If a new trek show really wants to work then the producers really need to look outside the old trek format I feel. They need to look at the quality of TV that is making it now and look at why it works (and doesn't), then ignore it all (if they for example tried to copy BSG or went for a Lost style theme, then I am sure they would have another turkey on their hands).

I figure the way Fuller wants to do it is going to be a great way for it to go. In star trek it was hard for characters to grow, and fuller said this, I figure he wants to make a show with arcs and big storylines over many episodes. I think it'll work, but that trek makers wont go for it.

Star Trek with "arcs" and "big storylines"? That's the way to go? How quickly some forget! "Enterprise" was originally conceived as having a big story arc which would stretch it's entirety. Remember the "Shadow Man" from the future who re-evolved stunted aliens to send back in time to mess up the creation of the Federation and Starfleet's progression? When the network didn't bother advertising the series, no one "tuning in late" understood what was going on, and eventually "Shadow Man" simply faded away, never to be mentioned again - and loyal viewers were left with NO RESOLUTION. Then there was the 3rd season which featured The Xindi. They took 24 episodes to build up an attack on Earth - after making their intentions to do so very clear, with a "mini" attack up and down the state of Florida. Viewers who didn't enjoy the Xindi plot tuned out and didn't come back, and new viewers who may have tried to tune in (4 or 5 of them...) had no idea what was going on. More than anything, what a new series would need would be a network - and studio - willing to back up the show with advertising and big bucks to draw great writers with great ideas. Paramount has certainly demonstrated it's willingness to back up ST XI with money. As to whether or not Paramount has hired a "great writer with great ideas" will be known in May.

I'd perfer Fuller to create something fresh, Star Treks been done and can be left in the hands of JJ, Carlton and Linderoff could pitch in as well with Lost ending soon

Sorry for my confusion. By 'big storylines' I meant storylines that go on for many episodes, but don't impinge on episodes until fully developed. You know, like real life.

Also, that whole stuff about the xindi or whatever was rubbish, but it's not what turned me off from Enterprise. It's cos it was rubbish. I enjoyed TOS, thought TNG was not bad if a little fluffy, had mixed feelings about DS9 but that it was alright most of the time, and absolutely loved Voyager. The reason Voyager gets all the love here, is because it had a bloody drive to it. Sure, they were exploring stuff, but they were also trying to survive in an unexplored region of space, with no back up on a mission to get home. It had bloody purpose, not just 'ah lets bum around, sleep with some women and shout at other races.'

Another television series is a great idea. It’s time. But Bryan, really, prequels in Star Trek just don’t work. Time travel within an episode is great fun, alternate universes ditto, but setting an entire series earlier in time will fail because it takes Star Trek’s greatest asset – an expansive, consistent, internal universe – and turns it into a liability. The Enterprise series proved that. What fans really want to know is What Happens Next? Give us new technology, new and more dangerous enemies, increased jeopardy – galactic stakes – all set in a post-2379 world that builds on the past. It’s ten times harder to churn out an episode in a pre-2379 context – you’ll spend all your time trying to explain why Klingons didn’t have wrinkled foreheads instead of focusing on new ideas and using the Star Trek Universe to your advantage. Gene gave us a huge Universe to play in. There’s no need to saddle ourselves with excess baggage trying to comply with what we know must happen in the future. The 60’s was great but it’s gone (I went to Haight-Ashbury in January and checked!). The irreverent energy, the risk-taking boldness, it’s all still there inside all of us. Love your episodes but, really, forward ho!

Another television series is a great idea. It's time. But Bryan, really, prequels in Star Trek just don't work. Time travel within an episode is great fun, alternate universes ditto, but setting an entire series earlier in time will fail because it takes Star Trek's greatest asset - an expansive, consistent, internal universe - and turns it into a liability. The Enterprise series proved that. What fans really want to know is What Happens Next? Give us new technology, new and more dangerous enemies, increased jeopardy – galactic stakes – all set in a post-2379 world that builds on the past. It’s ten times harder to churn out an episode in a pre-2379 context – you’ll spend all your time trying to explain why Klingons didn’t have wrinkled foreheads instead of focusing on new ideas and using the Star Trek Universe to your advantage. Gene gave us a huge Universe to play in. There's no need to saddle ourselves with excess baggage trying to comply with what we know must happen in the future. The 60's were great but are gone (I went to Haight-Ashbury in January and checked!). The irreverent energy, the risk-taking boldness, it's all still there inside all of us. Love your episodes but, really, forward ho!

