How should the franchise have been developed after TNG?

[Captrek]

I think Voyager was a big mistake. It’s about the bridge crew on a starship who encounter alien worlds and the various kinds of crises that can occur aboard a starship. It features a slightly different cast of characters in a slightly different situation, but when you get right down to it it’s essentially the same premise as TOS and TNG. By S7 on TNG, it looked like they were starting to run out of good ideas of what to do with that premise, and Voyager proved it.

Then after VOY’s seven seasons of what can be described as mediocre television at best, they started yet another series based on the same premise, driving viewers away in droves and ultimately resulting in the series’ cancellation after four seasons. Even with the built-in audience that comes with the Trek name, they couldn’t attract enough viewers to stay on the air.

I think they should have explored different aspects of the Trek universe. I had an idea for a series (I wanted to call it Star Trek: Capital) about the highest levels of the Federation government. It would have been kind of like The West Wing set in the Star Trek universe (although nobody would have called it that because this was several years before The West Wing hit the air).

Sure, there would have been howls of protest from a lot of TOS/TNG fans whose thinking was trapped in the box and wanted the same basic premise to go on forever. (There were howls of protest when DS9 was announced, and this would have been a much bigger departure.) A lot of TOS/TNG fans would have hated it. On the other hand, it would have appealed to a lot of people who didn’t like TOS/TNG. And as it turned out, it would have been especially interesting watching a peacetime government make the transition to a wartime government when the Dominion War started two or three seasons in. An added bonus is that the series would have had a much lower special effects budget than TNG or DS9.

This series could have been followed by other series that explored different situations in the Star Trek universe, instead of trying to go on forever with starship-based adventures.

What do you think? What should have been done with the franchise after TNG? Should they have gotten away from the starships? What other aspects of the Trek universe could or should have been explored?

 

[Anwar]

I think the better approach simply would have been not to have more than one series on at a time and to wait at least 2 years after the last one finished to air the next one. The shows could have been about anything, but not flooding the airwaves and spreading the writers too thinly would have solved most problems.

But your idea of the Trek government series would have been nice.

 

[clint g]

I dont think there was anything wrong with what they did for the most part, the problem is that they were trying to do too much at one time. Two series and multiple movies occurring at the same time? It was over kill and left the creative team worn out. I think trek would have been better off doing one or the other, movies or a show

 

[Nerys Myk]

It's called "Star Trek" So being "about the bridge crew on a starship who encounter alien worlds and the various kinds of crises that can occur aboard a starship." Makes perfect sense. It's all about how you execute it.

 

[plynch]

It's called "Star Trek" So being "about the bridge crew on a starship who encounter alien worlds and the various kinds of crises that can occur aboard a starship." Makes perfect sense. It's all about how you execute it.

Doggone it, people keep beating me to the punch.

I find VOY fun to watch, but I'll admit it's got a lot of flaws. Like a bad baseball team. There's nothing wrong with the game of baseball, just a lack of talent to execute.

I don't think they had the talent by the time of VOY. You could take that premise with the same characters and very different writers and had a great tv series. I had hope for ENT when it was on, but found it dull. Same thing there, though -- different writer producers, it could have been great.

 

[Starbreaker]

They made the right calls when it came to developing the series. It was the executions that could have been refined.

 

[Finn]

No. Voyager had a HUGE Potential. Voyager actually followed the spirit of Star Trek more than DS9 or even TNG (they seemed to stay close to home all the time unstead of exploring the unknown). But the writing was left to be desired.

 

[Navaros]

Starships were not the problem. The problem was bad writing.

Both VOY and ENT had excellent premises on paper, and then completely abandoned them by the time the shows went to air. Then they added insult to injury with no character development or story development, no conflict, and more useless 'holodeck malfunction' kind of 'stories' etc. etc.

If they had developed the premises of VOY and ENT that they had written on paper, they could have been great shows. By the same token, any other premise those showrunners tried to develop would have been likewise fubared since the same people would have made the same mistakes as they did with VOY and ENT, regardless of what premise they were working with.

If there was any way to improve things, then it could have been accomplished by hiring better showrunners, rather than trying to switch premises; that is what would have resulted in good development. A new premise could have worked too in the hands of different showrunners than B&B, but whether or not it did would depend on what the showrunners did with it. The old premise could have worked just fine too, in competent hands.

 

[Captrek]

It's called "Star Trek" So being "about the bridge crew on a starship who encounter alien worlds and the various kinds of crises that can occur aboard a starship." Makes perfect sense.

A lot of people advanced exactly that argument against the creation of DS9 when it was first announced. (“It’s called Star Trek! It’s about boldly going where no man has gone before! A space station doesn’t trek or boldly go anywhere!”) It was a specious argument against DS9, and it’s a specious argument here. Just because the original premise of a show is expressed in the show’s title and opening monologue doesn’t mean that all sequels and spinoffs have to be about the same thing. How much is there really to do on Starfleet’s big ships? Between TOS, TNG, VOY, and ENT, we got 21 seasons of that, and they simply didn’t have nearly enough stories to fill up 21 years. They should have embraced the true spirit of Trek and boldly gone where no show had gone before.

You say that Voyager had potential that was squandered. (I argue that they were operating at a disadvantage with 10 years’ worth of starship stories already used up.) But how much potential do you find in the concept for Star Trek: Capital? Wouldn’t that have been much more original and had even more room to explore concepts that had not previously been explored? And wouldn’t the much lower special effects budget have left them with more money to hire decent writers?

