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It's brainstormin' Time! Cool stuff the show coulda, shoulda done

Gaith

Gaith

Vice Admiral
Admiral
While seconding and dissenting motions are of course permissible, no need to go into lots of detail or tense debates; this thread is all about having fun with ideas that just might have made the series a bit more memorable. :bolian:


- No damn S1-2 K-Mart rug-catsuit for T'Pol. Ugh! Those S3-4 colored suits (and in more colors; where's my sunflower yellow and lime green?!), or standard unis only. :p

- A small, cramped greenhouse room (see other thread)

- A legitimately badass security chief who Knows Kung Fu and Will Break You

- At least one ep in real time - sorta like 24, but less torture-happy, and with transporters

- Karaoke Nights!

- More flashback eps a la "First Flight"

- A series regular with dyed hair?

- A black-and-white ep, not commented on in-universe

- An African regular, with an accent to match

- Trip: "Hey, you know that today is Star Wars' birthday?"
> Hoshi: "Oh, cool, that's a great trilogy; my friends and I all loved that as kids."
> Trip: "You know they actually made three more movies a decade or so later?"
> Hoshi: "What?!"

- Archer's little sis is getting married... and Archer can't stand the groom!

- Badminton tournaments

- A crewman gets knocked up

- Archer's zippers keep breaking: "Someday, the 'fleet's gonna have to find a better manufacturer of these things."

- Some of the E² crew is brought and stays aboard


... Comencemos la fiesta! :cool:
 
Lets see

Have T'Pol as an advisor only.

Make Reed a Lt. Cmdr instead of Lt and second officer say after Trip
 
Instead of trying to chart its own path, allot more foreshadowing of later Star Trek events, like Observer Effect, (ENT:4.11) would have been nice. It's a Enterprise top 3 of mine, for sure.
 
Have an episode where the Enterprise has to rescue the real ECS Kobayashi Maru. The event that inspired the training simulation. They could even have used the exact distress call from Wrath of Khan.

Something a LOT better than the awful novel.
 
Travis gets more than 3 lines per season.

Below decks characters take over for one episode.

Roommate living - I see The Odd Couple, with phase pistols.
 
An encounter with a Q - but not a typical Q encounter like we've come to expect. Have the crew experience his/her/its reality-bending antics without ever revealing himself/herself/itself to them as a being of unfathomable power. Just subtle (but not too subtle) hints to the audience and then, at the very end...

Archer completes his log and says something like "We may never know precisely what caused the strange phenomenon we experienced, but one thing is clear bla bla bla yadda yadda baby gazelles bla bla bla..."

And then we see the Q (whose onscreen "name'' does NOT involve the letter Q in any way at all) alone. He/she snaps their fingers...and the episode ends right there.
 
The Enterprise discovers mysterious signals in subspace, that keep repeating dictionaries of languages for unknown species. They chase down one subpace transmitter, which turns out to be over a quarter of a million years old. It has an AI which operates the transmitter. The AI also makes nanotech monitors which it sends down to a planet. The monitors record the languages of the people there, the AI compiles the dictionary and broadcasts it onto a network. The Enterprise tries to find the center of the net, but the whole system is a type of von Neumann cellular automata which merely replicate themselves. The Enterprise finds that there are dictionaries for Latin, Chinese characters, French, Spanish, Arabic and English. Starfleet concludes that the signals could provide the basis for a Universal Translator but some want to sabotage the system anyhow, since it is after all a spy system.

Enterprise encounters an alien species whose legal/economic/diplomatic systems are based upon absolute truthfulness, and they have the technology to verify it by measuring creative thinking when supposedly recalling memories. When the technology is adapted to humans, it discovers that no humans have no memories that are not partially reconstructed/fabulated. The idea that something so perverse is possible induces a crisis in the alien system. Could it lead to an attack on Enterprise, or even some sort of crusade against Earth?

