What Is "Real Trek"?

[Sonic Glitch]

Like it says on the tin: How do you define Real Trek^tm? I keep seeing this thrown around on both this site and other Star Trek fan communities when it comes to Discovery and the new series' in development, so what is it? How do you know it? Is TNG Trek in name only because they copied the names "Enterprise" and "United Federation of Planets' but they look nothing like the movies with Kirk and Company and don't star any of the original characters? Is DS9 not real Trek because it's on a space station and the Federation is shown going to war rather than just talking about it?

Tell me, what is Real Trek^tm, and is Trek not allowed to evolve and change as culture evolves and changes? To follow the trope of lesson through metaphor: Does "Batman Begins" with Christian Bale invalidate "Batman" with Adam West? Are we not allowed to have new things?

Or is Real Trek^tm simply, "Everything I like is real trek and everything I don't like isn't?"

[IanKennedy]

Real Trek is that which is set within the internally consistent universe of the original star trek. So:

TOS - for obvious reasons, it's the baseline.
TNG - has plenty of references to the TOS era, including direct reference to specific episodes
DS9 - Expands on the same universe, ships, races etc.
VOY - Again expands on the same universe without attempting to break everything that comes before it
ENT - Had a rocky start but was in the process of fixing the issues during season 4

TOS / TNG movies

Neo TOS movies - Sort of, but gets into issues. The attempt to make it an alternate reality was fine and solved most of the problems that would prevent it from being Real Trek, however, it has an underlying issue that the ship that the romans came back and destroyed was new universe style rather than old. If the Kelvin had been a Coni or Miranda and then moved on to their new style all would have been OK.

STD - Complete FUBAR, insistence that it's the prime universe and not Kelvin or an other but without actually sticking to the rules of that universe. Going completely wacky tech wise for the time they placed it in. Not Real Trek.

Can we have new things, yes absolutely you can. VOY showed a new part of the galaxy, new species, even new warp technologies (co-axial etc) but they did it in a time that made that perfectly OK, they could even have introduced a spore drive because it wouldn't completely destroy all the series that were set after them (because there were none).

Set stuff in the future and they world is your oyster (unless you are going to start doing time travel without controlling pollution of the past). Have any new tech you want, have any new species you want. Set it in the past and you can't (or should I say shouldn't) do any of that, it breaks consistency in a significant way. Otherwise set it in an alternate reality, then you can pretty much do what you like.

Or even, and I know this is radical, call it something other than Star Trek. If STD had been introduces as "Mushrooms in Space", or "Hippy trippy star ship" then everything would have been fine. For example Stargate and it's derivatives are perfectly decent shows, I'm perfectly happy to watch them, without complaining they're not Star Trek.

STD want's its cake and the ability to eat it. It wants the recognition of the name without any of the defence to the history behind it. They want the recognition that goes with the words Klingon, but not to have actual Klingons. Surely you only go with the established stuff because it's faster for the audience to get to know the situation and you don't have to teach them everything. All of which goes out of the window when you don't actually stick to the rules you're trying to benefit from. Especially true when you say you don't give a damn about the fans of the old stuff.

-----

As for Batman, they're pretty much the same thing, just a stylistic variation on uniforms. Batman is a man who's family is killed and he becomes a vigilante. Apart from style and language changes (less of the gosh / shucks kind of stuff from Batman) they're the same. Now if Batman had turned into a cyborg or suddenly had a transporter that allowed him to beam from place to place then it would be a non-Real Batman situation.

[Startrekanmore]

That's called hitting the nail on the head!

As bad as I think the NeoTrek/JarJar verse movies are, they do have some points: The Enterprise is recognizable, the color coded uni's for another and Karl Urban as McCoy as a third.

The way the the switch to the jj-verse is handled though, is awkward to say the least and illogical at worst. The universe undermined Zach Quinto's character of Spock by giving him a hot line right to Spock-prime to help him solve his problems. Right there is one huge red flag. And underminded him further by having him lust after/sleep with Uhura. And that relationship also underminded Uhura by turning her into a hormone driven (rhymes with twitch), with little knowledge of Vulcan psycology. As much as it pains me to admit, the jj-verse IS recognizable as Trek, it's just a Trek that wasn't handled well from the get go. And another admission-as bad as I think the neo-Trek is it is margainally better than STD (aka STINO).


STnM

[IanKennedy]

I'm pretty much fine with the Kelvin timeline. Yes there are oddities with it but then they are different people, with different experiences. Pretty much the main three are spot on. Urban being the living reincarnation of DeForest Kelley.

[Graham Kennedy]

Pretty much what Ian said.

You know, people go on about the MCU and what an amazing thing it is to have all these different but interconnected elements - the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, etc. And yeah, it is... and Star Trek has been doing that for more than thirty years. The Next Generation could have been a reboot, but they chose to put McCoy in episode one, they chose to give us Sarek and Spock. And DS9 built on from TNG, and visited TOS, and so on, and so on. And the creators made it all fit together - whether you like the GCS design or not, it totally works as a ship that's a few generations newer than the Connie. Voyager totally looks like it fits alongside the GCS. And so on.

This is not to say it was perfect. Mistakes were made, and sometimes canon was disregarded - like the early TNG episode that had genetically engineered Humans, before they decided that this was against the law. And there's confusion about what the present is like in Trek - some episodes treat it as being like our present, some episodes say there are sleeper ships heading off into interstellar space, some episodes say we haven't even gone to Mars yet.

But overall it was amazingly well done, and the mindboggling effort and level of care that it took to do that shone through.

And that's what makes those things "Real Trek", IMO. TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, Entrprise, the movies through Nemesis... all one big happy interconnected series of franchises.


And I'd be happy if they went beyond that. We've seen many times that there are alternate universes in Trek - the Mirror universe, for instance. By all means give us a reboot whose reason for existing is that it's in a parallel universe - that's essentially how the JJ-verse started out, and although there are things I didn't like about it, I applauded the effort and loved the films.

But if you're fucking about with the Real Trek universe for no other reason than that you think it's outdated or that nobody cares about it and you want to squeeze some cash out... yeah, I'm not down with that. I hate that, and I hate you if you do that.

Incidentally, there's been a lot of talk lately on youtube that the "Prime" universe isn't actually a term that refers to Real Trek. I'm not that bothered about the definitions myself, but it might make for interesting listening.

[Reliant121]

Ian got it in one. Having the prestige of the brand Star Trek then running an articulated lorry through all of the lore that makes Star Trek what it is is nothing more than a cynical marketing exercise. Nevermind the fact STD is just bad, it's a dastardly abuse of the name Star Trek. The Abramsverse movies skirt a little on the line but it makes sense to treat it as an 'alternate' universe. Again it does little to actively destroy what Trek actually is.

[McAvoy]

Star Trek is becoming like Bond. I doubt we will ever reach a point like we did with the Geneverse or Primeverse where movies and TV series are all based on the same time line or universe and is interconnected.

What we will have a series or two on a new universe before that goes out the window and its started all over again. Eventually we will get to a point where you just accept it as is. Just another Trek show doing its own thing disregarding the previous attempts.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

What's 'real Trek'? Well, for me, it's whatever a particular fan wants it to be. After being in the trenches for Transformers, I've taken a much more laid-back approach to whatever is 'real'.

[McAvoy]

Trek is getting to the point like comics. Multiple origin stories with most of them trying to keep the very original true but changing to suit the needs.