[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Slashdot has an interesting discussion, you can't join in unless you're a subscriber but the points raised are interesting:

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[Windrunner]

ouch thats a hit below the belt for every trekkie around the globe

[Fineus]

I think it's a good idea - the technology has advanced to much lately and they're running out of places to go (hence taking a step backward with Enterprise). Perhaps some form of "back to basics" would really help the franchise.. You could in theory make all kinds of stories based around a ship on a mission of exploration to god knows what kind of planets.

[Gloriano]

Well I think that they should take few years break
and come back with new ideas

[Ford Prefect]

Either come back with new ideas, or let it rest with the dignity it deserves.

[ionia23]

Didn't they kind of do that already with "First Contact"?

I'd either like to see a movie on the Eugenics wars, or if they're feeling slightly more brave, finally put Q in one of the films.

[Fineus]

Originally posted by ionia23
finally put Q in one of the films.

That could make a really good film, personally speaking, some of my classic Trek favourites have been when they've had some comedy relief (be it from Kirks/Spocks banter... Q taking the piss out of the human race... whatever).

[IceFire]

My take is that the first thing they should do is go further into the future instead of constantly doing these stories in the past.

Why?  I love the technological aspect to things but what going into the future does is make that constant level of technological advancement sort of "obsolete".  Yeah Star Fleet can do pretty much watever it wants with a ship...make it do this, make it do that, everything is so fantastically engineered that engineering is not really a prime story.

The prime story should be about the people, how they cope with problems, how they solve problems...and better yet...how they cope when they don't solve the problem.  The questions should be what they do with their technology...not about what it is but what it can do and what it can do wrong.

Going into the past restricts you because all of the sudden it becomes somewhat difficult to make todays technology look "old".  The communicators on Enterprise are believable but hardly futuristic...my friends cellphones do more than their communicators do.  So throw it into the far future if need be, figure out reasons for good stories, and make the technology subservient to that...and not the other way around.

[Fineus]

Only problem with going to far into the future is that you start to run out of things that can't be done. I'm not saying that humans are suddenly godlike - but the ships can do one heck of a lot already (Voyager for instance - can come up with all kinds of nifty things that enable it to face down foes that should be able to wipe the floor with it).

Of course if you destroy the ship - you destroy the story. But time travel, transwarp and god knows what else are all easily possible at the drop of a hat in current Trek storylines. The illusion of struggle - as a result - is somewhat lacking.

[mrfun]

I always wanted to see a movie one the same theme as "Unification", to see that side stroy fleshed out, but they killed that pretty well when they trivialized the romulans in Nemesis.  I prefer to take that sad little movie as just another sci fi action flick (like the last starfighter, lol) and ignore all pretenses to startrekdom.

Star trek definately needs a hiatus if Nemesis is the best they can do.

[Tiara]

I've been saying that for like 2 years now. Trek needs a break. It's not like people will just forget it. Star trek has the status of Cultural landmark

Even though I like the way Coto is handling ST: ENT, I would've preffered if they hadn't gone along with the series. A nice 5-7 year break (in which Brennan & Braga would most likely die in a horrible horrible way... courtosy of me) and start up in a refreshed and new manner.

It's the same way with Star Wars. The original Trilogy was good but they wrecked the whole thing into oblivion with all this franchise milking.

In short; They need to grow some testicles and fire Brainless & Brainless. Then go on a hiatus and fire it up in half a decade or so with a grandiose new series written by GOOD writers (like me :p).

What I would like to see, is another TNG movie in that 5 year hiatus. But written by someone else than ***** & Butch. Cuz post DomWar is a time where there are MANY storylines to be explored.

[Ace]

The sad thing with Trek is that as opposed to respecting the current liscense and using the existing materials and expanding on them people love doing the 'alien of the week' and pulling things out of their butts.

It's one thing to make a new species or two, add backstory, etc. it's another when every episode is a new race when you're in 'explored' space.

