Tease! Okay, a blisteringly talented tease, but all the same...!
By DarkHawke

I can't think of anyone better in whom to trust the next Star Trek series, because, technically speaking, we've already seen it: Crusade. Sure, it's steeped within the Bablyon 5 universe and the overall arc bears more than a passing resemblance to Star Blazers, but think of it: a strong, dynamic captain who's a hit with the ladies (Gideon/Kirk); a reserved but highly competent XO who's telepathic (Matheson/Spock); a dedicated, emotional doctor (Chambers/some of McCoy); an irracible but undeniably brilliant archeologist (Eillerson/the rest of McCoy); and an alien hottie (Dureena/some of Spock). Dunno how Galen fits into the mix, but hey, it wouldn't be as fun if you could fit all the pieces in neatly! And though the mission is fairly clear-cut, what was Excalibur doing but exploring strange new world and seeking out new life and new civilizations? The mission was even set for five years!

Putting Crusade aside (which I'm loath to do, 'cause even today I'd like to see more of it!), this is one brilliant S.O.B., and in Babylon 5, he wrote almost single-handedly the best science fiction show since the Original Star Trek. No one's perfect, of course, but for my money, the man nailed everything any Star Trek fan would want to see in a new show: dense, cohesive plotting that reaches epic proportions; rich characterizations that can change radically over the course of the series; and, yes, sparkling dialogue! [YMMV] Compared to the vast majority of Next Gen and DS9, and all of Voyager and Enterprise, Joe outwrites the lot of them.

The only aspect of his letter that gives me pause, aside from the "let's go!/no, wait!" thing, is his professed respect for Next Gen. Not that it was wholly without merit, but by and large what Berman and Braga didn't screw up on that show, the Great Bird of the Galaxy did personally. Though I wasn't blown away by the premiere, I thought it started with a great deal of promise. That was all but completely destroyed by the very next episode! [Even to this day, the words "The Naked Now" give me the willies!] Thereafter for the first two seasons, we got stale, P.C. re-hashes of episodes that were done best on the Original Star Trek. The swift departures of Original Star Trek leading lights Robert Justman, D.C. Fontana and David Gerrold were by no means coincidental: Gene wanted his way with the series and there would be no other, which unfortunately meant a dumbed-down voyage meekly going where we'd all been before.

Thus I hope that any series that JMS would participate in would hew more to the Original Star Trek and less to Next Gen. But given his brilliant work on B5, Crusade, and even his great comic books like Midnight Nation and Supreme Power, I can't think of anyone in a position to do so that I'd sooner trust the future of the franchise that has meant so much to me in my life. I don't know if JMS is the last hope for good Star Trek in the future, but I think he's surely the best hope!