I’ve always loved Star Trek.

Not the diabolical new shit. They’ve been a long-running series of abominations – from JJ Abrams Star Trek reboot in 2009 to the two sequels (Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond), to each series: Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, and most recently, Starfleet Academy. (I can’t comment on the animated slop, Lower Decks; I’ve only seen the pilot, and that was awful. Maybe it improved. Maybe. Maybe we’ll have world peace tomorrow.)

The people in charge of the franchise – JJ Abrams originally, and then Alex Kurtzman – just don’t understand the property. JJ acknowledged that in an interview, where he proclaimed he never got Star Trek. Great choice, then, to have him relaunch the franchise.

He’s a beautiful mimic, but I haven’t seen a single thing he’s done that you would consider original, speak to his voice as a storyteller (lens flares aside), or have lasting pop-cultural impact. His Star Trek movies were generic sci-fi with lots of meaningless action (as opposed to his Star Wars movies, which were generic sci-fi with lots of meaningless action). Take away the branding, and they would’ve had zero commercial and critical impact.

Kurtzman has been no better, if not worse. He has wanted to divorce himself – and his bastard creations – from their predecessors, and has performed a clumsy lobotomy on steroids to dumb down what was already dumb cinematic JJ Trek.

And this isn’t me just being an old guy not liking new shiny things. Star Trek: Enterprise isn’t that good either – it wasn’t quite sure what it wanted to be (despite definitively setting up the premise) and, unfortunately, it found it mojo too late, and was cancelled. Star Trek: Voyager could’ve been a great adventure of exploration, attrition and Starfleet’s perfect ideals under constant threat in extreme circumstances, but squanders opportunities to do something truly original in that universe and instead becomes Next Generation Lite.

Both series feel complacent, like the people behind them had gotten too comfortable after the successes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, so they grew too formulaic. The amount of times technobabble solves issues in situations you didn’t know it was an option is exhausting.

Voyager and Enterprise still have good episodes, though, and neither are offensive nor do anything that’s a vandalization of that universe (well, nothing major: Voyager vandalizes Q and the Borg, while Enterprise vandalizes the Ferengi and the Borg – the Borg were obviously Rent-a-Villain to try inject tension). If nothing else, they had some great characters, although Enterprise tended to underuse the supporting cast.

As far as the new series go, Alex Kurtzman feels as if he wants to do anything but Trek. To be fair (just a little), he was hamstrung by some rights issues as the cinematic and television rights belonged to two different studios. But his reinterpretation shit in the face of things that didn’t need their face shit in.

Funnily, author Andy Weir (The Martian and Project Hail Mary) recently asserted that all science fiction is inspired by Star Trek … except for modern Trek. He said Kurtzman is a nice guy, but his Trek is terrible.

Then there’s writer/director Roger Avery, who stated on the Joe Rogan Experience that he volunteered his services (because he loves Trek) for the new incarnations, but was dismissed because Kurtzman didn’t want anybody involved beholden to the predecessors.

What sort of stance is that? Seriously?

Rewind to The Next Generation, and it honoured its forebear – as experimental, unsure, and sometimes outright clunky as Star Trek could be sometimes – and incorporated it as a foundation while building its own identity.

I wanted to dislike TNG when it came out because of my loyalty to The Original Series, but as tentative as those first few seasons were, you could see so many great possibilities. Credit to Patrick Stewart, who masterfully anchored that series from the very first episode.

Kurtzman’s latest series, Starfleet Academy – cancelled after two seasons (and, surely, it would’ve been cancelled after one if season two hadn’t already been filmed) – is appalling. It’s not just bad Trek but bad television.

Speaking to the Trek issues, there’s nothing in it that resembles Star Trek. Even the things that are uniquely Star Trek – such as starships, Starfleet and the Federation, Klingons and Betazoids, etc. – don’t resemble Trek. This is nothing new, though. Its predecessors committed the same felonies.

When I was young writer (like over thirty-six years ago) I wanted to create my own Trek series. I’d written Next Gen fanfiction (yes I was, and am, that nerdy), and had ideas about what could happen next (the way I had so many ideas about what could happen next in various pop culture franchises – are you listening, Hollywood!?). But before I wrote anything, I studied the three existing properties – The Original Series, TNG, and DS9. (This was before Voyager and Enterprise).

That meant pulling apart how they functioned. That might seem overkill. But if you’re going to play in that universe’s sandbox, then you need to know how they make castles. You don’t just dismiss it, and then do something entirely different, like reinvent space travel – I mean, who’d be stupid enough to do that?

Here’s the first thing I picked up: the commanding officer in those Trek properties is always a human – naturally. You’d want a human there because audiences want to identify with the protagonist. In Star Trek, that’s infinitely more important because Gene Roddenberry’s vision was to show a human race that had grown up and, naturally, the commanding officer is going to be the best of us – or is at least going to try to be.

Starfleet Academy made their commanding officer, Holly Hunter’s Nahla Ake (what a ridiculous name), a 422-year-old alien/human hybrid. That’s already a terrible choice. You might’ve gotten away with the alien hybrid (if I’m being generous) but by making her so old, you’re disconnecting her from your audience. You’re telling us she’s not one of us.

