Why JJ Abrams should stop wasting his time with Star Trek and get back to Lost

A few blogs back I put together a list of the top whatever sci-fi shows of all time, and both Star Trek and Lost were on it.

Now, I was a late comer to Lost. I watched the premiere way back when, but it didn't grab me so I gave up on it about 30 minutes in. Then I started to hear about how great it was, but I didn't care. It wasn't until I fell for Abby that I began to seriously consider giving it a second chance. This year, I did that very thing, and was pleasantly amazed.

Lost is everything that good sci-fi and good television should be. It's exciting and action packed, for those people who need a lot of gunfighting and explosions in their entertainment. But more importantly, it's a mystery that actually knows where it's going. I know a common complaint about Lost is that the writers never answer any of their many questions, they just raise more. I'm not sure that I understand this, because having just watched the first five seasons in direct succession, it is pretty clear to me what the answers are to almost all of the mysteries raised in seasons 1, 2, 3, and 4. It's only a couple of questions raised in season 5 that are still up in the air. But what was cool about those questions is that they didn't have easy, predictable answers. They kept you wondering for a very long time. Lost is a show that requires patience. But don't let anyone tell you that the writers are making it up as they go along, because that is demonstrably not true. These guys have known since season 1, they just haven't let us in on the secret.

Star Trek was also on the list. Star Trek was a remarkable show that spawned a series of less remarkable spin-offs and a bunch of movies, some that were very good, others that were not. Most of the not so good ones were related to TNG spin-off.

But Star Trek was never about fast-paced action with little validation. It was about exploration and discovery. In fact, every single movie with the original cast had this as one of the major themes. So did both the original series and The Next Generation.

In the new movie, Abrams takes an incredibly flimsy premise (That an interstellar mining crew would be so overcome with vengance that they would wait 25 years for it, then use their mining ship to try to destroy the entire Federation of Planets. Why didn't they just jaunt off to Romulus and try to stop the destruction of their homeworld before it happened?) as an excuse to provide a lot of unrealistic action sequences. There was none of the planning that goes into Lost and none of the sense of wonder that goes into Star Trek. There was just a bunch of stuff blowing up. If that's what you want in a movie, fine. I like that stuff a little, too. Just don't hype it up as being so great. Tell me it's a kind of silly movie with a bunch of cool looking effects. That's all I'm saying.