Actually, no one ever said that the previous story of all the shows and movies was erased or didn't happen. In fact, they said pretty clearly the opposite. The original timeline is intact and fine. The new timeline is an alternate, parallel one. Here, have a picture. Maybe you should actually pay attention and understand a movie before you start hating on it?

Star Trek Discovery, a female lead that isn't the captain and it's before the original series. *sigh*

I assume it's this you mean? Yeah, not very good news. It's not the female lead that bothers me. I assume it means "one of the leads" anyway, since no Star Trek show ever had a single lead character. What bothers me is the mention of "more sex", since I don't need Trek to be "sexed up". I don't want it trying to ply into the Game of Thrones audience. And the speculation about "lower decks" show. There is a reason the shows always followed the bridge crew- they are the ones making all the important decisions, facing the most important conflicts. An episode about the "lower decks" people here and there was nice, but an entire show like that? It won't work.

And setting it before TOS, but in the original timeline... it may bnot impact the show's quality, but it feels a damn risky, if not outright stupid decision. It's ver limiting in terms of what they may do, and it might confuse the people who only know the new movies and may want to get into the new show. If it was set 20 years after Nemesis there could be a lot of coll nods to the previous series, but it would be far enough removed from everything to give the new audience a fair shot too.

I'm hoping the character is well written, a well written female character is groovy. Knowing current trends, I'm not counting on it..I hope to god they keep the general style of ships/uniforms. It's going to get confusing if they don't.

Unfortunately, even though they take place in an alternate universe, they are still canon. Which means that in the main universe, the Romulus system was completely destroyed. Since the Romulan Star Empire is one of the few genuinely interesting factions in ST, and has remained so in every incarnation of the universe,* I consider its canonical destruction to be pretty terrible. Especially since it was destroyed in such a nonsensical manner.

For me, this is just indicative of the greater problem of the new JJ movies: they don't respect the established universe. Things are done because they're cool or interesting or will attract viewers, without any apparent regard for the in-universe or real-world history of the series.


*Exception of Nemesis. But we should probably just ignore that one, like Spock's Brain or Threshold.

I quite loved "Star Trek Beyond", at least more than the other Trek reboots. It felt more like the originals, though I may be biased since McCoy (my favorite) is a main character again. He had more scenes than he did in the past two movies combined, and that's more how it was in the originals. "Beyond" was more of an ensemble movie, and not just the Kirk-and-Spock show of the past two. I loved seeing it be an ensemble again, and I loved that they added in the Spock/McCoy banter that I loved so much in the originals.

I really enjoyed "Beyond", so I'll be sad if they don't make anymore movies in the reboot series because it didn't make as much money. It was certainly better quality. Cautiously excited about the new tv series, and glad that Star Trek is still kicking.

I just read that the new Star Trek show is going to have 12 minutes of commercials per episode despite being on a paid streaming service (in the US). That seems like a terrible idea and a big incentive for people to pirate the show, which could really hurt its prospects.

*shudders*

Why did you have to bring up Threshold? As if mentioning Nemesis wasn't painful enough.

I think what's worth considering is that back then the conditions were a lot more amenable to a Star Trek movie being hugely successful the way Wrath of Khan did. For starters, Star Trek was still a hot property due to the success of the first movie and the continuing popularity of TOS (and later TNG). There also wasn't really a lot of serious competition in the general space that Star Trek filled apart from Star Wars, especially with the fizzling out of the original BSG after the failure of Galactica 1980.

Now, things are different; a new Star Trek movie not only has to compete against Star Wars, but the additional juggernauts of the MCU and the DCEU. SF/F on TV has also risen in popularity and quality, and speaking of which, there arguably hasn't been a break-out TV success for Star Trek since the glory days of TNG and DS9. ENT and VOY have their merits and defenders to be sure (and ENT remains a guilty pleasure of mine) but they neither brought in the viewing numbers nor had the pop culture clout as TNG or TOS. On top of all of that is the competition posed by video games for audience attention and numbers, especially big brands like Halo and Destiny.

