I have been rewatching TOS and TNG and every so often there is a crazy sci-fi medical case that makes up a significant part of the plot. Would a Star Trek Medical Drama work as a show? Many medical shows are close to BS anyway they could replace wrong science with made up space science and do a character show about Doctors. I suspect many will feel like this would be a waste of a Star Trek show like they do with S31 and Lower Decks, but the point would be to have something more approachable to a general audience and give a glimpse of 'civilian' life on Earth through the doctors. I guess the real question here, is would people who typically watch medical shows be interested in one in a sci-fi setting? I.e. is there a market for something like this?
In Trek, the medical solution to 99% of problems is to wave a gadget over the patient, so I personally wouldn't find it to be compelling TV. But I'm not into medical dramas anyway.
I think they've given up on "general audiences" and are going for strictly Trek fans with their Trek offerings. It gives them a consistent subscriber base with little risk. As far as Starfleet Medical goes? I wouldn't want something like that set on Earth. It would be more interesting to set it on some kind of frontier hub with a mix of species.
With Earth being the center of the federation, wouldn't that allow for a greater mix of species? Perhaps you mean humans in the minority. Clearly a show about medical things would have to make the medical things interesting. Why would you think that another poster would post "let's make a show that is 99% waving gadgets over sick people? Or that the worst case you can think of would be the only thing people on a writing staff could come up with?
I would like a Starfleet Medical show, but I would want it to be in the early days of the Federation. New junior doctors training and learning different anatomies, how to communicate with species where there is a language barrier. Perhaps a medical ship, assisting in conflict zones along the neutral zone border.
That or Star Trek Casualty/ER. Focus on a small group of medical staff, and show all sides to medical shifts. The emergencies, the unknown illnesses, the unknown species who need medical treatment. Maybe couch the show around a new base being opened in a region of space where initial membership talks are taking place, and there are long term conditions to treat following decades of war and conflict. A fragile peace, and not only medical treatment, but psychological patients too.
It kind of sounds like it would be for a niche audience, even among Trek fans. But then with CBS All Access doing a shitload of various spin-offs which focus on Section 31, teenage delinquents with their own starship and lower-ranked nobodies and rumoured to be doing shows about Starfleet Academy, Khan's life on Ceti Alpha V and a good portion of fandom clamoring for show set on the Pike-era Enterprise, I'm not sure there's much of an argument against doing a Starfleet Medical show. Though it should be noted with all the various facets of the Trek universe the novels delved into (among them the Starfleet Corps of Engineers, Department of Temporal Investigations, the Federation government and a Klingon ship) they've never tackled Starfleet Medical at all.
definately a medical ship, and not a fixed location, set towards the end of the 22nd century. the romulan war is history, but remains a scar in the memory of many. episodic, no getting trapped in boring season long arcs. the officers are starfleet, the medical personnel are a mix of starfleet and civilians. there are families too. the series does non-medical stories, character building, examming how the future is different than modern day society sometimes the ship engages in non-medical missions. first contact offering of services. exploring how a species medical procedures can be learned from. not always the same.
I agree, something like Starfleet House, MD where the focus is on diagnostics and the like would be better than a ER/Casualty-esque emergency medicine show.
Would the doctors find the cure to every single disease within a few hours of its discovery? I really hated all the shows in Trek that dealt with some unknown virus. How many times in history have doctors found the cure to some virus within one day of its discovery? The best scene about doctors in Trek was when that woman was using dying patients to experiment with new medicines in Ethics. To make a Star Trek medical show interesting to general audiences, all the doctors would have to be banging each other. Maybe put it on HBO or Netflix?
I don't think this kind of show would work. The whole point of emergency medicine / hospital shows is that people can identify with the patients -- what happens to them could (or did) happen to us. I just don't see a show about the made-up alien disease of the week that gets cured by some technobabble recourse would hold anyone's interest.
Trek has used the plight and situations experienced by Alien species as an allegory for the human experience. It could be about medical ethics as much as everyday patient care.
I was thinking perhaps more of an Emergency! format, with the rescues taking up as much time as the hospital stuff...but then you'd have to come up with constant excuses for why they don't just use the transporter.
In the first half century of it's existence, the transporter might not have been particularly precise in it's targeting. I can't remember, during ENT did we ever see them beam down to a planet's surface? A medical ship's transporter in the 2190's might have range restrictions.
Don't know that this sort of Trek would have broad enough appeal to last long. Maybe as a one-off or mini-series. But, if you want to see how to do a medical SF series right, look at the Sector General books/stories by James White - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sector_General