Long hailed as one of Star Trek: The Next Generation's best episodes as well as Patrick Stewart's favorite, "The Inner Light" won a Hugo Award and, to this day, remains on just about every must-watch list of Generation episodes. The writer, Morgan Gendel, hit pay dirt with the episode, and now he's secured a deal with Welsh broadcaster S4C to develop a new “eco-thriller” science fiction show currently titled Isolation. [via Inverse]
Not much is known about the series other than an ensemble of characters, attempting to defeat climate change, will come in contact with an alien force capable of direct contact with human minds. That sounds like something straight out of Star Trek, which doesn't come as a surprise. Gendel also wrote the successful episode "Starship Mine" for The Next Generation as well as two episodes for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—"The Passenger" and "Armageddon Game."
Though Gendel admits there is a "whole Inner Light kind of linkage" in this new series, in an interview with Inverse, he pointed out that “ is a vastly different show than anything I've worked on, with a right-here-right-now vibe. Its end-of-the-world stakes are directly tied to the struggle to tame climate change.”
The writer went on to say that his writing "often puts people in a pressure cooker to see what emotions or truths boil out of them.” Based upon the episodes of Star Trek he's written, we already have a sense of what we can look forward to with Isolation.
At the time of this writing, there were no further production details about "Isolation," and, of course, that means there's no release date yet. Hopefully, we'll hear more sooner rather than later as this sounds like it will be a show right up a Trekkie's alley, especially considering who the writer is!