Another stop for Alex Kurtzman’s recent media blitz promoting Star Trek: Discovery included participating in Variety’s CES Summit in Las Vegas earlier today. Variety has posted their summary and the full video of the 27-minute long panel, which you can watch below. The steward of all things Star Trek for CBS talked about the Picard show, Discovery season two, Lower Decks, and more. We have pulled out some of the highlights.

KURTZMAN ON DISCOVERY SEASON 2

Why Spock never mentioned Michael is fundamental to Discovery season two

The mystery of the red angel and seven bursts has been shown to be a prominent part of the second season of Star Trek: Discovery, but Kurtzman actually pointed to another mystery as being even more important:

“We set up a mystery in season one. How come Spock – one of the most beloved characters in all of Star Trek history, let alone the world and the universe – has never mentioned his sister Michael Burnham. It was a big mystery. And I think I knew inherently that the answer to that wasn’t going to be one or two episodes. It was going to be a full season and you were really going to have to dive deep into that story and into that relationship and what happened between them. There is a lot of friction between them.” “It was really, for me, the storyline of season two. They work out their relationship agains the backdrop of a larger mystery and it turns out that if they don’t fix their relationship, they are not going to solve the mystery.”

Building the family of the Discovery bridge crew

Kurtzman also expanded on how the theme of family weaves into the new season:

“It is for me a story about this bridge crew family that has finally become a family, because season one was really about coming together as a family and season two is about the family working together to solve this mystery – the literal and figurative families – and ultimately the story challenges the family with whether or not it is going to be able to stay together.”

Incorporating fan feedback

During the CES discussion, the executive producer of Discovery said that he does keep up with fan debates and reads reviews and tries to internalize critiques to learn from them. He even welcoming negative feedback, saying:

“It’s a very vocal fanbase. It took me a while to understand that the debate that some people love it and some people hate it is actually one of the great gifts of Star Trek. That, if you try and please everybody, you are going to please nobody. And that debate is democratic and wonderful.” “So, if somebody doesn’t like something and writes about it, or writes about with consistency and I see that message echoing with other people I will say “Okay, what feels resonate for me?” and what lessons do I take in how we are going to take our next steps.”

Klingon hair planned from the beginning

One area of fan feedback Kurtzman specifically highlighted was the controversy over how Klingons had no hair during the first season of Discovery. It has been revealed that Klingons in the second season will have hair, with reasoning tied into Star Trek canon. According to Kurtzman, this was actually always the plan, saying:

“There was so much debate about the Klingon hair. Why don’t the Kligons have hair? Why did you redesign the Klingons? Your life is over! Actually, Glenn Hetrick who does our prosthetics and Neville Page came up with this idea that in a time of war, the Klingons all shave their body hair. It’s a version of saying “We are committing to war” and that was the logic for them not having hair. And really through an error of omission, we realized we never made that clear in any context. People were like “These are not the Klingons!” And in season two, we were like “Let’s tell them why” and that was because it was a time of war.”

KURTZMAN ON EXPANDING STAR TREK TV UNIVERSE

New Trek shows will be unique, explore new characters, new parts of the galaxy

When talking about the fanbase for Star Trek, Kurtzman used that as a jumping off point for his approach to expanding the universe of Star Trek shows, saying:

“I think [the Star Trek fanbase] is large, and expanding actually. And that is part of why we all felt it was an opportune moment to expand the Star Trek universe, because Trek has been defined traditionally by a somewhat narrow point of view. And that point of view isn’t wrong, it is wonderful and what I love about Star Trek, but I think Trek can be so much more. So, the idea is that we can retain the essential optimism of Star Trek, but begin to tell stories in different ways about characters who you haven’t necessarily seen before and areas of the galaxy you haven’t necessarily seen before is really, really exciting.” “My hope is that through the different shows that we are doing now, and the idea being that each show has to be a totally unique prospect. You can’t get from Discovery what you are going to get from Picard or Lower Decks, each one has to be different… Each one has to be unique and specific. And when you look at what Marvel has done on television, nobody complains about too many Marvel shows. Each one is different… So, what do you put the highest premium on? Great storytelling. If each show is told well and each show is different enough, then why can’t there be more of them. That is not to say we should just throw them all out there and do bunch of random Star Trek shows. Each one needs to be unique.”

Lower Decks is not Trek and Morty

When talking about the expanding world of Star Trek shows and specifically animated shows, Kurtzman noted that while CBS All Access is the “fundamental home” for Star Trek, in the case of animation, shows aimed more for younger audiences may end up elsewhere. However, in the case of Star Trek: Lower Decks, he felt it was a good fit for All Access, and explained the approach they are taking to the show:

“The showrunner of Rick and Morty Mike McMahan came to me and said, “I want to do a show about the people in the lower decks of the space ship whose job is to take the yellow cartridge and put it in the processor and make sure the banana comes out the other side.” And I said, “You can stop pitching because that is perfect.” It’s not that we are doing Rick and Morty in the world of Star Trek, although if you watch Rick and Morty you will see that it is deeply influenced by Star Trek, which is really wonderful. It’s just a very different tone. The key is to laugh with Star Trek and not at Star Trek. And it will skew slightly more adult.”

The Picard show still needs a title

We are still learning more about the Picard show in development and in the Variety discussion, Kurtzman confirmed that the show is headed into pre-production. However, it is still missing something important, as Kurtzman revealed:

We don’t have a name for it yet. I’d love to give you an official title — there’s a lot of conversation about that right now.

Watch full discussion

There’s quite a bit more from Kurtzman, you can watch the full video interview below:

Star Trek: Discovery is available in the USA on CBS All Access. It airs in Canada on Space and streams on CraveTV. It is available on Netflix everywhere else.

Keep up with all the Star Trek: Discovery and Upcoming TV Projects news at TrekMovie.