• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

What storylines do you NOT want to see in Trek?

DSC is set in the Far Future. A non-prequel show gotta be set just after PIC.
Well the Star Trek franchise by default is set in "the far future ". Depends on your definition of far. But putting that side., Discovery being set in the 32 century for most if it's run, makes a show before then a prequel. It's a matter of perspective though. What about a show that's takes place during the burn.? Is that a prequel? ( to Discovery) .100 years after PIC? 50 years after? What are those then ? The clean definition is that everything before 32 century ( the furthest "main "setting for the franchise ) is a prequel. if someone new to Trek wanted to see it in chronological order , they would see Discovery 3-5 last.

Or in other words, If the showrunners want to respect cannon, any show after PIC has to take note on what Discovery added to canon. They cannot destroy Vulcan for example because it's established Vulcan exists in the future as being N'var. A non prequel show for me is a show not burdened by canon. Like TNG was when it aired originally.
 
Last edited:
Borg - I don't think they should have showed up after TNG, other than passing references.

Galaxy ending threats - Shows don't have to focus on defeating a massive threat every season. A showdown with some sort of adversary is fine, but it doesn't need to be the fate of the Federation/Galaxy/Humanity so many times!

Legacy Characters - I really don't want to see any more old characters showing up. I enjoy SNW, but I would enjoy the show just as much if every character was someone we had never met before.

Mirror Universe - The mirror universe is an interesting idea, but unfortunately the execution is often lacking. The last mirror episode I enjoyed was the first DS9 one.

Mystery box storylines - I really dislike this type of storytelling. If there are good stories I'll keep watching, they don't need gimmicks and cliffhangers.
 
Mystery box storylines. It’s more that they take a whole season when that’s not necessary than anything else. The story just drags on and on for no reason.

No more technologies we’ve never heard of before in prequels. All it does is mess with continuity.

Attempts at making a new version of TWOK. They never live up to the original.

Klingons and Romulans looking like chumps to the Federation instead of being threats. Klingons should be capable of running through not just the Federation, but Vulcans and Gorn as well, to name a few. Romulans should be able outfox the Federation more often than they do and be more treacherous than they are.

Every humanoid alien needing to be thin and hot when it comes to romance of the week. There should be a bit more body diversity in the show, considering how many alien worlds are visited every week. There’s more open-mindedness in the real world than in Star Trek.

Ignoring certain crewmembers. Stop ignoring the people at the helm or comms or tactical or ops, even if they are just a recurring character, if they also happen to be the main officer at that position. Have them contribute to the story of the episode in meaningful ways.

Bringing back legacy characters just to kill them off just because they can. Their deaths tend to lean towards being senseless and pointless more than anything else.

Time travel stories that are over in a few days. Nothing consequence happens to the characters that time travel, and the future they return to never changes in a major way. Basically, it’s never a prolonged stay, and its never a messy experience.
 
One I'm surprised hasn't been said yet:

NO MORE WARS!

Specifically, we're talking needless wars that dominate a season or more of a series. The Dominion War was bad enough, then we had the Xindi War on top of that. For a supposedly peaceful organization, Starfleet seems to go to war an awful lot.

Any others? Sure, I got one more:

NO MORE BLOWING UP THE SHIP!

The Enterprise has been blown up three times in the movies alone, to say nothing of the Defiant or the offscreen destruction of the Enterprise-B, C, E, and F. Seriously, how can you boldly go if your ship keeps blowing up?
 
Mystery box storylines. It’s more that they take a whole season when that’s not necessary than anything else. The story just drags on and on for no reason.
And frequently the mystery falls flat, like the 10-C aliens.

Discovery at the start tried way too hard to be shocking and unexpected, and we ended up with Voq/Tyler "surprise" and the Lorca twist... and of course, Michael as the Red Angel after the misdirection that it would be her mother. Then the cause of the galaxy-ravaging Burn? An innocent child. It's Vince Russo booking Star Trek... and the three of you who get that will understand.

Compare with Prodigy, which tried none of those things and just told a compelling story and was utterly amazing.
 
And frequently the mystery falls flat, like the 10-C aliens.

Discovery at the start tried way too hard to be shocking and unexpected, and we ended up with Voq/Tyler "surprise" and the Lorca twist... and of course, Michael as the Red Angel after the misdirection that it would be her mother. Then the cause of the galaxy-ravaging Burn? An innocent child. It's Vince Russo booking Star Trek... and the three of you who get that will understand.

Compare with Prodigy, which tried none of those things and just told a compelling story and was utterly amazing.

I'm sure that the Discovery folks were under a lot of pressure to put Paramount+ on the streaming map and revitalize the Star Trek property, at the same time. To be "prestige" programming. Especially, during that first season.

So, they kept trying to hit home runs.
 
And frequently the mystery falls flat, like the 10-C aliens.

