The Star Trek: Discovery writer sat down with us to discuss his hopes for the new series, how his past Trek adventures will influence the new show, and more.
TREKMOVIE: What are your personal hopes for Star Trek: Discovery?
NICK MEYER: I hope it’s a success. That’s my first hope. I hope it perpetuates the Star Trek condition of helping people see themselves, making us able to contemplate dilemmas that otherwise we might be too close to judge without prejudice. I thought that was the series’ strength – by taking hot button issues, renaming them and setting them someplace else, that we could think about ourselves and how we want to be. I hope the new series contributes to that tradition, that would be a good thing.
TM: Your Star Trek has been a more intimate character examination, i.e. Kirk’s journey in Star Trek II and Kirk and Spock questioning their continued relevance in Star Trek VI. Is this continued examination of a character’s journey the way you see yourself writing Discovery?
NM: That’s the only way I can really relate to Star Trek anyway. I’m not a science fiction fan, I didn’t watch the show as a kid – I didn’t get it. It’s only to the degree to which I understand the earthbound human aspects of the stories that I can create or relate to them. I used to read these stories by C.S. Forrester growing up about Captain Hornblower. I thought, “Star Trek is Captain Hornblower, and I can do this,” just change the name to some alien species.
TM: This is your fourth trip to “the final frontier,” what brought you back this time?
NM: Well, I’m sure they offered me money…
TM: You’re not doing it for free?
NM: I don’t carry a pen with me in case I accidentally write something for free. Dr. [Samuel] Johnson said, “a man is a blockhead who writes for any reason other than money.” I was very flattered, I was enormously flattered to be invited back as a sort of an eminence grise, which is sort of what I am, or have become, even though I don’t feel very grise and then I look at the color of my hair and I go, “you’ve turned quite grise.” So the eminence was maybe a fantasy, but here I am.
TM: Reflecting on the three Star Trek movies you have written and two you have filmed, do you look at them differently today?
NK : I like to think that the best of my stuff was built to last. You can look at Time After Time today and it does not look like an old movie; it seems very timely, pertinent, intelligent – the story is still, to my way of thinking, as captivating. On the other hand, when I look at Star Trek VI, I am self conscious about things in that movie, which strike me, they might not strike other people, as sort of awkward. There’s a certain smug quality to Kirk looking at the conspirators and saying “some people can be very frightened of change.” But look what change has gotten us, is the world we live in now an improvement over eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with the Soviet Union? As terrifying as that was, nobody was flying jet planes into the World Trade Tower, running around with atom bombs in suitcases or whatever is coming next.
Also, when I look at Spock doing the Vulcan mind meld with Valeris, it kind of reminds me of waterboarding. I’m thinking, would I really do it that way now? So looking back, this has really aged strangely. I don’t think Khan has aged, I don’t think Time After Time has aged. I think Elegy, The Human Stain (well, The Human Stain I give a B+) but Elegy is I think a terrific film, and Somersby.
TM: You mentioned in your book, A View from the Bridge, how you were hesitant to take on The Day After, but saw it as a challenge.
NK: Everyone was hesitant to take it on.
TM: Years later, Ronald Reagan said that it was why …
NK: … He signed the treaty with Gorbachev. It may be the most worthwhile thing I’ve gotten to do with my existence so far.
TM: Is there anything that you have written that is on the shelf that you would still like to see made into a film?
NK:There are far more projects that I’ve written, that I would love to see made, that haven’t been made, than the ones that have been made. I think most of my best stuff is not filmed; The Crook Factory, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, The White Company, Washington, Powerbroker – it’s a pretty long list.
I think the kind of writing that I do is arguably out of fashion. I don’t do the exploding car; my version of a swashbuckling movie is The White Company for sure.
TrekMovie would like to thank Mr. Meyer for taking time out of his busy schedule of both personal and professional projects to speak with us.
Will be interesting to see if he’s still got it. I hope he does.
I just hope people keep in mind that he isn’t the only writer on this show and if things don’t pan out the way they hoped, not to turn it into a “blame Nick” situation.
You kidding? He either takes responsibility or he shouldn’t be there in the fist place.
They’re just saying, don’t bag on just the most recognizable name in the writers room. He’s not the show runner.
Meyer is important to the tone though, is he not writing one half of the premiere?
