The actor also tells a funny story about showrunner Akiva Goldsman’s involvement in the ‘Trek’ franchise.
The Star Trek universe is expanding rapidly on the small screen, and that includes the long-awaited Christopher Pike show. While spinoffs have been part of the conversation ever since Star Trek: Discovery launched on CBS All Access (now called “Paramount+”), it was revealed in May 2020 that Anson Mount would be leading his own series called Star Trek: Strange New Worlds that would also star Rebecca Romijn as Number One and Ethan Peck as Spock. All three actors previously debuted those roles as part of Star Trek: Discovery, but now they get the chance to expand even further as part of their own series.
But Strange New Worlds will differ from Discovery in one significant way: it’s going to be a more episodic series in contrast to the serialized nature of Discovery. This harkens back to the original Star Trek show and its various spinoffs, which traditionally were more episodic in nature largely due to the weekly airing format and lack of on-demand viewing.
So when Collider’s own Christina Radish recently spoke with Mount as part of the press day for his new film The Virtuoso (which is available On Demand and on Digital on April 30th), she asked about what fans can expect from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Mount revealed that, originally, executive producer and Strange New Worlds showrunner Akiva Goldsman came aboard Star Trek: Discovery mainly so he could write the Captain Pike character – only to discover Pike was not part of the original plans for the show:
“Funny enough, I only found out after Strange New Worlds was picked up that, early in the days of planning Discovery, Akiva Goldsman, who’s our showrunner, had lobbied to be on Discovery because he’s a huge Star Trek fan. Akiva is so busy in his film career that he didn’t need to add a TV show, but he wanted to do Discovery. All he had heard about was that it was going to be a pre-Kirk show, so he assumed it was a show about Captain Pike. He gets in the writers’ room and he’s like, ‘Wait, what?! This is a different show. Okay, all right. We can play with this, but we’ve gotta do another show.’ So, he was lobbying for it and lobbying for it and lobbying for it. I got lucky enough to be cast in the role for Season 2 of Discovery, and they didn’t tell me any of this, thank God, because I would have been far too nervous. I just thought it was a one season gig and that was it.”
Following his debut as Pike in Star Trek: Discovery Season 2, fans quickly embraced Mount and his portrayal of the fan-favorite character – something that did not go unnoticed by Mount:
“Honestly, I’ve never felt such embrace from a fan base, on anything I’ve done. It is really night and day, and I’m very thankful to everyone with Gene Roddenberry and CBS, and Alex [Kurtzman] and Akiva for putting a huge amount of trust in me to be able to do it.”
As for the more episodic nature of Strange New Worlds, Mount says he feels there’s room for both kinds of storytelling approaches in the Star Trek universe:
“Well, I think that Star Trek is, by nature, episodic. Now, that doesn’t mean that Star Trek can’t be other things. Star Trek can be a lot of things, as we’ve seen in every iteration of it. But classic Trek is really founded on the big idea of the week, and the big idea of the week needs room to breathe. In serialized structure, you’re trying to take care of so many relationships that there doesn’t tend to be a lot of room for that. Now with that said, I think Discovery does a phenomenal job with that structure and I was very fortunate to be a part of it. Normally, serialized is my taste, as an actor, but this really felt like it needed to be episodic.”
A Star Trek: Strange New Worlds release date has not yet been announced, but it will premiere on Paramount+ alongside the other Trek shows like Discovery and Picard.
Look for our full interview with Mount on Collider soon.
Reporting by Christina Radish.
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