Absolutely Right(TM).
TNG probably didn't happen if it weren't for the confidence that Paramount's people had in the soon-to-be released fourth TOS-based movie, The Voyage Home. During the summer of 1986 they were so happy with that thing that after two reasonably successful films that failed to increase the audience for Trek above a certain ceiling - TWOK and TSFS - they believed that Trek was a property with growth potential.
Of course no one would ever have made a TNG movie without the track record of six TOS movies. The studio saw TNG as a sequel series from the beginning (they even planned to add it to the TOS syndication package as a "fourth season" if the sequel had failed to catch on) intended to extend the life of the property as Shatner and the other actors aged.
Now that the studio has seen that Star Trek can be successfully restarted using the core characters and setting and that this approach yields much bigger box office returns than the older model we can expect them to do it again and again - as others have with Batman, Spider-Man, the X-Men, James Bond and so on. The old faux "future history" is an additional source of characters, premises and story situations (did I mention Kirk versus the Borg
), not a template to be followed again in "evolving" Trek forward.
) but it's also the most fun I had had with Trek since midway through TNG's run...