I can see myself in Kirk, Picard, Sisko (who was my favourite), Janeway, and Archer, despite the differences between me and any one of them. But I can idealise – and idolise – what they stand for, and want to model myself after them. I can’t do that with somebody who’s 422 years old. How do I connect to that?

There’s always a confidante in Trek – in TOS, James Kirk had Bones McCoy; in TNG, Jean-Luc Picard had Guinan (but also would rely on Counsellor Troi); in DS9, Benjamin Sisko had Jadzia Dax; in Voyager Janeway had Tuvok and Chakotay; while Archer’s go-to was Trip.

In Starfleet Academy? Well, Yak’s been around for 422 years, so she knows everything. Why would she need a confidante? In fact, often she’s written as if she has answers and is just waiting for other characters to catch up. As an aside, this totally undermines the narrative impetus of any tension.

This is an important storytelling trope, too – mind you, I didn’t say an important “Trek trope”, but an important “storytelling trope”. We don’t want flawless leads. We want them to try to behave flawlessly, but connect to them when they experience doubt and uncertainty; we like to see the human face behind them as they work through issues. We want this because it’s what we do every day. The use of a confidante provides a sounding board so they can explore their frailties, and we can empathize with them.

Let’s go back to Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, and Archer: they’re heroic, and often they find answers, but they’re constantly challenged and will make wrong decisions. Sisko and Archer also made amoral decisions under extreme circumstances. Here’s an easier way to describe them: their behaviour was very human. No so much for Nomore Acne.

Trek will always have some outsider character who’s an observer of human behaviour – in TOS, it’s Spock; in TNG, it’s Data (with cameos from Q); in DS9, it’s primarily Odo, but also Quark. Jump to Voyager, which primarily uses Seven, with support from the Doctor, and Neelix (who did the heavy lifting in early season); and Enterprise, which has T’Paul. In Starfleet Academy? Well, there’re aliens everywhere in the ensemble cast, but they don’t offer much in the way of observation of humans because there are no real humans to observe.

Now you mightn’t think this is that important but as much as Trek is about science fiction, exploration, and space as the final frontier, it’s also a commentary on human behaviour. These outsiders hold a mirror up to the human characters, and in doing so teach us something about ourselves – and not just the good, but also the bad.

The supporting cast in Trek is usually mostly humans. If there are aliens, there’s usually some human connection. Deanna Troi is half human; Worf was fostered by humans; DS9’s Kira is full Bajoran, but spiritual in a way that speaks to how we understand and connect to religion; in Voyager, Seven is human and reconciling what that means. These characters are always dealing with a certain duality – their humanity conflicting with the alienness with the character trying to reconcile how they fit.

As far as I’m aware, Starfleet Academy has one human character in the ensemble: Caleb. And he’s great at everything. The other characters are inexplicably alien without it meaning anything to us. So we don’t get to explore human behaviour through others, how they handle adversity, and how they grow.

Kurtzman and company make narrative choices just because. These choices exist only on a superficial level. Here’s a good example: Gina Yashere plays first officer Lura Thok, who’s half Klingon/half Jem’Hadar.

Some of YouTube’s pop culture’s mafia have remarked that there are no female Jem’Hadar and that they’re genetically engineered, so how do we now have one who’s female? This doesn’t bother me so much. We’re eight-hundred years removed from DS9, so maybe a Jem’Hadar hooked up with a Klingon female and got whatever surgery would allow them to procreate. Or maybe she was genetically engineered from Jem’Hadar as an experiment, or as breeders in an attempt to create hybrids. Or maybe she was a Jem’Hadar experiment some Klingon rescued and fell in love with. (Already, I’ve put more thought into this than Kurtzman has.)

My issue is the character doesn’t exist outside the model of being some super-tough officer. It feels like somebody in some writers room suggested creating the offspring of Star Trek’s two most formidable warrior races. That would create so many possibilities, surely? Well, if it has – if it’s created just one possibility – I’m yet to see it.

She’s a one-dimensional character who runs around barking at people because she’s a drill sergeant. That’s it. Like Kurtzman watched Full Metal Jacket, and thought that they wanted to create a spin on the drill sergeant. But let’s up the ante, and make people scared of her because she’s half Klingon/half Jem’Hadar. Oh, and she’s female! That’s it. That’s the extent of character development. Oooh scary. Cool. Tough. Nothing more.

You know what could’ve been interesting? Allowing Gina Yashere to play a human. She was born in London to Nigerian parents. Wouldn’t it have been interesting if she was exactly that, and you explored her Nigerian heritage? Wouldn’t it have been cool if we had this tough abrasive human first officer who struggled with doubt behind the scenes and the responsibility of rearing Starfleet’s next generation of officers? Who might’ve even brought in some issues from some previous posting that she had to work through as a human? That she had a public façade but was something quite different behind closed doors?

