EVERYONE Wants Star Trek: Legacy — LeVar Burton Gives His Support
Burton joins the long list of talent asking for Legacy to be green-lit.
LeVar Burton has a new role these days as host of TV gameshow Trivial Pursuit, even adding a little Star Trek flair to the promotional material. When the Next (and Last) Gen legend sat down with TV Line's Kimberly Roots (via TrekMovie) this month, he gave us all a renewed sense of hope that we might get an answer to our own quizzical question: Where is Star Trek: Legacy?
It's certainly general knowledge that focus is elsewhere in the franchise at the moment. As Burton himself noted to Roots, "I see that they are all in on Starfleet Academy". The initial wave of optimism that followed Star Trek: Picard's third and final season has plateaued, if not dwindled by now. #StarTrekLegacy — a term stamped into officialdom by Terry Matalas himself — no longer floods socials like it once did. Even a few of us here at TrekCulture have started to give up hope, as the likes and the talents of Matalas and Dave Blass moved on to other projects.
Well over a year after The Last Generation first hit screens, Burton remains as keen to continue what he re-began with Geordi La Forge, however, telling TV Line,
The sentiment, then and now, at least for us, the cast, and the audience, two years on, seem to be just as interested in the idea of Legacy as when Picard was just airing.
That is a feeling echoed over and over by the captain and first officer of the Enterprise-G, and by the skipper of its previous incarnation, the Titan-A. In February this year, Michelle Hurd told TrekMovie that Legacy was something she felt "has to happen," that Picard couldn't be "the last time Raffi's voice is spoken".
Todd Stashwick, notably dead as Captain Liam Shaw, aptly stated in the same interview that, "It's 'Schrödinger's Legacy,' right? […] I can only be hopeful [for the future where it does happen]". Also speaking to TrekMovie in February, Jeri Ryan simply said, "never say never," and that "Sure!" she was "ready to go".
None of this is to diminish our excitement for Academy, the third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Star Trek: Section 31, and the Tawny Newsome / Justin Simien comedy spin-off. In all that, however, to extend the not-so trivial metaphor, there is still a wedge missing from the franchise without Legacy (and let's not forget Star Trek: Prodigy season three!).
Whilst Burton did concede to TV Line that, with budgets as they are, a Legacy series would be unlikely whilst the focus is on others, he remained hopeful that there would eventually be a shift back:
I would think that given the opportunity and the resources that they would want to do [Legacy]. It makes so much sense. It makes so much sense.
They have the bridge sets — the rebuilt Enterprise-D will even be at Universal Studios Hollywood next year — so costs are already lower than Picard. And besides, pop quiz: 'Why the Q in the room?' and 'What's Seven's warp catchphrase?' With a little added hope from Burton, perhaps the answers we all want to our Legacy questions will be soon forthcoming.