Fallen Star

Paramount hopes that a third-season refitting of ''Enterprise'' will help right the ship. Retiring the series' initial conceit of a novice, largely human crew still getting their space legs, ''Trek'' gatekeepers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga are now sending the gang to war. In last May's finale, a mysterious alien probe blasted Earth in a devastating neo-terrorist attack. This season will find Scott Bakula's Captain Archer charging into the Bermuda Triangle-like Delphic Expanse to strike back. Berman has billed it as the first time ''Trek'' has focused on a mission other than we-come-in-peace exploration -- i.e., now-you-go-to-pieces butt-stomping.

In the same jump-start-minded spirit, we at EW brainstormed a few tweaks -- well, actually, radical transformations -- of our own.

LET IT DIE...FOR A WHILE Name us a franchise that couldn't occasionally use time to lie fallow and rejuvenate. And this wouldn't be unprecedented: Don't forget, creator Roddenberry mothballed ''Star Trek'' for a full decade after the series was canceled, and it endured just fine in the hearts of the faithful. After that came 4 new TV series and 10 films. ''In 20 years, you'll have a rebirth of interest in 'Star Trek' that equals what we did with 'Next Generation,''' says Piller. ''But it may take that.''

ALL HANDS, ABANDON SHIP Could be that it's time for significant changes among the ''Trek'' creative staff, some of whom have been on board for a good 15 years. Snaring ''Gladiator'''s John Logan to script ''Nemesis'' was the right idea, but we want more new blood. How about recruiting the Wachowskis? Or the radical Alan Moore, whose comics work (''From Hell'') outshines Hollywood's stabs at adapting it? Or ''X-Files'' alum Darin Morgan, whose showcase tales recalled great ''Trek'' mind-screw episodes? The franchise needs to get back to the provocative scripting that marked the best episodes (like Harlan Ellison's classic ''The City on the Edge of Forever'').

HOW COME THE ALIENS ALWAYS LOOK LIKE MY UNCLE PHIL? Enough already with the old-school ETs, with weird ridges on their heads. Consider the premise of ''Insurrection'': A space commune is imperiled by a race of degenerating baddies who eerily resemble...F. Murray Abraham in cheesy burn makeup. They've been trying to come up with the next big bad guy for a while, but have failed. Where are the Borg, the Khans, the Qs?

OH, ENSIGN LEERY IS SOOOO DREAMY! Full-on soap-opera-meets-sci-fi really can work. Witness ''Smallville.'' A sexy teen-centric Starfleet Academy series, then, could be a logical next step: forbidden love flowering between a human cadet and a Vulcan, say, or an alienated Klingon teen and his struggles to fit in. Berman has discounted such an idea in the past, telling EW, ''Putting children in jeopardy every week is not what 'Star Trek' is about.'' Yeah, he's probably right. After all, no one paid any attention to that danger-prone boy wizard.

BEAM 'EM DOWN AND LEAVE 'EM DOWN So Picard orders the Enterprise to plow into a Reman ship at the climax of ''Nemesis'' -- cool. But the figurative impact of such a stunt -- and we've seen them before -- is lessened by our full awareness that there's undoubtedly an Enterprise Deluxe ready to replace it. Why not declare a moratorium on replacement ships and take the opportunity to strand the crew long-term in a completely different setting (think of the possibilities: ''Voyager'' meets ''Survivor'')? After all, for much of ''Trek,'' the characters are sitting in fancy chairs staring at a really high-end TV -- sorry, viewscreen. Get them out there doing something.

Then, maybe, audiences will enlist for another tour of duty.