Overhauling Star Trek

[Elheru Aran]

Interestingly enough Enterprise already did that. One second season episode has the ship damaged by a romulan mine and the next is about them finding an automated shipyard to fix the hole.

And they kept any hole that put in them in the third season. Thouh I think they mainly occured in one episode. BSG did the same thing. Of course they have an advantage in effects are cheaper with CGI now and you can occasionally affort to revise your hero ship model and redo your stock footage/establishing shots with the ship's new appearances.

I would have to beg ignorance regarding Enterprise, as I've seen all of like... two or three episodes of that show. TNG was particularly egregious, though, in the damaged/fixed next episode issue; DS9 was pretty bad about that too, although it did a better job with story progression. I can't comment much about VOY but there's that whole using more shuttles during the show than it has physically room for in its hold and ditching its warp core several times...

Plot wise, what I might do is combine the premises of the three better shows-- exploration/discovery/shipboard experience (TOS, TNG) with a progressive sequence of events (A leads to B leads to C, effects from B also lead to B-2 and B-3, and so forth) during their voyages.

Example:

USS Soditall is exploring the Beta Quadrant of the galaxy. There's tensions there as both the Romulans and the Klingon Empire claim territory there; the Soditall's job is, officially, simply to explore, but really some of the crew are on a mission to gather intelligence, and the captain thinks he needs to help keep the peace, while the first officer wants to try and convince the Beta Quadrant civilizations to join the Federation.

So you have your standard exploration missions (perhaps with a counter noting how many days remaining on their overall voyage at the start of each episode). But along the way, you have the potential for extended drama with the various duties and factions going on. An officer who's tasked with, say, locating a Klingon installation on the planet of a pre-warp civilization that they just found, gets into trouble on the planet... but it turns out the 'jail' he's taken to is actually a hold aboard a buried Klingon ship... while the captain has to negotiate his release, the first officer starts talking to the locals and finds out that they're chafing under Klingon repression, and so forth, until a few episodes later the ship has a showdown with a couple of Birds of Prey, and so on.

[TOSDOC]

I'd bring John M. Ford's Klingons to the screen instead of Vikings in space. There's enough material there for a show to just focus on the Klingons themselves, much less a mix of Starfleet and Klingon drama.

I like the idea of Marine detachments in space, and would have more of that then just generic redshirts, kind of like how some of the Hornblower landing parties went.

I'd like to see more genuine fascination in our characters in first contact scenarios, both with alien animal and plant life and alien civilizations in general. Sometimes we never got farther than Spock saying "Fascinating" when a genuine biologist or botanist could go on for hours. That's what they're out there for in the first place, so let's see them at this job too.

Starfleet medicine shouldn't always be a cure-all in 50 minutes. The TNG episode "Genesis" comes to mind here, the fix was way too quick, faster than the supposed cure that started it all. I'd like to see some repercussions from an alien disease or injury sustained in an episode still healing for a couple afterwards.

[Purple]

The problem you get into with Star Trek, at least in dealing with people, is you either get the people who advocate a more militant stance vs those who believe it's all about peace and exploration. It's not so much an issue when you're just talking, but any series would have to be careful where the writers stood or else the personal dynamic of one faction against another goes right out the window. If you have one episode where the peaceful guys win, then the next writer adds to that so that the peaceful guys win, and it goes on and on, then what's the point of having the other side at all except as strawmen?

Same things happens other way around if only the militant solution works. The peaceful group comes off looking like idiots for wanting to be peaceful with the aliens when they're clearly out to kill us. Hell, just look at Riker or Chikote's "Kick my ass for a few minutes" policy. They need to DO something, but they're clearly unwilling to.

The point is to show the characters on both sides growing and accepting that neither approach is right. The old peaceful ways can't work in this new climate. And yet on the other hand constantly preparing to battle means you'll end up constantly having to fight them. Instead the balance is in the middle and a Kirk like approach. Know when to punch, and when to talk.

The end result being the Federation returning to a more Kirk like era. And the whole thing would be one giant metaphor for the modern world with the statement "We have gotten complacent. And paid for it. But that does not mean we need to overreact and abandon the core principals of our society."

