Zachary Quinto Talks STAR TREK 3

At the 2014 Summer TCA's to promote his Starz television series The Chair, actor Zachary Quinto also touched on Star Trek 3. Said Quinto, "I think the five-year mission will be a part of this next film in some way. We're coming up on the 50th anniversary of one of the most iconic sci-fi series in entertainment history, so it's inherently an ongoing story. But I do think that we'll feel some sense of evolution in these characters that's been building through the first few films." For those not up to date on their Star Trek lore, the five-year mission Quinto is referencing harkens back to this classic line from William Shatner. "

"Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before." --James T. Kirk

In short, Starfleet starships in the 23rd century were often given five-year missions to explore the deep reaches of space. This is an aspect that has mostly been absent from the first two films in the new trilogy. According to Quinto, this is an element that Orci wants to reinforce moving forward. "Bob [Orci] is definitely sort of a purist about the Trek universe," said Quinto. He continued, "I've spoken to him a number of times about his ideas and they're really exciting and I'm really excited that we get to be a part of his feature directorial debut. It'll be a different world without J.J. [Abrams] on set every day, but this is a family and Bob is an essential part of that family and we're all really excited to see where it goes. The script is being tightened and polished and finished and I imagine that the phone will be ringing in the next few months to see when we'll go back into production."

Star Trek Into Darkness earned $467.3M USD on an estimated $190M USD production budget.