Your approach?

[Red Ranger]

OK, if I were in charge, it would've been a complete, clean reboot. I do like origin stories, only here's how I would've handled it.

I would show Kirk and Spock meeting and being rivals at Starfleet Academy, in an extended flashback. I like the idea of Spock coming up with the Kobayashi Maru, but as a cadet's special project. The enmity between Kirk and Spock starts because of how Kirk reprograms the scenario so he can win. Show that Kirk and Spock have different ideas on the primary role of Starfleet: Kirk feels defense is more important, Spock feels exploration is.

Fast-forward 10 years later. Kirk has made a name for himself as a hotshot, maverick officer who takes chances, but also often is in trouble with Starfleet Command. Pike is in command of Enterprise and is considering making either Spock or Kirk first officer. He recruits Kirk instead as his number one, and Spock feels Pike is being illogical. Pike tells Spock that at this time, Kirk is the best choice for first officer. And the other reason he brings Kirk on board is he feels both officers can and need to learn from each other.

To harken back to the series, we need at least one fight scene where, like in the old series, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy get to kick some ass.

I'd have both the Klingons and Romulans involved, and at the end, all three -- Federation, Romulans, and Klingons -- forced to work together to solve a crisis.

As for the rest of the crew, I'd establish Dr. McCoy worked with Kirk on his previous ship, and that's how he knows him so well. Pike taps McCoy as the new CMO, although it's the first time he's held the position.

I'd make Scotty more like an old officer under Pike's command and somewhat resentful of the new breed of Starfleet officer Kirk represents. Or perhaps make Scotty the designer of the Enterprise, once a civilian engineer, who decides to enlist in Starfllet and become Chief Engineer because he feels only he can properly handle the new engines he's designed.

I would have Sulu, Uhura and Chekov aboard, although just for the hell of it I'd make all three green ensigns just out of Starfleet Academy. Hey, it's a reboot, right?

As others have mentioned, definitely show more aliens as crewmembers. As a movie, we have a movie budget, not a forehead of the week budget, to show outlandish ETs.

Definitely no cute short alien sidekicks, although I always thought Scotty needed a female assistant who loves engineering as much as he does.

I didn't mind the new version of Enterprise. It has to be somewhat altered. After all, this is a new era, and the designers didn't really deviate that much from the basic design -- saucer section, nacelles, lower hull.

 

[Warped9]

Thirded.

There have been some people around here who say that tv has "evolved" too much to let writers of genre books and stories write scripts. Of course, they ignore The Wire, considered by many to be the best tv show ever and which employed Richard Price, Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos, crime fiction heavy hitters all. But Star Trek can only rate the guys who gave us the scripts to both Transformers movies? I mean, I had a ball with the movie but its script never rises above the level of the juvenile and spends more than a little of its running time in the solidly imbecilic.

Yes. And this from someone who liked the film.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Presenting Kirk as he claims to have been originally - a grim, studious cadet - would have posed an interesting writing challenge if he'd been set in opposition to Spock at the Academy, because then you have two characters who are too similar to play well off each other.

The traditional Hollywood screenplay approach, when they have two "equal" main characters who aren't intended as a romantic couple (and often, even if they are), is to make them very distinct, so that they can be set in opposition to each other. That's how we got Kirk, the wild child, vs Spock, the wet blanket.

But could the story still work if Kirk and Spock antagonize each other by being too similar, and each one reminds the other of things they don't necessarily like about themselves? It's an unusual idea, but I think it could have worked. Kirk in particular changed greatly when he got into space. Even Spock was far from a wet blanket. He developed an impish, arch sense of humor and a laid-back manner as he matured. To see this evolution happen because of their relationship would have been great.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The actual business of exploration - mapping star systems for instance - would be rather dull and doesn't require a close-up visit by a starship anyway.

Exploration:
Where No Man Has Gone Before
The Corbomite Maneuver
The Enemy Within
The Squire Of Gothos
The Galileo Seven
The Alternative Factor
The City On The Edge Of Forever
Catspaw
The Gamesters Of Triskelion
Who Mourns For Adonais?
The Changeling
Obsession
The Apple
The Doomsday Machine
The Immunity Syndrome
By Any Other Name
Return To Tomorrow
For The World Is Hollow And I have Touched The Sky
That Which Survives
The Savage Curtain

Each of the above had at least some element of exploration to it. That's easily 25% of the episodes.

"Some element" doesn't mean that's what the episode is about. The Doomsday Machine was about protecting the Federation. The Enemy Within was a personal-threat story that took place within the confines of the Enterprise. The situation may have arisen because they were exploring, but that's a common thread in episodes: the gang does something explorational at the very start, and then whammo! the real story starts. Which isn't exploration-based.

