This week, we're diving into the all-new
Star Trek series, Strange New Worlds,
with our intrepid Enterprise captain, Anson Mount,
and Executive Producer, Akiva Goldsman.
We will also dig into this week's Star Trek: Picard
Season 2 finale, and discuss
everything about it!
Yes, especially that.
Plus, I've got an exclusive clip
from next week's episode of Strange New Worlds,
so boldly go to The Ready Room,
y'all, it all starts right now.
Hey nerds, I'm Wil Wheaton, and this is The Ready Room,
your official behind-the-scenes hub
for all things Star Trek Universe.
The day has finally arrived, can you believe it?
An all-new Star Trek series joins
our ever-widening universe, and we're going to be getting
straight into the old-school episodic goodness
of the series premiere of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Considering the very shiny and new nature of the series,
I have to immediately warn you,
red alert!
If you haven't yet watched Episode 1, do not let this
be your first contact with Strange New Worlds.
Likewise, the Picard season finale
is jam-packed with revelations and emotions
that you're going to want to experience firsthand.
So go stream both of these episodes
and then come back here for a jam-packed episode,
full of spoilers and juicy details.
Let's start with Strange New Worlds.
In this week's premiere episode,
Captain Pike is called back to duty after being on leave,
following the events of Star Trek: Discovery Season 2.
I am very excited to talk with Anson Mount
about troubled, angsty, bearded Pike,
and I have a million questions for Executive Producer
Akiva Goldsman like, how on earth did they manage
to cram every reference in the universe into this pilot
while also creating some very original,
very watchable new Star Trek.
Now, let's talk about the season finale
of Star Trek: Picard.
Don't wanna make this all about me,
but you may have recognized a rather dapper,
rather wise and well-traveled face
in the Star Trek: Picard Season 2 finale.
That was me. Your boy got to play Wesley Crusher again
in the 21st century, and I cannot wait
for you to see a little bit more about how that came to be.
Second spoiler alert, they did not have to ask twice.
But first, while the highlight of the Picard
Season 2 finale was definitely the return
of everyone's favorite Traveler,
a bunch of other things went down as well.
Let's take a closer look at the incredible,
time-bending, tear-jerking, mind-blowing finale
to an amazing season of Star Trek: Picard.
Control room, engage.
As I leave, I leave you free.
Q is moving on.
In your parlance, I am dying.
He is leaving behind a gift
to the person who he has had the most focus on.
You matter to me.
We were wondering what to do with the emotional
throughline of Picard, and we noticed that Picard seemed
endlessly unable to stick with a partner that was romantic.
And so we thought, "Hmm, interesting. Brave man,
scared of nothing out there,
but maybe scared of something in there."
So we built what he was scared of.
This skeleton key migrated all over the house.
I wish that day it hadn't ended up in my hand.
[Akiva] We thought that maybe Q,
as his final act, would want to free him.
[Q, whispering] Bravo.
Destiny.
Left for the little boy you will be in the future to find.
He has seen that Picard has been constrained
by this notion that he caused his mother's death,
which is not accurate,
and I'm leaving him free of that.
You chose the Jean-Luc you are.
You absolved yourself.
And because you choose him, perhaps he will now
be worthy enough for someone else to choose.
Maybe this time he will even
give him the chance to be loved.
The conclusion of that trauma
that he experienced, it's done so sensitively.
I think all of us actors
did our best to live up to the writing.
It's time for me to go.
But not alone.
Isn't that the point of all this?
It was quite an emotional experience for me.
See you out there.
I think a way to look at this season is pairs,
partnerships, finding where you belong.
So Rios discovers he's a man out of time and stays,
and Raffi and Seven work it out.
For us, Alison, who is such an extraordinary actress
was always the character who never fit with herself,
and so therefore could never fit anywhere else.
And so the idea of this romance, as strange as it may be,
where these two end up sharing a body
seemed the natural resolution to her character.
And also the promise of potentially things to come.
We needed a friend.
Seven, by my authority, consider this a field commission.
We touch on in an earlier episode
that Seven had tried to join Starfleet after Voyager,
and that she was shot down because of being Borg.
