New Series thought.

[xsile]

I was thinking the other night that a awesome new ST series would be the eugenic wars. What you all think?

[StarSword]

An interesting idea, but it wouldn't really be Star Trek the way any of the fans are used to it. Probably closer to a slightly science-fiction-ified covert ops movie than anything else. After the 1990s came and went in real life with no Eugenics Wars, they retconned it so it was a "black" war between covert operatives.

[xsile]

I still think it would be cool to see the rise and fall of Khan. It would still be StarTrek just a different incarnation of it. After all it is apart of StarTrek lore.

[Ryag Han]

the Romulan War. or, better yet, a TV spin off of the J.J. Abrams ST.

[StarSword]

I still think it would be cool to see the rise and fall of Khan. It would still be StarTrek just a different incarnation of it. After all it is apart of StarTrek lore.

What I was getting at was that even with them explicitly stating that it was a Star Trek prequel, it'd be essentially just another spy show rather than sci-fi. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, it's just not Star Trek.

[Eframepilot]

Star Trek is supposed to be set centuries in the future, not 20 years in the past.

[Eternal_Freedom]

A TV spin-off of JJ abram's film, combined with the Romulan Wars:

In this timeline, the Romulans see the massive losses inflicted upon the Klingons and the loss of Vulcan and deicde it is the ideal time to launch an offensive aimed at defeating one or both powers.

[Rassilon]

It Should be Set in the 31st Century. If only For 1 Series so we can get info for the debates. Nah but I'd seriously like to see the 31st Century in detail and shows of strengths. Also kind of funny to see loads of Klingon Federation officers.

[StarSword]

It Should be Set in the 31st Century. If only For 1 Series so we can get info for the debates. Nah but I'd seriously like to see the 31st Century in detail and shows of strengths. Also kind of funny to see loads of Klingon Federation officers.

No thanks. The Thirty-Firsters' primary focus seems to be time travel. In previous series, half the time travel episodes are nonsensical, and the other half just give me a headache.

Honestly, I'd rather see Voyager done right. It had a great concept and a few decent episodes ("Prime Factors" was brilliant for putting the Prime Directive shoe on the other foot), but a lousy execution overall. Overriding rule for any future series: ban Beavis and Butthead from the studio and any related location. Heck, strike that: keep the show secret from them until the TV teasers start playing, so they don't even have the opportunity to get involved and fuck it up.

[Stofsk]

Goddamn.

I am positive Berman and Braga will never ever be involved in the Star Trek franchise in any way, shape or form. Why? Because I am pretty sure Paramount didn't spend $140 million dollars rebooting the fucking franchise only to hand it back to the fuckwits who crashed it into the fucking ground. Jesus.

[StarSword]

@Paramount: Thank you!.

[Enigma]

Well if there is going to be another ST T.V. series, I don't really think that CBS cares for the new timeline. I don't think they'd strictly adhere to the changes made to the main ST timeline by Paramount.

For all we know the new series would have an intact Romulus.

But for a new series, I wouldn't mind it being based in either the 29th or 31st century. Instead of having a crew exploring space, have a team of Starfleet Time Cops. Each episode they'd have to repair\correct the timeline whenever someone messes with it.

[lstyer]

I was thinking the other night that a awesome new ST series would be the eugenic wars. What you all think?

I think it might be fun, but I don't think it's at all likely.

If Trek were to return to TV, I think it would probably be a ship-centered series cast somewhere between TOS's planet-of-the-week format and a more continuity-heavy show.

[The Romulan Republic]

In short, something that's already been done three times (and two of those times sucked)?

Personally, if they're going to copy an existing Trek series' formula, I'd prefer they follow the lead of either TOS or DS9.

[lstyer]

What I'd really like to see, but realize I almost certainly won't, as a Star Trek TV series is some kind of anthology with a few different rotating casts on different kinds of ships, stations, maybe even civilian situations. I'd love to see that kind of broadening of Star Trek. If I really had my druthers, this dream show would be set during the TOS time frame.

