Paramount is planning to film Star Trek 4 later this year

By Blair Marnell Published February 18, 2022

There’s so much Star Trek television on Paramount+ that it’s easy to forget that there hasn’t been a feature film in the franchise since 2016’s Star Trek Beyond. The good news for Trekkies is that the long hiatus between movies may be rapidly drawing to a close.

According to a report on Deadline, J.J. Abrams has confirmed that Paramount has resumed talks with Chris Pine for him to reprise his role as James T. Kirk in Star Trek 4. The report also indicates that Paramount wants the reboot cast to return. That includes Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, John Cho, and Simon Pegg.

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Abrams directed the first Star Trek reboot film in 2009, which established an alternate continuity that is separate from the various TV shows. In addition to Pine’s Captain Kirk, Quinto was cast as Spock, with Urban as Dr. McCoy, Saldana as Uhura, Cho as Sulu, Pegg as Scotty, and the late Anton Yelchin as Chekov. That movie’s success led Abrams and the cast to return for Star Trek Into Darkness, which was also a hit.

Unfortunately, Star Trek Beyond made only $343.5 million worldwide, which was considered a disappointment. At the time, Paramount intended to have Chris Hemsworth reprise his role as Kirk’s late father, George Kirk, for a time-travel adventure with his onscreen son in Star Trek 4. But the project stalled in 2018 when both Pine and Hemsworth pulled out of the film.

Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine in Star Trek. — Paramount Pictures

The fact that Paramount is negotiating with Pine suggests that he and the other cast members aren’t under any contractual obligation to return. But if the deal can be made, then it would maintain most of the core characters of the Enterprise crew. Abrams and others have indicated that out of respect for Yelchin, Chekov will not be recast.

WandaVision director Matt Shakman is slated to helm Star Trek 4, which will probably have a different name when it heads to theaters. The current script was written by Josh Friedman and Cameron Squires under Shakman’s supervision. It’s not believed to be the same script from the previous version of Star Trek 4. If that’s the case, we can probably rule out a return for Hemsworth.

Paramount reportedly wants to begin filming Star Trek 4 later this year.

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Blair Marnell has been an entertainment journalist for over 15 years. His bylines have appeared in Wizard Magazine, Geek…

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The 10 most underrated Star Trek episodes ever, ranked

Captain Benjamin Sisko holds a smiling baby in the DS9 episode "Children of Time."

In the Futurama episode Where No Fan Has Gone Before, the wisecracking robot Bender describes Star Trek as having “79 episodes — about 30 good ones.” And, if we're being honest, Bender's not wrong. Across the franchise, there are now roughly 900 canonical installments, and out of a field that large, there are naturally dozens, even hundreds of entries that you can simply disregard. Of course, like any fanbase, Trekkies contain multitudes, and we don’t all agree on which episodes deserve the scrap heap.
One fan’s space junk is another fan’s latinum, and there’s no accounting for taste. We’ve selected ten episodes from across the history of the franchise that some fans might tell you to skip, but that we think deserve your attention. Is one of your dark horse faves on our list? Have we gone to bat for an episode you wish would be erased from the space-time continuum? Follow us to the salvage yard and find out…

10. The Time Trap (TAS season 1, episode 12)

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The 10 best Star Trek: Voyager episodes, ranked

Captain Janeway gives a speech on the bridge of the Starship Voyager

As much as fans love to praise Star Trek as groundbreaking science fiction, it’s important to remember that, for most of the franchise’s history, Trek was weekly procedural television. Until the streaming era, each series was churning out roughly 26 episodes a year, and by the later seasons of Star Trek: Voyager, some of the creative crew had been in the business of making Star Trek for over a decade. The franchise was a crossover commercial success, the kind of success that the money men like to leave exactly as it is for as long as it’s doing steady numbers.
The operation was essentially on rails, and there was a lot of pressure from the studio and the network to keep it that way, which accounts for the general blandness of Voyager and the early years of its successor, Enterprise. The waning years of Trek’s golden era were plagued by creative exhaustion and, consequently, laziness. Concepts from previous series were revisited, often with diminishing returns, and potentially groundbreaking ideas were nixed from on high in order to avoid upsetting the apple cart.
That’s not to say that Star Trek: Voyager isn’t still a solid television show, and even many Trekkies’ favorite. The saga of Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and her gallant crew finding their way home from the farthest reaches of the galaxy may not be as ambitious as it could have been, but it is steadily entertaining, which is why new and nostalgic fans alike enjoy it as cozy “comfort viewing.” For our part, however, we tend to enjoy the episodes that have a certain emotional intensity or creative spark, that feel like conceptual or stylistic risks. As such, you might find that our list of the 10 best Voyager episodes differs greatly from some of the others out there. We like when Voyager dared to get heavy, or silly, or sappy, or mean. So, without further ado, let’s raise a glass to the journey ...
Like Star Trek? Then check out how do I get into Star Trek?
10. Counterpoint (season 5, episode 10)