So to see her come full circle and to get that acceptance
is fun, and I'm excited to see what happens,
what kind of a fit it actually is with her in Starfleet.
Where's Captain Rios?
I'm staying.
He didn't really have that much
waiting for him in the future.
I always thought of Rios as a man out of time,
so that it made sense for him to suddenly
make that very bold decision, 'cause it's a big decision,
but of course, if there's the possibility of family
and of setting your own roots and someone that you admire
and love is there, then even more reason to stay.
Elnor, this is for you.
- [Seven] Oh. - [Raffi] Oh, no.
What I envision for Elnor's future, having known his past,
I'd actually really love it if we explored a lot of it.
We know nothing about his family, his history,
anything like that, and I think that's kind of
one of the reasons why he always wants to keep
moving forward is because he's scared of looking back
and what might be waiting for him there.
So I'd love to explore that.
Oh.
With that toast, there's somewhere it's time I got to.
He has had a huge internal shift,
and he goes to that meeting, that reunion,
with certain intentions and certain hopes.
It doesn't mean it will work out.
There is an ambiguity to the scene.
Just because he is resolved doesn't mean it's resolved.
She is a woman of great pride.
She is Romulan, after all, and she's very clear on her path
so there is part of her that thinks,
no means no, and that's fine.
And if anything, we don't know quite
how that will be received.
We're left with ambiguity in that scene,
but it is beautiful.
We will see.
While time cannot give us second chances,
maybe people can.
I am now joined by the newest Captain of the Enterprise,
Anson Mount and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Executive Producer, Akiva Goldsman.
Gentlemen, thank you so much
for joining me here in The Ready Room today.
Anson, you are now not just a Starfleet captain.
You are the captain of the Enterprise
and you carry that for the rest of your time on this planet.
What does that mean to you?
Well, it's--look. It--look.
I mean, this is ridiculous, right?
[Wil] Yeah.
You grow up watching this show
and the idea of being the captain of the Enterprise
is just something that is so left field
that it never even occurs to you
to put it on your bucket list, and then it's happening.
There is not a day that goes by that I'm not on set,
and I look around and go, "I'm on freaking Star Trek.
I'm not just on Star Trek,
I'm the captain of the Enterprise, like, me?"
That's...
insane.
It is so surreal,
but you gotta get past that so you can do your job.
You know, eventually, you gotta say,
"Okay, why not me?
If not me, somebody else, so why not me?
Let's go with it."
Hope that they keep buying what I'm doing
because I don't feel like a captain in my everyday life.
Akiva, we can see Anson is sitting
on what really looks like the bridge of the Enterprise.
And...
I am just crazy about the little details
that go into bringing our sets to life.
I know I am not the only nerd
who watches Strange New Worlds and is doing tons
of freeze-framing to get a closer look at how
you have brought this classic starship into our modern era.
Anything you want to share about the design philosophy
and how you worked with your art department
to make this ship real?
The Enterprise is put together
by a lot of people who spent a lot of time
imagining themselves on the Enterprise.
So what we did is we tried to evoke the experience
of watching TOS, but with the grammar available to us today.
So it still has to be aspirational.
It still has to pull you into an imagined future,
and so, there's a lot of that,
of sort of kind of almost the gut test
of designing and looking and designing and looking.
But what Anson can tell you is that when we were making
the pilot, because of COVID, we weren't done.
So not only did we have to split the episode
and shoot half of it at the beginning
and half at the end of the season--
- Oh, no way.
- And there are some sets, I won't tell you which ones,
that we shot on that were missing walls, that we were really
building the Enterprise around shooting on the Enterprise,
which was uniquely fascinating
and kind of delightful and awful at the same time.
That's fascinating to me.
So Anson, I'm not sure if this question I had prepped
to ask you actually makes sense,
and please, tell me if it doesn't.
We got to see, you got to see a little bit of the Enterprise
when you were working on Star Trek: Discovery.
Now it is your Enterprise and it is, I thought,
a fully-realized Enterprise with a transporter room
and a sick bay, and your quarters,
and your ready room, and all of those things.
I remember my first kind of solo, "the stage is empty,"
walk around through the set.
That quiet moment of taking it all in
and setting it as real in my head.
Did you have a moment like that?
