But both shows abandoned key parts of their premise. The idea of small remnant of humanity fleeing the genocide of the human race is a very dark and heavy concept. But Battlestar Galactica downplayed the grimness in favor of the light, family-friendly tone that TV audiences were looking for in the wake of Star Wars. And Star Trek frequently ignored the Enterprise's civilian population and mostly dispensed with the deep-space exploration angle. The majority of TNG episodes keep the ship in explored space, rescuing Federation colonies, dealing with Klingons and Romulans, or putting out diplomatic brush fires. People who criticize the Enterpise-D's interior design as being too hotel-like are missing the point: it was supposed to be that way because the show was originally going to be about a long-term mission of deep-space exploration.
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| Designer Andrew Probert's early concepts for the Enterprise interiors were even more hotel-like than what we eventually saw on the show |
I've always been interested in doing something like that with Star Trek. A Battlestar-like Star Trek tale would be fascinating for a number of reasons. But before we get too far into what those reasons are, let's lay out a rough outline of the story that's rattling around in my head.
- Stardate 48500. (Before Generations but after TNG season 7) The main "Alpha Quadrant" civilizations (Federation, Klingon, Romulan, and Cardassian Empires) are swiftly destroyed by a aggressive and angry strain of Borg (more on that later) who pop out of transwarp and fire nova bombs into the stars of key systems. (How does a "nova bomb" work? Surprisingly well.)
- Picard's Enterprise rescues a large number of refugees (10,000+) including some runabouts that fled from DS9 as the Bajoran system was destroyed. The O'Briens, Dr. Bashir and Garak are among them. It eventually joins a fleet of civilian ships of Federation, Klingon, Romulan, and Cardassian origin at a remote outpost on the very edge of explored space.
- With the Borg sweeping toward them and destruction imminent, a recently-returned Wesley Crusher uses his Traveler powers to "jump" the fleet over 117,000 light years into intergalactic space in the direction of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The effort leaves him comatose.
- There's no way the Borg can follow them, but there are new problems. The fleet is impossibly far away from the Milky Way. In fact, they're three-quarters of the way to the Large Magellanic Cloud.
- At Warp 9.6, it would take over 20 years to travel the remaining 40,750 LY to the Large Magellanic, but none of the civilian ships can go that fast. Even if they could, not even the Enterprise has enough fuel to travel at any warp speed for that long.
- Supplies and power are limited. In intergalactic space there's less free hydrogen for the Bussard collectors to scoop up to replinish the deuterium supply. (One "episode" will have us detecting a hydrogen streamer connecting the Milky Way and Large Magellanic Cloud and traveling to it.) There are also no stars or planets (although rogue solar systems or planets might be encountered on the journey, the chance of finding a star with a Class-M planet out here is practically zero)
- This is not a happy, unified fleet. Some ships are from unaligned worlds and aren't willing to accept Picard's authority. Many of the alien races in the fleet (including Cardassians) don't have enough individuals left to create a stable gene pool and are doomed to die out, causing them to be angry and desperate.
- The highest-ranking Federation official left is Serikia Xiramin, a Bolian member of the Federation Council. She was a fierce critic of Starfleet due to recent scandals (Adm. Kennelly's plan to arm Bajoran insurgents, and the plot by Adm. Pressman and others in Starfleet Intelligence to subvert the Treaty of Algeron) and is determined to maintain civilian rule. She'll go about setting up an ad-hoc Federation Council made up of representatives from the various ships.
- At some point, agents of the Romulan Tal'Shiar and Cardassian Obsidian Order try to take over the fleet. Much action and drama ensues.
- No one knows if Wesley will wake up, and if he'll be able to "jump" them the rest of the way to the Large Magellanic Cloud when he does. Geordi and O'Brien come up with a way to accelerate to 0.9999999c using a low-level subspace field to reduce the ship's mass. This will shrink the journey to only 18.2 years but it won't protect them from the effects of relativity.
- This means that for every day they travel at this speed, 6.13 years will pass for the rest of the universe. For each year of their journey, 2239 years will pass. By the time they reach the Large Magellanic Cloud, 40,750 years will have passed for the rest of the universe. What will they find when they finally decelerate? 40,000 years is time enough for the rise, fall, and rise of many civilizations.
- In the meantime, the fleet continues onward, on the lookout for rogue solar systems or planets where they might find resources (like a gas giant that the Enterprise could scoop hydrogen from the atmosphere to quickly replenish the fleet's deuterium supply). Of course, they'd have to use energy to decelerate, so if they choose to stop anywhere it better be worth it.
And now for some questions you might have:
Why this story? When Ron Moore left Star Trek after a brief, unhappy stint on Voyager, he had a lot to say about how Rick Berman's Star Trek had lost its way, and I agree with him 100%. As I said earlier, it's obvious that his BSG reboot was his way of pushing back against a lot of that. And although the show was often too dark for my tastes it got me thinking about what a Star Trek version of that story might look like.
