Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has spent four seasons aboard the Enterprise with Christopher Pike in the captain’s chair. One of the pleasures of the prequel is watching Paul Wesley’s James T. Kirk turn up before that chair belongs to him. We know who eventually gets the job, the remaining question for Paramount+ is whether we’ll get to watch him do it.
Executive producer Akiva Goldsman wanted to make Star Trek: Year One, a follow-up about Kirk’s early days commanding the Enterprise. By September, he revealed in an interview that the sets were gone, people had started taking other jobs, and he doubted the series would happen. That leaves a Kirk-shaped hole in the TV plans just as The Original Series celebrates its 60th anniversary.
Kirk and Spock are back aboard the Enterprise in Echoes in Eternity, a new Star Trek: The Original Series novel by David Mack. Released October 27, the anniversary novel gives them a mystery that takes 27 years and three visits to solve. Their destination is KX-1, a barren planet whose orbit between two black holes makes it reachable only during brief windows years apart. Whatever fell out of the sky and landed there, the Enterprise has only so long to find out what it is before the way back closes again. See the novel at Simon & Schuster.
COLLIDERInteractive
Crew Projection
Sci-Fi/Quizzes/Hero Match
PAUL ATREIDESCAPTAIN KIRKPRINCESS LEIAELLEN RIPLEYMAX ROCKATANSKY
Collider QuizWhich Sci-Fi Hero Are You8 Questions · 5 LegendsFive iconic heroes. Five completely different ways of facing an impossible universe. One of them shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of refusing to back down. Eight questions will tell you which one.On The Manifest
Paul Atreides
Captain Kirk
Princess Leia
Ellen Ripley
Max Rockatansky
Your Hero Has Been IdentifiedYour Sci-Fi Hero Is
Your answers point to the iconic sci-fi hero who shares your instincts, your values,
and your particular way of facing the impossible.
DunePaul AtreidesArrakis · Dune, 2021The hero who knows exactly what becoming one will cost.
You carry a weight most people would crumble under: the knowledge of what you’re capable of, and the burden of what you might have to become.Why This Is You
You see further ahead than others and you plan accordingly, even when the vision frightens
you.
You are driven by loyalty to your people and a sense of destiny you didn’t ask for but
can’t escape.
Paul Atreides is not simply a hero. He is someone who understands the cost of power and
chooses to bear it anyway.
That gravity, that willingness to carry what others won’t, is exactly you.
From The Collider File
Dune: Part Three closes Denis Villeneuve’s trilogy on December 18, 2026, adapting Dune
Messiah.
Messiah is the book that turns on its own hero, which is why Villeneuve waited to film it.
Sees It ComingCarries The WeightArrakis
Star TrekCaptain KirkUSS Enterprise · Star Trek, 1966The captain who refuses to accept that a no-win scenario exists.
You lead with instinct, warmth, and an absolute refusal to accept a no-win scenario, because you’ve always believed there’s a third option nobody else has thought of yet.Why This Is You
You take the mission seriously without ever taking yourself too seriously.
Your crew would follow you anywhere, not because you demand it, but because you’ve
earned it.
Kirk’s genius isn’t tactical, it’s human. He reads people, bends rules with
purpose, and wills outcomes into existence through sheer conviction.
That combination of warmth, audacity, and relentless optimism is unmistakably yours.
From The Collider File
Paul Wesley’s Kirk took the center chair in Strange New Worlds season 4, which
premiered July 23, 2026.
The producers have confirmed Kirk stays with the show through its final season.
No-Win ScenarioCrew FirstStarfleet
Star WarsPrincess LeiaThe Rebellion · A New Hope, 1977The one who holds the line when the line is all that’s left.
You are the kind of person who holds the line when everyone else is losing faith, not because you’re fearless, but because giving up simply isn’t something you’re capable of.Why This Is You
You lead through conviction. Your voice carries because your belief is unshakable.
You gave up everything ordinary the moment you chose the cause, and you’ve never looked
back.
Leia is not a supporting character in her own story. She is the moral center of the entire
rebellion.
That same fierce, principled, unbreakable core is what defines you.
From The Collider File
Carrie Fisher was 19 when she shot A New Hope, and Leia’s first scene in the saga is a
refusal.
Lucasfilm ruled out recreating her digitally, so her last appearance was built from footage
she had already filmed.
Holds The LineThe CauseRebellion
AlienEllen RipleyThe Nostromo · Alien, 1979No speeches. Just the person still standing at the end.
You are not reckless, not grandiose, and not particularly interested in being anyone’s hero. You just refuse to stop when it matters.Why This Is You
You see threats clearly, you document the truth even when no one listens, and when the time
comes you handle it yourself.
Ripley’s heroism is earned, not performed. She doesn’t have a speech. She has a
plan and the nerve to see it through.
You share her composure under the worst possible pressure, and her refusal to pretend the
monster isn’t there.
When it counts, you don’t flinch. That’s everything.
From The Collider File
FX renewed Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth for a second season, pushing the franchise onto
the home planet.
Sigourney Weaver has said she is seriously weighing a return to Ripley after reading a new
script.
You have been through fire that would break most people, and what came out the other side is something the world underestimates at its peril.Why This Is You
You don’t ask for help, don’t need validation, and don’t wait for anyone to
tell you the rules no longer apply.
Your loyalty, when it finally arrives, is absolute, but it’s earned in silence and
tested in action, not in words.
Max is not a nihilist. He is someone who lost everything and found, against his will, that
he still has something worth protecting.
That bruised, stubborn, ultimately human core is exactly yours.
From The Collider File
George Miller has a script for the next Mad Max, The Wasteland, but has said only that we
will see whether it gets made.
The 1979 original was shot for a few hundred thousand Australian dollars and became one of
the most profitable films ever made.
Outlasts ItEarned LoyaltyWasteland
Crew Match
1· · ·0%
2· · ·0%
3· · ·0%
A Collider InteractiveCOLLIDERMore quizzes at collider.com
What’s Next for ‘Star Trek’ After ‘Strange New Worlds’?
Paul Wesley as James T. Kirk in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, episode 10, season 4, streaming on Paramount+, 2026. Photo Credit: Jan Thijs/Paramount+
Image via Jan Thijs/Paramount+
Paramount+ still has two seasons of Star Trek on the way in 2027. Starfleet Academy returns for its second and final season in March 2027, a window announced at a New York Comic Con panel moderated by Collider’s Perri Nemiroff. Strange New Worlds also returns in 2027 for its six-episode fifth and final season. The open question is what follows those two farewells, especially with Year One still without a green light.
On the page, Mack gets to do something an hour of The Original Series rarely had room for. Kirk and Spock can leave a planet with the mystery still unsolved, and the story can pick up years later when there’s finally a chance to go back. Mack follows three lives caught up in the mystery, including a child growing up without her mother and a young officer taking his first command. The years between visits give those lives time to change while the thing that brought Starfleet to KX-1 is still waiting.
Echoes in Eternity is available now in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.
