Star Trek has had a hard time finding its way into the very future it teased fans with, starting back in the 1960s. As Artificial Intelligence and space travel are becoming bigger releaties of our daily lives, Star Trek has struggled to hold a place of relevance in popular culture, or please it most diehard fans. The last few years of Paramount+ streaming shows left a lot of Trek fans with a bad taste in their mouth. Despite some definite high points, shows like Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard tried to push the franchise into a darker, edgier place than most fans were willing to tolerate. The franchise also tried branching out into several different formats, including animated comedy (Star Trek: Lower Decks), and kids programming (Star Trek: Prodigy), and only had middling success in doing so.
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As Paramount went through a merger with Skydance, there seemed to be a clear shift in mandate: the Star Trek streaming universe has been phased out, and there was an announcement that a new Star Trek movie franchise is in the works. Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, the duo behind Paramount’s Dungeon and Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves, have been put in charge of the reboot, and have made their intentions clear: a whole new Star Trek story, that doesn’t have any legacy characters or lore ties.
But while that concept made sound fun to some fans, there’s another big name in sci-fi who doesn’t agree with the current apporach, at all.
Sci-fi Author Andy Weir Thinks Star Trek Is Taking The Wrong Approach
Author Andy Weir has been on a generational run of sci-fi hits: his novels The Martian and Project Hail Mary have both been adapted into successful blockbuster films, which have earned $653 million and $684 million (respectively) at the box office. He’s also carved a lane for his sci-fi-thriller brand, which feature space explorers getting caught up in disastrous survival situations while endeavorig to help mankind. In other words, he’s someone who was clearly influenced by Star Trek, and has some passionate feelings about the franchise.
When speaking with /Film recently, Andy Weir let it be known that he think rebooting Star Trek via the film franchise is the wrong move: “[I]f I was the boss of ‘Trek’… You’ve got to make a show, a series. I personally wouldn’t try to go straight to films. I would go back to a series, a streaming show maybe that’s just called Star Trek, and then work from there. It doesn’t have to be about the Enterprise. Star Trek is a rich genre that has lots and lots of cool stuff in it. It could have that same feel. It could be about a different ship exploring strange new worlds and new civilizations.”
Weir clearly knows ball: he’s delved deep enough into the Star Trek franchise to have clear ideas about where and when it took a wrong turn away from the Gene Roddenberry’s original vision: “Voyager departed from it a little too much. People didn’t like it. Deep Space Nine had its own completely cool story. It was more of a political thriller, and they got away with it, but they didn’t try to be Star Trek with a slight twist. They’re like, ‘We’re Babylon 5.’ We’re doing our own thing. We’re doing it in the Star Trek universe, but we’re doing our own thing.’”
In the end Weir thinks the best approach is a reversion back to simple beginnings: “This is a spaceship that goes out, finds new things, and has adventures.” He later added, “So that’s what I would do with Star Trek: go back to the basics, go back to a ship exploring the cosmos.”
The new Star Trek movie is currently in development at Skydance. Check out interivew with Andy Weir about his new sci-fi series Exoplanet HERE.
