How Would I Do A Star Trek Series?

I saw an article in my RSS feeds from Bleeding Fool titled “Elon Musk’s Vision For A Starfleet Academy Meets Resistance From ‘Star Trek’ Star“. At first I thought Musk had come up with some ideas for what he might want to see in the announced Starfleet Academy show, which I’m betting won’t be nearly as good as the original comic set at Starfleet Academy. Sadly, that wasn’t the topic, but it would have made for an interesting article. In case you’re interested, it’s just Robert Picardo mad at Musk for wanting to create a real Starfleet Academy because political internet drama and I don’t care. Although, I do now wonder how the US Space Force is trained. I still think they should have called it Starcom but…oh, apparently that’s what they call their Academy. I’m flexible.

Even if Paramount’s new owners manage to get rid of Alex Kurtzman and Secret Hideout, and they can’t do it fast enough, I don’t think they’d accept a story pitch from Musk, who is not really known for making science fiction. Space X is science reality. Still, it would be fun to break down his idea for a Starfleet Academy storyline or series. Denied this article topic I had an idea during lunch: replace Musk with me. Not at Space X. I can’t even run this place. I mean what would I like to see in a Star Trek show if I was allowed to develop one? Starfleet Academy itself would be easy. Just do the comic and continue the story from there. Not sure how you’d handle Nog, as Aron Eisenberg passed away in 2019. Still, I want to do something a bit more general Star Trek. So I wouldn’t be bringing back any of the previous crews outside of cameos, though it might be fun to get the fan films and fan series to cameo to build out the universe, also as cameos. I wonder how Skydance feels about fan films?

No, this will be an original ship, let’s call it the USS Elon in honor of the article that sparked this off-the-top-of-my-head dive. I actually considered USS Musk but considering…other definitions of the word “musk, Elon sounded a bit more spacy. So don’t expect this to be some deep, thought out pitch like I did years ago for Godzilla. That’s three links, by the way, which I bring up only to show off an old article and pad out the homepage. What I’m doing here is just coming to me as I write. More of a first concept than any real draft. So what would I do?

First off, we can forget this “20% different” nonsense just to get merch money. I know, that’s where the real money is, but I care about the fans (I am one) and making something good and respectful to what came before, not greed and ego. Instead we’ll have original characters, and not necessarily a Constitution class ship like NCC-1701. Yes, I would set this in the original series timeline. While that makes using the original actors difficult, there’s only been two official shows set during that period, and both featured the original cast (minus Chekov in the cartoon because I guess Leonard Nimoy didn’t think Walter Koenig was as worth fighting for as George Takei and Nichelle Nichols). I’d like to go back to the 23rd century, where the holodeck was barely out of prototype stage and of course still tried to kill McCoy, Sulu, and Uhura.

Still, we won’t be doing holodeck stories. Even the original series had the Pleasure Planet, the first pre-holodeck holodeck story that followed the same trope, that would also revisited in the animated series. It’s been done, let’s move on. If I were to do a “rec room/pleasure planet” story, it would be some fun filler episode for the cast, like a “Captain Proton” or “Dixon Hill” style adventure minus something trying to kill the crew in real life. Just a chance for the cast to expand their acting and give them a break from the routine.

I’d also try to diversify the characters a bit, given how many races we see in Starfleet. Even the Horta ended up having a member in one of the novels I hope to get to someday. You know, the rock momma McCoy once cured with plaster. I don’t know if I’d use a Horta, and for the sake of the budget we probably wouldn’t have a lot because prosthetics cost time and money. On the other hand, in a comic or animated production we could totally show some non-humans aboard, even as background characters among the crew. Deep Space Nine pulled it off pretty well. I’d really like to get some in the regular or recurring cast members.

I don’t have names of course (top of my head), but I can guess some of the ship positions we would have, which members of the USS Elon crew we’d be following. Admittedly they’d be all the regular positions that the shows usually give us in the spacefaring teams. You have the Captain, the First Officer, the Science Officer (they would not be the same person, and I do wonder why Data never became science officer and yet got to do all the important missions despite being the pilot), the Chief Engineer, the Chief Medical Officer, the communications chief, the bridge crew would would remain on the bridge unless they got promoted, Chief Of Security, and maybe introduce a recurring Shuttlecraft pilot and Transporter Chief. Why a dedicated pilot? A shuttlecraft isn’t the same as launching a boat from the…bigger boat. So many shows, including The Orville, use that line-up for a reason.

