Here’s what I would do. I would shift away from a military craft and have the series set on the interstellar equivalent of a merchant ship, one that’s heavily armed due to pirates and whatnot because it travels in the risky space where Star Fleet’s influence, though present, is minimal at times. Instead of just having military conflicts, have the crew having to cope with making a profit while dealing with alien races who don’t necessarily go by human rules. Sometimes this would be a huge advantage for the traders, sometimes not. There would be constant danger of pirates, or getting caught by a Star Fleet vessel with something or someone on board that shouldn’t be there by Star Fleet regs, plus military vessels of other races that have their OWN lists of what’s contraband and what’s not, and encounters with races and beings unknown to them or anyone else (because this area of space, though well populated with spacegoing races, still has plenty of unknown floating around). Other traders would compete with them, sometimes independents like themselves, sometimes corporate traders with huge resources they don’t have.
By going with a trading vessel you add a whole new dimension to the series, and escape from the military organization of Star Fleet. The object is to make a pile of money, not get killed or wrecked, and stay out of jail. The Star Trek universe provides a great backdrop for a story like this, with plenty of well-established friendly trading races, plenty of well-established villainous races, and plenty of unknown or semi-unknown races.
And don’t tell me this is what DS9 was. DS9 was a semi-military operation that never moved. Booooo-ring by comparison. The thing that made Trek so interesting was never knowing what they’d discover next.
And frankly, I think it’s time to give Star Trek a rest for a bit. Let there be no ST series on television for five or ten years. Part of the problem Trek has had is burnout…there was a period of almost 20 years when there was never NOT a Trek series on TV.
The Firefly ship was a trading ship running on the edges, but its universe was QUITE a bit more circumscibed than the Star Trek universe. A single planetary system – a very large one, but still, hardly an interstellar trade empire dealing with other trade empires and alien civilzations. Firefly’s universe is downright puny compared to Star Trek’s, which would CONSIDERABLY limit the kind of plots and situations that could occur. Wheedon’s Firefly universe are a bunch of poor trash scuffling over a can of beans in comparison to the Star Trek’s Federation.
Also, the people in charge in Firefly were pretty much bad guys, whereas the Federation is pretty much good guys. A dystopian vs. a utopian vision.
And frankly, Mal’s military background is too big an influence on Firefly. My idea is to get AWAY from the military stuff. Sure, there’ll be space battles and intrigue, but the real focus willl be on exploring unknown planets and civilizations and making money from them.
Nah, it doesn’t need a rest. It needs a lot of rethinking. The “military exploration of the galaxy and fights with alien species” angle wouldn’t work again no matter HOW long you let it rest, because it’s been so thoroughly, thoroughly done.
I think I see what you’re going for here - the futuristic equivalent of the hunters and trappers that explored the American West before the settlers and governments turned their attention to the region. Sort of like “Daniel Boone in Space.”
The premise for Voyager, except done right. Have a powerful Federation military ship get stuck in the ass-end of space by themselves… maybe they try to get home at first, but quickly give up and decide instead to simply start their own protectorate, allying themselves with various like-minded species they find along the way. Possibly build up to confrontation between the original Federation and the new one.
Basically, an entire series about empire-building, with the underlying moral overtones associated with that (how far will you go to ensure your own survival, including subjugating other races, allying yourself with unsavory ones, etc…)
I’d like to see Voyager done right, but I think the failed attempt poisoned the well, and the people running the franchise aren’t capable of doing it properly.
Start with the joined crew.
Add sector aliens, basically outcasts and refugees as deaths occur on the ship.
(That’s one thing (more) thing that bothered me about Voyager, was so few crew deaths for all the crap they went through)
Show a slow breakdown and reformation of the stick-up-the-ass Federation discipline and organization into something different.
Enough with the Borg, the miraculous contact with other humans who somehow made it out there, the constant reset button crap. You CAN do episodic within a larger arc.
Kill off and replace some of the major cast members along the way.
End the show after 7 seasons (max) with the crew making contact with the Federation (not sooner), but deciding that since their crew is now roughly half locals and has more local contacts and friendly ports, that there’s no point spending their entire lifetimes heading someplace that is basically foreign to them.
