New ST Series: Thoughts and Ideas

[Tethys]

Ok folks, lets hear it. Should we go with a story arc or a random episode set? I am thinking story arc, spanning several seasons, but perhaps with a pilot movie preceding the series. I would like to get some raw thoughts here

[Tethys]

Nobody has any thoughts on this? Anyone got some good ideas for an arcing story? We could spend a season or 2 hunting down Romulans, or Maquis, or both (working together). Maybe we run a 2 parter with the Enterprise of that era (probably the E-F).

There are 2 time periods I have in mind for this series. 2385-6, the events leading up to the Hobus star explosion, and the aftermath of the situation in the Prime Timeline. The other is the time period of 2392-5 where we will explore potential deterioration of the Federation-Klingon alliance and the rise of the Romulan Republic, which will be geared more toward reunification with the Vulcans than control of the Alpha Quadrant powers. There will still be Tal'Shiar, dissidents, etc, but not as prevalent and not as menacing.

My third idea is to combine the 2, making a pilot movie about Prime Timeline "Hobus Event" leading into a 7 year transition into 2392, where Vulcan considers breaking away from the UFP and reuniting with the Romulans, due to rising tensions with the Klingon Empire. This gives the ship time to undergo an extensive mission, and refit(s), which would make for a more interesting series (New techs? But not god-techs like Voy: Endgame). I would like to stick as close to CANON as possible. I understand this might not be 100% possible, so consistency, cross referencing, and real life fact checking would be prime objectives, while still maintaining an interest in science, exploration, and discovery.

Thoughts and suggestions are always welcome! Come on guys its YOUR SERIES

[chestermike]

I'm afriad the techs from Endgame must be put in as its cannon. The federation wouldn't have these massive advantages and just shelf them.

I'll post something more up later, but a new series for me could have a BorgWars theme for season 1. All ships that assimilated future Janeways pathogen regroup and come after the federation big time.

[Tethys]

An interesting concept there. Perhaps we can use this scenario to do away with the Transphasics altogether, perhaps the Borg finally adapting/using future tech from the One drone (Voy: Drone), since future Janeway would have knowledge of what happened to the body of One, it is speculation at this point.

[chestermike]

Future Janeway died before fully assimilated, she still had her own thoughts as the unimatrix exploded, so knowledge of 'one drone' shouldnt have been uploaded to the collective.

Here is my idea in full....

Admiral Janeway takes an assignment as sector commander (much like admiral Ross in DS9 during the Dominion Wars) of an outlying sector of federation space, she was given this assignment for her impressive record of dealing with the unknown in command of Vayager. During the early episodes we get to see entirely new crews (Although I could handle Captain/Commander Harry Kim on one ship, or the Titan with Riker and Troy) on a number of different ships, some Defiant class, Promethius class, Sovereign class or new classes. Each of the first 5 or 6 episodes centres on a different ship on a different mission, all sent by Janeway. At the end of this little packet of episodes, one ship comes accross a planet which has seemingly been attacked by the Borg (we could even have commander (captain by now) Shelby coming in as a captain/borg expert again to get a TNG link in). Janeway recalls all ships to the starbase she is on, and a task force is formed to hunt down the Borg ship that destroyed the planet, with Janeway leading and Seven of Nine brought back as an adviser. They find the Borg ship and with the future tech easily destroy it. However every day/week a new Borg ship turns up and attacks the task force, just to be destroyed. However the Borg are doing this for a reason, they are gathering data about the new tech and eventually work out a way to defend themselves. Then all the remaining Borg attack in one go, destroy the starbase and set up a new unimatrix ont he edge of federation space. The federation in their desperation make a huge anti-Borg alliance with the Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians, Ferengi and anyone else that will listen, and season 1 concludes with an all out battle, the either we survive or they do type.

I would welcome some thought/polishing here, as I am not a writer and don't pretend to be. Just think this would be interesting, and you could strike a nice balance between old trek ideals AND get enough action to keep the new fans the JarJar films have brought in interested.

[Tethys]

The only problem with there being canon characters is that we would either have to get those people (Kate Mulgrew, Jeri Ryan, John Frakes, etc) to do voiceovers without pay, pay them to do it, or find a talented person who can fake those voices almost perfectly. Since this project is set to generate $0 in revenue, and will be animated with the use of a few ST games, I would either have to consider a fresh set of characters we have never seen before, or find some people to fake the voices. Finding someone to fake, though, sounds quite difficult, so the first option is the primary objective at this point. We could, however, do a intro-story kind of thing, that the Star Wars movies did (A long time ago, blah blah) and explain what events transpired up until the current day, where we focus on the actual battle that destroys Janeway's starbase, killing her and a few other important people, with minimal voice faking needed. If we go this route, we could use the pilot movie to create a 3-4 month gap between the destruction of Janeway's base and the construction of the Borg Unimatrix, with ship facilities beginning to be built by them. 3-4 months seems like enough time for Borg to build alot of stuff, and is a respectable amount of time for Allied forces (Fed, Kling, Ferg, Rom, etc) to hold a summit or something similar to plan strategies to take the threat out once and for good, etc.

