Here’s a totally unoriginal opinion: I loved this year’s STAR TREK reboot, and I cannot wait for the inevitable sequel. We reported back in October about various chatter from director J.J. Abrams and writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. Most of that was just very basic, technical info, essentially boiling down to “yes, we’re doing a sequel, yes, you people will love it.”

Now, in the wake of the STAR TREK DVD and Blu-ray release yesterday, more tidbits about the sequel are coming out.

Damon Lindelof, who previously produced STAR TREK, will continue his producing duties and is also on board as a writer with Orci and Kurtzman. Both Abrams and Lindelof confirmed that the earliest we could expect to see STAR TREK 2 would be in 2012. The script is not yet written, and all involved are essentially working in idea-ville right now, as Orci says, “it’s still the story phase.” Abrams is also not confirmed as director, but it would be shocking if he didn’t sign up as soon as a completed script was delivered. He said, “In theory, I would be available, and it would be fun to do…Since there’s no script, it’s hard to talk about directing a movie that the story doesn’t even exist.” Sure, J.J., play coy with us.

In terms of narrative timing in the sequel, Lindelof is apparently not afraid of pulling some “Lost”-style time shifts (he is, after all, one of the series’ main writers): “One of the things we like to do as storytellers is drop you in the middle of something. And the question that you’re asking yourself is: Where am I in relation to the last time I left these guys? Could this be something that predated even, perhaps, some of the adventures that they had in the first movie? Does it happen five years later? Is it happening two seconds later? Who knows? So we’re not going to tell you.”

As for keeping the quality of the newly-minted franchise up, Lindelof seems to shy at sticking to sequel formulas, and promises “we want to give the audience an experience that feels like it’s not a sequel in all the best ways.”

One way to give us that quality sequel? Bring us a quality villain. While the rumors that Khan Noonien Singh would be the sequel’s primary nemesis press on, Abrams would only say about baddie rumors, “We’re not even at that stage yet, but the fun of where we are on the sequel is we could use some of what was done before in a new way…but we haven’t even figured out what we would use yet, so it’s very early on.”

Source Slash Film, Sci Fi Wire