STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS’ Captain Kirk Spinoff Gets a Grim Update From Akiva Goldsman

The future of Star Trek is looking a little less certain asStar Trek: Strange New Worldsheads toward the end of Season 4, and fans hoping Captain Kirk would keep the adventure going may want to brace themselves.

The proposed Star Trek: Year One spinoff, which would follow Kirk’s early days commanding the Enterprise, once seemed like a natural way to continue what Strange New Worlds started.

Executive producer and co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman was one of the project’s biggest supporters, but his latest update makes it sound like the window of opportunity may have closed.

Strange New Worlds finished filming its fifth and final season in late 2025, and with production over, the resources that could have made a Kirk series relatively easy to launch are disappearing.

The sets are gone, cast members are moving on to other projects, and Goldsman told Radio Times that nobody has given the spinoff the green light.

“Nobody's called, the sets are gone. Everybody else has started to take other jobs. It's never been officially yes, and it's never been officially no. But I don't see it happening. I don't know. It's above my pay grade.

“Maybe somebody calls and says, 'Hey, do a two-hour movie,' or, 'We want the show.' Great! But there was a moment where it would have been the most expeditious, creatively and economically, to just continue because we had a lot of assets which are now no longer.”

That’s a rough update for anyone hoping to see Paul Wesley continue Kirk’s story beyond Strange New Worlds. The idea had a pretty obvious advantage. Paramount+ already had an established Enterprise, a familiar crew, production assets and an audience that had spent years with this version of the Star Trek universe.

Now, bringing everyone back together would be a much bigger undertaking. Goldsman hasn’t said that Year One is officially dead, and he leaves open the possibility of a two-hour movie or some other surprise revival. Still, his comments make it clear that the easiest opportunity to make the project happen has passed.

Goldsman also sounds ready to say goodbye to Star Trek altogether. While another Star Trek movie is in development and the franchise is expected to continue on television, he doesn’t expect to be part of whatever comes next.

He said: “But I do think that, at least for me, my time with Star Trek is over now. I was really lucky – Strange New Worlds was everything I imagined when I couldn't even imagine it, as a little boy playing Star Trek.

“Now I got to be a bigger boy playing Star Trek with somebody else's toys...As much as I'd like to still keep playing, because it's fun, I also understand the value of renewal and whether it renews itself perfectly the first or the second or the third iteration of whatever the next – dare I say – generation of these shows are, it'll find its way. It always does.”

Goldsman has played a major role in the modern era of Star Trek. He was involved with Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard and Strange New Worlds, and his history with the franchise stretches back to writing Star Trek: Nemesis. His departure would mark the end of a substantial chapter for the franchise as Paramount figures out what its next era of television will look like.

After Picard ended, there was plenty of enthusiasm surrounding a potential continuation that would have kept that corner of the universe alive. The cast and creative team supported the idea, but Paramount never moved forward with it. As time passed, showrunner Terry Matalas moved on to Marvel and the actors naturally began taking other jobs.

The Kirk situation now appears to be heading down a similar road. Television productions can’t sit frozen indefinitely while studios decide what they want to do. Sets get dismantled, contracts end and actors and filmmakers find their next projects.

The timing makes all of this particularly frustrating for fans. Star Trek is celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2026, yet this milestone year has brought plenty of uncertainty about what the franchise’s television future will actually look like.

Still, Goldsman seems confident that Star Trek will find its next form, even if he won’t be helping steer the ship. Considering the franchise has survived changing casts, canceled series, long breaks, movies, streaming shifts and multiple generations of storytelling over six decades, reinvention is practically baked into its DNA.

It’s just a shame that Star Trek: Year One increasingly looks like it may become another cool Trek idea that never made it out of spacedock.