As must be obvious, I've come to the conclusion that Enterprise is a dead duck and should be cancelled as early as possible. To revive the Star Trek franchise, an entirely new approach and plotline is needed. This, of course means we would have to fire the entire existing team of scriptwriters and replace them with people who knew how to write and supervise them strictly (a team of BABB members having that responsibility). B&B would, of course, be cast into the outer darkness.

The new series would be Star Trek - Liberation based on the collapse of the Evil Federation. Voyager (where the continuity problems are appalling) can be dismissed as a side-story with the characters in the new series making sarcastic remarks about how the Voyager logs were proving to have been falsified and most Voyager stories were Federation propaganda. The end of DS9 and the defeat of the Dominion would be the bounce-off point for the new series. It would have Star Fleet as the unequivocal bad guys and the rebels the heroes - think "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" Federation-wide. A group of veterans who have all lost their families as a result of Star Fleet's policies have their eyes opened and realize that Star Fleet Must Go. These veterans and the Ferenghi are the good guys and eventually depose the evil Federation and reveal its loathsome character.

It could start off with low humor as the iconoclastic rebels run rings around the bungling incompetents of Star Trek We can have the hypothetical group of veterans meeting up with Maquis survivors to form the "Resistance". It would be fun to show existing characters in a new and much less favorable light. Janeway becomes an overbearing and arrogant virago, Picard a naive and bumbling bureaucrat, Sisco (who wasn't really carried away by the Prophets but "investigated" by Star Fleet security) is shown as a pompous and posturing windbag.

As one major story arc we have the growing alliance with the Ferenghi (who we can also make over into a much more rounded and multi-dimensional characters representing the voice of sanity and common-sense). It can turn out that the Ferenghi have finally lost patience with Hoo-mans and have started a quiet economic war with the Federation.

The dramatic possibilities are endless, particularly since the series will be looking at the stories through a totally different set of eyes. The rebellion has to start and recruit (and, of course, prevent itself being infiltrated by Starfleet security). We can then learn that all of our favorite shows and episodes were edited by some of the federation propagandaists to make them look more heroic. We can then get the other side of the story in this series. Heck this can be the first season or so of the series. Recreate the old episodes of the other series and tell the "real" story of them. The stories can be told in flashback as people join the growing resistance and the reasons behind their actions are shown. This allows us to eliminate some of the continuity and Bad Science/Bad Astronomy in them.

We can hire a few Vietcong Veterans to give technical advice on running insurgencies. In the Star Trek - Liberation, by the way, central characters should get killed off regularly. Nobody watching the start of a show should be able to guarantee that their favorite character will be alive at the end. Also, the resistance don't always win; sometimes they get their clocks cleaned. That happened in MI5/Spooks this week; they spent an episode building a character up then killed her horribly at the end.

After the first series (which is essential comedic in its approach) the episodes get darker and darker as the reality of Federation despotism and oppression become more apparent. Throughout this period we see the Romulans, Klingons etc appearing but their actions and behavior now seen in a totally different context. The series climax is the outbreak of a l a major civil war that ends with the overthrow of Star Fleet and the federation and the restoration of freedom etc to the suffering humanity of the galaxy.

(This text edited to correct some spelling mistakes. Also, I forgot to include my appreciation to Humphrey, without whose help, I would not have been able to assemble these chaotic thoughts into a readable text)