Frakes: Forget About Trek On TV
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If you’re waiting for a Star Trek series to air on television, don’t hold your breath.
Jonathan Frakes said it won’t be happening anytime soon.
Frakes, speaking at Fan Expos Regina 2015 last weekend, was asked about the possibility of a new televised Trek series.
The actor told the crowd that he had pitched a concept to CBS but that they weren’t interested in a new Trek show, not even one pitched by him.
Frakes went on to explain that CBS feels that it diluted the Star Trek brand during the 1990s and early 2000s, with Star Trek: Nemesis being the first Trek film to fail to make a profit.
So when the rebooted Trek movies did well, CBS decided to concentrate on them, and not branch out and make the same mistake as they did back then.
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Did the audience member then respond by asking whether CBS was aware it was wasting the best opportunity it will *ever* have for a successful franchise..??
The an$wer i$ no on a new $tar Trek televi$ion franchi$e – CB$ just does not want to dilute the franchi$e at thi$ time…
I don’t think CBS is sweating it, seeing as how much of their lineup is already full of franchises and spinoffs.
Now, if there was a Star Trek show set in the modern day that was about the lives of a dedicated criminal investigators in a police procedural, then they’ll probably listen.
I’m sure the CBS execs see these movies purely as undifferentiated product — but the reason Nemesis failed was because it was a horrible movie.
Maybe it was time for the TNG crew to pass the torch, but I’d have loved to see DS9 continue it’s run of providing a darker side of Trek with a movie that was a thriller rather than action/adventure.
The only reason why we had TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT to begin with was because Paramount needed shows for first-run syndication and later UPN. With the former being dried up and the latter long-since dead, CBS just doesn’t need a new Trek series, even if fans think they do. CBS can probably get more viewers (and more money) with reruns of the various CSI and NCIS shows than they can with a new Trek show.
Infuriating, short sighted, unappreciative. FUCBS.
These current reboot/reimagined shows have about as much to do with Star Trek as bologna does with fish.
Ticks me off to no end.
That being said… love to know what Mr Frakes pitch was about.
Urghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. This is highly illogical. (no pun intended).
The Reboot movies are a new Star Trek for a new generation they are not going to be like old Star Trek and thank God Old Star Trek was boring and preachy and they had that heavy Cerebral Element to them that was annoying, TNG for example was so Cerebral and Preachy and It was all about Diplomacy morals and Ethical Garbage It felt like you were being tricked into attending a Church service. These new movies are Flash Action packed full of Conflict Good vs Evil and It appeals to the mainstream Audiences I hear the next movie Star Trek Beyond will have the new Crew going to the prime universe and Staying there Either they restore the universe or they will find a area of Space where universes intersect and just go to the original universe and Stay there, this is great news that means Star Trek 4 will be set in the original universe the new Enterprise will get all that Technology that Voyager brought back with them added onto there Enterprise.
If you want a space opera devoid of “Diplomacy morals and Ethical Garbage” and full of “Flash Action packed full of Conflict Good vs Evil” with no “Cerebral Element,” then go watch Star Wars. Since you apparently find it so distressing to be asked to think, Star Trek was never for you in the first place.
The fact is the studios will develope a new series, but not using somebody’s else idea. They would then have to pay them to develope it and pay them royalties too. They will develope it using their own hired team and then they can keep the royalties in house and to the shareholders. That is the main reason they are making remakes of old movies and Television shows, they own them and make more money that way instead of buying a new idea/story from a outside writer.
When did Into Darkness make a profit? If it wasn’t for the foreign market, which was never looked at for the other films, it would have been a flop. 2009 film did good as there has been no new Trek for 6 years, the lack of success with Into Darkness showed how poorly received it really was. Maybe CBS needs to call Frakes up again.
Got to meet Frakes at this event, great guy. CBS should be so lucky as to get him involved in any new Trek project.
et vous Que penser vous de CELA Frank et vous qu’en pensez-vous que vous êtes d’accord avec cette décision
I wouldn’t say that these new movies are a great Star Trek series that I Enjoy and not just me but the new Star Trek movies brought in Millions of new fans that were not into Star Trek before because they felt the same way I did and also DS9 did a good Job in bringing a darker more Cynical feel to Star Trek I enjoyed DS9 because it was Darker more Cynical then TNG
the film failed because of of a director who hadn’t watched any of the Star Trek series.
Idea: Star Trek CSI?
Ohh, CBS doesn’t care about inspiring a future generation to pursue math and science, via weekly stories with characters they can relate to and aspire to be in a world that’s hopeful. Nope, CBS maybe just wants to appeal to oversexed shallow college kids who think they have every thing figured out, and that “Fast and Furious in Space” is the new Shakespeare come to life.
