Creative control- serious discussion only please

[SCVN 2812]

What would you do if you had creative control over the Star Trek franchise. What direction would you have Enterprise take for the rest of it's run and what else would you do to keep the franchise alive and hopefully vital?

I personally would focus Enterprise on the unexplored aspects of Star Trek, for example more focus on how other crew than the senior officers live and work as well as races established but never really fleshed out.

Series VI would definitely be Excelsior if the actors were still willing, I like the TMP era, more than I do any other era of Star Trek or any other sci-fi genre.

Movie wise, I'd make Star Trek XI a movie with both the casts of TNG and DS9 and tell the story of Sisco's return and the long term effects of the Dominion War.

Behind the scenes I'd also try and set some stuff in stone, ship sizes and armaments and other misc. details. Maybe get somebody to do a new technical manual covering the areas of the post DS9/Voyager era and make damn sure it's actually as close to accurate as possible(I personally would find it interesting to see a Star Trek version of the Ep II Incredible Cross sections, but that's just me, I like the little details of sci-fi.)

If I had the time, I'd also take a more active role in the games. I'd like to see a little more accuracy and quality in the games focussing on ships. (thinks about Dominion Wars, migraine starts forming)

[Howedar]

I agree in every respect. In addition, I'd introduce decent uniforms, engineering, designs, weapons, tactics, etc, etc.

[Darth Wong]

It's too late. Star Trek is a corpse. B&B killed it. The last good thing to come out of Trek was ST6.

If I could go back in time to a period before the Death of Trek, I would make enact a simple "no technobabble solutions" rule, so that we go back to a time when Scotty would tell Kirk that he can only give him "a few shots", and that's it: the rest was up to Kirk's ingenuity. None of this "our energy reserves are low but if I reroute power from life support to the phaser array and remodulate the phase coil emitters to the enemy's resonant shield frequency, I should be able to boost the phaser harmonics enough to penetrate their shields" bullshit.

[Enlightenment]

Ban technobabble.

Ban plots based on equipment failure.

Place an emphasis on plots centered around people rather than Stuff Going Wrong.

Develop specification notes for all ships' systems. These notes would contain details such as maximum power output (for power sources), ranges (for weapons and transporters etc), operating restrictions (e.g. no transporting through shields) and would be required reading for the writing staff. Technically-based plots would need to fit within the known operating parameters of all equipment.

Double or quadruple the cast size so away teams and engineering work (etc) can be shown to be done by dedicated crew rather than senior officers.

Hire SF writers rather than sitcom and drama hacks.

Use the science advisors to clean up concepts at the plot stage rather than to get the terminology right.

Hire a military advisor to clean up chain of command/tactics/etc problems at the plot stage.

Reaim Trek towards adults rather than testosterone poisoned teenagers.

[Eleas]

I would:
1. Ban the meaningless technobabble (like others have said)
2. Take a good hard look at what values the show is promoting. I'd remove the mindless creationism and Microsoft worship.
3. Reintroduce the (slain) sense of wonder about the universe.
4. Have the ships be able to survive damage.
5. Draw up guidelines for Trek tech and capabilities, and follow them.
6. Introduce large, sweeping story arcs, with "continuity" as a watchword.
7. Have B&B staked out over an anthill. No wait, scratch that - INSIDE an anthill.

[master_yoda]

It's too late. Star Trek is a corpse. B&B killed it. The last good thing to come out of Trek was ST6.

If I could go back in time to a period before the Death of Trek, I would make enact a simple "no technobabble solutions" rule, so that we go back to a time when Scotty would tell Kirk that he can only give him "a few shots", and that's it: the rest was up to Kirk's ingenuity. None of this "our energy reserves are low but if I reroute power from life support to the phaser array and remodulate the phase coil emitters to the enemy's resonant shield frequency, I should be able to boost the phaser harmonics enough to penetrate their shields" bullshit.

Yeah.You can hardly understand them now.

[Moonstone Spider]

I'd want to scrap the Enterprise concept altogether as I don't think it's working. I have in mind writing an entirely different sort of Trek, possibly something based on Section 41 or even the lives of civilians in the Federation.

