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? Bryce Zabel finally unveiled the dozen-page 2004 pitch for a Star Trek reboot at his blog (click here to go and read it) – in all likelihood because the recent hiring of J.J. Abrams as the new shepherd of the Trek universe pretty much seals the deal that nothing will ever happen with the Straczynski/Zabel reboot. (Part of me wonders if it isn’t there now to get, on the record, just a little teensy weensy bit of “But look, we got there first!” before Abrams performs a similar reboot himself.) It’s interesting reading, with a proposal for an over-arching, 5-year mystery involving the Enterprise’s real mission – its secret mission, one of which only Kirk, Spock and McCoy are aware. It smacks more than just a little bit of B5 leftovers, but I trust both writers enough to think that it would’ve been couched in different terms.
The pitch notes that, after all of the reinvention that has already taken place within the Trek franchise, viewers and fans should be able to take a reboot in their stride. I’d like to think that’s possible – look at Battlestar Galactica (which one respondent to Zabel’s blog posting tries to use as evidence that a reboot is a bad idea because of “the majority of original series BSG fans hating it” 😆 – maybe before the miniseries premiered, maybe). But while I think the idea is sound, sadly, I think the writers here underestimated the near-religious fervour with which fandom would’ve responded. And herein lies the sad truth: unless some brilliant mind like Abrams or someone who has relaunch ideas similar to Russell T. Davies’ approach to restarting Doctor Who succeeds, Star Trek may have to be put out to pasture because of fandom. I don’t even think the Catechism is as closely adhered to as Star Trek continuity is, and that’s even after Enterprise’s almost inadvertently comical attempt to explain away Klingon head ridges just for the duration of Kirk’s era. Never mind adding a new generation of characters – there may have to be a new generation of viewing audience in place before Star Trek can be stripped down to its component storytelling molecules and reassembled (no doubt on a “transporter pad” of digital media delivery somewhere).
Am I perhaps jettisoning both baby and bathwater out the nearest airlock? Maybe – or maybe not. Think about it. Star Trek fans have basically done what Doctor Who fans accomplished in the late 1980s – bitched and bitched about the show we suppodedly supported, and its producers, until the studio decided “Well hell, if the fans don’t even like it, what’s the point?” And I’ll admit, I was guilty of my own share of latter-day Trek bashing.
If the Doctor Who/Star Trek analogy is accurate, though, maybe we should’ve waited 15 years before handing Abrams the keys.