Game Changing Premises which were Dropped

[milo bloom]

Sorry for the thread necro, I'm one of those people whose brain will process ideas like this thread in the background for weeks at a time.

Anyways, the idea of first season Worf being a "bridge watch officer," someone who wasn't assigned to any one station, and could jump in and cover the main bridge stations when needed, was one that I really like the idea of now. I'd like to see any future shows bring this idea back, maybe not as a "opening credits sequence" cast member, but like one of the second tier cast (like DS9's extensive secondary cast).

 

[Nightdiamond]

In Descent, the crew learns about the Transwarp whatchamacalit conduit after chasing the Borg.

With it a ship can travel at great distances in moments.

Near the end of the episode, they were able to recreate one on their own and get back home.

If Geordi could remember how to do it, then it has to be part of their records.

They never used it again, even in situations where they really needed it, like the Dominion War, The second Borg attack etc.

 

[plynch]

Fed. has cloaking device and doesn't use it.

Transporter and/or replicator is Genesis Device writ small. If you can disassemble matter and turn it into coffee or a person again, then make it huge and that's quite a thing you'll have there.

Artificial gravity deck by deck. That has implications. Turn it around and you have gravity nullification perhaps.

Good thread, OP, btw.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

But, yeah, the really weird one is that they don't use time travel to solve more problems, although this gets solved once they finally did away with their weird "fix the timeline by interfering in it even more" paradigm and shifted to a MWI approach of time travel in Trek 11. Prior to that, major wars should've been really weird ("Sisko closed the wormhole? We must send the Jem'Hadar back in time, before he closed it!" "Captain, they went back in time before we closed the wormhole!" "Then we better go back in time before they went back in time and close the wormhole!" "Curses! We must go back in time before they went back in time before we went back in time!" And so on. ).

That's what actually happened. They went through every possibility, permutation, and variation, changing the timeline every time. The only one we saw was the last one, the one where (somewhat improbably) no one thought of doing it. That's the only way the timeline would ever stabilize.

Why would either side ever stop their eternal game of one-up-manship? The timeline would never stabilize. But since everyone is inside the timeline, they'd never be aware of this instability, and would think the timeline they remember is the one and only correct timeline, even if the timeline is changing a million times a second.

The Star Trek we've seen is only one of a constantly-changing infinite range of timelines that come into existence with every new timeline infraction. As such, it's just as valid as any other. Problem solved.

 

[Anwar]

In Descent, the crew learns about the Transwarp whatchamacalit conduit after chasing the Borg.

With it a ship can travel at great distances in moments.

Near the end of the episode, they were able to recreate one on their own and get back home.

If Geordi could remember how to do it, then it has to be part of their records.

They never used it again, even in situations where they really needed it, like the Dominion War, The second Borg attack etc.

I think the idea in "Descent" was that the Conduit was a fixed thing that could only go from the Alpha Quadrant to wherever the Borg world was (was it in the Delta Quadrant?) and no where else. They successfully found a way to OPEN it, but not make a new one.

Course, they should have kept using it to send ships to explore that area of space and searched for new ones but maybe they were afraid there would be Borg on the other side.

 

[Tiberius]

Telekinetic Vorta.

 

[Vanyel]

the achievement of warp 10 in Voyager, with the minor negative side effects of that achievement fixable by the Holodoctor.


Ummm.... writers? You just gave Voyager the ability to go anywhere in the galaxy.

They never actually should have needed the doctor to fix that problem. Warp 9.99999999999999............................. should get them anywhere in the Universe in a reasonable amount of time.

Using sensor to track the plasma ejected by a ship's impulse engines to track a cloaked ship. Unless they found a way to make plasma as cold as interstellar space, it should light up bright as day on an infrared scan.

 

[brian577]

In Descent, the crew learns about the Transwarp whatchamacalit conduit after chasing the Borg.

With it a ship can travel at great distances in moments.

Near the end of the episode, they were able to recreate one on their own and get back home.

If Geordi could remember how to do it, then it has to be part of their records.

They never used it again, even in situations where they really needed it, like the Dominion War, The second Borg attack etc.

I think the idea in "Descent" was that the Conduit was a fixed thing that could only go from the Alpha Quadrant to wherever the Borg world was (was it in the Delta Quadrant?) and no where else. They successfully found a way to OPEN it, but not make a new one.

The distance was only 65 light years.

 

[Paradon]

On DS9 they show what the Breen could do, so I'm wondering what aliens out there that can be a serious threat to the Federation. The Breen literally opened fire on earth and could have destroyed it had they used the energy draining weapon.

What if the Federation think they are so powerful and throt around where they weren't supposed to and mess with the wrong people? That could be a nice premises for the next movie when they came face to face with the Klingons. Think about it! They haven't had any serious infraction with the Klingons for a while because they down playing their role and then suddenly, the Federation found out they've messed with the wrong people. The Klingons nearly cripple the Federation and after which, they learned not to underestimate the Klingons.

 

[Pauln6]

The sinister insectoid aliens. Other shows have used this premise as the foundation for entire shows. While I'm not suggesting that it should have been that prevalent, it clearly had more potential than the two episodes in season one. I think they just thought the premise was too scary for a family show.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

On DS9 they show what the Breen could do, so I'm wondering what aliens out there that can be a serious threat to the Federation. The Breen literally opened fire on earth and could have destroyed it had they used the energy draining weapon.

What if the Federation think they are so powerful and throt around where they weren't supposed to and mess with the wrong people? That could be a nice premises for the next movie when they came face to face with the Klingons. Think about it! They haven't had any serious infraction with the Klingons for a while because they down playing their role and then suddenly, the Federation found out they've messed with the wrong people. The Klingons nearly cripple the Federation and after which, they learned not to underestimate the Klingons.

I'm pretty sure the klingons are evenly matched against the federation.

 

[CoveTom]

What was the deal with Voyager necels retracting before warp? Was that related to the issue with damaging the fabric of space? Or am I remembering that wrong?

That was the original concept as stated by some of the behind-the-scenes types around the time Voyager premiered. "Variable warp geometry," or somesuch. But that was never stated on screen at any point. And, of course, all the other non-Intrepid class ships we see in DS9 and the TNG movies don't have the moving nacelles, so I guess we're just left to assume that either Starfleet found out that warp drive wasn't as damaging as they thought or that they developed a technology to prevent the damage that worked with all nacelle designs.