My idea for Star Trek takes place on a really big ship, much larger than the Ent-D. More of a mobile starbase really. It also includes a group of support ships that travel with it, like a modern day aircraft carrier. This gives a variety of locations to work with and lots of good stories to tell.
In my Star Trek universe, I would:
I would kill off almost every “forehead” race out there. That is to say, all undeveloped cultures that consist of humans with plastic pieces glued on their noses and foreheads. I’m tired of races in Star Trek that only have a single aspect that defines their culture (Klingons = honor bound warriors, Romulans = sneaky militaristic bastards, Ferengi = greedy capitalists). How about we see some new races that are actually diverse? As in not everyone on Romulus has the same goddamn haircut! The Bajorans can stay because they are a fairly diverse culture. But the three different species of Terrellians? All dead, preferably at the hands of some huge force that wrecks shit episode after episode and is not stopped by a speech or a stream of technobabble.
I agree time travel has to be toned down. We already know there’s a Dept. of Temporal Investigations and according to Voyager there are time cops in the future too. So let’s have it so that whenever the ship gets too close to an anomaly that was about to suck them into Alternate Future from Hell, a Temporal agent in a futuristic uniform pops onto the bridge and says “Ah ah… you were about to fuck with the timeline. Back away from the anomaly. Back away from it now.”
No more Borg Queen. I’d explain her away as some giant insect the Borg assimilated and her brain power is so intense that she overtook the whole collective. Have the Borg recruit our crew to destroy this giant bug and then have the Borg say “Nice knowing you but every bit of technology we have is already superior to your and since we already have bazillions of drones we don’t need any more.”
Ships that maneuver in three dimensions would be nice. Space dogfights like we’ve never seen on Trek to date would be the norm in my universe.
I’d also put guidance on the torpedoes so they don’t just get fired off into space for nothing. Every single one that was fired would hit something.
I’d actually show some good medical technology by having crewmembers sustain horrible trauma. No more last minute escapes. People are going home hurt. But it will be okay because sickbay kicks ass. However, I would have plenty of crewmembers sustaining entirely unsurvivable trauma as well.
I agree with the call for special forces soldiers. Chain of Command was a great episode with a stupid premise. Picard is the only person who has seen these special waves that that Cardassian weapon makes. Thus Picard is the only person who can go on a grenade-chucking mission to destroy the damn thing.
I’d also like to see a Starfleet ship really wrecking some shit. Take the old Star Trek cliche where the ship wanders into a fight between warring factions. Turn it on its head by having the ship pick a side and then proceed to kick the snot out of the other side. Explore the ramifications of doing this.
Do away with the goddamn Prime Directive. No one follows it anyway.
Have the writers set out specifically beforehand exactly what the ship can and cannot do. No more technobabble solutions that consist of reversing the polarity of a stream of random made up particles and then re-routing it through the deflector dish. If the question is “how do we move the stuck ship?” there should be a standard set of answers that make sense. We can generate a soliton wave (forgotten tech from TNG). We can use the impulse engines to make a subspace field. We can use shuttles and tractor beams. We can vent stuff out of various openings in the ship. We can get guys in EVA suits and rocket boots to go out there and push. Et cetera, as long as it’s a practical solution that doesn’t sound like someone just wrote <TECH> in the script.
SEX! My Star Trek characters would have active sex lives and they’d be proud of it. I’d show that women in the future could have all the sex they want without any negative connotation being attached. Maybe even have a character from the past passing judgment on the crew for their loose morals only to be told “So what?”
I’d also have marijuana explained as legal in the Star Trek universe because it was one of the only things that would grow after WWIII and it was useful for a bunch of stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t propose a crew of stoners at all. If anything, they’d find it quirky that there are still people out there who dry and smoke the buds of a plant when they could much more easily replicate fun harmless substances that alter consciousness without the need to inhale harsh smoke. If Chakotay can have a little electronic bong, why can’t everyone else?
I’d have a crew that couldn’t wait to take their uniforms off after the end of their duty shift. The audience isn’t stupid. We’ll still recognize them in civilian clothes.
I’d also put leather back on the side of the good guys. Whenever there’s a bad guy around they seem to be clad in leather. Or whenever the good guys are doing something bad, they break out the leather jackets (Insurrection for example). But normal people wear leather all the time for a variety of reasons.
I’d give the good guys parents again too. Every other character in Star Trek has a shitty relationship with their parents. I’d have characters who sometimes got along with their parents, some who really loved and cared for their parents and some whose parents had died of natural causes a long time ago. But no more evil parents coming to the ship and messing a crew member’s life up.
I’d also have the characters use the holodeck for more than just getting their rocks off. I’d have them use it for training, creative interrogations (make a Romulan spy think he’s been rescued by a Warbird for example), extra storage space for uninvited guests, food production facilities for emergencies, et cetera. You have a device that can literally do anything you tell it to do, including things it isn’t programmed for (Moriarty, Barclay’s super warp drive thing, etc). Use it! Have people dedicated to figuring out new ways to make the holodeck worth all the energy it must burn.
There’s probably plenty more but that’s where I’d start.