A new Star Trek novel arrived this week that is, in every practical sense, the closest thing to Star Trek: Legacy that exists. Picard: Shadows Have Offended by Dayton Ward was commissioned specifically as a post-Picard story — and its journey to publication tells you almost everything you need to know about why the show itself has not been greenlit.
Ward revealed the backstory in a recent interview. His original commission was explicit: tell the first story of Captain Seven of Nine aboard the USS Enterprise G. “I was asked to write a book set after the show,” Ward said. “My original story idea was I was going to tell the first story of Captain Seven of Nine and the USS Enterprise G. That was the instructions I was given.” Paramount liked the outline. Then the brakes came on. “The studio liked it, Paramount liked it, but they decided to hold off on anything legacy related, at least that could be interpreted as the Legacy series because they were still hming and hawing about whether there was actually going to be a show.”
Ward’s response was to engineer a workaround. He set the book in the gap year between the end of Picard Season 3 and the moment Seven takes command — the one window of time any future Legacy show could not overwrite. “Even if they decide to do a legacy show with Seven on the Enterprise, my story takes place in that gap of time toward the end of that final episode where the big threat is over, but then they jump ahead a year and she’s the captain of the Enterprise at that point. I’m set in that year, that year time frame. So if there is a legacy series, it will obviously take place after they’ve launched and been on their missions for a while. Hopefully my story will be okay for a while. Canon.”
He was equally direct about what his book means for the show’s prospects: “I honestly don’t know. I don’t believe that my book has any bearing whatsoever on any decision like that. That’s not how it works.”
What Kurtzman Didn’t Do
Picard Season 3 ended in April 2023 with a post-credits scene that was, functionally, a pilot for a new show. Seven of Nine in the captain’s chair of the USS Enterprise G. Jack Crusher as her first officer. The crew assembled. A warp catchphrase left unspoken. The audience that watched it understood what they were looking at. So did the fan campaign that followed, which gathered over 65,000 signatures on a petition demanding the show be made with Picard Season 3 showrunner Terry Matalas at the helm.
Matalas already had the material ready. He confirmed at the STLV convention in August 2025 that he had written 30 pages of what would have been the show’s opening. “There was a moment in which I was pretty inspired, in which I just sort of spit out 30 pages over a couple of weeks, not for anybody necessarily to see, just in case one day it happened.” He had also written scenes between Captain Seven and Jack Crusher. On the D-Con Chamber podcast, he told Ed Speleers, who played Crusher: “The whole world doesn’t know how often we talked or texted about it… I even wrote scenes and stuff… I wrote a scene with Jack and Captain Seven at a bar that was great, and you were the Bones to her Kirk… It was fun.”
His pitch for how Shaw would return: not a resurrection, but an Emergency Engineering Hologram — a digital Shaw who refused to accept that the Titan had been renamed the Enterprise, and would not call it by the new name until late in the story. “He was going to be the Emergency Engineering Hologram who did not want to turn off and was really pissed off that the Titan was turned into the Enterprise, and would refuse to call it the Enterprise, until late.”
None of it was enough to get Paramount to move. Alex Kurtzman, who held the Star Trek production deal through the entire post-Picard period, prioritized Starfleet Academy — a show set in the 32nd century with no connection to the characters fans had just spent three seasons falling back in love with. His explanation, relayed through Matalas, was about cost and pipeline: “I do know that these shows cost a lot of money, and it can’t just be like, ‘You get a Star Trek, and you get a Star Trek.’” Starfleet Academy was subsequently cancelled before its second season aired. The show that was made instead of Legacy is gone. The show fans wanted still doesn’t exist.
Matalas was unambiguous about the development status when the fan campaign was at its loudest: “Let me be clear — THERE IS NOTHING IN DEVELOPMENT AT PARAMOUNT — Again, I need to be clear on this.” He has since moved on to executive produce Marvel Studios’ Vision Quest, bringing Todd Stashwick — who would have played the Shaw hologram — with him as Paladin. His window to make Legacy on the momentum of Picard Season 3 has closed.
What Changes With Skydance
The Paramount Skydance merger approved this week puts a new owner in the chair. David Ellison, now CEO of the combined entity, produced both Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond and is by multiple accounts a genuine Star Trek fan. The Letters4Legacy campaign, which has been running since the merger closed in August 2025, has directed its petition and letter-writing effort specifically at Ellison, arguing that he is the first person with authority over the franchise in years who might actually understand what the audience wants. Ward flagged the same opening: “I know they’re still talking with Alex Kurtzman about new potential Star Trek. I don’t know what anybody else might have on that idea. I know they’re doing comics with IDW that basically are Legacy-flavored. So who knows? Keep watching. We’ll see what happens.”
The question for Ellison’s Paramount is whether the lesson of the Kurtzman era was learned. Every NuTrek show that was made instead of Legacy is now cancelled or ending. Strange New Worlds gets five seasons and ends. Starfleet Academy didn’t make it to season two. Discovery is gone. The one show those audiences were asking for, built by the team that just delivered the franchise’s best-reviewed season in twenty years, has 65,000 petition signatures and a showrunner who wrote the first 30 pages on spec and is still saying never say never.
Ward’s novel said it best: “I’ve learned to never say never when it comes to Star Trek. We learned the hard way that, gee, they’ll never bring back Captain Picard, let alone the entire NextGen crew and other guest stars from a show that’s been off the air for 30 years. They’ll never do that, right?”
They did that. The question is whether Skydance Paramount does the next obvious thing.
Is Star Trek: Legacy happening under Ellison, or has the window closed permanently?
If the golden age of Trek and Babylon 5 left a hole in your sci-fi diet, The Stars Entwined fills it — interstellar espionage between two civilizations on the brink of war. Read The Stars Entwined on Amazon!
NEXT: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Premieres July 23. Can Fans Expect More Than Just Puppets?