"Star Trek XI" producer and co-writer Robert Orci sat down recently with TrekMovie, while fans tried to get a better grip on what to expect in the new movie.  Orci said the second draft of the script has come in and it is "much tighter," with a bigger focus on the villain of the piece.  He also said that fan input on first-draft rumors helped shaped round two, which should be comforting to Trekkers who've been wondering how faithful the revamp will be to the established continuity.

Orci said, "In some senses it is a prequel, but the word I would use, which is how [fellow producer] Damon [Lindelof] describes it, is a re-invigoration or re-vitalization."  He aded, "The reason we aren’t starting over is because the people involved, both fans and behind the scenes, have worked so hard to specify what is canon -  then to simply ignore it would be unnecessary. There is so much about the original series that is worth continuing. It is not like Batman where you can ignore everything.

That being said there are some things that have never been specified fully in canon that we take liberties with."

Regarding the rumors of continuity "easter eggs" in the film, Orci said, "We got some TNG stuff in there for sure. I made sure of that. And there should be a little something from everything, but for me personally it is all about Next Generation and The Original Series because those are the shows that really set down the rules for Trek that the other shows picked up on. We are also trying to do a lot of what Enterprise was doing in terms of a prequel and some of the corners of Star Trek which were mainly defined by Deep Space Nine are covered to a certain degree."

Orci also went into some of the casting rumors that have been floating around.  "We have ideas and some of those rumored out there we are considering. We are not hiding anything as some people on your site are speculating. It is not uncommon and we are trying to come up with the best cast as possible and as long as we get them by shooting that is all we care about."