Star Trek’s next movie should break from the current reboot

Star Trek's next movie should break from the current reboot — here's why

(Paradigm credit: Paramount)

The Star Trek movie franchise has been in limbo the by few years, ever since Star Trek Beyond underperformed at the box office and ended upwards losing around $fifty.5 meg. But Paramount has finally kicked things back into gear, by announcing a date for the next installment: June 9, 2023.

Information technology's unclear whether this movie will be a sequel to Star Trek Across, and proceed the adventures of the Enterprise crew in the rebooted Kelvin Timeline, or something else entirely. I'k of the opinion that it should be different, but not for the reason you might think.

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I'm not arguing confronting scrapping the reboot because I don't like the movies. I quite enjoyed the 2009 Star Expedition reboot and Star Trek: Beyond. I didn't similar Into Darkness, and the way it but churned out a half-baked remake of Wrath of Khan. I merely feel the Trek movies should go dorsum to its roots, and amend connect its large and small screen Treks past bringing Tv set series dorsum to the large screen.

Rights issues squandered the reboot's potential

Whether there were ever plans for the rebooted Star Expedition to cross over onto TV aren't known. What nosotros do know is that any hypothetical plans would have been complicated past the fact unlike people held the rights. When Viacom and CBS split up in 2005, CBS held onto Star Treks' TV rights, while Viacom (and subsidiary Paramount) held onto the movie rights.

For that reason, the Star Expedition reboot was always effectively crippled past the bike of moviemaking. While the three movies didn't come out on a particularly slow release cycle (2009, 2013, 2016), they didn't accept the advantage of utilizing Tv's super-fast turnaround.

Even if a tie-in Boob tube series didn't feature the primary Enterprise crew as office of its regular cast, it was still something. As Curiosity's Agents of Due south.H.I.East.L.D. proved years later, it was possible to have a companion TV show tangibly related to a big-screen franchise without much in the way of crossover.

It gives fans something to spotter, reminds them that the Star Expedition franchise all the same exists, and helps to market the movie franchise in the process. Plus it could help explore the impact of what happened in the movies across the scope of its seven main characters.

Star Trek reboot — (Image credit: Paramount)

The planet Vulcan got sucked up by a black hole? Terrible news, but beyond a few scenes featuring Spock's anger and grief, information technology's never really brought upwards over again in the movies. The destruction of a cadre member of the Federation would take an enormous touch on the galaxy at large.

There was no fashion to fill in the gaps, not really. Tie-in books and comics existed, only that relies on fans firstly being aware of them, and secondly going out and purchasing them. A TV series could accept done much the same thing, but in a way that is much more than convenient to the audience. Possibly more entertaining too, depending on your personal views about reading.

Plus Star Trek is, at its core, a Television series that's most more than just flashy activity scenes. The original ten movies understood that, and they still featured plenty of the themes and nuances that Trek had on TV (albeit in a very condensed class).

The reboot didn't quite sympathize that, and ended upwards feeling very much like a Star Wars motion picture starring Captain Kirk and co. A TV series would accept given space for the reboot more of what makes Star Trek Star Trek. More chiefly a multi-episode TV flavor really has the fourth dimension to do it, rather than trying to stuff it all into a two-hour run time.

But the whole rights state of affairs killed off any such idea earlier it could possibly be conceived. Simply like it complicated the reboot'south merchandising rights. And with that whole situation, any real hope that the Star Trek reboot could capture the same essence of the TV testify was buried.

Filling in the gaps in canon

Hereafter Trek movies should follow the example set up past other big franchises, and apply an interconnected TV/movie universe to fill up in the gaps of the canon.

Take Marvel. We all know that snapping half the universe back into beingness was going to have huge ramifications, merely Spider-Man: Far From Home kind of glossed over that fact. Which makes sense, since information technology's a 2 hour movie that has its own stuff to go through. Meanwhile Falcon & The Winter Soldier (and to an extent WandaVision) have the time to explore it properly.

Star Wars is another instance. In the movies we simply always saw the kickoff and the end of the Clone Wars. Just the Idiot box testify Clone Wars was able to explore the disharmonize in huge detail, and focus on things other than the small grouping of protagonists in the picture. The Mandalorian is doing something similar, exploring a part of the 30-year flow between Episodes 6 and vii. And in the process giving united states of america an idea of the state of the galaxy in the years following later the fall of the Empire.

