Your mission, should you choose to accept it: take an existing television sitcom and retool it so that all the main characters are from the Star Trek universe. Provide a punny new title and setting if you wish. List your character substitutions and/or provide a brief synopsis of your new and improved show.
Here’s an example to get you started:
00000011’s Company
After crashing a party and finding himself passed out in the sonic shower, the young Starfleet officer Tom Paris meets two young women in need of a roommate for their space station quarters. These are B’Elanna Torres, a no-nonsense half-Klingon engineering student, and Seven of Nine, a former Borg drone who has been liberated from the Collective and is trying to reintegrate herself into Federation society.
Paris wants to accept the pair’s offer to move in, but they are thwarted by Mr. Odo, the station’s old-fashioned, hard-nosed landlord. Mr. Odo has a paternalistic attitude towards the two girls and doesn’t want any interspecies hanky-panky going on under his watch. His concerns are assuaged when the trio trick him into believing that Paris is actually a (not-so-fully functional) android.
The show’s humour derives mostly from Paris having to keep up the pretence of being a non-living android (at least when Mr. Odo is around) and from Seven of Nine’s obliviousness to human cultural norms, which results in countless comical misunderstandings and unintentional double-entendres.
Secondary characters include Quark, proprietor of the station’s watering-hole, the Regulus Betelgeuse, and Jake Sisko, Tom’s best friend and playboy neighbour.
Despite the multiple titles, the story is always the same. Wacky but lovable Kes just can’t be content with her subordination to her irascible but loving husband/boss, The Doctor. Hijinks ensue as Kes bumbles through situations where her psionic powers get away from her and she accidentally destroys her friends and rips holes in the very fabric of the space-time continuum
You could probably recreate a lot of *Cheers *episodes in Quark’s bar, using ST characters. (Morn is already an homage to Norm Peterson.) But I haven’t put a lot of thought into it.
How about this promo from MeTV, from when they used to run Star Trek?
(MeTV did a few of these remixes in promoting shows they ran. Here’s another Trek one that takes advantage of the fact that “City on the Edge of Forever” actually did use the Mayberry set to stand in for New York.)
During the Dominion War, a team is sent to operate out of a Cardassian prisoner of war camp, to gather intel and conduct sabotage.
Riker is the leader (Hogan).
His team consists of:
General handyman and reliable soldier with wacky hi jinks Miles O’Brien (Carter)
Talented second in command who gets overlooked by the enemy too much, Tasha Yar (Kinch)*
Scammer, scrounger, and good imitator of Cardassians, Tom Paris (Newkirk)
One of the first prisoners at the camp, taken early in the war, a survivor and nationalist for her home land, Ro Laren (Lebeau)
The inept Kardassian Kommandant is played by Andrew Robinson as a more incompetent version of Garak
Gul Dukat is the Burkhalter analog
Every so often a Romulan agent shows up to cause trouble for Riker and his crew, and you never know what side she is really on, Sela (Marya, the “white Russian”)
And finally, there is highly dangerous but easily defeated agent of the Dominion, Weyoun (Hochstetter)
*replaced in a later season by near-analog Worf with no explanation (Baker)
During a Klingon/Starfleet war, the show follows the hilarity that ensues in a front line hospital ship USS Pasteur.
The staff includes:
Lead surgeon and self-described ladies man Bashir (Hawkeye)
His best friend and partner in “crime”, “Doc” O’Brien (Trapper)
Stuffed shirt doctor who is technically above Bashir in rank but not in skill, the EMH (Frank)
Specialist who is in early episodes but gets quietly dropped with no explanation, Vulcan expert M’Benga (Ugly John and or “Spearchucker”)
Interchangeable nurse who is always in the background, Alyssa Ogawa (nurse Able/ Baker/whatever)
Put-upon commander who has to deal with the non-military behavior of his staff because they are good at their jobs, Captain Dr. Leonard McCoy (Blake)
And the slightly-unlikable young acting ensign who actually runs things behind the scenes, Wes (Radar)
Wacky orderly who wants to get out of the military, Tom Paris (Klinger)
Cold, by the book doctor who doesn’t put up with wacky hi jinks but secretly is having an affair with the EMH, 7of9 (Hot lips)
Old school military doctor who replaces McCoy and tries to reign in the wacky hi jinks, Captain Dr. Beverly Crusher (Potter)
Competent doctor who comes in with arrogance but skills to match, Dr. Pulaski (Winchester)
Temporal Agent who shows up from time to time to cause trouble, Agent Dulmor (Flagg)
Sisko: The crew of Deep Space Nine (Cmdr. Sisko, Maj. Kira, Dr. Bashir, LtCmdr Dax, Chief O’Brien) engage in discussions and hijinks about “nothing”, often while sitting at Quark’s bar or hanging out in Sisko’s quarters, and Bashir writes a holodeck program that is a barely fictionalized version of their experiences. “You know what I hate about the Gamma Quadrant? It’s just full of people who don’t understand how to dock their ship properly! You just float past the portal and the warp in. You don’t try to just head directly in because then you have the wrong appproach angle and everything gets discombobulated. That’s what I’m saying.”
