ScorpioLikeYou TV Star Trek Turns 60 on Tuesday With No Series in Production for the First Time in Nine Years

Star Trek Turns 60 on Tuesday With No Series in Production for the First Time in Nine Years

written by Leo Hartwell

September 5, 2026 9:20 am

Star Trek Turns 60 on Tuesday With No Series in Production for the First Time in Nine Years — Image credit: IMDb

Star Trek turns 60 on Tuesday — sixty years to the day since "The Man Trap" aired on NBC on 8 September 1966. Paramount has built a week around it: 750 cinemas, a Guinness record attempt, a Walk of Fame ceremony, a Delta badge on the ISS. What it does not have is a single Star Trek series in production.

That is the part worth sitting with. For the first time in nine years, no Star Trek show is filming anywhere. The Star Trek stage at Pinewood Toronto is dark. Paramount+ has episodes banked through 2027, and nothing greenlit past that.

What is actually banked

Strange New Worlds S4 — airing now, 10 episodes, premiered 23 July, finale 24 September. The last full-length season.
Strange New Worlds S5 — shot and unaired. Six episodes, 2027. Filming wrapped December 2025.
Starfleet Academy S2 — shot and unaired. Ten episodes, 2027. Wrapped 24 February 2026. Season one aired January to March 2026 with Holly Hunter, Paul Giamatti, Robert Picardo and Tatiana Maslany.
Ended: Discovery (5 seasons), Picard (3), Lower Decks (5). Prodigy moved to Netflix. Section 31 became a film.

Alex Kurtzman, asked in January whether Starfleet Academy would be his last Trek series, said "No," and that "plans are being made" for after 2027. His contract is reported to run out at the end of this year.

The anniversary week itself

4–8 September: 750+ US cinemas, 4K restorations paired with a matching TOS episode — The Motion Picture with "The Changeling", Wrath of Khan with "Space Seed", The Search for Spock with "Amok Time", The Voyage Home with "The City on the Edge of Forever".
8 September: free outdoor screening at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles; a matching London event; a Guinness World Record attempt at the Science Museum for the largest mass Vulcan salute; Underground takeovers at King's Cross St Pancras and South Kensington.
Gene Roddenberry's Walk of Fame star gets a restoration ceremony. ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot is wearing a Captain's Delta aboard the ISS.
Free streaming: since 14 August, Pluto TV has been running TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise plus all 13 films free with ads. Discovery and Picard are deliberately held back to drive Paramount+ signups.
9 October: the documentary The Sixty-Year Mission, with William Shatner executive producing and appearing alongside Walter Koenig and George Takei.

One thing you may have seen this week that is not what it looked like

Headlines on Monday reported that Nathan Fillion had been cast as Captain Kirk. He had not. Fillion appeared as Kirk in a surprise segment of a live charity script reading — the Writers Guild Foundation's RetroReads, staged at the Lodge Room in Highland Park on Sunday evening, with Adam Arkin as Harry Mudd and D'Arcy Carden as Spock, reading the animated episode "Mudd's Passion".

The main event was a reading of "The Man Trap" — the 1966 episode being commemorated — led by the cast of The Pitt, with Noah Wyle as Kirk, Katherine LaNasa as McCoy and Iman Vellani as Yeoman Rand. It was a fundraiser, not a Paramount production, and it was not filmed for broadcast. The paid on-demand window closes on 14 September.

Fillion in a Kirk tunic is a fan-casting that has followed him since a 2014 magazine photoshoot, after which Shatner told him "you fit the tunic well my friend." He has never said he wants the part. One evening on a stage in Highland Park is not a casting announcement.

Who has actually played Kirk

William Shatner (1966–94, across the series, the animated show and seven films); Sandra Smith, for one episode in 1969; Jimmy Bennett as a child in 2009; Chris Pine across three Kelvin-timeline films; and Paul Wesley in Strange New Worlds since 2022.