Enterprise culture: Star Trek Into Darkness

To boldly go … that's the maxim of the Star Trek universe. But even the late Gene Roddenberry (1921-1991), the creator of this iconic sci-fi series, might've been surprised by J.J. Abrams' 2009 cinematic reboot - and not just for its pulsating action and successful recasting of the crew of the USS Enterprise.

If playing out the storyline in an alternate timeline to the original TV series and movies was brave, so was the US$150 million shelled out by Paramount - far more than the studio had spent on any of the 10 preceding Star Trek films.

It was a gamble that paid off - the film took US$385 million around the world - and, with the characters all set up, you might think its sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness, would be a hit in waiting. But Abrams, 46, had no intention of believing the hard work was already done. "Sequels often make mistakes in assuming that you care and that you know that world and the characters. We had to approach it as a stand-alone movie, where you didn't have to see the first movie to enjoy this one," he says.

So Abrams and his writers - Damon Lindelof, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman - didn't rush back into space. While Lindelof was overseeing the final seasons of Abrams' TV show Lost - and co-writing Ridley Scott's Alien prequel Prometheus - his co-writers worked on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Cowboys and Aliens. Abrams, meanwhile, wrote and directed 2011's summer hit Super 8.

Still, there's no doubt where their loyalties lie. " Star Trek is why I wanted to be a writer," says Orci. "The rest of the franchises can go die as far as I'm concerned."