In a recent RedLetterMedia video, Mike and Rich grapple with where Star Trek goes from here. Rich is more of a purist and thinks Star Trek can just be done. Mike is OK with Star Trek branching out, as long as it’s not, you know bad.
Anyway, after watching that video I came up with a bit of a treatment. I think this may conflict with some of the more recent series that I haven’t watched, but it’s the sort of direction I’d be interested in.
The Federation has an agreement with the Klingon Empire that allows them to operate an underground mining and research facility on a planet inside Federation space. The planet has a few million Federation colonists but the Klingon facility is in an inhospitable region and so they don’t bother each other.
The mining, however, is a ruse, as the region was actually chosen because the shielding provided by the planet’s rock structure is useful for hiding trace signs of cloaking research. The cloaking research initiative is overseen by a Klingon colonel (whatever the equivalent is) who understands the true power of Klingon culture in a way that most of the warrior-oriented leaders don’t. To keep this post short, things that I think would be interesting here:
Klingon scientists and engineers being really good scientists and engineers in a culture that doesn’t respect them.
The colonel understands that warriors are only as good as their weapons; he truly respects and nurtures the scientists like most military leaders don’t
We see the consequences of a Klingon hierarchy that can be upended based on challenges of honor, and how our colonel navigates that
Despite being educated and wise, our colonel is still a Klingon, motivated by lust for combat and dominance
At some point, we get to see Klingon warriors being completely terrifying – no more “Worf gets knocked out to demonstrate how strong an alien is” or “Picard can fight Klingons just as well as Worf.” No, in this series we get scenes like Darth Vader in Rogue One, where they actually earn their reputation by mowing through Star Fleet security officers
Meanwhile, a Star Fleet lieutenant assigned to a ship in the region starts to suspect that the mining operation is a cover for something else. We see her enlist the help of other independent thinkers as they challenge the entrenched bureaucracy of a complacent Star Fleet that can accept the Klingon’s being duplicitous, but can’t accept that they’d be successful working on something as sophisticated as a cloaking device – good opportunity to explore themes of racism.
Even as the colonel completes his cloaked bird of prey and starts taking out Federation ships, a debate rages about whether or not this lieutenant is right, whether the Klingon high council is complicit, and what to do to stave off war.
I feel like you could get 2 or 3 good seasons out of this.
They kind of did do that with Discovery, the results were not great.
Star Trek is probably better off with slightly changed timelines instead of jumping around the multiverse.
BTW: Star Trek practically started the multiverse thing with episodes like “Mirror, Mirror” (all-time classic) and “The Alternative Factor” (nowhere nearly as well remembered).
Sci-Fi authors like Wells, Murray Leinster & Heinlein provided early examples, but I think “Mirror, Mirror” was the biggie.
I’m think DC also beat Star Trek by 5 years and The Twilight Zone probably had one also.
There was that war during the time of Zephram Cochrane, those things were dealt with by (mumble mumble / space magic) in the aftermath of that war, and now humans don’t have to deal with that stuff anymore. That’s what makes Star Trek (at least from TOS through VOY) so special, and why dealing with (mumble mumble) is Something That Just Isn’t Done / left to other species (Ferengi, Cardassians, etc.).
In the real world, I don’t think the studio wants to just let a lucrative franchise die. Unlike some here, I liked Deep Space Nine, for the larger story arcs. And in general, every show now has these arcs more than the single episode storylines.
I’ve read that the Studio wants movies and TV shows for the streaming service. They’ve said the Kelvin timeline crew is done but a new movie is in the works.
They’re considering the Kirk led Enterprise for another show with many of the actors from Strange New Worlds. But they’re also trying to come up with other options, new things, not more mining Star Trek’s past.
I think DS9 is especially popular in streaming now. Maybe not Next Gen popular but up there. It has become a favorite for many more than it was when it first aired.
IMHO it’s the best of all the Trek series. I think it suffered at the time because it wasn’t TNG and due to having a Black captain. Now it benefits from those of us with nostalgia for the old days (AKA the “they ruined Trek” old fogies) who long for the good old days. IMHO it seems a lot less dated than TNG, and even to some extent less dated than Voyager.
I agree. I’ve been thinking about this since before TNG even. In Niven’s Known Space universe, there are some ginormous number like 15T(5T? something) people on earth. And yet his stories focus on onesies and twosies. He reduces the crowded masses to throwaway lines about fertility riots and ARM controlling people. But, what are they all doing? What if one of those number decided to create his own story, with, say, a slaver weapon? Or he creates time travel? He could get lost in all those people. Who could find him to stop him? The trouble with writing is you have to limit your scope. All those people have lives, hopes, dreams, stories. But a writer has to treat them as NPCs. In the real universe, they all are independent, and anything could happen. But, in functional readable fiction, it can’t. Even the Foundation trilogy couldn’t cover everything going on in a whole galaxy.
So yes, back to Star Trek. Not everyone gets a vineyard, or a Nawlins restaurant, or an apartment overlooking SF Bay. But you can have a tiny apartment in a city with a holodeck. Or a wall sized 3-d viewer, so it looks like you live in a highrise over SF bay. Would it matter if you didn’t, really?
In answer to your question, I think social status determines who gets the real stuff. And I don’t mean by being a hero Starship captain. Just making good food that people want elevates your status. Or writing a great holodeck movie. Or by being a good lawyer. Not by making money, that’s been established. There’s probably a lot of ways. And if you are not happy with your lot in life, and your dumpy apartment and boring spouse, you can always work. With 15B people or whatever, you have to try harder, but this is the glorious future. Or you can move to a colony world. Just hope no one makes a deadly virus that kills everyone.
In Kirk’s time, they treat them, or lock them on a planet with a deadly atmosphere. In Picard’s time, the give them jobs in Section 31.
We’re not all racists, you know. I didn’t like it because I don’t like “dark” trek, not that I don’t like Black trek. And i don’t like season-long arcs. So now, I can’t really watch DS9 reruns, because I don’t remember where we are.
Given that, I love In The Pale Moonlight. But I don’t know to this day if I agree with it.
And I loved Avery Brooks as portraying the best Hawk in the Spenser-verse.
Star Trek: The Harry Mudd Chronicles. Classic-era setting following the seedy scoundrel elements of the galaxy as they connive and survive working schemes between the various races/nations, also stumbling into and out of their own contacts with new civilizations.
I don’t think there is an official number. Wikipedia just says that one estimate is 18 billion. Even the massively crowded Puppeteer homeworld Hearth has a population of only 1 trillion.
I agree with not liking “dark” Trek. I just don’t see DS9 as dark Trek. Yes, there was the Dominion war, but in the end, to quote Stephen King, “the didn’t live happily ever after, because no one ever does, but they did live, and they were happy”. DS9 wasn’t a Babylon 5 or some other dystopian sci-fi series. The good guys won, the did so in the right way*, and they all lived (yes, in my book Dax counts as having lived)
* Barring In The Pale Moonlight, the good guys did everything right. And that was such a good episode I can overlook it. It in no way gave me a sense that the characters were living in anything other than a Roddenberry style utopia. The bad stuff was there, but it was all happening somewhere else / to someone else.