Kalinda Vazquez to write latest Star Trek movie

The ongoing efforts to get another Star Trek movie into production seem to have started over once more, with Deadline reporting Paramount have signed up Discovery writer Kalinda Vazquez to write a new Star Trek movie. There's no detail just yet on which crew or timeline might feature in the film, although it will be a Bad Robot production, who of course previously brought us the three Kelvin timeline movies.

Vazquez's has previously written the Pike-focused Short Treks episode Ask Not, and Discovery's recent return to the mirror universe, Terra Firma, Part 2. She has also been a consulting producer for the latter half of Discovery season three. Her other cool Star Trek connection is that she is named after a Star Trek character! Kelinda the Kelvan, from the TOS episode By Any Other Name.

TrekCore found a nice article Vazquez wrote which neatly sums up both the legacy of her name and her drive as a writer:

I remember watching Star Trek as a child — in awe of the fictional universe that so inspired my father, he was compelled to name his first born after one of it’s characters. (That’s one hell of an influential fictional universe.)

My father’s love for TV and film – and good story telling in general — was either contagious, genetic or both. I loved these mediums for their entertainment value – but I also loved them because they made me think about things I might not have thought about before.

The really good bits –say the ending of Close Encounters of a Third Kind or a particularly salient argument between Archie and Meathead on All in the Family— even challenged the way I looked at the world. It didn’t take long for me to realize the more stories I consumed, the more my imagination grew, and the more I wanted to create some stories of my own.

Vazquez' other TV work includes writing and producing for Fear of the Walking Dead, Once Upon a Time, and Runaways. She's also written several comic series, including Marvel's new America Chavez: Made In The USA(ad) miniseries. This appears to be her first move into movies.

This is the fourth known Star Trek movie project to enter development since Star Trek Beyond. The other projects that seem to have been shelved; those include: What would have seen the return of George Kirk to the Kelvin timeline in a film written by J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, and possibly the same film S.J. Clarkson was set to direct; An idea by Quentin Tarantino, written by Mark L. Smith, which reportedly would have had a 30s gangster setting; And most recently before this latest new possibility, there was Noah Hawley's film, which was apparently to feature a new cast and a virus-focused story that was felt ill-timed as of last year.

Will this new project get any further than those that have been lined up before? Let's hope so! Vazquez would have the distinction of being the first woman to write a Star Trek movie, and I think also the first Latinx person.