The Big Picture

Collider’s Steve Weintraub sits down with
Star Trek: Discovery
executive producer Alex Kurtzman and executive producer and showrunner Michelle Paradise to discuss the final season.
Kurtzman and Paradise discuss the inspiration behind
Star Trek: Discovery
Season 5, the themes of the final season, and share behind-the-scenes Star Trek details.
Kurtzman also teases upcoming Star Trek projects like
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
,
Star Trek: Lower Decks
Season 5, and
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Season 3.

In both celebration and a farewell, the cast and creatives behind Star Trek: Discovery made their way from the final frontier to Austin, Texas for this year’s South by Southwest film and television festival. It was a bittersweet moment for all as they world premiered the first episode of 10 for the final fifth season, “Red Directive.” Ahead of the screening, Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the opportunity to sit down with executive producer Alex Kurtzman and executive producer and showrunner Michelle Paradise to have a conversation about how the duo approached this final season’s storyline, and all things Star Trek.

With Discovery’s Season 5 now available to stream on Paramount+, fans have had the opportunity to join Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and her crew’s final mission on an adventure to locate an ancient artifact with some seriously mind-boggling powers. As it turns out, they aren’t the only ones searching for the mysterious object, pitting them in a race against time to retrieve the item before it falls into the wrong hands. In addition to Martin-Green, Season 5 sends off Doug Jones (Pan’s Labyrinth), Wilson Cruz (My So-Called Life), Blu del Barrio (The Listener), David Ajala (Fast & Furious 6), Mary Wiseman (Marriage Story), and so many more.

Check out the full interview in the video above, or the transcript below, to find out how Star Trek: The Next Generation inspired Discovery’s swan song, the behind-the-scenes planning for new Star Trek series and episodes, and what they hoped to explore in Season 5. Kurtzman and Paradise also share some teasers for upcoming projects like Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5, Season 3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and more.

Star Trek: Discovery
Taking place almost a decade before Captain Kirk’s Enterprise, the USS Discovery charts a course to uncover new worlds and life forms.Release Date September 24, 2017 Main Genre Sci-Fi Seasons 5

Read Our ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Season 5 Review

COLLIDER: I’ve seen the first four episodes, and the only thing I’m mad about is I don’t have more to watch.

MICHELLE PARADISE: [Laughs] We did that on purpose. We were hoping to make you angry before you interviewed us.

How many episodes is the final season?

PARADISE: Ten.

How does that number get determined for each Trek show? Is it the studio saying, “This is the number we want?”

ALEX KURTZMAN: Yeah, I think they’re only making 8 to 10 [episodes] of all shows, not just Trek shows, from this point forward.

You’re talking about for Paramount+?

KURTZMAN: For Paramount+. Yes, that’s my understanding.

Where Does a New Season of Star Trek Begin?
Image via Paramount

You finish the last season, you find out you’re going to get to do another season. What is the discussion like in terms of, “What is going to be our next season? What’s the arc we’re going for?” How does that all work behind the scenes?

PARADISE: Well, we always start with our characters, and where did they end last season and where do we want them to go this season? In those kinds of discussions, a lot of things start to come out thematically in terms of things that feel thematically resonant across those different characters, the things that we want to explore. In the midst of all of that, we are also figuring out the big ideas for the season. So, thematically this season, we’re exploring questions of purpose and meaning, which felt like a natural extension coming off of the DMA and out of COVID and the Season 4 stuff. “What is next for our characters?” That felt like an organic place to go. And just in the midst of talking about all of that, it kind of organically leads to questions of, “Who are the antagonists for the season? What is the thing that our heroes are doing this season?”

Coming into Season 5 we knew that we wanted to do a bit of a tonal shift. We wanted to lead with a bit more action and adventure, and make it slightly lighter than earlier seasons. That’s where the idea for a quest came from. And those are organic conversations that all feed into one another as we’re figuring out what we want the season to look like. We really do a lot of work up front breaking out just the high level of what the season will be before we start diving into the individual episodes.

‘The Next Generation’ Inspired ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Season 5
One TNG episode paved the way for the Discovery crew.

This season connects to Star Trek: The Next Generation, which of course makes me very happy. When you do something like that, how did that come about, and ultimately, who makes the decision, like, “You’re allowed to do this?” Is it you? Is it the studio? How does that decision get figured out?

