The new Star Trek movie is slated for release on 2009-05-08. That will be at the beginning of the summer movie season. This new movie had me thinking of what it could mean for Star Trek, the perverbial battle between itself and Star Wars fans love to talk about, and what could it mean for Sci-Fi as a whole.

What does it mean for Star Trek

I remember a few years ago seeing an interview of Kate Mulgrew, who plays Captain Kathryn Janeway, who mentioned that Star Trek needed a break after voyager. I think she was right. It needed a break, because at the star of Voyager, we had The Next Generation was done after seven seasons, Deep Space Nine was heading in it’s third season of seven. The overlap might have saturated the market of Sci-fi, but more so far Star Trek itself.

By this time, the level of writing had improved. I remember seeing the first season of TNG, and noticed the style of it did hark back to the original series. By the second season, TNG became it’s own thing, and was written better. Though, it still had some elements of the old series like the story arcs of one major theme, and one minor theme for the episode, and some how the two melded together. That’s always been the general way the stories have been.

By the time Enterprise came around, which only lasted for three seaons, that formula was feeling tired. I began skipping Enterprise for other shows on, like StarGate. It was kind of sad.

Now that we have this reimaging, what does that mean for Star Trek? A time to bring something new to series. Maybe a better style of writing. Look at Battlestar Galactica. I have both the classic 80s series and remember watching the shows in syndication as a kid, and the style of the show had that 80s feel, where you always have some form of comic relief in the show, though it had it’s messages. But the new Battlestar Galactica series does now is great. It basically said, drop the campiness, and let’s get serious. What a great move on their part. It reminds me a bit of how Hercules and Xena was at times. Those two shows had those serious times, and funny times, and quite honestly, I preferred more the seriousness of a show, and with Battlestar being that all serious show, it’s great. I enjoy every episode. If Star Trek could borrow some of this style from Battlestar, that would be great.

I don’t think many details have been released about how they plan to treat the story line or the characters, so I won’t go into too much assumption here, but they have Simon Pegg, who is hilarious, and that asian guy from Harold and Kumar. It should definitely be intereting to see. They may go for some humor, hopefully not the campy type.

What does it mean for the Star Trek vs. Star Wars battle.

You know this is bound to come up. Star Wars is, hands down, the most profitable franchise of sci-fi of all time, and quite possibly for any franchise. Why? Because Lucas makes movies for the Kiddies, like LL Cool J makes music for the Ladies. Yeah, I throw a rap reference into that. Lucas has been monopolizing on the franchise since 1979, when he made that now infamous Christmas special. He made deals with Kenner to make the toys, board games, costumes, coloring books and etc. Lucas did what the cigarette companies try to do, get them while they are young.

Honestly, I think you have to admire Lucas for understanding the psychology of the youth, because as they grow older, they have fond memories of things, because they don’t know any better. I would date call him a psychology genius.

So what does this have to do with the ST vs SW. Honestly, I don’t think much, except for all the die hard nerds and geeks in their jedi outfits hanging out in front of the theaters yelling, haha, you got remade. I think this will benefit Star Trek overall. It will help to revitalize the franchise because the fans would want to see the rest of the series remade in the new image.

Again, Lucas may have beaten Star Trek to the punch on reimagings. He’s done Clone Wars as a CGI animation, though originally as a regular animation. I saw the regular animation, and I couldn’t finish watching it. I just didn’t like it. It wasn’t the same. It didn’t feel like an imprvement, but feel more like a downgrade.

What does it mean for Sci-fi in general

I wish I knew. I can only guess that it may help sci-fi, if it’s done right, to bring back other series. A big franchise like this getting a reimaging, may call for more sci-fi franchises to come back.

As it is, I hear V, the one with the lizards from space eating humans as food, is in the works. Well the creator of the series has released a new book, and is working on getting a tv or movie version done. Maybe we will see a reimaging of Buck Rogers. I think Ben Browser, from Farscape and StarGate SG-1 would be a good candidate for the role. I’m curious if Space 1999 would get some attention from this.

Well, let me know your thoughts. It would be cool to hear from others about this topic.