If copyright expires, there's no such thing as "snapping up the rights to it." The franchise would become public domain in the same way that, like, Robin Hood is public domain, or Jane Austin novels are public domain.
Well, yes, but if Star Trek as an I.P. became public domain, the new stories based on it would still be protected by copyright and owned by someone. Jane Austin's 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice is public domain, but the 1995 television miniseries based upon the novel is copyrighted to the BBC, and the 2005 film is, IIRC, copyrighted to Working Title Films. So, yes, there are three different "canons" at play here -- the Jane Austin canon, the BBC canon, and the Working Title Films.
Similarly, if Star Trek: The Original Series became public domain because copyright expired, and three different production companies made three different TV series based on TOS, then there would be four different canons -- the original canon (the only one that currently exists), and the canon of each new series.
That's a really good way to think about it all.
I mean, to be honest, I don't think the character of Khan, conceptually, really works in our modern era. He's Sikh and has a Sikh name, but he doesn't wear a turban or a beard and he's played by a Mexican actor of European descent, or by a white English guy? The character as depicted in TOS just reeks of white writers creating a generically brown enemy for the white hero to fight.
Which is why I don't think Cumberbatch's character in Star Trek Into Darkness should have been Khan.
Maybe in a world where we have actual racial equality, that would be fine. But we don't. We still live in a very white-dominated society, and as long as that is the case, it is both morally acceptable for white characters to be recast as POC and morally unacceptable for POC characters to be recast as white.
I don't know what corners of the Internet you hang out in, but I know of plenty of people who think that that was a fundamentally racist casting decision on the part of the TOS producers and who care if the Sikh community finds it offensive. It is, as I have outlined above, part of why I think the character of Khan fundamentally doesn't work in an era where we don't assume that "white" is the default setting for American and that the feelings of minority communities matter.
If they do bring Khan back again somehow, I think he should be played by a Sikh actor in a manner that is not offensive to the Sikh community -- preferably against a hero figure who is also a POC. It's the sort of thing that would have to be done very, very carefully. And even thing, I'm not convinced it would even be worth it. After all -- how can you do any better than the great Ricardo Montalbán?
1) Nothing about Cochrane in Star Trek: First Contact is "hippie"-like.
2) The reconceptualization of Cochrane in Star Trek: First Contact is a prime example of a good creative decision even if it is not in strict adherence to continuity. The version of Cochrane from First Contact is a better version from an artistic standpoint, because he is more complex, dynamic, deeper, and more fallible.
I am a viewer, and I can believe the noble man seen in the 1967 episode is the same person as the sambling, asshole-ish mess of far different motivations seen in the TNG movie. Why? Because the experience of travelling to space and encountering aliens fundamentally changed him. I love that! I find beauty and inspiration in the idea that the worst version of ourselves -- and we are all different versions of ourselves at different points of our lives with different people -- can change and become so much better if we expand our horizons and build relationships that are bigger than us as individuals. Which is what Cochrane did when he shook that Vulcan captain's hand.
No. They absolutely made the right decision with their depiction of Cochrane. It made the film better, and it makes "Metamorphosis" a better episode by adding a level of complexity to the Cochrane character that had not previously been part of the episode's text.
Such a weird line. Like, who looks at a group of people and feels the need to remark upon the fact that it's a multi-racial group like that's unusual?
First off, I think that they could have made Pike Asian if they had wanted to. He wasn't a truly iconic character before DIS S2 and SNW. The Bruce Greenwood version of Pike certainly rescued him from TOS guest star obscurity in the 2009 film, but he still wasn't as iconic a character as he became with DIS S2. Anson Mount has made Pike iconic. But if the DIS producers had wanted to, I think they could have made Pike Asian or otherwise reimagined him.
Making Uhura white or Spock blonde are fundamentally different things from making Kyle Asian, because these characters are absolutely iconic and have been for decades. In Uhura's case, her identity as a black woman is fundamental to the character, because she is there to represent people of African descent in the 23rd Century. Spock is also iconic as a direct result of Leonard Nimoy's performance -- and is arguably coded as Ashkenazi Jewish, I might add. So reconceptualizing either of these characters would be offensive, both because of their iconic status, and because their original actors' ethnic identities are baked into the characters. Reconceptualizing Uhura as non-black would be actively offensive because it would undermine black representation. Reconceptualizing Spock as blonde would almost literally be "Aryianizing" a character played by a Jewish actor only twenty years removed from the Holocaust.
That's a very, very different thing from reconceptualizing an obscure, two-dimensional cardboard cutout of a character that happened to be played by a white actor as a POC character. Kyle is not iconic. And, once again, reconceptualizing a white character as POC in a film or TV show produced by a white-dominated culture (like the Anglosphere) is almost always morally acceptable because doing so undermines the idea that "white" is the default setting of the human race.
Personally I don't like when they bring in an actor who doesn't have any resemblance at all to the old character, as if Pke should become Asian or African.
If they want an Asian or African main character, fine. Then invent a new one. But don't mess with the appearance of already established characters.
I must point out that it has nothing to do with racism. I would be furious if they brought in a white guy to play Sisko.
In this case I actually have to give the NuTrek movies some credit. They have actually tried to find actors with some resemblance to Shatner, Nimoty and the iconic TOS actors.
But this whole thing is also a reason why I hate remakes of good series or movies. better to come up with something new and fresh.