I don't think Technobabble can be eliminated and it shouldn't be, it is part of Trek. Even TOS had some healthy servings of technobabble now and then. Instead just prevent it from solving or causing problems, putting it effectively in the background.

Major renovations for Uniforms. I'd redesign them to have some sort of armor built in, probably along the same lines as the removable ceramic plates in military body armor. No Crewmen shall be injured by arrows or spears hitting them.

Nobody on an away mission, including Redshirts, is to be killed by stray plants, the wind blowing, rocks falling on them, or similar nonsense. If a creature kills a crewman it had better be at least as mean as the Xenomorph in Alien and it had better have some phaser burns from the experience. The energy Creature Picard and a Strange Alien fought as a bonding ritual is a good candidate for killing redshirts. Tribbles are not.

Set a new rule, at least 1 major character killed every season. This makes Jadzeia/Ezri replacements less obvious, allows room for more main characters and action figures/books/manuals/public show appearances to raise more money (yeah, I'm mercenary.) In addition it's just good writing to have shit happen to the good guys once in a while.

They shall use Superweapons every chance they get, and remember these weapons tomorrow. The Flagship will now have a Phase Cloak, it will now have Batmobile Armor, and it will now have every other goody they come up with as soon as it can be installed.

Demand the writers use the tech on board as weapons in imaginative ways. For instance setting the Gravity in a hallway to 2,000 Gs to kill intruders or Beaming an enemy's heart out of his chest and onto the table in front of him. Now that's a negotiating technique.

[NecronLord]

When janeway gets back she is put on trial, and is not exhonorated, Section 31 Dissect 7of9, The enterprise is not the flagship, as it lacks a flag officer. Everyone would not go to the officers academy, and the Kligons will not be able to defeat a superior enemy with sharp peices of metal...

[Crazy_Vasey]

Kill it at least for a while.

Oh yeah and scrub everything past TOS and everything past Film VI from the continuity

[Gil Hamilton]

Funny thing is, I had such high hopes for Enterprise. That was the point where I'd try and make the StarTrek universe filled with (to quote Q of all entities) "wonders beyond your imagination and terrors to chill your soul". I mean, that's the first time humanity was clawing it's way into space... but then it sucked. It won't be long before Beavis and Butthead include the Borg into Enterprise.

Anyway...
(1) I'd hire a better class of Script Writing Hobo.
(2) The moment any of them bring up time travel, they are sent back to their box for the rest of the day to think about what they've done without being allowed access to the buffet cart.
(3) Have Janeway make a guest appearance and have a Gorn become infatuated with her. Gorn mating rituals involve love bites. Unfortunately, Gorns have about the same dental hygiene as a Komodo Dragon and twice as toxic. Then again, she might like it. After all, she had hot lizard sex with Paris after that Transwarp incident *ahem* "evolved" them.
(4) Hire a bunch of learned science fiction folk to draft up a standard set of technologies and abilities to run the show by.
(5) If Jonathan Frakes comes within 300 meters of the sound stage he will be thrown to the Gorns, after being sprayed with Gorn female pheromones.
(6) The male lead will be instructed in the art of Kirk-Fu.
(7) The females of the cast will not wear molded customs to show off their jiggly bits, but regular uniforms. On the other hand, the Script Writing Hobos will be instructed to write into their character a love of those retro metallic miniskirts that were all the rage in the late 23rd century when they are off-duty or on shore-leave.
(8) A coup within the Klingon Empire forces a change in government coinciding a movement to return to the good old days when Klingons didn't bother with Bat'leths in combat and knew how to use silverwear.
(9) The Script Writing Hobos will be encouraged to write good storylines by threat of the ominously cheerful song "It's Raining Gorns".
(10) The Ferengi will be restored to their original tough, greedy, Plasma Whip totin' selves. As much as I like Armin Shimerman (Quark), the comic relief Ferengi got to go.
(11) All Script Writing Hobos must be able to define any term in their Script well enough to satisfy a decent high school physics teacher.

