Andy,

I don’t know if this will ever cross your radar, but I figured it was worth putting out into the universe anyway.

Wanted to start by saying, huge fan of your work. I read and watched The Martian about a billion times.

I recently read your comments about modern Star Trek, specifically your apology to Alex Kurtzman, and I had one of those rare moments where I just sat back and went, “Finally. Someone said it out loud.”

Because you’re not wrong.

There was a spark again for a minute.

Between Star Trek: Picard Season 3, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and Star Trek: Lower Decks, it felt like Star Trek remembered what it was supposed to be. Character-driven. Thoughtful. Optimistic without being naive. Fun without being disposable.

You could feel the fandom waking back up.

And then… instead of building on that momentum, it feels like the powers that be looked at it and said, “Great, let’s do something else entirely.”

Projects like Section 31 and Starfleet Academy don’t feel like natural evolutions of that renewed interest. They feel like course corrections in the wrong direction, like someone misread the room and doubled down anyway.

And the part that really stings?

They had a perfect handoff sitting right there.

The ending of Picard didn’t just wrap things up, it set the stage. It handed over the keys to a next-generation story that fans were already invested in. Jeri Ryan as Captain Seven of Nine. Michelle Hurd as Raffi. Ed Speleers as Jack Crusher finding his place.

Call it Legacy, call it something else, I don’t care, but it was right there. A golden goose, plated and ready.

And somehow, it just… sat there.

When I saw Marina Sirtis comment that no studio would make a show led by older actors, I couldn’t help but think, that was never the point. Not even close.

The point wasn’t to drag the past forward again.

The point was to move forward because of it.

That’s what Star Trek has always done at its best. It evolves. It hands off. It trusts the future.

Instead, we keep getting caught in this weird loop of either nostalgia bait or disconnected experimentation that doesn’t quite understand why people showed up in the first place.

And here’s the kicker, this isn’t coming from someone who wants things frozen in amber. Quite the opposite.

If you’re going to do something like Starfleet Academy, then lean into what makes that idea compelling. Show us the making of legends. Build something structured, intentional, meaningful.

Give me:

• Pike learning command
• Kirk breaking rules before he earns the chair
• Picard becoming Picard
• Sisko finding conviction
• Janeway forging resilience

One captain per season. A throughline of what it means to lead.

There’s your show.

Instead, what we’re getting feels like a version of the future that nobody asked for, built on characters nobody knows, in a timeline nobody’s emotionally invested in.

And that’s the frustrating part.

Because the audience isn’t gone. The interest isn’t gone. The proof was right there in the success of recent shows.

It just feels like the moment was missed.

Anyway, I appreciate you saying what a lot of people were thinking. Even if it ruffled feathers, it was honest, and honestly, Star Trek has always been at its best when it wasn’t afraid to be exactly that.

—Bradley Page