Blame Alex Kurtzman :P
I’m anxiously awaiting the first real info-dump with visuals, ships, scenarios and all the stuff…
Always interesting to hear from Nick.
I love it that he wants to do character development and social commentary — and with no exploding cars. I wonder, though, since he doesn’t like or “get” science fiction, if he can bring the sense of wonder that a show named “Discovery” should have.
I guess we’ll see! Crossing my fingers for a good outcome.
Star Trek II and VI both had a great sense of wonder. I trust Meyer to get it right.
Hmm. Seems to me that KHAN’s sense of wonder comes courtesy of the Genesis Project, which was the late Mike Minor’s idea, not Nick Meyer’s. And while I still find many things to admire in TUC, a sense of wonder isn’t among them. I think Corylea’s point is a good one, enthused as I am about Meyer’ participation. We’ll just have to see.
Agreed, I think Genesis is the only sense-of-wonder in TWOK, and even wrote a college paper decades back to that effect. And TUC has nothing in that area at all, the invisible ship stuff is just SF trappings, nothing more.
I really like TWOK and I think it is because there is such a hodgepodge of influences. Meyer works best with pastiche of a known property, I think (but I DO love his novel CONFESSIONS OF A HOMING PIGEON, which gave me a heads-up in 1981 before TWOK about the dealing-with-death theme), but I don’t see TUC as pastiche, or at least a successful one.
Based on his statement of the goal to take events and issues from our day and put them into this other setting, I think whether he realizes it or not he absolutely does get science fiction.
The viewers can provide the wonder. You know, TOS wasn’t overflowing with wonder either, unless you count Spock saying “Fascinating.” It was very competent professionals doing their jobs in space.
You know, I couldn’t disagree more. The early episodes in particular were filled with the joy of boldly confronting the unknown, and for all his bluster and bravado the series lead wasn’t above showing awe when the circumstances warranted it (one of the primary differences, as it happens, between Shatner’s Kirk and Pine’s Kirk). I think that’s why the show spoke so deeply to generations of aspiring astronauts and scientists — watching, you knew that this was more than just a job to these people.
All music to my ears. At last, a talented writer who is interested in issues, humanity and trying to tell stories with a message and meaning, in the driving seat of Star Trek again. Just shows up what a bunch of corrupt clowns Braga and Berman were with all their Xindi/time-travel/catsuit obsessed dross. “Franchise fatigue” my a***, Trek never needed to die, it just needed people like Meyer in charge of it.
Love your last sentence.
I disagree, somewhat. I think, with 2 shows running concurrently, and a new series popping up whenever one ended, I do think there was some fatigue.
Both from the audience and the creators.
The audience was so saturated with Trek it became harder to impress (and i’m not talking about us diehards). Audiences can be fickle, and can tire easily if not given something engaging.
The creators, on the other hand, between 1993 and 2001, had to crank out 52 episodes a year. Think about that kind of churn, and how creatively taxing it must have been to develop that many compelling stories.
After a while i’m sure many writers and producers felt like it was an assembly line. They were never allowed time to breath, and I can imagine stories just being reluctantly shoved into production to meet a deadline before they could be properly developed and fine-tuned.
Enterprise tried something new (a show set out in the frontier, more adventure driven) but at the same time had mandates like the Temporal Cold War… and they struggled. They attempted to go back to the tried-and-true Trek style, tried new, bolder ideas, but it was too little too late. Audiences had already tuned out and moved onto higher quality cable programming that was becoming the standard bearer for TV action-drama.
The fatigue was on the part of the writers/producers who were going through the motions so obviously and so badly.
Enterprise is almost unwatchable with its horrible writing and dialogue until Coto arrived.
Trek needed new creative blood. TNG benefitted from Berman taking over from Gene. DS9 benefitted from Behr.
But Berman/Braga/whatshername with Voyager and then enterprise showed how shallow and weak they had become. Just going through the motions with no new ideas.
It’s disrespectful and borderline misogynistic to name Gene, Berman, Behr, and Braga and refer to the wonderful Jeri Taylor simply as “whathername.”
She was responsible for some wonderful TNG episodes, from “Unification,” and “Time’s Arrow,” to some important ‘message’ episodes like “The Wounded,” “The Drumhead” and “The Outcast.”
Its funny but so-called Star Trek fans will probably hate every new Star Trek product for the next decade so I don’t get the point of trying to please these people. Believe me I already see the moans coming light years from Discovery when they realize its a show that actually dares to do NEW THINGS and doesn’t look like an outdated TV most people under 40 dont watch.
