It’s almost ironic that Star Trek was born on television. The sci-fi franchise, whose storyline is set in a far-off future where humanity has solved many of its most pressing problems, has now endured almost six decades in spite of a fickle medium that is constantly at the whims of ruthless disruption.
When Gene Roddenberry created the original series in the 1960s, TV diets basically consisted of three broadcast networks. Star Trek was famously canceled three short seasons later, only to be kept alive by reruns, then given new life in golden age of movie blockbusters, and then again in the wild west of TV syndication and cable—with series like The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager carrying it through the end of the century.
By the time Star Trek: Discovery premiered on CBS All Access in 2017, the medium was being rendered unrecognizable by the burgeoning TV streaming wars. Discovery was the flagship series developed for CBS’s then-experimental streaming product, which has since evolved into Paramount+. “How to make television in different ways that haven’t been done before is something we talk a lot about,” Aaron Baiers, a producer on the series who has been integral in expanding the Star Trek universe on Paramount+, tells Fast Company.
Today, Star Trek is at yet another turning point. Discovery just aired its final episode after five seasons, while the Patrick Stewart-led Picard ended its three-season run last year. The franchise still has crowd-pleasers in the back-to-basics prequel series Strange New Worlds and the animated Lower Decks, but lately it’s been making more news for what’s on the horizon: Section 31, a highly anticipated TV movie starring Michelle Yeoh, began production earlier this year, and Holly Hunter has been tapped to star in the forthcoming series Starfleet Academy, which will focus on a younger cast of cadets.
On Sunday, the Star Trek franchise was honored with the Peabody Institutional Award for its “enduring dedication to storytelling that projects the best of humanity into the distant future.” Alex Kurtzman, the writer and producer who is now in charge of leading the franchise, was at the ceremony in Los Angeles to accept the award. Kurtzman has been instrumental in shaping the direction of Star Trek since serving as a cowriter 15 years ago on J.J. Abrams’s fast-paced movie reboot, which has been widely credited with breathing new life into the franchise.
Fast Company caught up with Kurtzman last week to discuss the future of the franchise, how his teams work to keep it relevant, why Star Trek will always remain true to its principles on diversity, and what role AI might play in its development in the years to come.
The following excerpt from our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Star Trek fans, or fans of any big franchise, can be really vocal and very often not friendly to bold choices [like the alternate timeline introduced in the 2009 reboot]. How do you balance the need to keep them happy while also moving this giant franchise forward in a way that brings on new generations of fans?
I think you have to fundamentally respect canon. What you can’t do is say that what came before you was either wrong or not good enough, or that you want to rewrite it in some fundamental way. Canon is sacred to so many people who love Star Trek, so first and foremost, you cannot betray that. You can’t punch down at it, even when you’re making a comedy like Lower Decks. One of the first things that [Star Trek: Lower Decks creator] Mike McMahon said when we started talking about it was, “I want to laugh with Star Trek. I don’t want to laugh at Star Trek.”
The essence of that translates to so many different kinds of approaches to Trek. You really cannot negate what came before . . . But I think that once the fans understand that you’re there to love and honor the same things that they’re there to love and honor, they begin to open themselves up to the possibility that Star Trek can evolve.
I had a very interesting conversation once with Nick Meyer, who directed Wrath of Khan, and he said, “If I had taken a vote of Star Trek fans and asked everybody, ‘Do you think I should kill Spock?’ They would’ve killed me.” And now that scene remains, I think for most people, one of the best—if not the best—scene ever in Star Trek.
I’m actually old enough to remember when that movie came out. As kids, we were just like, well, I guess that’s the last movie. He’s dead—you can’t bring him back.
Well, it was a choice that allowed a bunch of new choices to start happening. It allowed them to skip the record and start something different. I think that those kinds of bold moves are essential to the survival of Star Trek.
So you might say we’re at another inflection point now. Discovery just ended. Can you talk a little bit about what we can expect from the franchise over the next few years, how it might look different? Are there different ways of storytelling that you’re thinking about? Not just creatively, but distribution-wise and format-wise?
Yes to that. Without revealing anything, we are actively in the middle of conversations about exactly that. There are other platforms for Star Trek, other venues for Star Trek that will allow audiences to experience it differently than they have before, given the emergence of so many new kinds of technology. And that’s really exciting.
One core tenet of Star Trek has always been diversity. We are in a moment now in the business world, in academia, where we’re seeing this backlash to DEI. We write a lot about this at Fast Company. I don’t want to give undue weight to trolls or racists, but I do wonder if you think about this anti-DEI movement that we’re in as you’re plotting out where Star Trek is heading. Or more generally, what’s your philosophy on the role of diversity in the franchise?
