One of the most exciting aspects of the larger Star Trek universe is the opportunity for the franchise to finally tell different kinds of stories. Star Trek: Discovery catapulted the franchise into the far future. Prequel Star Trek: Strange New Worlds explores the origin stories of legacy characters from The Original Series. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will follow a group of young cadets from their earliest days with the Federation. And now, a former Star Trek captain wants to find out what happens after their days in command are done. 

Scott Bakula played Captain Jonathan Archer in Star Trek: Enterprise, a prequel that told the story of the first missions of Starfleet’s most famous ship. The series ran for four seasons and followed the crew as humanity took its first steps into the larger galaxy and laid the groundwork for what would become the United Federation of Planets. It’s a… let’s just call it a mixed bag in terms of quality (you either love or hate that theme song), but Bakula’s captain is a deeply human figure who undergoes real growth over the course of the series.. 

Now, Bakula and former Enterprise writer/producer Mike Sussman have an idea for how to continue Archer’s story. Per TrekMovie.com, the pair has reportedly developed a pitch for a follow-up series called Star Trek: United, which would focus on Archer’s later life as President of the Federation. Described as a political thriller and set during the earliest days of the organization, the proposed series would not only explore Archer’s family and life in diplomacy, but also the larger aftermath of the Romulan War, a key event in the Federation’s founding. 

“One of my aspirations would be that the series could do for Star Trek, what Andor did for Star Wars,” Sussman told Trek Movie’s All Access Star Trek podcast. “It’s a show where you can tell adult stories about adults and tell them in a very grounded, realistic way.”

Apparently, the story wouldn’t only be about Archer, but also his adult children, who would all be following in their father’s footsteps in various ways.

“Archer would be in a place in his life where Scott kind of is right now, where Scott is a family man. He’s got four adult kids. And so I gave Archer four adult kids, and the story is as much about them as it is about him, because he lived this life of diplomacy … his family sort of grew up with this sense of service,” Sussman said. “So he’d have these adult kids, one of whom is part of the diplomatic corps, another is in Starfleet, somebody else is in Federation Intelligence. So his adult kids could be brought into this story in a way that felt very organic… They would be integral to the story we were telling.”

The duo reportedly ran this idea past Paramount a couple of years ago, but the streamer passed on it, allegedly due to concerns about overlap with its then still-in-development Starfleet Academy series. They’ve since retooled the pitch and remain hopeful that the time to explore this particular corner of the franchise universe may well be sooner than later. (Insert your own joke about having faith of the heart here.)

Granted, there is something quite intriguing about a Trek series set within the halls of the Federation during its earliest days. In terms of franchise history, there’s actually a lot we don’t know about this time period or the compromises the organization had to make in its infancy. Is Archer the right person to lead a show that would, likely of necessity, focus on more morally complex political storylines? The version from Enterprise, maybe not. But, then again, we also don’t know what sort of man Archer has become in the intervening years or the choices he’s had to make along the way. There are plenty of possibilities there, and a real opportunity to make a series that’s nothing like anything else the franchise is currently doing. What I’m saying is, I’d watch.

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