Enterprise: The Rewrite

#1
Ah, Star Trek: Enterprise. What can I say about it that hasn't already been said? The horrible writing, the boring direction, the racism, the genocide, the sexism, the overall idiocy...

More than a few excellent fanfiction writers have taken the shit Berman and Braga delivered to us over four years and turned it into gold. My favorite is taralon's excellent "Star Trek: Enterprise: The Open Door" I highly recommend it, you can read it here.

So, in my usual way of encouraging people to write when I can't, I open this thread for speculation about how you would have done Star Trek: Enterprise. Keep the same actors and characters, or lose them. Keep the setting the same or alter it. I'd just like to see your ideas.

For my own? Well, they borrow heavily from "The Open Door", for the most part, but here are a few:

-Just roll with the Alternate Universe thing. The Borg ship debris in the North Pole would've worked perfectly as an explanation for the more advanced technology.

-Andor and Vulcan in a cold war with Earth in the middle, but have the Tellarites more involved from the beginning as either a third player or perhaps a client race of the Andorians. The Denobulans are an insulated, semi-xenophobic race that sends the "soft" members of it's society out to explore the universe and confirm their views of their superiority. This explains Phlox's really twisted views very well.

-Have an actual Starfleet out there. With the knowledge from the crashed Borg ship that there are probably plenty of big bads out there they can't handle, you get a more defensively thinking Earth who is committed to defending it's people and it's neighbors. the NX series doesn't have to be it's best armed ships or even it's biggest, just it's fastest and most advanced.

-Vulcan moving away from it's roots in Surak due to a politically minded few is also very good, so run with it. Have the Andorians plotting to influence Earth, who has been building up it's infrastructure extremely quickly in preparation for the Vulcans to finally let up. Once that happens, humanity will spread out among the stars even faster than they already are.

-Have the majority of ships in Starfleet resemble rockets with warp engines attached. It hasn't been until relatively recently that they've moved away from those old fashioned vessels into sleeker models influenced by tech and even knowledge from the future, but they're building them fast enough that soon those old fashioned vessels will be out.

-If you insist on doing the "Broken Bow" story, have it stretched out over a season's worth of episodes. If you don't, a couple of other ways to get Enterprise out there do exist. Distress call from a small colony that's being attacked by a mysterious enemy to lead up to a story arc towards revealing the Romulans, tensions between the Andorians and the Tellarites, maybe first contact with the Betazoids over their being used in the Andorian/Vulcan Cold War... You just need to think a little, and the possibilities easily present themselves.

So, go for it.
 
#2
And possibly humanity gaining the respect of the Andorians given mankind kicking the Kzinti's ass in the Man-Kzin Wars.
 
#3
It depends on how it would work. Why would the Kzin attack Earth? And if they did, why would Vulcan not do anything about it? Or, if they did, how much did they do?

Other things to think about:

-The Suliban cell ship. It's capable of Warp 7, and it can cloak, so why not use it? Sure, it can't carry many people but it's still a hell of a lot better than a shuttlepod.

-Use the Suliban cloak. Why the hell would they not use it if they could? There's no Treaty of Algeron against cloaking. There's no reason it couldn't be used.

-In addition-If a crashed Borg sphere changes the Enterprise timeline into a tangent timeline, you can use time travel to explain why the Romulans are more advanced as well, since according to TOS the Romulan cloaking device was something the original Enterprise crew had never seen before. Considering the time travel stuff involved in the 2009 movie, it's possible that the Romulan's tech base has gotten a boost from the future as well. Investigating this would allow for a whole season worth of stories, showing or leading up to an alternate Romulan Wars.

-It's possible that due to the Borg technology from the future, human colonies got established a lot sooner and a lot faster. Like I said before, this gives you plenty of colonies established decades ago to explore and check up on. But, it also allows for political intrigue. A human colony being attacked by raiders but receiving no help from Earth might ally itself with a nearby power for protection, such as the Tellarites or Andorians. An Earth colony might have been established on the edge of Romulan space, and it is turned into a listening outpost by Romulans who surgically alter themselves to appear human so they can gather intelligence. In the "CoDominion" written universe by Isaac Asimov and Jerry Pournelle, there were colonies dominated by a particular human ethnicity or culture. Maxroy's Purchase, for instance, was a predominantly Mormon world. How do human religions interact with alien religions? Are there colonies that have embraced the Vulcan way? Are there colonies that have adopted Andorian, Tellarite, or other beliefs? Hell, even Kzin beliefs if we can get them in.

Guh. I just hate seeing so much wasted potential.
 
#4
The Kzin won't attack Earth directly. What they would attack is Alpha Centauri. And given it won't be the deprogramed for war and conflict people that live there in the Known Universe (in fact the novels say they had a strong martial tradition) it will get ugly.

Though it does raise exactly what the Vulcans and other local powers think of the Kzin.

And of course there's the Tholians to add to this party.
 
#5
Yeah, but in the Known Space universe, even if humans were for the most part "deprogrammed" for violence, we had communication lasers, those boosting lasers from Mercury that can reach across the solar system, fusion-driven starships that can direct their exhaust plumes into enemy ships, and mass drivers that can accelerate big heavy things at a significant percentage of c. We were also dealing with slower-than-light enemy starships. Granted, they'd be moving at a pretty high percentage of c but we'd still see them coming. After all, barring FTL travel and what amounts to magic, there Ain't No Stealth in Space ?.

It was hyperdrive that turned the war against the Kzinti around, and it was at least 70 years before the Outsiders gave us that. Here the Kzinti would have warp drive, like us, and would have been out in space longer than us. Meaning they'd probably have a much bigger industrial base with which to hit us.

On the other hand, if we have subspace sensors we could "see" the Kzinti ships in transit, and when they drop out of warp we can destroy them. Though that still limits our range.
 

Khortez

Well-Known Member
#6
Ok, I might be heavily influenced by fanon here, but wasn't one of the main problems of the Suliban Cell Ship that it released too much radiation?
 
#7
Khortez said:
Ok, I might be heavily influenced by fanon here, but wasn't one of the main problems of the Suliban Cell Ship that it released too much radiation?
That's fanon. Which makes them not using it even more stupid...
 
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