Changing ST without breaking it.

[Patrick Degan]

As I understand it, the rubber forehead aliens of Star Trek are already human subspecies due to widespread genetic meddling by the "original humanoids" of the galaxy. This is similar to Macross and several other universes where humanity is taking its first steps but isn't actually as new a thing as it thinks. Unless you're dealing with a positively ancient setting like Star Wars, this is the only really viable explanation. Advancing convergent evolution as the culprit makes you stupid. Especially when they can crossbreed.

TNG's (and Macross's) idea was stupid as well —especially as there is no way to predict the outcome of an evolution experiment billions of years down the line. The idea that the Vulcans, Klingons, et al. are the descendants of human space colonisers from a few thousand years back would leave far less problems in that regard, for a number of reasons.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Babylon 5 had more non-humanoid and ambitious (complete facial mask) humanoid aliens than TNG and DS9 combined

Beyond sounding like a bullshit claim, you slag off DS9 for having humanoid aliens by pointing to another show stuffed full of humanoid aliens?

That's a nice bit of selective reading there. I was not talking only about non-humanoid aliens, but non-humanoid and ambitious humanoid aliens combined. DS9 especially a lot of very simple wrinkled foreheads, whereas a more ambitious full facial make-up or covering mask would not have been that much more expensive. It is a given that completely non-humanoid aliens are quite expensive, or at least used to be before CGI got cheap, and even today you would occasionally need expensive animatronics to properly display them.

[Bounty]

DS9 especially a lot of very simple wrinkled foreheads, whereas a more ambitious full facial make-up or covering mask would not have been that much more expensive.

Make-up artists and facemasks are cheap, right? Jem'Hadar and Klingons - the two aliens species most commonly seen in the series - were simple wrinkly foreheads, right?

[tim31]

I'm sure Michael Westmore and team would love the armchair producer opinions. of how hard it is to prep an actor and how much it's going to cost.

Don't forget the cardies, Bounty. They required a fair bit of work, what with the extra jugulars and everything.

[Gandalf]

Look at the background of a DS9 promenade sequence.

There's some pretty wacky aliens out there.

[Bounty]

I'm sure the actors would love it, too. It's not like it takes a very skilled actor to emote through a mask or anything.

Look at the background of a DS9 promenade sequence.

Yeah. Quite a mass of wrinkly-forehead aliens there.

[Anguirus]

Ironically, it was Voyager that really made the lame forehead alien syndrome noticeable. And they are supposed to be in a weird part of the galaxy.

It's really hard to blame the makeup guys, though. They required guest stars capable of emoting week in and week out on that show, and the format of the show prevented many repeat designs (except a few recurring enemies who usually were a bit fancier). Even B5 once resorted to a simple forehead appliance when they needed an alien-of-the-week for a tearjerker episode in Season 1.

[Darth Raptor]

TNG's (and Macross's) idea was stupid as well —especially as there is no way to predict the outcome of an evolution experiment billions of years down the line. The idea that the Vulcans, Klingons, et al. are the descendants of human space colonisers from a few thousand years back would leave far less problems in that regard, for a number of reasons.

Billions of years a la the "original humanoids" of Star Trek is indeed retarded. But I think the viral meddling of Macross is far more recent; on the order of hundreds of thousands to single-digit millions. More along the lines of uplifting extant animals than somehow guiding evolution along a deterministic path. This would be trivial to fix, and you could even say that the Galactic Protoculture in this case became the Borg, avoiding the awkward question of where they all went.

[Junghalli]

On the subject of the forehead aliens, by a remarkable coincidence just a few days ago I posted a short essay on SB.com where I try to come up with a more reasonable explanation for them. Long story short: I figured you had two waves of Panspermia in Trek, an early one 4 billion years ago that we saw in The Chase and a later one in recent cosmic time, and most of the forehead aliens were humans transplanted to other planets by the Preservers in the second event.

Link.

It has some weaknesses but I think it makes more sense than "aliens put their DNA in us billions of years ago, and this explains why Klingons are the same species as us." You might want to check it out, at least it might give you ideas.

