Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds co-creator Akiva Goldsman wants to expand the Star Trek universe by telling more stories about other classic Star Trek characters. But since not every classic character from the beloved sci-fi franchise can support an entire TV series, Goldsman thinks that creating an anthology series focusing on one Star Trek character per episode would be a great idea.
“There’s something that I like, which I think Robert Kirkman is doing right now with The Walking Dead,” Goldsman said in a recent interview with SFX magazine. “I’ll call it Tales of the Federation, where you would just do one-offs. So you could bring George Takei back for an hour, and do a show about Sulu as an older man, or find Jonathan Archer having now retired from his Enterprise and being on Earth.”
Goldsman continued, “You could grab anybody, from all the [Star Trek] shows, because it’s really hard to find enough for a series, but there are an endless amount of episodes, as anthology series are finding their way back. They were sort of a staple when I was a boy. A Star Trek [series] based [on] one of those, I think would be super fun.”
While it’s unclear whether Goldsman has already pitched the Tales of the Federation to the higher-ups at CBS Studios, it seems likely that this potential anthology series would fare well, as Goldsman has already given new life to two Star Trek captains since 2020. The first one is Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) in Star Trek: Picard, and the other is Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which will premiere on Paramount+ on May 5th.
If picked up to series, Tales of the Federation won’t be the first Star Trek anthology series. The sci-fi franchise first dipped its toe into the anthology format with Star Trek: Short Treks. Launched in October 2018 and ended in January 2020, Star Trek: Short Trek’s two-season run consists of 10 shorts, each with 10-15-minute running time. Each episode features settings and characters from Star Trek: Discovery and other Star Trek series, and often experiments with new genres.