Star Trek needs to go forward, not backward. I still don't understand why they haven't yet done Star Trek: The Third Generation. Go forward another 100 years, create a new crew for a new Enterprise, and you can do anything you like with the universe without having to pretend it fits into a 60-year-old timeline.
Great essay, Will. I don't know if it's Star Trek that's broken so much as sci-fi in general. I have this sense that the Cyberpunk authors books in the 1980s ("the Movement") was in a very real sense the 'end' of science fiction as a creative form, after which it degenerated into just another big bucket for genre fiction to churn.
It seems to me that philosophical problems in how we relate to the sciences have left science fiction rudderless, simultaneously 'tech fantasy' and 'social futurism', governed more by political and economic fantasies than by exploring questions about life, the universe, and everything.
Great science fiction - including Star Trek - was always philosophical, because it was about exploring 'the final frontiers' in more than one sense. This has started to come apart just as philosophy has come apart... maybe these are two aspects of the same problem.
Economic realities aside, since Hollywood is so different now, even bleeding money, but the political infusion is at a crazy tipping point, and not just with Trek or sci-fi. It permeates all of pop culture today. Such a tiresome, energy draining distraction...
I didn't mention how TNG era creatives such as Bryan Fuller or TOS film director Nicholas Meyer didn't 'meld' with Alex Kurtzman's vision or matching orders. It's an important reason why things have changed so dramatically or at least is a puzzle piece.
Star Trek needs to go forward, not backward. I still don't understand why they haven't yet done Star Trek: The Third Generation. Go forward another 100 years, create a new crew for a new Enterprise, and you can do anything you like with the universe without having to pretend it fits into a 60-year-old timeline.
Starfleet: Academy is coming - and I think will be about 3-400 years in future. So we'll see...
Great essay, Will. I don't know if it's Star Trek that's broken so much as sci-fi in general. I have this sense that the Cyberpunk authors books in the 1980s ("the Movement") was in a very real sense the 'end' of science fiction as a creative form, after which it degenerated into just another big bucket for genre fiction to churn.
It seems to me that philosophical problems in how we relate to the sciences have left science fiction rudderless, simultaneously 'tech fantasy' and 'social futurism', governed more by political and economic fantasies than by exploring questions about life, the universe, and everything.
Great science fiction - including Star Trek - was always philosophical, because it was about exploring 'the final frontiers' in more than one sense. This has started to come apart just as philosophy has come apart... maybe these are two aspects of the same problem.
All the best,
Chris.
Economic realities aside, since Hollywood is so different now, even bleeding money, but the political infusion is at a crazy tipping point, and not just with Trek or sci-fi. It permeates all of pop culture today. Such a tiresome, energy draining distraction...
I didn't mention how TNG era creatives such as Bryan Fuller or TOS film director Nicholas Meyer didn't 'meld' with Alex Kurtzman's vision or matching orders. It's an important reason why things have changed so dramatically or at least is a puzzle piece.
'Puzzle piece' is a good phrase here...