If You were Making Star Trek?

[xortex]

Ralph McQuarrie's designs were the best esp the bigger one. It's aestetically beautiful. It doesn't have to look like it works. Everybody hates everything at first then they come to love it as long as it doesn't just seem right which many things do.

 

[kitamurafan]

What do I want to see? “Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.” It’s going to be in the Abram’s verse, right now they will run with whatever can make them money. I have no specific ideas but I’ll throw some suggestions out there.

In TNG there was an episode where they discovered that many species throughout the Galaxy share a common ancestor, and that an ancient race seeded many words with life billions of years ago. Where did they go? Although the original species were Humanoid, it would be interesting if it were discovered that they would later grow and evolve into what we know as ‘the Q’. Over billions of years this advancement eventually made them lose their ‘humanity’, and caused them to look upon the rest of the Galaxy with cold apathy, knowing that they are ultimately responsible for most of what has unfolded.

I think it would be appropriate to include Section 31 in the new series, given current events in the world. I had an idea for a story about an attempt to stop a Doomsday Machine from destroying a planet, but during the process Section 31 attempt to ‘hijack’ the weapon so they can use it to further Federation interests. Might make for a good ‘pre-emptive strike’ on the Klingon Home world if relations are getting a little tense.

What about that star that’s going to go boom and destroy Romulus in a few hundred years? I can’t see Section 31 wanting the Romulan’s to find out about that. All they have to do is bide their time and the Romulan Empire is out of the way….if they can prevent the secret from getting out. Older Spock and Kirk would need to be ‘silenced’.

I have been really intrigued by your ancient humanoid storyline. Did you ever develop that further?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The reason it has to be about the same characters and same general places every time: because the single most important factor getting the audience to keep watching any TV show is to watch favorite characters

But these aren't my favorite characters. They're a bunch of a**holes pretending to be my favorite characters without any of the qualities that made them likable. If everyone followed your line of thinking, we wouldn't have Vorta.

I wasn't talking about any characters in particular. But whether it's a movie or TV series, people want to see the same characters they liked in the previous episode or movie. And if nobody liked the characters in the previous episode or movie, then the Nielsens/box office stank and there's not going to be a next episode or movie.

And yeah, people went to see Trek XI for the recognizable names: Kirk, Spock, Enterprise. After they're in the theater, then maybe you can wow them with other elements, but how are you going to get them in there in the first place? Trek had a terrible rep that needed to be overcome.

 

[timelord1010]

But these aren't my favorite characters. They're a bunch of a**holes pretending to be my favorite characters without any of the qualities that made them likable. If everyone followed your line of thinking, we wouldn't have Vorta.

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who was thinking this. William Shatner's Kirk was such a great speaker he could talk anyone into following him anywhere, I'm sorry to say Chris Pine's Kirk just doesn't give me the same feeling.

If I were given the chance to reboot Trek I wouldn't throw out the rich history of Trek, I would have jumped 100 years into the future with a young crew. You could have taken the entire Trek09 movie and changed the characters names and just had Nero as a crazy Romulan who wants revenge for Romulus being destroyed. The Enterprise could be a new ship, the G or H or they could pull the old Enterprise-A out of a museum and quickly refitted it in secret on the Earth's surface. Nero wipes out starfleet and the Klingon fleet so it's up to this young crew and new ship to save the day.

You don't need a alternate reality or to undo the history of Trek. The whole idea of Trek is to boldly go, not boldly go back and redo.

 

[Kelso]

They need to look at RTD's Doctor Who and understand why it worked.

He... (1) ditched the look of the old show (2) ditched the plodding pace and serialized structure of the old show (3) revamped the Doctor's back-story and personality (4) replaced the stilted and boring paper thin characterizations that were common on the old show with some frankly affecting character interplay (5) hired actors who could elevate the material, etc, etc.

But he also managed to keep the essential elements of the premise that still worked. And, as a bonus for fandom, injected unprecedented levels of fanwankery as the series progressed.

We need a talented TV producer who can take the old premise of a group of charming characters on a starship, bolding going where no one has gone before and make a contemporary television series from it. Fanwankery should be the optional icing on the cake, not the starting point.

 

[Warped9]

^^ If I were doing a reboot of Trek then I agree with you. Too bad Abrams didn't follow this approach.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

He... (1) ditched the look of the old show (2) ditched the plodding pace and serialized structure of the old show (3) revamped the Doctor's back-story and personality (4) replaced the stilted and boring paper thin characterizations that were common on the old show with some frankly affecting character interplay (5) hired actors who could elevate the material, etc, etc.

Wow! Star Trek was never that far gone!

1) Look of the old show - okay, I'll give ya that. It's nice to have a fresh new look.

2) Plodding pace - DS9 was fast-paced, and the serialized structure is great. Much better than the episodic structure, which sabotaged VOY by making it appear that everyone had amnesia and could never remember what they did from one episode to the next, and that Janeway had multiple personality disorder and couldn't remember who she was from one episode to the next.

3) Backstory and personality - The wonderfully rich backstory and personalities of the characters have always been Star Trek's strength. Even in VOY and ENT, the characters could get ya through bad/nonsensical plotlines.

4) Shallow characterization - Look to DS9 for a solution to the alien-of-the-week dilemma. Also, this solution requires serialization. Of course guest characters are going to be shallow if you only use them for one ep.

5) Hire good actors - Hasn't been a big problem with Star Trek, overall. There have been some notorious guest stars, but for every Padma Lakshmi you get a Harris Yulin, so it all averages out.

We need a talented TV producer who can take the old premise of a group of charming characters on a starship, bolding going where no one has gone before and make a contemporary television series from it.

Honestly, I don't think that's enough. If it were, then why have recent attempts at space opera such as Firefly and Defying Gravity flopped? The former was much better than the latter, but they have the same dilemma: there isn't a big enough audience for space opera of any sort to survive on network TV.

For Star Trek to survive on TV, it needs 1) to air on basic cable (AMC, FX, TNT) where a few million viewers is enough to survive on; and 2) to use the Star Trek brand name, familiar characters and time period, personality and philosophy to give it an added boost of recognition that original space opera shows can't have. Those two elements in combination just might do the trick.

 

[Kelso]

Temis, my point wasn't that Trek would benefit from the same changes as DW, just that we need a producer with the same savvy and freedom to change, revamp, or disregard anything from the franchise that doesn't work or isn't advantageous to the series. I agree that they would need to keep the name and premise of the franchise (along with anything else that still works), but the details should be freely re-thunk.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Oh okay. A really savvy Trek producer would realize that very little actually would need to be changed. Trek's fundamentals are very strong. They just take TOS and DS9 as the models, and forget about the creatively stagnant TNG-VOY-ENT approach. Tap into the publicity surrounding the movies, put the new show on cable where it can thrive, accept that an audience of 3-4M for space opera is realistic, respect Trek's philosophy and history, and remember not to get complacent.