I've always been curious about this and why they went to the Enterprise D instead of the B or C for shows from a production standpoint and how the B-C era would have been in terms of a show standpoint as well.
Why was there never a show set on the Enterprise B or C, and what would a show with those ships have been like?
- Thread starter Snowdrop82
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That makes sense. The B-C area seems a lot like a "lost era" of trek, nearly a century that hasn't really been explored all that much.
Well, in another universe, here's Captain Harriman being the latest in the line of "Kirk Successors", so to speak:
Carter is his first officer, and Deidre is the next best thing to first mate!
But in seriousness, we know how the "C" ends, just not what leads to it. But "B" has only its introduction and not the full course of events, including where it ended up at.
Carter is his first officer, and Deidre is the next best thing to first mate!
But in seriousness, we know how the "C" ends, just not what leads to it. But "B" has only its introduction and not the full course of events, including where it ended up at.
Appropriately enough that's the term used for that era.
Before Undiscovered Country and Generations.... A B series could have been a Captain Sulu series. He either gets the B as his first command or after a brief stint on Excelsior.
An Enterprise B series might feel like Star Trek Phase II or TNG Season 1. It likely could have revisited more TOS plots and locations. It definitely would have felt more like a TOS continuation in the TMP era.
An Enterprise B series might feel like Star Trek Phase II or TNG Season 1. It likely could have revisited more TOS plots and locations. It definitely would have felt more like a TOS continuation in the TMP era.
There's even enough time that we could have the adventures of the classified "Enterprise-Alef", a ship that only exists in redacted documents.
It would have been pretty much identical but with a different letter on the hull, surely?
Remember, Denny Martin Flynn who co-wrote Star Trek VI, wanted a scene where they handed the keys (literal keys, which were on the helm station in STVI in an ignition) over to the TNG crew at the end of the film. Someone eventually clued him into the fact the show is set 70 years later on a different ship named Enterprise...
In fact the original plan was to set TNG in the late 25th century, aboard the Enterprise NCC-1701-7, and have it be even further removed from TOS than it ended up being.
Which is ironic, because TNG season 1 was barely any different from TOS.
I think that a show set on the enterprise-B would not have been a desirable format for TV networks.
Things won't happen there 'till Tuesday'.
Things won't happen there 'till Tuesday'.
Pretty much this. Let’s look at the three ship shows we did get: TNG, VOY, and ENT. For the most part, the episodic format of those shows were exactly the same, only with different crews wearing different uniforms on a different ship. Make Voyager the Enterprise-C, or the NX-01 the Enterprise-B, and very little would have changed.
Hey, that would've been a built-in advertisement if they aired new episodes every week on that day.
To be fair, early TNG did have a sense of being a bit different and more advanced. Besides the general sense of physical comfort on the ship, I remember being struck a couple of times during the first two seasons when something knocked the ship spinning off some distance, and… — I don’t remember the episode, but the image is very clear: the ship is violently knocked spinning away, but Picard and company are standing around the bridge, concerned but undisturbed (unlike the old TOS Everybody fall this way! Now everybody fall that way!). Suggesting the ship’s gravity and inertial dampers were just that good now.
Later seasons let that fade away, I assume for understandable visual-drama reasons.
My old concept for an Enterprise-B show would involve Capt Harriman having an inferiority complex about having the "next" Enterprise, essentially living in Kirk's shadow, trying like hell but always coming up short - always being "just the B." Of course the interest in the show would be him overcoming his complex and eventually coming into his own.
First of all, what they should have done, is an anthology...
This would have come after TNG, and made use, of some bits of history mentioned in TOS, and TNG.
The purpose would be to fill in some gaps in the history.
For example in the season 4 writer's guide, there is mention that the Federation has come to a plateau in warp drive development.
This means that no faster warp drives are expected, period. So, you are stuck. What does the Federation do?
