ast weekend’s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premiere in New York City was a gold-carpet celebration held with the full cast and creative leadership team in attendance — along with a number of lucky fans from the area — and today we’ve got a few additional interviews from the event to share!
First up, we asked franchise boss Alex Kurtzman and Strange New Worlds’ Melissa Navia (Lt. Erica Ortegas) to describe the challenges of producing television during the height of the pandemic — especially during the extreme restrictions in place in 2021-era Toronto, where the show is filmed — and how the new AR wall technology allowed the show to thrive despite that situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLzQAGj6-L8
TREKCORE: What was it like spinning up a production like this in the middle of the pandemic, with all the concerns that you talked about — I’m sure some of you haven’t?
ALEX KURTZMAN: I mean, obviously the number one concern is always safety. How do you get everybody back into it in a way that’s safe? And I have to say CBS was unbelievable just in terms of the 3000-page document that they put together and changing out of air filters in every building, and a huge retrofit to make sure that people were at the safest and the protocols are very specific.
And then, part of the job is to forget about all of that — and try and go there and have fun, and make a show where you can’t tell that ANY of that was happening while you’re watching it.
TREKCORE: Do you think it would have been possible to produce the show in these conditions without the AR wall that you guys implemented up in Toronto?
KURTZMAN: Sure, it’s possible. It would have been very different — because the AR wall just opened the door to us, especially for a show like “Strange New Worlds” where the expectation is you’re going to be on one every week. We would never have been able to do that practically at the level that we’re able to do it now without the AR wall.
TREKCORE: We’ve seen five episodes of the season, and I feel like your team is getting more nuanced with it, even compared to “Discovery” —
KURZMAN: For sure. Oh, my God, yeah. I mean, it’s funny — like, I look at “Discovery” [Season 4] now, and then I look at what we’re doing [on “Strange New Worlds”]… it feels like we were like in the stone age back then, but that’s where the technology was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=worRzMcex0Y
MELISSA NAVIA: So “Star Trek” became our world essentially, and it was we all got to know each other on set. We could barely kind of hang out outside of set, so we got to know ourselves and our characters.
One thing the showrunners did was, which we’re all really appreciative of, is that they allowed our personalities to become a part of our characters, so we were really able to inform what our characters were doing, together with the excellent writing.
But yes, so much of that time in Toronto was locked down until like, I think, July, pretty much. I was always happy to go to set. As soon as I’d get emails from wardrobe being like, “Are you available tomorrow for fitting?” I’m like, “I’m not doing anything! I have no place to be! I’m in Toronto for YOU guys!”
Working on a television show on a film set, like, you really see how when something needs to happen, people make it happen. So what that meant for our cast and crew, like, we needed to test, we needed to mask up, we needed to wear shields, wear masks… and the crew, absolute shout out to the crew, who have been incredible. They’ve been masking up since day one on Season 1.
I laugh because there’s still like — at the end of season one, there’d be guys who have been working with all season. And I see them taking a sip of water and I’d be like, “You have a beard!” because your brain creates a face, but it really is, like, to wear a mask 24 / 7, to be working on a TV show that’s as as much hard work as this one is, it’s been incredible and they’ve been wonderful.
They’ve been the reason that our show didn’t shut down at all during Season 1.
Fellow castmate Christina Chong (Lt. La’an Noonien-Singh) shared her epiphany regarding the universe she’s joined, only realized for the first time once she watched the Strange New Worlds opening credits sequence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b1Rlg12RiQ
CHRISTINA CHONG: I’ll be completely honest with you. It only landed with me how big this whole thing, this whole show was and how much it means the “Star Trek” fans, the community, when I watched the opening credits the other day.
TREKCORE: Was that the first time you’d seen them?
CHONG: Yeah. I watched those and was like, “Oh my God, I get it! I get it, how amazing it is!” Like, the idea that — I know it sounds ridiculous, I hadn’t thought about this before — but the thought of like, that these people, on this ship…
And I was suddenly looking at the Enterprise and the graphics, going “Oh my God, all our little characters are on that ship! And they’re all going to explore strange new worlds!” I was like, “Duh! Yeah, of course!” I just never thought of it like that before, right? I was doing a job. And it’s been so quick, everything’s been so quick.
Suddenly I just had a moment on the plane to just go “Oh my God,” and I started tearing up. And so I’m probably going to go cry now when I watch it.
Finally, executive producer and co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers talks about updating 1960s-era production designs for the modern series, and the integration of new technology in the new Enterprise sets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BltTBjbEYY
HENRY ALONSO MYERS: The design of the Sixties was really influenced by modernism, midcentury modernism. and a lot of those ideas. Those ideas are still interesting design ideas. And so Jonathan Lee, who was our production designer, really tried to incorporate those into the sets, but also to kind of bring them to the future using different materials, making things more substantial.
The great unsung hero of our show probably is Tim Peel and his Motion Graphics department, who build these unbelievable displays that exist throughout the entire ship. We have lots and lots of meetings, so these displays actually work. It’s hard to imagine what that would be like, but for someone like Melissa Navia, who plays Ortegas, when she’s at the console and is doing a thing, and the thing responds back, just being able to pan to that… which just looks cool. The communicator still looks cool!
TREKCORE: The redesign of those classic props are really nice.
MYERS: I mean, the goal is to put something there for the people who love that, but also not have to be a barrier to entry. You don’t have to know about that thing to enjoy the show. The show is about characters, about a group of people who know and care about each other and go on adventures.
And sometimes they’re funny, and sometimes it’s scary, you know what I mean? But they also have very cool communicators and cool outfits. Stuff that gets to use classic design in a way that makes people who watched the original show go, like, “Squeee!”
We’ll have a few other episode-specific interview segments to share with you over the next few weeks, so be sure to keep your sensors locked here at TrekCore!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returns with “Children of the Comet” on Thursday, May 12 on Paramount+ in the United States, Australia, Latin America, and the Nordics, as well as on CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada.
The series will arrive to the UK and Ireland on Paramount+ on June 22; additional international distribution has not yet been announced.