Or at least, this is the charge CBS is open to.
No you mean TID – Temporal investigations department, detectives who go in time to uphold the temporal directive. that sounds way cooler.
Trek does middling as a movie, because the concepts it explores best suck for movies. Expositions as to the nature of humanity just don’t bring in the money a movie needs. You simply will not have the equivalent of Mudd’s Women or The Measure of a Man in a movie. You’re going to have shoot-em-ups, because that’s what the studios demand for their $200 million. Oh, you might have a little exploration of human nature as a B or C story, but the only Star Trek movie that didn’t involve weapons fire of some kind was Star Trek IV, and that only because it didn’t have Enterprise. Star Wars is primarily about the fighting, which is why it works better as a movie (the Clone Wars cartoon had the luxury of time, and so it was able to explore morality a bit more) and as video games. The Star Trek universe has always been about far more than fighting, and some of the best episodes never used a weapon.
THe frustrating thing is, there are fan productions that are pretty good that would be willing to pay a fee for a license to make Trek, then sell subscriptions to cover expenses. Some of the stuff from New Voyages/Phase II and Star Trek Continues captures the original spirit of the show, which isn’t surprising since they have help from Star Trek professional production folks. Nothing says that CBS has to declare them canon, but since Star Trek New Voyages lent pieces of their set to Star Trek: Enterprise, it proves that the fan productions are more than willing to work with the owners of Trek.
Yeah we live in a great time don’t we.
Disqualifying any money made — no matter the source — seems like a pretty bad business decision, any way you slice it.
The notion that movies need America to succeed is, frankly, pretty arrogant.
“Boring”? Why are you here again? Go visit a Star Wars fan site!
Amen!
Millions of new fans? Where are these “millions of new fans”? Are the going to Star Trek conventions? Are they buying JJ-Trek merchandise? Are they watching anything past those two big budget fan movies Paramount is masquerading as Star Trek?
I’m rather sure that most of these so called “new fans” from the first JJ-Trek film didn’t bother to see the last one and that most of the audience of the last one was made of of old school fans hoping that maybe, just maybe, these new films could fix the miss part of them. So sad how many of them were let down worse than the first film. 🙁
I disagree, Nemesis was a good film with the wrong ingredients. Instead of being honest with what Star Trek is, Paramount wanted a edgy film and it didn’t work. There was a great Star Trek movie in their that never got to come out!
There are reasons for that, like the fact that studios don’t always get all the made made from foreign markets. It’s amazing the thing one learns from a film production class!
I’m OK with their being an end to REAL Star Trek, I just don’t like how it ended. Something that better tied up the franchise instead of “These Are The Voyages..” would be great! It would be great to fill in the gaps between Enterprise and TOS and between TOS and TNG. I don’t disagree with Rick Berman that the main issue with going forward from Voyager is that the tech becomes so incredible, all danger is lost, and it’s like what’s the point? I do disagree with Paramount and CBS in letting Nemesis and “These Are The Voyages…” be the last word.
I’d be so happy for a few, well made mini-series that tied up certain story threads from the main five crews and the franchise as a whole. I can accept that all good things must come to an end, I just can’t accept HOW it has ended. It seems to me the 50th anniversary is the perfect time to give this story a proper and fitting end. Then let guys like JJ do whatever the hell they want, I don’t care. Hollywood is going to ruin all franchise ultimately, it’s only a matter of time. With over 700 hours of TV to enjoy on DVD and Blu-ray (mostly on the latter), it’s not like we are hurting that much. I seriously doubt too many other franchise will ever get that much screen time!
The fan productions are allowed to play with the Star Trek universe as long as they don’t make a profit from them. They would not be able to afford the license fees CBS would want for them to produce the quantity of episodes needed to fulfill the appetite of Trekkies world wide. I’m not talking thousands of dollars but Millions of dollars CBS would want, it’s a money game and CBS wants to make money off of Star Trek lots and lots of money. On top of that they would probably want total ownership of the episodes produced.
Heavy Cerebral Element make brain hurt. No like. Morality allegory stuff no fun make feel bored. Want more flash bang splodey please. New generation not need real drama want mainstream happy fun movies. Want cool Borg destroying supership comic book movie coolness. Bye bye old boring real Trek.
I’m not sure I understand the thought process here though. CBS doesn’t control anything to do with Paramount’s movie franchise, not since the Viacom split where Star Trek basically ended up being a child caught between divorced parents. I believe CBS licenses the TOS characters for the new movies since they control the television franchise, but not making a new series should have nothing to do with concentrating on the movies – CBS has no input there.
