posted
Flitting around from planet to planet each episode has been a mainstay of most Trek series - TOS, TNG, VOY, ENT. The one series that focused on one region of space and the nearby worlds - Bajor, Cardassia, the Dominion - is widely regarded as the best Trek in terms of stories told.
It makes sense that for the next series (if there is to be one), that some sort of combination of the two types of series (mobile and stationary) might work very well.
Hence, a concept idea for "Star Trek: Series VI."
The premise of the show is that it takes place on a starship. However, we don't go from planet to planet every episode. The show relies on arc-writing, and we find our focus devoted over a series of episodes to a specific region or planet.
For example, an eight-episode arc might focus on our USS Starship arriving at a world which has recently ended a civil war. Our brave crew, led by Captain Courageous, is here to assist the planetary government while Federation relief force travels to the planet. One episode focuses on our good Captain attempting to unite the two quarelling leaders and convince them of the Federation's honorable intentions before the civil war is renewed. Another episode might feature Doctor Bloody leading a medical mission to an epidemic ravaged continent to attempt to stop a plague, while another focuses on Security Chief Lt. Manly-Man attempting to determine if a local sheriff is in fact responsible for a series of murders of political dissidents. Yet another episode could feature XO Beardly taking the ship out of orbit to hunt down an Orion pirate raiding incoming freighters.
The format would still allow for the occasional one-shot planet episode, but I think that by featuring large arcs following a larger overall story, the show would break the typical Trek mold while keeping (and hopefully attracting) a larger audience.
posted
How about a starship getting trapped in time and emerging to find the entire galaxy has gone "Logan's Run" and degenerated to barely warp capable planets that have forgotten their past and.....Oh wait......Sore-bo's already RUINING that storyline......
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posted
As I understand it, the Andromeda concept was actually pitched to Paramount as a Trek concept, before being turned into a non-Trek series. I might be wrong.
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posted
A series of Trek miniseries... that sounds like an interesting idea, actually.
Although IMO that could easily get a bit too formulaic, and ultimately be subject to the same flaws you find in the other ship-based shows. Basically, what made DS9 great (in my view, anyway) was the LONG TERM nature of the arc. We met Winn Adami as a sneering, scheming Vedek in the season one finale, then she got elected Kai a year later, and after being Sisko's main Bajoran adversary for a few years had to come and ask him for his help. (I'll ignore the final chapter in this post, thank you very much.)
Even though the "miniseries" idea is intriguing, it still doesn't allow for the kind of long-term changes to develop in the show. And that's what's important -- the changes. You really can't address major changes in plot or character in an eight-episode arc. Or at least, not such major changes to non-main characters that are still going to be left behind at the end of that block of episodes.
Despite my criticism, though, I'm not saying that your story idea is at all bad. I'm just suggesting that it may not fully address the problems that you're trying to solve with this concept.
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posted
Such an idea could probably be taken a step further, and play off the popularity of the show "24". Each season could deal with a single event (not necessarily one day, but perhaps a week or a month or so).
[ October 06, 2003, 02:01 PM: Message edited by: TSN ]
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posted
and possibly focus on a few wnsigns and crewbeings and how all of the things happening affect and change them.
Anyone else tired of the same 'senoir staff' BS?
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posted
Shows like "24", "Alias", "The Shield" and "The Sopranos" keep the core cast and then have peripheral characters rotate in broad arcs around that cast. They have no problems killing off these peripheral characters however (and even the occasional main character). I think it adds drama in that when you put the cast in peril you don't know that they will somehow escape unscathed. Someone might actually die for a change. In the long arcs they introduce these characters in you can develope a pretty good appreciation for there personalities and even come to like them, then boom, they're dead.
I like your idea Snay. A good premise may be a "Starfleet Pathfinders" group who are the first responders on scene in any unusual circumstance that can't be handled by local authorities. The core group which consist of specialists in a wide variety of fields; diplomacy, law enforcement, Special Forces, medical, intelligence, etc. can be supplemented by specialists in specific fields related to the mission itself. These extra crew would only last as long as the arc required them and for the purposes of drama would be expendable. If one of them generates positive fan feedback, they can be bumped up to regular crew.
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posted
Mabye this: A story with far reaching consequenses told each season from a new crew/ship/starbase's P.O.V.
Like watching the Dominion War first from the viewpoint of a ship on a exploration turned warfare mission then the next season starting fresh with a new cast and crew living the same timeframe but experiencing it from a diffrent perspective....each season would lead up to some climatic battle or event as a cliffhanger. Each season would reveal a bit more about whats going on and you'd have to actually THINK about the story. Like what X-Files could have been, I guess. The last season would tie all the others together and be a big finalle.