Discovery at the start tried way too hard to be shocking and unexpected, and we ended up with Voq/Tyler "surprise" and the Lorca twist... and of course, Michael as the Red Angel after the misdirection that it would be her mother. Then the cause of the galaxy-ravaging Burn? An innocent child. It's Vince Russo booking Star Trek... and the three of you who get that will understand.
Too many cooks and chaos, especially early on.

The Burn reveal was one that worked best for me, followed by 10-C. But, by and large, mystery boxes in Star Trek (Picard all three seasons, Voq/Tyler/Red Angel) don't give them the freedom they think they have. The first Season of Discovery was to be this new era and it tried way to hard to be everything to everyone that it ended up landing very unevenly.

Compare with Prodigy, which tried none of those things and just told a compelling story and was utterly amazing.
Maybe?

Maybe not.

Prodigy doesn't hook the same way for me, so I would hesitate to compare the two. It's absurdist to try for my mind because they're initial goals were completely different. Discovery was, as Bill notes, to issue in a new age of Trek on the streaming platforms, and to be something very different due to this new platform.

Prodigy was set up to be more simple yet long form, something kids programming does very well in my experience. But, I would say they approached their storytelling differently.
 
And frequently the mystery falls flat, like the 10-C aliens.

Discovery at the start tried way too hard to be shocking and unexpected, and we ended up with Voq/Tyler "surprise" and the Lorca twist... and of course, Michael as the Red Angel after the misdirection that it would be her mother. Then the cause of the galaxy-ravaging Burn? An innocent child. It's Vince Russo booking Star Trek... and the three of you who get that will understand.
Even Vince Russo with a filter isn’t so bad. Meaning quality of the story all falls on management, since they have the final say on whatever ends up on screen.

But it does not seem like a filter was used for these stories at all here. Quality control was not high on management's priorities.

And I don't know how they expected to produce prestige programming without quality control.
 
Someone is trapped in a harsh world with an enemy or bad-tempered alien, and the only way to make contact with the big ship to call for a rescue is to climb a mountain together and use a communication device at the top.
 
Musicals.

Star Trek started with the original series, sometimes optimistic, sometimes eerie, ♪
the Enterprise was led by Captain Kirk, a man with many quirks, ♪
and there's also Spock, a Vulcan logic as a clock. ♪

Then we heard the cry of the nation, "it's time for The Next Generation!" ♪
Jean-Luc Picard, a captain who knew how to play his cards, ♪
had William Riker, the number one who was never a striker, ♪
Worf, who would kill his enemies and go to the Klingon church ♪
and then leave to Deep Space Nine, to set a new baseline ♪
turn off the disco, here comes Captain Sisko ♪
ready to wage war against the Dominion, the founders, and their minions ♪

Make way for Katherine Janeway, because those are the voyages of the USS Voyager ♪
We had Tuvok and Neelix, nobody needs a Tuvix ♪
If you don't like Chakotay or Torres, at least we'll always have Paris ♪
But before them all we had a prize, Star Trek: Enterprise ♪
 
Last edited:
Anything where the scientific method is presented as limiting or not open enough. Inevitable extra Bad Points for actively misrepresenting what science is and does.

Likewise, anything which presents mysticism and “just feeling” as maybe being on to something.

Sex comedies.
 
DSC is set in the Far Future. A non-prequel show gotta be set just after PIC.

Yeah, sorry 24th century fans, your shows aren't "the present" of the Trek universe anymore. The new "present" is the 32nd century. Any new show set before that time period is a prequel. Get used to it.


As for what I don't want to see:

No more starship shows. We've had enough. There's a whole universe out there and with the newer shorter seasons we should be expanding our window into the world. We don't need yet another bridge set, yet another sickbay, yet another engine room and more of the same "shields down to 40 percent" and all the same old trite dialog that we've seen ad nauseum since the original. Star Wars has branched out beyond the Jedi and the Rebellion and it's time Trek did too.

"That is the exploration that awaits you. Not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence."

...Q...


Deep Space 9 did something different and explored a lot of the same ideas with more depth and complexity than most of the Trek shows. "Star Trek" is a brand name now, not a literal descriptor of any particular show. It's time to jettison this safe, staid starship stuff. If I want that, there's over 600 hours of that. Time for something new. Time for Trek to actually start embracing IDIC instead of just churning out the same old stuff with a new skin on it.
 
Wouldn't mind if I never saw these again:

Q
Borg
Transporter glitch
Holodeck glitch
Time travel as the centerpiece of an episode
Central conflict in episodes that result from Treknobabble and are solved by Treknobabble
 
Time travel stories that are over in a few days. Nothing consequence happens to the characters that time travel, and the future they return to never changes in a major way. Basically, it’s never a prolonged stay, and its never a messy experience.

Picard season 2 had a prolonged stay time travel story and it was bloody awful. I usually quite like time travel stories, too. But I couldn’t wait for the whole thing to be over.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top