Star Trek fans, you’re geeking out can officially begin! Entertainment Weekly is issuing a special edition of its magazine focused around the new Star Trek film. The cover, featuring the movie’s lead actors, Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine, hits newsstands tomorrow, October 17th.

Not only does the film’s director, J.J. Abrams talk about the new film, his reaction to William Shatner’s YouTube video, but most importantly he talks about the reason why he made the film.

Abrams tells EW: “I don’t think people even understand what Star Trek means anymore…I think a movie that shows people of various races working together and surviving hundreds of years from now is not a bad message to put out right now…It was important to me that optimism be cool again.”

The filmmaker, who admits he’s always been more of a Star Wars fan, jumped on the opportunity to make a Star Trek film because he believes in the series’ unabashed idealism.

Abrams continues, saying he has no warm-fuzzy nostalgia about the first Star Trek film, which he saw with his father on the Paramount lot in 1979. In fact, he compares the series to the film Galaxy Quest, which satirized Star Trek and its followers. “It’s so ridiculous, so accurate, so sophisticated, it spoils the Star Trek universe,” he says.

As for his reaction to seeing Shatner’s YouTube video, he says, “I was such a huge fan of his, but we wrote a scene for him in the movie and it didn’t feel right. And he said to us-he said publicly-that doing a cameo didn’t interest him. Which I totally appreciate. But we did try.”

You can read the cover story in its entirety here.