Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will feel more like the episodes of ‘The Original Series‘ says Akiva Goldsman
Although last week’s First Contact Day delivered a wealth of Star Trek awesomeness, the lack of Strange New Worlds content was painful. Four out of the five new shows were rewarded with big reveals and all-new trailers. But for fans of Christopher Pike and the USS Enterprise, the day ended in disappointment.
But, never one to disappoint the fans, Akiva Goldsman recently sat down with THR and revealed some juicy new details. Fresh off the back of directing the premiere episode, the showrunner opened up about the series. And more importantly, about the tone and themes of the show.
“If you think back to The Original Series, it was a tonally more liberal — I don’t mean in terms of politics, but it could sort of be more fluid. Like sometimes Robert Bloch would write a horror episode. Or Harlan Ellison would have “City on the Edge of Forever,” which is hard sci-fi. Then there would be comedic episodes, like “Shore Leave” or “The Trouble with Tribbles.” So [co-showrunner] Henry Alonso Myers and myself are trying to serve that. We’ve all become very enamored, myself included, with serialized storytelling. And I’m talking to you from behind the stage where we’re shooting Picard, which is deeply serialized. But Strange New Worlds is very much adventure-of-the-week but with serialized character arcs.”
WRITING AND DIRECTING
Aside from writing the premiere episode, Goldsman was privileged to claim directorial duties on the episode; something he says was “super fun”
“It was super fun and I’ve finished almost all of it. There were certain scenes that we couldn’t shoot in Toronto because of quarantine — in terms of limits on the number of extras [in a scene] — that I’ll back and finish pretty soon I hope. But there’s something extraordinary about, uh, a bunch of folks coming together to do a new thing; you’re surrounded by people who would be perfectly happy to be on the floor of a Star Trek convention, which is a little different than a typical show.”
SET DESIGN
Aside from boasting the return of Pike, Spock, Number One, and the starship Enterprise, fans are eager to learn about the look of the show. We’ve already seen segments of the Enterprise’s interior during Discovery Season Two. But will there be changes made to the sets to allow for a grander scale of storytelling?
“Yeah. It’s a fine line because obviously we want to keep continuity with the storytelling and the style, but we also want Strange New Worlds to be a different show. It’s not Discovery. There are a few more reach-backs (to The Original Series) and the uniforms have been adjusted slightly, the sets are slightly different. Remember the Enterprise existed as a little piece of [the show Discovery] but now its its own object. When you close your eyes and think of the key sets and situations that you think of The Original Series, that’s what we’re looking to do.”
CHRISTOPHER PIKE
Thankfully, the reveals didn’t end there. Anson Mount recently joined the official Star Trek podcast – The Pod Directive for a new episode; and touched on becoming the custodian of Gene Roddenberry’s original Starfleet Captain.
“I know how much it means to the fans… if you think about it, Pike was Roddenberry’s originally conception of what a Starfleet captain should be. So he has to be the embodiment of the idealism that lived inside of Gene Roddenberry”.
The actor also touched upon the tone of the series and shared his excitement about reverting to the traditional format of classic Star Trek.
“I’m also excited about the fact that we’re going to be doing more of an old-school Trek. A lot of the iterations in this current generation of Trek, the storylines tend to be serialized, which comes with a lot of benefits. But I grew up on an episodic Trek, where there was a big idea of the week or the planet of the week, and we’re going to be getting back to more of that. So it’s not just going to be in the look, but it’s going to be in the overall structure and feel of the show, that’s why it’s called Strange New Worlds.”
BOLDLY GO
It’s an awesome time to be a Star Trek fan, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. After a period of adjustment with season one, I thoroughly enjoyed Discovery’s subsequent seasons – and that was largely down to the inclusion of Pike, Spock, and the Enterprise.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is exactly the series we need right now – a contemporary series that pays tribute to and reinvigorates the episodic format of The Original Series for Trek fans old and new. And that sounds pretty damn cool to me.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is expected to release sometime in 2022. In the meantime, maintain your orbit around Future of the Force for the latest Trek news as it happens.
Source: THR/The Pod Directive
Author
Phil Roberts is the Owner, Daily Content Manager, and Editor-In-Chief of The Future of the Force. He is passionate about Star Wars, Batman, DC, Marvel, Star Trek, Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters, King Kong, and the Ray Harryhausen movies. Follow him on Twitter where he uses the force and babbles frequently!
