News that Star Trek 3 will be in 'deep space' gets us excited...ok, not like that.
With Director J.J. Abrams far away producing the first Star Wars movie in a decade, his other project - the rebooted Star Trek franchise - has been handed over to Co-writer and Producer Roberto Orci. Simply titled Star Trek 3 at this point, it's aiming for a 2016 release date to coincide with the franchise’s 50th anniversary.
With the series a financial success so far, it seems like Trek fans are ready for the actual 5-year mission which made the original so successful. So, where will the next chapter lead the crew of the starship Enterprise?
Apparently, the answer came during a taping of the Bad Ass Digest podcast interview for Humans From Earth which Orci is producing along with Writer Geoff Boucher. Here's what he said:
In [Into Darkness] they set out finally where the original series started. The first two films – especially the 2009 [Star Trek] – was an origin story. It was about them coming together. So they weren’t the characters they were in the original series. They were growing into them and that continues on in the second movie. So in this movie they are closer than they are to the original series characters that you have ever seen. They have set off on their five-year mission. So their adventure is going to be in deep space.
So, the answer is 'deep space,' meaning little to no contact with Earth, and an adventrue that might reflect one of the original story lines from Season 1. That opens an amazing set of possibilites, but where to start? We know that the movie will return staple characters Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban), Sulu (John Cho) Scotty (Simon Pegg) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin), but the key is to find a situation or plot that could build on the Klingon threat brought forth in Into Darkness, while moving the franchise forward.
But, there's also the possibility of delving into classic TOS episodes such as 'Arena,' in which Kirk battled the Gorn alien while The Metrons looked on. Wherever Orci stands on the issue, his interview response was the following:
The Horta is actually the villain in the next one – no – they are in deep space now, so lets see what’s out there.
Of course, Orci is playfully referring to the burrowing beast from ‘The Devil in the Dark,’ another classic Season 1 episode. But, there may be a chance to go even further than the original series could at the time: the introduction of homosexual character. We know that Creator Gene Roddenberry was progressive on Star Trek, pushing for the first interractial kiss. His desire to see homosexual officers on the show did eventually make its way into the very good fan-produced series Star Trek Phase II (also known as Star Trek: New Voyages). To that question, Orci replied:
It can be part of a character and not be the whole shebang…It doesn’t have to be like ‘South Park,’ like ‘what have we learned today.’ It can be so normalized that it just exists. I agree it can’t be shoe-horned in. And it is not necessary for it to be the whole point of the thing. It is an ensemble and there is lots of people to represent so no one point of view should hog it.
Whatever the angle Orci is working, we know the franchise can play it safe by re-telling an episode from TOS or go in this much bolder direction. We're thinking the previous is more likely, since Paramount hasn't quite hit the paydirt they've been hoping for with the reboot. But in a world that Star Trek helped to mold, one which pushed the limits with intelligent storytelling, the possibility exists that we will see something relatively new. Considering how we felt about the role reversal in our review of Into Darkness, we think the series is headed in the right direction.
We'll keep you posted on details as they beam in.
Star Trek 3 is currently expected to open in theaters in 2016.
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