Romulan War

[All Seeing Eye]

I know it's been said before but i'm saying it myself. I want a new series of Trek that focuses entirely on the Earth Romulan war and hardly anything else with the feature length first episode dealing with what sparks it off. I don't however want it to be anything like 'Enterprise'. I think it should be set onboard a completely different ship, a completely new design but one that sticks with the common Earth designs of the era.
I think it would be ok for the odd mention of the Enterprise, possibly the enterprise leading fleets of ships into battle but I don't think any direct contact should be made with the Enterprise for obvious reasons.

Another thing I dont want is cheap budget special effects and scenes. Rather than having a high number of episodes focusing on boring crap that we've already seen before instead I want to see each season comprising of only a few episodes and those few episodes we do have are going to have large budgets for the special fx and action.

I think it's nice that Trek has focused heavily in TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT on storylines, characters and weird planet of the week stuff and the whole moral of the story type deal but just for once I want a series thats specially made for those people who want dramatic action scenes and cliffhanger type episodes.
I want the ship to go into battle take a whopping great pounding and then limp away at the end for heavy repairs. I want to see more about Earth in it and the effect of the war.
The problem with the Dominion war for me is that it just didn't seem real at all, not even the Xindi incident on ENT seemed real, what I mean is to me it's nothing like a war should be. People were too safe, the Defiant was barely seen fighting, instead we got storylines involving Quarks bar. I want focus on the Romulan war and this time I want to feel like there's real danger of people dying, I want to feel it's possible that main characters could be wiped out of the script in any episode.

Basically this series will be the same as large budget movies but broken down into several episodes in about 3 seasons.

Well, that's what I want for a change anyway.

 

[Kaziarl]

I doubt that would work as a tv series for a couple of reasons.

1) The budget you are suggesting is completely off the wall. You want big, multi million dollar special effects budget that usually goes into a two hour movie, to be spread across, say, 10 episodes and three seasons. Thats 30 hours of footage, and any studio who backed that would be bankrupt. It would be great to see, but the fact of the matter is TV shows just don't make enough money.

2) There have been so many "fly at the seat of your pants" shows that deal with beating the hero ship all to hell, then letting them limp away victorious. nuBSG does it all the time. So did Farscape, Stargate, and others. I'm not sure this would get enough interest to beat other shows and get enough ratings to warrent the budget from point one.

Personally, I want to see a 3D trek movie. I just reacently so Coraline 3D, and I couldn't help but imagine how the Big E would look flying off the screen, right infront of my eyes with those big theater speakers making you feel it. Now That would be cool.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

1) The budget you are suggesting is completely off the wall. You want big, multi million dollar special effects budget that usually goes into a two hour movie, to be spread across, say, 10 episodes and three seasons. Thats 30 hours of footage, and any studio who backed that would be bankrupt. It would be great to see, but the fact of the matter is TV shows just don't make enough money.

SFX have changed enormously since DS9 and for the same price as back then we can get better SFX than what we saw in the Dominion war seasons. I don't think it necessarily has to have a budget as big as that of a movie but I don't think a budget similar to Stargates would do. With enough money, action and SFX all crammed into less episodes than your usual Trek seasons the Romulan war series could be enormously succesful especially if the writing is good on top of it.
Then what you need to realise is that if successful people are going to want to buy them on DVD and one disc housing 2 eps could go for the same price as a movie DVD.
One problem I have with the other trek series is that the epsideos IMO just arn't interesting enough to go out and buy on DVD, that's why i've never bought them. I feel the DVDs are too expensive for what the episodes were and there are just too many episode per season.
With this Romulan War series there won't be as many episodes and the episodes will be so crammed full of action, great writing and SFX that people are going to be quite happy to go out and buy them which would add to the potential to make big money.
Look at Stargate, they have about 20 episodes per series, if you take the money it took to make those 20 eps and instead cram it all into make just 10 eps you double the quality of each episode, add a bit more to the budget and you're talking serious movie style episodes.
For starters in trek eps how much time is spent in the mess hall watching people eat and talk about pointless stuff? take scenes out such as those and put more interesting ones in and the viewers will be wowed.

2) There have been so many "fly at the seat of your pants" shows that deal with beating the hero ship all to hell, then letting them limp away victorious. nuBSG does it all the time. So did Farscape, Stargate, and others. I'm not sure this would get enough interest to beat other shows and get enough ratings to warrent the budget from point one.

That's why Farscape and Stargate have always been more popular than Trek, it's more realistic and more action packed. If you cram it full of win then the people are going to want to watch it and then buy it.

 

[CorporalClegg]

That's why Farscape and Stargate have always been more popular than Trek,

 

[All Seeing Eye]

That's why Farscape and Stargate have always been more popular than Trek,

To new audiences, obviously.

