Straczynski/Zabel Trek pitch revealed.
Far back in the mists of ancient time, or in the summer of 2004 to be precise, Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski was approached by Paramount with an eye toward taking over Star Trek: Enterprise’s writing room. He declined the offer, needless to say, though this isn’t necessarily a bad thing – for the most part, I think most fans felt that the fourth season finally saw the show come into its own under the guidance of Manny Coto. But Straczynski did reveal – rather cruelly, I thought! – to Trek and SFTV fans everywhere that he and Dark Skies co-creator Bryce Zabel had collaborated on a pitch for a new Trek series. And Straczynski hinted on several occasions that the idea leaned toward a complete re-imagining of the Trek universe, using many of the same conventions (no pun intended) but removing some of the boundaries that had been erected by Roddenberry, et al. – boundaries which, and this is my opinion, not JMS’, were put in place to rewrite history and make the original series sound more socially important than it was. Let’s be fair, the original series’ ideal world of the future may have been culturally diverse, but the turbolift still smacked into the Glass Ceiling on more than one occasion. Somewhere along the way, one of those barriers that Roddenberry added to the basic tenets of the Trek universe was that our characters don’t argue amonst themselves, at least not in a petty way. But some writers of the spinoff series of the 1980s and 90s interpreted this to mean that everyone got along swimmingly – Deep Space Nine was a refreshing exception – and along with other factors, the life was gradually bled out of the franchise.
But what would Straczynski and Zabel have done differently? … Read more
