Bob Orci Hints STAR TREK 3 Actually Boldly Goes Where No Man Has Gone Before

Like it or lump it, Bob Orci is directing Star Trek 3, planned to be released as part of Star Trek's 50th anniversary in 2016. I lump it, but what else can I do? Orci, a self-professed Trek nerd, was responsible in part for the horrific, scarring travesty that was Star Trek Into Darkness, one of those modern movies that made a couple of bucks but six months later everybody involved with it was like, 'Oh yeah, that was a real piece of shit.' Perhaps Orci, who believes that the US government murdered 3000 Americans on September 11, 2001 and who tweeted about the Boston marathon bombings being a false flag attack moments after the bombs went off, has learned some lessons from that movie. 

He was on the new Geoff Boucher podcast Humans From Earth, and he made noises with his mouth that sound like things I want to hear. He said that the next film will take place in 'deep space,' as opposed to Earth and/or near Earth, as was the case of much of the last two "Star" Trek movies. 

In [Into Darkness] they set out finally where the original series started. The first two films – especially the 2009 [Star Trek] – was an origin story. It was about them coming together. So they weren’t the characters they were in the original series. They were growing into them and that continues on in the second movie.  So in this movie they are closer than they are to the original series characters that you have ever seen. They have set off on their five-year mission. So their adventure is going to be in deep space.

So maybe Star Trek 3 won't be about Kirk proving he can be captain again? 

When asked about what aliens we might see, he said:

The Horta is actually the villain in the next one – no – they are in deep space now, so lets see what’s out there.

That sounds a lot like he's saying there will be new races in this movie, which would be in the actual Star Trek spirit for once. Between deep space, new races and a quote where Orci says Kirk is 'an adult' now, this almost sounds like a Star Trek movie that understands something of what Star Trek is.

Bob did have a kinda dumb thing to say, though, and it was when asked about having a gay character in the movie. Trek was very progressive... for fifty years ago. A lot has changed in the decades since, and the lack of a gay main character in the Trek universe is glaring. While Orci said he would like to see a gay character in Trek, he bungled the back half:

It can be part of a character and not be the whole shebang…It doesn’t’ have to be like South Park, like ‘what have we learned today.’ It can be so normalized that it just exists. I agree it can’t be shoe-horned in. And it is not necessary for it to be the whole point of the thing. It is an ensemble and there is lots of people to represent so no one point of view should hog it.  

I don't think a 'point of view' has to 'hog' anything. Just as you have a romance between Spock and Uhura, it is easy to have a romance between another crewmember and someone of the same gender. I'd go so far as to say that Sulu and Chekov's romantic histories are so vague that you could make either character gay without going very much against canon at all. In fact making Sulu gay would be a nice homage to George Takei, who has been vocally out for years. Orci is right that you don't need to make a big deal out of it, just simply have Sulu kiss another man, making some real Star Trek history in the process.