Mike Johnson Talks Star Trek Ongoing

Writer Mike Johnson recently spoke with Comic Book Resources about writing the new ongoing Star Trek. The series is the first ongoing in decades that re-tells some of the adventures from Star Trek: The Original Series but altered because now they are set in the new Star Trek 2.0 universe created by the 2009 movie. The first arc retold the pilot episode of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" while the next arc that began with issue 3 tells the story of "The Galileo Seven". Below are a few highlights from the interview, the entirety of which can be found here.

What are major differences between the characters from the original series and the 2009 remake? Conversely, can you name some similarities?
The biggest difference initially was in the makeup of the crew, because Bones and Chekov hadn't joined the show when "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was shot, which forms the basis for our first two issues. Also, there are sets in the original episodes that we didn't see in the new movie, such as the crew conference room, but our artist Stephen Molnar has done a brilliant job of imagining these in a way that fits the design of the new timeline.

In terms of similarities, they are the same beloved dynamics between the members of the crew, albeit with some interesting twists to reflect the new timeline, such as Spock and Uhura's relationship.

When this new comic series was announced, "Star Trek" film writer and producer Roberto Orci said, “Movies cost money. Lots and lots of money. But comics give us unlimited budgets to take the crew of the Enterprise farther than they've ever been." Keeping that in mind, how big is this series going to be?
It starts similar to the scope of the original series and gets bigger as we go. Think of the old "butterfly and the hurricane" analogy. Things start off relatively similar to how they did in the Gary Mitchell story, only to evolve in scope to the point that we get to the first big, original comic story, post-movie, which involves the Vulcan response to the apparent Romulan responsibility for the Vulcan homeworld's destruction.

Finally, you mentioned earlier that this series is tied to the movie continuity. Will you be leading the Enterprise towards the 2013 sequel, and will events from the movie effect your comic book series?
Definitely. The great thing about working with Bob and being privy to the development of the next movie is that we can really tie everything together in the same way we did with the "Countdown" prequel miniseries for the last movie. Plans are in the works for a similar prequel to the next movie. If we're lucky enough to continue the comic series after the next movie, we would definitely want to show the effects of the film on the crew in the comics.