You in charge of Star Trek: The Original Series
- Thread starter Landshark
- Start date
It's funny how so much of the ideas here essentially amount to fancy military stuff that probably wouldn't even go by the budget and would go against the whole spirit of the show. Starfleet guys in some super-wank-Marine-armor? Please. 
Also, in regards to story arcs, that actually isn't a very doable idea. Episodes were often broadcast in rather random orders at the time, which is why the series ended with the one it did. I suppose the best one could do would have some sort of big event in one season, like Best of Both Worlds, and reference it the next in another episode.
Also, in regards to story arcs, that actually isn't a very doable idea. Episodes were often broadcast in rather random orders at the time, which is why the series ended with the one it did. I suppose the best one could do would have some sort of big event in one season, like Best of Both Worlds, and reference it the next in another episode.
Most of these suggestions have taken Star Trek and turned it into more of a Battlestar Galactica.
Stephen
Banned
No transporter or replicators. Stick with the shuttle craft and if thats too much for the special effects budjet beaming will involve riding a force field down the tractor beam without all that silly being disasembeled and reasembeled malarky.
No inter xenospecies hybrids! Really Im more likely to mate with a fungus this one is really stupid! Alternately as the special effects budjet cant afford aliens which look like aliens I could have it explained that some mysteriouse ancient civilisation spread hominids and other Earth life across the galaxy.
Less utopianism and preachy morals. Also Im not idealistic enough to fight the studio on certain issues as much as Gene did.
Standerdise the speed of warp and get the script writers to use real star maps.
Guess I am lumped with the models from the first pilot so the ships still wont make sense.
No inter xenospecies hybrids! Really Im more likely to mate with a fungus this one is really stupid! Alternately as the special effects budjet cant afford aliens which look like aliens I could have it explained that some mysteriouse ancient civilisation spread hominids and other Earth life across the galaxy.
Less utopianism and preachy morals. Also Im not idealistic enough to fight the studio on certain issues as much as Gene did.
Standerdise the speed of warp and get the script writers to use real star maps.
Guess I am lumped with the models from the first pilot so the ships still wont make sense.
Because landing parties descending from orbit like they're coming down a slide is much less silly.
Stephen
Banned
Well you make it sound silly when you say it like , but done well in the later movies it could be a neat special effect. But in TOS it will just be a blob of light traveling down a beam from the ship to the ground. And as it does not alow them to pass through solid walls, ceilings etc but only via line of sight it becomes less of a plot killer.
loughery111
Banned
It's funny how so much of the ideas here essentially amount to fancy military stuff that probably wouldn't even go by the budget and would go against the whole spirit of the show. Starfleet guys in some super-wank-Marine-armor? Please.
Also, in regards to story arcs, that actually isn't a very doable idea. Episodes were often broadcast in rather random orders at the time, which is why the series ended with the one it did. I suppose the best one could do would have some sort of big event in one season, like Best of Both Worlds, and reference it the next in another episode.
So the spirit of the show is to create a wildly unrealistic socialist's wet dream of a society, which just happens to be completely incapable of fighting a single battle without blind luck or semi-divine intervention, let alone a whole war, while existing in a fairly hostile part of the galaxy? Clearly, if you'd ever watched TOS, that wasn't quite the point. It was when they had to try to respond to the fall of the Soviets in TNG that things went to shit. Thus, aside from the few people who want to completely rewrite the storyline and backstory, most of us just want to head off the morons who wrote TNG's stories.
Stephen
Banned
Yeah their improbable But tractor beams force feilds etc are already in the Star Trek world Im just reusing the and I cant for the life of me see how it is more implausable than having someone disasebeled atom by atom then precisely reasembeled at over half a milion miles awayfrom the instuments then re animated.
As for "plot inconveniance" that a good thing it will provide the writers with much better ways to produce obstacles to overcome and dramatic tension without having to have the transpoter break every single episode!
As for "plot inconveniance" that a good thing it will provide the writers with much better ways to produce obstacles to overcome and dramatic tension without having to have the transpoter break every single episode!
Character Arcs, each main character would have a distinct personality and a certain back story that will play in. I'd probably add another female main character besides Uhura. Kirk's womanizing would be downplayed, but still stay as an important character trait for him. For Spock, being half- Vulcan, half- human would be much more problematized. I would also make the series less episodic and more arc- driven.
There would be more episodes with Klingons, Romulans, Gorn and Tholians and less "weird shit happens in space" episodes. I'd cut down on the technobabble too.
There would be more episodes with Klingons, Romulans, Gorn and Tholians and less "weird shit happens in space" episodes. I'd cut down on the technobabble too.
No, the spirit of the show was about peaceful exploration and exploring new frontiers, wild west style (in theory anyway), not Starship Troopers with redshirts, which is want some people seem to be after. Besides, given the context of the OP, TNG shouldn't really be factoring into this at all.
loughery111
Banned
Well, knowing what we know now, it's pretty hard not to want to head off TNG at the pass. TOS was entertaining while being realistic and not dumb beyond all imagining, in a way that TNG, DS9, and Voyager were not. Frankly, I think that Enterprise surpassed the latter three by far.
That I want the Federation to be a realistic interstellar polity is not unreasonable, in my mind. And a rational military and economic policy would come under those headings, as would the occasional exploration of its defensive or industrial abilities.
Well, DS9 tried to address some of that sort of criticism over TNG, no? Anyway, TOS seemed that way because ultimately it didn't really go into that much detail about how the Federation worked, and left it more to the imagination. Really, it would be better to drop clear hints in episodes, as 60s viewers really won't give a damn about its domestic defence policies and whatnot. E.g. mentioning 'you can't get past all of Earth's orbital defence nets, that's impossible!' or something.
loughery111
Banned
They get involved in a decently large shooting battle around Sol system, just enough to establish that Sol has a strong defense net, a lot of industrial power in system (hooray for the ability to produce bomb-pumped laser mines in huge numbers!) and a decent-sized "Home Fleet."
Sounds fair enough, although you have to keep in mind SFX limitations. I also think TMP, snooze-inducing as it was, had Earth shielded and with defence sats.
loughery111
Banned
Naturally, but you need not see any of these things... just hear about them while the Enterprise somehow pulls off the impossible and cripples the enemy logistical train or blows up a fleet base in deep space or something else. Random comments to cover the fact that there are heavy defenses in place and earth's industrial base can replace weapons almost as fast as they get blown up, that kinda stuff.
I'm surprised that no one has yet expressed concern about the excessive amount of cloth on women's uniforms...
One thing we tend to forget about TOS is the television environment of 1966 (yes, it debuted in September, 1966, though a pilot may have been made in 1965). NBC touted Star Trek as "the first adult space adventure." At the time, CBS was preparing for its third (and final) year of Lost In Space.
Lost In Space went for a juvenile audience. Issac Asimov constantly criticized it for its many gaffes in terms of science. As Thande said, shows like these can not go too deeply into technical principles. But Asimov insisted that many of the lines could have been cleaned up if graduate students could read the scripts and suggest minimal changes.
You can always think about adding elements of Stargate and Babylon 5. But you are dealing with the competition and environment of 1966.
Lost In Space went for a juvenile audience. Issac Asimov constantly criticized it for its many gaffes in terms of science. As Thande said, shows like these can not go too deeply into technical principles. But Asimov insisted that many of the lines could have been cleaned up if graduate students could read the scripts and suggest minimal changes.
You can always think about adding elements of Stargate and Babylon 5. But you are dealing with the competition and environment of 1966.