STAR TREK: THE NEXT FRONTIER (WORKING TI TLE) GOALS OF A NEW SERIES

Do not encroach on the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movies and no impact on that plotline. Do not bring up overused plotlines from prior Trek: the Borg and Time Travel Especially. It needs to be exciting with some battle and plotlines, but it also needs to involve exploration. There must be moral dilemmas much like TNG. The primary crew must be mostly human.

CONCEPT KICK OFF MINI-SERIES

The year is 2393. This is the six years after the Supernova destroys Romulus in the 2009 Star Trek Movie. This assumes the same Prime Timeline with no changes at this point, essentially ignoring the entire 2009 Star Trek movie except for the events that happen in 2387. This is also 14 years after Star Trek: Nemesis for point of reference. MAJOR CONFLICT OF SEASON 1/MINISERIES Random suns throughout the galaxy are suddenly reaching their expected end of life millions of years early. Red giants are showing up in places where they should not be. Most of the time, it has little impact as most solar systems are not supporting any intelligent life, but it is causing the scientific community to worry of the lasting effects. By the time anyone figures out this is happening, it is already too late for the star. Eventually it happens to an inhabited system in the Federation, but this time, readings are taken showing the presence of a ship, one of completely unknown origin. It never warps away, but it does disappear suddenly. The Federation sends numerous ships to investigate and stars of the most inhabited solar systems are starting to be guarded. This leads to battles with this unknown enemy. Their ships have considerable speed and seemingly can disappear at will, but only do when they absolutely must before being destroyed. Are they cloaking or are they travelling somewhere else? Their weapons seem to be roughly on par with the Federation as well as their defensive capabilities. They can just disappear or high tail it out without any problems. The battles become more and more fierce, and without any official

declaration, they are clearly at war. The pace of the star transformations increases and tensions are getting higher. This is a loose reference to the Hobis Star from the 2009 Star Trek Move1. Finally they have a break. In one of the battles, the Federation through sheer luck is able to stp[ a ship from disappearing and they board the ship, but not before the damage is done to the sun. The crew is not on the ship, but they are able to look at their systems. Everything is extremely foreign looking; they still don't even have any idea who these beings are, but after months are able to interface with their systems. There is nothing historical on the ship, no mission. Starfleet engineers manage to get the navigation system online and they can't believe what they see. The ship's origin is the Triangulum Galaxy and there is a route calculated back. Thinking that they can't get much more information out of the ship, a group of volunteers from many different Federation Species make the attempt to go to another Galaxy to see if they can find out more about who is attacking them and if this technology really works. I don't want to go into the technobabble; maybe we can call this folding space instead of warping it. The ship shows up in the Triangulum Galaxy. The humans are okay as well as a few of the other races, but many of the multi-species Federation crew is either dead or very ill. Obviously this intergalactic jump is very dangerous to certain kinds of anatomy. Also, 1/4 of the energy on the ship has drained. Considering that all of the energy from a star was drained for their fuel source, getting to another galaxy comes at a serious energy cost. In less than 4 trips, they would have expended their entire energy supply. So this explains it. This unknown force from outside of the galaxy has come for their most precious natural resource - their stars. Its a tough call getting back to the Milky Way. There are dozens of the crew in really bad shape, in really bad health. Some elect to try to make the trip back home. One human Starfleet Doctor and about a dozen nonhuman crew who were not in the best health are dropped off at the nearest M-Class planet they can find with no timetable of when they can come back. Except for the doctor, these volunteers realize this might have been a one way trip and may never see their homes ever again, at least until it can be determined what happened during the journey. They jump back home, which kills a few more of the dramatically affected but not dead crew members who did not elect to make this choice.
From Memory Alpha: "In Star Trek: Countdown, the official comic book prequel to Star Trek, the star which went supernova and destroyed Romulus was called the Hobus star. It is explained that the Hobus supernova was unlike any previously seen: as the supernova grew, it converted mass into energy, which increased its power and allowed it to expand. As a result, its threat reached beyond the Hobus system and potentially the entire galaxy."
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END OF SEASON 1/MINI-SERIES The season ends with mining ships continuing to come back to the Milky Way and the successful trip back of the volunteer test crew. Hopefully this is exciting enough to get picked up for an actual series based on the cliffhanger nature. As far as characters in Season 1, many would be introduced with seemingly no connections to the other ones. You'd find some cadets from Starfleet, some ship captains from different ships, engineers from places like Utopia Planatia/etc. Some seemingly major characters will end up dying in Season one, but the general stable cast is not obvious until Season 2. The people that go to Triangulum are the ones introduced in Season 1. SEASON 2+ Season 2 will have some political ramifications as so many of the volunteers died during the test journey, and yet the humans had no impact. Obviously things are heated, and now the Federation alone has the technology to drain energy from stars while no one else does. This leads to agreements the Federation makes about usage of the technology, who controls the technology, and who is allowed to use it. Of course, many more exceptions than the Federation would like as they need as much help as possible to fight these armed invaders of the Milky Way, and they do not want to do it alone. And in some respects, as there are only a handful of alien races that are able to make the trip, they arent able to rely on too many allies. This kicks off a very small number of heavily armed ships with primarily human crews taking the trip to the Triangulum Galaxy after being outfitted with technology from that single ship. The only coordinates they know how to make operational currently are to the single point left by the one ship. Their mission is to find out who has been traveling to the Milky Way and destroying stars. Long story short, they have a very hard time finding similarly configured ships but do eventually find some of them and go after them. Obviously they'll find some other inhabited planets along the way but they are on a primary mission. Some of these allies aid in helping with the battles as they have the same concern with this unknown enemy in their own galaxy. A handful of battles occur with some casualties on both sides. No view screens with dialog, no diplomatic negotiations. The other side simply retreats and doesn't come back. It's an empty victory with no immediate resolution and leaving the threat on the horizon in the future. There are no

