It has a fantastic sci-fi premise, simultaneously simple yet with constantly unrolling implications.
It walks the line between speculative technology and allegory that the greats of the genre always have.
But whats weird is what we find when you go into that workplace.
CRT monitors with heavily pixelated black and green displays.
It elevates it to a different kind of science fiction.
Part of the appeal ofStrange New Worldsis finding a way to make it feel even more real.
We strive, every season, to tell modern stories that honour theStar Trekframework, Wolkoff says.
In each case, the aesthetic has a different reason, Moore tells us.
Part of the advantage that we have withStar Trekis we are building off an existing aesthetic.
It is really challenging to do something that you have never seen before.
it’s possible for you to couch stories in something a little easier to produce.
Going back a few years I loved the TV showHumans(2015).
Because youre making wild predictions.
Youre writing about people at the end of the day and thats what brings us forward.
Hope for the Future?
One issue is that increasingly, the way the future affects us is badly.
We no longer have the cast iron sense of manifest destiny that informed the creation ofStar Trek.
The technologies that were supposed to make our world greater and more wondrous have been a disappointment.
Radiation gives you cancer, not superpowers.
Space is the playground of billionaires.
Its really hard to escape the possibility that it is about hope, Moore says.
They dont want to or cant imagine what the road from here looks like.
So I wonder if were going to these stories because it feels safer or nicer.
In talking about how the writers bring modern science intoStar Trek, Wolkoff is keen to credit Erin Macdonald.
Shes an astrophysicist and the science advisor for every modernStar Trekshow and we owe the greatest debt to her.
Shes very much a guide for us, Wolkoff says.
And as Moore points out, we are hardly starved for material.
I just finished doing it!
There is another factor as well, aside from the despair of it all.
Theres this increasing knowledge that you cant do satire!
What is the responsible way of doing that?
Its the same climate.
Moore has seen stories that are evolving in that niche, but wants them to get more attention.
It is coming from Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Africa and is written by marginalised people.
Its not always about victory.
They dont overthrow the corporation, but they defy them and carve out their own existence.
As visions of the future go, we could do a lot worse.
