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

[undormant]

I've fallen back in love with TNG after it showed on CBS Action recently.

I'd like to discuss what you'd like to see in a new series. I'd like it to be set after TNG with the ship seen in the last episode and I'd like all new characters with very few old cameo's and I would like an openly gay man as a main character.

R

 

[Interference]

I'd quite like to see the Pike years, when the technology was more primitive, but not like they did on Archer's Enterprise - which was promising initially before it tied itself up in knots with time travel stories, hardly the function of a star ship, I'd've thought.

 

[Overread]

I too was disappointed when they started to mess around with the time travel in the Enterprise series. It took what could have been a great series and sort of messed it all up with a new race rather than focusing on all those original races.


As for a new StarTrek I'd like to see something different; ship searching for new life has been done enough times that its now sort of broken in that finding new life gets both repetitive and also requires more and more outlandish ways to find it without them crossing over the same territories as before.

Deep Space Nine I think had its strongest point in that, once it got going, it wasn't saddled just with "monster of the week" and that there was an overarching storyline to be played out. I'd like to see that again with a new series, though I'm not sure of the focus that would be best.
I'd kind of like them to get back to near where the early films were - where there was almost a mythological/magical unknown aspect to many aliens (not just vulcans). The fact that they were not just humanoid or understood and did strange things (the whole whale prob for example or Vger)

 

[Interference]

Or the Companion in Metamorphosis.

One of the great strengths of the original series was the exploration of human nature through science fiction, something which has since been relegated to the background, if mentioned at all, in most films and TV series set in space. Phobias, racism, war themes were frequent but rarely tackled the same way in any two episodes.

Roddenberry's original concept of the space-faring wagon train, an idea later described better but explored worse in Battlestar Galactica, was an open invitation to imaginative writers to hold our culture under a microscope and pick it apart from the perspective of a true outsider, with the Enterprise crew and encountered race alternating roles to that end. Seeking out New Life was a mirror, in the end, and that is what, I believe, Science Fiction - and particularly Star Trek - should be.

Perhaps, then, what I would like to see is Star Trek as a fleet of civilian and military vessels seeking out new homes and new territories to settle down after the Earth becomes uninhabitable.

But, please - no Cylons

 

[Overread]

The original series is certainly a bit of an outsider compared to the films and all that followed after them. Watching them now some of the original series episodes can get a little heavy with the whole overbearing morality of the earth humans - though I always like to think its balanced out by the fact that Kirk tries it one with literally every female semi-humanoid he comes across.

Actually thinking on it I'd be interested in a Startrek that looked at Earth during World War 3; building up toward the flight of the Phoenix at its very end. Granted it wouldn't be exploration based nor even have any aliens (it should NOT have any aliens in it at all!) but it would be a great way to see the Earth in that time line before it became the strong moralistic core that it is today.

 

[Interference]

Although your idea could be the first episode for mine

 

[Overread]

They could do a spinoff like that - there was Kane and his sleepership of superhumans. Could be interesting to see them shifting through time in big jumps as they have to enter sleep mode to travel the vast distances in pre-warp era.

 

[Interference]

Now, that's a fascinating idea. Each week begins with them coming out of hibernation. Ship-board time shows Earth Time, of course - and in years that soon mount up to hundreds and then thousands, but all that really matters is the Now of the current adventure, the next planet, the next watering hole.

One week the crew is awakened prematurely by an attack....

 

[Overread]

Plus all that time alone in space - what if one or two are always awake for short periods of time in shifts to keep an eye on things. The added stress of being alone, relationships broken up over different shift slots etc..
Lots of potential there to have episodes without need of aliens or monsters from anywhere outside of the ship.

 

[Dave]

Lots of potential there to have episodes without need of aliens or monsters from anywhere outside of the ship.

Or they could just bring back Firefly!

We've had these discussions before and I gave my views then:
http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/22621-how-would-you-improve-star-trek-seriously.html
http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/26589-could-star-trek-survive-re-invention.html

 

[Daggers]

I would love a series focused on the founding of a Federation outpost or colony. It would be Trek, but not as we know it.

 

[JamestheLast]

I might check out a series about miners of dilithium crystals or maybe smugglers of Romulan ale. Or a traveling salesman/woman/other who sells portable replicators to far off colonies. I am bored with the travelling spaceship storyline.

Then again I would have watched the Captain Sulu Excelsior series proposal.

 

[Dave]

I might check out a series about miners of dilithium crystals or maybe smugglers of Romulan ale. Or a traveling salesman/woman/other who sells portable replicators to far off colonies.

That sounds like elements of DS9 and Babylon 5.

I think it is harder for writers to write when the characters are not on a travelling spaceship because their problems remain with them week after week and they cannot escape from the result of what they did last week. However, I personally found that to be much more realistic.

 

[JoanDrake]

I think you might use that hard ass CEO from the 20th century who was brought back to life on the E II, (though I think the actual guy is dead now). Make him a Captain on a joint Ferengi/Federation ship. He was an interesting character and could realistically add some darkness without making everything go dystopic. They did make a book about him.

 

[Major Eazy]

How about a new Star Trek series set many years after Voyager.

Use a new starship, not to be called Enterprise, just find some other starship to use, maybe an Akira class, a Steamrunner class, have a different name, but still the same Starfleet.

The idea is to visit planets already seen in TOS, TNG, and DS9, and the idea is to see what had happened to the planets after the last visit.

An example would be to visit Sigma Iotia II, from TOS A Piece of the Action, to see what had happened to the people who used a book called Chicago Mobs of the Twenties left by the USS Horizon. Remember that Dr McCoy believes he left his communicator behind, so let's see what happened to the people living there. Are they still living their lives based on the Chicago Mobs, or have they changed?

Visit Eighty Ninety-Two IV, the planet visited by the SS Beagle in TOS Bread and Circuses, and see what changes happens since the USS Enterprise last visited.

Some episodes in the new series would be about after effects of when we visited some planets in TOS, TNG, and DS9.

 

[logan_run]

I like too see a gary 7 series/

 

[BAYLOR]

What I would like to see is a series that takes place in the new trek timeline and in the time of the two latest trek films.

 

[Droflet]

As long as it's true to the lore, I'd be happy.

 

[psikeyhackr]

I have suggested this in several places on the net:

Have rebels from the Mirror Universe try to steal 4 Federation ships during a conference with the Dominion at Deep Space 9 using doubles. The plan goes wrong even though 3 ships get taken across to the mirror universe with their crews but the 4th explodes in the transition probably due to fighting with the crew. This sets up an impenetrable barrier so the 3 ships are trapped in a universe with no Federation.

So three Federation crews must survive and maybe try to start a Federation from scratch in the Mirror Universe. Somewhat like Voyager but with 3 ships and no going home. They would get to explore the cultures of known space and see how everything is different. It would have familiarity but with a new direction.

psik

 

[stephen g parks]

I also like the idea of multiple ships and no going home, but I'd do it larger - a small squadron and a base ship of some kind, in the Magellan Cluster - new territory, different stories told with different crews - could even film episodes simultaneously with different complete crews. Some stories take all the hsips, some use individual. Sometimes the captains have to get together and decide if/how their rules still apply.