Reboot Star Trek.

[Graham Kennedy]

So one of the main things I hate about Discovery is the insistence that it is a Prime Universe show when it clearly isn't. But that got me to thinking... what would a total reboot of Trek look like? Call it an alternate universe, or just a plain hard reboot or whatever, but what if you were going to remake the series from a blank slate. What would you use from previous Trek? What would you ditch?

My thoughts...

1) Clear out most of the stuff that happened around the present times. Television and baseball aren't going to die out, there weren't Eugenics wars, there isn't going to be WWIII (Glances at the news. Well okay that might happen tomorrow.) etc. In fact I would have a general rule - the writers must never posit any event happening prior to 2100. No "when the first Lunar base opened in 2025..." lines, because nothing dates your show faster.

2) In fact, 2100 is when a near-light-speed-drive was invented - perhaps this would be 'impulse drive', or maybe first generation warp drive that could only do a fixed 1xc. There follows about 150 years of Earth sending out colony ships. Some of the closer ones would remain in contact via STL ships or lightspeed comms, with journey and message times in years. But many ships head out into the galaxy in a great diaspora, and many are never heard from again.

First contact with Vulcans, Andorians and Tellarites happens during this period, they are roughly comparable in technology. The four powers exist as allies. Around 2250 warp drive is invented, a joint effort between them. "The Federation" is formed about 2270, but it's less like the USA and more like the EU, or even the UN.

The show is set in 2290. So there are plenty of people alive who remember the first warp drive, and most adults would remember a time before the Federation existed.

Point being, let's not constantly have to invent alien races who look just like humans, or even like bumpy headed humans. A lot of the civilisations the Enterprise discovers are just going to be flat-out humans. This makes their similarities to us more plausible. And with the makeup money saved on those, you make the relatively fewer aliens you do have look even more alien.

3) There would be no universal translator. But there would be Inter Stellar Basic. ISB is an ancient language whose origins are lost in time. It serves as a common tongue for spacefaring species. ISB is not necessarily the primary language of all spacefaring species as such - just one they tend to have in common. You're not likely to get a job on a spaceship if you don't at least know enough of it to get by. The purpose of this is to avoid the silliness that you can translate an alien language you've never heard before - but you can still have occasions where language barriers are a problem if you want to. ISB is rendered on screen as English via standard Hollywood translation convention.

4) Controversial one - the Prime Directive exists only in the loosest form. Essentially it states that an officer may not interfere in an alien culture without orders from above. So you can interfere... if the government tells you to. And saving people from natural disasters is not regarded as interference. Essentially, the PD just means a Captain can't run his own foreign policy. The PD has been done to death, so let's see what we can do without it.

5) Nothing about humans being "evolved" beyond basic emotions like greed. Nor anything depicting a future in which basically everyone agrees about every political point because one point of view is so obviously right. People are people, and they're not going to stop being people in a few hundred years.

6) Generally a more realistic mixture of technologies. By which I mean, computers way more advanced than Trek typically shows them. Plus lots of genetic engineering, highly advanced medical science, etc. But interstellar travel is relatively new, it's difficult, it's hellishly expensive. I want the Enterprise to feel like its on it's own out there most of the time, in a dark, scary place where help is not usually available. Think about travel during the age of sail, where journeys took weeks, months or even years. No more nipping home for the weekend!

As a consequence of that, the Federation is NOT a post-scarcity society. Yes, money still exists.

7) I'd like to see a more realistic depiction of weapons and their firepower. TOS did this better than anything that came afterwards. Being hit by a ships' phaser bank or a photon torpedo should be like being hit by a nuclear blast. A LARGE nuclear blast. If the shields go down and the ship gets hit again, the ship is vapourised. Totally. And weapon ranges are in the hundreds of thousands of miles - two ships next to one another exchanging fire is something we should never see.

Similarly, decide how powerful your hand weapons are and stick with it. Don't treat a hand phaser like a handheld artillery piece in one scene and a .45 in another.

8) Yes, diversity! Upwards of 80% of the crew should be Chinese, Indian, African, South American. That's just how the demographics of the world are. But at the same time, do not go around making a big deal about it, either in the show or out of it. Starfleet takes recruits from anywhere in the world, no bias, and that's just taken entirely for granted by everyone concerned.

