A few months back this site (when we were called ‘The Trek XI Report’) and TrekWeb reported on some comments from Marina Sirtis (article here). The actress had some rather negative views of the executives at Paramount and J.J. Abrams plans for the franchise. The quotes were taken from publically available transcripts of an online chat she held with fans. Gustavo Leao of TrekWeb is now reporting that she has posted a new message to her fans voicing concerns about this:
I have always thought that the chats I have with my fans are private to us and I never imagined that anyone would then take any information I divulged and post it on another site. What I tell you guys is for us only. My feelings on certain topics such as Shatner were never intended to be made public. To be honest I feel utterly betrayed.
TrekMovie.com and TrekWeb were only reporting what was made public on her site. Sirtis has now closed off her forums to all but paying fan club members and apparently is considering throwing in the towel on the whole net thing. Sirits has warned her fans "I am now seriously cosidering closing the site as I don’t feel it is safe for me any more. I hate to do this just because of one irresponsible person but my lack of faith in the computer age has now been confirmed."
At the time of the report it was rather surprising that she would say such negative things about Paramount, her past (and potential future) employer. TrekMovie.com understands the concept of things being said off the record and on background (we always respect that when a source asks us to not report something). However, if something is on the Internet, then (by definition) it is public and fair game. TrekMovie.com has offered Ms. Sirtis (through her manager) the opportunity to go on the record to discuss her views of the Trek franchise and J.J. Abrams, we await a reply.
I’m sensing frustration in Marina’s voice. Perhaps she should see a counselor.
Sounds like she’s backpedaling… wanting to erase the negative that was said – maybe she’s worried now that Paramount is interested in Trek again, they won’t consider picking up her contract again unless she’s all happy go lucky about Trek?
lol welcome to the internet dumbbell, soon she’ll have anyone joining her site to sign a NDA…lol
The funny part is I bet she thought that her posting about her frustration over the posting was private and may post again complaining about the posting about the posting of her posting. :D
She has no beef here. There is nothing private about what she said.
When you publish something on the web that the public can see, you have to expect to be reported.
Frankly, I find her lack of care naive in the extreme in this media age.
As a chap called Julian commented on the story:
‘Nuts, egotistical, and no talent! ;)’
Much ado about very little.
In late 1986 Shatner, Doohan and other TOS actors said things ranging from resentful to downright churlish about Paramount’s plans to launch TNG. It was as revealing and entertaining a display of actor’s insecurity as you could get. Yet these folks are nonetheless treated as virtual gods by a large part of Trek fandom, and certainly not because of their extraordinary abilities.
Marina Sirtis should just relax about this little blip and let nostalgic recall do its thing as the years pass. There are a humongous number of TNG fans out there. ;)
It’s kind of sad, but as a public figure, these things happen. Even as a public employee, my name, some info, and my picture can be stolen off of my employers site and put on any other site without my knowledge. Unfortunately, it’s a fact of life in today’s computer/internet based society.
If she hates Shatner so much why doesnt she write a book about it (George, Jimmy and Nichelle did — their careers had to have SOME selling point after all).
(sigh)
I’ve met Marina in person three times over the years and she has always been nothing but charming and intelligent to myself and all the fans around me.
Wait a minute are you sure she wanted these latest comments published? Maybe she only wanted the 6 people you subscribe to her website to read them?
Quote from my maternal ancestor, “If it comes out of your mouth, YOU OWN IT!”
Sorry Sirtis, but if you could have convinced Brent Spiner and the other writers of Nemesis to make a not so “gun in your mouth” movie; you and TNG would probably be the stars of Trek XI. Keep blasting Trek Marina, JJ Abrams will beg you to come back.
Like GP said, go see a counselor.
To be honest, TNG should never have finished on TV. Sure, some of the actors would have wanted to move on after a few years, but new characters should have joined. David Gerrold’s original concept for the ensemble cast of TNG was that, like Hill Street Blues (then) and (later) ER, NYPD Blue etc characters could come and go.
Unfortunately, the cast stayed essentially the same for seven seasons then got shunted to the movie series, for which they were ill-suited.
Now I’m not a big TNG but I know that it did very well on television. The sort of show that TNG was, though, just doesn’t work in the cinema.
