If you were in charge of a Trek reboot, what ten things would you change?

[Rahul]

No, that is not a good enough reason.

Yeah, it is.
Tweaks and little changes, delving deeper, giving more detail is always alright. But not changing the core identity of something. Because then it stops being that thing. If you want to show Vulcans, they better be logical. If they're not, then why the fuck do you need to use Vulcans in the first place?

There is a reason the new Star Wars movies STILL have lightsabers and Jedi knights, despite both being a very 70s concept and everything else than 'modern' or 'realistic'. Because they are part of the core mythology. And thus should broadly remain consistent.

 

[uniderth]

I'm totally in the camp of having humanoid alien being decended from modified humans. It just makes sense. My theory is that genetic seeding in "The Chase" was a failure and that the only group that happened to evolve similar to their body plan was humanity. Some other later alien species took humans and seeded them through that galaxy, breeding them with life native to worlds. So the fact that the genetic message in "The Chase" worked was just a fluke. This is also my explanation for the different Klingon varieties. Klingons were originally humans. But during the process of engineering them they broke free and killed the alien breeding them. Killed their gods, so to speak. Because the experiement was incomplete a more human looking variety of Klingons as well as the fully Klingon variety existed side by side.

 

[fireproof78]

Yeah, it is.
Tweaks and little changes, delving deeper, giving more detail is always alright. But not changing the core identity of something. Because then it stops being that thing. If you want to show Vulcans, they better be logical. If they're not, then why the fuck do you need to use Vulcans in the first place?

Respectfully, no it isn't.

It isn't just that Star Wars and lightsabers are 70s and don't change. It's also that they are not tangentially based in Earth's own future. So, there is nothing wrong with even minor reboots to Vulcan appearance and expansion of culture.

Vulcans are not core to Trek. Optimism and hope for humanity's future absolutely are.

And, to avoid a "No, you're wrong." "No, you're wrong!" statement, this is my opinion. But, in my opinion, the level of inflexibility regarding Star Trek is starting to become concerning.

 

[Valenti]

There was an old joke where a scientist bet God that he could create life like God did. When God accepted, the scientist bent down and grabbed some dirt off the ground, and God said 'Whoa, wait a minute there. Get your own dirt.'

 

[Tim Walker]

1. I'd like a broader depiction of advanced alien races more broadly. In the Trekverse, it seems like nearly every alien race is either less advanced than the Federation, or within a few hundred years of development. Otherwise, they're just some godlike energy being. But the universe is 13.7 billion years old, and there should be many truly ancient civilizations which have not advanced into a higher plane yet are still as far beyond the Federation as the UFP is from a stone-age tribe. This would require developing a different sort of story, but it would offer up a great deal of story potential, given it would drive home that the galaxy is a huge place full of strange wonders built by the elder races.

Thoughts?

I was watching a documentary about Forbidden Planet. It was pointed out that we never did learn what the ancient aliens looked like-making them a bit of a mystery.

Come to think of it...did we ever learn what the Preservers looked like? Or the Iconians?

As for a super civilization making an appearance in the present (of Star Trek), perhaps we only see their ships? I'm thinking that a super civilization detected the signals of a primitive warp civilization, and choose to investigate.

 

[uniderth]

As for a super civilization making an appearance in the present (of Star Trek), perhaps we only see their ships? I'm thinking that a super civilization detected the signals of a primitive warp civilization, and choose to investigate.

Maybe they don't look like anything. Maybe they uploaded their consciousness into the starships that they pilot. That would be interesting.

 

[Tim Walker]

No transporters? I was thinking about the old Lost in Space series. The Jupiter 2 carried a tiny-cramped-auxiliary craft, referred to as a "space pod". There seems to be little information online about the craft. I did find what seems to be a CGI animation, showing the robot landing the craft on a planet. I'm thinking that a starship could carry similar craft, as well a larger design similar to a runabout.

 

[Tenacity]

A ballsy move -- ironically and unfortunately -- would be to have a Russian in the crew.

North Korean.

 

[Jonesy]

Yeah, it is.
Tweaks and little changes, delving deeper, giving more detail is always alright. But not changing the core identity of something. Because then it stops being that thing. If you want to show Vulcans, they better be logical. If they're not, then why the fuck do you need to use Vulcans in the first place?

What if the truth is that the races such as Vulcans, Klingons, Borg, etc are played out? Why does one have to modify them to make them interesting again?

Why not just go forward with something entirely different?

