-hicky causes the Serenity crew to materialize on the bridge of the Enterprise. And vice versa.
Guess which crew goes on to rule the Galaxy? And which one becomes Reaver food?
This one essay is definitely worth the price of the anthology.
Well, I knew which tired suggestion would be made before I opened the thread, but this has some promise…
Maybe we’d get Byrne inflicting the Vulcan Byrne lock on the myriad of annoying Trek females:
the Troi women, Capt. Janeway, Seven of Boobs, the Vulcan Boob Chick, …
Heck, even better than an Exposition Fairy, any time some Starfleet type opens his or her mouth to technobabble, Byrne could have the Byrne-lock Vulcan show up to throttle them!
TRIP: Captain, I’ve got it! If we reverse the polarity of the tachyon stream and reroute it through the deflector dish–
RANDOM VULCAN: Byrne-lock
TRIP: hurk!
ARCHER: Thank you, Byrne-lock Vulcan!
There’s really no need for the technobabble, but for some reason, the later versions of Star Trek considered it indispensable. How the device work was rarely important to the plot – the fact that it did usually was. And it really doesn’t make the “Magic Wand Rays*” any more believeable if you babble on. If you show them experimenting to get something to work, fine, but pulling a ray gun out that just happens to have the solution is typical of the worst of ST:TNG.
Contrast with B5: in the episode with the alien plague, they gave little snippets, but not full explanations. “It may have something to do with the yellow blood cells.” You don’t needc to know what yellow blood cells are, and what they do, and how they affect the alien’s matabolism: the only important points are that they exist and were what the infection targeted.
*Geordi: I’ve found that if you combine frammis rays with a heterochoride shunt in B flat major, it does exactly what we need to do to get us out of this episode.
Picard: Make it so.
Heterochoride shunts only come in E-flat. Geez.
Indeed. And one of the good things about TOS was how Kirk and Spock’s friendship grew. I can imagine that Kirk and McCoy knew each other, but not Kirk and Spock.
One other odd thing - Spock had never heard of poker until the Corbomite Maneuver. I can imagine poker not being played on Pike’s ship, but how could he have gone to the Academy and never heard of it?
You’ve obviously overlooked the relevant animated-series episode that shows otherwise.