One character is a superficial gimmick, and the other could be interesting. Once character is somebody we couldn’t possibly hope to empathise with, or see ourselves in, and the other we could. One character is one-dimensional, and one offers possibilities.

But that’s Starfleet Academy’s methodology – introducing novelties who have no depth. Hey, let’s have an alien who vomits glitter; let’s have another holographic character who behaves like Mork from Mork and Mindy and reports periodically to Orson; let’s have a Betazoid who’s so infinitely powerful she has to wear an inhibitor so she doesn’t accidentally hurt others, etc. These people are near-impossible to connect to, or root for. Even if they weren’t shallow, they’re also not human.

Now somebody will maybe point out something like Star Wars, which features an array of alien characters and we’re just fine with that. But primarily, we’re investing in humans – Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Han Solo, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Amidala, and even Rey, Poe, and Fin in the Sequels (even the Sequels do nothing to truly explore these characters and exploit the possibilities each offered).

These humans are not from Earth, but Star Wars never focuses on their birthplaces as being governors of unhuman behaviours. We know Anakin comes from Tatooine, and that it’s. There aren’t Tatooine rituals that would delineate him from our understanding of his humanity. In fact, we’re compelled to understand his internal conflict, which is something we would all experience in our lives. The same applies to Luke, Han, Obi-Wan, etc. Even Amidala, who comes from about as culturally rich a planet as Star Wars produces for its human characters, still behaves like you and me.

Starfleet Academy makes that impossible.

Currently, it’s rating a 4.4 (out of 10) at IMDb, which is terrible. I’m sure the “vocal minority” will be blamed, although how big a minority had to uninvest to warrant this rating over the majority? Or justify the series cancellation? Or maybe the defence will be that it was just too different, and the fanbase didn’t like that. Well, if shit is different, they’re right. It’s about as different as you can get.

You can do whatever you like in storytelling. There’s this myth if you stray from the formula in these pop culture properties, it antagonises the fanbase. You’ve heard it in things like Star Wars, Ghostbusters, DC’s Snyderverse, etc. Here’s the truth: good storytelling doesn’t crash. That’s Starfleet Academy’s weakness. It’s not good storytelling. I’ve focused on the characters and the construction of that universe, but the plotting is also abysmal.

Compare that to Deep Space Nine which was fundamentally unlike The Original Series and The Next Generation. The story was set on station, rather than a ship. The commanding officer was a widower with a teenage son. A brutal war with the Dominion dominated the series run.

This was nothing like anything we’d seen or expected from Star Trek. And it works because it has compelling characters and storylines.

Benjamin Sisko is a complex, layered man who’s carrying the burden that the Bajorans consider him some prophet, whereas he sees himself as a troubled officer struggling with his grief and trying to be the best single parent he can be. He’s not quite as diplomatic as Picard, and can be as impulsive as Kirk, but sits somewhere between the two. He also only carries the rank of “commander” when the series starts, so he’s not seen as experienced as those two. He has to oversee a station with political significance, while dealing with various races that are not beholden to the Federation. There’s so much there to do with that character.

In the past, I’ve heard that Deep Space Nine was initially unsuccessful, which is a crock of shit. Like TNG, DS9 ran seven seasons. If it was unsuccessful, how did it last? I used to borrow episodes from the video store the moment they came out. The guy who ran the video store, another Trek fan, also loved it. I knew people at the time who loved it. Some might’ve initially resisted its premise, but they quickly became fans.

I won’t go overly into what I wrote thirty-six years ago for my own Trek, but I did have a Ukrainian female captain (I was writing this before Voyager) who commanded an Enterprise forty years after TNG. The Federation were facing a period of destabilisation after the Romulan reunification with Vulcan, which antagonised the Klingon Empire, leading to extremists splintering into a Union that seceded and declared their independence. But, behind the Union, was a new alien threat that would be explored throughout the story’s run, and while they were small in number, they were more evolved and more technologically advanced than humans.

It’ll be a little bit too embarrassing to detail just how much world-building I did, how many episodes I wrote, how much of a bible I compiled, and just how much time I dedicated to it (but, to give you a hint, although I started it before Voyager, I was still working on it well into Voyager’s run, as I made Janeway the Federation President).

And as raw and problematic as my writing could be back then, I would still (to this day) vow it would’ve been much purer Trek than anything this new era has produced.

I didn’t see Highlander during its cinematic release way back in 1986. In fact, I don’t recall its cinematic release, which is unusual, because I was constantly going to the cinema to watch movies. It wasn’t until Highlander’s VHS release that I saw it (I only borrowed it because I borrowed pretty much everything), but it immediately became a favourite.

Swords? Tragic heroes? Two beautiful love interests in Beatie Edney’s Heather (and even the romantic in teen-me was committed to the tragedy of that romance) and Roxanne Hart’s Brenda? A larger-than-life villain in Kurgan (awesomely played by the equally awesome Clancy Brown)? Sean Connery as the mentor Ramirez? Actually, it didn’t matter what Connery was doing, but Connery was in it! He was enjoying a renaissance in his career through the 1980s. And then there was Queen’s awesome soundtrack – their ballad “Who wants to live forever?” is criminally underrated, and probably never got the dues it deserves because it’s been consigned to this little movie.

