Star Trek: Discovery Showrunner Says the Original Series Is Helping Season 2 Find Its Fun Side

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From i09:

The first trailer for the next season of Star Trek: Discovery looked surprisingly fun—especially when compared to the often-fatally bleak first season. It was full of cute jokes, great character moments, and late-1990s rock jams. So, where did this newfound levity come from? According to the showrunner, you can thank the first Star Trek TV series for that.

During a press conference for Star Trek: Discovery, io9 asked showrunner Alex Kurtzman how they’re balancing the look and feel of Discovery’sdebut with the first season of The Original Series, which feels like a huge departure from the grittier, more modern Trek franchises. How can they blend these two shows that are so tonally dissonant from each other? Turns out, by softening Discovery’s hard edges a bit.

. . . .

“I feel like tonally it’s probably a more buoyant season. Even those there are some episodes that are very very serious and intense, I think you’ll see in the first episode that there’s more balance between some of the humor that you’d see on TOS and the high stakes of the more modern versions of Trek.

I think obviously, last season was about war. And it’s tough to really stuff down and have a whole lot of humor when the stakes are so high, life and death is really what they’re dealing with every day… Tonally now, we’ve gotten to a place where the crew has more—even though the stakes are still high—there’s more downtime in the moments, which allows for more humor, which allows for a slower onion layer pulling open of character and the details of their own relationships.”

Link to the rest at i09

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15 thoughts on “Star Trek: Discovery Showrunner Says the Original Series Is Helping Season 2 Find Its Fun Side”

  1. Season 2 looks awfully pretty, which is all you can really tell from this kind of sizzle reel. Fingers crossed that they do interesting things, storywise.

    I feel like season 1 did turn out to be a very interesting story. It just took 10 episodes to prove they had a concrete goal in mind. This time around, with slightly less network meddling, they get the benefit of the doubt from me.

    • No, the first season wasn’t.
      Which is why they brought in a new crew behind the scenes to try to fix it.
      It might be possible–the show wasn’t awful, just not a Trek in any way shape or form. But I remain skeptical because the cast/character mix is a big part of the problem and importing temporary leadership isn’t enough.
      As much as I loved LOWER DECKS on STNG, you can’t build a Trek show without a strong command crew front and center.

      Both Janeway and Archer put this motley crew to shame.

      • Both Janeway and Archer put this motley crew to shame.

        I cannot tell if serious or sarcasm — I stopped watching Voyager two seasons in. I sensed the writers were getting tired, so I never gave the one with Archer a chance to disappointment me. But if it was actually good I’ll try and catch it on Netflix or Amazon.

        I’m not even tempted to watch the trailer for the second season of Discovery, especially as you point out the problems with the show are baked in.

        • Whatever their failings as characters, both Archer and Janeway were more than just administrators. They had some combat leadership skills. The new crew are more like new age managers than actual leaders in a military organization. And the trailer shows no signs of that changing. (When your lead character is a mutineer…)

          They seem to recognize this need since they’re not only bringing in Christopher Pike and (genuinely intriguing!) Number One. That would be his First Officer. Plus their science officer Spock (at some point). If they had built the show around Pike and Number One they might’ve had something Trekish. And possibly good, too.

          As is, they have a lot of unwinding to do.
          They’d earn a lot of goodwill back if the first thing Spock says is: “Who are you? I never had a foster sister.” : )

        • Enterprise got good when they changed the showrunner for the 4th season. They abandoned the STUPID temporal war storyline they had run for the first 3 seasons which was just exhausting. I say abandoned, but really they wrapped it up and did what the show should have been doing the whole time, space… the final frontier…

        • Different people like different things. After the original series, Voyager is my personal favorite, but I liked the lighter aspects of those shows in particular. I disliked a great deal the heavier politics of some of the series, in particular, DS9. Hated that one and have never finished the series. I made it through season 3 of Enterprise (the Archer one) and won’t ever finish it either. It was not good enough for me by a long shot, and I’m a huge fan of Scott Bakula (Archer). Anyway, that’s one fan’s opinion. I have all the Star Trek movies, old and new, and have watched them many, many times. 🙂

        • Do give ENTERPRISE a look.

          It’s no DS9 but it’s more trekish in tone. Think of it as a slightly tarted up lite Version of the original series.

          They did go overboard with the time travel aspects…

          Somebody ought to tell the studios that unless they’re remaking THE TIME TUNNEL they need to lay off time travel. Completely. Especially that “thing” NBC has been running. Mixing in fictional characters as if they were historical…

          • Thanks you all! I will investigate Enterprise.

            @ Felix: Spock … has … a … foster … sister?! No. If your suggested scenario happens I might watch. The foster sister sounds like a classic Mary Sue trope: give Cool Character a heretofore unknown sibling who is totes awesome. No. He had Sybock, which could be plausible given Sarek’s lifespan (I only remember the very beginning and end of that movie). But a foster sister he never spoke of? Nope.

            @Lynn, I actually like light episodes in the various Trek iterations, but I also loved the story arcs in DS9. The writers just seemed burned out in Voyager, and I didn’t want to watch my beloved Trek go down in flames … I also wish the movies would stop destroying the “Enterprise” itself.

            • If you buy DISCOVERY as Trek canon, he does now.

              Since they thought Commander Michael Burnham couldn’t possibly stand on her own, they made her Sarek’s human protege and Spock’s foster sister. Because what is one more Trek retcon by now, right?

              They also gave her a caring, nurturing Captain who blithely waved off her well-informed advice at a critical juncture. Because otherwise the season plot would never get off the ground.

  2. Our family is hard-core Trek (all six series though arguments break out over rankings).

    But the general consensus in 2017 was The Orville was more Trek-ish than Discovery.

    • Agreed on “The Orville.” I was about to say it will likely be the only network show I watch this year, but I just checked, and it’s not premiering until Dec. 30.

      • What else did you expect from Fox?

        Of course they had to cut short the first season of their best show and let it go a full calendar year between seasons. How else could they get fans to lose track and miss the second season opener so they can cancel it for declining viewership?

        I’m only surprised they didn’t kill it already.

  3. The Orville is a show that really surprised me. I was interested when I thought it was a straight up spoof, felt a little iffy about it when I realized it wasn’t quite that, then ended up really liking it anyway.

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