When has any ensemble cast series really successfully transferred to the cinema? Has there ever been Hill Street Blues: The Motion Picture? NYPD Blue II: The Wrath of Kelly? ER III: The Search for Ross? Serenity died a death in the cinema, although people enjoyed it on DVD.
End of the day, TNG was a very successful early 90s TV show that, with a more flexible cast, some believable design modifications to the ship and sets and some changes to the socio-political backdrop to the Federation, could have run for twice as long as it did.
Imagine all the events of DS9 taking place in a running TNG series as well! It’s not a bad thing that a TV show doesn’t work in the cinema, any more than some books don’t adapt well for the visual medium.
Sirtis clearly has issues with the way things went in the features, but she, like Brent Spiner, wasn’t particularly keen on TNG movies when TNG was still in regular TV production.
To be honest, it’s the lack of producer foresight that led to a saturation of spin-offs decreasing quality and led Trek to the mess it’s in today, where the only option is to hit the kill-switch and return to early Kirk, Spock and McCoy!
Sirtis is bitter, but so are many fans of many different versions of Trek!!
To comment on the article itself, and not the state of the franchise as a whole, I guess I feel kinda bad for her. She didn’t want those headlines, and there are certainly times when I think I’m talking to one private group and word gets out nonetheless. She doesn’t have any *legal* beef or anything here, but it she obviously thought that her fan group was something that it was not, and has the right to be hurt about it.
That said, if she didn’t intend for her words to get out, the fault is clearly her own. Anything private on the Internet really has to be password-protected to members only before you can truly consider it private, and, even then, you have to make it very clear to your members that what’s said behind those closed virtual doors is not to be repeated.
Rather than attacking the computer age as a whole and generally just spazzing a bit, she should take stock of what she can do better in terms of securing her website and move on, fan group and all.
My two cents. Not that she’ll actually read this or anything.
Hi James.
If you say something of interest to one of your friends at the pub about your boss, for example, and that friend’s dad is mates with said boss and hears about the conversation, there’s always the possibility that something will get back to your boss.
If you say something really quite controversial on your publicly-accessible website, do you really think people aren’t going to talk about it.
Funny how so many ex-Trek stars get pissed off as they get older!
You know, at least folks aren’t taking photos of her getting out of cars without underwear on. So on a “pseudo-celeb public humiliation scale” of one to ten, this one rates about a minus-point-five.
As far as I can tell, she was the one irresponsible person who caused this problem. This isn’t 1995 when the net was relatively fresh to the majority of the public. If Sirtis didn’t want those things available for the public, she should never have published them on her site. If that’s not careless, I don’t know what is…
who can blame her? aren’t we all a little pissed there’s not going to be any more TNG?
Hi Dom.
Yeah, you’re obviously right. Saying something is always risky, especially, as Adam points out, on the Net. But, to borrow your analogy, if that conversation DID get back to your boss, you’d be disappointed in your friend, wouldn’t you? Yes, you were stupid to say it in the first place, but, still, your friend showed that he didn’t deserve your trust.
Now, in this case, she was speaking in a crowded room to her group of friends and didn’t seem to realize that there were other people in the pub listening in. What she did was moronic, and blaming anyone but herself is unjustified. At the same time, having done similar stupid things, I feel a bit sorry for her.
This really isn’t an issue of the internet, anyway. It’s just a simple fact of free speech: It’s a double-edged sword. If you don’t choose your words carefully (or at least consider your audience), they can come back to haunt you. If you don’t like it that somebody found out something you said, you probably shouldn’t have said it in the first place (or else you should have been very careful of who was around to hear you).
I’ve seen Marina at innumerable cons and part of her routine is her honesty. She is a lovely and funny person. She often prefaces comments with how she’s gonna get in trouble with the next thing she’s about to say. The number of comments that get her in trouble is most of her act. I would add this article to that pile. She brings these things on herself and I would add that she does it on purpose, too. Grain of salt, people!!
First, serves her right. People should be well aware of the damage their words can cause before uttering them in public or in private. Marina is sleeping in the bed she made.
However, I personally loved TNG. In case anyone is doing box office comparisons, First Contact performed better than all but one of the TOS movies (inflation not withstanding, of course). To say they were ill suited to cinema is to demonstrate a severe lack of understanding of the talents involved.
TNG movies 9 and 10 were basically killed by the writers although Nemesis Director Stuart Baird made things worse in my opinion. It wasn’t on the page so it wasn’t on the stage.
