[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] On Story is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

"On Story" is also brought to you in part by the Bogle Family Vineyards, six generation farmers and third generation winemakers based in Clarksburg, California.

Makers of sustainably grown wines that are a reflection of the their family values since 1968.

[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story," a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators and filmmakers.

This week's "On Story," writers of "Star Trek" franchises, Marc Bernardin and Beau De Mayo discuss the art of writing science fiction.

- There's nothing they can do that we haven't seen some version of already.

We are past the Rubicon of dinosaurs and "Jurassic Park" being the thing we never thought we'd see on screen.

We've seen everything.

So then it's incumbent on the writers, on the script, on the story, to deliver the thing that they've never seen before.

And that's almost always cerebral.

That's almost always emotional.

It's almost always some little nugget of an idea twisted into a way that it's a prism that's unlocking a thing that within our brains we never saw it coming.

[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] [Narrator] This week on "On Story," writer and producer of "Star Trek: Picard," Marc Bernardin, and writer and executive producer of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds," Beau DeMayo, discuss the ins and outs of science fiction writing, the critical components of world building, and how they brought fresh new ideas to a classic franchise.

[typewriter ding] - First thing I wanted to ask both of you is to share with us sort of your secret origin when it comes to sci-fi.

What were some of your formative experiences or influences as a child, the stuff you stayed up too late to watch or read under the covers or things that still spark that passion for the genre?

- I was six years old in a theater watching "Star Wars," and the Star destroyers screaming over my head, like the sand and the droids and Chewy, like all of it.

Like that was the thing.

And my Dad, he's an immigrant from Haiti, and if you know anything about immigrant dads, they will then find the thing that the kid likes, and then just give him more of the things that the kids like with no barometer for quality or taste or appropriateness for a child.

And so it became like the boy likes the space things, take him to the space things.

And then it was "Dune."

Like "Star Wars" kind of cracked open the world of sci-fi for me.

But "Dune" was the "I don't understand this."

Like, it's the first movie that I watched and knew that I didn't get and then watched again because I wanted to try and understand it, because it's a [bleep] up movie.

It was the first thing that beckoned me deeper into it.

And so that has been kind of my twin poles of my science fiction experience.

It's the wonder and the spectacle of a thing like "Star Wars," and just the surface level emotionality of it, and then the crazy dense cerebral nature of something like "Dune."

- For comic books, it was my Mom explaining that I was adopted using Superman when I was about six.

So that was pretty interesting, that got me into Superman.

"Batman," the animated series was absolutely one of mine.

I was like nine or 10 when that premiered.

"Batman Returns" appealed to the boy who did not know yet he was gay.

And then, I mean obviously "X-Men" animated series was a big one for me to get into comics.

And "RoboCop," first "RoboCop," which is one of those movies like you shouldn't watch when you're a kid- - No.

- At all.

- So what was sort of the point or turning point when you went from, you know, just kids growing up, loving sci-fi and all this stuff, into actually thinking "maybe this is something I could do."

- I think it might have been the first "Terminator."

Only because he desperately wanted to be, as a kid, the D & D character.

I just wanna be a character 'cause that seemed super rad.

But I wanted to be some crazy mix of Steven Spielberg and Spike Lee.

Like I was of that age where like the Indie cinema movement was moving for real and like Raiders was my everything.

And so that, that fusion of like, "Why can't we do this this way?"

And then I see a movie like "Terminator," which cost like $4 million, like it is crazy low budget, but every erg of money is on the screen and all the ideas are on the page.

It started to feel possible in a way that it hadn't felt before because it had always been far away, right?

It was always been like "Star Trek," Gene Roddenberry was already a legend by the time I was a kid.

But "Terminator", it felt handmade in a way that the other stuff that I watched hadn't.

And, "If like that guy could hand make it, then maybe I could hand make it."

It would then take me another 40 years to make a movie.

But, still, that was the Rubicon that I thought I could maybe cross.

- I saw the first "X-Men" movie and that was probably the first time I decided to try to write.

Bought this whole "Screenwriting for Dummies" book, I was like, "Oh, okay, this is the formatting."

Promptly forgot every piece of advice.

Like if I found that script, it looked like a slug line, a bunch of novel text, like the dialogue was over on the right side, it's terrible.