Furthermore there's the problem that Hollywood has, much like the AAA industry: they're not making an almost $200 million movie just to make $230 million. Hell, Batman v Superman made over $870 million worldwide on a budget of $250 million, and it was considered an earnings failure for not making over $1 billion. If they make another Star Trek movie, you can be sure that the suits are going to want to see Avengers-level numbers, and they'll do whatever they think it takes to make sure it gets there.

What does this mean for the future? Well, Simon Pegg gave -- from what I've observed -- the kind of Trek film that the fans wanted versus the 2008 reboot or Into Darkenss (this is all from what I've seen). For the next movie, I'm going to be a cynic and say that it wouldn't surprise me if they put in more cheesy cornball action and T&A just to get more people in the seats.

On TV, I'm not optimistic either. Sure, I'd love to see LGTBQ characters in Star Trek, but from what I've heard it looks like it's going to be more of a hackneyed shoehorned character introduced to tick a box on a list of features, than a well-realized character like Soren from "The Outcast".

Oh well. At least I still have my VHS taped broadcast of "In The Pale Moonlight"...

Star Trek, or at least the character and the writing of the series, which was unique and was the defining trait in my opinion, is gone. The series will go downhill because they've put an agenda in front of the stories. Just watch this; I feel sorry for the actors which are there and had to answer the minefield of questions of the executive producer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe7oW0IDCIc

Romulus was destroyed, but you can still have the Romulan Empire alive and kicking if they ever make a new series set in that timeline. In Star Trek VI they blew up that Klingon Moon and talked about it like it's the end of the Klingon Empire, despite the fact that everybody knew that it's doing fine decades later in TNG. So is Star Trek VI also a terrible movie that doesn't respect the established universe? Most people usually point to it as one of the best movies in the franchise after Wrath of Khan.

So really, the original timeline isn't altered in any way that would be much of a problem should we ever return to it in that time period, and the new movies are not the first to do something like that. If anything, the fact that once it was decided by the higher-ups to go back to Kirk & Co the writers and the director went with an alternate timeline and made sure to point out that the original Trek stands apart and intact instead of just making it a remake and rewriting established events speaks of having the respect for that universe you think they so lacked.

Looks like they are more focused on getting as much PC'ness into the series than focusing on storylines and such like:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-37043956

I would expect another Voyager - which was pretty awful.

What really bugs me- the production starts in two months, and we still don't know a single cast member? Come on.

The destruction of an entire star system is a bit different from the destruction of a moon. Said moon was destroyed as a result of an industrial accident, and was technically foreseeable if the Klingons had any sort of safety measures in place, which they didn't cause they're Klingons. This was both the inciting incident of the plot and relevant to the entire movie. The aftereffects of its destruction are explored in decent depth in the movie.

The destruction of the Romulus system, on the other hand, was an apparently totally unforeseen supernova (!) that occurred so quickly that the Romulans couldn't even evacuate their home planet. While that's silly enough, it isn't even really that relevant to the plot of the movie, except as an irrational background motive for Nero. They never did any exploration of what the destruction of Romulus really meant in the movie precisely because it was so irrelevant. Except that it's only irrelevant to the JJverse, it's anything but irrelevant to the prime universe. There were any number of reasons they could've thought up for Nero, but the one they chose was an immense blow to the prime universe essentially as an afterthought.


All that said, I enjoyed the first two JJ movies, at least while I was watching them. It's just that they completely fall apart under any sort of rational scrutiny, just like everything JJ has ever done. It's not like ST has super-consistent writing in the first place, but JJ is particularly glaring in this regard.

Cool, thx, my memories of the first new Star Trek film (the first from JJ) is a bit hazy because it was such a convoluted mess.
My opinion on the new stuff has not changed. It's like the "Mirror, Mirror" episode but instead it's not over after an episode.
TL;DR: The Star Trek Computer (Majel Barret) died on December 18, 2008, and Star Trek ended with it. It's story has been told.