As an example, why did they need a new green time travel cold war shapeshifter race and the Xindi in Enterprise when you could just have easily had a cold war with the "Salt Vampires" in TOS?

A few of them have survived the fall of their civilization and plot to return to greatness. The audience knows exactly what they are, but the irony is that the characters never see them. (A similar plot device could be done with the Romulans having Vulcan agents, which it sounds like Coto is going to do)

An enemy like those guys in TOS already exist, and can be used without changing the canon if the writers are smart. Then you have an already existing telepathic, 'shape shifting' enemy that loves to suck the life out of things. Like the Wraith in SG: Atlantis but even more nasty. You could then have the guys manipulating the Humans, Andorians, Vulcans, and Tellerites trying to start an interstellar war (so they can rebuild their empire in the ruins of the future feddie founders with them as slaves) and it backfires leading to the Federation and the Earth-Romulan war. (Romulans being promised territory if they aid against the meddling humans)

Done *properly* a plot like that could last years and set the stage for TOS while having an entertaining show.

*sigh* They need better writers and good direction and an overall story over several seasons with no filler. Trek always seems to constantly change direction and then try to make it look like it was intended to be that way.

If the rumor about the JMS Trek series is true, then there might be hope. However, I wasn't really impressed by Legend of the Rangers. Adding in The Hand, etc. While it would have made a decent plot for another universe, B5 has too much future history to pull that off as they weren't mentioned or hinted at before. It also reminded me strongly of the Lensman series. Instead of Civilization and Boskone you had the ISA and Hand.

[Hunter]

^ Legend of The Rangers was a more Adventure-type thing attempt by JMS, and TBH it's quite watchable, but nothing fetchy. Crusade was his last "Saga" attempt, which got cut short by TNT. Now that show had a lot of promise, and if you go back and study it (starting from Call to Arms), and read the three released scripts, you'll see it was going places. Besides, Bester was going to be in it, and the whole deal with the Drakh

[vyper]

[q] they trivialized the romulans in Nemesis.[/q]

(some of this may contain spoilers for those of you that haven't watched Nemesis)

Indeed, they destroyed a very good and well developed plot device by completely thought half of the comments alone in Nemesis. (1) The Romulan senate and Tal Shiar is slightly less gullible than they appear to be (altho the Tal Shiar don't appear per se, surely they would have known what was going on? And ways to deal with it?).
(2) The female Romulan claims that the destruction of earth would be a stain on thier honour and the blood would be on the hands of thier children for generations.  Since when did the romulan culture breed anything except a desire to destroy any enemy of the Star Empire? To elimenate the hated Federation?
If she had issues about going to war when peace was so close - that would've worked since the very first episode they appeared in has a Romulan commander lamenting "must it always be so" when  a young officer points out that the sign for war is Romulan strengh in comparison to an enemy. However she would have been acting out of an argument that it was in the best interests of the Empire not to do it - but a crisis of concience? I think not.

Moreso, the Romulan warships that appear are pretty pathetic considering they knew exactly what the Scimitar was armed with. The Enterprise battle also lacked imagination, and there was no real feeling behind the actions of most of the actors.

Data's "goodbye" was impressive as a throwback to TNG days but it lacked substance since you never actually believed the Enterprise could be blow to hell if he didn't stop the reaction.

They've turned Picard into a Kirk character - the latter plots revolve around him constantly whereas in TNG, Generations (First Contact because it really established "canon" history of the warp launch) and even Insurrection, you could follow a plot that dealt with several key characters and thier lives. (Altho, Crusher kinda vanished after the end of TNG in terms of plot importance).

Before anyone complains to me I'm forgetting the format of older Trek, I'm not - think of the Khan-Genesis-Voyage Home (er..) arc? You followed Kirk, the crew and even the enemies through good plots without being focused on one man. Kirk, McCoy, Spock all have equal plot value. Hell, even Scotty got to make a play for screen importance during the clear choice he made about excelsior ("up yer shaft!").

