New Star Trek series will abandon Gene Roddenberry’s cardinal rule

For the first time, a Trek series will show main characters in a negative light.


Read the whole story

 

[lordcheeto]

None of us are really qualified to decide if this is a good thing or not.

For example, this comment:

DS9 was the first Star Trek to do this. Discovery is not, its late by about 20 years. DS9 had main characters do things that went beyond shady. Sisko killed all life on a Planet, he plotted to have get the Romulans into the war by falsifying data and ultimately allowed a Senator to be murdered.

Its good to see they are going this route, but the article saying this is new is kind of untrue.

I'm assuming there is something more subtle about the rule than we understand. Without having clear examples of what wasn't possible with the rule - scripts that had to be thrown out or changed - I think we're missing context.

 

[drachasor]

DS9 was the first Star Trek to do this. Discovery is not, its late by about 20 years. DS9 had main characters do things that went beyond shady. Sisko killed all life on a Planet, he plotted to have get the Romulans into the war by falsifying data and ultimately allowed a Senator to be murdered.

Its good to see they are going this route, but the article saying this is new is kind of untrue.

Correction: Sisko did NOT kill all life on any planet. What he did was poison a planet so that humans couldn't live there, but it was clear this didn't affect most life. For instance the Biosphere would remain largely intact and Cardassians could live there. This was part of his feud with Eddington, but also a way to balance the scales since Eddington did the reverse with a planet Cardassians were living on -- ownership of the planets was switched.

 

[gulthaw]

Well, I can see mine is not going to be a popular opinion... but it is what it is.

IMHO Enterprise was barely watchable (yeah let's bring a DOG to this new planet we've found and we haven't analyzed... nothing wrong can happen, right? /facepalm ) but DS9 was NOT Star Trek in my book, it was Star Babylon Trek and thus I loathe it.

STD (they should've thought about it before...) looks like is going to be more of that "NOT Star Trek" so I'll probably pass.... after I pirate it and check the pilot because.. "Spaceships!!!"

 

[LexaGrey]

I think they are throwing out what made Star Trek truly terrifying. I always empathized with the Ferengi because their rules of acquisition were more like our rules of commerce.

Humanity however rose up and joined together in like a super wwii commitment to dedicate everything to the future preservation and betterment during the Eugenics war.

That doesn’t just happen. Something super dark far beyond we fought superior genetics and won went down. Militias would never put up with this kind of war overwhelming unified world and it was brushed over with a “we don’t talk about that”. Even from the first series I considered the characters to be some variety of post human.

 

[Exnor]

Umm...did I hallucinate seasons 4 through 7 of Deep Space Nine? (This comment will have unmarked spoilers for those seasons, so stop reading now if that's a problem for you.) I think a nearly-successful military coup on Earth already went against Roddenberry's utopian ideals. Or what Sisco was willing to do to fight the Maquis. Or to bring the Romulans into the Dominion War. While TOS and TNG might have embodied Roddenberry's ideals, I don't think those survived his death.

Thank you! That was basically what came to my mind when reading this article.

A LOT of this so called changes to a cardinal rule already happened and with good results:

Star Trek Insurrection: pseudo-corrupt Admiral who is willing to stump on the planet inhabitants to get what he wants;
Star Trek Voyager: The Maquis represent a group of people of various species that are not satisfied with the "utopian" Federation and one of them ends up as a main character..
DS9: A lot of good examples (Cisco of course) but the one of section 31 comes to mind;
Star Trek Enterprise: Captain Archer initial "racism"/resentment towards Vulkans, etc etc...
Star Trek Into the Darkness: Megalomaniac Admiral;
Star Trek Beyond: lol do i need to write it?

 

[_myk]

LexaGrey[/url]":36qdkg3r]I think they are throwing out what made Star Trek truly terrifying. I always empathized with the Ferengi because their rules of acquisition were more like our rules of commerce.

Humanity however rose up and joined together in like a super wwii commitment to dedicate everything to the future preservation and betterment during the Eugenics war.

That doesn’t just happen. Something super dark far beyond we fought superior genetics and won went down. Militias would never put up with this kind of war overwhelming unified world and it was brushed over with a “we don’t talk about that”. Even from the first series I considered the characters to be some variety of post human.

I'm guessing you haven't watched First Contact? The real question is whether the events played out in the mirror universe episode of Enterprise (that led to the Terran Empire) would have happened in the prime universe if the E hadn't been sent back in time...

 

[No BS]

I am afraid this does not sound promising. Star Trek will be yet another soap opera in a Sci-Fi setting. :-(

 

[kalzekdor]

The amount of rose-colored nostalgic navel-gazing in these comments is... well, pretty expected, actually.

