Spoilers Q&A With Alex Kurtzman about Season 2 and the Finale

[fireproof78]

"It goes back to the 2009 movie, when we were going back to the original bridge crew and setting up an alternate timeline and blew up Vulcan, there were all these huge moves that we recognized would either be totally embraced or totally rejected. And to our delight, they were embraced."

Thank you, Alex! Glad the naysayers didn't get you guys down

 

[INACTIVERedDwarf]

History is full of people taking over franchises, saying how much they love it, then botching it.

There is a point here, which is that it could be construed as quite reckless and pompous to trot out the possibility of Pike/Spock and the Enterprise, just to serve as a hook for viewers to tune in next time.

When you think about it, it's someone taking a really beloved franchise, and using it in a cynical way. DS9 stood on it's own. Voyager stood on its own. But DSC might use TOS as mere bait in a publicity game.

After one season.

I'm not sure how comfortable I would feel with a writing staff and production team that felt rolling a classic show, iconic era, and set of established characters, into their own rather inconsistent show, is a good idea after just one controversial 15 episode first season. It does smack of the Bad Robot cardre, as The Wormhole says. They are proclaiming ownership, while having less than convincingly demonstrated moral ownership.

We shall see if they do TOS justice.

 

[jamestyler]

I'm really not sure how I see that through the writing. If anything, the Klingons were the most one-note villains they've ever been. As presented, the Klingons 'point of view' was, what? Racial purity?

Not racial purity, as such. But fear.

They had the same fears that have been sweeping the real world and led to the rise of the far right. Those foreigners are coming in and they'll change us, they'll make us different. We have to take a stand.

From my world perspective, that fear is very clear. We have people (in my country/city) marching in our streets here with alarming regularity who want to hold on to their 'heritage'. Those people marching all voted to leave the EU, not for any reason other than a fear of "foreign control". We've seen more of that attitude worldwide.

Thats all I saw with the Klingons: A refusal to accept that unity, a fear of what the outsiders would bring. It's not a point I find valid in the slightest, but it's one that's terrifyingly common in the real world.

 

[Ronald Held]

Unconvinced they will do TOS justice..

 

[AndorianAle]

And meanwhile he's still trying to be cagey about whether they'll even show the Enterprise bridge?

I see what you did there.

Gaah.

Best served live.

 

[eschaton]

Not racial purity, as such. But fear.

Nevermind that according to Enterprise, Klingons didn't even feel afraid until the augment virus.

 

[Campe]

Nevermind that according to Enterprise, Klingons didn't even feel afraid until the augment virus.

Right, because we can believe that no Klingon has ever once felt fear. Sorry, but the Klingons are full of shit. We call those sorts of things tall tales.

PLUS, the Klingon in "Broken Bow" was obviously scared when he was about to be abducted by the Suliban.

 

[mos6507]

Should have thought of that before you left us with this turd.
HAHAHAHA! hahahaha!

Yep. Half-collars and shiny sequins will age well.

 

[fireproof78]

Unconvinced they will do TOS justice..

Interesting characters? They'll do fine.

Nevermind that according to Enterprise, Klingons didn't even feel afraid until the augment virus.

How does a sentient creature not feel fear? That's part of self-preservation. So, apparently Klingons are just a race of thrill seekers, and daredevils who have a "Fek'lhr may care" attitude towards danger and dying? And yet, this species lives over a hundred years? Doesn't add up.

 

[Noname Given]

Interesting that he feels they need to answer "why Spock never talked about her sister?". That is a silly question that doesn't need to be addressed in this show. Spock was a private person. Never talked sbout his parents until they showed up, never talked about his brother until he showed up. So he never had a reason to mention the sister. And I doubt if they can come up with anything that would be a satisfactory answer anyway.

It just shows he watched Star Trek, but didn't really pay attention to what he was watching. It's probably why he thinks all the ridiculous Easter Eggs in the various scenes this season are what the 'hard core' fans want. Personally, I'd like to have one showrunner who really bothered to actually watch TOS and actually liked TOS - Ted Sullivan certainly doesn't seem to (IMO); and the rest seen more 24th century era fans. Why do I say that? Because neither Earth nor the Federation were a 'Utopia' in the TOS era; yet that's all we here from them when they talk about 'What Star Trek is...'

