Star Trek: Legacy – Will It Become A Reality?
With Star Trek: Picard having concluded on 20 April 2023, the question becomes whether the story ends here. For now, the answer is yes. However, Picard Season 3 showrunner Terry Matalas has proposed the idea of a spin-off series called “Star Trek: Legacy”. It would share its title with a 2006 Star Trek video game and a 1990 episode of The Next Generation. Legacy would be set immediately after the events of the series finale of Picard, with Captain Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) and the crew of the USS Enterprise-G.
This idea has inspired a fan-organized Change.org petition asking that Paramount put this series into production. The petition‘s signature count is nearing 60,000. This is roughly double the number of signatories who registered interest in a Change.org petition that circulated amongst fans during Season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery. In that petition, fans urged Paramount to produce a spin-off series involving Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), Spock (Ethan Peck), and Number One (Rebecca Romijn), set aboard their Enterprise in the time leading up to TOS. This petition eventually led to the development and airing of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Legacy Imminent?
Star Trek: Legacy, if given the green light by Paramount, would face some production challenges. Picard was shot in California, thanks to tax breaks granted by the California Film Commission. If Legacy is to go ahead, the production would have to apply for those tax breaks too or move to Canada, due to lower production costs. This would be nothing new to Star Trek, as Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds are both filmed in the Toronto area. The most recent film in the franchise, Star Trek Beyond, was shot in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Characters in the proposed series would be the new Enterprise crew, potentially led by Seven of Nine, Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd), Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers), and Lieutenant Sidney La Forge (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut). Who would join them? On 2 April 2023, Matalas revealed on Twitter that he would bring Worf’s son Alexander into the fold. Alexander was last seen in the DS9 episode “You Are Cordially Invited”, in which he served as the best man at his father’s wedding to Jadzia Dax. In the third and final season of Picard, it was strongly implied that Liam Shaw (Todd Stashwick) was killed near the shuttlebay of the Titan-A by assimilated Starfleet officers, but since his death was never fully realized, it may provide an opportunity for Shaw to return to the Star Trek franchise. On 9 April, Stashwick told fans on Twitter that he was loving the idea, “ready to raise a glass to get to be in [Star Trek: Legacy].”
If the show goes ahead, the most likely main setting is the Enterprise-G, which launched at the end of Picard’s third season, following a change of name from the “Titan-A”. It’s fitting that the show will likely focus on the Enterprise-G, under Seven’s command, given that the main starship in The Next Generation was originally known as the Enterprise-7 and Enterprise-G (G being the seventh letter of the alphabet) before it was finally named the Enterprise-D.
Strike Interference
Right now, no further discussions can be made in regards to Legacy, as Hollywood is in the grip of a Writer’s Guild of America strike that has been ongoing for over a month and has halted many productions. Star Trek has been no exception. According to Strange New Worlds showrunner Henry Alonso Myers, production on the third season of that series has been postponed until the strike is resolved. The WGA strike has so far not affected production on the recently announced fifth season of Star Trek: Lower Decks nor the second season of Star Trek: Prodigy, as most of the people involved with those shows are part of the Animation Guild. However, there are expiring contracts with the Director’s Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild that will expire on 30 June 2023. If the contracts lapse without new ones replacing them, all of Star Trek may be affected.
This isn’t the first time that Star Trek has been affected by a WGA work stoppage. The 2009 Star Trek feature film was in production during the strike. However, the most significant consequences of a WGA strike were in 1988. Production on Season 2 of TNG was put on hold during that strike, and as such, the premiere date got pushed from September to November. In anticipation of the strike, the first produced episode of that season was a TNG adaptation of a holdover script from the aborted Star Trek: Phase II television series, “The Child”. Pre-production on Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was also affected by the strike.
Conclusion
Will Star Trek: Legacy become a reality? Only time will tell. The fans are generally eager for it, and the actors and production crew are too. Making the envisioned show a reality is a matter of resolving contracts, signing deals, and budgeting funds. Requests by fans can only go so far.