By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 2 minutes ago
For better or for worse, the chief architect of NuTrek has been Alex Kurtzman, the executive producer who has overseen everything from Star Trek: Discovery to the upcoming Starfleet Academy. Some fans had been wondering whether he would still be a part of the franchise now that Paramount has completed its merger with Skydance, but he recently implied that he would continue shaping Trek for many years to come. While some may see that as a good thing, many longtime fans feel that Kurtzman’s continued leadership is going to drive Star Trek into the ground quicker than Deanna Troi crashed the Enterprise-D.
Kurtzman was in attendance at the recent red carpet premiere of Starfleet Academy, and he discussed his future (or potential lack thereof) with Star Trek. Regarding whether he will stick around under Paramount’s new leadership, he said, “Nothing I can share publicly, but I have reason to feel the future is bright.” Considering that he seems to be on fairly good terms with the Executive Vice President of Paramount+ Originals, Chris Parnell, you can probably bet your last bar of latinum that Kurtzman will remain at the helm, guiding Trek towards an uncertain future.
Beam Him Back Up
While this is reassuring news to many fans, the implication that Alex Kurtzman is sticking around really destroyed my hopes for the future of my favorite sci-fi franchise. That’s because, as avid baseball lover Captain Sisko might put it, this executive producer has a very lackluster batting average. While he deserves credit for some major Star Trek accomplishments in recent years (more on that soon), he is also the one to blame for pretty much everything wrong with the NuTrek era.
Before I take my phaser off stun, let’s give Alex Kurtzman his flowers…he’s overseen at least two shows that are major bangers: Lower Decks (which blends unhinged Rick and Morty-style comedy with an unbridled passion for the Star Trek franchise) and Strange New Worlds (which, its recent excessive comedy episodes notwithstanding, has been a deeply passionate love letter to The Original Series). Under Kurtzman’s tenure, Trek has also gotten some amazing new leading actors, including Sonequa Martin-Green (suck it, haters) and Doug Jones. It often irks the more right-wing fans, but Kurtzman’s NuTrek has also admirably embraced diversity in a way that exemplifies the principles of IDIC.
This Ain’t Your Parents’ Star Trek
With that being said, Kurtzman’s era of Star Trek has also added way too much depression and darkness to the franchise…for example, the first season of Discovery features graphic scenes of torture, multiple instances of cannibalism, and the torture of a cute little tardigrade. Furthermore, a major plot point involved a brutal Klingon war that would ultimately claim 100 million lives!
Oh, and Starfleet ended that war by threatening to blow up the Klingon homeworld. That was Plan B, by the way: Plan A was to simply blow up the planet, an act of genocide that the Federation (including Spock’s daddy) was completely fine with and had to be talked out of! Later, this grimdark storytelling would infect Picard, which is why the spinoff was filled with characters getting brutally killed while Starfleet quietly turned its back on both Jean-Luc and its most important ideals, leaving fans confused as to where the Star Trek they knew and loved had gone.
Everybody’s Out Of Character
On top of that, Kurtzman brought the endlessly tedious “mystery box” mode of storytelling from shows like Lost into Star Trek, and this instantly alienated viewers because an entire season would be devoted to a singular question, like “who is the Red Angel?” This was a franchise built on standalone adventures, and veteran fans were accustomed to getting 26 episodes per season, each with its own unique story. Now, NuTrek whittled things down to about 10 episodes per season; this killed the franchise’s storytelling diversity (the, uh, one diversity metric Discovery ignored) and ensured that any fans who didn’t care about the mystery would instantly tune out the entire season.
NuTrek is also filled with more canon problems than you can shake a tribble at, but that never bothered me as much as massive character inconsistencies. Like, Captain Picard famously fought for the android Data’s rights as a sentient being, arguing in court that Starfleet, left unchecked, would create an entire army of synthetic slaves. In Picard, that’s exactly what happened, but he’s too busy corking notoriously awful family wine to give a crap about the lofty ideals he is so famous for.
Similarly, Spock is a character known for being mostly emotionless, unattached, and purely logical in The Original Series, though we know from the show’s pilot that Spock was emotional enough in previous years to smile. Strange New Worlds took that one plot point and turned Spock into an overly emotional wreck who spends all his time juggling love interests and acting increasingly human. Ethan Peck is acting his heart out as the famous Vulcan; unfortunately, Kurtzman’s writers are writing him to sound like the exact opposite of Spock.
When Star Trek Stopped Feeling Like Star Trek
All of this adds up to the most common criticism of Alex Kurtzman’s NuTrek: that it doesn’t really feel like Star Trek at all. Different isn’t always bad, of course, and there’s a fair argument that a rebranded Discovery might have become one of the most popular sci-fi shows in television history. But, Alex, baby, it’s quite simple: when you promise fans new Star Trek and then deliver something with a completely different style, format, and theme, don’t be surprised when they start asking what’s going on!
The Kurtzman era has delivered some good Trek (Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks), some bad Trek (half of Discovery, most of Picard), and some ugly Trek (Section 31, quickly voted the worst film in the entire franchise). His success rate is middling at best, and the blunt truth is that Paramount getting rid of him might have saved the franchise by bringing in some new blood who could better give fans what they want. Now, though, it seems like we’re going to be stuck with a man who knows how to keep this franchise in the sky but can never really make the warp engines work.
There’s still time for Paramount to eject Alex Kurtzman’s contract out the airlock and bring in somebody with more passion and less baggage to oversee the best science fiction franchise ever made. Star Trek is the studio’s most important brand, one they hope will anchor other creative projects in the wake of the Skydance merger. To new Paramount CEO David Ellison, I have a simple request: please, please give Kurtzman the boot while there’s still time to save this franchise.
I know it seems like a risky proposition to kick out a known quantity in the face of something new. But I’ll leave you with the wisdom of James T. Kirk himself: “Risk is part of the game if you want to sit in that chair!”
