Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
As Star Trek: Discovery heads into its midseason finale Sunday, the series has wrapped production on its technically ambitious, socially progressive and enormously entertaining first season, but the work isn’t finished yet. The producers are finishing post-production on the final six episodes that will begin in January and beginning to talk about storylines for Season 2.
And, as the series airs on CBS All Access in the United States and simultaneously on Netflix everywhere else in the world, the cast and crew have been busy promoting it with a global press tour that’s more akin to what you’d see for a worldwide film premiere than a for a typical TV show.
“The whole world is getting the show at the same time, so Netflix viewers are completely up to speed,” said Star Trek: Discovery co-showrunner Aaron Harberts when I spoke to him by phone late last week. “It’s been interesting to see audiences here right with us in terms of the episodes they’ve seen.”
DECIDER: Has the press tour been mostly business, or have you had some pleasure time?
AARON HARBERTS: Star Trek business leaves very little room for pleasure at the moment. [Laughs.]
Has Netflix aired the same episodes that we’ve seen in the United States, or are they at a different point?
They’re actually up to date. That’s what’s so phenomenal about launching the show this way. We were just at the Lucca Comics and Games festival — it’s their version of Comic-Con — at this incredible theater in Italy where Puccini began his opera career, and now we’re in London for some press events and some fan events here.
Les Moonves, the CEO of CBS, said Showtime and CBS broadcast both wanted the show when he made the decision to put it on CBS All Access. How do you think the show would have been different on Showtime or CBS broadcast?
The feels more CBS than Showtime. The shows I’ve loved on Showtime — like Nurse Jackie and Californication — are edgy and risky and deal with subject matter that’s provocative and even graphic. We wanted to make sure that Discovery would be family-friendly. It may not be appropriate for 10- or 11-year olds, but it’s definitely something teen-agers can watch with parents. Star Trek shows have been handed down — from big brother to little sister, from father to daughter — like an heirloom. We were excited to get the opportunity to blaze a trail with CBS All Access.
It feels like a hybrid of a premium-network show and a broadcast show. Structurally, you take more latitude than you’d be able to take on CBS.
The structure of the show is definitely different from what you’d see on CBS network. We’re telling long-arc storylines that have to do with the war and the exploration mission, and the story needs to be seen in order. Shows on CBS, which are generally more encapsulated and allow you to more easily miss an episode or watch them out of order. I don’t know that the lead of a series on network TV could have been a mutineer. The research bears out that broadcast audiences want their leads to be likable and competent, and we broke the mold for that. I don’t know that we would have had the same freedom to do that on broadcast.
Would you characterize the Vulcan extremist from a few episodes back as racist?
We’re dealing with a species that in a lot of ways is no different than the Klingons, which is what we were trying to say there. The Vulcans have typically been associated with good — they’re members of the Federation and have strict codes for living — but we wanted to show that two races that are considered “good” and “bad” in the Star Trek universe can share similar traits.
The war begins because the Klingons don’t want to assimilate. They don’t want to have their culture and their civilization absorbed by the Federation. The Vulcan extremists feel exactly the same way. I don’t know that I would call them racist the way that word is used in this day and age, but I would call them intolerant. I would call them unwilling to allow others to participate in their culture.
What were the discussions around using subtitles for the Klingons?
The storyline is about the Klingons wanting to hold onto their culture, and we felt like it would be hard to play that up if they weren’t speaking their own language. The other thing, which we saw with Game of Thrones, is that there’s a tolerance for experiencing a multitude of languages. Klingon is a language. People can speak it, and we wanted to make that specific and unique for those fans. We didn’t do that with Vulcan, which just hasn’t been spoken that much on screen in Star Trek.
I’m not a longtime Star Trek viewer. Do you think there’s some cost to watching Discovery and not having that institutional knowledge?
[Co-showrunner] Gretchen Berg and I didn’t come from Star Trek credits, though we have a lot of Star Trek people on staff, but we wanted to make a show that would appeal to more than Star Trek fans. We wanted to get people who don’t think they would like Star Trek into Star Trek.
Last night on the plane from Italy to London, a gentleman who recognized some of the cast members on the flight turned to me and said, ‘I love the show. I’ve been a Star Trek fan all my life, and my wife said she had hated Star Trek her whole life and loves it as much as I do.’ Whenever I hear that, I smile. It’s a franchise worth picking up more viewers.
Scott Porch writes about the streaming-media industry for Decider and is also a contributing writer for Playboy. You can follow him on Twitter @ScottPorch.
