Star Trek Countdown Talk

As part of the promotional push for JJ Abrams' Star Trek movie, a comic book mini-series called Star Trek: Countdown is coming out next year. The plan is for the comic to bridge the gap between the post-Nemesis (ST10) movie and the prequel movie by introducing Nero, the Romulan villain who attempts to use time travel to wipe James T Kirk from the "history" books. The cover of the first issue is to the left, homage to various promotional posters that have come out over the last several months. As part of the comic, the editor of the title, Andy Schmidt, spoke with Newsarama. Below are sections of the interview.

“When we started this, what needed to be worked out was the creative angle on it more than anything else,” Schmidt says. “How would it fit with the new film and would it actually be a good story? It turns out, with the help of about a dozen people between the four companies involved - IDW, CBS Consumer Products, Paramount Pictures, Bad Robot, and Kurtzman/Orci Productions - that a great story was un-earthed. We got the writers of the film to help out and sign off on the story to ensure that our series would be an important component to the overall experience of the new movie. It's really turned into something special.”

“We're essentially introducing readers to Nero, the film's major villain, and telling his story,” Schmidt says. “You'll get a lot of firsts in this series - you'll see a lot of stuff that's in the movie for the first time here and get to know the characters so that when you walk into the film, you're already going to care about them. They're really tremendous characters with a lot of dramatic conflict and flair.

“Writers Mike Johnson and Tim Jones fleshed the story out into an outline for the four issues and, with approval from me, CBS Consumer Products and Paramount, and then worked it into scripts. It sounds like a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and it is, but what impressed me was how we were all pretty much on the same page. It's a very fluid process.”

Asked if IDW will launch a new Star Trek series that follows in the film’s perceived new timeline, Schmidt’s answer will certainly cause eyebrows to rise on some Trek fans: “What new timeline? And yes.”