COTEOF is reset-the-timeline, not exploration. It wasn't even caused by exploration. It was caused by a medical accident.

I also can't help noticing that most of your list could do double-duty as "the crap episodes." TOS was at its best when it focused on anything but exploration.

The dirty little secret of Star Trek is that exploration is boring. What are you exploring, except some Hollywood soundstages with the same types of sets populated by the same funny-colored people? We don't care about them and their disposable problems. But if the Federation is threatened by a gigantic space Hoover or Kirk has gone squirrely, then we care. That's what torpedoed ENT: lack of understanding that exploration should be just the start of the story, not the point of the story.

 

[Warped9]

The dirty little secret of Star Trek is that exploration is boring.

This is where you're wrong. The whole point is to introduce a situation where our heroes are faced with something unfamiliar that they (and the audience) have never encountered before. We follow them as they learn about the unfamiliar.

It works often for SF literature and it also worked very well for something like The X-Files, which was often at its most entertaining when investigating and exploring weird stuff.

The trick is being able to write this kind of story effectively. And sadly it's something few seem able to do well. One of the great appeals of TOS when we first watched it was being introduced to ideas through the stories built around them. But over time as Trek evolved the stories became more about the familiar and less about interesting ideas. In film Star Trek pulled this off with reasonable effectiveness only twice: TMP and TWOK. The rest is hit-and-miss mediocrity.

Exploration is the springboard to interesting stories. The story isn't about following the crew through a routine survey. It's about encountering something new and unexpected and the ensuing consequences during the supposedly routine.

 

[Shatnertage]

Thirded.

There have been some people around here who say that tv has "evolved" too much to let writers of genre books and stories write scripts. Of course, they ignore The Wire, considered by many to be the best tv show ever and which employed Richard Price, Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos, crime fiction heavy hitters all. But Star Trek can only rate the guys who gave us the scripts to both Transformers movies? I mean, I had a ball with the movie but its script never rises above the level of the juvenile and spends more than a little of its running time in the solidly imbecilic.

I'd pay to see the people behind The Wire make Star Trek. How about this: Clay Davis as the Federation High Commissioner/Ambassador who gets under the skin of Captain Cedric Daniels. Guy who played Landsman as the doctor for some witticisms, and McNutty as the moody helmsman. This stuff just writes itself. Kima as the no-nonsense head of security, Herc and Carver down in engineering.

Seriously, one of the strengths of a TV show vs. movie is that you could have those writers contribute scripts that might be light on the sci-fi elements but tell good stories.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Hell, the writers for "The Big Bang Theory" could do a better job than what we got...

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Thirded.

There have been some people around here who say that tv has "evolved" too much to let writers of genre books and stories write scripts. Of course, they ignore The Wire, considered by many to be the best tv show ever and which employed Richard Price, Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos, crime fiction heavy hitters all. But Star Trek can only rate the guys who gave us the scripts to both Transformers movies? I mean, I had a ball with the movie but its script never rises above the level of the juvenile and spends more than a little of its running time in the solidly imbecilic.

I'd pay to see the people behind The Wire make Star Trek. How about this: Clay Davis as the Federation High Commissioner/Ambassador who gets under the skin of Captain Cedric Daniels. Guy who played Landsman as the doctor for some witticisms, and McNutty as the moody helmsman. This stuff just writes itself. Kima as the no-nonsense head of security, Herc and Carver down in engineering.

Seriously, one of the strengths of a TV show vs. movie is that you could have those writers contribute scripts that might be light on the sci-fi elements but tell good stories.

Klingons? Sheeeeeeeeee-it!

 

[BillJ]

Presenting Kirk as he claims to have been originally - a grim, studious cadet - would have posed an interesting writing challenge if he'd been set in opposition to Spock at the Academy, because then you have two characters who are too similar to play well off each other.

The traditional Hollywood screenplay approach, when they have two "equal" main characters who aren't intended as a romantic couple (and often, even if they are), is to make them very distinct, so that they can be set in opposition to each other. That's how we got Kirk, the wild child, vs Spock, the wet blanket.

But could the story still work if Kirk and Spock antagonize each other by being too similar, and each one reminds the other of things they don't necessarily like about themselves? It's an unusual idea, but I think it could have worked. Kirk in particular changed greatly when he got into space. Even Spock was far from a wet blanket. He developed an impish, arch sense of humor and a laid-back manner as he matured. To see this evolution happen because of their relationship would have been great.

Why couldn't Spock be the wild child? We already know he is in Starfleet against his fathers wishes. We see a Spock that comes off as very emotional in The Cage. I could easily see a Spock that could get into all kinds of mischief during his Academy days. Maybe an incident at the Academy is why Kirk passes by the smarter, physically superior Spock and makes it to the Captains' chair first.

