Trek 2017: Starfleet Academy?
- Thread starter Bruchpilot
- Start date
Respectfully, NO... just no
Or, unrespectfully, HELL NO!
DS9 kinda did that towards the end and it worked well there.
I suppose it would be possible to tie the Academy into one such location or group of characters, but as the entire basis of the series? No thanks.
An academy series is something you might consider as a spinoff to a currently popular Trek franchise, not the first Trek series in 10 years.
Star Trek is a show set in Space, not San Francisco.
Star Trek is a show set in Space, not San Francisco.
Maybe just the first season. Show a bunch of recruits in their last year at the Academy. Lead up to graduation, let the audience get to know them and then send them off to different ships. A series that was a little more "Lower Decks" could be fun.
No - no pretty people in space series. No - no grads exploring themselves, then being ensigns in the lower decks doing menial tasks while having titillating sexual escapades. Yes, I understand you like Game of Thrones - please go and watch it. Star Trek is not game of thrones.
Having said that there are a lot of options short of turning this into Melrose Place in Space... I'm open to a lot, just not this.
Nobody said anything about titillation.
Who said anything about anything in your post? I never even said I was definitely in favor of using the Academy. Someone else brought it up and I was throwing out ideas. Calling it Melrose Place in space is incredibly short-sighted considering CBS casting (some but not all) young attractive people is basically a foregone conclusion regardless of the setting. I'm not advocating turning it into Game of Thrones content-wise. What Game of Thrones does well that the last few Trek series haven't is create good characters and build a believable world. It's also better at getting people to care enough about the characters to watch in droves each week. Would anything I posted help Trek do those things? I have no idea. Like I said I'm just throwing out ideas.
Having characters who are low ranked exist in the series and seeing things from their point of view is fine, but if the decision makers aren't main characters that would be a problem.
That isn't actually how it works. Take for example BSG's spin-off Caprica, which was a planet-based character drama with very little visual effects but was in fact more expensive to produce than BSG.
Actually, a drama about lower ranked officers and crewmen and seeing the ship's adventures through their perspective could be an interesting and fresh slant on things. I'd welcome such a show and wouldn't care if the ship's senior staff weren't main characters. Besides, Trek's over-reliance on the senior officers doing everything is unrealistic bordering on silly. In real world situations the ones in charge sit back and watch their staff do their work for them, not do the work themselves.
I'd offer another alternative: American Horror Story. This series is a novel approach at storytelling using the same actors in completely different roles and settings each season. I think it would be quite interesting to see a Trek series done in this genre.
Of course, fans would have to get over the idea that an actor can only play one person in the Trekverse (although this restriction was broken back in TOS anyway...).
It's long been noted that sending the majority of the senior staff on landing parties was silly, having the chief engineer be the one who crawls into the bowels of the engine is the same.
The average away missions would realistically consist of a lieutenant, a NCO and a half dozen junior enlisted personnel. You wouldn't sent the first officer any more than you would the captain. You wouldn't sent a surgeon, you'd send a medic.
I'm perfectly ok with the idea of a lower decks kind of series, and even of having some cadets in the cast, but the first Star Trek series in ten years should have actual Trek in it from the very beginning. Not hanging around in San Francisco (or any other planetside training base) for a year(s) until the cast graduates to space adventures. And ideally, it should have an interesting and diverse cast of characters (ie, not just a bunch of cadets who all went to the academy together).
I completely disagree.
Those shows are great but I fail to see how their model applies to Star Trek.
Trek, as we all know, is about seeking out new life and new civillisations. It is not about seeking out new life and waging a war to rule the galaxy or surviving in a post apocalyptic world overrun by zombies.
As I said in another thread it seems certain fans want Trek to be something it isn't and never has been. Doing something fresh within the Trek world is always welcome (Hello Deep Space 9) but changing Trek into something that doesn't fit its premise seems like suicide. Why take an established and beloved property and make it unrecognisable?
The key theme should be:
Space: the final frontier.
These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
Its 5 year mission: to explore strange new worlds,
to seek out new life and new civilizations,
to boldly go where no man has gone before.
Space: the final frontier.
These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
Its 5 year mission: to explore strange new worlds,
to seek out new life and new civilizations,
to boldly go where no man has gone before.
I don't think anyone is suggesting literally changing the subject matter of Trek to match those shows, just doing something in the same style, eg instead and adventure of the week and move on, have a season-long storyline and cast the net wide to focus on a large group of characters, some of which don't even meet others as opposed to the same seven guys week after week, some of which don't even really get anything to do.
There is no one like Harry Kim or Travis Mayweather in the main cast of Walking Dead. No reason why they should be in a Trek series either.
Actually, what would really help this show is if the characters for the main cast are actually people the writers have arcs and character development for, as opposed to what Voyager and especially Enterprise were guilty of which was basically filling a starship's staff, and that's who we'll be following.
