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It is fair to say that Star Trek has not been having a good time lately. Star Trek: Discovery, or A Very Special Degrassi Episode In Space, was a complete disaster. Strange New Worlds had promise but keeps on fouling its own nest by reimagining classic characters, and the recently released TV movie Section 31 has become a punchline.
Rob Kasinsky
One of the stars of Section 31 is Rob Kazinsky, and it turns out he is a massive, committed, and bona fide Star Trek fan. He gave an interview to Trek Nation a few weeks ago (reported via Dark Horizons) where he said he was reluctant to sign on to Section 31, until the producers explained a harsh, and potentially bone-chilling truth to him – Star Trek is dying:
“When I got this job I was like… why are they doing a ‘Section 31’ movie? It’s going to going to be hated from the get-go, no one’s going to want to watch a ‘Section 31’ movie, and we’re doing a TV budget movie… this isn’t going to be what people want.
Then I spoke to Alex [Kurtzman, producer] and I spoke to Olatunde [Osunsanmi, director] and they explained to me that ‘Star Trek’ is dying. I don’t know if people know that. I was talking about ‘Star Trek’ at my gym. I’m a boxer and I train with a lot of kids and none of them knew what ‘Star Trek’ was.
Can you imagine that? I mean just conceive of that for a second. I would say ‘Star Trek’ and they were like ‘Star Wars?’ I’m like ‘no Star Trek’ and they were like ‘um I think I’ve heard of it’. Now that was pretty upsetting for me.
Star Trek’s fan base has never been enormous it’s always been small and Incredibly passionate group, it’s never compared to the Harry Potter fan groups or the Star Wars fan groups it’s never had hundreds of millions of fans around the world. Its always been a dedicated group, and that dedicated group is aging and we are really we are going to lose ‘Star Trek’ if we don’t bring in new fans, new eyes and new ways of getting people to love the things that we love.”
He went on to say that trying to get the kids into the classic show, or even The Next Generation, isn’t going to happen. So they need these new iterations of Trek to keep the IP alive:
“Once I’d heard this I was 100% behind this movie. [It] was you have to make different flavors of ‘Star Trek’ for a different time you have to try and bring in new people as you that’s what ‘Starfleet Academy’ is going to be about. That’s what Section 31’s about. I’m sorry to say it, it wasn’t made for people that love ‘Star Trek’ it was made to make people want to learn more about ‘Star Trek’ that was the idea – it was for it to bring in new eyes, new people and then introduce them to that world.”
As to whether any of these shows are capable of cultivating a new generation of fans remains to be seen. One thing the Kelvin-verse movies did seem to do was make Star Trek more accessible to a wider, and new, audience. However, they seemingly alienated more established fans, and whatever halo effect the first two movies got from normos had worn off by the third installment.
So is Star Trek now trapped between a rock and a hard place?
The post Actor Says “STAR TREK Is Dying” appeared first on Last Movie Outpost.