There are high-quality textured 3D models of the main TNG sets - the unofficial ones that had to be taken offline, but also the official ones from the "On Board the Enterprise" book CD: http://blog.trekcore.com/2013/02/new-preview-images-from-on-board-the-uss-enterprise/ http://trekcore.com/newspaper/2013/02/review-on-board-the-uss-enterprise/
For me Short Trek is flop. I would like mini-series editions. Let's say 4 episodes for 1 hour 4 episodes about DS9 future, 4 episodes about VOY future and 4 episodes about future of Enterprise-E.
Star Trek: Picard is being released in two months and the second season of Discovery did a "previously on Star Trek" segment using footage from over 50 years ago. Revisiting the history of the franchise hardly seems implausible.
Given that Short Treks aren't limited to time scale or anything like that, theoretically the sky's the limit. You could rehire actors, rebuild a set or two, and actually set them within the old shows, rather than merely revisiting the characters. Do a DS9 adventure Short Trek called "A Day With Morn", following Morn around for a typical day in his life on DS9, guest starring Odo and Quark and seamlessly rebuilding the bar-room and promenade for an authentic 'side story' to DS9. Or go nuts and do a mini-reboot. Recast Sisko and crew, or Janeway and crew, and tell completely alternative versions of their adventures. Maybe use the pretense it's a holoprogram, a fictional retelling of 'actual' events, or perhaps suggest these are the real people and that Mulgrew and her crew were the holoprogram. With Short Treks there are no rules.
Except, you know, budget. It costs a lot to build a set, that's why the Short Treks so far have just been reusing sets from Discovery.
But not for a 15 minute one off. They did that for Will & Grace before the revival but the set still existed.
I mean, true, but, consider that sets get built for a less than five minute scenes in a sitcom. Also, I think we're too focused on assuming that a familiar set would even appear. Who's to say we can't have a Short Trek with any of these legacy characters off adventuring somewhere. Considering that DS9 and VOY were contemporaries with TNG - and by extension, Picard - it's more likely that a set from Picard would be used; if not redressed. I think it's more important that we see the characters as opposed to the locations they existed in. Why not have a Short Trek, say for example, featuring Kira in a shuttle going to the Founders homeworld to retrieve Odo? A shuttle set from Discovery (or Picard) could easily be redressed. The Great Link was full on CGI. The only practical element was the rock in which they stood on. DS9 fans would eat that up and would be more excited to see them again as opposed to wining about not getting to see the interior of the station again. Though I'm sure there would be some. That certainly helped, but, I don't think that was the main factor in reviving the series.
Hey Guys i just joined the forum to post this... There might be a way to recreate classic trek sets environments without breaking the bank. The makers of the Unreal game engine have developed a new technology that could be described as a real life holodeck. I believe this is similar to what they are using right now for Star Wars show "The Mandalorian" for their virtual sets (and they are doing a TON of them there). This tech makes dealing with traditional green screen composites look like a working with a model T. Behind the Scenes with UE4’s Next-Gen Virtual Production Tools