Orci And Kurtzman: Fitting In What Fans Expect
2 min readCo-writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman had a job ahead of them when it came to including the necessary “signature bits” to make Star Trek XI feel like Star Trek.
As reported by Sci Fi Wire, it took careful thought to include important character references yet keep Star Trek XI from seeming contrived by doing so. “The key is to introduce those things in a very organic way, so that the audience doesn’t feel like, ‘Oh, this is the scene where they design it around [that bit],” explained Kurtzman. “It’s more about creating a story so that all of those things that you are hoping you will see in the characters comes out.”According to Orci and Kurtzman, the list includes elements such as McCoy’s “I’m a doctor not a …,” “an engineer struggling against a law of physics,” Kirk cheating on the Kobayashi Maru, and McCoy and Spock needling each other.
Some things didn’t make the cut. “You know, in an early draft we wanted to potentially lay down the foundation for his friendship with Carol Marcus, who ends up in the original continuity being the mother of his child,” said Orci. “In an early draft she was in, and then literally because of the nature of the introductory story and making sure that our core group of characters had the proper amount of story that they deserve, she went into the potential future draft.”
William Shatner didn’t make the cut either. “Yeah, well, the biggest is [Shatner] in the movie,” said Kurtzman. “There’s been a lot of debate about that. We just, we really tried very hard to get him in there in a way that felt organic, but the problem was that because he died in continuity, …I think it would have felt a little bit cheap, is what we all decided. And, you know, we really struggled with it, because we wrote a scene that we really loved, and, ultimately, I think it might have felt like an add-on, you know?”
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