Things Trek in general could have done better?

I saw a "Biggest Misfire" Thread over in the DS9 forum and it got me thinking about how this could apply to Trek as a whole. It's not so much a "lets trash Star Trek" thread, (This is still my favorite SciFi franchise ever.) It's more of "wish list" or things you'd like to see going foward. I'm sure many of the replies will be "A post nemesis series" what would you like to see in it that hasn't been conveyed in Trek very well up to this point? If you were in charge what changes would you make?

Personally, I've recently begun to realize (while rewatching DS9 and TNG) that they don't really flesh out the universe, for some reason, it feels like when watching the show that the Enterprise (or DS9) is the center of the universe. That they aren't in this living breathing universe where stuff is happening whether or not main characters live or die. Maybe it's just me.

 

Internal consistency within and in between series.

The claim is that continuity is nearly impossible to maintain 100% and there are many here that feel continuity should give way to creativity instead of creativity being stifled or confined by continuity. I don't agree but I respect that viewpoint. Even with that said, there were some big missteps that were so glaring to long-time fans.

Let's take the existence of androids. Data was supposedly unique in all the universe. It was consistently presented that he was the only android to exist. Yet, TOS had 3 episodes with androids as very prominent story elements - What are Little Girls Made of?; I, Mudd; and Requiem for Methuselah (you can count Return to Tomorrow as a fourth because they were building android bodies). There was no need to make Data so unique that he was the only one of his kind (until we met Lore, Lal and B-4). Worf was the first (and only) Klingon in Starfleet, yet there were other Klingons. Data could have been the only android in Starfleet. Something could have been said or written tying those other android episodes together, paying respect to the past while still giving us Data as a unique character.

The "zone of darkness" in TNG's Where Silence has Lease. While it was different than the zone of darkness generated by the giant space amoeba from TOS's Immunity Syndrome, the initial affect was nearly identical. Why not acknowledge the Enterprise nil encountered a similar phenomenon? Instead, the dialog explicitly states something like that had never been encountered before.

This is the whole Antonia misfire from Generations. Why create a new character (who wasn't even a character. She was just a name mentioned. We never even saw her)? It wasn't necessary. It did nothing for the story. Call her Edith or Carol. No need to explain to us who they are. The long time fans know and the newcomers won't miss out.

Things like that. Just one pass through the script by a continuity editor. Not minor details. Broad strokes.

 

Most things fans assume are errors are not. It appears on the surface they don't add up, but then a little thought will usually straighten these matters out.
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There was no way for anyone to know that Data was the only android who had ever existed in the universe, and no such claim was ever made. The universe is full of unknowns. They know that.
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Data went far beyond any cyber technology that the Federation had in its possession. As far as the Fed and all civilizations it exchanged scientific info with, Soong was way ahead of anyone else.
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However, historically, Starfleet had run into ancient civilizations which were so far ahead of us in cybernetics and many other fields, that we can't even understand how their technology works. This covers the four TOS episodes you mention. Even Flint from Earth was technologically far ahead of the rest of humanity, because of his genius.
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Where Silence Has Lease... Well, they weren't about to call attention to the fact that this aspect of the story was ripped off from Immunity Syndrome. They really shouldn't have reused this idea at all. I can easily see, though, that there might be significant enough differences between this and the space in IS, that they wouldn't consider it the same phenomenon. You can actually see stuff in it, for one thing. There are bluish clouds. I think this was a mistake, but they're there.

 

In my personal view, STAR TREK's doing the following -- in general -- could've been most easily achieved:

1) Better Writing. All series. All episodes.
These shitty-assed writers really need to get a handle on how people talk and interact ... especially, in their personal relationships. Romance has always been STAR TREK's weakest aspect. I love the concept of a Holodeck, but ... see, here's the thing: unless a character becomes a living being, on its own ... there's no surprises in it. The holodeck is a diversion and as such, a waste of the audience's time. But from a writing standpoint, it's safe, because there's no canon being violated, great FX are used and when the show's over, nothing's changed. It's not compelling.

2) STAR TREK could've been more fun, all along.
TOS was the most successful at this, but the series still produced its share of crappy episodes. "Spock's Brain" gets singled out, often, but I blame the unfortunate title of the episode for that. The content of the show fits in, easily, with the series. Fits right in. But what happened, of course, was the Ham & Cheese & Corniness of TOS embarrassed the franchise. Oh, TOS would always be hailed as an innovator, this & that, but come a dung-throwing Mugato, or a throw-rug Horta, then suddenly ... it's a different story. Everything has to be constrained, now. Nothing too outrageous, because audiences won't believe in it. Blah, blah, of the blah. How about having some frigging FUN with this series? Hell ... STAR TREK '09 had the brass -- OK? -- the BALLS to model its snow monster off an anal disease! I mean ... that wouldn't be my first choice, really, but I applaud the effort. Take the frigging board out from up your back and get loose ... just get loose ...have some fun when making STAR TREK.

