I have thoughts, but no time to post them. Maybe after the downtime for the site.

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Maybe we can chat on the phone tonight? I'd love to hear your take on all this.

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Sorry I didn't pick up the phone last night. I'd just gotten to bed when I heard it ring. I was too exhausted to go exploring for the phone. =(

I'll try and comment further today.

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Not a problem.

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I'll admit right up front that I'm not particularly enthused by the trailers I've seen. My concern is less about whether or not Abrams is true to the spirit of the Star Trek and avoiding a Star Wars motif, and more about my earlier stated fear of "Starfleet 90210." That said, here are some thoughts.

- The Viability of Future Utopia as a Setting:

Your prior post questioned whether it was unbelievable for people to set aside their differences and build a better tomorrow. I have trouble believing in such a future. As a Buddhist with Mahayana leanings, you would think I would. I mean, "working towards enlightenment for the benefit of humanity" seems to imply that. But I find there's a difference between what works as a good personal goal to strive towards, and what is realistically possible. My cynicism from working for government probably colors my viewpoint. Nothing gives you less faith in a system than being caught in one.

mainly because it implies that there is some sort of agreement on how to obtain that future. Call it my "Pizza Doctrine," which I've alluded to in my gaming posts: It is damn hard to get everyone to agree on what to put on a pizza. And if it's that hard to get people to agree on olives vs. no olives, how hard will it be to get them to agree on how to create a better tomorrow?

To use our own election as an example: People wanted change in this country and pushed out in record numbers to obtain that change. Sure, Obama had a landslide victory in terms of electoral votes, but in straight numbers he only had about 53%. There are still people crapping their pants because Obama won. Trust me, I get the conservative spam. The end times are upon us. You can read some yourself if you look for One News Now. I won't dignify them with a link. Hell, I game with a guy who has already started the conspiracy theories, and he *voted* for Obama. For him it really was the lesser of two evils.

Beyond just the diversity of humanity, I see two other factors really knee-capping utopia. One is just the fundamental greed and selfishness of humanity. I see self-interest undermining a lot of goals. I also see the generation gap playing a factor as well: The lessons of the previous generation are often lost on the next generation.

With the repeated proviso of "I stopped watching about the time DS9 got started," the criminal underground of Star Trek always seemed... silly. Tacked on at the edge and not really fitting. Part of it is probably born from TOS being birthed in the 60s and needing to deal with what the networks allowed. I mean, really: tribble smugglers and mail order brides? Even my faint memories of DS9 recall it being... silly. Quark and Odo sparring endlessly back and forth, hijinks ensue.

The other question to consider is whether utopia is marketable to modern audiences. Being able to identify with the characters and suspend disbelief is important for fiction. While we certainly aren't at "this is the 80s and everything is edgy," I think that audiences are still cynical and savvy. I don't think they will buy into a utopia nor will they be able to identify with people who live in such a world.

I have more on villains and JJ Abrams, but that will have to come later.

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I can see saying that I find it hard to imagine living in a utopian society, but I find it hard not to believe in the possibility. It may be that it is many years off, but I believe that just as an individual can become enlightened, so can a society. Sure, we are far removed from it now.

Re: Tribble Smugglers & Mail Order Brides - Yeah, it was silly, but it shows that what you have in the future is not completely enlightened. There are still people motivated completely by self-worth. In fact, the Ferengi in DS9 were used a lot as a parody of the consumer/greed society of the 20th century.

While the Quark/Odo hijinks were most often played tongue-in-cheek, many of the other darker aspects of the show were not. There were Bajoran survivors of Cardassian Deathcamps killing any "Spoonhead" because of the anger. There was the Orion Crime Syndicate, an organized crime group that O'Brien had to go undercover in who would kill anyone who got in there way (as well as the unsavory types that Quark often found himself dealing with). There were religious extremists.

I identify with the characters of the utopian future because they are often written just like people of today......who just happened to be motivated less my self-interest. I think you're right that a lot of folks may need the self-interest motivated character to relate.