Admittedly, a lot of Trek fans wouldn’t have liked it. They’d have missed their starships and phasers and tricorders and space battles. But at the same time, it would have reached out to a new group of fans who don’t care much about phasers and tricorders and space battles.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

In retrospect, moving TNG from television to the movies was a business mistake. Paramount should have kept TNG going on television in some form for as long as possible, "evolving" it and keeping contract costs down through the replacement of actors when necessary ala M*A*S*H. There would have been no need or really any place for a second syndicated TV series.

Voyager was a response to a specific business situation - the launch of the UPN network in a joint venture with Chris-Craft. If TNG had still been running, the producers might well have decided to develop a series more like DS9 for the new network rather than a second starship-based show.

 

[plynch]

In retrospect, moving TNG from television to the movies was a business mistake. Paramount should have kept TNG going on television in some form for as long as possible . . . .

I would second that, as I think ST is a format for telling stories on tv. That was GR's idea, anyway.

Was part of the problem that the series developed a stable of writers rather than accepting submissions from outsiders (including s-f writers)? I was hopeful that ENT was going to be very different, but it "sounded" just like another Trek show, though its premise was very different.

 

[Captrek]

Was part of the problem that the series developed a stable of writers rather than accepting submissions from outsiders (including s-f writers)?

Makes sense to me. Some of the best episodes of TOS were written by SF writers such as Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, Norman Spinrad, Jerome Bixby, and David Gerrold. None of the later series ever had writers like that.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

TNG had its greatest success - and the greatest sustained first-run success of any Trek series - after having developed a dependable in-house writing staff that included people like Ron Moore and Joe Menosky and a number of others. In fact, most TV by that time was staff-written; comparing what was done on TNG to how TOS had been produced back in the 60s is comparing two different eras of TV as much as two different TV shows. So no, that's not it at all.

During all the years that Trek accepted submissions from folks outside the business, only a handful of scripts or stories were purchased and produced. What was done somewhat more frequently was the purchase of a story premise based on a pitch or submitted script. So as nice as Trek's "open-door submissions policy" was, its importance has been exaggerated in some respects - although in others, such as that it opened the door to Ron Moore, it was pretty damned important. But the vast majority of the work was always done by staff writers, from the very beginning of TNG onward.

 

[Anwar]

Didn't Micheal Piller establish an Open-Door submissions thing for TNG? I remember that was how they got "Yesterday's Enterprise".

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

I love reading Articles of the Federation and i think, Trek West Wing. Why not? It'd be awesome.

 

[Chrisisall]

The main problem with Voyager, aside from lack of bold writing at times, was the ship's "meh" design. It was neither offensive, nor inspired.

 

[Nerys Myk]

It's called "Star Trek" So being "about the bridge crew on a starship who encounter alien worlds and the various kinds of crises that can occur aboard a starship." Makes perfect sense.

A lot of people advanced exactly that argument against the creation of DS9 when it was first announced. (“It’s called Star Trek! It’s about boldly going where no man has gone before! A space station doesn’t trek or boldly go anywhere!”) It was a specious argument against DS9, and it’s a specious argument here. Just because the original premise of a show is expressed in the show’s title and opening monologue doesn’t mean that all sequels and spinoffs have to be about the same thing. How much is there really to do on Starfleet’s big ships? Between TOS, TNG, VOY, and ENT, we got 21 seasons of that, and they simply didn’t have nearly enough stories to fill up 21 years. They should have embraced the true spirit of Trek and boldly gone where no show had gone before.

You say that Voyager had potential that was squandered. (I argue that they were operating at a disadvantage with 10 years’ worth of starship stories already used up.) But how much potential do you find in the concept for Star Trek: Capital? Wouldn’t that have been much more original and had even more room to explore concepts that had not previously been explored? And wouldn’t the much lower special effects budget have left them with more money to hire decent writers?

Admittedly, a lot of Trek fans wouldn’t have liked it. They’d have missed their starships and phasers and tricorders and space battles. But at the same time, it would have reached out to a new group of fans who don’t care much about phasers and tricorders and space battles.

My argument is that they needed better executed shows. That the setting has little to do with how well the show is produced. I happen to like DS9, the wormhole provided the "strange new world" and "boldly go" angles. I didn't like VOY. It was squandered through bad writing, not from lack of stories or even using familier plots. Saying that all the Starship based stories are used up is shortsighted.

As for "Star Trek: Capitol". Might be interesting, but I can't see it appealing to Trek Fans or casual fans. Since we don't really know much about the workings of the "Highest levels of the Federation government." there's not much of a hook. A crack team of diplomats being sent to hot spots in the Galaxy might work better than a SF show set on Earth.

 

[Tachyon]

I think Voyager was a big mistake.

Disagreed 200%.

I think both DS9 and Voyager were well done, though I personally prefer Voyager from those two. But I wouldn't change either of them to anything. Ever.

The main problem with Voyager, aside from lack of bold writing at times, was the ship's "meh" design. It was neither offensive, nor inspired.

Voyager's design was the best one.

 

[Genesis Does]

I think that DS9 was the series that got stale (I mean, how many seasons can you have of interesting episodes about a Cardassian space station?), and VOY was Rick Berman's perfect Star Trek. I think even 7 seasons was a little too much though for VOY. IIRC, both TNG and VOY got a lot of the spotlight in their last seasons though, at least in my neck of the woods. Nemesis and ENT was the sign that Star Trek needed it's nap and juice.

 

[Skywalker]

I think that DS9 was the series that got stale (I mean, how many seasons can you have of interesting episodes about a Cardassian space station?)

At least seven.