Trek’s biggest missed opportunities

Okay, so here’s a question for the room. What, in your opinion, were Star Trek’s biggest squandered opportunities? This could be from a dramatic perspective (eg, VOY failing to explore the Maquis), a production standpoint (eg, alienating David Gerrold), or an ethical viewpoint (eg, failing to represent LGBTQ characters until the 2010s)

I’ve got two in mind

First, the Search for Spock would have been much much better if the production team had followed the template of Wrath of Khan and made the movie sequel to another TOS episode — specifically, Mirror Mirror. For one thing, the mirror universe had an entire spare Spock just lying around ready to receive prime Spock’s memories by mind-melding with McCoy. Instead of drama coming from “how will Spock get through puberty” it could come from an invasion of doppelgängers, so the crew doesn’t know who to trust. And imagine if the person responsible for the death of David Marcus was not some random Klingon but … another James T. Kirk.

Second; I wish the final episodes of DS9 tweaked the pah-wraith storyline to tie in more strongly to Sisko’s visions / experiences from Far Beyond the Stars. Dukat had already demonstrated symptoms of psychosis and an inability to distinguish objective reality from delusion. What if Sisko faced the same problem? What if there was real ambiguity as to which Sisko was “real”? The writers tried hard to make Dukat and Sisko mirrors of each other and didn’t entirely succeed. Pitting both of them against reality itself could have helped, I think.

what other brilliant ideas do you have about what Trek could have done differently / better over the years?

 

I think this is going to be a very interesting thread. I'll put some thought into this and come back with the items I feel were most underutilized.

 

There are so many Trek does like to shoot itself in the foot. Today I'll go with...

Not making Star Trek: The Academy Years for the 25th anniversary. That film would have been fantastic.

 

DS9 not being continued up until season 12 and then given a 5 movie deal.

VOY never digging down into its premise and pushing a motely crew to their limits whilst being lost and alone on a long trek back home, they really had it far too easy.

 

For the most part, squandered opportunities in Star Trek tend to be more generalized, as in Bry Sinclair's post.

As far as what a more direct squandering may be, the debate is going to be between the extremes of stories that the original creators would have never thought of, as in OP, or stories that were thought of, but never made it to the screen, large or small, as per King Daniel.

 

For me it comes back to Insurrection. That movie should have been set during the Dominion War and been a WW2 style action/drama. A “men on a mission” style movie like The Dirty Dozen or a prestige style movie like Saving Private Ryan.

they were just so determined to keep the tv-verse and movie-verse mostly separate.

 

STAR TREK: GENERATIONS, not exploring and fleshing out the mysteries of Guinan and her people including the villain by making the movie a Borg story where Soran was looking for salvation.

 

1. Star Trek: Enterprise. I would have been far more excited about a prequel that respected TOS continuity in terms of stories as well as aesthetic.

2. Setting Star Trek II more than 10 years in-universe after the events of The Motion Picture. We never got a second five-year mission.

2½. Not keeping the uniforms of TMP. The grey/blue ones were boring, but I liked the white and yellow/brown versions.

3. Not showing us more of the Enterprise-D, including Cetacean Ops!

You think so? There's a story outline here. Doesn't sound all that special to me. Moreover, we probably wouldn't have got Star Trek VI with the old crew if the Academy movie had been made. (But also no Star Trek V.)

 

The adventures of Captain Robert April and the Starship Class, USS Enterprise to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life in an age of a pre-formidable universe. Sigh. It's what I thought I was going to see when my Dad introduced me to Enterprise. I was deeply disappointed. The series kept proving everything TOS did, Enterprise did it first, even when I saw the Klingon trial from VI which was something new and only Kirk and Bones experienced such a historical event but alas I discovered Archer beat them to it! Bullsh!t!

 

Never doing the JFK/time traveling Klingons story.
Also, Planet of the Titans.

Kor

 

I'm not sure. Did you read the story outline? Kinda feels like a supersized TOS episode to me.

 

In "Voyager" instead of Janeway having been the Captain all along, she should have been first officer and the Captain gets killed. Then there could have been an extra depth to command and people's acceptance/questioning of it.

 

Khan's consciousness merging with the Genesis explosion. - Kirk, my old friend, It appears -revenge keepeth one's own wounds green.

Space "seed", full circle - Yeah I went there.

 

True, and the two factions Starfleet and Maquis all made friends way to easy the first eps.
Uneasy tension for the necessary alliance should have lasted much longer, with the Maquis retaining more of their identity, the payoff becoming a crew/family would have meant more.

 

1) The lack of ambition in Voyager and Enterprise, sticking too close to the TNG formula.

2) The awfulness of Insurrection, which was following a strong film with wide appeal.

3) Paramount choosing to prioritise VHS sales from a small number of fans in Australia and elsewhere rather than building the fanbase through decent TV exposure (a mistake they've repeated by pulling Disco from Netflix).

4) The time gap between Into Darkness and Beyond.

5) Not making the Tarantino film.

6) Constantly failing to finish long-term stories well. Disco and Picard have notably failed in this respect but it's nothing new - DS9's Dominion war became a mess, Voyager just meandered along to an abrupt end and Enterprise didn't even bother finishing the TCW.

7) The poor quality of tie-ins. Trek games have mostly been a wasteland, especially in the last couple of decades, and the books went off a cliff.

 

Really? I’m too ignorant of both to actually argue the point, but I thought that both STO and the Post-Nemesis lit-verse were fairly well-regarded.

 

As a US fan I’m particularly interested in things like this. This seems like bad business and bad ethics—pursuing short-term revenues over long-term growth. It seems almost poignantly stupid to limit global access to a show that worked specifically to overcome international divisions from its earliest incarnations.

 

Star Trek: Nemesis. Instead of trying to rectify the previous mistakes from Insurrection, they decided it was a great idea to make an even worse film. Bombed so horribly that it almost killed the franchise.

Well, there's also the cancellation of TOS. One of the biggest mistakes ever, but not at fault of the producers. It's awfully short when compared with the other series. While season 3 was weaker, I still imagine how season 4 would look like, not counting TAS.

 

The part of this story I always liked was that once Nielsen ratings started reporting demographics in the early 70s, NBC executives lost their minds over what a mistake they had made

 

That's my subjective opinion coming through; I'm sure some others would disagree.

I couldn't stand the novel relaunch. I own over 100 Trek novels, but stopped buying them soon into the relaunch, and stopped reading them at all a few years later. Suffice to say that the number of novels published dried up pretty dramatically, so plenty of other people evidently also stopped buying them.

Star Trek Online has a decent loyal audience, but it's very much a niche one - it's not the sort of game that attracts a wider audience and could help to grow the fanbase and brand. There's very little else of note. I'd have thought a decent RPG or Telltale-style game might have had an impact - one of the latter is finally on the horizon.