Chabon: The Present Is The Future In Star Trek: Picard
2 min read
In a new interview at Star Trek.com, Michael Chabon talked about working on Star Trek: Picard and the topics ranged from being naïve at the beginning to working with the cast including Sir Patrick Stewart.
Stewart’s input to the show was valuable and the actor wanted his new series to be relevant. “What was important to Patrick Stewart [was] looking around at the world we’re living in now,” said Chabon. “He very much let us know he wanted the story to resonate to our times. I think Patrick sensed correctly, or knew, that Star Trek from the very first season, has always squarely, directly, and head-on grappled with contemporary issues.
“I mean, science fiction, people think it’s about the future. It isn’t. Science fiction is about the present. It always has been. Science fiction holds a mirror up to the present…a distorting mirror up to the present. It exaggerates certain features or traits that we see in our world around us now. It extrapolates from them [and] it pushes them to their limits, and Star Trek always fearlessly did that.
“From the very beginning, it was very much part of Gene Roddenberry‘s modus operandi, stated in the original documents that led to the creation of Star Trek and that’s still what Star Trek can do today and they continue to do that over the course of subsequent shows.
“One of my favorite episodes of any Star Trek ever is the episode of Deep Space Nine, Far Beyond the Stars... [It] squarely takes on the subject of race and racism in America, not in the future, in the past, in a really interesting way, but in a way that also clearly resonates on many levels with science fiction fandom as it currently exists or as it existed when that episode of Deep Space Nine was made. You know, that’s what Star Trek‘s for, in addition to all the other things that it may be for.
“…That’s all Patrick was really reminding us to do.”
See the video here.
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