With 60 years of Star Trek lore, writers John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein — who are tasked with penning the script for the upcoming Star Trek movie — are not concerned with continuity and timeline. Instead, the writing duo is interested in bringing something new to the franchise.
Up until now, we've only gotten vague details about the Star Trek movie, with Goldstein teasing that it will take place further into the future than previous movies and series, and that we'll be dealing with a new cast of characters. For a franchise with a history as deep as Star Trek's, continuity can be a pretty big deal, but that's not what Daley and Goldstein are necessarily interested in.
Recently appearing on The Discourse podcast to promote their new Apple TV film "Mayday," the duo spoke briefly about their approach to Star Trek.
“We’re less focused on, like, what continuity we’re in, which timeline,” Goldstein explained. “It’s more about how do we bring this franchise to audiences that don’t necessarily consider themselves Trekkies? What can we do that hasn’t been done before?”
Rather than focusing on familiar characters or timelines, the filmmakers are instead interested in Starfleet as an organization.
“Our approach is to really look at it from a question of, what is this institution of Starfleet that’s at the heart of ‘Star Trek’?” he continued. “And what would happen if all is not well in that institution? The movie that we talk about as the comp is ‘Training Day.’”
“And ‘Crimson Tide,’” Daley chimed in. “Those are the two that we sort of used as our spiritual benchmarks.”
For those unfamiliar, Training Day is a 2001 crime thriller about corruption inside a trusted institution. It follows a rookie LAPD narcotics officer (Ethan Hawke) as he spends his first day shadowing a legendary, charismatic veteran, Detective Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington), only to gradually realize he's running his own criminal operation under the cover of his badge. The tension comes from institutional trust. The rookie has been taught to believe in the chain of command and the badge itself, only to realize the system protecting this man is the same system that's supposed to protect the public.
Crimson Tide, which is an even older film from 1995, is a chain-of-command thriller about conflicting authority. Set entirely on a Navy submarine ship, the military/political thriller follows a by-the-book captain (Gene Hackman) and his XO (Denzel Washington again) over whether to launch nuclear missiles based on a garbled, possibly outdated order.
Without knowing the details of the script, we can only speculate what Daley and Goldstein mean with this comparison, but it's pretty easy to paint a picture of the pitch. I'm thinking a Starfleet vessel or officer discovers corruption or a fractured chain of command from the inside. Rather than the optimistic, exploration-driven tone Star Trek is known for, there's a good chance the film will be driven by paranoia, loyalty, and uncertainty about who's actually trustworthy.
It certainly sounds like a bold departure from typical Trek, but perhaps it's exactly the kind of refresh the franchise needs after so many years of disappointment.