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“There’s nothing I am going to say about United, at this point,” the actor said cautiously. “There’s a great writer [Sussman] and I have had conversations about the possibility… I’m just going to say — and we will close on that — you never know.”
Bakula played Captain Jonathan Archer in the prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise, captaining Starfleet’s first vessel with Warp Five technology on humanity’s very first deep space exploratory mission in the Star Trek universe. In one of the series’ final episodes, we get a glimpse into the future, including a bio of Captain Archer’s life after the series is over. It’s easy to miss, but if you pause and read it, it says that Archer rises to the rank of Admiral in Starfleet, then pivots to politics and ultimately becomes President of the United Federation of Planets.
That’s the story Sussman hopes to tell in United — “a political thriller and a family drama set in those chaotic, formative years of the Federation.” He came up with the idea while watching Star Trek: Picard, and made it quite far in the pitching process. However, Paramount executives ultimately felt it had too much overlap with Starfleet Academy, which had already been greenlit. On top of that, Paramount+ was drastically cutting its spending on streaming originals at that time.
