Star Trek: Deep Space Nine producer and showrunner Ira Steven Behr revealed at STLV over the weekend that a brand-new DS9 documentary is undergoing preparation for a release in the near future, likely in the 2017 calendar year.

In an interview with TrekMovie on Friday night, Behr detailed the impetus behind the project:

We all went through this unbelievable experience that took seven years out of our lives, and now we’ve had all this distance from it – and what does the show mean? What does the show mean to us as individuals, and what does the show mean – if anything – in terms of both the franchise and the culture?

I had been interviewed a couple of times for other Trek docs, by Shatner for [“Chaos on the Bridge”]… and was asked if I wanted to be like Shatner and interview everyone, getting people single and together and talk over the show.

It just seemed like a fabulous thing to do… I’m hoping that by next year, sometime in 2017, the doc will come out.

Behr, who we last spoke to in 2013, elaborated on his on-stage comments that the documentary features a breakdown of what would be a hypothetical Episode 1 of DS9’s eighth season, with some of the show’s star writers participating in the roundtable discussion.

I got the people I called: Ron [Moore], Robert [Hewitt Wolfe], René [Echevarria], and Hans [Beimler]. I could have gotten more… but we only had one day to do it, so I kept it to the core group.

I told everyone to watch [“What You Leave Behind”] – or if they were to lazy to do that, to check the Trek page, because no one remembered anything, including me. That’s just an added, cool bit – but that’s not what the dock is about at all.

Behr also commented that while he was able to get nearly all the cast – both primary and recurring actors – to participate in the project, he was not able to convince Avery Brooks to sign on, despite many attempts.

You can see the entire interview with Behr at TrekMovie.

Order the DS9 Companion

Order the Deep Space Nine DVD Collection

Order the DS9 Documentary