10 Dream Star Trek Moments That Could Still Happen

800-odd years is already a long life, even for a hologram. First activated on Voyager in 2371, soon to be teaching at the Academy in the 32nd century, the Doctor will not only have lived, he will have seen generations of friends die along the way. And, as Robert Picardo pointed out during Trek Talks 4 this year:

Digital memory is completely clear, which means that a beloved colleague, like Captain Janeway […] [is] as present in his memory, 900 [sic] years on, as when he was working with [her] in the 24th century.

That bittersweet fact leaves us with a few dream possibilities. The Doctor's trips down memory lane could see the on-screen return of any one of his former crewmates. He could chat to B'Elanna aboard Voyager in a daydream, before being interrupted by a student mid-lecture! (More on other legacy characters later.)

An EMH that doesn't age still poses a few technical questions about de-aging. The Doctor can alter his physical parameters as he sees fit, but there needs to be some sort of explanation for the audience. In Star Trek: Picard, Q snapped his fingers. The Doctor can just tap his mobile emitter. The ageing process shouldn't be too much of a stretch for his subroutines!

For the 'Octocentennial Man,' there is also always the possibility of transfer to a synthetic organic android, or 'golem,' body — one capable of ageing. The Doctor might prefer that, in fact, to flickering every five seconds like every other bloody hologram in the future. The end of that really would be a dream come true!

Fans have been dreaming of some kind of large-scale crossover event between the various series ever since stock footage of the USS Voyager appeared in the teaser trailer for Star Trek: First Contact. Naturally, ship and crew hadn't whizzed back to the Alpha Quadrant for the movie itself.

Crossovers have been done to varying degrees of success — from the frankly bad of Birthright, Parts I & II and These Are the Voyages…, through the decidedly better of Unification and Those Old Scientists. Fun with Reg and Deanna on Star Trek: Voyager was always welcome, as were those other get-togethers on Deep Space 9.

No episode, series, or movie has ever combined all of the extant Captains, now all with differing amounts of pips. Whatever they've got on their collar, it would take a lot of temporal shenanigans — and a hefty pile of contracts — to get at least Pike, Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, Archer, Burnham, and Freeman in the same room together for some shenanigans of their very own.

Beta canon has provided many ideas that could serve as a blueprint. For example, the Star Trek: The Captain's Table novel series used a 'bar' locale in another dimension (the titular 'Captain's Table') as its conceit — the door to which was only accessible to those with the rank (from across time, and not just from Starfleet).

There is also always the holodeck, made good era-hopping use of in the Star Trek Annual (2023). Via a more linear narrative, the 2006 video game Star Trek: Legacy told the story of its single player campaign across several eras and characters — from Captain Archer through to Admiral Janeway, and even Avery Brooks as Captain Sisko in between.

Speaking of Legacy…

There is nothing so new as not to be iterative. Quantum mechanics aside, you can't innovate from the vacuum. After nearly 60 years of incremental variation, Star Trek is now its own inheritance. To move forward is to look back. In that sense, all Star Trek must be Star Trek: Legacy to be Star Trek at all. That said, only one Star Trek: Legacy can be the series we're looking for.

A lack of Legacy is not for a lack of continued interest either. The dream's alive! Sure, the initial buzz that followed the conclusion of Star Trek: Picard's final season has been tempered by a certain degree of realism. The actors required to make the show remain largely on board, and with an air of optimism.

As late as October last year, LeVar Burton told TV Line that,

The sentiment, then and now, at least for us, the cast, and the audience, two years on, seems to be just as interested in the idea of Legacy as when Picard was just airing.

It would all need Captain Seven of Nine of the Enterprise-G, of course. On her part, Jeri Ryan continues to say, "never say never," having even turned down a pitch for a Seven of Nine spin-off because it wasn't the Legacy show fans wanted, and that she wanted to do.

Remove Rachel Garrett from Star Trek: Section 31, the Long Trek, and the Lost Era was nowhere to be found. One wasted opportunity is still hope for a more substantial visit to Star Trek's most forgotten time, typically marked as beginning with Kirk's apparent death in 2293, and ending at Encounter at Farpoint in 2364. Captain John Harriman needs more than the Tuesdays!

