MTV Pumps Trek and Quinto
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I definitely feel a sense of optimism surrounding the new Trek flick, though I credit it less to J. J. Abrams directing than I do the lack of Rick Berman and company pitching in. Berman has become the most reviled producers in Trek history for the way he's treated the Trek franchise with the terrible Voyager, three bad seasons of Enterprise, and the absolutely dreadful films featuring the TNG cast. I'll be looking forward to seeing this new flick, but only once it comes out on DVD. Abrams has no credibility with me because I'm one of the few people that think Lost is a hackjob, and I'm certainly not alone in pointing out its huge drop in the ratings over the past two seasons.
Season 2 debuted to a massive 24+ million viewers while at one point during the mid-to-last of the third season there were as few as 14 million people watching. 14 million is hardly a bad number, these days that's actually pretty good with a receding television audience in general, yet at one point, NBC's Heroes was actually pulling in better ratings that Lost did. And where has Abrams been during these struggles? Off making a horrible Mission Impossible 3, another Godzilla remake with no name, and the most expensive Star Trek film ever produced which also has no name.
I'm sorry for the rant but this thing is just not going to do the trick. A remake of the franchise was not the only choice open for revitalization and Abrams was not a good choice to pull it off. To be completely fair, J. Michael Straczynski and Bryce Zabel came up with the "rebooting trek" idea years before Abrams even hit the scene with Lost. Those two are far more talented and successful and should have been given first dibs on this.
The MTV story has some quotes from Quinto about how he likes that Simon Pegg (he played the main character in Shaun of the Dead - a hilarious film) was chosen to play Scotty, even though the guy who plays/played Carson Beckett on Stargate Atlantis was obviously a far better choice. I'll give Quinto a pass here because I'm a huge fan of the guy, but it leaves me with apprehension that Abrams isn't trying to make a Trek film, he's just doing whatever the hell he wants with the largest most valuable and abused franchise in cinema and TV history - and it's going to piss off a lot of people no matter what he does.
Well, that's going to be a problem because he made the wrong choice. Pissing people off is inevitable but that isn't why you should just generalize the thing and give it the widest appeal and just hope for the best. What you do is return th Trek's roots and give the huge fanbase what Berman and company have been creatively incapable of supplying ever since Deep Space Nine went off the air.
I'm tell you, this entire thing is one huge mistake.
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