Season 4 Showrunner Retrospective with Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers

[00:00:00] This is Akiva Goldsman. And this is Henry Alonso Myers, and you're listening to Open Pike Night. Are you sure you didn't take too much cordrazine? It's a fair question. Is this thing on? Hello? Hello?

[00:00:20] Hello and welcome to Open Pike Night's Season 4 Showrunner Retrospective. Now, John T. Boulds and Jesse got lost wandering through the sections of a video store trying to find a genre Strange New Worlds has not mastered yet.

[00:00:46] I'm sure Jon just got stuck listening to Jesse tell him about some anime series he has to watch. But with me here today, the men responsible for bringing us Space Ghosts, Space Dragons, Earth Dinosaurs, Space Babies, and Space Deidre Hall. And thank you both for all of that. It's Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers. Hi. Hello. Yeah. Sorry about all the space things.

[00:01:14] Well, it is a space show. So I think you're... Oh yeah. That's a good point. We hadn't thought of that. So where are you guys at right now? Because you're done with Season 5. I mean, I assume maybe some post stuff still, but here we are at the end of Season 4 talking about it. Where are your heads at? Akiva, would you like to answer that or shall I?

[00:01:36] I mean, I think we both could probably answer it. I think honestly, I'm grateful, sad, grateful, sad, grateful, and also sad. I think that sums it up. I think we can relate with that. Here's the truth. Most shows get cancelled at some point. I mean, all shows end. Usually, as the quote I always say, it's all shows end is just a question of when. And I've been on a bunch. They all end.

[00:02:05] This is one of the best circumstances under which you get to end a show, which is you really get to find the endings you want. And we're already past that. The people who watch these have not experienced that yet. So it's a little bit like, oh, I'm going, yeah, that's right. You guys are getting to experience this stuff. That's so great. You know? As I'm sure you know, because the order for the last six was last minute-ish. Mm-hmm.

[00:02:35] And we had a bunch of, in the conversations we had with the studio about really wanting to be able to end it in a way that Henry and I felt was thorough and, you know, sort of fulfilled the promise to the audience. And we couldn't wait to do it. In order to make it simply fiscally viable, we kind of had to essentially continue shooting. Not essentially. We didn't.

[00:02:59] So we basically shot four and five consecutively. So for us, it was one long, oh boy, season, right? Because we were still writing five while shooting four. Right. But, you know, we went through all the emotions you go through as you come to the end of a thing. But of course, in the world, it's two different things, one of which is over and one of which, you know, doesn't begin or end until arguably next year.

[00:03:30] Well, as sad as we are that it is eventually ending, we are equally excited for what's coming. I cannot wait. I mean, I know some stuff. I don't know everything. I cannot wait to see how it all comes together. But of course we are here to talk about season four, the amazing season four. I mean, my favorite season yet. I just think there's so much fun stuff that happened here. Let's go back to the beginning. You finished up season three, you're heading into the writer's room for season four.

[00:03:56] You're breaking the episodes. What are you thinking? What are your must do's? You don't have a cliffhanger to resolve this time. It's kind of a blank slate. Where are you at with it? Well, I'm worried that Henry's really drunk because he just keeps coming in. None of that's true. Some of it's true. It was true once. But not in the room. Or is that me? Anyway, I think that, you know, the one thing I can tell you going in is we didn't know whether it was going to be our last season.

[00:04:25] So that's where we started. Mm hmm. I mean, it's funny because I feel like in some ways we try to enter every season with the idea that like, all right, if this is the last, we should really try for everything that we didn't get to do before. So a lot of the stuff that we were pushing the boundaries of were things that we were like, okay, what, what have we missed in Star Trek that we really want to bring back?

[00:04:49] And what are things that feel like Star Trek, but haven't been tried yet that we would like to do and show it as Star Trek? You know, we often start with character arcs, you know, we're sort of like, okay, who needs what service in, you know, sort of as the show kind of reached, you know, an accumulated mass. Who's gotten who hasn't? How are the kids? You know, they're sort of like all your kids are at the table. Right. And you're like, has everybody been served?

[00:05:18] And oh, okay. Is there something? Oh, is there a dish? We haven't served. But, you know, and we try to figure out where the characters are going first. Then we kind of go, how does genre accelerate that when we're going to do genre? So where does that fit? It's not just a random, hey, wouldn't it be fun if they sang?

[00:05:38] You know, as, as, you know, Henry has always said about season two, what was great is, you know, in a moment where we needed a lot of resolution, you know, the characters got to sing their subtext. And then, of course, because, you know, we're nine at heart, we're like, and also dinosaurs, you know, and that's sort of the origin. That's pretty much it. A lot of it, you, you, well, you spend a lot of time thinking like, what are the big crazy things that we want to see?

[00:06:06] And some of those are puppets, and some of those are dinosaurs, and some of those are like the shuttle landing on the ship. Like we went to great lengths to, to actually build like a three quarter size shuttle that we could see our characters entering and exiting from. Because that was the thing that we were like, this feels so Star Trek, and we have the pieces, which is not quite there yet. So we did that a lot.

[00:06:31] So is that why you think there were seemed like more genres this season? Like you've always done genres, but it's well, there's a twice. There weren't really, I mean, I know, I think we're probably similar or even a little less maybe than last season, I would have to serve, we'd have to check one to one, I think that.

[00:06:49] So what sort of happened, which is interesting, is once it became a conversation, both in the world, more so in the world than with us, because we always were looking honestly different. So like, you know, episode two of season two, is that Una's Illyrian? That was the Illyrian, yes. That's a genre episode. We were like, okay, courtroom thriller. Do you know what I mean?

