WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS

STAR TREK: DISCOVERY - BOLDLY GOES WHERE NO STAR TREK SHOW HAS GONE BEFORE –ALMOST 1,000 YEARS INTO THE FUTURE. ALEX KURTZMAN EXPLAINS WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THE NEW, EXPANDED TREK UNIVERSE

- DARREN SCOTT

WHEN SFX BEAMED DOWN TO Vancouver in January to speak with the cast and crew of Star Trek: Discovery – all spoilers, sadly, embargoed! – we were blissfully unaware as to what 2020 had in store. Fitting, then, that what became the delayed third season catapults the crew of the USS Discovery into the great unknown.

Catching up with showrunner Alex Kurtzman several months later – following announcements, virtual convention appearances, Star Trek Day and so on – just where does a global pandemic leave the Star Trek Universe?

“Things are just starting to shoot again,” he explains. “We would have been in production already on Picard, but we couldn’t be because of Covid. It’s pushed our Discovery and Strange New Worlds dates just a little bit, but I think we’re actually planning on staying on track for those. By the time they shoot, we will have innovated with a couple shows, and we will know where we are. And we will be a little bit more down with a process.

“So I’m hopeful… it’s a very systematised, militarised operation now, that’s really rigorously being constructed around making sure that everybody is safe and that the sets function in pods so that if one person is sick, it does not necessarily infect the entire group.”

TREKKING AHEAD

He says there’s no announced date as yet for the Pike/Spock spin-off, but things are looking good for the new show already.