If you haven’t seen it, Highlander follows Christopher Lambert’s Connor MacLeod, born in 1518 in Glenfinnan, Scotland. He discovers he’s one of many immortals who must battle and kill each other (only accomplished through decapitation), with the last survivor to win the Prize, an undistinguished ability that sounds pretty underwhelming when it’s revealed to be something like reading everybody’s mind.

The story jumps between the 1500s in Scotland (where Connor’s born and spends his adult years with Heather) and 1985 in New York (where he’s an antique dealer living under an alias), with a handful of flashbacks scattered through different historical times and locations as we revisit Connor trying to survive.

The movie’s just about perfect given what it sets out to do. Christopher Lambert has an enigmatic quality that fits Connor. The swordplay’s good enough to enjoy. And the premise creates a neat mythology that offers enough to invest in, but remains cryptic enough that you won’t pick it apart.

The problem is it’s a close-ended story: I don’t think it’ll be a shock to anybody who hasn’t seen it that Connor triumphs over Kurgan. A catchphrase throughout the story is, “There can be only one”, and Connor becomes that one.

There. The end. That’s it.

While the movie wasn’t a cinematic success, it became a video success, and that eventually necessitated a sequel.

I’ll give Highlander II: The Quickening credit for trying to continue the story, rather than – as so many sequels do – rehash it.

And that’s where the credit ends.

The Quickening picks up in the near future where the ozone’s depleted, and Connor’s used his ability to help the world’s best scientists to unite and create a shield around the Earth that protects us from deadly radiation. But the shield pitches us in perpetual twilight, and as the decades tumble by, people find that bleak.

Then we learn the immortals are from the planet Zeist, and had launched a rebellion against a tyrannical government but failed. Their punishment? Exile on Earth, where they’d become immortal, and would have to battle to the death until only one remained. That one would be able to return to Zeist. Given Zeist is depicted as a seemingly unending desert, I’m unsure why return to some barren shithole triumphs bumming around Earth being immortal, and effectively invulnerable.

Oh yeah, Sean Connery’s Ramirez is back, even though he died in the first movie. How does he come back? you may ask. Well, Connor shouts, “I need you!” and Ramirez comes back. That resurrection should tell you something about the thought that’s gone into this.

The whole thing plays as if some studio exec was ordered to find a screenwriter to continue the story, and that exec quickly briefed their receptionist and ordered them to find a screenwriter, and the receptionist lazily relayed the brief and delegated that responsibility to the mail-boy, who jumbled up what he remembered of the story and delegated it to his idiot cousin Larry, who said something-something about immortals as he delegated it to his eight-year-old brother, who talked about aliens and ozone and delegated it to his seven-year-old friend to write up the story and turn it in.

Highlander III: The Sorcerer ignores Highlander II – I could be wrong, but I think that’s the first time a franchise actively ignores a sequel and picks up from an earlier point in the franchise. Nowadays, that’s much more regular. Back then? Franchises usually lived and died by each instalment.

The Sorcerer introduces a loophole that allows the appearance of another immortal, Kane. Kane was buried in a cave-in, and thus died. Immortals usually rejuvenate, but his circumstances didn’t allow him to. Centuries later, his body is excavated, and his immortality is finally able to kick in and resurrect him, so he goes after Connor. But Kane’s the last immortal. I promise!

Until the spin-off TV series, featuring Duncan MacLeod. Connor guest stars in the pilot to offer some validity to his kinsman. They just outright ignore Highlander’s conclusion. In fact, in one episode they offhandedly reference that Connor killed Kurgan, which did humanity a favour, and ignore that was meant to be the battle of the final two immortals.

The series, although formulaic at times, does a neat job of exploring the immortal mythology and building on it, but given there are always new immortals being created – they are seemingly normal people until their immortality is triggered by a violent death – I’m unsure how this is ever meant to end.

Props to Adrian Paul as Duncan – Paul has the enigmatic mystery down right, and he knows a range of martial arts, so his combat (even for a TV show back in this time) is on another level to Lambert’s. Arguably, his casting is what makes the show work.

There was also a spin-off series, Highlander: The Raven, starring Elizabeth Gracen as the immortal Amanda. I never saw it, so can’t comment, but the popular consensus is that it was awful. What’s looked on more favourably is Highlander: The Animated Series, which featured Ramirez mentoring a young immortal, Quentin, in a post-apocalyptic medieval 27th century.

Back in the cinematic universe, Highlander IV: Endgame marries Connor’s and Duncan’s mythology and has some neat concepts, but is clunky as hell. Highlander V: The Source, to its credit (again), tries to continue the story by exploring the origin of the immortality, but it makes The Quickening look like Shakespeare, and a school play featuring six-year-olds look like it was made on a budget of millions.

