Star Trek is in a bit of an uncertain place right now, as the shows that created its streaming boom have spent the last couple of years either coming to their end or announcing that they’re preparing to do so—and that’s even putting aside that Paramount itself is controversially about to come under new management. Beyond two and a half more seasons of Strange New Worlds and at least two seasons of Starfleet Academy, where Star Trek goes next is unknown. But it’s also a situation where one Trek alum sees an opportunity for a major return.
That alum is Michael Sussman, a writer and producer who worked on both Star Trek: Voyager and, more significantly, Star Trek: Enterprise. Speaking to TrekMovie ahead of an appearance at the ongoing STLV: Trek to Vegas convention this weekend, Sussman revealed that in the last few years he had worked with Enterprise star Scott Bakula (who is also making a rare convention appearance at STLV) on a pitch for a successor series inspired by an idea Sussman had sown the seeds for in the last episode of Enterprise he wrote, “In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II.”
Set in the Mirror Universe, the season four two-parter saw Bakula playing the dual role of both the Prime Captain Archer and his Mirror Universe counterpart. The latter, accessing the computer systems of the U.S.S. Defiant, a ship from a future point in the Trek timeline (but not that U.S.S. Defiant) that had made it to the alternate reality, pulls up Prime Archer’s personnel file—where both Mirror Archer and the audience alike learn that he is destined to one day become the president of the nascent United Federation of Planets.
“It occurred to me that someone on the writing staff, not the art department, needed to write this graphic. Somebody needed to think about this, right? This was going to be a graphic that spelled out Archer’s life and career after the series ended,” Sussman told TrekMovie. “Holy shit, I actually have an idea for a series, going back to that viewscreen graphic that I planted all those years earlier.”
That idea—which, according to Sussman, had been born out of Bakula expressing an interest in returning for an Archer-focused show inspired by the success of the then-ongoing Star Trek: Picard. It coalesced into a pitch Sussman and Bakula worked on called Star Trek: United, which would’ve revolved around an older Jonathan Archer navigating the diplomatic and political nuances of leading the Federation in its early years and taken a more mature tone. “It’s a political thriller and a family drama set in those chaotic, formative years of the Federation… One of my aspirations would be that the series could do for Star Trek, what Andor did for Star Wars,” Sussman continued. “It’s a show where you can tell adult stories about adults and tell them in a very grounded, realistic way.”
However, according to Sussman, the pitch for United, while in the very early stages of discussion, didn’t go far. The producer took what he described as a “high-level overview” for the series to Secret Hideout, Alex Kurtzman’s production company that works with Paramount on all of contemporary Star Trek. Although the meeting was positive and Sussman was developing a more in-depth pitch, he was eventually told that Secret Hideout and Paramount would not be moving forward in developing, amid a broader cutback by the studio on streaming spending, and due to a potential similarity overlap with the already-in-development Starfleet Academy, which, although set thousands upon thousands of years after the timeframe of United, would also be set primarily on Earth.
Things are indeed about to change at Paramount, with the $8 billion deal for Skydance to take ownership of the studio having closed this week. Paramount’s new CEO, David Ellison, has already discussed a renewed focus on premium streaming content. To Sussman, that indicates a potential that—especially after the amount of streaming Star Trek has contracted in the past few years—he could take the United pitch, tweaked enough to alleviate prior concerns about overlap, back to the studio for a new appraisal.
“The hope is that Paramount is planning to invest more in Star Trek on television,” Sussman concluded to TrekMovie, “and they’ve been very clear about how they want to make Paramount+ a real player in the streaming space.”
Time will tell if the possibility is still on the cards. After all, even if Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy are currently the only two Star Trek series in production at the moment, we’ve heard plenty of rumors about plans to try and bring the franchise back in film, whether it’s Patrick Stewart’s own hopes for a new Picard film, the perpetual talk of a fourth entry in the “Kelvin Timeline” series started by J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek movie, or—perhaps most interestingly in the case of the United pitch—a movie set in the early days of Starfleet and humanity’s early steps after making first contact with the Vulcans and other alien species, ground already covered in part by Star Trek: Enterprise.
Suffice to say, it’s going to take a long road to get any indication of Star Trek‘s future in this new normal. Whether Captain (or President) Archer will be part of that future remains to be seen.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