And yes her name is Jeri Taylor and made some amazing episodes. And oddly the only woman to this day responsible for creating a Trek show. We need more voices like hers in Star Trek, not less.
Too bad the show she created sucked.
It didn’t suck at all up to the point she retired at the end of season 4. It was
coalescing nicely, with some real heartfelt moments for Janeway and some of the other characters. (especially once she had more control towards the end.) It was only when Braga took over in season 5 that the show became a weird, technobabble filled, characterisation free, unwatchable mess.
As I explain above, it wasn’t awful (ill take that word back) but it was consistent in being below average. It was boring. Great concept, lousy execution. Removing all the conflict and drama and just become TNG-lite.
It lasted 7 seasons. Shows that last 7 seasons can’t suck that badly. Voyager had its problems for sure but I liked it a lot. I liked most Star Trek though minus Enterprise and as said that grew on me in time too.
Jeri Taylor was a good writer and a great contributor to Trek.
@Torchwood, not disrespectful at all. I just couldn’t remember her name. lol
But let’s not pretend Voyager wasnt awful.
Fair enough. Voyager is enjoyable to me on a certain level (and I still rewatch it fairly regularly) but high quality it was not. It has a couple of great characters in some serviceable stories is probably the best thing I can say about it.
And while i’m sure you couldn’t remember her name, it wouldn’t have taken more than 10 seconds on google to find out.
The one positive I can say about it is that the quality rarely dipped to “terrible.” It was reasonably watchable for the entire run (a handful of crap episodes aside). Unlike TNG which was unwatchable it’s first two seasons, by and large, or DS9, which had a pretty bad first season, and a clear jump in quality in the later seasons.
Ill agree that Voyager was consistent. It was consistently poor overall but didnt have wild swings from brutal to excellent. It was just always the same level of “not that good”. But by then, the people behind Star Trek knew how to do it from day one. TNG needed to find itself and you have the transition between Gene and Berman that you didnt have on Voy.
And with DS9, it could have been the same TNG-Lite on a space station. Im not sure what happened (did Berman just get distracted with launching Voy?) that the DS9 folks were able to create their own identity.
The shame of Voyager, like Enterprise, was it was the right concept with lousy execution. By episode 3 or 4 it was clear they werent going to tell any stories that werent pretty vanilla. It could have been great.
Your last sentence nailed it. Of the four spin-off’s, Ent was the one I was probably most excited for and disappointed the most in. Like Voy it didn’t embrace it’s concept and that was because the staff were a bunch of burnout’s who didn’t have the good sense to move on and let fresh voices reinvigorate things. I stopped watching Voy regularly around season 3 because it got to the point where I could predict how the episodes would end by the fifteen minute mark. That’s how generic the show was.
yeah agreed to many episode per year,if only voyager did not happen and enterprise was stronger to start off with,having said that, i am surprised that enterprise not only has aged well but somehow gotten better with age , i am hoping that the new show is a good star trek show,with only 13 episode per year and only one show hopefully it will be good across that board
Agreed. Enterprise has clearly only gotten more popular and liked with lapse of time. I’m one of those people. I stopped watching the show after first season, the first Trek show I just bluntly stopped watching as I think a lot of people. I didn’t go back to it until 8 years after it was cancelled. I gave it another chance and watched the entire series and became blown away by it. No it still isn’t perfect but it definitely improved the longer it went and has some really thoughtful episodes.
And its funny but Enterprise is now part of my regular Trek watch on Netflix these days. I usually squeeze in a few episodes from every show every week, although mostly DS9 and TNG but I notice I rewatch just as many Enterprise episodes as I do them now. I just re-watched Carbon Creek and the three part Vulcan story line last week. I re-watched all of third season when Beyond premiered. It is funny how these episodes holds up for me.
And I imagine when Discovery premieres (whenever that happens) that a lot of people will be re-watching Enterprise because I imagine canon from that show will make its way into this show just like it did with the KT films. Maybe not a lot but clearly some just to make it all fit in the timeline. I would love it if we got an appearance from the Xindi in the show.
You bring up good points, however there have many shows with longer, successful runs. Good writers make all the difference. Or, negatively speaking, so can the limits put on them.
