Alex Kurtzman on Star Trek: Discovery’s bold new future for season three

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

MAJOR SPOILERS for the season finale of Star Trek: Discovery's second season finale. As Star Trek: Discovery takes place around ten years before the events of The Original Series, fans have kept an eye out for any element which didn't fit into Star Trek canon, and Discovery provided them with plenty of fodder. Franchise producer Alex Kurtzman had previously promised that the finale of the second season would bring everything together. "We are entirely aware of everyone’s questions and criticisms; I’ve read everything, and I see where everyone’s like, ‘Well, the spore drive never existed!’ and ‘What, Discovery was never around!’ and all of those things, we’re totally aware. You will get an answer," Kurtzman said. With season two now officially behind us, we now know how Kurtzman decided to tackle those criticisms.

As part of their effort to stop the malicious A.I. behind Section 31 from wiping out all sentient life in the universe, the crew of Discovery traveled far into the future through a wormhole. During the closing moments, Spock (Ethan Peck) proposes that Starfleet erase all knowledge of Discovery and her crew so that their sacrifice won't be in vain, thus explaining why these characters have never been mentioned before.

While speaking with THR, Alex Kurtzman confirmed that Discovery has jumped 950 years into the future, which is where the third season will be set, meaning that they won't be subject to Star Trek canon.

We love playing within canon. It's a delight and a privilege. It's fun to explore nooks and crannies of the universe that people haven't fully explored yet. That being said, we felt strongly that we wanted to give ourselves an entirely new energy for season three with a whole new set of problems. We're farther than any Trek show has ever gone. I also had experience working on the [J.J. Abrams] films where we were stuck with canonical problems. We knew how Kirk had died, and we wondered how we could put him in jeopardy to make it feel real. That's what led us to go with an alternate timeline; suddenly we could tell the story in a very unpredictable way. That's the same thought process that went into jumping 950 years into the future. We're now completely free of canon, and we have a whole new universe to explore.

"There will be canonical references to everything that has happened in the various shows; we're not erasing that," Kurtzman continued. "But we're so far past that point that all of that is a very distant memory. We're very excited to see how you put the elements of Star Trek in an entirely new universe." Although I've enjoyed the series, particularly this past season, the idea of Discovery getting to chart its own path centuries away from events we're already familiar with is quite appealing. The next Star Trek series on the slate is the as-yet-untitled Jean-Luc Picard series starring Patrick Stewart, which is slated to debut late 2019 before the release of Discovery's third season. "[The Picard series is] going amazingly. We start shooting soon. It will be really different from Discovery in tone, pace, and story. I'm so excited with how our cast came together. Hanelle Culpepper, our director, is absolutely crushing it," Kurtzman said. "We're so excited because it's so different. Yet, I think people who like The Next Generation will recognize that it's made by people who love it equally. It will be really interesting to see how people respond." Following the both the Picard series and Discovery's third season will be the Section 31 series starring Michelle Yeoh.

If you're a fan of Deep Space Nine, you've probably spent the past two years saying, "What the hell are they doing with Section 31? That's nothing like the Section 31 we know." That's exactly right. In Deep Space Nine, they did not have badges or ships. They're an underground organization. What you see on Discovery and our upcoming show with Michelle Yeoh is how Section 31 became that organization and why it was so underground by the time Deep Space Nine comes around.

What do you think of Star Trek: Discovery's new direction for its third season?