This weekend on HBO there was a mini Star Trek movie marathon. Anyone else catch that? It was fun to see William Shatner in his Starfleet uniform and I got a chuckle out of the "cutting edge" graphics going on. Watching these movies made me sad. There's nothing like this on television at the moment. Firefly was canceled and when the Battlestar Galactica prequel show, Blood and Chrome, wasn't picked up by SyFy, it became a painful reality that there are no adventures in outer space on the tube. Nothing! That's crazy talk. With George Lucas saying a Star Wars live-action tv show is years away from becoming a reality, one wonders if we will ever see another a spaceship outside of it being taxied by a 747 to Washington, D.C. Here are just a few reasons as to why we need a Star Trek TV show. Paramount executives, please listen up.
1. There are zero space operas on TV at the moment. How is this even possible?
2. We finally have the technology to make Star Trek look cool. No longer will the Klingons have silly-looking pets.
3. Four years is a long time to wait between J.J. Abrams movies.
4. New episodes mean new social ideas to tackle. Gene Roddenberry would enjoy the series taking on new social and political questions of today.
5. Finally a show not about a crime scene or featuring lawyers
6. Finally a Star Trek show about crime scenes and lawyers?
7. Use characters other than Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew. The USS Viper sounds pretty bad ass.
8. This is probably the biggest hurdle the people at CBS (who own Star Trek property) have. They don't want to over saturate the market with Star Trek episodes and ruin their tent-pole film franchise. There is a way for both properties to coexist. Make them completely different stories. Get creative and have the TV show set 500 years in the future or the past. Although, be better than the lackluster Enterprise.
8. Merchandising! Merchandising! Merchandising! There's too much money to be made for this not to happen.
9. NASA named a spaceship after the ship in Star Trek. Think about that! I'm sure NASA nerds would love to help with making the show realistic or as authentic as it possibly can.
10. Episode 59: The crew encounters a planet where magic is real thanks to their green sun.
11. Slutty space aliens.
12. Explore the space of the Federation. Set a show on Earth or Mars or whatever! Just make sure there are transporters involved.
13. Episode 5 could take our heroes to a planet full of zombies.
14. Since J.J. Abrams rebooted Kirk and Spock, have someone else reboot Picard and Riker for Star Trek: The Next Generation.
15. Because Star Wars is officially embarrassing. Star Trek finally has the chance to become hip.
16. If all goes well, maybe someone will finally make that real life USS Enterprise in Las Vegas!
17. At this point there should be an entire channel dedicated to Star Trek. Channel 780 should be all Star Trek, all the time.
18. Star Trek: The Academy Years. 90210 meets Star Trek. BOOM! I just created a new franchise.
19. Space monsters never get old.
20. American Horror Story meets Star Trek: Stardate 4721 the crew of the USS Trinity start to experience strange anomalies as crew members begin to die mysterious deaths. BOOM! Franchise!
21. Cheers: Star Trek. A sitcom takes place in the bar of the Enterprise.
22. Finally have a likeable Vulcan character not named Spock.
23. Bring back Klingons!
24. Tribbles!
25. Vulcan-on-Vulcan sex scene.
26. Turn your phasers to KILL!
27. Episode 23: The crew travels back in time to Mad Men times, thanks to the Holodeck, to solve a murder mystery and learn a valueable lesson. Naturally.
28. A new Data!
29. Episode 56: Responding to a distress esignal the crews of 3 StarFleet ships must come together to solve global warming on an alien planet on the brink!
30. First openly gay Starfleet Captain!
31. Romulan wine drinking games!
32. The return of the magic sliding doors for elevators that no one EVER WAITS FOR!
33. Snakes on the Starship!
34. Episode 18 the USS Enterprise crew encounters vampires. Someone may be infected. All personel are required to head to sick bay where it turns out the ships doctor is the vampire and he's using blood samples to quench his thirst. TWIST!
35. Geordi wears the Google augmented reality glasses instead of my mom's hair clip on his face.
36: The captain gets to say no to Worf again!
37. More Lens Flares!!
38. Episode 97: First Officer Drake gets hooked on space drugs and turns the USS Falcon into a space drug delivery system
39. KHAN!
40. A truly epic Starfleet vs. Klingon battle in high definition.
41. Photon torpedoes!
42. Episode 8: Bottle episode where we learn our fearless Captain is looking for his long lost father.
43: Wormholes!
44: An HBO Star Trek series with a similar tone to Game of Thrones, but in space! Lots of blood, sex and talking.
45: An entire series set on the sick bay of a Starship where they must treat unsual space illnesses. Think House but in space!
46. A sweet new opening title sequence featuring, "Space, the final frontier..."
47. New catchphrases! Picard had, "Make it so." Spock had "Live Long and Prosper." McCoy had,
"Damn it, Jim!" It's time for a new one!
48. Strange new worlds would look cool on my TV. Just sayin'.
49. Before there was the United Federation of Planets, there was something else. I want to see that on TV.
50. NBC could really use the ratings (even though CBS owns the rights to Star Trek, it's common practice for a show to be owned by one network and air on a different one)
51. New weapons! There has to be something better than a phaser to battle alien scum at this point.
52. We can finally know what happens to all the poop on Starships! Seriously, where does it all go? Do they beam it somewhere? Some shit filled planet or into a sun so it burns up on contact?
53. Because there are a million fan fiction stories to tell on television. No other franchise has a more loyal fan base than Star Trek. It's time to reward these fans with their stories on the small screen.