10 Rules The New Star Trek TV Show Must Follow

3. The Audience Expects An Ongoing Storyline

This didn't always use to be the case with the general public, but in recent years there has been an expectation that high end drama series will have continuing threads woven into individual episodes. This has always been a danger to science fiction shows in general as it means that while existing viewers are invested in the show, it becomes harder for new viewers to jump on board. You only need look at shows like Fringe recently to see what happens when the storyline becomes so in depth that there is no way that you can just start watching it in the middle of a series. But shows like Lost and Homeland mean that the public are now much more aware of this. In Star Trek this has only been done on a handful of occasions, such as the start of season two and the end of the final season of Deep Space Nine. Enterprise had the Xindi arc and the mini-arcs in the final season (not to mention the Temporal Cold War). Perhaps it is shows like Doctor Who that do it best €“ the episodes stand alone, but with a single element or question that links them all together. That way you avoid a situation like with Babylon 5 where if you missed an episode then it suddenly felt like the end of the world because you didn't know why G'Kar was doing the following week. This is a rule that needs to be carefully applied by any new Star Trek show as it is not something that they can easily replicate from an earlier series but it something that needs to be thought about so that it doesn't seem so dated. The ongoing story should be plotting out for the season (or even the series) as if it was an episode - the fans know when you're making something up as you go along and while the show will want to be able to change things due to unforeseen circumstances or because something just plainly doesn't work - if it isn't planned at the beginning then it'll never be planned properly. The best storylines are ones that we don't know are there - need I say Bad Wolf?