 

[Rahul]

What if the truth is that the races such as Vulcans, Klingons, Borg, etc are played out? Why does one have to modify them to make them interesting again?

Why not just go forward with something entirely different?

Then do something completely new and different, but don't try to sell it at the same time as "Vulcans"?

 

[Graham]

1) I'd make it a total reboot of the franchise. Start with a TOS-equivalent, but clear out the entire timeline so that it can do whatever it wants.

2) No world war III, no Eugenics wars, no century of horrors. They're unlikely to happen in real life, no need to have them in the timeline. In fact as a general rule I'd tell the writers to avoid giving the viewer information about things that happened on Earth until after the year 2100. No "When Mars was colonised in 2020" lines which are just going to date your show.

3) I'd keep TOS where it is, in the 2260s. But I'd make the Federation and space exploration in general younger within the timeline. The Federation would be a looser alliance, far more akin to the EU than the USA, an alliance of sovereign states. Maybe even looser than that, something closer to the UN now. The Federation would pre-date TOS by no more than thirty years, and interstellar travel by no more than 70. I would want people alive who remembered the first Human warp drive, and most adults would remember a time before the Federation existed.

4) No universal translator, as others have said. BUT... there would be an common language. Let's call it "Inter Stellar Basic." ISB is the "Lingua Franca" of space; most species capable of interstellar travel know of it and most ship crew on interstellar ships speak it. You can buy translators that convert it to english for a few spacedollars. The point of this is that on the one hand, you can depict the reality that meeting a genuinely new species brings language difficulties with it. But on the other, it's not so simple as everyone speaking English - though as a convention, ISB may be rendered as English on screen just to avoid all those tedious subtitles or an interpreter endlessly translating lines.

5) No prime directive. At MOST, the prime directive would be a Federation policy that Starfleet may not interfere in the politics of other worlds without specific orders. But leaving people to die rather than help - no. No way. And yes, the Federation would intervene when it felt the case was right. The reason being that we've done the "we can't interfere!" thing to death, let's do something new!

6) Generally a more realistic mixture of technologies. By which I mean, computers way more advanced than Trek typically shows them. Plus lots of genetic engineering, highly advanced medical science, etc. But interstellar travel is relatively new, it's difficult, it's hellishly expensive. I want the Enterprise to feel like it's on it's own out there most of the time, in a dark, scary place where help is not usually available. Think about travel during the age of sail, where journeys took weeks, months or even years. No more nipping home for the weekend!

And no replicators. You can have machines that make things, and they can make things quickly and easily, but they are more like distant descendants of 3D Printers than they are like replicators. They're seriously limited in what the can produce.

7) Nothing about Humans "evolving" beyond basic emotions like greed. Human nature hasn't changed in thousands of years, it won't change in the next few hundred. In relation to this, the Federation is NOT a post-scarcity society. There is money, people are paid for their work, the Enterprise captain has to be aware of his operating budget.

8) I'd like to see a more realistic depiction of weapons and their firepower. TOS did this better than anything that came afterwards. Being hit by a ships' phaser bank or a photon torpedo should be like being hit by a nuclear blast. A LARGE nuclear blast. If the shields go down and the ship gets hit again, the ship is vapourised. Totally. And weapon ranges are in the hundreds of thousands of miles - two ships next to one another exchanging fire is something we should never see.

Similarly, decide how powerful your hand weapons are and stick with it. Don't treat a hand phaser like a handheld artillery piece in one scene and a .45 in another.

9) Echo what people have said about more diversity. Let's face it, at least 85% of the cast should be from places like India and China. And yes, some of them should be gay, some of them should be transgendered, etc.

And NONE of this should have a "story of the week" about it! Do NOT give us a story with the moral "it's okay to be gay" - simply show us a society in which nobody thinks anything of it if you're gay.

That's all I can think of for the moment.

 

[lawman]

Now those are some great, thoughtful ideas I could get behind!

(Except for number 7. In fact, I think it kinda conflicts with number 6. I would argue that if humanity were to manage to put its Earth-bound problems behind it and venture out into space as posited, it would almost certainly be because technology has advanced to the point that we have a post-scarcity society. Indeed, it's a damn realistic prospect in a lot of ways even today... the trouble being, obviously, that as yet we have no consensus economic model for how to run such a society.)

 

[Graham]

My problem with a post scarcity society is that it's so difficult to write for because it removes almost every motivation and activity we're familiar with.