I still think September 11th, 2001 helped kill Star Trek on TV. Viewers no longer wanted the hopeful optimism of Star Trek, instead they were conditioned for the harsh settings of “Battlestar Galactica” and the real world relevance of thrillers like “24”.
I love “Time After Time”, but yes it has aged. All that business about Amy (Mary Steenburgen) being a woman doing a man’s job, and the women all being helpless until the man steps in to save them. Very ’70s.
It’ll be interesting to see how the ABC series updates the modern-day aspects of the story.
Really looking forward to the series.
Be careful what you wish for. The Pilot is excellent though. Many of the sexisim issues are taken care of, unfortunately the series doesn’t follow through as strongly.
I actually don’t think Time After Time is dated. It’s actually perfect as a time travel story, which takes place in 1979. That’s the genius of it. Everything HG Wells is coming from remains perfectly relevant in 1979, and moreover, it’s shocking to see that not that much has actually changed.
Sadly the new series acclimates Wells much to quickly to modern times in the effort to turn this into an action adventure/crime series. Time travel movies that become dated are the ones who try to predict the future. While Back To The Future II is still delightful fun, that one is completely dated as 2015 has come and gone, and little of what they predicted came to pass.
@Curious Cadet
I dunno. Time travel allows for all sorts of variations to exist. The end of Back to the Future III changes Marty’s future and perhaps other things as well, so neither of the Back to the Future II futures will exist.
Can’t they get any actual sci-fi creators who do “get it”? Why does sci-fi have to always be apologized for in some way? JJ Abrams wasn’t a Star Trek fan, now we get this from Nick Meyer who I had hoped would restore some of what made Star Trek great, but come to think of it II and VI were more adventure military films than they were about exploration per se (Minus Genesis which its been noted wasn’t Meyer’s idea). There are so many big brains creating real sci-fi out there today…. why don’t they get on tv?
Precisely Star Trek Wrath of Khan and Undiscovered Country were Military adventure films and that’s why they were great movies and that’s why they hired Nicholas Myer, even Nicholas Myer told fans at a Star Trek Convention ”Lower your Standards you might be disappointed” he went on to say ”my Job is not to give you what you want my job is to give you what I want” and ”if you don’t like it you don’t have to watch it” finally he said ”and with all due respect Star Trek fans don’t know what they want.” This Star Trek show will be more what the mainstream want not what the trekies want and this is great news, I like Nicholas Myer he was always skeptical about Roddenberry and his vision.
Agreed. Roddenberry’s vision has become dogma for some. Ironic, since he doubted religion.
The military aspect of Trek…man, its really just a way for people to complain. When you say you’re tired of the military, what do you mean? How was TNG or Voyager or Enterprise overly militaristic, outside of the terrible Xindi storyline?
What Meyer did was give Star Trek a foundation, based on what TOS had already shown us. That Starfleet was essentially a navel department. More accurately, if the Navy or Air Force took over NASA. It provided a text book, or rules, for how to present it as far as chain of command, ranks, etc. That was evident even in TMP. WoK just gave it more of an identity. And it worked.
And hopefully that continues in Discovery. TNG was silly in presenting it like a big ship of volunteers who just want to preach humanity’s evolved sensibility to the masses.
A very good question. Real science fiction writers really understood the short story, episodic concepts. Maybe that’s why they wouldn’t fit into the plan for Discovery to have a longer narrative.
I agree! Part of what made TOS great was the episodes written by real SF writers, like Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, and Norman Spinrad.
I’ve heard that Robert J. Sawyer is a big Star Trek fan, and he’s certainly a very real SF writer; I’d love to see them tap him for some episodes. Connie Willis, Lois McMaster Bujold … there are a lot of real SF writers who could write great Star Trek episodes, and at least some of them are Trek fans, so it shouldn’t be that hard to get them on board.
Don’t forget Larry Niven (of Ringworld fame…) who’s short story “The Soft Weapon” was adapted for an episode of the animated series.
I’m also tired of militarism in Trek. But I disagree with the idea that only scifi writers should write scifi. They can get too caught up in the minutia of technology which gives us a lot of technobabble solutions. Roddenberry wrote westerns and police dramas before Trek.
Mark2000,
re: technobabble solutions
As I lived observing it, technobabble solutions in Trek didn’t come from noted SF writers writing its scripts. It came from the same “Dialogue is supreme and all else must be reduced to non-distracting background noise.” dicta producers who claimed technobabble was the winning formula crutch that had to be used.
