S’OK. It’s all hypothetical anyway, isn’t it. In my universe, scientists have discovered the technology to generate new TOS episodes indefinitely.
Maybe with a Han Solo-type captain, a wisecracking pilot, a plucky engineer who keeps the ship running with shoestrings and gum, and a big dumb brute who’s good in a fight. Throw in an uptight doctor, a stoic first mate, maybe a “spiritual” character, and some hot babes. That’s a recipe for a guaranteed hit! 
Naah… it wouldn’t even last one season. 
Ok, it doesn’t have to be the Enterprise. The lead “ship”. And it should not look like the corny style of thingy we used to have.
Actually, that was the point. I wouldn’t ignore canon. They exist, people know they exist, and both sides would try (and fail) to use them. Except that said entities just dont’ care about pitiful human politics.
I didn’t want to ignore canon. It was such an interesting plot point that it sucked they droppped it and never brought it up again.
More stucturally, the show shouldn’t be about “the command staff” The show should have several set of actors, and it can rotate around them. Some episodes can look at the science and engineering people trying to fix things and deal wit everybody being ense and frightened, or having to muck about with weird alien objects or get themselves out of jam. The next can show the command crew doing battle/diplomacy or the counselor intriguin on the ship. The next can look at some actual ship’s marines room-to-room fighting with useful weaponry.
The crew of the Enterprise crash on a planet where strange things seem to be happening. The planet is inhabited by other humans, who are lead by a creepy guy in glasses. They struggle to leave the planet, but a strange force seems to keep them there. Suddenly, a rescue ship arrives, but the crew isn’t so sure that they are really going to be rescued. Intersperse this with flashbacks, showing how the lives of the crew were intertwined in ways they didn’t know.
Gravity?
You just spoiled season 5!!!
The Skipper and Mary Anne here on Gilligan’s Planet.
smiling bandit, the scenerio you describe is very similiar to the Terran Empire as depicted in the novel Dark Mirror, by noted SF author Diane Duane. It’s a so much better treatment of the Mirror universe than the crappy DS9 episodes that it’s a tragedy that Duane’s novels aren’t canon. (Just as her Romulans/Rihannsu were light-years better than how they were handled on TNG and DS9).
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An aside: I was just watching season 7 of DS9 on DVD, specifically the episode “The Seige of AR 558”, and at the end of the episode when the replacement troops show up, one gentleman walks by and the camera follows him. It looks like Joe Morton, veteran actor know for being the star in the movie Brother from Another Planet. I wonder, was it him? Perhaps he’s a trek fan and since Bill “Will Robinson” Mumy was in this episode, perhaps he had a brief nonspeaking, uncredited cameo.
Thats not a bad idea. Especially the command staff thing. The only reason they made O’Brien a Chief Petty Officer in DS9 was because I think the writers began seeing how ridiculous it was that everyone was an officer. *(they certainly weren’t sure of what to do with his rank when the show began…he even gave his rank of “chief of operations” in the 1st season which is a title and job description, not a rank…if that…he behaves more like the chief engineer but I suppose they didn’t want him to be a “Scotty” clone.) *I’d like to see more enlisted in an active role in any new trek shows if any are made.
I’d still prefer for any new series be in the period just before the destruction of the Enterprise-C. (Though I don’t like the uniforms that much from that period). If it takes place arpound TNG/DS9 time theres theres too much technobabble and frankly outrageous science. I suppose that can be toned down. Besides, they’ve taken the teeth out of their best enemies. The Borg became a joke with Voyager. I guess that can be fixed. The Klingons are allies, and the Romulans are usually too much of sneaky backstabbers to be a real threat on a series type of basis. The Dominion is gone, and so are the Cardassians thanks to the DS9 conclusion. Now any of these threats can be reborn of course, and I’d like to see that. But if its in Enterprise-C time, you have the Klingons for enemies, and the Romulans (who seemed more of a force in the quadrant back in the day)… I may need to brush up on Trek lore but weren’t they aliies for a time against the feds?
