Star Trek Needs To Say Goodbye to the Kelvin Timeline With a Reunion Miniseries, Not a Fourth Movie

Star Trek Needs To Say Goodbye to the Kelvin Timeline With a Reunion Miniseries, Not a Fourth Movie Chris Pine as Captain Kirk in Star Trek Beyond.Image via Paramount By  Lloyd Farley Published 1 minute ago Lloyd 'Happy Trails' Farley: the man, the myth, the legend. What can be said about this amazing - and humble - man that hasn't been said before? Or, more accurately, what can be said in public? Born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Lloyd is a master of puns and a humorist, who has authored one pun book to date - Pun and Grimeish Mint - and is working on a second. His time with Collider has allowed Lloyd's passion for writing to explode, with nearly 1,000 articles to his name that have been published on the site, with his favorite articles being the ones that allow for his sense of humor to shine. Lloyd also holds fast to the belief that all of life's problems can be answered by The Simpsons, Star Wars, and/or The Lion King. You can read more about Lloyd on his website, or follow his Facebook page and join the Llama Llegion. Happy trails! Sign in to your Collider account Summary Generate a summary of this story follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap

In the early 2000s, Star Trek was all but dead. 2002's Star Trek: Nemesis had killed the franchise on the big screen and almost took the legacy of Star Trek: The Next Generation with it, until Star Trek: Picard gave it a new life and a proper ending. On the small screen, Star Trek: Enterprise, which premiered in 2001, was doomed from the start, and the franchise wouldn't return to television for 12 years. It would take a miracle to bring Star Trek back to life, and that miracle came in the form of a 2009 film that rebooted the franchise in a bold, new way with a dynamite cast that both reinvented and honored the cast of Star Trek: The Original Series.

Directed by J.J. Abrams, Star Trek was a more fast-paced, sci-fi action piece — "selling its soul," so to speak, in order to bring in new fans. But it cleverly played to those long-time devotees of the franchise by purposefully not messing with the original continuity to date but, instead, forging the Kelvin Timeline, an alternate universe that took the same beloved characters into their now undetermined futures (for the most part — right, Star Trek Into Darkness?) and brought previously unexplored relationships to the fore. The film was a hit and scored two sequels: 2013's Star Trek: Into Darkness and 2016's Star Trek: Beyond. An expected fourth film, however, never came to fruition, and, almost 10 years after its last entry, Paramount is no longer moving forward with the Kelvin Timeline cast, or, presumably, the timeline itself, as a possible new entry in the franchise is said to be unconnected to any other entry. The Kelvinverse may be dying, but the best, most logical thing that could happen to wrap it up for good is a reunion miniseries.

Star Trek's Kelvin Timeline Deserves Better

Simply put, the Star Trek Kelvin Timeline deserves better. The cast deftly offered more than just caricatures or impressions, breathing new life into characters we thought we knew and making them their own. Karl Urban is flat-out perfect as Dr. "Bones" McCoy, while Simon Pegg amps up Scotty's comic potential without making a mockery of James Doohan's iteration. Chris Pine came into the role of Kirk with bombast, but ultimately brought a sensitivity and nuance to the character that separated his portrayal from William Shatner's oft-exaggerated Kirk.

But even these pale in comparison to Zachary Quinto's Spock, who explores the emotional struggle of the two sides of his heritage to a level that took Leonard Nimoy years to establish himself (through no fault of his own, of course — Nimoy was arguably never really given the material to work with until much later), and made a believable, palpable romantic connection with Zoe Saldaña, who also brought depth to her Lieutenant Uhura.

The exploration of the new timeline, with only three entries, is ridiculously short-lived for something that opened up a wellspring of endless possibilities. It stymies the opportunity to see how the new "old" cast reacts to familiar or new challenges. How would this Kirk and this crew deal with the Gorn, or even the Borg, something that the original crew never interacted with? And even with these pushed aside, the Star Trek Kelvin Timeline films literally saved the franchise, and ending it without exploring it further, or even bringing it to a proper ending, is borderline criminal.

There's Precedent for a Kelvin Timeline 'Star Trek' Miniseries

It's that final point more than anything that should stick in the craw of any Star Trek fan. It's one thing not to move forward with the Kelvin Timeline, but quite another not to bring it to a proper conclusion. A miniseries, however, would not only reunite the Kelvinverse cast but also offer opportunities to explore new and familiar adventures and possibilities, as well as allow a proper goodbye, especially for the Kelvinverse's Pavel Chekov, Anton Yelchin, who tragically passed away mere days prior to the release of Star Trek: Beyond. Star Trek: Picard, although not a miniseries, does provide a blueprint on how to bring closure to a Star Trek story, but there's another example specific to the Kelvin Timeline that a miniseries could borrow from.

In 2016, IDW Publishing introduced a new comic book series that continued the Kelvin Timeline story beyond Star Trek: Beyond, titled Star Trek: Boldly Go. In that series and the sequential series that followed, the Kelvin Timeline Enterprise crew encountered, oddly enough, the Borg, the Green Lantern Corps, and even themselves from the original timeline. The comics stand as proof that there are definitely still engaging stories that can be told with the Kelvin Timeline crew.

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Posts 13 By  Rob London Aug 12, 2025

There's also no better time than now to bring in a Kelvin Timeline miniseries. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds set a new record for the most-watched original Trek series over the first 90 days of streaming on Paramount+. That in itself proves that interest in the franchise, reinvigorated by 2009's Star Trek, is healthier than it has ever been, so the appetite for new content is certainly there. Plus, the franchise's approaching 60th anniversary is only going to bring even more interest.

Then there's that proper closure element that the cancellation of a fourth movie has denied this cast. There are many directions that a miniseries could send the Kelvin Timeline crew in, maybe by simply wrapping up their mission and returning home or even creating catastrophic events that collapse the timeline outright. Tragic, yes, but certainly unprecedented, which would be a bold move for the franchise, with a cast that could pull it off. So, Paramount/Skydance: put aside a few million from your offer to buy Warner Bros. Discovery for a Kelvin Timeline miniseries. It's only logical.

Star Trek

Like Follow Followed PG-13 Sci-Fi Action Adventure Release Date May 8, 2009 Runtime 127 Minutes Director J.J. Abrams Writers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Gene Roddenberry Sequel(s) Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek Beyond Franchise(s) Star Trek

Cast

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• Chris Pine
• Zoe Saldana

Genres Sci-Fi, Action, Adventure Powered by Expand Collapse

• TV Features
• Star Trek
• Star Trek Into Darkness

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