In what may be the last of the reports coming out of the Fox’s TCA Fringe event last week, IGN has a summary of JJ Abrams comments about Star Trek. Much of it has been reported here before, but they provide it in better Q&A format to get more context. There is also a little bit more from Star Trek’s new director on what is his biggest challenge with the new film.
Excerpt from IGN:
Q: What was the biggest challenge of taking [the Star Trek] franchise on?
Abrams: I think the biggest challenge was trying to make it relevant to now. Like to do it despite it being Star Trek. I don’t think it’s enough to say, "Oh, it’s Star Trek, let’s just…." I think it’s a question of: How do you make it something that would be what it wants to be, even if it hadn’t been a series before.
Q: How do you?
Abrams: Well, you invest completely in the characters. And you tell a story that is good, regardless of the setting, in a weird way. And I think that what we found — with Alex [Kurtzman] and Bob [Orci]’s script and with the cast, who are so good — is you love these people and so you go with them anywhere.
For more from Abrams check out IGN
Sounds great.
goof stuff, ,but how about some full shots of the enterprise
I have complete faith in JJ, there are only a few directors I would say that for.
I agree completely with Abrams. The 24th century Treks and the TV prequel show didn’t feel connected to today. They were off in their fantasy la-la land – a separate ‘Trek Universe!’
A lot of the blame for this lies at Roddenberry’s feet and is an Achilles Heel that has existed since the start of TNG. Rodders created a society so different from our own, because he wasn’t interested in the present day anymore. TOS was an attempt at showing where humans could go in the future. TNG was a show telling people where Roddenberry believed humans ***should*** go! Big difference!
With his intent to invest us in the characters and their foibles, making them believable people who could be our great-great-something-grandchildren, Abrams seems to show a touch of the likes of Gene Coon about him!
Hopefully there might be a reference or just a wink to Enterprise. Just to show this film is keeping with the canon.
Again, tired of Abrams telling us how wonderful he thinks it’s going to be. Post a pic or something already. We got a full Watchmen trailer and that gets released only 2 months earlier.
My confidence in this man has grown by leaps and bounds over the course of the past several weeks. He really does seem to be shooting for a faithful, original series Trek – but the man ain’t stupid – he knows he has to alter a lot of things to make it appealing to people in the year 2009.
Think about it: look over to the ad for the TOS replica communicator and tell me with a straight face that thing would look futuristic today next to an iPhone.
Me, I’m hoping they do a flip-out hologram-generating communicator or something.
I DO have to admit though, I hope he goes with the same sound effect when the communicator activates.
#4
“TOS was an attempt at showing where humans could go in the future. TNG was a show telling people where Roddenberry believed humans ***should*** go! Big difference!”
EXACTLY – EXCELLENT POINT!
#4
You’re right on the money there. Though I don’t have many complaints about the 24th century Trek. Still love all three of those series.
#5
I agree totally. Just a “wink” to Archer or NX 01 is all I ask.
“I think the biggest challenge was trying to make it relevant to now.”
Relevant, how?
“Like to do it despite it being Star Trek.”
Say, what?
6. Green-Blooded-Bastard – July 22, 2008
“Again, tired of Abrams telling us how wonderful he thinks it’s going to be. Post a pic or something already. ”
Then don’t read it. What do you really think he’s going to say? I don’t think he’s lying…they worked hard on this and I think equally hard on “getting it right.”
Human nature in the original series was just about what we see today. In the spin-off series, that nature was seen to have “evolved” into something noble compared to who we are today.
I don’t believe that human nature will change in the next few hundred years. It hasn’t changed in 6000 years of recorded history and it isn’t likely to happen in the future.
Thus, the original series had conflict and characters who the viewer could identify, thus, stories which hold-up 42 years after they were produced.
Perhaps we’ll see something of this in the new film.
I also agree that the series since TOS were quite disconnected. It goes back to Ron Moore’s thoughts on too much canon. What should happen is this: Ignore Enterprise, and follow only canon as it was in TOS. That would provide a fresh perspective and still keep the original series relevant.
Trek’s biggest problem is that it was so inaccessible. The reboot appeals to me more and more and I think it’s where JJ may be headed.
