Snake wrote:

That's a good exposition of that POV. I'd suggest though that it's also an
argument in favour of choosing either (a) end the franchise forever or (b)
reboot it. And by reboot I mean a complete retool from the ground up,
starting with the basic premise of the series and deliberately abolishing
all the "history"- the canon.

I'm reminded of something Douglas Hofstadter wrote in his "Godel Escher
Bach". He'd written a computer program which took english words and made
amusing sentences out of them. At first he found it entertaining as it
produced these odd, grammatically correct, but meaningless or surreal
statements, and found the printouts amusing (bear in mind this book was
written during a time when computers were still rare research machines and
ELIZA was cutting edge :) But he found that the experience quickly palled,
even though there were millions more statements of equal humour value in the
program. His conclusion, which I agree with, was that we lose interest in
something not when we've seen every permutation, but when we've mapped its
"behavioural space". That is, we build a mental model of what it can do, it
then becomes predictable. It can no longer surprise us. When we've mapped
the behavioural space, we seek something new and refreshing. (Perhaps this
is why we generally don't get bored with other humans, or pets, they always
have the potential to surprise us- even then, we can become bored with other
people if their behavioural space becomes too well mapped "Goddamn it Abner,
you've farted after dinner every darned day of the 50 years we've been
married!").

When we start watching a new TV show, reading a new comic book, a new series
of novels, the behavioural space is a tabula rasa. Gradually, we fill it in
as time goes by- a detail here, a broad stroke there. Eventually, a canon
builds up. What were just stories become part of the contstructed fictional
universe. But we're also mapping its behavioural space. At some point, we
end up with a marvellously detailed *setting* for stories, but we have a
similarly detailed *behavioural space*. We know everything this thing can
do. We get bored. We move onto something else. The mapping of the
behavioural space occurs long before every possible story in the ficitonal
universe can be told. We simply can't be surprised any more.

I think this is the state Trek has reached. THere are still lots of stories
that could be told in this detailed universe, but really most people just
aren't that interested in them any more, because they have such a clear
model of what "Star Trek" is that there's no capacity for much change. The
behavioural space is too well mapped. You just end up with permuations of
the same old same olds- "hey, waht if the Klingons attack the Romulans and
then shields drop to 60%% and the transporters malfunction?" kind of plots.
The *conventions* of this universe's storytelling are fixed. We simply know
too much. And I think that's why the franchise has had steadily dropping
viewing figures and interest for so long. It's an inevitable consequence of
the mapping of the behavioural space.

So the only way to revitalise it is to scrub the map. Go back to the basic
premise of the show, but open up every option again. Do a reboot. It won't
please Anybody, but it might please somebody and might be appealing to
almost everybody. Without doing that, the chances of a rebirth of Trek are
nil, because the behavioural space is mapped.

Which is why I was hoping for a real fresh start; a reboot. It may have been
carp, but it may have worked. The more I hear about the kobayashi maru, and
Pike, and Spock's mother and so on, the more gloomy I become. It appears
they're trying to stay in the same behavioural space and, as the saying
goes, familiarity breeds contempt.

Ian