[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Your points are well-taken. I agreed myself, before the end of Voyager's run, that Trek needed a break from television... or at least a major shift in perspective. My novel Berserker, in fact, was originally designed around my take on the direction Trek should have gone, to get away from the military angle and go civilian for awhile... see how the "other side" lives. I always thought Firefly was also a good take on the "other side" of the Trek universe, where people don't get the perks of Starfleet life.

That's a neat idea. There are a lot of stories that could be told in that universe. I had cautious hopes for Enterprise, as I saw a lot of potential for a prequel series that took place in the early days, and covered the formation and growth of the Federation. Fortunately, I didn't have very much hope, since it was Paramount, so I was neither surprised nor really disappointed with what they actually produced.

But as you pointed out, Paramount never could see past the dollar signs earned by the franchise, and if they thought they could have continued the franchise with a Starfleet ship crewed by Muppets, they would have done so happily.

I would have enjoyed a Muppet Show skewering Trek no end.

Even now, Paramount refuses to give up on Trek, and while they are pushing a revisionist movie forward, they are taking the original series and adding updated special effects and ship scenes, Lucas-style, to give the show a facelift (and you'd better believe that, once they're done, the face-lifted series will be available on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray at every supermarket).

Given the wealth of experience Paramount has built up creating Trek, sometimes I imagine all of that redirected into a totally new SF franchise... such possibilities...

That won't be fulfilled.

I think it's a problem endemic to the current entertainment industry.

Consider Walt Disney. Walt was a genius. He just wanted to tell stories, and did so brilliantly, becoming fantastically successful as a side effect. Walt died. The bean counters took over. What has DisneyCo produced since Walt died that has any likelihood of being on the same shelf with his classics?

Peter F. Drucker made the point in various writings that revenue comes from outside the enterprise. You get revenue and make profits by providing goods and services people are willing to pay for at a price that will let you make money. He also pointed out that profit was a means to an end, and not an end in itself. The end result is to survive -- to be able to open your doors and do more business with your customers tomorrow. To survive you must make a profit, but it's the means of survival and not the goal.

The corollary to this is that making money is a by product of providing superior goods and services. If you treat making as much money as possible as your goal, you tend to lose sight of the factors that make you successful in the first place.

Entertainment is based on creativity. Kill the creativity in the service of profit, and well, there's that goose with the golden eggs again. Creativity isn't a sure thing. Sometimes you try to create something and you fail. Try too hard to avoid failure by stifling innovation and sticking to the proven formula, and you die a slow death through stagnation.

I think that's about what has been happening to Trek.
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Dennis