It's 50 years from now...

[muzzleflash]

...Star Trek has flopped, and most people have forgotten about it. Now is your chance to do it over again. What would you change?

For starters, I would get rid of the aliens. I always found the aliens in Trek, or at least the way the were portrayed, to be rather silly.

It's a relatively shallow idea compared to what could be accomplished if one were to (really) re-imagine trek, but I'd like to see all "aliens" actually be humans in this hypothetical new Trek. It does away with trying to explain why most of the Milky Way is inhabited by organisms that are in every way human, with the exception of appearance and obscure references to physiology, neither of which are important factors in the story. If you're going to have a story about aliens, they need to be truly alien, in almost every aspect.

I can imagine something like, during the earlier days of space exploration, there was a period in which hundreds of colony ships were sent into deep space across galaxy in an effort to preserve what was left of the human race (perhaps due to the aftermath of WW3). Over time, these colonies developed their own cultural identities which were completely removed from that of Earth's. After centuries, some of these colonies would grow into powerful empires like those of the Klingon and Romulans.

It sounds kind of like EVE after some further thought.

E: wrong forum, I meant to post this in general.

 

[scotpens]

. . . I can imagine something like, during the earlier days of space exploration, there was a period in which hundreds of colony ships were sent into deep space across galaxy in an effort to preserve what was left of the human race (perhaps due to the aftermath of WW3). Over time, these colonies developed their own cultural identities which were completely removed from that of Earth's. After centuries, some of these colonies would grow into powerful empires like those of the Klingon and Romulans.

Sounds like Gene Roddenberry's failed pilot Genesis II (later reworked as Planet Earth), except that it was set entirely on Earth.

 

[Nerys Myk]

. . . I can imagine something like, during the earlier days of space exploration, there was a period in which hundreds of colony ships were sent into deep space across galaxy in an effort to preserve what was left of the human race (perhaps due to the aftermath of WW3). Over time, these colonies developed their own cultural identities which were completely removed from that of Earth's. After centuries, some of these colonies would grow into powerful empires like those of the Klingon and Romulans.

Sounds like Gene Roddenberry's failed pilot Genesis II (later reworked as Planet Earth), except that it was set entirely on Earth.

Or Andromeda

 

[muzzleflash]

Never watched either of them.

That's by no means the premise of this hypothetical reboot, just canonical candy.

I could think of a number of things I'd like to see, but I didn't want my first post to be a wall of text that nobody would read.

 

[Takeru]

I can imagine something like, during the earlier days of space exploration, there was a period in which hundreds of colony ships were sent into deep space across galaxy in an effort to preserve what was left of the human race (perhaps due to the aftermath of WW3). Over time, these colonies developed their own cultural identities which were completely removed from that of Earth's. After centuries, some of these colonies would grow into powerful empires like those of the Klingon and Romulans.

I kinda like your idea, but I would establish that most of these ships never reached a planet and the people simply died, I never really liked the "humanoid life on every rock" approach of Star Trek.
I would set it in the 30th (or 35th?) century, to give the colonies enough time to truly create "vulcan" or "klingon" societies and to grow into more than 100,000 descendants of the firts colonists, but I'd keep the technology at the TOS level. Simple warp drives could have been developed after WW3, to allow the humans to actually reach other planets, but it took centuries to create advanced warp drives, that allowed easy travelling between the worlds, which explains why most of them developed seperately from each other.

I'd also downgrade the federation, it would only be an alliance of humans from Earth, Vulcan and a few newer, dependant colonies. They would compete with Klingons, Romulans and Cardassians as the big players in the alpha quadrant (there would be a few minor states, but class M planets would be relatively rare, at least in the area that is accessible without the need of generation or sleeper ships), other parts of the galaxy haven't been explored yet, so there might be other human colonies or truly alien intelligent life, just to keep the options open.

 

[T'Girl]

Having the show be in the 30th or 35th century is good, would have be good for the original TOS too. Have human space be only seven or eight hundred light years across, not eleven percent of the galaxy. Make warp drive easy and cheap, hundreds of thousands of ships traveling all over the place.

