What would you like in a new Star Trek TV series?

[GenericGuy]

Recently read Ron Moore’s interview for WIRED and he talks about what he thinks it would take for a new series to be made, and this got my mind a fluttering of what I would like in a new Trek series.

Personally I think one that dealt with the black ops organization Section 31 as the protagonists would be interesting.

[Ichneumon]

I think they both need to stay true to the old, while doing something completely new. There have been A LOT of episodes of Star Trek before, so I don't think we really need a "Monster of the Week" kind of show again, like Star Trek the next generation. I don't think people are really interested in seeing that. However, I do think you could have interesting real sci-fi in a show, if they focus on one particular aspect and flesh it out. It has to be instantly recognizable as Star Trek though, I think.

[Hopeless]

Like having it start at a Star Base and then have them send a ship out to be stationed at a planet just prior to the Dominion War and they get cut off?

Or have them be a survey team sent to investigate why a colony has stopped responding only they end up being left behind after their base in the sector is taken out in a surprise attack and the enemy are initially unaware they're there?

Hmm what kind of cast would you want for your new Star Trek series?

I'd go have a veteran engineer, a trio of security whom area little too ready to fight it out, a green lieutenant leading them, a helmsman say like from Bajor or a known world with maybe a few more crew to either act as a relief crew and support.

Maybe flesh out the colony and make the enemy be something regular rather than an unknown alien menace make this series something we can nod and recognise aspects.

No Q, no Galaxy class starships, lets have the lesser known ships, ones that look like they've been in the service a while instead of brand spanking new and then immediately destroyed or rendered helpless by an ongoing saga of plot points...

Maybe they have to repair their ship first and make friends with the colony explaining their signal beacon was destroyed by raiders and make it initially sound like klingons except thats what the enemy wants them to think since Klingons are feared maybe a mix of Ferengi, Orion or whatever other criminal syndicate maybe even go so far as to make them ready to create their own empire and have links in the Federation to pull it off...

Sorry utopia is not what I think when it comes to Star Trek I know thats the viewpoint they try to pass over, but utopia is just a starting point after all its something that needs to be worked on and then more so when they think they've achieved it...

[Yora]

I would like plot and characters.

TNG somehow did work for me back then, but I don't think it's much fun to rewatch, except for only picking out the few multi-episode plot arcs.
Deep Space 9 was great because people stayed in place and had a connection to the locals and would have to experience the results of their actions. Voyager didn't have that, which was the main reason the series bored me pretty soon. Enterprise suffered from the same problem, though they did try to balance it out with plot-arcs. They just were very stupid.

Also, I'd like to see a return to an international cast of characters as in TOS, TNG, and DS9. In Voyager and Enterprise, everyone is American. Maybe korean American, or hispanic American-half-klingon, or from a completely different planet native american, or swedish borg, who happens to be actually a swedish american, but americans nontheless. And the black vulcan existed for the sole purpose to fill the token black cast spot that needs to be filled for the american market. One Brit and Neelix don't count.

[Obrysii]

Honestly, I'd love to follow something along the lines of the original-series during or just after Star Trek 6. With an Excelsior-class starship.

[Yora]

The most important thing would be to come up with new plots. I watched the first season of Enterprise but I just couldn't go on after halfway into the second, because every single episode I've already seen before, twice!
If you do TOS, TNG, or Enterprise again, just with different characters, it's still going to be exactly the same thing. With the same situations they run into and the same solutions they come up with.
To get new stories they need a different environment with new conditions and circumstances. Voyager tried but apparently forgot about it after the first episode and also went back to always the same things again.
Deep Space Nine had a different environment that created different problems and also had different limitations of what the characters could do and couldn't. That's how you get new plots and get to see things you didn't see before.

