New Star Trek TV Series In Development

[Orius]

Honestly, I don't want to see them "blow up the setting". The whole "positive vision of the future" is kind of central to Trek, trashing it could very well wreck it. It would likely cause a split in the fanbase somewhere too, and Trek fandom does not need that right now. That includes blowing up Vulcan in the last movie.

Voayger's problem wasn't the tech level, it was the bad writing.

 

[Thunderfoot]

Okay, my honest opinion is no, just...no.

After ST: Enterprise, which had great acting and a pile of horse crap for scripts, which ignored thousand of pages of previously established Trek canon... if it's a source of info mining for the new show, bag it.

Also, I'm quite surprised no one has tapped the un-mined potential of the cartoon series, yes it was ignored as non-canon but, it had the actors, writers and producers of the original series, and took place in roughly the same time as the original series. It's no less blasphemous than ST:ENT or some of the later DS9 or VOY episodes.

If it has to happen the laundry list of things that should and shouldn't be included (for me) include:

Yes:
An emphasis on exploration
A multi-cultural crew
Andorians
Telerites (for a founding race of the Federation they sure get panned in on-air time)
Klingons as "semi" bad guys, more a non-agreeable non-Federation race
Gorn - they used a "war" off screen to explain why they weren't there, let them win and start conquest again.
Romulans - they are the Communist Chinese government of space, we have massive armies and navies, but are quickly running into problems with everyone else. Maybe we should "play" nice while going about business (ie raiding) as usual
Orions - bring back green slave women!!! (and their lesser known gold servant slaves)
Caitians - because ST needs furries (not really but it is a demographic)
Marines/Army - The often overlooked branches of the Federation. Not everything is going to react peacefully, show us what happens when diplomacy goes south (see next to last entry as a corollary)
Consistent Diplomats/Officers/Officials - One thing that always bothered me, even in the originals, everything was run by the admiral of the week. If you have a part for a higher-up, find a long term guest star (Mark Lenard was a great example of this policy). If you mention the Federation President, tag a name to it, if its different than the last time, there had better have been an election mentioned. It's the little stuff that makes the difference. (see last below)

What they should NOT include:
The Borg - At least not on a continuing we've run out of ideas so they come back and cause problems race. The are supposed to be scary, they come off as one dimensional and boring.
Ferengi - Yes they should be there, just not as a major player, really, annoying merchants are hardly anyone's cup of tea.
Naussicans - they had the Gorn, why create another race with harder make-up?
Quantum anything - time travel should be left to the professionals, like Dr Who.
Betazoids - I'm sensing, confusion, grief and that the Klingon wants to do me in 10 Forward.... AWKWARD.
Trill - Great idea, poor execution, maybe if they played around a little and tightened them up...maybe
Massive space battles - Wolf 359 was AWESOME, the 14 times it was re-created after that (I'm looking at you DS9) was boring. Small ship engagements should be fast, brutal and deadly. Too much looks like an interstellar rave gone bad.
Admirals - if the real navies of the world had that many top line admins, there wouldn't be any money left over for ships... If they really want to make it sing, build some consistency. Every starbase, had an admiral, uh-uh, that's a captain's job, or a commander's. They received orders from so many different admirals on TNG that my first response was, who the hell do they belong to? I'm sure they are assigned to a division, who is the division head and why weren't the orders sent through them? (sorry a bit of real world military experience kicking in.) If you are assigned to Galaxy Exploration Division and you are getting orders from Military Operations Division, someone has crossed the line and FUBARed...

Yeah, I realize a lot of this stuff is nit-picky, but attention to detail is a military catch phrase for a reason. No military organization can function efficiently or effectively without it. A military based arm of even an imaginary government should have a smidgen of it, or else its just a group of space monkeys throwing really destructive poo.

 

[Sutekh]

I say, try a series using a different race. Id definetly watch a Kilingon based show, where every castmember say perhaps a token human was present. Set it during the Romulan/Klingon alliance time or not. Star Trek does not mean that you need to have Kirk and Co or Picard and co. Its simply a setting with a myriad of interesting concepts.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Honestly, I don't want to see them "blow up the setting". The whole "positive vision of the future" is kind of central to Trek, trashing it could very well wreck it. It would likely cause a split in the fanbase somewhere too, and Trek fandom does not need that right now. That includes blowing up Vulcan in the last movie.

Voayger's problem wasn't the tech level, it was the bad writing.

Yes, blowing up the setting seems pointless.

I see more appeal in going back to "real" exploration and give the Enterprise the role it had in TOS - basically Starfleet's only (big) ship in an area of space. The Federation is still and will always be a safe haven, but there is a lot of conflict outside it, and the Enterprise protects us from it, and helps the outlying regions to get closer to peace.

There is a lot of potential to spice this up with "modern" storytelling, without killing off the Startrek ideals. There can be alien conspiracies targeting the Federation, there can be aliens fighting each other and the Enterprise being caught in the middle, requiring politicing a lot, and even creating conflict within the crew (can we allow to support any of them? If so, which aliens?)

They can even have the Borg in it. Imagine a lone Federation ship warning a remote sector of space of the Borg threat. The next Federation fleet months away. (This is a storyline I would have liked to see in Voyager, to be honest).

 

[Umbran]

Caitians - because ST needs furries (not really but it is a demographic)

Heck, go for the real McCoy, and use Kzinti. "Speaker to Vulcans" would be hi-frikkin-larious.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I would like to see a lot put into the relations between the various established powers of the Alpha Quadrant. In some ways the relations between the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians and Ferengi can be seen as sort of an analogy of the UN. But I wouldn't say that any one of them completely correspond to any one of the UN veto nations. While many things about the Romulans for example that could be like China, there should be an effort to diverge from that and show there's parts of them that are just like the USA or France or something else. Much like how the Federation shouldn't be completely the USA of this "UN", but some aspects should be also like the UK or Russia or something different in some aspects.

