Posted in: Star Trek, TV | Tagged: star trek, strange new worlds

Star Trek: SNW Showrunners on Post-Series Future, TOS Possibilities

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds EPs Akiva Goldsman & Henry Alonso Myers on ending the series and teasing expanding the TOS characters' future.

As Paramount+ announced the end of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds after five seasons, with season three set to premiere, it seems like executive producers/creators Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers might have some big plans in store for the franchise, speaking at the Tribeca Film Festival to discuss how SNW will end. As SNW conceptualizes the original U.S.S. Enterprise we never saw from franchise creator Gene Roddenberry had for his The Original Series, Paramount+ brought that vision to life 56 years after the unaired pilot "The Cage". While Leonard Nimoy's Mr. Spock would be the only character to remain in his position by the time TOS was recast with William Shatner's James T. Kirk at the helm of the Enterprise instead of Jeffrey Hunter's Christopher Pike, Goldsman, Myers, and co-creator Jenny Lumet saw new possibilities in expanding canon.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds EPs Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers on How They Plan to Land the Enterprise with The Original Series Possibilities

When it comes to ending SNW, "One of the things you learn as a TV writer is that all shows end; it's just a question of when. So you don't look at it like tomorrow it's gone… So the whole point is to go out each day trying to do it as well as you can and make it as good as you can. Don't think about, 'Oh, maybe I'll get another season tomorrow.' Like, really go for it. And we have treated every season like that. It is a blessing to be able to do five seasons. The original show got to do three, and this is more than that, which is amazing," Myers said (via TrekMovie.com). "So the real thing for us that I think is important is that we get to do the show and the ending. And it's not really an ending, but the ending to the series as good as possible–as good as we would like it as fans of this genre, as fans of Star Trek. We want to make a show that we would like."

SNW saw Anson Mount as the fourth actor to play Pike in the current canon, taking over Majel Barrett Roddenberry's role of his first officer Lt. Cmdr. Una Chin-Riley (aka Number One) is Rebecca Romijn, and Ethan Peck took over Nimoy's role as Lt. Spock. All originated their roles on Star Trek: Discovery season two, and as the series leapt into the 32nd century from season three on, SNW resumed the franchise's path on the pre-TOS timeline.

Aside from the core trio, we've also seen cast members like Celia Rose Gooding, Martin Quinn, and Paul Wesley take over the roles made famous by Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, and Shatner as Uhura, Scotty, and Kirk. The two full seasons and the shortened, six-episode fifth and final season make plenty of time to introduce Hikaru Sulu and Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy. Goldsman broke down how SNW's premise builds on TOS's original premise of the five-year mission. "We made a promise to ourselves that we would arc the show into ['Star Trek: The Original Series']. And so we sort of thought, 'Well, five-year mission, okay, can we do five years?' And we are really doing almost five—well four and a little more than half [Season 5 is set for six episodes instead of the usual ten]," he said. "And we needed to be able to tell that story. Because right now [the characters] are in mid-stage development. How do they become who they are? What happens to some of them? Those are questions that we knew we needed to answer and promised to answer. And so that's our five-year plan."

Goldsman then offered, "And then we run into 'TOS.' But they're not dying. And we have those sets…" Just because certain characters are safe, like Pike, Spock, Uhura, Kirk, Scotty, M'Benga, and Chapel, doesn't mean others like Pelia (Carol Kane), Ortegas (Melissa Navia), and La'an (Christina Chong) are. One possibility Goldman is suggesting is that the TOS adventures could continue as SNW ends in a new series, since the original NBC series only lasted three seasons, which could act as a TOS revival series to continue that "five-year mission." What's to say one season represents one year passing in the Star Trek universe? Keep in mind that from the time TOS ended in 1969, there wasn't another live-action project in the franchise until 1979's franchise feature debut, The Motion Picture, which was supposed to be Roddenberry's original concept for the TV series revival, Phase II. The possibilities are endless, but for now, we'll have to wait until season three of Strange New Worlds when it premieres on Paramount+ on July 17th.

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