Time is relative, especially for Akiva Goldsman. One minute he’s a kid playing with toy phasers and zipping around the galaxy on an imaginary starship. The next he’s a grown-up Hollywood producer who’s — still playing with toy phasers and zipping around the galaxy on an imaginary starship.
As Star Trek passes its 60th anniversary, Goldsman, 64, is nearing the end of his own five-year mission as co-creator of Strange New Worlds, the Paramount+ prequel that focuses on the adventures of Captain Christopher Pike, the intrepid space explorer who, along with his pointy-eared sidekick Mr. Spock and several other familiar Federation officers, zooms through the cosmos on the USS Enterprise in the years just before Captain James T. Kirk squeezed into the command chair in the original 1966-69 series.
To commemorate the franchise’s sexagenary, The Hollywood Reporter sat down with the superfan-turned-uber-producer to talk about the show he’s loved since childhood, why Star Trek has survived for six decades, whether another generation of fans is coming, and why, despite everything going on in the world right now, he still believes humanity has a shot at making it to the 23rd century.
Photographed by Rick Wenner
