this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
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The strategy on the film side of things remains an incoherent mess, and I think we should all take this with a massive grain of salt as long as phrases like, "is in talks to," are being thrown around.
But sure, okay. At this point, I'll take any progress over no progress.
@ValueSubtracted I keep thinking about this and I'm not sure where I land. I feel like we're near "progress for progress' sake".
First we had movies that sequeled our TV shows. No one objected unless a given movie was bad.
Then post-Berman pre-streaming we did movies because no one had appetite to make new TV Trek. Fine.
Now in the streaming era of multiple series, what purpose do disconnected-from-TV cinematic movies serve? Do they need to exist besides 💰?
I don't know what the answer is.
Oh make no mistake, I'm on record as not really caring whether we ever see another theatrical Star Trek film. In my opinion, it's a TV franchise at its core, and it can stay there as far as I'm concerned.
But I'm pretty sick of the tedius "will they/won't they" shenanigans at Paramount.
@ValueSubtracted I think my ramblings up there are my process of arriving where you already are.
"Make Kelvin 4" is at least a plan, and there's an audience that would like more. Would I watch it, sure. Would I care if it never gets made...not really.
But when they start throwing these other movie ideas around, I don't see a purpose. And people will say what they will about Kurtzman's tenure as TV Trek overlord, but at least everything there had a purpose (whether one agrees with it or not).
Having TV and film Star Trek exist in separate timelines seems like a bad approach for getting people invested in the franchise as a whole. I wonder if that’s the reasoning for the early Federation time period. People who have only watched the Kelvin films can understand it as a prequel to those, but elements from it could just as easily spin-off into a streaming show without issue.
@usernamefactory @startrek I don't know if I agree with that premise. I've run into any number of people who became Trek fans in general by starting with Kelvin.
That said, I don't know that breaking the movies into *more* timelines is a great idea.
And I personally would be skeptical that anything from the proposed movies would ever turn into a TV series. They are really operating in separate spaces right now. And P+ is shedding series faster than they're adding them.
Now that I've thought about it some more, it's unlikely the movies would be making any decisions based off of what's best for the streaming shows. That would probably be seen as the tail wagging the dog.
That said, I've definitely encountered people who enjoyed the films but skipped the shows on account of not knowing where to start and finding the relationship too confusing. It would make sense to pair a successful "early days" movie with an "early days" spinoff series to lure some of that casual audience to streaming.
The specific point of divergence was shown in Star Trek 2009, otherwise it’s a real reboot and offside the television franchise.
I never pass up on an opportunity to share Simon Pegg's thoughts on the matter - he wrote one of the films, so I think his opinion should carry some weight:
Sure, we experience time as a contiguous series of cascading events but perception and reality aren’t always the same thing. Spock’s incursion from the Prime Universe created a multidimensional reality shift. The rift in space/time created an entirely new reality in all directions, top to bottom, from the Big Bang to the end of everything. As such this reality was, is and always will be subtly different from the Prime Universe. I don’t believe for one second that Gene Roddenberry wouldn’t have loved the idea of an alternate reality (Mirror, Mirror anyone?).
This means, and this is absolutely key, the Kelvin universe can evolve and change in ways that don’t necessarily have to follow the Prime Universe at any point in history, before or after the events of Star Trek ‘09, it can mutate and subvert, it is a playground for the new and the progressive and I know in my heart, that Gene Roddenberry would be proud of us for keeping his ideals alive. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations, this was his dream, that is our dream, it should be everybody’s.
Ok, I can buy that, but it means that it created a true parallel universe and not a branch in the Prime timeline.
This could be viewed as consistent with the Kelvin universe 24th century officer not being able to survive in the 32nd century Prime Universe.
Yeah, my simplified headcanon explanation is that the Kelvin universe was always there, and Spock and Nero happened to tunnel into it.
If you want to add the wrinkle that the red matter implosion somehow created it (which the original film seems to suggest)...well, it's more complicated, but it works, too.
@StillPaisleyCat I can't decide how to feel about it. I don't have much interest in a full-blown reboot. Nor am I much interested in seeing how this film might crap all over ENT. I guess we'll see. Or maybe we won't, considering Paramount's track record of late with getting Trek films off the ground. @startrek
"It is said to involve the creation of the Starfleet and humankind’s first contact with alien life."
If that's really what it is, for all I care just establish that Kelvin is an entire alternative universe and not an alternate timeline instead of annoying me by seeing how they frak around with the canon Star Trek: Enterprise already established.
Oh yes all that valuable canon of, "oh actually they met the Borg earlier and nobody recorded it. And "oh actually they met the ferengi earlier and nobody recorded it."