IO9 is carrying bits from an interview by Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller, on what he would like to do with Star Trek. I think a lot of us are hungry for a real Star Trek reboot, and not the time travel "everything's the same but the characters are younger" thing we're going to get this summer.
Among other things, Fuller would want to give Star Trek a full-on Battlestar Galactica re-imagining, featuring Rosario Dawson as a lead character. (Thankfully, he's careful to specify that she wouldn't need to be a captain. Call me ageist, but I think 30 is a little young for a starship captain.) He then adds that "Angela Bassett as a captain would rock my boat."
THIS. Although personally, I'd rather see CCH Pounder as a captain. Because she is SO AWESOME, that's why.
Here are some other suggestions for a real Star Trek reboot:
1. The Prime Directive
Scrap it. Let's face it, the Prime Directive is a namby-pamby weasel way for the writers to get out of having to take sides. Sure, we don't want starship fleets flying around the universe handing phasers to cavemen. (Although that might help settle the infamous argument.) But at worse, it allows Starfleet to stand back and let atrocities roll.
Call me old fashioned, but I think the Allies were right to fight the Nazis. DS9 grappled with this issue in a sidelong way, but who could listen to accounts of the Bajoran genocide, torture, and internment camps without thinking, "Hey, shouldn't Starfleet have lent a hand?"
2. Aliens
There should be more of them serving on Starfleet ships. There are about as many non-humans serving in Starfleet as there are non-whites. Both imbalances should be severely corrected. It was always interesting when a Starfleet ship docked at DS9, disgorging a crew of what looked, to the DS9 audience, like a whole lotta white humans.
3. Holodeck
Just knock it off, already. A starship would never launch with a holodeck, in the same way that a Navy ship would never launch with a porn theater on board. It's just not going to happen. Holodecks are a ridiculous prop which only serves to foster lazy writers.
4. Pets
We either need more of them, or fewer. Whenever Porthos made an appearance on Enterprise I always got distracted wondering, "Where does he poop?" This question either needs to be definitively answered (in which case there would be dogs EVERYWHERE on ship, and I love the idea of a ship-board dog park), or pets need to be banned. Maybe each ship could have a Ship's Cat on retainer. (I recommend naming it Frankenstein.)
5. Crime
You simply can't put that many people together for that long, and not have crime. Everything from petty theft to murder. "The brig" occasionally comes up in conversation, but I'd like to see it used more, and to greater effect. I know we're expected to believe that Starfleet folks are the best of the best, and would never EVER do something bad or ill-conceived, but it's time to get real.
How about you?