[Meghel]

1) Drop the TimeTravel cliche.
2) Drop the "Torn between two cultures" cliche.
3) Drop the "We federation are Enlighted Pacifists"-attitude.
4) More exploration.
5) reduce the Technobable to the minimum.
6) Let the good guys loose for once (not fatally, but let them have a beating).
7) Write good and multi-sided alien races.
Bring back Rock 'N Roll!!
9) Get humanity back to something we can recognize and like. See point 3.

[Lusankya]

I'd like to see ST from the point of view of one of the other races, instead of the Federation.

The Romulans would be interesting. You don't hear squat about them in Star Trek, but there must be some reason for their isolation.

Perhaps showing another race's perspective could even cancel out some of the "Federation is perfection incarnate" crap that we keep on being told.

[SirNitram]

There's only one thing that can be done now, and that's kill it, crucify it, and leave it to rot for a few years. Maybe then they can make it work again, but not yet.

[Dralan]

There's only one thing that can be done now, and that's kill it, crucify it, and leave it to rot for a few years. Maybe then they can make it work again, but not yet.

Well, there may be another possibility.

Possible scenario: One or several "unknown" species clash for one hell of a battle in the alpha quadrant thereby causing catastrophic side effects for most species living here.

As they battle one another they ignore anything else and in the process all of our known factions of power are for all intents and purpose destroyed...

Possible new series/films that can be created:

1. (Earth and all that you know is destoyed... Most of the galaxy is in a state of dissaray and chaos) Make a story based upon the lives of the people on a colony world that has been left untuched, where they have to struggle to survive. (since the galaxy now has no set power structure we can expect alot of lawlessness and survival of the fittest attitude.

2. any other good ideas ?

[Stravo]

As said earlier before on this thread MORE CONTINUITY. I HATE the episodes that have these supposed big changes and then never referenced again in the series. The Captain falls in love every episode with soem chick, either she dies or stays behind on her world and the captain goes on as if nothing happened, falling for the next woman in the next episode.

Warp 5 speed limit anyone? Was it EVER mentioned again...EVER??

Honestly, the series needs to be put in hibernation for like a solid 5-7 years, to get the memories of Voyager and Enterprise out of people's heads, then we can start fresh and the ideas will be better because we've had such long development time. BAN time travel stories to an absolute minimum, MORE crew interaction and no more stereotypes please, for once I'd like to see an engineer that can'y jury rig a replicator out of rocks and some AA batteries, how about an engineer whose by the book and doesn't like to jury rig because its dangerous? A security officer who is not gung ho about fighting, maybe he's just a quiet professional who's trying to make it back home to a wife and child when tour of duty is up.

No crewman of the week, that is summarily killed. Introduce a small subset of crewman and keep them around, then if one dies, we actually care.

There is SO MUCH to be done here, but definately needs a haitus first and foremost. There is just pure crap coming out of this franchise right now and it is sad.

[Wicked Pilot]

I would start a new series, the first episode would go some what like this:


Space...

A battle damaged Constitution refit approaches Earth. As it flies past our point of view, we see the words NCC-1701A USS Enterprise painted on it.


Bridge...

Uhura speaking: "Captain, we are receaving a message from Admiral Baddecision, he is once again congradulating us for or success over Khittomer, but still insist we must put the ship in drydock for decommissioning... Captain?"

Camera pans over to captain's chair to find Kirk asleep, he slowly wakes up

Kirk speaking groggly: "Lieutenant, I just had the worst dream. I dreamth that a hundred or so years from now, there would be an Enterprise-D, whose captain is a bald french man with an strong english accent. His crew was composed of a pussy first officer, a wussy android, an idiot Klingon, and this really annoying little boy. It was horrible."

Checkovf: "Surely Captain, it can't be so!"

Kirk: "It gets worst, they fly around space spouting this new Federation communist pacifist nonsence. And their ship almost blows up every week. Their only defense involves a man with a cheese grader over his eyes spouting some nonsense for long periods of time. Words like subspace disturbance and quantom singularity. Scotty, those words mean anything to you?"

Scotty: "Not in'd least bit Capt'n"

Spock: "There is no logic to this Captain, why would Starfleet field a ship with such problems?"

Kirk: "I don't know Spock, I, just, don't, know"

McCoy: "Damnit Jim!, you know dreams are nonsense."

