So much was revealed last week during the First Contact panels but there was one glaring omission, there was no info about the highly anticipated Star Trek: Strange New Worlds series heading our way soon featuring Anson Mount as Pike.
Well, this week Akiva Goldsman who is now doing double duty, acting as co-showrunner for both Picard and Strange New Worlds, in a fresh interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Goldsman had a few things to say about both Strange New Worlds and the second season of Picard.
Goldsman On Strange New Worlds…
Seeking to make Strange New Worlds (and the U.S.S. Enterprise) more like The Original Series, Goldsman had a fair bit to say about the direction the new show is heading, from new sets to tweaked uniforms…
“[T]he uniforms have been adjusted slightly, the sets are slightly different. Remember the Enterprise existed as a little piece of [the show Discovery], but now it’s 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.”
Moving on to the tone and the shift from long arc storytelling like Discovery and Picard season one, one goal of SNW is that the episodes will be more episodic with charter driven arcs…
“[I]t’s really episodic. 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… Strange New Worlds is very much adventure-of-the-week but with serialized character arcs.”
And with Goldsman having not only writing the pilot episode, but as showrunner got the privilege of directing the shows first outing as well and described it as “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.”
With the show finally hitting the air in 2022, the question is, was the show already being planned or was it something that the fan driven petitions and social media campaign brought about, or was it something that was already in motion…
“There are few things I will take credit for in the Star Trek universe but this is actually one of them. When [executive producer] Alex Kurtzman called about [joining the Discovery team], I was wildly envious of any involvement in Star Trek because I love it so much — my very first Star Trek convention was in 1975. I had no idea what his show was about, so I went online and I started reading that it was clearly going to be about Captain Pike and Number One. So that’s what I thought I was going to join.
Then I got there and it couldn’t have had less to do with Captain Pike and Number One. So I started agitating for them because the timelines overlapped with Discovery and the Enterprise was out there. When the Enterprise appeared at the end of season one, and once Anson and Rebecca and Ethan started living those characters in season two, I think it sort of became this wonderful inevitability.”
The Captain Speaks To The To The Pod Directive
During last weeks episode of The Official Star Trek Podcast, Anson Mount told the story of his audition for the role that made the fans fall In love with him, but when he auditioned he had no idea he was set to play the iconic role of Captain Pike, as he auditioned for the role of ‘Captain Parker’ and it wasn’t until he won the role did he find out that he would be playing Pike…
“I found out much later, actually just a FEW months ago. Alex [Kurtzman] & Akiva [Goldsman] told me that they’d actually been talking about this idea of doing a Pike series well before they even cast me.”
Moving on to the burden of taking on the role of the Star Trek’ first Captain the pressure as on and he had no idea that a series would ride on his portrayal.
“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”.
Reiterating what Goldsman said, Mount also spoke of the shift from season long arcs to more of a episodic, problem of the week style of show…
“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 serialised, 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.”
You can listen to Anson Mount’ interview below…
With Strange New Worlds only a few months into production, the show is not likely to hit the air until 2022 and until then we can only guess what to expect, however, if Mount and crew are anything like they were in second season of Discovery we can not wait…
