Hey, Great Idea! Too bad It's not Star Trek

[Jeffe525]

How many times have we heard that? At some point most of us long-time Trek fans have had an idea for a new Trek movie, show, or novel. We put our hearts and souls into it and think, "This is great! It's just what Star Trek needs." Then we showcase our creations on forums like this, only to be crushed when everyone tells us, "Sorry, not Star Trek."

I know - it sucks. I've only been on BBS for a short time, but most New Trek Idea threads I've read attract a healthy number of "it's not Trek" themed replies. It's not what we want to hear. But let's face it, we're eliciting opinions from die-hard fans, many of whom have strict, pseudo-religious views about what Trek is and what Trek is definitely not.

But they may have a point. Anyone who has ever researched it can tell you how impossible it is to even submit a Trek novel to a publisher. The general rule is, "Don't call us, we'll call, eh... Well, we'll call an established writer and tell them what we want them to write."

So here's your chance, dreamers. This thread is all about those ideas that could be great Sci-fi stories, so good that you just can't let Star Trek (or the unyielding Trekkies) stand in your way.

Your challenge: Sum up your idea, as you originally imagined it within the Trek universe. Then identify the changes necessary to remove Star Trek from the title. Do you need to add back story, change the names, the ships, the planets, etc? Does it still work? Do you feel any better about it? Worse? Remember, this is a challenge - GET CREATIVE!

For the sake of encouraging everyone to read and participate, I suggest we try to keep posts to 300 words or less (about the length of this OP). We don't need the whole story, just focus on the "Elevator Pitch."
Happy De-Trekking!

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I have thought about taking my Border Cutter Silverfin fanfic and turning it into something non-Trek, though in this case it wouldn't just be changing names and species, but a shake up to the whole concept.

All that really remains is the idea of a ship, designated a 'cutter', that is on the forefront of boundry defence, interdiction, smuggling, and SAR-Ops, within the region known as the 'Borderlands' ("buffer zones" established between several major powers). These border guards are made up of members from most of these species, as well as a few neutral ones that inhabit the Borderlands, so the cutter has a diverse mix of aliens (humans make up at most 8% of the crew onboard).

The characters would be a split between the ship's senior crew and a couple of the 'boarding teams' (the cross-trained teams that are deployed to secure hostiles, search for survivors, carry out routine customs checks), and would look at their lives as much as the missions they find themselves on.

 

[uniderth]

Valiant

Originally a story showing the adventures of Earth's first warp ship. The first part would feature post-apocalyptic earth/solar system. The second half would feature adventures to other planets.

I think this idea could work equally well as Star Trek or non-Star Trek. If I was to pursue it I would rather do it in a venue free from threat of copyright holders.

All that would need to change is the ship design and a few aliens.

 

[Warped9]

I started writing stories writing TOS fanfic. It wasn't so much that I had an idea for a new Trek series, but that I felt geeting something I thought of put into Star Trek form would be essentially inpossible.

To that end I set about creating something of my own that incorporated ideas from Star Trek (as well as my own) and adapting them into a new form.

I basically wanted to do "space, the final frontier" and "strange new worlds" but with a new veneer. I went with a futuristic starship but one that traveled at very fast relativistic speeds rather than FTL speeds. I had an all human crew (to begin with) encountering exotic type aliens. I added technology we hadn't seen in Trek. The setting was more of a rare Earth scenario rather than alien intelligence being practically everywhere. While the design of my ship and hardware is radically different its overall aesthetic is influenced by the Matt Jefferies style as well as some other SF illustrators.

Star Trek's "5-year mission" became a 150-200 year voyage that seems like only five to six years to the crew because of time dilation. Humans are longer lived (about 120-140 years) in this future. And the setting is 900 years in the future as opposed to Trek's 23rd century. Many of those who join this organization choose to remain partly because they become akin to time travelers into the future. Even when they come home every ten, twenty or thirty years or so they find home and people have changed greatly even while they have hardly aged at all.

 

[MantaBase]

I started writing stories writing TOS fanfic. It wasn't so much that I had an idea for a new Trek series, but that I felt geeting something I thought of put into Star Trek form would be essentially inpossible.

