Star Trek Is Getting a Fresh Start Movie, So Where Is the Next Star Trek TV Series?

Star Trek is getting a fresh start: a new movie with new characters and a different setting, from filmmakers who point to Training Day and Crimson Tide as inspiration. What I want to know is where everything else is, because there is a big difference between announcing another Trek movie and showing us that somebody has a plan for Star Trek.

Are we getting a new Next Generation, a return to Deep Space 9, or something that actually moves the prime timeline forward? I am open to a new crew. I am even open to a darker story, although that is a whole debate in itself. This is supposed to be the beginning of a new era, with Skydance taking over and merging everything together, so I would really like to know what happens after the credits roll.

The new Star Trek movie is a fresh start, but not necessarily a deleted timeline

First, let's get the movie straight, because the word reboot is doing a ridiculous amount of work here. Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, the filmmakers behind Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, are developing it. They have talked about original characters in a fresh setting, and this is not being presented as another adventure for Chris Pine's Enterprise crew or the Kelvin timeline.

What they did not clarify is the exact relationship to established continuity. They kept the waters muddy, maybe on purpose. A different time period does not automatically mean a different universe, and a fresh start does not automatically mean 60 years of Trek just got deleted. That matters because the moment people hear new timeline, all of us start trying to work out whether Picard happened, whether Sisko exists, and whether we need another diagram just to watch a spaceship leave Earth. "I don't want homework before the opening scene."

But I also don't want us treating assumptions like announcements. We have a movie in development. We have some comments about its direction. We do not have a fully explained replacement universe with a television slate attached.

Training Day and Crimson Tide could work if Starfleet's values survive the story

The filmmakers' comparisons are interesting. Training Day and Crimson Tide suggest tension inside an institution, questions about authority, and people disagreeing about what doing the right thing means. They have specifically discussed looking at what happens when things are not right with Starfleet. That could work.

My concern is what they decide the story says about Starfleet when it is over. There is a difference between an officer betraying the values of the Federation and a movie deciding those values were always a joke. One gives you characters worth defending. The other leaves me wondering why I am supposed to care whether this organisation survives.

We have plenty of science fiction where everybody is corrupt and the future is miserable. Trek's appeal is that humanity actually accomplished something. Put that accomplishment under pressure, sure, and make the crew fight for it. But the movie's tone is not even my biggest question anymore. My biggest question is why the television future feels so empty.

With Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy ending, the television runway is running out

Strange New Worlds has its fifth and final season ahead, with six episodes. Starfleet Academy has its second and final season ahead. So this is not a situation where everything disappears tomorrow. But the reporting around the next major television chapter is remarkably thin. We don't have an announced TNG reboot, a DS9 revival, or a new flagship series carrying the franchise forward after these shows finish.

I am starting to get some sources, and some messages behind the scenes from certain people. I am not going to say I am an insider, but there is not a lot there.

I think that is what people are reacting to and upset about. It is not just a particular show ending. Shows end, and sometimes they should end. It is that we can see the runway running out and we don't know what is taking off next. There is a movie somewhere on the horizon, but Trek has spent years having movies somewhere on the horizon. At this point an announced Trek movie needs to survive its own development process before it even reaches the Klingons.

Year One and Legacy show the gap between fan interest and a green light

What about the ideas we already know people wanted to make? Year One was the proposed continuation following Kirk's early command of the Enterprise after Strange New Worlds. Akiva Goldsman's recent update was not good. He said the sets were gone, people were taking other jobs, and he didn't see it happening. Importantly, this was not a green lit series that got officially cancelled. It was a hoped for project that never received the commitment it needed.

That distinction does not make it less frustrating for the many people who wanted it. They had actors, and audiences already knew an established version of the Enterprise. They were transitioning over to Kirk. To me it was basically like Picard, where you open the door with the pilot episode for the new series.

Then there is Legacy, which is probably the clearest example of the gap between fan interest and an actual production announcement. I would say the response is 98% positive whenever I talk about Legacy, and from the comments I read, everybody wants it for the most part. Picard's ending gave us Seven commanding the Enterprise G, a younger crew, and connections to the older generation. Whether every single decision worked for you or not, the basic setup was there: here's the ship, here's the captain, here's somewhere to go.

