Since his success with Babylon 5, along with the failures of Star Trek in later years, there has been interest in J. Michael Straczynski’s proposals for revamping Star Trek. In 2004 Straczynski and Bryce Zabel came up with a proposal to remake Star Trek which Zabel has posted on his blog.

The idea, written before Ron Moore’s recreation of Battlestar Gallatica, is basically the same concept. Rather than having another sequel, or prequel, they would go back and recreate the original five year mission of the U.S.S. Enterprise with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy played by new actors. They would modernize the show and not be constrained by all the details of the Star Trek universe established in previous shows (leaving the question of whether Star Trek fans can live without debates over canon). A remake would also get around complaints that an idea has been done before, as updating and repeating an old story would be expected in such a format.

It would be interesting to see how Strasczynski and Zabel would create the original show, but reading their proposal I had the feeling that JMS was stuck on Babylon 5. They envision the show having an underlying reason for the original five year mission in order to find information on an ancient race considered dead, but which remains alive to influence the fate of mankind. It sounds like we’d have the Vorlons moving from Babylon 5 to the Star Trek universe.

They compare this theme to the mythology episodes of The X-Files. Shows which tried to stretch out such a mystery over many seasons, including X-Files and Babylon 5, inevitably wind up disappointment many fans as such stories rarely turn out strong enough to justify the multi-year commitment. JMS and Zabel criticize the holodecks of Star Trek: The Next Generation arguing that “If you need a holo-deck to make an interstellar starship on the bleeding edge of the unknown interesting, something is seriously amiss.” Similarly they should not need a single mythology of such an ancient race to propel the show. Perhaps this could be incorporated into some episodes, but the series could be far stronger with a number of continuing story lines being developed to interest the viewers.

Another problem with the neo-Vorlon concept is that they envision changing the “Prime Directive” to be not about non-interference in the development of other civilizations but to be to do “whatever is necessary to find this long-lost race, and discover the truth about the common origin of all life forms everywhere, the truth that will unite a galaxy.” Certainly an interesting goal, but it lacks the vision of Gene Roddenberry’s original idea. Roddenberry’s original philosophy worked because it wasn’t just a science fiction idea about a fictional ancient race, but about principles which applied to our contemporary world.

Straczynski and Zabel make valid points about new ideas for Star Trek being limited by established cannon, but I would hate to see Jon Luc Picard and other aspects of the Star Trek universe be totally thrown out. The problems cited can also be avoided in a manner similar to what was done with Star Trek: The Next Generation. I’d like to see another starship based sequel set a century beyond the last shows. Technology, and even human attitudes, can be updated. New enemies, and allies, can be created with humans venturing further out into the galaxy. As long as the underlying history is adhered to, it wouldn’t necessarily be important to recall all the specific details of old episodes (unless a writer specifically wants to continue a story line started in the past). If a character speaks in error about something which happened a hundred years earlier, there would be a simple explanation of a character being mistaken about history as opposed to being a violation of series continuity.

Regardless of the specifics of this idea, the proposal was fascinating to read and I am happy Zabel chose to post this on line.

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