But I think that's the first time I was like, "maybe I could do this."

And then I was like, "You know what?

I'm gonna actually try to write for film."

So I went to grad-school and did films and that's kind of how I came to it.

- There is no real path that I could tell somebody they can follow to do this job.

There's 100% no path for a Black dude from the Bronx to, A, survive being a Black dude from the Bronx in the 1970s, but then somehow find a way to be in this place at this time.

It's all pinch me moments and it's all surreal all the time.

[typewriter dings] - You know, as a writer to a certain degree, you have the power of a God to sort of conjure whatever you want, but then it meets reality of production.

What are some of the challenges that you faced there in terms of balancing these sort of expansive possibilities of the genre, and of as a writer and then the realities of the production, but also the restrictions of these franchises?

- It's weird because we are also right now in a time, and we're about at the end of this time, 'cause we're approaching the very first contraction of the business that I've noticed in the last 25 years.

But like on a show like "Castle Rock", it felt very much like John Hammond was like, "Well, spare no expense.

What do you need?"

Still, like the realities of production are real.

The realities of how many pages can you get in a day?

How much are we going to spend to realize this thing?

We bought out like most of this tiny town in Massachusetts, like we bought that house, we bought that house, we bought that house, so we could blow up that house if we wanted to and rebuild it for them.

Like, but it was still, like there's always limitations.

But the joy of writing genre is that you get to use those limitations as an advantage.

You have to somehow find a way to invert that paradigm.

And the thing you then can't do becomes the reason why you're doing X, and X gets to be the reason why people love the thing.

It's harder to do in a world where you have all the money in the world, but nothing creates innovation like desperation.

- I agree.

Like, the limitations are absolutely so key to creativity.

I have found myself lately preferring working in animation though for that reason.

Because for certain I do, you know, I never thought I would, I grew up on animation, I love anime, but like I never would've thought that I would actually say like certain franchises would probably be better in animation.

And not that you just get to do anything you want in animation, but you don't have to worry about day and night.

But I do think it does push you to more creative solutions 'cause at the end of the day you're showing up to watch two people talk in a room.

Like, all great drama, all great stories, I do think boil down to two people talking in a room.

And that is cheap to shoot no matter what.

- The thing about science fiction is that it really exists on a cerebral plane.

And one of my favorite science fiction movies is "The Matrix."

And at the time we were all, like gobsmacked by bullet time.

We were gobsmacked by kung-fu, all of that stuff.

But over time what had been sensational has become somewhat mundane, but the ideas inside that movie still remain and still retain a lot of impact.

And so the idea of humans being used as batteries, the idea of a virtual prison, the idea of all this stuff is still ultimately what we take away from that movie once the spectacle fades.

And if all you're doing is spectacle, spending money, throwing it on a screen, nothing but like, "Woo-hoo, that was great!"

We've seen it all at this point.

There's nothing they can do that we haven't seen some version of already.

We are past the Rubicon of dinosaurs and "Jurassic Park" being the thing we never thought we'd see on screen.

We've seen everything.

So, then it's incumbent on the writers, on the script, on the story, to deliver the thing that they've never seen before.

And that's almost always cerebral.

That's almost always emotional.

It's almost always some little nugget of an idea twisted into a way that it's a prism that's unlocking a thing that within our brains we never saw it coming.

- And I think, piggybacking off of that, it comes down to POV.

When you have someone come in with a POV that is just different, takes that idea and says, "let's look at it from this angle" and asks a different cerebral question.

That is like when you just go, like, "Wow, I never thought about that."

The other thing with sci-fi that I think is ultimately true, and, I mean, you look at the two movies we kind of referenced, "Terminator" and "RoboCop."

Less is typically more.

Like, if you look at those two movies, yes, there's spectacle, but, you know, especially the first "Terminator," it is a small, like you have a couple scenes and the rest of it is just tension, great exposition delivered, intense situations.

Like, it's just so simplistic and I'll see a lot of writers, especially in pilots, the thing of like, don't leave anything off the page in your first pilot script is true, but that's more emotion character and just, like, the big questions in sci-fi.

The concept that you're just gonna hit me with to go like, "Whoa, I never thought about that."