3) Presentation of the Human/Female Form
I am, by no means, a feminist -- OK? -- so, there's that, upfront. But I am an Artist and even without that, I still know what looks cool. T'Pol in a hand-bra isn't it. Or stuffing actresses in the tackiest, cheesiest dresses they can find. I don't find it insulting, it just doesn't look good ... that's all. If you've got a beautiful leading actress on your show, willing to bare all for an extra viewer or two, I get it. It's the Nature of the Beast. But when said actress looks sexier in an interview than her STAR TREK character did, scantily clad, on the show ... something's wrong. I almost wish the franchise would just forego the whole, damn thing, and keep their frigging clothes on. And I do get annoyed, sometimes. Yes, I like seeing beautiful women dressing sexy, but not like they're a Vegas prostitute. I mean, come on fellas, let's get it together. It's not that difficult a puzzle to figure out ...

 

Well, on TOS they do seem to have had some odd ideas as to what's attractive on women. Antoinette Bower in Catspaw enticing Kirk with a series of ugly outfits... Women guest stars with their hair pulled back tightly even when it makes their heads look like skulls... That's all so subjective though, of course.

 

This is a touchy subject for me. Star Trek is my favorite series of all time but there are countless problems with it.

1. Human mortality, vulnerability, aging. Basically, Star Trek assumes that almost no medical progress in curing aging has been accomplished in centuries. As someone with an interest in this field of medicine I find it laughable. At least play around with exoskeletons, artificial bodies/organs, superior senses upgrades. We're left guessing that either all research in these fields stopped around the dawn of the 21st century or that everyone chose to keep on dying and remaining as vulnerable as we've been for 100,000 years.

2. Artificial Intelligence. We see it in some isolated cases, V'Ger (Voyager IV) in ST:TMP, Data in TNG, Professor Moriarty becoming self-aware on the Holodeck - these are great. But why aren't humans integrated directly with A.I. for at least processing power efficiency, why aren't starships controlled by the A.I.? I guess it would make it very difficult to write interesting stories where humans are realistically merged with A.I. but they should have at least made some effort in this direction. For instance, Ray Kurzweil, the Director of A.I. dev at Google is forecasting ubiquitous artificial intelligence before the middle of this century, let alone the 24th century.

3. Most species exist at the same technological level of advancement. There are some species that stand out, but in general everyone travels at around the same speed, are equipped with approximately the same weaponry and for some reason are also all at roughly the same evolutionary stage of advancement. Vulcans, Romulans, Humans, Klingons, Andorians, etc. Again, I understand that it makes it easy to write about familiar conflict that draw on human history, but I wish they were more adventurous and came up with more races that are millions of years ahead of us, which would be more likely, statistically, for us to encounter, considering the our galaxy is 13.21 billion years old and that Earth is only 4.5 billion years old. Most races should be millions of years ahead or behind us. Being millions of years behind us would put them at early primate stages, so that makes sense that we don't interact with them in the Trek universe, but apart from Q and a few stand alones, we don't see continuous interaction with races that are far more advanced.

4. Too much focus on wars. I don't find these to be even remotely realistic and I understand that they're actually drawing on human conflicts and exploring our own past and present, it's just not very entertaining. For instance, the "Balance of Terror" in TOS is clearly a projection of a classic WW2 submarine battle - but if that's what I wanted to watch, I'd watch an actual WW2 submarine war flick, not Star Trek. Pew, pew, evasive maneuvers = half of Star Trek. Whenever Star Trek focuses on a war it just screams lazy writing to me. Out of novel ideas? Let's put WW2/Cold War/Civil War/Punic Wars in a Trek universe and stretch it out while we try to come up with an interesting idea.

And yet there's nothing that's better out there.

 

Trek has done a pretty poor job of depicting a future human society that is radically different from the present day. Show me something wonderfully bizarre and unrecognizable. Show me cultural values and morals and ethics that are absolutely wacky and lopsided from our perspective, with completely different ideas of what is fundamentally right and wrong, proper and improper, and appropriate and inappropriate. Show me commonplace human augmentation via biological, genetic and technological alteration.

But I digress.

Kor

 

Fascinating. I disagree on all three counts.

