New TOS - Should we?

[ChallengerHK]

About 20 years ago, I told a friend who designed computer chips that it wouldn't be too long before computer animation would allow us to create new episodes of TOS with Shatner, Nimoy et al., which looked like original episodes with new, original performances. At the time, I put a 15 year figure on when I thought that would happen. He told me it could never happen. As a side note, I described a quantum computer, which he also told me could never happen. Such is the difference between technicians and visionaries :-)

Now that we're within spitting distance of being able to make such a project reality, my question, though, is this: should we?

For most of my life, I thought more Trek is always a good thing. Ii thought that when TMP premiered. I thought that when Voyager premiered, and then Enterprise, and then Insurrection and Nemesis. As I've gotten older and, debatably, wiser, I've come to the conclusion that more Trek is not necessarily better, and that the confluence of the people who made TOS was a one-time thing that was gone forever. And then I thought that Star Trek Continues and Star Trek New Voyages did a pretty good job of creating new TOS. And THEN I thought that Discovery, while palatable, stray so far from the TOS vibe that for me it wouldn't count.

My ultimate thought is that the effort would take a lot of time and money, that because of that (and other reasons) it would be studio-financed, and that the studios cannot be counted on to make a true TOS. It probably would not behoove them to do so.

So, having gone through all that, who do you think? Assuming that we get to a point where we can, should we make new TOS episodes?

 

[Steven P Bastien]

I would say they shouldn't do it. But, I would expect some good parodies to come out using the "deep-fake" type approach.

 

[F. King Daniel]

About 20 years ago, I told a friend who designed computer chips that it wouldn't be too long before computer animation would allow us to create new episodes of TOS with Shatner, Nimoy et al., which looked like original episodes with new, original performances. At the time, I put a 15 year figure on when I thought that would happen. He told me it could never happen. As a side note, I described a quantum computer, which he also told me could never happen. Such is the difference between technicians and visionaries :-)

Now that we're within spitting distance of being able to make such a project reality, my question, though, is this: should we?

For most of my life, I thought more Trek is always a good thing. Ii thought that when TMP premiered. I thought that when Voyager premiered, and then Enterprise, and then Insurrection and Nemesis. As I've gotten older and, debatably, wiser, I've come to the conclusion that more Trek is not necessarily better, and that the confluence of the people who made TOS was a one-time thing that was gone forever. And then I thought that Star Trek Continues and Star Trek New Voyages did a pretty good job of creating new TOS. And THEN I thought that Discovery, while palatable, stray so far from the TOS vibe that for me it wouldn't count.

My ultimate thought is that the effort would take a lot of time and money, that because of that (and other reasons) it would be studio-financed, and that the studios cannot be counted on to make a true TOS. It probably would not behoove them to do so.

So, having gone through all that, who do you think? Assuming that we get to a point where we can, should we make new TOS episodes?

God no. Nothing you make now will be the same. Just reboot it from scratch, which is what I've been waiting for forever. New actors, new writers, new stories.

 

[Phaser Two]

Interesting question, and one I was mulling the other day (hey, I think about Star Trek a lot).

I don't want an Uncanny Valley series, I don't believe. It would be interesting, but ultimately there would be flaws. What I also absolutely do not want is some Discovery-ized reboot with lens flares, fungal drives, total murdering of canon, etc.

But as you pointed out, STC (which was a favorite of mine) and STNV showed that even without a profit motive, you can recreate Star Trek. That is what I want. Use the same characters (preferred) or put it on a different Constitution-class ship (or something similar) from the same era, but I want the uniforms to be the same, and I want the sets to be re-creations. The bridge needs to look like THE BRIDGE, not an Apple store, not a dentist's office (sorry, TNG, I love ya in so many ways but that was just such a bummer), not stuffed with "updated" displays, and not someone's 2019+ reimagining of what the bridge should look like. I want copies of the sets, and new sets based on the old ones.

I also have a feeling, that with the right writers and actors, this show would be wildly popular. I'd reorganize my schedule around it and watch it live, not on DVR. And I would absolutely love it.

 

[HaventGotALife]

No, but I think Star Trek is going to go there; reboot the original series on television. There's already clamoring for the Pike years. I think they won't work it into the timeline; an alternative universe or a mirror reality. They will just re-cast, and tell old tales, again. The success of the show will determine if they do it for TNG or other shows.

We'll be in our own time loop, as anti-climatic as it may be.

 

[ChallengerHK]

I think you're probably right about where things are going, but by my standards they won't be doing what I'd like to see at all. Lots has been said and written about the visuals, such as model design and set design, but that's only part of the equation. I want to see Shatner in his 30s and Nimoy in his 30s, and I want them to tell TOS stories, as opposed to just stories aet around TOS in the timeline. STC and STNV showed that those stories can be told, and successfully.The two concerns I have are 1) it has to be a labor of love, as opposed to having someone like Kurtzman who just wants to leave his own fingerprints all over it, and 2) the modern market will probably not make it financially successful. I think the people who say that TOS would never go over today are right, but that's what I'm geeked about seeing. Personally, I'd watch as much STC and STNV as could have been turned out (even though they had rebooted actors), whereas I doubt I'll bother to check out something like the Rick and Morty spoof.

 

[BillJ]

No.

 

[ChallengerHK]

No.

Succinct and to the point :-)

 

[MAGolding]

Back in the 1960s there was a story about the head of a corporation in the late 20th or early 21st century who discovered that his computer expert was using the mainframe to digitally animate a version of The Lord of the Rings. As I remember the setting of the story was about the time that the The Lord of the Rings movies were made with a lot of live action scenes and also a lot of computer graphics scenes.