As far as the society, sure it is a little hard to imagine yourself living in the utopian future, but isn't just as hard to imagine living in a world with moon-sized planet killers, magical space-knights with laser swords, constant war, etc.?

Interestingly, it occurs to me that I tend to really enjoy both ends of the sci-fi spectrum of Dystopia/Utopia. It seems to me that I like the extremes because I am most interested in reading about societies that are not the one I am living in. If I want to read or watch my own world, I'll watch the news. (For the same reason the thing I get into the most in Star Trek is learning about the alien cultures and am currently loving all the tidbits I am learning about the Denobulans as I watch Enterprise.)

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I guess I have problems with both ends of this equation. My perception (admittedly from a distance, I've never followed any of the Trek series closely) is that the Star Trek pattern is: Spend four or five seasons promoting an entire alien race as utterly Evil, until that gets boring, in which point we suddenly discover they were just Misunderstand after all. I don't really see that as moral nuance -- it just looks like a repeated pattern of mediocre storytelling to me. And yeah, in its desperate attempt to imitate B5, DS9 did a little better.

Whereas Star Wars is full of shining heroes like Obi-Wan. He does a crappy job of training his apprentice, and when that apprentice turns evil, Obi-Wan chops him to pieces and leaves him to die a slow horrible death rather than finishing him off cleanly. Then when his apprentice's son is old enough, Obi-Wan tells him a pack of lies about his dad to encourage the kid to do his dirty work for him. He finally settles into an afterlife of giving the kid really bad practical advice. "Let your friends die! Your dad cannot be redeemed!"

As for popcorn-munching action-fests, haven't the best Trek movies been exactly that? I mean, I like Star Trek I much better than most people seem to have, but I still like Wrath of Khan a hell of a lot more. Not really a lot of nuance there, either, just a really bad bad guy and great heroics stopping him.

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Actually, I can only think of two alien races that started out "evil." One was the Klingons, as I mentioned before. The other was the Borg. The Klingons were changed to the more honorable race with the TNG, which fits in with Roddenberry's vision better. The Borg were soulless machines in the TNG but in writing that I agree with you was poor in Voyager (a show which was filled with poor writing), they suddenly became "not so bad."

The others races have had characters that were evil and spent time as the "bad guys" but were never protrayed as entire race of evil people. Tomalok of the Romulans comes to mind. He was a recurring villain in The Next Generation. However, even in the early Romulan appearances of TNG, where the Romulans were used as the "bad guys," they also showed that they were not all bad.

An episode from TNG season 3 that I watched recently comes to mind in which the Romulans are the bad guys but during the episode, Worf refuses to allow Dr. Crusher to use his blood to help save the Romulans (since Romulans killed Worf's parents, he had issues about saving Romulans) and the Romulan dies, while on the planet Geordi and another Romulan work together to survive a storm and find a way to get a message to the Enterprise to help the Enterprise find them. (It is very Enemy Mine/Robinson Crusoe on Mars.)

The Cardassians are one of the main villains of the whole run of DS9, but the show also featured early episodes (first and second season) that showed that many of them were compassionate and honorable people. You learned early in the first season that the code of ethics for Cardassians teaches that loyalty to the state is the most noble virtue and is even more important than loyalty to family, etc. So, you know right away why a people that you are shown can be loving and compassionate people would be willing to go along with the evil actions of their government. There was even an ongoing character, Garak, who befriends Dr. Bashir and gives us constant insights into the Cardassian mind.

When I say that Star Trek turned all their bad guys good, I am in no way saying that these races started being protrayed as evil. Like I said before, one of my favorite things about the show has that they generally avoided stuff like that. What they did that changed all of the bad guys is changed the whole society to make them tough to use as the antagonists. Klingons? Allied with the Federation. Romulans? Allied with the Federation during the Dominion War and after the recent assassination of the Romulan Senate, not much of a threat. Also they have been showing that the Reunification movement on Romulus Borg? No longer much of a threat, but probably the last threat out there by the end of Deep Space Nine. The Cardassians? After their world was pretty much destroyed by the Dominion, they are now strong allies to the Federation. The Dominion? After Odo returned to the Founders and used the Federation-found cure for the disease killing them, they have changed their ways.

