The Star Fleet Universe... and the screen?

[BigJake]

This question popped into my head today. The Star Fleet Universe has some kind of legal foothold on its own, more military SF-oriented, version of the Trek universe. Has anyone ever contemplated adapting stories from the Star Fleet Universe to the screen, large or small?

I could see a few potential upsides in this scenario:

- The SFU, being pretty action-oriented but also pretty detail- and consistency-oriented, could potentially strike a reasonably sweet spot between general audiences, fans of Action Movie Trek, and fans of more adult-oriented Trek.
- As long as you stay away from the Enterprise and canon characters, you still have the cachet of the Trek franchise kinda-sorta available to it.
- The nature of the SFU will tend to orient stories more in a military-thriller / techno-thriller direction and away from some of the goofier recurrent themes of the shows (Omnipotent Space Jerks, Planets Just Like Earth, Holodrek et cetera).

The downside, of course, is that Trek isn't (or is more than) military SF -- it shares more with the Odyssey than the Iliad -- and the SFU wouldn't bring that across. (And I'm certainly more of a fan of Trek, Omnipotent Space Jerks and all, than I am of the SFU.) And I have zero idea what the legal niceties here are or who you could possibly find to throw money at an idea like this outside of KickStarter. Nevertheless... at some level the idea intrigues me.

 

[SPCTRE]

I'm a big fan of Star Trek: Starfleet Command, the PC game based on the Star Fleet Battles table-top game, so I'd agree that it definitely is an intriguing idea.

I don't have a good grasp on the significance and breadth of appeal the SFU has in terms of board game culture, but it certainly looks like a very niche thing. Which is probably why I'm so fascinated by it. I'd certainly back a KickStarter for a Tom Clancy-esque miniseries set in the SFU.

 

[F. King Daniel]

This would be very interesting... but I can't see Paramount or CBS (or whichever publisher owns the Kzinti) letting it ever happen. It'd be tangled up in lawsuits and never see the light of day.

 

[BigJake]

^ You'd think, right? And that's just what I wonder about. Why didn't those kinds of legal issues keep the SFU from being published at all? And if the properties have already been sorted to allow print publication, what exactly is to stop their being used in other media?

 

[USS Triumphant]

And if the properties have already been sorted to allow print publication, what exactly is to stop their being used in other media?

Possibly nothing, but then again, you might be surprised at how annoyingly complex some of these agreements are. A quick example: The season DVDs of "Beavis and Butthead" don't include the music videos (the best part of the shows, IMO) because the agreement that allowed them to be included in the episodes when shown on MTV does not allow them to be resold in the DVDs. Possibly the SFU agreement only applies to print media or some such.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

I'd say The Wrath of Khan could be in that universe.