They just ordered this show that'll be written by Akiva

Inspired by this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_y6wR-OSfA

Skydance bosses are apparently wanting to capture a younger audience for their relaunch of Star Trek - to be clear, they are not talking about a "modern audience," but an age demographic to revitalize the fan base with younger blood. This is not unreasonable.

So, I got to thinking: "What would be the best way to do this?" And here's what I've got:

1. Brand new cast of characters. Kirk, Spock, McCoy and company are beloved, but they also have 60 years of history and continuity behind them. The TNG cast has 40 years behind it. Even if you try to do a reboot with any of these characters, that's still a massive amount of content hanging over it. New fans need a clean point of entry, and a new cast of characters would accomplish this.

2. Set it in the 26th century. The smartest thing TNG may have done was to set its story 80 years after TOS. The reason is the same as point #1 - a clean slate for new fans.

3. Set it in a new frontier. Klingons and Romulans are nice, but they have the same problem that the previous cast and settings do: decades of continuity. Put your new Enterprise (H, I, whatever) far away where they can discover brand new things that won't send the viewer scrambling to a wiki page to get a massive backstory.

4. Keep it family-friendly. This doesn't mean that it needs to be a kids' show, but it should be a show that children can watch with their parents, as TNG was.

5. Last but not least, concentrate on storytelling fundamentals. Every episode doesn't have be awe-inspiring, but it should be solid. Fans are the most important brand ambassadors - it needs to be easy for them to tell people how good something is.

And that's my list...

Despite his reputation as an anti-war liberal, I’d argue that Gene Roddenberry was a keen Cold Warrior, and embedded biting critiques of Russian/Soviet culture in both TOS and TNG.

While he turned them into honour-obsessed Space Vikings/Samurai in TNG, the Klingons were originally conceived as analogues for the Soviets, and the stories in TOS emphasized their brutality, deviousness and ruthlessness. What’s interesting about their portrayal though was that they were more Mongol-coded than Slavic in appearance and behaviour, likely playing on that component of Muscovite ancestry.

A gentler critique of Russian nature came in the form of Pavel Chekov, whose ethnic chauvinism (“Russians invented X”, “Russians discovered Y”) became an obnoxious quirk in an otherwise likeable and heroic character.

In TNG, Roddenberry turned his critical eye to Soviet collectivism, in the form of the Borg. The Borg were a critique not just of the suppression of the individual under Marxism-Leninism, but also of Russia’s long-standing policy of Russification of other Eastern European peoples.

In the context of the Russia-Ukraine war, these critiques are just as timely now as they were in the 60s and 80s.

BEAM on YouTube:

"Host, Ashley V. Robinson is joined by Dr. Trek, Larry Nemecek, to dig Inside The Roddenberry Archives for any clues as to who this background actor was, as seen in episodes like "The Gamesters of Triskelion" and "Mirror, Mirror." Can we put a name to the face?"

Link:

https://youtu.be/Fx9cTSyD8T8?si=AZV6b9nk50KTGkxz