A combination of talk about a Pike show, seeing the Enterprise bridge in the new Discovery episode, and the ongoing thread about Pike's "woman on the bridge" line got me thinking.
If, hypothetically, CBS decided to have a remake of Star Trek today, what kind of features would you want to see in it? I ordinarily hate reboots and remakes, and my immediate response to such a thing would be "why bother?", but I think I've talked myself into this.
The way this could work is have, say, a 26 episode season (I have no idea if this is practically viable in today's TV climate, but whatever), and about 6 or so of those episodes could be remakes of fan-favourite TOS episodes. I'm thinking Arena, Mirror Mirror, City on the Edge, Space Seed, A Taste of Armageddon, The Doomsday Machine and so on could all work fantastically in the modern day with only minor script changes (obviously, staying as close to the originals as possible would be of paramount importance here) and, obviously, new visuals. The remaining episodes can all be totally new stories. I'd want it to be episodic because that's what Star Trek is to me and it's my favourite mode of TV storytelling, but there could be continuing background plots and character arcs to appeal to people who enjoy serialised ongoing stories.
In a way, the term "reboot" doesn't convey what I mean - all the new stories would have stardates that don't conflict with existing TOS, so existing canon remains essentially untouched. We simply fill in the gaps in the first 3 years of the mission with new stories, and go into the 4th and 5th years if need be. So less a reboot, and more a continuation, if you like.
Here are some of the benefits of this concept that I can think of, in messy list form:
- Major advantage: remove the sexism/misogyny that undermines whole episodes. Pike's line in The Cage is far from the worst example - Wolf in the Fold, for example, is total frigging nonsense from start to finish. Elaan of Troyius can go climb a tree as well, and so can all the nasty lines, scenes and treatments of characters scattered across the series that I'm sure we could list. I'm not suggesting going back with a fine comb through the series and removing everything objectionable, but rather simply showing things differently through new scripts. One of the easiest examples I can think of is to just have a female captain on another Constitution-class vessel, showing that the situation established in Turnabout Intruder is obviously not true.
- Following on from that, characters like Janice Rand who get completely mistreated by the scripts of TOS could now have a chance to grow and become vivid, proper characters. Similarly, the rest of the bridge crew can get actual personalities and have more to do - TAS already sort of showed glimpses of this.
- I mentioned this in the Pike show thread in the Discovery subforum, but any revisiting of the 23rd Century offers us the chance to have some proper Andorian, Tellarite, etc characters. Both cultures are pretty much a blank slate to work with, with some great stuff in fan works/novels to integrate into canon, should the writers choose. I think it'd be great to flesh out the Federation's founding members like this, and I've never been totally sure why every show except Enterprise has neglected them, considering their importance within the Federation.
- Another bonus is the opportunity to fix up the continuity a little. This needn't turn into a fanwank nightmare where Spock just spends 20 minutes reciting Memory Alpha articles to the camera - just minor lines here and there to help everything gel together more smoothly. This can work in tying things very loosely to the TNG/VOY/DS9 era, too - we could have a plot, or even just a bit of dialogue, about the newly-contacted Betazoids and/or their entry into the Federation, for example.
- We could also give Spock a throwaway line or two about "my Human sister", rescuing us from the canon-wars that presently engulf the fandom.
So again, I know everyone (or at least, me) hates reboots and believes in leaving great things untouched, but I've been playing the old PC adventure games Star Trek 25th Anniversary and Judgement Rites recently, and they convinced me that the TOS setting and characters are so strong that there are virtually infinite high quality stories still to be told using them, so why not do it while revisiting some of the best of TOS in the process?
How would you produce such a series? Are my ideas any good, or just abjectly terrible? Have at it.
If, hypothetically, CBS decided to have a remake of Star Trek today, what kind of features would you want to see in it? I ordinarily hate reboots and remakes, and my immediate response to such a thing would be "why bother?", but I think I've talked myself into this.
The way this could work is have, say, a 26 episode season (I have no idea if this is practically viable in today's TV climate, but whatever), and about 6 or so of those episodes could be remakes of fan-favourite TOS episodes. I'm thinking Arena, Mirror Mirror, City on the Edge, Space Seed, A Taste of Armageddon, The Doomsday Machine and so on could all work fantastically in the modern day with only minor script changes (obviously, staying as close to the originals as possible would be of paramount importance here) and, obviously, new visuals. The remaining episodes can all be totally new stories. I'd want it to be episodic because that's what Star Trek is to me and it's my favourite mode of TV storytelling, but there could be continuing background plots and character arcs to appeal to people who enjoy serialised ongoing stories.
In a way, the term "reboot" doesn't convey what I mean - all the new stories would have stardates that don't conflict with existing TOS, so existing canon remains essentially untouched. We simply fill in the gaps in the first 3 years of the mission with new stories, and go into the 4th and 5th years if need be. So less a reboot, and more a continuation, if you like.
Here are some of the benefits of this concept that I can think of, in messy list form:
- Major advantage: remove the sexism/misogyny that undermines whole episodes. Pike's line in The Cage is far from the worst example - Wolf in the Fold, for example, is total frigging nonsense from start to finish. Elaan of Troyius can go climb a tree as well, and so can all the nasty lines, scenes and treatments of characters scattered across the series that I'm sure we could list. I'm not suggesting going back with a fine comb through the series and removing everything objectionable, but rather simply showing things differently through new scripts. One of the easiest examples I can think of is to just have a female captain on another Constitution-class vessel, showing that the situation established in Turnabout Intruder is obviously not true.
- Following on from that, characters like Janice Rand who get completely mistreated by the scripts of TOS could now have a chance to grow and become vivid, proper characters. Similarly, the rest of the bridge crew can get actual personalities and have more to do - TAS already sort of showed glimpses of this.
- I mentioned this in the Pike show thread in the Discovery subforum, but any revisiting of the 23rd Century offers us the chance to have some proper Andorian, Tellarite, etc characters. Both cultures are pretty much a blank slate to work with, with some great stuff in fan works/novels to integrate into canon, should the writers choose. I think it'd be great to flesh out the Federation's founding members like this, and I've never been totally sure why every show except Enterprise has neglected them, considering their importance within the Federation.
- Another bonus is the opportunity to fix up the continuity a little. This needn't turn into a fanwank nightmare where Spock just spends 20 minutes reciting Memory Alpha articles to the camera - just minor lines here and there to help everything gel together more smoothly. This can work in tying things very loosely to the TNG/VOY/DS9 era, too - we could have a plot, or even just a bit of dialogue, about the newly-contacted Betazoids and/or their entry into the Federation, for example.
- We could also give Spock a throwaway line or two about "my Human sister", rescuing us from the canon-wars that presently engulf the fandom.
So again, I know everyone (or at least, me) hates reboots and believes in leaving great things untouched, but I've been playing the old PC adventure games Star Trek 25th Anniversary and Judgement Rites recently, and they convinced me that the TOS setting and characters are so strong that there are virtually infinite high quality stories still to be told using them, so why not do it while revisiting some of the best of TOS in the process?
How would you produce such a series? Are my ideas any good, or just abjectly terrible? Have at it.
