Star Trek: What's the basic formula?
 

What's the basic formula for a Star Trek show? Especially any of the more recent series? Love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Our take on it:
My friends and I love to analyze the show. Our basic theory is that each Star Trek show has 2 story plots, major and minor, that are linked to a central episode theme which is then linked to the overarching themes for the series.

For example:
If it's a Next Generation episode and the theme is "Duty" then the major plot might be a crisis on the bridge where the crew has to decide whether to follow or disobey orders in order to do "the right thing". At the same time, there is usually a minor story going on exploring the same subject, for example, you might see Dr. Crusher having a similar dilemma with a patient of hers or maybe with her son Wesley.

What do you think ... ? :-)

The Original shows had the better stories, IMHO, that tied in to the social and political events of the time. All of this, written as a futuristic wagontrain to new worlds. Most of what they saw was new to Humankind. Just like early pioneers.

These are also what made Voyager and now Enterprise appealing. Then, you have the close relationships that are formed between the crew, almost like they were family. On top of that, you have the interaction with new species, and cultural/racial differences that are similar to our own.

Of course, there is also the scantily clad alien women, and Yeomans in short skirts...
Keith

It's all about the next generation. Hands down, best writing and stories. DS9 was good, Voyager, not so much.

Early in Next Generation you had a shift from self-contained single episode stories to stories that took place in a story arc or against a background of continuity that made it difficult to get into a given series if you hadn't already been watching it.

I admire the original Star Trek because the writers (some of whom were well-known SF authors) had to write interesting, meaningful plots that relied only on the most basic of Star Trek conventions but had to tell a solid story. Hence, you could sit down and watch any original Star Trek episode knowing only who the crew was and they were on a ship called the Enterprise. Both Voyager and Enterprise started out with the promise that each episode would be self-contained but each precipitously became more reliant on cumbersome backstory, politics and recurring characters.

A good example of a series that is very self-contained, yet has memorable characters and conventions that its fans love is "Law and Order". There is almost zero backstory to the characters. Everything is realized in the character's actions in each episode. It leaves everything to the details of the story which can be very dense.

I'm not against story arcs but I do think that the Star Treks have suffered overall in the quality of the writing because you get these weird bastard episodes where half of the episode is slaved to pushing along the story arc and the other half seems unrelated or involves totally different characters. Also, a lot of the way the episodes were structured almost defied you to have schedule that wasn't glued to the TV. The words: "to be continued" really made me groan. "Buffy the Vampire" slayer is a good example of writing continuity but not making the episodes submit to the arc.

SPACE 1999!!!!!!

<<<-- Originally posted by matthew s : SPACE 1999!!!!!! -->>>

I loved that series! Man that brings back memories...

I don't remember that at all from Next Generation. I know the first and last episodes were related. . .but as licensed dork, having watched many episodes of that show, they all seemed self-contained to me. DS9 was the really guilty one where that's concerned.

Okay, I was talking about Star Trek as a whole (and we've had lots of it). From season three onwards (which marked the rise of Brannon Braga and cohorts) Next Generation had lots of arcs including the never ending Worf / Klingon ascendancy babble, each season seemed to have a big Borg blowout and various Romulan intrigues. I agree, it was worse in DS9 and later series.

On the whole, because there have been three series since then, it has very much been weighted toward story arcs and weighty backstory.

Hmm. Maybe I've just seen all the wrong episodes.

Keith,
your hate of "to be continued" is greatly felt by me. They were showing DS9 here and at the end of season 5 they ended the series, the following week they started showing Voyager.

Now Voyager ended 3 weeks ago after showing the entire series and they returned back to earth, and the following week they started showing DS9 at the start of season 6. I'm guessing that when DS9 ends in about a year they will start showing Enterprise. But I'm not waitin that long, my friend and I have already downloaded about 15 episodes.

On our last trip back I stopped in Vegas and checked out the Star Trek Tour at the Hilton, very cool. still have the photo of my wife and I with a Ferengi on our wall.

BTW, any of you guys seen the movie, Trekkies. I should order it, I know my mom would love it, she's a trekkie like me.

The writing has changed from series to series, sometimes a little too PC and it seems more like a lecture instead of entertainment. But still, I'll take it good or bad, as long as I get my regular fix of Star Trek.

I think Voyager was the worst offender, but only because of their episode A Year in Hell being a complete alternate reality mind-screw. I don't mind having a background story throughout a series, as long as I don't start missing any episodes. Then you lose track of what happened, and finally give up on the show.

That is what happened to me with Lexx and Farscape.
Keith

Trekkies is excellent.

Voyager was definitely the low point in Star Trek writing.

