A Former Trek Fan’s Comment on the Marketing of Star Trek Discovery

Reader and former Star Trek fan Gamera977 has more to say on Star Trek Discovery in a response to my post on start-a-fight marketing:

Thanks Rawle, I was thinking they were going down the same route as the ‘Ghostbusters’ remake too but I think you’ve hit the nail the head by pointing out the deeper issues here.

And it might had some success if they hadn’t already honked off many if not most Trek fans already. As a former big Trek fan and I guess I’m still a little bit one even now my two cents for what it’s worth:

1). It’s been what, the early ’90s since we’ve had a ‘new’ ST series? ‘Enterprise’ was a prequel and soft reboot of the original. Then the Abrams movies were a hard reboot. And now ‘Discovery’ is both a prequel and a hard reboot. There’s a lot of complaining from fans about ‘why the BLEEP can’t they just set a new show in the future like they did ‘The Next Generation’ instead of remaking the original over and over!?! The ‘Star Trek: Online’ game picks up a bunch of plot threads left over from ‘DS9’ and ‘Voyager’ and makes a far better story than anything I’ve seen from Paramount in years.

I’ve noticed there seems to have been an ongoing effort to clean-up or erase the original show by displacing it with the reboots. You have ‘A Private Little War’ which supported US involvement in Vietnam War. The SJW types either ignore this episode or try to explain it away. Or ‘The Way to Eden’ where a bunch of free-loading space hippies following a cult leader almost start a war with the Romulans so they can find a paradise planet where they don’t have to work for a living but spend all their time frolicking and playing terrible music. Funny the space hippies seem a lot like SJWs……

2). Trek fans can get pretty obsessive about consistency. As you’ve pointed out we’ve got aliens called ‘Klingons’ that have nothing in common with the ‘real’ Klingons. Why use name Star Trek if you’re going to change everything- fans tend to get upset over stuff like that.

3). Complete ignorance of the original. I loved the lead actress braying about being the first black person to play the lead in a Trek production. Only that Avery Brooks did that as Captain Benjamin Sisco on ‘DS9’ TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. Fans don’t like the ignorance on simple facts about the series or the ranting about doing something ‘new’ that was first done a quarter of a century ago.

4). Even many of the fans tend to hate the preachy political sanctimonious attitude the series often adapted. The most PC episodes tend to be some of the most disliked of the various series.

5). Trek was always based on optimism and hope. The ’60s pretty much sucked on a lot of levels. But Trek said we wouldn’t only survive but thrive. Making a grim-dark angry show in the Trek universe- I can’t see how it can work. It’s simply not Trek. Even the darkest show ‘DS9’ was about how we’d overcome the odds and win in the end.

Sorry to run on and on but I really think Paramount has royally screwed themselves here to the point we’re looking at another ‘Ghostbusters’ remake. The only defenders of the show I’ve seen are some of the troll types on Jon del Arroz’s site who I wonder if they’ve even watched it or are just screaming how it’s the greatest thing ever just to argue and get attention.

As I said, it remains to be seen if this new series will drive more interest in Star Trek. However, I find it interesting that according to some Trek fans, Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville captures the spirit of Star Trek better than the official show.