No doubt what the OP describes could be done now or a few years in the future. But the big question he asked was should it be done.

 

[Galileo7]

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[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re-creating the original actors' likenesses and performances using CGI? No.

Doing a new series with Pike, Number One and Spock from DSC, using the Discoprise bridge? HELL YEAH!

 

[Qonundrum]

I think you're probably right about where things are going, but by my standards they won't be doing what I'd like to see at all. Lots has been said and written about the visuals, such as model design and set design, but that's only part of the equation. I want to see Shatner in his 30s and Nimoy in his 30s, and I want them to tell TOS stories, as opposed to just stories aet around TOS in the timeline. STC and STNV showed that those stories can be told, and successfully.The two concerns I have are 1) it has to be a labor of love, as opposed to having someone like Kurtzman who just wants to leave his own fingerprints all over it, and 2) the modern market will probably not make it financially successful. I think the people who say that TOS would never go over today are right, but that's what I'm geeked about seeing. Personally, I'd watch as much STC and STNV as could have been turned out (even though they had rebooted actors), whereas I doubt I'll bother to check out something like the Rick and Morty spoof.

I'd surmise that it is not impossible to have the TOS format appeal to a modern audience, if select changes were introduced that would otherwise not adversely affect the feel of the show. An easy example of this would be regarding TOS's use of casual sexism. Remove those particular instances from a script. Is the script still viable or does the script hinge on said instances being there? (Or made viable if some other comment was put in its place of the sexism, the only episode that might be so hinging might be 'Amok Time')?

And Kirk not being seen to chat up every woman in every episode doesn't hurt either. Like when he was asking Losira if there were men on her planet, there were only two possible reasons - I just settle with "Kirk was hoping there weren't any so he could try to teach her teh luuuuuuuurve."

 

[wayne66]

I would like to see something like that also. I would be satisfied if they took the audio from TAS and the computer games and made new animated episodes from them. They can be 30 minute or 60 minute episodes. Just please do it.

 

[Mysterion]

Nope.

 

[Delta Vega]

By using CGI to recreate the actors, absolutely not
To recast and take over the mantle AFTER a potential Pike series, absolutely yes for me.
There must be a better James T Kirk out there than Chris Fucking Pine.

 

[ChallengerHK]

By using CGI to recreate the actors, absolutely not
To recast and take over the mantle AFTER a potential Pike series, absolutely yes for me.

I hear what you're saying, and someone upstream said something pretty similar. I'm OK with a Pike series or a Kirk series, but, while I want the sets, and the uniforms, and the musical cues, and all of those little things, what I want is a type of storytelling that I think the modern audience would call obsolete. TOS stories are, largely, different from TNG+ stories, Kelvin stories, or Discovery stories. That was one of the things that made STC and STNV such a positive experience for me, and just having a new story, which would almost by definition be a Discovery-type story, wouldn't do the trick for me. I want to see Kirk being Kirk, not Kirk being who Kurtzman thinks Kirk should have been.

 

[Delta Vega]

I hear what you're saying, and someone upstream said something pretty similar. I'm OK with a Pike series or a Kirk series, but, while I want the sets, and the uniforms, and the musical cues, and all of those little things, what I want is a type of storytelling that I think the modern audience would call obsolete. TOS stories are, largely, different from TNG+ stories, Kelvin stories, or Discovery stories. That was one of the things that made STC and STNV such a positive experience for me, and just having a new story, which would almost by definition be a Discovery-type story, wouldn't do the trick for me. I want to see Kirk being Kirk, not Kirk being who Kurtzman thinks Kirk should have been.

Yeah, I won't argue with that
I want to see Kirk in full dropkick diplomacy mode

 

[MAGolding]

Back in the 1960s there was a story about the head of a corporation in the late 20th or early 21st century who discovered that his computer expert was using the mainframe to digitally animate a version of The Lord of the Rings. As I remember the setting of the story was about the time that the The Lord of the Rings movies were made with a lot of live action scenes and also a lot of computer graphics scenes.

No doubt what the OP describes could be done now or a few years in the future. But the big question he asked was should it be done.

And here is a link to a question and answer about "The Accomplice" by Vernor Vinge, the story I remembered. https://scifi.stackexchange.com/que...pert-digitally-animates-the-lord-of-the-rings

 

[Defiler-Of-Redshirts]

New TOS episodes have already been done in amazing, professional detail in YouTube's fan series "Star Trek Continues," using the original's set designs, uniforms, music, etc. The one difference is that it hired new, somewhat lookalike actors to play the original characters. The show's creator, Vic Mignongna, is a near clone of William Shatner (who blows Chris Pine's Kirk off the map), in appearance and mannerisms. For a self-financed fan-fic of Trek, Star Trek Continues looks and feels a lot more fancy and polished than you'd expect. With some ambitious sci-fi stories that build on some of the stories in the original. Like "Who's the Fairest One of All?" as a sequel to the Mirror, Mirror episode.

 

[ChallengerHK]

Myself and others have talked about STC and STNV upstream. I mostly agree with your assessment. The problem I see is that CBSmount won't let anyone do that any longer. In particular, a 15 minute module with no more than two modules linked together storywise just won't allow for any serious storytelling. Frankly, I'd love to see someone challenge that, but I think its iffy that anyone will, and even more iffy that they could win the case. So the conclusion I'm left with (please disagree if you think I'm wrong) is: creating new TOS has to be a labor of love>CBSmount has effectively precluded labors of love>CBSmount has the resources to create new TOS>CBSmount does not have the will/desire to create new TOS.