I think the problem at the time was that the "good" writers/production people were stretched too thin (DS9 + Next Generation) so they hired soap opera writers to get the story plots going. I really hated the dumb romantic fights, especially between B'lanna and Paris which you could have plopped into any daytime soap opera.

There are 2 funny episodes when the "good" writers/production people came back

1. B'lanna gets dumped on a planet with a group trying to put on a play (the playwrite uses her as a muse). I remember the story because they'd go on about how to do a story correctly. "Just tell the story, stop adding all those fancy tricks like reversals plot twists etc." I thought it was a message to the original writers about how to just tell a good story again.

2. The new writers come on board and blammo no more stupid fights between Paris and B'lanna ... what happens? They just marry the two and get on with the story ... hilarious.

Unfortunately, the last few episodes of Voyager show what it could have been.

I remember a couple of good episodes besides the ones you mentioned. One was where a museum in the future had all the wrong impressions about Voyager, its crew, its mission, etc., and the other had something to do with clones of the entire crew believing they were the real crew.

I like the one with the green chick with the big knockers.

Just kidding, what I really want to say is...

STAR WARS RULES!
LUCAS KICKS RODDENDORKER'S ASS!
CHEWIE EATS WORF FOR BREAKFAST!
TAKE THAT FOOLZ!

Heh heh heh, I'm still just kidding. :)

Although I like Enterprise more than any other ST series except for TOS, I find it's stories all somewhat familliar, like they are just changing the names and places from old scripts. Is it just me or has anyone else felt this?

May the For...
err...
Live long and prosper!

Good God yes! Hey's here's a plot. . .an alien race attacks the ship, and they figure out a way to beat it! Gimme a break! I've seen a couple of episodes I thought were really good, but that series seriously needs some work.

My roommate and I used to have a running joke about the recycleability of Star Trek plots.

Me: "Kelvin! Trek is on tonight! Guess what it says in TV Guide?"
Kelvin: "Ummm (*thinking hard*) ... 'the crew of the Enterprise encounter a mysterious entity that takes over the vessel?'"
Me: "So you've seen it..."

Anyway, this month I cut off my cable to save some money. I hadn't actually been watching TV regularly since the Canucks were knocked out of the playoffs.

I'm hoping that Josh Wedon's "Firefly" will finally put the nail into the rusted hulk that is the Star Trek series but I'm waiting for reaction before I buy into cable again.

Personally I like story arcs... That really pulls me in. That is why
I loved the first season of the new show 24 so much (we will
have to wait and see what season 2 brings). That is probably
also why I dislike the new Enterprise... It just goes in too many
directions for my liking. So I really liked DS9. Most TNG episode
were pretty self standing though. Voyager a bit less and Enterprise
is pretty seld standing.

Oh well... They really need to work on their stories though. Things
are way way wat too predictable. A massive ship failure should
be just that. People should die then. And no, it should not be
resolved in the last 10 minutes by some clever thinking or an
alien. Sometimes Star Trek tends to be "too good" I think. People
make mistakes. War kills people. I think DS9 was more realistic
in that manner. It was heart breaking to see the daughter (ziyal)
of Gul Dukat being shot before his eyes....

Now I'm not saying that war and death are good things, but
just that I like the longer story arcs and things really happen.
Not that you are made to believe something happened or will
happen and then it doesn't....

Just my two cents

Unfortunately, Rob, you are the exception to the vast majority of the TV audience. The TV audience wants their favourite characters to go on living. A 'death' scene may have good short term ratings, but the cost to the fan base can be extreme. I read a good article a couple months ago about Stargate. One of the actors who played (Daniel) had a contract dispute so they canned his character. It doesn't matter how well it worked in the story, once they canned his character, ratings went down the tubes.

What the hey. I like shows like Oz (or used to) where characters had an average life expectancy of two episodes.

"Space: 1999" did have its moments. It was darker, more "Outer Limits" than "Star Trek." Out of the first season's 24 episodes, about 10 were really great - which isn't bad for a first year. "Star Trek TNG" had a really bad first season, for example.

A pity they changed the show's format in its second season - which was a disaster. They made into into a children's show - and even Martin Landau expressed his frustration at the poor script quality.

I met Johnny Byrne, the writer of some of "Space 1999" scripts - some of the best, to my mind. Interesting fellow.

Never seen "Space: 1999"... in what year was it produced?

The first season's 24 episodes, as produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, were shot in England's Pinewood Studios between November of 1973 and May of 1975 (a long, long time). They completed a whole year before they shipped any film out to go on the air.

It was first broadcast in the US in September of 1975. Martin Landau, Barbera Bain, Nick Tate and Prentis Hancock starred.

Here is an episode guide:

http://www.space1999.net/~catacombs/main/epguide/ty1.html