Star Trek legend Brent Spiner has opened up on a spin-off series that sadly never made the light of day.
The Star Trek franchise has now been running for 60 years, with Spiner part of the world of the USS Enterprise and beyond since he made his first appearance as Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987.
After seven seasons of Next Generation, Data has maintained a consistent presence in the Star Trek universe, with Spiner appearing in two spin-off series and four films – even getting a writing credit for 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis – as well as lending his voice to five video games.
But speaking in New York ahead of the new Star Trek documentary, The Sixty-Year Mission, Spiner said there was even more of the story to be told.
The actor has revealed a sequel to Star Trek: Nemesis was initially planned, which was "going to be fantastic", bringing together multiple characters from throughout every part of the franchise in a story around the Mirror Universe and time travel.
However, speaking to TrekMovie, he said: "Thing is, it was a pipe dream on our parts, because obviously nobody could afford to do that. Particularly not after my salary, they weren’t going to be able to.
"We had an original script that we wrote that was rejected. It wasn’t the script. We had a story idea that involved everybody playing two roles, but alas, that this wasn’t to be."
He added that ultimately executives decided they "didn’t want to do it" due to the poor box office of Nemesis, ending its potential.
Shortly after the project was scrapped, it was announced that Star Trek was getting a full movie reboot, with JJ Abrams at the helm and a new cast.
Chris Pine led the new all-star cast as Captain James T Kirk (previously played by William Shatner) with Zachary Quinto taking over the role of Spock from Leonard Nimoy and Simon Pegg playing Montgomery 'Scotty' Scott, replacing James Doohan.
The film, released in 2009, would eventually evolve into its own trilogy with 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness and 2019’s Star Trek Beyond.
However, the original cast and story continued to endure on television, with Star Trek: Discovery launching in 2017.
Since then, there have been six further television spin-offs in the Star Trek universe, three live-actions, two animations and one short-form series, including Star Trek: Picard in 2020 and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds in 2022.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, which focuses on up-and-coming cadets training to join Starfleet, launched earlier this year.
It’s been confirmed the series will end after its second season, which will air next year.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy season 2 will arrive on Paramount+ in March 2027.
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