Like a Cross between House (or Hospital Drama/Comedy of your choice) and Star Trek. Kind of like the Star Fleet version of the Hospital Navy ship sent to New York. Does anyone else think think this could be cool?
While I'm all for doing something different, having such a specialised ship could be very limiting in the types of stories that could be told (mainly due to the level of medical technology that exists out there and what we've seen our frontier doctors manage to do onboard non-medical specialist ships). One concept I have thought about before that could work, with a lot of drama in the mix, parallels with the current global situation: A species hostile to the Federation (lets say the Cardassians) are stricken by a plague, which is always lethal and seems to be unstoppable. They manage to keep the lid on it for a while until one of the researchers working on finding a cure breaks radio silence and calls for help. After some negotiations between the two governments, the Cardassians reluctantly agree to permit a single medical ship to enter their space to provide assistance. Alone in hostile space, the crew discover things are much worse than the Cardies led them to believe, now they are in a race against time to discover a way to stop the plague before it's too late. However, as they work, the team uncover that the plague isn't a natural one but something engineered and unleashed on the galaxy... Whatever direction such a story went on, a short run of a season or two would most likely work best, otherwise it could start getting a little repetitive over a longer run.
Whenever this subject comes up something I've always pointed out is that the novels have covered many aspects of the Star Trek universe. There have been novels (or even novel series) set on board a Klingon ship, about the Starfleet Corps of Engineers, the Federation government, Department of Temporal Investigations, and even a legal drama set around Samuel T Cogley, and never have they ever done anything involving Starfleet Medical or a hospital ship. Now, I know some are saying "that's perfect, it's something completely new," but I can't help but wonder that if it's something even the novels don't bother with, there can't be much to the idea at all. Also, I've tried reading the Sector General series, basically a futuristic space opera sci-fi medical drama and it really didn't do anything for me.
FWIW, there was a weird rumour that Gene Roddenberry wanted series called Hopeship to spin off of TOS and star M'Benga back in the 60's.
might work if its integrated in to a "Fleet" setting, say a 5 ship fleet is off exploring some new sector of space, and one of the ships is a hospital ship, and you have the ocasional episode that focuses on said ship if there is a need.. Would be more interesting to set the show in the 2160's, or so right after the set up of the federation in the 22nd centery.. We had some very interesting episodes with Dr. Phlox and how he cured stuff, and less about technobable, transporter, etc of 24th centery stuff.. more primitave
Could be more doable if you set it at a hospital station/starbase which has emergency response ships (medical runabouts?). You could work in a format similar to the 1970's series Emergency! where you've got two parallel sets of characters - the rescue crews out on the scene (Squad 51), and the hospital folks at the base (Rampart). I think this would allow a broader scope of stores than just having it set on a ship (or just back at the hospital base). Also - there needs to be an edoan character if only to see a three-armed surgeon at work. Medical-based SF is very viable - see James White's Sector General series of stories - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sector_General
This premise has been done before, it was called Mercy Point and had a short-lived run on UPN of just 7 episodes in 1998-1999 ("the series focuses on the doctors and nurses in a 23rd-century hospital space station located in deep space"). In fact, according to wikipedia it was originally envisioned "as a companion to Star Trek: Voyager" but for some reason was scheduled with Clueless and Moesha instead.
How about a House MD in space with Bashir as the lead? I am glad we don't get to write this stuff, as fun as these ideas are. I fully recognize I would run the franchise into the ground if I got to make my zany ideas reality.