Star Trek Discovery Writing Staff
- Thread starter The Habs Fan
- Start date
Oh there is that, lol.
Being around to the end of the season doesn't guarantee they'll be around for the next. It's pretty common for staffers to come and go between seasons, especially after a show's first season. And I believe there's going to be a fair interval between seasons 1 & 2, production-wise, so some people might want to move on and take other jobs. So we don't yet know which staffers will still be around (although I'm pretty sure Kirsten plans to stay).
You mean are still around right? Filming is supposed to start next month, so hopefully some season 2 scripts are already in rough form at the very least.
True statement. It's easier to observe who's gone already than it is to say who may yet be replaced.
But it's fair to say that Kurtzman is sticking around — he's not just an EP but also credited as "co-creator," and he's been a prominent media spokesman so far about plans for Season Two, at least as much as Berg and Harberts. And if it's true (per Variety) that S2 will begin shooting in April (!), it's safe to assume they already have at least the initial writing crew in place and presumably some stories already in the pipeline.
There's always a time gap of months between when something is made and when we see it, so for convenience I'm speaking from the perspective of when we see it. In reality, any writing staffers who wanted to move on no doubt left months ago. But as far as I know, we haven't yet gotten an announcement of who's on staff for season 2. So it's still in the future from our perspective even though it's already happened. (Sort of like when astronomers talk about when a cosmic event happened in terms of when the light reached Earth, even if it really happened hundreds of years earlier.)
Kurtzman is the head of a production company that's responsible for multiple shows, currently including Hawaii Five-0, Scorpion, and Salvation as well as Discovery. Think of him as the equivalent of Herb Solow, who was in charge of the development and production of Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, and Mannix simultaneously while he was at Desilu. He's a listed co-creator on several of the shows his production company has made, but that's basically the role of TV writer-executive producers at his level. Once they get to the point that their production companies are churning out multiple shows, their role is basically to shepherd the creation of each new show and then turn it over to a showrunner or showrunners to handle on a day-to-day basis. For instance, all the Arrowverse shows on The CW are from Berlanti Productions, but each one has its own separate showrunner(s) answering to Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter.
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Well, I'm so glad they have the "Trek experience buddy system" in place. I guess it wouldn't be beneficial.
Yeah, that's one of the tricky things about TV credits these days... the term "executive producer" covers quite a variety of different functional roles, at different levels. Certainly DSC has a noticeable abundance of EPs listed. Still, Kurtzman's own background is as a writer, and he has been prominent in the coverage of S2 plans, so it's hard to know what to assume... suffice it to say I'll keep my fingers crossed that his creative role really is de minimis.
So here is a summary of writing staff:
Those that were there the whole season:
Aaron Harberts & Gretchen J. Berg (show runners)
Ted Sullivan
Akiva Goldman
Bo Yeon Kim & Erika Lippoldt
Kirsten Beyer
Those that were there at the beginning of the season but left before the end of season. So these were Fuller's guys who probably didn't click with the new showrunners:
Joe Menosky
Nick Meyer
Jesse Alexander & Aron Eli Coleite
Craig Sweeny
Kemp Powers
and of course Bryan Fuller himself
Those that came aboard later:
Lisa Randolph
Jordan Nardino
Sean Cochran
It's too bad Menosky didn't work out. That is definitely a loss for Discovery and a gain for Orville.
If they are looking for new members I would recommend anyone from ENT 4th season (Coto, Sussman, Reeves-Stevens duo).
Goldsman surprised me. Every time I hear his name I think of Batman and Robin and the Lost in Space movie, which were not good scripts. Based on the credits he didn't do too much writing on Discovery, a rewrite of the first episode, and a story contribution in the last episode (reportedly going to Klingon homeworld was his idea) but he competently directed 2 episodes. What surprised me was how much of a Trek geek he seems based on the interviews that I saw.
Those that were there the whole season:
Aaron Harberts & Gretchen J. Berg (show runners)
Ted Sullivan
Akiva Goldman
Bo Yeon Kim & Erika Lippoldt
Kirsten Beyer
Those that were there at the beginning of the season but left before the end of season. So these were Fuller's guys who probably didn't click with the new showrunners:
Joe Menosky
Nick Meyer
Jesse Alexander & Aron Eli Coleite
Craig Sweeny
Kemp Powers
and of course Bryan Fuller himself
Those that came aboard later:
Lisa Randolph
Jordan Nardino
Sean Cochran
It's too bad Menosky didn't work out. That is definitely a loss for Discovery and a gain for Orville.
If they are looking for new members I would recommend anyone from ENT 4th season (Coto, Sussman, Reeves-Stevens duo).
Goldsman surprised me. Every time I hear his name I think of Batman and Robin and the Lost in Space movie, which were not good scripts. Based on the credits he didn't do too much writing on Discovery, a rewrite of the first episode, and a story contribution in the last episode (reportedly going to Klingon homeworld was his idea) but he competently directed 2 episodes. What surprised me was how much of a Trek geek he seems based on the interviews that I saw.
The Hollywood feature film writing process is such a convoluted mess that it's impossible to tell how much responsibility the credited writer has for the final film. Feature writers have absolutely zero power to protect their scripts from arbitrary changes unless they're also producing or directing, so a film may easily end up completely different from the script the credited writer turned in. And the credited writers are usually just a few of the multiple hands that contributed to the writing process.
So if you want to assess how good a writer is, you're probably better off focusing on their television work than their feature work. TV is far more of a writers' industry.
Yeah, this is true. In the movies the director usually has the creative control and the writer is the gun for hire. In TV this is reversed.
Basically. Although I think they're starting to grow closer to each other. A number of movie series and even individual movies these days have adopted a "writer's room" model like they use in TV; and meanwhile, a number of TV series have directors permanently on staff as "producing directors," responsible for maintaining a consistent directorial style even as individual episode directors come and go.
I just finished watching the series and I must say what a mess and major disappointment. I really wanted to like the show but it was so poorly written that it was difficult to get through it. Despite the stupid things written into the show (spore drive, Burnham being Spocks half sister, etc.), the first half of the season was watchable but it really went off the rails the second half of the season. Gutting through 4 mirror episodes was painful. These writers don't seem to understand Star Trek; this was more like the Battlestar Galactica reboot than Trek (even down to the costumes). One other observation is the lack of any strong male characters with the exception of Lorca who was killed off (and from the mirror universe, really?). I believe in strong women but I want to see balance. The writing for this show is lazy and terrible; very sad.
^^^
That's a BIG plus in my book (that they haven't watched TNG, DS9, VOY) as we already have too much of that for my taste. ST: D ISN'T set in the 24th century era of Star Trek.
Well that's the bulk of, and some of the best that Star Trek has had to offer, but I guess it's a good thing...
For the first time, we have a show that isn't about the captain, and we now have the most in depth, and authentic development of the Klingons. Finally, they weren't portrayed as stereotypical villains, and we got to see things from their P.O.V. and were given a glimpse into some actual Klingon culture at work.
For the first time, we have a show that isn't about the captain, and we now have the most in depth, and authentic development of the Klingons. Finally, they weren't portrayed as stereotypical villains, and we got to see things from their P.O.V. and were given a glimpse into some actual Klingon culture at work.
That's what we were promised, but in practice, we saw relatively little of that.
Got to say, the Klingons played like stereotypical Klingons. I saw little growth in them as a culture/species during the first season. We just got more babbling about Honor, Kahless and Stovokor. The only difference this time was that they were near impossible to understand thanks to the poor choices from the make-up department.
You're wrong. They were 3 dyemensional.