Trekkies around the world may have to wait a while longer before seeing Star Trek return to the small screen, but perhaps an adaptation of John Scalzi’s Hugo Award Winning novel Redshirts is the next best thing. Deadline is reporting that FX is developing a limited series based on Scalzi’s work, from producers John Shestack (Air Force One, Dan in Real Life), Ken Kwapis (The Office) and Alexandra Beattie (Outsourced).
Anyone familiar with the original Trek series knows of the often tragic fates of the more, shall we say, disposable crew members of the USS Enterprise, who accompanied Captain Kirk and his crew as they visited strange new worlds. It became common knowledge that any crewman sent on an away mission wearing a red Starfleet uniform would surely be killed, and Scalzi’s novel examines that aspect of the show quite cleverly.
Here’s the description of the novel for those who are unfamiliar with it:
Set in the 25th century, Redshirts follows the adventures of five new recruits on the Starship Intrepid who come to realize that the ship’s crewmembers are dying at an alarming rate. Their investigation leads to the mind-bending discovery that a science fiction television show, produced in the early 21st century, has somehow “intruded” upon their reality and “warped” it. In other words, the lives of the crew are following the course of a television narrative over which they have no control.
Redshirts sounds like it could be a truly fun series for science fiction fans and its meta approach to storytelling seeems similar to that of Galaxy Quest. Scalzi not only plays with the Redshirt trope, but also examines other tried-and-true sci-fi clichés as well, so there should be a lot of material to build the show around.
At this point, the series is still in early stages of development. Kwapis will direct the opening episode, and the search is currently on for writers. We’ll let you know when we hear more.
Tell us, are you excited for a Redshirts series, or would you rather just see a new Trek show on the air? Let us know in the comments below.
