If I had the power to take over the Star Trek franchise at any time during its history, the moment I would choose would be just after Unification, Part I: TNG was at its height of popularity. Every thread had come together to form the seed of a vast, star-flung epic of interstellar war between the Federation and the Romulan Empire.
And then, with Unification, Part II, the producers and writers chickened out: The crisis was averted through a convenient deus ex machina, the character of Sela was conveniently shuffled off-stage, and Spock’s insurgent philosophies were wiped from the series’ memory.
Perhaps we’d lose the brilliance of “I, Borg”, “The Inner Light”, “The Chain of Command”, and a few other classics… but TNG could be turned from its eventual decline to a vibrant new life in which the political machinations of the Klingons, Romulans, and Cardassians would all be interwoven into a compelling saga.
If we wanted to get really daring, Picard would be promoted to Admiral – although his role on the series would continue (he would be the lynchpin which would allow us to get a wider perspective on the war without contrivance; and the Enterprise would be his pet ship for black ops assignments).
Then, when TNG had come to its natural conclusion along with the Romulan War, we would skip the ultimately stagnant waters of DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise – opting to take the franchise in a bold new direction: Hiring visionaries like Vernor Vinge and Iain Banks, we would re-imagine a future a hundred years in TNG’s future… in which all of the scientific devices and innovations we have seen on the series are taken to their logical conclusion.