Kirk: "But it was so vivid!"

Commercial break

In sick bay, Kirk is lying on a medical be facing up

Kirk: "And then there was the space station, filled with these wierd religious nuts with funny things on their noses. And the captain was bald too, and a really bad actor. But there was this hot chick named Dax."

McCoy: "Damnit Jim!"

Kirk: "No wait bones, then there was this other ship named Voyager, her captain was a woman. At least I think she was a woman, she sounded like a man. But there was this other chick with numbers for a name, but her personality was inferior to that of a peice of toejam. This part of the dream took forever, at least seven years. Why bones?! Why?!"

McCoy: "Well it's over now. Relax Jim, it was only a dream, only a dream."


Fade to Space


Roll Credits

[Stravo]

USAF Ace: Fucking Brilliant, I'm still laughing!!

[Straha]

Why not this:

1. U.s.s Enterprise has a makeover so that it actually looks like the one from TOS.,
2. Yes I know its been said but, BAN TIME TRAVEL
3. Put a quota on technobabble happenings, if it goes beyond the quota the writers lose their christmas bonus.
4. New crew (would make it bigger as others suggest but $$$$ would stop that)
5. New positisons and branches in federation, keep the security officer and marines but wwhy not get an army to boot?
6. Specilized ships for certain purposesl I.e. a troop transport ship, a orbital bombardment cruiser, a fighter carrier.
7. Rebuild from the ground up on all other aspects.
8.Have a rotary writer team with roughly 30-40% of scripts being guest writer scripts.

[Doomriser]

USAF Ace, you owe me a new keyboard!

[Mr. B]

Two words.

Resurrect Kirk

[Needa]

Come on, TNG wasn't all that bad.

I agree, ST would need a brief period of pause to come up with better ideas.

I would personnaly hired writers who are capable of making a structured story. I mean, let's look on Voyager: except Caretakers, Endgames and a couple of other episodes you can simply watch the episode in no particular order. I know, Trekkies will say ST was often like this but I would like to have a more complex story than a lot of small stories which are not linked together.

It seems to me that ST was too often focusing about the crew of the starship, but not much about what's going on in the rest of the Federation. Sure, there are episodes that show a little more of ST complexities, but they aren't very common. Of course, many people liked it this way, and that's fine, and I respect your opinion if it's the case, but to me it's time ST move out to another style. Perhaps it's betraying the "spirit" of the series, but that's my opinion.

Babylon 5 remains my model of good sci fi series that are intelligent, well written and interesting. Perhaps it will influence other sci fi producers, like ST...

[Straha]

Something just hit me (well, not literally)

Why not junk Enterprise. Say it was a mistake apologize, etc. Then Do two mini series (sp?) one takes place between TOS and TNG and shows the reforms which turned the UFP from a kick but capatilist fighting force to a quasi-communist government that can be beaten by napolean.
Then do a second mini-series that takes place after voyager, or if voyager has been done away with like enterprise the latest point in the series. About a new bunch of "unkown" alien species that pop up in alpha quadrant which cause a set of reforms that turn the federation back into a TOS style force. And you could use this a diving board into a whole new series.

[Master of Ossus]

I would make it more like Babylong 5 and Star Wars. Seriously, TNG's main problem was that nothing from one episode carried over to the next. That also plagued Voyager and DS9. In DS9, the Federation consistently lost battle after battle, but they won the war, how? In Voyager, they shaved years off their journey REPEATEDLY, and never seemed to get any closer until the last few episodes.

But in B5 and SW, there are clear cause-effect relationships. I think that the ST writers needed to be able to establish a single plot, replete with red-herrings and foreshadowing of future events. I loved those moments in B5 when you went, "Oh, I remember that!" from two weeks ago, and I really liked the way everything was structured. THAT is how ST should have worked.

Instead, TNG often felt like one of those X-Files "Monster of the Week" episodes, but without any mythology to tie it together. That was the main problem I had with TNG.

[Mr Bean]

I am now in awe of USAF ACE plot writing skills

[Howedar]

I would have liked to see the story arc continued with the Goa'uld-like bug things that infiltrated the Admiralty, but its too damn late for that.