Topic: Star Trek re-boot that never was

[Nemesis]

Link to full article

Anyway, the take that JMS and I came up with included using the original characters as the new film will do, apparently, but not as young officers at Starfleet Academy. We wanted to do what they do in the world of comics, create a separate universe ("Universe A") for all the past TV and film Trek continuity in order to free ourselves creatively so we could embrace the good stuff, banish the bad, and try some new things. In our re-boot ("Universe B"), we wanted to start over, use Kirk, Spock and McCoy and others in a powerful new origin story about what it was that bonded them in such strong friendship, and show them off as you'd never seen them before. It was, admittedly, pretty audacious but here it is if you want to take a look...

This was, I'm pretty sure, before the Sci-Fi Channel had done their terrific job with "Battlestar Galactica" (which I just voted for on my Emmy ballot as Outstanding Drama for the second year in a row). If you're trying to imagine the changed tone that JMS and I were thinking about, this would be a good place to start.

As we take pains to point out in that treatment, however, JMS and I both have lots of respect for the writer/producers who brought "Star Trek" to TV in so many forms over the years, including the last on-shift at "Enterprise," Brannon Braga and Manny Coto, both of whom were wrapping up as we did this. Same admiration for J.J. Abrams and where he's likely to take the franchise. No snark intended. He's a great talent.

So, for what it's worth, please just consider this another artifact to be found somewhere in the alternate "Star Trek" universe that never was.

There is a pdf of the actual proposed script on that site as well.

[Vipre]

That's what Trek really needs. It'll never be a true success again until the chains of canon are thrown off and it stops copying itself.

Posted it before and I do it here again...

http://www.startrekreborn.net/

Best Trek since Trek

[knightstorm]

Star Trek has already been rebooted twice.  The whole point of setting TNG 100 years after TOS, and Enterprise 100 years earlier was so they could approach the franchize from different angles without abandoning the original.

[Vipre]

I think you'd have a good case for Enterprise, though it's more like a failed reboot.

[knightstorm]

I think you'd have a good case for Enterprise, though it's more like a failed reboot.

Truthfully, I think Enterprise's failure is more of a reflection of the network it was airing on rather than the series itself.  Enterprise is actually my favorite of the spinoffs.

[Lieutenant_Q]

^ Agree with that.  UPN is not a Network, its a sham.  Look at the crap they air on it.  Is it any surprise that you can only find a good UPN station in the major Television markets?  Typical liberal thinking there, focus on the cities, ignore the "Flyover country",  Despite the fact that Star Trek is more popular in the rural areas than the major urban centers.  UPN was a recipe for disaster.  Very few in rural communities would watch the garbage on that station, so why bother with Enterprise? (or Voyager before that).

[knightstorm]

^ Agree with that.  UPN is not a Network, its a sham.  Look at the crap they air on it.  Is it any surprise that you can only find a good UPN station in the major Television markets?  Typical liberal thinking there, focus on the cities, ignore the "Flyover country",  Despite the fact that Star Trek is more popular in the rural areas than the major urban centers.  UPN was a recipe for disaster.  Very few in rural communities would watch the garbage on that station, so why bother with Enterprise? (or Voyager before that).

UPN followed a decade old format model.  FOX carved out a niche by focusing on urban minorities and then gradually mainstreamed their programing after they got their foot in the door.  However, by the time UPN launched the landscape had changed, and the target audience had numerous other options to choose from.  Add to that the fact that network TV was now a larger landscape with not only the big 3, but FOX, and the WB.  Voyager seemed like a good idea because Star Trek was one of Paramount's more successful exclusive properties.  Voyager was one of the network's more successful programs so it seemed reasonable to produce another Star Trek spinoff.

[Vipre]

I meant it as one term "failed reboot", not as a comment on the success or failure of the show itself. Unfortunately the creators wanting to milk the existing franchise a little more added to the issue of people being unable to get the concept of retcon out of their heads turned what could have been a fresh start for the universe into a bad appendage.

I wish they'd just grow a pair and cut the strings as it were stating flatly that XI is the start of Canon 2.0 and the appearance of Nimoy is a nod to the original series/cast only and not intended as a statement that the story happened in the TOS-ENT canon. Not gonna hold my breath.

