We've already got the Star Trek show where everyone gets violently murdered raped mutilated and tortured.
It'd be great to have a "nice" show in the Star Trek universe again for a change. Voyager spent a lot of its time being tepid and dark and action focused. Enterprise had space 9/11. DS9, the only show to really successfully pull the dark angle, and Discovery spends most of its time being all about as much edge as it can find. Torture, rape, mass destruction, chaos, death, people getting shanked, mauled, mutilated...
TNG had it's moments, sure, but that's all they were. Moments. It didn't spend seven years being grim and dark. In point of fact i'd say the darker moments had that much more power because the show was so often much more humanitarian and pleasant. So whenever the horrible body horror came into play, or the crew were delving into their minds and encountering nightmarish stuff it really kicked it up a notch. Not everything has to be Game of Thrones with sex, debaunchery and horrific death in every corner.
How about something that takes a cue from...
Cosmos? The poetry and beauty of science, discovery, our own human ingenuity. TOS and TNG were nerd Nirvana. They were a strong and a loyal following. Tens of thousands of people went into stem fields or became interested in science and technology because of what Star Trek presented. That kind of show is not the show that Discovery is. It could be the kind of show this second new Star Trek series could be.
As Sir Patrick Stewart himself talks about repeatedly in interviews when asked about TNG, the thing that made him so proud of their work were all the people that approached him over the decades and told him how much the show that TNG WAS is what
SAVED THEIR LIVES.
Personally, with as "meh" as the world feels these days i'd like to see one. Just one show that tries to light the imaginative spark in people again about the future.
I just feel like John Sheridan when it comes to Star Trek.
I know, I know. Muh nostalgia. It won't sell. That was then, this is now. We'll just keep farting out style over substance...
Here's my idea. Instead of destroying the character of Picard by turning him into a bitter asshole, (like they did to Luke in Star Wars) how about he's leading the Star Trek A-Team to reunite the Federation after the destruction of Romulus has generated a geo-political and literal shock-wave through the galaxy? He becomes something of a mentor figure and a teacher for a group of new characters who can handle the action-adventure stuff while he relights the enduring optimism.
"No. There are
better ways, and we were
always able to find them in the past."A group of the Next Generation of Starfleet officers, perhaps very eager for a fight. Cut from the Johnny Rico cloth. Picard, the ideal man to push against that, to try and right the rudders and lead this new generation on a mission that seeks
unity and stability. Old friends become new enemies. Have the status quo switch up in many ways. The destruction of a central power like the Romulans would have DRAMATIC effects on everything around them. How would the Klingons, the remains of the Cardassians, the Orions, the Gorn, react?
Members of the Federation could withdraw after word gets out that maybe what happened to the Romulans wasn't a "natural occurrence."
You want to make a character bitter that it makes sense to have become bitter, and give Picard a very compelling pseudo antagonist?
Riker. We've already seen that side of him in All Good Things. What made him bitter? The death of Deanna Troi. Imagine, say, he was on the USS Titan, on the edge of Romulan space, monitoring the event that lead to the JJ Trek movies, and the Titan was caught in the shock wave.
Badly damaged. Troi dies saving people. Riker, embittered. Even angry that his friend is still vying for peace. Riker could think he's crazy, there's something much more sinister at play. Picard might say "Old friend, now more than ever is the time for us to stand together. We have always been at our best together."
I'd much prefer a Star Trek show that, though it has to acknowledge the great well of darkness that the galaxy has fallen into because of Nemesis, post nemesis, and the events of Countdown that led up to Trek 2009, it immediately jumps to high warp
into the light. Far away from that mess.
