Movies News Talk
Writer for Starfleet Academy Tawny Newsome describes how her time on Star Trek: Lower Decks helps Star Trek's upcoming series writers balance the "strange" tonal variations of the franchise. Newsome as Lt. Beckett Mariner in Star Trek: Lower Decks will premiere its fifth and last season in the fall of 2024. But Tawny is also a writer and self-described continuity cop on Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, which is set to start filming in the autumn with Academy Award winner Holly Hunter and Academy Award candidate Paul Giamatti slated in major roles.
Screen Rant conducted an interview with Tawny Newsome for the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of her comedy Nuked. Newsome highlighted her performance as Mariner on Star Trek: Lower Decks and explained how Lower Decks proving Star Trek's ability to effectively explore the animated comedy genre helps her persuade her fellow writers on Star Trek: Starfleet Academy that Star Trek has a 60-year history of successfully managing "the strangest tonal shifts." Please see her quote below:
Tawny Newsome is right when she says that the 60-year history of Star Trek is a collection of absolutely strange tonal alterations, particularly in the episodic Star Trek legacy series with 22–26 episodes every season. Philosophical sci-fi, action, time travel, humor, sports, singing, and every other possible narrative genre have all been part of Star Trek's several versions. Both Star Trek: Lower Decks, which has an everything-goes attitude, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, with its "big swings" including season 2's musicals and crossover episodes and season 3's forthcoming "Hollywood noir murder mystery" directed by Jonathan Frakes, carry on this lineage.
Tawny Newsome's lifetime love and familiarity of Star Trek also help Starfleet Academy. What fans love about Star Trek is its tremendous range of storytelling capability. Hints from Tawny Newsome, executive producer and showrunner Alex Kurtzman indicate that Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will also have the "strange Tonal Shifts" Star Trek is known for. Aimed as a younger audience, Starfleet Academy will contain comedy to counter the sci-fi stories of the young cadets following their Starfleet aspirations. With Star Trek: Starfleet Academy's thrilling A-list hiring of Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti, viewers could also be excited by the best quality of acting. Luckily, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy gains from writer Tawny Newsome's lifetime love and Star Trek knowledge.
The gift of my career has come from performing Mariner. Her ever, ever plays no greater part than it does now. She is more and everything I wish to be. So writing for Academy has been fascinating. Though Lower Deck was Star Trek's first step into harsh comedy, I was a lifetime Star Trek fan and playing Mariner has given me. Being the top on the first time my cherished property is trying comedy is such an honor; the fact that it worked and they allowed us do it for five seasons and let us crossover into live action.
It was just evidence of our showrunner, Mike McMahon's vision and tone. It's also just evidence that Star Trek can really manage the most unusual tonal swings and is the craziest franchise on Earth. That's exactly what I contribute to Starfleet Academy; I'm the one in the writer's room hammering the f-cking gong, like, "Nope, Star Trek is strange."
Lower Decks will shortly be gone and Star Trek: Discovery is finishing, but even with less shows, there is still a lot of fantastic material just waiting for us.
As the series grows, Star Trek clearly has several directions for development. Star Trek has created a sizable following even if its trip may have come to an end. The ability of the show to portray both lighthearted and serious subjects perhaps help to explain its popularity.
It makes no difference if our last program focused entirely on the horrors of war. The next episode most likely will be a wild farce. The franchise has been doing that for sixty-plus years, so expertly and insanely. Our supporters want for and enjoy that. I could name instances of it. So if someone in the room says, "I think this is a little too out there or it's a little too goofy," I just grab my Rolodex of either Lower Deck episodes that did it stranger or Ferengi episodes from Deep Space Nine that did it wilder. And normally then they go, "Okay." Their arguments with the receivers of it are somewhat limited.
Source: Plus Rant in Screen
Star Trek: Discovery season five may be accessed on Paramount+.
With a fresh collection of characters and a more current Star Trek style, the latest addition to the series seems to point to ongoing success.