Last night I was lucky enough to attend a screening held by the WGA for one of the very best films of last year, Star Trek, followed by a short but informative Q & A with the films screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. Surprisingly, the majority of the audience was seeing the film for the first time, giving the film a sincere blockbuster feel instead of a stale screening for studio execs. It was probably the seventh or eighth time I’d seen the film personally, and I still don’t understand how forty years worth of Trekkie minutiae was synthesized so perfectly into a two-hour film, but the wildly successful Kurtzman/Orci combo seemed to pull it off with ease.

When asked about what it was that makes Star Trek intellectually and commercially relevant after all these years, one word was all that Kurtzman had for us. “Hope”, he said to a resounding auditorium. We all knew what he meant. The term science fiction is almost synonymous with pessimism and doom these days, at least on the big screen, leaving Star Trek as one of the last in a dying breed: Hopeful Sci-Fi. The writers expressed that above all, it was Gene Roddenberry’s vision of an intergalactic-united future, one of exploring and expanding that carried such a dense mythology all this way.

Their idea to explore the genesis of the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise, something that had curiously never been tackled in any of the many incarnations of Trek lore, was an opportunity for the writing duo start with a clean slate, injecting their trademark mix of a big entertainment, brains and heart into the risky undertaking that turned out to be a Trekkie-approved triumph. Quite simply, it’s the beginnings of the most promising franchise in years.

But it was also “a gamble, an act of faith” for them at first. From the script’s very inception, the angle was always to bring Mr. Spock (or Spock Prime as he’s referred to in the script) into the movie. They felt that the one constant in all that is Star Trek, Leonard Nemoy himself, needed to be integral to a reboot of the franchise. So, they spent six months writing a screenplay unbeknownst to Nemoy and handed it over to him as a shot in the dark. If he weren’t on board, they would have had to scrap the whole project. But to their humble surprise, with a tear in his eye, Nemoy granted Kurtzman and Orci his involvement and his blessing.

Perhaps the most interesting bit of the night was Orci’s confession that they’d based the film’s Kirk/Spock-love/hate dynamic on none other that John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The idea of two such ambitious forces coexisting, striving for supremacy but inevitably part of a greater whole, is beautifully underlined in the tone of the film. Similarly, Orci felt this day and age was analogous to that of sixties, when Star Trek first aired, giving the film fertile ground to explore all the same ideologies that Roddenberry so boldly illustrated for TV audiences all those years ago.

All it took was a little pestering to get friend and collaborator J.J. Abrams (the duo wrote some great episodes for Alias and co-created Fox’s Fringe with Abrams) to direct the picture, even though he was “more of a Star Wars guy”. Lost alumn (and hardcore Trekkie) Damon Lindelof and his producer Bryan Burk joined the arsenal, altogether providing the screenwriters with a nice “checks and balances” of what would and wouldn’t fly in the movie. The end result was impressively concise, action-packed, funny and respectful expansion on the Star Trek universe. Thanks in large part of course to a carefully cultivated cast, who take on such iconic roles with lived-in spirit and ease, this film really felt like a spectacular gift from a tight knit family. One can only imagine where the franchise will go from here, though I’m sure the next Trekkie convention will have a fairly large suggestion box.

As for Kurtzman and Orci, when probed about their own futures (which seems blindingly bright the way things are going) the two modestly insisted that they’ll just keep doing what they’ve been doing since they started writing together in high school; write about whatever makes them the happiest (though, unofficially, you can count on some Cowboys and Aliens news to develop soon). One audience member asked what their dream project would be if they had free reign to choose. Kurtzman answered promptly, “I’d like to take a stab at Indiana Jones.” The theater, understandably, applauded in favor of the not-so-crazy idea. Who knows, at the rate these guys are going (and the degree to which Indy 4 sucked), Mr. Star Wars – George Lucas – just might have to give the Star Trek boys a call.

Star Trek is the first script based on a TV show ever to receive a Writers Guild nomination.