Terry Matalas said he would still be interested in the follow up, although enough time has passed that his approach wouldn't necessarily be identical to the original idea. That is encouraging, but it is not an executive order from Paramount, and that is where I am getting irritated. Actually, I am starting to get a little angry. You don't have to make exactly the show fans describe, but when people respond to a captain and a crew, that response should at least tell you something. There are fans who want to keep exploring the universe. They are not all demanding another reunion where everybody walks through a doorway, waits for applause and plays some cards at the end.

A Next Generation reboot would be a hard sell, even though I would still watch it

Would rebooting The Next Generation solve any of this? Personally, I think that is a really hard sell, harder than just making an actual new Next Generation. Recasting Picard, Data, Riker and the rest means your new actors spend every episode being compared to people who helped define the franchise. And what exactly are you remaking? Encounter at Farpoint, the Borg introduction, the same relationships with slightly different uniforms?

I am not saying it is impossible. As a Trek fan, I would digest anything they put in front of me, and I feel like a lot of you would too. If they announced tomorrow that they were rebooting TNG and redoing it all, just like they are doing with Harry Potter, a lot of you would be really upset. But I have a strong feeling you would tune in out of interest, or maybe just to hate on it and prove why you are upset. I am not going to tell you I wouldn't, because I absolutely would. I would want to see how they recast Picard and Data, and see all those episodes done again, maybe some done better.

Would I enjoy it? Would I be upset that they were messing with it? I would have a lot of mixed feelings, but I would still watch it. Still, it sounds like an enormous amount of effort spent trying to recreate something we already watched that was really, really good. TNG itself offers a better lesson. It moved forward with a different captain, a different crew and a different Enterprise. It belonged to the same universe, but it gave us new people to invest in.

Deep Space 9 should be reopened, not rebooted

I would be even more careful about the word reboot with Deep Space 9. Every time we talk about it, it is not a reboot. "We're reopening the station."

DS9's appeal was not simply that it happened on a station. It was the history surrounding the station: Bajor recovering from occupation, and the Federation trying to help while also protecting its own interests. That is a fantastic foundation for another series. Move it ahead, flash forward 20 or 30 years, and make Jake the focus.

Moving the prime timeline forward does not require new fans to know everything

Here is the part I think gets lost whenever we talk about attracting a new audience. Continuing the prime timeline does not require newcomers to know everything. You can introduce a new captain and a new ship and explain their mission in five minutes. The audience needs to understand these characters and the situation they are facing. They don't need to pass a written exam on the history. Existing history can give the world depth without becoming a barrier to the story. "We don't need 900 episodes to catch up before we watch something."

Go beyond Picard. Give us a Federation that has changed, a frontier we haven't explored, and officers whose lives don't revolve around famous people. Let familiar civilisations matter when they belong in the story.

Even that depends on something more important than picking the right century. We need a show we want to spend time with, a crew we enjoy when the galaxy isn't ending. Give the doctor a difficult patient. Give the engineer a problem that doesn't involve the destruction of all existence. A movie can introduce a crew and make a great first impression, but television gives those relationships room to grow and gives us a reason to return. That is why I am struggling with the idea of one theatrical project, however promising. It doesn't answer the bigger question.

Star Trek United has a level of interest Paramount should notice

As of right now, we don't have an announced TNG. We don't have an announced DS9 reopening. We don't have Legacy. We don't have Year One. And we haven't heard anything about Star Trek United, which gets an enormous response every time I cover it and the vision behind it.

I could put together a spreadsheet or a pitch deck just from the response to anything related to United, with thousands of comments and thousands of likes, and put it in front of Paramount. The interest is there on a whole other level. It is a real level, not a made up one, and a credible case for how that vision could be turned into something fun: the Andor of Star Trek. Maybe I should put a pitch deck together, keep covering United until we reach 10 million views, start a petition, try to get 10,000 signatures and present it to Paramount. I don't know.

I will give the new Star Trek movie a chance, but the franchise needs to show what happens next

Legacy hasn't become a commissioned show, Year One is pretty much done, and Paramount is going through a huge transition now. I am going to give the new movie a chance. Original characters are welcome, and a tense story inside Starfleet could be great.

But I want the film to open the door into more Trek, and I want to know television has a place at Paramount on the other side of it. The franchise doesn't need to keep going back to the first day all the time. It needs to show us what happens next as well.

If you were the studio head with one pick for a Trek series on television, would you choose Seven's Enterprise, a return to the world of Deep Space 9, a completely original crew moving the prime timeline forward, or Star Trek United?