 

[Warped9]

I really hate the idea of Kirk and Spock at the academy together. It's just too cute and tidy that I want to hurl my lunch.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

I like the idea that the two men didn't meet until Kirk took command of the Enterprise. Likewise McCoy.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

My wish would be for, I guess a wholly different space opera series, practically unrecognisable from Star Trek in terms of design and structure. I am tired of Trek's future, which has become technology indistinguishable from magic, where the plot dictates what can be done, and where all powerful aliens, particles of the week, swiss army deflector dishes abound.

If I were to make a new show, or a movie, I'd make it a prequel, and unrelated to the series or the movies, and not necessarily evolving into them. I want real world physics, plausible extrapolations, and small scale storytelling. I'd set it in the near future, just after Cochrane's discovery of warp drive.

That would be the only magic in the show, FTL. Everything else would be real world, so no shields, no transporters, no tractor beams, no artifical gravity. The fleet wouldn't be based on naval or coastguard traditions, it would be similar to current NASA in terms of structure and terminology, and the ship design would follow that sort of ethic, maybe modular, spin for gravity and so on.

It would be the earliest days of extra solar exploration, we may know about a couple of races, The Vulcans, Andorians, but that would be it. But it would be a big fleet, not just one exploratory ship, and there would be a big rush to get off world, like the Gold Rush. I guess I'd like stories more about small scale exploration, like a ship reaching a new star system and mapping it taking time because they'd have to use telescopes and interferometers instead of some magic subspace thing. I'd also like stories about colonisation, Starfleet ships escorting vast caravans of people to their new homes, helping them set up their colonies, acting as the link back to Earth. Maybe it's environmental collapse that is driving a human diaspora, maybe it's just the need for breathing room.

I'd like it to be a cross between Star Trek and Defying Gravity, but without the weird alien whoszit that is never explained.

Enterprise done the way I imagined, instead of what we actually got...

 

[BillJ]

I really hate the idea of Kirk and Spock at the academy together. It's just too cute and tidy that I want to hurl my lunch.

I too prefer the idea of them meeting around the time of their postings to the Enterprise. But if they're going to meet at the Academy, throw out this preconception that Spock during that time frame is exactly like Spock from the five year mission.

 

[jtkirk]

Star Trek XI was perfect, I wouldn't change a thing. I don't care if a few liberties were taken here & there, i've never been that anal about continuity. After the success of the film I wish they would have started a new series instead of planning on film sequels. We are going to have to wait 2-3 years between each film to see these characters & that is too long! A series with the same actors would be better.

 

[Warped9]

Star Trek XI was perfect, I wouldn't change a thing. I don't care if a few liberties were taken here & there,

Words fail me...

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Emoticons, however, seem to express you just dandy!

 

[jtkirk]

- no origin or prequel story. I am seriously sick of these things and it wastes a lot of screen time. Either Kirk has just assumed command or has already been in command for a time

I meant to comment on this earlier. I understand what you mean, i hate it when they do this with superhero films, spend 20-30 minutes on the origin...but in the case of this film it was essential.

Why? Because everything as we previously knew it had changed, the timeline had been altered so it was necessary. Kirk's father was dead & he never knew him so those events were important to the story later & had to be told.

I can't help it, i love this film so much & feel it worked on so many levels. And for those of you who don't like it or wish it were different? I LIKE IT & THAT'S ALL THAT'S REALLY IMPORTANT!!

 

[Warped9]

- no origin or prequel story. I am seriously sick of these things and it wastes a lot of screen time. Either Kirk has just assumed command or has already been in command for a time

I meant to comment on this earlier. I understand what you mean, i hate it when they do this with superhero films, spend 20-30 minutes on the origin...but in the case of this film it was essential.

Why? Because everything as we previously knew it had changed, the timeline had been altered so it was necessary. Kirk's father was dead & he never knew him so those events were important to the story later & had to be told.

I can't help it, i love this film so much & feel it worked on so many levels. And for those of you who don't like it or wish it were different? I LIKE IT & THAT'S ALL THAT'S REALLY IMPORTANT!!

No. Even with a reboot an origin story is not needed in any way whatsoever. Jeez, how many films or TV series or novels have begun without an origin story? It's countless.

But it does show there's balance in the universe. While you adore this film I despise every stinking frame of it.

 

[Joker]

None of it, from '69 onwards, was or is "needed in any way whatsoever".

The fact is, like the rest, it happened. Trying to paint the old stuff as being anymore necessary/important/different than the new stuff is doomed to failure, no matter how many times you repeat it in every thread in the forum.

Like everything else that's ever been created, some like it, and some don't. Spending lots of time reminding everyone of your rejection of it isn't going to change anything.

 

[Warped9]

Spending lots of time reminding everyone of your rejection of it isn't going to change anything.