We will keep the history of the characters, but give them the full range of dramatic
possibilities that exist now, as opposed to the more rigid standards that existed in 1968.
More complex, adult relationships.

And so on. Not much about how you’d actually do that. There’s a proposal for a mystery at the heart of the universe, but it’s just another Von Daniken god-race. You can practically hear that producer asking Harlan Ellison if he could put Mayans in somewhere.

Where stories are suggested, they seem to miss the point of the source material they’re reusing:

We know that the Enterprise was once infested with tiny cute Tribbles piled three fight high
in some places…but what if they came equipped with an agenda, an attitude…and teeth?

Then they’re just rats with an agenda. The only reason “The Trouble with Tribbles” works is that the tribble “threat” is absurd. Compare that to Ron Moore’s reuse of the Pegasus. He kept exactly what made the original Caine story interesting, then built the new story around it.

Granted, they both do superior work in comics but they *started* with creations that were wholly theirs (Fray, Rising Stars) in addition to their adapted franchises before they were given near complete authority over a major and established franchise.

Of course J.J. Abrams actually will be “revamping” the series for really reals…

I’m not amazed that Paramount turned it down. Having worked with the franchise twice, which means working with Paramount twice, the only surprise here is that JMS’s brain didn’t explode when faced with the total idiocy that can result from Paramount inertia and paranoia regarding ST. Note that they are not bad people, generally; just caught up in nervousness of maybe breaking the goose that lays the golden eggs and getting blackballed. This can result in some truly outstanding institutional stupidity.

An example, you ask? OK:

While producing ST: TOS games for Interplay back in the mid-1990s, we had to submit all story ideas to a “canon” person, who would make sure we weren’t completely destroying the ST universe. One of our writers submitted a story for one of the games based on “The Ultimate Computer” episode, with Dr. Daystrom having been rehabilitated and trying again with the ‘M’ series computers.

When we received the hand-written comments from Paramount’s “canon-eer”, as we called her, there were only two lines of comment on that story treatment, which were:

“What is this M5 computer shit?”
“This isn’t canon; get rid of it.”

When we gently enquired about this (while restraining the Producer from jumping in his car, driving to Paramount Studios and strangling the woman with the cord from her desk lamp), it was discovered that she had never watched a single Star Trek epsiode. Ever. Not ST:TOS, not ST:TNG, nothing. How did she get that job? Apparently, she was the secretary for her predecessor and when he left, they just dumped the work on her as a cost-cutting measure and decided that was much cheaper than hiring another lawyer to look all that stuff over. Talk about pressure; the poor woman was probably ready to crack, anyway.

That’s just one example.

So, no, it is not surprising that Paramount wouldn’t want to reboot the series; that just makes far too much sense.

Snort.

JMS is very good at what he does, and I enjoy the vast majority of what he works on.

Ok, I’m imaging that.

It sucks tremendously.

That’s all JMS is trying to do here, ‘re do’ another classic SF series, since the ‘re do’ of Galactica was a roaring success. (Not sure I agree with that, I am slowly coming to accept the new imagining, I do like the alcoholic Col. Tigh, but I still can NOT accept Starbuck as a woman, cigars or no)

So this is hardly a new idea from JMS, and Paramount probablly didn’t want to be accused of ‘me tooism’ like all the reality shows after Big Brother/Survivor.

Me, loved the original and the last part of ST:E

Evangolis, who usually doesn’t agree with Goe as much as he does on this one.