Just count how many times TNG showed us mining operations, talked about people being farmers, having jobs, showed us ships carrying out trading operations, etc, etc. Yet in a post scarcity society most of that activity would be rendered meaningless. So you wind up having to come up with a lot of excuses as to how replicators can't make this or that - and yet still call it a post scarcity society anyway.

The "we don't have money" thing is already one of the most contradictory aspects of all of Trek, and you can positively tie yourself in knots trying to work out what it even means because there's like fifty things on screen that contradict it. It's just too easy for writers to contradict it without even realising they've done it.

Not to mention that even if you did do it right, you wind up with a society that's so different that it's alien and difficult for the audience to understand or connect with.

 

[Phaser Two]

If I where in charge I would never do a prequel show again.
Just continue 10 or 20 years after Nemesis.

THANK YOU

 

[Gov Kodos]

1) I'd make it a total reboot of the franchise. Start with a TOS-equivalent, but clear out the entire timeline so that it can do whatever it wants.

2) No world war III, no Eugenics wars, no century of horrors. They're unlikely to happen in real life, no need to have them in the timeline. In fact as a general rule I'd tell the writers to avoid giving the viewer information about things that happened on Earth until after the year 2100. No "When Mars was colonised in 2020" lines which are just going to date your show.

3) I'd keep TOS where it is, in the 2260s. But I'd make the Federation and space exploration in general younger within the timeline. The Federation would be a looser alliance, far more akin to the EU than the USA, an alliance of sovereign states. Maybe even looser than that, something closer to the UN now. The Federation would pre-date TOS by no more than thirty years, and interstellar travel by no more than 70. I would want people alive who remembered the first Human warp drive, and most adults would remember a time before the Federation existed.

4) No universal translator, as others have said. BUT... there would be an common language. Let's call it "Inter Stellar Basic." ISB is the "Lingua Franca" of space; most species capable of interstellar travel know of it and most ship crew on interstellar ships speak it. You can buy translators that convert it to english for a few spacedollars. The point of this is that on the one hand, you can depict the reality that meeting a genuinely new species brings language difficulties with it. But on the other, it's not so simple as everyone speaking English - though as a convention, ISB may be rendered as English on screen just to avoid all those tedious subtitles or an interpreter endlessly translating lines.

5) No prime directive. At MOST, the prime directive would be a Federation policy that Starfleet may not interfere in the politics of other worlds without specific orders. But leaving people to die rather than help - no. No way. And yes, the Federation would intervene when it felt the case was right. The reason being that we've done the "we can't interfere!" thing to death, let's do something new!

6) Generally a more realistic mixture of technologies. By which I mean, computers way more advanced than Trek typically shows them. Plus lots of genetic engineering, highly advanced medical science, etc. But interstellar travel is relatively new, it's difficult, it's hellishly expensive. I want the Enterprise to feel like it's on it's own out there most of the time, in a dark, scary place where help is not usually available. Think about travel during the age of sail, where journeys took weeks, months or even years. No more nipping home for the weekend!

And no replicators. You can have machines that make things, and they can make things quickly and easily, but they are more like distant descendants of 3D Printers than they are like replicators. They're seriously limited in what the can produce.

7) Nothing about Humans "evolving" beyond basic emotions like greed. Human nature hasn't changed in thousands of years, it won't change in the next few hundred. In relation to this, the Federation is NOT a post-scarcity society. There is money, people are paid for their work, the Enterprise captain has to be aware of his operating budget.

8) I'd like to see a more realistic depiction of weapons and their firepower. TOS did this better than anything that came afterwards. Being hit by a ships' phaser bank or a photon torpedo should be like being hit by a nuclear blast. A LARGE nuclear blast. If the shields go down and the ship gets hit again, the ship is vapourised. Totally. And weapon ranges are in the hundreds of thousands of miles - two ships next to one another exchanging fire is something we should never see.

Similarly, decide how powerful your hand weapons are and stick with it. Don't treat a hand phaser like a handheld artillery piece in one scene and a .45 in another.

9) Echo what people have said about more diversity. Let's face it, at least 85% of the cast should be from places like India and China. And yes, some of them should be gay, some of them should be transgendered, etc.

And NONE of this should have a "story of the week" about it! Do NOT give us a story with the moral "it's okay to be gay" - simply show us a society in which nobody thinks anything of it if you're gay.

That's all I can think of for the moment.