[Gandalf]

I would have to beg ignorance regarding Enterprise, as I've seen all of like... two or three episodes of that show. TNG was particularly egregious, though, in the damaged/fixed next episode issue; DS9 was pretty bad about that too, although it did a better job with story progression

To be fair, part of that was practicality. It's expensive to muck about with your main ship model week to week.

[The Romulan Republic]

It is so predictable and sad that a lot of the suggestions seem to be along the lines of "Make Star Trek more militaristic." Can't people come up with something besides that?

[Balrog]

It is so predictable and sad that a lot of the suggestions seem to be along the lines of "Make Star Trek more militaristic." Can't people come up with something besides that?

Conflict is a pretty basic concept which is easy to accept as the premise for a story, and one of the easier ones is the conflict of Man vs. Man since you can pretty easily arc out a general plot line (we have our protagonists and antagonists, there is an incident which sparks a conflict, the two sides fight each other up to a final climax and then there is an aftermath). The alternative is to try and keep solely to the exploration angle and have the intrepid crew struggle against Nature, but it requires the writers to be a lot more creative to avoid any feelings of repetition as the series goes on and on for several seasons.

[Simon_Jester]

The two big themes seem to be "make it more militaristic" and "make it less episodic."

Arguably the best example of a Star Trek series trying to do both was Deep Space 9, which was quite well received.

[Gandalf]

It is so predictable and sad that a lot of the suggestions seem to be along the lines of "Make Star Trek more militaristic." Can't people come up with something besides that?

Conflict is a pretty basic concept which is easy to accept as the premise for a story, and one of the easier ones is the conflict of Man vs. Man since you can pretty easily arc out a general plot line (we have our protagonists and antagonists, there is an incident which sparks a conflict, the two sides fight each other up to a final climax and then there is an aftermath). The alternative is to try and keep solely to the exploration angle and have the intrepid crew struggle against Nature, but it requires the writers to be a lot more creative to avoid any feelings of repetition as the series goes on and on for several seasons.

You can have conflict without militarism, like every other drama show not set in a military setting.

[TOSDOC]

It is so predictable and sad that a lot of the suggestions seem to be along the lines of "Make Star Trek more militaristic." Can't people come up with something besides that?

I thought I did.

Some of Trek's best episodes don't have militaristic themes, and I'd like to see a return to that kind of creative writing. Amok Time and The Devil in the Dark come to mind.

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah, I'm not endorsing a militaristic approach to Trek either. Mainly I'm trying to remove it from the simplistic, episodic feel that TNG suffered from. With TOS it's less of an issue because that's how TV was at the time and it's only three seasons long so people don't care that much (plus it leads into the TOS movies). You can certainly do episodic, but do it within a context that's not simply a ship and its crew farting about.

My inspiration is largely Stargate, to be frank. It had a general overall background and plot that they stuck to, even when they got episodic. OK, maybe not the first couple seasons or so, but after that point it was consistently about the Goa'uld and their struggle against them (fuck the Ori). DS9 did the same thing from my understanding although I haven't watched much of that series. It helps tie everything together-- even the occasional one-off episodes have that background in mind (someone takes a vacation to get away from the Dominion War, whatever).

[amigocabal]

My idea would be the Federation colonizing an M-class planet in the Delkta Quadrant, with focus on the lives of the civilian colonists, as they make their way on the far frontier. Contact with Earth is limited, and ships can only travel between the colony and Earth twice a year. It would be like a space-based version of Little House on the Prairie.

aside from the colonists' struggle to survive and grow, there will be two plt threads.

- The planet was the site of a previous colonization attempt by another interstellar power, which had since disintegrated. A remnant of that power tries to take back the planet.
- A Federation official who is part of the senior staff overseeing the colonization desires to build and rule an interstellar empire in the Delta Quadrant, and clandestinely lays the groundwork to make that desire a reality.

[The Romulan Republic]

That sounds interesting.

With the Delta Quadrant setting, you could also have various aliens from Voyager appear.

But I am concerned that a little colony stuck in one place might get dull.

Edit: Then again, that still gives you at least a whole solar system to work with.