And if you did, do you feel comfortable sharing it with us?
Yeah, sure, actually, the very first time I toured
the Discovery stage,
our art director took me around, and it was empty,
and said, "Would you like to sit in the chair?"
And I said, "Sure, that'd be great.
I'd love to sit in the captain's chair, yeah."
And I plopped down and suddenly, I got emotional,
and I didn't expect it because I suddenly had this flashback
to playing Star Trek as a child in my parents' living room,
and I realized I'm still doing that.
I had this weird connection with my childhood
and this realization of this dream I'd always had
and never, until that moment,
did I realize how deep that dream was.
And then here, obviously, yes,
it continues to expand as we do our set
and it is now a full
Enterprise. We're built and we're, actually--
we get to continue expanding as we go.
Akiva came up to a few of us
at the end of last season and said,
"What do you wanna see on the Enterprise we haven't seen?"
Because there's all this literature
out there from canon about all these different places
that are in the Enterprise
that have never been televised and fully realized,
so we're adding elements here and there as we go.
I have a question for you, Akiva.
We, who identify as Trekkies, are very well-known for our,
let's say, rather strong opinions about things.
You are working with fan-favorite legacy characters.
You are working with a fan-favorite legacy starship.
How does our particular relationship as fans
to the franchise interact with your needs, desires
and creative impulses as the showrunner?
Well, I've probably now said too many times
that my first Star Trek convention was 1976.
But it was, and somewhere along the way,
I think on Star Trek Day,
I posted the program that I still have from it.
And the reason I say this is
because there are very few things in life
that I loved as much as Star Trek when I was a kid.
Again, I'm older than you guys, so for me,
it was WPIX Channel 11 in New York,
every night at 6:00 PM.
And it was, instead of a lot of, as we say,
hazarai in my house, a lot of goings-on,
none of which were particularly pleasant.
And this was, for me, a way out.
And a way to imagine a kind of
life that wasn't available to me.
And I'm not alone in that, by any means.
I've found over time that a lot of us found it
and then ultimately each other because of that.
And so akin to what Anson's saying,
we're making up a thing we love,
and in my case, I'm trying to please the 12-year-old in me.
So you have to make the show for the fan in you
and hope there are enough like you,
hope you're not such an outlier
that you won't get it entirely wrong
because to be predictive or calculating will fail.
It's an emotional journey.
So you gotta make a thing you love because you love it
and hope that you're not just alone and, you know,
so far so good.
Anson, you, and Ethan, and Rebecca,
all worked together on Star Trek: Discovery.
When you were brought in for Pike,
were you brought in under false pretenses
for like "captain of a starship" or some other thing.
And like, everyone I'm talking to, they're like,
"Yes, I was auditioning for 'mysterious role'
and I had no idea it was actually Star Trek."
Did you know you were auditioning for Star Trek
when you came in to read for Pike?
Yeah, I did because I had actually been talking to them
about Lorca for Season 1,
and they very wisely hired Jason Isaacs
and then getting ready for Season 2, they said,
"Hey, we got a new captain, would you read for it?"
And I said, "Of course."
And they sent me the material
and it was for somebody called Captain Parker.
And I thought, "Well, that's not a very inventive
name for a captain, but fine." And I did it,
my wife put me on tape and sent it in.
They called me back, I think the next day
and said, "Okay, you got it,
and it's actually Captain Pike,"
and I about...
fainted
because I knew what that meant.
- What a great moment. - Right.
- [Wil] Yeah, for sure.
- And then what they
very wisely did not tell me that Akiva had already
been talking up his idea for a Pike-based show...
[Wil] That was my follow-up question.
- Yeah, so.
- When did you find out?
Oh, thank God, they did not tell me that
because I would not have been able to function.
They never really told me explicitly until,
gosh, I think we were already into making it.
Yeah, it was a very, very tightly kept secret.
Listen, I know how incredibly late it is for both of you,
so I just want to end with one question.
Akiva, this is primarily for you and then a little follow-up
for both of you to jump in on if you want to.
Akiva, the transition from serialized writing
to episodic writing, I know that it presents
some challenges. I know it's exciting, but I imagine
that it's kind of like learning how to sprint after being
a very successful marathon runner for a very long time.
