Brent Spiner: Star Trek's Failure Is Fans' Fault

[Jem'hadar]

Brent Spiner: Star Trek's Failure Is Fans' Fault
Actor who played Data speaks out over 'Nemesis' failure
http://www.syfyportal.com/news423165.html

[First of Two]

Brent Spiner: Star Trek's Failure Is Fans' Fault
Actor who played Data speaks out over 'Nemesis' failure
http://www.syfyportal.com/news423165.html

Interesting way that Spiner's quotes are spun there.

I don't happen to agree with the implied interpretation of what he said, even though I do believe that some fans have contributed to the decline of Star Trek in the recent past.

[JALU3]

Our community, the trek community as a whole that is, has become very split regarding certain key parts of the genra . . . and I think one can trace it to the late period of DS9, to the beginning of ENT. We have started seeing our difference more then what we have in common. So we sit in our own little camps and talk amoungst ourselves rather then coming to a middle ground and creating a rebirth to a genra that has a lot of potential still left in it.

[Tricky]

I've said the same thing many times; mostly when discussing either new movies or relaunching trek: Any revamp of the Trek francise will have to appeal to more than a 'nitche fan base', it will need to be accepted by the larger mass audience.

Not to sound politcal, but what's happened to Trek fans is a microcosim of what has happened to the American political scene: groups on the fringes of the debate controlling the debate, while the larger middle group does nothing.

[tonyg]

I've said the same thing many times; mostly when discussing either new movies or relaunching trek: Any revamp of the Trek francise will have to appeal to more than a 'nitche fan base', it will need to be accepted by the larger mass audience.

Not to sound politcal, but what's happened to Trek fans is a microcosim of what has happened to the American political scene: groups on the fringes of the debate controlling the debate, while the larger middle group does nothing.

That is probably because there are fewer people in the middle who have strong feelings and opinions about things. It is rather difficult to for people to "strongly agree" with one another. Without the conflict, things fall apart. It is human nature.

[Tricky]

Case in point about Trek and it's marketability:

I was rereading First Frontier (TOS crew vs Dinos) at work, and one guy always would just look at me reading it and say "Star Trek sucks!", so one day we started talking about it. He said he hated almost all of it because it never made much sense to him.

The only Trek he liked was "the movie were there were cyborg zombies and they took over the ship." He liked it because "it didn't really seem like a trek movie, more like a sci-fi horror movie: it didnt have all the 'star trek bull@#it' he had seen on the shows".

I told him I always recommended First Contact as a "Gateway Trek", because it's lite on the "Trekie-ness" and high on action.

Take from this little exchange what you will.

[tonyg]

That is a point that I've heard before. THere are a lot of people who are turned off by Trek utopian vision of the future. A lot of people think it is too big a pill to swallow. I've even heard similar arguments from the more militaristic Trek fans. Most other SF shows have humans acting about the same as we do now. I've even had a few players who didn't want to play Trek basically becuase they didn't want to be so goodie-goodie.

The big battles, special effects and all that become their own draw. A lot of people will see a movie just to see the cool CGI explosions. So throwing space fights and CGI is good for marketability. The folks that go into a theater to see the coll effects are usually not the ones who are or will become fans.

I think that might be one of the main reasons why Trek is doing so bad now. Without CGI, the episodes had to focus on sotry and character, they had no choice. With CG, it is possible to to think of the CG effects as the story. The series, at least TOS and TNG, probably only had a ship battle once in awhle. Since CGI the number of battle shoots up in each successive series. The films have battles in something like 90% of them.

[First of Two]

People who only like dark, grim, dystopian views of the future have serious psychological issues.

[C5]

People who only like dark, grim, dystopian views of the future have serious psychological issues.

You'll get no argument from me here, but then the success of series based on such premises raises some interesting (or disquieting ?) questions.
Sure, I find it quite unlikely that Trek future could happen in 4 centures (more like 4 millenia), but what is the point of dreaming if it has to be realistic ?

I personally think that part of recent Trek's failure was its inability to adapt. The TV series now don't obey the same rules as in the 60s or 80s, and they have to be more complex than "episode of the day, reset button, new episode, and so on", which was what Trek mostly did during its course.
Add that to the fact that the casual viewer will tend to dismiss Trek as "the nerdy show" and that fans themselves seem more eager to nitpick a show than trying to find its good points, and I think we have some good reasons for what happened to Trek in the last years.

[JALU3]

I think something that can draw people, is to show how mankind evolves from the greedy self interested bastards that we know we are, to being more social peaceloving, thinking, concious, and noble beings that in Star Trek most of them are portraid to be.

But I have to agree one of the greatest things about certain chracters are not all their stunning positive attributes, but their flaws, and how the coup with them.

What makes O'Brian a great character, is not that he is one of the few Non-Coms, focused in a series, but to see how human he is, how his flaws effect him, and how he manages them while attempting to be an upright and honorable person.