Counterpoint drops the audience into the middle of an ongoing story,in which Voyager is boarded and inspected by agents of a fascist government, the Devore. The Devore treat all travelers through their space with suspicion, but are particularly concerned with capturing and detaining all telepaths, who they view as dangerous. Despite the risks, Captain Janeway is attempting to smuggle a group of telepathic refugees to safety, all while putting on a show of cooperation for smiling Devore Inspector Kashyk (Mark Harelik). Much of the plot takes place in the background, obscured from the audience in order to build suspense. The real focus is on the evolving dynamic between Janeway and Kashyk, a rivalry that simmers into one of the Voyager captain’s rare romances. Kashyk works in the service of what are, transparently, space Nazis, but when he offers to defect to Voyager, can his intentions be trusted?
Beyond its intriguing premise, Counterpoint is a particularly strong production with a lot of subtle hints of creative flair. Director Les Landau and director of photography Marvin Rush, who had been both working on Star Trek since the 1980s, shoot the hell out of this story, breaking from Voyager’s even lighting and predictable camera moves to make some very deliberate choices that build a great deal of tension around what is essentially a bottle episode. The makeup team, supervised by equally seasoned Trek veteran Michael Westmore, supplies a memorable and imaginative makeup design for an alien astrophysicist who appears in all of two scenes in this episode and is never utilized again. Most of all, Kate Mulgrew provides what may be her most subtle, human performance in the entire series, embodying Janeway’s famous conviction and strength of will while also granting a rare glimpse at her more vulnerable side without ever straying into melodrama.

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The 10 best Star Trek: The Original Series episodes, ranked

Captain Kirk, upset, buried waist-deep in Tribbles.

It’s hard to imagine today, but back in the late 1960s, the original Star Trek was not considered a hit. The ambitious science fiction series was constantly on the brink of cancellation and was cut short only three years into its planned five-season run.
However, it’s important to put Trek’s apparent failure into historical context as, given that most markets in the U.S. had only three television channels to choose from, even a low-rated show like Star Trek was being watched by about 20% of everyone watching television on a Thursday night, or roughly 10 million households. This year’s season of HBO’s Succession was viewed by roughly 8 million households a week, which makes it a hit by today's standards. Star Trek’s audience only grew once it went into reruns in the early 1970s, and by the time Star Trek: The Motion Picture hit theaters in 1979, it was a genuine cultural phenomenon. Today, the Star Trek franchise is considered one of the crown jewels of the Paramount library.
Though arguably outshined by its most prosperous spinoff, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: The Original Series holds up remarkably well for a vision of our future imagined nearly 60 years in our past. It’s a space adventure series that tackles social or political issues from what was, at the time, a daring and progressive perspective informed by the contemporary civil rights movement, sexual revolution, and backlash against the Vietnam War. Conveying these values through fanciful science fiction didn’t only allow its writers to get away with a lot of subversive messages, it also delivered them in a way that remains fun to watch decades later — fun enough that fans are willing to forgive when its ideas, or its special effects, crumble under modern scrutiny.
These 10 episodes, however, unquestionably stand the test of time, and thanks to the continuity-light nature of mid-20th century television, any one of them could be your first Star Trek episode. (Be aware, however, that the order in which classic Trek episodes are listed varies depending on the source. For our purposes, we’re using the numbering from streaming service Paramount+.)

10. Mirror, Mirror (season 2, episode 4)