Mabye even have a season from the enemy's perspective.
The Dominion War from the Dominion alliance's perspective would rock.
This idea probably would work better as a book series I guess....hmmmm...
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posted
Something just post-Nemesis would be cool too. I'd love to see the Romulans get the development that the Bajorans did on DS9.
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posted
I don't have much confidence in network television to produce a Star Trek series with the kind of creativity you're talking about. "24" blows me away and I think I will remember it for a long time as the last truly original network television concept. Even with "24", though, FOX tried to get them to serialize the second season, to make it more like other television shows.
Network execs and creative storytelling do not mix well. They play to the masses and people in general get bored very quickly. That said, I'd love to see a Trek series produced by Showtime or something.
True, you probably wouldn't have the same satisfaction with development of characters like Wynn over the run of seven years, but even a year-long arc focusing on one particular planet would result in a larger satisfaction at the end of the season then would the typical Trekian "okay, we got here forty-minutes ago, time to warp out."
quote:Originally posted by Malnurtured Snay: ...but even a year-long arc focusing on one particular planet would result in a larger satisfaction at the end of the season then would the typical Trekian "okay, we got here forty-minutes ago, time to warp out."
Oh, unquestionably. I'm just saying that what made DS9 especially attractive for me was the full seven-year development of the secondary and tertiary characters. But your idea definitely has merit, and I'd actually be interested in reading it if you ever publish online.
Might as well mention it here rather than start a different thread, but there's another format that offers some interesting possibilities for Trek -- the anthology television series. Of course it presents a bunch of problems all its own, but IMO it's also got some pretty interesting possibilities. Kinda like a decently-written fanfic about original characters each week (rather than the usual 'shipper tripe that's out there). An online acquaintance of mine tried to organize an anthology series like that. Unfortunately, he's not working on it anymore. Fortunately, he's writing for Renaissance now.
(I don't want to steal your topic, Snay, just figured it was relatively pertinent...)
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quote:Originally posted by Malnurtured Snay: As I understand it, the Andromeda concept was actually pitched to Paramount as a Trek concept, before being turned into a non-Trek series. I might be wrong.
I was following the links in that size comparison chart thread over in S&T, and happened across this little tidbit:
quote:Q: And Wasn't Dylan Hunt a character in a crappy 1970's TV movie?
A: Er, yes. In the period between the cancellation of Star Trek and the revival as a theatrical movie series, Gene Roddenberry worked on several short-lived projects. Two of these were pilot episodes for proposed TV series that didn't pan out. The 1973 TV-Movie Genesis II was such a pilot episode, and it did indeed feature a lead character named Dylan Hunt, who wakes up 300 years in the future, and tries to restore civilization in a world gone mad. The very-similar "Planet Earth" had a similar plot and also had a lead character named Dylan Hunt. Since neither pilot movie became a series, and both were created by Gene Roddenberry, who also created Andromeda, it's not really plagarism. You can't steal from yourself. Rumor has it that one of the proposals for the series that eventually became "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was for a Federation Starship called the U.S.S. Andromeda to be frozen in time for 300 years, then emerge to find that the Federation had been destroyed by a civil war launched by the genetically-engineered descendants of Khan Noonian Singh, followed by a Klingon invasion. Another proposal, which shared some of the same elements, would have been for a series about the first Warp-Capable starship and the original founding of the Federation, and this proposal eventually led (after many modifications) to the current series Enterprise.
Aside from the fact that Khan and his followers were totally vaporized in the explosion of the Genesis Device, that's actually a pretty intriguing idea. I'm surprised!
I gotta say, though, that execution aside, the Magog are a helluva lot more interesting and menacing than the Klingons...
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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Another concept that I thought about was a Hornblower type deal(think of what A&E has been doing), where we follow one person through a series of TV movies and/or miniseries at various steps in his career - i.e., the first movie features him or her as a cadet facing some troubles, then later as a junior officer, and so on up to becoming a starship captain. There would be room for recurring roles (think of Hornblower's Lt. Bush), and the nature of the series would allow for a "survey" of, for example, the 24th century - starting just prior to TNG (perhaps a miniseries focusing on the Cardassian Wars), through the Dominion War, and to the return of Voyager (and beyond). They wouldn't neccessarily have to focuses exclusively on events we heard mentioned on DS9/TNG/VOY, but the format would provide for the expansion of certain themes.
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