Meyer perfected the concept of Genesis that was in the script, and came up with the idea that it was a Terraforming device. Originally it was just a superweapon/doomsday device. He deserves much of the credit to its success as part of the story.
The military aspects of Star fleet as envisioned by Meyer were really important in establishing a cohesive vision.
“Gene’s vision has become dogma”
Yes, yes yes, and it’s what i’ve been trying to put into words for some time. The reverence for “Gene’s Vision” among many trek diehards really disgusts me. His vision was great, and consistency with it is important, but it is not the be-all-end-all. It should not be rigid dogma.
I have no problem with any of the statements Nick Meyer has made. I adore his Trek films, and I think he gets sci-fi more than he realizes.
Besides, our own discussions here prove out that Trek means different things to different people. What we enjoy about it can vary. There is room for all versions of Trek. I don’t think JJ’s Trek is consistent with what I love about the franchise, but I think they’re good films, and if you look closely, the spirit of Trek is buried in there. Some people think DS9 is not true Trek.
I also don’t get the love for Manny Coto. Most overrrated Trek producer. Not to say he wasn’t good, but boy, the adulation I hear when his name is conjured kind of bewilders me. I think a lot of it stems from the contrast of quality between pre-Coto and post-Coto.
Such as, if George W. Bush were to be President tomorrow, liberals would suddenly be singing his praises.
Seeing Gene Roddenberry’s vision as ‘dogma’ is certainly silly – although, I think, we can be thankful that producers and writers tried to preserve core elements of his vision in the 90s. Yes, it made drama very difficult to write, but it kept the show from becoming cheesy, kept writers on their toes, and after the first years of TNG they found ways to deal with that.
As folklore goes, Gene was a solid writer, but an even better executive producer – a very hard worker who knew how to get the right people involved, and how to get them to deliver. I know people like that: they are difficult, you either love or hate them, and they are hiding a huge ego and power play behind their charisma. But you need those kind of people if you want to start something.
Not sure if Meyers’s military adventure would work for TV Star Trek. It once saved the movie franchise, but TV is different. Then again, Meyer is smart, and we do not know what he has in mind for the show. Nobody really knows what defines science fiction anyway, aside from some form of future plausibility stuff, so there are many possibilities. I will be happy if ‘Discovery’ is original, entertaining, political, good characters, making me think.
Ha. Not sure of your last point but yeah, Gene Roddenberry deserves all the credit for creating this baby, albeit for different reasons as far as we fans are concerned. Sure there was always a moral, a lesson to be learned but originally it was fun and sexy while often dealing with contemporary issues. And though there was the occasional tendency to go overboard, later incarnations truly began to sermonize and the storytelling, in my opion, suffered. Star Trek became weighed down by its own vision, his own vision, a utopian example for humankind. Many fans followed Mr. Roddenberry down this path and now revere him for this sterile depection of the 24th century. (Deep Space 9 excepted). I’m looking forward to a new and more vibrant and realistic version of Trek. My hopes are high so far.
I was actually thinking of my former boss, who was extremely difficult to work with, a real b*st#rd, although he was really nice to people outside his inner circle. Not the happiest years of my life, but, man, we were in for a ride, and I learned a lot about managing things in difficult situations. But yeah, for better or worse, charismatic leaders are very successful in many kinds of businesses. In GR’s case, we are definitely lucky.
And yes, DS9 is the best! Just watching the show for the third time or so, thx Netflix.
I’d like to see what Coto could bring to the table with a fresher series. Hopefully he gets a chance to write for Discovery at some point. I do think his Enterprise work was good, not great. His ideas were fresh for Enterprise but really, they were just fan servicing. It was turning Enterprise into a pre-TOS but by that point, it was the only thing that might have saved it.
The dialogue was infinitely better. But it was going to be very difficult to overcome how boring Enterprise was.
I disagree that Coto’s ideas were “just fan servicing.” Please rewatch “Similitude” from Season 3. It was one of his best, and not directly part of the Xindi arc. The overall theme bore some resemblance to VGR’s “Tuvix,” but I think it was executed much more effectively.
No. Terraforming was Minor’s idea, which is why Harve Bennett hugged him and said, “You just saved Star Trek!” Your information is incorrect, sorry.
Thanks for that tidbit. I didn’t know that.