[Patrick Degan]

TNG's (and Macross's) idea was stupid as well —especially as there is no way to predict the outcome of an evolution experiment billions of years down the line. The idea that the Vulcans, Klingons, et al. are the descendants of human space colonisers from a few thousand years back would leave far less problems in that regard, for a number of reasons.

Billions of years a la the "original humanoids" of Star Trek is indeed retarded. But I think the viral meddling of Macross is far more recent; on the order of hundreds of thousands to single-digit millions. More along the lines of uplifting extant animals than somehow guiding evolution along a deterministic path. This would be trivial to fix, and you could even say that the Galactic Protoculture in this case became the Borg, avoiding the awkward question of where they all went.

The timeframe is not as ridiculous as in "The Chase", but the idea of deterministic evolution is still a stupid one. There is no guarantee that the pressure which maintains a particular path of development (or retardation) can be maintained indefinitely. And if the idea is that a fixed evolutionary path can be set into motion with creatures living outside the laboratory or the farm to produce an expected "end result" at some point down the line, that's utterly ludicrous. The environment can change, new diseases can spring up, there could be blight which retards the supply of available food, any number of utterly unpredictable random variables which can either alter evolutionary development or extinguish it.

[Darth Raptor]

It has some weaknesses but I think it makes more sense than "aliens put their DNA in us billions of years ago, and this explains why Klingons are the same species as us." You might want to check it out, at least it might give you ideas.

That hypothesis is downright workable. The continuity issues can be dismissed if one doesn't take a strictly inclusionist attitude toward the canon (which I don't). It suits my (our?) purposes nicely. Brilliant!

[Patrick Degan]

The Preservers idea as originally presented has the fewest attendant problems: the humanoids being descendants of those taken from Earth and settled on other worlds, along with the other aliens that end up being found in lots of places they shouldn't. You really can't work in the forehead aliens, though, as beings which can interbreed with humans and each other without making a whole host of unsustainable assumptions even if you try to shoehorn them into the Preserver mythology.

[speaker-to-trolls]

You really can't work in the forehead aliens, though, as beings which can interbreed with humans and each other without making a whole host of unsustainable assumptions even if you try to shoehorn them into the Preserver mythology.

Why can't you work this into the Preserver mythology? I don't expect it would be that difficult to develope a different shaped forehead due to random genetic chance. Provided they were transplanted something like 50 or 60 thousand years ago.

My own thoughts on this: How humanlike could you conceivably make aliens just by appealing to convergent evolution?

[Gandalf]

I'd like to think that the Preservers or whoever just decided to influence evolution by actively manipulating the species on a planet for billions of years.

[Patrick Degan]

You really can't work in the forehead aliens, though, as beings which can interbreed with humans and each other without making a whole host of unsustainable assumptions even if you try to shoehorn them into the Preserver mythology.

Why can't you work this into the Preserver mythology? I don't expect it would be that difficult to develope a different shaped forehead due to random genetic chance. Provided they were transplanted something like 50 or 60 thousand years ago.

Unless there is some environmental factor which favours humanoids with pronounced forehead ridges, for whatever reason, it's not going to become a dominant trait if it emerges at all. Random genetic change, or mutation, plays far less of a role in evolution than a lot of people imagine.

[Junghalli]

My own thoughts on this: How humanlike could you conceivably make aliens just by appealing to convergent evolution?

I'd say upright walk, two arms, two legs, give or take a tail. Something like the stereotypical "Grey" aliens or the creature from Predator in terms of how human it appears.

[speaker-to-trolls]

I'd say upright walk, two arms, two legs, give or take a tail. Something like the stereotypical "Grey" aliens or the creature from Predator in terms of how human it appears.

That's not exactly incompatible with the setting then, you can just have the aliens looking a bit more alien than they did previously, the same principle as the Powers that Be used on the Klingons between series.

[Patrick Degan]

Yes, but then you can't make a credible case for interbreeding if their obvious traits are too dissimilar. Then you're right back into the bullshit trap TNG fell into.

[Junghalli]

Yes, but then you can't make a credible case for interbreeding if their obvious traits are too dissimilar. Then you're right back into the bullshit trap TNG fell into.

