The Star Trek Timeline Continues To Get Muddled

Hey guys, it's Donnie... I still have a soft spot for the influence Star Trek had in my formative years, so whenever there's a major development in the work of Trek, I tend to sit up and take notice. I've been out of the loop for a while, having been pretty unhappy with Nemesis and never really being able to jump onboard Enterprise. I saw a lot of the first season and thought it had tremendous potential, but my understanding is that Dr. Sam Beckett and his ridiculously hot Vulcan friend never really delievered the goods.

Personally, I thought that going back in the timeline was a very smart move, because, aside from the Dominion War, which was really one of about 4 things that was ever interesting about DS9, all the best Trek stuff was about the crew as intrepid explorers. Going back to a time when everything was still new seemed to make sense and apparantly the powers that be at Paramount seem determined to make it work.

Band of Brothers writer Erik Jendreson recently turned in draft number one of a new Trek film tentatively titled Star Trek: The Beginning. I take particular issue with that title as it centers around events that take place between the time of Enterprise and The Original Series, so clearly "The Beginning" isn't a chronological reference. Jendreson says "The story is big and epic...it would look at the inciting incident that started everything," so by "started everything" I'm going to assume he means forming Starfleet and the Federation, which I'm pretty sure still didn't exist by the end of Enterprise.

Jendreson is also promising a dramatically different style of film: "We're looking at a very small group of men and women, particularly focusing on one character. There are a couple of ships, including a principal ship, but this is not a traditional captain and crew of a starship story in the least."

A dramatically different approach to telling the actual story is pretty much all they have left to try, and I really hope it works. It's been a while since we've had really great Trek. However, if this approach is gonna work, I don't see it translating to television very well, and if they can get a good movie going, they'll certainly start looking back at television again. They're seriously running out of space in the timeline, so I'd love to see them jump REALLY far in the future ala The Next Generation, so that we still get remnants of the universe we knew, but all the rules have changed and we have to relearn the ways of the galaxy again. Who knows where this is all going? Certainly not Paramount. They're pretty much fumbling in the dark at this point...