 

[Pbartender]

Yes, blowing up the setting seems pointless.

I see more appeal in going back to "real" exploration and give the Enterprise the role it had in TOS - basically Starfleet's only (big) ship in an area of space. The Federation is still and will always be a safe haven, but there is a lot of conflict outside it, and the Enterprise protects us from it, and helps the outlying regions to get closer to peace.

The problem is that's all been largely done in the earlier series, and the continually advancing technology has gotten to the point ships are simply too big, too fast, too powerful. There's little challenge left without pushing the setting and the plots to extraordinary extremes.

That's where most of the problems in your list originate from...

Borg came along, because Klingons and Romulans no longer posed a credible threat to the latest incarnation of the Enterprise. They had to be dangerous enough to make you worry for the survival of the ship and its crew.

Quantum Everything was invented, because you can't have decades or centuries worth of a super-scientific "positive vision of future" go by with no technological advancement. And where do you go, when you're already at the top?

Herds of Admirals showed up, because likewise, you can't have a starship crew of hundreds serve for years, with promotions. And it wasn't just the Admirals... by the time the later TNG (and TOS) movies came about, I think Starfleet had an Admiral, two or three Captains, and a half dozen Commanders serving on a single ship.

Voyager was sent 70,000 light years away to the Delta Quadrant, because there wasn't anything left worth exploring within the 8,000 light year expanse of the Federation.

Star Trek is suffering from Power Creep something awful.

 

[Mallus]

The problem is that's all been largely done in the earlier series, and the continually advancing technology has gotten to the point ships are simply too big, too fast, too powerful.

Or too much like TARDISes!

Isn't it implied the Federation has a fleet of spaceship/time machines by some (future) point in the Voyager/Enterprise timeline? (27th century? 29th century?)

 

[Umbran]

Isn't it implied the Federation has a fleet of spaceship/time machines by some (future) point in the Voyager/Enterprise timeline? (27th century? 29th century?)

Voyager establishes the existence of the Temporal Prime Directive and the Temporal Integrity Commission in the 29th century.

Enterprise establishes that there's "Temporal Accords" prohibiting using time travel to alter history, established before the 31st century.

Of course, if you change history, those pieces of future canon can go away

 

[Steel_Wind]

Voyager was sent 70,000 light years away to the Delta Quadrant, because there wasn't anything left worth exploring within the 8,000 light year expanse of the Federation.

Star Trek is suffering from Power Creep something awful.

This is incorrect.

Voyager was set 70,000 light years away so that the things that they would be doing on that show would not cross over and create continuity issues with DS9 and, in particular, with the canon timeline that was expected to be in use in the restarted Star Trek movie franchise at the time. The "political" story of the Federation and its allies and enemies was something that was to be the subject of the existing movie series, and to a lesser extent, with DS9. The same reason was the excuse as to why DS9 was doing its thing through the wormhole. Again, the political situation in the "main" Federation space was reserved for TNG and the movie series. As such, Voyager was to return to pure exploration mode in the Delta quadrant in a manner which would not interfere with the continuity in existing programs.

OF course, we know how that ultimately worked out. We ended up with new political stories and issues that were particular to the Delta quadrant, which ultimately nack-contaminated Fed Space after DS9 ended and the movie series fizzled.

Star Trek always takes on a life of its own in every guise it has been protrayed. ST:Voyager was no different.

Federation space always gets bigger and there is always more to explore. There was no suggestion that there was "nothing left to explore" on the borders of Fed space at any time in any series. That was never, ever, the issue with Voyager. Indeed, as Federation Space grows, the borders of Federation Space get bigger, not smaller, by definition. There is, literally, always more to explore.

In this specific instance concerning the new show being discussed, there is no issue of any conflict with an ongoing telvision show. DS9 is not on the air and neither is Voyager. The Star Trek movie franchise appears to be befuddled with unexpected delays. They should be shooting (or hell, have FINISHED shooting a sequel already if they were serious about making money with the movie franchise. Clearly, they aren't THAT serious about it.

There is no impediment against starting up a new series which returns to the premise of TOS and TNG, and just advances the clock.

IF there is anything they may decide to back off on, it is the idea of a Galazy class ship with hundreds of families on board. That was present largely as an excuse to justify Wesley Crusher's presence on the ship in an attempt to reach the tween and teen demographics with TNG.

Probably we can do without that element being reintroduced to the Enterprise F. Any number of reasons can be offered as an excuse. Or not, as the case may be. I don't think anything turns on it. In the end, the ship is the bridge, some hallways shot form different angles, a few staterooms, engineering, a meeting room, sick bay, transporter room and the Captian'r eady room. Really, those are the sets no matter how "large" the pretend ship is. From the outside, it's just a model with some more windows. In the script, its just a reference to how many peopl are on board.

It's alll fluff and no crunch.

In terms of tech, TNG already established the problem of the destruction of space time that high speed Warp was doing to the Galaxy. If you need the reason for a speed limit -- the canon readily provides such a voluntary speed limie (except in overriding emergrncy circumstances) already.

Frankly, there is no prohibition on them just restarting TOS as the TV series, either. Saldana aside, there is no actor in the movie series who has branched out into other films with a huge splash.

They could do a new Trek series on the small screen and make a good buck at it if they wanted to. Chris Pine, Zach Quinto and even Karl Urban are affordable in those roles for TV, (even if Zoe Saldana probably isn't.) Not doing so is a preference, it's not a RULE.