It's interesting: Gene Roddenberry advised his writers to handle Trek as a kind of serious period piece rather than as juvenile twaddle and Matthew Weiner, creator of Mad Men, has likened the experience of recreating the early 1960s as akin to science fiction. I think the appeal of a TOS is in this inherent contradiction: it's much more about the 1960s than it is about the 2260s. Thus any revival of mine would go out of its way to evoke this, to be Mad Men in Space. There are touches of this deliberate retro-futurism in Trek '09: the Kelvin uniforms are reminiscent of 1950 B-movie costumes and the phasers harken all the way to the sci-fi serials of Buster Crabbe. I'd have just gone all the way, like in "Trials and Tribble-lations" and "In a Mirror Darkly," only with aluminum instead of plywood and more detail on props that look, in essence, unchanged from the original designs. I'd have it be a direct sequel sequel to TOS, the first episode of the fourth season, and I'd eschew the rogue Bond villain archetype, which only really worked with Khan, for threat that is more an expression of existential uncertainty in the face of the unknown (like Vejur) or the political "realities" of the Star Trek universe (Kruge and Chang were imperfect versions of this). And there would be no time travel. Also, I'd find a job for a barely updated Wah Chang Romulan Bird of Prey because I like them so much and because they are the finest examples of Star Trek's retro-futurism.
