After reading Starczynski's and Zabel's pitch, I can safely say those two need to be hurt. With a rock or something.
His basic pitch is to reboot trek from before the original series where they find an ancient and obscure civilization with tons of nifty gadgets and stuff for a pilot. (There is a reason why B5: Crusade failed. There is a reason why Glen Larson's Buck Roger's season 2 failed. And, please sir, no more Vorlons).
And apparently, by the end of the pilot, Kirk fights it out with another alien to get the mysterious city of the ancients.... what? no ripped shirts?
Then he goes on to talk about a galactic "Da Vinci Code" conspiracy in the DNA of all kinds of races --- wait he said "Artist's signature"... that sounds like a soft-sell on Intelligent Design! Bah! Leave religion to Galactica! I know JMS is an athiest, but the man dumps far too much religious material into his work for my tastes.
That's not to say JJ Abrams deserves any better. I feel what he's doing will amount to a reboot of the frandchise much like JMS has been planning.
I'm personally a fan of the Susstrem (spelling?) Romulan War Trilogy and I think a good movie triliogy might serve the series good a few years down the road, but it's just too soon. Plus that trilogy would indicate that James T Kirk was named for a relative of his from that period, Capt. Tiberius Chase and not the roman emperor
