How would you re-imagine and reboot Enterprise?

[Jedi Marso]

Mayweather could have been so much more than he was. Raised on a ship, visited numerous worlds in his childhood, and has dealt with Orion Traders, pirates, Nausicans, and any other number of aliens. Behind Hoshi and her linguistic skill, he should have been the second most important guy in the crew as far as Captain Archer was concerned- he's 'been there, done that, and has the T-shirt.' Arguably, in many situations, he would have been more important than Hoshi. By the end of the series he should have been a lieutenant, at least.

 

[RandyS]

1. Get rid of the lyrics to the theme song and just play it the way it was on Broken Bow's end credits.

2. Eliminate the Xindi season entirely. We already knew from past shows that Earth would be saved, so no suspense, no reason to watch.

3. Remove Trip as a character. Reed was much better. Give him a bigger part.

 

[fireproof78]

Mayweather could have been so much more than he was. Raised on a ship, visited numerous worlds in his childhood, and has dealt with Orion Traders, pirates, Nausicans, and any other number of aliens. Behind Hoshi and her linguistic skill, he should have been the second most important guy in the crew as far as Captain Archer was concerned- he's 'been there, done that, and has the T-shirt.' Arguably, in many situations, he would have been more important than Hoshi. By the end of the series he should have been a lieutenant, at least.

This goes to one of my ideas is have Earth a little more developed in terms of colonies, and ships. Yes, the Warp 5 one is cool and all but there is a lot of world building that could be done by them having other space farers out there, like the merchants that were shown, but more developed, and more distinct from Starfleet.

 

[Jedi Marso]

This goes to one of my ideas is have Earth a little more developed in terms of colonies, and ships. Yes, the Warp 5 one is cool and all but there is a lot of world building that could be done by them having other space farers out there, like the merchants that were shown, but more developed, and more distinct from Starfleet.

Yeah, that was one thing they didn't really capitalize on much that they should have- the idea that the Warp 5 engine didn't just enable mankind to push out farther, but to consolidate the gains already made. As I mentioned in the OP, Alpha Centauri should have already been contacted (or colonized, depending on the canon you subscribe to), there was Terra Nova 20 LY away, and maybe a couple other colonies closer in, to say nothing of the Andorians, Tellarites, and Vulcans. It would have been interesting to see the crew deal with humans more, especially in terms of the lawless elements that might have been queering humanity's chances of friendly relations with nearby alien species, or colonists worried that the Terran 'tax-man' was coming, bringing civilization and more people where they weren't wanted.

 

[fireproof78]

It would have been interesting to see the crew deal with humans more, especially in terms of the lawless elements that might have been queering humanity's chances of friendly relations with nearby alien species, or colonists worried that the Terran 'tax-man' was coming, bringing civilization and more people where they weren't wanted.

Agreed. Honestly, I would love for that to happen, and kind of a reverse "Firefly" idea where there is benevolence from United Earth and Starfleet, rather than ill intent, but still face that suspicion.

 

[Tenacity]

Shran becoming a member of the Enterprise

I've seen people post this idea going back for years, and it doesn't make sense. For Shran to become a member of the Enterprise's crew, even if he bumped T'Pol and became first officer, that would be a enormous professional demotion. From commanding starships and being a senior officer in the Andorian Imperial Guard, to play second fiddle to a Human aboard one of their tinker-toy ships.

 

[Golbolco]

This goes to one of my ideas is have Earth a little more developed in terms of colonies, and ships. Yes, the Warp 5 one is cool and all but there is a lot of world building that could be done by them having other space farers out there, like the merchants that were shown, but more developed, and more distinct from Starfleet.