 

[Kaziarl]

Don't get me wrong, I like Farscape, and Stargate, and nuBSG. They are good, all I'm saying is if you flood the market, people loose interest.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The war could not sustain an entire series (I doubt the Romulan war was as complicated as, say, the Dominion war), but something like a trilogy of films - that would work. And rock.

 

[ChristopherPike]

To me, the Romulan War and Birth of the Federation are Enterprise. Something pretty much non negotable from my perspective. The original proposal for Star Trek XI was a script set during this time and pretty awful it sounded too. With an Earth Navy mysteriously absent throughout the show and some lame excuse about Archer & his crew on vacation at Risa during the conflict. That incensed me. They should disregard Enterprise's final episode and give the NX-01 the send off they deserve... and that's leading the vanguard in the war.

 

[mirandafave]

A series including the Romulan War could work if it takes a DS9 approach. The Dominion War dominated the latter seasons but not every episode was a war story. They had a huge ensemble cast with great supporting roles and a mix of politics and intrigue.

A war with the Romulans would promise plenty of that. You could have Romulan spies walking around like Vulcans sabotaging systems - maybe a key character is actually a traitor. Obviously never figured out or if it is the person who discovers it is killed.

It could work this way because then the budget would not have to be massive and of course with a limited season run then more to spread about too. So the idea has merit but alas not very likely.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

To me, the Romulan War and Birth of the Federation are Enterprise. Something pretty much non negotable from my perspective. The original proposal for Star Trek XI was a script set during this time and pretty awful it sounded too. With an Earth Navy mysteriously absent throughout the show and some lame excuse about Archer & his crew on vacation at Risa during the conflict. That incensed me. They should disregard Enterprise's final episode and give the NX-01 the send off they deserve... and that's leading the vanguard in the war.

No no no no no. We don't need the Enterprise greatly involved in the series. Like I said, we could have mentions of the ship and crew and have the Enterprise leading fleets into battle. We could possibly see the Enterprise fighting in battle scenes but we don't necessarily have to hear from any of the crew or have any extra input from that ship.
The tactical officer on the main ship of the series can say stuff like "We've just received orders from the Enterprise to engage the Romulans" and stuff like that.

The series needs to be different from the ENT series, we don't wanna be seeing cast from that series showing up in the new one. We need to take this Romulan War series away from what previous trek has been like. For starters we don't wanna be seeing the same types of uniform from ENT, we need a new special wartime type uniform showing the change from ENT style to TOS style (the new movie version).
Obviously this will unfortunately destroy the canon of the ENT final episode where they wore the same uniforms but I can live with that, they can just say because that episode was supposed to be set on the holodeck of the ent-d it could just be a glitch in the historical records .

Oh and if you go HERE there's already a possible poster for the new series made up created by another board member uniderth.
Click here for large version.

 

[Funngunner]

Funny you should ask for that... because that is almost exactly what I wanted to see, and where my fan fiction series (available here) is heading towards.

 

[Admiral2]

I don't get this "wouldn't work" talk. Isn't Lucasfilm doing essentially what Tachyon Shield is proposing with "The Clone Wars"? It's a season-long, half-hour war show, and I don't recall any episode of it where there wasn't a protracted, elaborate battle of some kind. And I generally can't stand when I'm told "Oh, it's too expensive!" It's PARAMOUNT, not Tyler Perry Productions. They can afford it.

Look, this can be done in a way that Tachyon Shield gets exactly what he wants. My thinking is that you can take a page from good TV of the past. Anybody remember the NBC series "Victory At Sea"? This is your template.

Here's what you do:

-Start with a short season, say twelve or thirteen hour-long eps.

-Concentrate only on the most important battles of the war. There can be thousands of battles in a full-scale war but a relative few that make the greatest difference, and if you're televizing it, those are the battles your audience will want to see.

-Tell it in a partial documentary style. Have a voice over describe the events leading up to each particular battle. (That means your writers will have to know the overall "history" of the war beforehand. I would suggest you get somebody like Tom Clancy or Dale Brown to write the conflict bible, since the current crop of canon Trek writers - I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it till I see a change - generally suck at writing war stories.)

-Spread your characters out among all branches of both militaries and all the theaters of battle. That way, you can follow any conflicts you want on the surfaces of planets and in space.

-If you can tell all of the important battles in one 13-ep season, great. If you can't, there's your next season.

(BTW, do you notice the similarites of what I'm saying here to Clone Wars, a show that's currently in production and doing well?)

Whether or not someone would be interested in watching a Trek show like this is a topic worthy of debate. Whether or not it's doable is a red herring. Of course it's doable - for not as much as it might have cost in the past - with sufficient will behind it.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The war could not sustain an entire series (I doubt the Romulan war was as complicated as, say, the Dominion war), but something like a trilogy of films - that would work. And rock.

