The other big change from the first two films is that the normal screenwriting duo have departed as well. Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci met at high school and have since become one of the biggest-earning writing teams in Hollywood, working together on both Star Trek reboots, the last couple of Transformers and Spider-Man films, and basically every other movies Abrams has done. Their professional partnership recently came to an end, however, with Kurtzman bunking off from Star Trek altogether, and Orci originally staying on both as a screenwriter and Paramount's first choice as director. He knew the material, obviously, but Star Trek 3 would've been Orci's directorial debut a pretty huge first crack for an untested filmmaker. He's a talented guy, but would you trust him with such a blockbuster behemoth? Now Orci's scrapered as well, with his early draft scripts being polished up by JD Payne and Patrick McKay. Both of whom have absolutely no professional credits to their name so far. Well, at least, they've written a bunch of scripts from the sounds of it, but none of them have been produced yet. Make of that what you will...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