Yeah, that was one thing they didn't really capitalize on much that they should have- the idea that the Warp 5 engine didn't just enable mankind to push out farther, but to consolidate the gains already made. As I mentioned in the OP, Alpha Centauri should have already been contacted (or colonized, depending on the canon you subscribe to), there was Terra Nova 20 LY away, and maybe a couple other colonies closer in, to say nothing of the Andorians, Tellarites, and Vulcans. It would have been interesting to see the crew deal with humans more, especially in terms of the lawless elements that might have been queering humanity's chances of friendly relations with nearby alien species, or colonists worried that the Terran 'tax-man' was coming, bringing civilization and more people where they weren't wanted.

I strongly agree with both of you. I have a small gripe with the Trek timeline in that, with the DY-100 and similar vessels existing as early as the 1990s, Humanity should have a decent spread throughout their local space; maybe no more than 25ly away at Vega, but surely warp speed was not necessary to colonize Alpha Centauri at only 4ly away. Presumably, far-flung human colonies launched without United Earth or Starfleet's knowledge could exist beyond Vega, and that's not even considering transplanting populations as w

I prefer the idea that Archer and co. should be just as much on a diplomacy mission as they are on an exploration mission. They're going to worlds to raise the flag for United Earth and bring Human colonies under a centralized authority now that the technology makes it possible, and I think it plays well into Archer's George Washington ethos. Interestingly, the first season was supposed to be more human-centric after the Earth concept was shed, but they ditched it. I think that's unfortunate, it's not as if the rubber foreheads for all of the first and second season's generic aliens really added that much to the series.

I've seen people post this idea going back for years, and it doesn't make sense. For Shran to become a member of the Enterprise's crew, even if he bumped T'Pol and became first officer, that would be a enormous professional demotion. From commanding starships and being a senior officer in the Andorian Imperial Guard, to play second fiddle to a Human aboard one of their tinker-toy ships.

As the series stands in its complete form, I think the best way to justify it would be to put Shran in an advisory role outside of the command structure. if I recall correctly, the end of Season 4 leaves Shran without a starship of his own to command and romantically interested in Jhamel. He could choose to serve with Archer because his life is now in a transitional phase.

In a fully reimagined series, I can see Shran coming aboard due to the pressures of the Romulan War dictating that he and his crew transfer onto the Enterprise, perhaps initially temporarily, to serve as shock troops or replacements for the MACOs/Starfleet Marines. Maybe Shran's commandos become the foundation for the later Starfleet Marines, in fact!

 

[Tenacity]

A crew on a ship flying around aimlessly

One of my big gripes about the first two seasons, they didn't seem to have a set agenda, and true mission.

 

[fireproof78]

I prefer the idea that Archer and co. should be just as much on a diplomacy mission as they are on an exploration mission. They're going to worlds to raise the flag for United Earth and bring Human colonies under a centralized authority now that the technology makes it possible, and I think it plays well into Archer's George Washington ethos. Interestingly, the first season was supposed to be more human-centric after the Earth concept was shed, but they ditched it. I think that's unfortunate, it's not as if the rubber foreheads for all of the first and second season's generic aliens really added that much to the series.

I agree. I think it would be nice if they were following up with merchant vessels and identifying potential allies as United Earth becomes more stable. It would be nice to see the conflict not just from hostile aliens, but distrustful colonists too.

 

[RandyS]

One of my big gripes about the first two seasons, they didn't seem to have a set agenda, and true mission.

I don't know about that. Archer and Trip in particular seemed to be hell bent on showing up the Vulcans every chance they got. Hell, Archer even admitted as much in the beginning of season four.

Personally, I'd have liked to see both those guys get their comeuppance some more. One of my favorite scenes in the entire show was the end of CONGENITOR. Trip just couldn't let Charles be, and had to stuck his stupid face where it didn't belong despite T'Pol's warning of noninterference. Trip's antics were directly responsible for Charles' suicide, and Archer rightfully chews him out about it. Sadly, we didn't see Trip lose status over it, like being sentenced to the brig for six years or something, but at least Archer knew enough to lay into him a little. One of my biggest annoyances about the show was that the Vulcans were completely right in trying to reign the reckless humans in at that point in history, but it was never taken far enough.

