Compromise.
Keep the ship, but stop filming it upside down all the time.
Keep the ship, but stop filming it upside down all the time.
When you already have a musical episode and a muppet episode, why not?
I don't.
This isn't a real proposal for a workable TV series. It's just silly wish-fulfillment that makes no sense as a production. A sure-fire way for someone to burn a lot of money failing.
Not like I was taking your proposal seriously before, but this smug condescension really doesn’t help.
Very well. So lets re-imagine Star Trek. So.... What must we keep to retain the essence of Star Trek?
A ship. A crew. (Who can be new characters). Who have adventures among the stars.
It has been commented that Star Trek has an underlying optimism. We can build a better future.
A variety of stories, often with an emphasis on Action-adventure.
Stories often involve exploration. To boldly go.....!
And a Forbidden Planet!
What purpose does a total reboot serve?
If you* want to tell stories that don't conflict with canon, then stop with all the mega-galaxy-ending bullshit. Just tell stories about a group of people doing things. You can tie it in with the existing material as little or as much as is needed for your story to work.
If you want to eject everything that Trek has built up over the decades, why not go make something else instead?
*Assume all "you" usage is the proverbial kind.
If you* want to tell stories that don't conflict with canon, then stop with all the mega-galaxy-ending bullshit. Just tell stories about a group of people doing things. You can tie it in with the existing material as little or as much as is needed for your story to work.
If you want to eject everything that Trek has built up over the decades, why not go make something else instead?
*Assume all "you" usage is the proverbial kind.
I know you're joking, but this is part of the reason that the musical and muppet episodes of SNW really piss me off.
Once you open the door to this shit it's really hard to close it again. If you add magical bullshit to a more grounded science fiction series you can't ever get rid of it. Some writer comes in with fresh ideas who's less beholden to what came before, they add a magic pixie to the crew who is from Narnia, and that's now canon forever.
Someone could actually make a muppet musical episode of a future Star Trek, and when people complain they'd just say "We've had two episodes like this already, you can't say this isn't proper Star Trek". "In fact it's a bit weird you can't let this go. Those other episodes were years ago now and you're still bothered by this? You still care that they added a magic pixie from Narnia?"
Maybe the fanbase need a canon committee to officially write off certain derailed episodes, something like some Christian religions choosing to ignore certain old and new testament books. Speaking of which, stay tuned for a movie on the Book of Enoch! 
I absolutely love Star Trek, but I don't know if I've ever actually been pissed off about it. Frankly, there are far more important things to worry about. If a fictional show is actively pissing you off, I'd suggest you need to take it less seriously.
One man's shit is another man's treasure. The musical was easily one of the best things to happen to the franchise and one hell of a fun episode.
Since when has Trek ever been a grounded science fiction series?
Star Trek isn't really grounded sci-fi, especially TOS. I really wish the franchise would embrace this aspect of itself more willingly - TAS' scripts were a bit shaky at times but it's my favourite version of the setting in terms of the sheer fantastical weirdness that exists everywhere. Mermaids! Slugs who own human zoos! Mage duels!
I agree that SNW's genre hopping often feels performative and abrasive at this point (though I liked the musical episode), but adding a "magic pixie" to the crew wouldn't really be out of line with the setting at all, and might play into its greatest strengths. The setting is robust enough to easily absorb and integrate a character like that without breaking a sweat - "magic" is a property unique to this race, same as Spock's telepathy, and pixies are just another form of life that exists in the vastness of the universe.
That level of creative freedom and flexibility is something worth embracing IMO, and something that helps distinguish Star Trek from the genuinely grounded sci-fi that came to dominate in the 2000s.
I've been thinking about this the last few months, and I decided that these series are meant to inspire an emotional reaction and I watch them because I want something to care about. It's not a bug, it's a feature. We give authors our heart and trust them to be careful with it.
Every series exists in its own universe with its own possibilities and sense of normality. Star Wars isn't a grounded franchise in the slightest, but if they introduced transporters into it it'd just feel wrong. I've got nothing against the transporter, I think it suits a science fiction series, I just don't want it anywhere near Star Wars.
I don't want aliens in Ghostbusters, I don't want superheroes in Indiana Jones, I don't want Gundams in Lord of the Rings, I don't want ghosts in Doctor Who. It's pretty clear at this point that they don't belong there.
I think that's the thing for me, I watched TAS late and I don't really think of it counting as Star Trek. It's so different to the live action series that came after it that it feels like it's from the road not travelled. It's from its own cartoon universe. Star Trek could've become this, but that it isn't how things worked out.
Though at least the idea of it must exist there, or Luke couldn’t wish that Threepio could “teleport me off this rock”. (Likewise altering time.)
I'm wishing someone would teleport me off this rock right now, doesn't mean we have a transporter in real life
But yeah. I'm sure all these settings have the concepts, they just don't exist there for real. Yes Gandalf knows what a Gundam is, he just never had a reason to mention it.
That's fair, though TOS itself is only a tiny bit removed from TAS in that regard - "Catspaw" is the obviously-fantastical one but "Spectre of the Gun", "Mirror, Mirror," "Who Mourns for Adonais?", etc all read to me as something much more mythic and dreamlike than grounded. Even where TNG wears the costume of something more restrained and realistic, the universe's underlying logic is still often surreal and oneiric, especially in the first couple seasons.
I suppose again it comes back to the idea that "Star Trek" means so many different things to so many different people at this point that the best solution might be to make a clean break and launch some totally new IPs.
I'm wishing someone would teleport me off this rock right now, doesn't mean we have a transporter in real life
We do have the idea of it, though. (We’ll probably never have the reality.)
I really feel like this is the best solution, at least creatively. Not necessarily to stop making Star Trek, but to make new IPs that share aspects with Trek, but do something different with them.
Variety is good, but Star Trek can't appeal to everyone, because people have mutually exclusive ideas of what it should be. It creates a tension in the fanbase as no one's exactly getting the series they want and no one can agree on what's going wrong.
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