 

[Redmess]

So in other words, Star Trek is finally becoming Babylon 5?

 

[FrankN.Stein]

The Captain accepted "ma'am" in emergencies. When Harry Kim called her that, he was scolded because it was NOT an emergency.

If I remember right, Ma'am was acceptable for Janeway in a crunch, but she preferred Captain.

*Edit*
That's what I get for commenting too quickly. On a second read I see that it was Kate Mulgrew who made that request, not the character.

 

[FrankN.Stein]

"that main characters were not allowed to mistreat each other or have conflicts that weren’t quickly resolved."

So - Bones' permanent casual racism towards Spock didn't count, because he didn't mean it?

 

[williamlondon]

flunk[/url]":1s5xuo8r]They have to do something to shake up the formula, this fits with current TV trends and will probably be interesting.

Wow, do something that's the exact same thing as everything else out there already so they can continue turning "variety" into "quantity."

 

[SPCagigas]

Did Section 31 suddenly stop being a thing? They were kind of awful.

Also, as a rule, not "main characters" and pretty consistently shown as the bad guys, tho.

 

[SPCagigas]

Thank god. The best Star Trek series, DS9, pretty effectively ignored this rule and the reward was compelling fiction, as compared to the ship-full-of-boy-scouts that was TNG. Don't get me wrong, I like TNG quite a bit, but they were hamstrung by a lot of Roddenberry's silly "rules," to the extent that they finally put him out to pasture.

Yep, I'm hoping that this show is more like DS9 than TNG.

I'm hoping that this show is more like watchable TV than the steaming pile it looks like it will be...

 

[TurboPascal]

CBS All Access is the biggest killer for me. $6/month for network television -- no thanks

 

[abhijeetgaiha]

I know the self-contained format can feel silly sometimes, but I'm not sure how I feel about it being ditched entirely.

It seems most people support the move to long arcs, but I will point out that a big part of the reason Star Trek has endured so long, despite its hit and miss quality, is that it is fun to rewatch. Stuck on an airplane, in a hotel room, or home sick? Great time to rewatch a favorite episode. Rewatching part 3 of a 10 part story arc has no such appeal. Long arcs also get old a lot faster than the writers think. The "final five" Cylon thing was dragged on so long it became tedious, and that arc never really came to a satisfying climax.

Nailed it! I've never felt like re-watching BSG (which I loved during it's original run) because watching it is an all or nothing exercise.

 

[flish]

What could be more Utopian than telling stories about people overcoming genuine, entrenched conflict

I'm fine with that if the conflict is genuine, not forced. Elite starfleet officers would, like astronauts today, be chosen as the best from a large applicant pool. It is very unlikely that they would have serious conflicts over petty personality quirks, lack of commitment to the mission, or naked ambition. Those are fairly easy people to weed out. For example, Interstellar had a major conflict where the female astronaut wanted them to visit a planet because she felt drawn there by the power of love. Bullshit. Anyone chosen to be an astronaut would demonstrate some objective thought. Similarly, the recent movie Life was all about astronauts wanting to violate safety protocols in order to attempt to save their buddies from a deadly life form without a clear plan for doing so. Nobody impulsive, irrational, and insubordinate like that would actually be serving on a spacecraft.

I am genuinely envious that you can imagine such a bright future.

For start though, astronauts today are not chosen as the best from a large applicant pool.
They are chosen as the best for purpose from ex-military personnel from US and Russia - mostly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... ationality
USA => 337
Russia => 118
All the rest of the countries => 92

 

[SPCagigas]

Umm...did I hallucinate seasons 4 through 7 of Deep Space Nine? (This comment will have unmarked spoilers for those seasons, so stop reading now if that's a problem for you.) I think a nearly-successful military coup on Earth already went against Roddenberry's utopian ideals. Or what Sisco was willing to do to fight the Maquis. Or to bring the Romulans into the Dominion War. While TOS and TNG might have embodied Roddenberry's ideals, I don't think those survived his death.

Even TNG had episodes like "The Wounded", "The Drumhead", and "The Pegasus", and the whole character of Ensign Ro Laren. In Season 2 of TNG, Starfleet actually needed to hold a formal hearing to determine if the 2nd Officer on it's flagship actually had any rights, or was just a slave owned by Starfleet.

Things like this, though, are why I'm a little worried when they say "it's new." To me, that suggests characters who aren't redeemable, or anti-heroes closer to the anti vs. hero end of the spectrum.

