Star Trek: Re-Boot the Universe

Real world article
(written from a Production point of view)

Star Trek: Re-Boot the Universe was a fourteen-page treatment detailing an ultimately undeveloped concept for a five-year-long Star Trek television series. The document was written by Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski and Dark Skies creator Bryce Zabel in 2004. It was a concept that they never had a chance to submit to Paramount Pictures, because the studio announced that J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot Productions already had plans to reboot the Star Trek universe, in forthcoming film Star Trek. [1]^(X)

Zabel and Straczynski began discussing the concept while collaborating on a network pitch for a limited series called Cult. "We started talking about the state of the Trek universe," recalled Zabel. "Before we could stop ourselves, we banged out a fourteen-page treatment [....] I seem to recall having lunch at Art's Deli and our conversation veering off into the Trek situation. The take we came up with included using the original characters, but not as young officers at Starfleet Academy. We wanted to do what they would do in the world of comics: create a separate universe for all the past TV and film Trek continuity in order to free ourselves creatively so we could embrace the good stuff, banish the bad, and try some new things. In our reboot we wanted to start over, use Kirk, Spock, and McCoy and others in a powerful new origin story about what it was that bonded them in such strong friendship and show them off as you'd never seen them before. It was, admittedly, pretty audacious." (The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years, p. 749)