One of the surprises out of this year’s San Diego Comic Con extravaganza was the announcement that a live-action Star Trek comedy series is in development — coming out of a collaboration between writer/director Justin Simien and Star Trek: Lower Decks star (and Starfleet Academy) writer Tawny Newsome.
The gestating series is said to be tonally similar to The Office or Parks and Recreation, officially described as a show in which “Federation outsiders serving a gleaming resort planet find out their day-to-day exploits are being broadcast to the entire quadrant.”
Now, in a new interview with TV Line (conducted shortly after the July 27 SDCC panel), Simien shared how he came to be involved with the Star Trek franchise — and some of the Trek inspiration that lead to the potential new television show.
It was actually very organic. I’ve been a ‘Star Trek’ fan my whole life; I was a Trekker before I was in any other nerd category.
Around the time of ‘Discovery,’ I just sort of befriended the folks that were making it – Alex Kurtzman, and Tawny [Newsome] was hosting this aftershow podcast thing that I was on because I was a nerd.
Simien was referring to his May 2021 appearance on The Pod Directive, the official Star Trek franchise podcast:
Over time, that developed into us having a comedy pitch for ‘Star Trek’ that really grew out of our organic love for those bottle episodes — especially on ‘Deep Space Nine’ — where no adventure would happen but it was mostly a character-drama-slash-comedy.
We just sort of kept riffing, and here we are. We are in development. We are in a very early stage, we don’t even have a title… but I don’t know, it’s feeling really good, I have to say.
Simien continued, sharing how the show’s pitch eschews the longform storytelling which is part of many mainstream television projects these days — including, of course, Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard — for more traditional, focused stories.
[With television seasons now] you’ve got thirteen episodes and you’ve got to keep that scripted arc going – but we kind of longed for those episodes that exist inside of like, a 39-episode season, you know, where you had time to hang out with Quark for a second. We came up with a pitch out of that space, and it’s going.
DS9 is a big, big inspiration, but also – and this is true for everything [I’ve done], true for ‘Dear White People,’ even – those episodes of ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ where it wasn’t plot-heavy; it was more like you were with a character for a day and you got to see their perspective on a bigger thing.
Those were always my favorite episodes. So we decided to make a show that was made up of our favorite parts.
With a series this early in development, it may be quite some time until more news about its structure, characters, or even title becomes known — but when there’s more to share about this live-action comedy project, you can be sure to find it here at TrekCore.
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