[knightstorm]

I meant it as one term "failed reboot", not as a comment on the success or failure of the show itself. Unfortunately the creators wanting to milk the existing franchise a little more added to the issue of people being unable to get the concept of retcon out of their heads turned what could have been a fresh start for the universe into a bad appendage.

I wish they'd just grow a pair and cut the strings as it were stating flatly that XI is the start of Canon 2.0 and the appearance of Nimoy is a nod to the original series/cast only and not intended as a statement that the story happened in the TOS-ENT canon. Not gonna hold my breath.

Well, you already know that I view the Trek cannon as an asset and not a handicap.  By this point, there is way too much history to drop it anyway.  As for XI, they explicitly stated that they would respect cannon.  If they say its a reimagining now, I can guarantee you that I will not spend $15 on it.  What really worries me is that Abrams submitted this gem for Superman.  Imagine what he might do to Star Trek.
http://www.supermanhomepage.com/movies/movies.php?topic=jjabrams-review

[Vipre]

By this point, there is way too much history to drop it anyway.

I take it you mean too much history to ignore that history.

That's a key point. The question is, "Is there too much history?" What it comes down to in the end is do you wipe the slate "clean" and start fresh, do you try and add to what's already there or do you start overwriting previous events.

You almost always wind up writing yourself into a corner with option two, not to mention the limits it places on story options leading to cases of "He never this..." or "They'd never..." and if you're going to go with three why not just go with the clean slate. For most TOS-R seems to go option three, overwriting all prior events essentially creating a dual canon, and bringing up the issue of which canon is canon. Where there three D-7 variants in "The Enterprise Incident" or two variants and a Romulan BoP...depends on which version of the episode you saw doesn't it.

As for "respecting canon" it's not really the same as being a slave to it. So long as you don't make Spock into a woman and have a love triangle between her McCoy and Kirk you're pretty much respecting canon.

[knightstorm]

By this point, there is way too much history to drop it anyway.

I take it you mean too much history to ignore that history.

That's a key point. The question is, "Is there too much history?" What it comes down to in the end is do you wipe the slate "clean" and start fresh, do you try and add to what's already there or do you start overwriting previous events.

You almost always wind up writing yourself into a corner with option two, not to mention the limits it places on story options leading to cases of "He never this..." or "They'd never..." and if you're going to go with three why not just go with the clean slate. For most TOS-R seems to go option three, overwriting all prior events essentially creating a dual canon, and bringing up the issue of which canon is canon. Where there three D-7 variants in "The Enterprise Incident" or two variants and a Romulan BoP...depends on which version of the episode you saw doesn't it.

As for "respecting canon" it's not really the same as being a slave to it. So long as you don't make Spock into a woman and have a love triangle between her McCoy and Kirk you're pretty much respecting canon.

I have never rejected the idea that with over 40 years of scripts some things might need to be changed in order for the scripts to make sense.  I don't think its impossible to try to write within cannon without being a slave to it.  Also while the makers of the remastered Enterprise incident may have taken a bit of artistic license by including the Romulan bird of prey in the armada, does this alter the overall contributions of the episode to cannon, namely
1. Romulans have a new cloak that is immune to sensor dedection unlike the one in balance of terror
2. Romulans seem to have some sort of technological exchange with the Klingons, a conclusion further bolstered by the Klingons having a cloaking device in ST III.

[Vipre]

Also while the makers of the remastered Enterprise incident may have taken a bit of artistic license by including the Romulan bird of prey in the armada, does this alter the overall contributions of the episode to cannon...

Regarding those two points no but overall yes. One of the very first posts I read about the episode was to the effect of "Wow they included a BoP in the group, that says something about it's capabilities." What that something is could probably be debated but it's something which kind of highlights the problems with options two and three.

Good example of the issues.

[FPF-DieHard]

You wanna reboot Trek?  Buy out Steve V Cole's "Starfleet Universe" and use that as the backdrop for a much darker show that focuses on the General War.   You've got a great cast of characters (Include J'inn and Chutt somehow . . .), diverse races, conflict, and a great excuse to blow up a lot of stuff.