Because after a while, if it's just a constant episode of phasers and photons and everybody doing this, it just gets old.

It gets old very quickly.

Find ways to use world building to just change the texture of your world so that there are small sci-fi elements available.

I mean, you watch "Matrix," it takes a while, but the tone is very much tech.

That computer, like, you know you're not in our world.

And it's all tone and a little bit of world building.

- My current favorite show on TV is "Interview with a Vampire."

And I read the books when I was in high school, as I think everybody had some way to those books.

I'm like, "No, I get it, it's New Orleans and it's kind of steamy and there's homo-eroticism but it's not homo-erotic.

Like, it's glancing up against that stuff.

It's like going, "Henry."

- It's not glancing, I mean, come on.

- But I mean, but- - Dude?

[laughs] I'll tell you from experience it's not glancing at all.

It's there.

[laughs] - But it was never text, but it's very, like, high level subtext.

- Oh yeah.

- But it's like, yeah these two rich white guys just kind of banging around New Orleans, literally and metaphorically.

[audience laughing] But then, and I'm like, I dug it because of course I dug it.

I like "The Vampire Lestat" as a novel better than I like his, you know- - Thank you.

- Louis' a bit of [bleep] whiny [bleep].

- Yes.

- But then the show has found a way to make it not just about, you know, two people who were kind of in love across time and space, but about what it's like to be a gay Black man in New Orleans in 1920 and how vampirism answers a very core need in Louis' heart.

Which is I need power, I want agency, I want control over my own life in a way that I don't have it.

And suddenly this text gets to be about something and it gets to be deep and it gets to talk about race and class and gender and sex and all those things in a way that to me, the original novel never really did.

And I don't think was interested in.

It's not a failing of the novel, it was not aiming for that depth and so never tried to hit it.

But that is the power to me of what genre can do, of what science fiction can do, what fantasy can do, what horror can do, which is summon the real world and put it in a bit of a cloak so that you don't see it coming when it's doing what it's doing.

- Another show that did this, and I know I said it was on "Star Wars," I have been blown away by "Andor."

- Yes.

- Like, one, I love Tony Gilroy, but, like, I was just watching, I'm only two or three, I'm two episodes in and I'm just like, he's talking to the bureaucrat about covering up the murders and he's just like, they're in a palace.

They don't know that we're not supposed to have that.

They had an unfortunate encounter with a dark featured, he's talking about [bleep].

And it was just so like, shoom, and we're back in "Star Wars."

Like that is, it's sugar medicine go down, right?

Like no one wants to go, literally was talking to somebody yesterday, I was like, "I don't know if 'Requiem for a Dream' could be made today."

But, like, it allows you to cloak, like you're saying just, like, really hard truths that we all deal with the little, I call them 2:00 AM thoughts.

It allows you to kind of put it in a nice little safe area, but then you go, like, "Oh."

The power of genre is a very healing connectivity between people, I do think it bridges empathy in a way that other genres cannot.

Do you remember the episode of "X-Men" anime series where Storm falls in love and marries a slave trader?

[Marc laughing] - No, but now I definitely want to watch this.

- Yeah, I mean, there's an episode about that.

I was watching it, actually yesterday in the hotel room.

I was just, like, and I remember the episode.

I'm just, like, "Wow, they did this."

[laughs] But, like, that is the power of genre.

You can go there.

[typewriter dings] - I wanted to ask you guys to talk a little bit about building on legacy.

And you've both had these sort of surreal, extraordinary experiences of coming in to these formative franchises from your youth that has been built, that's sort of foundational, but then bring something new to it in a way that is relevant to where we are now and has something new to say.

And that just seems like a big ask.

- "Star Trek" was definitely one where I felt the pressure.

- Especially on "Strange New Worlds."

- On "Strange New Worlds," like the first time writing Spock was terrifying.

And you just have to eventually just do it.

- Cadet Uhura.

As I said, many dream of being worthy of Star Fleet, of representing its values of selflessness, courage, sacrifice.

- I know it shouldn't have been me down there.

- I've not finished, cadet.

[gentle orchestral music] The odds of us surviving were, in fact, quite low.

No pep-talk could have increased them.

I understand you did not come through Star Fleet the way many of us have, that you are not sure you wish to stay.