I’m with jayjay. Leave it laying, and I say that a former ubertrekkie.
Also, though it’s dumb, it’s pretty well established the Federation doesn’t have a cash based society, so the premise of “making piles of money” is fundamentally flawed unless you plan to make it a non-UFP crew.
But time will tell with the new movie. They may decide that it’s time to go back to the well, or perhaps they’ll be happy making sequels for a while. (Although I gotta wonder about the willingness of some of those people to continue in the roles. I can’t see Simon Pegg or Karl Urban making 6 sequels.)
Well, no actually. I was more thinking Poul Andersen’s Polesotechnic League stories, or Andre Norton’s Sargasso of Space novel. Settlers are on the planets, governors are on some planets, but still lots of unknown out there where a guy can make a buck finding some new alien drug, artifact, or what-have-you, or selling pepper to aliens for whom its an aphrodisiac, etc. I’m thinking of a galaxy where advanced civilizations have been around for billions of years, leaving treasure troves of advanced tech in the most unexpected places. A much more interesting place than the New World.
Read the thread title. It clearly says “Star Trek TNG made less stupid.” I am not talking about a redo of an existing Star Trek series, I’m talking about rethinking the franchise and coming up with something completely new. Did you read the OP at all?
Per the movie, do you think maybe a reboot/ reimagining is the way to go? I can’t see any way to continue the current Star Trek franchise, it having become so top heavy with backstory and continuity. The original show ended, the chance to restart the show with the original cast passed away with time, we had Next Generation, Stargate DS9, Lost in Delta Quadrant Space, and The Early Years a.k.a. It Was All A Dream. There’s nothing left that wouldn’t be Star Trek in name only.
The problem with Star Trek is Gene Roddenberry died and they never found an antiquate replacement. His stories would be out there and scientifically implausible, but they’d really explore the human experience.
Before Voyager ruined the Borg they were horrifying, mysterious, and darkly powerful. In Season 4-5 cliff hanger there was a scene where the first Borg cube to make a run for earth was hunting the Enterprise which was hiding in a nebula.
There was a scene, totally devoid of Voyagerish level giant boobs, and technobabble, where Picard was in 10-forward talking to Guinen worried about the Cube. Would this be the end of the Federation? Reflecting on history’s courses he made the comment “turn the page”, and even though you knew the Enterprise would win you felt the apprehension of the characters. The same kind of apprehension you’d feel before a major surgery or something very dangerous.
That was the human element that really gave Trek it’s impact. It wasn’t the special effects, nor the universe it drew on, it was the story writing. The story writing created that universe. The Federation represented the hope of a better future.
I am not so much interested in continuing the Star Trek tradition as using the Trek backstory to provide a universe that people will be familiar with and which is useful and understandable. Look, if you had a Trek series based on the exploits of Harcourt Fenton Mudd, it would still be Trek, but very different from any other Trek series, see?
Um, actually your line about the Federation representing the hope of a better future implies that the universe did help create Star Trek’s impact. Also, good writing is good, and much better than bad writing, by definition.
No way. I want photon torpedoes and phasers and explosions and conflicts and death and destruction and enemies and battle scenes and fire and explosions. Did I mention explosions? No way do I want to see a merchant space FedEx vehicle. I love sci-fi battle scenes. Nothing else will do.
Well, if nothing else, if I had to do a new Trek series (I’m for letting it rest in R’lyeh for a generation or two to heal, myself), I’d redo the Photon/Quantum torpedoes.
I mean, they’re loaded with enough antimatter to have a 64 megaton yield [cite available], and they’re usually (DS9 was the worst, I think) depicted with a tiny little gasoline explosion bluescreened onto the space battle. Lame.
Look, even if the shields/structures in-series are able to withstand something like that—not unreasonable, considering the tech, and possibly necessary story-wise to keep each “fight” episode more than ten minutes long—I want it to look like a damn nuke going off, at least.
What does a nuke going off in space look like? Do we even know? I know that flames behave differently in zero-G, you have to figure a nuke would too, and that it would look different without an atmosphere.