Nah, it probably means "Ugh... Do you know how much damned research we already have to do without watching all those stupid old shows? We had to send our costumers to Europe. Europe, for chrissakes! There's like 900 hours of Star Track, and we just don't have the time to watch all of it. We've watched like 45 minutes of YouTube clips though; we're now experts on all things Track. We're going to blow your mind with our new, never-before-imagined take on characters."

 

[arobert3434]

While the Federation certainly seems internal conflict-free, calling it a Utopia is a huge stretch, particularly when a number of episodes of TOS were centered around exactly the Enterprise's escape from a Utopian society on some planet or other trying to entice crew members to join them, help perpetuate itself, or both. Some of Kirk's most memorable moments were impassioned speeches railing against the vacuousness of the challenge-less lifestyle such Utopias offered and in defense of the innate need of humans for (at least the possibility of) pain and misfortune to help define their existence.

 

[Edzo]

All this talk of DS9 without mentioning it's true protagonist, Gul Dukat? Sure, he had make some hard decisions and take strong action, but he was always a voice of moderation among the Cardassian leadership. Or at least that's how he tells it.

 

[SPCagigas]

Whenever someone says they're going to turn up character conflict, it usually happens in one of two ways:

1. The characters are written to be idiots, which allows them to be petty and selfish.

2. The characters are reprehensible, intentionally manipulating and harming others for their own gain.

So, I'm not really excited to hear that Discovery will be amping up the drama because I'm anticipating it to fall into one of those categories.

For me, the appeal of Star Trek has always been a crew of competent, mostly rational people striving for the greater good. Trying to do the right thing for themselves and others. Increasing drama for drama's sake just strikes me as incredibly hollow.

This. It's not that I want flawless characters, but rather I want to watch people who have their crap together. They still have flaws, but they're more complicated and not so easily solved flaws. They have the basics taken care of, and that actually makes it more believable to me. You're not going to send a bunch of people into space, for possibly years at a time, in an expensive spaceship that took a lot of resource to build, who have basic interpersonal issues. You don't send a bunch of brooding edgelords to go research space anomalies.

I know a lot of people have been saying that DS9 already violated this "rule", but not really. DS9 cheated the rule by setting it in a place that the Federation had only partial control, in the "frontier" of space. Even then, all of the main characters, both Starfleet and others, were competent. Even Rom turned out to be a productive and intelligent individual once he was given a chance. Quark was a thief, but he was good at it and had his own moral code.

All the characters in all the series had some kind of flaws, but I never watched an episode and thought "how the hell did this guy get a position on a star ship?". When I've watched BSG and Stargate Universe (huge fan of SG-1 and SGA) I couldn't figure out why half the people where there, other than drama.

Well, the whole point of the BSG reboot was that none of the main characters were the "best and brightest" of the colonies before the Cylon attack; they were just the ones left. Bill Adama was a washed up naval officer; Tigh was an alcoholic who only still had a billet because Adama covered for him; Roslin had her job as Secretary of Education because she had an affair with President Adar; Thrace was a self-destructive drunk; Lee Adama was a complete prick... The only character in BSG that was consistently good was Karl Agathon. If you plucked any of the other characters out of BSG and dropped them into Star Trek, they would have been borderline villians-of-the-week, or at least one of those pitiful characters driven to do something because they were weak.

 

[arcite]

From reading the article, it's not entirely clear what change is being made.

It seems that the good guys are still going to be the good guys, but they will simply be allowed to have flaws - rather than some main characters actually being bad guys week in and week out.

I think Star Trek fandom should be able to live with that.

IIRC StarFleet personnel being horrible people started with Voyager (yes, I know that some characters were technically Maquis)

Re-watch some ST:TOS, starfleet reps are all bureaucratic power hungry ASSHOLES. In all those episodes, it's Kirk vs. THE MAN, and he always comes out on top using guile, wit, and throwing the prime directive out the airlock.

Rules are made to be broken, so I have hope for this new series.

 

[SPCagigas]

Friends, I don't think that any individual episodes of TNG or the long arcs of DS9 broke this rule, at least as formulated in the article. To quote:

So he made a rule, which endured long after his death, that main characters were not allowed to mistreat each other or have conflicts that weren’t quickly resolved. Writers for the various series also weren't allowed to show characters being malevolent or cruel.

Can anyone think of an example in TNG where a character (all things being equal, e.g. not possessed-Troi) was malicious? Were there any examples of main characters mistreating each other? Ro Laren was sharp-elbowed, but didn't mistreat anyone.

How about Capt. Benjamin Maxwell in "The Wounded" who went rogue and started killing Cardassians, or Dr. Marr who, in "Silicon Avatar", deliberately destroyed the Crystalline Entity? I guess you could say that Lore is excused, because he was an android running a computer program.