Enterprise encounters a civilization (Axanar?) that has engineered two relatively small black holes into mutual orbit, so that matter injected between them is so highly compressed that it breaks down into something very like the plasma present seconds after the Big Bang. The matter stream ejected in a jet is half antimatter and this civilization has devised a way to segregate and handle the antimatter. In other words, they really have solved the energy crisis. How does Enterprise justify asking for some of the antimatter the advanced civilization does not need?

In other words, SF stories.

In a character-driven, universe mythology vein: Driven by their "bond" to actually talk to each other about stuff, T'Pol demonstrates to Trip that there is no such thing as "free will," at least in the sense that what you want is determined by neurophysiology. The Vulcans conclude that doing what you want is not free will, but doing what reason tells you to do is true freedom. To do this successfully requires controlling the emotions. Trip tries to demonstrate to T'Pol that suppression of emotions is a kind of self-abuse, using some of Phlox's drugs in a reckless experiment. His flattening of affect does make him seem superficially more rational but his work suffers, leading to hilarity and jeopardy. T'Pol tries to break the bond, so that Trip doesn't feel compelled to continue, with her own use of drugs to free her emotions. Jeopardy and hilarity ensue. Archer settles the issue of free will by issuing orders, and Phlox tries to argue there is no such thing as rationality. The dramatic resolution is left to the viewer.
 
Totally redesign from the ground up to emulate 50s sci-fi from uniforms to ship design and everything in-between. More off-the-wall episodes, more traditional crew beam down to wacky planet episodes, less story arcs - more character arcs. Giant sentient blobs in space. Foxy robot women.
 
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My list:

  • The show could have been set 20 years earlier so that it could focus on Earth as a growing power within the Alpha Quadrant.
  • No Starfleet yet. There are two predecessors instead, the purely exploration-oriented United Earth Space Probe Agency and the totally defense-oriented United Earthcorps Command.
  • A less Star Trek-looking ship. Let it look like something evolved from the DY-series of ships. Screw calling it the Enterprise because some people might think it isn't a Star Trek series otherwise. Keep the submarine interior idea.
  • Have the ship be a joint venture between UESPA and Earthcorps (a heavily-armed exploration vessel). Have the crew composed of UESPA mission specialists and Earthcorps officers & enlisted who don't always see eye-to-eye on aspects of their mission.
  • Assign the ship to explore and patrol Sector 002 (the Alpha Centauri Sector) where new Earth colonies and a starbase are being developed. The region could also be home to some alien races and frequently will have Vulcan, Andorian, and Tellarite ships passing through at times.
  • No alien crewmembers aboard the ship, but feature a genetically-enhanced female first officer known only as Number One (a possible ancestor to the character that appeared in TOS) who serves the role as "the outsider observer" to the Human race.
  • Ditch photonic torpedoes and phase cannons & pistols. Spatial torpedoes and disruptor cannons & pistols (that don't have a stun setting yet).
  • Instead of having everyone wear blue jumpsuits with division-colored piping, have the jumpsuits be division-colored instead (olive green for command, burgundy for operations, and dark teal for sciences) with black shoulder piping. In lieu of rank pins, there are traditional rank stripes on the shoulder boards.
  • With the exception of T'Pol as the aforementioned Number One and Phlox as a Human, the rest of the characters remain mostly the same. Mayweather is a stronger presence on the show as a lieutenant with "Kirk-like tendencies." Sato's role is also beefed up as someone with experience dealing with different alien cultures. Reed is a major from Earthcorps.
  • No Klingons yet, but establish from the very beginning the mysterious Romulans as the most dangerous bad guys (not even the audience gets to see what they look like).
  • To avoid having too many "alien of the week" stories, there should also be stories in which the crew occasionally visits Earth colonies and the still-under-construction starbase. It should also meet up with other UESPA vessels in the regions periodically.
And if nothing else, don't be afraid to have some humor in the series now and then. Everything and everyone doesn't always have to be so serious all the time. Even having more bug-eyed monsters (both good and evil) wouldn't hurt.
 
Ringship.

A lot more trouble with the technology.

A more NASA style approach to the whole crew and ship.