Though that said, Star Trek isn't really that much of an interesting setting to me. Again, and in full awareness that this makes me looks like a much bigger fanboy than I actually am, Deep Space Nine was different in that it had the Dominion and Bajor, two environments very different from the rest of the Star Trek universe. And I have to say mostly, or even primarily because, it's not the Federation. The Federation is boring.
I enjoyed the first half season of Enterprise because at that point it was a single human ship, making a first few careful step out of the door, finding an unknown and often incomprehensible environment where everything they knew and were used two hadn't any meaning or value. But again, it didn't take long and they were back in full Federation mode. "Greetings primitive aliens. I am the great human Captain, here to solve your internal problems in 35 minutes by teaching you the superior morals of our society."

Maybe some people would say it's not Star Trek without the Federation and it's moral standards and it's regulations, but this isn't the 80s anymore. I could stand Captain Picard being dimplomatic, but after that it just got anoying. To mention Deep Space Nine for the 29th time, every time I dig out and watch the DVDs again, I skip all the episodes that deal with Federation law and Starfleet regulations. I hate those episodes the most in every show. Right after Holodeck-episodes.

My favorite Star Trek series is "The Bajoran Space Station - The adventures of Kira and Odo fighting the Cardassians, the Dominion, and domestic terrorism."
I love that show.

[Kitten Champion]

I'd rather see Stargate: Universe return, personally. Star Trek has been, with the possible exception of the J.J. Abrams' film, a monotonous stage play so entrenched in its popular liberal humanist Western ideology and utopic optimism that it's unwilling to plumb the depths that modern SF literature reached long ago. Abrams version was, as he intended, an action-oriented space opera more than Star Trek -- and perhaps that's a direction they could go, rebooting the franchise from there and turning it into Fringe in space.

The changes I would want would make it unrecognizable to Star Trek fans. Actually dealing with post-humanity, alien aliens, grey and grey morality, and challenging our assumptions about ourselves and our reality wasn't what Star Trek did in any meaningful fashion. The best was, I would agree, Deep Space 9. It dealt with the nature of faith, colonialism, racism, and war with more than the usual confident morality we've seen espoused in passing before. Voyager was an utter disappointment in that regards when it could have been the most complex.

I would not, regardless, continue the canonical Star Trek universe. It needs to be taken out of its comfort zone in more than just superficial ways. That was the beauty of Stargate: Universe and was my initial attraction to Enterprise until it slipped into convention and rudimentary social commentary ad nausea.

[Welf]

Maybe some people would say it's not Star Trek without the Federation and it's moral standards and it's regulations, but this isn't the 80s anymore. I could stand Captain Picard being dimplomatic, but after that it just got anoying. To mention Deep Space Nine for the 29th time, every time I dig out and watch the DVDs again, I skip all the episodes that deal with Federation law and Starfleet regulations. I hate those episodes the most in every show. Right after Holodeck-episodes.

I would not, regardless, continue the canonical Star Trek universe. It needs to be taken out of its comfort zone in more than just superficial ways. That was the beauty of Stargate: Universe and was my initial attraction to Enterprise until it slipped into convention and rudimentary social commentary ad nausea.

Personally I'd like to see a remake of Voyager, if it was DS9. I think the premise of Voyager was very good; new places, and more importantly, inner conflict. On one side Star Fleet and their regulations and optimism of a better tomorrow, and on the other side rebels who rejected that world and had to fight a brutal war to survive. Pity that was instantly forgotten and almost never explored.

I'd set a new series after the Dominion war, in a situation similar to TOS enterprise. A ship on the border of the known zone. But put more focus on inner conflict. I think of a captain who made his way up in the Dominion war, and is unlike previous captains a military officer. Basically a guy who thinks in terms of war and resources, and who considers violence a useful option. And one he takes very soon, considering his experiences in the war. And as contrast some newer and older officers, who believe in the ideals of the federation. I think that inner conflict and the changes in the society of the Federation brought by the war would make some interesting stories.
And maybe they can retcon the Klingons to what they were in TOS and their first movies, and not retarded Space Vikings like in TNG ff.

[Fjolnir]

I would actually like to see a post Dominion War Trek. The Alpha Quadrant has a large amount of space unexplored by starfleet that was previously held by people on poor terms with them. Possibly even serving on a ship that isn't a starfleet ship...