hints as to who it was really was. But we've made a few allies in this new galaxy as well. The underlying premise is that the opposing side is simply energy miners and it isn't worth their effort at the moment to mine the Milky Way after getting this push back. But if their other sources become direr, who knows maybe their employers will force them to come back. POST CONFLICT PLOTLINES At least initially only human crews (and some other select alien) can travel to other galaxies. Once they are there, they cannot come back often and the cavalry is not there to protect them. A starbase is established out there, but that's it. Communications are sparse. It really is a new frontier and the travel back and forth is EXTREMELY limited. This isn't like Voyager as they do come back, it is just very infrequent. There will be multiple ships out there. There is going to be some power struggles as the Starbase would have an admiral in charge to run things out in another galaxy. The key part of this show would be a major departure from the other Star Trek series is that while there is would a primary ship to focus on, there would be other regular ships throughout the series. The rest of the time is exploring Triangulum and developing new plot lines there. And, none of the existing plot lines would have any real impact as nearly everything from Enterprise to Voyager (timeline wise) is in the Milky Way. And just coming back seems like a moral decision that must be weighed. Only people who are serious about exploration are out there. And considering they can potentially travel to other galaxies (not initially, planned for later), this can be expanded upon.

FOR THE HEAVILY INVESTED FANS (LIKE YOU READING THIS)

I'm suggesting a brand new crew, but keep in mind anyone from any previous series that was still alive is fair game to come back as a cameo for the fans. And for all the characters without special aging considerations (Data/B4), the Doctor, etc.), everyone has aged appropriately in real life to have them be in the series. This cannot be overused as it will alienate new fans.

IDEAS FOR CAMEOS: Captain Riker on the Titan La Forge running the team of engineers to figure out the intergalactic space travel Admiral Picard negotiating the use of this intergalactic space travel and of mining of stars inside of the Milky Way I'd love to make the cameos surprises randomly (not like the Enterprise E showing up to save the day) and for new fans of the show, no prior knowledge necessary. Like necessary characters that wouldn't stand out unless you had the prior knowledge. ON CONTINUATIONS OF PLOTS FROM PRIOR SERIES Very few old plot lines could be reused. Although part of it can be set in the Alpha Quadrant in the Milky Way at times. It goes back to exploration and a primarily human crew, which is all that most fans can really relate to.

WHY THIS WOULD WORK AS A TV SERIES

TNG would not be green lit now with the episodic nature of the series. With DVRs, audiences are not as drawn to shows they can pick up and watch randomly, understanding each episode independently since a reset button was hit and it is very rare for characters to die. The potential peril isn't there. That's why shows like Game of Thrones and others have people glued to the TV. I've been a Star Trek fan nearly my entire life and just finished watching all Star Trek end to end for the first time in that order. I understand now what fans felt were missing in the latest Star Trek movie. Star Trek fans like myself were taking Star Trek for granted since it had been on the air for so long and we had so many series going on. TNG obviously is a favorite, but DS9 was amazing. It's just too bad nearly no one was watching it at the time. Voyager was okay, but had some writing issues and hit the reset button too much. I'm going to blame write fatigue as part of this. And Enterprise suffered from a horrible intro song and being pigeonholed into being in the past and keeping continuity. I think it did alright, but fans had been taking Star Trek for granted for years, and after less than stellar episodes and overlapping shows it was hard to keep up.

WHAT THIS IDEA NEEDS TO HAVE IN IMPLEMENTATION Longer storylines mixed in with some more independent episodes. No reset switches. No time travel. No over reliance on previous plot devices like the Borg. I'm not including names or characters, but it needs to be very seriously character driven. We need to really care about the people and crews on those ships and they need some decent back stories introduced in Season 1. 4. Conflict and battles are part of Star Trek, even on TV. The movies are a different beast entirely but the battles need to be on TV as well. But there needs to be other elements (see #5) Exploration after and some during the conflict are a necessity. Like TNG, there needs to be some moral dilemmas going on. There's no take down of Starfleet and the Federation, but the seeming "Utopia" that the Federation is supposed to be is trillions of miles away. 7. Everything is new. Every race, every planet. But you can still go back to the Milky Way when absolutely necessary. This is the Next Frontier of exploration.

FINAL THOUGHTS
This concept should appeal to long term fans and new fans who were brought in from the 2009 Star Trek movie. Obviously the characters are what is going to make or break it, but I've yet to see a more solid framework for a series proposed thus far. Most of what I've seen has been things like "Let's see the series about the Titan! Or, more Section 31! Or lets just get another Enterprise out there!" No offense, but for this be well written and received, it can't just be a shout out to the diehard fans. A new Star Trek series will not have the luxury of having 2 to 3 seasons to get people interested. Television shows get cancelled far too fast today. It's got to hit the ground running and draw people in. Only by doing this can we get back to exploring with any hopes of having episodes of elements of the older series. If you've got a better idea for a series, bring it on.