[lord Martiya]

What I'd like to see would be the Earth-Romulan War, in lstyer's format.

[Stofsk]

The only way you could do the kind of thing Istyer wants is if you had the kind of production values and hour-long format that cable shows get nowadays.

If I could create a new series that's how I'd want the format to be- hour long episodes, with a shortened season run. Maybe at most a dozen episodes. I wouldn't have anything so garish as depicting the Earth/Romulan War, or any other war. This is Star Trek after all. I'd love the focus to be on surveying alien worlds for possible colonisation, with that as a kind of huge meta-plot that goes throughout the series run. You'd have the starfleet guys who beam down and explore the planets looking for someplace suitable, to civilians who are both part of that mission and who are also training/preparing for the eventual colonisation. If you want politics and intrigue then set the show in an 'unexplored sector' that's a stone's throw away from some antagonist (if this were TOS then I'd say the klingons, if this were TNG the romulans and DS9 the cardassians etc) while at the same time, hinting that there could be alien civilisations nearby that haven't been contacted and thus represent an unknown. So you'd also have high-level admirals and politicians from the Federation council as characters who make decisions on this particular matter as well as the 'grunts' who go down to a planet and do scientific surveys or whatever. And you'd have guys like independent merchants who can be alternative suppliers to a colony that eventually gets set up.

It would be Star Trek without the kind of format people would expect, keeping in mind the maxim of going places nobody has gone before (both literally and figuratively, because nobody has ever done this kind of thing in a Trek show before). It has the same familiar things we've seen before paired with it too so it's not too far out the comfort zone. This would cost a lot more money than anything else as well, which is why I'd go the cable route for it. It just seems to me that you'd want high production values for something like this.

[Srelex]

What about that proposed 'Final Frontier' animated thing that never got off the ground? Anyone heard of that?

[Stofsk]

An animated series could work actually, especially given how successful the Clone Wars cartoon has been.

[Col. Crackpot]

A post galactic fall federation remnant drama could be interesting. The grimdark/post apocalypse genre has proven to be quite popular as of late.

[StarSword]

What I'd like to see would be the Earth-Romulan War, in lstyer's format.

The Earth-Romulan War would do nicely for a new series. I'd also like to maybe see the Federation-Klingon War (first mentioned in TNG: "Yesterday's Enterprise") As for the episodic/megaplot problem, I like the Stargate solution, which isn't unprecedented in Star Trek. For the most part, the series is planet/alien/tech-of-the-week, but they have an overarching plot that drives each season. ST experimented with this solution in VOY ("find your way home"), and to a greater extent in DS9 with the Dominion War.

There's a couple other things they could borrow from Stargate. First, they often creatively bring back plot points from previous episodes. For instance, in SG-1: "A Matter of Time", the SGC's gate gets locked to a black hole, a phenomenon they use to disable the Ori supergate in "The Pegasus Project". Star Trek plot points and such are usually one-hit wonders.

Similarly, they're frequently forced to deal with the consequences of their actions in previous episodes, something Star Trek has experimented with in VOY but never really mastered. A great example: destroying the Cimmerian Goa'uld-remover in "Thor's Hammer" to save Teal'c leads to Cimmeria nearly being conquered by Heru'ur in "Thor's Chariot". The only instance of this in ST that I know of was the defeat of Species 8472 in VOY: "Scorpion, Part 2" leading to a planet that had successfully resisted the Borg being assimilated.

I'm not trying to shill for Stargate here, just trying to provide examples for how a Star Trek show could improve continuity while maintaining the "something new every week" vibe.

A post galactic fall federation remnant drama could be interesting. The grimdark/post apocalypse genre has proven to be quite popular as of late.

Possible problem with that: canon conflict with the future timelines from ENT. Such a series would have to take place after the 26th century (and possibly after the 31st), because it would interfere with having a continuous Federation from at least 2379 (Nemesis) to the 2550s (ENT: "Azati Prime").