[MLai]

Enterprise had a good premise in humanity setting out into the Great Unknown on a primitive flimsy ship, and humans are everybody's b***h.

But that got forgotten right quick. Before you know it, Enterprise crew is fighting aliens and winning.

Enterprise has the most potential with a remake. The tech level needs to be set back drastically. I want to see 2010, not Star Wars. The crew should live like a submarine crew. Little things like an asteroid field should be life-or-death for them. Aliens should be bewildering to humans.

[Yora]

I'd set a new series after the Dominion war, in a situation similar to TOS enterprise. A ship on the border of the known zone. But put more focus on inner conflict.

I'd been thinking of something very similar some months ago. Basically "Star Trek: Space Patrol"!
A crew that tends to stay in the same general area and often returns to the places they have been before, so they have to deal with the results of their actions instead of treating everything as a hypothetical situation that probably should work out just fine and we never really care how things actually turned out.

But I think the biggest problem with Voyager and Enterprise was probably the people in charge of production who made the descisions what things get dropped and which ones are added in later. It's all some time back and I never really got much into the details, but apparently there were some people very high up who shot down pretty much anything that would have added some ambiguity or controversy and instead had everything to be all clean and safe for the average conservative american audience. And it wasn't from Paramount who were funding the shows, they were giving the producers a lot of freedom in doing almost anything as they thought would be best for the shows.

[Welf]

I rather think their problem was they were making new episodes of TNG, but without new ideas. I think they even recycled a few old scripts. They weren't risking anything because they didn't understand that they were repeating themselves. Sometimes you need to fire the old people and get a fresh start. TNG started rather underwhelming because of the influence of Gene Roddenberry, and got better when new people took over.

[Kd7sov]

It could be fun to have the focus on, not a starship or station crew, but a squad in the Feds' Department of Temporal Investigations.

[Don Julio Anejo]

I'd rather see the dingy, frontier, unimportant part of the Federation that doesn't have shiny ships, new aliens that just make you want to violate the Prime Directive this once, debates as to the meaning of life. In short, I don't want to see the communist utopianism so prevalent in TNG/Voyager.

A patrol boat dealing with a set of issues in a local sector suggested above would actually be a really good idea. A few local Maquis hotspots, belligerent aliens that aren't important enough to warrant major Starfleet presence but nonetheless cause trouble, organized crime, farmers/colonists who can't solve their own problems. DS-9 kind of stuff. The problem with this kind of show is that it may alienate much of the core fanbase (a lot of people watch Star Trek precisely for "boldly going where no-one has gone before" and humanistic crap), but at the same time may or may not bring in new fans.

Honestly though, I think The Big Bang Theory has done more to make Star Trek popular in recent years than Star Trek itself.

[Kitten Champion]

Star Trek brought out the best of writers who wanted to do Not-Star Trek for exactly the reasons we've been listing. Thus we got Farscape, Babylon 5, Firefly, Stargate, Andromeda, and more that I've forgotten.

It makes it extremely difficult to find a new angle which doesn't seem like its rehashing someone else's turf, and what has been Star Trek's territory has become so old hat as to be trite.

A Federation Temporal Unit in the far future is an idea -- like the one from Enterprise -- but time travel stories are apparently a real challenge to write.

[Kd7sov]

A Federation Temporal Unit in the far future is an idea -- like the one from Enterprise -- but time travel stories are apparently a real challenge to write.

Why the future, far or near, specifically? We know the DTI was active at least as the DS9 tribble episode, and probably formed as a result of one of Kirk's innumerable time-trips if it didn't already exist by then.

Sure, it'd be a challenge, but it'd be fun to watch.

[Kitten Champion]

Why the future, far or near, specifically? We know the DTI was active at least as the DS9 tribble episode, and probably formed as a result of one of Kirk's innumerable time-trips if it didn't already exist by then.

Sure, it'd be a challenge, but it'd be fun to watch.

They were studying temporal mechanics, but I thought time travel wasn't available in any practical sense until centuries after Voyager where it was used primarily to police the timeline. The Federation only really moved into temporal exploration after still more centuries have passed -- as with the agent on Enterprise.

