I think the opportunity to make our own Trek show, our own way, was really the driving force of the excitement behind this. We knew going in we wanted to make something episodic—not just in terms of the new idea, or the big planet of the week—but, ‘What is the character of this episode? How can we encourage our directors to come in and really put a strong footprint on their episode? How can we find a different way to play every episode?’ We wanted to re-inject a sense of fun in Star Trek, and I hope we succeeded.
On Discovery, [Pike’s] leading a different crew than he’s used to on the Enterprise—there, you get to see him leading his crew. The sense of responsibility there, the sense of warmth... if I wanted to bring one thing to Pike, it’s that every time that door to his office opened and a crew member walked in, the most important thing in the room was not Pike, not the question—the most important thing was that crew member. That’s one of the few things, for certain, I knew I wanted to do.