The original idea for Assignment Earth was that Seven was going to fight a Alien invasion of Earth. So a Version of "the Invader" or The British Series "Counterstrike".
I don't say it's necessarily a bad idea, tho I couldn't stand Robert Lansing or Teri Garr. It's OT here, tho: not "ST" related enough. (It's like suggesting a series about one of the crowd aliens just because they appeared in "Farpoint Station".
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Might work if they enlisted James White who had done the Sector General Stories and Alan E Nourse who did the novel Star Surgeon. But I fear it be a mixture of standard Medical Dramas and Star Trek TOS. Medical Stories were never Star Trek strength. McCoy would come up with the cure just toward the end of the episode.
Bringing in Nourse would've been genius.
Would it have degenerated into "disease of the week"? Maybe. (
) It might have been interesting to see more Federation aliens, & get a look at how the bureaucracy worked.
It could have been "St Elsewhere in Space" (so to speak), doing jobs nobody else wants. Or a dramedy closer to "M*A*S*H". Or a crime show, like "Quincy" or "CSI". (Actually, it could've been all of them, depending on what the script called for.
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The problem I see is the budget for appliances & ship models. You could pretty easily break the bank.
A typical episode of "TOS" was spending around $300K; this show could easily go $500K, IMO.
Always felt that Harry Mudd was over rated as a character. The Stories were weak and it was only Roger Carmel acting that made the episodes watchable.
Agree on the first. Never liked Carmel's performance. I'd far rather they'd substituted Cyrano Jones for those stories.
Not sure if Roddenberry would be willing to let the Producers develop a underworld for his perfect Star Trek Universe.
Judging by how he reacted to Harlan's original script for "City", I'd say not.
That said, IMO there was more room than there might seem, tho maybe they'd be kind of niche series that could only work once Trekker fandom had taken hold:
- Prequel at Academy, with Finnegan
- Prequel (of sorts) with Matt Decker before "Doomsday Machine"
- "Starbase", spun off "The Menagerie" (an early "DS9", without the religion?)
- An Iotian spinoff (based on "A Piece of the Action"). This seems really, really unlikely, given it effectively has the Fed endorse the Mafia. Or puts a Starfleet officer in the position of being *Luciano. (Having them turn up in the first "ST" movie, after they've developed warp drive from reverse-engineering McCoy's communicator, might've been fun, tho. )
I can't see Dr. M'Benga being cast as a lead at that time. IMVHO, it's probably too early for a black lead actually giving orders to a white man to fly.
I could see him being Chief Surgeon under a white CO. (Actually, I'd cast an Asian woman & make her up as an Andorian.
Screw the bigots, & the network.
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The other approach? A heavily black cast, like Diahann Carroll's show.
However, it isn't out of the question for black & white equals, even in this period. Recall "I Spy". So: Booker Bradshaw as Chief Medical Officer M'Benga &
France Nguyen as Captain Tranh?