Star Trek:USS ARK

[RobertScorpio]

Yes...strange title...but here it goes..

This show would be centered around a ship that is tasked with saving animals from planets that face ecological or actual distruction. The captain is some Star Fleet type (think Tom Paris as we first met him) mainly do to his ability to run a ship. But the rest of the crew is staffed by science types.

It sounds silly, but I think the interesting lifeforms we'd be introduced to could be interesting. They would be taken to a special planet dedicated to preserving endangered life forms..and no, I don't mean a zoo planet, because I have problems with some aspects of zoos. Just a planet dedicated to saving these life forms.

The scifi would come from the different types of life and different types of planets they come from.

With our youth very much interested in the ecology movement, I think a show like this would attract a new younger fan base. And it would allow TREK to go back to the basics..inspiring our youth with thought and compasion.

 

[sbk1234]

An interesting premise, actually. Personally, after five series, all fairly similar in their own ways, DS9 more of a stand out for change of formula, any drastically different approach would be provocative to me.
Unfortunately, I don't think the general public - or most Trek fans for that matter - would be too receptive. Probably just me and 8 others world-wide.

 

[USS KG5]

The problem would be where your drama came from wouldn't it, there cannot be much actiuon in saving cute alien beasties.

Your show could quickly turn quite formulaic with a beastie of the week and a crisis of the week and everyone would doze off.

Not to mention creative aliens are hardly trek's forte, you would get a puppy with a wrinkly nose most weeks with the budget you could expect.

Now, as a premise for an EPISODE this could be kinda fun, the Enterprise is sent to save some beasties and resettle them, points are made about conservation, the crew try to keep one as a pet and it dies...

In fact the whole show could end on a downer as all the delicate animals die shortly after re-settlement due to being transferred and Starfleet re-afirms its commitment to non-interference, or some such.

 

[RobertScorpio]

I think there are more than enough plots they could do in this area. I would actually go so far as to say that TV TREKs were running out of ideas years ago and so we started to see a lot of the same stuff,just told with a new crew (Voy-ENT to be exact)

If they could squeeze out 28 seasons of Klingons-Borg-jem Hedar-Time Travel-God like beings-Strange mental disease episodes, they could come up with enough stories for USS ARK. And actually, if you think about it, it would bring in a whole new kind of writer..not the typical kinds of writers we have seen since TNG brought back TREk.

 

[USS KG5]

You mentioned half a dozen very broad kinds of stories as covering those 28 seasons, the list is not complete AND pretty much everyone agrees it got pretty tired at points anyhow.

Do you have more than one example for one season of your Ark show? How would you stop it becoming cute beastie of the week?

 

[hellsgate]

Mr. Robert Scorpio:

I don't mean to demean your idea as I think you've hit on something unique & special. I could see this as an intriguing new fan fiction series but I doubt it would generate much interest as a show, except perhaps as animated internet podcast screenplay or prose format entertainment item.

Perhaps you should consider submitting your manuscripts in ".pdf" format to some childrens' nature publications such as Chickadee Magazine. I'd also consider asking Pocket Books / Paramount-Viacom for permission to submit an environmentalist-niche "Star Trek" concept to the same kinds of Childrens' publications, then sit, wait & see what kinds of reactions you get.

The U.S.S. Ark, the flagship of a "Task Group" salvaged & recertified for active duty in late 2379 from the Starfleet Museum & attached to Starfleet's Diplomatic Corps.

A Collection of Community Leaders, Refugees, Volunteers & Starfleet Officers head out into the now-quiet battlefields to do what they can to save habitable planets in crisis from deciding to secede from the United Federation of Planets.

The Task Group it leads have been assigned to assist recovery & relocation of indigenous peoples & endangered species on planets decimated by either natural phenomena or as a result of Starfleet's participation & moral responsibility for past actions pertaining to Klingon, Dominion & Romulan War battles that have temporarily or permanently ruined/contaminated alien ecospheres.

Garonne

Overfield

Cosmos Royale


Stealing bandwidth makes Baby Jesus cry. If you own ShipSchematics.net, you can put the images back. Otherwise please either use hyperlinks or upload copies of the images to your own personal Photobucket (or similar) account. --biggles

 

[bryce]

I tend to agree that this would make a good one-off story, or series of stories, but not necessarily an entire series...but as a series of series, I think it'd be very interesting.

But...

Remember that episode of Enterprise where the Doc and Hoshi relocated that alien worm-thingy they found on a new planet because it was dying.