Now, it's possible they could fit in a "Federation Remnant" storyline after this, but it could happen no later than 2769 because we know the Federation exists at that time (ENT: "Cold Front"). They might be able to work it into the 27th century; Memory Alpha makes no mention of events in that timeframe requiring the Federation to exist. Maybe the Sulibans or Sphere Builders (or whoever) conquer the Federation, forcing the crew of (for lack of a better name) the Enterprise-K to run a guerrilla war, gathering allies to help them reestablish it.

Going to the 31st century or later runs it straight into my time-travel-episode objections. (Again, I like the SG solution: do at most one time-travel or alternate reality episode per season, and do your damnedest to have them make sense logically. "1969" is the only time-travel episode I've seen that I actually enjoyed.)

[VF5SS]

I know you're kind of a new guy, Starsword, but the post Federation grimdark thing is a running joke on this board. People keep suggesting it every time talk of a reboot or sequel comes up :3

It makes Uraniun mad.

[Uraniun235]

What I'd like to see would be the Earth-Romulan War, in lstyer's format.

The Earth-Romulan War would do nicely for a new series. I'd also like to maybe see the Federation-Klingon War (first mentioned in TNG: "Yesterday's Enterprise") As for the episodic/megaplot problem, I like the Stargate solution, which isn't unprecedented in Star Trek. For the most part, the series is planet/alien/tech-of-the-week, but they have an overarching plot that drives each season. ST experimented with this solution in VOY ("find your way home"), and to a greater extent in DS9 with the Dominion War.

There's a couple other things they could borrow from Stargate. First, they often creatively bring back plot points from previous episodes. For instance, in SG-1: "A Matter of Time", the SGC's gate gets locked to a black hole, a phenomenon they use to disable the Ori supergate in "The Pegasus Project". Star Trek plot points and such are usually one-hit wonders.

Similarly, they're frequently forced to deal with the consequences of their actions in previous episodes, something Star Trek has experimented with in VOY but never really mastered. A great example: destroying the Cimmerian Goa'uld-remover in "Thor's Hammer" to save Teal'c leads to Cimmeria nearly being conquered by Heru'ur in "Thor's Chariot". The only instance of this in ST that I know of was the defeat of Species 8472 in VOY: "Scorpion, Part 2" leading to a planet that had successfully resisted the Borg being assimilated.

I'm not trying to shill for Stargate here, just trying to provide examples for how a Star Trek show could improve continuity while maintaining the "something new every week" vibe.

If you watch TNG, like really watch a bunch of it and not just your favorite four or five episodes or whatever, you realize that they do actually reference and build upon previous adventures. Some examples include:

- Galaxy's Child revisits Geordi's (terrible) crush on Leah Brahms from Booby Trap, and in turn the technobabble solution devised by Geordi and Leah to the problem they were facing was recounted as an anecdote to Scotty in Relics.

- The "incident at Galorndon Core" that takes place in The Enemy is referenced in The Defector. The wargame in Peak Performance was spurred by the encounter with the Borg in Q Who?.

- The main deflector dish blast developed in Best of Both Worlds is seen again in Night Terrors; the "put the Bussard collectors in reverse and shoot a blast of gas" trick introduced in Samaritan Snare was also reused for Night Terrors. Also, the experimental "metaphasic shielding" seen in Suspicions is brought up and used in Descent against the Borg.

- There are stories that directly build on previous encounters; Worf has several episodes dealing with his relationship with the Klingon Empire, leading up to him playing a part in the Klingon Civil War. The Borg are built upon in the five(!) episodes they show up in, and Family deals directly with the aftermath of Best of Both Worlds.

There are very probably some instances where a solution concocted in one episode was forgotten when it could have been useful in another, but overall TNG isn't nearly as amnesiac about its own continuity as has been frequently portrayed before.

As for larger arcs, DS9 did more with that.