A nice twist we could incorporate, is a virus based on One's modified nanoprobes to reverse engineer Borg Collectivism, effectively "hacking the network" and liberating most (but not all) drones from the Collective (there were a few instances where drones had been connected together on smaller networks, ie when Seven of Nine crashed on a planet with a few other drones and she connected them all together, and Hugh/Lore from TNG)

Thanks for your input! Its great to finally have someone to brainstorm with and come up with ideas, and gain feedback!

EDIT: On a side note, the Transphasic torpedoes were designed around mid-to-late 2380's (I dont remember the reference material for this date), so I doubt we will see very much of them except for when fighting the Borg, as per Temporal Prime Directive. And once they adapt (which they will nearing end of the movie), they will become obsolete before they are ever commissioned, thus closing that temporal loop so that it cannot be exploited again. (http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Transph ... do#History)

[chestermike]

The new weapons and armour would need to be incorperated for me, otherwise the Borg ships would be too hard to destroy, and the campaign of attacks to adapt to the new tech would be out the window.

No old characters then, just new ones. You could use the early episode arcs to develop your new characters.

We already had a virus that counteracted the collective, it was unimatrix zero. Maybe the Borg resistance from this episode, that was growing at the end of the episode, could be included in the alliance. You could even chuck in races like the Hirogen, First Federation, Gorn etc into the alliance.

One plot twist to include, which would keep the summit episodes interesting, would be one major power not interested, basically wanting the Borg to destroy everyone else then pick up the pieces, with the rest trying to convince them being surrounded by the Borg being a very bad idea. You could then put in an episode where some underhand tactic was used to get them interested, maybe getting the Borg resistance from unimatrix zero to attack them!!!

Maybe you could do something with Species 8472, dunno what though. Maybe they join the battle unexpectedly at the end and try to blow away both sides. Another twist to consider could possibly be a dominion presence, either in the alliance or the race that refuses to join.

Hope I am helping again.

[Tethys]

I love your ideas, I just wish more people would participate. This way, we would have alot of potential stories for a few seasons at least. And if it's good enough, I suspect we could get Tim Russ to do a guest appearance. He's a big Star Trek fan and I think he has even done some work on his own ST fan series.

[geon]

Well, it looks as if the Borg are very popular for the new series. As is Janeway’s technology and the drone known as ‘One’. So, here are some of my thoughts concerning storylines involving all three.

Janeway Storyline

The Borg recover from Janeway’s sabotage, thanks to inbuilt safety systems in the Collective. It’s been shown time and again (ST ‘First Contact’ and various Voyager episodes) that killing the Queen does not stop the Collective. The fact that at least one sphere in VOY ‘Endgame’ was unaffected by Janeway’s pathogen suggests that the affect was at best localised.

The question now becomes whether Janeway’s technology was indeed assimilated by the Borg. Chestermike is correct when he says Janeway was not fully assimilated before she died. However, she was assimilated enough for the Queen to read her thoughts.

The following dialogues from the episode make it clear that not all the Borg were affected and that the technology was indeed assimilated.

BORG [OC]: Voyager has entered aperture eight two three, access transwarp corridor zero nine. Redirect vessels to intercept at subjunction (Queen gets an electric shock, voice becomes garbled)
ADMIRAL: Must be something you assimilated.
QUEEN: What have you done?
ADMIRAL: I thought we didn't need words to understand each other.
QUEEN: You've infected us with an neurolytic pathogen.
ADMIRAL: Just enough to bring chaos to order.

And

QUEEN: Voyager will be destroyed.
ADMIRAL: They're ahead of the shock wave. They'll survive. Captain Janeway and I made sure of that. It's you who underestimated us.
QUEEN: (pulls off a disintegrating arm) Sphere six three four. They can still hear my thoughts. I may have assimilated your pathogen but I also assimilated your armour technology. (leg falls off) Captain Janeway is about to die. If she has no future, you will never exist and nothing that you've done here today will happen. (Queen dies, central complex explodes)
http://www.chakoteya.net/Voyager/722.htm
‘But I also assimilated your armour technology’ makes it quite clear that the Borg have indeed gained this knowledge. Whether through Janeway herself, or through the databanks on her shuttle (remember, the Borg captured the shuttle as they beamed Janeway to the Unimatrix), the Borg have now become far more dangerous (think cubes with instant ablative armour).
I agree with Tethys in that Transpahasic torpedoes will probably not make an appearance, simply because if the Borg already have Janeway’s data, they have the knowledge to adapt to the transphasic warheads.

