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Star Trek Discovery Writing Staff

I thought I should resurrect this thread because there have been some changes to the writers/producers of Discovery. First, here's who wrote each episode:
  1. The Vulcan Hello - Teleplay: Bryan Fuller, Akiva Goldsman / Story: Bryan Fuller, Alex Kurtzman
  2. Battle For The Binary Stars - Teleplay: Gretchen J. Berg, Aaron Harberts / Story: Bryan Fuller
  3. Context Is For Kings - Teleplay: Gretchen J. Berg, Aaron Harberts, Craig Sweeny / Story: Bryan Fuller, Gretchen J. Berg, Aaron Harberts
  4. The Butcher's Knife Cares Not For The Lamb's Cry - Jesse Alexander, Aron Eli Coleite
  5. Choose Your Pain - Teleplay: Kemp Powers / Story: Gretchen J. Berg, Aaron Harberts, Kemp Powers
  6. Lethe - Joe Menosky, Ted Sullivan
  7. Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad - Jesse Alexander, Aron Eli Coleite
  8. Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum - Kirsten Beyer
  9. Into The Forest I Go - Bo Yeon Kim, Erika Lippoldt
  10. Despite Yourself - Sean Cochran
  11. The Wolf Inside - Lisa Randolph
  12. Vaulting Ambition - Jordan Nardino
The 2nd half of the season no longer lists Aron Eli Coleite, Jesse Alexander, and Joe Menosky as Co-Executive Producers. Aaron Baiers is no longer listed as Producer. Kemp Powers is no longer listed as a Staff Writer. New as Co-Executive Producer is Jordan Nardino.

Looking at these changes, I wonder if that's why the show went in a different direction after episode 9. Is that the point where the show fully became Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts' show? Was there behind the scenes drama like TNG season 1?

Everything else has remained the same as far as I can tell. Including Nicholas Meyer and Craig Sweeny still acting as Consulting Producers.
 
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Too bad about Menosky. He is a good writer.

Surprised that Meyer hasn't written or directed any episodes.
 
Cyrus said:
Surprised that Meyer hasn't written or directed any episodes.
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He did a draft of episode 2, but the final version of that episode didn't credit him, so it must've used little or none of his material. Meyer was brought on by Bryan Fuller, and whether he stuck around past Fuller's departure is unclear. I suspect his "Consulting Producer" credit is strictly honorary/contractual by this point. A lot of producer titles these days are honorary -- for instance, whoever directs the pilot episode of a show gets an executive producer credit, sometimes just on the pilot (like David Semel on "The Vulcan Hello") and sometimes on the entire series (like Bryan Singer on The Gifted, even though he's had no subsequent involvement with the show).
 
On Twitter, Star Trek Writers: "Overheard in the room". What does it mean? Any tip? Are they Hearing someone speaking in special?
 
A rare glimpse into the DISCO writer's room...
mr-burns-monkeys-typewriters1-640x381.jpg
 
ralph said:
On Twitter, Star Trek Writers: "Overheard in the room". What does it mean? Any tip? Are they Hearing someone speaking in special?
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I don't think it means anything. They're just sharing weird stuff said in the writer's room.
 
Firebird said:
I don't think it means anything. They're just sharing weird stuff said in the writer's room.
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Yeah. Fans want every random tweet from a writer or producer to contain some vital plot secret, but writers and producers are just people like everyone else, and a lot of what they tweet is just the same frivolous everyday nonsense that other people tweet.
 
Dunno if this is the place to put it, but if there was on Trek writing alum who could realistically be added to the writer's room, who would you want it to be?

Presume that they will not be taking over the writers room for Harberts/Berg, nor displacing Kurtzman/Goldsman as EP. Just writing stories and teleplays.

I don't think Ronald D. Moore or Ira Steven Behr would take such a lowly role at this point in their career unless they were brought in as executive producers. Maybe they could get back Rene Echevarria or Micheal Taylor? Thompson/Weddle?
 
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Who is this Akiva Goldsman that writes and directs? What's his story?

I would just have these 2 EPs sit down and watch the other Trek series. They might get into them, and glean something from them.
 
Prax said:
Who is this Akiva Goldsman that writes and directs? What's his story?

I would just have these 2 EPs sit down and watch the other Trek series. They might get into them, and glean something from them.
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He won an Oscar for Batman and Robin or something.
 
Prax said:
I would just have these 2 EPs sit down and watch the other Trek series. They might get into them, and glean something from them.
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Why in the world would you think they didn't already do that?? Making a TV show is a job. When you get hired to do a job, you train for it, do the research and study you need to learn the ropes. If you get hired to continue or remake a TV show, then the obvious first thing you do is to watch the damn show. Why wouldn't they? The whole thing's easily available on Netflix, and of course as employees of CBS they'd just be given copies of the shows on request. Plus they have other people on the staff who are longtime Trek fans and experts (and Akiva Goldsman is one of them), so they can fill in the less experienced producers on anything they need to know.

Nicholas Meyer and Harve Bennett weren't Trek fans when they were hired to do the second Trek movie, but the first thing they did was to sit down, watch all of TOS, and take notes about things they could use. Because that's what you do when you get a job -- you learn how it's done.
 
Christopher said:
Why in the world would you think they didn't already do that?? Making a TV show is a job. When you get hired to do a job, you train for it, do the research and study you need to learn the ropes. If you get hired to continue or remake a TV show, then the obvious first thing you do is to watch the damn show. Why wouldn't they? The whole thing's easily available on Netflix, and of course as employees of CBS they'd just be given copies of the shows on request. Plus they have other people on the staff who are longtime Trek fans and experts (and Akiva Goldsman is one of them), so they can fill in the less experienced producers on anything they need to know.

Nicholas Meyer and Harve Bennett weren't Trek fans when they were hired to do the second Trek movie, but the first thing they did was to sit down, watch all of TOS, and take notes about things they could use. Because that's what you do when you get a job -- you learn how it's done.
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I have no doubt that they've both seen the original series, and I've heard that some of the actors watched Enterprise(in addition to TOS) in preparation for their roles, but from a lot of the things I've heard Kurtzman say in regards to Discovery, I have the distinct impression that he hasn't seen TNG, DS9, or Voyager.

If true(and it wouldn't be that odd), he/they just might enjoy it, and find beneficial inspiration from it.
 
Prax said:
but from a lot of the things I've heard Kurtzman say in regards to Discovery, I have the distinct impression that he hasn't seen TNG, DS9, or Voyager.
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Doesn't matter, since there are others on the staff who have. That's what teams are for, after all. In particular, staff writer Kirsten Beyer (my friend and fellow novelist) is a Trek expert with a whole bunch of Voyager novels under her belt, and I know that the other staffers kept her very busy with constant questions about Trek lore and continuity until they got up to speed for themselves. She was involved in every creative decision, just as all of the writing staffers were. So none of the decisions in the show were ever made out of ignorance of Trek continuity. If they reinterpreted things, that was by choice for the sake of the story, not by accident.
 
Prax said:
Who is this Akiva Goldsman that writes and directs? What's his story?
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I mainly know his name from his writing/producing credits on "Fringe," thought he wrote or co-wrote other stuff like I, Robot and The DaVinci Code.
 
It troubles me that the people who were responsible for some of the best writing in season one (Alexander, Coleite, Menosky) have apparently moved on, while those responsible for some of the worst (Kurtzman, Goldsman, Nardino, Sullivan) are still around.
 
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