Third Edition of What I'd Do With...

[newnumber6]

This Time.... the Star Trek franchise.

Burn Enterprise, and salt the ground so that nothing grows there again.
Okay, maybe a bit drastic. I'll do this back in time to before Enterprise starts because... well, I don't think it's easily salvagable now. It really, really needs a big rest, now.
No, wait, I'll travel back to the last year of Voyager.
Actually, I'd like to travel back to when Voyager started, but I'd be afraid of accidentally impacting the history of DS9 with my changes, and I think that went, on the whole, excellently.
The first change I make... fire Berman and Braga. It's been long overdue. Get some of the writers from DS9 working on it. The last season of Voyager should have been a much more arcly year, at the very least getting home a few episodes early, maybe followed by some ultra powerful threat only a few weeks behind, (I hesitate to use the Borg, but they are the logical choice) to give the finale some more oomph. None of this 'getting home at the end of the last episode' crap, and no time travel episodes, they'd been done to death.
After Voyager is ended, we do give the Trek franchise a rest. I don't think Enterprise was a good idea from the start. If someone pitched a great idea for an ongoing series, I'd go with it, but if not, I'd give it at least another years rest, and maybe more, but if the Suits forced me to do something with the property (or fire me and get someone who would), then, the next plan...
Miniseries. One a year, or at most 2, maybe 6 hours each, with a single major story, beginning middle and end. Focusing on different aspects; one might focus on an independant merchant ship, one might focus on a federation ship in some other time period. Hell, even a planet bound one or one focusing on an alien race. We could even try and get some of the stars of Trek involved in some way or another. This would be the place for the Captain Sulu series that'd always been hinted at, or a series about Riker's command (or a 'DS9 after DS9' followup miniseries).
If one of them is wildly popular, it could perhaps be expanded to a full series down the line. Otherwise, we explore different facets of the Trek Universe and just focus on telling really good strong SF stories in the Trek tradition. The real one, not the watered down one we've got the last few years.
(Edit, somehow lost a line in cut and past, replaced it)

Comments

[fiddlersgreen.livejournal.com]

Can't really find anything to argue with here.

Next Generation and DS9 I'd leave largely as they were (though DS9's finale was kind of clumsy...great resolution to the Dominion War with the Prophets nonense just kinda tacked on. So I'd find some way of fixing that.)

I'd rethink Voyager from start to finish, make it the edgy, risky series it should have been (and desparately wanted people to think it was, when it was actually just Next Generation-lite). More open strife among the crew, more exploration of options *other* than this futile mad dash for home, and play up Janeway's obvious obsessive insanity a lot more.

And about halfway through, I'd have Voyager (the ship) utterly falling apart, so they'd effectively abandon it, strip off anything that still worked, and put together a new ship altogether. Maybe this could even be a Borg thing, where they somehow acquire one of their spherical scoutships or something, spray-paint a Starfleet logo onto it, and let wackiness ensue.

Oh, and first and foremost, yes, get rid of Berman, et. al., and hire some decent writers who are willing to take risks.

Enterprise, I'd have modeled pretty much blatantly off of Diane Carey's 'Final Frontier' novel, which did everything that show should have done and did it way better. (Basic premise was Captain Robert April with Kirk's father as his first officer on a secret rescue mission aboard the very first 'starship' which goes horribly horribly wrong.)

Voyager Redux

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

Yeah, like I said, the only reason I'd have left early Voyager alone is because I think changing that couldn't help but affect DS9, possibly for the worse... even if, say, some of the DS9 writers move to VOY, that might mean some of the best DS9 stories never get told. If I can assume everything else stays the same, then, yeah, a lot of you say, I agree with 100%
(Incidentally, I liked the DS9 finale a lot, the only significant thing I would have changed about it is to have worked Bajor officially joining the Federation in there, since that was one of the meta-plots throughout the whole series, and is unlikely to get resolved in a movie. To make room for it, we can axe one of those awful, awful Ferengi episodes. ;))
I like your idea of Voyager being destroyed and the crew making a new Voyager. Shades of ST4 where they went the whole movie in a Klingon Bird of Prey. I'm not sure I'd go with a Borg cube though because that would lead to so many 'Oh my god the Borg systems are reactivating!' plots. Plus they'd be universally feared and not trusted whenever they showed up somewhere new. Then again, that's not such a bad thing.
Definately agreed on the 'more intercrew strife' and 'Are we _just_ going to go home?' options. One of the (many, many) things that bugged me on Voyager was an early episode where they met up with a world composed of descendants of humans abducted from Earth in 1939.
Janeway offered everyone on board a choice about whether they'd stay there or go home. AND NOT A SINGLE ONE STAYED. I mean, come on. What I'd have done there is have at least a handful go over (none of the regular cast unless they wanted to leave), and compensate that by having them take on humans from that planet who wanted the adventure of trying to reach Earth. That'd have set up a new dynamic on the ship. Federation, Maquis, and humans who've never seen Earth and are in this for the adventure.
Although it sort of touches on the 'voyager finally falls apart', I'd also have played up the 'making do with limited supplies and not much chance for repair' aspects. I always hated it when they took major damage, and they were pristine the next week. I'd have rather seen, say, an entire console on the bridge which was burnt out beyond repair. A big outer hole in the ship that contained sections which had to be sealed off permanently. Not to mention little things, like say having a big bulletin board posted in the hallway because the com system breaks down at the drop of a hat, _really_ training medics rather than 'oh, this'll make a cute plot, lets have Paris be the only intern the Doctor has'.
Enterprise... could have worked, I think, even with the Temporal Cold War, but it was just too timid at first and then when they tried to correct it has just lead to all sorts of stupidity and I can't bring myself to care about it anymore. If a prequel series was the way to go, I'd rather have chucked the temporal cold war thing and actually stuck with not having very good tech. And I don't mean 'Our sensors aren't quite as nifty as before, and we have 'polarized plating' instead of shields (but they still go down in %age amounts for appropriat edrama!), I mean, no transporters, no stun setting on phasers if we even have them, and so on. I'd probably have put them in conflict with the Klingons and maybe even the Romulans right off (since it's historical that Klingon first contact was a 'disaster' that lead to centuries of conflict..

Re: Voyager Redux

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

Oh, just to add, since I forgot, I never read the Final Frontier novels, but it does sound interesting at least.

Re: Voyager Redux

[fiddlersgreen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was especially thinking of that Voyager episode you mentioned, and I agree that it's ludicrous that no one would have chosen to stay.

Final Frontier's just one novel (though she might have written a sequel to it, come to think of it). Back when I read Trek novels regularly, that one was at the top of my list of favorites.

I'm mostly annoyed at Enterprise 'cause a proper low-tech space exploration series could have been really cool. (And was, for as long as Firefly lasted. :)

Re: Voyager Redux

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

Heh... yeah. I thought of doing a 'What I'd Do With... Firefly', but I realized it would only be two lines long:
Air it in order.
Not cancel it.