It so completely fits in to Roddenberry's mindset to have the Federation and the other empires work out their differences, but it doesn't leave them much big threats left to work with and I think they may have written themselves into a bit of a corner at this point. Every major group in the Alpha and Beta quadrant is getting along.

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Now, I wonder why you believe the good stuff of DS9 came out of copying B5? Other than the superficial similiarities which came out of a necessity to make a place where the universe comes to the heroes which reduces a special effects budget, (Both the creators of B5 and DS9 cited this as the reason for setting their shows on a space station), how was one a copy of the other? What reason would DS9 have had to copy a show that it was getting better ratings than? Why would there be a desperate attempt at anything when TNG was making money hand over fist? I would say that these days the Trek franchise has been seeing desperate attempts to revitalize the franchise but DS9 was launched at the height of TNG's popularity.

I wouldn't call Wrath of Khan an action movie at all. The TNG movies were more what I would call popcorn-movies, particularly First Contact. With Wrath of Khan, it was slower, more about characters, relationships, etc.. In the classic Star Trek mode, the day isn't saved by running around shooting guns or anything. It is saved by some good command decisions and quick thinking.

I think that is the thing. Star Trek doesn't work so well with the fast-paced storytelling methods used in a lot of successful sci-fi movies right now. That is why the TNG movies I think have failed more than not. They keep trying to be big shoot-em ups when that doesn't fit Trek. Seeing Data and Picard driving and shooting vehicles through the halls of a Romulan battlecruiser in Nemesis was ridiculous. Picard is not the action hero. He is the thinking hero and should be written as such....but these heroes don't work in today's fast-aced culture. Seeing Picard retire to his ready room with the crew and discuss possible plans of action is not the same as seeing some guy leap around like a frog with a laser-sword.

Please don't get me wrong. I don't say popcorn-movie as an insult to Star Wars. I like popcorn movies too. I still basically like the series, despite the prequels. I started playing Force Unleashed tonight and I'm loving it. KotOR was a blast. I like action movies. I am just a little saddened right now that this seems to be the direction Abrams will be taking the Star Trek series and, in fact, where the last several movies have already gone anyway and failed. Sure the original series had a good fist fight here and there but the weapon that always saved the day was the brain.

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Over in Voyager, they did the same to the Borg, for crying out loud!

And that definitely gave me a WTF moment.

As far as your apprehensions, it would be a jarring tone change, and a negative one, if Star Trek were to become more Star Wars. It does make for $$$...but Box office be d*mned.

As you have said in comments above, Brain wins over Brawn...even if the fans cheer sometimes when, say, Dr. Crusher kicks a bad guy in the chest.

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The best writing that I see in a series is the ability, that you mention in your post, Nuadha, to keep the tension going between the characters or groups when it's not clear who are the bad guys and who are the good guys. The tension creates the drama, not necessarily having clear cut villains and heroes. There is, I think, a section of the viewing public who want the good and bad guys to remain clear and in stark contrast to each other. But there is also a desire to explore the motivations of characters in more depth and introduce people to the gray, more complex world.

"Heroes" is currently trying it out with their new series exploring villains. They have written some of their "good guys" going bad and revealed depths to their "bad guys" that make them seem more heroic.

Another two series' exploring similar themes that I can think of off-hand -and due to my lack of good memory, I may be forgetting an obvious one - would be Supernatural and Fringe. Part of what I liked about the new James Bond film was a return to the picture of Bond as what many would describe as a villain, i.e. a cold-blooded killer/assasin in the name of his country. Is that good or bad? Do we need people who can be and do that? We see that question in Joss Whedon's Firefly - ruthless killers help forge a new and better civilization, but then do they have any place in that kind of Utopia?

As for Utopia, I definitely believe we can all create a better, more just and open society than we live in now. However, that requires a level of sacrifice and maturity that I don't know if "we" as a society or race currently possess...

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