College: The Final Frontier

Alright, Ross, I give. A little bit. I only made it midway through Season 3 of DS9, one season of Voyager (which I’ve entirely blocked from memory), and not a single episode of Enterprise (Star Trek: Quantum Sleep?). So maybe after the atrocities of the last two we really do need to toss it all out. But I think the fan backlash would be severe. Honestly, you don’t mess around with sci-fi geeks. You think they're just passive, wimpy nerds, but, like tribbles, they only seem harmless. These people make Borg costumes in their spare time; surely that signals severe danger. Or least some sort of disorder. Is Borg-Costume-Making in the DSM IV?

Ross, or his phantom reader anyway, is right that DS9 tried to do what I’d like to see, which is take the gritty, grimy Battlestar Galactica approach. And, surprise surprise, it was at least partially helmed by BSG’s Ron Moore. But Moore has complained loudly about never really being able to take the series where he wanted—the runabout always appeared unscathed the next episode. No one could ever die or change in a lasting way. DS9 seemed to want to inject some grimy reality into the series, but instead we got funny-looking Bajoran jewelry and a security officer who slept in a bucket. Science fiction is really weird when you think about it too much. Kind of like Mormonism.

But if Ross can accept that Star Trek goes with socialist utopia like Bill Kristol goes with takin' down dictators, then I can probably agree that a bit of Batman Begins-style revision and a fresh start at Starfleet Academy might work. It could be like Star Trek:Harvard, and we know Ross would love that.

Addendum: William Shatner, also weird.