Tips for the Next Star Trek Series

Ok, I'll admit I'm skeptical about the next Star Trek film. It's $150 million budget and massive advertising spree doesn't dissuade me from the cold, hard facts that I've never really liked Abrams' work (especially not Cloverfield or Lost), no Star Trek film has ever made more than $150 million, and betting the farm on making it a blockbuster seems like a bad idea given the historical precedent (the mediocre Star Trek: The Motion Picture). That said, there's plenty of buzz building, and I hope the best for the film not for Abrams' sake, but the franchise's continuation.

It's not surprising, given that Star Trek has always been Paramount's golden goose (that they don't mind abusing), but before the film has seen its premiere, talk is on about a new TV series. I'll leave the logistics and who would do such a program to the article and speculation; such ordinary, mundane matters are below us series fans. But what form would a new series take? Here's a sensible list to what it should and shouldn't include. Read on.

#1: The proper time
The next series should be post-TNG (that is, after the time frame set by The Next Generation series and films, roughly 2379 in the fictional timeline). There's multiple reasons for this. One, it allows old characters from The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager to make appearances and tie these old series together in a more cohesive way. Plus, it allows for new ground to be broken; with prequels, you're often in danger of either playing it safe or rewriting canon. If the Star Wars prequels and Star Trek: Enterprise showed us, prequels are a tricky thing, and there's no reason to keep dipping into Star Trek's established past; let's keep pushing to the 25th century.

#2: Jargon: Get it right or don't do it at all
A major issue I had with all the Star Trek series, but especially the later ones like Voyager, is that the writers had no bleepin' clue what was coming out of the characters' mouths (and I'm pretty sure the actors didn't either). Jargon can be good, if properly and sparingly used. Technobabble is part of the future; we wouldn't understand all the technology using our own terms, so it makes sense. And besides, a key part of scifi is presenting possible future technologies--hence the lasers, phasers, transporters and the like.

Where the issue comes from is when writers ad-lib and throw in junk words for real science. Take for instance Star Trek: Voyager, where the crew of the USS Voyager were constantly running out of deuterium. Through seven years, apparently no one bothered to check Wikipedia to find out that you can find deuterium everywhere--it's just a stable isotope of boring ole' hydrogen! (Ok, the series ended in 2001, before Wikipedia. But that's no excuse for not cracking open a science book once in a while.)

#3: Stay in character
This is endemic of any show, but it was particularly a problem with later Star Trek series. The characters would change personality at the drop of a hat in order to serve the latest plot contrivance (see this article for a broken-down list). Many characters never got the attention they deserved, or because of these sudden changes in behavior never came off as real. In a world of spaceships and ray guns, it's the characters that people bond with, and they are incredibly important to nail down properly. The actions should flow from the characters, not the other way around.

#4: Open-door policy
Speaking of writers, one of the big reasons Star Trek: The Next Generation turned from the awkward bastard child it was in the first two seasons to the mature and later Emmy-award winning series everyone remembers for the rest of its run is due in part to the opening up of consideration of scripts sent in by anyone--even people without an agent. One such script was written by a nobody named Trent Ganino--the episode became "Yesterday's Enterprise", considered one of the best episodes of the entire series. Maybe it's just putting the fear of getting the axe into staff writer's heads, but either way it seems to work.

#5: Stay true to the roots
Star Trek's creator, Gene Roddenberry, was both the best and worst thing to happen to the franchise. His dedication created a vision of the future unique to scifi; he also envisioned some of the worst ideas in the history of the franchise and nearly killed it with Star Trek I. But Roddenberry was adamant about a more enlightened future, and that idea shouldn't be abandoned. Sure, it's highly doubtful that in the 24th century neighbors have stopped bickering (and besides, interpersonal conflicts are a fact of life), and some of TNG's best episodes were aired over his complaints, but overall, Roddenberry's bright and optimistic outlook on the future is something that was often lost in the shows that aired after his death. Don't go all Dark Knight on Star Trek, Paramount--people like a bright future. And in these tough times, it may be the thing we all need most.