There’s always been talk about a reboot throughout the years, and that’s now underway with Henry Cavill as Connor, Dave Bautista as Kurgan, and Russell Crowe in Connery’s role as the mentor Ramirez.

I’m sure this will be gorgeous, everybody will be great in their roles, and the swordplay will be vastly superior to the original. In the 1980s, you approximated enough of something to create the affectation that it looked real enough to belief. Nowadays, they send actors to get lessons so it is real.

The casting’s good, although when this was all just being talked about, I thought Jason Momoa would be the perfect Kurgan. However, do you want Henry Cavill’s Superman and Jason Momoa’s Aquaman battling it out on screen while Superman’s dad (Russell Crowe) plays the mentor? It might’ve been just a bit too much of a DC reunion.

Whether the movie will be any good, though, is anybody’s guess. The original captured lightning in a VHS bottle. The reboot – as reboots often do – is trying to artificially recreate that.

The bigger problem is where do you take the story? Hollywood, as Hollywood is wont to do, will try to franchise it. But the story’s close-ended. Do we just have Connor endlessly fighting other immortals? At what point do we stop caring? It is a story that’s meant to have a definitive finish.

When I was a geeky young writer and coming up with (fan) sequels for all my favourite properties, I had written a sequel (in my mind) where immortals belonged to different cycles. Each cycle produced a different Prize. When only the champions of each cycle remained, they fought each other.

If you haven’t seen Highlander, that won’t make much sense, and neither will this: Ramirez belonged to a previous cycle, and champions couldn’t die until all the cycles were complete. That was my way of bringing him back. It also layered Ramirez’s relationship to Connor: Ramirez wasn’t just preparing Connor against Kurgan, but possibly protecting himself from having to face Kurgan in a battle of champions.

It still ultimately has to end at some point, though. But that was my means of getting more life out of the story in a way that might be meaningful, rather than producing some Zeistian-like logic, or just outright ignoring the original’s conclusion.

I’ll see the reboot and hope it succeeds, although I’m not hopeful given Hollywood’s track record when it comes to franchise resurrections (Star Wars, cinematic Star Trek, television Star Trek, Superman, DC’s other superheroes, then another Superman, Spider-Man … well, you get the idea).

Those original properties are usually the vision and passion of one person, whereas reboots try to trade off the original’s marquee. Look at JJ Abrams’ Star Trek into Darkness, which featured Benedict Cumberbatch’s Khan as the antagonist – a character who has no significance or relevance in JJ’s timeline, but is trading off what’s (still to this day!) considered the best Star Trek movie: Nicholas Meyer’s The Wrath of Khan.

Reboots can look great. We live in an age where things should, at a minimum, look great. JJ Abrams has proven that repeatedly. I found that the most offensive with Disney’s Star Wars Sequel Trilogy. They looked beautiful. The effects were much better than anything George Lucas had done, but they offered none of Lucas’s vision or aesthetic voice. People complain AI imagery and videos look soulless. That’s what the Sequel Trilogy looked like – visually stunning but sterile. They were made by people who understood how Star Wars looks without understanding how Star Wars works. Then there’s the storytelling. They’re often shallow, or that other sh word: shit.

Anyway, you know what I’d love to see? Not another Highlander movie or TV series, but an online game where you create your immortal, and then battle others. If you beat them, you gain their power. They respawn at an earlier stage (since you don’t want to discourage players entirely by forcing them to start over).

So you go around having little adventures (like all these other games with online universes) but you’re always on the hunt for other immortals. You can make alliances, dedicate yourself to good or bad, and live by the story’s mythology: e.g. you have to lose your head to die, you regenerate from other injuries (given time and opportunity), and you can’t fight on holy ground. You might even have to forge your own sword.

The only thing I’d be concerned about would be making a game that has good combat mechanics. Too often (if not all the time) in games that have any swordplay, it really is just hack and slash. There’s not enough skill to it.

Part of the problem is that games want to keep everything three-dimensional. That means you could be facing somebody who’s not on your axis, and attacking their toes, although that’s not the intention. Or you spend time trying to orient your player to face the enemy, but the gameplay’s mechanics have you facing the wrong way.

If you go back to something like Prince of Persia in 1989, that had a simple two-dimensional axis. You could hit high, low, or in-between, and had a block. But as simple as that was, you could have epic battles because you were locked into the same physics. At no point were you trying to do something and suffering because the gameplay’s mechanics were misinterpreting you.

Anyway, that’s just what I’d like to see.

P.S. Make it virtual reality!

When Seinfeld was nearing the end of its run, talk surrounded which character would be spun off into their own TV show.

Were any of them strong enough to carry their own shows, though? Because as much as each character is iconic, as different as they each are, they’re also part of a set: Jerry, George, Elaine, Kramer. They each represent a different facet of the human psyche, so they complement one another in how they function independently, and as a whole. Could any of them carry their own show week-in, week-out?

Popular shows have often tried to spin off characters. The Brady Bunch came up with the sequel The Brady Brides, which followed Marsha and Jan in their marriages. More recently, Friends span off Joey into his own show, but only with moderate success.