Thoughts about human nature and desires to see pictures of the Enterprise aside, I think we need to look at a bigger question:
Has anyone else noticed that if JJ were bald, he would look almost exactly like Moby?
12. Thomas Jensen
Sorry, I don’t see TNG human society as ‘noble.’ ‘Scary and repressive’ would be closer to the mark!
I think the thing with TNG and its follow-ups is that Roddenberry didn’t want to make another Star Trek show. He spent years trying to get something else made and couldn’t. His politics and personal obsessions changed down the years and this meant that he couldn’t relate to the sci-fi show he created.
We all know that TMP, whatever its merits and demerits, had little to do with the Star Trek TV show. What little is known of Roddenberry’s Phase II shows that, without Spock appearing and with Kirk set to be sidelined or killed off early on, the show would probably have tanked in its first season and be regarded by fans as an embarrassment best ignored.
When Roddenberry created TNG, he created a philosophically different show that had nothing to do with what Star Trek was about and dressed it in Star Trek clothing. Take away the window-dressing of the Starfleet command structure, the ship designs and terminology and you’re left with a show that is, at its heart completely unrelated to Star Trek.
After years of being seen as a failed has-been and in declining health, the Star Trek films taken away from him because he didn’t understand it as well as other people, he pulled the most massive con trick and cheated the audience out of a proper new Star Trek series by giving them something completely different under the Star Trek name.
Indeed, that’s why every meeting between the major castmembers of TOS and TNG were horribly awkward and embarrassing. It was like having Keifer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer turn up in character in the middle of Roger Moore’s Moonraker. While Moore’s James Bond series and Sutherland’s 24 series have the similarity of being about government agents, thaey don’t belong in the same universe.
Pity poor Ron Moore, a TOS fan, getting a dream job of working on a Star Trek show, only to find he wasn’t working on a Star Trek show at all! While DS9 can convincingly sit in the TOS universe, TNG really doesn’t fit in at all.
Really? TNG was great. DS9 was really dull towards the end there.
Abrams: I think the biggest challenge was trying to make it relevant to now. Like to do it despite it being Star Trek. I don’t think it’s enough to say, “Oh, it’s Star Trek, let’s just….”
” And you tell a story that is good, regardless of the setting, in a weird way.”
I am looking forward to this movie as much as the next guy, but so far I think JJ’s biggest challenge is to stop saying things that can be interpreted the wrong way. Both of those comments kind of rubbed me the wrong way. And believe you me, I like to be rubbed.
So to sum it up – ‘Make it real!’
… the adventure continues…
I think that Mr. Abrams seems to “get” a key point. The story has to stand on its own, and the characters be engaging, whether or not it’s Star Trek. If the story only works in the Trek Universe, people not already invested in that world won’t care. But if the story, and the characters, work whether in that fictional world or not, then the general audience has something to connect to, and will come find out what that fictional universe is about.
That’s really always what it’s been about. Make sure the story works first, and then set it in the Trekverse. (The last several films have had stories that relied heavily upon pre-existing interest in that fictional world, and thus never connected with the broader audience.) Don’t do it the other way around. And if the team making this film have succeeded in that, we’ll have a great new Trek film that the general audience can connect to.
# 7…Think about it: look over to the ad for the TOS replica communicator and tell me with a straight face that thing would look futuristic today next to an iPhone
I think it looks as cool, if not cooler – especially when you can really make a phone call with it like mine. I’ve stood next to people with an iPhone and used this, it ALWAYS gets more attention! Click below…
http://youtube.com/watch?v=K6n5jEFoVOM
16. Beam Me Up
I wasn’t saying TNG was a bad show per se. I was simply saying that, beyond the window dressing, it really is a completely separate entity from Star Trek, whereas DS9 feels like more of a companion show to TOS.
Looking at it realistically, in one ‘grouping’ you have TOS, TAS, DS9 and most of Enterprise season four, all fitting quite nicely together. In another, you have TNG, Voyager, Enterprise seasons 1-3 and a bit of 4.
All the shows have their crossovers, but realistically, TNG really shouldn’t be considered as a ‘Star Trek’ show, but as a separate show about life in a utopia, Voyager about members of the utopia losing their link with it and trying to get back there and Enterprise seasins 1-3 about the history of the establishment of the TNG utopia, rather than a prequel to TOS.