Those are my thoughts... anybody else?

[Bryan Moore]

I'm all for all of this! I've thought about many of the same things myself.

The diversity thing is interesting - I created a scenario in my own Trek universe that explains the current model of mainly-Caucasian faces: The WWIII and Post-Atomic Horror ended with the Eastern Coalition (or whatever it was called in First Contact) being defeated via nuclear weapons. This alliance of the Middle East , Africa and all of Asia/India was not wholly destroyed by the nuclear weapons (as casualty figures quoted in canon clearly say in the millions, not billions), but due to the fallout and devastated lands, the birth rate dropped to next to nothing, so that within 100 years of this (Late 2100's), the population of Asia is 1/100th of what it once was.

I suppose it as a pretty Anglicized viewpoint/retconning, but I think it would help to explain a lot of what we see/don't see.

[Graham Kennedy]

That would certainly work.

But I'd still far prefer to just have a very diverse cast though.

[Bryan Moore]

That would certainly work.

But I'd still far prefer to just have a very diverse cast though.

Oh, I don't disagree. I just always spun various ideas around in my head as to why not, and that was the best I could come up with =)

[Graham Kennedy]

That would certainly work.

But I'd still far prefer to just have a very diverse cast though.

Oh, I don't disagree. I just always spun various ideas around in my head as to why not, and that was the best I could come up with =)

Oh I do that too. I'm the guy who suggested that Picard's accent was due to the fact that the UK invaded and conquered France in World War III...

[Bryan Moore]

That would certainly work.

But I'd still far prefer to just have a very diverse cast though.

Oh, I don't disagree. I just always spun various ideas around in my head as to why not, and that was the best I could come up with =)

Oh I do that too. I'm the guy who suggested that Picard's accent was due to the fact that the UK invaded and conquered France in World War III...

Makes perfect sense. Those cheese eating surrender monkeys probably still don't have a backbone in the late 21st century.

[Nutso]

I already view Discovery as a reboot. It's real easy to enjoy the show that way because there's mushroom speed in the universe now. Since Klingons are so ugly now, I can't imagine that there will ever be a K'Ehleyr in the future.

The showrunner should just come out and say, "Discovery is our reboot of TOS, and Star Trek in general." If you guys saw the last episode of Discovery, you know that they're

facing the TOS Enterprise at the end of the episode.

God knows where they're going with that but, I like the intestinal fortitude the creative staff seemingly possess.

[Nutso]

That would certainly work.

But I'd still far prefer to just have a very diverse cast though.

Oh, I don't disagree. I just always spun various ideas around in my head as to why not, and that was the best I could come up with =)

Oh I do that too. I'm the guy who suggested that Picard's accent was due to the fact that the UK invaded and conquered France in World War III...

Maybe Gene wanted to give his Captain a handicap, and decided to make him French, but even that was too much for Gene so he said, "Fuck it!" and let Picard be an English accented, tea drinking, brave and noble Frenchman.

In-universe, maybe the Xindi tested another weapon, this time on France, Quebec, Haiti, and Cameroon. The lands were spared but, the people were vanquished. So the rest of the world filled in that void, including names, but sadly not the language. And hence the legendary Franco-Anglo accent, along with the legendary Franco-snootiness, was gone forever. La Fin.

[Graham Kennedy]

I already view Discovery as a reboot. It's real easy to enjoy the show that way because there's mushroom speed in the universe now. Since Klingons are so ugly now, I can't imagine that there will ever be a K'Ehleyr in the future.

The showrunner should just come out and say, "Discovery is our reboot of TOS, and Star Trek in general."

I just wish they thought of it that way. Last I heard they were calling it a "visual reboot", whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean. But they still insist over and over and over again that this is the prime universe. It absolutely baffles me, but there you go. I can only guess that they have a very different understanding of what "this is the prime universe" actually means as compared to mine.

If you guys saw the last episode of Discovery, you know that they're

facing the TOS Enterprise at the end of the episode.

God knows where they're going with that but, I like the intestinal fortitude the creative staff seemingly possess.

