A Non-Human Alien Captain

[Grendelsbayne]

Thing is, a big part of the audience is not following forums, buying merchandise and going to cons. They are people who like the show, follow it every week, then watch something else. Most of these people want something relatable.

Because if there were any Trek characters that the average home viewer couldn't bring themselves to care about, they were Spock, Data, and Worf.

Exactly. There may be a line beyond which people can't relate to an alien being (say, the Horta or Sp. 8472), but the vast majority of Star Trek aliens don't go anywhere near that line.

Not that I have any problem believing the studio heads may be dumb/scared enough to veto the idea based on just such a claim...

The problem I see is one of money. The cost of makeup for the star of the show would put a drain on the budget, since the Captain is pretty much going to be the center of attention and likely in every episode. That brings several hours per day of shooting as extra paid time just to get the actor made up into whatever species they come up with, as most take at least and hour to put the makeup on for a skilled team, and half that to take it off.

Even the most captain centric trek still spent a large chunk of most episodes focusing on other characters (often the same other characters who therefore got pretty much just as much exposure as the captain). Any new show would of course have to balance all sorts of different considerations as to where they want to put their money, but the idea that having an alien captain would automatically be 'too expensive' makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.

My biggest problem with an alien captain would be how to strike the right balance. Make them too human like and you loose the entire benefit of having an alien captain in the first place. But the more un-human they are, the more time you have to spend explaining what their background is, what their culture is like and why they act the way they do.

And while I don't believe the Captain needs to be more relatable than all the other characters (and good Trek show should have at least 3 or 4 major characters from the start), I do think any standard formula Trek series tends to rely on the Captain to set the tone for the series early, which would be a very hard line to walk with an alien captain, since they have so much extra setup necessary to help people understand them.

Unless you throw out the standard Trek formula and do
something different, in which case, there's absolutely no reason why they couldn't do it.

 

[wulfio]

Ferengi first mate. Maybe the Federation Council has seen just a little too much high-minded principle upholding and a little too little acquisition of cool stuff, so an oversight committee hands Starfleet a few "recommendations." Hence, a first mate with some ingrained ideas on what's "good" that the captain WILL hear.

Doesn't have to be crazy talk like ditching the PD (but, in time, that has to come up). Just viewing some missions more as opportunities.

I'd just like to retcon the Ferengi right out of existence.

Also, ditching the PD would be very un Trek.

Which is why I wrote that ditching the PD would be "crazy talk." But the PD IS frequently challanged from some angle in may episodes, and it would be inevitable that a Ferengi first officer would counsel some advice, some time, that would create PD tension.

I like the Ferengi, myself. Not their silly start in The Last Outpost, but Quark, Brundt, Rom, Nog, Zek (love Wallace Shawn), yes.

I think the idea of the Ferengi could have been interesting, and a nice commentary on contemporary society. But for me they just went over the top. First in the last outpost, it was just a caricature of that commentary. And later on in DS9, I felt like every time the Ferengi were on, it was like a cartoon intermission. Though of all of them, Quark was the most compelling when he wasn't dressing up like a woman or trying to be a commando.

I just think they could have done a lot better with the idea of a super capitalist culture driven by greed and power in contrast with Treks egalitarian vision of the future.

 

[danny]

Kirk will be the captain when the inevitable hard reboot of TOS comes to TV.

Is that really inevitable?

 

[Ithekro]

Perhaps not inevitable, but it is logical.

 

[wulfio]

I'd say more uninspired than logical.

 

[Ithekro]

In Hollywood?

 

[BillJ]

I'd say more uninspired than logical.

Meh. There are worse places to start than characters that are considered modern American mythology.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I would be alright with a series about Kirk, so long as he was gay--or at least bisexual.

Ideally though, I'd want an alien in the central seat.

 

[somebuddyX]

In my fan Star Trek series I made back in High School had a female alien commanding a starbase near the Romulan border. Her species looked like the un-phaged Viidians. I also had a Romulan exchange officer, but I realise I never decided if he'd wear a Starfleet uniform or a Romulan one.

This guy called R John Burke wrote this neat fan series Star Trek Renegade set in an alternate future where the Dominion controlled the Alpha Quadrant. The main resistance leader (not the commander of the hero ship) was a Cardassian female who commanded a hijacked Dominion warship renamed Enterprise. (Sorry I just love mentioning this series)

Nowadays I feel the commanding officer should remain human but I think an alien second in command is always pretty neat, along with alien admirals or commanding officers of an episode's guest ships.

 

[CRM-114]

If a new series gets made, it will most likely have a human captain. The captain is the character that sets the moral/ethical tone of the series. To be most relatable, the captain would need to have a human-centric morality.

It doesn't matter too much if it's been done before, so long as it's done well.

That said, a non-human captain would most likely be a near-Human species. I've come to realize that it's the rare actor that would willingly endure regularly being buried under makeup for a performance.

 

[Arpy]

You know what might work? If they captain wasn't needed every episode. Say it was more an ensemble show like DS9 and maybe less episodic, like the last season of ENT with its three-episode story arcs. What if some arcs only sparingly needing the captain and others not at all? Some arcs could be more like TNG's "Lower Decks," told from the perspective of recurring lower officers.

In some ways this would be more realistic as unlike Kirk, you wouldn't really have the captain beaming down to every unknown planet, and unlike Trek overall, not every week on a naval vessel should end with a red alert.

There were over 1000 people on the E-D. What was going on in Stellar Cartography all those years? Or that airport of a main shuttlebay? And what cutthroat villainy might have transpired in Cetacean Ops?

 

[somebuddyX]

Only if we get a Xindi-Aquatic and Lieutenant D̶a̶r̶w̶i̶n̶ Sydney the Dolphin.