Ideas for the next Star Trek

[Mr. Oragahn]

Lost ship? Been there, done that.

Talk about lost opportunities with that concept. Just read Ron Moore's interviewsometime about what could have been done with Voyager.

Trek was initially meant to comment on things, not just blow shit up real good. While there is still plenty Trek could say, the simple fact is that I rather doubt modern Hollywood could manage to say it on a weekly basis. We had the chance with Coto, but lost it. Best to leave it be for now.

Sadly the potential of what Manny Coto and his crew was capable of was only glimpsed of in ST:ENT's 3rd and 4th seasons, and some of what they were planning for season 5 was just incredible.... If only Coto or Moore had been the ones in charge of ST:ENT from the begining, it might have made to it's 7th season.
-Mike

The problems of Voyager Moore highlights are exactly the same which have been plaguing Stargate for 3-4 years now.

[Mike DiCenso]

I think that many of those issues are ones that you can apply to any franchise that has gone on for a long time. The Star Wars EU, in my opinion, is suffering from some of them as they try to continuously maintain a state of constant war in the SW galaxy.
-Mike

[2046]

Oftentimes, Star Trek was at its best when it was liberally borrowing from other material. (Stargate was the same way . . . there were plenty of TOS rehash plots told in such a fresh manner that they were a joy.)

And as we well know, Trek writers are invariably drawn to time travel and reset buttons.

So probably at this point the best thing they could do would be to steal from Sliders, X-Files, and so on and do Time Trek, following a couple of Daniels-esque time travellers who are themselves very good SG-or-BSG-or-B7-esque characters that Berman and Braga could never write nor even dare hope to touch without breaking.

I'm not saying it'd last more than a season, or even be any good, but it would be an original take on the universe that is not so limiting for the purposes of writing it.

While it could be utter crap quite easily, it has various advantages. First off, with the parallel universe angle occasionally coming into play, there's always the opportunity to ignore continuity. You could even drop lines to this effect . . . mention of infinite universes and so on.

Second, you don't have to slavishly remember old Trek facts . . . now you can USE them. It's like the Trek version of the History Channel, but with plot.

This means you can tell stories from all the generations, and indeed even rewrite Trek history at a stroke. No longer does it take a temporal anomaly to see the Enterprise-C . . . you *are* the anomaly and can just show up wherever it's going to be, like Berlinghoff Rasmussen without the funny hair.

Wanna do that Romulan War movie that was rumored way back when where, it appeared, everyone would die? Do it one week -- or two -- . . . no risk, no fuss. Battle of Donatu V? Done. Visit Kirk in TOS again? Piece of cake. Fight the Borg? Ready and willing.

(The main problem with the idea is budgetary . . . there would be problems having a bottle show. But, if the present is interesting too, there can be stories that occur on its standing sets.)

The main story danger would be Mary-Sue-ing one's way through Trek history, so that the main characters become some sort of Flint-like figure that did or contributed to everything cool in history up to and including sliced bread and the better mousetrap.

So one would probably end up with a temporal cold war sort of thing, which is also similar to the latest Trek film plot I've heard . . . chasing badguys through time.

It could work, or it could suck . . . but either way, it seems to be what everyone's been converging toward.

Roddenberry- or Coto-style Trek is still damn good, with lots of potential, but it's just too difficult for most folks in Hollywood to do these days.

[Flectarn]

Then there's always the Qo'noS Shakespeare Company