The Lost Era is so ripe for storytelling. Storytelling that has been done, and done rather well. The series of seven (plus) novels that defined the epoch, starting with Sulu in The Sundered in 2298, are so finely detailed as to make it a breeze for anyone who should wish to adapt them. In our era of tightening budgets, it only makes sense, in this case, to use the resources that are already there.

Forget the 'godsend,' and think of the Tomed Incident, instead! In canon, next to nothing is known about the little ruckus between the Romulans and the Federation that led to the signing of the Treaty of Algeron.

The Lost Era novel Serpents Among the Ruins gives Tomed as a false flag operation, led by Starfleet Intelligence and Captain Harriman. It's tough to imagine that Section 31 wasn't involved, too, if anyone is stuck for ideas for the next film. Actor Alan Ruck is a busy person, but we can still dream of a good hour and a half in 2311.

It has been 20 years since Star Trek: Enterprise was unceremoniously cancelled, so you can add that to the list of 'things that age you'. It has taken almost that long for the show to be appreciated for what it already was. Latter-day or at the time, the consensus is that a fifth season would actually be quite nice, thank you very much. It's true what they say, absence does make 'Faith of the Heart' grow stronger.

Plans were made. Ships were redesigned and eventually made canon. It's not too late to implement them in one form or another. Khan is getting his own audio drama. They could at least stretch to that for the founder of the Federation! The ever-hypothetical season five had some rather good ideas — from the brewings of the Earth-Romulan war to the beginnings of the Federation, via the origins of the Borg Queen. We might even have visited Denobula!

Above all else, it's more than about time for the return of Captain (or Admiral) Archer. We've not heard a peep out of him or Porthos since Riker and Troi peeped in in These Are the Voyages… There has been a lot of love recently for the OG of the NX-01, most notably in the form of a spacedock in the 32nd century.

According to unseen information written for his bio in In A Mirror, Darkly, Admiral Archer "died peacefully in his home in upstate New York in the year 2245, exactly one day after attending the christening ceremony of the first Federation Starship Enterprise, NCC-1701". Therein equally lies a great opportunity for a flashback, or several, in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, with Scott Bakula still open to a return.

The penultimate episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks was a lot more katra than any of us had anticipated. Fissure Quest got out a Vulcan lute, played 'dun dun duuun!' and then whacked us over the head with it. The previously only imaginable had happened. Jolene Blalock had returned to Star Trek. Of all the quantum realities in all the multiverse…

The alternate T'Pol's animated appearance then leaves us all the more hopeful for the return of her Prime counterpart in live action. Vulcan lifespans are particularly long — upwards of 200 years. Born in 2088, T'Pol would be 171 by 2259, the year in which Hegemony, current latest of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, is set. By way of comparison, the temporal duplicate T'Pol from E² was around 182 years old.

There is more than one 'Lost Era' in Star Trek, after all. T'Pol is the living link to bridge the gap. The 1701 owes more than just a piece of itself to the NX-01, and those Travis and Hoshi fans would surely be more than glad to give T'Pol at least the guided tour. As a Vulcan, T'Pol's katra could also live on indefinitely after death. Perhaps a few cadets could pay a visit to the 'Hall of Ancient Thought'?

Instead of a lampshade, hang a warp catchphrase on it. Star Trek: Picard teased us with a possibility for Captain Seven of Nine. At the end of The New Next Generation, Star Trek: Lower Decks gave us the newly promoted Captain Jack Ransom's choice. "Come on, you don't wanna set that tone," insisted Beckett Mariner, as Ransom prepared to "engage the core". "What if this is a five-year mission?" What if, indeed.

"I feel it's both an ending, but like a promise," Lower Decks creator and showrunner Mike McMahan noted to our very own Seán Ferrick on the TrekCulture podcast in December last year. In April, the news that the fifth season would be the last for Lower Decks left fans at a loss. The series finale doubled up as a fine farewell to the Cerritos, and a fourth-wall breaking nod to the hope for more. As Tawny Newsome told RadioTimes.com, "We'll do this show until we're dust in the ground".

If season six won't break the warp barrier, then why not a set of movies to continue the adventures? Newsome herself has her own live action comedy spin-off in development, set hopefully still in the 25th century. Failing both of those, McMahan also added to Seán that he'd even considered a Starbase 80 spin-off. Well, they do have the inventor of 'sliding' right there!

