At some point it might be fun to examine Star Trek’s in-universe future and its three major timelines, Classic, Prime, and Kelvin, Yes, I treat Kurtzman’s Trek as a different timeline because things don’t make sense even by Star Trek continuity standards–though still more sense than Kingdom Hearts or Doctor Who. Alex Kurtzman’s vision of Star Trek, which he stated himself is less about making Star Trek and more using Star Trek to “send a message”, has not exactly been a hit. The preview stream of the Starfleet Academy pilot on YouTube was outdone by Nerdrotic streaming a static image of a Leonard Nimoy Spock sitting on host Gary Buechler’s computer chair without anything else until he realized he was getting a bunch of Super Chats and responded to his viewers.
(I think it was more protest and a glorified chat room than actual entertainment, but it still happened. Now Buechler owns one of the shuttle chairs from the show, not the biggest trophy but he probably made more from that stream than the show did for Paramount Plus.)
Of the Paramount Plus and rebooted movie periods only the final season of Picard, in which Kurtzman was forced by scheduling to take a backseat while an actual fan of the franchise gave fans what they wanted the past two seasons, ever made a positive impact. Four live-action series, two animated series, and a TV movie originally intended to be a TV series, all otherwise hit a deflector screen with a thud that could be heard in space. Now the sets are coming down or already down, only completed filmings of Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy‘s final seasons are yet to come out, and few tears are shed outside of the creative teams, performers, and people of a certain political viewpoint who wanted to “own the chuds” with something they probably weren’t watching given viewer stats.
Book & Film Globe has a good politics-free breakdown of why the Kurtzman shows didn’t work on a technical level and never felt like Star Trek… as in Enterprise understood the assignment better and between them and Voyager that’s a low bar to duck under. Pretty sure you could win a limbo contest making it under that bar. Full disclosure if it matters to your perspective so I don’t waste your time: I can tell you that I saw the first episode of Discovery when it aired on CBS and wasn’t impressed enough to want to see more, having already passed up those other two I just mentioned and the movies, which Kurtzman was also part of when he was still with Bad Robot versus his own Secret Hideout company.
I also saw the first episode of Lower Decks and wasn’t impressed because Rick & Morty wasn’t my style (it’s where the writers came from) and the focus seems to be on the worst character because her VA is also one of the writers (who also wrote herself a bit part in Starship Academy as the new Dax host). I went through the first episode of Prodigy with lukewarm interest that I never had a chance to follow up on. That went ignored by everyone else because cartoon while the other shows had such bad scene by scene reviews that even if I had Paramount Plus or it came up on Pluto TV I really wanted nothing to do with it. I didn’t even need that to tell me Starfleet Academy was going to be bad because the promotion itself told me they didn’t have a clue about making good Trek…and it turns out they couldn’t even make good TV according to reviews. I even thought Discovery looked okay standalone but lousy as Star Trek, and it proved me wrong as the series went on.
So this is more of an outside prospective and not review on each series. You just saw how much of it I was exposed to, and even with that caveat somebody on X-Twitter or Tumblr gets mad at me for daring even mention it because of it. Maybe if I made money reviewing the slow demise of my childhood like Buechler does or could make fun of bad media like SF Debris I’d have reason to devote my limited time to something that doesn’t appeal to me that I could be spending watching good Star Trek. You know, like the original and animated series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, or reading the novels and comics like I’m doing right now with The IDIC Epidemic. Instead we’re talking about where Gene Roddenberry’s creation is going to in a post Kurtzman world with the announcement of a new movie. Will it help the franchise? There are too many questions to be sure.
A lot of this discussion is coming from an article by Inverse contributor Ryan Britt. Directors for an upcoming feature film, Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, was at San Diego Formerly About Comics-Con to discuss the film. Apparently time jumps are the new hotness.
Speaking at Collider’s Directors on Directors panel, Goldstein and Daley confirmed that the new Trek film is still being written, and that it will feature an all-new cast of characters. The pair also confirmed that the film will take place “further in the future than we’ve been before.” This would seem to indicate that the film would take place beyond the 32nd century setting of later seasons of Star Trek: Discovery, and, most recently, Starfleet Academy.
I know two of the things they’ve worked on. I’m not going to fault them for adaptation errors in Spider-Man: Homecoming because those were Sony’s fault (the idiots) and much like My Adventures Of Superman they at least got the title character’s essence right even while screwing up everything else about him and his supporting cast. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was surprisingly good and I enjoyed it. Granted I know more about Spider-Man than D&D, but even the trailer to Honor Among Thieves looked like a fun fantasy heist movie and it delivered.
It’s also possible, of course, that this could be the far-future of a different timeline, perhaps not the Prime or Kelvin Timelines at all. Because the film is being touted as a fresh start for the franchise, this notion seems not only possible, but likely. “Further in the future” might not have to be tied to existing chronology.
The Trek we deserved.
And that’s where the questions begin. Is it set in one of the three timelines or some new one? Geeks & Gamers even wonders if Kurtzman is still somehow involved, even though his license was for TV and streaming, set up by the Star Trek-hating Les Moonves as a middle finger to Sheri Redstone as he walked out the door after she remerged CBS Viacom and Paramount in part to restore the Star Trek IP to one company.
If the new movie is connected to the far-future timeline introduced under Alex Kurtzman’s stewardship, Paramount may be walking directly into another public relations disaster.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy has already been confirmed to end after just two seasons, making it another short-lived entry in the Kurtzman era of Star Trek.
