Producer Alex Kurtzman Wants to Make a STAR TREK Musical
With Star Trek: Short Treks picking up an Emmy Award nomination, there’s a good chance that we are going to see more of those developed. In a recent interview with Gold Derby, Star Trek franchise producer Alex Kurtzman talked about the Short Treks format and how it gives him and his team the opportunity to tell stories that may not work as a full-length show and to experiment with the Star Trek universe a little more.
When asked if there will be more Short Treks, Kurtzman said:
"Well thanks to the Emmy nomination, I'm really hoping so. They're like little O. Henry stories. There's the story that presents itself, but then there's the little twist at the end that reframes what you've been watching the whole time. I grew up with anthology shows like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits and there's something about telling stories in a shorter period of time that are close-ended and frankly even shorter than The Twilight Zone, because the max length of our short is like 15 minutes, that's the longest one we ever did.”
Kurtzman also talked about the fun and challenges of writing these Short Treks and said that he would like to produce a musical episode, and another one shot in black and white.
"As a writer and as a storyteller, it's a real challenge to figure out how to have a beginning, a middle, and an end in a much more compressed period of time and there's so many different forms that these could take. I'd love to do a musical, for example. I'd love to do one in black and white, figure out what that means. I can probably think of 50 different ways that we can tell stories and 50 different crevices of the Star Trek universe to explore. That may not be the right kinds of crevices for the larger shows, but I think we always think of the Short Treks as, these are the scenes that are just as important as what's going on in the main shows but that you wouldn't actually have time for. These are the moments that you can drill down on. So I'd love to. I'd love nothing more."
When I think of Star Trek, the last thing that crosses my mind is a musical. I’m curious to see how that might effectively work, but I’m sure that Kurtzman and his team have some ideas.
In the meantime, we can look forward to 23 straight weeks of new Star Trek episodes to carry us through into the new year. We’ve got the animated comedy Star Trek: Lower Decks, which debuted last week. Then there’s the third season of Star Trek: Discovery, which will premiere on October 15th on CBS All Access.