During a recent panel aboard the Star Trek Cruise ship (via Screen Rant), Marina Sirtis stated Star Trek: Legacy is “never going to happen.”
Marina Sirtis: First of all, Legacy is never gonna happen.
Jonathan Frakes: Come on, Marina!
Marina Sirtis: You know, you hate hearing the truth. There is not a single studio in America that is gonna make a series where most of the leading actors are over 70 years old. I’m sorry, but that’s just the truth. It’s just Hollywood.
I don’t particularly want it to happen, based on what we saw in PIC’s third season, but I feel like Sirtis is a little…confused here.
The oldest cast members of the hypothetical series would be Jeri Ryan and Michelle Hurd - everyone else would be a recurring guest star, at most…
It’s at about 43:00 in the embedded video, and yeah, that’s probable, but the question was posed to the panel about what their characters would explore in a hypothetical Legacy show, so unless she’s been right on top of it, it feels like a fair assumption for her to have made that they’d be among the leads.
As an aside, I think I would absolutely love hanging out with Marina Sirtis for exactly one day, and I would be utterly exhausted at the idea of spending any longer than that. In her interviews, she is always a delight, but also a lot.
hanging out with Marina Sirtis for exactly one day, and I would be utterly exhausted at the idea of spending any longer than that.
Sirtis is a lot more like Lwaxana than Troi ever was. Also, @29:48 in the same video:
Well, I only do stuff that’s cult: Star Trek, Gargoyles, Sharknado. It makes sense.
–Marina Sirtis
I’m perhaps at the extreme of negativity about the Legacy premise, but what Matalas seemed to be pitching was almost an anthology of legacy characters being visited by the Titanprise with the bridge full of offspring.
So, yes, Sirtis would not be wrong to think the focus of the pitch was the older cast with the younger characters and the visiting Titanprise as more or less the framing.
I have a theory that someone in senior management of the streamer under the old ownership had a strong belief that ‘children of legacy characters’ were a necessary bridge between old and new audiences. There seems to have been no awareness at all of his antithetical nepotism would be to the meritocratic principles of Starfleet.
We have La’an Noonien-Singh for no particular reason in SNW - she’s not even the bridge officer with augmented abilities.
Also, the more I hear about the pitch for Unity the more it sounds like a family saga with all the great things Archer’s offspring are up to as young adults (since the creators were told that they could have them at the Academy as they’d originally pitched).
almost an anthology of legacy characters being visited by the Titanprise with the bridge full of offspring.
Oof, that would be real uninteresting, to me.
I believe that there was mention of some Legacy locations and species to visit too.
Sigh…
That, I’m not so opposed to. No sense in visiting that time period if you’re not going to check in on the status quo of the neighbours!
She probably thought it was going to be a TNG revival show…?
Very well could be. It’s a quote from a panel they did on the Star Trek Cruise not long ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ML_ScYo8wQ) and everything was off the cuff (and maybe a little drunk?) . I’m about 15 minutes into that recording as I reply.
I would definitely enjoy Legacy , but I was a total sucker for the fan service that was PIC S3. After reading the rest of the Picard tie-in novels (thanks for the recommendation, BTW), seeing Captain Seven command the Enterprise would be pretty great.
I’d watch it, and I’m sure they could do great things with it…but as presented, Terry Matalas’ vision left me pretty cold. Captain Seven was definitely the most compelling part of it all (and Raffi, I do like Raffi), but it mostly just seemed to be, “here’s a new Enterprise in that era that you miss!”
And that’s fine…but it doesn’t really point to a compelling story on its own. But take the basic premise, give it to another showrunner, and jettison Jack Crusher into the nearest black hole, and you have my attention.
thanks for the recommendation, BTW
Hey, you’re welcome! I stalled out on the Riker one, which I guess is the third one. I should pick it up again one of these days.
Oh, “The Dark Veil”, yeah. It wasn’t bad but was definitely the weakest of the 5. I could swear the entire plotline was recycled if not from Trek itself then from some adjacent sci-fi.*
The only one I haven’t read is the Rios one since it’s the only one I can’t buy DRM-free. “Second Self” (the Raffi one) and “Firewall” (the Seven one) were both excellent.
*Or maybe the reclusive aliens on the ark ship in Dark Veil were just similar enough to the reclusive Caeliar and their planet ship in ST: Destiny that I had read shortly before.
The Rios one is a lot of fun if you enjoyed “A Piece of the Action”…
I thought legacy was supposed to be new stories post dominion with Captain Seven. I want that.
What I don’t want is the TNG cast showing back up every week. They finally had a perfect send off, and a passing of the torch. For me their chapter is closed.
Yeah, that’s what I always thought Legacy was supposed to be too.
I would love to see a Jeri Ryan led show on the Enterprise G. With new characters - keep Raffi and La Forge’s daughter.
They should give a bunch of creators a couple million dollars each to write new stories in the Trek universe, whichever one.
All of life is over-administered, and having one creative brain behind entire IPs is a limiting factor to creativity.
amen! roddenberry is long gone and trek has long since been a part of the broader culture. it should really be in the public domain
I assume you’re referring to Kurtzman, but it seems to be like that’s exactly what he’s doing? Of the six series we’ve had under his watch, he’s been the showrunner of two of them. The rest of them seemed to be fairly free to execute their creative vision, for good or ill.
Not him specifically but that management pattern broadly over the entertainment industry. There’s The Showrunner and they’re supposed to control multiple films and series. I bet it’s exhausting and that’s why later stuff just isn’t as good.
By giving more people more freedom we’ll get more stories from more perspectives with different takes, instead of a corporate monoculture.
This is a pattern that happens every time control is decentralized, across social groups, so I’m pretty sure it’ll work.
I have so much dread from the Ellison MAGA takeover that any new Trek would just Phantom Menace everything.
I mean. You know.
Assuming convention people= everyone… Nah, I didn’t even watch Picard… I have Zero desire for a reunion show.
I feel like she kind of missed the part where no one was clamoring for her and Frakes and any other TNG cast member you care to name to headline the thing.
But it’ll never happen anyway. If anyone was even considering it, I doubt they would have let IDW start a new comic book series that’s broadly the same idea.