[Balrog]

It is so predictable and sad that a lot of the suggestions seem to be along the lines of "Make Star Trek more militaristic." Can't people come up with something besides that?

Conflict is a pretty basic concept which is easy to accept as the premise for a story, and one of the easier ones is the conflict of Man vs. Man since you can pretty easily arc out a general plot line (we have our protagonists and antagonists, there is an incident which sparks a conflict, the two sides fight each other up to a final climax and then there is an aftermath). The alternative is to try and keep solely to the exploration angle and have the intrepid crew struggle against Nature, but it requires the writers to be a lot more creative to avoid any feelings of repetition as the series goes on and on for several seasons.

You can have conflict without militarism, like every other drama show not set in a military setting.

Starfleet is a paramilitary organization at the least though, in deed if not name, given that they are the first and last line of defense when the Federation is attacked/goes to war/etc. Militarism is going to be some part of any sort of Man vs Man conflict. Other non-military drama shows usually have this type of conflict take place in a more limited setting (i.e. police dramas have the Law & Order types trying to catch/prosecute the criminals) which wouldn't exactly work out on a starship traveling in space (although a police drama set in the 24th century could be interesting).

[Joun_Lord]

I'd love to see some more conflict between Starfleets stated goals of peaceful exploration and its need to be a military to protect lives. Going against Gene's vision of no conflict amongst the crews, I'd like some conflict. Some are people who joined Starfleet to save lives and protect the Federation, others joined to explore and study comets and junk. The "military" Starfleet would see the explorers naive idealism as dangerous and not grounded in reality, the "explorer" Starfleet would see the military as primitive throwbacks who are the worst of humanity maybe. For the explorers they think Starfleet is not a military, does not fight except as a last resort, negotiates above all things, and believes that a sensible compromise can always be reached. The military sees that is foolish and dangerous and invites attack. The military would especially be against things like family onboard spaceships and the Starfleet tactic of sitting there getting ass kicked and then maybe firing one shot. The explorers just look down on military actions, as they do in canon with I think Riker saying military tactics was the least important thing for a Captain to do.

Maybe shine a light on how the Federation does do terrible things in the name of peace, like letting whole civilizations die and throwing their own people into the cold for treaties that aren't worth the pixels they are made of.

Most importantly show the character as human, even when they aren't. Fallible creatures that sometimes do fail but strive to do better, strive to be better in true Star Trek fashion. A bit like how DS9 showed humanity being these enlightened better creatures was a load of horseshit but still tried to do the right thing or how Kirk was a very flawed man but recognized his flaws and tried to correct them (this is the man who was practically jumping at the prospect of interstellar war).

[amigocabal]

That sounds interesting.

With the Delta Quadrant setting, you could also have various aliens from Voyager appear.

But I am concerned that a little colony stuck in one place might get dull.

Edit: Then again, that still gives you at least a whole solar system to work with.

The colony would have access to warp-capable transports, and Starfleet would have a few ships in orbit for space defense.

In my idea, the first season would focus on the struggles of the colonists, as well as their relationship with the Federation people assigned to oversee the colonization. There would be one episode where the colonists find the remains of a previous colony that had existed centuries ago. There will be some foreshadowing regarding one or more Federation officials' ambitions to create an interstellar empire. (Remember, contacted with Earth is limited, and swift transport between Earth and the Delta Quadrant colony would be even more limited.)

The remnant of the interstellar power who previously colonized the planet would debut in the middle of the second season, and we will also see more machinations by the rogue Federation officials wanting to create their own empire. Obviously, they will come into conflict. Will they start by fighting each other? Or would it work better if they instead start by trying to use each other?

The military would especially be against things like family onboard spaceships and the Starfleet tactic of sitting there getting ass kicked and then maybe firing one shot. The explorers just look down on military actions, as they do in canon with I think Riker saying military tactics was the least important thing for a Captain to do.

Of course,t his does beg the question of why the Federation does not have or create a separate service with a purely military focus.

Does it rely on its member worlds' military forces to do most of the fighting?

[Elheru Aran]

No, Starfleet *is* the military-analogue of the Federation. It's just a really shitty one in the TOS and TNG era. They start getting better in DS9, though. In Enterprise (pre-Federation, I know) they had the MACOs.

