1w ago

Alex Kurtzman Gives Live-Action Comedy Update, Says Star Trek Can “Broaden”

trekmovie.com Exclusive: Alex Kurtzman Gives Live-Action Comedy Update, Says Star Trek Can “Broaden”

Tawny Newsome from 'Lower Decks' is developing a workplace comedy set in the Trek universe.

It's a pretty small update - the project is still in the very early stages:

And last week at the premiere when pressed on their progress, Kurtzman confirmed he had “not yet” seen scripts, noting “They’re just breaking story.” The executive producer also said he speaks to them about the project regularly, adding “I mean, I adore both of them so much, they’re so fantastic, and I trust them a lot.”

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Also, I feel like an awesome Star Trek series would be a (preferably animated) semi-anthology where you have a few crews a season that then meet up in a finale subplot, sort of like taking LD:”Wej Duj” and focusing on each individual crew and culture more. My ideas are:
“Cetacean Ops”, which would take place on the USS George and Gracie (or something), a starship (either prototype or refit) built for and staffed by aquatic/cetacean life forms, except a few engineers. Besides exploring what cetacean life style is like in the Federation and Starfleet, as well as how they avoid isolation between aquatic and non-aquatic crew.
One that’s literally just the Archimedes from the Lower Decks Season 2 finale. I really liked that crew for some reason and want more.
Several non-Federation species vessels, like a Ferengi starship or a post-Dominion Cardassian vessel.

I really want Paramount to keep trying to broaden the Star Trek universe and its genres, if only because that will bring us one step closer to my dream show...
...a weekly 90s-style proceedural where a Starfleet Medical doctor somehow gets involved in solving a murder every single episode

Tawny Newsome is awesome, so I'm sure this will be good, but there seems to be a fundamental tension between Kurtzman saying Trek can broaden, while Paramount seems to be trying to contract it.
- I’m sure the motivation of Paramount is that they need X weeks of Star Trek content a year to maximize the subscription income from Star Trek fans. If they can get roughly the same benefit from a sitcom which is much cheaper than an hour long show, they’ll jump at it.
- I've heard Tawny Newsome talk about this show on a podcast, and in this particular case, it's the opposite - Paramount+ wanted a live-action comedy, Kurtzman wasn't sure it would work, and Newsome had to talk him into it.
  That said, the industry as a whole has been in a state of contraction, and the big Paramount merger is imminent, so who the hell knows what will happen?

I just realized. They say they're broadcasting to the entire quadrant - but which quadrant?
Chances are they'll do something normal and boring like the Alpha Quadrant and create a bunch of canon confusion, but it would be kind of awesome if took place in the Gamma Quadrant and looked at life in the Dominion (or post-Dominion planets) after the war.

What I want from Trek:
✅️ A sensible tone, mostly serious and sometimes silly. Like real life.
✅️ An exploration of morals, ethics and the human condition, aligned with the mostly utopian future depicted by 80s and 90s Trek.
✅️ An episodic plot that is not overrun by a season arc but not devoid of character development.
✅️ Occasional fun episodes with dress up and jokes.
✅️ Full orchestral score.
❌️ Too many action scenes and explosions.
❌️ Too much budget on CGI.
❌️ Over the top cheesy fan service.
❌️ Rewriting canon.
❌️ Excessively American oriented script.
❌️ Lazy storytelling.
❌️ Reusing plot devices.
- Overwriting canon is fine, actually. TOS never had an issue with it, and PIC S1E10 gave Data a much better send-off by breaking canon from Nemesis and other Soong episodes. Gene Roddenberry's assistant officially decanonized TAS, but better writers still acknowledge it.
  The idea of "canon" in regard to fictional worlds is dubious anyway, especially ones developed across multiple writers and generations. I'm fine with stuffing Pike's comment about women on the bridge into the dustbin of history, and not stressing about what decade the Eugenics Wars happened, and assuming PIC S3 doesn't exist.
  
  You make some great points. I can't disagree.
- I been saying this for a while.
  Drop all the 'canon' lore. No more Klingons, Romulans, Vulcans, or Borg. In fact, no six foot tall, five fingered aliens. Aliens will look completely unlike humans.
  Wipe all memory and start 100% fresh.
  
  If it was written fiction then I would agree, but for the screen I still prefer human actors in makeup over full CGI.
- You need to hit Enter twice (or put 2 spaces at the end of each entry), otherwise your newlines get ignored and your list runs together in one giant paragraph.
  
  Just for you my lawful good friend
- I'm 50/50 on the episodic plots. I think that DS9 hit a good balance there: The plots were mostly episodic but usually connected to an overarching metaplot. That felt pretty good; not too loose and not too tight.
  
  Same here. While the arcs at the end of the series were a little too serialized for my taste, most of the time the overarching continuity was really good.
- Spot on.
  SNW is good but I don't think we'll ever see a return to the old TV format of 20+ episode seasons. You can't do random episodic stories all that well in 6-12 episodes. Short seasons have no room to breathe.
  Even Futurama has this problem with the two new Hulu seasons, and that's without the burden of an overarching plot to keep moving forward.
  
  The new 20 episode season is a 10 episode season with 5 webisodes and a cheaper side project like a cartoon or anthology.
  Honestly this is better to me because it enables the good plots of the smaller episodes to get all the focus without forcing some awful secondary plot to fill run time.

Federation outsiders serving a gleaming resort planet find out their day-to-day exploits are being broadcast to the entire quadran
Ok not bad, Acapulco is a funny show about working in a resort so I can sorta imagine it in space. Not as sure about the Punkd angle, but I’m remaining optimistic.
- From a structural standpoint, it seems like a good way to have a rotating cast of guest stars while still having an ongoing mystery for the leads to explore.

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