They've cast the Inhumans guy to play Captain Pike, so I guess they're going to show viewers the "Enterprise" crew. Which means yet another Spock meeting his "adopted sister".

[Nutso]

I already view Discovery as a reboot. It's real easy to enjoy the show that way because there's mushroom speed in the universe now. Since Klingons are so ugly now, I can't imagine that there will ever be a K'Ehleyr in the future.

The showrunner should just come out and say, "Discovery is our reboot of TOS, and Star Trek in general."

I just wish they thought of it that way. Last I heard they were calling it a "visual reboot", whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean. But they still insist over and over and over again that this is the prime universe. It absolutely baffles me, but there you go. I can only guess that they have a very different understanding of what "this is the prime universe" actually means as compared to mine.

They would free themselves creatively immensely if they just go reboot. Instead of squeezing their new ideas into the 52 year old corpse of established canon, announce the reboot and start creating their own Star Trek. They have a budget like never before. Create a new universe and explore it, goddamn it!

If you guys saw the last episode of Discovery, you know that they're

facing the TOS Enterprise at the end of the episode.

God knows where they're going with that but, I like the intestinal fortitude the creative staff seemingly possess.
They've cast the Inhumans guy to play Captain Pike, so I guess they're going to show viewers the "Enterprise" crew. Which means yet another Spock meeting his "adopted sister".

My main curiosity is, "what will the Enterprise uniforms look like?" I am hoping for the old style stuff because it will make things even more confusing... I mean, we have mushroom speed, and warp speed, so we can have DSC uniforms, and pastel uniforms.

[Nutso]

Star Trek: Discovery's Version of the Enterprise Had to Be Modified for Legal Reasons

“Back in April of 2017 the task of the Enterprise making an appearance came to be and work was to start right away,” Eaves explained (with some of the grammar modified for readability). “The task started with the guideline that the Enterprise for Discovery had to be 25% different, otherwise production would have most likely been able to use the original design from the 60's. But that couldn’t happen so we took Jefferies’ original concepts and with great care tried to be as faithful as possible. We had the advantage of a ten-year gap in Trek history to retro the ship a bit with elements that could be removed and replaced somewhere in the time frame of Discovery and the Original series.”

That guideline, apparently, came from legal, as Eaves went on to explain in a comment below the main post.

“After Enterprise, properties of Star Trek ownership changed hands and was divided,, so what was able to cross TV shows up to that point changed and a lot of the crossover was no longer allowed,” he said. “That is why when JJ [Abrams]’s movie came along everything had to be different. The alternate universe concept was what really made that movie happen in a way as to not cross the new boundaries and give Trek a new footing to continue.”

So the Enterprise looks different because of muddled ownership. It is at least 25% different... Just reboot the show!

[Graham Kennedy]

This is discussed in the Midnight's Edge videos I posted back in the early days of the show. It's why nothing in Discovery looks like TOS.

It continually baffles me why they refuse to call it a reboot. It would solve so many of the problems. And at this point, denying it just makes them look like asses.

[DonP]

I've pondered the reasons why not myself and have drawn mostly big blanks. I can't see any legal reason not to call it a reboot as long as they don't call it JJ's reboot, so that's not it. There's no professional reason not to, since it would actually make them look more original and more creative. Really, the only things I can come up with are that they honestly think they're fooling enough of the fans to make it worth it or they think the original was too ickily '60s and must be Social Justice Warriored into submission.

Oh and for what it's worth, Fandom reported that yet another new actor will indeed be playing Spock in Season 2.

[Graham Kennedy]

Couldn't get Quinto, huh?

One wonders when we will see Lieutenant Kirk on the show.

[Bryan Moore]

Back to the reboot: I would have said fuck Discovery, continued within our main universe, 18 years after the Dominion War has ended, keeping going with the Pocket Books novels. That staff has done such a tremendous job at keeping a delightful continuity and has interwoven so many different threads of Trek without at any point seemingly blatantly contrived. The Typhon Pact plot-lines alone could go for 7 years, and you could throw in some occasional plot-relevant cameos of accurately aged past stars without it being too cute, too nostalgic, and too wink-and-nod cringey.