“By the way, Mr. Sulu, how was your beach vacation?” (And yes, that’s supposed to be Uhura on the left. The book & record artist missed a few memos.)

Other recurring characters would be among the experts and subordinates in various departments, the night shift–oh, speaking of practical jokers there’s a fun issue of the DC comic that actually introduced a night shift captain that had to deal with Scott’s search for a Gremlin in the new NCC-1701-A–you know what? Have an episode about the night shift having to complete a mission because something happened to the usual cast, like the night captain has to take over with his team because our regular captain and first officer can’t reach the bridge to change shifts during some crisis. Give the usual cast some extra time off or film a story with them elsewhere and get an extra episode for the season out of it. I’d also like to do a “lower decks” type episode with these recurring characters. I mean the TNG episode, not the animated series.

For the sets, I want to keep the look of the original bridges we saw, though not using the Constitution class to further separate us from the Enterprise does give us layout leeway a bit. There are technical designs of other class’ bridges, so we’d have something to work with. I’m making it up as I go along, with only the necessary editing to make the article good, so I’m doing minimum research here. I can’t tell you what class I’d go with, but I want to spice things up a bit. There could be an episode with a Constitution class ship besides Enterprise, but while it would look like the traditional bridge (we’re going post-Pike period to the TOS/TAS classic look) the visuals would get a make-over. The controls would look more “realistic” or at least modern in a way prior to those words being ruined by Modern Hollywood. The displays would feel more like computer screens, with the detail seen in TNG but not with their LCARS look. It would have to look like it came from the 1960s show without looking…so 1960s, if that makes any sense.

The part I’m waffling on right now is whether or not this would be another exploration vessel. It could be anything. A science vessel like the Intrepid from the original series (not to be confused with the fan work set in the 24th century), or a medical ship. We don’t get to see many medical dramas set in space. Possibly a cargo vessel, but one that carries enough big cargo to have a full cast and extras. Maybe a security vessel that patrols Federation space for Romulans and other threats to Starfleet and the Federation as a whole, or has to serve as a go-between with warring groups. It could be time to explore a bit of the known Federation space, like that Intrepid fan series, rather than have yet another vessel that explores other planets. One thing I will praise Lower Decks the show for is the concept of a “second contact” team, folks go in and build on what some other vessel stumbled upon and made first contact with. It’s just they’re all jerks because that’s the kind of comedy they went for. If we’re expanding on the Star Trek Universe, why not take some time to build on the stuff we already know?

As for stories, it depends on what ship type we went with. A science or security vessel would probably be closer to classic Trek adventures, while the cargo or medical ships would offer something new as far as the franchise goes, and let us see another side of the Alpha Quadrant and the Federation/Starfleet. I would, however, be getting Trek right. It might speak to our world and themes would be inspired by it, but the world of this show wouldn’t reflect ours. We didn’t have a third World War or a Eugenics War, or any of that. Their world isn’t necessarily ours, features alien races that most likely don’t exist on other planets even if we aren’t alone in the universe, and includes scientific principles that don’t really match up with our science, like transporters and warp drive. Meanwhile, so much of our media and musical genres apparently died in that war. Plays, classical music, jazz, and ebooks (with some love for traditional books) seemed to be all that made it. No TV shows, no comics except for one issue of the Starfleet Academy comic and, like the Captain Proton tales because no movies or serials, feels out of place as a result. The worst episodes are the ones that tried to preach, or used stereotypes as a creative endpoint rather than a creative starting point. The best entertained you, but also gave you something to think about without telling you what to think, treating the audience as intelligent even if they’re here for the laser and fist fights, and space babes. The Federation isn’t supposed to be perfect but in recent years they’re just plain horrible and I’d like to get back to that United Federation Of Planets that seemed like a great future beyond the spaceships and alien designs.

So those are my thoughts, just made up as I went along. Nothing really strong there but a good showrunner team could make something out of those random ideas and forge a really good show, comic, or even game or audio drama. I just wish they were any of those for Kirkman Trek.