The Adventure Is In Trouble

If we face up to facts, we must admit that Star Trek has fallen by the wayside of late. The quality of recent movies has ranged from dubious to dire, and for the first time in nearly two decades, there are no new Star Trek TV episodes in production.

Not all is lost, however; Star Trek is such a big money maker for its license holders that it was almost inevitable that we would see something new in the works before too long. It doesn't yet have a cast, a crew, or even a budget, but Star Trek XI is definitely in the cards, most likely coming in 2008.

It is safe to say that what we don't know about Star Trek XI far outweighs what we do know about it. That said, if you connect the eclectic dots of things people have mentioned, contracts that have been signed and schedules that have been set then we can patch together a sketch of what Star Trek XI is shaping up to become.

Here's what we know so far, after chasing interviews across the Internet and working with Anthony Pascale, editor of The Trek Movie Report (a site dedicated to keeping tabs on every snippet of information of upcoming Star Trek projects.

Tell Me Rick Berman Won't Be Working On This Movie

Okay: Rick Berman won't be working on this movie. The man who has essentially led Star Trek since the death of Gene Roddenberry is gone from the franchise, along with all of the people who worked with him.

Berman, and co-producer Brannon Braga, take a lot of the blame for debacles such as "Voyager," "Enterprise" and some of the more dubious movies - including the flop that was "Nemesis". A lot of people consider the pair to be the poison pen of Star Trek (although they did oversee some of Trek's best years in TNG and DS9, let us not forget.) After "Nemesis" flopped Berman did try to propose a script which he brought to light in 2005 - "Star Trek: The Beginning" - to the chagrin of many fans.

Derided as "Star Trek: 90210", the script was being written by Erik Jendresen of "Band of Brothers" fame, and was to center around Spock's and Kirk's Starfleet Academy days. This was an idea originally floated by Harve Bennett in '91 as the idea for Star Trek VI, and revived by Berman and Jendresen.

Another possible idea from Berman and Jendresen was a movie focusing on the Earth-Romulan war, at a time after Enterprise but before The Original Series. Apparently Paramount wasn't too hot on either idea - or, some suggest, Berman himself - and chose to make Berman persona non grata where Star Trek was concerned.

As reported in early September, even former Star Trek actors are saying that CBS has kicked Rick Berman off the Trek bandwagon.

This helps to allay the fears of those who say that "they" will screw up this movie as "they" have been doing for the past several years. As Anthony Pascale put it to me, however, "There is no 'they' any more. Everyone who has worked on Star Trek previously, from the top executives at the studio to the guy who sweeps the floor on-set, is gone. There's now a totally different production team running Star Trek. This is what people have been asking for now for years."

The new production team is led by "Lost" creator and "Mission: Impossible III" director Jeffrey Jacob Abrams, a self-professed Star Trek fanatic who, it is rumored, signed up to a five-year mission with Paramount specifically so that he could head up Star Trek XI.

So who is J.J. Abrams, and what is his vision for Star Trek?

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