Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1542693
It was a sweltering day in September of 2022 and I was knee-deep in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans when I got the call. Actually, it was a meticulous reconstruction of Hurricane Katrina's wake in a half-acre tank purpose-built for an Apple miniseries I was designing, but let's not digress: "Are you familiar with the show?" I'd missed the opener to this conversation, but recognized the rather stern monotone voice as belonging to Frank Siracusa, a prodigious and oftentimes intimidating Toronto producer. "Which show." "Star Trek…" Long pause… "Well, I've seen the show." But had I? I racked my brain to remember and I drifted back to what was ingrained as perhaps my earliest intact memory—a curious four-year-old sitting cross- legged in front of the television in the living room of my childhood home in King City, a sleepy suburb of rural Ontario. Images of William Shatner in a tight spandex suit wrestling with a rubber monster percolated through the mists of almost fifty years. Not a good start. Not only was I unfamiliar with the show, I was woefully inexperienced at designing sci-fi in general. My brain froze as I contemplated the situation. Why call me? Over the years, I'd been hired for all sorts of reasons—because people loved my work on Hannibal, because I was known for designing detailed period reconstructions, but never science fiction. Everything I knew was from the past, never the future, although the idea had always intrigued me. Yes, I'd caught glimpses of Trek over the years, but it felt like a family to which I'd never belong. I'd always given so much thought to creating plausible realities for on-camera characters, with all the rough edges that really define human existence. What would a perfect world feel like, where holograms look solid, where programmable matter can transform and where almost anything can materialize out of thin air? Take away all the rules of this reality and what is left? Anything… and maybe nothing? As the longest running sci-fi franchise in television history, Star Trek shows the pitfalls of science fiction—each generation imagines a future based on the zeitgeist of the future-present. Hence the reason Eero Saarinen's forms feature so heavily in the original series, why carpeting abounds in The Next Generation and why Voyager feels so distinctly nineties…is anything timeless or is everything somehow anchored in the present? And with Starfleet Academy, there were structural paradoxes in the storytelling—how to tell a story set in San Francisco that also wants to be a space adventure; how to depict life on campus when the format relies so heavily on the infinite potential of space. And then there are the fans, stalwart protectors of Rodenberry's legacy and oftentimes critics of Kurtzman's narrative A. STARFLEET ACADEMY CAMPUS IN SAN FRANCISCO. CONCEPT ILLUSTRATION BY LEE FITZGERALD. SHOWING THE METAMORPHOSIS OF STARSHIP ATHENA INTO THE STARFLEET CAMPUS. B. EXTERIOR USS ATHENA. CONCEPT ILLUSTRATION BY LEE FITZGERALD. SHOWING THE UNDERSIDE OF ATHENA WITH ITS NACELLE COVERS RETRACTED. C. USS ATHENA BRIDGE. LEAD ACTOR HOLLY HUNTER AT THE HELM OF THE BRIDGE WITH HER KEY CREW ARRANGED IN CIRCULAR FASHION AT CONSOLES. PRODUCTION STILL. C