Summary
- Ronald D. Moore, one of the most popular Star Trek writers, supported J.J. Abrams' reboot of the franchise as a way to break away from established canon and come up with fresh stories.
- Moore felt that the extensive continuity and backstory of Star Trek had become burdensome and difficult for both writers and audiences to navigate.
- While the possibility of a Star Trek 4 reboot is unclear, there is interest in seeing the return of Chris Pine and the original cast, potentially led by J.J. Abrams, in a new theatrical movie.
J.J. Abrams' 2009 movie reboot of Star Trek had an early supporter in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine writer Ronald D. Moore. After leaving Star Trek, Moore masterminded his own lauded reboot of Battlestar Galactica, and he is an executive producer of Apple TV+'s For All Mankind, which can be seen as a pseudo-prequel and origin story of Star Trek. Moore also co-wrote the feature films Star Trek Generations and Star Trek: First Contact and he was excited about the idea of J.J. Abrams shedding decades of established canon and starting over with a new, younger version of the Star Trek: The Original Series actors.
In the Star Trek oral history "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years" by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, Ronald D. Moore shared his enthusiasm at the idea of J.J. Abrams rebooting the original Star Trek characters, and he explained the advantages of breaking away from canon. Read his quote below:
I liked the idea of this “reboot” as soon as I heard it, and it was something I was vocal about. I said that the idea of going back to the original and recasting and starting over was brilliant. When I left the show, I felt like there had been so much Star Trek and it was so much continuity and so many things to keep track of, that it was hard to come up with new stories. You’d be in the writers room pitching stories and you’d have to stop and go, “But does that contradict episode twenty-five?” It was a burden. All the backstories of Romulans and the Klingons and Starfleet and the history and all the franchises … It was just an enormous burden and I really felt like it was becoming impenetrable to the audience. Especially if you weren’t a completely dyed-in-the-wool fan who watched every episode and knew the stuff backward and forward.