[00:07:18] But what happened was, you know, post musical, because it broke a box that people imagined Star Trek lived in, why I don't know. We then suddenly everything got, and by the way, in fairness, I think also there was some selling of that in season three. And so it became sort of like saying gangsters of, uh, gamesters of Triskillian is a gladiator episode. Sure. You know what I mean?

[00:07:45] A Muck Time, uh, is also a gladiator episode. Do you know what I mean? Like we didn't do a gladiator episode, but like, you know, Star Trek has genres within genres. And so now, unless it was absolutely straight sci-fi in the, by the way, time travel is a genre. In the present, it's a genre episode. So I think our wild, our big swings were probably the same number this year than last year.

[00:08:11] And, you know, as is, you know, we love them and we're also, you know, for better or for worse, depending on who you talk to, you know, we're not doing any of them next year. Um, you know, but tone still shifts. So we were not the first people to do a black and white episode. Right. That suddenly, but like the black and white episode was, we were looking for a genuine scientific reason to put it on the show. Outside of holodeck. Yeah, exactly. Well, speaking of genres, let's listen to our first caller. Let's hear from Val.

[00:08:41] Hey, open Pike night. This is Val. Since season one, Strange New Worlds has moved to the top of my favorite Star Trek series. Don't get me wrong. I love the other series as well, but the serialized nature of many of them means that it is hard to go back and just watch an episode. But Strange New Worlds episodic format and genre swings gives me something else. Episodes I can just return to depending on what I feel like watching. We've had shuttle disasters and court dramas before.

[00:09:05] Now this season we have, among other things, a stoner comedy and a Muppet episode, both of which I have watched many times already. Is there any particular genre you wish you had been able to include in? Or if coy about that, are there any that stood out to you as a favorite to have been able to include? Thank you so much. Well, we definitely, we've been trying to do, we tried to do a Western and had, did not have a lot of the things necessary to do it.

[00:09:30] I think that was easier to produce in and around Los Angeles than it was in Toronto. But that's one that we, we, we showed a little piece of it, but we didn't do the whole thing. Got as much as you could. Yeah. I still think the musical is my favorite, you know, of what we would call the genre swings. You know, I just think it, I just was, I just find it so delightful and amazing.

[00:09:55] And I'm so impressed by the cast and how the sort of, you know, obviously, as we've talked about, you know, we try to use genre to accelerate the, you know, storytelling and really character storytelling, you know. And in some ways it was never more spot on. I think that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Now, Akiva, Robbie Thompson, when talking about the Griffin incident, the horror episode, to put it in genre terms, described your blood lust as having no bounds.

[00:10:25] This season really seemed to have amplified the physical damage our crew takes in a way that I found both visually and narratively compelling. Was there a conscious effort coming into the season to be like, let's really raise the stakes on these guys? Or what was that about? No, I mean, I think, you know, the deeper you go into your characters, ergo that, you know, if you're doing progressive character development over the course of seasons, you're getting deeper, right?

[00:10:51] Because you kind of got the low hanging fruit, you know, oh, you know, Lon starts with, I don't really get on with people, right? So by now you got to get underneath it and why, and then, you know, you know. So I love horror. Interestingly enough, I'm not really a body horror guy. Although in this one, I was like, no, no, a bigger cut in the stomach, cut the finger. But I love horror. But, you know, I think we've done pretty well finding our way.

[00:11:19] But to me, this one, like, this was chef's kiss, as they say when it comes to horror. I found it really scary. And I do like pushing the boundaries of what the audience will expect and still trying to keep them in. And, you know, I directed an episode of Discovery years ago where I had lots of naked people dancing around on stage, you know, lots of regillions.

[00:11:48] And I was told that was not okay. Up for Star Trek. So all I got left is, you know, scares. And, you know, I'm really proud of that episode. I think it's really effective. And I think, you know, it's an example of how genre can move character. Yeah, I think it's also just to say something about Robbie.

[00:12:17] Like, I, I, um, Akiva is, uh, I want to say he has a deep, deep love or appreciation of pushing horror. And every season we were trying to find a different angle on it. And Robbie is a unique specific talent in that I know that Akiva is going to be, I say hardest, but I mean like, he's going to set the bar high when we're doing a horror episode.

[00:12:41] And Robbie has both the skills and the producing abilities to, to really pull it off. So it's, it speaks well of him. I mean, I happen to love ghost stories and it was a really great take on a ghost story that happened to go right into the guts of emotion. And that to me is like, that's, that to me is the horror that works the best. Cause it's not just a boo. It's a, it's a boo. And then it kind of stays in your gut and won't go away. Yeah.

[00:13:11] Axel needs some praise too. Oh yeah. And then we, we, I mean, look, this is one of the, actually the great joys of just to speak about the show in general is that a lot of TV shows set up their directors without having a sense of what the episodes are going to be. They just, cause they're, they're hard to, it's hard to hire them ahead of time.

[00:13:29] And we really leaned in on directors specific to the episode and Axel who directed this episode has a unique ability to bring a, just a, just a, a genuine horror, like a visual nature to it. And also she, she just, she makes it scary. She makes it feel real. She makes it kind of like, she just has, she knows how to do horror in a way that we, that I think is a, a unique talent.

[00:13:56] So it was a, it was another great mix that we were able to bring her in there on that one. I mean, just to kind of jump to that, Chris Fisher describes changing roles in season four specifically as 10 Star Trek movies directed by 10 Star Trek directors. And I thought that was a great kind of context to look at it. And why is kind of letting each episode stand out on its own that way important to you guys?

[00:14:20] I think that in the same way that when you bring in creative people to do a show and then you ask them to adjust and change to make just the show you want, you, you lose a little bit. You lose a little bit of their skill ability. I love being surprised by things. I love when people bring another level. And I think this actually applies to the actors as well. When you ask them to rise up to something hard, they are excited to do it.

