What in the fark is wrong using the original format. A spaceship..exploring, and encountering new and interesting society..that might mirror modern life?

Putting a 'black ops..section XXX" turns star fleet into something sinister and any dramatic tension would against home base..or onboard. Instead of subtle allegory.

The problem with slap in the face allegories is they are just that...and don't translate well over a few years. We can watch TOS series and still see (or some times project) themes and tension into those---which is why it's survived decades later. Some TOS are very well anchored in the 60's..but the themes are timeless.

First:

The last season of Enterprise, minus the first episode, was some of the finest Star Trek there's been.

Second:

DS9 was amazing overall. But dear God were the Bajorans annoying.

Third:

BSG changed everything for the flying-around-in-ships-in-space genre. Any new series would almost certainly need to take that into account. Star Trek is/was about idealism and adventure, but popular taste has changed a lot since TOS.

I noticed this trend, in which each new Star Trek series, on average, had better writing than the last, and was less dependent on the actors to pull all the weight. Enterprise is the best example. There is no single character from Enterprise that I absolutely like above the others. In TOS it was most of the main cast that I really liked. In TNG we had Picard, Data, and Worf, and also Riker. Voyager, the Doctor and to a lesser extent 7 of 9. DS9, Garak and the Ferengi in general. In Enterprise there was no single character that I would have liked to have seen more of in preference to the other characters.

Sid_6.7: DS9, Garak and the Ferengi in general.

Well, selecting Quark and the other Ferengis as one of the things you really liked about DS9 automatically disqualifies your opinion. And you were doing so well.

optikeye: Some TOS are very well anchored in the 60's..but the themes are timeless.

Sid_6.7: I noticed this trend, in which each new Star Trek series, on average, had better writing than the last, and was less dependent on the actors to pull all the weight.

I think we can thank the death of Gene Roddenberry for that one. If he were still alive there would have been no Dominion.

Sid_6.7: DS9 was amazing overall. But dear God were the Bajorans annoying.

I thought DS9 was a one shot story arc. Yeah, it was good for that particular story arc..but ultimately that was all it was; a political religious conflict drawn out over multiple seasons. For geeks only that really get into ST universe and the politics of the Federation, etc.

A casually viewer would be "LOST" watching just one show. Where in TOS they're pretty much stand alone..and time shows they're still popular. That format also gave authors more freedom to explore ideas not in the 'BIG PLAN" of a multi season story arc.

Dont?

RexTalionis: optikeye: Some TOS are very well anchored in the 60's..but the themes are timeless.

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Well, that one kinda silly and very 60's...but also had some other ideas such as a cult leader taking his followers with promise of paradise--that didn't quite work as well as he thought; and willing to kill others for his goals; Remember Jim Jones in the late 70's..or the "Spaceship" dude recently.

...if more teenagers in the 60's had payed attention to that silly TOS show about the cult leader. They probably would have been able to recognize Jim Jones as a megalomaniac in 70's and not 'drink the "Kool Aid".

optikeye: Sid_6.7: DS9 was amazing overall. But dear God were the Bajorans annoying.

I thought DS9 was a one shot story arc. Yeah, it was good for that particular story arc..but ultimately that was all it was; a political religious conflict drawn out over multiple seasons. For geeks only that really get into ST universe and the politics of the Federation, etc.

A casually viewer would be "LOST" watching just one show. Where in TOS they're pretty much stand alone..and time shows they're still popular. That format also gave authors more freedom to explore ideas not in the 'BIG PLAN" of a multi season story arc.

Is that a bad thing? DS9 is my favorite Trek series--and that's from someone who grew up with and loves TNG. It was basically Ronald Moore cutting his teeth for BSG. Why can't sci-fi be cerebral with complex, multi-episode stories, at least as a contrast to everything else on TV?

Wow. So he wants an entire Star Trek series about his Mary Sue fanfic character?

Ghastly: Dont?

fusillade762: Star Trek: Section 31

This could actually work. Think "Mission Impossible" (the TV show, not the movies) set in the Trek universe. No need for them to be completely ruthless black ops assholes like Luther Sloan. Have them get rolled up and incorporated into Starfleet a bit so they're not so "by any means necessary".

Though his "Alias"-style mole inside Section 31 idea has potential, too.

Anyone who thinks that a STAR TREK: SECTION 31 TV series would ever get off the
ground is a hopless Trekkie. The concept wouldn't fly with the general public because
the background of STAR TREK is mutable based on the attention span of the writers.

And a CSI-style TREK series (which I've also seen bandied about) would fail utterly
for the same reason: every week the writers could make up some new flux nano
quantum string doohickey to solve the crime, then forget it exists a week later and
have to come up with an Inverse Tachyon phased emitter matrix to do the same thing.

(then again, the 'real world' CSI guys make stuff up all the time so maybe this isn't
such a negative).

/In full disclosure: I would so watch a SECTION 31 show, but I am a hopeless Trekkie

I think it'd be fun to see Wheaton have his own show, and what better place to do it than with a Star Trek franchise.

Sid's right. BSG changed a lot of things. So, make it dark, get rid of the Federation, and leave a bunch of people stranded throughout the universe. Have a once-plucky young Wesley, now a bitter, beer-swilling asshole, swipe a ship and scour the universe, destroying everything.

Episode one can open with that Traveler dude lying on the floor in a pool of blood with Wesley standing over him screaming "NO MEANS NO you freakin' pedophile!!"