[Tobian]

Well as i say to my players: you have flaws to overcome them: They are an explanation of why you act/thing/do a certain thing, but are not a licence to do them, and get away with it!

It's like I always say... People seem to have no problem believing that we can bend the laws of physics, disassemble and reassemble matter, travel faster than the speed of light and do things that are scientifically impossible, but they can't believe humanity can change and we can live in a society that doesn't revolve around material possessions and wealth.

This is much the same reason I have a problem with my players in the game: They don't want to be 'goody two shoes' either, but therein lies the rub. Without the ethics and morals of Startrek era people the universe would rapidly devolve, and implode. Given a big enough sandbox, my players would probably ACTUALLY implode the universe Coming from systems like D&D and the like, suddenly having a weapon which can disintegrate someone with a single shot, but without having earned it, creates a huge problem, because they don't understand they aren't supposed to use it by default - there are no monsters in Startrek, save the flaws of sentient beings, which have to be overcome. For a roleplaying game to really work means people need to understand they can't just kill someone because it's really easy!

The same is true of the Franchise: When you have weapons of such awesome destructive power, you shouldn't use them because it is easy to kill someone with them: It's like a metaphor on the cold war... Everyone has Nukes, which is why we dont use them! Triggering a fanboy wet-dream total war with everyone and everything would rapidly result in 'Game over' in the universe *sigh*

[Tricky]

A side result of this 'goody-goody' stigma has been an attempt to 'grim and gritty' up Trek. And I don't mean just DS9; I'm talking about Section 31, secret SF plots and conspiracies and trying to find ways to darken (or in the case of female characters, sexy) up every character or situation. I don't think that Section 31 would have been in Gene's Federation Charter.

Ironicly, while i have no trouble playing SF personel, I have all kinds of trouble playing Jedi in Star wars: It seems that inorder to be an agent of 'the living force', you have to turn your back on friends, loyalty to your ethinc background, and not form attachment to anything EXCEPT the Jedi order.

If I wanted to play a monk, I'd be a half elf monk in D&D, thank you very much!

but in all seriousness, I don't mind the occasional 'corruption' story line: I like it when the heroes have to say things like 'Sure, we could violate our treaty with the Tholians and still protect the FED, but that's not the FED I'd want to protect!' And O'brian is one of my favorite characters BECAUSE he is so much more like me than, say Picard or Spock. He has all kinds of issues (he hates Cardys at first, but begins to get over it, family life, worries about his friends) that he struggles with, but he still does the heroic thing when he needs too.

[JALU3]

I think what non fans see in Star Trek is only the cover . . . the goody goody image of Starfleet. And sometimes it's a bit over done, like a good piece of beef, which sometimes is better off not "well done" (I prefer Medium myself). However, what makes Star Trek different, is the fact that even with all these powers and capabilities, in the end the protagonist are ethical and driven by noble values.

And that's what I liked about Deep Space Nine, although some here would disagree with me, it was all driven by good . . . and that's why the saying goes, "the road to hell, is a path filled with good intentions." It's where they decide to cross the line, and where they take the higher road . . . it's how they come to these decisions, and how they act upon those noble values that is what makes the stories worth telling.

There is nothing wrong with a little reality based grittiness, just as long as the noble values and ethical decisions, are placed in a context showing how it is possible to overcome the darker parts of our human nature.

One of the most interesting things though, that this brings to mind, is in a local galaxy area where there are many a species and alliances that do not hold to more noble ideals . . . with just as much capability, sometimes more . . . how do they manage these other species and alliances, while still maintaining their external security, and their internal values? There is nothing wrong with examining these questions.

[First of Two]

When I started playing FASA Trek way back before the turn of the century (that's something my 6th-grade science teacher used to say as a joke, but many of us can say it for real!), I tried to help get a couple of players unfamiliar with Trek, but familiar with comic books, used to the character concept by saying "You're super-heroes. With little in the way of powers, just gadgets. You're like Batman, but with less serious psychological issues."

Of course, then came Frank Miller and Alan Moore and blew that all to hell... Frickin' "Watchmen..."

It's okay to have the grim and gritty and conspiratorial in Star Trek... "as long as you point out that they were wrong." -- (Monty Python reference)

[Spectre]

I didn't start watching Trek until I was about 20. Before that, I thought it was too utopic, unrealistic, and I wasn't into Sci-fi. That and my dad was an Air Force captain and we had the last name of Pickart (very similiarly pronouned) and I got a lot of teasing about it as a kid- just didn't want to hear anything more about it. But then I started watching and saw the underlying plots and such, became more interested in sci-fi as a whole, and became a fan.

Back to the original subject, I don't think the failure of Nemesis was the fan's fault. I think going way off the wall and doing the clone thing was part of it, having to have the opponent's ship just so incredibly bad ass in everyway the fans think "yeah, right" was a negative, and having opening weekend when it did didn't help at all.