Star Trek: Legacy Dead, We Mourn Series That Felt So Right

It seems like Matalas was going out of his way to address the increasing rumors that he and Paramount have been working on Star Trek: Legacy in secret. In that same interview, the showrunner admitted that “I’m working on some things I can’t talk about yet” but that he’s “not working on anything Star Trek at the moment.” This will come as a disappointing double whammy to fans: not only is Legacy not going to happen, but we can’t even look forward to Matalas helming any other Star Trek projects anytime soon.

Some fans are still holding out hope (tough to be a Star Trek fan if you’re not optimistic about the future, after all), but this Terry Matals interview seems to be the final nail in the coffin for Star Trek: Legacy. Now that this would-be project is definitively dead, there is only one thing to do. Time for us to properly mourn this dead show,

Why are we already missing Star Trek: Legacy? The third season of Picard managed to find the perfect tone for the franchise: there were high-stakes dangers and frightening moments, but they were always balanced by scenes of characters swapping jokes and genuinely bonding with each other. That may not sound like much, but this seemed like a perfect tonal compromise between Discovery (which kicked off the NuTrek tendency to be overly dark and violent) and Strange New Worlds (which sometimes leans a bit too far into being lighthearted).

Terry Matalas could have achieved the same perfect balance with Star Trek: Legacy, giving audiences the perfect antidote to NuTrek exhaustion. Additionally, having episodes set in the “present time” of the franchise (not the distant future of Discovery or the 23rd century of Strange New Worlds) would have left the door open for the return of more fan-favorite characters. For example, it would be amazing to see Admiral Janeway interact with Captain Seven of Nine, and we’d love for the universe-straddling Wesley Crusher to meet his half-brother Jack.

Speaking of cameos, an ongoing Star Trek: Legacy show could have given some of our favorite characters their own spotlight episodes. The third season of Picard was great, but the arcs for everybody but the title character had to be contained and fit the mold of Picard’s story arc. Freed from these constraints, a Legacy show could have entire episodes devoted to Worf, Dr. Crusher, and other fan-favorite characters, effectively giving them an even better send-off than Picard did.

Now, it seems like the most Star Trek fans can hope for in terms of character cameos is more legacy cameos in Lower Decks. As for Paramount, I’m a bit worried about the franchise’s future and how everything from the teenybopper-centric Starfleet Academy show to the grim and gritty Section 31 movie will take it even further off course. 

Here’s hoping the new productions end up pleasantly surprising us, but the first time we hear modern teen lingo or vocal fry on the Starfleet Academy series, we’ll have no choice but to hijack a ship and do a slingshot maneuver around the sun. Maybe then we can fix our timeline by convincing Paramount to greenlight Star Trek: Legacy…and, while we’re at it, have them kill that awful Frasier reboot, so Kelsey Grammar can concentrate on bringing his Captain Morgan Bateson character back for a few Trek episodes.