Because of the way Berman-era Star Trek operated, we never really saw the TNG crew get seriously tested (aside from Picard during "Chain of Command"). They barely ever left Federation space, always seemed to be in easy range of a safe comfy Starbase, and were almost always in real-time communications range of a Starfleet Admiral who could tell Picard what to do when he ran into a serious problem. (Interestingly, the only episode I can think of that put the Admirals out of communications range and therefore put the hard decision on Picard's shoulders is Ron Moore's "The Defector". It consistently makes TNG best-of lists.) In many episodes, the crew seems to spend only a quarter of the running time dealing with actual problems. The rest of the time they're drinking in Ten-Forward, playing on the holodeck, or going to classical music concerts. This isn't a recent criticism, either. Jokes like this one from the April 1993 issue of Starlog make it clear that fans have always noticed how little time the TNG crew spent actually doing anything:
Because of the way Berman-era Star Trek operated, we never really saw the TNG crew get seriously tested (aside from Picard during "Chain of Command"). They barely ever left Federation space, always seemed to be in easy range of a safe comfy Starbase, and were almost always in real-time communications range of a Starfleet Admiral who could tell Picard what to do when he ran into a serious problem. (Interestingly, the only episode I can think of that put the Admirals out of communications range and therefore put the hard decision on Picard's shoulders is Ron Moore's "The Defector". It consistently makes TNG best-of lists.) In many episodes, the crew seems to spend only a quarter of the running time dealing with actual problems. The rest of the time they're drinking in Ten-Forward, playing on the holodeck, or going to classical music concerts. This isn't a recent criticism, either. Jokes like this one from the April 1993 issue of Starlog make it clear that fans have always noticed how little time the TNG crew spent actually doing anything:
And while those more relaxed moments made the characters more three-dimensional, they also tended to make life on the Enterprise-D seem like a cruise on a spaceborne Love Boat. So let's put our characters in an actual difficult situation. Let's see this massive starship packed with 10 times the number of people it normally carries and stranded impossibly far from home as the characters struggle to deal with the destruction of their entire civilization. We'll see the senior officers give up their comfortable quarters to refugee families and relocate to cramped junior officers' quarters. (One story beat will see O'Brien's family living on the runabout they arrived in until Picard finds out and gives them his quarters.) Some civilians will have to live in cargo bays that have been converted to barracks. There aren't any quiet, darkened lounges for our people to retreat to anymore. All the Enterprise's public areas are teeming with civilian refugees. Even the dolphins are gone (in a flashback scene, we'll learn that the cetacean crew were spooked by the destruction of the USS Odyssey and elected to leave starship service. This fortuitously leaves more space to be converted for the needs of the civilians) Dr. Bashir will spend most of his time traveling between the civilian ships tending to their medical needs, and O'Brien will do the same for the civilian fleet's engineering needs.
On BSG we've barely met the characters when the apocalypse strikes. But the crew of the Enterprise-D are familiar to us. Captain Sisko once said "It's easy to be a saint in paradise." So let's see what these characters do if you take them out of paradise. Let's see Picard struggle to uphold Federation values in a world where the Federation is gone. On BSG, the fleet was made up of Colonial ships and they almost always went along with Adama because they recognized his authority as a Commander in the Colonial military. But not all the ships in this fleet are Federation. Besides the Romulan, Cardassian, and Klingon ships there will also be an antimatter tanker from Farius Prime, the seedy unaligned world we saw in DS9's "Honor Among Thieves". Picard will face situations where it would be easier to use the might of the Enterprise to force cooperation, and we see him struggle to come up with a more diplomatic solution.
Angry, aggressive Borg? What's wrong with you? When we first met the Borg in the second season TNG episode "Q-Who?" they were a single-minded swarm of cyborgs who only consumed technology. People were beneath their notice. The last time we see them in the Star Trek chronology, they've transmogrified into villains who are primarily interested in assimilating people and planets. Although they still have a collective consciousness, they're led by a queen who has a distinct personality and makes all the stereotypical Evil Overlord mistakes that allow our people to defeat her. That's a pretty big change. But rather than come up with an interesting explanation the writing staff of Star Trek:Voyager pretended the Borg had always been that way, because Voyager's writers were allergic to smart creative decisions. So I put on my Geoff Johns hat and came up with an explanation myself.
It goes like this: sometime before TNG's "The Best of Both Worlds" one of the Delta Quadrant races threatened by the Borg tried to disrupt their collective consciousness with a computer virus. But as the Borg do, they adapt. Rather than fracture the collective, the virus created an aberrant personality within it: the Queen. Unlike the coldly logical Borg uni-mind, the Queen personality had many of the flaws common to humanoid minds. She craved power for its own sake. She could be overconfident, petty, vicious, and greedy. She arrogantly believed herself to be perfect. Over time she gained more influence over the Borg to the point that she became the personification of the collective, kind of like the way Agent Smith took over the Matrix. That's why they started assimilating people eventually became ineffectual enough to be thwarted over and over by the crew of Voyager.
