reimagining the series

I know I trot this out every now and then when this topic comes up, but I'll say it again. I'd be curious to explore the road not taken: an animated series picking up after "The Cage." Tweak the characters and add some new ones. There's a decades worth of stories before the Kirk era. Marvel Comics' Early Voyages was an interesting experiment giving us a glimpse into that era and more could be done.

An advantage is that "The Cage" characters are largely blank canvases since we only saw them once so you wouldn't have to think about reinterpreting established characters. Even Spock---the lone familiar character---would be in state of evolution from his younger days.

You also wouldn't have to worry about aesthetics in terms of production standards because "The Cage"/TOS would be ideal for animation.

One writer I think could be interesting to contribute a story or two would be John Byrne. His TOS stuff for IDW Comics is usually quite good.

C'mon, CBS, make it happen.

 

When I first heard a blurb about ENT, I (naturally, I thought) assumed that it would take place on April's or Pike's Enterprise.

There's a lot of room in Prime Universe continuity for TOS/TNG-y type adventures that involve a crew that's something like a cross between TOS's and TNG's and that's on a ship that's more or less Kirk's Enterprise. Spock served with Captain Pik(ard) for over eleven years, and that's more than enough time in-universe for a whole series.

 

It's still going, and I get the issues in my pull-box at my local comic book store every month. And the remade stories (plus new stories) are great, IMHO. Check it out.

 

we can dream

 

When TOS did it it wasn't all roses. SF writers can have their own egos and that can include not being able to see things from the series' vision perspective. Hence Roddenberry rewriting a good number of early stories to have them fit Star Trek as he envisioned it. The SF writers could come up wth good ideas (which make them ideal for anthology series), but they have to be able to see the bigger picture when it comes to a regular series and check their egos at the door.

It might be better to simply have a solid SF writer as a conceptual consultant much like Harlan Ellison was on Babylon 5.

 

I'm fine with animated too; and it'll do what I had in mind very nicely.

ME

 

I have to disagree with you there. A lot of DS9 and TNG's best episodes dealt with Klingons, and DS9 wasn't typical Star Trek either, yet people love it a lot. And I too wish to see something like TNG/TOS on tv again, but at the same time, I also wish to see a show based on other races.

 

^^ A core group of people like those shows, but in terms of general audience---the one that Trek needs to appeal to---those shows are not the ones people think of as Star Trek. When it comes to that TOS and TNG are the ones they think of.

SF as a rule is a small part of the TV landscape and shows that veer too far off the recognized brand are an even smaller piece. Space war and political intrigue can be part of a Star Trek series---always has been---but they are not the primary things one generally thinks of in terms of Star Trek. Space war and political intrigue are primary elements of shows like Babylon 5 and nuBSG and those audiences aren't of the popularity TOS and TNG have reached.

A show focusing on Klingons and/or from the Klingon perspective would likely have very limited appeal. It works as a standalone novel or comic or even an episode or two, but as a television series it's highly unlikely it would fly.

I, for one, would certainly have zero interest in watching such a series, particularly one where Starfleet and the Federation were enemies or pseudo enemies of some sort. If I want war and political intrigue I've got Game Of Thrones.

 

But like I said earlier, I am all for there being two Star Trek shows, not just one. So those who wish to see traditional Star Trek will still have that, and those who wish to see something different will have the other one, and those like me who wish to see both can see both. And it's not necessary that it has to be about politics. We can have an exploration show with a Klingon crew.

 

There's no way in hell CBS would produce two Trek shows at the same time. Heck, I doubt they'd even produce one.

 

Plus at this point the stories are largely new and just use a few elements of TOS stories being used.

 

Fans like to imagine having a show that would appeal specifically to them, but often overlook the fact a show has to have some indication of appealing to a broader audience. Certainly a Klingon or Romulan themed series would have very limited appeal to a small group of fans within a small percentage (Trek and SF fans) of the broader television audience. No network would even momentarily entertain that idea.

At this point even a mainstream Trek series faces a challenge to be made anytime soon since big concept SF series aren't likely to appeal to network suits. Presently space adventure doesn't seem to be on anyone's radar as a genre to get on television. I suspect even specialty channels would be hesitant and are more inclined to do something with a period or fantasy setting.

 

About a decade ago, around the time that the reimagined Battlestar Galactica was announced, I started thinking how TOS could be reimagined in a similar way. Not to "dark it up", but how to bring in serialized storytelling while staying true to the intent of the original.