 

[Forbin]

Trek without discovering new life and new civilizations? It's the whole point of the dern show!

 

[Jeri]

Who knows what kind of entertainment format people will even be watching 50 years from now. Concepts could be so amorphous they'd be unrecognizable anyway; sort of like open-source programming. Maybe everybody will get in on it.

 

[Michael]

For starters, I would get rid of the aliens. I always found the aliens in Trek, or at least the way the were portrayed, to be rather silly.

Interesting idea there. Wouldn't be Star Trek, though.

 

[muzzleflash]

Trek without discovering new life and new civilizations? It's the whole point of the dern show!

That's the premise, but it's not the point. And if it was ever the point, it wasn't executed very well, again due to the fact that all these so called "aliens" are really humans with different faces. Even Earth squids are more alien than any alien portrayed in Star Trek (with the exception of shapeless energy lifeforms and giant space amoebas)

 

[22 Stars]

^ TAS has many truly alien life forms around, and TOS would have with the proper technology and money.

 

[T'Bonz]

A futuristic show sans aliens wouldn't interest me.

 

[JustKate]

A futuristic show sans aliens wouldn't interest me.

Me, either. And here's why - or at least part of the reason why.

The point of Trek isn't "Look at the cool aliens." Which is good since an awful lot of them weren't really all that cool, as the OP very correctly states (although there are a number of great exceptions). The point of Trek, and of most good fiction, really, is to talk about people, and the great thing about using alien people is that you can use them to say things about humans, but you can say them in a way that people find entertaining and interesting instead of ponderous.

So by all means, give me Spock and Data and their struggles to understand humanity, give me Cardassians and their struggles to continue to exist despite their planet's lack of resources, give me mysterious critters such as the cockroach thingies in TNG's "Conspiracy," give me a human trying to understand someone who has some understandable qualities but also some inexplicable qualities...I want all of that, and more.

 

[scotpens]

Even Earth squids are more alien than any alien portrayed in Star Trek (with the exception of shapeless energy lifeforms and giant space amoebas)

And the cheesy birdlike puppets in "Catspaw," or the unseen true forms of the Kelvans in "By Any Other Name."

Well, of course, the TOS crew had to create whatever aliens they could within the time, budget and technical constraints of a 1960s TV show. Gene Roddenberry's first story outline for "The Cage" described the illusion-creating aliens as large crablike creatures. Imagine trying to create such beings convincingly in 1964. Now, if only they could have trained real crabs to act. Or squid, for that matter.

 

[muzzleflash]

I think this thread is a bit misleading because it's in the TOS forum. I meant to post it in general trek.

The point is, I dislike the idea of the majority of Trek aliens being humans with some miscellaneous protrusion on some part of their face. It's silly.

 

[JustKate]

The point is, I dislike the idea of the majority of Trek aliens being humans with some miscellaneous protrusion on some part of their face. It's silly.

Maybe, but it's also the reality of TV. We didn't have CGI back in the day, and it's not that common on TV even now because of budget issues...

...And even if it were, I have to say that generally speaking (thus far, anyway), human actors are far better at portraying emotion than even the most skillfully created image. This is supposed to be drama, not science, and to me being able to see the emotions on the characters' faces is more important than having them look more alien.

If they eventually are able to manage both, that would be great, but right now they manage it only rarely and at great expense.

Have you ever seen the British series Primeval? It uses a lot of CGI ("a lot" being a relative term), and at least on the episodes I've seen, its CGI varies from eh, not bad to simply dreadful. In those instances when the CGI creatures look fairly real, that realism does add to the plot, but when they look mediocre or out-and-out bad, they actually distract from the plot. Badly. I would hate to see Trek make the same mistake. And in Trek's case mediocrity would be an even bigger mistake since unlike the Primeval creatures, which basically just run around acting like wildlife, the aliens need to interact with the humans and vice versa. So the CGI needs to be done wonderfully...or it shouldn't be done at all.

