Legacy Would Be A ‘Mix And Match’ Of Series Styles

From its inception in 1966 up until the later seasons of “Star Trek: Enterprise” in the early 2000s, Star Trek has remained largely an episodic show. There were multiple-episode stories here and there, and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” had seasons-long wartime backdrops, but the shows were made before television switched to broader, season- and series-long story arcs as a matter of course. Star Trek has since wrestled with which approach is more appropriate for the franchise. 

Longer stories haven’t done well for “Star Trek: Discovery” or the first two seasons of “Star Trek: Picard,” but the third season of “Picard” availed itself well. Meanwhile, the more episodic modern Star Trek shows “Strange New Worlds” and “Lower Decks” are doing quite well with a retro approach. So which approach was “Legacy” poised to take? Matalas was diplomatic, saying: 

“I think it could be a mix-and-match. Again, let me be clear: there’s nothing in development. It’s just an exciting pie-in-the-sky idea. But it would mix and match. But I would love to go back to the spirit of ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ quite a bit.”

The series that ran from 1987 to 1994 was, of course, an episodic TV series that only occasionally presented two-part episodes when it had the leeway to get ambitious, or when it required a cliffhanger ending to one of its seasons. It sounds very much like Matalas wants an episodic structure, but is very much open to longer arcs, should that be a requirement for “Legacy” to get made.