Both those stories likewise feature in books and comics, but they accept the same consequence every bit attempting to do that with Star Trek. A TV serial is a much more interesting style to get those stories out to a large audition.

Where Star Trek is concerned, the roles are reversed slightly. It's a TV series that jumped to the big screen, and not the other mode effectually. But you can still fill in the gaps the TV series leaves behind, much similar how the original vi movies continued the adventures of the Original Serial crew. That means yous show people what else is going on in the milky way while the USS Discovery, or Picard are off saving the universe from evil robots.

Tales of hereafter past

Interestingly at that place are already plenty of gaps in the Trek canon that the Boob tube serial either couldn't, or weren't able to address. Particularly Enterprise, which was cancelled back in 2005 and left Star Trek off our screens for a skilful 12 years. More importantly the run-upwards to the never-fabricated fifth season left backside some unfinished storylines that would be perfectly suited for the large screen.

The big plot point of season 5 would have been humanity's start (official) contact with the Romulans, and the war that it inevitably led to. A war that changed the political landscape of the Blastoff and Beta quadrants until the destruction of Romulus centuries after.

Non only is it a travesty that we've never been able to see that pivotal moment of Star Trek history, a full-calibration war between Earth and the Romulans is perfectly suited for the big screen. More than so when you think that Earth was not the same force that it became by the days of Kirk and Picard.

There was no Federation, and political alliances betwixt different alien races were tenuous at best. Even with the Vulcans, humanity'southward closest actress-terrestrial allies at the time, who also found themselves targets of their distant cousins.

That's not to say in that location couldn't as well exist stories featuring the bandage of other long-finished Star Expedition Boob tube shows. Though timeline constraints, and the ongoing Star Trek Picard, mean that there are going to be more restrictions over who can actually appear.

Worf may be 1 bully choice, given the ongoing-popularity of the character and Michael Dorn's repeated attempts to get producers to agree to give Worf a Television set series of his own.

The Picard tie-in novel 'The Last Best Hope' revealed that Worf succeeded Picard equally captain of the Enterprise-Eastward. Though the details of what the newly-promoted Captain Worf got up to in the 12 years between the novel and Picard's commencement season were never revealed. It could be explored in a time to come season of the Boob tube serial, but it's as well the perfect opportunity for new on-screen adventures that are tangibly related to hereafter seasons of Picard.

You have the aforementioned Worf, and the same Enterprise (until someone blows it up), which volition go far accessible to fans of both Picard and The Next Generation. A whole new crew would also mean you can explore past events without having to worry about the fact actors from previous Trek shows have aged 20 years somehow.

Unless you had a very specific type of conflicting that could affect actors that way. Like the Krenim from Voyager, who almost exclusively fought with temporal weapons.

Maybe nosotros could see Voyager's Year of Hell story get a new lease of life? The TV version was pretty underwhelming, and it might do good from a big screen adaptation with an actual flick budget. I don't see that actually happening, but it shows in that location are still things that Star expedition movies can explore - fifty-fifty if information technology means jumping back through the timeline.

Lesser line

Star Trek is uniquely positioned in that its original incarnation persevered by a reboot into the growing TV franchise it is today. At present that the rights to the movies and TV shows belong to the aforementioned company, the producers accept new opportunities to create something great

Curiosity pioneered an interconnected Tv set and picture show universe, more then now that we have the Disney Plus shows. Star Trek is ane of the few franchises that can follow that pb. Edifice on what Paramount did in the late '80s and early '90s, and resurrecting the thought that Star Expedition movies and Tv shows can share the aforementioned canon.

With picayune over two years before the next movie's release, there'south little chance of something new and heady happening. Only there's e'er hope that things might go in a dissimilar direction. Simply hey, at the very to the lowest degree, if Paramount is sticking to the reboot I'd also very much like to meet that turn up on TV as well. It would be nice if it was greater depth than Discovery's random conflicting cameo though.

More: Star Expedition Picard: Every episode with Q, ranked

Tom is the Tom's Guide's Automotive Editor, which means he can usually be plant knee deep in stats the latest and all-time electric cars, or checking out some sort of driving gadget. Information technology's long way from his days every bit editor of Gizmodo United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, when pretty much everything was on the table. He'southward usually found trying to squeeze another giant Lego set onto the shelf, draining very large cups of java, or complaining that Ikea won't let him buy the stuff he actually needs online.