According to Variety, Star Trek: Discovery executive producer Alex Kurtzman will direct the season two premiere of the series, which begins production in Toronto in April.
The season two premiere will pick up after the season one finale ended on a cliffhanger with the last-minute surprise appearance of the U.S.S. Enterprise. As noted by Variety “The finale’s closing shot sets up a likely meeting between the Discovery’s Cmdr. Michael Burnham and Capt. Christopher Pike, who commanded the Enterprise prior to the tenure of James T. Kirk.”
Alex Kurtzman with fellow executive producers and cast of Star Trek: Discovery at Comic Con 2017
This will be the first time Kurtzman helms an episode of the series he co-created with Bryan Fuller. Star Trek: Discovery is produced by Kurtzman’s Secret Hideout Productions and in addition to executive producing the series, he also shares a story credit with Fuller for the series premiere “The Vulcan Hello.” Prior to being tapped to bring Star Trek back to television for CBS, Kurtzman co-wrote and was a producer for two Trek feature films: 2009’s Star Trek and 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness.
Kurtzman has previously directed Universal’s 2017 Tom Cruise-lead action-horror film The Mummy, the 2012 family drama People Like Us, and an episode of Alias in 2003.
Alex Kurtzman on set with Tom Cruise (Universal Pictures)
Earlier this week TrekMovie reported that director and Star Trek: The Next Generation star Jonathan Frakes revealed he will return to direct an episode for Discovery’s second season. Frakes didn’t specify which episode he would helm, but indicated he would be working on it soon. He also noted he had read the script for the first episode of the season, which he described as “on fire.”
Star Trek: Discovery is available exclusively in the USA on CBS All Access. It airs in Canada on the Space Channel and streams on CraveTV. It is available on Netflix everywhere else.
Keep up with all the Star Trek: Discovery news at TrekMovie.
I can’t tell if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Out of season 1, the only credit he has, besides being co-creator and executive producer, is (co-)writing the first episode.
It’s sure as hell not good news.
“I can’t tell if this is a good thing or a bad thing.” Well, I can. Its a bad thing. Watch the latest Mummy reboot with Tom Cruise (directed, written, AND produced by guess who?) if you need evidence of that.
What is he, the Reboot King? No, I didn’t see it. I’ve got clothing older than the Brendan Fraser movies, why they needed a reboot is beyond me. And I am on a low-Scientology diet besides.
Most certainly bad news, we’re getting more of the ADHD “look we are not really a Star Trek” femminist propaganda agenda-show with videogame like cartoonish VFX, stories written probably by 5 year old (boom there is a bomb in your planet) run by ppl who see nothing wrong and congratulate themselves at every opportunity.
…feeling nauseous…
” femminist propaganda agenda-show” I love when people kill their argument before they even make it.
Cue the anti-Kutzman brigade coming out of the woodwork to complain about this.
While I think the writing is the most important thing on a show like Discovery, Kurtzman doesn’t have much of a directing track record and his last effort – The Mummy – was savagely derided. Maybe he’ll do a good job, but I’d feel better if someone with a more established track record and pedigree of directing TV shows handled it.
Not actually Kurtzman’s fault that The Mummy had a boring script and a completely out of place leading man.
Well, Kurtzman does have a ‘story by’ credit on The Mummy too. He also helped produce it. Take from that what you will.
“Not actually Kurtzman’s fault that The Mummy had a boring script”. It’s not Kurtzman’s fault that the story HE WROTE for The Mummy is boring and crappy?
Sorry, but Cruise it good enough to elevate a bad script if he’s got good support from other areas, chiefly the director. Clearly he didn’t. A fish rots from the head first.
Chup… Gotta disagree with you here. Cruise is certainly NOT good enough to overcome a bad script. He’s proved it time and time again.
Judging by the reports coming out of The Mummy set, Kurtzman was pretty much a proxy for Tom Cruise.
These TV directors dont mean a whole to me. For the Premiere? Sure, because it sets a tone for the whole series.
But there arent a ton of fundamental differences from episode to episode.
Its probably a good thing. AK can obviously direct. And he has a hand in the vision of Discovery. So directing the first episode will set up the tone for the season.