That always stuck me as a supremely ignorant plot point - just look at our own world's history or how transplanted species have become invasive species and wreaked entire ecosystems! You just want to drop some alien bug on some unsuspecting new ecosystem!? I mean seriously, WTF ARE YOU THINGINK!?
Think of the damage a transplanted extra-planetary species could do!? You might do lees damage just dropping a nuke. Even it that alien wormy-thing wouldn't just get eaten by the first alien birdy-thing that came along - likely poisoning the birdy-thing - if it survived, think of the possible disease it may pass along. I means, odds are, it wouldn't carry anything that could survive or infect in a completely different type of biology - then again - what would *it* eat in an entirely different biology!? And gods forbid the think was like a tribble and figured out how to breed... That was just a dumb-ass episode, for so many reasons.

(Did you know that if aliens had landed on Earth a 3 billion years ago, can you imagine the change in our evolution that would have been caused by one leaky alien porta-potty!? Likely, the less advanced Earth organisms would have been NO MATCH for the much more-evolved alien organisms and pathogens.)

As for the series idea...

Any planet that alien species were transplanted to would probably *HAVE* to be a kind of Zoo planet, terraformed specifically as an "Ark world" - or better yet a space habitat, and set up with individual biosphere habitats for life from each world. You couldn't just pick a planet, with life already on it, and throw in species from dozens or hundreds all separate different worlds on it, and just expect that they'd all live happily and successfully and in harmony like some Disney movie. Nature doesn't work that way. It's violent and competitive. And they'd never be able to live lives like they had before in their own biosphere.

In reality, it would probably HAVE to be a Zoo planet, with species living in tailored - likely artificial (partly holigraphic even!) habitats - where they would be held just to preserve them, or maybe held for preservation and captive breeding so they could be reintroduced back to their own native world's if the ecological problems on those world's could be solved. Or relocated to a new world teraformed specifically fro creatures from that one single ecosystm.

But while on that world, for better or worse, they would live a controlled and artificial existence.

That could even be part of the show - a taskforce that tries to use Starfleet tech to resolve major eco-catastrophes. (Asteroid impacts, industrial accidents, supervolcanoes.) But again, likely most of that wold violate the Prime Directive, which as much as I deeply respect, is often taken way too far in that the Fed's think it was wrong to even divert an asteroid to save a non-contacted world. They have attitude of "Well, it's there time to go, who are we to interfere!? And how can we predict how our saving them will impact the future!?" Even if the future for that planet or species...well, there is no future. (Of course, if thaty have made contact and can ask to be saved, sure, but of not, too bad.) But it's often considered better to let a species die utterly than to risk any interference at all and the possible future unintended consequences of getting involved.( And in the past, cultures and ecosystems have been decimated by colonialism, conquest, and and interference - and that's why I think the Prime Directive is a VERY good idea. But I think you can take it to the other extreme, create a dogma that says when should be black and white about this issue and NEVER interfere, at all, period. Even is that would destroy or decimate a species. But again, if some ancient astronauts had intervene to save the dinosaurs...we'd not be here...)

And btw, Zoos aren't *all* evil. Most modern zoos have the animals living in habitats that are very painstakingly recreated to be as natural-like as possible, they don't just toss animals in cages like in the past - and Zoo's help with captive breeding programs to breed animals for later wild re-introduction. And they allow people to get up close to creatures that they would NEVER otherwise see in the wild, and people *protect* what they love, and they love what they know. Zoo like whole generations of kids to get to see and know these creatures. < http://www.australiazoo.com.au/ > Plus, for some creatures, it may, sadly, be a zoo or extinction. (But again, just like with the Prime Directive) some people argue that death, even extinction, is better than an artificial existence. People have argued that it was wrong to save Knut. Better to let it die than be raised by people.

 

[hellsgate]

In reality, it would probably HAVE to be a Zoo planet, with species living in tailored - likely artificial (partly holigraphic even!) habitats - where they would be held just to preserve them, or maybe held for preservation and captive breeding so they could be reintroduced back to their own native world's if the ecological problems on those world's could be solved. Or relocated to a new world teraformed specifically fro creatures from that one single ecosystm.

But while on that world, for better or worse, they would live a controlled and artificial existence.

Agreed. A Dyson Sphere, a few Ournal-Class spacedock parks/preserves depending on whether or not the animal is already domesticated & 'people-friendly', or deposited on a recently rejuvinated "Project: Genesis" Planet (done to a far lesser degree & under far more highly controlled conditions than the original Genesis project Kirk & the Enterprise encountered.)

A terraformed world specifically for DNA cold-storage, cloning and/or re-integration of some kind.