With Star Trek: Picard already renewed for a second season, Star Trek: Discovery heading into its third, Star Trek shorts mini-episodes, and the upcoming Below Decks animated series from Rick and Morty writer Mike McMahan, Trek is going through a serious revival.
And things are about to get even busier, as Trek bosses Heather Kadin and Alex Kurtzman revealed on the Star Trek: Picard press tour. For one thing, there’s a series coming up all about Michelle Yeoh’s character Philippa Georgiou, called Section 31. And apparently there are two more live-action shows in the works.
“[Section 31 is] in active development,” Kadin said. “So that’s obviously a huge priority; Michelle character is so unique, and you’ve never seen that before.”
"Again, it has to fall under the guise of, ‘is this [show] a unique space we haven’t explored yet? And then also, the animated shows [Lower Decks and the untitled Nickelodeon project] are also really going to provide that too. For someone like me, who gets to work on these shows—and then two nights a week, go watch a cut of Lower Decks—it’s a blast. So I hope we continue to find those new avenues."
“There are two more live-action shows that haven’t been announced yet,” added Kurtzman. Man, that’s a lot of Trek.
What kinds of new shows could we be in for? Well, Trek fans have definitely taken a shine to Anson Mount as Captain Pike and Ethan Peck as a young Spock on Star Trek: Discovery. I could see an Enterprise show set during that timeline (before Kirk took command of the vessel) being well-received.
Kurtzman hinted that the two unannounced shows might be pulled from Short Treks, which just aired its second season finale, “Children of Mars.”
“I’ve loved the Short Treks because they’re a really interesting testing ground both for different kinds of stories, and also different talent,” Kurtzman said. “Breaking new directors, new writers, younger writers, composers, and we’ve taken one of the composers and now put them on one of the series. So it’s very interesting and it’s been educational for us.”
"I love making them. I think there’s something so satisfying just from a pure creative point of view of figuring out how to tell a full story in ten to fifteen minutes or sometimes even less. I go back to the Pixar shorts — the shorts make you cry in two minutes. That’s a talent. That’s a real art to doing that. They tell very emotional, very fulsome stories in such a short period of time, so it’s just another way of telling really interesting Star Trek stories."
The future of Star Trek seems cemented. Let’s hope Picard lives up to the hype — which I’m sure it will — so CBS/Viacom will have the confidence to boldly go where the series has never gone before.
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h/t TrekCore