December Talking #1

[cosmic_llin]

such_heights said: I know you've had awesome fantasy Star Trek crews before - if you were in charge of bringing back the show for a new 7 year series, what would you like to do with it?

Oooooh, good question! Yup, my dream Star Trek crew is here and I still think it would rock! But more generally... hmm... top of my wishlist are things to do with casting - any Trek series worthy of bearing the name at this point really ought to have at least as many women as men in the cast (and possibly at least one character who was neither male nor female, especially since there's a canonical basis for it, and even more so in the extended canon), wide racial diversity, and at least one queer character whose name is in the main titles - as a bare minimum. Also I'd put more aliens than humans in the main cast, and a less Earth-centric view of Starfleet and the Federation. A non-human captain would be a good place to start with that, I think.

It'd be set on a ship. DS9 is incredible but I'm not sure you could do it again. Things I would borrow from DS9, though - the excellent character development and arc-based plots. I think people expect that much more from sci-fi now than they used to, anyway. I'd like to dig deeper into what it's like to live on a small ship with the same group of people for several years. I'd like things to have consequences, I'd like characters to take their time recovering from things they went through.

I'd also like to steal the epic Bechdel-passiness of Voyager, and the sense of adventure in the unknown. I love love LOVE TNG but sometimes it did feel a little like they were boldly running little errands for the admiralty. The ship in my Trek series would probably not be totally out of reach of the rest of Starfleet, but they also wouldn't often be in a position to get help quickly or come home a lot. Maybe some sort of long-term exploration mission, which could bring them into contact with new allies and adversaries whose issues would lead to interesting storylines.

I'd set it a comfortable amount of time after the end of Voyager (perhaps roughly 15 years or so, so that characters from earlier shows could cameo now and then and be around the right age.) and I'd try to make it not outright contradict at least the more sensible extended universe canon - a lot of people are invested in the continuation books as the story and I'd like for it to fit in, within reason.

Above all, I'd try to keep Star Trek's optimism and hope for the future. I think DS9 did a great job of walking that fine line, telling sometimes quite dark stories but still keeping the overall tone hopeful. A lot of stuff these days seems so grimdark, cynical and pessimistic - Star Trek shouldn't be about that, it should be about imagining a better society, even if it's one that's still far from perfect. So the show would acknowledge the flaws of its characters, of Starfleet and the Federation, but also it should be about trying to figure out how to make the universe a better place.

Comments

[thirdblindmouse]

I agree with everything here. Less human-centric POV, consequences -- Voyager always had such a bizarrely TNG-like atmosphere despite being an even more closed environment DS9. And I'm not sure how TNG managed to always feel like it was on short missions, because TOS and [what I've seen of] Enterprise didn't feel like that, or not to the same degree.

[cosmic_llin]

Yeah, I think with Voyager they started with an incredible premise but were never quite brave enough to follow through. I love it, but I'd do almost anything to see the show it could have been.

[cantarina]

Voyager was a terrible mismatch between concept and desired tone. I think they wanted it to feel like TNG but wow, they chose a really, really weird setting to try and do it in.

[cosmic_llin]

That's a really good way of putting it. Yeah, they never quite made the stakes feel high enough for the situation.

[usuallyhats]

Agree completely. This is exactly the kind of thing I want to see from Star Trek. (I've been reading an essay about queer Star Trek fans this morning and it's talking about the campaign for queer visibility... on TNG. I can't believe it's over two decades later and we're still having to ask, and still getting fobbed off with the same answers. Including queer characters should just be what Star Trek does.) And yes, exploration and adventure and hope, those are key.

[cosmic_llin]

Seriously - you know Star Trek s basically my life, but if they made a new show at this point with no queer characters I might have to break up with it. (I mean, I basically did with Enterprise...)

