An idea I liked would be to have Human, Vulcan, Klinogn and Romulan crews. Have different episodes or mini arcs with each ship. Have some episodes using two or more; a battle between the human and Klingon crew, say, the humans rescued by the Vulcans. And kill off major characters regularly.
So since our EP hasn’t weighed in of late, and I hate to see this drift off the front page, here is an apparent consensus (barring EP over-rule of course) … focus on mid-level crew, multi-ship (maybe different species), character driven, in a space with old tensions re-erupting now that they are free of The Dominion’s iron rule. There to … Explore? Develop trade (maybe the different species all trying to out sell each other as partners)? Negotiate peace through intellectual exchange programs?
Characters? Any one want to offer up some back stories? What about that security guard?
What have you liked out of old Trek formulas and what to avoid (besides no time travel!) or change? Eye candy in cat suits? Only if they can act as well as Seven did. The play on becoming more human (Spock/Data/Seven …)? Tie-ins to current events through allegory? Develop more depth within the cultures of the different worlds?
Well, what about this as a character. A human explorer who has already been through this region solo. Someone who wants to be more than human. Someone who wants to use genetics and technology to make themselves better than human and is hired as a guide, and regional expert. They’d be a soruce of some tension. Afterall, you can always have too much tension. But, they’d also be an interesting contrast to the person trying to be more human, which is such a tradional archetype, that I think it’s worth keeping.
I like the identified human trying to become less like other humans, and this might be a way to do it. He might be disgusted with humanity’s failings rather than trying to become some sort of Augment, trying to find another culture where he can fit in?
Maybe another character caught between cultures, neither culture human, but struggling with identity issues … how he/she sees him/herself and how others see him/her? Sort of a stand-in for identity issues in America today where often one’s identity is imposed upon us, no matter how we want to define ourselves. Not another Worf or Spock but one where our identifications are neutralized.
I am entirely in favor of the above. In addition to the stated missions, I might observe that if they are in a place where ancient wars are about to break out now that the Dominion is gone, that may also be why they’re there. (And Klingon scout ships too, and Romulans…) They wish to be appraised of any festering old wars that might spill out through the wormhole.
Much of the mission statement is… well, pretty close to the vest anyway. If we focus on our mid-level crew, only the writers (and not the characters) will know what any given mission’s purpose is.
- No time travel. (Exceptions to this rule can be made (in my mind) if a concept as good as “Cause and Effect” can be made as a one-off show. Mostly, though, no time travel, because the typical time travel story is like “Time’s Arrow.” Ugh.)
1.5. No holodeck accidents. Ever. Not even if it’s a good idea. It beggars logic to think a device that powerful has so few safety interlocks.
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Eye candy in cat suits okay by me as long as it is a character designed to contribute to the story. Alien eye candy on the arms of fat Ferrengi traders, or at the dabo table, I can live without for the most part.
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Pinocchio stories. I think I’ve seen about as many of them as I care to. If we must have the human/non-human thing going on, I’d rather it be of the Worf variety than of the Data variety (i.e., trying to be distinct from human rather than to emulate humans).
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Allegory is awesome when it is subtle. The whole Bajor thing of the people with the ancient religion having escaped labor camps at the indisputably evil Cardassians… yeah, that wasn’t all that subtle. True, they did yield some very good stories out of it nevertheless.
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Roddenberry always said that there were two guiding principles to Trek. One, never to do plots you could do on another show. Two, know what the show is about from the standpoint of allegory or emotional resonance or at a deep story-telling level. (Okay, maybe he didn’t say those things, but who’s telling this story, damn it? :D) I’d be happy to stick with these two guidelines as a rough beacon to navigate towards.
I could see this working well… or flopping miserably. A character who is more than human and better in unquestionable ways would tend to dominate scenes. (Like Data began to.) “We need somebody smart? Get Bl’oogh. Oh, and that doorway is stuck. Get Bl’oogh. And the computer in Astrophysics is down? Ask Bl’oogh, he’s got the star charts memorized. Just make sure Bl’oogh finishes recalibrating the main sensor dish with his dick first.”
I would favor a character who is sacrificing part of his humanity to become more than human in other ways; that would prevent him from being the go-to guy in every scene when you wanted something done.
I’ve no real comment on the way this is headed but just want to point out that it’s exceedingly unlikely that the Dominion has lost control over its 2,000 year old empire just because it lost a war of aggression to three governments literally on the other side of the galaxy. Especially since the mostly benevolent UFP controls the only access point to the GQ and let them off pretty easy, meaning they’re not going to just let the Klingons or Romulans follow them through to continue the war.
America didn’t suddenly balkanize when Vietnam kicked our asses; the Dominion’s hardly going to splinter either.
Hey, how about for this wanting-to-be-more-human-like character we have a Jem’hadar? It’s already been shown that they can lose their loyalty to the Founders, and presumably some must have survived by taking over ketracel white factories. They’d also fulfil the role of “person who knows about the Delta Quadrant”. It’s not that they’d want to be more human, but that they literally have no culture of their own; they usually last what, four, five years? I think they’re capable of lasting a human-like lifespan, anyway. All of their lives were devoted to warfare; it would be interesting to see what a Jem’hadar would like to do when it had spare time. The human/romulan/klingon characters could try and absorb it into their culture, while it might be better for it to find and create a culture of it’s own.