I think it’s baked into the DNA of Star Trek from its inception. It is not something that evolved later in its lifetime. You had a show that was constitutionally made up of different people of different colors on the bridge. And the greatest contribution that Roddenberry made to that conversation was that it was never a conversation. It was just an assumption: In the future, this is what we look like. This is who we are. So, to negate that, I think would be to fundamentally destroy what is at the very beating heart of Star Trek.
The answer is no. I understand what you’re saying, and I see the backlash that’s happening across the globe to this exact thing. However, it does not affect the way that we’re approaching Star Trek, because Star Trek is so much bigger than that.
On that same note, Star Trek recently was awarded the Peabody Institutional Award. Peabody called it a show that was “groundbreaking for its diverse cast and unapologetically progressive values.” What does this award mean to you?
Well, it’s an unbelievable honor that I have to look at within the context of Star Trek over its lifetime. I always feel like Star Trek is this wonderful, very fragile egg that whoever holds it has to hold very carefully and then pass on to the next person without dropping it. And in doing that, you have to protect all of the ideals that the Peabodys just characterized.
What I’m grateful for is that the work that we’ve done in the last eight years is being recognized as being part of a continuum of something that’s so much bigger than any one of us. Because the truth is, if we’re doing our jobs right, we will hand it on to the next people and they will hand it on to the next people. And somebody will still be talking about Star Trek in a hundred years.
Do you worry or think about the notion of oversaturation with a franchise like this?
Absolutely. For sure.
How much is too much in your mind?
It’s funny. Contrary to popular opinion, we are not in the volume business. We don’t make a Star Trek show unless we have a very specific story to tell. We’re not trying to crank out a new show every year to satisfy a corporate mandate . . . I can’t tell you how often someone will walk into my office and say, I have an idea for a new Star Trek show. It’s just this kind of perfect engine that constantly generates new ideas. And when one of those ideas is exciting and different and feels like a really innovative way to tell a new kind of story, we do it.
But the truth is, from the minute we decide we want to make a show to the show actually airing, it’s a three-year process. It takes a long time. It takes a strategy . . . I think part of the key is that each of these shows not only is a different color, but it’s run by a different showrunner. If I were to write all the shows, you would feel a real sameness to everything. My job is to hire the right people and support them and help them get the ship off the dock and then let them sail it. Because that way, each person’s individual voice will stand out from every other show. And you won’t be watching Discovery thinking, well, it’s a lot like Lower Decks, because it’s not.
When I think about oversaturation as an audience member, it’s because a franchise starts to turn out something with such frequency and such sameness that I start losing interest in any of it. So our goal is to do the exact opposite of that.
Also, I think there was this conventional wisdom a few years ago that streaming services had to churn out lots of content to feed the beast. And I think we’re in a different era now where companies are pulling back. Do you feel like the pressure is less now than it was a few years ago to create content?
The pace for us hasn’t changed . . . I think that the mandate overall has changed, but we haven’t stopped making Star Trek for a second since we started Discovery. Right now we’re in the middle of Strange New Worlds. We’re about to launch Starfleet Academy. And we’re in post on Section 31. So it’s very constant for us.
Everyone’s talking about AI right now. I don’t know how much you’ve thought about the role that tailor-made content might fit into a franchise like Star Trek. A lot of this is theoretical now, but there is talk of the ability at some point for fans to be able to create their own episodes just by putting prompts into a large language model. Is that something you’re also thinking about?
I think everything’s on the table, but I would say that, no, we’re not thinking about how to tell stories with AI. That’s actually not what we’re focused on at all. AI is becoming a more fundamentally accepted and useful tool, just like a typewriter is a tool. But the typewriter doesn’t write the story . . . I’m thinking more about the way that emerging technologies provide opportunities to rethink the way we tell stories and to iterate into new forms that, you know, for generations that come after us are going to be wildly intuitive, but for the generations that came behind us would seem entirely like science fiction. That to me is very interesting: What kind of story can you tell in a totally different format? What new door does that open?
It’s funny that when you talk about AI and Star Trek, you just can’t help but think about how Star Trek has already explored it so much in its own history. I think about, would I like Commander Data [a Star Trek character who is a sentient android] in real life now that I have opinions about interacting with AI?
Absolutely. But again, I go back to the beating heart of Trek, which is that, fundamentally, it’s a story about humanity. If you’re talking about AI and Star Trek—and Star Trek has obviously done it a lot—it’s still always in relief to the human condition. Is it helping the human condition? Is it hurting the human condition? How do we evolve to our better selves? How do our better angels lead us to the future that Roddenberry envisioned? That’s really the question behind it. And I don’t think an AI is going to answer that question.