As many of you know, Paramount is currently planning on doing a "prequel" to the original Star Trek series, set in James T. Kirk's Starfleet Academy days. J.J Abrams (the creator of Lost and Alias) is set to direct, and Matt Damon is said to be the front-runner for the Kirk role (this was actually Shatner's pick, and Bill has given his blessing to this). This idea was first proposed back in the early 90s, as a way of re-booting the film franchise. Both then and now, the idea has been, to say the least, controversial amongst Trekkies.

Now, today, Ain't It Cool News has gotten their hands on a tidbit of info that adds a new layer to this story. How is it that Paramount has come back to this concept, once again? Quite simply, they are (once again) using one of Babylon 5 creator J Michael Straczynski's ideas, without actually having him involved. A few years back, JMS and Dark Skies creator Bryce Zabel submitted a proposal for a re-boot of the Trek Universe that is suspiciously similar to the one being put into production. Of course, it was a Paramount idea to begin with, but the original concept was still to be set in the Trek film and TV universe. What Zabel and JMS had come up with was more akin to a total revamp, along the lines of the quite successful Sci-Fi Channel re-tooling of Battlestar Galactica.

Now, love it or hate it, this idea is certainly interesting. It re-created Star Trek, without tying it to the previous continuity (essentially, this is a new universe. A parallel one, if you will). This approach has been done recently at Marvel Comics, in the form of the "Ultimate Universe", which revisits all the classic super-heros like Spider-Man and the X-Men, but with new continuity. Marvel has continued to produce stories set in the mainstream Marvel Universe, but the Ultimate U allows creators some freedom from decades of continuity. It is no surprise that JMS is currently a writer at Marvel, and has had a huge hit with his re-boot of Squadron Supreme.

Paramount may be skewing this more towards the original 90s Starfleet Academy concept, or they may be going for more of a total clean-slate. Either way, it is clear they are going ahead with a new film, rather than a TV series. The rumors surrounding this film sound a whole lot like the Zabel/ Straczynski incarnation, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Here is the link to the proposal (posted by Zabel himself), so see for yourself what you think:

http://bztv.typepad.com/n...Reboot.pdf

im so over Star Trek...

Voyager and Enteprise did it for me...those shows sucked enough for ten shows...

i only ever liked next gen, so it doesnt matter to me.

which speaking of next gen, i have all the 2 disc collectors editions of the next gen movies on dvd now, they totally rock!

gonna start looking for used copies of the tv boxed sets off TNG

i LOVE that squadron supreme do-over they/you mentioned, but in general i don't know how i feel about revisionist takes on legendary characters and stories. i guess, though, when it all comes down to it, star trek and spiderman and all the rest of those characters are just brands - things created to make money - and to invest too much in their "integrity" is to miss the point of a franchise.

Anx said:

Yes, Supreme Power/Squadron Supreme is one of the five best books Marvel is publishing right now.

sextonseven said:

i think the ongoing series is kind of a yawner, but the miniseries had some of the best comics writing i think i've ever read.

Anx said:

I agree. I'm still waiting for the new series to actually kick into gear, but the Supreme Power series, and the tie-in mini-series, rocked!

If it makes a good series, why not. But i'd rather have 'em finish the plots they started in DS9 & Enterprise. Not 2 finish a plot is despising the fans IMO!!!

shaomi said:

Unfortunately, at this point, Trek has become too watered down. Voyager was bad, and Enterprise was bloody awful. The dangling plot threads will probably never be revisited, unless its in the novels (which Paramount doesn't acknowledge as canon anyway). Trek needs some sort of major overhaul, no doubt about it.

Is a re-boot the answer? Possibly. It certainly worked for Battlstar Galactica. The only other thing I can see working is some sort of new series that is set even farther in the future, much in the way TNG was from the original series.

JediMaster said:

I liked Voyager & LOVED Enterprise, particularly the 3rd season with that crazy Xindi quest... Just an opinion, though...
& 2 me, the best ever was DS9.

I don't have much faith in a new Star Trek series at this point. I watched some Enterprise last night. After watching the Battlestar Gallactica series it was even more painfully obvious how bad Enterprise was.

It had a really strong pilot, with some interesting ideas (like humans not liking Vulcans) but the show got bad quick, and no bad acting hot vulcan chick in a tight uniform could save it.

They would really have to get all new people involved to make it worthwhile, I think.

If this is an actual reboot, then I will have nothing to do with it. Why Paramount wants to keep pissing off its fan base is beyond me. For example, when many fans wanted a Captain Sulu series and have a series in both classic movie era and the TNG/DS9 era, Berman and Paramount gave us Voyager instead. The testing of the waters they did for Sulu for Trek's anniversary with the Voyager episode "Flashback" was pathetic: 1) for putting it on as a Voyager episode to begin with, and 2) using a badly written story. DS9's thowback episode for the Trek anniversary, "Trials and Tribble-ations", was a much better story. There's no use in trying to convince TPTB at Paramount what the average Trek fan wants, because they think they know what we want without any input from anyone else. One needs only to look at Enterprise for that. There's a prime example of pissing off the Trek fans so much that they lost their core audience. Would you watch Enterprise if even the Trek community has written it off as a horrible series? What does that say to people?

Two words will forever haunt the Trek franchise: Berman and Braga.

I just wanted my name to be seen on a geek thread.

TMPletz said:

Well, you can relax, since Paramount shot it down. Currently, they are going ahead with their JJ Abrams "prequel" movie instead. Like I said, rumor has it that they are still borrowing heavily from the re-boot proposal, but it looks more and more like this will be a prequel, set just prior to the classic series.

I agree with much of what you are saying here. Paramount giving us Voyager and Enterprise, instead of a Sulu series is such a joke. Those two series were truly horrible, through and through. On the other hand, I like the "re-boot" proposal that JMS and Zabel came up with. Starting over from scratch, without the baggage of the last two series, sounds good to me. The fact that they wanted to make it as a sort of alternate universe to the main Trek Universe was a good move. Let's face it, at this point Star Trek needs some sort of shot in the arm to be brought back to life. Enterprise effectively killed it, and something drastic needs to be done to bring it back.