But having observed your actions on the comet, I'm certain should you choose to, Star Fleet would be fortunate to have an officer like you.

- Thank you, sir.

[inspirational music] - Spock was a good example in "Strange New Worlds" where, you know, you look at the original series and it was a very binary choice between human or Vulcan.

And, you know, I'm part Black, latino and white and something I was always talking about, I was like, you get to a point where you go like, "Well, I'm just all three of those things and I don't know what the name of that is, but that's what I am."

And I think that's where you start to have conversation about how do you evolve the conversation about Spock's duality, say?

Does Spock actually have to choose?

Is the problem that he's been raised, if you look at his childhood, he has been raised to see it as human or Vulcan.

There's no third option.

When really the third option is that unique [bleep] that he is in the middle, that he can walk in both those worlds when he wants to.

- Ah-ha, I see.

You mean you reason that it was time for an emotional outburst?

- Well, I wouldn't put it in exactly those terms, Captain.

But those are essentially the facts.

[electronic chiming] - You're not going to admit that for the first time in your life, you committed a purely human emotional act?

[electronic chiming] - No, sir.

[chuckles] - Mr. Spock, you're a stubborn man.

- Yes, sir.

- So, that was a character that, you know, it was fun to evolve the conversation on.

Pike was another character that was like, well, we have these great iconic captains that all represent, and I'm gonna start a fight here, the terrible leadership style of Captain Kirk and the perfect leadership style of Picard.

Where does he fit in the Enterprise legacy of captains, in terms of his style was always, you know, a continued conversation which we kind of came to him, I think, as like, he is the Boy Scout, he is the Captain America of the captains.

Picard was never I would say, and you wrote on Picard, but I'm curious to hear what you think.

Like, Jean-Luc, why I like Jean-Luc is he's kind of like a diva, you know?

- I hereby formally request third-party arbitration of our dispute.

- You have the right.

- Furthermore, pursuant to subsection D3, I name the Grizzelas to arbitrate.

- Grizzelas?

- Unfortunately, they are currently in their hibernation cycle.

However, they will awaken in six months at which time we can get this matter settled.

Now, do you want to wait or give me my three weeks?

- Absurd.

We carry the membership.

We can book no delay.

- Then I hereby declare this treaty in abeyance.

[Alien] Wait, negotiation is permiss- [transmission ends] - You enjoyed that.

- You're damned right.

- You know, there was always this kind of elitism to him, but it was well earned.

It didn't feel like that would, if Pike was also a great leader, it wouldn't step on him.

Whereas the kind of Americana machismo that Pike also has didn't feel too much like Kirk, because Kirk was the guy who is like, "Rules?

What are those?"

- I would suggest knowledge of death is vital for effective leadership.

- Knowledge is one thing, Spock.

But I experienced it.

How will it live in me?

Will it make me hesitant, cautious, not cautious enough?

I'm already second-guessing myself, and that's the last thing a captain can afford.

- Suffering can be transformed into insight.

You must seek out the good in knowing your own death.

Use it to be the man you most essentially are.

- And who's that, Spock?

- The captain.

[gentle orchestral music] - I think the process, for me, in dealing with sort of canonical characters and the legacy of something like Stephen King or "Star Trek" or Jason Bourne or whatever it is, it's doing the reverse engineering.

I remember when I was a kid, my Dad had a mechanic friend and I was like, "Teach me how to be a mechanic person."

And he was like, "Take an engine apart and then put it back together again."

And then in that process you will kind of understand how all of the pieces work.

It always begins with some semblance of like, breaking down what we love about these things to their core principles.

The thing when you're dealing with characters like Picard, with Spock, like, you know, you have to find a way to what's the humanity underneath it all?

Every character wants a thing.

Whether they can actually articulate what they want.

What they want and what they need are very often two different things.

So, figuring out what that actually is.

Like, I wrote a story for this anthology, on the "Star Wars" anthology, which was from a certain point of view and it was all about "Empire Strikes Back" and, like just picking moments in that movie that you can find, like, "I'm gonna tell a story about this."

And so the story that I wrote was about the chef who was cooking, who was doing the dinner service on Bespin Cloud City, when, like, 'cause Han Solo and gang walk into this dining room and there's Vader sitting there behind a table.

