He’s retiring then?
Alex Kurtzman On His Star Trek Future: “I’m Hopeful”
Submitted 1 day ago by ValueSubtracted@startrek.website to startrek@startrek.website
https://trekmovie.com/2026/01/07/alex-kurtzman-on-his-star-trek-future-im-hopeful/
reddig33@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m not. I’d like to see someone new running Star Trek, but I don’t have much hope they’d be any better considering current Paramount management.
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 1 day ago
He’s not my favourite writer by any means, but I’m in almost total agreement with his overall approach to handling the property.
He wants each series to be unique, hires the showrunners, and seems to let them do their own thing. I think it’s a good approach, even though a couple of the projects fell short of their potential (y’know, in my opinion).
And he seems to work well with the suits, which is probably a good thing overall?
reddig33@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Let’s see how “let them do their own thing” worked out:
Picard — ok s1, abhorrent s2, had to be rebooted in s3 Lower Decks — found its niche audience Discovery — squandered a great cast on absolutely horrible writing Prodigy — found its niche but got canceled anyway SNW — mixed bag, lots of good episodes, but then singing, dancing, muppets, fake Kirk, killed off a great character (Hemmer) Sec 31 — aborted right out of the gate, couldn’t even wring a series out of the material Academy — just looks like more Discovery
To me it seems like he’s just squandering Trek’s good name with his rudderless guidance. 3.5 decent series out of 7 isn’t that great of a batting average.
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah I’d rather have each show be its own thing and crossover (where appropriate). There needs to be some oversight of showrunners, but only to prevent egregious things (look at The Witcher show runners clearly wanting to do their own thing and butchering the IP in the process without any apparent oversight).
Not everything will be perfect, and to be honest many of the vocal Star Trek fan thoughts when shows are being released are often terrible takes. A decent number of people vocally hated DS9, Voyager and Enterprise, when they first started airing, some even calling for them to be immediately cancelled, smothered in the crib basically.
Fan reactions online to new shows need to be taken with an entire salt lick, Star Trek doesn’t have a good track record with the vocal fans being an accurate consensus, and the breadth of modern social media just makes it easier for them to vocalize their opinion in multiple places and make their reactions seem larger and more indicative than they are.
StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 1 day ago
Given the complete failure to produce and release anything for Star Trek in more than a decade on the cinematic side, I can’t think any reasonable senior executive would think now is the time to let Kurtzman go. All the more, the historic chaos in relaunching the television franchise in the early seasons of both TNG and Discovery have demonstrated that it’s just not possible to launch a new overall franchise runner without running major risks.
Kurtzman’s got a reputation as being good to work with from both the studio/streamer and creative side. They don’t have any evidence to show he won’t adjust to new strategic direction.
The question more will be how far will Kurtzman himself be willing to compromise if the Ellisons give high level direction that would take the franchise in a very different direction for television.
What I do see is that some of the perceived failures will definitely lead to restricted opportunities for some of the EPs that have worked for Kurtzman. For example, Osunsami may not be given run of a project again after the S31 movie. Michelle Paradise won’t likely be asked to run another show in the franchise.