Alex Kurtzman talks to The Pod Directive about the “incredible opportunity” of the Star Trek franchise

Star Trek: The Pod Directive is available wherever you get your podcasts

JUNE 23, 2021 - Alex Kurtzman, one of the key creative forces in the Star Trek Universe since the 2009 reboot, recently appeared on the podcast Star Trek: The Pod Directive to talk about how he became connected to the franchise and to offer some thoughts and stories about what it means for him to help Star Trek evolve in the 21st century. Over the course of the conversation, Kurtzman shared that a large expansion of the existing universe was not on his mind when he co-created Star Trek: Discovery, but that the opportunities to share meaningful and relevant stories became too good to pass up.

 “It felt like Star Trek is this amazing property that’s existed for over 55 years,” Kurtzman shared, “but people didn’t quite know what to do with it. […] I was seeing that the world was beginning to change in ways that were making Star Trek even more relevant and more important. […] It seemed like, wow, there’s this incredible opportunity to build this thing out, because people respond to it so deeply and have for so long, that I don’t think you guys are taking full advantage of the kind of stories we could tell.”

That desire to “take full advantage” has brought us to a truly mind-blowing amount of new Star Trek content. Kurtzman echoed Gene Roddenberry himself as he described the storytelling possibilities in this kind of science fiction, calling it a “commentary on who we are as a species, on the choices that we’re making, on what our future’s going to look like if we continue down certain roads.” He then added, “That’s what science fiction does better than any genre.”

You can hear Kurtzman’s other Trek-related thoughts, including his hopes for a musical Short Trek, on the latest episode of The Pod Directive, wherever you get your podcasts.