Quentin Tarantino might be making a Star Trek movie. You can file that under Sentences One Never Expects to be Writing, but that doesn’t make it any less of a possibility. News broke earlier this week that the famed director’s Star Trek pitch had been received positively by J.J. Abrams, and that the story Tarantino had outlined would soon be on its way to a writers’ room at Paramount. There, the story will be workshopped and, if all goes according to plan, Tarantino could end up directing the film, with Abrams pegged to produce.
For diehard Star Trek fans, the news likely comes as a massive surprise. After all, Tarantino isn’t known to take on projects in established properties. He has dabbled in television, having directed episodes of CSI and ER, but those are the exceptions to the rule. For the most part, Tarantino falls squarely into the auteur camp; he pens his own scripts and directs the resulting films with very little oversight. That the outspoken director would break away from his comfort zone to take on such a massive studio project in one of the biggest science fiction franchises of all time is staggering -- but he might be just what Star Trek needs.
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At its core, Star Trek is an allegorical show. When Gene Roddenberry first pitched the series back in 1964, he did so with the idea that each episode would be a mix of spacefaring adventure and a morality tale -- a Medieval storytelling genre in which protagonists are often convinced to walk a righteous path by characters who are the personification of moral elements. Roddenberry’s goals for Star Trek were timely. The ‘60s were fraught with conflict, and as a result some of America's greatest cultural fears made their way onto the show. In creating a vast, wholly unique spacefaring mythology, Roddenberry made a playground in which his characters could apply their idealistic values to simulated scenarios that touched on everything from the Civil Rights movement and second-wave feminism, to the threat of nuclear annihilation from afar.
Tarantino’s films have always had a similar moral backbone, tinged with genre-bending adventure. Django Unchained combined the aesthetics of a Spaghetti Western with the horrors of slavery in the Antebellum South. Kill Bill is a revenge story about a capable woman tracking down the man who betrayed and abused her. Tarantino’s Grindhouse entry, “Death Proof,” is a take on B-movies that’s actually about the perils of toxic masculinity. Inglorious Basterds is an empowering war movie adaptation designed to take the wind out of modern-day Nazis, though it predates the current wave of alt-right regressivism. In each of these films, the characters at the fore are the downtrodden; unlikely heroes who rarely get their time to shine as protagonists in American media -- a former slave, women on a mission, a band of Jewish soldiers.
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This is exactly the kind of moral center that has been missing from Star Trek’s last three theatrical releases, which have all gone big on action, much to the detriment of the films’ storytelling. This is especially concerning considering the mind-bending lengths to which the trilogy went to appease fans, effectively creating a Star Trek multiverse where the events of the original television series coexist alongside the revised tales of Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk. Unfortunately, in tampering with the space-time continuum, it seems that the trilogy of films also excised the heart from Star Trek. Without that, the series is little more than another lost-in-space drama chockful of special effects -- not wholly displeasing, but not the dish Star Trek fans ordered.
Of course, there’s no telling what Tarantino might do with the Star Trek franchise. The details of the alleged script idea haven’t been released, and, considering that it’s reportedly heading straight to a writing room, there’s always a chance it will look nothing like the director’s original conception when details finally surface. All of that being said, we know what kind of Star Trek script idea Tarantino might have come up with. He made that much perfectly clear back in September, when he discussed the flaws with the recent Star Trek trilogy, as well as the kind of script he would pen if given the chance. In the interview, Tarantino calls out a classic episode, “City on the Edge of Forever,” that perfectly follows the Star Trek formula.
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The episode sees Kirk and Spock chasing Scotty through 1930s New York City after a medical accident renders the doctor delirious. Scotty beams down to an anomalous planet and flees through a time portal called the Guardian of Forever, his actions inadvertently wiping out the USS Enterprise and its crew in the process. Kirk and Spock pursue him, only to find themselves faced with a terrible choice that is the key to saving their own timeline. Written by Harlan Ellison, the script deals with the inevitability of time and outlines the difficulty of selflessly abandoning personal ties in favor of the needs of the many. In several ways, the episode is an examination of Star Trek’s own post-scarcity world set against the backdrop of the American Great Depression. So, it’s heavy stuff.
Interestingly, the episode also changes up the Star Trek timeline, meaning that all the retconning that has occurred since 2009’s Star Trek could be undone while conveniently placing the Enterprise’s crew on familiar, Earthly ground -- familiar for us, at least. In this way, Tarantino’s Star Trek could be yet another reboot for the franchise, which certainly sounds exhausting, but could also be just what it needs. While Star Trek: Discovery is more than comfortable changing up the series’ formula in key ways while honoring the past, it could be time for the movies to get back to what Star Trek was originally good at -- human stories. If Paramount wants another special effects-driven Star Trek film set in its own continuity, they’ve got their pick of the litter (doubtless dozens of Hollywood directors would jump at the chance to helm the next big-budget Star Trek movie), but if they want to go boldly back to the series’ roots, then Quentin Tarantino might be just who they need.