Somewhere someone is surprised that Paramount is already planning a sequel for Star Trek. I’d like to meet that person and gently remove them from their life support machines.

Yes, even though the reboot of Star Trek has yet to hit theaters, Paramount has asked Robert Orci, Alex Kurtzman and new guy Damon Lindelof (who produced the reboot and probably actually had a serious hand in rewrites along the way) to cobble together a new script by the end of the year. That doesn’t mean the film is greenlit, of course. Star Trek movie history is littered with unproduced scripts, so I’m not quite sure why everybody is getting so excited here… or thinking that a studio moving ahead on a major franchise is unusual in any way.

What is interesting is this bit from Kurtzman: ‘Obviously we discussed ideas, but we are waiting to see how audiences respond next month.’

Now, this is me completely reading into things, but I wonder if that’s not a reference to a possible changed timeline at the end of the time travel-heavy film. There are spoilers below:

My current understanding, and it could be quite wrong, is that whatever major non-canon events occur in Star Trek – deaths and worlds being destroyed among them – will be at least partially undone at the end. But if the filmmakers sense that audiences dig these major deviations, they might be willing to follow these more divergent paths in future adventures, feeling free to get farther and farther from canon. Again, that’s pure speculation.