Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the upcoming Star Trek: Discovery spinoff, is looking to begin filming next year. When it does launch, it will be a return to classic Star Trek storytelling. That’s according to Star Trek head Alex Kurtzman, who says the series will be structured in the episodic format of classic Star Trek: The Original Series while keeping some of the serialized elements of the new Star Trek series like Discovery. “I think Strange New Worlds, under the guidance of Henry Myers and Akiva Goldsman, is going to be a return, in a way, to TOS,” Kurtzman tells Deadline. “We’re going to do stand-alone episodes. There will be emotional serialization. There will be two-parters. There will be larger plot arcs, but it really is back to the model of alien of the week, planet of the week, challenge on the ship of the week with these characters pre-Kirk’s Enterprise.
Videos by ComicBook.com
“I think what people responded so much to in all three characters is this kind of relentless optimism that they have. And that they are at the young phase of their careers. Then Pike, who has experienced this extraordinary trauma, which he’s famous for, that he knows how he’s going to die. The idea is, how does a character who knows how he’s going to die live optimistically from that point on and lead a ship? It’s a great question. I’ve never seen a show where a character knew that already. You have to have an inherent optimism in your world view in order to say, ‘I’m going to get up every morning knowing how it is going to end for me” and still lead everybody to be the best versions of themselves.”
The idea Kurtzman posits here sounds in line with what star Anson Mount discussed during the Star Trek Universe panel during Comic-Con at Home. “I think the biggest thing, obviously, was seeing my future, and when you see how it’s all going to end and that it’s not so pretty, what do you do with that?” said Mount, who plays Capt. Christopher Pike. “I think there’s a reason that we can only see our past because we’re a very neurotic species, and we wouldn’t know how to comport ourselves. And so I think ultimately the question becomes, ‘How do you move forward?’ I think he’s going to wrestle with how he can best utilize the rest of his life for the good of the world, the universe… He’s not thinking about it as a team yet because he’s wrestling with it himself, which I hope he’s going to learn to let other people help him wrestle with it.”
