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Monday, August 22, 2022

Star Trek: Stories


Since the Trek franchise has gone buck-wild and is currently airing 3 live-action and 2 animated series, with at least 2 more in the works, I thought it's time to publicly air an idea for a show I've been thinking about for years.

This show would not focus on a ship or a space station.  It wouldn't really even be about Starfleet at all.  It would be an anthology series, each episode independent of the other, with an arc in the background vaguely tying all the stories together.

There would not be any recurring characters, although a featured character in one episode could reoccur as a background character in another.

So, if not Starfleet, who would be the characters?  Let's imagine a ten-episode series, like 2/3rds of the current crop (Strange New Worlds, Picard).  Just off the top of my head, episodes could feature:

1. An autistic student

2. A teacher

3. A homeless person

4. An artist

5. A stay at home mom or dad

6. A robot repair person 

7. A (ocean) ship's captain

8. A miner

9. A con-artist

10. An underwater archeologist (uncovering sunken Florida)

These are just ideas. Any other ten ideas could be just as valid.  I was thinking it could take place on Earth, or anywhere in the Solar System.  Or galaxy.  But I like the idea of the long-term effects of space exploration and alien contact on the human condition.

The background story could be an impending invasion by a powerful species, a rift in space-time, a reversal of the Earth's poles, or predicted devastating solar flares.  Whatever, actually.  It could be meaningful, or it could be a Macguffin.  This would be the background as each story played out.

The autistic kid could feature in episode one, then segue into the teacher's home life. She or he often passes a homeless person and the next episode begins when the teacher gives him or her an apple.  The artist might come in as a flashback....maybe the homeless person was an artist?  Who knows?  One story would flow into the next based on one character's minor role in an episode.  The ship captain has a reserved archeologist on board.  The following episode takes place underwater as the archeologist uncovers....what, exactly?

Meanwhile, ominous PSA's warn of what to do if the sun starts shooting flames.  Or how to detect space-time unraveling in your dining room, or if, if, if....

Starfleet might enter the picture, sometimes sympathetically, but maybe sometimes as self-righteous busy-bodies some characters resent.  Not all main characters have to be human, and episodes could take place anywhere in the Solar System:  Luna, Mars, Enceladus, Titan, Europa, Ceres.

The miner might be the stay at home dad's sister, seen briefly as a holo-mail or on a screen saying happy birthday.

The characters can be linked very tangentially, if barely at all.  

Endless possibilities. Basically, no starships, Starfleet, alien battles, or great villains.  Just everyday life in the Utopic future.

So, whaddya think, Trek fans?  Green light this sucker and let's see what it means to busk outside a transporter pad in 24th-century Paris....

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