It’d also not be the case that they’d be called on for every problem; asking for help from someone that you fought for a long time is not going to be easy.
Interesting and agreeable points save for the above. You got something against Ferrengi? 
The OP describes that the Dominion “collapsed” within two years of the war, but that collapse is likely to be a slow thing. Maybe it’ll be more like the Galactic Empire on Trantor, then, from the Foundation series: still powerful at its core, but losing strength at its fringes.
I agree in principle with your objection, Aesiron, but I think a new Trek series should make the effort to put some different bad guys in the table other than the ones we’ve seen. Well… that you’ve seen. 
I didn’t watch much of DS9 past about midway.
Not really. I just had in mind a particularly prevalent example in mind of the blatant eye-candy-only rule, from “Reunification,” where Riker has to meet a fat Ferrengi merchant in a bar (signalled by the song played by the bar’s four-armed organist) and there are two four-hour makeup jobs on either of the Ferrengi’s arms. Neither has a line.
And Revenant Threshold, I like the cut of your jib. Whatever a jib is. (Some kind of small shortbread cookie, I think. )
Hey, I didn’t realise they’d be cookies involved! And to think, yesterday was my last guest day. I might not still have been here for cookies. Madness.
Well, the terminus of the wormhole is a few lightyears beyond Dominion territory so, instead of heading straight out, why not double back and go the other direction? Or up or down or left or right or diagonal or wherever? There’s more Gamma Quadrant than there is Dominion.
If nothing else, make this a joint military-exploration mission with the Federation being afraid of the Dominion building up again but trying to head them off by looking for powerful allies in addition to seeking out new life and new civilizations.
Not having watched the last few seasons of DS9, nor really kept track of the continuity as a whole, who does command the Gamma Quadrant end of the wormhole? Who would object to a similar DS9-type station (or Fed Starbase, or Ballchinian Pocket Fortress) on the GQ side?
I’m not suggesting that we put such a base there, but securing the real estate for it would be a good idea if they knew who to talk to. Likewise, even if it’s just a big framework of girders with only one room completed and the rest of the base skeletal, it’d give the ships something to protect, a nucleus around which to center (go back, refuel, drop off accumulated data, relay instructions from Alpha Quadrant, etc).
There ***might ***be an automated relay station at the Gamma terminus but there is no dedicated base there since it’s in interstellar space and most starbases in Trek seem to require a nearby planet. I think it’s a good two lightyears or more from the nearest system which used to be New Bajor until the Dominion razed it.
Well, if you wanted a base, they could actually send DS9 itself through; i’m pretty sure it can actually move. If not that, there’s always Empok Nor around somewhere; same type as DS9, but derelict.
O’Brien got it to move in *Emissary *but that was one of those one-time-only-miracles that Trek is so fond of pulling out of its ass. Think it had something to do with using the deflectors to somehow shunt some of the station’s mass into subspace(!) so that the thrusters could move it faster or something. Not one of the better moments for the series. Way too TNGy.
There should be a base on the other end but I don’t really know how it could be built especially, as I said, Trek bases seem to require nearby gravity wells. How many truly interstellar ones have we seen in any of the series? There might be some in TOS but all the modern ones I can think of were in orbit of some planet.
I agree. the “more than human” character probably has different standards of “better”. The idea I was toying with is someone who’s adapted, cybernetically or whatnot, to vacuum, and harsh conditions. “Bl’oogh” doesn’t need space suits, or life much life support. “Bl’oogh” is disenchanted with humanity altogether, and would rather be cruising around alone and grumbly with his implanted pressurized lung and sheilded skin.
this sort of character should one obvious, key strength, such as being able to ednure space just fine, or not needing computers to run a ship (now that I think about, that is pretty cool), but that’s where the buck stops.
A jem’hadar could work. So would an exiled Klingon, or a particularly logical Vulcan.
There was a remake of the movie Lifeboat set on a spaceship instead of a ship. There were dwarves who had allowed themselves to be altered to work on space ships. Had an arm removed and replace with a tool.
And for eye candy I’d vote for a Klingon instead of another ice princess. Overtly sexual, horny even, but no one around her is man enough … well Klingon enough … for the job. A bit of ongoing attraction beween her and our jem’hadar, (or human trying to distance himself from humanity, whatever) always unrequited of course.
I’d prefer no overt eye candy, myself. DS9 had three gorgeous women on its senior staff and none of them were paraded around quite like Troi, Seven, or T’Pol. Even the most overtly sexual one of them, Jadzia, was in a regular uniform just like everyone else and only got dressed up for appropiate scenes and episodes.
What no panda! Okay, how about making my Klingon a part-human who looks human but was raised on a Klingon world. Rejected as a true Klingon because of mixed heritiage and even more so because she could almost pass for human, but very much Klingon by temperment and culture. No cat suit but one of the clincher Klingon outfits with some S&M frills? 