There’s only one week left to go till Star Trek: Part 31 arrives on the 2025 motion pictures schedule and reunites followers who’ve a Paramount+ subscription with Michelle Yeoh’s Philippa Georgiou, the previous chief of the Terran Empire within the Mirror Universe. Nonetheless, there was a time when Part 31 was meant to be on the slate of upcoming Star Trek TV exhibits. In truth, director Olatunde Osunsanmi shared that the Part 31 TV collection really made it fairly far alongside within the improvement course of earlier than the artistic pivot.
Had issues gone in accordance with the unique plan, Osunsanmi was going to direct the Part 31 pilot, having already contributed to the franchise helming varied episodes of Star Trek: Discovery, which paved the best way for this spinoff. In an interview with EW, Osunsanmi mentioned the next about how issues formed up when the Part 31 TV collection was occurring:
We really prepped and had an idea assembly on the pilot of Part 31 whereas we had been ending and capturing the finale of Disco season 2. So we basically had two parallel exhibits occurring on the identical time.
For many who want a refresher or haven’t watched Star Trek: Discovery, the Season 2 finale noticed the crew of the title ship, together with Philippa Georgiou, touring over 900 years into the long run. Nonetheless, Georgiou didn’t keep lengthy, as the mix of her touring to this point ahead in time and hailing from one other universe meant that her molecules had been too removed from their origin. This was slowly killing her, however the Guardian of Eternally opened a portal to ship her again to an earlier time interval within the Prime Universe. That’s the place we’ll discover her when Part 31 begins, albeit a number of a long time forward of when Discovery’s first two seasons came about, as evidenced by the presence of Rachel Garrett, the long run captain of the Enterprise-C.
I’d be mendacity if I mentioned didn’t wish to see how Part 31 turned out as a TV collection, particularly if it included different Discovery characters to hitch Philippa Georgiou, like Shazad Latif’s Ash Tyler. Alas, that model of the venture ultimately glided by the wayside when author Craig Sweeney drafted one other pilot script therapy. Then the COVID-19 pandemic additional sophisticated plans, and by early 2023, it was determined to make Part 31 as a film as an alternative, though its manufacturing was delayed by the 2 Hollywood strikes.
Olatunde Osunsanmi credited the “relentless” Star Trek franchise overseer Alex Kurtzman, Aaron Baiers (the president of TV at Kurtzman’s manufacturing firm, Secret Hideout) and Michelle Yeoh for Part 31 in the end being made, saying:
I can not consider that we really are on the verge of releasing it to the world in any case of that.
We’ll see how the ultimate product turned out when Star Trek: Part 31 is launched on January 24, with Michelle Yeoh being joined onscreen by Omari Hardwick, Kacey Rohl, Sam Richardson, Sven Ruygrok, Robert Kazinsky, Humbly Gonzalez and James Hiroyuki Liao. Following its launch, the Trek franchise will proceed with Unusual New Worlds Season 3 premiering someday on the 2025 TV schedule.