With the announcement that Alex Kurtzman, who co-wrote both of the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movies, will be involved in the show there are rumours that this new series will take place in the rebooted universe. Since the movies are already covering the reheated adventures of young Kirk and crew, its an easy jump to make that the new series might follow the crew of The Next Generation. This would be a mistake. A constant criticism of the new movies is that they kept looking to the past for inspiration instead of creating their own stories, so a reboot of The Next Generation would be a safe but boring approach. It would be easy to reintroduce beloved characters like young Picard (what's Tom Hardy doing these days?) and Data and retell classic stories like The Best Of Both Worlds, but that's the least creative approach imaginable. Whatever the weaknesses of the various Star Trek spin-offs were, they at least tried to do something different. If the new show is going to earn any fan love, it needs to bring something fresh to the table.
