StarfleetAcademy ‘will be funny’ according to Alex Kurtzman.
He’s also confirmed at the NYCC panel today that the writer’s room is back at work after the WGA strike.
Given the heavier #thriller background (Absentia) of one showrunner Gaia Violo, and youth supernatural CV (TheMagicians; NancyDrew) of Noga Landau the other, sounds as though Tawny Newsome is there to bring some lightness and fun.
I’m really looking forward to seeing more in the 32nd century StarTrek.
I’m also pleading 🙏 let David Cronenberg’s Kovich be involved.
I would love so much to have some of The Magicians mysterious vibe with so true humour mixed in. Glad to know that they’re going for something less earnest than the tone of Discovery for this show, it didn’t seem to be working in the Discovery episode with Tilly and the cadets.
Friendly reminder that the initial fan reaction before TNG aired was very negative.
And look how that eventually turned out.
Give the new show a chance before condemning it.
I love that newspaper clipping. Helps put a lot of things in perspective.
I’ve been trying to find a confirmation on the century it’ll be set in for forever, but I suck at finding these things. Is 32nd century setting confirmed? I’m genuinely hoping it is. So much unexplored territory there.
The original announcement referred to the Academy being re-opened after 100 years, so it’s a pretty safe bet.
Good news. Both that Starfleet Academy is greenlit, and that Tawny Newsome is one of the writers. The part of the DSC episode teasing a Starfleet Academy (DSC s4e4) came across to me as having an ABC Afterschool Special vibe. It didn’t strike me as being sustainable as a series. But, with this new information, I’m curious and hopeful about Starfleet Academy. I’m also very happy that it will be set in the 32nd century. Making room for new characters and possibilities.
“I’m also pleading 🙏 let David Cronenberg’s Kovich be involved.”
Yes! As well as Admiral Vance and Tilly as series regulars.
Always an important reminder.
More Star Trek is good, & like Lower Decks and Prodigy, which are also designed to appeal to different, younger audiences, the old fans might just find they love them too.
Many of the old TOS fans were unbearably resistant to anything but the original crew and ship, even though movies were being made about them. (They had done the same thing when TAS was in development.) It was really difficult to come to a convention between 1987 and 1990 as a TNG fan.
I haven’t been too into the new shows but it feels like a lot of humor focused stuff. I like lower decks, but I’ve heard snw is also pretty light and now this… I know Picard exists but with that over I feel like something else needs to balance it out.
SNW has light moments but they are only there to hide how extremely dark it can be. That show goes DEEP into a lot of dark topics and only adds in the joke episodes so it’s not constantly depressing.
Oh nice, I didn’t know. I should probably check it out at some point.
If you’re a long time Trek fan, definitely check out SNW. It is the best of all the new stuff for old-school fans. By a long shot.
It reminds me of DS9 in that sense. SNW season two seemed to alternate between really dark episodes and really light episodes.
I wouldn’t say SNW is light. It’s a little campy, but I think it’s close to the spirit of TOS. They deal with some really heavy issues, but also remember to add a little humor to cut the tension. The only episode I didn’t like was the musical one.
A bit worried it’ll have a heavy tonal overlap with Lower Decks and thematic overlap with LD/Prodigy.
That said, I really want Star Trek to move to literally anything other than the TOS/TNG eras, so let’s see where this goes.
Gaia Violo who wrote the pilot and is coexecutive producer was co-creator and senior writer on the thriller ‘Absentia.’
Noga Landau (sharing showrunner credit with Kurtzman) worked as a senior writer with Henry Alonso Myers (coshowrunner of SNW) when he was the showrunner of The Magicians. Then she went on to write the became showrunner of recent Nancy Drew show, giving it some supernatural vibes and storylines.
So, with those two, I was expecting a more mysterious, even thrillerish. Putting Tawny Newsome in the room will definitely lighten it up somewhat.
If Discovery is any benchmark, once the show is in production, Kurtzman will leave the day to day show running to Landau and whomever will be the supervising director EP in Toronto. He’ll review and approve scripts and be more involved in post.
At this point one has to question whether Paramount is unwilling to have women showrunners take the helm on their own. Kim and Lippoldt ended up having a guy tacked on as a 3rd coshowrunner for S31, then with all the delays, they moved on to run things successfully on their own at Netflix with ‘Sweet Tooth.’
You know what was good about 66-90’s trek? Older cast members who were role models.
We’re not going to get a good show full of teenagers.
Surely there are staff and teachers. Kind of the definition of role models I would have thought.
Hopefully. But suspect they’ll be minor characters like Pike in Star Trek (2009).
Not every Star Trek show needs to be made for you or your (our) age group. We need new shows to appeal to younger viewers and keep the franchise fresh.
I’m an old thing who watched TOS in first run in my primary grades. I have absolutely zero patience with the position you’re taking. I watch it all and don’t need to see people my age as the principal characters anymore than I did when I was six.
Shows aren’t made for the mass audience anymore, and even TNG was a bit beyond our kids when they became franchise fans as middle graders. They loved watching Voyager reruns though, demonstrating to me why it was the most successful Trek show on Netflix.
