It’s been a quiet week or two in the Star Trek news world, so thankfully we’ve got franchise boss Alex Kurtzman out today with a new interview in which he touches on every known Trek project currently in production, from the currently-filming Star Trek: Picard to the far off animated shows, and even offers up a hint or two to future potential projects along the way.
Speaking with Deadline’s Crew Call podcast, released Monday evening, a lengthy discussion with Kurtzman led from topics such as his time directing “Brother” — the Season 2 premiere — to things we’ve heard before about new Star Trek shows taking an extremely long time to properly make their way through development, pre-production, and post-production before fans get to see any of the new output.
The hot topic of the franchise right now is Star Trek: Picard, the now-filming series featuring the return of Patrick Stewart as legendary — now former — Starfleet officer Jean-Luc Picard, finally seen on camera in last month’s first teaser trailer for the upcoming show.
Notably, Star Trek: Picard is the first Trek spin-off not to be titled after the ship (or station) housing the Starfleet crew at the center of each show — so how, Kurtzman was asked, do you build a ‘family’ of characters in a show with a one-character title?
ALEX KURTZMAN: It’s a great and necessary question, and it’s something that has been baked into the DNA of Picard — yes, obviously Patrick, it’s Patrick — [but] we have an unbelievable cast. And you know, the thing that I loved about the Next Gen cast is that you really could have focused any episode on any of them.
I would say the same about our cast now, that it’s such an incredibly brilliant group of actors [that are] given such amazing things to do. Without spoiling anything, I think that you will feel that.
The producer also spoke about the importance of having Patrick Stewart in the writer’s room, as one of the voices driving the story behind the series.
KURTZMAN: It was essential. We spent a lot of time with Patrick, and you know what? He’s incredibly brilliant just as a human, and very warm, and obviously he knows Jean-Luc Picard better than anybody — and you know, he was really the one who from the outset said, “I don’t want to do this unless we’re breaking new ground. I don’t want to just play the character I played, why come back to that? We did that already.”
So it’s been a really wonderful give-and-take in our collaboration with Patrick where he very quickly came to trust that we were both going to do exactly what he said in taking Picard to a new place, but also — and he doesn’t look at himself this way — we’re reverent of him, you know? He’s Patrick Stewart! When we’re in a room with him, his opinion really matters to us, and his happiness really matters to us, and ultimately, we couldn’t do this show the way we’re doing it if he wasn’t excited about it and excited to play it.
I think we’ve found a story that honors everything that people love about the character, but in ways that are not what you expect — and yet, become more and more familiar as the show goes. And that’s what’s exciting. A lot has happened to Jean-Luc Picard in the intervening years [since Nemesis]. There’s been a lot going on and he’s had to deal with some new things, he’s had to deal with some old things, and both of those things kind of come colliding together.
He’s made choices that he’s not necessarily feeling great about — and yet I think the audience will understand exactly why he made them.
The USS Discovery may have shot off to the far future at the end of Season 2, but the writers are moving at warp speed to prepare for the launch of production on Season 3, expected to kick off in a month or two — and Kurtzman noted that compared to this point in Season 2’s development, the team is farther ahead in their prep on Season 3.
KURTZMAN: ‘Picard’ is in the middle of shooting, we’ve broken the season and I am so happy with the scripts. We are on episode five of Season 3 of ‘Discovery.’ We’re far along. ‘Picard’ is [filming] here in Los Angeles and ‘Discovery’ is in Toronto, and future Trek shows I believe will be in Toronto.
He also popped in a quick update regarding the Michelle Yeoh-led Section 31 show, reiterating a timeline we’ve heard before:
KURTZMAN: Erika [Lippoldt] and Boey [Kim], who are two of our writers on ‘Discovery,’ are breaking story on [‘Section 31’] right now, and the plan is to shoot that the second we’re done with [‘Discovery’] Season 3.
Star Trek: Discovery is now just the first of many Trek projects in the works for CBS and CBS All Access — as the header image of this news update illustrates! — but it also served to (hopefully) stimulate new growth as the franchise continues to expand — and in an interesting set of remarks, Kurtzman notes that this seems to be working… and that he’s got potential plans to keep things growing for the next “five or ten years.”
KURTZMAN: I went to CBS and I said, “I think you have a universe here that is very under-utilized, and a fan base that I think is hungry for a lot more.” And I walked them through the plan of what I saw for the next five to ten years of ‘Trek.’
Part of it was, kind of, premised on the idea that it was going to take time. What I said was, “Don’t expect us to put the first thing out, and suddenly, you know, you’re have 100 million new fans. That’s not gonna happen.” ‘Trek’ has been around for too long for that to happen — but but what we do have is new generations, and what I can tell you is that ‘Trek,’ in general, finds people when they’re about between nine and twelve.
