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In the wake of the cancelation of the divisive Starfleet Academy, Project Hail Mary author Andy Weir has revealed Paramount rejected his pitch for a new Star Trek show, and has called modern Star Trek “s**t.”
Star Trek is currently without a new announced series, with the divisive Starfleet Academy set to end with its upcoming second season, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds set to end with its fifth season. Some objected to Star Trek Academy’s progressiveness and Gen Z-skewing nature, although others praised the show for these characteristics. Earlier this month, Starfleet Academy director Jonathan Frakes, who plays much-loved Star Trek character William Riker, told IGN that fan hate is “dimensionally more painful” today than in the Next Generation years.
Weir is coming off the back of the hugely successful release of the Project Hail Mary movie, starring Ryan Gosling. It’s made over $300 million at the global box office after just two weekends in theaters, and there’s even talk of a sequel, should Weir himself get around to writing a follow-up.
Speaking on the Critical Drinker After Hours YouTube channel, Weir ended up talking about the state of Star Trek, which he was heavily influenced by. He said all modern science fiction TV shows and movies have been heavily influenced by the original Star Trek except for the current batch of Star Trek shows, before commenting on the end of Starfleet Academy.
“It’s gone, baby. It’s all gone,” Weir said of the latest Star Trek series. “I saw a guy talking about… he said all modern science fiction has been influenced by the [Gene] Roddenberry Trek, except the modern Trek.”
Weir went on to give his opinion on recent Star Trek shows [from Enterprise onwards]. “I like Strange New Worlds. I think it’s pretty good,” he said. “I didn’t hate Enterprise. I thought it was kind of weird, but… Lower Decks I thought was entertaining and fun. All the others, they can go.”
At this point, Weir said Paramount, via current Star Trek boss Alex Kurtzman, rejected his Star Trek show pitch, although he didn’t say what it would have involved. At this point he called modern Star Trek shows “s**t,” and, to Paramount, declared: “f**k ‘em.”
“And here’s another thing. So, I pitched a Star Trek show to Paramount, and I was in a Zoom with the showrunners of all of the shows. And I’m just like pitching them my show idea. And so I actually spent a long time talking to Alex Kurtzman.
“I don’t like a lot of the new Trek, but I have to say he as a person is a really nice guy. So, it’s kind of interesting. I feel a little bad for him, but at the same time, those shows are s**t. He is a nice guy. But you know, they didn’t accept my pitch, so you know, f**k ‘em. No, I don’t know [laughs].”
The suggestion throughout all of this is that Weir would do a much better job than Kurtzman at running Stark Trek, or at least the shows would go down better with fans.
“I’m a Trekkie. I would stay true to it,” Weir said, before suggesting Star Trek and other long-running sci-fi franchises like it suffer from studio interference.
“For the major properties like Star Trek, Star Wars, you’re always going to get studio interference,” he continued. “And one thing that I have to say on PHM [Project Hail Mary], Amazon is new to the game, and there was like… I can’t even think of any studio, I mean, they gave notes on the cuts and stuff like that. But they weren’t up in our faces pushing us around. And you know that that’s happening on the Star Wars films and stuff like that.
“I think part of the reason why PHM ended up being such a good movie — I’m incredibly biased, but whatever — is because the studio just let the artistic people do their job. They let Phil Lord and Chris Miller be directors and have control. And they didn’t come in and get in the way and say, ‘No, change this. No, do that,’ because it’s not some 50-year-old legacy franchise that they want to do things with.”
The future of Star Trek is very much up in the air following Paramount’s successful bid for Warner Bros. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Kurtzman’s deal with CBS Studios runs until the end of 2026, and he’s in talks with Paramount+ about renewing or extending it.
Earlier this month, Kurtzman said he’d had positive conversations with Paramount over the future of Star Trek. “Yes, we’ve gotten nothing but support,” he told Trekmovie.com. “Yes, there have been specific shows that have been discussed. And we’ll see. I’m truly at the beginning of the conversation with them now. And so I hesitate to say anything to you, because I don’t have anything to report yet. But I can report that the conversations are happening.”
However, this interview was conducted before the announced cancelation of Starfleet Academy, so it remains to be seen how relevant those talks were. Following the series’ demise, Kurtzman and executive producers Noga Landau and Gaia Violo issued an open letter, published by Variety, to the cast and crew of Starfleet Academy:
It’s been my and Noga’s joy and privilege to help carry Gene Roddenberry’s extraordinary vision forward with Starfleet Academy, thanks to the hundreds of hardworking humans who pour every ounce of their talents into the work daily with imagination and reverence. We are in post-production now on what will be the second and final season. We’re so proud of what we’ve accomplished together on this show, and the world will get to see the work of these extraordinary artists when season two airs. We will finish strong.
Whether you’re working on Star Trek or part of the marvel that is Star Trek fandom — its very heart, soul, and conscience —the joy comes from adventuring across boundaries of time, space, and the humanly possible in service to Roddenberry’s transformative vision of the future. That incomparable vision was fueled by an inexhaustible optimism. Star Trek places its bet on the best in human nature. It dares to imagine a society of “infinite diversity in infinite combinations,” free of war, hate, poverty, disease, and repression, and dedicated to the spirit of scientific inquiry and respect for all life, whether carbon or silicon-based, green-skinned or blue.
But make no mistake: Gene Roddenberry wasn’t some starry-eyed dreamer. He was a decorated Army bomber pilot in the Pacific Theater. He had seen first-hand the grim consequences of the worst of human nature. And his vision of the future wasn’t just a promise of hope. It was also a warning. In a fraught, frightening time of intolerance and violence, Star Trek said: Look! We made it! But just barely. First, we had to put all those ancient scourges behind us. It said that what makes us glorious as a species, and gives us hope for the future and the galaxy is inextricably linked to what makes us dangerous to each other, to this one world we presently inhabit, and to ourselves. That dual message — of hope and of warning — isn’t just a pretty dream but a call to action, to think about who we are in a different way.
Please don’t take our word for it. Take Gene’s:
“Star Trek was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms. […] If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there.”
With enduring hope that his vision of the future is possible, for our children, their children, and every future cadet in Starfleet Academy:
Live Long and Prosper.
Photo by Theo Wargo/WireImage.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