Possible problem with that: canon conflict with the future timelines from ENT. Such a series would have to take place after the 26th century (and possibly after the 31st), because it would interfere with having a continuous Federation from at least 2379 (Nemesis) to the 2550s (ENT: "Azati Prime").

Now, it's possible they could fit in a "Federation Remnant" storyline after this, but it could happen no later than 2769 because we know the Federation exists at that time (ENT: "Cold Front"). They might be able to work it into the 27th century; Memory Alpha makes no mention of events in that timeframe requiring the Federation to exist. Maybe the Sulibans or Sphere Builders (or whoever) conquer the Federation, forcing the crew of (for lack of a better name) the Enterprise-K to run a guerrilla war, gathering allies to help them reestablish it.

Going to the 31st century or later runs it straight into my time-travel-episode objections. (Again, I like the SG solution: do at most one time-travel or alternate reality episode per season, and do your damnedest to have them make sense logically. "1969" is the only time-travel episode I've seen that I actually enjoyed.)

To be blunt, I don't have much respect for the continuity that was carried from 1987 through 2005. It's not like the writers did. They felt totally free to just retcon in an allegedly brutal war between the Federation and the Cardassians out of nowhere in the fourth season of TNG, and they also (probably) completely forgot that the Federation's offer to settlers in Journey's End totally undermined the legitimacy of the Maquis later on. They were willing to handwave away an entire fleet of ships in DS9, introduce bullshit technobabble rules in Voyager (as well as the endless shuttle factory), and were utterly creatively bankrupt in Enterprise.

That said, TNG only ever did two time-travel stories on TV.



I won't satisfy Veef with a vitriolic rejection of the "post-apocalyptic/big war" series concept, but I will ask: what aspect of such a series would require it to be a Star Trek show, rather than a wholly original property? Basically what I'm asking is, what would make it more than just an exploitation of an already-established setting and brand name?

[Stofsk]

There is something to be said for a post-Federation collapse setting where the principle story arc is of a ship and crew acting like light bringers to the rest of the galaxy undergoing a 'dark age'. Kind of like Andromeda, but without Kevin Sorbo.

Bringing hope to the hopeless, that kind of thing. It's easy to be optimistic in the kind of future Trek usually portrays; it's a lot harder to be such when the chips are down and things have collapsed and people are struggling to rebuild etc.

[StarSword]

If you watch TNG, like really watch a bunch of it and not just your favorite four or five episodes or whatever, you realize that they do actually reference and build upon previous adventures. Some examples include:

- Galaxy's Child revisits Geordi's (terrible) crush on Leah Brahms from Booby Trap, and in turn the technobabble solution devised by Geordi and Leah to the problem they were facing was recounted as an anecdote to Scotty in Relics.

- The "incident at Galorndon Core" that takes place in The Enemy is referenced in The Defector. The wargame in Peak Performance was spurred by the encounter with the Borg in Q Who?.

- The main deflector dish blast developed in Best of Both Worlds is seen again in Night Terrors; the "put the Bussard collectors in reverse and shoot a blast of gas" trick introduced in Samaritan Snare was also reused for Night Terrors. Also, the experimental "metaphasic shielding" seen in Suspicions is brought up and used in Descent against the Borg.

- There are stories that directly build on previous encounters; Worf has several episodes dealing with his relationship with the Klingon Empire, leading up to him playing a part in the Klingon Civil War. The Borg are built upon in the five(!) episodes they show up in, and Family deals directly with the aftermath of Best of Both Worlds.

There are very probably some instances where a solution concocted in one episode was forgotten when it could have been useful in another, but overall TNG isn't nearly as amnesiac about its own continuity as has been frequently portrayed before.

Okay, put most of that down to my limited knowledge. Basically, I've only personally seen scattered episodes of TNG, DS9, and ENT, the first season of VOY, a DVD collection of all the Borg episodes (which I only got to watch through "Descent, Part 1"), and movies 3, 7, 8, 10, and 11. (I've read plot synopses of several other episodes on Memory Alpha, though.)

As for larger arcs, DS9 did more with that.

As I noted.