[Joun_Lord]

The military would especially be against things like family onboard spaceships and the Starfleet tactic of sitting there getting ass kicked and then maybe firing one shot. The explorers just look down on military actions, as they do in canon with I think Riker saying military tactics was the least important thing for a Captain to do.

Of course,t his does beg the question of why the Federation does not have or create a separate service with a purely military focus.

Does it rely on its member worlds' military forces to do most of the fighting?

As far as I know from watching the series Starfleet has always served as a military for the Federation (even pre-Federation) while having exploration duties too. During Kirks era they even seemed to consider themselves a military or atleast Kirk considered himself a soldier. The ships of that era were comfortable and well equipped for science missions but could be considered warships, the Excelsior especially (to me, I'm not sure why though) seemed to have a combat role in mind and probably goes well to explaining its usage nearly a century after it was launched. Later on though Starfleet "evolved" to the point fighting was considered the least important part of Starfleets job and the ships reflected that.

I don't recall really any mention of any Starfleet members worlds having any sort of military hardware of their own. The vulcans had their own Navy during the ENT era but that seems to have disappeared (it don't even look like the Vulcans defended themselves during the reboot Trek). Earth had those 3 ineffective in-system ships during the BOBW but that seemed to be about it. Everybody else seemed to have nothing. No mention during the Dominion War of any planets defending themselves or non-Starfleet Federation ships doing any fighting.

But yes, I could see the want to create an actual military. Starfleets main job is exploration and sciency stuff. Seems like a 3rd of the crew of the D is dedicated to studying comets and spatial phenomenon though I can't find actual numbers on how big the science department was. Taking a bunch of blueshirts into battle to fight killer cyborgs or cloned zealots doesn't seem smart anymore then taking a bunch of children does. It would be like a 3rd of a US navy carrier being scientists and botanists and oceanographers and then the ship going into battle. Those people probably didn't sign up to fight and die anymore then crew members and scientists (and sometimes their families) on board modern science vessels would. Imagine strapping some guns to those sort of ships and sending them into battle, probably wouldn't work to well.

As an aside the Ent-D seems really, really empty for its size. The Enterprise CVN-65 is 342 meters in length and about 76 meters high from keel to mast with a crew compliment of over 5,000. Plus I'm sure the hangers take up a sizable volume of the ships. Compare that to the Galaxy class which is 641 meters in length (and nearly as wide as long) with a height of 190 meters (and that ain't mast height) but has a compliment of just over a thousand and that might include the civies. Its no wonder the ship seems so empty at times on the show, parts of the ship must be like a ghost town. I could see them having the space to have whales and dolphins to help navigate.

[The Romulan Republic]

To some extent Starfleet does have a separate combat force- Starfleet Security. But it is rather poorly equipped in the sense of lacking body armour and seldom having heavy weaponry. And the non-security guys still end up in combat a lot.

Perhaps a better funded and equipped Starfleet Security and forces dedicated to military duties staffed entirely or almost entirely by Security would be a compromise between the status quo and a separate military?

[amigocabal]

To some extent Starfleet does have a separate combat force- Starfleet Security. But it is rather poorly equipped in the sense of lacking body armour and seldom having heavy weaponry. And the non-security guys still end up in combat a lot.

Perhaps a better funded and equipped Starfleet Security and forces dedicated to military duties staffed entirely or almost entirely by Security would be a compromise between the status quo and a separate military?

Relying on Starfleet Security for ground-based combat operations is like the U.S. relying on Navy masters-at-arms or Air Force Security Police for that same purpose.

What I do wonder is where the producers got the idea that Starfleet Security was the only Federation ground combat force. I do not recall anything in pre-DS9 material that even implied the Federation lacked ground combat forces outside of Starfleet Security.

The vulcans had their own Navy during the ENT era but that seems to have disappeared (it don't even look like the Vulcans defended themselves during the reboot Trek)

To be fair, it could be assumed that the Narada destroyed all the Vulcan combat ships in orbit prior to the arrival of the Starfleet vessels.