[Vipre]

Not a bad idea though you could just as easily play the "What if" game and save the cash. Not hard to pick an existing TOS race that isn't the Romulans or Klingons and build an arc around them as Reborn has done with the Gorn. Or take even the Klingons, who hasn't heard about the "disastrous first contact" between them and the Federation. Why not tell that story except instead of it being a hundred years ago or something have it happen to Kirk and co. then show the build up of hatred between the two groups.

Or you might have more success dropping the arc format and going back to the classic stand alone episode style. Many options open up when you're not anchored to 40+ years of baggage.

[Father Ted]

You wanna reboot Trek?  Buy out Steve V Cole's "Starfleet Universe" and use that as the backdrop for a much darker show that focuses on the General War.   You've got a great cast of characters (Include J'inn and Chutt somehow . . .), diverse races, conflict, and a great excuse to blow up a lot of stuff.

That's where I'd go. Cole has a goldmine of original TOS background developed by him and contributors that doesn't involve Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the Enterprise(the only mention of NCC-1701 and 1701-A in the entire SFB universe is in the Fed OoB).

[Beeblebrox]

You wanna reboot Trek?  Buy out Steve V Cole's "Starfleet Universe" and use that as the backdrop for a much darker show that focuses on the General War.   You've got a great cast of characters (Include J'inn and Chutt somehow . . .), diverse races, conflict, and a great excuse to blow up a lot of stuff.

That's where I'd go. Cole has a goldmine of original TOS background developed by him and contributors that doesn't involve Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the Enterprise(the only mention of NCC-1701 and 1701-A in the entire SFB universe is in the Fed OoB).

This would be no bad thing.  Not that I would ever try to diminish the awesomeness of James Tiberius Kirk but sometimes I get the impression that Starfleet is composed of a single starship and three minor deities.  Surely there are other ships and other crews who had opportunities to shine in the darkness. 

If casting could find someone as convincing and likeable as Kelsey Gramar (sp?) a really slam-bang TV series could be built around U.S.S. Bozeman and her captain (whose name temporarily eludes me).  How sweet would a series in the TMP era be?

[Nemesis]

Star Trek has already been rebooted twice.  The whole point of setting TNG 100 years after TOS, and Enterprise 100 years earlier was so they could approach the franchize from different angles without abandoning the original.

Neither really qualifies as a reboot in my opinion.  TNG didn't restart canon and limited their changes to canon.  Enterprise ignored canon to a great degree but never put themselves forward as anything but a continuation of the existing story lines.   The season 4 finale makes it clear that Enterprise is the same history as TNG.

I wish that sometime in the 1st season of Enterprise they had done a story arc that would start with an Admiral calling in Commander Worf and asking him if the Defiant is completed refitting (since the battle of First Contact) and offering him a special mission using only crew that were aboard the Enterprise during that battle.  The mission?  Data had begun an analysis of history and found that it had NOT been changed by the Borg attack on Cochranes base yet the Enterprises records of that attack showed changes so the Defiant was being sent back in time to a somewhat later period using the same system to check out whether the system took them into the past or an alternate past.  They would arrive in a "quiet" sector according to history and use their cloak to avoid interference.  They would of course run into the Suliban and the NX-01  and get included in one of their battles.  The NX-01s anti cloaking device would reveal them and they would conclude that it was an alternate past.  Then it would have been a cleaarly stated reboot caused by the First Contact movie and leave people wondering is it THE mirror universe or A mirror universe?

I would also have liked to see the time travel story arc ultimately revealed to be a battle between 2 futures without full awareness from those futures as to what was going on.  One future would be the mirror universe where Spock had failed his rebellion and switched to a system of projecting his image into the past (and then been replaced by his son years later who would be the image seen by Archer).  In the mirror universe the Terran Imperium would have discovered the time "rebellion" and would be working at countering it.  Daniels would be from the other future and unaware intially of the Terran Imperium and their actions.  Archer and the NX-01 would be a fulcrum that both futures were trying to influence to get the "right" result.

All that said I think that what is needed is a NEW series not rooted in Trek.  I think this novel would be a good basis for such a series. 

