Back in January 2015, months before production began on Star Trek Beyond, it was announced that Simon Pegg, who plays Scotty in Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness and this upcoming sequel, had come aboard to co-write the script with Doug Jung. Before they took over, there were rumors that the previous script wasn't received well by the studio, and many fans were overjoyed when Simon Pegg became the man responsible for the story. Last week, the actor-writer appeared at CinemaCon to present the Showman of the Year award to J.J. Abrams, where he revealed some interesting details to ComingSoon.net about how a group of fans helped him craft the story.

"We had the entirety of Star Trek history at our disposal and it's always there online. There's an amazing Wikipedia online called Memory Alpha. It became Doug [Jung] and my resource and the place that we'd turn to whenever we wanted to know, 'What kind of weapons does an NX vessel carry?' Memory Alpha has it. We actually wrote to the Memory Alpha guys and got them to name a certain device in the movie. I sent them a letter saying, 'Can you come up with this for me?' In two hours, they came back with an entire etymological history of what the thing was. It's beautiful. It's fantastic to have that support network."

Unfortunately, Simon Pegg wouldn't confirm whether or not the NX ship will be featured in Star Trek Beyond, but concept art that surfaced earlier this year portrayed a ship that did resemble the NX-01 Enterprise ship from the original Star Trek TV series. The current crew are travelling through space on the NCC-1701 ship, and we saw in poster artwork from CinemaCon that this vessel has taken on quite a bit of damage. It's worth noting that this year marks the 50th Anniversary of the original series, so perhaps the Enterprise crew could be transitioning from the NCC-1701 to the NX-01. Star Trek Into Darkness drew several parallels from the the 1982 movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but Simon Pegg revealed that Star Trek Beyond won't be similar to the movie that followed The Wrath of Khan, 1984's Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

"No, although we were obviously aware of the coincidence of those two films. That might be a little nod for fans perhaps, but it's certainly not something that the film depends upon or has any relationship to the plot of the previous Star Trek 3."

It was also recently confirmed that Star Trek will be returning to the small screen as well, with a new TV series developed by Hannibal creator Bryan Fuller. The series is slated to debut with a special preview on CBS in early 2017, before the series debuts on the network's new streaming platform, CBS All Access. When asked if there will be any connections between Star Trek Beyond and this new series, Simon Pegg said that they are not related at all.

"Absolutely not! Star Trek has existed for 50 years in very different iterations. There are so many different points from the history of the Federation, from the very beginnings in Enterprise to much later on with Voyager and Next Generation. This is a story that will go on and on. It's a continuing mission. It must have life on television as well as film. It started out as a TV show. It's home was television. I'm overjoyed at that news and I can't wait to see what they do."

Simon Pegg will be joined in the cast by Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness stars Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Jon Cho and Anton Yelchin, along with new cast members Idris Elba, Sofia Boutella, Lydia Wilson and Joe Taslim. Justin Lin is directing this new adventure, which hits theaters nationwide on July 22, going up against Ice Age: Collision Course and Lights Out. Stay tuned for more on Star Trek Beyond as we get closer to this highly-anticipated summer release.