13 Star Trek Pitches Out There (And Where They're At)

6. Tawny Newsome & Justin Simien’s STAR TREK SITCOM

*trek sitcom justin tawny 2024
Sarah Coulter / CBS Media Ventures

Way back in July 2024, the oddest Hall H announcement ever at San Diego Comic-Con yielded news of a Star Trek sitcom developed by comedian/producer-writer Justin Simien of Dear White People and our own Beckett Mariner (and Illa Dax and Starfeet Academy writer) herself, Tawny Newsome. I think thanks to Lower Decks breaking the 24th Century comedy barrier, far more fans were in the zen zone of a Trek sitcom than they would have been, say, even five years earlier.

What’s wild is how this broke news about a series that was not actually a done deal yet; hardly the textbook Paramount PR way. But we learned the initial take, with Tawny among the cast, would feature Federation outsiders serving a gleaming resort planet “who find out their day-to-day exploits are being broadcast to the entire quadrant.“ The format was later reported to have been tweaked a bit, but what we do know is that multiple scripts were prepped and the whole package was formally submitted to Secret Hideout just before the 2025 holidays—just in time to sit until future Trek’s big picture is settled.

If there’s anyone I’d love to see pioneer a Trek comedy, single or multi-camera, it’s Tawny and Co. But again, the “Trek Sitcom” is a submitted pitch — waiting for when or if whoever's in charge can decide on it.

Status: IN AN INBOX, SOMEWHERE

Contributor
Contributor

Back when nerds and geeks were just called "hobbyists," Larry's ninth-grade science teacher ended a bewildering conversations with him about Halkans by finally saying, "Oh Larry — don't tell me you don't know Star Trek!"— along with a commandment to go home and begins watching the daily after-school rerun. The rest is history — well, future history, anyway. Larry had always been a NASA kid and a history fan (not so much sci-fi), so Star Trek fit right in: for the phenomenon that was worldbuilding before the term was invented, Larry felt passion-called to take up "backgrounding" and gap-filling before the term "retcon" was invented. Star Trek is fun and inspiring, but it doesn't pay the bills —at least in those days— but after college and work in theatre and print news, Larry somehow managed to combine both fields with his non-fiction Trek fandom and created the monster that today is Dr. Trek. His self-published, pre-Internet star charts and TNG Concordance were precursors to the official Stellar Cartography map set and the bestseller TNG Companion, after a move to Hollywood /SoCal in the 1990s boom years. Add in a stint as managing editor of official ST Communicator magazine, the first editor and later content producer of the original startrek.com, and the franchise consultant for everything from the Star Trek World Tour to the storied Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas. When Star Trek went wandering in the wilderness for the first time in 18 years amid the "Paramount divorce" of 2005-06, so did Larry — until, finally, the entrepreneur web world eventually found a path and a way to stay afloat. Since then, Larry's "Trekland" has come to mean more media projects and podcast/streaming alongside the old standbys like convention guest speaking and even text writing. Sure, there's The Trek Files for Roddenberry, his own Trekland Tuesdays Live, and Dr. Trek;s Second Opinion reaction shows — but that passion for spotlighting and archiving the creatives of Trek across all arenas and eras still drives him to pioneer experiences like the monthly backstage Portal 47 features, and the Trekland Treks day tours of Trek location sights. And now ... in-depth Dr. Trek turns for TrekCulture, too!