In his recent profile, Kurtzman says that the “Discovery” writers’ room paid attention to feedback during the writing process and internalized it when necessary. “We really listen to our fans in the writers’ room — everybody will have read a different article or review over the weekend, and we talk about what feels relevant and what feels less relevant,” he told the Times. From that point on, it’s a matter of figuring out what’s worth paying attention to moving forward. “We engage in a healthy democratic debate about why and begin to apply that; it seeps into the decisions we make,” Kurtzman admits.

The show’s premiere season starts with Sonequa Martin-Green’s Michael Burnham on the brink of starting a Klingon-Federation war, and it ends with her choosing not to commit genocide to end it. What comes in between was equally bleak: Michelle Yeoh’s Captain Georgiou, initially positioned as the show’s hero, is killed off by the second episode, while one half of the franchise’s first openly gay couple, Dr. Culber (William Cruz), got his neck snapped soon after. The show would later bring versions of those characters back, but at the time, it felt to some fans like the optimistic franchise they once loved had gone full “Game of Thrones.”

According to Kurtzman, the first season’s heaviness was all part of the plan. “Season 1 of ‘Discovery’ was always intended to be a journey from darkness into light, and ultimately reinforce Roddenberry’s vision,” he explained. “I think people were just stunned by something that felt darker than any ‘Trek’ had before.” Still, the filmmaker insists that “doing a dark ‘Star Trek’ really wasn’t our goal.” Instead, he says, the show did what pretty much every “Trek” show has done since 1966: reflected reality. In this case, unfortunately, reality was bleak as hell. “The show is a mirror that holds itself up to the times, and we were in 2017,” Kurtzman explained.