Star Trek: Reboot The Universe
Over the decades, Star Trek has become so insular, so strictly dened, and placed so many layers upon itself that some of the essence of what made us love it in the rst place has been lost. The all-too-reasonable desire to protect the franchise may now be the cause of its stagnation. (Star Trek Re-Boot the Universe. A Proposal for Re-Imagining the First Five Year Mission) J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5) and Bryce Zabel (Dark Skies) conceived of a separate universe where Star Trek could start from scratch and be re-imagined while keeping the original universe intact and untouched. Envisioned as taking the characters, settings and storylines from TOS and updating them with modern television storytelling techniques, the pilot would have told how Kirk, Spock and McCoy met and of Kirks ascension to the Captains chair. Intended as a 5 year series, each season would have captured a year in the life of the Enterprises crew with a definitive ending and a return to Earth at the end of the series. Like TOS this re-imagined series would have tapped into prominent sci-fi and horror writers such as Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Ann Rice and Michael Crichton.