Its not like he isnt capable.
TUP,
And one would think that if Meyer still has a credit in the new season, and we recall the reverence with which Kurtzman and Orci 1st met him, that Alex will avail himself of this valuable television directing resource for advice in tackling the job?
I don’t like him because of his affiliation with the JJ-verse. One of the most confusing paradoxes I live with -I loved Alias, was deeply invested in Fringe and (still) eat, sleep and breath LOST. Why then do I loathe JJ’s Star Trek so much? As soon as I saw that Alex was attached to Discovery it turned me off to this new series. Diverse casting and a gay couple turned me back on – but magic mushrooms, Klingon make-up that doesn’t allow the actor’s to act… the post-nemesis ship designs and the way the entire war arc was wrapped up because ‘oops, they planted a bomb inside our planet guys, let’s end the war now’ just seemed insulting. I didn’t want another Voyager, hell, I’m not even sure I wanted a Voyager – but the more this series tries to let us know it’s ‘different’, the more I see it like a whining teenager and I can’t take it seriously. I am passionate about a 50 year institution that I am emotionally invested in, what is Alex passionate about?
I never thought about it until now, but “whining teenager” is an excellent way to describe this series :) I would add “whining teenager looking for attention”. To the point I think. Having said this though, the show can still improve if they tighten up the writing and don’t try to cram everything in every episode. They need to let the episodes flow more naturally.
Whiny teenager is right because that is their target audience
Filthy lucre
You’ve only got to watch the atrocious Mummy reboot to know this is bad news.
I am hoping that the series premieres again in October. Honestly cannot see why this wouldn’t be possible to achieve. They are likely to split the season in two again anyway, so the first four to six episodes could debut between October and November and then the rest of the season can debut in January or February 2019.
My reaction….(crickets).
But your reaction was to write that. If it were actually (crickets), why the text at all? “Crickets” implies your silence, no?
…think I’ll post when and what I want, VoR. Thanks for caring, though.
Exactly Dan! I read it and thought ‘so what…’ Underwhelmed and not hopeful they will turn around any of the mistakes of the first season. They want to be ‘different’ so much. There will be more pointless ‘reinvent the wheel’ choices, they will continue to alienate the core fans and smuggly dissemble 50 years of television history because they feel what they are creating is more important.
One of the saviors of Star Trek. He get’s a pass.
Can’t tell if being ironic…
Him, Orci and Abrams saved Trek. Like it or not they brought it back and they were successful which meant it would stay
There are a lot of people who could have ‘saved’ TREK with a budget as high as 09’s was — and at least some of them would have made a movie that wasn’t embarrassing and infuriating to watch.
…and they didn’t do it
They didn’t get the chance. Point being that I think the folks who were brought on did a terrible job with their choices, and the thing happened to be popular anyway (which is true for most blockbusters in recent decades, so don’t say I’m picking on TREK.) Dating back to the first Keaton BATMAN, theatrical features have been ‘made’ more on marketing and convincing ordinary folks they ‘have’ to see something in order to be okay — kind of a peer pressure thing — and it seems to me that the most successful effort has gone into the least impressive work in most instances.
It doesn’t always work, but the %age of time it does still annoys me. I remember seeing endless promos for BLUES BROTHERS back in 80 or so and thinking, ‘eh, maybe?’ and then hearing it cost 30 to 40 mil, and deciding there was no way I was going to pay to see that thing, just because of what I perceived as profligate waste of resources. Everybody else I knew was like, ‘how can you NOT go?’ And I mean everybody, it was similar to TITANIC and 89 BATS in my neck of the woods. But I still haven’t seen BB, and I’ve only seen about 20 minutes of TITANIC (the end, which I assume was not INTENDED to be funny so context probably colors my impression), and while I’ve sat through the 89 BATMAN 2-1/2 times over 25 years, I’ve never managed to enjoy it. That COULD be close-mindedness on my part, but I think it more likely that it was just not buying into hype (not saying I haven’t fallen for it before often enough.)
I’m not saying I agree with you 100% but…
“theatrical features have been ‘made’ more on marketing and convincing ordinary folks they ‘have’ to see something in order to be okay — kind of a peer pressure thing — and it seems to me that the most successful effort has gone into the least impressive work in most instances.”