Show the transition from post apocalyptic Earth to Paradise Earth. During that development, have them go against competing Earth space programs, bad guys. A war and race for resources and allies and in outer space. That earthlings trust one another and work together is a longer process and just doesn't happen only because of First Contact with the Vulcans.

No visual communication with many races.
No Klingons.
No Ferengi.
No Borg.
More language barrier problems.
More alien aliens and worlds.
More wonders, bizarre stuff and excitement. STRANGE NEW WORLDS, for crying out loud!
No transporters.
No phasers.
No photon torpedoes.
Nuclear weapons.
No Scott Bakula.
No T'Pol and especially no Vulcans are backstabbing racist motherfucking assholes plot.
No Temporal Cold War shit.

The show should have been a clear break from the standard Star Trek we got in 4 series. First Contact with the Klingons should have been like the finale of the first or even second season and lead to the introduction of the Prime Directive.

Actually, Strange New Worlds should have been the title of the show.
 
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Gaith said:
No damn S1-2 K-Mart rug-catsuit for T'Pol
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Think she should have been in Vulcan robes, a thin Japanese style kimono could have still showcased her boobs.

A small, cramped greenhouse room
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I wish the entire ship had been more cramped, while the design of the ship has grown on me, I still feel it is too big for that time period. By cramped, I mean WWII submarine crammed, narrow corridors, bunk rooms, people living alongside the machinery, for the size of the crew sickbay was ridiculously huge.

MacLeod said:
Have T'Pol as an advisor only.
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Yes please, regardless of her rank in the Vulcan services, it never made sense that she was in the chain of command aboard the Enterprise. This is something that Trip should have made clear to T'Pol in the first episode.

TUCKER: Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you just kind of an observer on this mission? I don't remember anyone telling me you were a member of Starfleet.

T'POL: My Vulcan rank supersedes yours.

TUCKER: But your Starfleet rank is non-existent, aboard this ship Chef has more ability to give lawful orders than you do.

TiberiusMaximus said:
And then we see the Q
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No, no and no.

jespah said:
Travis gets more than 3 lines per season.
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Make Travis much older, older than Archer, and a senior chief with years more space experience and little patience for Archer's whizkid inexperience and naivety.

:)
 
A true evolution of the Prime Directive arc including interference that has disastrous consequences.
 
T'Girl said:
jespah said:
Travis gets more than 3 lines per season.
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Make Travis much older, older than Archer, and a senior chief with years more space experience and little patience for Archer's whizkid inexperience and naivety.

:)
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I like this idea as there was never an older, experienced officer who counsels the captain in Trek. McCoy was only half of this as superior experience did not play a role in his relationship with Kirk.

While Montgomery was in my opinion the weakest actor of the show many people like his acting and except for the two stories on freighters (which were ironically more about the freighter folks gaining from the experience of Starfleet folks than the other way around) Travis never got anything to do.
 
No, no and no.
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You're entitled to your own wrong opinion. :D I'm kidding. I think it would be cool if done well. Just a tiny, tiny subtle hint that the strange events in the episode were caused/altered by a Q, not a typical Q episode.

Here's another, better idea. Instead of coming up with an all-new strange alien species for Phlox, why not make him a Bolian? Trek never covered the Bolians in detail, so there would still be plenty of potential opportunities for Phlox to display strange and alien behaviour.

Also, how about some actual badass Klingons? Perhaps even a mixture of ridged and non-ridged Klingons, and nothing to do with human Augments.

A true evolution of the Prime Directive arc including interference that has disastrous consequences.
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Yes! An episode that actually showed how interference can cause a terrible mess. And make the moral dilemma involved an actual moral dilemma, not a ridiculous notion based on stupidity.
 
Love a lot of ideas here. Someone better to balance Archer (esp in S3) would have been nice. Everyone just rolls over and plays dead when he says 'hey, let's steal that other ship's warp coil'.

What I really would have liked properly acknowledged is Cutler's passing, or present status; something a bit more than she broke her arm. Lame.
 
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