A Take On Trek Writing

Over at the Trek Nation, Fred Shedian has uploaded a new edition of his 'A Take On Trek' column. This week, he reflects on the last two Voyager episodes and their somewhat disappointing ratings, and offers some advice to the writing staff on how to improve the quality of the show:

While watching and thinking about the above two episodes, I started to consider how the show will end. It has been stated Voyager will indeed have a "final chapter," following in the footsteps of Deep Space Nine. Throughout Star Trek's history, stories which have some direct link with one another seem to generate ratings. The writing quality is normally quite good and fans come back the following week to see "what will happen to Lieutenant Dan." Examples are numerous, rating from season finales to DS9's "Final Chapter."

Other science-ficition shows have adapted a writing structure based in individual character/show subplots. For example, most recently, Babylon 5 and Farscape. Although your one time episodes exist, most of the time we were/are watching the characters take one more step in a long chain of events. When the conclusion finally comes, the last twelve episodes come together. Using an example, when the Chief of Security aboard Babylon 5 resigned...it was part of a subplot which had started a month before and didn't end for another two years. Could Star Trek use such methods?

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