Anything can be done with the writing behind it, it's just, thus far ST time travel has been pretty pedestrian.

[BRC]

The Shiny Optimism of TNG won't fly today, but if you remove that too much, then it won't feel like Star Trek.

I think the key to a new Star Trek series is to remove the position of power the protagonists are in. Rather than seeing the Utopian Federation spreading a message of understanding and tolerance throughout the galaxy, I think we should see a federation in crisis.

An Unknown enemy wipes out Starfleet command. The chain of command falls apart. Scattered admirals and captains form their own coalitions, using their warships to carve out pieces of territory. With the Federation all but shattered, Klingon and Romulan fleets begin pushing into former federation space, claiming that they are there to "Restore Order". The surviving Federation fleets become suspicious of each other, suspecting other admirals, or the more exotic alien species, of being behind the attack on Starfleet command.

In the midst of all this chaos, you have the still unchristened USS Enterprise. It was completed in Drydock, and on it's way to Starfleet Command to pick up it's intended crew when the attack hit. Rather than being run by the Best and Brightest, it's got a crew of misfits, rejects, and refugees. The original Crew was just a token presence, had regulations allowed it, Starfleet would have just let the autopilot take the ship in.

The Captain is an old warhorse who refused to retire. Starfleet Command can't make him retire, but they can give him the worst assignments they have until he gets the message on his own.

The First Officer is a convicted pirate. Before his capture, his main game was to put on a uniform and, since he looked every inch the picture of a handsome federation officer, bluff his way onto small civilian ships, usually with promises of handsome payments from Starfleet if they take him where he needs to go, usually straight into a trap set by his allies. He was imprisoned on the Starbase where the Enterprise was being built. He managed to escape, and was stowing away on the Enterprise. However, he's basically the only guy onboard besides the captain who actually knows how to command a starship, so he gets the #2 slot. He would leave, but he knows that if he does, he's now fair game for any number of enemies he made during his life (Especially now that law and order has broken down).

The post of Chief Engineer is filled by a lowly drydock engineer commanding a pack of semi-sentient automated construction drones.

The Ship's Doctor is some random refugee who is host to a sentient telepathic disease (The individual bacteria link telepathically to form a hive-mind. Basically your standard "Alien Symbiote" situation). His usual method of diagnosis is to infect the patient with himself and go take a look.

Together they form the Crew of the USS Undesignated Starship #4324 (It wasn't supposed to officially be designated the "Enterprise" until it got it's proper crew), their mission, to Boldly Go Where Others have Gone Before, and try to pull something good out of the shattered wreck of the Federation.

[The Glyphstone]

I would watch the heck out of that.

[Don Julio Anejo]

*snip*

That is.. awesome!

[Yora]

They were studying temporal mechanics, but I thought time travel wasn't available in any practical sense until centuries after Voyager where it was used primarily to police the timeline. The Federation only really moved into temporal exploration after still more centuries have passed -- as with the agent on Enterprise.

Except in Star Trek 4, where they make two time jumps just like that, that anyone could replicate at any time, and was apparently easy enough they didn't need any special preparation to an entirely unfamiliar ship they had just stolen.
And people say the even numbered ones are the good ones.

I hate time travel episodes. They all seem to exist for the purpose of having the actors play around with different costumes.

[Obrysii]

Rather than being run by the Best and Brightest, it's got a crew of misfits, rejects, and refugees.

...

Together they form the Crew of the USS Undesignated Starship #4324 (It wasn't supposed to officially be designated the "Enterprise" until it got it's proper crew), their mission, to Boldly Go Where Others have Gone Before, and try to pull something good out of the shattered wreck of the Federation.

So, it's a mixture of The Irresponsible Captain Tylor and Andromeda?

That'd work. I'd like that. Especially if the Enterprise has a sort of "awe-inspiring" design like the refit Constitution-class has.

[Gnoman]

What I'd really like to see is Diane Duane's Rihannsu. They wouldn't have to be the actual Romulans (since canon took them in an entirely different direction than Duane extrapolated from their few TOS appearances), but the society she constructed in her books was both fairly solid and quite interesting.


