Recent reports of the new Star Trek series being moved up from January of 2017 until May seems like a smart marketing move. According to Deadline Hollywood, it was a proactive request from the producers of the series, as they currently have three complete scripts and the season mapped out, but need more time for production.

Star Trek: Discovery is due to hit CBS television in May 2017, then trickles down to All Access for endless streaming. [Image by CBS]

The manipulation of time seems to be a “thing” that’s common for a Star Trek story line which is something they seem to have in their back pocket in case they need it, kind of like the producers of the new Enterprise crew.

And while a new generation is salivating around the fact that CBS is bringing the new series Star Trek: Discovery back to its small screen origins, bringing back The Next Generation crew should also never be off the table as they were left high and dry with Star Trek: Nemesis back in 2002.

The reason for this is that Nemesis was not supposed to be the final send-off for the crew, despite what the series’ franchise history shows.

The Captain of the Enterprise Jean Luc Picard and security commander Data (left) Sir Patrick Stewart and (right) Brent Spiner in Germany for Star Trek: Nemesis showing. [Photo by Markus Schreiber/AP Images]

“While we were filming Nemesis, an idea was being developed by John Logan, the screenwriter of Nemesis, and Brent Spiner for a fifth and final movie. It was a very exciting idea for a screenplay. It would have been a real farewell to Next Generation, but it would have involved other historic aspects of Star Trek as well.”

Those are the words of the captain of the Enterprise Jean-Luc Picard, as portrayed by famous actor Patrick Stewart, who in the same interview says that he wouldn’t do another one.

Since then he was interviewed for the International Business Times a few years ago, where when asked if he would return as Picard, he said he would if it were serious. and for a very good reason. There’s no reason to think another movie with the crew wouldn’t be a good enough reason.

But that was then. In an op-ed published on Inquisitr about Star Trek: Nemesis, it states that the movie is different today as opposed to then when Star Trek fans were struggling with franchise fatigue.

And why not bring back the crew from The Next Generation? They didn’t make as many movies as the original crew did and they were even mixed in with each other for those altered timeline episodes and movies. Why not mix them in with the new crew?

Not to say that it isn’t in the cards. Star Trek: Discovery could do what the other shows did during the ’90s and go for several seasons.

And it isn’t as if Patrick Stewart’s career or anyone else’s in the cast is in danger at this point; not as if they’re going to be typecast. Another Star Trek movie, if marketed right, could be the final appropriate send-off a la The Undiscovered Country, which was the appropriate send-off for the first crew with handwritten signatures during the closing credits.

Sure, there are copyrights and studio problems, but the fans are more than ready and willing to get behind another final Next Generation movie that puts that crew together one last time.

There have already been hints that at least some of the crew would reprise their roles, such as Brent Spiner, who played Data and also returned in this year’s Independence Day: Resurgence, when he was asked about it in an interview with IGN.

This is also pretty much what happened with the other actors from the original crew, who were broken up and seen by themselves in The Next Generation, and the same thing happened for TNG crew in other Star Trek spin-offs in the ’90s.

The point here is that there should no longer be a case of franchise fatigue when it comes to any Star Trek shows or movies. Even the latest film in the new J.J. Abrams reboot are a rehash of the original crew, which leaves the just-as-influential Next Generation crew with plenty of opportunity to put some stake in the game.

And as Brent Spiner says, there’s no doubt that as long as the money is right, he’s on board and so should everyone else be for another Next Generation Star Trek.

[Featured Image by Paramount Pictures]