If you've read any of my posts, you'll know that I'm someone who really doesn't want Star Trek back on TV, in any form. But if it does come back, I want it to be recognizably 'Star Trek', not something wearing Star Trek's clothes.
Creative laziness could just as easily be applied to a new series based on taking all the old stories we know and love and... telling them again. And again. And again. In almost exactly the same style. Why is it automatically the story style and nothing else that should define what Star Trek is? Isn't the world that's been created a part of it, or the show's way of looking at the universe? Doesn't the core of Star Trek have at least something to do with the UFP and the utopian ideals it represents, or with the willingness to confront actually challenging questions of morality without automatically dumbing everything down to instant right and wrong? Isn't it possible there are ways of telling stories about all that sort of thing without necessarily requiring that the main characters must without exception be the crew of a starship on a mission of exploration?
If you don't actually want it back, then I certainly respect that. Honestly, I don't have any burning need to have it back on tv, either, and I don't really expect a new series to happen, anyway. Certainly not in the next 10-15 years. I'd just prefer that, if they are going to bring it back, they do something new and interesting with it.
It's called Star Trek. It would me like me turning on Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and finding out that its a sitcom about an elderly islamic woman and how she copes with her grandson's Jewish wife.
But today or in fifteen or twenty years, there will be people who have never seen or heard of Star Trek. A new series will be their first exposure to it. So I think any new series should remain true to the Star Trek premise. I'd love to have a new sci-fi series, but I'm not interested in shoe-horning something completely incompatible into the Star Trek universe in the name of doing something "new".
Not to toot my own horn or anything, but the question of "What is Star Trek?" now has its own thread. Created specifically because that's a fundamental question about all this.
And all that time on all the different shows when they weren't on a spaceship and weren't trying to explore anything at all, I suppose none of that was Star Trek at all? If it's the name that's bothering you - I'm not sure how a show following various different types of ships can even be construed as not constituting a 'trek through the stars'.
I understand the logic, though I disagree that anything different automatically constitutes 'shoe-horning'. And I wouldn't even blame Paramount if they decided that kind of permanent reboot was the only thing that made financial sense for them. But as for me - I've already seen TOS and TNG and Voy. I don't need to same the same stories a fourth time in the same style.
Of all the ideas presented in this subforum, the one I find most interesting would be a focus on a group of junior officers serving together--perhaps a core group of three or four with some supporting characters as well. For continuity's sake (in terms of paradigms anyway) I'd stick them on board Enterprise-G, a huge vessel with a crew of roughly two thousand. We'd see the Captain or senior staff only once in awhile, and over time they might change--first officer moving up to command after the Captain gets promoted, etc. The main characters themselves would increasingly be seen as an effective team and thus assigned together for away teams and the like. During the course of the show this group might even get transferred to a new ship. Me, I'd also avoid any clear sign whether this was the 'prime' timeline or not. You can certainly have Vulcans, but never mention that time Vulcan was destroyed back in the 23rd century. For example.
I would have said Enterprise H to leave the online ship out of it, have it be ran by an Admiral, and make the Junior-Officers Captains instead, specialists who transfer on and off ships in the fleet.
Okay, I'll bite. Why? I'm not trying to be smartass but I'm genuinely curious. I don't personally see any advantage in that.
^Scratch that Enterprise H bit, I was thinking of the F when you said G. As for making him Captain, he could take charge of whatever situation you put him in. One away mission, he'll command a ship, the next a station, the next an outpost on an alien planet.
Yeah, I got that. What I don't get is why that's something desirable. Seems to me you "gain" an entirely new setting each week or so in return for...what? At the same time you've lost anything like an ensemble of characters, but rather focus upon one person. At least that is what you're describing--a Captain moving around to different commands each week. Quite apart from the expense, I just don't see the attraction. But maybe I'm missing something. Wouldn't be the first time...
I was talking about a transferring team, led by a transferring Captain. We'll have the familar faces and they could reuse sets, or stay at a set for an extended period. I was taking my fleet idea and adding a focused set of people, instead of my multiple crews on multiple ships, outposts, and stations.
Okay, I get that now. Your idea is to have a team (the equivalent of bridge crew) and move them around to different ships, outposts, etc. Am I right? Honestly, I'm having trouble seeing a huge amount of viable story potential there, but I've my blind spots like everyone else. I'd certainly watch it, see what such a show looked like in practice.
It'll be a broad view of what goes on around in starfleet, and not a ship. Think of it like Shelby from "The best of both world" (or some other character sent from starfleet for a certain task) but as a team of maybe 3 with reoccurring faces here and there. I'd rather it be a higher rank than a junior-officer so he can get away with more.
Not so much saying what I want as much as what I expect.... Time Trek. Star Trek already relies very heavily on time travel and it has already been shown they regularly travel through time in the future, hence Time Ships and whatnot. I would not be the least bit surprised that if they decided to do a continuation of the "Prime" universe, they're going with temporal travel. Episodes will usually involve a new time period. To save monies, they will probably do a lot of this on Earth. They'll probably do the occasional crazy episode with time travel, to say, the 40th century where people are magical. Most of it, however, will be in the past.
I think Paramount should make another "trilogy" of shows, which is what I've always considered TNG, DS9, and VOY. The first one could be based on a starship, the "traditional" Trek. The second could be based on a colony near or on the Romulan border, after the destruction of Romulus, that helps Romulan refugees, and battles off the various attacking Romulan factions which we all know would spawn immediately after the destruction of Romulus. The third could be based entirely on a Klingon ship, in a setting that, in the fifth or sixth season, could be transformed into a serialized war.