Beyond the ratings, the series became one of the most polarizing entries in modern Star Trek. Debate over the show’s direction, setting, and creative choices dominated online discussion throughout its run, with many longtime fans arguing it represented another step away from the optimistic vision that originally defined Gene Roddenberry’s universe. Whether one agrees with those criticisms or not, there’s little question that Starfleet Academy failed to unite the fanbase in the way Paramount undoubtedly hoped.
That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that audiences are clamoring for more stories set in that era.
Building a theatrical film on top of a television continuity that failed to establish broad enthusiasm would be an enormous gamble—especially for a franchise that hasn’t released a movie since Star Trek Beyond in 2016.
Which is the only praised of the Kelvin movies (for the few that actually saw it after Abrams’ bad takes) as the director was also a Trek fan. Star Trek Beyond. Picard Season 3. I see a pattern, do you? Even Enterprise supposedly got better when people wanting to make Star Trek rather than use the name got to sit in the proverbial captain’s chair. Whether they were Trekkies or not I couldn’t say. It’s not important to be a fan, but it is important to remember the fans and give them what they want while still making it accessible to newcomers. You know, like all the other post TOS shows, movie, and extended media did.
Perhaps the most striking thing about this announcement isn’t what Paramount revealed.
It’s what it didn’t.
There has been no confirmation that Alex Kurtzman is creatively involved with this film, despite his production company overseeing every televised Star Trek project since 2017. His overall future with the franchise has remained uncertain amid Paramount Skydance’s restructuring and the expiration of his current deal.
Emphasis by writer Martin Montanaro. He at least likes the directors’ previous directing and screenwriting credits, including the two I mentioned. Back to Inverse, as they bring up another piece of information involving the movies: the characters.
But more interesting than the canon/timeline shift is the notion that the new film will debut on the big screen without a single legacy character. This is a historic first for Star Trek, full stop. Each of the 13 theatrical films featured characters and actors who had previously appeared in either The Original Series or The Next Generation, as well as some cameos and references to other existing shows. Star Trek, as a motion picture franchise, has never launched a film with all new characters. Ever.
The last time the franchise launched anything with all-new characters was, again, 1987’s The Next Generation, which at the time was the biggest risk for the franchise. And yet back then, Trek was still technically playing it the same, since feature films featuring the original cast were still being made.
Right now, with Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy both ending in 2027, it’s reasonable to assume that there will not be a new Trek TV series airing when the new movie hits theaters. This means that for the first time ever, Star Trek is fully rebooting. A new timeline and all-new characters. It’s the risky maneuver that Gene Roddenberry tried on the small screen decades ago. Could it work again? At this point, with so much nostalgia and complex continuity, a clean slate might be the perfect way for Star Trek to boldly go next.
The Trek we got.
I have to agree…in part. Some of my favorite fan films are ones with all new crews rather than replacing the original Enterprise crew with fan actors and the occasional “mysteriously aged up” cameo, like having Sulu trapped in another dimension for years and coming back old and with a daughter, as one of the New Voyages/Phase II episodes did. It allows them to find someone else in the galaxy having their own adventures rather than just Kirk and company finding…or at least surviving…all the really cool stuff, the lucky bastards. They only lose a handful of the unimportant characters.
On the other hand, I wish that was what the movie was doing. Rather than going even further into the future, which did nothing to benefit Discovery via time travel or Starfleet Academy by further time-jumping in universe, find a different ship, reference older ships and events from other Star Trek shows (bonus if you use the fan films like someone else has suggested in the past to show other ships having other missions) to show an expanded universe, and you have the makings of some good Trek. Once Voyager departed for the Gamma Quadrant none of the previous shows’ characters could show up except by extenuating circumstances, and while I’m not a fan of that version it has its champions. The Inverse article also looked at a storyline from Star Trek Online that borrowed from a Voyager episode.
The thing is, regardless of how badly Starfleet Academy was in the writing, going into the future after Discovery already skirted past prior series time periods, it wasn’t that new characters were created, it’s that they were unliked characters whose forced connection to prior characters and events “because it’s totally Star Trek, I totally promise for realsies” did nothing to gain traction with the larger Trek fan base. They also felt like something that could be completely divorced from the Star Trek universe as their own show and nobody would have made the connection beyond what they already do with The Orville, Seth McFarlane’s semi-parody of Star Trek and similar shows and is set nowhere in any Trek timeline. People love The Orville. I haven’t been able to watch it since it moved to Hulu, and I really liked the show. That wouldn’t be Paramount and Skydance capitalizing on their biggest IP though, would it?
One thing I’ve learned since doing this site and watching beloved franchise after beloved franchise become less and less of why I liked them so much–whether it was political, social, or more often some “I have a better idea” grimdark sad sack writer with auteur director aspirations fueled by snobbery and ego while the corpos are too lazy and uninterested in anything other than the money to try to understand WHY these franchises are losing old audiences while not collecting the “modern audience” they were promised? It’s that changing the guard doesn’t fix the problem when the new guard is at best a different form of terrible. They can be good at project A but be the wrong choice for project B. We’ll have to wait and see what come of all of this, but right now the “future” of Star Trek is looking about as bleak as the in universe past of the Eugenics War and it’s aftermath before humans fixed their mess and met the Vulcans. It’ll be a few years before we get beyond Kurtzman Trek as he has two more shows left in the coffer and the movie won’t be out for some time. Speculation will continue and the Brand will continue to fall so long as terrible product is all we’re still getting. And it ain’t looking good, kids.
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