Star Trek TNG
DS9 TNG universe set on a space station
Voyager TNG 2.0
Enterprise TNG in the past.
My hypothesis is not that Star Trek needs a break, but the
TNG universe needs to be shelved permanently and Star Trek
needs a leap as great as that between TOS and TNG.
You bring up excellent points. I will get Braga out of the way. He was hands
on for the latter part of TNG, then Voyager and Enterprise. He had nearly
zero input on DS9 and as a result, it was the best of the TNG era shows IMO.
Now, about what you said. Do we need a reinvention like Battlestar has
gotten? I am not totally sure. That show doesn't recognize the old show as
far as it continuing the story. Do we need to go to the "Next, Next
Generation?" Maybe but to be honest, I think DS9 still has a lot of stories
to tell.
The Trek (NG-era, for the sake of argument) Universe is really big,
and you can tell pretty much any story you can think of there.
The original series was pitched as having this advantage ("like an
anthology series, but without the drawbacks"). What has happened
to Trek is that it has grown more and more inbred: both in the
Starfleet-centric part of its universe that it portrays, and in
the real-world studio politics governing its writing and production.
As a result, the two best Star Trek movies in the last ten years
have been "Galaxy Quest" and "Master and Commander". There's
something wrong there.
I have often thought, and still think, that a "Tales of the Federation"
anthology series, sometimes adapting classic science fiction stories
into the Trek universe, could have some real energy to it. But hey,
I'm not the one trying to get Paramount to spend money on my ideas.
Let me say again..DS9 has many more stories to tell and compared to TNG and
VOY, it WAS gritty and took chances. The next Trek series needs to follow
that. Enterprise had watered down serialized stories and it did that show
it.