[q]Brennan & Brag[/q]

B&B did some good work, but they should've walked away before Ent started.  From what little I've seen (BBC lost the right to Trek now, so its on Channel 4 who've gone on a season break the length of a Q's lifetime) Ent suffers from the opposite fate to what TNG did - this time there's not enough been done to establish the characters, and the stories are being crammed in beside a very poor attempt to giving said characters more depth. No one really cares if Archer gets killed by the Suliban et al because he could be replaced by a far more charismatic and mature captain yet still be the rebellious NX-01 captain he has to be.

 [q]Cuz post DomWar is a time where there are MANY storylines to be explored.[/q]

Very true, but that better not include Captain Riker and his mission to go around sucking everyone's cock to keep the Federation in one piece because we both know it'd end up being too weak for his style of character. Beyond which Jonathan Frakes really can't pull off the young confident yet sometimes still learning Riker anymore.

What would be nice would be a film showing what happened to the Enterprise crew during the Dominion war - they were.... 14th fleet? Dunno, but it'd be good to see, perhaps as a TV Movie that jumped a year per hour or so. It'd work because real trek fans could follow the characters as if Nemesis never happend (lets be honest, in our hearts it never reallly did... ) and it could explain a lot of the character's slight changes by Insurrection.  

You could also tie it in with an upcoming DS9 movie, with guest appearances of that cast and references toward the end as to what will happen in that regard.

[vyper]

And something else - ever thought they could explore the idea of the Andromedans again? Those folk from the Andromeda galaxy that knocked the Enterprise in TOS?

[Singh]

They ought to bring Lore back if they want something new..hell, was he a villian.
(and yes, it is actually possible to bring him back without the normal issues that revolve around death - Voyager sowed the seeds of this possibility in one of their episodes)

[Goober5000]

Mind spelling that out for us, Singh?  I've seen most of Voyager but don't remember that part.

[StratComm]

Who knows, they've done a lot of that on Voyager.  The one that comes immediately to mind is the episode (early, 1st or 2nd season) where voyager is copied.  They realize that they can't stabilize the warp core for two ships to use, and so one voyager blows itself up to stop that organ-harvesting race from taking both copies.  In it, Kim and a baby die on the ship that doesn't get killed, and when the ship that does die decides to self-destruct Kim and the baby are sent over to the other ship to take the place of those who died.

[an0n]

There are four very easy and viable ways in which a new Trek show could kick the ass of every previous series:
[list=1]

• Section 31 - Running alongside the DS9 timeline and showing the evil side of the Federation and their part in the Dominion War.
• Fighter Squadrons - We know the Federation uses them. And it's an area of the Trek universe that's never been shown. It'd be cool because it could tie in with the Dominion War and there'd be a massive main-character mortality rate.
• The Second Romulan War - According the vague canonical hinting, after the Dominion War the Klingons invade the Romulan Star Empire and practically wipe the Romulans out.
• Death Of The Federation - This could tie in with the whole Enterprise temporal cold-war thing and ideas 2 and 3. Have some cataclysmic event (or Q) screwing the space-time continuum and plunging future-Earth into a new timeline where the Borg have assimilated half of the quadrant; the Klingons have been crushed (by the Borg and the Tholians) and been absorbed into the Federation; and the Romulan-Tholian Alliance is beating the **** out of the Federation with shield-piercing weapons and cloaked firing.

Personally, I think the last one would be the best. As it'd give some finality to the story of the Federation, feature kick-ass space battles, be packed full of reset-switch potential if it bombed and would do what no episode or movie has done since Balance Of Terror: Show that the Federation is not invincible.

[Ace]

I thought by TNG's time the Tholians were Feddy members or on good terms with the Feddies.

Anyway, if you wanted to tie in your idea #4 with ENT, it could be the war against the Sphere Builders. Their tech could be insanely advanced and they wind up pushing the Federation back to the core member planets.