This is what worries me about the Star Trek: Renegades webseries pilot thing that's been gathering steam - it looks like a very interesting idea, but all the talk about it is about how it's darker than any Star Trek we've seen before, and I just... that's not what I want. Star Trek isn't just a universe, it's an ethos. (But I'll reserve judgement until I see it anyway...)

[usuallyhats]

Yeah, I saw the Renegades trailer and thought "that looks cool, but I'm not sure if it looks like Star Trek." :/ Also reserving judgement, but still worried.

[beccatoria]

Wow, that fancast you linked is really cool. I agree completely about a non-human captain, that would be amazing! As well as the need for queer visibility, considering how progressive it's been (at least for the times - it's odd to think that it's really been a decade since regularly televised Star Trek was a thing) in other areas, I really don't understand why that hasn't happened. That's the thing about Trek, for all it sometimes relies on formulaic narrative structures within its episodes, it's never been pedestrian with its characters.

Apparently Ron Moore left Voyager over his frustrations with being unable to more fully explore the implications of their situation, and a lot of those thoughts went into BSG. I'm not really sure, given how angry I was with BSG at the end, that I wish he'd stayed, but I certainly think that that influence, modified by the other Trek Writers could have lead to something extraordinary had it been given the chance.

[cosmic_llin]

Seriously, it seems like everyone involved has been pushing for it for years except for the handful of people who actually get to say yea or nay.

Yeah, I was pissed off with the end of BSG too, but I do wonder if that could have been amazing for Star Trek, balanced out by the rest of the writing staff and the weight of the kind of show Star Trek already was. I wish I had some kind of TV superpower where I could look into parallel universe and see what would happen if shows had different writers/showrunners/didn't get cancelled/etc.

[such_heights]

Ooooh, yes, I like this! Especially the non-human captain, that's a great idea.

[cosmic_llin]

It just seems like the next logical step. I feel like people worry too much that non-human characters are less identifiable, and that the captain has to be a certain type of person.

I was pretty disappointed with Enterprise in that regard, actually, like, "we had a black guy and a woman, what more do you want? Back to the straight white dudes". I guess the setup of Enterprise didn't really allow for a non-human captain but they could have done something more interesting than what they did.

[thisbluespirit]

I love your thoughts here (and I did like those imaginary crews you did before on Tumblr, too), but the main thing that struck me was this:

love love LOVE TNG but sometimes it did feel a little like they were boldly running little errands for the admiralty.

I never really watched Star Trek, but at uni, I had a friend I used to watch videos with (we'd rent the player for the night!) and the price of me getting to watch DW was having to watch Star Trek with her. I used to mildly enjoy it, but I was shocked and put out at this popping back to Federation HQ for tea business. It put me off the whole thing. Plus, I was suspicious of the Federation (they sounded suspiciously like a dodgy dystopia in disguise - I was obviously always due to be a B7 fan and not really a Trekkie) so I never managed to get into Star Trek or understand it, till Voyager sneaked in there with Janeway and the whole lost far away in the Delta Quadrant thing. But I never heard anyone else ever saying anything like that till now.

Anyway, they should put you in charge. I'd watch it. :-)

[cosmic-llin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, sometimes people get a bit funny if you criticise TNG in any way, and while generally I'd defend it to the death, I think they could have gone a little more boldly. And I'm actually working on something at the moment about the Federation secretly being a bit evil...

[thisbluespirit]

From my outsider perspective, I'd agree. But then the only ST I really, really like is Voyager and everyone tells me that's no good, so obviously I am not Proper and Correct in these views. I did, however enjoy the film with the whales, of course, because I think that's obligatory for everyone. ;-)

And these days I don't mind the Federation so much - it is interesting to contemplate how to do a Utopia rather than a dystopia, and not very easy. But things being what they are, it's also easy to find questionable things in it, too, or the way it sometimes was accidentally portrayed, so I'm sure your thingy will be interesting! Also, as I said, if I want to explore the flip-side of the coin, I have my wonderful, tacky and excellent B7 to do that for me.