It’s been a strange few years for the movie side of the Star Trek universe: Just as the franchise’s TV fortunes finally appear to have righted themselves—courtesy of some savvy maneuvering surrounding CBS All Access, and our shared Dad Feelings re: Patrick Stewart—the only-okay performance of 2016's Star Trek Beyond sent Paramount into something of an anxiety spiral. What else are we to make of a four-year span that’s seen the studio throw pretty much all of its space-spaghetti at the cosmo-wall, desperate to see what hyper-sticks? (Sorry.) There are currently something like three wholly separate Star Trek movie concepts floating around in the ether at the moment: The Quentin Tarantino one (which still sounds like a joke to us, honestly), a pitch from Fargo’s Noah Hawley, and the one that would try to bring the J.J. Abrams-verse cast back together for another go-around.
Some of that confusion has now been diminished in the most direct way possible, though, because, as it turns out, there are now only two Star Trek movie concepts floating around out there. THR reports that Noah Hawley’s take on the series has now been gently pushed into whatever the Star Trek people use for trash management in the future. (Transporters that link directly into the sun? The warp drive? That blob monster that ate Tasha Yar?) It’s not clear at the moment why Hawley’s film has been shoved into stasis. Maybe he got too busy working on the next season of Legion. Maybe the studio wasn’t enthused about the performance of Lucy In The Sky. Maybe it’s because it was about a massive pandemic sweeping through the galaxy, leaving millions dead in its wake.
Okay, yeah, it was probably that last one.
Details on Hawley’s treatment were sketchy, obviously, but it definitely sounds like it won’t be moving forward any time soon, as Paramount re-evaluates its current Space Sojourn priorities. Which is a shame, in so far as Trek has always been held up as the sci-fi series that actually dares to reflect our societal concerns and insecurities, rather than retreating back into escapism. (At least, as far as its TV entries are concerned.)