Star Trek: What's the basic formula?

[Josh Bass]

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.

[Keith Loh]

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.

[Rob Lohman]

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

[Keith Loh]

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.

[Rob Lohman]

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