It’s official that a new series of Star Trek (not related to upcoming film: Star Trek Beyond) will air on the CBS Television Network in 2017. Without giving much away, StarTrek.com did share something about what the new cast will be boldly doing:

“The brand-new Star Trek will introduce new characters seeking imaginative new worlds and new civilizations, while exploring the dramatic contemporary themes that have been a signature of the franchise since its inception in 1966.”

This will be the 7^th generation of the Star Trek franchise, which dates back to 1966. The pilot episode was called The Cage, and didn’t feature arguably the best man to have taken the helm of the Enterprise, Captain James. T. Kirk. On seeing the pilot, NBC remarked that it was, “too cerebral,”, “too intellectual,” and “too slow” for viewers. They were wrong.

Star Trek should be more cerebral

You only have to read the cutting reviews of a string of fight-focused recent sci-fi series whose plots wouldn’t confuse a five year old to know that people want to be taken deeper. Take Fox’s abomination of poor Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report. While we might have been tough on this vapid piece of low-rung entertainment calling it, “A heinous crime against science fiction,” we weren’t alone in our contempt. Forbes summarized it with, “Shallow Water Begging To Be In The Deep End,” and Yahoo TV said it was “Alternately bad and laughably bad.” If you read through the reviews, the gist in them all is the same: it’s badly written, shallow, and somehow manages to leave out all that was good about the original story. Dumbing it down for a wider audience will ironically lead to its downfall.

Take another show, but one we have lauded many times this year: Mr. Robot. A show critics and viewers across the board have complimented. Why? Because the writers spent a long time studying the theme of the show, hacking; and secondly because it’s socially, politically relevant… because it’s cerebral.

Or take the film utterly fantastic sci-fi, Snowpiercer,  again a piece of art that was given glowing reviews by critics and viewers alike. A film that was socially and politically relevant, but one that didn’t get a wide release and was called too difficult for American audiences by the Weinstein Company. Perhaps the audiences at test-screenings should be screened before they get to air their views. For Star Trek to gain acclaim, it must be intelligent.

We need a moral genius like Spock for that to happen

The most memorable character from the original Star Trek was not Captain Kirk, it was his sidekick, the Vulcan. Like a sci-fi Socrates with a predilection for Kant’s categorical imperative, Spock didn’t just avail us of some cracking dialogue, but he served as a moral compass on the ship and in our TVs. We learned from Spock, and believed in him, because he said things like this:

“Change is the essential process of all existence.”

“Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them.”

“After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but is often true.”

“I’ve never understood the female capacity to avoid a direct answer to any question.”

He was probably being ironic, but still, such a line would likely be censored out these days or lead to a Guardian headline:  “Sexist Star Trek an insult to the Women’s Rights movement. As for the randy Kirk, his old school approach to impressing females in space would likely lead to protests. This is a good thing in part, but the series must also be careful not to overdo political correctness. At the same time the new series should also have some crew members that have a few distasteful traits.

Spock was so good, he martyred himself in 1982 in The Wrath of Khan. You seriously couldn’t ask for a better travelling companion. And just think what such a character could do in today’s environment of growing wealth gaps, secret wars, global warming, etc. It’s not that Star Trek should become a heavy critical social commentary, but it wouldn’t hurt to have some real world problems pop-up now and again and to have a genius try to try and solve them.

Plausible gadgets

Star Trek through the years featured lots of gadgets that became a reality, as you can read here. While it’s fun to go far out, employing some writers who are very tech savvy would add gravitas to the story. Remember that Star Trek already gave us GPS, voice recognition, tablets and flip phones before those things ever existed, so right now with mind boggling technology breaking into the consumer market, Star Trek could provide some ideas for the engineers that will create gadgets in real life.

Another point concerning tech is how the spacecraft will function. It’s doubtful that many hands will have to be used seeing how everyone’s cars may sometime soon drive themselves. I guess we should expect a lot more swiping the air in the new series, but something way beyond what we have already come up with in terms of gesture recognition.

Anarchy on the Enterprise

Sometimes doing things for the common good can get you in trouble, just ask Edward Snowden. It’s always a good thing in Star Trek when the captain makes a decision that defies the United Federation of Planets. No we won’t open fire on them, or invade that planet, something a lot of people were saying when Blair and Bush decided to invade and ruin a country supposedly holding weapons of mass destruction. Star Trek could win a lot of people over by having a crew that knows injustice when it sees it, and knows when the bosses are wrong. It might also be a good idea to have a very thin line between good and bad. A Star Trek in which propaganda exists, where the truth is a difficult matter. Having nuanced characters, including nuanced aliens or cyborgs, would also be much closer to current characterization in modern TV series.

Weirdness

As well as keeping it real, when traveling the universe there’s nothing more entertaining than celestial strangeness. The stranger the better. The Enterprise might find a couple of wormholes, or find that in an ever-expanding universe there are copies of ourselves… ones we are not keen on, perhaps. Exploring other dimensions, and finding out science has a lot of rewriting to do, will not be a waste of space time. Strange planets must be far-out, but also at times they should be much like our own except with a few fundamental changes.

Normality

Without going too far to please the standards of modern political correctness, Star Trek should at least try to mirror reality. Maybe a female captain is due? And please, no stereotypes, so don’t make the tech genius a quiet Chinese guy with a penchant for playing puzzles, or the gay (expect to see gay characters this time around) man overly camp.

In fact, the series should attempt to reverse all the stereotypes we still see on TV and in film. Lastly, why not just a little bit of romance, some light sex, perhaps even an on-board relationship between a human and droid – and maybe even some crew members that don’t approve of a robotic/human matching.

Photo credit: J D Hancock via Flickr