 

I, on the other hand, am in complete agreement with all 3 of those arguments ... 100%

 

That is not surprising.

 

For television produced before Sopranos came and raised the bar, I find the Trek series to have rather high writing standards.

What I would improve the most is having more memory of what already exists in the universe. Like, things often exist in one episode that would break the next episode if characters remembered it existed. More consistency about what the prime directive means, what is legal and what is not, what is acceptable and what is not.

Also, I would have a smaller percentage of human characters. Give alien cultures and alien values more of a say, analyze just how different cultures accept and adopt the values of the Federation

 

Already, by the 23rd century, an average human life span is 130 years. That's progress. As for the rest, there was that backlash after the Eugenics Wars. And not all SF is or should be cyberpunk. There might be resistance. There are biomachines you can't see, not to "improve Man" but to keep her/him going.

 

Tesophious, your argument about STAR TREK pretending like aging can't be dealt with is very interesting to me, by the way. Are you suggesting that you'd only want to see a youthful cast in the main roles? I've often voiced this opinion, myself, for not dissimilar reasons. Also, because I like a photogenic crew. I like my Heroes to be Larger Than Life.

Jean-Luc Picard was a rather elderly member of staff on the Enterprise-D, and it worked on TNG. Sir Patrick Stewart is such an amazing talent. His ability to elevate even the worst script is legendary. I'm so thankful that he took on the role of the ship's Captain.

But for the franchise to keep putting older people in command, with every show following it started to make the franchise seem duller to me. For example, imagine Christina Applegate as Captain Kathryn Janeway. Now ... the possibilities are starting to open up that maybe weren't there, before ...

 

Depiction of politics. Keep it like in TOS, where the Federation council is this vague (even mysterious?) organization without details.

The concept of "evolved humanity," what a mistake. I want to see real people traveling the stars, not egotisical clueless "better" people. The on-duty helmsman with a wrinkled shirt, leaning his elbows on his console and who has a nearby cup of coffee.

I'd agree, the Dominion arc when on too long, the whole thing could have been condensed down to one season, then DS9 could have moved on to something completely different. The same thing with the Xindi arc, maybe 5 or 6 episode tops, then move on.

I don't mind a comedy scene (or even entire episode) every now and then, but I wouldn't want this to be a main theme of the show. I would prefer a majority of serious and drama episodes, over fun ones.

In the Honor Harrington sci-fi novel series, people medically stopped aging in their late teens early twenties, Harrington is a admiral in her sixties, but she looked to be twenty-something.

 

Better representation.

More women in central cast (preferably in proper uniform, enough with the catsuits already!). Different sexual orientation and sexes/genders. Aliens. Aliens! ALIENS! The Federation and Starfleet are not human-only, there are 150+ member races so show some of them in the background!!!!

 

130 years by the 23rd century is, essentially, no progress. No modern futurists are that pessimistic in their forecasts and why should Star Trek follow an extremely pessimistic projection? There are so many fascinating paths to indefinite lifespans that are in development now, that not exploring any of them seems like a waste of novel angles on the approach to what life is. Artificial organs, cloning organs, growing organs, neurological enhancements, nanobotic medicine, programmable biology - these are all maturing fields by now, in the beginning of the 21st century, yet there are no hints at them centuries later?

I wasn't advocating for cyberpunk, not even sure how you inferred that I was. I just want more realism to how future is portrayed. What was great about TOS is that they explored the cutting edge of scientific and technological progress available in their time, then all the following series failed to do the same. I still find most of TOS to be more innovative than most of post-TOS for this reason. I think that writers should consult a prominent futurist, like Michio Kaku or Ray Kurzweil, to get ideas into what the future holds for us, instead of just relying on their imagination. That's how you get good science fiction, it's how Jules Verne made accurate projections 100 years into his future.

 

I'm not making any specific creative suggestions here, certainly not that all the actors should be young, in fact I think older actors make the show more serious and believable to watch (because they're just better at acting, maybe)

I just think that the approach to age and human frailty should be re-examined in Star Trek, because the show takes place centuries from now. Looks should be optional - someone who is 300 years old should be able to look like a teenager or vice versa, that's the fun of science fiction - exploring what could be, instead of just assuming that nothing ever changes and everything will stay exactly as it is now - which is what Star Trek does when it examines the human condition. Or maybe looks don't even matter anymore, people have had their fun at looking "perfect" and now they've evolved beyond superficiality of aesthetics, there are many interesting sides to this that writers can explore and I'm not advocating for any one specific direction.

 

• Humor.
• Sex and relationships.

 

How are Geordi's visor and Picard's artificial heart not medical advancements?