Terry Matalas Running Star Trek? Great Idea, But...
Putting celebrated "Picard" showrunner at the helm wouldn't be as easy as it might look
Chris Snellgrove over at Giant Freakin’ Robot recently published a long piece making the case for Star Trek wunderkind Terry Matalas to run the franchise.
And, as far as it goes, his rationale for putting Matalas in the captain’s chair of the franchise 100-percent checks out.
Snellgrove wrote:
Even the most hardcore fans have begun asking who Paramount thinks its audience is, and it has become clear that the franchise needs its own Dave Filoni figure to guide it back to greatness. Fortunately, the answer is clear: Terry Matalas needs to be given creative control of the Star Trek franchise.
Long before he served as showrunner of Star Trek: Picard — where he wrote and directed several episodes, including during the series’s celebrated third season — Matalas could boast of one of longest associations with Star Trek one could imagine.
However, while he might arguably deserve to oversee the entire franchise, installing Matalas wouldn't be as straightforward as perhaps Snellgrove might portray in his article.
Going back to his early days, Matalas started as personal assistant to then-executive producer Brannon Braga during the end of Star Trek: Voyager and throughout the run of Star Trek: Enterprise, where he also wrote the stories for two episodes of Enterprise’s third season.
The planets Matalas and M’talas Prime, referenced in the Enterprise episodes “Dear Doctor” and “Dawn” — the latter also seen in several Picard episodes — were named after him.
He even made a cameo appearance as an Enterprise-D crewman in the series finale of Enterprise, “These Are the Voyages...”
Even his social media oozes Star Trek.
Long after he finished his current stint in the franchise with the blockbuster series finale of Picard — “The Last Generation,” which he personally both wrote and directed — Matalas regularly still geeks out over the franchise online.
Snellgrove sums up his argument for handing off the reins to Matalas this way:
Over the years, Matalas has helped to write multiple episodes of multiple Star Trek shows before taking over as showrunner and later directing two great episodes of Picard. The man understands the franchise inside and out, and in its fictional canon, he even has two planets named after him (Matalas and M’talas Prime). In short, Terry Matalas has spent decades bringing Star Trek to life in every form; why not let him take the captain’s chair and finally take NuTrek to Warp 9?
Please support my work…
Despite its merits, there are two main flaws to Snellgrove’s case, however.
The first is part of the rationale Snellgrove laid out for putting Matalas in charge, in the first place.
Snellgrove posits that the trouble with the franchise is that Paramount is just kind of clueless. “It’s an open secret that Paramount doesn’t quite know what to do with Star Trek,” he wrote, by way of opening his piece.
I'd argue, however, that that’s not really the case.
I’m quite certain that the Paramount team has plenty of ideas for new Star Trek, after all, they have a spinoff fans have been very publicly clamoring for in Star Trek: Legacy.
If the suits at Paramount lack for anything with Star Trek, it’s not on the creative side; but rather they’re short on cash, as well as apparently on ideas to package the franchise as a property to be sold to an interested bidder.
The future of the studio as an ongoing concern — as well as the fate of Star Trek itself — is wrapped up in corporate drama.
As multi-talented as Matalas might be, I doubt these particular issues are in his wheelhouse.
And the second flaw in Snellgrove’s big plan is that Star Trek already has a master.
Alex Kurtzman and his Secret Hideout banner already are contracted with Paramount through 2026.
There have been no signs that Paramount is looking to sever that deal. Quite honestly, with their aforementioned financial struggles, it’s quite likely that Kurtzman’s contract isn't even on the Paramount radar at the moment.
An old friend of mine used to like to say, “There’s a reason it's called show business.”
In other words, Star Trek’s not only a franchise we fans love and appreciate. It’s intellectual property worth many billions of dollars.
If Star Trek were strictly art and literature, it would make perfect sense to give control to Terry Matalas.
Unfortunately, it’s also commerce, and that's where it gets a lot more complicated.
Hailing Frequencies Open…
Here's the latest that we've been keeping up with…
Star Trek mission carrying actors' ashes to Moon 'crashes in flames above the Pacific'
Star Trek: What Happened to Kira Nerys After Deep Space Nine?
MOMENT FOR TREK
Ep. 2.27: “Hoisted By His Own Picard” with Terry Matalas
Enjoy this edition of Subspace Chatter?
Please make sure you …
And also …