Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

Alasdair Stuart prepares to boldly go…

With the fourth Kelvinverse movie possibly, finally, dead for the last time, Star Trek has been looking a little muted recently. Strange New Worlds’ final two seasons are pretty much in the can as are Starfleet Academy’s first two and the rest of the franchise is stood down. There’s a tangible sense of disappointment, as multiple excellent TV shows have either been killed early (Prodigy) or abandoned, arguably more than the disappointment that defines most fandoms rather more than it should. So good news, when it comes, is kind of surprising. And we have some good news.

Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley have been lined up to write, produce and direct a new Star Trek film. One described as:  “a completely new take in the Star Trek universe and is not connected to any previous or current television series, movie, or prior movie development projects.”

A moment here for people to yell ‘Go back to the past!’, other people to yell ‘Go into the future!’ and rather more people to yell ‘No no like that!’

We’ve got two pieces of information to dig in on here. The first is the fact this is entirely new. No Pike. No Kirk. No Spock. No Picard. No Mariner. No Burnham. That, for a franchise that has often been unable to resist play the hits (and punished when it tries something new) is a brave and welcome move. It also seems to confirm that this won’t be a TOS era, TNG era or Disco era show. Which, ironically, gets us back to either the distant past of the franchise or the future. Perhaps that 900 year gap between Picard and Starfleet Academy? Regardless, we can park pretty much all the ‘We need a new TNG movie!’ ‘What we really need is more Voyager!’ because this isn’t that. Any of that.

The other piece of information we have is Goldstein and Daley. In three movies (and co-writing the first and still one of the best MCU era Spider-Man movies, Homecoming), they’ve established themselves as funny, perceptive writers and directors who can find the heart in anything. I’ve seen two of their three movies to date; (Mayday, Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves), loved one and enjoyed the other. They’re not perfect by any means, and the fat shaming gag in Honor Among Thieves lands like an anvil on an ice rink, but they are very good at what they do and they could do some really fun things with Star Trek.

Whether they get to do it, succeeding where Quentin Tarantino, Noah Hawley and others have failed, we’ll have to (hopefully) see. In the meantime, go watch Honor Among Thieves, it’s great.