The Star Trek: Strange New Worlds creative team revealed at San Diego Comic Con that they plan to wrap things up with season 5 — but that doesn’t mean they want to stop telling Star Trek stories. In fact, they “100 percent” have a dream plan to work on a spinoff series that centers on the first year as captain for Paul Wesley’s James T. Kirk.
“Nothing would make us happier than to be able to continue telling the stories of how Pike’s crew transitions to Kirk’s crew and how Kirk’s crew sets off,” Strange New World showrunner Henry Alonso Myers told Entertainment Weekly at SDCC.
“Obviously, when we come into TOS [The Original Series] it’s not the first day of the job…. Fundamentally, there are relationships that already exist. How did they happen? And, obviously, we have the opportunity for Sulu, and we have the opportunity for McCoy in a longer life, and opportunity for Chekov. So it would be awesome to be able to continue.”
Myers also explained that he and fellow showrunner Akiva Goldsman “have fates in store for those folks who don’t seem to appear in canon” post-Strange New Worlds, but that “doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
That said, Myers and Goldsman have asked the fans to be vocal if they’re interested in seeing a prequel series. “We dream it loudly,” Myers said of trying to convince the network to give them another show. “We like to say vocally that, ‘Hey, we have all of these really great sets. You guys own them. You make money off them.'”
To be fair, they still have a series to finish, and the pressure is on to do it well. “All our dreams of post–Strange New Worlds iterations, [pay]checks notwithstanding, we gotta stick the landing,” Myers added. As for what’s next, the third episode of season 3 screened early at SDCC and season 4 recently wrapped production — so with season 5 on the horizon, we might just get that prequel series sooner than we think. That is, if the fans make some noise about it.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is currently available to stream on Paramount+.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.