Author Michael Chabon treks to ‘Star Trek: Picard’
PASADENA, Calif. — Michael Chabon, 1984 University of Pittsburgh grad and the author of “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh,” may be a writer-executive producer for the anticipated “Star Trek: The Next Generation” sequel series “Star Trek: Picard,” streaming Thursday on subscription service CBS All Access, but he wouldn’t have been as excited about that prospect back in 1987 when “ST: TNG” premiered.
“I’d seen all the ‘Star Trek’ movies that came out before, and then I was watching ‘TNG’ the night it premiered, and to be honest, I was disappointed,” Chabon said last Sunday prior to a “Picard” press conference during the Television Critics Association winter 2020 press tour. “To be a fan is in many ways a very conservative position. If you love it the way it is you want it to stay the way it is. My first reaction is, what is this? Who is this guy with no hair, and why are there two captains? It wasn’t [the original series]. It wasn’t great to begin with, but it got better, and then it got really good, and in the meantime I got used to it and made the adjustment and suddenly I realized they’re taking it to places the original series didn’t really go.”
It’s probably fair to expect some viewers may have a similar initial reaction to “Picard,” which is not a redo of “TNG” but a continuation of the story of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), now retired from Starfleet and living on a French vineyard when events from his past and memories of his Enterprise crewmate and friend Data (Brent Spiner) disrupt his dreams.
After a mysterious young woman, Dahj (Isa Briones), shows up at his doorstep, Picard’s new adventure begins and in the first season will eventually reunite him with “Next Gen’s” Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes), Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) and Hugh (Jonathan Del Arco) and reintroduces “Star Trek: Voyager’s” Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan).
How does the celebrated author behind “Wonder Boys” and the “Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” go from writing novels to helming a special effects-heavy, multimillion-dollar streaming series? It’s been a long road getting from there to here.
Chabon, who has screenwriting credits on the 2004 movie “SpiderMan 2” and 2012’s “John Carter,” said he’s been trying to break into the TV business since the late 1990s, including a series he developed for CBS, “House of Gold,” that never got produced. Chabon said that show was about three generations of a family told in different time periods similar to NBC hit “This Is Us.”
“[I liked] the idea that you could begin to approach [TV as] novelistic storytelling with characters who change over time,” said Chabon. “The classic episodic model — with exceptions over the years — is: Something terrible happens to a character and then the next episode it’s reset as if that never happened. It was starting to feel like you could you could tell stories about characters over time in a way that appealed to me.”
And unlike in film, where directors are in charge, in TV writers run the show.
“I had had enough experience at that point with being a writer in the feature film world to realize I would prefer to do this in a way that I had more control,” said
Chabon, who’s still working on a novel when he gets time.
Chabon got involved in “Star Trek” writing a “Star Trek: Short Treks” episode in 2018 after working with “Trek” executive producer Akiva Goldsman on developing a potential movie universe based on Hasbro toys.
After that “Short Treks” episode the idea for a “Picard” series started to form. Star Patrick Stewart, 80, initially rejected the prospect of returning to the role that made him famous, and Goldsman recruited Chabon to write a story document that helped persuade Stewart to sign on.
“Nothing that was in that document is actually in the show,” Chabon said. “I didn’t know it at the time but what that turned out to be was a way of showing him we’re serious about this. You can trust us. … [We understand] you don’t want to do a Picard we’ve seen before. You don’t want to be on the deck of a spaceship being the captain with a crew and planet of the week.”
Stewart said he’s “absolutely thrilled” to continue playing a character that had melded into his own persona by the original series’ third season, but he wanted to put distance between “Next Generation” and “Picard” by avoiding repetition of what he’d done in the original show.
“We’re living in a changed world, and Picard is a changed character,” Stewart said. “That was the stimulus that made me embrace this role and want to examine it as closely as possible.”
Already renewed for a second season, “Picard” won’t constantly reference “The Next Generation,” but Stewart said it will offer snippets of backstory that clarify what happened in Picard’s life between the events of the last “Next Generation” movie, 2002’s disappointing “Star Trek: Nemesis,” and where viewers find him in the new series.
Stewart praised the “Picard” writers, including Chabon, for involving him in crafting the story for season one of the new series.
“[He brings] a profound understanding of character and how character can affect narrative and what makes a character distinctive,” Stewart said. “And to discuss ideas with Michael Chabon is an exhilarating experience. For one thing, he is astonishingly open and generous. I had actually never read a Chabon book until two years ago, and I’ve been devouring them.”
The story of “Picard” involves fallout from an abdication of moral responsibility by the Federation when the Romulan home world needed to be evacuated 14 years earlier and discrimination against sentient androids (like Data) that all are labeled evil after the nefarious actions of a few bad apples.
“We wanted to tell a good ‘Star Trek’ story about JeanLuc Picard, and ‘Star Trek’ stories have a tendency to reflect the fractures in our world,” said “Picard” executive producer Akiva Goldsman. “When it comes to the stratification of people and opportunity, when it comes to the marginalization of others, when it comes to not
open‑hearted being or seeing with empathetic eyes, this seems to be a pervasive problem that I think we all saw as rife for healing, and ‘Star Trek’ does this small little bit in trying to heal social ills.”
More Enterprise?
After season two of “Star Trek: Discovery,” fans clamored for more adventures with the Enterprise crew of Capt. Pike (Anson Mount), Spock (Ethan Peck) and Number One (Rebecca Romijn). Now that seems like more of a possibility.
“We are now having active conversations about them,” Kurtzman said. “Akiva and I have been tossing ideas back and forth.”
Could it be a miniseries or a series?
“I’d rather do it as a series,” Kurtzman said. “There’s room for that. There’s still seven years from Discovery’s departure until Pike’s accident. There’s a lot of precedent for seven-year ‘Star Trek’ shows.”
“The Next Generation,” “Deep Space Nine” and “Voyager” each ran for seven seasons.
Meanwhile, CBS All Access continues to develop a Section 31 “Star Trek” series starring Michelle Yeoh, who will be a part of the third season of “Star Trek: Discovery,” which streams later this year.
Next movie ‘Trek’
But “Trek” fans shouldn’t hold their breath for another big-screen adventure featuring Chris Pine as Kirk and Green Tree native Zachary Quinto as Spock.
“I don’t know yet,” said Noah Hawley, writer-director of the next big-screen “Star Trek” movie before a press conference for the fourth season of his FX series “Fargo.” “It’s not even clear that those roles are … I don’t know, it’s not necessarily a Capt. Kirk story.”
Hawley said what appeals to him about “Star Trek,” as opposed to other movie franchises, is that it tells stories about exploration, diversity and humanity.
“On some level it’s a story about heroes winning the day by being smart,” he said, “by being more clever than their enemies. It’s not ‘might makes right.’ There’s a real moral and ethical center to those stories where a big part of it is the ethical struggle. The violence isn’t automatic, and it’s reluctant.”
Hawley cited a scene in “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” when the Klingon ambassador is assassinated and Kirk surrenders.
“He’s not going to go automatically to war; he sacrifices himself. It’s not what you would expect,” Hawley said. “It’s not ‘kill them all and sort it out later.’ I’m excited to go back to those kind of roots of ‘Star Trek.’”