PARADISE: Well, in terms of where it comes from, we had actually been interested in the episode, “The Chase.” It’s something that has stuck with many of us from TNG just because it has such big ideas, big things that it’s exploring — where does life come from? It was this single episode that explores these big things and then kind of moves on to the next episode, and it kind of lends itself to so many questions of, “Well, then what happened? What do we do then?” So we were actually looking at that and considering folding some of that into Season 4, but as we got into Season 4, we realized with the 10-C, there was just so much story, it was too much happening, and it didn’t quite feel organic. When we came into Season 5 and started looking at where our characters were and where they were going to go over the course of the season, and what Burnham was exploring with respect to meaning and what’s next and all of that, it really felt like that progenitor story as a quest felt like the perfect place to live thematically.

Then in terms of who allows us to do that, I mean, we talk about it and Alex says yes. Then, I don’t know, do people above and beyond that…?

KURTZMAN: No. There’s always a big conversation about whether or not that’s something in canon. What you never want to do is just throw in an Easter egg to throw it in with no real reason. That is, I think, the worst mistake because it starts to feel like fan service and has the exact opposite effect of what you want. In this particular case, it’s the root of the season, and it sets the season forward, and it asks a very fundamental question that becomes the question that we set out to answer for the season. So, from that perspective, it was the right choice.

At the studio, how does it actually work? Obviously, you are near the top of the food chain on Star Trek. Who do you talk to at Paramount+ in terms of working out budgets or working out what they want for Star Trek, which you then do? How is that structure figured out?

KURTZMAN: It’s a communal conversation, meaning I talked to the head of the studio, David Stapf, who’s been incredibly supportive from the beginning, from Discovery’s launch. Then we go, and we talk to the Paramount+ folks, and we tell them, “Here’s what we’re thinking. In order to get to this show, we’re going to need to start planning, really, two years ahead, which means you have to start putting things in development.” It’s actually a small group of people. And then once you figure out what show everybody wants to make, then it becomes a question of what it costs to make it.

Related ‘Star Trek: Discovery’s Connection to ‘The Next Generation’ Explained …And it involves a new crew.

I’m assuming you have a number for the budget for all 10 episodes. How does it work in terms of figuring out where and when you want to deploy additional resources, knowing you can only spend so much here and there?

PARADISE: I think it depends on the individual episode. So, for example, our premieres and finales have always tended to be a little bit bigger than pattern. We have a pattern budget, which is the number that we want to hit for any given episode. Because our premiere and finales are typically larger because we want to launch with a bang and end with a bang, we just know that if we go over the pattern in the episode, or in a particular area of the episode, that in later episodes we’re gonna need to make that up. So, it’s really a matter of just making sure that we are diligent about that and keeping track along the way, so that by the end of the season we have hit our pattern for all of the episodes, even if one or more went over.

Bottleneck Episodes Are Actually Beneficial to Television
“It’s an essential part of it.”

How much in the writers’ room are you thinking, “It would be great, because we want to go big in two episodes, we really need a flashlight episode in Episode 6. That way we can take that money and use it somewhere else?”

PARADISE: We’re very thoughtful about that. For example, going into any season, I don’t even need to know what the season is about to know that our premiere and our finale are probably going to be bigger, because that’s just how we tend to do it. So we always go in kind of knowing that. Once we start getting budget information, we get a sense of how much bigger the premiere will be, and then we just know, “Here’s how much we have to make up along the way.” We’re diligent about making sure that if we need to do a bottle episode, we do a bottle episode.

Flashlights.

PARADISE: We do flashlights, and no one gets to change their costumes suddenly. [Laughs]

I’m a huge Star Trek fan. If you watch Next Generation, every season there’s a flashlight episode, or something that requires just sitting in one stage, just them talking, you know what I mean? And you know that the money’s gonna be deployed somewhere else.

KURTZMAN: No, it’s an essential part of it. In fact, I think from a dramatic perspective, it’s great because it forces you to tell stories that are just focused on character, nothing else. If you say, “Sorry, you don’t get any explosions this episode. You don’t get anything, any of the bells and whistles, you just have to write people in a room,” it forces your brain into a different space than you’re usually in, which is a great thing if you’re doing it right. It’s a great thing for character.