The Earth-Romulan War could have been complex in its own right, especially if you assume that the Federation emerged because of that war. That would lend itself to a good mix of war and politics stories - not just war, war, war. Plus there are always personal character stories to be told. I don't even mind the occasional "Quark's bar" style stories. Even in wartime (especially in wartime) people need a drink.

Look at Stargate, they have about 20 episodes per series, if you take the money it took to make those 20 eps and instead cram it all into make just 10 eps you double the quality of each episode, add a bit more to the budget and you're talking serious movie style episodes.

Making 10 eps instead of 20 means you make half the money so you certainly couldn't increase the budget, even if you mean the per-episode budget. You would get the same budget, probably less, because 10 episodes doesn't allow you to amortize standing costs as efficiently as 20. (Stargate keeps the budget down partly by sharing resources beween two series - more episodes overall means a bigger total budget).

So you'd have, at best, Stargate-level SFX. Paramount will never allow Star Trek to look that bad. Right now they're embarked on trying to buff up the brand, which has been devalued through mismanagement. Allowing substandard SFX would constitute more mismanagement. Even at their worst, Berman and Braga insisted that Star Trek look good.

Whether or not someone would be interested in watching a Trek show like this is a topic worthy of debate. Whether or not it's doable is a red herring. Of course it's doable - for not as much as it might have cost in the past - with sufficient will behind it.

Those two questions are related because the show is not "doable" from a financial standpoint if the audience isn't there. I doubt there's a large enough audience to support a Earth-Romulan War series - not enough people care about Star Trek anymore - we have to be patient and let Paramount reinvigorate interest in the franchise. And even then, when Star Trek returns to TV, it will spin off of the success of the new movies. That's the sensible way to procede. The Earth-Romulan War will have to wait.

 

[Bacl]

Well, maybe not as a war, but as an spy/intrigue on the brink of war style storyline, yeah. Think of it as 24 meets Star Trek. Romulans = cloak & dagger. Work in Section 31.

 

[Funngunner]

I think this could be done really easily, given that most wars don't just HAPPEN, there's a long gradual build-up to them, full of subterfuge and intrigue. Here's my take of how you could do it, basically the timeline for what I'm writing ...

2082: A sleeper ship departs Earth towards a newly-discovered Arloff system, possessing an M-class planet inside what would eventually become Romulan territory. The system is rich with valuable dilithium, and is eventually forcibly annexed by the Romulans.

2147-2149: United Earth territory continues to expand outward, eventually meeting the Romulan Empire, which is also expanding outwards. Earth is unaware of their new rivals, and several convoys full of colonists and supplies are destroyed by an unknown force that can appear without warning. United Earth officially assumes these are the acts of pirates, and begins supplying escorts to the colonies. Unofficially, a branch of United Earth Intelligence, Division 31, is aware of who and what they are dealing with, and is hiding it from the rest of Earth's military and populace.

(This allows a convienent RetCon from various statements about the Romulans: "No one has ever seen one before..." "Sublight vessels with atomic weapons..." (Neither of which are beneficial to creating a fast-paced story line.)

2151: The Romulans, far more aware of their foe than Earth, begin covert operations to cripple United Earth expansion. Developing spies, and helping the proliferation of terrorist organizations calling for an isolationist Earth, namely the Earth First movement.

2152: Earth First attempts an assassination of the President of the United Earth, a proponent of forming a coalition of planets.

2153: A series of bombings at critical government facilities on Earth is linked to the Earth First movement.

2154: In secret, representatives of United Earth and the Arloff splinter colony meet to discuss the possibility of Arloff seceding from the Romulan Empire and rejoining humanity as a United Earth colony. Romulan forces attempt to disrupt this meeting, result in casualties for both sides. No longer operating in secret, hostilities escalate dramatically.

2156: The Arloff system attempts to secede from the Romulan Star Empire. In accordance with their agreement, United Earth forces are deployed to aid and advise. Romulan forces attempt to forcibly retake the rebellious systems, resulting in a tense standoff with United Earth forces. Ultimately, the United Earth backs down, hoping to maintain peace.

2157: Perceiving the backing down of United Earth over the Arloff Crisis as weakness, and coveting several mineral-rich colonies inside U.E. territory, the Romulan Empire launches a massive surprise assault on U.E. forces along the border. The war begins in earnest as Romulan forces are able to quickly overwhelm the U.E. forces and push deep in to U.E. territory...

That's just a lead up to the war, and I think could work.

