Star Trek: Nicholas Meyer has a theory why his ‘Ceti Alpha V’ series isn’t going ahead

Nicholas Meyer wrote a Ceti Alpha V script documenting the time Khan Noonien Singh and his followers spent on the titular planet before the events of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Meyer, who worked on Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, and The Undiscovered Country, picked up the pen once again to work on the script of the Khan-prequel series, writing it to be a three-night mini-series on television.

It took him a long time to finish the script, and now the three-night mini-series for television no longer fits what companies want, longer content for streaming services. Star Trek has its own streaming service, Paramount+, which is owned by Star Trek’s parent company, ViacomCBS.

While ViacomCBS isn’t looking to add anymore Star Trek shows until they end one of the others that are currently running, a Ceti Alpha V mini-series fits in nicely with what ViacomCBS is looking for; new stories but with familiar tones.

The only problem for the series, as Meyer tells Trek Movie is that the series may not be long enough for Paramount+.

"Well, I don’t consider it dormant because I think it’s it’s a terrific project. I think what happened, or up to a point what happened, was that the business model for streaming was changing really fast. And what was originally commissioned as a three-hour or three-night event, by the time I finished writing it, three hours was not enough. They wanted longer stuff. And somewhere between those two imperatives, the thing sort of fell between two stools. And I still don’t know why they’re not doing it, even if it’s to say, ‘give us ten episodes instead of three or whatever.’ I don’t know why."

Meyer told Trek Movie that it was Alex Kurtzman, the grand poobah of Star Trek currently, who suggested he write the mini-series. Now that the mini-series is done, he hasn’t heard back about the status yet from Kurtzman. Meyer believes, however, that if Paramount+ wants to expand the mini-series into a longer story, that it may not be doable, telling Trek Movie;

"Well, that may be a defect of imagination on my part. I think if it went on and on and on about Khan and Ceti Alpha V  it risks becoming a kind of Gilligan’s Island. Which I think is a wrong idea… It was commissioned as a three-hour thing and there were certain parameters that were put down, to which I adhered. And they’re all fungible."

Considering how long the characters were on Ceti Alpha V, and the events they had to witness, there’s clearly a lot of potential stories to tell. The problem could be budgetary but more than likely it could be doable. There’s so much to explore, like the life on the planet before the destruction of Ceti Alpha VI, the discovery of all sorts of weird alien creatures, the daily life of a pre, current, and post-destruction of Ceti Alpa VI, politics, intrigue, romance.

You could easily expand this into a full-blown series with the right writers. Just figure out the end, and work backward to fit in the number of seasons the network wants.