Star Trek: Arrested Development: The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise-D are trying to figure out a way out of their predicament after it turns out that Picard has been negotiating settlements in the Neutral Zone just to line his own pockets wih gold-pressed latinum by building habitats for the Romulans. Beverly Crusher and her young, clueless son Wesley try to extricate themselves from the morass but just can’t seem to escape regardless of how many times they zip off in a shuttlecraft to Rigel 6 while Wes secretly crushes on Troi, who may or may not be his demi-cousin. LtCmdr Data loses his hand and screams, “I’m a MONSTER!” when LaForge replaces it with a minature tractor beam emitter.
Other large cast shows are pretty obvious, i.e Friends, M.A.S.H., Hogan’s Heroes, et cetera.
Thank to everyone so far for their great contributions!
What do y’all think about this one?
Phaser
After his creator, Lewis Zimmerman, dies, Voyager’s Emergency Medical Hologram moves into a high-rise apartment in Zimmerman’s hometown of Seattle. He starts up a successful call-in holoprogram where he dispenses psychiatric advice. The show becomes widely known for its opening salutation, “Good morning, Seattle. Please state the nature of the medical emergency.” Issues reported by his callers include holo-addiction, transporter phobia, and PTSD induced by being abducted by an alien civilization and implanted with a lifetime of false memories. (The last of these seems to be a particularly common occupational hazard for Starfleet officers and crew.)
Welcoming the Emergency Medical Hologram to Seattle is a slightly newer model, the Emergency Medical Hologram Mark I Revision 2, who maintains a successful medical practice there. Aside from being a bit hairier and prissier, the two EMHs look and act very much alike, with refined and eclectic tastes in music, theatre, and Klingon opera. The two become inseparable friends and occasional social rivals as they attempt to insinuate themselves into Seattle’s cultural elite.
The EMH’s plans for a bachelor life are challenged when he is obliged to take in Zimmerman’s widow, Ishka, an elderly Ferengi. Ishka’s greed for gold-pressed latinum and other material possessions is at odds with the post-capitalist sensibilities of Federation high society. Her blatant avarice, her gaudy tastes, and her Ferengi habit of traipsing naked around the apartment, are perpetual sources of embarassment to the EMH, particularly when he brings home home guests and dates.
Ishka is joined by her live-in oo-mox therapist, Seven of Nine, a former Borg drone who insists that her cybernetic implants allow her to sense things that others cannot. The EMH Mark I Revision 2 soon becomes obsessed with Seven, despite him being in a long-term homosexual relationship with a mysterious alien named Morn. Morn is often talked about but never seen on camera (or heard, for that matter) except once, in a mirror-universe episode set in 24th-century Boston.
The Enterprise crew are busted down because of their interfering with Federation rules all over the place. So they have to go “back to school” and start over at Starfleet Academy.
They meet regularly in a study room.
There’s Kirk, the smug jerk who’s just trying to coast thru.
Urhura as the timid mother figure.
Scotty and Bones as the nerdy pair.
Nurse Chapel and (former) Yeoman Rand alternate as love interests with Kirk.
Spock as the no-fun guy who ruins all the other people’s pranks.
Each season ends with a disastrous game of phaser paintball.
William Riker retires from a career as an adventurous space captain and purchases Quark’s bar. He intends to turn it into a classy jazz club, but gets stymied when the old owner sticks around and insists on ‘showing him how it’s done.’ He is joined by a lovable cast of patrons, including Montgomery Scott, Morn (“MORN!”) and the exasperating Lwaxana Troi.
While on Deep Space Nine, Ezri Dax becomes infatuated with Riker. When he doesn’t satisfy her expanded Trill intellect, she activates the Emergency Medical Hologram just to prove that even a synthetic intelligence is a better boyfriend than Riker. The will-they-or-won’t-they plot thread becomes a definite ‘won’t’ when Dax leaves the show. She is inexplicably replaced by Lieutenant Saavik, whose love-hate relationship with Riker dominates the remainder of the show’s run.
The Emergency Medical Hologram goes on to star in the critically acclaimed and long-running Phaser.
“My nanite colony is completely secure,” Wesley said.
Captain’s Log: It wasn’t.
“There’s no way they could escape,” he continued.
Captain’s Log: They did.
Morn “works” at the DS 9 dilithium power plant, but the real center of his life is spent on the barstool at Quark’s with his more competent co-workers Bashir and O’Brien. One reason he spends so much time at the bar - he hates his sisters-in-law Lursa and Be’tor, who are always trying to get his wife (their sister) K’Ehleyr to get back together with her much more successful ex-boyfriend Artie Worf. The kids, especially “The Boy” (Wesley) add to the martial tendency but you can always get a laugh when Morn chokes him.