Brent Spiner believes that Star Trek XI producer J.J. Abrams is a fine choice to revive the franchise, but is more concerned about the actual future of the Earth than he is about science fiction.

"I think any future is all any of us want, because right now it’s looking like there’s not going to be one. It’s looking like we’re going to destroy the planet," Spiner told Starburst Magazine (via Sci Fi Pulse). "Short–sightedness, ego and self–involvement are the biggest reasons for that. We’ve got people who have fought for thousands of years over a piece of land while the planet disappears around them. People need to stop all this killing."

Having played the android Data, his passionate creator Noonien Soong, his morally ambiguous twin Lore, his incomplete predecessor B-4 and his megalomaniacal progenitor Arik Soong in The Next Generation TV series and movies and on Star Trek: Enterprise, Spiner is often asked to wax philosophical about Star Trek and humanity. "I definitely don’t think it's moved closer [to Star Trek's idealistic era]," he said. "Perhaps it’s just remained on its destructive path...the billions of dollars we spend in Iraq, for example, how could we better use that money? Maybe saving the species rather than trying to possess a part of the world that has a lot of oil."

Spiner hopes that Paramount's planned revival of Star Trek will be successful and the franchise will last another 40 years. "I wish him the best," he said of Abrams. "I think he’s a fine choice, why not? Lost is a really interesting show. Alias was fun...who would be better?"

He did, however, wonder why some fans were up in arms about the remastering of the original series for syndicated rerelease. "Is it that sacred?" he asked, saying that cleaning up Star Trek was not akin to colorizing It’s A Wonderful Life, which was always intended to be black-and-white. "I don’t think that remastering the Star Trek series to look better is really tampering with it."

For more, the full interview is in Starburst Magazine. These excerpts are courtesy Sci Fi Pulse.

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