Akiva Goldsman Had Two Cameos In Star Trek Earlier than He Began Writing Episodes

Akiva Goldsman has had many highs and plenty of lows in his Hollywood screenwriting profession. The scribe gained an Academy Award in 2001 for writing “A Stunning Thoughts,” however he had beforehand been nominated for Razzies (honoring the worst in filmmaking) for writing the screenplays to “A Time to Kill” and the atrocious “Batman & Robin.” He is been deeply concerned in main blockbusters and media franchises, writing “The Da Vinci Code,” 1998’s “Misplaced in House,” and “The Divergent Sequence: Rebel.” He additionally penned “I, Robotic,” “I Am Legend,” and most not too long ago, “The Darkish Tower.” 

Since 2017, Goldsman has fallen in with the top honchos at “Star Trek,” serving as one of many franchise’s government producers and writing a number of episodes of “Star Trek: Discovery,” “Star Trek: Picard,” and “Star Trek: Unusual New Worlds.” He has additionally directed 5 episodes, embracing his new place atop the “Trek” heap. Goldsman can also be engaged on different tasks — he created the 2023 collection “The Crowded Room” — however “Star Trek” appears to take up the majority of his time.

Goldsman has lengthy been a Trekkie, so becoming a member of the brand new wave of Paramount+-era exhibits was seemingly a dream come true for him. It was additionally, it so occurs, not the primary time the screenwriter received to mess around within the “Star Trek” sandbox. In 2009, Goldsman finagled with director J.J. Abrams — a good friend of his — to have a cameo look in his 2009 “Star Trek” movie. Look carefully on the picture under, and scan the faces of the 2 Vulcan tribunal members trying down on the younger Spock (Zachary Quinto). The one simply to the fitting of the central choose is none apart from Akiva Goldsman in a wig. 

Within the above under from “Star Trek Into Darkness,” one also can spot Goldsman as a human Starfleet admiral. He is the bald man with the white-chested uniform on the fitting aspect of the desk. 

Goldsman mentioned his Trekkie cred in a 2014 interview with StarTrek.com, and the way his cameos got here to be. The author grew up watching “Star Trek,” and he is such a giant fan that he has an opinion on the “Trekkie vs. Trekker” debate. He even went to conventions again within the day. He mentioned: 

“I’m a dyed-in-the-wool, diehard, 1000-percent Trekkie. And I say Trekkie, not Trekker, and I do not care what the nomenclature has turn into. I feel my first ‘Star Trek’ conference was on the Statler Hilton Resort in 1977 or 1978. I grew up in Brooklyn, and what you noticed was on WPIX, Channel 11. And also you watched it at 7 each night time. I am not fairly sufficiently old, I do not assume, to ever keep in mind having seen it in primetime. However I picked it up in a short time in syndication.” 

Goldsman recollects the wild-and-woolly days of the Nineteen Seventies when a bunch of youngsters may go away city on their very own, get a resort room, and do nothing however watch “Star Trek” and roll joints (largely seeds and stems, he mentioned) on vinyl copies of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Highway” (by current EGOT Elton John). It is seemingly no coincidence that his manufacturing firm is known as Weed Highway Productions. He mentioned that he related “Star Trek” together with his personal sense of adolescent liberation, lastly discovering “a factor” of his personal. 

Goldsman mentioned he adopted all the bizarre authorized battles Harlan Ellison instigated, and he learn all of the design sourcebooks penned by the present’s designer David Gerrold. When “Star Trek: The Movement Image” got here out, Goldsman mentioned he was in school and that he fell in love with Persis Khambatta. There was by no means a second when Trek wasn’t a part of his life.

Plainly Goldsman, as a result of he was mates with J.J. Abrams, was in a position to merely name up his buddy and ask for a cameo. Abrams was the co-creator of the 2008 TV collection “Fringe” (with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci), and Goldsman labored on “Fringe” as a author, advisor, and producer. Goldsman finally wrote 18 episodes of that present and even directed one. Understanding that Abrams was engaged on “Star Trek,” Goldsman reached out and subtly requested for a bit of favor. Okay, really he pleaded. In Goldsman’s phrases: 

“I launched J.J. to his spouse. I did ‘Fringe.’ And so when he was doing the primary ‘Star Trek,’ I mainly begged. That went okay, so then I suppose it was perhaps simply a good suggestion to carry no matter people from the primary one again in [for ‘Into Darkness’]. I might need begged some extra. And there I used to be. I could not find it irresistible extra. I’ve a bubblegum card proper right here in my workplace of me within the Vulcan council.” 

Akiva Goldsman is, curiously, not one of many many, many producers listed for the upcoming “Starfleet Academy” TV collection, at present in growth. Each “Discovery” and “Picard” have come to an finish, so by way of “Star Trek,” Goldsman could also be focusing all his energies on the upcoming seasons of “Star Trek: Unusual New Worlds.” Its third yr will start within the early months of 2025.