Star Trek: Discovery is shedding a creative restriction that's long frustrated top writers on previous shows in the franchise.
Showrunners Aaron Harberts and Gretchen J. Berg — working from a creative roadmap laid out by executive producer Bryan Fuller — are delivering a Trek saga that gets rid of one the franchise's decades-old limitations in an effort to evolve the series.
As part of Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's utopian vision of the future (and one that Trek franchise executive producer Rick Berman carried on after Roddenberry's death in 1991), writers on Trek shows were urged to avoid having Starfleet crew members in significant conflict with one another (unless a crew member is, say, possessed by an alien force), or from being shown in any seriously negative way.
This guideline wasn't strictly followed across all 700 previous franchise episodes, of course. But in an aspirational effort to make the future more idyllic, Starfleet crew members typically weren't supposed to demonstrate baser human flaws. For writers on Trek shows, the restriction has been a point of behind-the-scenes contention (one TNG and Voyager writer, Michael Piller, famously dubbed it ”Roddenberry's Box"). Drama is conflict, after all, and if all the conflict stems from non-Starfleet members on a show whose regular cast consists almost entirely of Starfleet officers, it hugely limits the types of stories that can be told.
So for the CBS All Access series coming Sept. 24, that restriction has been lifted and the writers are allowed to tell types of stories that were discouraged for decades.
”We're trying to do stories that are complicated, with characters with strong points of view and strong passions," Harberts said. ”People have to make mistakes — mistakes are still going to be made in the future. We're still going to argue in the future."
”The rules of Starfleet remain the same," Berg added. ”But while we're human or alien in various ways, none of us are perfect."