It amused me to stumble over a small nest of pieces wondering whether it's possible to resurrect the Star Trek franchise as a new TV series. It seems the whole megilla was kicked off by a pair of essays by Graeme McMillan, "Why Isn't There a New Star Trek TV Show Already?" and "Why Star Trek Might Not Work For Today's TV Execs". Susana Polo followed up with "Is Star Trek Unpalatable to the Television Industry's Modern Tastes?". Alyssa Rosenberg cited both Polo's and McMillan's pieces in her own "Would Star Trek Work On Television Today?", while Erik Kain built on Rosenberg's proposal in his "Making Star Trek for This Generation" and Alex Knapp "snarked at both of them" (Rosenberg and Kain) and came up with a proposal for three interlocking series in his blog entry "How to Reboot Star Trek for Modern TV". My goodness.
All of these writers seem to agree that nothing like Trek exists on TV today and wonder if the reason is, TV execs have decided the audience doesn't care for utopian futures. They also wonder if perhaps the broad tonal palette of all the series is perceived to be off-putting: that is, they wonder if modern TV series are expected to be all action, or all comic, or all dramatic, or ... well, you get the idea. And finally, they wonder if TV execs believe science fiction on TV only works if it has long story arcs, as the remake of Battlestar Galactica did.
These folks start with the premise that Trek as a whole, or if pressed one particular Trek series (though they can't agree which), has been good television. So good, in fact, that TV simply can't figure out how to market it.
I'm sorry: I have to laugh.
I've admitted liking the original Star Trek -- to being mildly obsessed by it at one time, in fact.
That doesn't mean I think Trek in any of its incarnations, and I've seen them all, was very good as a TV show. Quite the contrary. The writing and acting for the most part were substandard. Actually, that's being kind: the writing and the acting for the most part were wretched. Any time a Trek series wandered into the areas of character development or emotional conflict, the writing sank into the morass of melodrama and the acting followed. Patrick Stewart and John Billingsley are the lone franchise regulars to have escaped with their dignity intact (and Stewart had more than his share of close calls).
I've never spent time with hardcore Trekkers, as they prefer to be called, but I will guess that their affection for all the series stems from the fundamental hopefulness of Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future, rather than from the episodes being great TV. I, too, have an affection for a hopeful, rather than a dystopian, future. The thing is, the Trek franchises only gave us adolescent portrayals of such a future. These days, even portrayals of adolescents are more emotionally complex and real than most Trek scripts.
My guess is that McMillan's first piece nailed the reasons no new Trek series are in the works: a concern that a series would weaken the newly-strong movie franchise, and uncertainty over who has the right to make a series at all (it's more complicated than you think; read McMillan's piece for details). That is, the reasons probably have little to do with the franchise being wrong in some way for contemporary TV audiences.
But whatever the reason(s) for the dearth of Trek, as far as I'm concerned, this Trek-less period is a good time for somebody else's vision to take hold.
Babylon 5 showed us an alternate and just as hopeful future back in the 1990s, but while J. M. Straczynski's series was exquisitely well-plotted, dialogue and acting were usually abysmal (always excepting Peter Jurasik's and Andreas Katsulas' superb performances). The Battlestar Galactica remake showed everyone how to make a space opera for the modern age, with engrossing writing and compelling acting, but it was a tad grimmer than most Trek fans would probably like.
Can't somebody produce a deep-space series that shows us a hopeful future while being written for adult sensibilities?
It's long past time that the Trek franchises' stranglehold on the public imagination was broken. Make a smart TV show I won't cringe to share with my friends. Show me a future I can actually believe in.
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