What’s the trick to exploding and rebuilding Star Trek so that new fans embrace it and Trekkies don’t snub it?

“Render onto Caesar what is Caesar’s, everybody from the older generation should be incorporated into the new generation, there should always be respect for both and yet it always has to forge new ground,” says Star Trek: Discovery EP-scribe and director Alex Kurtzman on his secret sauce for dusting off and refurbishing the 53-year old franchise for the small screen.

“The plan is multiple shows,” Kurtzman confirmed to both Deadline Genre editor Geoff Boucher and I on his grand plans to have a Star Trek series on CBS All Access at any given point in time in the future, each one distinct.

“It takes really a year from writing to finished product, sort of like animation,” said Kurtzman. VFX on a Star Trek show can take seven months, while a new set can take four-to-five months of construction time. “I have to plan two or three years out from now,” says the EP when it comes to creating a new Star Trek show.

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On tonight’s Crew Call, Kurtzman provides an update on the Star Trek animated series which are in production, whether we’ll see young Spock again, the Michelle Yeoh Captain Philippa Georgiou series currently breaking story, season 3 of Discovery and directing season 2 episode 1’s “Brother”.

But most of all, Boucher and I pull out some more details on Picard.

“A lot has happened to Jean-Luc Picard in the intervening years. He had to deal with some new things, and some old things. Both things collide together and he’s made choices that he’s not necessarily feeling great about,” says Kurtzman on the new Star Trek series which is currently shooting in Los Angeles.

As the new teaser trailer indicates, “something has caused him to leave Star fleet and we will find out a lot more about what happened,” says Kurtzman about the spinoff he’s exec producing.

What’s been key and vital on Picard is having Patrick Stewart in the writers’ room (He’s an EP on the series). “He knows Jean-Luc Picard more than anybody,” says Kurtzman.

“We’re reverent of him,” adds the EP, “his opinion on what happens really matters to us. We couldn’t do this show unless he was happy about it.”