I'm wondering how many people who are so bitchy about the Kelvin movies grew up loving TOS in first run as kids. I did, and for me the new movies are like a birthday present. I can totally believe Pine and the rest of the cast are younger versions of the characters. It's like watching old home movies of close friends from before I knew them. Yes the tone of the newer movies is different - that's because younger audiences like faster paced movies. So what? The story is being retold now, not in the 1960s. If I can embrace the changes at age 70, I don't know what everybody else's problem is.
Oh yeah, we need to follow the Code of Honor of never questioning the perfection of TNG. TNG is an Angel, One's perfection can only be imagined. Any criticism would not do the show Justice and should be put Sub Rosa. Star Trek really went Up the Long Ladder with this show.
I know what you meant, though. The actor who played kid Picard was only for a one-off episode while the rest were for whole series or movies. I just really like being technically correct. 😆
For any Trek fans I can suggest some science fiction writers who strongly influenced the original series.
Poul Anderson's 'The War Of The Wingmen' features a smarter version of Harry Mudd; a space trader trapped on a planet ruled by intelligent, winged tigers.
Roger Zelazny's 'Lord Of Light' has a long lost Earth colony ruled by the original starship's crew. They've used their advanced tech to turn themselves into the Hindu pantheon [except for a renegade Christian with an army of zombies]. One rebel used Buddhism to start a war...
TNG has aged well and despite some dated elements it is still within the comfort zone of modern audiences. TNG created the baseline for how following Trek shows for decades would look and operate which gives it a connection to all of those shows for people to grab onto. TOS is both older and of a significantly different wavelength. I personally love it, but a lot of people bounce off of it. That is why there is more openness to rebooting it. Also, the JJ Abrams movies have broken the seal, as it were, on the idea of recasting TOS characters, making it less of a major step. This is why people at large talk about it.
SNW also slowly and softly incorporated the building blocks for a TOS reboot spread out of time, rather than just dumping the idea out all at once. This assembly was made more palatable by fitting the process inside of a pretty good Trek show.
In terms of canon, it is much easier to introduce a TOS reboot than a TNG reboot. A lot of things in TOS have had to be explained away in convoluted ways or mostly ignored by the rest of the franchise. TOS is more ripe to be retuned with details that fit better into what Trek has become. TNG has a much tighter connection to the rest of the shows.
For what it's worth, I don't think either TOS or TNG should be remade. A new Trek show should always expand or move Trek forward in some way. I am tired of reboots, reimaginings, and rehashes.
I completely agree with your last point. Why are we so stuck on the same ~150 years? (not counting Enterprise) Go to year 2600, start exploring things like AI singularities, the construction of megastructures like Dyson Spheres, artificial wormhole networks, or other more advanced sci-fi that was only scratched at in previous series.
Maybe have the series revolve around the first ship able to reach a neighboring galaxy and the new discoveries that await there. Isolated by extreme distance and forced to be self-sufficient, but not lost or unprepared like Voyager.
Or what if a competing coalition of species has started rapidly spreading from a different quadrant? Not one that's evil, but maybe one that just has a looser stance on things like The Prime Directive and Genetic Enhancement. What happens when member species of the Federation start getting lured away with promises of new technology and advancements?
What does Vulcan, or Romulus, look like when over half their population has decided to upload their consciousnesses into digital immortality? What does a free and democratic Ferenginar look like? How's the Gamma quadrant holding up with the power vacuum caused by disappearance of the Founders and the collapse of the Dominion?
Space is big, time is infinite, there's countless stories to be told somewhere outside of 2250-2400. New Trek should be looking forward, to new stories and new adventures; not backwards and trying to shoehorn in yet another prequel/remake without completely fucking up the canon.
You also can't recast Picard. He's a Shakespearean stage actor, with a voice so authoritative it became The Heartbeat of America, and a presence so powerful that the Queen of England knighted him. Who in their right mind would want to try to follow that?
We need Star Trek: The Nextest Generation where it’s all just horny salamanders making salamander babies that slip into the water real quick when anyone shines a palm light on them.
Further, a lot of the modern films are a lot less Philosophy Trek and a lot more Action Trek. TNG as a series is squarely Philosophy Trek, even if the TNG movies veer a little too much into Action Trek themselves.
I just don't have faith that the themes would be faithfully reproduced, even if the actors, setting, and so forth could be.
If we are looking at it from the cold business angle, there has to be an acknowledgement of the different audiences and the different ways that different kinds of entertainment are monetized.
A Disney movie goes into theaters to make money on its own, then it goes onto Disney+ as part of the big lineup. The main audience is children. Children don't have the kind of demand of franchises that adults do. It is much easier to get children to accept reboots.
That 2019 live action Lion King movie that nobody ever even talks about? It made a billion and a half in theaters. Why? Simple. It had animals and loud noises in it, kids don't need much more than that.
A Star Trek show is not going to be making any theater money. All the money spent on it is in the hope that it attracts enough subscribers to make the costs worth it. That's harder math and it's with a more niche and picky audience.
I was in the middle of writing up a lot of math, but the TLDR is that a TNG reboot is not as appealing as a new show. A TNG adjacent show can cash in on TNG memberberries while having the freedom to be creative to try and pull in new subscribers.
James Macavoy is 45. Patrick Stewart was 47 when TNG first aired. So Macavoy hasn't got much time to get himself ready to play the most important role of his lifetime!
I guessed wrong too, which was a surprise to me when I looked this up:
"New filming took place for the framing story for "The Cage". Since actor Jeffrey Hunter was unavailable to reprise his role as Captain Pike, a look-alike actor, Sean Kenney, played the injured captain in the new scenes, although Hunter was represented in flashback footage and credited accordingly (along with the other original "Cage" cast)." source
William Shatner was the only actor to portray Kirk for the 43 years between 1966 and 2009. TNG premiered in 1989, “only” 35 years ago. I'm sure a reboot of some sort will happen one day, just be patient.
Maybe Paramount Global should negotiate with the TNG cast (including Patrick Stewart) for rights to their likeness and voice (kinda like they did with James Earl Jones) before any more of them die.
Ugh. They probably already have, but nothing would make me less interested in a new Trek show than some other actor wearing Patrick Stewart's CGI skin.