Hoping to calm the cadets’ nerves after the trauma of the USS Miyazaki training incident in episode 6, “Come on, let’s go,” which left the fledgling Federation officers mentally shaken, “Starfleet Academy” downshifted to episode 8, “The Life of the Stars.” This meditative chapter served to reset the students’ psyches via the unlikeliest of methods… by reading a classic 20th-century American play.
We linked to “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” co-executive producer Noga Landau and series creator/Episode 8 co-writer Gaia Violo to learn more about this strangled interlude before the season’s final two installments drop.
“For me on a personal level, I’ve wanted to bring literature into the show,” Violo tells Space.com. “I know we talk a lot about science. But my background is classics, ancient Greek and Latin. You become a writer, hopefully, because you love to read and because it changed your life in one way or another. That experience is always present. Specifically for ‘Our Town,’ the writers’ room was the brainstorming for the episode. We went from wondering if we just wanted an adventure of the week, and then moving on to an adventure of the week the last two episodes.”
Thornton Wilders”Our city” was written in 1938 and centers around the lives of the residents of Grover’s Corner, a typical antebellum New Hampshire community, representing small-town life at its most intimate.
These themes of community, harmony, love, mortality and finding value and meaning in the simplest things are used as a teaching tool by a surprise drama educator in the form of “Star Trek: Discovery’s” Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman).
“But we started to realize that all of us hadn’t really dealt with the aftermath of Miyazaki nor the characters,” adds Violo. “It was a big deal for us to lose one of our own, even as writers. Even though all of these characters have experienced loss, definitely Caleb and Jay-Den losing one of their own in a place that’s supposed to be safe really felt like it needed its space and time to breathe. And to do it through literature in the style of the great classics felt right.
“‘Our Town’ in its simplicity—and looking at the human experience as this collection of small ordinary moments that become essential, set against the backdrop of infinity and the eternal—felt perfect as a way to not only explore our cadets, but also to look at Nala and The Doctor under a different lens. We’d wanted the two of them to connect for a long time, where the two of them just talked about how quietly they exist in a quiet room and where the two of them have talked in a quiet time. feels to live seemingly forever and to see so many eras pass while still standing.”
Landau furthers these sentiments regarding this reflective episode by reaching back to growing up watching classic “Star Trek” episodes, injected with the signature flair of theatrics.
“When I close my eyes, some of my earliest memories are these episodes specifically of ‘The Next Generation’ where people would do theater,” she recalls. “I remember Beverly Crusher doing theater. I remember Data doing theater, and everything Patrick Stewart does is basically theater because that’s who he is as a Shakespearean actor. An unfortunate reality for people on planet Earth today is that they go to school and study Shakespeare and they study these plays, but they don’t really understand what they’re about.
“We’re led through the system where we’re taught how to write essays about the work, but we’re not taught how to feel the work. Taking everything we love so much about ‘Star Trek,’ which makes us feel nostalgic, and a big part of that is how ‘Star Trek’ has incorporated theater into the canon, and then being able to say, ‘Okay to have a reenalized two adrenalized episodes This is going to be ‘Star Trek’ at its best. What are the feelings?
“And reminding a group of kids in the 32nd century that something was written hundreds and hundreds of years ago, something little called ‘Our City,’ it’s actually about the universal things in life and the reason we go to the stars.
The message of the play, that life has meaning whether you look at it that way or not, is wonderful and healing. It was definitely the disincentive we need before we’re about to go on a wild ride at the end of the season.”