Borg recovery will take some time, what with producing a new Queen, building a new Unimatrix and Transwarp Hubs, and producing new ships to replace those destroyed by Admiral Janeway’s attack. But when they are ready, you can bet the Queen is out for revenge. Perhaps they first take the time to take care of unfinished business (ie Unimatrix Zero and Species 8472).
So we find ourselves in the time period after the last ‘official’ Star Trek movie (ie: ST Nemesis). Janeway is indeed an Admiral (which must annoy the Queen greatly, seeing a younger version of the admiral that killed her). In the past the Borg sent only single cubes into the Federation (STNG ‘Best of Both Worlds’ and ST ‘First Contact’). Now, with all the knowledge gained from these invasions, and from the Voyager series, they send in a whole invasion fleet. We now have a fight for survival involving the Borg and every major power in the galaxy.
‘One’ storyline
We can have the Borg again recovering, as per the first storyline. This time, the Queen is out to recover the technology seen in the ‘One’ drone. Thanks to his appearance on the sphere in VOY ‘Drone’ they are aware of the technology.
ONE: While I was linked to the Borg I could hear their thoughts, their objectives. They are aware of my existence. They will pursue me.
http://www.chakoteya.net/Voyager/502.htm
At some point, they will discover the circumstances behind the creation of ‘One’, likely through Seven of Nine (since ‘Voyager’ has shown how easy it is for the Queen to access Seven’s Borg technology). It now becomes a matter of acquiring a 29th century mobile emitter. How they try to do this might be a major part of the story.
Do they:
a) Gain control of Seven, who then steals it and returns to the Collective
b) Somehow hack into Voyager’s or the Federation’s database to retrieve the technical scans of the emitter and build one themselves
c) Time travel to the 29th century to an steal an emitter and then return to their own century
Whatever the scenario chosen, Admiral Janeway and company will be there to (hopefully) thwart their attempts. A Collective with Janeway ablative armour, 29th century multidimensional shields and inbuilt transporters is just plain scary.
There might even be some scope for a time war with the 29th century Federation (think Timeship ‘Relativity’ from VOY ‘Relativity’). Perhaps we can tie this in with the Temporal Cold War seen in ‘Enterprise’.
Well, these are just some quick suggestions. I hope they are of some help

Cheers
Geon

[Tethys]

This is exactly what I was looking for. Geon, you always have some really good information. I like how you take the time to be critical and detailed. I could use you in this project. I was actually going to ask you later on down the road, but now is a good a time as then. The sooner the better. I can handle the writing and stuff, but ideas is what I want from you guys for stories. So far I love all of what I see, its going to be hard to choose which storyline to pursue.

I like the Janeway one, and we could focus less on the Janeway character than we could if we chose the One storyline, where it would be almost mandatory to get Jeri Ryan to do some voiceovers for free, highly unlikely. Although, I do like the idea of the Borg doing some reconnaissance and hacking, it seems very unlike the Borg to do so, but the Borg have proven to adapt to any thing/situation, so this could be no different and would bring a good twist to things. Time traveling to the future, however, would be thwarted before it started, so that's gonna be a no-go. It would be a direct invasion of temporal space and should give Starfleet the permission it would need to eliminate any immediate threat in that time period, and possibly subsequent time periods, as points-of-interest, depending on how the scans of the prime timeline and alternate timelines come back (as in 'Does this directly affect the past, the present, or the future?')

Man, all this temporal stuff gives me a headache thinking about it!

[geon]

Hi Tethys,

Glad you liked the ideas. Always glad to help. Just let me know what you need.

You wrote:

" Although, I do like the idea of the Borg doing some reconnaissance and hacking, it seems very unlike the Borg to do so".

I have to disagree here. In their first appearance in TNG 'Q Who?' they did exactly that. A scout beams in and hacks the Enterprises's systems.

Q: Understand you? You're nothing to him. He's not interested in your life form. He's just a scout, the first of many. He's here to analyse your technology. He may attempt to gain control of the ship. I wouldn't let him.
(The mechanical arm is used to pass a green light to the console)
http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/142.htm

RIKER: Guinan, if they were that aggressive, why didn't the Borg attack? They could have but they didn't.
GUINAN: They don't do that individually. It's not their way. When they decide to come, they're going to come in force. They don't do anything piecemeal.
DATA: Then the initial encounter was solely for the purpose of gathering information.
GUINAN: Yes
http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/142.htm

You might also see the single cube invasions as a further information gathering exercise in force. So doing reconnaissance seems to be an intergral part of Borg behaviour.

[chestermike]

Is there a way to ask previous actors to add their voices? If you have any contact details I'd be happy to do the leg work for you.

[Army37]

A Q Trek show so that JJ's going back to oblivion and we can have our Janeway back to explore another galaxy