How ‘The Twilight Zone’ and ‘Twin Peaks’ Changed the Television Frontier

If you could only watch one TV show for the rest of your life, what TV show would it be, and why?

PARADISE: I might say The Twilight Zone, because it’s one of those shows where there are different tonal elements in all the episodes. It did such a wonderful job of reflecting what was happening in society at times. It’s an incredible mix of character work and genre, and just profound questions that it would explore. I remember growing up on that and just loving it. And every Thanksgiving they would have Twilight Zone marathons, and I would just sit and watch The Twilight Zone for hours and hours on end. I have The Twilight Zone companion at home. [Laughs] It’s really wonderful, compact storytelling, and I think it endures for a reason.

It also led to where you’re sitting.

PARADISE: Yes, that too. I mean, I don’t think you can overlook the importance of that show in all of these.

100%. What about you?

KURTZMAN: Twin Peaks for me, which is weirdly very Twilight Zone adjacent. Twin Peaks made me want to make television. It just changed my understanding of what television could be. I remember seeing the premiere of the episode at a screening at LACMA when I was growing up. I was in high school, and I didn’t understand what I was watching because at that point, television was cops, doctors, lawyers, right? And so you see that show, and he’s just blowing up everything you understand about TV. It is endlessly entertaining to me, and the more you watch it, the more you begin to see that it’s a case study on all the things that should be done on television, and then all the things that shouldn’t be done on television when networks come in and start mandating certain things that sort of break the rules that was fundamentally so wonderful about an idea. So, I just think it’s an amazing, amazing piece of art.

Related Kyle MacLachlan Ushered in a New Era of Cool Detective in ‘Twin Peaks’ Kyle MacLachlan is a damn fine detective in ‘Twin Peaks.’

I think, also, a lot of people don’t realize the context of time of when it was on, just like you said.

KURTZMAN: People don’t get it. It was funny, we had a whole conversation this week in the writers’ room about it because a lot of the writers’ assistants, who are of a totally different generation, just had no frame of reference for Twin Peaks. And so somebody, one of the writers’ assistants, asked, “Why should I watch? Why should I watch the show? What’s so special about it?” And I said, “You’ve got to understand context, which is impossible for you to understand given the fact that you didn’t live through it, but there was nothing like that that had ever existed. It was the first thing ever. And every show that you love now…” You can name 20, 30 of them. It was funny because we just finished Season 4 of True Detective, and I said, “There is no Season 4 of True Detective without Twin Peaks. It doesn’t exist.” I mean, I can name 10 shows right now that don’t exist without Twin Peaks. And so I think when he saw that, he went, “Oh my god, that’s right. I didn’t understand it. I apologize.”

Star Trek Fire Round With Alex Kurtzman
Image via SXSW

As the person near the focal point of Star Trek, I do have a few individual questions for you, if you don’t mind. Just like Discovery, I’m a big fan of Strange New Worlds. I know you’re filming Season 3. How’s that going?

KURTZMAN: It’s going great.

Anything you want to tease?

KURTZMAN: No. [Laughs]

Image via Paramount+

Got it. I am also a fan of Lower Decks. I think that Mike [McMahan] does such a great job with that. Do you know if Paramount’s planning on renewing that? Do you know if it’s near the end of its run? What can you say?

KURTZMAN: I don’t. What I can tell you is that I think we’ve had five amazing seasons. If it’s five amazing seasons then that’s amazing. The fact is that five seasons of anything in the streaming universe is almost unheard of at this point. It’s been such a delightful show. Mike, the whole staff, everybody on it — amazing. Tawny Newsome, who obviously plays Mariner on the show, is also in our Starfleet writers’ room, and so it feels like the spirit of that show has somehow also migrated into Starfleet in some ways. But if this turns out to be our last season I think we will all walk out heads high.

Related Filming Star Trek’s ‘Strange New Worlds’ x ‘Lower Decks’ Crossover Was a “Dream Come True” for Tawny Newsome Newsome shared a sweet story about co-star Jack Quaid, her hopes for Mariner in Season 5, and spoke about working on ‘Starfleet Academy.’

