Take something from another TV show or movie, or perhaps another character from another franchise that would have made Trek better in your opinion. What would it be?
Mine will be unpopular, but I'm going to say Star Wars.
Not the whiny Jedi bitch or the comedy droids, or lightsabers. Just the sense of scale!
In six movies, Star Wars managed to appear larger and more lived in than Trek managed in 40 years. Everything had a proportion and a place in SW. The opening scene over Tatooine is a case in point. Awesome expanse of planet, giant spaceship flies overhead, followed by even more massive spaceship. Even more massive spaceship is tiny compared to the Death Star.
The Yavin system looked amazing, when Alderaan was destroyed, you got the impression that millions of people had died.
Yet 10 years later, TNG's planets still looked like pastel pool balls, decidedly 2D. Compare the Republic Senate chambers to the relatively tiny chamber the Federation sat in when Kruge demanded Kirk's head in STIV, the President in VI entertained his visitors at what looked like a desk lugged up to his bedroom! Star Trek has rarely felt large or galactic. Even the most cinematic of movies, TMP struggled to escape the confines of a television set, using its cinematic sequences for eye-candy, but still feeling small when it came to the personal character moments.
The TNG films suffered from merely being upgrades of the TV series. Hopefully as the new film is starting from scratch, Trek will finally feel galactic.
Mine will be unpopular, but I'm going to say Star Wars.
Not the whiny Jedi bitch or the comedy droids, or lightsabers. Just the sense of scale!
In six movies, Star Wars managed to appear larger and more lived in than Trek managed in 40 years. Everything had a proportion and a place in SW. The opening scene over Tatooine is a case in point. Awesome expanse of planet, giant spaceship flies overhead, followed by even more massive spaceship. Even more massive spaceship is tiny compared to the Death Star.
The Yavin system looked amazing, when Alderaan was destroyed, you got the impression that millions of people had died.
Yet 10 years later, TNG's planets still looked like pastel pool balls, decidedly 2D. Compare the Republic Senate chambers to the relatively tiny chamber the Federation sat in when Kruge demanded Kirk's head in STIV, the President in VI entertained his visitors at what looked like a desk lugged up to his bedroom! Star Trek has rarely felt large or galactic. Even the most cinematic of movies, TMP struggled to escape the confines of a television set, using its cinematic sequences for eye-candy, but still feeling small when it came to the personal character moments.
The TNG films suffered from merely being upgrades of the TV series. Hopefully as the new film is starting from scratch, Trek will finally feel galactic.
One thing that's always bugged me was the size of the weekly planet or star while the ship is parked in orbit. You get absolutely no sense of scale. You never see the ship dwarfed against a single band of gasses, say, or descent into an atmosphere as they approach a continent for landing, or passing through a nebula for days for no reason at all. I think the producers need a shot of astronomy! Space! It's called space! It's big!
Will Adama could add as a SF Captain/Admiral. On Fanfiction.net there's even an interesting crossover story. The strength of it is the interaction of Trek and nuBSG characters.