 

[Golbolco]

I agree. I think it would be nice if they were following up with merchant vessels and identifying potential allies as United Earth becomes more stable. It would be nice to see the conflict not just from hostile aliens, but distrustful colonists too.

When I first started watching ENT, I began drafting a map of the Enterprise's maiden voyage. It's on a stained sheet of graphing paper and in no condition to post on the Fan Art subforum, mind you, but it helped me get an idea of what the Enterprise was doing and roughly where it was going.

Archer and co. reach Risa (90ly from Earth) by the end of Season 1, and accordingly I set 90ly as my rough diameter for the first map; but for all of the talk about how the Enterprise had been the first vessel from Earth to reach this distance, I just couldn't buy it. Oh sure, they might be the first vessel from Earth to go this far, but Humans like Mayweather aren't from Earth. About 90 years since Earth's first warp flight, and sure the Vulcans have been stalling Starfleet for maybe the last 30 of that because of Romulan meddling, and people had been leaving Earth long before Starfleet or perhaps even before Zephram Cochrane was making his way to Alpha Centauri.

United Earth and Starfleet can't even find a colony 20ly from Earth before they achieve Warp 5, but Vega has a colony 25ly away and it's described as though it's the furthest Human settlement under United Earth's control. I think that ENT needed to lean harder into the plot point of reuniting Humanity. If Kahn Noonien Singh, a war criminal, could escape Earth's orbit and go missing for 200 years, then I'm sure plenty of others did the same thing. The first season of ENT should have been all about bringing together the disparate merchant companies, mercenary organizations, lost colonies, and wayward travelers under one banner. Earth has finally recovered from the Post-Atomic Horror and she's here to collect her children. I think this very smoothly segues into the Xindi (or Kzinti, as I'm starting to favor) backlash and fear of Humanity, followed by expanding from uniting Humanity to uniting the four dominant species of the Alpha-Beta Meridian against the Romulan threat.

 

[Vale]

• The NX-01 design would be different. The interior sets, bar main engineering, were fantastic; but the ship was too big and look too advanced on the outside. I'd like it to be the "warp delta" ship we saw a couple of times:

Or the Emmette that we glimpse in the title sequence (love those big low-tech engine exhausts!):

Both combine a certain sleekness with a retro charm. I never liked the idea that humans, as the least advanced of the Federation founding races, somehow hit the perfect starship design and set the pattern for centuries of Starfleet vessels on their first try. This design could also be the origin of the famous Starfleet delta logo.

• The warp core would be MUCH bigger and look more like the TOS "pipe cathedral". It should fill a comparatively large percentage of the NX-01's interior. I disliked the "warp boiler" core aboard the Enterprise; I thought it should have been a huge industrial complex, not a neat single room. CGI and forced perspective sets could be used for this.

• Phlox and T'Pol would be combined into one character. To me it makes more sense that a Vulcan observer/liaison would be put in a position outside the immediate command structure – I hated it when T'Pol took command of the NX-01 early on because it's an Earth ship, so the next in command should be the next most senior Earth officer. I like the idea of a Vulcan chief medical officer that is initially standoffish with all the humans aboard the NX-01 – a sort of combined Spock and McCoy in one.

• Per the original concept, the NX-01 wouldn't launch until later in the first season.

• The Temporal Cold War never happens, because it's complete bollocks.

• Ditto the Xindi arc. The 9/11 overtones were distasteful and while some season three episodes were great the whole temporal/multi-dimensional aspect of things was just messy and unnecessarily complicated.

• No anachronistic alien encounters. No Ferengi and absolutely no Borg. Perhaps there are rumours of Klingons that the Vulcans are cagey about, but if we see them at all it shouldn't be until much later in the show. Any reference to the Nausicaans should be replaced with Orions.

• Let's start seeing the Romulans sneaking around earlier too, and start properly building towards the Romulan War.