 

[fireproof78]

It just shows he watched Star Trek, but didn't really pay attention to what he was watching. It's probably why he thinks all the ridiculous Easter Eggs in the various scenes this season are what the 'hard core' fans want. Personally, I'd like to have one showrunner who really bothered to actually watch TOS and actually liked TOS - Ted Sullivan certainly doesn't seem to (IMO); and the rest seen more 24th century era fans. Why do I say that? Because neither Earth nor the Federation were a 'Utopia' in the TOS era; yet that's all we here from them when they talk about 'What Star Trek is...'

No, but they were "perfectly planned societies."

 

[Cranston]

"Humanize the Klingons."

That's what they told Voq, anyway.

 

[skip bittman]

Ah, a man who has never worked on anything I've ever liked on any level. I guess I should click on this to add vague irritation to my coffee break.

 

[Phoenix219]

Alex Kurtzman:


I would believe this if it hadn't been for the finale where immediately after only seeing a glimpse of the Enterprise the soundtrack and end credits music comepletely change to that of TOS.

It makes me want the Pike spinoff, and to follow the ship, the models and the music where it goes. It made me instantly not care about the Discovery crew, unless a couple of them end up on the Enterprise. It completely deflated Discovery, and kind of underlined the fact that I've basically been watching for easter eggs, and for THAT SCENE, the entire season....


I still think that not using the augment Klingons to justify the "purebred" Klingon's wanting to attack the Federation for tainting Klingon culture was a big loss/misstep that would have soothed a lot of TOSers. Have the new Klingons trash the "D7" as stagnant. Proceed as planned.

 

[Shinzonfan]

It makes me want the Pike spinoff, and to follow the ship, the models and the music where it goes. It made me instantly not care about the Discovery crew, unless a couple of them end up on the Enterprise. It completely deflated Discovery, and kind of underlined the fact that I've basically been watching for easter eggs, and for THAT SCENE, the entire season....
.

It reminded me of what I really wanted from Discovery and sadly didn't get.

 

[trekfan39]

Interesting that he feels they need to answer "why Spock never talked about her sister?". That is a silly question that doesn't need to be addressed in this show. Spock was a private person. Never talked sbout his parents until they showed up, never talked about his brother until he showed up. So he never had a reason to mention the sister. And I doubt if they can come up with anything that would be a satisfactory answer anyway.

It's also possible Spock doesn't even consider Burnham to be his sister after all they aren't related by blood and as a logical person I could see him thinking of her as a non family member.

 

[fireproof78]

It's also possible Spook doesn't even consider Burnham to be his sister after all they aren't related by blood and as a logical person I could see him thinking of her as a non family member.

Indeed.

 

[Shinzonfan]

It's so easy to put your own interpretation on these things, and read into it what you want to read into it, and I'm about to be guilty of that when I say that what I see here

So figuring out a way for the Enterprise to work in that framework is the task of our story-breaking for season 2 right now.

suggests to me that it was never the plan to have the Enterprise enter this series so early and the writers were simply told from above to make it happen. If that's the case then you could surmise that CBS is not totally happy with how the show has performed. That's not to say it hasn't done well, and looking at the response on this forum it certainly has been well received by many fans, but maybe not by as many as CBS had hoped.

And if I'm going to go way out in left field here and let my imagination run wild with wishful thinking, then I might want to say something like - maybe showing us Enterprise in the last episode and going into TOS theme music is really a coded message from the network telling some of us "We heard you, so just trust us and keep the faith. We will give you what you want."

And ideally what I want to see is Discovery morph into the adventures of a young Christopher Pick and the crew of the Enterprise, or maybe an Enterprise Spin off. Have that run for 5 or 6 years and then in the final episode of the final season redo "The Cage" followed by Pike's promotion off Enterprise. Then the following year reboot TOS with a Young James T. Kirk and crew, redo some of the best original episodes along with many many new ones, and take us on a true 5 year voyage of exploration and Discovery.

After that I can curl up and die happily with my bucket list complete.

 

[Tuskin38]

suggests to me that it was never the plan to have the Enterprise enter this series so early and the writers were simply told from above to make it happen.

Nah, they said on After Trek that they had the idea of the Enterprise showing up in the finale for a while, and wrote from there.

It isn't rare in television to not have a full picture of what's happening in the next season. The writers focus on finishing the current season before they start on the second.

For example in TNG, for Best of Both Worlds Part 2, they didn't have any full idea what was going to happen in part 2 until they started writing it.

There is an example from Stargate SG-1 I could throw out, but I don't remember the episode, but it was the same thing.

 

[Phoenix219]

The Pike spinoff would start after The Cage; its already happened.