You’re welcome.
I always hate it when nobody wants to play.
“He’ll be like sauerkraut in my hands”
Wait a minute. If Star Trek runs 14 seasons, then Shatner never does TJ Hooker. Adrian Zmed’s “career” dies at birth.
Oh, the humanity!
Well, then clearly Shatner has to keep Fans from saving Star Trek as it steps out into the Street, allowing it to be hit by Ignorant Network Suits so that the Future can Unfold As It Should. Even if he weeps as he does it.
You’re assuming Shatner & Co. remain with the show for the entire run. I think some posters in this thread would want to swap them out slowly, so that by year ten – maybe by year seven – there’s a new crew.
I don’t know that I’d want to lose the Big Three, but I think Sulu, Uhura, Chekov, & perhaps Scott have to leave at some point.
One thing I’d want to do in this circumstance is bring some of the novels to screen. Either stay with our canon and show exactly how & why Kirk took his fateful promotion, or go with some of the more interesting alternatives, like Reeves-Stevens Prime Directive.
I like the idea of doing “City on the Edge of Forever” as a two or three parter. But I’d hold it back till I was ready to promote Kirk, and use the story as an impetus for his leaving the center seat for an admiral’s desk. It would have been proceeded an season’s arc showing Kirk as being terribly lonely and suspecting he’d made a huge personal mistake in his career (an idea that goes back to "The Naked Time) and show him in some serious despair after having to allow Edith Keeler to die (or to murder her, depending on how you look at it.)
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I’d like to see a change with Scotty in this way, actually. The idea of him being third in command always bothered me, because if the ship is in a battle situation, it’d be better to have him in Engineering if at all possible. I could see Kirk always intending the second officer position for Sulu (who makes more sense in the job, in terms of minimum disruption to operations in a tight spot) but not being able to give him the job because of his rank; and Scotty, around season 4 or so, pointing out that Sulu had sufficient time in to become a lieutenant commander and prodding Kirk to give him the damn job so he (Scotty) had time to tend his bairns.
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I respectfully disagree. During General Quarters, everyone is up at their primary station. Kirk, Spock, and Sulu are all shown to be on the bridge.
You need someone with command authority off the bridge in case something happens to that section of the ship.
If you move Sulu to Auxilary Control (for GQ situations), then he gets to be third in command, or sumthin.
Yes, but, for the first time in human history, they seemed to have it all worked out, “it” being everything (other than natural disasters and nonhuman threats, and other than the basic need to work to get things done) that has ever vexed any human society – crime, unemployment, depressions, recessions, class conflict, political conflict, religious conflict, ethnic conflict, labor strikes, union-busting – all seem to be unheard-of save to historians. There is the occasional murder but no discussion of crime as a larger social problem; we see a bit of cultural conflict with the Space Hippies in “The Way to Eden”; otherwise any human-to-human conflict is on the individual or small-group level.
I like the Kang/Koloth contrast you’ve got there, especially since it fits with my long-term plans for the Klingons. I once elaborated on my theory of Klingon evolution and its production of two very distinct strains, but the short version is that the smoother, smaller subspecies developed a culture of deception and treachery in order to survive among their larger and more aggressive cousins. They parlayed this into control of most of the Klingon space and colonization programs, with the bumpy-headed subspecies retaining control only of command warships and similar posts.
A 14 year run would allow opportunities to explore these distinctions, with Koloth as a representative of one subspecies and Kang representing the other. Eventually, a series of incidents between the Empire and the Federation (beginning with The Trouble With Tribbles) would force Kang to officially recognize and publicize the institutionalized practice of dishonorable tactics by Koloth’s people. This revelation would kick off a civil war in the Empire that would grow into a war of genocide, which would mostly be seen through the lens of the Federation’s conflicted reactions to it. In the end, Koloth’s subspecies would be all but wiped out, surviving only on secret colonies and in roving habitats formed of derelict spacecraft. This preserves them as a potential thorn in the sides of both the Federation and the Empire.
The Romulan Commander as a nemesis is also an excellent idea. I would position her as a highly competent, subtle, and ruthless antagonist. That means that sometimes, she will have to win–or at least, not lose–or she will become a joke. Even when she loses, she should often get away with some sort of gain. Among the major recurring antagonists, Kang is the Honorable Adversary, Koloth is the Treacherous Snake, and the Commander is the Chess Master.
I’d take a few cues from the later Treks.
- story arcs (not necessarily as all-encompassing as the Xindi arc or Dominion War, but some re-visits here and there to give the feel of consequences. Some of the TAS scripts that are sequels to TOS episodes would be a good start.)
- some focus on the characters other than the big 3. (the big 3 would still be the big three, but a Sulu episode or an Uhura episode would be cool. careful not to overdo it. One Troi episode would have been enough to last me all of TNG. Also don’t fall into the “X’s parent(s) come to visit” trap.)
- recurring villains (Koloth would have been cool. Mudd was OK, but silly. A few serious villains would be great. I daresay TWOK might have been even cooler if Khan has shown up a few more times in the series.)
I’ve always liked the idea that, of the TOS crew, only Spock had much in the way of living relatives. It made their devotion to one another (seen mostly in the movies) more palatable somehow.
Yeah, I agree about that for TOS. On the other tentacle, tho, I really liked the TNG episode “Family.” Didn’t think I would at the time.
Perhaps a longer running series needs more character development.
Tonight, on a VERY SPECIAL episode of Star Trek…
They could totally make it like when Blossom decided to have sex for the first time!
Truth be told, I figure TOS is already pretty gutsy. TNG was a quivering spineless puddle of crybaby by comparison.
Are you familiar with the filk classic “Banned from Argo,” by Leslie Fish? When TNG was new, I once at a filksing heard a filkmutation (I’ve tried to find it online but my google-fu fails) called “Too Bland for Argo.” I recall verses about how Wesley and a local girl spend an evening holding hands, and Worf confronts a crowd of riotous drunks or space pirates or something and gives them a stern talking-to, and so on, and the chorus ends “bored Argo all to tears.”
Apparently, it’s not even included in The Bastard Children of Argo songbook.
Kirk nails Yeoman Rand, not only resolving all that tedious UST but knocking her up – and, since in her case he can’t knock boots and warp like he usually does, he and she (and perhaps Bones and Spock) are forced to discuss, right on screen during prime time in 1968, abortion or its 23rd Century equivalents or alternatives. And, just whether any Christian church still exists that has any opinions on the matter.
Did someone ask for gutsy? 
Thanks, Cal. It’s a good story. 
One change I would make is a restriction on the use of god-like aliens. No Organians, no Q. While having the Enterprise encounter one of the beings starts a story quickly, it ends it quickly just as well. So none of the story where god-like aliens meet Kirk, put him through some crisis and then pick up the toys and go home at the end of the episode.
What about god-powered antagonists like Apollo and Trelayne? Or god-powered aliens like the Metrons or the Day-Glo Brains of Triskelion, whose scheming drives the whole plot setup?
The Metrons go because “Spectre of the Gun” was an awful episode. The new, gutsy Trek will have none of it. The Gamesters get a pass because they were fun, and in a sense honorable. They did agree to help the thralls set up a functioning society. But the Organians were spoil-sports. With a 14 year run, we could explore more of the political scheming that went on trying to get around the limits, and eventually see the Klingons and Federation get used to cold-warring rather than slaughtering each other.
Trelayne was a Q. No doubt about it.