Since Star Trek seems to be doing extremely well at the box office, it's got me wondering if the franchise could produce some more series. I ended up with one general concept of my own, and thought I'd share it:It takes place on a small Oberth class science ship, outfitted with cutting edge sensors and other science-oriented equipment. It's focused on planetary study (since I'm not so fond of Negative Space Wedgies). I think the ship type makes a lot of room for writing potential:
1. As a science ship, they're naturally going to gravitate towards scientific curiosities and save the day in the manner of a Campbellian hero, like Star Trek tends to be fond of.
2. The ship works with a smaller crew, so a casual manner among them can be more easily justified. There could be friction between Starfleet and civilian crew.
3. If the ship gets caught up in a conflict, you can easily understand it being outgunned and the crew forced to rely on guile to survive, at least until a bigger class of ship arrives to help. It'd be well established they've got better Everything Sensors than average, so they could detect unusual advantages. One of the things that makes it harder for me to take a number of original series episodes seriously was how often the Enterprise, the flagship of the Federation, was outgunned by various alien species. How's the Federation still around?
So, anyone got their own ideas?
14 comments:
This is more a general idea that I had spontaneously, upon reading the post, but, if Achron-style time travel ends up being comprehensible, it would be neat to see a story based around that model.
Also... I don't know, maybe have a complete change of tone and build a sitcom around the lives of the redshirts.
One of the things that makes it harder for me to take a number of original series episodes seriously was how often the Enterprise, the flagship of the Federation, was outgunned by various alien species. How's the Federation still around?The Enterprise was so relatively under-gunned because the Federation are pissant pacifists who simply don't understand that you its not only those who live by the sword that die by it.
As to how the Federation survived? Apart from pure Mary Sue power, most of the threats they faced weren't from organised enemies. A small group of powerful aliens might be a threat to a single ship, but not an entire civilisation.
As for the organised threats (Klingons, Romulans etc.) were probably minimised by by the tyrrany of distance. Until warp drives got very quick it would be ruinously expensive to launch an invasion against a civilisation as large as the Federation. And I'm pretty sure the Feds had the advantage in speed, so they'd find it easier to apply power at a point.
In many cases the firtunes of the Federation were completely plot dependent. They would be shown easily defeating a Cardassian ship one episode, and being overpowered by the same sort of vessel in another episode, as the plot demands.
They could be shown defeating the Kilngon empire through attritition in one movie, and then shown being defeated by that same empire in a different episode; whatever best fits the plot the writers have come up with.
And then, of course, there is idiocy like the treaty they signed according to which the Federation would not develop a cloaking device; doesn't get much dumber than that... again, for plot-driving purposes.
You'd have to look for a bible to get more contradictions per square centimeter.
Isn't that much like real-world treaties and governments, though?
Yeah, good idea - I've had similar thoughts myself in the past. It's always seemed strange that the view we get of the Federation is almost entirely through its paramilitary wing...
Since "proper" science in the Federation is done by teams of specialists working for years, they should be a scout ship. Take it right back to the original premise - "to seek out new life and new civilisations". Their job is to look for interesting things which need further specialist investigation, particularly civilisations with contact potential. That way, we get to have a more generalist team looking at lots of different stuff, and they'll spend a lot of time in the grey area at the edge of the Prime Directive. There's a conflict with the PD in potential First Contact situations (after all, First Contact is the biggest and most disruptive event most civilisations ever face), and I think it might be interesting to explore that more. I'd also like to see a bit less outright military conflict - it's just not very interesting, and it's not really the Federation way.
Hang on a minute... I've just described Star Trek as it would have been if it had been written by Iain M. Banks, haven't I?
I keep meaning to read stuff by Iain M. Banks, but never get around to it (Yay, another thing to do this summer!), but that does sound about right. And awesome, to boot. Wonder if he's interested in working on any such franchise...
Alternatively, general things that should be handled: if we're getting a complete do-over, the technobabble needs to be reined way in. The impression I get is that the current levels would be better suited to absurdist humor, or something. Keep it simple, and consistent. Maybe build secondary arcs around the development of technology to deal with it, so that there's some continuity between episodes in the "problem of the week that could be solved easily with what you did not two weeks ago" department.
("Captain! We've entered a storm of duralon particles! They'll buffet the the ship to pieces via subspace resonance!"
