Recreating Other Franchises in the Star Trek Universe

Star Trek spans nearly 50 years of television, and a time period of over two hundred years in-universe, covering everything, literally, just about EVERYTHING you could imagine.  Still, (despite one or two exceptions) Star Trek always seems to center around a group of mostly humans on a ship.  Usually, it's the Enterprise.  The plot lines are generally predictable- prevent an interstellar war, rescue some colonists, make first contact with a new alien race.  Trek also tends to shy away from being too dark, gritty, or realistic.  It also avoids going too far out there.

Joe Straczynski, the creator of the groundbreaking series Babylon 5 once proposed a reboot of Trek, saying,

"Imagine buying a new Porsche and leaving it in the garage all the time, because if you take it out on the road, it might get scratched.  But that is exactly what's happened to Star Trek.  The Porsche is still clean and polished, but where driving around in a nice, reasonable family car.  It's time to throw caution to the wind and go out for a drive... a real drive." (The complete proposal for his reboot idea can be found here.  It's a fascinating read.)

Ok, so the following are reboot ideas... no, actually they're terrible ideas, but they do illustrate how big the Star Trek universe is, and how you could literally do ANYTHING other than gravitate toward the Enterprise and still have a decent show idea.

Bad Idea 1.)  Antares.  Set 10 years after the Federation/Dominion war, this series centers around the crew of the Antares class freighter, Athos and its captain, a former Maquis who fought for independence against the Federation and lost.  The crew are a mixed group of travelers with mysterious and dark pasts- a female Klingon first officer who has pledged her loyalty to her captain, an Orion slave girl with an unspoken mutual desire for the captain, a Bajoran priest, a mercenary, a brilliant doctor and his genetically enhanced sister, the cocky pilot, and the quirky, young engineer.  On the edge of Federation territory, they smuggle, steal, and do whatever it takes to survive, even when it puts them at odds with Federation law.  This series would be much loved but cancelled after 13 episodes.

Bad Idea 2.)  Gary Who.  Beloved TOS character Gary Seven steals a time-travel pod from the 31st century and uses it to explore time and space!  Using advanced holography, he disguises it as an old Earth police call-box. He travels, meets new companions, and saves Earth many times over.  Whenever he's near death, he transfers his consciousness into a new, cloned body.

Bad Idea 3.)  Star Gateway SFG1.  Archeologists excavating some old ruins discover an Iconian gateway capable of taking living matter across the galaxy in a matter of seconds.  From a top-secret base located deep underground, Federation scientists and Starfleet special forces military personnel begin using the gateway to explore other distant planets with gateways.  They divide up into Starfleet Gateway Teams (or SFG Teams) and scavenge for new technology and resources.  The main team is SFG1- a top-notch group of soldiers, including a wise-cracking human commander, a brilliant scientist, a tough-as-nails Klingon/Vulcan hybrid warrior, and a bookish Federation archeologist/linguist.

Bad Idea 4.)  Far-Escape.  A cryogenically frozen astronaut with a vast knowledge of 20th century pop-culture wakes up in the 24th century- his craft quickly damaged and taken aboard a Gomtuu style ship.  A living ship.  It's crew is a band of escaped convicts, who have hijacked the Gomtuu ship, named "Myrtle."  They are made up of a Bolian woman, a sword-weilding Klingon, a human-looking woman, and several other more "alien" aliens.



Bad Idea Bonus)  Deep Space Five.  A space-station on the edge of the final frontier.  Its goal, to prevent war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call - home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night. It can be a dangerous place, but it's our last best hope for peace..... Hey, wait a second...