• Let's see more of the "space boomers" hauling cargo or establishing colonies, and have a more detailed look at what the coming advent of (relatively) fast warp drive and increasing ties between humans and alien races means for their way of life.

• No transporters at all – certainly not on any human ship.

• Completely change the character of Trip, because he's an ass. Maybe, if we're losing Phlox, have John Billingsley playing a different chief engineer as a sort of substitute father figure for Archer.

• Shran gets promoted to a main character at some point.

 

[fireproof78]

Earth has finally recovered from the Post-Atomic Horror and she's here to collect her children. I think this very smoothly segues into the Xindi (or Kzinti, as I'm starting to favor) backlash and fear of Humanity, followed by expanding from uniting Humanity to uniting the four dominant species of the Alpha-Beta Meridian against the Romulan threat.

Kzinti for sure. No Xindi or Suliban. Other than that, I like it and like them having some sort of forward momentum to their mission.

 

[Golbolco]

Kzinti for sure. No Xindi or Suliban. Other than that, I like it and like them having some sort of forward momentum to their mission.

For me, I love the Delphic Expanse arc. I think it's a cool idea and while it wasn't always perfect, the character development was stellar and necessary for a series that had largely stalled on that for the first two seasons.

I don't love the Xindi. They're not memorable. They have five designs, none of which I love. I do like the explanation for how the Xindi are largely cut off from the rest of the Galaxy and will remain that way for some time, but we run into a similar distance problem with the edge of the Expanse only being 50ly from Earth.

I like the Kzinti but I don't know if there are rights problems with including Known Space elements into Star Trek. When I think about it, the Spheres and the Sphere-Builders sort of resemble the Ringworld and the Pak, with an interdimensional twist. I think that the best way to reimagine it might be to place the Delphic Expanse in what will become the Neutral Zone, and have the Xindi/Kzinti being manipulated by the Romulans instead of the Sphere-Builders. I like the Spheres and the anomalies, though; it's hard to say how these can be repurposed after injecting the Romulans into the arc.

In general, exploring an unstable part of space is just a very cool idea to me. I'd hate to see it ditched entirely.

 

[oberth]

I've seen people post this idea going back for years, and it doesn't make sense. For Shran to become a member of the Enterprise's crew, even if he bumped T'Pol and became first officer, that would be a enormous professional demotion. From commanding starships and being a senior officer in the Andorian Imperial Guard, to play second fiddle to a Human aboard one of their tinker-toy ships.

having got his ship shot out from under his ass making shran some sort of liasion may be in line with showing him his place for the andorian brass. he said it himself: he doesn't expect to get a new ship anytime soon. so taking this unique job is not so bad - especially compared to counting used combat boots in a remote outpost.

i think the crew was too small and with that the ship. for comparsion look at the sizes of wet navy heavy crusiers in the last 150 years - they get smaller and need less personnel over time. nx-01 needs to have an engineer in every cupboard. whenever reed orders an as of that episode not seen security dude around i think that guy must have 4 more full time jobs (mess hall, protein resequenzing plant, janitor and "shovelling antimatter into the reactor")

i nearly forgot sth: compared to ncc-1701 life is way too safe for redshirts on nx-01

 

[Airmandan]

Definitely needs to be a much higher turnover rate amongst the crew. Deaths, injuries or mental breakdowns would be high.

What would happen if you had one of the far flung human colonies be remnant's from the WW3 conflict? For them the conflict never ended. Classic Trek trope. There could be where you find Arik Soong working on his genetic modifications. Could go for a couple episodes of the crew trying to deal with the situation until it devolves into the populace wiping themselves out rather than rejoin with Earth.

 

[Golbolco]

Definitely needs to be a much higher turnover rate amongst the crew. Deaths, injuries or mental breakdowns would be high.