I know you're talking about 50 years from now, when presumably this sort of thing will be done infinitely better than it is currently, so I'll just add that even then, character and plot should always take precidence over how cool and/or alien the aliens look. Always. There's nothing sillier, in my opinion, than a TV show or movie that cares more about how it looks than about what it says. There's more than one kind of silly, after all.

It's the same reason the enormous inconsistences of the Universal Translator don't bother me. The UT is, to be frank, silly - at least as it's portrayed in Trek. But I accept it unquestionably because without it as a plot device we'd never get anywhere. You can't have "We don't understand the aliens and the aliens don't understand us" plots all the time, right? That is indeed far more realistic and far less silly than the usually effortless translations we get from the UT, but it would also be booooooorrrrrrrring. Well, to me, too much time and effort spent on making aliens really alien-looking would probably end up sacrificing stuff that's more important to me, such as plots that make me laugh or think - or allow me to just sit back and enjoy the the ride.

 

[muzzleflash]

The point is not that the alien make-up is unconvincing, it's that their behaviour is not convincing. Honestly, what part of, say a Klingon (other than their appearance, or not even if in ToS) is so alien? Nothing.

I understand that part of the reason there are aliens is to allow the writers to examine human behaviour by contrasting it to particular qualities of alien species. In other cases, aliens represent extreme qualities of humanity. In all cases, these aliens are almost always essentially human, so why pretend that they are something different? It just gets in the way of convincing storytelling in my opinion.

 

[JustKate]

I understand that part of the reason there are aliens is to allow the writers to examine human behaviour by contrasting it to particular qualities of alien species. In other cases, aliens represent extreme qualities of humanity. In all cases, these aliens are almost always essentially human, so why pretend that they are something different? It just gets in the way of convincing storytelling in my opinion.

I think I might be getting myself in way over my head, theory-of-dramatic-construction-wise, but what the heck? I'll give it a shot.

Therein lies our primary disagreement, I think (particularly because I do agree that it would be nice if the aliens sometimes acted a little more alien.) In my opinion, the pretence of alienness - when it's done right - can improve the storytelling. It's probably the main reason why I like scifi. In a well-crafted piece of fiction, the point of using aliens is to allow us to examine human behavior, yes...but also to do so in such a way that it's thought-provoking and entertaining at the same time. And what makes it entertaining is the element of distance that the illusion of aliens allows. (Sometimes a historical drama can provide a similar sense of distance.) Watching humans treat other humans as aliens - as another species - in even a semi-realistic way is horrible. It happens, sure, and it's important, but it's not entertaining at all. But we can watch humans treat aliens that way, and while we may still get a moral lesson out of it, the lesson is more palatable...and even more fun.

I'm not saying I'm right and you're wrong, BTW - I'm just saying that's how it seems to me. To me, if you take one of the Trek episodes involving aliens acting as mirrors of humanity, even one of the very best ones, and take out the aliens...it usually just wouldn't work nearly as well. The reason is that the illusion of distance that the alien pretence provides makes the show more...more entertaining. For example, watching Cardassians treat Bajorans like slaves is not pleasant and it can (and should) remind us of unsavory parts of human history...but it's not nearly as unpleasant as watching humans treat humans that way and it's therefore far more entertaining.

Edit: Maybe I'm just more shallow than you, but I prefer that at least some of my moral lessons be accompanied by a bit of entertainment. Honestly, I think I might even learn more that way.

 

[Neutral Zone]

I think this thread is a bit misleading because it's in the TOS forum. I meant to post it in general trek.

The point is, I dislike the idea of the majority of Trek aliens being humans with some miscellaneous protrusion on some part of their face. It's silly.

I think the problem was that in the early days of sci-fi creators could not imagine anything much beyond the human look. But they are getting better!

Who knows maybe in 50 years we may actually know what someone looks like from another planet?!

 

[muzzleflash]

stuff

Perhaps I'm just a tad sadistic.

I am a fan of BSG after all.

But what you said is very true also.