In this version of the story, the Queen personality becomes seriously unbalanced and angry at Picard for rejecting her and at the Federation (and by extension all Alpha Quadrant civilizations) for successfully resisting the Borg. Hence the apocalypse. And unlike the Cylons, the Borg won't be following the fleet when it jumps out of our galaxy. Why not? For one thing, this story is only inspired by BSG, it's not a direct copy. And if the Borg are powerful enough to detect the fleet at such extreme range and transwarp 117,000 light years to chase it, then what's to keep them from wiping the fleet out altogether? The Borg stay in the Milky Way.
Why strand our fleet so far out in intergalactic space?
Space operas like Star Trek have the tendency to make the universe seem as densely packed as New York City block, full of solar systems with habitable planets. But it's not. Space is 99.9% empty, which is why it's called "space" and not "stuff". I want to put our Star Trek characters in a situation more like real space travel, where all you have is what you brought with you, solar systems are incredibly rare, and inhabitable planets are practically impossible to find. Of course, the Large Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy and probably has all of that. If only they can get there.
Also, I really wanted to play with the notion of relativistic travel, something that Star Trek has never touched in 50 years. As our fleet moves toward the Large Magellanic at such a high percentage of light speed, the impassable gulf between them and the Milky Way increases not only in terms of distance but also temporally. Unless they find some kind of shortcut, by the time our people reach the Large Magellanic 40,000 years will have passed for the rest of the universe.
So that's my idea. I have a more detailed plot outline in my head, and will probably turn it into a proper story treatment and post it at some point.
On BSG we've barely met the characters when the apocalypse strikes. But the crew of the Enterprise-D are familiar to us. Captain Sisko once said "It's easy to be a saint in paradise." So let's see what these characters do if you take them out of paradise. Let's see Picard struggle to uphold Federation values in a world where the Federation is gone. On BSG, the fleet was made up of Colonial ships and they almost always went along with Adama because they recognized his authority as a Commander in the Colonial military. But not all the ships in this fleet are Federation. Besides the Romulan, Cardassian, and Klingon ships there will also be an antimatter tanker from Farius Prime, the seedy unaligned world we saw in DS9's "Honor Among Thieves". Picard will face situations where it would be easier to use the might of the Enterprise to force cooperation, and we see him struggle to come up with a more diplomatic solution.
Angry, aggressive Borg? What's wrong with you? When we first met the Borg in the second season TNG episode "Q-Who?" they were a single-minded swarm of cyborgs who only consumed technology. People were beneath their notice. The last time we see them in the Star Trek chronology, they've transmogrified into villains who are primarily interested in assimilating people and planets. Although they still have a collective consciousness, they're led by a queen who has a distinct personality and makes all the stereotypical Evil Overlord mistakes that allow our people to defeat her. That's a pretty big change. But rather than come up with an interesting explanation the writing staff of Star Trek:Voyager pretended the Borg had always been that way, because Voyager's writers were allergic to smart creative decisions. So I put on my Geoff Johns hat and came up with an explanation myself.
It goes like this: sometime before TNG's "The Best of Both Worlds" one of the Delta Quadrant races threatened by the Borg tried to disrupt their collective consciousness with a computer virus. But as the Borg do, they adapt. Rather than fracture the collective, the virus created an aberrant personality within it: the Queen. Unlike the coldly logical Borg uni-mind, the Queen personality had many of the flaws common to humanoid minds. She craved power for its own sake. She could be overconfident, petty, vicious, and greedy. She arrogantly believed herself to be perfect. Over time she gained more influence over the Borg to the point that she became the personification of the collective, kind of like the way Agent Smith took over the Matrix. That's why they started assimilating people eventually became ineffectual enough to be thwarted over and over by the crew of Voyager.
In this version of the story, the Queen personality becomes seriously unbalanced and angry at Picard for rejecting her and at the Federation (and by extension all Alpha Quadrant civilizations) for successfully resisting the Borg. Hence the apocalypse. And unlike the Cylons, the Borg won't be following the fleet when it jumps out of our galaxy. Why not? For one thing, this story is only inspired by BSG, it's not a direct copy. And if the Borg are powerful enough to detect the fleet at such extreme range and transwarp 117,000 light years to chase it, then what's to keep them from wiping the fleet out altogether? The Borg stay in the Milky Way.
Why strand our fleet so far out in intergalactic space?
Space operas like Star Trek have the tendency to make the universe seem as densely packed as New York City block, full of solar systems with habitable planets. But it's not. Space is 99.9% empty, which is why it's called "space" and not "stuff". I want to put our Star Trek characters in a situation more like real space travel, where all you have is what you brought with you, solar systems are incredibly rare, and inhabitable planets are practically impossible to find. Of course, the Large Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy and probably has all of that. If only they can get there.
Also, I really wanted to play with the notion of relativistic travel, something that Star Trek has never touched in 50 years. As our fleet moves toward the Large Magellanic at such a high percentage of light speed, the impassable gulf between them and the Milky Way increases not only in terms of distance but also temporally. Unless they find some kind of shortcut, by the time our people reach the Large Magellanic 40,000 years will have passed for the rest of the universe.
So that's my idea. I have a more detailed plot outline in my head, and will probably turn it into a proper story treatment and post it at some point.