It’s never reached younger than that; it’s never tried to, and to me that’s a hugely missed opportunity, especially because what you’re really trying to do is influence hearts and minds with really positive messages — messages about who we can be as a species and as people and what our future is. So why not start young, you know? And not for a cynical reason. Not because you know, hey, let some more toys, but because if you really want ‘Star Trek’ to reach people, then you’ve got to start young.
And this is where I guess the ‘Star Wars’ influence on me really mattered, because as a kid at four years old, I could imagine myself starting up with a twin suns of Tattooine and wondering what my life was. ‘Trek’ didn’t give me that same thing — it gave me Wesley Crusher, it gave me different characters, but again, those are older characters.
But we are definitely seeing just metric proof that the fan base is growing, and it’s growing younger — and yet, we’re keeping our current fans, and that’s great.
And speaking of reaching out to new generations of Trek fans, we also got a few new thoughts on the two planned animated Star Trek series, starting with Mike McMahon’s Star Trek: Lower Decks, which is set to center around the crew of one of Starfleet’s least important ships.
KURTZMAN: The spirit of each of these shows has to feel very different… Mike’s show [for CBS All Access] is really for kids, I would say, from 11 to 70. [Laughs]
What I love so much about the way Mike is doing is planning things. What you would typically be the ‘A’ story on any [normal] Star Trek episode is happening in the background — like huge, crazy, crazy shit is going on in the background [on Lower Decks], and that’s super peripheral to the story that you’re actually focusing on. No [Trek] show has ever really done that before.
In addition, Kurtzman also touched on the still-untitled — at least, to the public — animated Nickelodeon show being developed by the Hageman brothers, said to focus on “a group of lawless teens who discover a derelict Starfleet ship and use it to search for adventure, meaning and salvation.”
KURTZMAN: The Hageman brothers are doing [an animated] show for Nickelodeon, and that will be entirely different from ‘Lower Decks’… I won’t announce the name of the Nickelodeon show, but that’s a really different show.
That’s a show that’s for kids, younger. Full CG animation. It’s going to be incredibly cinematic. We just started seeing [storyboards] this week. It looks like, wow. It’s on par with Love, Death, and Robots in terms of beauty and lighting and cinema, so it’s a a really different feel, and Nickelodeon has been wildly supportive and I think very excited to bring a new energy to TV, you know, in animation.
While we don’t know anything about the vocal talents expected to be part of either of these two animated shows just yet, Kurtzman did not rule out if we’ll hear any familiar Star Trek voices returning to the franchise when Lower Decks and the Nickelodeon series finally arrives.
In fact, he seemed to indicate that while the main characters will be “mostly new” to Trek, there still “may be some” voice that we’ll recognize.
KURTZMAN: It’s mostly new. There may be some that you know, but it’s mostly new.
Animation is in an incredible, glorious renaissance right now. Between [Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse] which just blew everything open and everything Pixar’s been doing for so very long, I think what I’m excited about in the world of animation is to try all these different things to see what feels ‘Trek.’
Not to leave any corner of Trek untouched, Kurtzman didn’t stop after just talking about the main series that are in the Secret Hideout pipeline, but he also looped back to the next round of Short Treks, the short-format minisodes that will be returning ahead of Discovery Season 3.
We’ve known since January that there were at least two more Short Treks on the way, a pair of animated entries, but in this new interview Kurtzman confirmed that there are a total of six more coming, with the additional four likely to arrive in the lead-up to Discovery Season 3, much how last year’s releases were structured.
KURTZMAN: That’s the other thing. It’s not just the shows, we have the Short Treks too. We’re doing six more of them. Two of them are animated [and they are] unlike the two animated shows. What I love about the Short Treks is that they are an experimental training ground, a place to experiment with different things. Directors who we’ve never worked with before, tones we’ve never tried before.
Michael Giacchino is doing one of the animated shorts; Olatunde Osunsanmi is doing another one in the animated shorts and he’s our main director on Discovery — and again, different animation styles, totally different tones. Aimed at kids, I would say, more than adults, those two.
After all that, what else could there be to talk about? Well, how about the crew the Enterprise, last seen hiding the truth about Discovery’s journey to the far future in April’s season finale?
Since the end of Discovery Season 2, there has been a clamoring of fan sentiment to see Captain Pike and his Enterprise crew return in some form, with nearly 30,000 people signing on to a Change.org petition to show their support.
While nothing definite was offered by the producer, Kurtzman hasn’t forgotten about the Federation flagship, her captain, or its half-Vulcan science officer.
KURTZMAN: I would be remiss in saying you’re going to see Spock again on Discovery because we’ve obviously jumped so far into the future that it wouldn’t make sense…. but the the idea of bringing Ethan [Peck] back, and Anson [Mount] and Rebecca [Romijn] and the Enterprise, I mean, we loved it so much, and to find a way to do that is definitely something we’re thinking about.
Set phasers to fingers-crossed.
Well, talk about a data-dump — what do you think about all of Kurtzman’s comments on the future of the Trek franchise? Share your thoughts in the comments below!