Arguing that Star Trek is a bad fit for CBS’s lineup is reasonable (if Supergirl takes off that might open execs minds to the idea), but the synergy Marvel is promoting to moderate success with its linked TV and movie properties and the spinoffs the CW is successfully growing each year for its genre shows should be giving CBS serious evidence that it’s a worthy idea to resurrect a franchise that pioneered this level of interconnected storytelling and world-building, particularly as Trek is now a $400 million-a-movie franchise. It is likely difficult to coordinate with what Paramount does, the show would be expensive, I hear the TNG blu ray sales have been disappointing and pure space sci-fi still is risky to put on network TV, but nostalgia is in full swing right now with TV revivals happening left and right. I have a feeling CBS just didn’t love Jonathan Frakes or Michael Dorn’s pitches.
North American box office accounted for nearly one half of STD’s total grosses. (It took in approximately 11% less domestically than the first one did.)
So yes, Star Trek does need American box office to succeed.
We got TNG & DS9 because Paramount wanted to make money from the property they owned. Star Trek II becames the movies thanks to Star Wars, but Paramount wanted their own network like Turner and Fox created. The massive library they own would help provide material to air on top of the new productions they developed for the UPN. One major reason CBS might not want to go forward with another Trek series could be the numbers they saw from Enterprise or I should say the lack of numbers. Numbers mean viewers and viewers means money and money is why they are in the business of making Television and Movies.
After “Insurrection,” I’d argue the fans wanted an edgy film too! What we got though was derivative of many old episodes of Trek and earlier movies – John Logan’s fanboy instincts took over and subverted his grasp of good storytelling. The director didn’t help, but this stalled at the script stage and just ends up being a few decent action scenes and nostalgia for this cast barely pulling us through some very dull patches and a bland recycled plot. The tone of the film was fine, but there was no real imagination at play. IMO.
It’s true. The old distribution models that kept those shows on the air are mostly gone. There’s no obvious outlet for a new Trek show.
Showtime is a viable option though – genre fans are more apt to subscribe for exclusives, even if they are also the most torrent-savvy.
I would agree Trek even now is not guaranteed of suitable ratings on a big network – UPN had to promote the hell out of Voyager and Enterprise to get occasional numbers suitable for a major net.
CBS has to be a little envious of the synergy Disney is reaping the benefits from with Marvel though. Supergirl is a tepid attempt to put their toes in the water again – I don’t know that they’ve touched anything genre since… Moonlight.
Snatching up “Jag” for a pittance from NBC and creating the NCIS franchise out of that is a hard opportunity to top, even if it doesn’t have a merchandising windfall like Trek had in its heyday.
Of course TNG and DS9 was created to make money–hardly any TV shows aren’t created for that purpose. But Paramount did not want UPN (it wasn’t their idea). UPN was really an attempt by Chris-Craft and Viacom to create a new television network. As Paramount’s owner, Viacom used its television division to produce new shows for it, including VOY and ENT, which wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
I think if Showtime was really viable for a new Trek series, CBS would have put one there by now. It may be too small of an outlet for Trek, unless they decide to go ultra-cheap (B-movie level) with it.
I think the answer to bringing back Trek on TV is to involve the UK broadcasters in any deal. Sky has a good track record of working with US networks to produce shows (e.g. 24: Live Another Day), Sky definitely has the money to invest and they’ve had great success over the years with all the Star Trek shows. I also think the BBC could do a good job of it even on a limited budget, particularly given the impressive job they’ve done of resurrecting Doctor Who and making it one of the top rated shows around, despite it being basically a Sci-Fi geek show! As for who could mastermind all this… as long as the new Trek movie is a great success, I bet Simon Pegg could make it so, especially with his connections in UK broadcasting.
poor jonathan frakes… 🙁 CBS clearly don’t know a good thing when they see it *sighs* whilst I liked DS9 the most, I despise JJ Abrams stuff.. any chance he could pitch it to another company? Or try a netflix campaign? I think Enterprise are trying that..