Going with these ideas, I wish they would explore the folks that have a problem with Federation Society. Goofy as Way to Eden was, the idea of a counter culture that finds the technology of society a prison that needs to be escaped is a good way to explore Federation life from a counter perspective.

 

[Marynator]

If I was doing a show, I would set it about 100 years after Voyager. I would show the major nations now all part of the Federation, and how multi-cultural the Federation has become, but with a general sense of "We are all in this together". I would have the ship and crew of the series (which I would make as a new Enterprise!) exploring beyond the Milky Way into other galaxies.

I would not have any military threats to the Federation: I feel we should move past that, it has all been done before. What I would like to see is the crew exploring new concepts of reality. The conflicts wouldn't be about petty border disputes or squabbles, but rather just totally different ideas on concepts such as time, energy, space, and what existence is. I feel that it would be interesting to have more aliens in the spirit of the Tralfamadorians (from Slaughterhouse Five) as an example.

 

[Graham]

Going with these ideas, I wish they would explore the folks that have a problem with Federation Society. Goofy as Way to Eden was, the idea of a counter culture that finds the technology of society a prison that needs to be escaped is a good way to explore Federation life from a counter perspective.

And this is something that still having a scarcity society makes not only likely, but inevitable. Because it means every government decision will advantage some and disadvantage others. Which generates tension and conflict - which is what drama is all about.

 

[eschaton]

My problem with a post scarcity society is that it's so difficult to write for because it removes almost every motivation and activity we're familiar with.

Just count how many times TNG showed us mining operations, talked about people being farmers, having jobs, showed us ships carrying out trading operations, etc, etc. Yet in a post scarcity society most of that activity would be rendered meaningless. So you wind up having to come up with a lot of excuses as to how replicators can't make this or that - and yet still call it a post scarcity society anyway.

The "we don't have money" thing is already one of the most contradictory aspects of all of Trek, and you can positively tie yourself in knots trying to work out what it even means because there's like fifty things on screen that contradict it. It's just too easy for writers to contradict it without even realising they've done it.

Not to mention that even if you did do it right, you wind up with a society that's so different that it's alien and difficult for the audience to understand or connect with.

I dunno. I don't think having a post-scarcity society is unrelatable. After all, the following is currently true:

1. Very rich people effectively live in a post-scarcity society today. Yes, they do continue to accumulate wealth, but they don't really need to in order to survive - they could live off of interest and investments for the rest of their lives. Which many of course do, but others choose to continue to accumulate wealth because they like the power that the money gives them - either to shape the world in their desired manner or just out of sheer competitiveness. And there's of course plenty of drama in the world of the wealthy
2. Societies without currency, or even private property, were the norm until relatively recently in human history. There's nothing inherent or fundamental to human nature about modern capitalism, it's just the system that works best when the economy is growing and there's a scarcity of resources.
3. Plenty of people today don't have jobs besides the idle rich and the destitute. I'm talking about retirees and children first and foremost. They manage to lead full and complicated lives without spending eight hours a day or more toiling in order to have someone else extract the surplus value of their labor.

Take all of these together, and there are plenty of ways that you can have relatable drama in a setting which is (largely) post-scarcity, post-currency, and post-work. Writers just have to not fall into the lazy trap of using a MacGuffin.

 

[Tenacity]

. But I'd make the Federation and space exploration in general younger within the timeline

In the case of the Federation, go the other direction.

The Federation is hundreds of years old by the time Humans enter the galatic stage, Humans had nothing to do with it's creation, Earth isn't the seat of government, we are one among many, after the Romulan war Earth was invited to join.

Prior to the Cochrane flight the Federation policy of non-interferance keep them for contacting us, and it was a century after before they noticed we had warp flight because It took that long for them to notice.

No one was paying attention to us.

One of the reason there are so many Humans in Starfleet is because more than a few of the older Federation species consider Humans to be basically cannon fodder.

Societies without currency, or even private property, were the norm until relatively recently in human history.

In part because many of the people in those societies were lower class peon or slaves.

The big problem with the insistance that Star Trek is some kind of magical post-scarcity, post-currency, post-work society is in order to make it work is the necessary to first dismiss a large number of scenes and tracts of dialog that contradict this assertion.

 

[Valenti]

Nice. Call it the First Federation and have Bailey and Balok be the Chancellors. Bailey was our first Ambassador. And more giant ships. I love giant ships and space stations, alien of course. Spock did say Humans were only a tiny minority of the life forms in the universe.