One of the things that TOS featured heavily, especially in the beginning was an emphasis on the loneliness of command, so I started with that. I looked at one of my favorite movies on the subject, 12 O'clock High, for inspiration. The Enterprise wouldn't be the "flagship of the Federation" or even the best ship in the fleet. She was just a ship, and at the beginning of the series, she would be a broken, 20 year old ship. She had been a great ship under Captain Pike, but that was over a decade ago, and two poor COs after that, she had a demoralized crew, and hadn't even left space dock in a year in a half. Starfleet is even considering cutting their losses and decommissioning her.

That changes when a Starfleet probe discovers an ancient and technologically advanced ship drifting through space - towards Klingon territory. The limited information that the probe is able to get tells them that they can't let this ship fall into the Klingon's hands, and a ship needs to be sent to investigate it, salvage it if possible, and destroy it if need be. The Enterprise, true to form, is the only ship close enough with the speed to pull this mission off.

Commander Kirk, who is a hot-headed, but brilliant and driven XO is promoted and pressed into service as the CO of the Enterprise and given this seemingly impossible task.

He's given a vulcan XO, Spock, who is familiar with the ship, having served under Pike years earlier. This is, in Kirk's eyes, a temporary placement, because the man who he wants as his XO, Gary Mitchell, is the ship's Operations Officer, but Starfleet overrides him due to Mitchell's reckless behavior. (In his first scene with Kirk, he's brought back to the ship in handcuffs - deliberately referencing a similar scene in 12 O'clock High).

Anyway, long story short, the Enterprise intercepts the ancient ship, discover that it is the 30,000 year old First Federation starship Fesarius. The Klingons intercept them, and the ship winds up falling into Klingon hands, but not before the Enterprise crew is able to download star map data which seems to show potential caches of First Federation technology - and it would take about five years to travel to these planets. A race is on, since the Klingons would have this information as well.

The idea is that we would get to see the Enterprise turn into the ship that we know and love, but it wouldn't start out that way. It would be Star Trek deconstructed. All the pieces would be there, but wouldn't (at first) fit together in expected ways. The "Big Three" at the beginning wouldn't be Kirk, Spock and McCoy, but Kirk, Mitchell, and his female Command Master Chief, who was a mentor when he was an ensign. Spock and McCoy would be there, but they wouldn't be friends with Kirk, and Kirk would see their advice as more antagonistic than helpful.

The one major change would have been with the Klingons. The original Klingons had them as the Soviet Union to the Federation's United States which isn't as timely as it used to be. In my reimagining, the Klingons would be more of a mirror of the Federation - an empire built up of many races; some conquored, some there willingly, and even some human worlds. They would be bound by a common religion, the followers of Kahless, and there would be elements of fanaticism among them, although not all. The main difference between the Klingons and the Federation would be that the Klingons don't have the prime directive, and they willingly share their technology, as long as you are part of the empire, making them appealing. I wanted to make the Klingons less clear cut bad guys, and allows for variations among them, instead of a monolithic warrior culture.

Anyway, there are lots of things wrong with my ideas, but it's the kind of TOS reboot that I would want to see - taking concepts from the original to build a framework on to tell new stories.

 

^^ There's a Star Wolf feeling to that outline. That's not a bad thing since I quite like David Gerrold's Star Wolf books. I will say that I'm not keen on a deconstructed Trek, particularly TOS, but that said I see appeal in your idea as an original non-Trek series.

 

I've mentioned this before somewhere else.... J Michael Straczynski submitted a short reboot concept several years ago. As opposed to rebooting Star Trek as I am, I found his proposal quite interesting.

http://bztv.typepad.com/newsviews/files/ST2004Reboot.pdf

 

Yes interesting. It's sort of what they did a bit with the ongoing comic. I fully expect them to go animated after the third movie.

 

Some great ideas there, and some I find rather curious -- idea of a central mystery is cool, but what was so "odd" about the Enterprise's original mission, which was just a fairly standard Galactic patrol / survey mission for a ship of its class? I like the idea of taking the five-year mission chronologically season-by-season... and JMS could've pulled it off creditably, too.

 

Well said.

 

JMS' idea had legs IMO. I'd be just as happy with a TOS cartoon based on the second 5-year mission if I'm honest. Maybe even more so since TMP had more alien crew to play with.

In fact I've done 2 comic stories on Youtube where I've merged TMP's second mission with a bunch of other franchises. The main mystery is the shadow war from Babylon 5 and one of the weapons used is the xenomorph from Alien.

I love merging Trek elements with mystery elements. The biggest bar is ramping up the magical technology too far.

 

re JMS-Trek: No, just no. Never once did I think to myself, "Gee, I'd like to see the Enterprise go to Z'ha'dum." And secret mission?!? No!