Word: treks
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...easy to think that Star Trek inspires either adoration or loathing--that you love it so much you say your wedding vows in Klingon, or you pity those who do. But most who have read even this far know there's another class of Trekker--the closeted ones. These are people who aren't telling co-workers they plan to see Star Trek: Nemesis, the 10th Trek film, which opens Friday. They won't admit they watch UPN's Enterprise, the sixth--sixth--TV series in the franchise. They tell buddies they are going to Vegas for blackjack and bourbon...
...still thrives. Though showing its age after 664 TV shows and a 35th birthday last year, the franchise still generates perhaps $200 million a year in revenues when you add up movie grosses, TV ad sales and what's spent on books (500 have been published), DVDs and tchotchkes (Trek ornaments are always among Hallmark's top holiday sellers). Paramount claims merchandise sales have exceeded $4 billion over Trek's lifetime; 470 people have actually paid $5,000 apiece for a life-size replica of the villain Locutus. The newer series haven't done as well as Star Trek...
With their built-in audience, the nine previous Trek films grossed an average of $181 million in inflation-adjusted terms and earned a collective profit of $1.2 billion. And Nemesis is better--darker, more surprising--than the average Trek. Of course, it won't make as much as, say, Spider-Man. Yet Star Trek has outlasted other brands over the years. (Suck a phaser, Batman...
...does Trek survive? The oft-cited answer is that freakish Trekkies--fans who saved the original series with passionate letters and today maintain an eBay market of 25,000 Trek items--still sustain the franchise. Wrong. Trek hasn't been a cult enterprise in years. It is, instead, a humming mainstream business that responds quickly to changes in mass culture. That's why the new film and TV show depart from the softer story lines of the '90s. Since Sept. 11, Star Trek has basically become an action franchise again. It's even trying to be sexier. But Trek...
...nearly a decade after creator Gene Roddenberry died in 1991, Trek producers--particularly new honcho Rick Berman, a TV veteran who had overseen Cheers and Family Ties--furiously tried to freshen the brand. Though he denies it, Berman seemed to be courting those exotic creatures rarely associated with sci-fi: women. On the small screen, his team launched the spiritual Deep Space Nine in 1993 and the political Voyager (helmed by a female captain) in 1995. The films Generations (1994) and Insurrection (1998) seemed more concerned with the captains' emotional lives than their ability to outsmart Romulans...