[00:14:50] Um, when you take what they brought you and you put it on screen. And so having different directors really helps. You know, there are shows, you know, I think of Plurbus, you know, I couldn't have more admiration for Vince. And it's a single voice, you know, and, uh, or I think of West Wing and Aaron. I don't know the process, but I do know both men.

[00:15:12] And I do know that in very different ways, there is a sound, a point of view, a kind of storytelling system perspective that is delivered on by all everybody who works. Right. And it's, it, and it's singular. We are not that, you know, we are, we're not quite an anthology show, but we're a collective, you know, we always talk about collaborative art.

[00:15:41] So for us, the process of, you know, raising people up, as Henry said just now, lifting people up, of finding the thing people do best and giving them the opportunity to do it. All in the box that, you know, hopefully we have built well enough. You know, that does let you go to places you might not in a show where the narrative tone is more singular.

[00:16:09] And that's not, that's not qualitative in any way. It's just a truth. And so you get certain kinds of things from one that are different from the other. And, you know, we are, we're a community of Star Trek storytellers because the world has a community of Star Trek storytellers, you know, much as, you know, Vince or Aaron, you know, when they're making the shows, the world doesn't have a community of pluribus storytellers or of West Wing storytellers.

[00:16:33] Right. They're, they're creating something and maybe in 50 years, they'll be the sequel show or five or 20. But, you know, for us, we're also trying to open our arms to the legacy that comes before us and figure out how to sort of touch it again and send it back out into the world. And that's collaborative. I mean, you can, you can, I could point to each one of those directors and be like, thank God they were doing that episode.

[00:16:57] I mean, Yana who did human best friend is, it has a, has an incredible comic background and brought that to it. Um, Jordan who did the puppet episode. I don't think we had another director who could do the puppet episode. Uh, and Anna D'Acoza who did the soap opera. Oh yeah. She was a unique director who knew how to shoot both in, in single camera and multi-camera and really get something out of that. Uh, Dan who did episode six.

[00:17:24] I mean, like he's, he's a, Dan is one of our, you know, he's been with the show for multiple seasons and knows how to come in and deliver that stuff. And there's always going to be something great in it. I mean, we have a lot of great people who could do the thing that they came to do really well. Mm-hmm. 201. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Speaking to them all this season, that's been amazing. Now, speaking of the Griffin incident though, going back to that, we learned about division 12, which I think is just an absolutely fascinating inclusion.

[00:17:54] And into the star Trek universe, when you are including something like that, are you also thinking like, how can it be used by other Trek shows? Like how global are you thinking when you're adding in these world building elements? Well, I think when that one came in, we're like, oh, somebody wants to make this show. Like, you know what I mean? We were like, oh, X-Files and you know, in the Federation, come on.

[00:18:16] Um, but you know, I don't think we're doing that per se, you know, it's, you know, I, I have, things have jumped shows now and then, you know, even in our time. And that's pretty interesting stuff. But we were just thinking about a corner of the star Trek universe that we know exists because we've seen it, you know, all the way back to, to TOS and the Robert Block episode, you know?

[00:18:44] So we understand things are not all understandable. So the Federation must to star fleet must to. So what did they do with that? And then we got giddy thinking that there must be somebody who deals with it and why shouldn't we glimpse that? I, well, I can't wait for that spinoff. Yeah, you and me both. Well, let's listen from another caller. Hello.

[00:19:14] I wanted to ask what you guys were trying to say with the Spock and La'an romance, because it seemed to be building up to a really real connection between them. But suddenly it's over. It didn't change or affect either of them. And Kirk was the person she needed to fix her this whole time.

[00:19:40] I just, I guess I don't what the point was of having Spock and La'an get together at all. So I was just wondering what you guys were thinking with all of that. People get attached to their onscreen relationships. It's true. Yeah, I mean, I, so I, I'm not sure La'an needs anybody to fix her, but I, I hear you.

[00:20:01] Um, you know, I, I think we thought that there was something interesting about a relationship that ran its course in a way that was relatively adult. And we thought that they were actually people who would grow away from each other, which is kind of what they did. I don't think she, I don't think La'an goes to Kirk to fix her. I think La'an goes to Kirk. She's starting to heal.

[00:20:31] And I think that, you know, and, and that's obviously a choice of ours. Um, you know, we know Spock ain't ending up with La'an and we know Spock's heading back to logic, right? That's, that's not a choice of ours. Um, but we felt that that was also organic to, to the relationship. So it was not ever in our minds, although it might've been in theirs, that which would last.

[00:20:58] Uh, it was that which would help them become who they're going to be. The fun thing about Spock is that you get to, we get to tell a story of, I mean, if you know where he's going to end up, like tell a story in the, where he learned something new. Um, and if it ended the same way it ended with chapel, that would be, have felt the same. Um, we thought there was a maturity to the way that they ended that we particularly liked, but we like them together too. Just so you know. Yeah.

[00:21:27] There, there was some chemistry there. They have great chemistry. You never marry the rebound. So Spock learned that. So a theme I noticed in season four is not so much relationships with each other, although there are those, but characters relationships with them. They come to show up with themselves. Doubles, doppelgangers, shadow selves are a big theme this season. We see it in almost every episode. I mean, they see their puppet selves and they learned something about themselves through being puppets. I 100%.

