I'm super-excited about this new timeline and my creative impulse has been tickled. A lot of people have talked about the prospect of going back and redoing TOS plots in the new 'verse, but I wanna see what other ideas people have, just for fun.
Here's a couple to get started:
1) The Enterprise is assigned to make diplomatic contact with a civilization at the height of a technological renaissance following its invention of warp technology. The first few meetings go well with only a few hilarious but harmless hitches: the new civilization is in top industrial form but living under the looming threat of energy depletion and ecological disaster from its rapid development, so it has both much to give and much to ask from the Federation. A key meeting, which Kirk, Spock, Uhura (as head translator with a small team of interpreters) and a dozen Federation ambassadors are attending, is attacked (bombed?) suddenly by unknown hostiles. The Enterprise is also attacked at the same time with Sulu in charge and Chekov handling weapons; at the time of the attack, they are forced to believe that the entire diplomatic mission has been wiped out.
Kirk et al must rejoin with the Enterprise and then team up with the new ally's best ships of war -- none of which have yet been implemented with warp-capability -- to defeat a well-armed rogue faction of the civilization's space navy led by a determined mother-daughter pair of expert-tactician captains. The rogue faction believes (rightly or wrongly) that if their people joined the Federation, they would be forced to give up their proud military tradition in favor of gutless pacifism. Kirk and Spock have to figure out how best to deploy their non-warp allies while dealing with the expertise of their foes.
2) (This one is more of a series plot than a movie plot, since all of these threads will take time to develop and spin out.) The Federation, having lost one of its founding members and failed to avert the genocide of six billion people, has lost almost all of its credibility as a protective humanitarian alliance. Starfleet, having lost seven ships and an enormous amount of personnel at Vulcan, is now putting inexperienced and barely trained people into service on antique mothballed ships dragged out of retirement by necessity. The Federation's antagonists are tearing each other apart but largely ignoring the Federation itself, viewing it as gutted and impotent. The Enterprise is assigned to travel with two other ships, one of which is majority Vulcan crewed, because Starfleet has only been able to appoint one experienced captain between the three ships, and although it's somewhat willing and somewhat forced to give Kirk command, it doesn't trust him on his own.
The little squadron is assigned to patrol a neutral zone on the border of an area of severe conflict between two of the major powers (Klingons and Romulans?) that are now shredding each other to pieces. The task is to keep the vicious war from spilling over into neighboring star systems, inhabited by a species that is technically allied with the Federation but actually extremely xenophobic and flagrantly violating its treaties by giving nothing in exchange for Federation protection. The Federation is almost toothless to enforce its end of the agreement. When the xenophobic species decides to bypass the Starfleet ships and directly provoke the two parties at war (for stupid political reasons), the Enterprise and her companions get swept up in a three-way war that threatens to consume the entire sector.
So, what are your ideas for possible stories in this shiny, strange new world we've been given? How do you want to play out the consequences of what the film gave us?
We've already talked about bullet-point "what I want from Trek", so this thread is more about fully-formed plot/character/setting ensembles.
Here's a couple to get started:
1) The Enterprise is assigned to make diplomatic contact with a civilization at the height of a technological renaissance following its invention of warp technology. The first few meetings go well with only a few hilarious but harmless hitches: the new civilization is in top industrial form but living under the looming threat of energy depletion and ecological disaster from its rapid development, so it has both much to give and much to ask from the Federation. A key meeting, which Kirk, Spock, Uhura (as head translator with a small team of interpreters) and a dozen Federation ambassadors are attending, is attacked (bombed?) suddenly by unknown hostiles. The Enterprise is also attacked at the same time with Sulu in charge and Chekov handling weapons; at the time of the attack, they are forced to believe that the entire diplomatic mission has been wiped out.
Kirk et al must rejoin with the Enterprise and then team up with the new ally's best ships of war -- none of which have yet been implemented with warp-capability -- to defeat a well-armed rogue faction of the civilization's space navy led by a determined mother-daughter pair of expert-tactician captains. The rogue faction believes (rightly or wrongly) that if their people joined the Federation, they would be forced to give up their proud military tradition in favor of gutless pacifism. Kirk and Spock have to figure out how best to deploy their non-warp allies while dealing with the expertise of their foes.
2) (This one is more of a series plot than a movie plot, since all of these threads will take time to develop and spin out.) The Federation, having lost one of its founding members and failed to avert the genocide of six billion people, has lost almost all of its credibility as a protective humanitarian alliance. Starfleet, having lost seven ships and an enormous amount of personnel at Vulcan, is now putting inexperienced and barely trained people into service on antique mothballed ships dragged out of retirement by necessity. The Federation's antagonists are tearing each other apart but largely ignoring the Federation itself, viewing it as gutted and impotent. The Enterprise is assigned to travel with two other ships, one of which is majority Vulcan crewed, because Starfleet has only been able to appoint one experienced captain between the three ships, and although it's somewhat willing and somewhat forced to give Kirk command, it doesn't trust him on his own.
The little squadron is assigned to patrol a neutral zone on the border of an area of severe conflict between two of the major powers (Klingons and Romulans?) that are now shredding each other to pieces. The task is to keep the vicious war from spilling over into neighboring star systems, inhabited by a species that is technically allied with the Federation but actually extremely xenophobic and flagrantly violating its treaties by giving nothing in exchange for Federation protection. The Federation is almost toothless to enforce its end of the agreement. When the xenophobic species decides to bypass the Starfleet ships and directly provoke the two parties at war (for stupid political reasons), the Enterprise and her companions get swept up in a three-way war that threatens to consume the entire sector.
So, what are your ideas for possible stories in this shiny, strange new world we've been given? How do you want to play out the consequences of what the film gave us?
We've already talked about bullet-point "what I want from Trek", so this thread is more about fully-formed plot/character/setting ensembles.
