Hey, everybody, it’s Darren from GateWorld.
I can’t hardly begin to tell you how excited I am about this weekend’s announcement from
Patrick Stewart that he’s officially returning to Star Trek.
He’s 78 years old and, though he has stayed plenty busy on both stage and screen, he said
he’d thought that he had left the role of Jean-Luc Picard behind him.
When the Discovery producers approached him about doing something new with Trek, he said
he agreed to the meeting but had every intention of turning them down.
In this video I’m going to compare what’s happening with Star Trek to a possible future
for the Stargate franchise.
In fact I think something similar may already be in the works for Stargate and about to be announced.
Patrick Stewart has been rumored to be in negotiations with CBS Television for some time now.
But it was still a shock when he walked out on stage
at the big Star Trek Las Vegas convention on Saturday.
Here’s a short little piece of what he said:
STEWART: I have spent a lot of time recently watching Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Including episodes I'd never seen before, which was fun and exciting.
And gradually it became clearer and clearer to me that the power of that show, the success
of that show, the benefits that it gave -- I have never, ever grown tired of hearing from
people who stop me in the street or in a restaurant (well, no, I don't like being interrupted while I'm eating)
who say to me, "Your show changed my life.
Without Star Trek: The Next Generation I might not be here."
And that lies at the very centre of what I have to tell you now: Jean-Luc Picard is back.
GATEWORLD: So this news basically broke the Internet.
Picard last appeared on screen in Star Trek: Nemesis, which premiered in 2002.
So it’s been 16 years since he’s played the character.
The actor said that they are still spinning stories and aren’t sure what the show is
going to be yet … but Picard will be older, he might not be the captain of a ship any
more, and he will have been profoundly changed by the events of the past two decades.
He’ll be the same man – but imagine running into an old friend from college two decades later.
Life just has a way of shaping us into different people.
So this is the story of Jean-Luc Picard later in his life.
When the rumors first started circulating I though maybe they could get him for a one-off,
like a 6- or 8-episode mini-series.
But the way that Stewart and producer Alex Kurtzman were talking on Saturday it sounds
like we might actually see a full-fledged, ongoing television series about the older Picard.
Now there’s two reasons why I wanted to talk about this on what’s ordinarily a Stargate channel.
The first is that I grew up on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
I was 11 when the show premiered.
This show is in my DNA; it’s largely responsible for making me a science fiction fan to begin with.
Not only does it remain my favorite TV show of all time, but lately I’ve been introducing
Next Gen to my three children.
We’re a little ways into Season 4, and the show absolutely holds up some three decades later.
If you haven’t seen the new remastered edition, with brand new visual effects, go check it out --
it’s incredible.
The second reason I wanted to talk about this here at GateWorld is because there are some
obvious comparisons between the Star Trek franchise and Stargate.
Both have had movies and long-running TV shows, with spin-offs, crossover episodes, comic
books and novel tie-ins, fan conventions, etc.
Now Stargate is much younger, it’s less of a household name, and its worldwide audience
is obviously smaller.
But Stargate fans over the years keep making comparisons to what Star Trek is doing, and
by and large I think those comparisons between the franchises are apt.
Take, for example, one recent comparison: Star Trek went off the air and had nothing
new in production for years.
Then along came J.J. Abrams’ feature film reboot in 2009, followed finally in 2017 by
a new TV series.
Today Stargate is in the same boat.
It’s been off the air for seven years.
We dodged the movie reboot a few years ago.
But in 2018 we got a short Web series in Stargate Origins, and now there’s talk of more.
MGM just hasn’t revealed what it’s planning yet.
So how about the Jean-Luc Picard comparison?
Well, it’s all about canon, about respecting the fan base, and about sewing a new story
into the existing tapestry rather than starting over.
Trek stories span over three centuries in the fictional universe, and even though we
don’t get to see the weekly adventures of the starship Enterprise any more it’s still
really important to know that those stories happened, they still matter, and we were there
to be a part of it all.
A new series centered around an older Picard totally has the opportunity to be really high-quality
and make CBS a ton of money.
(They want multiple Trek projects rolling out over the year so that they can convince
people like me not to turn off my CBS All-Access subscription for 9 months out of the year.)
But, more than any of that, I think this is a genius move on their part because
it respects the fans.
It says to long-time viewers, “Your 30- or 40- or 50-year experience with this franchise matters.
We’re not going to chuck it all and make something totally new, and totally different
and call it ‘Star Trek,’ in the hopes of attracting new viewers.”
A lot of people have that criticism of Discovery, and while I found the show really well executed
and entertaining in its first season, I think the criticism is valid.
It IS different.
And I’m not just talking about Klingons.
The show’s tone, its writing choices, the ways in which characters relate to one another
and the way it tells stories, Discovery isn’t like any of the 24th-century shows from the 1990s.
So now that story can move forward in its own way, and on its own terms, AND we can
get new stories set in the 24th century, with familiar faces and characters that we know and love.
Stargate should do the same.
It’s only been 12 years since Stargate SG-1 went off the air.
Most of the cast, the writers, and the producers are still active in the business – and many
of them would definitely be happy to return to the franchise to tell new stories in the
vein of what made Stargate so awesome.
If you’ve been following GateWorld you know that Christopher Judge, for example, has made
it very clear for a year now that he’d like to tell more stories about Teal’c and the Jaffa people.
This doesn’t have to be a full-length television series.
It might be a one-off, like a second season of Stargate Origins; or maybe a miniseries;
or a movie event that isn’t cut up into pieces for online distribution.
Who knows.
But MGM can do that, and also 10 other things.
A Jaffa origins story doesn’t have to preclude other stories from being told – like a new
show with a totally new team; or a mini-series about the Ancients; or how about a proper
resolution to Stargate Universe and Stargate Atlantis?
Here’s the lesson from what CBS is doing with Trek: When there’s more on the table
than just one on-going TV series, the studio can find ways to do all of this and more.
That’s the age of television that we’re living in now, with online distribution.
Whether it’s long-form or short form, whether it’s streaming online or airing on cable
or it gets a theatrical release, all of these stories can share the same universe.
The point is that MGM can do a lot, and I’m still hopeful they will.
I think that what’s about to be announced is probably more than one thing.
That doesn’t mean multiple, hour-long TV shows, of course!
But more than one thing.
More than one story in more than one kind of medium.
Now is the time to bring back some familiar and trustworthy voices to help shepherd the
Stargate franchise into a new golden age.
Patrick Stewart and Alex Kurtzman have just shown us that it can be done, and that the
fans will show up and respond to it.
Stargate needs to do likewise – not to follow in Trek’s footsteps, but because it’s
a smart and stand-up way to honor a fandom.
Take us into the future of Stargate storytelling, not by setting aside what made us fans to
begin with, but by sewing new ideas into the tapestry.
Thanks everybody for watching!
Here’s my question for you: Which writers, producers, actors, or directors from Stargate’s
past would you most like to see involved with the franchise again?
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We’ll have full coverage of the Gatecon announcements in September.