DS9 is more about an interesting corner of the TOS universe where the likes of Harry Mudd and Cyrano Jones would like to trade. Most of Enterprise season 4 gives interesting background material about the early days of TOS.
The key philosophical differences between TOS and TNG are the reason that there’s such a divide in the fan world and why some people really loathe TNG and others dismiss TOS as a primitive, slightly embarrassing, doddery elderly relation to TNG.
When you have two shows that really are so mutually incompatible beneath the surface dressing, there’s bound to be a conflict.
Trek Reflects the times, TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT. Star Trek 1-10 They all reflected the times in which they were made. Now back to Abrams Stop telling us what a great thing this movie is! Please! What are you going to say? That it is a bad movie? Star Trek V’s close relative? That you have a cast who could barely deliver lines? That Pine turned into Shat and is an egotistical jerk? That Nimoy is to old to be Spock? That in Shatner’s cameo he ooopppps! Mums the word on that!
But, in regards to Bill, has anyone on here ever hear him sound so negative towards any current production? And being in the media a bunch of times saying it? Seems kind of odd……
[note: the following is an attempt at humor] ;-)
Q: What was the biggest challenge of taking [the Star Trek] franchise on?
Abrams: I think the biggest challenge was trying to not piss off all the rabid fanboys who will dis anything I do, and yet at the same time keep the cool old school Trekkie types happy and also make the 9th graders think it’s cool.
… And to do something good enough that Paramount keeps the big paychecks flowing my way. It was also a challenge to keep the “kitsch” out and make it “real”…
#15 Dom I’m right with you on this. Noble wasn’t perhaps the right word. As Mr. Roddenberry might have said, ‘humans were evolved from their adolesence’ by the time of TNG. And more boring.
It all goes back to… if you don’t like a biased (but informed) opinion, don’t read the interviews from JJ or the cast. Every time they speak, one or more on the thread basically say “shut up” (like they care or are reading that thread). Again, what are you hoping to learn besides a new way to dis them?
Miniskirts will make it relevant…
Guys, realistically you will not be seeing the Enterprise until another teaser hits us November-ish. They aren’t going to unveil their new Enterprise in a still shot. They’ll want to show it in action, on the big screen.
As long as JJ abrams makes sure this is a Star Trek film and not a film masquerading as a Star Trek film then I will be happy.
As long as he uses it to explore the human condition and show us as a species on way to improve ourselves ten I will be happy.
Star Trek is a utopia of how we will be better in the future, TOS and TNG both conveyed it. Its a future in which all the sickness and cruelity of today’s world is gone. That was the Star Trek ideal.
If we stray away from Roddenberry we stray away from Star Trek.
JJ better remember this.
Yeah, JJ, make the most famous scifi series of all times, the most iconic cult characters, the most famous tv troika, and the most enduring, inspiring, and discussed friendship of pop culture “relevant” again.
And while you’re busy doing that, don’t forget to tell everybody who the hell the elderly guy with the pointed ears is…LOL
I think TOS is perma-relevant to any human age (unlike the pajamatrek years, which increasingly feels much more like a “period piece” than TOS, in terms of actual story content if not – yet – the sets and FX).
But certainly it would be a challenge to assert that relevance to an audience that doesn’t remember it/know it, without seeming like you’re asserting anything. Character is key, so it sounds like JJ’s got his head screwed on straight on this point.
Change in enthusiam: no change; holding course.
JJ – The Star Trek Lagacy is counting on you. Never forget, Sci Fi is the last great playground of the philosophers. Make a great movie that is intelligent. If you make this work, we can get Star Trek back. I am so sick of the mindless garbage on TV and at the theaters.
I’m pretty much ready to see the what the Enterprise look like now, and no longer care about any of Abram’s so-called ‘challenges’.
#4 DOM; (I agree completely with Abrams. The 24th century Treks and the TV prequel show didn’t feel connected to today. They were off in their fantasy la-la land – a separate ‘Trek Universe!’)
Totally agree with his comments. There is a big difference between TOS and its spin-offs. In TOS Utopian universe, humanity had united and largely overcame many Earth-bound frailties and vices by the middle of the twenty-second century is very appealing story.. Tng and later spinoffs were more in Trek fatnasy Universe (that includes DS9 too)
“Yeah, JJ, make the most famous scifi series of all times, the most iconic cult characters, the most famous tv troika, and the most enduring, inspiring, and discussed friendship of pop culture “relevant” again.”
