Patrick Stewart will reprise the role of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard in a brand new "Star Trek" series

I knew that was coming. :P

Ok, /geek mode on. You've been warned.

First order of business, jump the timeline forward another 50 years or so.

No more old villains. Klingons are fully federation-integrated at this point yet still retain sovereignty over their space because they wouldn't have it any other way. I'd have the Romulans integrated as well, but probably only just integrated. If we want to clean up the timeline mess, we say Spock did his red-matter thing but in the Prime universe, it worked, he saved Romulus, but was lost in the process. Now there's a statue of him sixty feet high somewhere on Romulus and the Romulans having had their asses saved are willing to go in on a deal much like the Klingons have - it's still their space, but it's open access, trade, and peace.

I'd be interested to explore what's out there inside Romulan space, and see how their empire is treating worlds they've subjugated (parallels with modern human rights abuses would be apropos). Not really sure what I'd do with the Bajorans/Cardassians. I was never very keen on that storyline in the first place. I doubt it's resolved in any case, still an uneasy border region, and the Cardassians have surely been preparing for war.

I do remember in one of the alternate timelines, the Bajorans were much worse than the Cardassians, maybe we tap into that, with them on a quest for revenge. Perhaps they are now using terrorist tactics that tie into what I'm describing below with the warp damage.

All I know is if I see the same villains again I'm going to lose my shit. Move beyond Klingons, Romulans, Borg. Actually, we can bring the Borg back later once they have a makeover into something much more sinister and deadly. We can do better than Swedish bio-zombies with a malicious runaway super intelligence. ;)

That's enough boring background.

The Federation needs a shakeup, something that threatens their very existence. We got hints of that in the TNG episode "Force of Nature" and I would go all-in on this, with catastrophic consequences that have essentially made warp travel in any previously heavily traveled areas deadly and impossible. There's a great opportunity to tie this warp travel damage into our own climate change problems. I'd use that as the parallel. It's too damn easy to get around in the Trek universe, and this would make things suitably difficult and much more interesting.

Newer engines and non-Warp travel methods would be under heavy development (and probably not going all that well). This could be expanded into catastrophic rifts opening into subspace (and each rift goes somewhere new, sometimes things come out of them, plenty of opportunity for new villains/dangers here). Basically, space is a LOT more dangerous now. Federation scientists are desperate to find ways to repair the damage. Bajorans are using rift-opening tech to shred the Cardassians. I think I'd have the Ferengi turning into a matriarchy, since their women now have equal rights, and it turns out they are better at business than their male counterparts. Fun times.

There's your setting. The Federation is facing down an apocalypse of their own making and they know it. Now let's talk about the crew/cast/focus of the show. All of that is just backdrop.

I'd start with a science vessel - not just any science vessel, but the most accomplished and infamous one in the fleet. Famous for 5+ year long deep space missions studying phenomena most people wouldn't dare to get close to. The ship itself is small, svelte, and has been mutated and hacked into something so far off book that it's now unique, with multiple advanced systems at the bleeding edge of whatever starfleet's standards are in this newer timeline.

Why is it infamous? The captain has a problem with authority, despises rank, pomp, circumstance - he's there for the science. He's capable of diplomacy with the best of them, just considers it all a waste of time, and does not censor himself or his opinions. He'd chew out an admiral at an assembly in seconds, publicly, and viciously, with Churchill's wit. The only reason he gets away with this is because he's never around - always on mission, and because his results are untouchable. The entire admiralty groans when he walks into a room with them. He's also not big on rules, only results.

He has an attitude that is quite literally 'fuck the prime directive', he's on the other side of that controversial decision. I think I would also give him a habit of experimenting with different drugs to alter his own perspectives, one that's gotten him in trouble before (nootropics, micro-dosing, cannabis plant in his quarters). It'd be shameful if he wasn't publishing papers on it that were pretty damn solid. He likes to create holo-novels, had a problem with holo-addiction in the past. Not flagship material, and certainly not well-rounded. Obsessive.

He's assembled a crew that redefines what diversity is. He finds troublemakers by scouring fleet records, and he's on a mission to include every conceivable race in the mix just so he can get at their unique cultures and perspectives, because it pushes science into overdrive having so many different intellects on his team. Being assigned to his crew is like being in exile, starfleet is happy to send him their troublemakers and he will put them to good use. Engin Ro would be right at home there. Data's story may be over but Lore is still out there, and deserves far more than the 2d treatment he got in TNG.

His ship, his rules (to borrow a line from Discovery). Starfleet dress code is suspended in favor of more culturated attire. Typical 'alert' systems and procedures have been redesigned, he's got his own codes and ways of doing things that are unique and generally an improvement on the rigid starfleet model. His brain is an encyclopedia that stores multiple disciplines of science, and one of his hobbies is reading/listening to the logs of every captain in history who ever encountered something interesting in space, so he's got a map of the galaxy in his head that is unrivaled. He knows every log that's been 'classified' and has been trying to add them to his collection, he's very interested in starfleet's dirty business.

Now what kind of crew can we put together for this island of misfits? The possibilities are limitless. I think we need to tap some of the races that were so popular in TNG. It's been half a century, many more worlds have joined the federation by now.

I think it's time for the first Romulan starfleet officer, likely head of security, we'll be needing a sketchy past she's hiding from, possibly ex-romulan security herself. Only in starfleet because the captain didn't even tell them until a couple years after he'd activated her commission on his ship. Putting that classic Romulan paranoia/preparedness to good use. I'd be tempted to go with the stock Vulcan science officer just to enjoy the friction between them and to contrast them off of each other (logic vs instinct).