Does anybody know what “The White Company” project that Meyer references is about?
Ketracel White manufacturing? :-)
It’s one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s lesser-known novels. Swashbuckling chivalrous knights, that sort of thing. I have his script. It’s good, if a bit out of fashion, as he notes. :)
Being someone who writes more character driven stories is fantastic news.
BTW, anyone notice that Brad Grey is leaving Paramount to be replaced, temporarily anyway, by a committee until a permanent replacement is found
http://variety.com/2017/film/news/brad-grey-paramount-interim-committee-marc-evans-amy-powell-1201992392/
I wonder what this will mean for future Trek films.
I was wondering about what it means for the future of Trek too. The new head of Viacom said that they want Paramount to focus on “franchise” movies the way that Disney is with Star Wars and Marvel and Warners is with DC and Harry Potter. Star Trek is one of their few properties that has that potential…
Abrams is likely out, along with Bad Robot. They will likely let his first look deal lapse, and give another producer a chance to reboot. I’m not sure we know what Paramount’s current deal with CBS is about Trek, but it could well expire before they are able to put another film into production. In which case, CBS might just keep the film rights and finally give the unification to Trek that Marvel has.
@Cadet – that would be the best thing, in my opinion. For Star Trek to be a fully realised franchise, it needs to serve one master. JJ understood this when he tried to create an off-shoot franchise that he would control.
CBS fully owning the TV and film rights would at least give Star Trek its best shot at success in a long time.
Yeah, over here:
https://trekmovie.com/2017/02/17/star-trek-bridge-crew-delayed-again-tos-enterprise-being-added/#comment-5335137
In that pic it looks like Nick Meyer is being interviewed by his younger clone.
Yeah, it took me a second to realize that Meyer was the one on the RIGHT! :-)
These people are out of their Vulcan minds.
I can’t believe they are still peddling it, and I really don’t understand why so many superkirkfans are always ready to jump in to defend it.
Scratch that, I do know. It’s because they still live in their childhoods, Bryan included. Oh what a mess this has become. I feel like I got in the way of someone else’s sucker punch.
Were you drinking when you made those posts? What’s the connection between “super Kirk fans” and a series that doesnt include the character of Kirk?
Honestly knowing what we know so far I have a feeling this is really going to be a reboot in the same vein the KT films were. Its going to at least look very updated and modern so I’m not worried about that. Trek fanboys who are still living in the 60s will nevertheless whine about it but you have to be an idiot for it not to look as advanced as possible while maybe having a few call backs to the old show that Enterprise and the KT films did.
But its really unfair to call something ‘a mess’ when we haven’t seen a single frame of it yet. So lets see what they do first before people panic.
I thought they sold all their props over a decade ago? Is that 60’s era TV supposed to be…. nostalgic? NOT.
Pensive’s Wetness
Step too far out of the science fiction/advenure realm and you risk the danger of turning into nothing but another soap opera. I hope they don’t get too full of themselves and know how to deliver a fun show.
Honestly I hope for Nick Meyer sake the guy delivers a good product because the second he screws it up he’ll go from visionary to hack in a matter of weeks. All the things people loved about him with the TOS films will now all but be forgotten and now a man who should stay far away from the franchise. See any number of folks out there but George Lucas, Damon Lindelof, Rick Berman and the Wachowski brothers come to mind who yes all at one point were adored by the fans but then turned on the second the franchises they were famous for went south. Now fans don’t trust these people to screw in a light bulb correctly.
It is sadly the power of fandom. You are only loved until you screw it up.
https://www.library.ucla.edu/blog/special/2016/10/11/to-boldly-go-the-hurried-evolution-of-star-treks-opening-narration
https://twitter.com/StarTrekWreck/status/795841540451024900
Good interview. The bit about Reagan being influenced by “The Day After” is great. Thought, it’s curious that Nick’s last name changed from Meyer to some name beginning with a “K” about halfway into the interview.
TIME AFTER TIME holds up quite well, and I’d love to see more of Nick’s stories get produced into feature films.
My chief concern, and this is less a concern about Meyer than it is about the entire DSC writing staff, is that the stories will be too reflective of a roomful of writers of certain beliefs basically jerking each other off about how holy their beliefs are.
