As genre franchises go, Star Trek has one of the longest legacies. With CBS preparing to merge with Viacom, a move that will unite the movies and TV series under the same roof via Paramount, some have suggested that it could become a new Marvel Universe for the conglomerate. Right now, there are two separate movies reportedly in the works from Noah Hawley and Quentin Tarantino. Meanwhile, the Star Trek television universe, overseen by Alex Kurtzman, serves as the centerpiece of the originals slate at CBS All Access, the network’s streaming platform.

Unlike Netflix and Amazon, which whip out fresh series at a head-turning rate, CBS All Access has moved slowly, debuting a small number of original programs each year, including The Good Wife’s sterling spin-off The Good Fight, Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone reboot and the glossy Marc Cherry drama Women Who Kill. But the Trek-verse has been the streamer’s secret weapon ever since the 2017 launch of Star Trek: Discovery. It kept doubling down on the bet with short-form series Star Trek: Short Treks and Picard (premiering in January, starring Patrick Stewart), and several more in the works like the animated Star Trek: Lower Decks and Section 31, a series that has Michelle Yeoh reprising her character from Discovery.

“We're in the middle of a merger, and there are a lot of assets that this joint company has that I don't know entirely how that will [come] together,” Julie McNamara, CBS All Access executive vice president of original content, told me last month. “I know that streaming and CBS All Access specifically are a huge priority for the company,” she said. As are originals. “The people who come for originals are by far the stickiest subscribers.... For something like the Star Trek universe, we are putting a ton of resources toward it and we're using serialized storytelling [so] that show is sort of premium version in that universe.” We were talking during the Women in Entertainment Summit in Los Angeles, where she and Kurtzman spoke to me about CBS All Access plans for Star Trek as well as Kurtzman’s other upcoming projects for the platform, like his political miniseries about James Comey, based on the FBI director’s memoir and starring Jeff Daniels and his adaptation of The Man Who Fell to Earth, which he will make with Jenny Lumet.

Vanity Fair: Tell me about the development process of Picard. Did the fact that you were creating it for CBS All Access change how you conceived of it?

Kurtzman: Julie and I were very excited about the idea of bringing Patrick back. But... he did not want to come back. He said he was never going to play that part again. So we entered into that knowing Patrick is going to have a major, major voice in whatever this becomes if we're going to get him to say yes. He doesn't want to repeat what he's done already, which was by the way, the best bar he could have put forward. The show is inspired by Next Gen, and it's written by people who grew up loving it but it is very much not Next Gen. It feels like a modern adult drama in the world of Star Trek, which has not actually really happened before. It's also singularly about a man in his emeritus years and there are very few franchises that would allow you to have an almost 80 year old lead and tell his story.