I think the MACO example is a really great starting point though: have a few "away teams" that can beam down or beam over and take care of things. The exception being when circumstance requires a specific officer. In Enterprise during the Xindi conflict, MACOs handled certain off-ship actions. I think a similar situation in another franchise is Stargate SG-1/Atlantis, where the bridge crews never leave the ship and instead utilize teams (such as SG-1 or AR-1).

Starfleet claims they are not a military organization, but beams down with phasers (or phase rifles). Why not get a special team who is experienced militarily and instill first-contact procedures, diplomacy, and, if the need requires it, a science personnel who is trained to defend themselves.

With as many red/yellow shirts who have died, it makes sense to not endanger your senior officers who would have died without plot armor. For their credit, the MACOs were a step up from their plain security personnel.

Nothing super new that I know of, other than this a few months back. I'm really hoping that Amazon will make a formal announcement soon, and I'm really hoping that the series won't suck like their Halo series.

Yeah, here's an article from late last year. There were a lot of posts that Mallozzi did earlier this year, but it appears that Amazon/MGM shot them down.

Obviously, I would prefer a series by Brad Wright with work from Joseph Mallozzi, but I don't think we'll be getting that from what Mallozzi has posted on Reddit. I would actually like to see either a series on a BC-304 or its successor, or I'd like to see a SG-1/SGA style base and explore series.

I really don't want to see a pure reboot, or shudders a continuation of the original film and tossing out the canon we've known to love.

This Community will not calm down, Lemmys, it will in fact calm up.

Indeed