MAY 22, 2023 - Star Trek fans are known for being loyal, if a bit demanding. A part of Trek lore is that a letter writing campaign saved the original series from cancellation after its second season and a petition signed by more than 30,000 fans helped convince Paramount to greenlight a Star Trek: Discovery spinoff about Captain Christopher Pike that became Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

A new petition is serving as a rallying cry for another spinoff, this one taking characters from Star Trek: Picard and showing their adventures aboard the newly refitted Enterprise-G.

As of this writing, the petition at Change.org has nearly doubled the one for Strange New Worlds and sits at 55,229. It calls for Paramount to let Terry Matalas, the showrunner for Picard’s third season, be given the reins of a new series to be called Star Trek: Legacy. The show would pick up where Picard left off with Seven of Nine in command of the Enterprise with a crew consisting of Jack Crusher, Sidney La Forge, and Raffi Musiker. 

For his part, Matalas has said publicly that the final episode of Picard season 3 wasn’t meant to be a backdoor pilot, but was intended to show his belief that the story didn’t end with the conclusion of the season.

 "I think that's the spirit of Star Trek, that they're going to continue exploring strange new worlds. That's a feeling of hope. So you want to get just a little taste of what that might be — for it to be a satisfying ending, it needed to be a satisfying beginning. Having said that, of course, I want to see Jack and Seven and Sidney and Raffi and everybody go on forever.

Matalas isn’t the only person connected to Trek who would like to see more of this story. Actress Jeri Ryan, who plays Seven of Nine, tweeted her support of the petition after it surpassed 50,000 signatures. 

Although the call has been for a show called Star Trek: Legacy, that might not be the name that sticks. Fans of the expanded Star Trek universe know the name Legacy has been used on a number of different projects already. The most widely known of these was a 2006 video game for PC. It was also the title of a story in the Star Trek: Waypoint comic book miniseries published in 2016 and a TOS novel by Michael Jan Friedman, released by Pocket Books in 1991. None of these previous Legacy projects have anything to do with the current storyline.

For its part, Paramount has not made any comment on a possible spinoff, either for or against the idea. It probably isn’t worth noting, however, that a television ratings recent report by Nielson showed that Picard Season 3 was the only Paramount program in the top 10 for streaming platform shows.