LeVar Burton Getting His Own Star Trek Spinoff?
During an appearance on The View, Star Trek: Picard's LeVar Burton endorses the pitch for Star Trek: Legacy - a show that would combine cast from TNG and younger heroes from Picard.
If you thought LeVar Burton was tired of Star Trek, think again. Burton appeared on The View yesterday when he was asked about the pitch made by Star Trek: Picard showrunner Terry Matalas for Star Trek: Legacy — a series that would bring together the cast of TNG with younger heroes introduced in Picard. Burton’s response: “I am down.”
In the clip above, Whoopi Goldberg — herself a Star Trek alum — references the fan reaction to a post from Matalas on Twitter, when he referred to Star Trek: Legacy as a”25th Century show that explores the Last Generation and the Next.” Confronted with the idea, both LeVar Burton and his daughter Mica expressed nothing but enthusiasm:
“I am down. Yeah, absolutely. You know, what the writers have done is that they’ve really set it up well. We’ve got the next generation of The Next Generation, right? The La Forge sisters — one’s an engineer, the other’s a pilot — we’ve got Jack Crusher there, Seven of Nine. It makes a whole lot of sense.”
–LeVar Burton
LeVar Burton made his Star Trek: Picard debut in this week’s episode, the sixth of the season. As now Commodore Geordi La Forge, his character rules the roost of the Fleet Museum where he oversees the upkeep of such classic vessels as Voyager, Kirk’s Enterprise, and The Bounty — the Klingon Bird-of-Prey captured by the heroes in 1984’s Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and used throughout the 1986 follow-up. Now with a wife and two daughters, La Forge is at first hesitant to help the titular hero who has been framed by Changeling infiltrators.
LeVar Burton’s real life daughter Mica made her own Star Trek debut in the same episode, as Geordi’s daughter Alandra. Meanwhile Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut (Homeland) has been appearing as Geordi’s other daughter Sidney since the Season 3 premiere. Sidney is the helmsman of the U.S.S. Titan, and in “The Bounty” we learn things haven’t been that great between her and her father for a while.
The notion of bringing together TNG alum like LeVar Burton with the younger heroes in Star Trek: Legacy is a promising one and opens up some intriguing possibilities. Todd Stashwick‘s Captain Liam Shaw has proven to be a surprisingly popular character in spite of being nothing but an absolute jerk to the heroes early in Season 3, and fans would no doubt love to see him continue in the franchise. We haven’t gotten to see much of Mica Burton yet, but both Chestnut and Ed Speleer (Jack Crusher, son of Picard and Beverly Crusher) have been great in their respective roles.
Some fans might also wonder about the possibilities for the all-but-forgotten heroes of Picard‘s first two seasons. Alison Pill, Santiago Cabrera, Evan Evagora, and Isa Briones were all given their walking papers at the end of Season 2 to make way for the TNG cast’s return. Might there be room for them in the proposed series LeVar Burton is pushing?
