Orci: "it's an origin story"

Roberto Orci, one of the writers for the Star Trek movie, briefly discussed the origin of Star Trek with IGN, while continuing to be shy about the details.

From the article:

Q: Star Trek is the holy grail. How big a responsibility was it taking that on?
ORCI: If we fail, I have family members who will disown us. It's a big responsibility. We thought of Transformers as a warm up – as training for what Trek's gonna be. The difference is that Transformers started as a toy. I personally felt that we had a little more freedom to make sure that what we did for live-action was not going to be a slave to whatever happened [in previous incarnations]. Star Trek has 40 years of established history. It's been live-action, so it's not like no one's ever done a live-action Star Trek. It's been done! So the responsibility is gigantic. We were aware of it from the very beginning. It's kept us up at night. It's why we're so happy to be part of a such a great team with J.J., with Damon Lindelof, with Bryan Burk. And so we felt, if we can get a story by everybody, that all five us like, then we'll probably be in okay hands.

Q: How tricky is it to come up with a story that will appeal to the old fans, and yet do the business of bringing in the new fans that it has to?
ORCI: It's tricky, but we thought that it was an amazing opportunity, which is there'd never been an origin story of how this original crew of Kirk and Spock and Bones and everybody, how they met. So when we went back and started thinking about it, we realized goodness, that's never been covered! That's not even a remake. There simply has not been a story that told how they got together. So when we realized that, we thought well, that solves the introduction problem, because this will literally be an introduction to these characters that everyone knows, but not everyone knows how they met. So we knew that we could tell a story that was still viable for Star Trek fans, because it's not a retelling. It's a new story. And we knew that for those who don't know Star Trek, it's going to be an introduction to the world. So we kind of leapt at it, in that it hadn't been done before.

Q: The biggest problem with origin stories is that every time they're a hit, the director or the writer, when they're talking about the second one, says, 'Well, the first one did its job and introduced its world.' How do you go about making an exciting first film?
ORCI: I can tell you right now, we need not make any qualifiers like that. This is not something like, 'Oh, just sit through the first boring one, and then we get to the fun.' This one, I'm telling you, it's an origin story that's… We didn't save anything for later. We wanted to make sure that it was great for the fans, but a general audience, they're not going to be able to rely on that they love Kirk or they love Spock. They have to love it on its own merits. Like you said, Transformers and Star Trek are very different things. However, I don't think anyone would say that the first Transformers somehow is like waiting for the second one to happen. Our goal is always to not be arrogant enough to think that you're going to get more than one movie. Make one good movie and if that movie's good, then hopefully you'll get another one. Don't save anything for later. Don't plan on the sequel. That's a mistake. And that's how we approach it. Just make one good movie and god willing, we get to do another one.