Would you just talk a little bit about how that change
happened for you and how you have met the challenge?
Sure, well, it will be up to others to decide whether
we've met it, but I do think that something became clear
that has come full circle for me, which is even though
we talk about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
being episodic, and it fundamentally is,
we have a story each week, we have retained something
of the serialized type of storytelling
that none of the purely episodic shows had.
So the thing I always say about TOS is
the problem with purely episodic is
Jim has to watch Edith Keeler get hit by a car one week--
but he's gotta be over it the next week.
And so human experience couldn't
carry across episodic storytelling.
So you've got more story, but less humanity.
Now what we're doing is a little bit of both.
We do episodic storytelling,
but our character arcs are serialized.
And that gives you, hopefully, the best of both worlds.
The last thing I'll say is, one thing that episodic
does give you that was so extraordinary and delightful
about TOS is the opportunity to leverage tone
slightly more significantly than you can in serialized.
Because in serialized, it's all of a piece,
and so to pull up and become a little bit lighter
or to drop down and become a little bit darker,
has to be far more measured than it was in TOS
or as we hope to do in Strange New Worlds
where the stories can surprise you,
not just about where they go, but how they get there.
Anson, in this episode, towards the end,
Pike is in the well of this large sort of diplomatic chamber
and gives what I know is going to end up being remembered
as one of the great Star Trek speeches.
It actually reduced me to tears
when he's describing the second civil war.
I've seen my future. Let me show you yours.
Our conflict also started with a fight for freedoms.
We called it the Second Civil War,
then the Eugenics War, and finally, just World War III.
This was our last day,
the day the earth we knew ceased to exist.
What began as an eruption in one nation,
ended in the eradication of 600,000 species of animals
and plants and 30% of Earth's population.
It was deeply affecting to me.
When you have those moments,
I just wanna know about the acting part of that.
The actor prepares part of that.
You're giving an incredible speech.
You're a great leader, you're a great diplomat,
but you're an actor on top of all of it,
you gotta grab the beats in that.
It all just comes across as so effortless.
It all reads as just, "Yes, I absolutely believe this man.
What does he want me to do?
I'll do it. He's really, really smart."
Talk to me just a little bit about those incredible speeches
and what it means to have,
like, I guess, the privilege of delivering them?
Well, first of all, thank you.
And yeah, when I first read it, I was like, "Wow, man."
I got chills.
I get to say these words.
I don't know, I had to let it really trickle down.
We'd been through so much over the course
of the pandemic, and we had George Floyd,
we had people marching in the streets.
I mean, you can tell, I was very pleased that the studio
and the network were happy to go there with us,
in terms of the footage that we chose to use in that moment.
Because I think it was a perfect opportunity
to juxtapose where we are now
with where we could be going in either direction.
And so I didn't have to reach too much on that one.
Listen, I'm gonna have a fanboy moment.
I absolutely loved it, it was deeply affecting to me
and it is going to be remembered
as one of the great Star Trek moments.
Thank you, Akiva, for writing it.
Thank you, Anson, for delivering it.
Thank you, both of you,
for bringing us Strange New Worlds,
for staying up so late to spend so much time with me today.
I really, really look forward to seeing
where this season goes, and I cannot wait to come back
and talk to you about it again, at some point in our future.
Thanks for having us.
It was fun and good to see you.
Thank you very much.
From the moment Star Trek: Picard was announced,
people began asking me if Wesley Crusher
would make an appearance.
So until August of last year,
I told the truth when I said that I would love to do it,
but I had no idea if it would actually happen.
This has been an unbelievably big secret
for me to keep since then.
There is so much I want to say about the entire experience.
I could sit myself down on the couch
and use that transporter clone of mine
from earlier this year to interview me about it
for, like, half an hour, at least.
But because I'm here mostly as a host,
and only a little bit as that guy,
I'm just gonna take a moment of your time to tell you
a couple of reasons this was so special for me.
I love Wesley Crusher. I cherish Wesley Crusher.
I am fiercely proud of Wesley Crusher.
It is an honor and a privilege
to be the actor who played him.
