Star Trek: Picard showrunner Michael Chabon responds to fan questions
"Michael Chabon" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Star Trek: Picard showrunner Michael Chabon has made the unusual move of responding to fans’ criticisms of his show - directly on social media.
Yesterday morning, Chabon posted a video to his Instagram, with the caption, “You’re A Star Trek Fan Watching Star Trek: Picard. You Have Questions.” Chabon himself did not appear in the video, rather it was a series of text and occasional pictures on a black background. But in the three-minute video, he addressed several of the most controversial issues that fans have brought up from the first three episodes of Picard.
Chabon gave a few spoilery explanations for questions such as “What’s the deal with Commodore Oh’s sunglasses?” and “Is Raffi vaping?” On the subject of starship captain Cris Rios’s cigar-smoking, Chabon postulated, “Would you believe: synthigars?”
Chabon also went into some more detail surrounding a couple philosophical decisions in the show’s production. First: shouldn’t Picard, a show set in our future, be more, well...futuristic? Chabon said, “We actually thought about this a lot. When you are making a show that’s set in the future, you have to ask yourself constantly how people will be meeting daily needs and performing everyday tasks. One guiding principle is that some fundamental objects and tools evolve an ideal form - efficient, economic, comfortable, durable, practical, effective, useful - and afterward change very little, except as subject to fashion - which itself is also retrospective. Certainly any human civilization in which all the objects and appurtenances of everyday life were brand new, of recent invention, and thoroughly contemporary in design, would be fairly unprecedented.”
Chabon also had a few choice words to say about swearing in Star Trek: “Listen. No human society will ever be perfect, because no human will ever be perfect. The most we can do - and as Star Trek even reminds us, must do - is aspire to perfection, and work to make it so. [...] Until that impossible day, [stuff] is going to continue to happen. And when it does, humans are going to want to swear. The absence of swear words in Star Trek was never a matter of Federation principle, it was a matter of FCC rules. Writers of previous eras had no choice. They were censored. Swearing is one of humanity’s most ancient, sensible and reliable consolations. Personally I would consider any society that discouraged, banned or abandoned the use of curse words to be a [...] dystopia.” And yes, I’ve edited the swear words out of Chabon’s explanation because I prefer to keep them out of Daily Star Trek News. A certain amount of irony intended.
It’s clear that Chabon takes his duty of care seriously when it comes to Star Trek: Picard. His responses to fan criticisms are clear, well-researched and respectful. At the end of the video, he thanked the fans, saying, “That is all for now. Thank you for caring so insanely much. See you around the Alpha Quadrant!”
The first three episodes of Star Trek: Picard are now streaming, on CBS All Access.
