5 Ideas For The New Star Trek TV Show

The orignal Star Trek crew
Image source: epictimes.com

The land of geek received great news this week with the revelation that CBS is moving warp speed toward a new Star Trek television show. The excitement is peppered with caution, however, since so little information is yet available on what form the new show might take.

Here’s what we know: it’ll air on CBS All Access, the network’s streaming service, and Alex Kurtzman will be involved as a producer. Given that Kurtzman was so involved as a writer on the recent big budget movie reboot (and sequel). it may be that CBS will be going down that road too.

In all likelihood, though, we won’t know for months what the new show, the first Star Trek show in ten years, will look like. What we do know is that things have changed. Iron Man is popular now. Everything else is dark and gritty. In the modern television era, a new Star Trek show could go in a bunch of different directions.

Here are five ways we could revisit Starfleet:

1. The Next, Next Generation

The Enterprise
Image source:
gentside.com

Star Trek: The Next Generation arrived on TV eighteen years after the original show went off the air. It’s now been more than twenty years since The Next Generation finished its run. It wouldn’t take too much imagination to throw on a new lick of paint, jump forward fifty years and give us the adventures of the Next, Next Generation. This would stick to the original timeline, from which the recent movies deviated.

We know already from the new show’s logline that it will explore “dramatic contemporary themes” as previous TV iterations have before it. There’s plenty more to explore and Alex Kurtzman has a history of finding winning formulas on TV (Sleepy Hollow, Fringe, the modern Hawaii 5-0).

The show’s MO would be the same as in the past: a space ship would explore strange new worlds, recurring alien villains would turn up from time to time and the main characters would always make the right moral decision. For good measure, the show should probably hire a renowned British actor to take the role of captain. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

 

2. The Movie spin-off

star-trek-into-darkness-benedict-cumberbatch

J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness weren’t box office mega-hits by any stretch. What they are though, is the main Star Trek related presence in our pop culture in recent years. Whatever you think of the reboot, for many young people, Star Trek is all about Chris Pine, J.J. Abrams, and Spock getting busy with Uhura.

It wouldn’t be out of left field if CBS decided to bet their money on the horse people are familiar with. That poor analogy aside, this new series would likely follow a separate crew to Kirk and company, because movie actors are expensive. The aesthetics would be the same though, so the bridge would still look like an upmarket frozen yogurt shop.

This show would likely also be more action orientated, with potentially less room for space exploration and those “dramatic contemporary themes”. With a TV budget, would it have the money to pull it off?

 

3. Captain Worf

Worf from The Next Generation
Image source:
memory-beta.wikia.com

For those of you who don’t know, actor Michael Dorn has been pitching a show centred on his Next Generation character Worf for years now. At face value it sounds ridiculous, but it’s obvious Dorn has thought a lot about how such a show might work.

Captain Worf would presumably be set only a few years after The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, which Dorn also starred in. As a captain of his own ship, Worf would not be aligned with either the Klingons or Starfleet, presumably torn between lingering loyalties to both.

As a departure from the straight laced, idealistic, vision of the future in other Star Trek series’, Captain Worf could be a breath of fresh air. On the other hand, Dorn is not a young man anymore, making it more difficult for him to play the tough action guy he did in The Next Generation.

 

4. Dark Trek

The main cast of Battlestar Galactica
Image source:
scifinow.com

We’re living in a post-Batman Begins world these days, which means if you’re out of ideas ,you could always go dark and morally ambiguous. While I’m not a fan of every franchise becoming dark and ponderous, Star Trek could do with a pinch of spice if it wants to survive in the golden age of television.

Battlestar Galactica and Farscape showed how interesting space-faring science fiction could be if it offered flawed characters and bigger stakes. A new Star Trek does not have to go quite so far, but it would benefit from having more complex, flawed characters than it has in the past. I hate to say it, but it might also be time to give Star Trek some genuine no-win scenarios, delivering some real emotional consequences.

Imagine a Star Trek series which told a bigger, higher stakes story over the course of a season, and did not shy away from harsh outcomes. To win our attention, Starfleet will have to compete with the likes of Daredevil, The Walking Dead and Mr Robot. Injecting a little bit of grit in there might work wonders.

 

5. Beyond Starfleet

The crew of the Serenity
image source:
blastr.com

Just because it’s Star Trek, does it also have to be about Starfleet? There are a ton of other stories that could be told in the Star Trek universe, and not all of them need to be on a Federation ship. Captain Worf is just one example of this.

What is happening in between all the Starfleet missions and political squabbles of the galaxy? What’s happening on earth when the hiveminded Borg try another invasion? Perhaps CBS should set their new show at Starfleet Academy, where new recruits must learn how to be officers. Or maybe the show could centre on enemies of Starfleet, and what they make of Star Trek‘s utopian future.

Star Trek Voyager tangentially explored the lives of members of a rebel faction called the Maquis (yes, I am exactly that big of a nerd to remember this). Exploring the story of a similar group, perhaps in something akin to Firefly, would be a unique new direction to take the Star Trek universe.

Also, bring back Firefly.

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