[00:21:55] Was that something you came into the season being like, let's examine this or did that kind of just naturally grow as you were breaking the stories? we're always talking about people's relationship to themselves right like that's you know that that's typically there's something very useful about characters having internal mysteries that have to be solved um we have a bunch of them so there are only a couple ways to do that

[00:22:24] and one is you know through mirrors one of the great things about writing for star trek that i think people don't always recognize is that um you have great performances and lots of other shows but we get to approach it from a genre perspective we get to create science fiction ideas that allow

[00:22:48] the actors a chance to do things that they wouldn't otherwise and so part of this is the the fun of the show and that in that it allows our actors to try things that on any other show they wouldn't get to do you know to be two versions of yourself in the same episode and to know how to jump back and forth i feel like when you again i not to go back to be a broken record to go back to the same thing but i

[00:23:14] think when you give people an opportunity to rise to something they really step up and and give you great stuff and when you don't they get bored and and then you make something boring and then you know that's the end of your show we asked ellie about that and she she 100 agreed with your philosophy there and was very thankful for the chance to do hard things and show what she could do she's uh she

[00:23:38] is a delight and a true talent and we told her like although you may sometimes doubt yourself going to those as an audience whenever we hear about what's coming we are immediately excited to see the cast like tackle it because we know they're going to knock it out of the park speaking of we had mission puppets let's hear from michelle hey open pike night first off thank you so much for season four it was a wild

[00:24:04] ride and i really appreciated a lot of the big swings you took especially the puppet episode i grew up on the muppets and star trek so that felt tailor-made for me and it was such a gift i could see all of the hard work and creativity i promise you there are a lot of fans that loved that episode my question has to do with my favorite tos character growing up dr leonard bones mccoy now i love to make crusher

[00:24:34] connections here on open pike night because i love the character of dr beverly crusher from tng but i grew up on tos as a kid and dr mccoy was my fave his humor his sparring with spock his friendship with kirk and the crew just really endeared me to his character and i was really hoping to see him in that awesome season four finale but i guess good things come to those who wait and i'm sure it will be worth

[00:24:59] the wait but i'm wondering if you can tease anything about the character about what he's going to be like on strange new worlds about the actor who's portraying him i've really loved deforest kelly and carl urban's performances so i'm looking forward to seeing how he's going to be brought to life here so if there's anything you can say about mccoy i would love that i'm really looking forward to season five until then live long and prosper is there anything you can say about mccoy

[00:25:29] i was going to lean on akiva on this one because uh only because he is uh akiva did a lot of directing in that particular episode where he is introduced which i got to watch some of you did oh you were there of course you did i will say that as as a viewer i was delighted by he how he came

[00:25:53] out i felt like he he rose to the occasion of all of the rest of our cast on the show brought a real perspective a real you know point of view it was a delight to to watch was extremely well written um uh you know i that's my perspective as a viewer henry talk about the puppet episode that was my next question i mean that was like uh that was like blood sweat and tears for

[00:26:23] a long time it was a it was like six to eight months of prep uh it was a lot of design work it was calling on a lot of people to do things that were uh extremely difficult and i think it falls into this level of comedy that i think is more tremendously hard than people realize and probably don't think anything of at the time we had to rebuild huge chunks of our sets in order to put them in

[00:26:48] we had to have a whole entire new division of puppeteers who had to come onto the show the thing that i took from it that was the i think the most important was every day i would come to set and i would see our puppeteers come to set to to try to you know do performances that emulated the work of our cast i would catch them before we were even shooting and they would turn to each other and they

[00:27:14] would say guys guys we're on the enterprise today and like they would say this every day and they would have this like joy and happiness uh and i feel like it came through on on the screen when you saw what they did so you know it's one of those things where you i i had i thought there was a version of it you could do in star trek i was delighted that we got a chance to do it not everyone gets to do

[00:27:37] every crazy thing that they want to do and so for me that was like uh i checked a box on the things i always wanted to do in my life the moment i mean walking through the set and i know akiva you visited it as well just looking it around at all the muppets the jim henson muppet versions of your characters like you must have felt a little bit like willy wonka like look at this playground that

[00:28:01] we've created like was it like that i mean it's you know the venn diagram of puppeteers and star trek fans you know as henry says was just extraordinary you know and and so that joy was infectious um and then of course there was puppet palya you know which just rules supreme

[00:28:23] over all things not just puppet but just all the greatest thing ever made another spinoff we need so another thing i noticed this season the last few seasons you've had a lot of fun with like the opening title sequence matching that to the genre you're coming at having some more outtakes and such at the end last season season three although this season seemed maybe tailor made for those opportunities we didn't really see many of them was there a reason to kind of step

[00:28:52] away from that we had some outtakes and some we had some stuff at the end of the soap right we did the soap operator you yep i think the thing we were also concerned about is we didn't want to make it feel like we were trying to alter star trek from what it was like for instance in the black and white episode we were like it it is a black and white episode but we're not we're still doing a

[00:29:16] star trek episode so part of the joy of it is to cut from what is clearly black and white to the you know the color that you're used to um and we put elements of it in the opening titles there's there's pieces of a lot of where we are going to go in the season that go throughout you know like there you see the dinosaurs uh you know you see the the shore leaf planet um you know you see a lot of stuff um you

[00:29:42] see a black and white section of it um that the ship is is shown in but uh we we didn't want to make it we didn't want to like draw too big a circle around the idea that we were changing everything i guess i just wanted to see like a thunderbird style opening on the puppet episode yeah you're not wrong we we looked into it at one point but then we sort of ultimately decided that the puppets were the puppets were enough you know what i mean people had to well people had to be reminded that

[00:30:12] we're still doing star trek here you know well uh again let's uh return to a little bit of genre talk hey it's trev beaming in from the fair letter franchise podcast with a question for henry and akiva i'm sure they're not unaware that one of the criticisms often levied to the show by fans and critics is the shift toward much more genre-based big swing episodes i will say personally i felt the show was originally sold to us as more the return of tos era episodic trek and i felt that promise was really

