Star Trek: The Original Series began a phenomenon that has last over half a century.
Though Star Trek: The Original Series only lasted three seasons, it went on for another six movies, with William Shatner, Walter Koenig, and James Doohan appearaning briefly in a seventh. The cast of this 1966-1969 series has left an indelible mark on the franchise with actors like Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley setting the tone for a space adventure that drew fans in from around the globe. Though Star Trek has continued to expand beyond this series, there will never be another show like this one. Nor should there be.
Screen Rant recently provided a potential cast for a TOS reboot, and while there has been no talk about such a project, I’m going on record to say such thing should NEVER happen. The characters themselves have already been rebooted on the movie screen, but that is much different than taking a cast of characters and putting them together in an effort to replicate the magic that was The Original Series.
Legacy characters from Star Trek: The Original Series have already been introduced.
Along with the J.J. Abrams’ movies, all of the legacy characters have now been re-introduced into the franchise through Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Even some of the characters who didn’t have story arcs on TOS have found their way back onscreen, and that’s a great tribute to what they brought to the series. Series like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds are giving those characters a history, a past we never got to see on TOS. That makes more sense than trying to set them up on their own television show with a reboot of The Original Series, even though there has been some deviation from canon.
Though Star Trek (2009) and its sequels recasted most of the original characters from TOS, those stories were set in a different timeline and clearly didn’t follow the storyline of the original series. So fans could look at those movies not as a spin-off of The Original Series but as an addendum in an alternative world.
Most of us who know and still love TOS have no interest in seeing a television or streaming series attempt to recreate what Shatner, Nimoy, and McCoy brought to the screen over half a century ago. In the video above, Leonard Nimoy talks about the chemistry between him, Shatner, and Kelley and nails exactly why these three characters shoulnd’t return to the small screen on a show meant to reboot TOS.
While stories about the characters’ pasts are interesting, and something we can get behind, we’re hoping the franchise moves forward with new stories and new characters and leaves Star Trek: The Original Series as the original series.