I agree with Mr. Pengraff that revisiting Star Trek's early years is fraught with dangers, especially in light of the fiasco that was Star Trek: Enterprise. At the same time, and by the same token, having watch several of the fan-produced episodes done by James Cawley and his Star Trek: New Voyages team, I can see that there is still potential to develop new stories based on the original series. Yes, there is a GREAT DANGER here, as we saw with Enterprise, and that is the almost pathological temptation of some to meddle with the look and feel of TOS. The danger, of course, is of upsetting the applecart of the canon of Trek that latter-placed series, such as TNG, DS9 and Voyager are based on, by introducing new concepts and ideas that were not familiar to them. In this regard, it would take a deft touch, great care, great respect, and great knowledge to make any series produced during the timeline of the Captain Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, work and be successful. Above all, it would take great courage because meddling with the past, especailly in a series as rich and influential as Star Trek, risks alienating almost three generations of people that have grown up watching it. I admire courage, but I despise recklessness and any attempt to 're-imagine' or 'update' the look of a TOS-based series, is like trying to traverse a minefield loaded with nuclear weapons. Still, as Cawley and the Star Trek: New Voyages team have shown, the potential to more deeply explore and understand that time period, is extensive, if not limitless. So, as long they are willing to truly and religiously respect the foundations of Star Trek, and not be tempted either by corporate bigwigs and analysts to deviate from it, I'm willing to give it my qualified support. Sincerely, I.M. Ulysses.

what is it with Star Trek writers and their fixation on the past?? "Enterprise" didn't work and I have serious doubts that JJ Abrams' film will either ... but it seems the powers-that-be just don't want to acknowledge and accept the fact. It's a case of ostrich head-in-the-sand denial. Gene Roddenberry aborted Star Trek Phase II and created Star Trek The Next Generation because of a notion that Star Trek writers were more creative and forward thinking. Roddenberry didn't want people to believe that he and his team were so limited in thought, ideas and originality that they must relive the past. Starfleet, the Federation and the Star Trek Universe IS NOT limited to the exploits of Captain Kirk and Friends. Indeed, any new actors in the roles of Kirk and crew will not be accepted by fans. Those roles have been immortalized by Shatner, Nimoy and others. Thus, unlike Ulysses, I do NOT support this attempt to resurrect Kirk and 1701. As Mr. Pengraff said: FORWARD HO!!

Yes, and more yes. The Star Trek Universe (STU) is sort of like a huge bank account. When a writer/producer tries to add an updated or re-imagined prequel to the Star Trek Universe that does not follow canon then they are making a heavy withdrawal from the STU. Eventually, after too many withdrawals, the consistency of the STU is damaged so badly it becomes just another weakly-connected body of contradictions. I hear that Bryan Fuller has been hired for a fourth season for Heroes, so I hope he will use the extra year to come up with at least one great post-2379 Star Trek series concept. I’ll bet any one of us could pitch him some great ideas. Ask away, Bryan.

