The other day I actually had the living room to myself for an entire evening (surprise!). I was waiting for someone to show up. She was delayed considerably longer than I thought so I ended up watching (by chance) one of my favorite Malcolm in the Middle episodes "Emancipation", the entire cable-edited version of the movie Zoolander (for the first time by the way. How old is that film that I only saw it now?) and finally an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The episode was called "Unnatural Selection" and while ultimately resolved with no one on the Enterprise being killed, the same could not be said for the starship crew encountered in the Introduction, all of whom had died from old age. The old age turned out to be a disease caused by what I guess would be artificial humans on a research colony (I say "artificial" as they were built from scratch and given enhanced immune systems, the very same immune systems which were hyperaggressive enough to mutate a minor sickness one of the crewmembers of the ill-fated starship had brought with them causing them all to age rapidly). But the show itself is not anything special, it just happened to be the one I watched that night. The thought I had was one I've had before, and that is I think they've been getting the format of Star Trek wrong all these years.
Star Trek is supposed to be about mankind's expansion to the stars and its inherent wonders, mysteries, and dangers. The trouble is, the sense of danger is lost because of what I call "Invincible Ship Syndrome". The Starship Enterprise (or Deep Space 9 or Voyager) cannot be destroyed or else the show is over. Yes, all these ships and the station have been destroyed within episodes but never permanently. Their destruction is used to create tension in the episode but we as the audience know that there really is no danger in the end making such episodes kind of pointless. [It's like kids in horror movies. Unless you're Stephen King, they're never in danger making it aggravating for them to even be in the film]. Plus the main crew is never in any danger either leaving the vast majority of the fatalities to anonymous crew members. But there's a way around this.
Star Trek should experiment with a Twilight Zone format.
What do I mean by this? The Twilight Zone told more-or-less random stories weekly using a different cast every week. Now, it wouldn't have to be precisely this. There could be a Starship Enterprise which could have a recurring role but the majority of episodes would feature random ships, stations, outposts, Starfleet headquarters, etc. and their crews and the things that happen to them. The advantage of this format is that the Enterprise needn't be everywhere or be involved in everything that happens to the Federation. It carries the additional story-telling advantage of part or all of the crew needn't survive every episode and that each episode needn't end happily (or have the problem resolved). Stories could be told from alien perspectives too. You could even do two-parters, the second part involving a recurring ship (say the Enterprise) in which the first part ends disastrously or with a cliff-hanger and the second part yields resolution. Without the Invincible Ship Syndrome (or the related Invincible Main Cast Syndrome), it opens up story possibilities that could not exist in the standard format.
I really think it's something they ought to try especially seeing as how Star Trek has never really been a coherent show. It's always been episodic in nature. Deep Space 9 tried bucking this trend and I will admit that its last several episodes, all of which were more-or-less continuations, were immense fun to watch. Star Trek, unlike Babylon 5, is plagued with inconsistencies on account of multiple writers in addition to it not being a series with a definite destination (and even Voyager which ostensibly was about their journey home was filled with distractions along the way) so I really think they would benefit from having ever-changing casts each week.
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