Like, there's a chef there who's making a meal that she thought people were going to eat, but instead it's like this weird showdown and then the doors close, but they're all still in this room and they're still gonna be serving food to people.

And so she's like, she was told her dignitary was coming, she was told it's a big deal.

So I'm making the dinner, the meal of my life.

And her closer was this dessert that she used to have when she was an orphan on Coruscant that was just this like bread sugar, butter, milk, it's ultimately like bread, pudding, right?

Peasant food.

And she brings it out and, like, suddenly, like, there's a tap on the door and Vader walks into the kitchen.

And he's like, "I wanted to deliver my compliments to the chef," because- [all laughing] Because when Anakin Skywalker was banging around Coruscant as a [bleep] padawan, he used to eat food like this on the street.

That was one of his joys.

And so the fact that now, like, 40 years later, like, somebody made the food that reminds him of what it was like to be human, and reminds him of what it was like to feel.

I was like that's a story that I think I can find my way into.

It's not like exploding canon, it's not going forward, but who is that guy and what does he actually want?

And what are the ways that he feels about the world that he lives in?

- Well, and one thing that I think is so striking and really important, is that when these characters and worlds were built and stories were told, they were told by people who did not look like you guys.

- Yes.

My favorite thing to do on "Star Trek," and I love "Star Trek," everyone, I really do, was just like, "Hey, guys, it's still colonialism."

[laughs] Like, I don't care how nice they make it sound, it's still colonialism.

So how do we talk about "Star Trek" still in that positive way, while maybe sanding down some of those edges?

You're right, like these were made in a very different time and in a very different era.

It's difficult, but you also never wanna put so much of your experience on it that you change what it is.

And then you start making these decisions that you're like, "Well, now this feels like it has an agenda and this is moving away from the source material."

- As a storyteller of color, I do think that trying to reflect my perspective is important because every storyteller reflects their perspective.

That's the beauty.

I mean Superman, Clark Kent, Kal-El, is a perfect Jewish myth.

It is very much about, you know, "Hey listen, I was put in a basket and sent up a river of space time.

I landed on this place.

I'm different, but not so different that I look different.

I wear glasses to hide the fact that I am a certain way and I can't tell anybody because if I tell them they will come for me."

Very much the Jewish American experience in the, like, 1930s of America.

And so that's the power of what genre can do.

You can tell the story about yourself no matter who that self is.

- Like, the thing for Superman for me is what is it like to have the weight of the world on your shoulders when you don't even know if this is your world?

How do you save the future when you don't know your own past?

Like, that's a horrible burden to have.

Superman doesn't know the first chapter to his story.

Like, those are always the most interesting versions of Superman when I read, where he is just like, "Who am I?"

It's like it doesn't matter 'cause you have to go save the world.

Well, I want to know the world.

That's where Superman, everyone says, like, "Oh, he's such an unwritable character."

No, the guy's got plenty of [bleep] on his plate that he's not dealing with that he should be dealing with.

But that's the nobility of him, right?

That is actually the nobility of him is that he can never be himself.

He can never truly put himself out there, but yet he goes out there every day.

And then the big question that no one really has ever explored in a Superman movie, it's not really who he chooses to save, it's who he chooses to let die.

And, you know, those are those areas that you can get into those characters and go like, "Okay, we can start saying something different about them."

- He can hear every cry for help, but he can only save but so many, a handful.

- I'm one of the few defenders of "Superman Returns" for that literal scene when he takes Lois Lane up and he just goes, "I hear everything."

- Yeah.

- And it's his sole way of, like, I [bleep] off the planet 'cause I just didn't want to hear all the cries for help anymore."

Like that's an incredibly tragic moment for this character, who also doesn't have his parents.

He doesn't have those people who can guide him.

Yes, he has adopted parents and that's beautiful and lovely, but they're still human.

They're never gonna connect with him with that burden.

And, again, that's where good genre comes in.

[typewriter dings] [Narrator] You've been watching "Sci-Fi Storytelling with Marc Bernardin and Beau DeMayo," on "On Story."

On Story is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story project that also includes the "On Story" radio program, podcast, book series, and the "On Story" archive accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about On Story and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [projector clicking] [typing] [typewriter ding] [projector dies]