It’s not commonly discussed in polite circles, but we’re now in an era that is more Puritanical in certain ways than Western society was when past Trek series were produced. Prohibitions today on what sort of notions are allowed to be discussed are more heavily skewed to the “social justice” movement than ever before. This is not to imply that certain, tangible improvements to Western society have not been achieved by “social progressives”; minorities are today more protected from systemic injustice than ever before. But, simultaneously, there exist serious infringements to liberty and certain illogical implications arising out of social progressivism which that movement manages to suppress open discussion about. Salman Rushdie, no stranger to oppression, has remarked about the serious infringements to personal liberty consequent to today’s social progressivism. Performers, such as Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Maher and Chris Rock, have expressed how the oppression of the social progressive movement has had a deleterious effect upon their art. It is my hope that DSC will avoid, not social progressivism in toto, but social progressive groupthink, and “go there” with the DSC stories and themes.
@Cygnus – good point. If its a room full of liberal elites, that could be a problem. Someone like Orci simply could not write a story that wasnt reflective of his personal beliefs. He couldn’t even write a story that ended up confirming his beliefs as true while presenting the other side. Hopefully these writers are more committed to good story-telling.
With DS9, you had the exploration of sort of a liberal ideal in a time of war and the extent good people will go to in order to reach the right end.
My natural inclination would be to play devil’s advocate. And its probably because when I took debate in school and our teacher would sometimes make us swap from our chosen position. We’d object and she’d explain you have to be able to argue and understand the opposing view to fully understand your own.
TNG was pretty preachy. So was Voyager for that matter, though maybe not as bad. But it seemed like a series where the characters were pushing their views on the rest of the galaxy.
TUP
It is interesting to consider Trek in terms of political persuasions, left/right. I’m on my nth time though TNG at the moment, and I only just realized in literal, conscious terms, last night, while watching “I Borg,” that Worf is the conservative on the show (as he also is on DS9), Picard is the liberal, and Beverly Crusher is the über-liberal. Riker is your classic moderate, Geordi’s apolitical, Data’s incapable of leaning in any direction, even if he wanted to, and Troi’s like a laid-back, hippie sort of liberal.
lol That sounds about right. But the “left” always wins in the end because its the “right thing to do”.
Time After Time has definitely aged.
Aged in what way, the filmmaking? I might agree on that. The shots are in a very 70s style. And TWOK suffers from the same issues. But otherwise this is a story set in an historically accurate 1979, about time travel. It holds up as well now as it did then, because it’s accurate to the era.
Nick Meyer is a great talent when he wants to be creatively (if he feels the material or is working under a tight deadline). But clearly he will not be calling the creative shots on Discovery it will be the usual PC friendly big corporation agenda running the show overall. If Paramount had any sense they would hire Meyer & get Ralph Winter back to produce a new trilogy with the current Trek movie cast instead of letting Bad Robot get another chance with a reduced budget!
Big shake up at Paramount. No guarantee BR or Abrams will be back to call shots on anything. Their inability to keep the runaway budget in ST3 in check is reason enough to keep BR away, but a regime change at the studio could be a real game changer.
Sufficed to say, they’re going to mess it up. They always do. Since The Wrath of Khan. Good story. A visual mess.
I love the fact that Nick Meyer is back at the helm!!! I hope this new series is heavily influenced by his unique brand of Trek.
Left talk for liberal agenda.
I attended a viewing of Myers’s movies at his (and my) alma mater the University of Iowa. He spoke after the screenings. One of the novels he said he would like to adapt was about a President that wanted to make a big state visit to Iran and was obviously going insane. The story was about how his close advisors handle this realization. At the time, middle of the Bush years, he thought this would be topical. It’s way more topical now. Wonder if he still wants to do the screenplay.
I would love nothing more than for Star Trek to recapture its popularity and to be interesting again. But I’m sorry everything I’m reading sounds like it’s going to be political correctness in space and it just makes me sad. Add to that that this is set slightly before Kirk’s time and this has all the makings of a huge failure in my opinion. It’s totally going what we’ve already been countless times. Instead of wallowing in identity politics set in the original series time frame why not thrust us forward 100 years or 500 years from the next-generation time frame and blow us away with the awe of the unknown and unimaginable, in both technology and new worlds and new civilizations, where no one has gone before? My belief is the last series failed so badly for many of these reasons. And here we go again. This franchise is sadly limping along and this new series I’m afraid is not going to do it any favors. And I surely can’t see myself paying to watch it based on what I’ve read so far.