Star Trek Without Starfleet?

What if there was a new Trek series set in the 24th century but not focusing on a Starfleet ship/station or crew? In "The Way Of The Warrior", Sisko and Worf spoke of the Nyberrite Alliance taking in experienced officers from other races--making them the interstellar version of the French Foreign Legion.

This notion has always intrigued me but we've never seen or heard of anything more about the Nyberrite or their alliance, so what if there we a series that was based on one of their cruisers? The lead character would be a human, formerly of Starfleet who left (either due to personal reasons or were booted out for something more serious), and signed onto an Alliance ship. There he/she works along side a wide array of other species, all there for their own reasons (the possibilities really are endless with who their shipmates are), carrying out patrol and exploratory missions on behalf of the Nyberrite. Ultimately though the human, and his/her alien shipmates, must confront their demons whilst trying to escape them and live their new lives.

I'd see the crew having one or two Nyberrite in the mix, though the aliens would make up the vast majority of the complement, with maybe another couple from Federation worlds and the rest being from neutral or customarily hostile species (I'd personally love to see a Gorn in the mix).

Would anyone else tune in or would it just he me?

 

Pass.

 

Better off just doing an original show about the Foreign Legion...IN SPACE!!!!!

 

The Trek universe is so vast and yet we always seem to focus on Starfleet. Your idea would definitely break that mold and give opportunity to different story telling.

 

Star Trek is about Starfleet.

 

True. But there've been 5 series and another one in the works, based primarily on Starfleet. After 50 years they've created an entire universe ready for different kinds of story telling. It would be interesting to explore those.

 

Starfleet isn't a type of storytelling. It's part of the setting.

 

It sound like a interesting idea.

It being set somewhat is the Star Trek universe, but separate enought to incorperate new concepts and themes, would be a fresh start without having to use another sorry "re-boot." By having it be a part of the Star Trek universe there would be a tie-in to bring in a established audience.

For some time I've personally have been interested in a counterpart to the Federation, one which isn't automatically another evil empire. Maybe the Nyberrite alliance is recruiting foreign officers because their own multi-species interstellar civilization is undergoing a rapid expansion and their fleet is growing too fast for their own people to occupy the needed experienced top positions.

One possibility for such a expansion is that a number of species are canceling their memberships in the Federation, and joining the Nyberrite alliance.

 

The fan film series Renegades tried something this (albeit on a super secret Starfleet mission), with mixed results:

 

Usually, but not alway. There were episodes of DS9 that didn't have a single Starfleet officer in it. But it was in the Star Trek universe

And third of the crew of Voyager didn't think of themselves as Starfleet, there was a conversation between Janeway and Chakotay where (somewhat to Janeway's surprise) Chakotay told her this.

 

Still the setting is a station run by Starfleet and Starfleet ship.
Are there episodes of DS9 where Sisko, Dax, Bashier, O'Brien or Worf do not appear?

 

In my head, I see the Nyberrite as being one of the oldest races of the galaxy, who once did what Starfleet did and ventured out into space on peaceful exploration, but now after centuries they have taken a step back from the major interstellar events, with most of their population (maybe one that is starting to dwindle in numbers) being more interested in focusing on their core worlds--drafting in other races to fill out their ships to safeguard their interests further from home. But that's just how things look in my head.

 

I see (somewhat differently) the term "Nyberrite" as not referring to a particular species/race, but being a term that refers to a assemblage of species.

Older than the Federation would be fine, maybe it's larger as well.

 

I would watch something like that, but I think it would be neat as a sister series to a more traditional Trek series. I really enjoyed a fan series of scripts called Star Trek: Renegade (unrelated to the webseries Renegades) that has the motley crew of a civilian freighter returning to the Alpha Quadrant after fifty years to find the Dominion has invaded and already won, and so set about starting an insurrection to restore freedom. Now you don't need something that extreme but I think there could be a lot of interesting and different stories a civilian crew or an alien crew could have rather than a Starfleet one. I'm just very curious to see it happen and in this era of limited series you could do one for a year or two and then move on.

 

I think you need Star Fleet just to maintain some sort of continuity with the other series. Thinking about DS9, much of what they wanted to do with that show could've conceivably been done without any Federation involvement, with some additional characters obviously. But I can hear through the echoes of time the complaints from fans about a show with no Star Fleet officers, complaints that would probably still fill sections of this forum (!).

 

Maybe if it was a series about a civilian freighter (called, I dunno--the S.S. Serenity) and the adventures she and her motley crew have trying to make a living out on the final frontier, far from the shiny idyllic worlds of the Federation. Most of their jobs are legit, but some aren't. In those latter instances, they do their best to avoid running into Starfleet at all costs...

 

Sounds like a show I'd like.