Padawan61 makes an interesting point about the new moview and Star Trek Phase 2. Yet if he bothered to look at Star Trek New Voyages, he would realize that there is a great and I believe unrealized potential for more stories that could fit within The Original Series framework. Whether those episodes, or in this case, the movie (Star Trek XI), 'work' or not will depend on the degree that the writers are willing to stick with the canon of Trek, and are not on who plays the iconic characters of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. To me, there is plenty of directions a series or a movie can go based on TOS and I sometimes wonder why Roddenberry never pursued that. In fact, I remember being very disappointed (as many other fans were) when TNG was announced, instead of a 're-start' of the original series, with the same actors and settings. Personally, I think it is just 'easier' to move forward and that is why Roddenberry and Company decided to persue a series amost 100 years after TOS. Going forward they could develop new ground, new concepts, and enhance the old ones. But more than that, I'm sure they were thinking that they could bring a 'new' or 'next' generation of Trek fans with a more 'updated' series, with better special effects, newer characters, and concepts (ie. marketing). But that begs the question as to why they didn't think they could have done the same thing using the TOS crew and merely moving it forward a decade or so as they did in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, as many of us hoped? Why WAS it 'necessary' to invent new characters? Why was it 'necessary' to update the capacity of the ship? Sure, these things happen, organically, in life, as you can tell with each new generation of car and new style of clothing. But for Mr. Padawan to suggest that TNG was necessary to move the story further by setting it almost 100 years into the future, is rather disengenious to me since the writers could have done the same thing by using the same cast and newer-looking technology. Sure, Shatner and company could not have played their roles forever and a NEW GENERATION might have been necessary, eventually. But I remain of the opinion that much of what we saw in TNG could have worked in TOS (as seen by the wonderful stories in ST:NEW VOYAGES and fan-based series). Just as they did in TNG, they could have brought in new characters, maybe even a 'Mr. Data' and other actors, like Patrick Steward or Jonathan Frakes, to take on roles that they would then expand further as the series progressed. Instead, they ditched it, except for the movies (which were still making them tonnes of money, while TNG was on TV) until, eventually, they decided that even the old characters and actors of the beloved series were no longer necessary - from a marketing point of view, if not from a story-point of view. To me, then, there is still plenty of places you could take a TOS adventure and I still believe that the story of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy on their original 5-year or more mission is somehow incomplete. If, therefore, they can find the actors and the writers who can act and respect the concepts of TOS, and have the same or better chemistry of the original cast, I don't see why a TOS-based series or movies will not work. Yes, I agree with Mr. Pengraff that,"... writer/producer tries to add an updated or re-imagined prequel to the Star Trek Universe that does not follow canon then they are making a heavy withdrawal from the STU." Going forward is always easier and less risky, while going backward is definitely fraught with more risks. But I also believe that if they can maintain the canon and develop stories that fit into it (ones far better than with Star Trek: Enterprise) the payoff is also greater too. That is true of life as well. Going forward is easier. Updating the looks and feel to 'modernize' something is also damn-near heresy in some ways, as it should be, and in that regard I totally respect Mr. Pengraff's and Mr. Padawan's view points. But I also believe that the Star Trek Universe can be expanded without violating any canon. It would take a deft touch, for sure, and great, GREAT respect as well. But if it can be pulled off, some of us from the 'older' generation, as well as many from the 'next' generation of Trek fans are bound to be ever more rewarded and enriched by it. It's a big "IF" I know but instead of fearing it, I want to see IF it can be done and done right. The other posters on this thread might think it is a reckless gamble, but it's only reckless if it fails. IF it succeeds, then it is visionary, audacious, and heroic, and personally, I have incredible respect for the latter. I mean, take for example the res-start of the Batman franchise. People thought it was dead or that it should move forward from the horrible Batman and Robin. Instead it was born again with Batman Begins and sent to epic new heights with The Dark Knight. That took courage, but it worked. I think it will work here too.

Whosoever the writers or producers are for this potential remake of TOS Trek, there will always be the TEMPTATION to meddle with the look and feel of that era to make it more "modern" ... in line with the special effects available today. That mistake was evident with "Enterprise". The writers used concepts reserved for later Trek ... including bumpy headed Klingons and the Borg. One would wonder how Archer could've encountered the bumpy heads but not one could be seen in Kirk's era ... likewise Archer battled the Borg but Starfleet has no knowledge of their existence until Picard encounters them in 2364 when he asked Guinan if she was familiar with the species. It's this type of unexplainable discontinuity that'll make reliving a prequel a dangerous proposition. Mr. Ulysses sounds like one of those individuals who relish history and wishes to live in the past. Hence the desire to "dig up" more adventures of Kirk and company regardless of who will inhabit the roles. I have seen the fan produced Star Trek New Voyages. Although, the stories are interesting with some potential, the actors portraying Kirk, Spock, McCoy and others are (almost) a laughable DESPERATE attempt at recapturing a fading saga ... refusing to accept the fact that TOS is a part of Star Trek's past. James Cawley is NOT Kirk and Jeffery Quinn is NOT Spock ... no matter how much people like Mr. Ulysses want them to be. When I watched Star Trek New Voyages, I don't see Kirk on the screen ... I don't see Spock on the screen. What I see are actors trying very hard to become those roles. It's a valiant effort, but in the end, the failure is almost comical to watch. Mr. Ulysses wonders why Gene Roddenberry didn't persue further TOS and I had already answered that in my previous post. In an interview with Gene, he clearly indicated his belief (to the audience) that Star Trek writers were creative and original in their thinking. Gene wanted to move FORWARD while people like Mr. Ulysses cling desperately to the past. I believe Gene's words were: " ... we don't want people to think we're so limited in our thinking that we should restrict ourselves only to the adventures of Captain Kirk". It's not only easier to move forward with TNG and later series, rather it's unfettered thinking with numerous possibilities ... not just the possibilities that exist with Kirk. There may have been more "spin" left in TOS but Kirk's era is NOT the TOTAL embodiment of Star Trek that Mr. Ulysses would like to believe. Kirk's era is merely a small piece of the entire Star Trek saga.