Friends, I don't think that any individual episodes of TNG or the long arcs of DS9 broke this rule, at least as formulated in the article. To quote:

So he made a rule, which endured long after his death, that main characters were not allowed to mistreat each other or have conflicts that weren’t quickly resolved. Writers for the various series also weren't allowed to show characters being malevolent or cruel.

I don't know VOY or ENT well enough to say whether or not they followed the rule. But I think that this show does have new ground to explore (pun unavoidable), by having an actually abrasive and selfish member of the crew. Or perhaps even a love triangle of jealously (I choose to ignore the sterile Worf-Troi coupling).

It would be hard to ignore the evil machinations of Capt. Ransom in ST:VOY "Equinox" parts 1 & 2.

Those are all minor characters, not the stars of the show.

 

[arcite]

Some people are showing a misplaced nostalgia for tv plot tropes of the '80s.... where in every syndicated show, the plot had to be resolved, main characters always landed on their feet, the good guys always won, nothing of consequence affected anything or anyone. Consider the best of British TV, they've been killing off or reveling in their main protagonists flaws for decades.

 

[cjb110]

As long as these multi-episode arcs all finish properly in a season, so when this inevitably gets cancelled by some short-sighted suit, the story is actually finished.

 

[greatn]

That "cardinal rule" was abandoned shortly after Roddenberry died. Main characters is DS9, Enterprise, Voyager, and even late TNG were portrayed in a negative light and having conflicts with one another all the time, and the new movie series was built on interpersonal drama and conflict.

This is just PR from a desperate studio that's making a product people are turning their noses up at and realizing no one is going to subscribe to another streaming service for this, and no one has faith in their ability to make a good Star Trek show, and none of their set photos or creative decisions to this point have done anything to gain any confidence.

 

[greatn]

LexaGrey[/url]":1ynrbm0e]I think they are throwing out what made Star Trek truly terrifying. I always empathized with the Ferengi because their rules of acquisition were more like our rules of commerce.

Humanity however rose up and joined together in like a super wwii commitment to dedicate everything to the future preservation and betterment during the Eugenics war.

That doesn’t just happen. Something super dark far beyond we fought superior genetics and won went down. Militias would never put up with this kind of war overwhelming unified world and it was brushed over with a “we don’t talk about that”. Even from the first series I considered the characters to be some variety of post human.

I'm guessing you haven't watched First Contact? The real question is whether the events played out in the mirror universe episode of Enterprise (that led to the Terran Empire) would have happened in the prime universe if the E hadn't been sent back in time...

The opening credits of the mirror universe episode shows the Terran path had split historically long before first contact.

 

[Smithy]

Do we really have to deal with the same old TV drama BS with Trek? The values and ideals of that universe, the civility and honour, is what makes it special.
Having a bitchy Days of Our Lives feel is going to make it fail. I don't want the usual American sitcom banality in Trek.

 

[Pirokobo]

Or what Sisco was willing to do

Yeah like sanctioning murder.

Sure, it's how Klingons settle matters of leadership, but still, he did basically give Worf the okay to kill Gowron.

 

[Craver T]

If done well, I think this sort of change will not negatively impact the core essence of Trek. However I'm not at all confident this will be done well. TV characters are often one dimensional, so I'm skeptical that the characters will be written with enough nuance to be fundamentally heroic and aspirational while simultaneously displaying less admirable qualities and motivations. The major character arc in television usually consists of a person with extreme qualities in one direction, and through the course of many seasons, evolves to begin showing qualities toward the other end of the spectrum. Optimistically, it is about character growth. Cynically, it is about fan service, giving them something they always wanted or wondered about. However real people are more complex than television writers typically write to. I'll have to reserve judgement until I see the end product.

 

[GreenEnvy]

Sorry. I'm gonna pass on STD.

Not a lot to interest me.

Not that it reflects on the show one way or another, but it has an unfortunate acronym.

Didn't read all 6 pages to see if anyone replied, but thats not the acronym. All Star Trek shows TNG onwards have used the part after Star Trek to make the acronym, so we had TNG, DS9,VOY, and ENT. So Discovery is DSC.
We never had STT, STD (s9), STV, STE

 

[Wardatrigger]

Ha! All those DS9 fans thinking their series was the original "gritty" one. Obviously they've not watched B5.

I'll watch this without any great expectation that it'll be great. I'm looking forward more to Greatest Gen covering DS9 to be honest.

 

[NinjaNerd56]

So, this will have 'Liar, Liar' moments where some Orion slave girl will tell a Captain Kirk analogue "Eh...I've had better."

 

[mmiller7]

Sorry. I'm gonna pass on STD.

