What’s next for Star Trek: Discovery’s far-flung future? Showrunner Alex Kurtzman has a few tidbits to drop.
As shared by Trek Movie, Kurtzman shared some interesting information when he visited an online panel (via Deadline) with Sonequa Martin-Green and his fellow showrunner, Michelle Paradise.
“We’re actually exploring — we’re diving deep in to science — in the fourth season, in a kind of new and interesting way,” Kurtzman said, of the subject matter of the fourth season. Which is an interesting idea, considering how much science is and isn’t the focus of Discovery. While scientific ideas play a role here, they’re often pretty out-there ones, and big drama and plotting tends to win the day more often than not. This focus on science, then, might play into the show’s next villain. Which isn’t what you might expect.
“There have been many kinds of villains over the course of Star Trek. What happens when the villain is not actually any kind of living, breathing entity, but something else? How do you solve that problem?” Kurtzman said.
What sort of villain are we talking here? Time? Decay? Mushrooms? Whatever this new villain is, it’s going to offer new challenges, both for the futuristic Federation and for Burnham.
[referenced id=”1663671″ url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2021/01/star-trek-discoverys-co-showrunner-talks-defying-expectations-with-season-3s-big-michael-moment/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/12/xmyohrryu85a0odzl8fg-300×169.png” title=”Star Trek: Discovery’s Co-Showrunner Talks Defying Expectations With Season 3’s Big Michael Moment” excerpt=”The season three finale of Star Trek: Discovery was a big one for Michael Burnham. She had to retake the Discovery from the villain of the season, try to stop some of her closest friends from dying of radiation, and prevent kickstarting a galaxy-wide cataclysm — just to name a…”]
“The Federation is coming back together but it’s not fully back together. And so the continued mission of bringing other worlds in and meeting the criteria and standards of what it means to be a member of the Federation but also not to rob other cultures of their identity is something that we’ll explore,” Kurtzman said.
And as for Burnham, he added, “Burnham has spent a lot of time thinking she had to be one thing or the other and ended the season being rewarded with the captain’s chair for being two different things. Vance basically says, ‘You don’t have to pick. You do things your way and that’s why I want you in the chair. Because you’re always ultimately fighting for what’s right.’ Burnham is going to have to keep figuring that out. She’s going to have to keep learning what that means. Her relationship with Book will be tested in many ways, for reasons that I won’t tell you.”
Star Trek: Discovery is streaming on Netflix now.