Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci

Damon Lindelof

It’s been 9 years since Star Trek was last on the small screen, but after two successful movies, Paramount is convinced the time is right for its return.

The new series, entitled Star Trek: Final Frontier, signals a return to television for the writers of the most recent big screen adventures. Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Damon Lindelof – whose previous credits include Fringe and Lost – will be producing the new series, but will be doing it without director JJ Abrams at the helm.

“It’s a shame that JJ can’t join us, he’s got a busier schedule than we do, but he’s given us his full blessing,” Lindelof said. “We promise that we’ll do our best to carry on from where he left off, and try to do the fans proud.”

Abrams was instrumental in the reboot of the Star Trek franchise, and while he originally maintained that he would be on board for the third film in the new series, he angered some fans by accepting the directing job on the new upcoming Star Wars film.

Roberto Orci has dismissed rumours of Paramount pulling the plug on the next movie in favour of the show. “We’re still working on the next one, we planned the films as a trilogy and we’ve been in talks with [director] Joe Cornish about what we’ve got in mind. It’ll definitely be something smaller this time though, due to budgetary issues. Until then, we’re looking forward to getting the ball rolling with the new show.”

Star Trek: Final Frontier will be set in the alternate universe from the films, and will focus on the missions of Captain Robert April and the first USS Enterprise, before it later became the ship of captains Pike and Kirk.

Captain Robert April

“He was originally going to feature in Into Darkness, but he was cut, and only featured in a comic book series I wrote,” Damon Lindelof stated. “In that, he was a villain, so this is a chance to go back and show what drove him to that. He’ll be a very human hero, one who makes mistakes.”

“Setting the show in this time period made sense,” Orci added. “We can’t go forward, especially not to the Next Generation universe. We took a gamble with rebooting the original series, and we can’t get too far ahead of ourselves. This way it fits within the technology and budget of a television series. We know it can’t look as grand as the movies. We’ve been through the arguments about that, so setting it in the past works best.”

The casting call has already gone out, in particular for the lead role. However, the producers have an idea of what they’re looking for.

“We’re sticking with Gene Roddenberry’s original template. He’s supposed to be an Englishman in his twenties, very adventurous and playful,” Kurtzman revealed. “Basically, a young Patrick Stewart!” he added, laughing.

Along with the captain will be his new female first officer Jeanne Poisson-d’Avril, science officer Michael Hofnarr and ship’s doctor Gastar Bromas.