Create a new series premise

[Nate the Great]

A sort-of game. Come up with an idea for a new Star Trek series that's actually NEW. By "new" I mean no Enterprise, space stations or marooned starships.

I'll get the inevitable Starfleet Academy series idea out of the way up front. Some of you guys think that it'd never work, "Saved by the Bell in Space," so to speak. I think otherwise. Remember that the Academy isn't JUST the main campus in San Francisco. These cadets go all over the world for field trips, train for weeks in the asteroid belt, no doubt they study abroad on Vulcan or Andor for a semester once in awhile. What about cadets that are from new member worlds, or even totally foreign governments? Remember that anyone from a non-Federation world can apply with a command officer recommendation. How would their upbringing compare and contrast with the standard Federation mindset? What about cadets that aren't young whippersnappers? In the wonderful book Sarek, Kirk's nephew Peter started at the Academy when he was almost thirty. He would've had experiences that younger guys wouldn't have had. How about someone who grew up in a colony ship, like that guy from NX-01? Suddenly moving from a small, isolated society to Earth would be quite a paradigm shift. Or go the other way; a character who grew up in a very closely-knit multigenerational household, suddenly having to only deal with one other person.