Keep in mind that one of the things about TOS is that 'Galaxy travel is fully perfected', thos comes from the opening chapters of 'The Making of Star Trek '. And most likely refers to a top speed of .73 of one light-year per hour being attained. In the pilot episode 'The Cage', mention is made by Navigator Jose Tyler, that the time barrier has been broken.
THIS is important.
It means that it took much longer to get anywhere before it was broken. It means that the time warp factor order at the beginning of 'The Cage', is refers to something else.
Which begs the question what exactly is a time warp? The logical interpretation is a compression of time - in other words acceleration. Acceleration is extremely interesting - due to the fact that coupled with acceleration is time squared. Meaning that shorter distances take longer to travel than long distances do. Meaning that at some point you are going to reach an optimal speed solution. In other words the rocket equation in in play.
Going to the second pilot, one finds out that automated freighters take twenty years to get 'out there', then one can see just why Tyler was so excited.
So coming forward to the Enterprise-B, let's keep the warp factor 12 and 14 from FASA...
But what has been happening since the breaking of the time barrier is just how messed up things are., and the various "cures" attempted for those problems. So, we could have multigenerational attempts story lines.
Such that by the time of the beginning of TNG, peak speed is now up to one light-year per hour and that getting up there, is a piece of cake, now.
Because when one is talking about space travel, one must remember that it takes time.
But overall of this good and great stories are absolutely required.
This would have come after TNG, and made use, of some bits of history mentioned in TOS, and TNG.
The purpose would be to fill in some gaps in the history.
For example in the season 4 writer's guide, there is mention that the Federation has come to a plateau in warp drive development.
This means that no faster warp drives are expected, period. So, you are stuck. What does the Federation do?
Keep in mind that one of the things about TOS is that 'Galaxy travel is fully perfected', thos comes from the opening chapters of 'The Making of Star Trek '. And most likely refers to a top speed of .73 of one light-year per hour being attained. In the pilot episode 'The Cage', mention is made by Navigator Jose Tyler, that the time barrier has been broken.
THIS is important.
It means that it took much longer to get anywhere before it was broken. It means that the time warp factor order at the beginning of 'The Cage', is refers to something else.
Which begs the question what exactly is a time warp? The logical interpretation is a compression of time - in other words acceleration. Acceleration is extremely interesting - due to the fact that coupled with acceleration is time squared. Meaning that shorter distances take longer to travel than long distances do. Meaning that at some point you are going to reach an optimal speed solution. In other words the rocket equation in in play.
Going to the second pilot, one finds out that automated freighters take twenty years to get 'out there', then one can see just why Tyler was so excited.
So coming forward to the Enterprise-B, let's keep the warp factor 12 and 14 from FASA...
But what has been happening since the breaking of the time barrier is just how messed up things are., and the various "cures" attempted for those problems. So, we could have multigenerational attempts story lines.
Such that by the time of the beginning of TNG, peak speed is now up to one light-year per hour and that getting up there, is a piece of cake, now.
Because when one is talking about space travel, one must remember that it takes time.
But overall of this good and great stories are absolutely required.
Actually, what I meant was that the visual aesthetic of the show went right back to being similar to TOS as opposed to the quite different TOS film era. They went back to the same divisional colors and simple uniforms of the TOS era; the ships now had red bussards just like the TOS Enterprise; the way the ship would be filmed panning across the screen over a planet, just like in TOS, etc. etc.
Okay, as it's come up, here's my idea for a Trek anthology series (including "The B"). I did this up before Enterprise was even announced! Of course the way TV shows are even done has changed completely since then. The idea was a weekly network series rotating between four time periods. In a 24-episode season you end up with six episodes of each show, a new one of a particular series dropping every 4 weeks in the rotation. The plots would be totally unrelated, but if that turns out to be annoying, maybe have a mystery running through the time periods, with a key clue in each episode to build interest.
The Enterprise-B won’t be ready until Tuesday
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