My sad truth is that I couldn't fully feel
any of those things for a lot of reasons
when he and I lived and worked on the Enterprise.
And when I was finally able to, I thought it was too late.
I didn't think I would ever have a chance
to fully embrace and appreciate playing him again.
I didn't think I'd get to love being Wesley in the moment,
the way I love being Wesley in my memory.
But I did, and I am so grateful.
Wesley the Traveler is different from the Wesley
on Next Generation, the same way this Wil Wheaton
is different from the actor
who played Wesley on the Next Generation.
We're both still part of the Star Trek Universe
in a different way than we were,
and I hope he loves it as much as I do.
It was such an honor, it was such a privilege
to share time and space with Wesley the Traveler.
To come home to the set,
to feel at home the way I feel there,
the way I feel at home right here in The Ready Room.
It was wonderful, and here's how it all came together.
Control room, make it so.
I am on the set of Star Trek: Picard
to be Wesley Crusher,
who is now a full-fledged Traveler,
for the first time in 30 years.
It was a great opportunity to bring Wil back,
which obviously everybody wanted to see
and to keep him modular so that the story could tolerate
a superbeing and sort of Easter egg
and make the fans happy as well.
Welcome to the Travelers.
I think that people are gonna be very surprised
how he's back, but it was wonderful.
I was so excited when I read this scene
and saw the writers for Picard had taken the Wesley who has
existed in my head for all these decades and canonized him.
You've evolved to a new level.
You're ready to explore places where thought
and energy combine in ways you can't even imagine.
And I will be your guide...
if you would like.
When we started realizing that there was an opportunity
for Kore to go somewhere, that she had to actually
go somewhere for the timeline to be restored.
Terry said, "What about Wesley?"
And then this really funny thing happened.
For the first time so far, in the Star Trek Universe,
people went to war over a character.
The one thing that pretty much everybody wanted
was to figure out a way to bring Wesley back
to their own individual shows,
so it was a little bit of a fight to bring him back.
"We're using Wesley," and we're like,
"Well, we want Wesley here, he's a Next Gen character."
"Well, we're already using him." "Well, we can use him too."
"Well, no"--and then it's like,
Wesley Crusher was the bell of the ball.
But obviously, bringing him back to Picard was necessary
because he had to return to where he came from.
Hello, Kore.
We like to tie up disconnects in canon if we can.
Good luck, Wesley.
[Wesley] Thank you.
[Akiva] We like to create elegance where possible.
Isa is a terrific scene partner to work with.
It felt like we had been working together for months
and not just for a few hours today.
I just hope that it all comes across in the final cut.
It's such an honor to have him back.
It is everything I hoped it would be.
Big job.
Tell me about it.
I am so thrilled to live in a world where new Star Trek
just continues to premiere each and every week.
Did you enjoy your Star Trek from last week?
Well, here you go, nerds,
have another helping of Star Trek, it's brand-new.
If the premier of Strange New Worlds
thrilled you as much as it did me,
you will be elated to know I've got us an exclusive
sneak peak at next week's episode. Check this out.
Oh, can I help?
No.
You have offended Hemmer, our new Chief Engineer.
No offense intended, I was raised to offer help
to anyone with a sensory impairment--
- That word again.
Sir?
Impaired.
A human in my condition
might consider themselves impaired.
Hemmer may not be able to see,
but his other senses compensate.
Compensate?
They are superior.
I've read that among many things,
the Aenar have a form of precognitive ability.
I knew you were going to ask that.
Because you sensed my question before I asked it?
Because everyone always asks that.
Right.
Well, that peek at Episode 2
has upped my excitement levels and I didn't think
they could get any higher after this week's very full,
very nerdy, double-the-Trek episode of The Ready Room.
Y'all, thank you so much for watching.
It's because of you that I get to do this
and it is all the more special
getting to dive into this new series together.
I have a feeling this is just
the beginning of an amazing season.
Next week, I am joined by the incredible
Grammy award-winning, Celia Rose Gooding,
along with Strange New Worlds Executive Producer,
Henry Alonso Myers to talk all things Uhura
and breakdown Episode 2, "Children of the Comet."
Until then, I'm Wil Wheaton,
and I'm also Wesley Crusher.
Live long and prosper.