This is a mistake on CBS’ part. Even though I like the J.J. Abrams universe fine (I’ll get to this in a minute), they seem to have lost a LOT of fans with the new movies. Now, I wasn’t partial to Into Darkness, but I enjoyed the 2009 movie perfectly fine. Those who don’t like it usually say it was nothing but mindless action that spits all over Roddenberry’s vision. I would challenge anybody to point to a Star Trek movie (besides The Motion Picture”) that WAS a deep-thinking philosophical journey. The other complaint I see most often is how the new movies just have bad science…please, explain to me how a sling shot around the sun for time travel is good science. My issue with Into Darkness was this: if you have the big brass ones to tie continuity to a tree and bash it with a shovel, DON’T try to redo the most POPULAR Star Trek villain of all time. They LITERALLY could have gone where no one had gone before, and instead they delivered a piss poor mash-up of “Space Seed” and “Wrath of Khan.”
Anyway, back to the point of the article – Trek on television…deep thinking and philosophy has ALWAYS been the aim of the shows. I’m not saying it was always achieved, but it was the aim. I think a show on television, no matter which universe it is set in, could bring some of the old fans back that the new movies have alienated. Personally, if a new show is pursued at some point, I think I would like to see it in a new venue such as Netflix or Amazon. Give it fewer episodes, a bigger budget per episode, and license to tell some interesting stories that network censors might not approve of.
Just my two cents. Here’s hoping I’m not let down by the next movie as much as I was by NOT Khan.
One more thing in regard to movies – it would be a WELCOME change, IMO, to get away from Crew vs. Bad Guy (alien warlord, galactic despot, etc). Say what you want to about The Motion Picture, VGer was an AWESOME concept. Man’s own creation coming back to haunt him. A more ambiguous threat could be awesome. Just saying.
wrong!!!!!!!!!1
CBS hate the JJ crap and Paramount wants out.
I do happen to know the plans, but Frakes is just not involved
It’s OK, all is not lost yet. Simon Pegg who is co-writing the 3rd installment of the JJ reboot, vows to bring that “cerebral” element back into trek. He said, and I quote “Obviously, I always treat things with respect, but I have to abide by certain rules and do right by the original series, and not be too post-modern with it and not be too aware of itself. I have to try to take on the spirit of the show, rather than fill it with stuff that people will just go, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s from episode something or other.’ It’s more than that.” Hopefully he gives the 3rd trek reboot the justice it deserves, and I think it will be glorious! But seriously nuke CBS.
Contribute to Star Trek Continues and Phase II fan series. They are the future of NON MOVIE Trek. The more they make the better they will be.
There are only a handful of countries in the world where Star Trek movies take any meaningful money at the box office. USA, UK, Germany, and Australia. Checkout the foreign BO figures over at boxofficemojo. Into Darkness did very well in China, it was the first Trek film there to do anything big. I’ve never noticed this before, but I might suggest the reason Nemesis stank financially was because it seems to have had a very limited worldwide release compared to other Trek films. There are of course all the well discussed reasons why the film died on its backside, the main one being it was crap, and that word of mouth killed it.
I would like to know the pitch too. If it was interesting, different, and thoughtful that’s one thing. If it’s some kind of Mary Sue fanfiction (Captain Riker and the Titan!) than it’s just as silly and desperate as Dorn’s Captain Worf series or Russ’s Renegades.
I know it’s a long shot rights-wise, but with Twin Peaks, Arrested Development, the X-Files, and bloody FULL HOUSE getting new seasons with on-demand services, I think it would be much better for a new sequence of Next Generation or Deep Space Nine episodes. Some kind of mash-up season of TNG, DS9 and VOY characters set before the events of Trek 2009 might be cool. It would give the actors something to do so they stop Kickstarting fanfilms and give the fans some likeable Trek.
Indeed. Heavens forbid you having to actually think while watching anything. How about a nice Transformers film instead?
Wait a moment. Wasn’t DS9 also quite complex, with moral and ethical dilemmas, and quite cerebral at times? If you liked DS9, why would you favor brainless pablum?
The only “fans” Abrams brought to the franchise are fans of the new movies. These “fans” will not bring Trek back to TV in any way that resembles Gene Roddenberry’s vision. I enjoyed DS9, but I think you are remembering it as being darker and more cynical than it really was. It was still an optimistic view of the future, with plenty of hope and idealism. Maybe you have forgotten how the Dominion War was ended. Sure, there was lots of fighting and space battles, but it was, ultimately, cooperation, healing, and inclusion that ended the war.
Foreign market unfortunately is becoming a necessity for these huge, bloat-budgeted tentpoles. No one seems to have figured out that maybe if they scale it back just a leeeeeetle bit that they could make it profitable in the US market alone.
Honestly, I’d take a well-written, well-produced lower-budget Trek film over an overblown CGI noise-and-lensflare-fest any day.
It had some good parts, but Dr. Frankenstein’s sewing skills were not up to snuff.
Plus, dune buggies.