This weekend, Star Trek writer and producer Michael Sussman went public with his pitch for a new spinoff series called Star Trek: United, which would star Scott Bakula reprising his role as Jonathan Archer. Sussman shared his general ideas for the series in an interview with TrekMovie.com, along with the history of its development and his renewed hopes for the future. The potential series had fans buzzing all weekend at the Star Trek Las Vegas convention, but Bakula only spoke about it towards the end of his final panel appearance on Sunday. Even then, he was careful with his words, which might be a sign that his hopes are also high, and he doesn’t want to spoil it by sharing too much too soon.
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“There’s nothing I am going to say about United, at this point,” the actor said cautiously. “There’s a great writer [Sussman] and I have had conversations about the possibility… I’m just going to say — and we will close on that — you never know.”
Bakula played Captain Jonathan Archer in the prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise, captaining Starfleet’s first vessel with Warp Five technology on humanity’s very first deep space exploratory mission in the Star Trek universe. In one of the series’ final episodes, we get a glimpse into the future, including a bio of Captain Archer’s life after the series is over. It’s easy to miss, but if you pause and read it, it says that Archer rises to the rank of Admiral in Starfleet, then pivots to politics and ultimately becomes President of the United Federation of Planets.
That’s the story Sussman hopes to tell in United — “a political thriller and a family drama set in those chaotic, formative years of the Federation.” He came up with the idea while watching Star Trek: Picard, and made it quite far in the pitching process. However, Paramount executives ultimately felt it had too much overlap with Starfleet Academy, which had already been greenlit. On top of that, Paramount+ was drastically cutting its spending on streaming originals at that time.
Now, Paramount’s merger with Skydance is underway, and executives have promised an increased investment in original content, with a particular eye to major franchises and brands, including Star Trek. Sussman hopes this will give United another chance, and Bakula seems to be onboard. The actor a major asset to Paramount twice over now, between Enterprise and NCIS. Earlier in his panel, he mentioned the parts of Archer’s story that he had always hoped to return to one day.
“Because we were being canceled… we got an extra season 4 to kind of complete the whole Xindi thing, which thank goodness we did, because I thought that was pretty amazing television,” he said. “I loved that, and it really was great writing… So, we crushed the ending of the show to wrap things up, but I think the goal was for that to happen more slowly, and for Archer to kind of start forming the bones of the Federation. And I think that would have been really, really exciting to do. So I’m sorry we didn’t get to really kind of lean into that.”
Hopefully, Star Trek: United will give Sussman and Bakula the chance to tell these stories that have simmered on the back burner for two decades now. In the meantime, Enterprise is streaming now on Paramount+, along with the rest of the Star Trek catalog.
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Image courtesy of HBO