To that end I set about creating something of my own that incorporated ideas from Star Trek (as well as my own) and adapting them into a new form.

I basically wanted to do "space, the final frontier" and "strange new worlds" but with a new veneer. I went with a futuristic starship but one that traveled at very fast relativistic speeds rather than FTL speeds. I had an all human crew (to begin with) encountering exotic type aliens. I added technology we hadn't seen in Trek. The setting was more of a rare Earth scenario rather than alien intelligence being practically everywhere. While the design of my ship and hardware is radically different its overall aesthetic is influenced by the Matt Jefferies style as well as some other SF illustrators.

Star Trek's "5-year mission" became a 150-200 year voyage that seems like only five to six years to the crew because of time dilation. Humans are longer lived (about 120-140 years) in this future. And the setting is 900 years in the future as opposed to Trek's 23rd century. Many of those who join this organization choose to remain partly because they become akin to time travelers into the future. Even when they come home every ten, twenty or thirty years or so they find home and people have changed greatly even while they have hardly aged at all.

Why did you want to keep it relativistic? Seems very inconvenient unless you were trying to explore that aspect.

 

[Warped9]

Why did you want to keep it relativistic? Seems very inconvenient unless you were trying to explore that aspect.

Space adventure SF is brimming with FTL travel. I thought it would be interesting to seem a sliver more "hard" and explore that aspect. It also really puts the crew on their own with no help to be expected from home if they get in trouble.

The first story is a first contact story (two actually) where the crew then wrestle with whether they should reveal what they encounter to those back home.


This is the starship I designed for the idea.



These are the two different sized shuttlecraft I also designed for it.

 

[Jeffe525]

Great illustrations, Warped9! May I ask what you used to make them?

 

[Warped9]

Great illustrations, Warped9! May I ask what you used to make them?

They are 3D models made with SketchUp. The top illustrations are the raw model in SketchUp without rendering. The lower images of the shuttlecraft are rendered images made with Maxwell.

Both shuttlecraft are a lot larger than Trek style shuttles simply because without a transporter to beam needed equipment to you at anytime you have to know to bring your equipment and needed personnel with you when you land to survey a planet. The smaller of the two is basically a reconnaissance vehicle to transport survey parties. The larger vehicle is a transport for bringing down lots of equipment and more personnel. Both versions have reconfigurable interiors to accommodate different uses.

 

[MantaBase]

Wow - I hope that was sketchup pro, becuase with my experience in SU, that it a huge amount of work!

Also, me thinks Disney owes you royalties:

http://diznoidtoys.biz/CustomsCrafts/axiomxx[1].jpg

 

[Warped9]

^^ No, it's standard SketchUp with the help of some plugins.

That ship in your link is from Wall-E I believe. The designer might have had some similar influences.

 

[MantaBase]

^^ No, it's standard SketchUp with the help of some plugins.

That ship in your link is from Wall-E I believe. The designer might have had some similar influences.

Well, that's pretty amazing then. I have a very hard time with curved surfaces in SU.

 

[David.Blue]

Okies...

REVELATIONS
Essentially the notion here is a miniseries about the Federation confronted by an alien race left to die in a natural disasters by a Starfleet officer obeying the Prime Directive. This race was on the verge of inventing warp drive, but...
Now, decades later, we learn there were survivors and they stellar flare that slaughtered billions left the survivors with the power of psionically creating transwarp fields. They intend to force the UFP to abandon the Prime Directive one way or another.

Clearly the biggest change is context, namely we'd be dealing with a very different political entity than the Federation. More we'd probably need a FTL drive dependant on psionics in some way.

So maybe a Terran Empire, one that united the many lost colonies of humanity by strictly not allowing the "modern" Empire to interfere with those colonies that have lost contact. They must be left alone, lest the Empire exploit them, so the law states no Imperial may initiate first contact. But the folks of this colony had figured out what they thought were aliens were listening in, and begged for help.

To no avail.

Now a rebel faction, a generation or two later, have made contact with them. The new psionic ability, the result of a bioweapon perhaps, gives the rebels a big advantage. But we have to remember the Empire is not really evil. Non-interference was an attempt to prevent exploitation, at least by some. There is no easy right or wrong, just people trying to do their duty and hopefully find a working compromise.