CURIOSITYAndy Weir Torched Modern Star Trek and Now He’s Very Sorry4 min read

The Comments That Started Everything

Andy Weir has written about astronauts surviving alone on Mars. He’s written about humanity making first contact across the stars. He did not, apparently, think through what would happen when a few candid interview minutes about Star Trek went viral.

The Project Hail Mary author delivered some scorching opinions about modern Trek — his verdict on most of the current lineup was essentially: they can go. He quoted an unnamed analyst whose line he clearly relished, that every modern sci-fi show has been shaped by the original Star Trek “except for the current batch of Star Trek shows.” Then came the detail that traveled furthest: Weir mentioned he’d once pitched his own Star Trek series to Paramount, sat in a Zoom call with executive producer Alex Kurtzman and the showrunners, and didn’t get the greenlight. His sign-off on that: “they didn’t accept my pitch so, you know, f*** ’em.”

That last part moved fast.

The Facebook Apology

Days later, Weir posted an open letter on Facebook addressed directly to Kurtzman. The tone had shifted completely. He argued his quotes had been “taken out of context as salacious sound bytes,” that he’d been going for humor, and that his crack about the rejected pitch wasn’t meant to land as bitterness. “In retrospect it comes off as disrespectful and mean,” he wrote. “So I’m sorry for that.”

He closed with an offer that reads as either genuinely disarming or slightly odd: Kurtzman was welcome to call him, “even if it’s just to rip me a new one.”