Note:  My opinion on using the novel Space Viking as the basis of a new series is not in any way influenced by the fact that the "evil ship" in the novel is the Enterprise and the "good" ship is the Nemesis.   

[knightstorm]

Star Trek has already been rebooted twice.  The whole point of setting TNG 100 years after TOS, and Enterprise 100 years earlier was so they could approach the franchize from different angles without abandoning the original.

Neither really qualifies as a reboot in my opinion.  TNG didn't restart canon and limited their changes to canon.  Enterprise ignored canon to a great degree but never put themselves forward as anything but a continuation of the existing story lines.   The season 4 finale makes it clear that Enterprise is the same history as TNG.

I don't think Enterprise ignored cannon that much although it did play loose at times much as voyager had before.  The two points that people on this board seem to hit on when criticizing Enterprise's cannonicity are the fact that the NX-01 was not pictured along with a few previous Enterprises on a timeline that was an incomplete depiction of all ships named Enterprise as of 1979 when the film was made.  The early appearance of the borg can be explained by the fact that they had no idea what the borg were at the time.  Also, since the TOS connie did not have visible weapons ports, how do you know it didn't have aft torpedoes.  You never saw Kirk fire aft weapons because the show had no budget and had to reuse footage as much as possible.

As for Enterprise and TNG being reboots, while they are not reboots in the BSG sense, I consider them attempts to re-imagine the original series while at the same time maintaining ties to the preceding incarnations of Trek.

[Nemesis]

I don't think Enterprise ignored cannon that much although it did play loose at times much as voyager had before.

Basic canon violations just off the top of my head:

The very 1st episode had Klingons on Earth well before the 1st contact was recorded previously.  Contacting Klingons on EARTH rather than in deep space.  (It was supposed to be in 2218)

Romulans and various aliens with cloaking devices when it was recorded that Kirk and the Enterprise were the first to encounter them.

Time travel known (the fact of its existance not how to do it) to Earth and the Vulcans at a time it wasn't yet known (again Kirk and the Enterprise).

The Borg on the Enterprise NX 01 would have been in the Federation databanks and that would have been made available to Picard at least after his report of the Borg contact.  That would include the knowledge of Cochranes report of an attack from the FUTURE defeated by others from the future.  Again that includes knowledge of time travel.

[knightstorm]

I don't think Enterprise ignored cannon that much although it did play loose at times much as voyager had before.

Basic canon violations just off the top of my head:

The very 1st episode had Klingons on Earth well before the 1st contact was recorded previously.  Contacting Klingons on EARTH rather than in deep space.  (It was supposed to be in 2218)

Romulans and various aliens with cloaking devices when it was recorded that Kirk and the Enterprise were the first to encounter them.

Time travel known (the fact of its existance not how to do it) to Earth and the Vulcans at a time it wasn't yet known (again Kirk and the Enterprise).

The Borg on the Enterprise NX 01 would have been in the Federation databanks and that would have been made available to Picard at least after his report of the Borg contact.  That would include the knowledge of Cochranes report of an attack from the FUTURE defeated by others from the future.  Again that includes knowledge of time travel.

The Idea that contact with the Klingons happened in deep space came from a TNG episode which I believe was also called first contact.  They stated that they preferred to contact a race right before it initiated warp travel to avoid the disaster that it had with the Klingons.  It did not specify that it happened in space.  I'ld say that having the first contact involve a Klingon courier being shot in the chest by a Montana farmer would count as a disastrous first contact.  Add to that, the fact that the humans pretty  much ignored the Klingon's requests concerning his return ie. pull the plug and send back his body.  Also, where in cannon was it stated that first contact with the Klingons was 2218?

While Enterprise dealt with time travel, they made a point that the majority of the scientific community at the time rejected the idea

The cloak in enterprise seemed to be one of many technologies that the romulans were toying with.  Early cloaks might have been abandoned by the time of the war.  In balance of terror, the primary source of information on Romulan capabilities that Kirk had to work with came from war records.

Voyager states that knowledge of the borg was much more extensive then we were originally led to believe, but it was restricted to the admiralty.  Picard would not have had access to the technology during Q-who.

Like I said, Enterprise played loose with cannon, but never exlicitly broke it.