John D. Payne is a screenwriter. He co-wrote the first draft of Star Trek Beyond with his writing partner Patrick McKay and co-producer Roberto Orci. [1] [2] However, their work was scrapped by the studio, and a completely new story, written by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung was chosen to be developed instead. At one point, Payne was also considered to return to co-write the proposed Star Trek 4 film project. [3]
Payne named the first episode of Star Trek he watched as TNG: "Frame of Mind". After becoming hooked on the series via reruns on UPN, he recorded episodes and edited out commercial breaks to create his own archive. He bought Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion to list the episodes he had not seen yet. [4]
Payne also watched Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, but only a few episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise because he was at college while it was airing. [5]
Before being assigned to Star Trek XIII, Payne and McKay scripted an adaptation of the graphic novel Boilerplate for Bad Robot. They also scripted the Biblical epic Goliath and a film adaptation of the Spike TV series Deadliest Warrior. All three of these films are still in the development stages.