Among the most intriguing Star Trek reveals at San Diego Comic-Con was that Dear White People writer/director Justin Simien and Star Trek: Lower Decks’ actress and Starfleet Academy writer Tawny Newsome are working on a new half-hour, live-action Trek comedy. Collider’s Christina Radish recently sat down with Simien for his new docuseries Hollywood Black and managed to get some fascinating new tidbits of information on the as-yet-unnamed series.
Simien talked about his early experiences with Star Trek, how it informed his best-known work, the 2014 film Dear White People, and its spin-off TV series of the same name, as well as how he came to collaborate with Newsome on the new series. “Star Trek has always been there for me. It might seem weird, but especially when you’re looking at the last season of Dear White People, Dear White People is such an ode to Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Simien explained. He went on to reveal how TNG taught him a lot about the formatting of a television series.
“My fandom as a kid was X-Men and Star Trek,” said Simien. “You couldn’t tell me anything else was important in the world, but Star Trek a little bit more because it’s live-action and I learned the earliest roots of how I might write something in that. And when I was going to make Dear White People, it was like, ‘Oh, I do have permission to have a central character, but then to go off on adventures with other characters. I do have permission to not play the plot, every single episode. I do have permission to make the audience encounter paradox and encounter really difficult truths that require lots of different opinions to come together’,” he explained. “It really taught me some of those fundamentals.”
Simien continued, explaining his long-standing relationship with the franchise and explained how he and Newsome developed the new show together.
Could the New Star Trek Sitcom Air on Network Television?
Simien also spoke about what would distinguish the first “sitcom” style Star Trek show from its predecessors, saying: “I think the goal of any new Trek should be, of course, to take the franchise in a slightly different direction because why else would you need a new show unless it was doing something a little different? But also, find maybe a new novel way to actually honor what Star Trek has always been.” Simien is a tried and true Star Trek fan making him a perfect fit to bring a new series like this to life. He told Collider:
“I really am a Trekker. I have seen everything multiple times. To me, the task here is, yeah, how do I distill what I feel is the heart of Star Trek, which is people with all of these differences finding a way to advance, and to do so with love and integrity for each other, without breaking each other down. How could you not respond to that message? But how can I say that in a totally different way and honor all the little bells and whistles that make it feel like Star Trek, and be funny. That’s the other thing, Tawny and I really bonded over this. Some of our favorite episodes are the sitcom, workplace comedies in disguise episodes, particularly Deep Space Nine , particularly mid to late TNG. That was our sweet spot of inspiration, with the tone of those more comic episodes. Without saying anything specific, that’s the sandbox we’re playing in.”
He went on to discuss his relationship with CBS and Paramount+ executives and with Star Trek’s streaming impresario Alex Kurtzman. Simien also raised the possibility that the series might end up on network TV, a first since the cancelation of Enterprise in 2005, outside of Disvovery’s polite episode. He explained:
“Well, I don’t know exactly where the show will land. That hasn’t quite been figured out yet. But I don’t notice a difference. They’re all pretty interesting spaces to work in, at this time, in our industry’s evolution. I haven’t noticed a difference yet. All I’ve gotten from the CBS and the Paramount people so far, though, has been incredibly encouraging, shockingly encouraging. I’ll read an email over and over again to look for the other shoe dropping. They’ve been really into what we’ve been talking to them about. So far, so good. And Alex Kurtzman is also a big part of that, too. He’s a big papa. He loves to put together teams of just really good people who also happen to have talent. He’s a great protector of artistic vision. It’s been really great so far, I’ve gotta say. I can’t complain.”
As far as the timeline for the show’s production goes, Simien reveals that he and Newsome are currently planning out the pilot, and that everything will follow from there. Regarding filming and casting, he told Collider, “That’s the part that’s not up to me. I don’t know.” It sounds like its still early days for the new series, as Simien explained that all eyes are on another new series at the moment. “I know that right now, they’re in the throes of Starfleet Academy, and Tawny is a writer on that show. And so, I’m assuming that probably has
to happen before we can get going, but I really don’t know,” he explained. “We are still in early stages. We are still refining what a pilot might be. It’s maybe too soon to tell, but I’m hopeful that it’s not gonna be years from now. We’ll see.”
What Do We Know About Simien and Newsome’s New ‘Star Trek’ Show?
So far, we know little else about the series, which will be co-written by Newsome and Simien as a live-action, half-hour comedy — a first for the Star Trek franchise. The venerable science fiction property only released its first-ever comedy-focused series in 2020 in the form of the animated Lower Decks, which will be ending with its fifth season this fall. The logline for the series states that it will take place on a gleaming resort planet, where the staff members discover that their exploits are being broadcast to the entire quadrant as a form of futuristic reality TV.
The resort planet may be the vacation world Risa, which first appeared in the Next Generation episode “Captain’s Holiday.” A series focusing on characters who are not part of the Federation or Starfleet would also be a first for Star Trek; the aforementioned Deep Space Nine did have a number of characters who were not part of the Federation, including avaricious Ferengi bartender Quark and officious Changeling security director Odo, but the show was still led by its Starfleet characters.
Other Star Trek reveals coming out of SDCC included new teasers for the streaming-original Section 31 movie and the fifth season of Lower Decks, a new clip from the third season of Strange New Worlds, and the announcement of several actors joining Starfleet Academy’s faculty, including Discovery’s Tig Notaro and Voyager’s Robert Picardo.
Justin Simien and Tawny Newsome’s new Star Trek series is still in development; no title, casting, or release date has yet been announced. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates, you can stream most other Star Trek shows on Paramount+.