TVZ: The Wrath of Orci...

2013 saw the theatrical release of Star Trek Into Darkness, the second film of J. J. Abrams' reboot of the Star Trek universe. The script for the film was written by Abrams stalwarts Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof. While the film did moderately well at the box office and capture the imagination and appreciation of a large majority of its audience, it seemed to be a polarizing event for the hardcore Trek fan community. Quite a few of those Trekkies were very vocal in their disapproval of STID in the ensuing months leading up to an online article that caught the attention of none other than Bob Orci himself.

On September 1st, the popular Star Trek fansite TrekMovie published an editorial entitled “Star Trek is broken – Here are ideas on how to fix it”.  The majority of the article was about how Star Trek Into Darkness has not lived up to the perceived ideals of the Star Trek franchise as established by its creator, Gene Roddenberry. A big part of the criticism for this divergence was leveled at the writers with the suggested remedy being to remove them from future sequels and bring in writers more in line with Roddenberry's original vision. Many of the comments agreed with the writers being out of touch with what the fans want or what makes good Trek. And then one of those writers, Bob Orci, decided to get involved in the proceedings.

Before getting to the comments themselves, it should be noted that the comments from Orci were not entirely unprecedented as he has always had a presence on the Internet, at least as far back as the release of 2009's Star Trek. I wrote an article just after that film's release examining the implications on the time travel Star Trek episodes brought on by the new timeline and he emailed me with his opinion on the piece and some further thoughts. He has also commented on many articles written about both movies on TrekMovie and other sites. It's obvious he is interested in what the online community has to say about Star Trek so it only seems natural that article declaring it broken would catch his eye.

After commenting with a simple “Fascinating...” Orci continued with more elaborate comments...

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