Sci-fi rant part 1: star trek

Sci-fi has always been a prefered genera for me, Star Trek and Star Wars where always personal favorites of mine. I loved sitting down with my dad every week and watching the latest episode of Star Trek: Voyager and was stoked when I got my Star Wars VHS box set.

Theres this weird phenomanon in the genera of Sci-fi which I don't see in other types of television, and thats the reserection of a series. There are three distinct staples of Sci-fi that have all come back from the dead so to speak.

1) Star Trek. The origonal star trek only had like 3 seasons in it. The movie didn't come out until 10 years later. Officially, it should of been a flop, however almost 20 years after the origonal show, it gets completely re-invented with a new cast and new concepts. It completely redefined the sci-fi genera, for the second time in a row really.

Star Trek the origonal series was great in its own right for changing what people think about when they think Sci-fi. Up until this point most of Science fiction had been what you think of when you think of classic pulp sci-fi



the space cowboy with his trusty ray gun going around in his rocket ship. Vary Flash Gordon.

Then Star trek, 20 years later gets a spin of, but heres the kicker, its not really a spin off, as there are few elements from the origonal show still present in The Next Generation. I mean obviously there are the same races and concepts of phasers, warp travel and so on and so on but the look and feel of everything else has completely changed. Honestly its Star Trek The Next Generation which has all the spin offs (deep space nine, voyager and arguably Enterprise)

Its sad to see where the franchise is heading, because each new show has been progressivly worse, starting with DS9. Deep Space 9 was wrong from the git-go as it took place in a space station that didn't go anywhere. If a show is about exploration, why the hell are you sitting in the same place? They even had a freakin' worm hole that took them to a never before explored part of space, but didn't do that much with it. It also had magic.

Voyager had possibly the coolest concepts since the conception of Star Trek itself. Take an ordinary ship, stand it on the other side of the galaxy to a place where NOONE from earth has EVER been to before. Introduce a typical Star Trek crew, and then kill half of them off in the first episode. Lets replace them with a band of mercs who this crew was in persuit of to start with. The chief of medicine is a computer program, the 1st officer is the leader of the rebels, hey, lets throw in some weird aliens you've never seen before. Then they take a Borg drone, possibly the scariest thing they could take, liberate it and make it a crew memeber. Holy crap thats just damn good television.

What Voyager did wrong though, was just be lazy in their writing. Lots of the episodes all deal with the same thing and fallow a vary similar structure and sometimes just strait up contradict themselves. A prime example would be when they experiment with going faster then warp 10.

For those who are not familure with the concepts, Warp is the speed of light, warp 2 is 2x the speed of light, all the way to warp 10 and anything beyond that point is considerd "trans warp." OOOOoooOOOooo fun.

so they take a small shuttle craft, make it trans warp capable and test it. It works pretty well, but with one tiny problem. The pilot evolves millions of years over the course of 48 hours, kidnapps the captin and evolves her as well, has babies with her, they find them and the doctor reverses the process. The highly evolved (btw, we turn into slugs in 1000000000000 years) children in a hole on a planet and never talk about it again.

Enterprise was the next installment in the Star Trek series, which actually took place before the origonal show in terms of continuity. This was just too stupid to comprihend in my book, and the whenever I even tried to watch the show I would fall asleep. I was also supposed to belive that this set, full of flat pannel screens and tech that we have today which is more advanced then some of the stuff that was on the origonal show was somehow set 150 years in the future.

None the less, sci-fi has still shown considerable influence from Star Trek in any of its conceptions. Take Firefly for example, a great show on its own right (even if it did die too soon) and there are definetly influences from Star Trek in it. The casting is similar to that of a Trek show, fom the basics of a Captin, first officer and specific specialists, to even the moral/guidence officer and the true alien trying to discover what it is to be human.

I think that if Star Trek where to continue and a new series where to come about, I would love to see it move away from The Federation (the big allience of planets that all ships on Star Trek come from) and move on to an approach like Firefly. A ship that is not controlled by The Federation but and but still subject to their laws and regulations, making a living for themselves out in the edge of the universe. Bring it back to its origins in the since of true explorers dealing with problems out in space, but move it forward still by doing something completely different.