 

[uniderth]

Interesting ideas. I like the idea of a colony in Romuln Territory. But I'm not a fan of S31. I'd like to think at least for 100 years the United Earth, with it's advanced humans, could avoid secret shadow government organizations undermining the rights of citizens.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

2152 - The Enterprise begins to orbit a seemingly unclaimed planet for observation when it runs into a cloaked mine, heavily damaging the ship and flooding sickbay with injured crew members. Soon, another cloaked mine attaches itself to the hull but doesn't immediately explode. Lt. Reed performs a spacewalk in an EVA suit to try to disarm it, but accidentally activates a magnetic grappling spike that impales his leg before attaching to the ship's hull, thus pinning him to the mine with limited air. Any attempt to cut the spike would set off the mine. The NX-01 then makes first contact with the Romulan Star Empire when two Romulan Warbirds arrive and demand that they leave Romulan territory or else.

2153 - A new Earth colony (Devros 4) is founded on a remote planet discovered previously by the Enterprise.

2154 - The Romulans deploy a drone ship capable of mimicking the ships of other species. They use the ship to try and prevent Earth from succeeding in developing a peace deal between the Andorians and the Tellerites.

2155 - Romulus claims the Devros system belongs to the Romulan Empire and demands Earths colony there is removed. Earth rejects the Romulans claims and sends 4 ships to defend the colony incase of attack.

2156 - Romulus attacks and wipes out the Earth colony Devros 4 and destroys over 25 freighters and the 4 ships protecting the system. Earth declares war on Romulus and begins the fast construction of warships to fight the Romulans, due to the quick nature of the war many of Earths warships are initially equipped with Atomic weapons instead of Photonic torpedoes. It is only later in the war that Photonic torpedoes become more readily available and the tide of the war is turned in favour of Earth.

2157 - The Andorians, Vulcans and Tellerites are dragged into the war with Romulus but none of them choose to work together. Each determined to win the war against Romulus and claim victory. They are unable to put aside their past differences which proves to be their undoing.

2159 - The Andorians, Vulcans and Tellerites are on the verge of defeat by Romulus when Earth manages to persuade them all that they need to work together to survive. They combine their forces and resources and are able to push the Romulans back for the first time in the entire war. Eventually however the Andorians, Vulcans and Tellerites dig their heels in and decide they can no longer afford to push forward against the Romulans due to such heavy losses so it is left to Earth to continue the fight.

2160 - Earth and Romulus prepare for the biggest battle of the War and send hundreds of ships (many of them quickly assembled from wreckage) to fight in what will be known as the battle of Cheron located only a few lightyears from Romulus and Remus. Romulus loses the battle and all Romulan ships are lost. Romulus surrenders to prevent subjugation and the treaty of Algeron is signed.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

I think 5 seasons could be ok for the Romulan War. The Romulan war lasted for 4 years and of course we should see the year leading up to the war so .

Season 1 - Set in 2156, focus's on the lead up to the war and the Romulan attack on Earths colonies.

Season 2 - Set in 2157, focus's on the first year of the war and how the Vulcans, Andorians and Tellerites are pulled into it.

Season 3 - Set in 2158, focus's mostly in great detail on how the war is fought, including ground warfare. Earth and the other races begin to lose the war and the Vulcans, Andorians and Tellerites are almost brought to their knees.

Season 4 - Set in 2159, Focus's on Earth uniting the other 3 races to join together in their war against Romulus. The tide of the war turns in favour of Earth.

Season 5 - Set in 2160, focus's on the final months of the war where Earth is stood alone once again against Romulus and how Earth pulls together all of it's ships and resources in one final push against the Romulans in a last ditch effort to end the war. Earth begins enlisting younger and younger people into the war effort both for fighting and manufacturing new ships for the final push.
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I think it's probably best to make the seasons last slightly longer so it doesn't look like the war was rushed but I don't want it like DS9 where there was 8 episodes between the fighting. I think this new series could work on an every other episode basis. So basically 1 ep is fighting in the war in battles, then the ep after that continue on the war theme but focus's on the crew and then the ep after that is primarily about the war again with fighting and battles. If you catch my drift.

 

[xortex]

They should definately do it as a darker more realistic experimental cartoon series like the star wars thing so as to be in contrast with the movie. Everything could be redesigned. Tachion shield is right. I didn't read everything but I think Star Trek could go into competition of sorts with itself. I think that would be healthy for it with the cartoon doing groundbreaking story telling like tachion suggests with a Starship Troopers, my fave movie, type flair.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

I'd like to expand on what I said here:

2160 - Earth and Romulus prepare for the biggest battle of the War and send hundreds of ships (many of them quickly assembled from wreckage)

I think this might be a good opportunity to revert back to the old style looking Romulan BOP from the TOS era rather than the green sleek design one of ENT. If there's a war going and both sides are trying to construct ships as fast as possible and they're using whatever resources they can get their hands on such as wreckage from destroyed ships and they're building them so fast that design isn't a factor then the war era BOPs will look like the TOS era style.

Of course, I suppose there's no harm in using both designs in the war.