Exactly Iowagirl! I know he means well but some of the things he says….
#15 “When Roddenberry created TNG, he created a philosophically different show that had nothing to do with what Star Trek was about and dressed it in Star Trek clothing. Take away the window-dressing of the Starfleet command structure, the ship designs and terminology and you’re left with a show that is, at its heart completely unrelated to Star Trek.
After years of being seen as a failed has-been and in declining health, the Star Trek films taken away from him because he didn’t understand it as well as other people, he pulled the most massive con trick and cheated the audience out of a proper new Star Trek series by giving them something completely different under the Star Trek name.”
SO very true. I’ve always believed that the spin-offs never even remotely resembled STar Trek. In order to get made, they had the name, but that’s where any resemblence ends.
Excuse me for being a cynic, but I’m waiting for the credit line on the upcoming movie to read: “Star Trek” – Created By JJ Abrams.
21 – Funny you should say that; I’ve always thought of DS9 as the one that didn’t fit with all the others, but just had the name “Star Trek” slapped on it to cash in on the franchise. Berman was very open about the fact that he did not want to do a Star Trek show, but found himself unable to do the show he wanted without using Trek vocabulary, and thus DS9 was born.
That aside, ALL of ST’s incarnations have been about telling stories relevant to today’s society, and I’m glad that JJ gets that. He’s not doing anything new by making that his commitment. Some of the shows and movies have made the parallels more thickly veiled than others, and frnakly that’s how I like it.
As much as I’ve enjoyed a lot of the new BSG, its primary weakness in my eyes it that it bludgeons the viewer over the ehad with its parallels rather than let us subtly discover them. Making every single detail of their society identical to ours shows a distinct lack of creativity in storytelling which is only made up for by the visual design and some amazing performances.
“Excuse me for being a cynic, but I’m waiting for the credit line on the upcoming movie to read: “Star Trek” – Created By JJ Abrams.”
Chuckle. Which would be fine if he was completely reimagining it say like BSG. That almost total redo is awesome. I kinda wish that was what was happening with Trek & JJ to a certain extent. That way I could emotionally divorce myself from it. I’m not sure you can have it both ways — keep the old but make it new — but we’ll see.
#4—I completely agree with you, Dom, and have been saying this for years.
To me, there will always be a difference between Star Trek and “based upon Star Trek”. Even Roddenberry himself wanted to ignore much of what he had done in the Original Series when he created TNG. TOS never depicted a utopia. It was, however, optimistic in that human beings did not destroy themselves after all. We survived, and went on to explore the frontiers in front of us.
TNG was Roddenberry’s revisionist view of the Star Trek Universe. He wanted to depict his idea of utopia. The resulting effect of the writers is well documented, and I won’t revisit that here.
TOS was a romantic look at our possible future…
TNG began as a politically correct, sterilized, almost robotic environment, where humans no longer had any internal conflicts recognizable to us, and there was often a fine line between wisdom and naivety towards other cultures. Were they truly “enlightened”, or “assimilated”?
28. captain_neill
You don’t seem to know what a utopia is. I suggest you read up on it! TOS is not a utopia. Most of TOS and its related (23rd century) spinoffs did stray from Rodders, which is what made them so good. Star Trek not being faithful to Roddenberry’s ‘vision’=good!! Star Trek resembling the work of DC Fontana, Gene Coon and John Meredyth Lucas = good!
Get away from this Cult of Roddenberry nonsense! All the sickness and cruelity of today’s world is not gone in TOS. Why else do you think there are still monsters like Kodos and Captain Garth and Dr Adams out there in TOS? TOS is about humans trying to be better, not being better!
Of course they’re out there in TOS – and recognized to be aberrations, the same as in TNG.
For instance, Karnas and Mark Jameson are nothing if not the heirs to Kodos and Finney or Matt Decker. And in both series, the things they do are looked at as things which have no place in the society humans want to live in.
It´s not Abrams comments that are tiresome, what is tiresome is this new found TNG bashing. TNG did a lot for the TOS, if not just to give new material to discuss about, and TOS was never made to be this over scrutinized.