Speaking of Starfleet Academy, not like I wasn’t going to ask about it, have you started casting?

KURTZMAN: We haven’t started casting the kids.

Have you revealed when it takes place on the Star Trek timeline?

KURTZMAN: Not to you, no.

[Laughs] Right. Exactly.

PARADISE: Actually, to everyone but you. [Laughs]

100%. So is it gonna be another 10-episode show?

KURTZMAN: Yeah.

Is it like a six-month shoot, a nine-month shoot?

KURTZMAN: Yeah. It could end up not airing until 2026. We don’t know. Just building the sets alone is a massive endeavor, then six months of shooting, then six to eight months of post. If you recall, there was all this noise around Season 1 and Season 2 of Discovery because the streaming service, they were like, “Oh, it’s a cop show.” I’m like, “No, you don’t understand. It’s eight months of visual effects turnaround, and we’re not gonna rush that.” So, it’ll come out, but it’ll come out when it’s done.

Related ‘Absentia’ Co-Creator Gaia Violo Working on ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Spin-Off Series for Paramount+ The ‘Star Trek’ domination of Paramount+ continues.

One of the main issues, and I talk about this with everyone at every streamer, is I don’t understand how they don’t keep writers’ rooms going all the time because it’s like, get the scripts ready so at least if they green light, you can try to go as soon as possible.

KURTZMAN: We’re actually starting to have that conversation now. There’s a million reasons to do it. It’s not just that it keeps things fresh, but it also saves an enormous amount of money for your budget.

Absolutely. That’s why Netflix, with Avatar [the Last Airbender], just renewed two seasons. It’s great.

KURTZMAN: Yeah. You’re sitting here holding stages and you’re paying for those stages and nothing’s happening. Sometimes it takes four to six months to renew a show. The case that we’ve been making is if you take four to six months that’s just money off the screen and you’re burning money. Everybody hears it. Everybody understands. There’s no debate about it.

I know you haven’t cast the kids, but what can you tease about the cast and the protagonists on the show?

KURTZMAN: This is my first official Starfleet Academy question. There are a lot of different kids from a lot of different places. Some of them want to be there, some of them don’t want to be there. It’s gonna be a fundamental reinforcement about all the things we love about Starfleet in general. You always want to ask yourself, “Why this show now?” I think that one of the big things that certainly my 17-year-old son is facing, which is kind of a fundamental Star Trek question, is, “How did we get here? How has this generation inherited the mistakes from the previous generation? And what are we gonna do to fix it to build that optimistic future that is Roddenberry’s essential vision?” That is very much going to be at the heart of Starfleet Academy.

One of the reasons why I’m excited for the show is because Star Trek cannot exist with just aiming at the older fans. You have to bring in new people. One of the reasons why Prodigy is great, and one of the reasons why I’m looking forward to Academy is because you can go after, maybe,15 to 19-year-olds. Do you know what I mean?

KURTZMAN: I do. So here’s the thing, I couldn’t agree with you more. I will also say, and I’m always very vocal about this with the studio, you can’t do that to the exclusion of OG fans. You have to make sure that you are also pleasing people who have been around and are die-hard TOS fans, die-hard Next Gen fans, whatever iteration of Trek is yours. You cannot alienate those people. You actually also have to invite them to the tent. So the challenge is how do you do that while also bringing in Trek to a new generation of fans that have no experience with those shows, has never watched those shows? So you need to make a show that you can drop into if you don’t know anything about Star Trek, but also a show that you can get a tremendous amount out of if you have all of that canonical history.

Image via Paramount+

One of the things about the Academy is that you only go to Star Trek Academy for so many years. So, hypothetically you get to run for four seasons — do you see it that each season you would essentially be bringing in new people and people would be graduating, or are you aiming for the whatever-amount of years? Do you see what I mean?

KURTZMAN: Of course I see what you mean. [Laughs] We talk about it every day. Without spoiling anything, what I’ll tell you is I think the structure and the construction of the show is going to allow for both of those things to happen.

Do you know when you’re going to announce the cast, or no?

KURTZMAN: It’ll be a while. We haven’t actually started the casting process, essentially. We’ve started generally for some of the adult characters. We haven’t even started with the kids.

New episodes of Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 release every Thursday on Paramount+.

Watch on Paramount