Seems like a lot of people want a Star Trek series that isn’t really Star Trek. The latter-day series may have got a little too smug and moralizing for their own good, but without Roddenbery-esque faith in the power of human ideals, what exactly are you saving? Just start completely from scratch a la Babylon 5.
Anyway, the one thing I’d want to see in a new Trek series is a somewhat-thoughtful attempt to show how language has evolved in the 24th (or whatever) century. (Firefly did this a bit.) Give the show an evolving patois suitable to a highly advanced technological society, a stylized form of English that – gasp! – might even take a little effort on the part of the viewer to comprehend. Our own day is saturated with acronyms; imagine how bored you get if you found yourself having to say “plasma conduits” and “dilithium intermix chamber” and “tertiary sensor array” all day. One of the reasons Trek got so boring was the misguided notion that its science had to be made somehow comprehensible to the viewer, when 99% of it was already complete bullshit.
I like that idea, so much of DS9 and B5 felt like it was there just to progress a story along. I’d prefer if there was a template of familiar, well formed characters that writers could use as tools to create stories from.
Optimism, like the episodic TV format, is outdated.
True.
If I know that none of the main characters are going to die or be affected by events in anyway, why would I care? B5 did that well. None of the characters were the same after a traumatic event. Some even died.
Optimism doesn’t have to be dead, but the old “end show credits roll, everything is back the way it was” stuff is unrealistic. we all know its fiction, but i stopped watching enterprise when it aired because of that format. i didn’t see any of it beyond the first season until I got the series on DVD for Xmas years ago.
Trek can have Optimism and a series story arc without the same old boring, unrealistic crap.
Okay, that’s funny. But it’s led. Past tense of the verb “to lead”. Really tired of that misspelling.
Remember the TNG episode where they found that all those ships using Warp drive were actually damaging the fabric of space? And Starfleet issued an order restricting all ships to Warp 5? And, if I recall, it was never mentioned again? How about going a few years down the line, and suddenly Warp drive just doesn’t work anymore. No more subspace travel. Ships like the Enterprise are stuck in normal space, light years from anywhere.
They’d still have their antimatter engines, deflector shields, gravity fields and impulse power. What’s their top acceleration on impulse power? Given the shipboard gravity field to counter the effects of acceleration, they might be able to get up to a good percentage of lightspeed fairly quickly, and still get where they’re going – but with time dilation.
If subspace radio still worked, maybe the Federation would still officially exist for a while, but once it became clear that there was no transportation of materials – or enforcement of orders – beyond a certain practical distance, you’d have smaller governments form in areas of space maybe a few light years across. And people willing to travel those distances would have to accept that their loved ones back home might be twenty years older when they got back from a few months shiptime.
You could have a limited run series with that premise, perhaps keep coming back to a particular ship devoted to finding a way to restore FTL capabilities; as they travel on that desperate quest, centuries go by while they age a few years.
Full impulse is is 0.25c.
With respect, don’t you think that my idea has already been considered by someone and maybe they already do not plan to re-hash old story lines?
Re: the Enterprise: Okay, that’s fine with me, but I do want them in a ship of some kind.
With that comment, I end my arguments.
Bet y’all are glad about that, huh? 
But…are you going to watch it and give it a chance if it comes to pass???
D&R…
Quasi
Quasi I can say this…you’re ideas are probably far better than what some exec has in mind. I just fear that no matter what good ideas might get htrown into the ring they’ll find a way to screw it up.
and i would wathc to give it a chance. 
i’m only stating how I feel, and while I take my opinions somewhat seriously, i will not claim to be entirely correct in them.
I hope i didn’t come off as a prick.
God no, Rog. It’s a great thread, man!
Q
The DIC?
“Ah no, the DIC is shot”
“The DIC is overheating”
“Captain, I’ve done all I can, we need a new DIC”