Star Trek: Deep Space Nine stands out from the other series in the franchise as a more mature and serious take on the final frontier. Now, Ira Steven Behr, who served as showrunner for the series for most of the show, is teaming up with Adam Nimoy to produce a documentary looking back on the history of Deep Space Nine, and they’re turning to Indigogo to fund it.
The film, called What We Left Behind (a reference to the final episode of the series, “What You Leave Behind”) has already blown past the original $150,000 goal in just under a day.
While Star Trek documentaries are fairly commonplace, What We Left Behind stands out from the sheer amount of official talent associated with the show that it’s promising to bring in. Along with Behr and Nimoy — the son of actor Leonard Nimoy, who directed 2016’s For the Love of Spock — the Indiegogo promises appearances from almost every single major cast member in the series, including Nana Vistor (Major Kira), Terry Farrell (Jadzia Dax), Rene Auberjonois (Odo), Armin Shimerman (Quark), Alexander Siddig (Dr. Bashir), Colm Meaney (Chief O’Brian), Michael Dorn (Worf), along with a number of the important recurring guest stars from across the series. The only notable exception is Avery Brooks, who played Captain Benjamin Sisko, who was arguably the lead character on the series, but who doesn’t seem to have signed on for the project.
Avery Brooks — who played Captain Sisko — hasn’t signed on
Along with the retrospective on the series, What We Left Behind will be gathering several original writers from the show, including Ronald D. Moore, Rene Echevarria and Hans Beimler, to plot out what a hypothetical eighth season could have looked like.
According to the Indiegogo page, the producers have already been filming interviews with cast members for several years, which should help the team reach the estimated release date of February 2018. An interesting note is that despite the involvement of so many original cast and crew members, What We Left Behind is still an unofficial project, and therefore has to license any footage or images from the show from CBS, which is where a fair chunk of the Indiegogo funds will go toward, along with production and interview fees.
With the Star Trek franchise having just celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, an occasion that though CBS and Paramount seemed content to mostly ignore instead of commemorating the storied history of the franchise. But it’s nice to see that even though corporate concerns may be elsewhere, unofficial projects like What We Left Behind and The Fifty-Year Mission oral history books are taking up the mantle of celebrating the series.