Toothpaste back in the tube sorta thing, innit?
been there, done that Dr Dre.
best!!
=h=
Whaaaaaaaaa!!!!!! Soooooooooooooob!!!!!! baby want her bottle!!!!!
pubic and fair game
Remember that, folks!
If memory serves, Marina Sirtis has run into this before — her honesty is admirable, but it lacks tact and thus has handed her an embarrassment or two over the years. She would be better off to offer a ‘mea culpa’ than to lash out at the Internet age in a way that only makes her look frighteningly naive. Too bad, because she’s a good actress, and this will only hurt her more.
Once more into the breach, dear friends!
Words have consequences…
YOU GO GIRL!
Admiraldeem, it’s not ‘a severe lack of understanding of the talents involved’ as you so deliciously put it! Where’ve you been posting lately? The female section of the dog pound during an aniseed delivery?
It’s that, in an ensemble piece like TNG, everyone in the cast has an extremely substantial role to play across a number of episodes and you grow with the characters. One week, one character can be emphasised and another they don’t necessarily even need to appear. A one-off film featuring everyone every few years allows you a brief snapshot, resulting in many characters not receiving the screen time they need to serve any purpose.
Let’s face it, was there ever really going to be a Trek movie going heavily into the life of Deanna Troi or Beverley Crusher (whatever happened to her in the TNG movies!) or Geordi LaForge? Answer . . . no!
Inevitably they would be reduced to ciphers. Data, in Generations, does Jerry Lewis, because it’s Kirk’s and Picard’s film. Troi in First Contact does the drunk act because it’s Picard’s, Lily’s, Zephram’s and Data’s film. LaForge in Insurrection gets to stare misty-eyed into the distance and Worf gets comedy zits because it’s Picard’s and Data’s film. And as for Nemesis where theres a tit-for-tat Jean-Luc gets a double, which means Data has to get one too . . .
If TNG had continued on TV, but a portion of the characters had moved off into the features, things might have been different. But could an ensemble TV show with a large cast that emphasised talk over action comfortably slot into a 90-minute to two-hour movie without losing too much?
Not really and it was a shame they had to try. Imagine how interesting a TNG series set during the likes of the Dominion War could have been.
Ultimately, I think Marina Sirtis has been caught in the written equivalent of a paparazzi panty-flash. She was careless, but to be honest, I doubt she’s looking for work from Rick Berman right now and the leaderships of studios are so fluid that pretty quickly anyone she’s ‘offended’ will have moved elsewhere. If any TNG characters get used again, it’ll be under a new production team who might even agree with her, anyway!!
Now, kids, let’s be absolutely accurate.
“Words have consequences” only for those who identify themselves publicly by their real name.
On the Internet, however, most folks adopt handles and buy into the semi-illusion of anonymity so that they can say whatever they damned well please about whomever they damned well please in whatever manner and language amuses them without having to live with the consequences of their words.
Obviously, that would include some of the less charitable folks posting in regard to Marina.
DB:
It’s her own words from her website. I doubt she is under any illusion of anonymity on the internet. None of us are, including here.
She has talked bad about Nemesis and of Trek XI in public. Freedom of expression has consequences also, which we all practice here.
Once again; words have consequences. Including here.
A valid argument.
#28 Dom: You’re right that the Picard-Data monopoly became *very* tiresome after a while. One of my favorite non-Abrams ideas for XI (let’s face it: we ALL have our pet ideas) is a Geordi-centric TNG movie. My premise involved the return of the Hera in a very action-oriented way, but, seriously, anything would have worked, as long as it got Picard and Data from hogging the spotlight of every single movie.
Maybe they should make a string of TNG TV movies.TNG actors and fans seem to want more but frankly there’s NO theatrical audience.
re: ” 17. deevolution – January 2, 2007
who can blame her? aren’t we all a little pissed there’s not going to be any more TNG?”
I’M not pissed.
#30: “Freedom of expression has consequences also, which we all practice here.
Once again; words have consequences. Including here.”
Yeah. You couldn’t get the real identities of some of the folks here – or at TrekBBS or TrekWeb or a million other places – without a court order. They like calling names and belittling people from the shadows…without consequence.
She may be a bit naive, but there’s no reason to bash on her. She’s at least someone who takes the time to talk to fans and share her thoughts, just maybe a little too freely.
