‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Showrunner on Creating the Show’s Aliens

Star Trek: Discovery returned to the world that Gene Roddenberry created more than 50 years ago. That meant creating new aliens for the Starfleet to encounter, but the demands of visual effects have changed over the past several decades.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, co-creator and executive producer (and now showrunner) Alex Kurtzman discussed the process, saying that “any kind of organic creature or character is exponentially more difficult, because it’s really tough to trick the human eye.”

One of the biggest challenges was creating the tardigrade-like alien that traveled via the same mycelium network that the USS Discovery’s unique, experimental spore drive was able to tap into. However, Kurtzman feels that the tardigrade was also among the most rewarding projects as it “spoke to one of the core tenets of Star Trek. What seems to be alien and foreign and scary and monstrous is only something that we don’t yet understand.” That may be why the show once had very different plans for the creature.

Star Trek: Discovery visual effects supervisor Jason Zimmerman spoke a bit about the challenge of communicating emotion from an alien that is not humanoid and, though sentient, does not exhibit a specific personality.

“You have to use different features on the creature to take the place of what would normally be a human face, because we’re so used to reading human emotions,” he said.

Zimmerman has spoken previously about the Discovery effects team’s love for the Star Trek franchise.

“All of the artists and people involved in the visual effects process recognize what they’re working on,” he says. “It’s Star Trek. There’s details all over the place just for the love of the show.”

CBS has submitted Star Trek: Discovery‘s visual effects for consideration for this year’s Emmy Awards. Emmy Awards voting is now officially underway. The nominees will be announced on July 12th.

Do you think Star Trek: Discovery‘s visual effects are Emmy-worthy? Let us know what you think in the comments!

The first season of Star Trek: Discovery is available to stream in its entirety on CBS All Access in the United States, through CraveTV in Canada, and through Netflix in other international markets. Star Trek: Discovery Season Two is now filming in Toronto.