It was 10 years ago that Paramount Pictures revived the Star Trek film franchise in 2009’s Star Trek. The film was directed by JJ Abrams and written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. The story introduced a new timeline with new, younger versions of the Star Trek: The Original Series crew in a new galaxy of adventure. Despite all this,Orci insists the film was never a real reboot.
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In an interview with Trek Movie, Orci points to the fact that a portion of the film — the destruction of Romulus — takes place after the previous Star Trek movie, Star Trek: Nemesis, to show that it is in truth a sequel rather than a reboot.
“The word reboot is something I used because that is what people called it, but I myself would never classify what we did as a reboot at all. I consider it a sequel,” Orci says. “It is just a sequel that tells you an original story of how they met that could have happened in canon. I find the term reboot distasteful in regard to this franchise because I don’t think it was that simple or that is what it was? Reboot implies throwing out a bunch of stuff because of the idea of [Leonard] Nimoy coming back and changing history, it is well within the parameters of what Star Trek had established within its own rules. So, I just used that term because that is what the press calls it but ‘reboot’ is a dirty word in regards to Star Trek.”
Orci goes on to say that he and Kurtzman never considered a clean slate reboot, “not for a second”
“Part of why it worked is that if you don’t know those 10 films, you don’t need to know that it is a sequel, but if you know those 10 films, you know it is a sequel,” he says.
In an interesting twist, Kurtzman is now the head of the Star Trek television franchise and is set to explore the ramifications of the destruction of Romulus in the post-Nemesis Star Trek universe more directly in the upcoming Star Trek series focused on Jean-Luc Picard.
“I didn’t know that. Remind me to ask him for a check,” Orci jokes, laughing.
The Star Trek film series that began in 2009 is currently on hiatus after Chris Pine, who starred as Capt. James Kirk, walked away from Star Trek 4 over contract disputes.
How do you think of 2009’s Star Trek as a reboot or a sequel? Let us know in the comments.
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