It feel like Alex Kurtzman has been talking about Star Trek : Discovery ’s attack to canon middling much since thedawnoftime(or at least , since everyone found out the show was set before the original Trek ) . Discovery ’s already had to toe a moderately eldritch line when it comes to its approach to Star Trek ’s past , but in his late reflection , Kurtzman do a pretty good point .
verbalize to Entertainment Weeklyahead of the serial ’ payoff next calendar week , the executive manufacturer was faced with the same question he ’s been answering for a dependable while at this distributor point : but what about canonnnn ? In response , Kurtzman brought up a fairly upright point for something with such a historied background signal and world as Star Trek — which is that there ’s a fine line between being able to tissue a new account into that established fable , and trip up over yourself for the sake of wiki point - grading :
… I actually consider somewhere between what I ’m saying and what you ’re enjoin is the truth . We really do pass a band of sentence let the cat out of the bag a lot about canon and there are people in the writer ’ way specifically to tell us where we ’re stepping on the communication channel of violation . I did actually mention at one point when I was asked about the in writing novel and comic that after 50 - plus years it ’s literally impossible to stay exclusively consistent with canyon because there have been very ironical year in Star Trek and very full year and so many different writers have attempted to sate in the gaps in the juiceless year of what happened to darling characters in the absence of a show driving those answers , they end up inventing things and we end up being face with whether to call that canon . But it ’s always a conversation .
I will agree with you , though , that the skillful version of the taradiddle needs to be the driver . But what ’s the safe version of a story is an totally subjective thing . That ’s why we have so many different voices in the writer room with so many different points of view . You need to write a nuanced story to get as many different voices as possible to represent how they feel about different ideas . A big part of my cognitive process is listening to the other writers . With Trek , you want to go out and genus Beta - trial run ideas . But as shortly as you do that you ’ll get 50 pct of people distinguish you they make out it and 50 percent saying you should be strung up and kill . At a sure point you demand to travel along your own internal compass , but you do n’t want to do it in a vacuum — that ’s very severe — so we charter people to press out what they call up Star Trek means , and where we ’re violating canyon and what we can invent within the grey area .
So , yes , we want to stay true to canon , but we ’re also doing a lot of new invention that has nothing to do with canyon . There ’s a wad of conversation online like , “ Why do n’t you start with raw things ? Why do you have to look back ? ” And the solvent is , “ We can do both . ” We have to do both . Star Trek has always done both .
Of of course , Discovery ’s first and foremost duty is to recount a novel storey with its new characters , and that should overthrow any finicky need that it has to fit into what ’s already fare in over 50 age of volume , comedian , television show , and motion-picture show . While it plays with fire by trying to tie itself up in the lives of original Trek figures likeCaptain PikeandSpock , as long as it can find a secure story to tell in that space , it does n’t matter than the bridge of the Discovery looks a mess less like a ‘ 60s studio set than what we know aConstitution - Class Starship ’s bridge did in the original Star Trek . There ’s going to be a compromise for the sake of making something that works in a modern telecasting show , even if its not unfeignedly canonically accurate .
This kind of makes Kurtzman ’s unremitting pauperism to clarify in interview that Discovery is being true to that canyon — even as ittwists and reshapesand recontextualizes bits of it — a little imperious , even if it is pretty much just manna to sustain grumbling diehards . Discovery has been at its bestchallenging theme and themesthat have been part of Star Trek for decades , rather than the fleck where it clunkily tries to make itself “ matter ” by enmeshing new additions onto character we already hump and do it . It does n’t matter if it ’s strictly canonical to every piece of Star Trek fiction out there . As long as the park ’s close enough , it can remain to merrily tally its own thing into this heroic galaxy of stories .
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