the humans on Star Trek aren’t even human. The aliens are human.
Always nice to see your opinions validated by some random stranger on the internet.
Naturally I agree with most of what he says. However, I was thinking a few weeks ago about an idea that he dismisses outright (which is fine except he dismisses it for the wrong reason). I think a ST anthology series would be pretty cool. We've seen very in depth portrayals of specific chunks of the space-time continuum. It'd be interesting as fuck to see some random, unknown corners of the canon. What was the NCC-1894 Cocksucker doing the last week of the Dominion War? What was the Intrepid doing a month before it died? The NX-2 might have had some interesting adventure at some point. I'll bet the Valiant and the Equinox had all sorts of crazy shit happen to them before the events leading to their respective demises. A day in the life of a psychotic Klingon? Romulan poltics?
By staying outside of the 5 key elements you've opened up a shitload of canon to play around with still inside of their universe. Christ, we could come up with 5 seasons worth of great stories in the ST universe since they don't have to be linked to any one series at a time. A lot of really good ST has come outside of the common context. Below Decks was very good and dealt mostly with nobodys. O'Brien spends an episode inside some criminal syndicate and goes Donnie Brasko. Worf spends two episodes stuck in some Romulan/Klingon interment camp. As a rule you would rarely be recasting people, and they'd be largely unknown if you did. At the same time, John Savage might be keen to do a ST movie of the week; who knows. It's also possible that you stumble across a ship/crew that are particularly popular out of some random actors you through together for some one off story. Seems like a series could spin off naturally from something like that, which wasn't something dreamt up by the same people using a formula to make money.
Downside is that it'd be cost prohibitive. Try telling a studio principle shooting will be on a Constellation bridge one week and inside a Borg cube the next. "Oh, and in a couple of weeks we'll need 300 Andorian extras for a two-parter!"