The latest example of this was Black Panther. I was going to skip it but it got a lot of good word of mouth. So I went. And VERY sorry I did. It was mediocre at best and for the life of me I have no idea why people thought it was so good.
Who cares ,stop watching movies then.Some folks enjoyed the movies you bashed,like your someone really important.
STID Was infuriating, 09 and Beyond were actually pretty good as far as Trek movies go.
I loved Into Darkness. Beyond was boring.
They “saved” Star Trek by turning it into just another dumbed down action franchise that Discovery is happy to live up to.
Nobody seemed to have an issue when Voyager’s fourth and fifth season became a dumbed down action show, to be fair.
Yep. He saved Star trek with ST09. Before that, it was dead.
yep it was
Dead? Couldn’t prove that by me. The fans hadn’t gone away. Books were still being published. Fan sites still operated. Fan films were being made. Conventions still packed ’em in.
Pretty lively for something “dead.”
The franchise needed a break after the obvious creative burnout that was Enterprise. But it would have been back soon even if Abrams & Co. had not shown interest. Wasn’t JMS’s TOS reboot being talked about around that time too? And stand-alone two-part Earth-Romulan War movie? Arguably, the break was too short (four years 2005-2009, originally announced as only 3 1/2 and due late 2008). A good five or six years before a relaunch would have been just fine. Bond has gone longer (Dalton-Brosnan) and was just fine.
“The franchise needed a break after the obvious creative burnout that was Enterprise.”
The franchise needed the break after Voyager. Enterprise I feel would have been better served to come in perhaps two or three years after the Voyager finale.
starbase63,
Yep. The only thing that “died” was old Viacom/Paramount/CBS that was rent asunder.
My big box and department stores’ video shelves weren’t bare of STAR TREK PRODUCTS.
Fan films sucked.
The idea that Trek was *dead* before 2009 is a tired argument put forth by JJ fans who just never thought of Trek before he showed any interest (or, are just diehards who worship all things JJ. Some of them are even now claiming that JJ saved Star Wars!!!). The idea that a franchise which has already survived 30 years’ worth of ups and downs just needed one guy to save it is laughable. And, by the way, JJ only wanted Trek precisely because he knew it wasn’t dead. He knew he could ride the built-in audience to decent box office returns.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, when JJ saves a truly *dead* franchise (Lone Ranger, Green Hornet, etc), then I’ll give him his due. Otherwise, I’ll stick with the theory that JJ is just a smart and talented opportunist.
I haven’t watched the Mummy, but how did it look in terms of direction? Forget the writing. If he can direct a scene competently, then there should be no worries.
The Mummy was „Battlefield-Earth-bad“ both in terms of writing and direction. Also acting…
Didn’t Kurtzman come up through the ranks as a writer? I don’t know if he could forget the writing.
The Mummy is not a terrible movie, it just isn’t particularly good, either. Its main problem is its story, which Universal wanted to be the launch of a new franchise and thus shoe-horns in a major unrelated character. This was supposed to be the big shocking reveal near the end, but just comes off as “what were they thinking?”. Direction was so-so and couldn’t save the story/script. The acting is not the problem, no matter what you think of Tom Cruise.
As long as there isn’t a scene where someone is transporting from Earth to Kronos, I’m cool with it.
Well, I suppose that cuts out the Gary 7 cameo.
Haha! Or a magic augment blood tonic that cures death. I can get past so much of the stupidity in the JJ-verse but Into Darkness was insulting. I remember watching it with a bunch of buddies and there was moaning in the cinema. One of those rare times you just felt like everyone in the audience was thinking the same thing. I hope Alex knows what poop he helped create – but the choices they’ve made in Discovery prove otherwise.
Martin,
Actually, to be fair, Orci and Kurtzman turned in a Khan-less script. I believe it was Lindelof who freely admits he took point and sold them all on that it had to be Khan and not just some other augment from Khan’s Botany Bay.
As to who wrote the particularly offensive to you elements in their final draft, I doubt they’ll ever delineate that.
