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

by Larry Nemecek

1. BUT WHO KNOWS WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN ... NOW?

David Ellison Skydance Paramount
Getty Images / Jeff Bottari

The truth is that the TV side of Trek is in stasis, and nothing new will be decided until Kurtzman’s expansive 2021 Secret Hideout franchise-runner contract renewal is decided late this summer.

In turn, no matter what happens with their pending close to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, incoming Paramount/Skydance honcho David Ellison and his team have said they want synergy, not silos, between Paramount’s TV and movies as well, using all the studio's franchises available. Their Trek emphasis seems to be with feature films first, per the one known deal in place now, while still looking to strengthen Paramount+ streaming as well. Meaning... at least one new Trek streaming series after Starfleet Academy runs its course, but only one? For now? Would a solo series even need a Trek franchise-runner? We'll see.

One thing we do know: Whether new or old, this is hardly the last list of new Star Trek wanna-bes we'll see in the coming months. But by year’s end, after all the parties for Star Trek’s 60th have come and gone,  we’ll likely know a lot more about who is and is not calling the shots, the tone that Ellison & company want for Star Trek — and hopefully, whether any of these very public pitches for big or smaller screens are seriously a part of it.

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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!