On Wednesday night, Alex Kurtzman made another virtual appearance promoting the Emmy nomination for Star Trek: Short Trek. During a Q&A with Variety, the man in charge of the Star Trek Universe for CBS released a rare update on the Section 31 series, announced the hiring of a composer, talked about fan feedback, and more.
Section 31 section may not be what you think it is
During the Variety Streaming Room Q&A, Kurtzman was asked about the Section 31 series in development, which has not had much detail since its announcement in January 2019. He said the show’s origins began with star Michelle Yeoh and went back to before Star Trek: Discovery even premiered in 2017:
The truth is that for section 31 the idea to do that show was Michelle Yeoh’s. She deserves all the credit for that. She actually got me over it before we got the first season of Discovery. She liked to play the character [Captain Phillipa Georgiou] and she said, “I know there are a lot of young women who grew up like me and no one like I saw on screen and I want to be that person.” And I said, “That sounds great! Let’s do it.”
But we did not know if people would like it Discovery. We did not know if Discovery would work on time. And so I said, “Let’s see how it works, and if we can get there we can get there.” She killed it. She did a great job on the show. And then in season two, we really started digging into the mythology of Section 31, which was covered on other shows. And we started to see a way to do it. And so we got there.
Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou and Alan Van Sprang as Leland in Star Trek: Discovery “Point of Light”
Recently, Kurtzman said that writing continued for the Section 31 series. In the Variety Q&A on Wednesday night, he offered some more details about the status of work:
Erika [Lippoldt] and Boey [Yeon Kim], who are two of our writers on Discovery, have worked with Craig Sweeny, who was a writer we worked with for a long time and he ran Boundless for us. And they did a great job building the show. So I’m really excited about where it’s going. And I can not wait to see Michelle in that part. And I think people will be very surprised about the world they occupy. We have seen things online where people have guessed certain things, but some are nowhere to be found. So that’s pretty fun.
Section 31 shows writers Bo Yeon Kim and Erika Lippoldt with Sonequa Martin-Green on the set of Star Trek: Discovery
Kurtzman’s remarks on how the world occupies section 31 may be surprising may refer to the setting for the upcoming series. One of the big questions about the show stems from how Michelle Yeoh’s character from section 31 operative (and former Mirror Universe Emperor) Georgiou with the rest of the Star Trek: Discovery crew for the upcoming third season. It is widely believed that she will find a way to go back to the 23rd century to begin her own adventures in the Section 31 series. But perhaps these assumptions are wrong, and the performance is set at a different time or place.
Promotional image for the third season of Star Trek: Discovery with Anthony Rapp as Stamets; Michelle Yeoh as Georgiou; Mary Wiseman as Tilly; Sonequa Martin-Green as Burnham
“Q&A” composer hired to score an upcoming Trek series, possibly ‘Prodigy’
While discussing the Short pull episode “Q&A”, Alex Kurtzman revealed Nami Melumad, who scored that briefly, has been hired as a composer for one of the Star Trek series in development:
That our composer Nami is great, and in fact it was so good that we hired her to compose one of our Star Trek shows, and I will not tell you what it is, but she will compose one of our Star Trek shows.
This hair would make Melumad the first female composer for a Star Trek series. The 32-year-old Israeli / Dutch composer already has an extensive list of musical credits, including scoring the Amazon series Absentia and the new HBO Max movie An American Pickle. Kurtzman said when choosing composers for Short pull, except for the one scored by Oscar winner Michael Giacchino of course, he was looking for young composers “to give them a shot to see what they could do.”
In the case of the score for “Q&A” and how it incorporated the original theme Star Trek, Kurtzman says:
Nami not only found an incredible way to evoke the feeling that you get from a great Star Trek score, that is this kind of wild abundance and this joy and the joy of discovery and the joy of science. And of course, the original Alexander Courage theme is such a big touchstone for anyone who loves it Star Trek…
That was the idea, how can we approach the theme, show Caesar what Caesar’s is, and then give it its own sound. And Nami really found the joy. In fact, the piece she wrote the plays about the end credits for “Q&A” is one of my favorite pieces ever for anything I’ve worked on in Star Trek.
Because “Q&A” was a story about Pike’s Enterprise, one can imagine Kurtzman tapping Melumad to score the next series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, but there are other possibilities. She has also previously worked in animation, so she may have tapped to compose the score for CG-animated series Star Trek: Wonder, which debuted on Nickelodeon in 2021. During the presentation of Comic-Con @ Home Star Trek Universe in July, Melumad retweeted two tweets from the Prodigy executive producers and one of a Prodigy author. And those were her only Trek-related tweets during the panel.
Composer Nami Melumad
Feedback from fans reads “hurts” and is “needed”
Asked about fan discussions online and on social media, Kurtzman confirmed he keeps getting feedback from fans and considers it an important part of the process, even though it can sometimes be difficult to see criticism.
Here is Kurtzman’s commentary entirely on feedback from:
I pay a lot of attention. And it took me many, many years to figure out why I had to, despite the fact that it made me very uncomfortable. Anyone who goes on the internet and looks at an overview of their work will see both people who love it and people who hate it. It’s just the nature of the internet. And it is very difficult not to take it personally.
At the same time what I understood about Star Trek is that Star Trek fans love Star Trek for so long. It would be canceled, and even after it was canceled, they kept living in syndication. And it always comes back to the fans, because I think the only two entities that really have Star Trek are Gene Roddenberry and the fans. The rest of us just wear it for a while.
And being part of Star Trek fan is allowed to know that there will always be debate about Star Trek. One of will love Voyager one of will love Deep Space Nine, one of will hate Next Gen., one of will love Next Gen.. One of will love Picard, one of will hate Picard. And on, and on, and on. There’s a real democratic quality to it, right?
You know people will see it and they will have different points of view. And it does not mean that anyone is right. And it does not mean that one is wrong. Everyone has their own feelings about it. But listening to what people are responding to is so important to understand what they have to deal with. I feel like if you’re at a 50/50 split, you’re doing well. If you are 90/10, and people hate it 90%, you have real problems. Fortunately, we have not been there yet.
But I know that is part of it. So once you accept that part, you can read reviews. And you can separate the critique, which is just, ‘I hate everything,’ from ‘In fact, that person had really valid points about why something didn’t quite work for her.’ And that’s something to keep in mind for the next time we do something different in the world of Star Trek. So I see it as a learning tool. It hurts, and at the same time it is necessary.
Easter eggs without fennel service
Kurtzman also talked about his approach to adding Easter eggs to fans in his Star Trek shows:
The nice thing about Easter eggs is that they are really great when they are paid in a way that feels satisfying and they are really disappointing if you just throw them in there. That feels like fan service which I think can have the opposite effect if you are aiming. I think fans do not like it when you just throw things in to throw them in. They must actually have meaning, because those Easter eggs are meaningful to them. So it’s always a challenge when you’re laying an Easter egg to make sure there’s a reason to do so.
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