The West Wing was suppose to focus on the support staff of the President but that quickly fell away.
And why is that, do you think?
Martin Sheen
Not just him.
The real focus of West Wing was mainly supposed to be Rob Lowe's character, but most of the other characters were more compelling, That's why Rob was gone halfway through its run.
The episode lower decks was a gimmick. It is not a series. It would fail because even in peacetime situations nobody gives a damn what Transporter repairman third class Dexter McStuffins does during his day, and they sure as hell don't want to see it replayed every week.
Ironic quote considering the actual episode had a young bajoran being part of a starfleet intelligence mission.
But what are we talking about, pffft putting a young officer in a position where there in an intense degree of danger, with a high possibility of being killed is an absolutely horrid idea, especially if it's all for some irrelevant mission for intergalactic intel.
Oh and the whole idea of an attractive strong willed female putting herself in a form of simulated abuse to help what was essentially her nazi overloads absolute drivel. Absolutely no room for layered themes or commentary there.
I'm sure if ideas like this were expanded on, critics adults, etc would hate it.
Even worst is upon her supposed death, would be those pesky juniors being emotionally conflicted about there promotions.
I give in what we need more of is kinder trek.
If you sacrificed a Mary Sue or Harry Stu like Seetol Jaxa every week, then yeah, it would get boring real quick. Even if you balanced in slice of life stuff, people would lose interest.
But again, in those situations the detectives are not "lower decks." Lower decks is cadets fresh out of the academy, and even the academy show with Shat in it didn't focus on them.
When I said lower ranks I specifically meant to include senior non coms and the like. On top of that not even the officers need to be juniors. Depending on your interpretations of what a starfleet vessel may be like, it's implied there should be a higher number mid level officers not ever setting foot on the bridge.
Which would still be a problem, especially if your Chief Petty Officer Paddy Paderndern's job is to sit in the Computer Core and make sure LCARS is backed up properly. Nobody will care.
The absence of depth itself is what I was talking about addressing. Believe what you want, rodenberry believed in the idea that a large portion of the ship were officers or at the very least talented and well trained individuals.
He was a bomber pilot in WWII. In the US military air forces and air wings and air crews are all top-heavy with officers. He was going with what he knew. He made some mistakes in creating trek, but that wasn't one of them.
Using some drunk logic(4am at a bar) one can easily assume there should be a large number of specialists on board.
I don't drink, so I'll go with common sense, which says you take aboard the number of specialists you need, not what number you assume you should have.
There's more to the argument than just "the bridge is where the action is." The bridge is usually where the Command Staff is. That is key, because when the Romulan decloaks (or the peace talks break down, or the cosmic storm is bearing down on the ship) you want to pay attention to the reaction of the people with the immediate authority to do something about it.
This is essentially a trope rather than a fact of reality. Examining this trope gravitates to a rather large and relate-able theme. Everyone wants to climb to the top.
It's a trope that's incredibly useful for telling stories in a naval setting, which despite the sci-fi trappings star Trek has always been. The ambition of the characters (and/or of the audience) has no bearing on its usefulness.
Anyways there are lots of times when the reverse is true, by the time command finds out it's already too late to make a decision.
Only when the crisis is internal and localized (and trivial, if nobody's in a hurry to tell the captain...)
Using drunk logic there are plenty of times when anyone can be selected at random to do their duty. This is the core value of the idea. What if your menial job has importance for just one day, a month or one year of your life.
Telling that story once would be fine. Telling the menial job crisis story every week for a season would suck.
By simply wanting a more real(not scientifically accurate, but more inline with what your average persons sees in their day to day life) a plethora of plots and ideas can be introduced to the star trek universe to give it new life.
. It's obviously a mix of real life, and escape. However that ratio to me does not start at 0 percent and 100 percent, which it seems to do for many on here.
And for the network people who would have to greenlight the series. Try selling them on a 50-50 ratio Trek series.
Lower decks people have to go through lots of levels of bureaucracy to get heard by the decision-makers - unless they're Mary Sues (or let's call a spade a spade, Wesley Crushers). Also, lower decks people don't get information as immediately as the command staff. In a real crisis they might know jack about what's going on, and if they're your show's focus, your audience will be just as in the dark. Your audience will not stand for being in the dark week after week unless there's a dead body involved and Dick Wolf is producing the show.
It's just as often the reverse is true. The people in the thick of things have a way better understanding of what is actually going on. Often the leaders are the ones in the dark taking advice and intel from those on the ground. There are so many examples of this in real life, yet the trek verse completely ignores this fact.
Because again, aboard ship, this is only true if the crisis is internal. A show with no external conflict would be boring. The Klingons exist because they figured that out in the 1960's
Even in TMP kirk fixates on how he feels he's on the sidelines.
And he went out of his way get back on the field. as the quarterback. In like the first ten minutes of the movie. And did we follow Galley Technician Polly Purebread after he came aboard? No.
Of course there are interpretations on what scale one becomes on the sidelines. However in this concept it happens at the bridge(not admiralcy).
Again further dissecting this excessive trope in trek.
And again, flying in the face of its incredible usefulness across scores of stories in fandoms of all stripes.
The popularity and drama of that one episode is not sustainable on a regular basis. Eventually, just to save the series, you're going to have to make one of your lower deckers a bridge officer, thus defeating your purpose.
Define sustainable.
Having well over 600 episodes of a franchise with the same formula on repeat again and again for 30 years to me seemed like it wasn't sustainable. In fact basic logic would imply I may be right.
But the mere existence of those episodes would immediately prove you wrong, and they exist because that formula, for the most part, works. By contrast, there only a few episodes out of the six hundred that focus on Starfleet's kids. If your concept is so sustainable, where's the Academy spin-off series? Where's all the Lower Decks tie-in books?
If star trek comes back it hopefully will adapt to the times of modern television.
DS9 is the only show that was well suited for this modern dynamic and it was 15 years ahead of it's time.(way to many filler eps)
In a modern format with 10-12 eps at a time over a 5 year ark, it'd be hard to convince me you'd run out of content.
But if the bulk of that content is a day in the life of Ensign Pulver, replicator and morale officer, it wouldn't matter, cause you'd get cancelled anyway.
