Alex Kurtzman Wants to Make a Star Trek Musical

Star Trek: Short Treks picked up an Emmy Award nomination, and that may mean more episodes are on the way. Star Trek producer Alex Kurtzman spoke to Gold Derby about Short Treks‘ Emmy nod. Kurtzman talked about how the Short Treks format gives him and his team license to tell stories that may not fit into the full-length shows and to experiment with what Star Trek is and can be. As to whether there will be Short Treks, Kurtzman says, “Well thanks to the Emmy nomination, I’m really hoping so. They’re like little O. Henry stories. There’s the story that presents itself, but then there’s the little twist at the end that reframes what you’ve been watching the whole time. I grew up with anthology shows like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits and there’s something about telling stories in a shorter period of time that are close-ended and frankly even shorter than The Twilight Zone, because the max length of our short is like 15 minutes, that’s the longest one we ever did.

Kurtzman then went on to discuss the fun and challenge of writing for Short Treks and mentioned a couple of different types of stories he’d like to take a shot at. One is a musical episode, and the other is black and white.

“As a writer and as a storyteller, it’s a real challenge to figure out how to have a beginning, a middle, and an end in a much more compressed period of time and there’s so many different forms that these could take. I’d love to do a musical, for example. I’d love to do one in black and white, figure out what that means. I can probably think of 50 different ways that we can tell stories and 50 different crevices of the Star Trek universe to explore. That may not be the right kinds of crevices for the larger shows, but I think we always think of the Short Treks as, these are the scenes that are just as important as what’s going on in the main shows but that you wouldn’t actually have time for. These are the moments that you can drill down on. So I’d love to. I’d love nothing more.”

In the meantime, fans are getting 23 straight weeks of new Star Trek episodes to carry them into the new year. The animated comedy Star Trek: Short Treks debuted last week and new episodes premiere Thursdays on CBS All Access. Then the third season of Star Trek: Discovery will premiere on October 15th on CBS All Access. All episodes of Star Trek: Short Treks are also available to stream on CBS All Access.