I’m sure we were all just talking about where the new Star Trek movie could go, and what cast would be taken on board. With the totally insane cancellation of the really good Enterprise, it seems there’s nowhere left for Star Trek to go, and indeed no one seems to want to resurrect it except for the fans.
Then there’s the movies, what could be next, and with whom? Which cast could possibly come to the fore and bring us a new series? Some say Generations, some say Voyager…I say Enterprise…but that’s just me, I love the longer reaching stories rather than the episodical formula.
So it was that this very day I caught the story on SyFy Portal through Coming Soon. Star Trek 11 is commissioned and a writer is assigned. Who is it and what is it about I hear your communicators babble? (Oh dear Richard…too much coffee this early)
Erik Jendresen was producer and three episode writer for Band of Brothers, a wonderful series for so many reasons. However apparently he wasn’t keen to visit the franchise, and frankly who can blame him. With series being dropped like hot potatoes during their story build up, and no one but the fans willing to fight for them, what luck does a movie have of making it through development. Must be a bigger guaranteed cash cow than a series anyway. Well, he said no originally, but when he was pitched the concept he was in.
“I was not a diehard Star Trek fan,” he said. “When they first approached me, I wasn’t really interested. But they said, ‘What if we could approach this as a blank slate, and here’s a notion.’ When I heard the notion, I realized that the people I was talking to were serious, and genuinely dedicated. I started to really think about it, and, ultimately to develop a story. And it’s a pretty good one.”
Jendresen confirmed that the movie would take place more than a century before Kirk, but acknowledged that it would not be an “Enterprise” spinoff.
Mmm…well actually since it’s in the Star Trek universe they are all “spin-off’s”, but let’s not quibble. He goes on.
“‘Star Trek,’ the original series, borrowed in an often elegant way from classic mythology and great ancient storytelling,” he said. “There’s something kind of epic – almost mythic about the prequel (movie).”…
…”Death doesn’t hurt, it’s not really ugly. You can get killed by a phaser and just √¢‚Ǩ¬¶ disintegrate.
“We’re going 160-odd years before Kirk is born. It’s an earlier time, and I think it would be really refreshing to feel something in the course of telling this tale, instead of being wowed by special effects, or presenting another crew in jeopardy where, in the end, the captain does something brilliant, and all√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s right with the world.”…
…”By the end of this story, everyone isn’t fine,”
I think that a lot of the great Star Trek movies have been made with that feeling, the feeling of realism. Wrath of Khan or The Undiscovered Country, where things truly can go wrong and the world, indeed the universe, is not a nice place.
With the cancellation of “Enterprise,” and reports of what actress Jolene Blalock (Cmdr. T’Pol) described as an “appalling” finale, Jendresen said he’s well aware that there’s a lot of anger out there.
That does not bode well for those of us still watching a series that was cut in its prime. It really didn’t deserve that, and if the fight can be fought for such series as Babylon 5, repeatedly, why not a very worthy series such as Enterprise? Oh, and on a more serious note, isn’t Blalock the most stunningly gorgeous woman you have ever seen?
No director and no cast has been brought in, but it is clear that characters from other Star Trek properties will not be included.
There’s so much to talk about in here. Should they have abandoned the Enterprise series? Should they make another movie, especially in another “return before Kirk” attempt? Should they be going totally fresh and avoiding all series, films and characters to date? Start your comments!