The choice of director means very little to me and I disagree it will set any solid “tone”for the rest of the season. I would like to see the series allign itself with the other 5 series more. And for that to happen, I’d like to see some established Klingons amongst the disappointing ‘cone heads’ and more ship designs that ‘make sense’ chronologically. Most importantly, no more grandiose story arcs that go nowhere, but a return to a more episodic format, using the budget and the modern effects to show us new and exciting civilisations – use Star Trek as a way of uplifting and inspiring, not reinventing the wheel to stroke their own egos, but actually thinking and coming up with new ideas, not destroying established ones. There is so much potential in this series, it’s acting talent, it’s production value – the more laboured shock value choices they make to set themselves ‘apart’ the more time they waste and the sand glass will eventually empty. Go back to basics, tell thought provoking stories and show us the stars.
When the director is very very good and the material is awesome, the choice of director is quite important, like the guy who did the first WIRE and many other installments and even acting in the last season of the show. But when it is a TREK series, I don’t think given their choices of those available that it is a make or break thing.
There have certainly been less than inspired directorial choices in Trek (Stewart’s first go-round was really bad as I recall, and on TOS there were some one-time directors who really didn’t do the job, but cinematographer Jerry Finnerman and Shatner would carry the thing to completion, by their own accounts.) I recently saw a really bad DS9 (comparatively rare for DS9 but still no surprise, it was an Ezri show, a SILENCE OF THE LAMBS knockoff) for the first time, and man, I’m glad I somehow missed it all these years previously. It was written by Wolfe, so it SHOULDN’T have been an utter turd, but whatever polishing was supposed to get done to make it shine, the director did not apply the necessary elbow grease (it may have been unpolishable — it was awful.)
It might be tempting to do a multi-part crossover between Kurtzman’s Hawaii 5.0verse and the STDverse. Instead of saving whales … maybe narwhals? And for those who only know Kurtzman from the thrills and chills of CumberKhan, Sleepy Hollow, and The Mummy – you should know he has a much broader range. He did this picture wherein Chris Pine must learn to open his heart because his dad was a selfish music producer who did peyote with Neil Young and so Chris Pine befriends Elizabeth Banks and starts teaching her kid Spanglish and spoiler guess what? It turns out Pine and Banks are brother and sister and I don’t remember what happens after that.
Why would they give the season premiere to a guy with little directing experience whose previous work has been panned? Let Frakes direct the first episode; he seems to know what he’s doing.
Well, on a positive note, it will only last about 45 minutes.
But seriously, I hope I’m impressed.
Awesome news.
THis news is meant to get me interested in season 2, I think not. I am wanting Alex Kurtzman, he thinks he knows Trek but has no clue and his directing of The Mummy was so by the numbers, that there is a rumour that Tom Cruise took over.
Problem with the Mummy is that he spent more time setting up what is to come rather than telling a good story, he thinks he is being clever and appealing but to I feel he is just a hack and thinks more about the twists rather than the characters.
The best Kelvin Timeline film did not have his involvement, yes Beyond is my fav out of the recent films solely because it is the only one that remembered that it was a Star Trek film.
I miss Brannon Braga, Rick Berman, Ron Moore, Ira Behr and Manny Coto. Well all I can hope is that Kurtzman is not talking out of his ass when he says this show will reconcile with TOS. If DSC remembers it is Star Trek and that it is meant to be 10 years before TOS ten there might be hope.
But instead of being progressive and telling good stories, DSC is just about ticking boxes and riffing on other popular shows. When did Trek become a follower of the trends, rather than setting the trend.
Another problem with DSC, is that it is a show where the decisions are made by committee, to me that first season was a Frankenstein’s monster of a story and it had the worst lead character ever. I despised Michael Burnham and I can’t believe people like this dull character. Her morals are skewed and yet everyone looks at her as if she is amazing but Star Trek is an ensemble.
More swords and swearing dross on the way then most probably.
You know the most daring thing they could do & show on TV right now? A show full of optimism and that frontier spirit of exploration and adventure.
I think our society needs a show like this now to lift our spirits and show us possibilities for a better future…
I wonder if he and Bob Orci have reconciled yet?