Happy Days had several spin-offs: among them, Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, and Joanie Loves Chachi. Interestingly, the two spinoffs that enjoyed success are Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy – they deal with guest characters we didn’t know much about. Meanwhile, the spinoff featuring main characters – Joanie and Chachi – was so unsuccessful, the two were reintegrated back into the Happy Days family.

I think in some cases characters only work because their ensemble provides them context. Subtract the ensemble, and where do they go? Joanie and Chachi pursued a music career, but that’s not really who the characters are in Happy Days. They’ve become something else entirely – facades we recognize on an aesthetic level, but who’ve now lost their emotional connections.

That’s something they kept with Frasier Crane in Frasier. Of course, although Frasier was part of the Cheers ensemble, he wasn’t a foundational character built to serve the show. He was brought in later to be part of the Sam-Diane love triangle, and because he had to be able to compete with Sam as Diane’s love interest, he was a lot more wholly formed. Even in later seasons when Frasier had become a regular, he was part of the clique, but also quite separate from them – smarter, accomplished, career-oriented, and then given his own family.

When he was spun off into Frasier, there was a lot to work with. He became a radio psychiatrist, which was an adjunct to who he was anyway. Then they created facets of that ensemble psyche – his brother Niles, a more neurotic version of who Frasier had been during his early run on Cheers; and their father, Martin, who was a contrast. They created their dynamic.

Could George, Elaine, and Kramer have done that with a new cast? What could you have done with any of them independently? George stuffs something else up? Elaine has more bad dating experiences? Kramer does something whacky? Even Jerry minus those other three wouldn’t be as interesting.

But what I thought (at the time) would’ve been nifty was a sitcom where each episode was based on a different character from the Seinfeld universe. One episode might’ve been about Crazy Joe Davola; another episode could’ve been about Babu Bhutt. And so on. There were nine seasons worth of characters, and some you could’ve revisited.

Television generally doesn’t work like that, though. Things like Black Mirror, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, etc., might be a different story every week, but episodic television features regular characters that build-up a following, so we tune in each episode to see what happens next.

Given Seinfeld’s longevity, though, and just how culturally entrenched it became, it did have enough goodwill that people might’ve tuned in weekly to see which character we’d be revisiting, and in what predicament they’d find themselves.

And it could’ve been a new episodic format in comedy.

I even had the name of the show: Seinworld.

It’s a little bit late now, but I always thought that would’ve been interesting.

The James Bond franchise is amazing.

And not necessarily for the right reasons.

Of the twenty-five official movies, I’d posit there’s only one truly great film – From Russian With Love. It’s a grounded spy thriller with brilliant performances from Sean Connery, Robert Shaw, and Lotte Lenya. Then the series becomes more gimmicky, which irked Connery, and which the Roger Moore era truly embraced – perhaps to accommodate an era were movies were growing sensational in their storytelling.

Of the other twenty-four movies, I’d suggest there’re a handful of good ones, and the rest are middling, forgettable, and – in some cases – terrible.

I grew up when Roger Moore was the incumbent Bond, but I wasn’t so far removed from the Connery era to feel any real separation. Both actors were equally valid. It was the burning question: which Bond do you prefer – Connery or Moore? (George Lazenby was considered an outlier, although one of my older brothers said Lazenby at that time was closest to the book Bond.)

One of the problems with the Moore era was that rights issues meant the filmmakers could no longer use Blofeld and SPECTRE. That left Bond without an arch enemy. It’d be like Batman losing the Joker, or Superman losing Lex Luthor. Unfortunately, Bond has no other rogues gallery.

Timothy Dalton felt it worst. He took on Bond just after the Cold War ended, so the Russians were retired as the enemy. Attitudes were shifting against smoking and promiscuity, so Bond could no longer be the hard-living, womanizing spy he had always been. He also had a new Miss Moneypenny, which mightn’t sound like much, but she enjoyed some telling banter with Bond.

The great thing about the two Dalton Bonds is how much grittier they are than what the Moore era had turned into. Dalton played Bond as serious, burned out, and just always a breath from quitting. Desmond Llewelyn (who played Q) said he was the closest to Ian Fleming’s Bond.

Dalton’s getting the respect he deserves now, but he was reinvigorating at the time, although it didn’t necessarily click with audiences who were growing accustomed to wise-cracking over-the-top action heroes like John McClane, Martin Riggs, and pretty much any character Arnold Schwarzenegger played.

Then Pierce Brosnan had to deal with a new M, and a series that began to lean back into the outlandish – stupid jokes, more gimmicks, and rent-a-week villains. Brosnan also played Bond the way he played the TV character who’d made him famous, Remington Steele, although that was likelier a result of how they were writing the character for him. Brosnan’s a much better actor than that – check out his portrayal of the spy Osnard in The Tailor of Panama. It’s the Bond he should’ve been.

Bond had grown progressively divorced from his literary inspiration, and that could’ve worked if they knew how to adapt around him, but they didn’t. I always thought that after they lost the rights to SPECTRE, they should’ve invented some new terrorist organization. The Cold War had ended. There would’ve been all these spies who might’ve been left without purpose and could be recruited as freelancers. It would’ve been easy enough to create a new supervillain and an organization like SPECTRE for Bond to combat.

