It’s been ten months since writer-director Noah Hawley was named as one of the architects of the next possible outing for the Star Trek film franchise — and though it seems that plans for his Trek movie are going through the same sort of stop-and-start gyrations the series has endured for the last five years, Hawley recently discussed his project in a series of new interviews.

During press interviews for the upcoming fourth season of Fargo on FX, potential Star Trek film writer-director Noah Hawley shared some insight into the themes of his ‘in stasis’ project at Paramount Pictures — a movie expected to included new characters separate from previous Trek starship rosters (with a new cast as well).

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, the writer described plans for his film as one seemingly focused on how the Earth of today became the idyllic utopia seen in Federation times:

I can’t say much about it except it’s an argument for why humanity should prevail and why we should come together and unite, which I think is important – to look at the United Federation of Planets and remember at some point Earth is what we are now and then we invented warp technology and met extraterrestrial life and everybody came together.

But how? How did we get from where we are now to where they are then? And what happens if that utopian reality is challenged? There are times of challenge and war when we have to prove our values all over again.

Maybe there’s a time in the Federation where this ideal is challenged and it won’t survive on its own. It needs to be saved.

The project, which moved into ‘back burner’ status at Paramount Pictures in early August,  reportedly centers around a galaxy-threatening virus — a storyline, for obvious reasons, is probably not a great idea these days.

Hawley confirmed that his tale would not feature a familiar cast or crew in an interview with Variety earlier this week, but did describe his story has having at least one solid connection to known Trek canon by way of a late-story tie-in.

We’re not doing Kirk and we’re not doing Picard. It’s a start from scratch that then allows us to do what we did with [the first season of] ‘Fargo,’ where for the first three hours you go, ‘Oh, it really has nothing to do with the movie,’ and then you find the money.

So you reward the audience with a thing that they love.

While Hawley’s film still may be viable — just ‘in stasis’ — there remains two other known takes on a potential Star Trek film known to the public: the original story (first announced in 2016) featuring the return of Chris Hemsworth as George Kirk, and the Quentin Tarantino-produced take on the Original Series episode “A Piece of the Action,” where (per Deadline) the Chris Pine-led Enterprise crew would become involved in a “[1930s] gangster setting” adventure.

We’ll bring you any news on forward-moving developments on the film side of the Star Trek franchise as it surfaces.