[Baffalo]

The vulcans had their own Navy during the ENT era but that seems to have disappeared (it don't even look like the Vulcans defended themselves during the reboot Trek)

To be fair, it could be assumed that the Narada destroyed all the Vulcan combat ships in orbit prior to the arrival of the Starfleet vessels.[/quote]
They were interrogating Pike for the Starfleet defense codes, which hints that perhaps there are automated defenses around Earth that are formidable enough to either deter the Narada, or he's hoping to avoid detection until he's had a chance to destroy Earth.

[Elheru Aran]

Or perhaps Shinzon simply wants information on Starfleet's defenses, and the codes were part of it. His ship is formidable enough that he doesn't have much to worry about, but I suspect it's the latter (avoiding detection).

IIRC the fish-ship that Spock was flying was a Vulcan design, but of course it's from (more or less) the period just before STO, so... early 2400's? And from another reality entirely, so it doesn't really apply. However there were probably at least *some* ships around Vulcan before Shinzon got there. Not that it appears to have made much of a difference.

The fact of the matter is that historically Starfleet has always been depicted as something of a peacetime military, paradoxically a supposedly civilian organization structured along military lines. Trying to make it more of an active, actual military is a dangerous exercise. Not impossible... but it risks stretching the schema that is 'Star Trek' too far out of shape.

[Sidewinder]

The fact of the matter is that historically Starfleet has always been depicted as something of a peacetime military, paradoxically a supposedly civilian organization structured along military lines. Trying to make it more of an active, actual military is a dangerous exercise. Not impossible... but it risks stretching the schema that is 'Star Trek' too far out of shape.

Like the Japan Self-Defense Force? If so, it begs the question why the Federation would structure its defense force this way, as IIRC, they didn't suffer a military defeat and then had the victors impose such limitations upon them. Did Starfleet's predecessor- an actual military- attempt to overthrow the government (United Earth's, Vulcan's, Andoria's), and the Federation government imposed such limitations to prevent history from repeating?

[Elheru Aran]

Like the Japan Self-Defense Force? If so, it begs the question why the Federation would structure its defense force this way, as IIRC, they didn't suffer a military defeat and then had the victors impose such limitations upon them. Did Starfleet's predecessor- an actual military- attempt to overthrow the government (United Earth's, Vulcan's, Andoria's), and the Federation government imposed such limitations to prevent history from repeating?

I'm not familiar with the JSDF, but the expanded-universe rationale (they've never really addressed it in the shows, but I haven't watched them in enough detail to say for certain) is largely because "the Federation doesn't do things that way". A lot of people chalk it up to the Vulcans, I think. That was before Enterprise, of course...

[Baffalo]

Given that Earth was attacked early on by the Romulans during the Earth/Romulan War, I could see the need to protect themselves while taking measures not to overly aggravate their neighbors, especially once the Klingons showed up. Vulcan being such a prominent member of the Federation and basically helping Earth, I imagine United Earth proposed the idea of Starfleet being a largely defensive organization to compromise between the Vulcans and Andorians. The Tellarites were fine either way because it protected their interests, and while the Andorians were likely worried, they could see the inherent advantage to having 3 allies who could bolster their own economy and help stand up to the even larger powers in the region.

[Simon_Jester]

The fact of the matter is that historically Starfleet has always been depicted as something of a peacetime military, paradoxically a supposedly civilian organization structured along military lines. Trying to make it more of an active, actual military is a dangerous exercise. Not impossible... but it risks stretching the schema that is 'Star Trek' too far out of shape.

Like the Japan Self-Defense Force? If so, it begs the question why the Federation would structure its defense force this way, as IIRC, they didn't suffer a military defeat and then had the victors impose such limitations upon them...

Quite the opposite, I think- they've always been victorious without a fierce and warlike space force, with armed ships under military levels of discipline but with substantial civilian and scientific roles being 'good enough.' Why would they deviate from a winning formula?

Did Starfleet's predecessor- an actual military- attempt to overthrow the government (United Earth's, Vulcan's, Andoria's), and the Federation government imposed such limitations to prevent history from repeating?

Maybe their predecessor was NOT a military. Maybe it was the equivalent of NASA.