For those who aren't familiar with the ST novels, there's a small set of authors that greatly influenced many of the depictions of alien societies in the licensed ST universe. The vast majority of depictions of Vulcans and Romulans in the books were based on Duane's version as depected in Spock's World and The Romulan Way.

[Traab]

I would like to see a similar theme to the show Andromeda too be honest. Basically, some top of the line ship, or even small fleet, got itself stuck in the future. There are a dozen ways it could happen, so to name one at random, they got sucked into a temporal anomaly, there, stupid start, but its not the point. Basically, they get back to earth, only to find that its x number of years later, the federation is gone, so is the romulan empire, klingons, vulcans, etc. Everything has been pretty well wrecked at some point in the past. Whatever holocaust can play a role in the ongoing series. Tech has regressed, so this small fleet, (im sorry, but a single advanced ship just aint enough for long term) which was already pretty damn sweet for its time, are heavy duty ass kickers now.

They get together and form up a new framework to try and recreate the federation. We can spend several seasons exploring the history of what happened with each species, what caused this breakup, and who wants to be allies this time. Will the romulan survivors still be sneaky untrustworthy manipulative bastards? Or will that be prejudices talking and they have turned into decent folks after being humbled thoroughly a thousand years ago? Have the klingons mellowed? Did the vulcans self control snap at some point turning them into vicious killers? You'll find out next time, on Star Trek: here We Go Again. (not the actual title. )

Another interesting angle is the fact that having multiple ships allows for multiple actions and reactions. Lets face it, you can pretty much guess how picard or kirk would react to any given event. But by having for example, 5 ships with their own crews and personalities, you open up whole new avenues of problems that can crop up when say, the more warlike captain happens to stumble across a belligerent, but not precisely hostile species, or the more trusting captain meets some backstabbers, or vice versa. The main problem is keeping the cast at a reasonable level, and how to switch back and forth between vessels without it feeling like a different show each time.

[Mutant Sheep]

Hmn... all I would ask for is scenes similar to the classic " AHIIIIIIHAM KAPTIAN KAAAIRHK!"

[Kitten Champion]

Except in Star Trek 4, where they make two time jumps just like that, that anyone could replicate at any time, and was apparently easy enough they didn't need any special preparation to an entirely unfamiliar ship they had just stolen.
And people say the even numbered ones are the good ones.

*Sigh* Yes, I did recall that, unfortunately. I suppose it's still better than Superman reversing the flow of time by circulating the Earth, but still.

I hate time travel episodes. They all seem to exist for the purpose of having the actors play around with different costumes.

And meet with historical celebrities.

The only one I can recall enjoying was when DS9 went back to the mid 21st century and ended up in the middle of a crapsack state-run ghetto just before a historic riot. The whole thing was a creative commentary as opposed to the usual wish fulfillment fantasies.

[Hands_Of_Blue]

I would be pretty fine with Star Trek: Final Frontier actually getting produced.

It would have been neat.

[Yora]

The only one I can recall enjoying was when DS9 went back to the mid 21st century and ended up in the middle of a crapsack state-run ghetto just before a historic riot. The whole thing was a creative commentary as opposed to the usual wish fulfillment fantasies.

It was good. But I still wonder why it needed to be? Couldn't that story had been done without time travel?

What I'd really like to see is Diane Duane's Rihannsu. They wouldn't have to be the actual Romulans (since canon took them in an entirely different direction than Duane extrapolated from their few TOS appearances), but the society she constructed in her books was both fairly solid and quite interesting.

I like Romulans. Unfortunately after TNG they never really got to be reoccuring opponents, just unrelated on and off secondary characters for one episode or two,
TOS had their Klingons, DS9 the Cardassians, Voyager the Borg, and Enterprise the Andorians (I think).

Having Romulans as the primary opponents, though not neccessarily enemies, would be quite cool. Better then creating something new, since it's supposed to be still Star Trek and not something different that has the name tacked on.