I definitely want to see a Tamarian on the crew. That's got miles of dramatic and cultural potential. Just because humans have a hard time communicating with them does not mean they can't internalize our literature and communicate with us (Juliet on her balcony etc). I'm also thinking Malcorian for chief engineer - remember Mirasta Yale? I think I'd go with having their race be able to sense energy fields with their strange hands, giving them a serious edge in engineering. Could be Mirasta or one of her descendants, and working on a new kind of warp drive that's prototyped on the ship.

I'd comb back through the trek franchise and dredge up every possible interesting choice, put together a crew that way, with the captain intentionally selecting differing races as all of his officers and specialists.

This post is a mile long and we're not at the opening credits yet. Grab some coffee and come back. :P

I believe we'd open with this ship/crew studying one of the rifts, gathering data. That particular slice of science has been the crew's focus for several years, and they've made some real progress. I'm a bit ambivalent on what they are discovering/witnessing, but as we start the series we need the rifts getting worse, threats from the rifts themselves, and whatever is coming through them. I'm tempted to go with big bad invasion coming through one of the rifts, but we could probably do better (than repeating fluid space and the borg).

I'd have the ship returning to the federation during the pilot with critical information that starfleet needs to know now. The crew has discovered whatever threat we're about to use to rock the federation's world. See, we're going to upset this terrible crew of misfits and throw them into a maelstrom of danger along with the rest of the fleet. Science playtime is over, it's time to survive.

Meanwhile, I'd trot out the latest/greatest version of the federation's flagship (perhaps the Enterprise, perhaps that name has fallen into history's dustbin). This is the star trek we all know and love - top crew, top marks, everything by the book. I would so use this to fuck with trekkie expectations, giving them the classic they pine fore before blowing it all to hell.

I think I'd go with a bit greener than normal for the crew, though, almost as if the flagship has become a cushy assignment. It really doesn't matter since the ship won't survive the pilot, though most of the crew will (not the captain/officers). Perhaps we're witnessing a christening, nice big ceremony with pomp and circumstance which is rudely interrupted by our band of misfits and shortly thereafter, reality going haywire.

I am totally on board with tapping Admirals Janeway, Riker, Worf, Chakotay, though I think Picard would be better suited to ambassador. Get the old cast back on board, and if Frakes wants to direct so much the better. Put the gang back together, prior trek was only suffering from bad writing, not production/directing.

I've been thinking about Janeway and what her PTSD-damaged mind would be up to after getting home. I've also been thinking about Section 31 and their mission. Considering Janeway's main focus would be preparing the federation to withstand the threats she got an up close and personal glimpse of, it seems to me Janeway and Section 31 would run afoul of each other in short order, and Section 31 will come out the worse in that exchange.

I think I'd have Janeway take it over and turn it into a sort of startfleet-emergency-preparedness operation, top secret but known to the admiralty. We also need to answer the question of what the hell exactly Section 31 has been doing for nearly 300 years of unsupervised activity.

I'm picturing a ship (probably built in secret, possibly in a subspace-bubble shipyard with corresponding Section 31 space station). That's going to become the new home for our crew (which will be the combination of the two crews I've mentioned above). This isn't just any ship. It's ancient and massive, and has been remodeled and upgraded so many times over the years that it's really five ships built on top of each other - we're going full Hogwarts here. This ship was created to prove out experimental technology and be a sort of emergency federation superweapon when it was under the guidance of Section 31 - a legit federation warship. That purpose fell by the wayside, though.

Now it's basically a Warehouse 13-esque amalgam of technologies, stored there. It's functional and still cutting edge (armor systems, highly advanced shields, trans-phasic torpedoes, and that's just the 'standard' tech upgrades). The ship basically became a research lab for Section 31 and a place to store everything that the federation wasn't supposed to have (such as the fruits of Cytherian research, a functional trans-phasic cloak, etc - I'd toss a Genesis torpedo in one of the holds, never mention it, just let the fans notice it in the background). It's not ready for primetime anymore unless you want your crew crushed by crates the first time you hit turbulence.

Whatever happens at our admiralty gathering that has thrown the federation into chaos results in the crews escaping together on our science vessel (not in very good shape), and the captain being told to go there by Janeway (with precious little info beyond that). Starfleet is trying to cope with the disaster, so the fleet's busy elsewhere. We'll have our crews discover the ship, and that's our new 'enterprise' going forward.

The ship is being looked after by a highly advanced AI (possibly a result of Bruce Maddox's research into Data, some help from the Binars). It has a living computer. The security protocol dictates vetting the crew before just granting them access to the most powerful ship in the federation fleet, so they get a firsthand look at the new holo-security systems and have to fight their way to the bridge (and they are losing). Once the captain orders the self-destruct the AI concedes, because being willing to destroy this tech rather than let it fall into enemy hands is part of the protocol. Of course the AI can inhabit androids, so we've got our data-esque character here.

Now we've got our ship of mystery, two crews with authoritarian/anti-authoritarian aspects working together, the federation fighting for its life, and that's plenty of fireworks for everyone to enjoy. Embrace the chaos.

That's just the pilot movie. I think we can manage that in 2.5 hours.

This is the kind of Trek people want to see - building on the past, with something to lose, and plenty of action/drama, multiple parallels to the real world and exploring moral philosophy.

Man, I flinched every time Lwaxana appeared - flinched like I was punched in the face. Eesh.

Btw, scroll up, you should read my war and peace pilot.