As great as Vanguard was I still miss the Old Familiar Faces. Just think if we had gotten a tightly contained series of several books with Kirk or Picard, just a 4 to 7 book series with one continious story thread. The character development would have been much more poignant.
I don't know if I can agree with that. The TV characters already get more than enough "screen time" as it is. It's nice to be able to take a break from the same old faces every so often. Of course, I've only read the first book, which still featured Kirk and the Enterprise, so I don't know how much of a role they have in the rest of the series.
I don't think Vanguard would have been anywhere near as good as it was if it was done with one of the TV show casts. Part of what made it so great was that the characters were not the usual types that we saw on the shows, and that added a whole level of unpredictability to it. I couldn't see anything like T'Prynn, Quinn, or Reyes's story lines having been possible with familiar characters.