Let’s get weird when looking at the next film franchise for Star Trek

With the Oscars in the book, it got me thinking about what should be the next Star Trek film franchise and this idea could be really good…

There are three ‘groups’ or ‘sagas’ of the Star Trek film franchise. There’s the Original Series films, the Next Gen films, and the reboot films. With the rebooted franchise essentially dead going forward, it’s time to think about what should come next for the film franchise. Should Star Trek: Discovery be the next series to get a film? Arguably, no. The reason why the past shows were made into films was for bigger budgets, something Discovery doesn’t have to worry about and of course the demand for more content from that crew.

With Discovery costing around $110 million dollars a season to produce, there’s no need for a film version of the series, as their budget is huge like a film. There is no limitation on what stories they can tell, and in a franchise like Star Trek, shows are always a better storytelling option than a singular film. There’s also not a lot of demand at the moment for more from that specific crew, besides the next season.

It also shouldn’t be Star Trek: Picard for the same reasons.

So if you’re doing a new Star Trek film series, there’s no modern show that needs the budget of a film or curries that sort of demand. The new timeline also muddies up the idea of doing more films from that era. So there’s no need to go there either. There’s also no reason to reboot another universe of films like the ones Bad Robot did. So that just leaves us with an original idea; but what idea?

For that, we go to Star Wars for a moment, but not where you think. There was a series of books in the ’90s called Galaxy fo Fear, that featured siblings and their uncle traversing the galaxy through the more horrible aspects of the universe. It was catered to the Goosebumps generation and was steeped in horror.

Forget Star Tarantino, the next Star Trek series should be horror-themed. After re-watching Star Trek: First Contact for the 398th time, the part that always gave me chills and still does to this day, is when the Borg cube shows up and starts wrecking everything. The music, the tone, the expressions on everyone’s faces, it was pure horror. As a child, that tone stuck with me.

I’m not sure what specifically you would do, it doesn’t have to be the Borg, but I think to introduce an alien race that can be viewed squarely as a horror villain would bring some freshness to the film franchise. You can do it on a low budget and let’s be real, most science fiction fans crossover with horror and vice versa. So the demo’s are going to be easy to reach out to. Sci-Fi horror really does work too, with movies like Alien, Event Horizon or Pandorum and you see what can really be done with the right perspective. Heck, one of Firefly/Serenity‘s best bits were the Reavers. A horror-specific race of marauders who do all sorts of unspeakable acts to people.

Heck, why stop there? Maybe the next film franchise shouldn’t even be one type. What if you do a horror film, a comedy and a rom-com in succession? That way we get even more angles depicting life in the Star Trek universe.

What do you think, should Star Trek give horror a try for the next film franchise?