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Where the Star Trek 3 Director, Writers Want To Boldly Go

Is the Star Trek reboot Star Trek at all? I grew up watching The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and, yes, even Enterprise along with many of my friends and we’ve debated the merits of the JJ Abrams reboot. I really enjoyed 2009′s Star Trek, but wrote off Star Trek Into Darkness.

For a series called Star Trek, there isn’t much trekking through the stars, and far too much saving the Earth from a singular bad guy.

Looks like my friends and I are not the only ones who would like to see the Trek reboot move into some more interesting territory.

New director Roberto Orci recently spoke to the Humans From Earth podcast (via Cinema Blend), and discussed where they’ll be going with the third film:

The first two films -- especially the 2009 [Star Trek] -- was an origin story. It was about them coming together. So they weren't the characters they were in the original series. They were growing into them and that continues on in the second movie. So in this movie they are closer than they are to the original series characters that you have ever seen. They have set off on their five-year mission. So their adventure is going to be in deep space.

Trek Core sat down with writers Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne, who will be penning the next film with Orci. The interviewees talk about how they came into writing. and the effect Star Trek has had on them growing up. The really interesting stuff comes up when they were asked about the villain of the week structure of the last few Star Trek films:

People always talk up “Wrath of Khan! Wrath of Khan!” -- and while I love Star Trek II, and I’ve seen it so many times, I also REALLY love Star Trek III and Star Trek IV. Those are movies that have a little bit more of the character relationships and the humor and some more of the speculative sci-fi elements. And sure, there are certainly a lot of problems you can point to in The Motion Picture, but I love that movie too. I think it’s a cool movie, and it’s totally Star Trek.

There are big, ambitious, complex movies that also have a huge audience. Take The Dark Knight -- certainly, that’s a very villain-centric movie, but that’s also very ambitious movie. Inception -- does that one even have a villain? That’s such a complex picture, and that ended up doing like $800 Million worldwide. There’s a lot of ways to do it.

–Patrick McKay

Yeah, and that’s one of the things that I think is so wonderful about Star Trek. It’s a universe in which there are a lot of different possibilities in terms of what make a good story.

I look back at some of those Next Generation episodes where you have these shows that are as big and crazy as “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” “The Best of Both Worlds,” “Chain of Command," or “All Good Things,” but there are also these intimate episodes like “Tapestry” and “The Inner Light" -- or "Data's Day," where you have Data just hanging around with his cat!

Star Trek can do so many different things and do it well, that you have just so many colors on that palette to paint with -- and I think that for us, in terms of what we’re thinking for the next one, nothing’s really off the table.

–J.D. Payne

I always thought Star Trek was at its best when it was dealing with a complex issue. I love a good starship fight as much as the next sci-fi fan, but a film with a complex puzzle at its center is also incredibly entertaining. I really hope the team in charge of the next installment start bringing Star Trek back to it’s roots and give us new and wondrous ideas instead of rehashing another revenge story.

Star Trek 3 will debut sometime in 2016.

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