I've mentioned this idea on a couple of other threads already but I figured I should give it a thread of its own.
There's a few things which lead me to conclude that an Excelsior TV series would be the perfect thing to re-introduce Star Trek to television.
First and foremost, it's that any such series would have to get back to the fundamentals of what Star Trek is about as a show (I mean in terms of basic concept, not ideals and such). Star Trek is, at its most basic level, a show about trekking through the stars. And let's face it -- Star Trek is dead on TV right now and has been since 2005. Any new series will have to function as a re-introduction to Star Trek on television, for the audience who never grew up watching it.
Now, I'm very much a Niner. But Deep Space Nine was a variation on the Star Trek theme, and that's something that they can't afford to do. Deep Space Nine was only able to branch out the way it did because The Next Generation had provided such a solid foundation. The next series has to provide a foundation for future Star Trek TV in the same way TNG did. Start off by taking it back to a lone ship exploring the frontier, and then let future spin-offs make the variations on the theme.
(That's not to say that the series should ignore valuable lessons learned from DS9, like proper character development and continuing storylines. I'm just saying that mixing up the formula of Star Trek would only work when the audience is conscious there's a formula to mix up in the first place.)
So, why Excelsior specifically? Well, there's a few reasons for that.
I'm operating on the assumption that they won't be able to get all the Abramsverse cast together to commit to a TV series. We'll most likely get a trilogy out of them and that will be it. But the Abramsverse is the way in which Star Trek has been introduced to a new generation, so it makes little sense to abandon it completely after the movies are done. The way to get carry-over audience from the movies to the new series is to make the new show grow organically out from the movies, as a proper continuation. If they take the approach of a throwing a dart at a timeline blindfolded and going "Let's set it in the year 2XXX in the aftermath of an inevitable massive interstellar war!" then it's more likely that people who saw the movies and enjoyed them just aren't going to bother.
And the thing about Excelsior is it's not coming out of nowhere: it's an established feature in the Star Trek universe, and could potentially have had a series made from it back in the 90s (most likely in place of DS9). The advantage of the Abramsverse is the opportunity to re-visit ideas like this.
And there's also this: we know that John Cho does TV. He was in Flash-Forward and he was pretty damn good in it. I think Star Trek is best when it's a proper ensemble piece, but I reckon he could be the lead.
Now, you don't want the TV series to be too reliant on the movies (after all, you want new viewers too) but the thing is, the show doesn't have to come right on the heels of the movies -- they can include a time-skip, so that it's set maybe a decade or so afterwards. It's breathing space, and sets it almost a generation after Star Trek '09, but it's not too much distance either.
(And why can we get away with a decade-long time-skip? Because John Cho is about a decade older than his character Sulu. He's 39 years old now. And if we say that Star Trek 2 is coming out late next year and Star Trek 3 coming out in 2016, then Star Trek: Excelsior can come out the next year -- Cho will be 45 years old by then, which seems about right.)
So how do we begin? If there's going to be any torch-passing in the pilot episode (as they did with McCoy in "Encounter at Farpoint", Picard in "Emissary", Quark in "The Caretaker" and Cochrane in "Broken Bow") then I think the person to do it should be Spock. As played by Zachary Quinto, that is. The character is popular, the actor does TV, and what's more he canonically ages slowly (so they can get away with the time-skip with him).
And, now, characters. Obviously I haven't mapped out who every single member of the main cast should be, but I do have some ideas on who could be included. We want this show to be new, of course, but not completely throwing you in the deep end either. To that end, here's some characters we've seen before whom I think could be included:
There's a few things which lead me to conclude that an Excelsior TV series would be the perfect thing to re-introduce Star Trek to television.
First and foremost, it's that any such series would have to get back to the fundamentals of what Star Trek is about as a show (I mean in terms of basic concept, not ideals and such). Star Trek is, at its most basic level, a show about trekking through the stars. And let's face it -- Star Trek is dead on TV right now and has been since 2005. Any new series will have to function as a re-introduction to Star Trek on television, for the audience who never grew up watching it.
Now, I'm very much a Niner. But Deep Space Nine was a variation on the Star Trek theme, and that's something that they can't afford to do. Deep Space Nine was only able to branch out the way it did because The Next Generation had provided such a solid foundation. The next series has to provide a foundation for future Star Trek TV in the same way TNG did. Start off by taking it back to a lone ship exploring the frontier, and then let future spin-offs make the variations on the theme.
(That's not to say that the series should ignore valuable lessons learned from DS9, like proper character development and continuing storylines. I'm just saying that mixing up the formula of Star Trek would only work when the audience is conscious there's a formula to mix up in the first place.)
So, why Excelsior specifically? Well, there's a few reasons for that.
I'm operating on the assumption that they won't be able to get all the Abramsverse cast together to commit to a TV series. We'll most likely get a trilogy out of them and that will be it. But the Abramsverse is the way in which Star Trek has been introduced to a new generation, so it makes little sense to abandon it completely after the movies are done. The way to get carry-over audience from the movies to the new series is to make the new show grow organically out from the movies, as a proper continuation. If they take the approach of a throwing a dart at a timeline blindfolded and going "Let's set it in the year 2XXX in the aftermath of an inevitable massive interstellar war!" then it's more likely that people who saw the movies and enjoyed them just aren't going to bother.
And the thing about Excelsior is it's not coming out of nowhere: it's an established feature in the Star Trek universe, and could potentially have had a series made from it back in the 90s (most likely in place of DS9). The advantage of the Abramsverse is the opportunity to re-visit ideas like this.
And there's also this: we know that John Cho does TV. He was in Flash-Forward and he was pretty damn good in it. I think Star Trek is best when it's a proper ensemble piece, but I reckon he could be the lead.
Now, you don't want the TV series to be too reliant on the movies (after all, you want new viewers too) but the thing is, the show doesn't have to come right on the heels of the movies -- they can include a time-skip, so that it's set maybe a decade or so afterwards. It's breathing space, and sets it almost a generation after Star Trek '09, but it's not too much distance either.
(And why can we get away with a decade-long time-skip? Because John Cho is about a decade older than his character Sulu. He's 39 years old now. And if we say that Star Trek 2 is coming out late next year and Star Trek 3 coming out in 2016, then Star Trek: Excelsior can come out the next year -- Cho will be 45 years old by then, which seems about right.)
So how do we begin? If there's going to be any torch-passing in the pilot episode (as they did with McCoy in "Encounter at Farpoint", Picard in "Emissary", Quark in "The Caretaker" and Cochrane in "Broken Bow") then I think the person to do it should be Spock. As played by Zachary Quinto, that is. The character is popular, the actor does TV, and what's more he canonically ages slowly (so they can get away with the time-skip with him).
And, now, characters. Obviously I haven't mapped out who every single member of the main cast should be, but I do have some ideas on who could be included. We want this show to be new, of course, but not completely throwing you in the deep end either. To that end, here's some characters we've seen before whom I think could be included:
- Sulu, obviously.
- Janice Rand, who was seen as the Excelsior's communications officer in The Undiscovered Country. It'd be nice to see that she had some hidden depths.
- Saavik. They'd be able to properly explore the idea of her being half-Romulan, which should be interesting. Her presence would actually make Spock's appearance in the pilot episode all the more fitting, come to think of it.
- Dax. Because why not? And just for fun, let's make Dax a male this time. In fact, let's make him Torias Dax (who doesn't die in a shuttle crash this time, obviously). He seemed cool.
- This isn't an established character, but someone made the suggestion a few months ago and I think it's brilliance: an Andorian, played by Pauley Perrette.