"That sounds an awful lot like what zaxilex particles do. What's the difference?"
"Duralon particles are rendered with green particle effects!")
MWChase:
Iain M Banks is a master a worldbuilding (The Culture is what the Federation should have been), though soem of his stories are strange (I really can't elaborate, though I'd like to) I think its because most of is work is in literary fiction.
I'd start with The Player of Games and The Use of Weapons, those are IMO the best of the Culture novels.
Bronze Dog's suggestions sound good, but I think they should not go too far in the direction of "monster of the week", or "green skinned girl of the week" direction.
My favourite episodes of TNG have always been those that were heavy on the characterization, and, to a lesser extent, those that gave consideration to ethical concerns* and moral dilemmas.
And, of course, MWChase is correct; showing us a subspace transporter that can work over several light years, penetrate shields, and avoid detection and then never using that concept again is an enormous plot hole. Sure, it was energy intensive and dangerous for humans, but being able to beam a photon torpedo directly to a Romulan ship's warp core would probably have come in handy in an emergency.
Oh, and, now we're on it, how about a little more understanding of the scientific endeavour? Not wanting to use a particular piece of technology because of its horrible, civilization destroying effects whe it is used as a weapon is no reason to ban all research into it; what you do, instead, is figure out how it works, what makes it so nasty, and how to counteract its nastiness. That way, when the Bajoran terrorists decide to use it against you, you can defend yourself, and then you can wax poetic on the morality of terrorism.
* Without idiocy like the captain in Voyager using knowledge gained from unethical experiments run by cardassians to save one of her crew memebrs, and then deleting the information so that nobody else can have on the grounds that it was obtained unethically. Please!
Hey, maybe we shoudl submit a script or two for the new series.
Star Trek TOS was supposed to be a Horatio Hornblower in space type of adventure. So the Enterprise would have been roughly an Age-of-Sail Frigate--set up for long-range (6 month) cruises, capable of projecting force against limited opponents, but not capable of going up against a 1st (or even 3rd) rate vessel (unless you're really sneaky) (the more capable vessels would presumably have been too expensive to operate away from base except during an actual shooting war).
I'm not sure what future history to choose as a baseline for the new series.
Just for guidelines, I'd say (1). No time travel. Unless you have time cops, it just doesn't work out, and if you have time cops, they're going to be more interesting than your new show.
2. No more than one civilization-threatening monster per season. Just because. And your civilzation-threatening monster really should be spread over multiple episodes. It would be nice if they didn't know it was a civilization-threatening monster the first few times they encountered it.
3. No Q. No Borg. The Borg cliff-hanger season ending was great. Unfortunately, that should have finished the series. The next season should have had the Federation losing system after system to the Borg until either the last starship flees (in a Battlestar Galactica type move) to another galaxy or suicides in a futile act of resistance.
4. No gangsters. No Nazis. Pirates and Ninjas are ok. Other than those, no alternate earths (well, no real alternate earths. Fake earths constructed from the crews' memories would be fine).
5. Figure out how the damn transporters work (this is a do-over, right?). I'd prefer subspace tunnel myself, not break them down and put them back together again.
6. I'd prefer not to have a holodeck. If you have to have one, figure out how it works first.
7. Get a rough idea of how phasers, photon torpedoes, shields, normal matter all interact. I kind of like E. E. "Doc" Smith stories, where, once the shields go down, the ordinary matter is instantaneously blown away. If the ship loses shields it ceases to exist except as a rapidly expanding ball of subatomic matter.
8. Mechanics--distance and speed, sensor range, effective weapon range, that sort of thing. Things don't need to be completely specified, but it'd be nice to have an outline that could be filled in as you went along.
Valhar2000:
And, of course, MWChase is correct; showing us a subspace transporter that can work over several light years, penetrate shields, and avoid detection and then never using that concept again is an enormous plot hole. Sure, it was energy intensive and dangerous for humans, but being able to beam a photon torpedo directly to a Romulan ship's warp core would probably have come in handy in an emergency.Its telling that in Stargate SG1 practically the first things the air force did with an Asgard Transporter was use it as a weapon delivery system.
Come to think of it, something like a the Stargate can be extemely dangerous unless you make sure you control both of the endpoints. In fact, each stargate should be treated as an entry point into your territory, and heavily defended as such.
For most planets in the Stargate Universe it seems to be the primary entry point.
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