With Daniel Craig’s era, they were able to reacquire rights so they could finally adapt the Casino Royale novel – a movie which, in my opinion, is goodish, but not as great as many make it out to be. I feel it’s appreciated because of what Bond had become. It’s like Star Wars: The Force Awakens – that feels like it was overly appreciated because the Prequels had depreciated the brand. It was being graded against a curve in its favor, although it truly is shitful.

But at least during Craig’s run, they got some things right. Judi Dench is great as M, and Ralph Fiennes came into the role with the same gravitas. So that worked. And that was it. The actors who replaced Moneypenny and Q were good actors, but unable to distinguish those roles. The filmmakers also reacquired the rights to SPECTRE and introduced them – and Blofeld – and then defeated them all in the space of one movie.

I’m not the fan of Daniel Craig that many are – he’s the bottom of the list for me as Bond (yes, behind Lazenby); I find Craig too dour, and there’s not a lot of variation in what he does. The hard reboot was unnecessary, and then in Skyfall they seemed to retcon it when Bond used the car he had in Goldfinger.

Killing Craig’s Bond is also a major fuck-up. We understand our heroes aren’t going to die in most movies – and not in a franchise. It’s a conceit we fear for them. Inevitably, they’ll survive and succeed. But we at least need to fear they might fail, that they might die, because that sustains the tension.

Dr. Who can get away with killing the protagonist because they regenerate a new character. It allows them to reboot time and time again within that universe and audiences accept it. That also means they can experiment, and if it’s not working, just hit the reset button.

Bond’s different. He’s meant to be a normal guy. Killing him is signaling you’re rebooting in a universe where he’s mortal. Death is a terminal choice. That generates a simple question: why should I continue to invest in this character if there’s every chance you’ll just kill him again to reboot everything?

I want to think that Bond is part of our universe. I invest in him because he’s saving our world. But if he dies in our world, then where’s the next Bond functioning? He’s not in our world. Our Bond is dead. If he is in our world, where does that other Bond belong? This isn’t Doctor Who, where regeneration is a function of the character, and everything around that character stays a constant. They don’t reboot the universe. They reboot Doctor Who inside that same universe. With Bond, you’re starting over.

I know movie continuity implies that already. Dr. No screened in 1962. Here we are sixty years and six actors later, so quite obviously this isn’t just one character and one world, and yet we’re romantically tied to the affectation that it is.

George Lazenby marries in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service; in Diamonds are Forever, Connery avenges her murder. In For Your Eyes Only, Moore stands at her grave. In The Living Daylights, Dalton expresses melancholy when Felix Leiter’s new wife, Della, jokes he’ll be married next. In The World is Not Enough, Brosnan’s asked if he’s ever lost anybody close to him, and he shows fleeting pain.

All these different Bonds are tied to a single bit of movie continuity that perpetuates the fiction that we’re watching the same character, regardless of what era the story’s taking place, and which actor’s in play.

In whacky movie timeline continuity, we accept that this character is timeless, so when you reboot him after 44 years, you’re compartmentalizing him and asking us to invest in not only a new reinterpretation fashioned around the actor, but a new incarnation. So, while they haven’t killed the earlier version(s), they’ve euthanized his timeline.

And then to kill him sixteen years later, you’re telling the fans that this character no longer has individual significance. He could be anybody, any time, and it’s all a restart.

And that might happen again.

And again.

So why should I care?

Now that Amazon owns Bond and Denis Villeneuve is behind the next reboot, I hope they treat Bond with the respect he deserves, rather than a rechargeable yet dismissible commodity.

And I hope they find a way to contemporize the things that did make the franchise so popular.

In its first season, Cobra Kai did a great job of expanding The Karate Kid universe into a TV series.

My only real problem is that at the end of The Karate Kid, Johnny Lawrence seizes the trophy, and gives it to Danny, telling him, “You’re all right, LaRusso.” That implies Johnny’s swallowed his pride, anger, and vengeance, and now begrudgingly respects Danny. The series bypasses this moment to maintain open grievances, and doesn’t offer a callback until its sixth and final season.

Otherwise, Cobra Kai’s brilliant in imagining where these characters’ lives went. So open when properties revisit characters, they vandalize both the character and – worse – their legacy. Prior to Cobra Kai, I’d often thought about what might’ve happened to Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence. It didn’t match what Cobra Kai had done, but I could totally invest in their vision because it felt believable.

They could’ve easily just ignored everything that had come before it and twisted characters to fit into some predetermined narrative they’d concocted, but they stayed true to the voice of the film franchise, while building something new.

For the first couple of seasons, Cobra Kai’s engaging drama. Then it becomes a little Austin Powers’ish when Terry Silver emerges to plan Cobra Kai’s global domination. You’re a millionaire, Terry. Just go out and buy some dojos and franchise it. You can afford it.

