Showrunner Aaron Harberts has announced that the team will start work on Season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery when he returns to Los Angeles next week. He’s currently on a tour to promote the series, and was speaking at a special event in London where fans got to see a preview of Episode 8, look at props from the show and participate in a Q&A with the cast.
Harberts described how that work will begin.
“We look at these seasons as novels, and what’s beautiful about it [is that] we can sit down – [series creator] Alex Kurtzman, [executive producer/writer] Gretchen Berg, myself and [executive producer/director] Akiva Goldsman — we sit down and the first thing that the conversation is going to be about is what worked and what didn’t,” he said. “What did we love? What experiments did we do in terms of structure or styles of storytelling; what did we feel sort of sang the best? And, more importantly, what are the themes for Season 2?”
Harberts suggested the direction that Season 2 takes is still open, revealing that they’ll also be asking what it is they want to dig into next season.
“I can tell you this, Season 1 is the war novel and we won’t be doing another war novel,” he revealed. “And that’s fine; it served us very well for Season 1.”
Not Just Space Battles
They will also be trying to please the fans. “I feel like Star Trek fans — and science fiction fans — are looking for ‘What are you trying to say?’ ‘What is the deeper [meaning]?’ It’s not just about space battles.”
Harberts added, “It’ll be a big discussion and it’ll probably take at least two weeks to even think about what Season 2 in a macro sense will be.”
He also revealed that they’re still tweaking the Season 1 finale. “Actually, I spent the other day in my hotel room going through the cut of that — Episode 15. So that has taken so much brain power just to make sure we’re finishing this first season correctly,” he said.
For now, we can look forward to the upcoming midseason finale which airs in the US on November 12 and in the UK a day later.