Star Trek: Concordium

Star Trek Concordium was the working title for a prospective Series V, a successor to Star Trek Voyager, developed between 2000 and 2004. Production would have started in late 2001 with airings in 2002 when the idea was shelved and eventually rejected in favor of Star Trek Enterprise in 2000.

The series’ setting was slightly changed after this and evolved into a hybrid style of previous incarnations of Star Trek. The series is based on Amarillo’s Starfleet Universe making heavy use of the Gorn, the Tholians and the ISC – the limited license of the Starfleet Universe made inclusion into “mainstream” Trek difficult, lending to its eventual cancellation.

Of the planned 182 episodes of the complete series (=7 seasons) 143 have been drafted (until mid of season 6) with the remainder of the seasons episode in an incomplete state.

Setting
Concordium is set after the Dominion War, with a battered Federation struggling both with its past and its future. Rebuilding Starfleet, the post-war Federation takes a quite different stance than it did during the centuries, even modifying its core beliefs. Peace at any price is no longer an option and even preemptive strikes are in the quiver of the new Federation. And while Starfleet again focuses on exploration rather than war, defense of the Federation and its citizens can not be achieved with hundreds of ageing 23rd Century starships, leading to construction programs of new tactical capable ships.

The uneasy alliance that the Federation found itself in during the Dominion War broke apart within weeks, with the Romulans quickly reverting into old patterns, and even far more firm ties with long-time allies like the Klingons and Gorn beginning to fade with the agony of loss and destruction, supplanted by the widespread mistrust of a Federation that was no longer the bedrock that it had been during the decades before.

The series focuses on the Nebula Class Cruiser U.S.S. Canopus NCC-69237, which is completing its refit after having fought in the Dominion War. The ship is under the auspices of Starfleet Rimward Command (RIMCOM), patrolling and exploring the thinly populated space in the direction of the galactic rim, bordering to the Klingons, Gorn and Tholians. The Canopus’ crew is composed mostly of seasoned officers, some of them veterans of the war – contrary to the preceding Star Trek series however, the crew does not include members of races that normally would not be found within Starfleet.

When the renewed exploration effort yields first contact (what was thought to be first contact then) with the Interstellar Concordium and the Mjjrni, the Federation and its allies find themselves once more threatened by an opponent that they might not be able to cope with. And political pressure, both from inside and outside the Federation, created by the looming danger and the new Federations methods to handle it is beginning to tear the once mighty interplanetary union apart…

Continuity
Since the framework for Concordium was created in 2000 those parts of canon Star Trek created afterwards are not included in the series and therefore considered an alternate reality. The Romulan Star Empire still is a stable faction, there are no Remans, no Xindi, no Suliban, no Temporal Cold War and no Vice Admiral Janeway.

Differences to Standard Trek
These concepts proved to be major showstoppers, contributing to Concordium’s rejection.
 * Holodeck and Time Travel episodes are to be banned from the series. This prevents episodes that slip outside of the series general setting (as in Time's Arrow or The Killing Game).
 * The technological framework laid in the technical manuals would be obeyed strictly.
 * Space combat would be realistically simulated, without the close-quarters Star Wars style of common science fiction.
 * Astrophysical and astrometric laws and properties are adhered to.
 * Starfleet would be more akin to contemporary military services instead of being the loosely defined entity of preceding Trek series.
 * Concordium follows a Telenovela-style plotline, with the general plot predefined for the complete production duration, and detail plots and episode storylines defined for a season in advance.
 * Concordium features off-ship episodes, depicting events elsewhere, instead of centering everything on the main cast, as unlikely as it may be.