Watch Two Of The Comic-Con Star Trek Panels
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Several more of the San Diego Comic-Con panels are currently on YouTube courtesy of the official Star Trek site.
Alex Kurtzman, Heather Kadin, Alex Kurtzman, Sonequa Martin-Green, David Ajala, Rebecca Romijn, and Ethan Peck were on the panel for the Discovery/Short Treks panel. Mike McMahan, Heather Kadin, Alex Kurtzman, Tawny Newsome, and Jack Quaid were on the panel for the Lower Decks panel.
In the Discovery panel fans found out about where Discovery will be next season, and they also heard about the new Short Treks, due out this autumn.
Alex Kurtzman began by explaining how Season Two had ended and where the show will be in the next season. “We made a pretty radical jump into the future at the end of Season Two,” he said. “We are going almost a thousand years into the future in Season Three, which is crazy…further than any Trek series has gone before. People are asking lots of questions [such as] ‘OK what the world is going to be like in the future and are you going to go dark?’ I understand all of those questions. The thing that I think that I would want to lead with is to say every conversation we have about how to create Star Trek is filtered through Roddenberry’s essential vision of optimism which can never really change because it is the spirit and soul of Trek for all of us.
Expect huge changes in Season Three. “There will be things you recognize,” said Kurtzman. “There will be things you don’t recognize. Part of the fun of it is that we get to honor canon but shake it up hugely. We are not erasing anything, so please don’t worry about that. It is all still what it was. But we do get to shake it up quite a bit. I think the fun of getting to that place of preserving that essential optimism is by testing it. Each of these shows do that in many ways. I just want to assure you all first and foremost that it’s still Star Trek and it will always be Star Trek, the way Roddenberry wanted it.”
Sonequa Martin-Green told fans that they ended up in a different place than expected. “We are not in Terralysium,” she said. “We do not land there like we planned.
“We were able to shoot in Iceland, which was fantastic. It was such a blessing. It was incredible and breathtaking. And I feel like this venture into the future is so powerful because we, as a company and also as a crew on Discovery, we became a family at the end of Season Two. And now we are forging this path that has never been forged before, boldly, I might add.”
Kurtzman explained that landing in the future means landing into trouble. “When they get to the other side of the wormhole they have big problems,” he said. “In fact, even getting to find each other may be difficult, because they may not have landed in the same place.”
He also spoke about Michael Burnham’s character and how she feels responsible for what happened. “I think what Burnham carries with her is, which is fascinating, is this tremendous responsibility of taking care of everybody. She felt she had to lead her ship through time to save all sentient life. That is a really big burden to bear. That is a lot, to explore for her character what that means and at what point is that too much to carry. She goes through a lot of changes as do all of the characters in many ways.”
But will she be captain? “…the captain will be somebody you will find out about when you watch Season Three,” said Kurtzman.
Back in the regular time frame, among those left behind are Pike, Spock, and Number One. It was announced that there would be three Short Treks featuring the three characters. Many fans have been clamoring for an actual Star Trek show featuring the trio. What does Kurtzman think about that? “There has obviously been a lot of speculation about whether Pike and Number One and Spock would get their own show,” he said. “So, I guess the question for you guys is do you want them to get their own show?
“Okay, we will think about it.”
The Discovery/Short Treks panels took half of the forty-four minutes. The second panel featured the animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks.
Enjoy the video below, courtesy of the Official Star Trek site.
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