I had an idea for a post-DS9 series—actually, it’d probably work best as a miniseries, or maybe part of an anthology or something; anyway…—taking place on occupied Cardassia, post-Dominion War.
We start off in the pilot with the opening titles, show title superimposed over a starfield…and as the orchestra fades out, the camera pans down to reveal a ruined cityscape at night, with a hovercar full of patrolling UFP troops skimming past some miserable looking Cardassian refugees.
The story would be about the issues and travails of the occupation force; preventing food riots at aid depots; ensuring security; trying to rebuild a shattered world, drained and battered by war, and a genocidal orbital bombardment in the conflict’s final hours; and most importantly, dealing with the Cardassian people—“liberated,” “conquered,” but most of all pitiably desperate, and trying to rebuild a world with them.
And more drama comes from the Federation Alliance, itself not exactly politically unified, and the disparate groups making up the force planetside clashing and meshing. Federation peacekeepers taking to wearing Klingon-style body armor (sturdier than a gold shirt—especially against getting shanked in a scuffle); Klingons needing to use weapons that have a “stun” setting; maybe see some neglected (perhaps, in-story, societally…) Federation member species like the Arcturians again, and all the while the brass and the guys in nice offices back on the homeworlds are playing the situation to their own ends, while the guys on the ground on both sides are just trying to keep things together.
I came up with the notion a little while after the DS9 finale, so that’d be…1999-2000-ish. :eek:
Now, admittedly, the inspirations I had in mind were more post-war Germany and Japan (with some 1993 Somalia) than any prescience, and that’s really more the direction I’d imagined the story going in. Though if they made anything like this today, they’d probably just “[del]Iraq[/del] Cardassia” in a script, and produce it as is, even if it didn’t make any sense for the setting. Maybe with some really terrible technobabble plastered on to handwave it, if you’re lucky. 
(I’d add some more snarks concerning science fiction in general, but I’m veeerry tired. i sleep now.)