The Search for Story is the first in a series of articles where we’ll take a character, group, species, timeline, or event from Star Trek and look at what that might look like as a standalone series, miniseries or movie.
Star Trek boasts one of the richest, if not the richest, developed shared universes ever created and most of it was created and over to some degree long before any of the other movie studios started to take interest in starting their own shared universes.
As Marvel has done a great job of splitting genres within a superhero shared universe (Captain America the Winter Soldier being a political thriller, Ant-man being a heist comedy, ect…) we will take the same approach, there’s no reason the Star Trek universe can’t be home to a comedy, or drama.
With the production deal recently signed by Alex Kurtzman, the potential of Quentin Tarantino making his own movie and the Kelvin timeline continuing its run there should be no shortage of ideas being floated. We’ve heard in earlier reports that spinoff series have been considered for just about every character on Discovery.
So without further adieu, I present the first in the series:
Title: Star Trek Galaxy
Inspiration: Brian Singer’s proposed Star Trek Federation series.
Setting: 32nd century
Disclaimer: For this pitch I will be borrowing inspiration somewhat from Brian Singer’s proposed (but never pitched) series, Star Trek Federation, but with a few major changes due partly to the events of the Kelvin timeline, partly to needing a different setup, and while the enemy shares the name for convenience it is to my knowledge in no way the same enemy.
We jump ahead in time to the 32nd century, by this time the temporal war is long since over and the temporal prime directive is largely followed, while the aging flagship of the Federation, the USS Enterprise NNC-1701-V is capable of temporal incursions nobody on the bridge crew except her Captain has ever had to do so, and even then it was as a young ensign.
It has been hundreds of years since the Romulan sun went Nova, spreading the Romulan people across the galaxy. A faction, known as the Romulan Republic joined the Federation several centuries ago, while another faction lead by the former Tal Shiar ultimately would invade and lay waste to the Klingon home world before themselves being destroyed.
Meanwhile as improvements in warp technology, the Discovery of a new wormhole connecting the Alpha and Delta quadrants, and the destruction of the Borg opening their trans warp network to the rest of the galaxy the Ferengi seized the opportunities presented to them and became a galactic superpower in trade and transportation.
At this point the milky way is little more than a small neighbourhood to its people. With the distance to the next closest galaxy now standing as the final frontier and Starfleet and the Federation showing an unwillingness to face that distance exploration has for all intents and purposes reached a standstill.
Sure there is conflict. Not everybody gets along, but for the most part the galaxy is essentially at peace…
That is of course until the Scourge. Ships begin to arrive from outside of the Milky Way galaxy, having crossed this vast distance for an unknown reason, followed by more from surrounding galaxies as the series rolls on.
The Milky Way is under siege from visitors, aggressors and onlookers. Or at least that’s how it seems. As the series will later reveal this is a direct response to the Next Generation episode “Conspiracy”. While some of our new visitors may have come to help in the fight against the parasites, or escape the trouble the Scourge has caused in their galaxy many are a part of the invasion, it’s up to the people of our galaxy to determine who’s who.
The Logic – Why is this Star Trek?
This opens us up to using the whole of known space while still allowing for first contacts. Having an aging ship and stagnant Starfleet, while certainly a departure from the series we have seen before allows the problems of vastly superior technology saving the day in every case.
The use of the parasite allows for an underlying political commentary on current events with refugee crisis’, stateless terrorist organizations and of course xenophobic views. This social and political commentary has always been at the heart of Star Trek.
Would you be interested in this series? What would you do differently?
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