40
I do know what a utopia is. I did an essaay on it and dystopia in University.
Star Trek is the one show to display a utopic view point. Most other science fiction has a very dystopic view point.
TNG is the utopia of everything is perfect but not so in TOS. However, the 23rd Century still has a more utopic view point because it is still depicting humans as growing and Earth has grown beyond the troubles of the now. To me that is utopic thinking. Now I will admit that the humans got bit more arrogant and full of themselves about their evolved brilliance in the 24th Century.
Its a great idea but would not work in practice, in todays society that is. With no money humans would become fat and lazy, there be no drive today. But I love the idea of no money as it brings up too much greed in todays world.
Also TOS was born on an era which wanted a monster of the week and shoot em ups. TNG was born out of the conservative 80s. There is a reflection of the times in both shows. Just as the Xindi arc of Season 3 was relevant of the post 9/11 world.
Also I am getting fed up of TNG bashing that Victor Hugo is bringing up. TNG was a brilliant show. it seems like everyone is bashing the 24th Century now ever since JJ Abrams came on the scene. I have also noticed the same with the Batman movies. After the disaster of batman & Robin everyone praised Keaton and Burton’s two films and it seems even they are getting bashed now in the post Batman Begins era.
I always believed TNG was the way Gene Roddenberry wanted Trek to be if he was allowed more freedom, which he did have for TNG as it not tied to a network.
This utopic view on humans as a species being better than we are now is part of the Trek. Its not just shoot em up, it is a morality play with our characters.
These are what are important.
There is still diseases in the 24th Century as well.
Perhaps it is better to say a utopic future rather than a utopia, as it is a future which provides hope.
true #39 and i add—from tng on i fervently disliked how tng on thru voyager the prime directive was used—and how the federation developed—the prime directive began simply as not to interfere with the internal poliitics/development of a pre-warp civilization—but tng on thru voyager it turned into the plausible deniability directive–pretend u never met them/never heard of their plight…accept everything short of mutual annihilation…put non-interference above a persons right to exist…the federation would allow entire civilizations of nice people to die off rather than help them…believe me the shock of your world dying due to a plague would far outweigh the shock of meeting an alien race prewarp…the federation would allow that crap to occur and on top of that, goes around plotting to displace people by force (the ba’ku) and consorts with races who love raping, torturing, encouraging their kids to watch them do psuedo-s&m on people just to utterly destroy a person, and committing horrific violations of basic decency (cardassians); use the glory of murder, violence, cannibalism, etc., as the formation of their whole society, (klingons) and debases women and embraces everything humanity was meant to avoid (ferengi) and plots genocide to stop a war…
the federation sounds more like the terran empire using a different opera mask…
hmmm…for all its faults the romulan empire doesnt look so bad after all…perhaps i’ll acquire a dwelling in the krokton segment…perhaps pardek’s old place..LOL…
naaahhh…LONG LIVE BAJOR!
RE: 29. Iowagirl – July 23, 2008
“Yeah, JJ, make the most famous scifi series of all times, the most iconic cult characters, the most famous tv troika, and the most enduring, inspiring, and discussed friendship of pop culture “relevant” again.
And while you’re busy doing that, don’t forget to tell everybody who the hell the elderly guy with the pointed ears is…LOL”
***********************************
Well, I think to a large extent, Star Trek is NOT relavent anymore…not to the general population. It may have been years ago, but not any more. Trek may be relavent to you or I or anyone else that patrols these boards, but not to John Q. Public.
*relevant* not relavent…..darn typos
#43—“…what is tiresome is this new found TNG bashing. ”
For you it may be “new found”, but TNG lost me very early on, and there is nothing new about my disappointment. It has been 20 years or so, and I don’t feel like it is any closer to Star Trek as I knew it than I did then.
I’m not bashing TNG. It had a huge following, and still does. But I would rather have seen a continuation of Star Trek in what I felt (and still feel) to be the more romantic 23rd Century then, and I am very happy now that Star Trek is returning to what was, IMO, its golden era now. TNG was obviously “for you”. It just wasn’t “for me”. That doesn’t necessarily make one or the other better…They are just different, as you and I are.
50. Closetrekker.
Nicely put! My feelings exactly!