Not a lot to interest me.

I might be interested if it wasn't on CBS's streaming service. That's just a bridge too far.

for that alone i wont be watching.

Indeed, I'm not going to be buying into yet another streaming platform just for one show.

 

[JonathanSmith]

Ha! All those DS9 fans thinking their series was the original "gritty" one. Obviously they've not watched B5.

I'll watch this without any great expectation that it'll be great. I'm looking forward more to Greatest Gen covering DS9 to be honest.

...because B5 isn't a Star Trek series?

 

[mmiller7]

Friends, I don't think that any individual episodes of TNG or the long arcs of DS9 broke this rule, at least as formulated in the article. To quote:

So he made a rule, which endured long after his death, that main characters were not allowed to mistreat each other or have conflicts that weren’t quickly resolved. Writers for the various series also weren't allowed to show characters being malevolent or cruel.

Can anyone think of an example in TNG where a character (all things being equal, e.g. not possessed-Troi) was malicious? Were there any examples of main characters mistreating each other? Ro Laren was sharp-elbowed, but didn't mistreat anyone.

How about Capt. Benjamin Maxwell in "The Wounded" who went rogue and started killing Cardassians, or Dr. Marr who, in "Silicon Avatar", deliberately destroyed the Crystalline Entity? I guess you could say that Lore is excused, because he was an android running a computer program.

Friends, I don't think that any individual episodes of TNG or the long arcs of DS9 broke this rule, at least as formulated in the article. To quote:

So he made a rule, which endured long after his death, that main characters were not allowed to mistreat each other or have conflicts that weren’t quickly resolved. Writers for the various series also weren't allowed to show characters being malevolent or cruel.

I don't know VOY or ENT well enough to say whether or not they followed the rule. But I think that this show does have new ground to explore (pun unavoidable), by having an actually abrasive and selfish member of the crew. Or perhaps even a love triangle of jealously (I choose to ignore the sterile Worf-Troi coupling).

It would be hard to ignore the evil machinations of Capt. Ransom in ST:VOY "Equinox" parts 1 & 2.

Those weren't "main characters" though.

Lore was only in a small handful of episodes as a reoccurring villain just like Q.

Benjamin Maxwell I only recall in that one episode unless he made passing-appearance an another as something trivial (e.g. part of the fleet).

Capt. Ransom only was in that 2-part episode, again not a main character.

In all of those examples the "main characters" (TNG - Picard, Riker, Geordi, Data, O'Brian, Crusher, etc; VOY - Janeway, Chakotay, Paris, B'Elana, Doctor, etc) were always "good" and "fighting for good".

 

[Dukov Nook]

Sorry. I'm gonna pass on STD.

Not a lot to interest me.

If you do happen to get STD you'll want to see your doctor ASAP.

That really is a very unfortunate acronym for the new show.

Some might say it's

wait for it

'catchy'

 

[MyGaffer]

I'm keeping my expectations very low. This was a troubled production from day one, they fired the show runner/creator, they've shuffled the cast, this is supposedly from the "prime universe" but all the visuals looks much more like the Kelvin timeline, that cheesy line about "sensing the coming of death," basically I'm expecting this to be a terrible TV show, let alone a terrible Star Trek show.

Hopefully it's good, but if it's not I want it to be so terrible they never make another Trek show again. I hate how successful franchises aren't allowed to die. Let's fund the next Star Trek, not endlessly rehash Star Trek.

 

[Eliminateur]

Thank god. The best Star Trek series, DS9, pretty effectively ignored this rule and the reward was compelling fiction, as compared to the ship-full-of-boy-scouts that was TNG. Don't get me wrong, I like TNG quite a bit, but they were hamstrung by a lot of Roddenberry's silly "rules," to the extent that they finally put him out to pasture.

deep SLEEP 9 best ST series?, hahaah what shit are you on son?.

TNG is the pinnacle of Trek, Voyager was a clusterfuck and janeway horrid as captain, enterprise did the cardinal mistake of all that "time travel" bullshit that NEVER ends well otherwise it would've been so boring my TV would've melted.

Gene's rules are what MAKES Trek, if you take them out then you have a generic ship sci-fi crap, like everyone else said if i want gritty scifi then i have a pick of already excellent shows like expanse.

this sexually transmitted disease(STD) show is trek without trek, like decaf, a generic show of "ansgty" "flawed" characters which is bullshit...

 

[gulthaw]

that cheesy line about "sensing the coming of death," basically I'm expecting this to be a terrible TV show, let alone a terrible Star Trek show.

I forgot about that line!

It makes no fkin sense on a evolutionary standpoint, no sense at all.