And, of course, there’re a string of teen characters (like all of them) who pick up karate late and somehow can compete on the world stage against people who’ve been doing it all their lives. I don’t mind when it’s one character, or maybe two, but it’s all of them! Let’s also not forget there always has to be a secret move to be learned. The drama works best when it’s forging its own way, rather than (overly) homaging the movies as a narrative device.

But I bring up Cobra Kai because it does show what can be done with film properties, and how in television storytelling has more time to explore the lives, motivations, and desires of the characters, and build a universe that might otherwise take a whole string of movies to do.

A series I’d like to see is one based in the Rocky universe, placing it between Rocky V and Rocky Balboa.

This is the landscape to consider, which can draw from all the films prior to the last one:

• Rocky’s retired due to brain damage (Rocky V)

• Tommy Gunn is a contrived champion (Rocky V)

• Union Cane, who loses the championship to Gunn, would be floating about as a contender (Rocky V)

• Unscrupulous promoter George W. Duke has a monopoly on boxing (Rocky V)

• Russian amateur champion Ivan Drago would be reorienting himself following his loss to Rocky (Rocky IV)

• Tony “Duke” Evers (formerly Apollo Creed’s trainer) has a gym full of boxers (Rocky III)

• Somewhere in all this, Clubber Lang would be keen to regain his championship (Rocky III)

• Rocky had ten title defenses: Joe Czak, “Big” Yank Ball, the German Heavyweight Champion, and seven others (Rocky III), so you have a host of other boxers to draw from

• Mac Lee Green pulled out of a title fight with Apollo (Rocky), so he’s another who could be used

• Buddy Shaw was floated as a possible replacement for Green but considered out of shape (Rocky)

• Going back to Joe Czak, but the promoter floats him as a “good prospect” and a possible Green replacement.

The Rocky timeline is pretty fluid, which is best demonstrated in Rocky IV and V. When Rocky goes to Russia in Rocky IV, his son is 9. When Rocky returns from Russia in Rocky V, his son is now 14. I can only imagine Rocky had passport issues, which necessitated a five-year stay in Russia.

Series are always loose with aging. We’ve seen it often in TV shows – especially sitcoms. There’s a birth, and a season or two later the kid’s aged up to four or five so they can be cute and say stupid dialogue. This phenomenon even has a name: SORAS ~ Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome.

And the Rocky universe is never clear how much it adheres to some internal story time versus real time.

According to Google’s AI (or “large language model” as it calls itself):

• Rocky: starts in November 1975, and ends 1 January 1976

• Rocky II: starts immediately after Rocky and ends on Thanksgiving (26 November 1976)

• Rocky III: set 3 – 5 years after Rocky II.

• Rocky IV: set about 9 years after Rocky III. Ends on Christmas Day, 1985

• Rocky V: begins days after Rocky IV, but somehow ends around 1990, with Rocky training Tommy for “several years” (although nobody ages, Rocky Jr stays in the same class with the same kids, and we see no improvement in Rocky’s health or surrounds)

• Rocky Balboa: set 16 – 20 years after Rocky V.

If we’re to adhere to this timeline, Rocky holds the title for 12 years, Clubber Lang’s brief reign aside. I thought this was going to be unrealistic, but Russian Wladimir Klitschko held it for 9 years and 7 months, and for a total of 12 years. Joe Louis held it for 11 years and 8 months.

So the Rockyverse has a big and loose enough timeline that it can take whatever it needs. As it is, between Ivan Drago, Clubber Lang, Tommy Gunn, George W. Duke, and Tony “Duke” Evers, there are enough strong characters to extrapolate possibilities, and you could inject original characters, too.

The Creed franchise offers only one contradiction: that following the events of Rocky IV, somehow Ivan Drago – this Olympic Gold medalist and undefeated amateur who was so devastating he mercilessly killed a former world champion in the ring – was ostracized by his native Russia, even though (in Rocky IV) we see the Russians (including their politicians) applauding Rocky’s victory and speech about change. I guess that didn’t stick when it came to Drago.

So as much as Creed ignores that, I figure Creed’s canon can be ignored – or, at the very least, written around. Drago talks about his disenfranchisement, but that could be contained to Russia. He might’ve went to live elsewhere in Europe and still had success. Or maybe he became that flawed contender who never realized his potential, and was always trying to live up to his victory over Apollo Creed.

There’s often been speculation what did happen with the title picture after Rocky was forced to retire in Rocky V. There’s pretty much ten years here to explore the boxing landscape, the contenders, and title aspirations. Rocky himself doesn’t have to be in it; figuring into Sylvester Stallone’s canon, Rocky might be taking care of Adrian during her illness. Or, if Stallone was willing, you could get him to narrate it.

Obviously, you’d have to recast all those main players, and in most cases they’re going to be pretty big gloves to fill – especially with Mr. T’s Clubber Lang and Dolph Lundgren’s Ivan Drago. But I’m sure audiences would be open to it, and we’re so far removed from those movies, it’ll be easier to find separation.

So, somebody more powerful than me, get on it.