Because Nero destroys the Kelvin on the day of Kirk’s birth, that means that there was no Kelvin timeline a few decades before most of the events of the 2009 movie. So what the heck is the origin story going to be about? Is it about the origin of the Federation? We already saw that on Enterprise, which takes place a century before The Original Series. Is it about the Enterprise before Kirk? We got that in the first two seasons of Discovery and in Strange New Worlds.
To be sure, these entries didn’t completely mine all the possible stories of the era, but that generation has received so much attention already. Between movies, TV shows, and all of the non-canon novels and comics, fans have seen plenty of looks at the early days of Starfleet, the Federation, and especially the USS Enterprise.
That’s even true of some of the best current Star Trek series. While Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks have a lot of fun putting new twists on familiar ideas, they offer little new to the larger tapestry of Star Trek stories. Contrast those in-jokes to learning about Janeway looking for her one-time Voyager shipmate Chakotay on Prodigy, or seeing a mature Seven of Nine take the Captain’s chair at the end of Picard. Look how much better Discovery became after launching into the undiscovered country of the 32nd century instead of filling gaps (or making new gaps) in the TOS era.
These constant returns to the past violate the basic premise of Star Trek. Sure, some of the best Trek entries involve trips to the past. But the core mission of the franchise is about moving forward, boldly going into a future we can only imagine in the present. Viewers don’t want to see a past that’s already been explored so thoroughly over the last few decades. We want to see how this universe has progressed, how the actions of Kirk, Picard, and the other Captains have affected the universe in ways good and bad.
In short, a Star Trek origin movie is wrong headed, mining nostalgia and references instead of seeking out new life and civilizations.