Whatever you do, don't put it on SyFy. But, yeah. It could be fun in a Stargate: Universe, BSG, Star Trek sort of way.

RexTalionis: optikeye: Some TOS are very well anchored in the 60's..but the themes are timeless.

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Wow. That's the closest I've seen to you having a sense of humor.

We will assrape Wil Wheaton to death
-The Fans

Alex, dude. You're on the Forbes web site, which is consistently unfriendly. It's like reading a magazine that's been left out in the rain. The pages stick and bend.

But let's look at the concept, assuming "total creative control and a decent budget".

Star Trek: To Boldly Go. (ST: BBC, 12 eps/season)
Star Trek: Office of the President. (ST:CSPAN, 10 eps/season)
Star Trek: Section 31. (ST:History Channel, 10 eps/season)

This is, essentially, cheating. You don't win at roulette by putting a chip on every square, which is what this seems to be.

First, let's see what works before we even talk story.

1. Short seasons. Yes. Do it small and do it right. The flip side is not to wait for two years before the next season. But that seems to be the only lesson you've learned from TV in the last 10 years. This is not the age of Buffy. It's the age of Breaking Bad, The Wire and Game of Thrones.
2. Figure out why SciFi fails. Defying Gravity was a good show, but I didn't watch Threshold or the other one, but I was caught by BSG from the start. I like Fringe as X2-Files, but the mythology's beginning to solidify around my feet. I love Doctor Who, but I've watched that since Robots of Death, so it doesn't count. I am the first to admit I'm too close to this.
3. Buffy? Really. It was a great show, but it's SciFi analog is Stargate, and it's been done (vampires = Jaffa, Buffy=Jack, hot old English guy=Sam, hot nerdy wussy guy = Daniel, no hot Willow analog, damnit). And the introduction of the religious extremism of the Ori was something that Buffy never addressed. (I love Buffy and "The Body" and "Hush"). And Buffy's new name is True Blood.
4. Pick one series. Focus your creative team; don't invite internecine battles among them over ideas and resources. You ignore the secondary lesson of spin-offs: don't divide your resources. (The first lesson is that after seven years, everyone needs to graduate.)
5. Abandon the anthology-arc. It invites the Voyager reset button that spurred Moore into BSG and was seemingly the source of the Moore-Braga rift. "Year of Hell", is a rare example of the deus ex reset button working.
6. Abandon the 'this is a [Troi/Riker/Data] episode' which seemed to be written into contracts and doled out like boarding passes. This turns seasons into lumps of dough.
7. Abandon the A Plot/B Plot. Congratulations, you've turned this into two half-hour episodes.
8. Get good actors. Jesus. No more soap opera people. And establish the right tenor: John deLancie in Breaking Bad is great; John deLancie as Q is tiresome.
9. Sit down and figure the plot arcs before you begin. Don't wing it. I'm not talking a B5 left turn into Warner's solar plexus, but more like the treatment of the Dominion. I don't read the novelizations, because I'm not that big a Trekkie, but it occurs to me that those are fully formed universes which can be exploited. I just don't want to wander into an unfinished second floor the way I did with Lost and the end of BSG.
10. Figure out who this is for. Don't go George Lucas pandering by including Bazooka Joe repartee between Droids in the middle of the greatest light saber battle ever waged.
11. No ST: Backstory. Don't go into the past. We want to see the future, not space harpoons and Warp 5 engines shaking like a subway train. I liked Enterprise, but they kept hitting their head on canon, feeling it necessary to pander to fans.
12. No. Farking. Nazis.
13. Time travel is chocolate. Everyone likes a mini-Snickers or a Godiva truffle, but the Bennigan's Super Amazing Death by Chocolate Volcano with White Chalkalat Lava and Dark Chocolate Virgins floating in the caldera makes us all wince.

So. Part Two:

Star Trek: To Boldly Go. (ST: BBC, 12 eps/season). No. It's Amazing Stories for Star Trek. We need arcs and characters. I'm not trying to mimic formats-a procedural or a reality show-I'm talking about a structural shift in storytelling based on our ability to have all 12 chapters in our hands within hours of the season finale. Take them and go somewhere. And don't cheat by pushing the reset button every year. Breaking Bad is an example of a progressive challenge: every year, Walt has dealt with a greater enemy.

Star Trek: Office of the President. (ST:CSPAN, 10 eps/season). I love Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. I have The West Wing on DVD. I can quote dialog. But it works because it's real problems. The essence of what's wrong with this concept is this Star Trek cliché, "It's like the Crusades on Ancient Earth, the Gulf Wars of your 21st Century or the tri'kescan blood feuds of Pankosoka IV." It ain't real.

Star Trek: Section 31. (ST:History Channel, 10 eps/season). This was invented in 1998, as part of DS9. We accept our paranoid police state; we accept the slow encroachment on our political liberties. We are at a new stage in our discourse.

So what do I think works?

Send me a contract, and we'll talk.

RexTalionis: Sid_6.7: DS9, Garak and the Ferengi in general.

Well, selecting Quark and the other Ferengis as one of the things you really liked about DS9 automatically disqualifies your opinion. And you were doing so well.

So who should I have picked? Kira?

StrikitRich: Why not follow Saturday Night Live vision and turn the Enterprise into a restaurant or cruise ship? It could be 'Love Boat' in Space with Capt. Wesley Crusher in the Capt. Stubing role.

Data could be the new Gopher and a Ferringi could play Issac, of course.

They already did that with TNG, duh!