How a Star Trek movie became Quentin Tarantino's one that got away

"It would be the greatest Star Trek film," said writer Mark L Smith to Collider in 2023. "It was just a balls-out kind of thing." But sadly, we'll almost certainly never get to see the movie he's talking about: Quentin Tarantino's unmade Star Trek sequel.

On a podcast appearance way back in 2015, Tarantino revealed his Star Trek fandom and interest in having a go at the franchise — either with an original idea or by expanding a classic episode. But a decade on, it looks very unlikely that Tarantino will be boldly going anywhere with the crew of the Enterprise.

So what happened here? What would the Tarantino take on Star Trek have been like, and why didn't it ever come to fruition? With a new Star Trek movie, Section 31, hitting Paramount+ this week, now is a great time to look into one of the strangest chapters of the franchise's history.

Tarantino's initial podcast comment was originally treated as just that — an off-the-cuff remark. The clip resurfaced in 2017, though, and by December of that year, it was reported that Paramount and producer JJ Abrams were keen on an idea Tarantino had brought to the table. Paramount started to develop this idea, while also working separately on a sequel to Star Trek Beyond — another project yet to surface.

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While Tarantino was hard at work on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Smith was hired to work on the screenplay for his Star Trek movie. Tarantino later referred to the script as "Pulp Fiction in space" and said he'd been given permission to make it with an R-rating in mind, rather than the family-friendly feel of the rest of the franchise. We assume this referred to violence, rather than Spock discovering a penchant for dropping F-bombs.

As for when the film would've taken place within the continuity of the series, even Tarantino wasn't sure. He explained to Josh Horowitz in 2019 that Abrams had basically given him the green light to ignore the complex connection between the original Star Trek timeline and the "Kelvin Timeline" established in the 2009 reboot. Tarantino was keen, though, to retain at least Chris Pine as Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock — continuity be damned.

A Deadline report in 2020 revealed that the script for Tarantino's movie was "based on an episode of the classic Star Trek series that takes place largely earthbound in a 30s gangster setting". That episode was 1968's 'A Piece of the Action', in which a discarded book left by previous space travellers had inspired an alien planet to model itself on 1920s Chicago.

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At the end of 2019, after Once Upon a Time in Hollywood became one of the biggest box office hits of Tarantino's career, he started to get cold feet about Star Trek. For years now, Tarantino has stated that he would retire after making 10 movies. Based on the way the director counts his work — he considers Kill Bill to be one film — that means his next movie will be his swansong.

According to Smith, this sticking point is a big part of the reason why Tarantino veered away from making his Star Trek film. He wasn't sure about having a Trek adventure as his final artistic statement to the world.

"Quentin and I went back and forth. He was gonna do some stuff on it, and then he started worrying about the number, his kind of unofficial number of films," said Smith. "I remember we were talking, and he goes: 'If I can just wrap my head around the idea that Star Trek could be my last movie, the last thing I ever do. Is this how I want to end it?' And I think that was the bump he could never get across, so the script is still sitting there on his desk."

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Tarantino's final word on the matter came in January 2020 when he told Deadline that he had pretty much let the project go, hoping the script would fall into someone else's hands. He subsequently announced — and then unannounced — The Movie Critic as his final film, so the jury is still out on what he will do for his last movie.

"I think they might make that movie, but I just don’t think I’m going to direct it," he said on Star Trek. "It’s a good idea. They should definitely do it and I’ll be happy to come in and give them some notes on the first rough cut."

So that would seem to be it for the prospect of Quentin Tarantino bringing his unique sensibilities to the world of Star Trek. It's set to go down as one of the great unrealised projects in Tarantino's filmography and, even if the idea does make it to the big screen one day, we won't be able to help but wonder what it would have been like with him behind the camera.

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In the meantime, Star Trek is making a real home for itself on the small screen. Paramount+ plays host to some acclaimed Star Trek TV series, as well as the newly released Section 31. If you're a fan of Gene Roddenberry's creations, that's the place to be right now. That is, unless, Tarantino decides to redefine what the number 10 means again. We wouldn't put it past him.

Star Trek: Section 31 is available on Paramount+ from 24 January.