[00:30:40] delivered in the first two seasons which had a few i guess what we would call gimmick episodes but overall were full of what also felt like classic good old-fashioned trek sci-fi tales but i noticed that the showrunners writers and cast alike eventually started discussing the genre swings as the main modus operandi for the show which was obviously most felt this past season and i have to admit as the season went on i started to worry we would never again see stories like children of the comet lift us where suffering cannot reach among the lotus eaters and under the cloak of war unless they

[00:31:07] were cloaked in some bigger genre overlay now i know we did get a couple more classic trek feeling apps in the back half and i should acknowledge that overall i really enjoyed season four i've sort of made peace with what the show has become even if seasons one and two were more my personal sweet spot i also know we have one more season to go which some are already saying will feel quite different again so my question is as much as they can answer now i'm wondering what the guys personally see as the show's central identity is it the pike show the star trek genre gimmick show the tos with modern

[00:31:35] filmmaking show i'm guessing they might say it's all these things and more so perhaps they can discuss what they hope people will label or categorize the show as when all is said and done all right thanks guys well you know graciously i would take uh issue with gimmick right so you've you've made clear your feeling not just in terms of you know your summary of your point of view but also in your word choice

[00:31:59] so um so for you i will say trev has made a point on our discord that he doesn't agree with the gimmick label but it is you know the common shorthand being bandied about online i mean i i could tell you a lot of common shorthand being bad that's that doesn't justify the use of it unless you believe it right and so which is okay but for us those shows aren't gimmicks right um obviously um you know like all of

[00:32:27] us we do things with our whole heart and i don't i don't think henry and i would ever sort of suggest much less for the cast of the writers and everybody else attended to creating episodes that we're spending our time on gimmicks we like those episodes obviously we believe deeply and applaud your

[00:32:47] ability to like and dislike whatever you choose to like or dislike i have watched over the season as to an episode everybody's favorite is everybody else's least favorite it's amazing they alternate and so again with all due respect there's an interesting conversation to be had which is a

[00:33:14] little less about what you like and a little more about what star trek is and in my view star trek is much more diverse narratively than yours um and that's okay we don't have to agree but i would ask that you know one reconsider the use of kind of terms that suggest that these are flip and non-serious

[00:33:40] attempts at storytelling whether you like them or not i am curious about his question on what you view the identity of of strange new worlds as i mean i wouldn't disagree that that it has shifted a bit from season one to season four and just like again the the balance of traditional episodes to genre swings and again i'd like i'd be interested in discussing what a traditional episode is or isn't but uh but

[00:34:09] you know uh i you know let's have this conversation again after season five look at the whole object and see what you think and what you would think its identity is i i i'll be able to tell you that i i think i age just gives you a different perspective a lot of this um some of the stuff that was most attacked in sort of the the 90s and early aughts in star trek is some of my favorite

[00:34:36] there's so much stuff that they do on deep space nine that was considered um not star trek it was two bending things away from what was star trek and those have come to be like some of the best star trek ever made um even enterprise which was i think enterprise got unfairly maligned for a lot of really amazing stuff that they that they did i think time will kind of hold up well my genuine

[00:35:05] feeling is there's not a single episode of our show that wasn't like that didn't have some blood sweat and tears in it um we fought to make the best version of everything that we could make we tried to do some things that i think were uh we wanted to push the boundaries of of what you could do in star trek not because we wanted to change star trek but because we were like we have things

[00:35:29] that they didn't have back then like we have vfx elements that they just didn't have we have we have some incredible like financial opportunities of things that we can build and show and try that i wish that they could have done back in the day but in our hearts in our hearts we are trying to do the best version of star trek as we come to know it you know and i also think that there's been this odd merging

[00:35:56] of fandom and criticism you know and they are actually different things you know and so i'm really interested in a conversation about why something is or isn't star trek you know i i'm sure there were those and i don't raise anything we've ever done to this level but there are many i'm sure we thought sitting on the edge of forever wasn't star trek you know certainly there are those who thought a piece

[00:36:21] of the action wasn't but that's an interesting conversation what is star trek i don't like it is not really any of my business like i'm not here to get you to like it i'm here to try to do my best to create something that i believe is star trek and hope that you like it because there everybody has individual tastes and so i think the conflating those two things

[00:36:47] you know i'm watching the star wars reactions today and i'm just like it's just people wanting to say i don't like a thing okay you know don't like a thing don't watch it well it's an henry's point about time which i totally agree with i think expectations also kind of come into play there and people expecting something to be what they necessarily want it to be and not meeting it on its own terms i've come to think of strange worlds as like we've always said you guys have said we want 26 episodes give us 26

[00:37:17] episodes that's like the only criticism of strange world is we want more i like thinking of like these are the 10 most remembered most talked about episodes of strange worlds from a universe where there was 26 but these are the 10 that people love to talk about the most and the biggest swings give them all to me like that's i know that's my i think i do think that i get that because i i you know i i came up watching 22 to 26 episodes a season and i understand why people are like they you know the

[00:37:46] the comedy one in that time there were probably like a couple of them because they had they you just had to get these things out again they're hard to produce but what they also did was they drew in people who wouldn't necessarily know that this was something that they would love and i sort of i guess my one of the things i felt was important for our show was to widen the scope of what people would expect from the show meaning to get people who wouldn't think that

[00:38:15] they'd like star trek to like star trek as well as people who love star trek and that's to me the thoughtful conversation which is is it worth or not the attempt to broaden star trek's reach now i can tell you i don't think we did i think that fundamentally it turns out if you look at the numbers that star trek seems to have a ceiling now you can drop below it you know but at least in its