But then... I think I have to say I don't like Star Trek. Even though I've seen all of the three first shows and most of the movies three time and watched half of Voyager and Enterprise. But the best I can say about the setting and the characters is that I really enjoy the episodes of DS9 that ignore the Federation. Which pretty much means ignoring almost everything that defines Star Trek.
Somehow the whole franchise is sterile and bland. The setting isn't interesting.

[Cikomyr]

Star Trek really got at its best when it wasn't just about itself and its own ideals in a vacuum. When Star Trek ideals were challenged by "real life" situations and problems. This is why DS9 was so great, it wasn't about the shiny super-starship that was meant to be a huge PR on Starfleet part. It was about a harsh situation with unperfect people.

Quark, Odo & Kira weren't happy Federation Fanclub Party Members. They poitned out the flaws in the ideals the Federation represented. And the fact that the show rarely shied away from these criticism, but rather faced them and still managed to convey good ideals was the strenght.

Even Sisko wasn't above this. The Maquis situation was really dire, and he deliberately gas-bombed civilian colonies. He war against the Dominion was bleeding them out, so he assassinated a Romulan senator to bring them into the war.

But these events were never presented in a glorified manner. You could see the moral flaw in these actions, and the episode where they occured often conveyed a sentiment of negativity regarding these very actions. SFDebris said it best: In The Pale Moonlight isn't the story of how Sisko single-handely saved the Federation, it's Sisko's confession of his sins against the ideals he is supposed to defend.

Challenging ideals is a good thing, which promotes discussion. Gene Roddenburry & Rick Berman were really thick-headed when they practically disallowed any criticism of the Federation's dogma.

Enterprise really got good when the crew & Archer were caught in the Expanse, trying to deal with a harsh mission in a dangerous environment. They were desperately trying to achieve their mission while clinging to their ideal.


Which is what the show should be about. You SHOULD have the Federation, you SHOULD have these ideals present. They represent what Star Trek was all about. But at the same time, you should have people criticising these very ideals, their foundations. Criticism isn't necessarily negative or deconstructivist. Wouldn't it be great if people addressed some of the damn finer points of the Prime Directive?

[Traab]

Star Trek really got at its best when it wasn't just about itself and its own ideals in a vacuum. When Star Trek ideals were challenged by "real life" situations and problems. This is why DS9 was so great, it wasn't about the shiny super-starship that was meant to be a huge PR on Starfleet part. It was about a harsh situation with unperfect people.

Quark, Odo & Kira weren't happy Federation Fanclub Party Members. They poitned out the flaws in the ideals the Federation represented. And the fact that the show rarely shied away from these criticism, but rather faced them and still managed to convey good ideals was the strenght.

Even Sisko wasn't above this. The Maquis situation was really dire, and he deliberately gas-bombed civilian colonies. He war against the Dominion was bleeding them out, so he assassinated a Romulan senator to bring them into the war.

But these events were never presented in a glorified manner. You could see the moral flaw in these actions, and the episode where they occured often conveyed a sentiment of negativity regarding these very actions. SFDebris said it best: In The Pale Moonlight isn't the story of how Sisko single-handely saved the Federation, it's Sisko's confession of his sins against the ideals he is supposed to defend.

Challenging ideals is a good thing, which promotes discussion. Gene Roddenburry & Rick Berman were really thick-headed when they practically disallowed any criticism of the Federation's dogma.

Enterprise really got good when the crew & Archer were caught in the Expanse, trying to deal with a harsh mission in a dangerous environment. They were desperately trying to achieve their mission while clinging to their ideal.


Which is what the show should be about. You SHOULD have the Federation, you SHOULD have these ideals present. They represent what Star Trek was all about. But at the same time, you should have people criticising these very ideals, their foundations. Criticism isn't necessarily negative or deconstructivist. Wouldn't it be great if people addressed some of the damn finer points of the Prime Directive?

I agree with you in principle, but im not sure if an entire series based around moral decisions and ethical considerations would work or if it would just get a bit too much. Its like how you can only have so much drama for so long before it burns you out. Even DS9 had a large amount of silly episodes or not so universe shaking problems to break up the tone.