William Shatner Pitches 'Starfleet Academy' Show

Tycoon Guy writes "TrekToday reports that William Shatner recently pitched an 'Academy' show to Paramount. The series would feature teen versions of the Classic Star Trek characters Kirk, Spock and McCoy, and be set at Starfleet Academy. The studio turned Shatner down, but he's not letting go of the idea: Pocket Books has asked him to write a two-novel series based on the 'Starfleet Academy' concept. Also, Shatner apparently went over the head of Trek head honcho Rick Berman to pitch his idea straight to the head of Paramount - maybe after Enterprise ends and Berman leaves the franchise, the studio will be more inclined to listen to Shatner?"

Comments

Shatner is copying Smallville

[zymano]

All these new teen shows on the alternative networks are the big ratings getters because of 'teen girls'. Purely a niche play.

I think he is putting money before the vision of Rodenberry.

Maybe he will have a ton of models be the crew. Should get good ratings for a while until teen girls viewers get bored by scifi which takes about a year for these demographic shows.

Not a bad idea

[PCM2]

Why is everybody so quick to knock this idea? I'd say the main problem is that it doesn't make much sense to have Kirk, Spock, etc. all hanging out at Starfleet together. For one thing, presumably the universe was a much smaller place before the Enterprise's original five-year mission. For another, we all know Spock served with Christopher Pike before Kirk came on board, so what's to suggest that he and Kirk were old school buddies?

Instead, why not do it with new characters? The only problem there is getting all the horrible "Next Generation" style moralizing out of it and keeping every character from being a different version of Wesley Crusher (jock Wesley, flirt Wesley, misunderstood loner Wesley, etc.) Hell, if you did it right, you could even bring back Wesley as an Academy instructor... why not?

Not sure I'd actually watch such a show, mind you, but it certainly doesn't sound any worse than the crap that's been passing for Star Trek in recent years.

No no no no no!!!!

[MagicDude]

Do NOT do a prequel to the TOS cast. If enterprise has taught us anything, it's that trying to write history to canon is full of pitfalls, and the nerds will never forgive even the smallest of errors. You'll also run into the problem that people had with enterprise in that the technology looked more advanced than TOS, simple because computer graphics were more advanced.

Also, it's a bit of a stretch to presume that all the TOS cast would be at the academy together. Kirk and Spock maybe, but all the junior officers are much younger than Kirk, Spock, and Bones (McCoy would have been at starfleet medical anyway).

An awesome show would be an academy show during the dominion war of an unknown group of cadets. So rather than being a futuristic "Saved by the Bell", you can follow these cadets in some of the extended duties they would have had to undertake during the war. We could even see how the attack on Starfleet Headquarters happened, since we only saw the aftermath in DS9.

Re:Hey Bill?

[AKAImBatman]

And another thing, Bones was WAY older than Kirk (by 15-20 years, I believe)! Especially when you consider that Kirk was the youngest Starfleet captain ever! (canon, I believe) The only way Bones would have been at the Academy during Kirk's tenure is if he was the Doctor on staff!

Re:Prequels are just plain HORRIBLE

[Guppy06]

"I could care less about what happened BEFORE"

Who cares what you want, I wanna see the Earth-Romulus War already! I wanna see the humans take all their anti-Vulcan aggression out on the other green-blooded, pointy-ear bastards!

In the episode where the Romulans were first introduced in TOS, they show a map of the Neutral Zone and it has Romulus on it, and yet Earth is nowhere on the map, as if the Neutral Zone is a whole lot closer to Romulus than it is to Earth. I wanna see that happen. :)

"give me BORG again."

God... why not ask for more Janeway while you're at it? The Borg were introduced as a whim to make a particular Q episode a little more interesting, and now the dead horse has been beaten for the better part of a decade. They can't even stay consistent for three seconds. How do you resolve the whole lustful Borg Queen with the way the Borg were originally portrayed, for example? They're supposed to be Daleks on legs, not the latest pin-up of the month!

I like trek but...

[Doverite]

Lets just let the whole thing be done and do something new. The problem with the trek universe is the TREK UNIVERSE every time someone tries to do something new it conflicts with the history or the prime directive or what someone thinks aught to be done. I say start fresh and different.

"Kobayashi Maru" book did this very well.

[sampson7]

One of my favorite Star Trek books, called The Kobayashi Maru, involved several of the main characters re-telling stories of their academy days. It is really a compelling little book and extremely well written.

Several of the stories focus on the Kobayashi Maru doomsday scenario that's referenced in one of the Star Trek movies, but several deal with other aspects of a Star Fleet Academy education.

If Shatner had this type of material in in mind then the project might actually be worth while. Anyway, it's a great read for any Star Trek fan -- the author really captures each character's own nuances.

Just remember, it can't be any worse than the first (and for me, last) episode of Enterprise.

Smallville better than Superman IMHO

[N8F8]

I used to hate Superman. I liked Batman and human superheros better. What kind of a turtured soul can you have when you can't even be hurt? How about being uncorrupted by ultimate power? No, Smallville gets it right. Internal conflict between a evil destiny and being raised with a apple pie morality. Good stuff. It also helps explain his relationship with Lex Luthor.

Re:Tekwars

[Winkhorst]

The one difference I think you're all missing is that all these films and series take place in a universe with a mature interstellar civilization, whereas in the Original Star Trek, space was still a relatively unknown quantity ("going where no man has gone before"). That is what created the sense of awe and wonder and that is what Sci Fi (and SF) are all about--the UNKNOWN--not some spaceship tied to Starfleet Command by a subspace umbilical cord. That was why Janeway was flung halfway across the galaxy, and still they continued to act like a Washington bureaucracy when determining how to proceed.

And along the way Star Trek became more and more about the characters, whereas in the original series, the crew were basically an ensemble cast that acted out new stories every episode. I.e., they were short stories, not parts of a novel. The great thing about this kind of ensemble acting is you don't have to get to know the characters over again. You can cut right to the chase and tell a story. This is why the idea of a Star Fleet Academy series is such a horrendously bad idea. It gets even farther away from the short story format and turns the franchise into even more of a soap opera. And I, for one, cannot abide soap operas pretending to science fiction.