[00:38:41] current iteration on this platform it has a ceiling but part of what we believe is valuable about star trek star trek is that it transported people who weren't aware of it somewhere else and both henry and i are people who were profoundly transported by star trek at an early age and so could we do that

[00:39:08] that for people who weren't just straight ahead sci-fi i mean i will say you know with all modesty we can make those episodes we like those episodes we we love those episodes and we make them and what we hoped to do was to make our arms wider so that there were more star trek fans and new star trek fans and star trek fans

[00:39:35] who would say oh that's the show where at where there were less barriers to entry and you know again i don't think i think if our numbers had done that we'd still be on the air but that was a conscious goal on our a valid valid goal let's hear from lucy who wants to know about the characters hi lieutenant

[00:40:00] lucy from london calling in with a question for akiva love the show thank you for all your work on it a question around the ensemble cast and how you found being able to use the ensemble in individual episodes i felt that off hour in this season was particularly strong in capturing all of the different actors and their

[00:40:24] performances and whether we might expect more of that in season five also i had a question around season finales um i think possibly only season two would have been the only one maybe where you were somewhat guaranteed of a of another season and the extent to which the lack of certainty about whether the series

[00:40:47] would be picked up for the following season shaped how you wrapped up particularly seasons one three and four and uh yeah whether or not we might get a little bit more pike and una um in season five so thank you that's three questions i know it's true i i will answer the what how we got to the end of this season henry i'll toss the ensemble thing to you so yeah we didn't know so we built this so what you know what you

[00:41:17] see in as the finale of season uh four is not what we designed it's what we redesigned we designed the finale of the show we weren't sure what was happening but we were told at a certain point that we were not being picked up um and so so began the the negotiation where we said but wait we can't do that

[00:41:42] everything like there's a bunch of folks who aren't in canon like we gotta reconcile that we gotta police them we have to let them find their future they can't just drop off the the edge of the continuity so uh they said make a movie and we said no i mean tv uh you know streaming right we said no no we can't possibly because it'll either be a either all talk talk talk or we'll just blow up like there's not

[00:42:09] enough time to do both things you know and to their credit god bless them you know we went back and forth so alluding to what i was saying earlier you know that fundamentally there were parameters on what we could do and how much money we had which is you know why we ended up with they said what do you need and we said minimally six and they said okay you know and we showed them how we could do it for a way that you know was both our show and you know wasn't going to break the bank which included

[00:42:35] shooting it directly after you know so that we sort of closes down a slowdown startup and all the things that are attendant to that so so that happened while we had already broken this and it was different you know it was nothing to see here nothing to see here but it's the end of the show and once we kind of realized that there was a lot of re-breaking and a lot of rewriting in order to get to something that

[00:43:05] was fundamentally the story that had been broken that had a lot of the promise of the original uh idea but also pulled out some things you know that we then actually got to save and do in a more thoughtful way because we had more time um so that was uh we were dancing as fast as we could and my partner henry was typing as fast as he could it's like shut up shut up no i mean i i will i i would lean on the

[00:43:35] we had a really terrific i mean by season four we had a lot of great writers on the show who really understood the show who we could lean on i could speak to specifics but i would rather just speak to all of them because they really uh they knew the show they loved the show they loved star trek they put their own blood and and sweat and tears into it and that's one of the reasons we were able to get that show done um in season five um what forgive me what was the question about cast there was

[00:44:04] literally like there was too many questions and then at some point i was like i'm not sure which one needs to be answered here just how do you utilize your ensemble cast and oh well i mean we look akiva started off talking about how we usually looked at the character stories for every season and that's literally where we start we try to give everyone at least one big story that is theirs or

[00:44:28] deals with them you know like a off hour is a chapel story and it also happened to have a scotty story in there as well but it because of the structure of that type of episode which technically would be what people call a bottle show in the old days because it was only on our sets um and the ar wall which is technically one of our sets that we had to use and redesign it allowed us a lot of scene work

[00:44:56] where we got to lean on lots of different people um and and it it's actually very similar to episode 104 it's basically like a sub episode we did with the gorn you know where where we really got to cut all the way around the ship and show different sections of the ship and lots of different people in those sections and allowed us a chance to give everyone a chance to do something you know not every episode

[00:45:22] can be about everybody um sometimes you get to lean on people in different ways sometimes it's an episode where we follow one person going to a planet the horror episode this year was it was really about three people and that was it and everyone else was in it but not in it you know as we soon discovered or eventually discovered one of the great things that i wish i had learned early as a tv writer is

[00:45:51] you you write scenes that you think are cool but the real thing that makes a difference is did i give the actors something to do like you have to put yourself in the heart and mind i mean you want to do this you have to do this to the director you have to do this to everyone in your crew but you really have to do this to the actors and so to that end writing a simple scene with two people is almost or two and

[00:46:18] or three people is almost the easiest and best thing you can do but you have to give everyone a purpose and so a lot of that is just about let's take what is traditional for star trek and give everyone a point of view this is the kind of thing that made chapel really great to write for or ortegas really great to write for because ortegas is a person who is literally in the middle of the bridge and has a comment on everything but it allows her as a character to reveal things so i guess i would say

[00:46:46] is star trek is the kind of thing that looks really easy on the surface and it's actually tremendously hard and it's tremendously hard if you find ways to give the actor something to play and henry just said something which i think is really important which is we don't try to service and everyone every episode because there are too many of them we try to service everyone well sometimes yeah um and rather than everyone a little all the time if you're going to put them in one scene let's make it a really good scene

