LeVar Burton: " I Call Bullshit, J.J."

LeVar Burton didn't mince words when speaking with the Toronto Sun regarding J.J. Abrams and the rebooted Star Trek universe:

(Abrams' Star Trek) was a great movie, and he brought a whole new generation to Trek. But I'm a little disquieted by things I hear coming out of his camp, things like he would like to be remembered as the only Trek—which would discount everything before he got there.

There's 'breaking the canon,' which he did (by re-inventing Star Trek's timeline). But there's also honouring the canon. And to pretend to be the only one is really egocentric and immature.

I just came from a conference in San Francisco with Advanced Micro Devices, and they're working on technology towards building a holodeck. That was Next Generation. And that's part of what Star Trek has brought to the culture. So when JJ Abrams says, There should be no Star Trek except the one I make,' I call bulls---, J.J.

So it's not that Abrams rebooted things, which we can mostly agree was done well. It's the apparent hubris of wanting to be considered the only Star Trek that invoked Burton's response.