Posted in: Paramount+, Star Trek, TV | Tagged: star trek

Star Trek: Kirsten Beyer on Weathering Fan Reactions, Thinking Forward

Star Trek writer/EP Kirsten Beyer spoke with us about her journey in the franchise since "Discovery," reacting to fan discourse, and more.

Whenever you have a franchise as enduring as Star Trek, with its nearly 60-year history, you inevitably encounter bumps along the way, especially among the fan base, with certain aspects resistant to change. When "The Next Generation" premiered in syndication in 1987, there was significant pushback from fans of "The Original Series," despite the spinoff being set 75 years after the NBC series and coming directly from "TOS" creator Gene Roddenberry. There was doubt that TNG would survive beyond the first couple of seasons. Still, fortunately, it lasted seven, which became the standard for the franchise, including the syndicated Deep Space Nine and its return to network TV in Voyager on UPN, as well as the underachieving Enterprise, which lasted four, ending its consecutive runs on TV in 2005.

When the franchise returned to TV in the streaming era, starting with Discovery in 2017 for Paramount+, Kirsten Beyer became one of the creative pillars of the franchise, which expanded into three other live-action series, including Picard, Strange New Worlds, and the upcoming Starfleet Academy. Coming from the heels of the audio drama Star Trek: Khan's finale, Beyer spoke to Bleeding Cool about navigating the franchise in the current era, how she's handled fan discourse in the eight years working in the franchise, welcoming fans who embrace the new direction, and not looking back; and if she had any thoughts at Paramount abandoning the Kelvin universe for its next Star Trek film.

Star Trek: Kirsten Beyer on Embracing the Torch, Inviting Anyone on Board for the Franchise Ride

How much have external reactions and content influenced your work? Do you tend to stick to the course or adjust things depending on how things are going?

I'm very receptive to reactions. I got used to doing that with my books, because there was a very small community of people who read the books and wanted to talk about them. This was in the early days of the internet, so we could all talk on message boards and whatever and go deeper into questions. That is not to say that I weigh every reaction, positive or negative, in the same way. What I have found over the years is that there are certain fans out there, certain people who respond, whether in articles that they write, or now it's in podcasts, interviews, or whatever that they do on YouTube where I can see the mind at work, the way they are coming into the universe, and the things that the universe gives them and means to them.

What is expanded is my sense of "these are things that are important." It's not just the stuff I'm interested in with Star Trek. There are other very cool things that other people are interested in, and there are ways to incorporate them. It's not a specific story point so much as a sensibility, if that makes any sense. I pay as much attention as I have time to. I'm very curious to see responses, but the extreme would be: Somebody didn't like that; therefore, I must never do that again.

Sometimes people don't like things because it's not their thing and not for them. I'm very aware of that now in a way I wasn't before. You can't please everyone with any story that you tell, and chasing that fan response is a fool's errand, truly. I do this stuff because I'm super well-versed in the universe, and there are a lot of ways that I feel like this universe serves us well for telling stories about things that I'm interested in. Just like not every story is made for me, not every story I make is for everyone, so I fully expect that there are going to be those who don't respond to it. When there are things that people call out, sometimes it's like, "Well, I can see why you would feel that way. However, there were nine other things that you know actually spoke to that, that you didn't get. It doesn't mean you're wrong, it doesn't mean I'm wrong, it just means it's not hitting for you." We can all like different things, and that's okay.

Hypothetical question: I know you have no control over it now with the announcement that they're starting back from scratch with the new Star Trek movie. Do you have any ideas of where you might want to take it if you're hitting the reset button once more?

No, I don't think I'm sure I would call it "hitting the reset button." Now I don't know. I'm not connected to that part of it at all, so I have no inside knowledge of that. We have now watched Star Trek evolve over 16 years in lots of different ways, and the only goal is to make sure that it is speaking to our time when we are making it. There is nothing specific that I want to do that we're not already doing. There are other things that I see that are possible, obviously. I think the exciting part is that whenever you come to this, there are always more in one direction or another, and I think we just keep making it, to keep exploring what's happening now through the lens of this and the perspective of this incredible thing that got started sixty years ago.

All episodes of Star Trek: Khan, which features the voices of Naveen Andrews, Wrenn Schmidt, George Takei, Tim Russ, Sonya Cassidy, Olli Haaskivi, Maury Sterling, Mercy Malick, and Zuri Washington, are available from your favorite podcasting platform and YouTube. Starfleet Academy, which also stars Holly Hunter, Sandro Rosta, Karim Diané, Kerrice Brooks, George Hawkins, Bella Shepard, Zoë Steiner, Rebecca Quin, and Paul Giamatti, premieres January 15th on Paramount+.

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