DB:
I read my identity in my browser on this site. However, maybe you cannot.
My blog is http://www.maximumthinktank.blogspot.com. My email is sailor_dude1959@yahoo.com. I never hide. No need to.
I used this information to register to post here.
I was born in 1959 and have been a Trek fan since the first broadcast. I was 7 years old.
Any other info you require?
Let me get this straight: Marina Sirtis is upset because comments she posted on her website (marinasirtis.tv) were repeated elsewhere?
???
Marina is no dummy. Didn’t it occur to her that public comments in a public forum on her *own* public website are… er, **public**?!
DB:
By the way, my name is Max Creel, which is posted on my blog. No anonymity on my part.
Max Creel
‘I have always thought that the chats I have with my fans are private to us and I never imagined that anyone would then take any information I divulged and post it on another site.’
I guess they never got around to wiring your cave with an Internet hookup, did they, Toots? If it was two days ago, that would be the hands-down winner for the most absurdly naive statement of 2006.
what did she say about shatner
Have U ever been fishing?
My Daddy always said,,, ” the Big Fish Only Gets Caught, When She opens Her Mouth”
I’ll soon be 50,,, have been a Huge fan fan since 1967, this is the first time I actually thought, hmmm how does it go,
Spocks Brain,,, or should it be where is Marina Sirtis Brain/// LOL
ok guys, give her a break,, she’s only a girl…
just kidding Marina, keep your head up, and your personal notes to your self and I’ll still be one of your biggest fans…
Have U ever been fishing?
My Daddy always said,,, ” the Big Fish Only Gets Caught, When She opens Her Mouth”
I’ll soon be 50,,, have been a Huge fan fan since 1967, this is the first time I actually thought, hmmm how does it go,
Spocks Brain,,, or should it be where is Marina Sirtis Brain/// LOL
ok guys, give her a break,, she’s only a girl…
just kidding Marina, keep your head up, and your personal notes to your self and I’ll still be one of your biggest fans…
Really Maria, keep your head up,,, and keep on doing a great job,,, don’t let them get you down,,,
is there an echo in here?;)
Open Mouth: Insert Foot.
Hoo- ha!
*rolls eyes*
Greetings one and all,
I understand her frustration, but a movie about the Titan, hmm… It seems to me ever since the end of STNG she has been trying to get back into some role in Star Trek. I do not blame her; she problem needs the work, who doesn’t in show business. Lets keep our eye on the ball. J. J. Abrams wants to make HIS movie not someone else’s, but he should keep in mind, that we the fan will be paying for his labor. Is there a site that J.J. Abrams has open to ask us the fans? NO! He is making the movie, I sound like I am in conflict with myself. I am I want to see what he is going to do for Star Trek, but I want all of us fans to be heard by him & Paramont. To give us a voice on what we want to see. No matter what happens not everyone will be happy. Someone will always feel left out, ignored, whether it is a fan or an actor. Maria get a grip get a job, and most of all have fun, and reopen your forum.
Nuff stuff said.
#28 Dom
Just for the record, personal attacks are very Star Wars not Star Trek. Please keep your comments to the subject matter at hand rather than disparaging me personally.
And I noticed in your lengthy dissertation you did not make a single comment to disprove or even challenge the bulk of what I had to say.
Point made.
Damn, and here I hoped to see a photo of her bouncing up and down on a couch.
Her reaction and comments are as much a non-event as Nemesis. She’ll get over it.
I figured it would become a contest to see who could piss on her and TNG the most.
She’s unhappy…. so what?
She make a mistake?… probably
Words have consequences…. for the 15th time… yes they do.
As DB said in #6…”Much ado about very little.”
Even if she responds to trekmovie’s offer to respond… she shouldn’t and if she does it’ll just be another chance for the haters to do their thing again.
O
Another opportunity for the TOS-only closed-minders to trash TNG.
I really blame her for all the crap… but not for the reasons you think.
I believe she knows dam well how her Forum works and purposely said those things knowing it would be passed around. Any attention, good or bad, that an actor or public figure can get helps their name-awareness and helps get them hired. She likely knows her Trek persona has logged her last warp-hour and is seeking other projects.
Look at Britney Spears…. remember ALL the things that have happened since her separation? It’s gotten her mucho attention. Sirtis isn’t Spears, but the same works for all. They all need and crave attention. I know a few like that myself.