[00:47:14] right and have pike serving dinner that's the thing that people remember they remember when you write a really great scene i mean the the pike uhura scene in the finale this year is a i mean there's a couple of them but like this really if there's really like one core simple emotional scene um and it's memorable and it's just two people talking mm-hmm well speaking of those characters and and writing for them and

[00:47:42] the characters in griffin incidents you know we're seeing captain kirk not yet captain kirk we're seeing jim kirk become more and more of a character of this show getting his own through line arcs and everything how are you finding balancing you know bringing in the captain kirk with a show called pike well but the show's not called well i was referencing something henry told me in the last time yeah oh yeah that was a that was a buffy quote that that they used to say back in the day where they'd say

[00:48:10] show called buffy if they couldn't find the story but it's true that is not the story right and we know the story right the story leads us to kirk yeah right and we've known that from the beginning and you you will see uh there's been more and more kirk because we know where this story ends and it became very clear pretty quickly that we weren't gonna have eight seasons or ten seasons

[00:48:38] you know i don't think we were surprised nobody has that now right yeah yeah but i don't think we were surprised when they canceled us after season four we were thrilled that we got another season but you know as you could see we're already tracking to be able to say it's a handball so um you know and we didn't want to we love anson and we we love paul and we love both characters we didn't want to hand

[00:49:03] anson's we didn't want anson's pike to hand it over to an imaginary shatner's current right right it speaks very well of the type of actor anson is that uh he would argue and i would argue that what we would say is show called enterprise yeah um and and he would lean on that you know what i mean like he is very much an actor who you give him a big scene to do he comes in full tilt boogie he brings all of his

[00:49:32] energy but he does not want that all the time he just wants those scenes for the scenes that affect his his character and sometimes i think that the story of how he would hand off the ship to kerkusen is not a story that was told so it's a story we get to tell which we'll see soon so you uh you mentioned him we've heard recently that like you did get pretty far down the road of getting a

[00:49:58] shatner episode happening as well as pretty far down the road of a doctor who crossover since we know neither of those are happening now can you share what we might have seen in those episodes well i think we had a few different shatner ideas and i think that the one that actually seen for a second like it really might happen was the the doctor who crossover you know because russell was engaged

[00:50:24] too when we were going back and forth and we were talking about how we would do it and who i mean there was sort of like they'll go three of our cast will go there and that they'll come here i mean with you know we were and what do we do because they air and we drop and how does that work you know i mean it was a thing it was a thing so they were going to be the same episode the shatner and the doctor who no no no no two separate two separate things no no no no no no two totally different ideas gotcha

[00:50:53] the one that came closest to fruition was doctor who yes yes that that seemed like they're oh i'm sorry i understand you no no it's two totally different ideas and i i think that it you know i think that just ran into you know that just ran into the impact the the sad thing about it was everybody said yes for a second we were like what and then they realized what they said yes to and they were like no you were kidding about that uh you can't give us the pitch for the shatner episode

[00:51:22] there were a couple there was an animated one you know that sort of tas animation there was a city on the edge of forever return with he and uh you know joan collins edith keeler you know uh you know him now having been aware of the timeline could you know influence and what if they if he had stayed and you know yeah and then you know and um and they never got very far and it's too bad yeah but we get

[00:51:49] to play in what if yeah i know we we we love shatner and and we would have loved to have been able to find something that would have worked so what we did see uh one of my favorite three lines of this season was the cadet ashah storyline loved her very glad she did not suffer a similar fate to to ensign gamble she does decide to leave starfleet as the showrunners do you have any idea of what her

[00:52:19] fate is what what is ashah's future um she oh she goes she goes back to bulken i mean she is she's like i wanted to be uh she she she tried to make something work that she wasn't wired to uh and i think she was mostly i think a lot of that was about uhura wrestling with the idea of uhura was as good as you possibly could be at her job and that wasn't enough because this person wasn't

[00:52:48] willing to go in that direction she could never make her someone who was happy at starfleet but she could show her what what what she experienced but i really i appreciate you actually coming from because in fairness it never even occurred to me what happened to her and you know what i and it's a great question because you know of course she was created as henry said to sort of reflect some

[00:53:13] character growth for uhura but like yes i wonder i it's a good it's a great question she was very fun it's a credit to like what a fully developed character you made for her like yeah i love it another fully developed character i loved is this season we see a lot of a teller right in the background in a lot of episodes can you tell us anything about this guy i asked chris fisher he just said they loved him i asked him his name he didn't know i told him to

[00:53:42] make up a name he said frodo i love that can we set that in stone here now no his name is camera camera camera okay okay i like this better than frodo and uh we he came to the ship um there was a diplomatic mission um and there was uh he stowaway is not the exact right word but he chose um much to the

[00:54:07] chagrin of his uh crewmates to it's an early phase of uh the tellerite human relations so it's not exactly political asylum because they are uh obviously a lie but there were certain crimes that tellerites commit that we don't consider crimes and so he uh he asked for uh asylum on the ship and uh pike gave it it's canon now it's all canon and it seems aptly named for all that you're welcome

[00:54:38] well let's get to our our last call from abby hey open pike and you fabulous showrunners you abby summer from the first flight podcast all right gentlemen we've heard a lot about what people are taking away from season four and their thoughts and feelings but can you tell me what you're taking away from season four maybe it's something you expected to take away something

[00:55:03] you didn't some sort of reaction that has changed your perspective on the work that you did any of that i know it's been a long time but since all the reactions are fresh i have a feeling you might be revisiting some of that stuff so please give us some of that and then what do you hope we take away from season five when we get it whenever we get it thank you for all your hard work you've been spreading joy to the universe and i appreciate that hope this finds you in yours well talk soon