You could have the "aliens" be a mix of actual aliens and Preserver-transplanted humans. With most of the forehead aliens the issue of interbreeding didn't even come up, the forehead alien appearance was just because it was easier than making them look like genuine aliens. Offhand, the Trek aliens I can think of where you have actual stories where the interfertility issue comes up:

Vulcans
Klingons
Betazoids
Kazon
Cardassian/Bajorans (with each other)
Romulans

Also arguably

Ferengi, in so far as you find it (im)plausible for a true alien to have the hots for Troi's mom.
Those hermaphrodite people in TNG, insofar as you find it (im)plausible for Riker to be at all attracted to something that looks like it came from a Twilight Zone episode.
The faux-Africans from Code of Honor, again insofar as you'd find it (im)plausible for an actual alien to be attracted to Tasha Yar.

And I think in a non-inclusionist reboot at least some of those story lines are arguably better done away with. And even if you want to keep them some of them could probably be modified. For instance, some possibilities:

Alternate-universe Tasha Yar from Yesterday's Enterprise was pregnant when she was captured by the Romulans, hence explaning Sela without having to resort to her getting knocked up by a Romulan general (though since Spock had the whole half-human thing as a major part of his character and Romulans and Vulcans are supposed to be the same species that one might not have been too bad).
The hermaphrodite people are some weirdo group that left Earth at some point in the past, not actual aliens.

[Ohma]

Well, if I were to change Trek, one of the most obvious things I'd do away with would be forehead aliens. Offhand I can only think of Spock's ancestry as an example of interbreeding that was important to someone's character, but like Junghali implied, his back story could be adapted to make him half Romulan without changing much.

As far as the rest of the universe goes, I think Covenant had it completely right:

You could easily do an honest, earnest Star Trek show that didn't involve any exploration whatsoever. It's just that the unique character of Star Trek was the combination of Cold War fighting episodes and "what is the nature of man" style episodes, like "A Taste of Armageddon," "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," "The Ultimate Computer," and "The Changeling." These are some of the episodes that really define what Trek was all about, but you really didn't need them to be a spaceship or have exploration for these sorts of things to work out overall, other than plot details. I would stress to Raptor that the essential element of Star Trek was not the literal Trek, but the figurative one, which I think everyone recognizes. You just needn't have a literal trek to make the figurative one work, and staying put doesn't mean you've given up. It's not like "Moral/Monster Of The Week" is a high bar to hop.

When I did a vague AU Trek outline for kicks a while back, the overarching story ended up being a long ass and vague Cold War parable with the Federation and Romulans competing against each other to alternately gain influence in the affairs of other space faring cultures, and sabotage the other's efforts to do the same.

[Sidewinder]

At the same time, I'd like to stay true to that very same franchise without hijacking and bastardizing it like some fanfic writers and now, apparently, a proper writer have done. For these purposes, it would be useful to distill Star Trek down to its most essential components.

I believe others have noted Gene Roddenberry himself hijacking and bastardizing the franchise, giving differences between TOS and the movies, and between TOS and TNG, as examples. That means it's hard to tell just what are the "most essential components" of Star Trek. William Shatner's own brew (The Ashes of Eden and its Kirk-wanking sequels, which made me puke) is different from B & B's, as demonstrated by the different portrayals of Section 31; Shatner portrays it as a necessary evil, an invisible line of defense for the Federation, while B & B portray it as evil, period.

That way, one can dramatically alter the face of the universe while leaving what makes it Star Trek intact. Rather than making an original sci-fi universe that merely wears the flayed skin of Star Trek, as countless proposed "reboots" actually are.

If you're going to dramatically alter the face of the universe, you might as well create a new franchise instead of calling it "Star Trek." That'll spare you, the fans, and the studio a lot of headaches. Don't believe me? Watch Beast Wars and then Beast Machines, and ask yourself, "Was it a good idea to shoehorn Transformers characters into a borderline ecoterrorist mold?"

The problem is, I don't think I know enough about Star Trek to do it properly.

As noted, no one knows enough about Star Trek to do it properly, because the definition of Star Trek itself changes to suit the POV of whoever gets their hands on it, regardless if they're anonymous fanfic writers posting on some trash-filled website, or first-rate scriptwriters whose stories the studios actually use.