How would you improve Star Trek? Seriously

[ray gower]

How about making the series shorter?

Only having to fill a four year schedule gives them the opportunity to bring good ideas and stories together (planning), along with fresh faces. Result better more engaging stories and actors that look as if they want to be there.

Think of all the good shows. TOS, TNG, anything Gerry Anderson- All have had short runs.

Voyager was too long and they padded like fury as they rushed their way through the final three years.
I predict Enterprise will be dull by the end of its fourth year.
Farscape, now in its thousandth year has become just plain weird!
Okay DS9 managed to do it backwards, but the dull first three years are generally forgotten.

 

[ray gower]

Looking back at some of Voyager's previous episodes and some of the news reports surrounding them.

Perhaps they ought to go back to basics?

Planning! Prepare your whole season/series before it starts.

With many Voyager episodes the writing was finished less than a month before they filmed. As the filming was less than a month in advance of airing, it leaves precious little time to firm up what does/does not happen and fix the gaping holes.

Enterprise has shown a lot more forethought, until about 'Rogue Planet'. The two episodes that followed looked as though they came from the 'infinite gibbering monkees' school of writing, as they ran out of time for anything better.

 

[Dave]

They have been able to do that on 'Enterprise' because they HAVE had more time, as Rick Berman says

Star Trek Monthly #97
"I told you last time that we're a little bit ahead of ourselves in terms of scripts, and that we still are, which gives us some bumper room."

I agree, it allows much more forethought, less sudden rewritings on the day of filming, and makes it infinitely better.

Why can't they always do it that way?

 

[imported_Data]

Star Trek seems to be turning into a bit of a soap opera, at least some of the Voyager episodes appeared that way. They need to reverse this.

 

[ray gower]

Is Soap Opera such a bad way to go in Star Trek?

To run down the lines of Third Rock would definitely be a bad idea and if that is still the US idea of Soap then we are in trouble.

But perhaps if they took some of the grit from British Soaps: Eastenders, Coronation Street et al, but it does lead to individual (and genuine) characters forming, conflict and again we are looking down the throat of continuity.

Please note I said 'some of'. The reason why I don't watch Soaps is they go too far, they are daily diaries. I don't want to know about every head banging incident between T'Pot and Trip Tucker, but it would be nice to know they occurred between disasters?

 

[imported_Data]

When I say soap opera I mean incidents such as Seska impregnating herself with Chakotay's child. That was just stupid. People dealing with their struggles is fine, and has to be included in any decent show because that's how people relate to the characters.

 

[ray gower]

I don't think the Seska incident was particularly soapy. More a badly devised device to give the writers a reason to get Voyager in trouble again.

Soap is more prevalent in Enterprise, like the shinanegans trying to find what Reed liked to eat. It made for an entertaining episode that rather threw the rest of the episode into the shade.

Most Star-Trek fan-fiction is rich in soap as hack writers try to put some depth to the main characters. Even those that do try to provide a larger story around it.

Yet there is a comparitive dearth of fan-fiction for Enterprise, which suggests the producers have finally produced a series where the urge to find something in the series to make it hang together is no longer a major requirement.

 

[imported_Data]

I haven't seen Enterprise yet, so I really can't comment on any of that. But I do think we have a different defination of what a soap opera is. Have you ever seen Passions or any of the other US. soaps? They're filled with incidents such as the one with Seska. I remember one year they had this contest to see who the father of one of the character's child would be, shortly before the child was due to be 'born'. That's the kind of stuff I'm referring to.

 

[ray gower]

I manage to miss most soaps, American ones especially

But I have watched Dallas and Rita occaisionally and if Passions is anything like those, then I agree. They are situation based and dumb.

The soaps that are popular this side of the pond are programmes like Eastenders, Coronation Street and Emmerdale. Which pretend to be real life. The story themes, both dramatic and personal are heavily entwined and little gets resolved in one episode or even several weeks worth of episodes. Perhaps you might think of them as Kitchen Soaps?

That depth would be too much for Star Trek (unless it came on 3/4 times per week:dead, but it does need more thought to the placing of devices, their practicality and the prerequisites and the follow on than was shown in shows like Dallas.

Again that comes down to the requirement for planning. One cannot simply say the morning of filming, 'I've a spiffing idea. Captain Kate is pregnant and they have to guess the father!'. There has to be forethought and malice in there. A situation where she could join the pudding club has to be provided and that has to be played weeks and months before.

 

[Plethora]

The biggest thing i'd do to make Star Trek better, is to cut out all the scientific mumbo jumbo.. i dont wanna know how a poloron-inverted dimensional quad-stratospheric doohicky works..

 

[ray gower]

I agree that there is often too much gibberish, but without some scientific mumbo-jumbo it would not be Star Trek.

Perhaps part of it is that the mumbo jumbo is not explained because it is so fantastical even the writers haven't a clear idea as to what they want it to do?

Not only that but a lot of problems appear to go away with an application of just one favourite solution, TNG and Voyager's favourite was a Tachyon Burst.
The problem being that the single solution, like asprin, seems to cure all known problems, even if they are contradictory.

 

[ray gower]

Been doing some more thinking (highly dangerous I know) and chatting about this with a friend.

I wonder if there would be a benefit in reducing the number of writers to say half dozen and making them work together to produce a single coherent series?

Looking back at Voyager, there are over thirty writers responsible for producing various independant and individual episodes. Even where a writer produced more than a single episode they were rarely consecutive and with no coordination at the writing stage there is little prospect for a lead on into the next episode, or a theme.

It is beginning to look as if Enterprise is also beginning to lean heavily upon the 'Infinite Gibbering Monkey Department' for scripts and stories, even though the B3's are still claiming they are planning the shows progress.