I agree… and I think it could potentially set up more character development and interaction than merely involving the captain, XO, and other department heads vs alien-of-the-week- you could have tension above and below the characters in terms of the org chart- unruly subordinates, crazy boss, etc… BSG did it fairly well with Chief Tyrol and his deck apes, and with the pilots.
The whole concept of concentrating on the bridge crew seems to be a holdover of Roddenberry’s “Horatio Hornblower in Space” concept.
While I’d like to see a show center more around a junior character, who gets promoted, etc… over the course of his career/the show’s run, I think I’d ultimately like a show that’s NOT an ensemble cast centered around the bridge crew/senior officers.
How about Star Trek: Multiverse? In one universe the Federation are the good guys. In another they’re the bad guys. In another they’re the ones with the bumpy foreheads Etc.
I’ve been thinking it would be cool to see a sci-fi show based in a military organization that actually functioned somewhat like a military organization - with people routinely being promoted up the chain and out of the show. Wouldn’t really work as an ensemble, like you say, but you could start with a main character getting their first command, and roughly every season or so, getting promoted and taking over a new ship with a new crew. The lack of a “permanent” cast would give them more room for character deaths, too.
I usually think of it in the context of turning the Honor Harrington books into a TV show, but it could work as a new direction for Trek, too.
Concur. And, throw in keeping the plots more cerebral now that we’re back on TV–more science fiction, less science action. You don’t have to go too far if you don’t want to: the original Star Trek was still pretty action based but pulled off some great science fiction.
In the 24th century a Runabout finds itself getting tossed about in an ion storm and winds up crashing on an uninhabited planet. Ship’s complement consists of the captain and his first officer, a Ferengi and one of his wives, a Vulcan scientist, a Dabo girl and a fresh faced female Lieutenant, just out of the Academy. With their subspace radio broken, they will be here for a long, long time. They will come close to rescue on numerous occasions, thanks to the efforts of the Vulcan scientist, but the inept first officer will usually manage to cause the attempt to fail, when it doesn’t by just plain bad luck.
Something to throw out, which at least seems fun to me, would be for the crew to start off as basically nobodies. These are the already-famous, important, impressive leaders with clout. They’re working on a cut-rate transport ferrying supplies or passengers with no better options from not-especially-interesting places to some starbase or whatever. This would be a ship where the first officer’s greeting is “Eh, don’t worry about it, we’ll try to get you out to a better posting as soon as possible.” The captain would glare at anyone who bothered him and mostly fills out dull forms. Nothing ever happens, and many of the crew are stuck here because of a bad report in their past or simply never having had a chance to shine.
Then something does happen. You could get half a season or more of a plucky crew in a transport armed with popguns having to rise up and meet the call to adventure. By the end of the season, they’d have an opportunity to shuffle the cast a bit, add new crew members, and give them a better ship and mission.
On a darker note, I’d like to see a character have to deal with death. Specifically, his or her own death. This just seems like an interesting twist, given how many characters in Star Trek just walk off a case of death. In this case, the character gets killed a few times, but it changes the man and the human perspective. Hell, if you can’t get a good story out of that once a season, you fail at writing drama forever.
Death, like Game of Thrones Levels of dead “main” characters.
BSG meets GOT and has a Star Trek baby could rock.
Episode 1, There is a space battle, intense fighting, both ships fire photon torpedoes at the same time, one blows the bridge right off the Federation ship at the same time the enemy ship is destroyed or disabled, leaving no one to take over but lower level officers.
This. I’d love to see a Star Trek based on a starship, on a five year mission or its future equivalent. Except this time, spend more time showing the life on the ship in detail. Show what it’s like to live as a security officer, or as a yeoman, or as a member of an engineering team. And of course the bridge personnel.
Or, you could scale it way down. Put a group of people on an old ship, scavenging around a large star system. You could get a gruff soldier, a cute female mechanic, a wise-cracking pilot and a bitter ex-soldier captain with a heart of gold and tight pants. The ship could be called the ‘Tranquility’, in a very non-copyright infringing way…
Kirk, Spock and the gang, exploring the galaxy on a five-year mission to seek out new worlds, new life-forms &c.
Occasional visits to the planet Vulcan, where Spock’s parents, the Vulcan Sarek and his Earth-born human wife Amanda Grayson demonstrate, through their old-married-couple interplay, a small vision of what growing up Spock entailed.
The alert reader will discern that I have little use for reboots.
I think instead of a series how about they come out with a mini-series, say 4-5 episodes long, that will feature a new crew and situation everytime? Have a new one say once a year?