The problem I foresee with a higher turnover rate is that there is no recruitment pool as it stands. Perhaps this is a new role to give to the Enterprise: on their way to making contact with Human colonies, someone on board should be in charge of recruitment. Reed or Mayweather are good candidates for this role. In general, Archer should be handing out field commissions and setting up Starfleet chapters or at least dropping subspace buoys at worlds that choose to become affiliated.

The Enterprise might actually need to be more of a tug than anything, dropping off prefabbed space station modules to build Earth Outposts and Starbases, with a large cargo hold and hangar bay for all of its buoys and several more shuttles to compensate for no transporter. I don't think the scale or tech level would be appropriate, but could there be manufacturing aboard the ship for this purpose?

Under these constraints, the NX-01 might actually have to be somewhat bigger than the NCC-1701. After all, primitive technology is often made smaller as it's refined. Much of the bulk of the ship should be taken up by space completely unfit for normal living.

What would happen if you had one of the far flung human colonies be remnant's from the WW3 conflict? For them the conflict never ended. Classic Trek trope. There could be where you find Arik Soong working on his genetic modifications. Could go for a couple episodes of the crew trying to deal with the situation until it devolves into the populace wiping themselves out rather than rejoin with Earth.

I like this idea! I think Arik Soong makes a fitting reoccurring villain and they should have brought him in earlier, so I like the idea that it's Archer and co. who first discover him and escort him back to Earth after he destroys a colony. In general, the connection between Khan and Noonien Soong seems like it's walking a fine line, and the way Arik decides to switch over to cybernetics is unrealistic--as if a geneticist could just switch tracks that easily!--but over a few seasons and with some caution, the character could be developed in a way that makes a lot of sense.

 

[oberth]

there's also the fact that other captains might want to offer promotions to nx-01 crew members to get some deep space experience into their crews - have malcolm reed complain: why is everybody steeling my ncos the moment they become useful?

---

as to shields and plating: i always thought shields to work in a certain distance off the ship while platings are an impact protection - so to me that's definately not the same.

 

[Jedi Marso]

For me, I love the Delphic Expanse arc. I think it's a cool idea and while it wasn't always perfect, the character development was stellar and necessary for a series that had largely stalled on that for the first two seasons.

I don't love the Xindi. They're not memorable. They have five designs, none of which I love. I do like the explanation for how the Xindi are largely cut off from the rest of the Galaxy and will remain that way for some time, but we run into a similar distance problem with the edge of the Expanse only being 50ly from Earth.

I like the Kzinti but I don't know if there are rights problems with including Known Space elements into Star Trek. When I think about it, the Spheres and the Sphere-Builders sort of resemble the Ringworld and the Pak, with an interdimensional twist. I think that the best way to reimagine it might be to place the Delphic Expanse in what will become the Neutral Zone, and have the Xindi/Kzinti being manipulated by the Romulans instead of the Sphere-Builders. I like the Spheres and the anomalies, though; it's hard to say how these can be repurposed after injecting the Romulans into the arc.

In general, exploring an unstable part of space is just a very cool idea to me. I'd hate to see it ditched entirely.

More good ideas here.

The problem with expanse being only 50 LY from Earth is not a big one, if Archer and his crew solve this one in the 22nd Century. By the time of TOS, it's simply a settled issue that doesn't merit mention, as there is no TOS episode that hearkens back to it. By the 24th, it's a historical footnote in the action-packed decades leading up to the founding of the UFP.

 

[oberth]

More good ideas here.

The problem with expanse being only 50 LY from Earth is not a big one, if Archer and his crew solve this one in the 22nd Century. By the time of TOS, it's simply a settled issue that doesn't merit mention, as there is no TOS episode that hearkens back to it. By the 24th, it's a historical footnote in the action-packed decades leading up to the founding of the UFP.

yeah, but what happened to suliban and xindi? do we need two shows about their extinction? or may be we can handle that in one show star trek: the suliban-xindi war where they nuke eachother into oblivion in the pilot and the crew of uss holmes then tries to find out what happened over seven seasons