[00:55:31] sure i mean you know i'm thrilled to you know i'm thrilled to have done it i'm thrilled to have done the show i mean i'm i am both bemused by how polarizing the some of the episodes are and you know it makes me sad because um what we try to do with star trek is connect and you always wish you could connect to

[00:55:56] everybody and we live in a world now where there's a lot of conversation about that which doesn't connect and you know i wish everybody liked all of it uh it's an unrealistic expectation but you know we all start out that way and you know i would be lying to if i said we don't finish that way or at least me

[00:56:18] in my old age but i'm deeply deeply deeply proud of it i i i couldn't agree more with everything that akiva just said i mean the the truth is that like i i think on some level i have always sort of seen our job as being like uh um professional viewers like we we there's a lot of writing and producing

[00:56:44] and organizing and things that come into actually putting it together but at the end of the day i mean when you're looking at cuts you are just sitting there and saying do i have the feels is it making me laugh is it making me cry like do should could i be more scared could i be happier could i be delighted you're just trying to create those feelings um and every one of the episodes did that for us um you know i usually i borrowed this from a a guy i worked with on another show where i i feel

[00:57:14] like we we play with it in the room you know all the writers uh until we're all jealous of it wish that we could have written that episode um and i still feel that way i would be disappointed if we had hadn't tried to push the envelope if we had just kind of done what i would consider to be standard

[00:57:36] fastball down the middle type track that i think i think it's worth when someone gives you a chance to do this like you really should try to push it and see how far you can make it go like drive the car fast like drive the car off the edge of the cliff and see if you can land it like to me that is that to me is worth it personally so uh i i do i do agree like on some deep level i i want i want everyone to like

[00:58:04] it but what was also very interesting is that every reaction that we got to every episode uh in order was also very predictable like i could they had the reactions that we sort of wrote down and expected so sometimes you're like well you sort of hope you will open up and win over more people but like the

[00:58:28] people who love it do love it and the people who get angry about it do get angry about it um but you know the one thing i am certain of is that everyone has found something that it is the star trek that they love this season everyone has found some um there are people who you will never reach and that's okay i wish those people well i hope that they love i'm glad that they continue to love trek but i also think that

[00:58:52] i you know i i went to get bagels the other day and i was wearing my my puppet shirt and i've never had such an incredible response from a guy working at the bagel shop it was just like it was just you know and when you see that reaction when you see someone who is like oh my god you brought me so much joy like thank you so much for that you know like we we do entertainment

[00:59:17] that's what we do for a living and so when you reach someone and you realize you gave them something and they give it back to you you know in a fraction of the feeling that they felt that that that touches my heart so every episode of someone's favorite and i mean that your story was the point i was going to make which is i'm sure your guys you guys have your fingers on the pulse of the reaction more than i do but there's the online reaction and then there's when i go out into the real world and i see people

[00:59:46] wearing their star trek shirts so they see me wearing my star trek shirts almost to a tee when i go what do you think of the current season they love it my mom who like is an old school fan and not a horror fan her favorite episode is the griffin incident she loved that one that's awesome like the people in the real world and you know there's people yeah you know you know you get it so let me ask then we won't try to get any more spoilers about season five we'll save it all for those who wait year one it sounds like

[01:00:15] the current status is it could happen but probably not do you have like not to share but would you have an outline do you have an outline right now of what season one would look like if they were to green light it or how far into it are you thinking no no no no i mean i you know i think it's such fertile ground that it would but you know when i say it writes itself it means that all of us sit around and we

[01:00:42] figure out how to write it but you know but it but it i think it's such rich terrain you know so i think i think so many things would emerge i don't want to say what i think they might be because they will tell you they will start to distinguish themselves from what might exist in the last episode of our show but right you know but i i do think that uh i think there's a there's miles and miles of story

[01:01:08] there absolutely well i mean we all love the characters i think everyone with whatever reaction they have is because they love the characters and they love the show and we can't wait to see what's coming thank you so much thank you thank you but before i leave i do have to ask you both one question yeah what's your favorite episode from the season from this season from season four

[01:01:35] henry what do you got um i i actually i think i've had a lot i mean i'm torn between um no no i'm torn between two but all right okay you gotta pick one i gotta pick one choice i'm torn between seven of them uh um uh i'm just curious about the bottom three uh the i think the finale is probably my favorite i the idea of doing the story between two uhuras um i feel like there's something so

[01:02:04] fundamental simple great and emotional that you can do in that and also to to be able to hand that to an actor and say do you get to play two versions of yourself and you're your own you know you're you're the person who you fight with and you're the person who is your best friend like that's the part like that to me was a it was a time travel version as we've tried to do a time travel version for every

[01:02:27] season that we have not done and i was really proud of that one mhm akiva i think it's six yeah six yeah i mean i was just so really good yeah yeah that's right oh god i mean babs and jess are just

[01:02:48] nailing it yeah and i just like to me that was it's a funny analog it's like to me that was like in its best moments a great old episode of mash do you know what i mean like you know there you are the the healers suddenly in a circumstance where all they have is each other as as doctor as patient

[01:03:14] that just their boy the the writing was great the directing was great the acting was great i just i think i mean obviously there are others that we talked about that i have a close connection to but boy oh boy i just you know at the end of that one and you can see it on the day like there's just like you just want you know there's just heart there so you guys i forgot that um bingo was a legacy character i was worried for i was like

[01:03:42] that's our job we talked about that a lot in the room it was like can we can we we're gonna pull off that people think he might die i'm not joking yeah

[01:03:52] well thank you again and i will see you next season thank you thank you this is akiva goldsmith and this

[01:04:27] is henry alonzo myers and you're listening to Open Pike Night are you sure you didn't take too much cordrazine it's a fair question you