"Perhaps you should beam aboard our ship. There's something we need to discuss." Those were Captain Picard's words to Captain Morgan Bateson of the USS Bozeman at the end of Cause and Effect. Oh to be a fly on the wall in the room where that conversation happened!

Ninety years was a lot of time to be out of the loop in a temporal causality loop. A crash avoided with the Enterprise-D meant a crash course in the 24th century for Bateson and crew. Three years later, the Bozeman had to make a course correction thanks to Doctor Soran. Two years after that, it was on course for the Borg cube at the Battle of Sector 001.

The last we saw of Captain Bateson himself was as leader of a crack black-ops team in 2381 in the Star Trek: Lower Decks episode Grounded. Keep tossing your starships and scrambled eggs, however, as that appearance had no dialogue. Bateson was just a bit-player of a much better story.

In fact, in the spirit of Lower Decks, it would be far more interesting to hear from the subordinates of the Soyuz-class stranded in another century. How did they all cope with the temporal transition? They lost family but gained replicators, so, you know, give and take!

On 18 November last year, OTOY and the Roddenberry Archive released 765874: Unification, a truly exceptional short film in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the theatrical release of Star Trek: Generations. In an instant, Kirk of Veridian III was returned to us for another's final journey. In about eight minutes, OTOY and the Roddenberry Archive changed Star Trek forever.

If that was proof of concept, it was a spectacular one. OTOY's visual effects technology clearly works, especially with Sam Witwer in the room, or by the fountain. That OTOY and the Roddenberry Archive care about canon in the most minute detail should go without saying. It is certainly evident by seeing. We can only dream of more shorts the likes of 765874 or longer.

On the TrekCulture podcast in April this year, OTOY founder and CEO Jules Urbach kept those dreams alive when he said:

There is no better ending, I think, for those characters than how it ended in that piece [765874: Unification]. But that doesn't mean there aren’t other parts of the Star Trek Universe that we wouldn't want to explore and tell similar narrative concept videos that would connect those to the things in the Archive.

Those largely independent projects aside, there should surely be a world in which OTOY is working directly with Paramount on existing Star Trek shows.

Finally, there was great news for those of us who like to delve into the virtual world, but don't have the budget to take another bite out of the Apple. On the podcast, Urbach noted that as much of the Roddenberry Archive as possible will be made available to VR headsets other than the Vision Pro using 'WebXR'. We don't know when, but the sooner the better, please! To take an immersive stroll aboard a whole gamut of starships and starbases is several dreams at once.

Kathryn Janeway — holo- and (Vice) Admiral — has already made her triumphant return to Star Trek in animated form in the brilliant Star Trek: Prodigy. Nevertheless, her last live action appearance (in canon) remains that call to Jean-Luc in Star Trek: Nemesis. Fans are clamouring for Kate Mulgrew to step back in front of the camera. After all, as Captain Janeway herself said to the alternate Admiral Janeway in Endgame, "There's got to be a way to have our cake and eat it too".

Now, where better for news than a cruise? The Star Trek one. In 2025. Aboard, during an 'Evening With…,' Mulgrew answered a fan question about a possible live-action return for Janeway as follows:

There is a conversation happening. It is being pursued.

One more room to be a fly on the wall in, so long as we're not Roy! As to what form a live-action return might take, we can only speculate. We can only dream! Picard got his series with his name on it, so why not Janeway? And, as we reported on at the time in February, William Shatner was apparently awaiting a pitch for a Kirk show from "a writer on one of Paramount's currently in-development Trek series".

Any 'Star Trek: Janeway' series would also come with the tantalising prospect of flashbacks to events that immediately followed Voyager's return to Earth, as yet undepicted. There are a lot of gaps to fill in. (Did Harry Kim's parents manage to move the sofa in time?) OTOY might be able to help with all that.

Whatever happens, Mulgrew remains keen to avoid a "vanity piece," to return just for the sake of it with something that doesn't live up to fan expectations, though it is difficult to see how she could ever disappoint.

We live in hope for live action Janeway, and for more from the animated whilst we're at it. The 60th anniversary is still on its way! If the alternate Admiral Janeway from Endgame could speak directly to Paramount, she might well say, 'it's time to go big or go home!'