Strange New Worlds Director Wrote The Book On Star Trek Virtual Production Going Into The Final Season

Published Oct 24, 2026, 11:00 AM EDT

John Orquiola is a TV Editor, Senior Writer, and Interviewer with a special focus on Star Trek. John has over 5,000 published articles at SR, and he has interviewed the biggest names in Star Trek on the red carpet and VIP events, among other beloved shows, movies, and franchises.

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds producing director Chris Fisher literally wrote the book on virtual production. Along with directing several episodes, including Strange New Worlds season 4's premiere and finale, Fisher penned The Producer's Guide to Virtual Production, a handbook on working with an AR wall (also known as the Volume) and the intricacies of building a Virtual Art Department.

Speaking to ScreenRant's John Orquiola, Fisher calls The Producer's Guide to Virtual Production "a how-to guide for anyone who is interested in how we built Strange New Worlds, and anyone who's interested in virtual production." It's easy to forget that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds began filming in 2021 under COVID-19 restrictions, and the acclaimed first two seasons were produced during the pandemic under strict protocols. Meanwhile, the AR wall was new technology that Strange New Worlds' production team learned on the go.

"[Paramount] looked at the Star Trek shows as a product that they weren't willing to shut down for the pandemic," Fisher recalls. "They said, ‘Well, how do we keep this going?’ And so, we designed and built this virtual production Volume, but we did it with our partners at [Star Trek: Discovery] and all of the Star Trek shows. We all use pooled resources and talent and shared the actual physical set with each other, so it really created a working model for what a digital back lot might look like at a studio lot today.”

Fisher says that virtual production is both an alternative solution to A.I. and an alternative solution to production leaving Los Angeles. Chris hopes virtual production can "rebuild the old, dusty studio backlot system into something more like a digital backlot. The book's getting some interesting traction, interest from different people and places, and it was really fun to write.”

Creating Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Virtual Production From The Ground Up

Image via Paramount+

Chris Fisher's five-plus-year mission with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds began in 2019, when he was in Vancouver, Canada, directing Stephen King's The Stand, which, ironically, was also about a pandemic. When Fisher joined Strange New Worlds as producing director, he had to build a virtual production team to film with an AR wall, which was set up inside a warehouse in Mississauga, outside Toronto.

So we had to make it work, and we didn't know anything about it. There was no book about it, and the only thing that there was were The Mandalorian behind-the-scenes videos. And if you know anything about behind-the-scenes from an insider perspective, behind the scenes aren't really what happened. They're performative, in a way. Behind the scenes are very curated as to what we want you to see. But that was the best we had. There was no book. There was no handbook. There was no guide. There was no experience. So we really learned this technology from the ground up.

Fisher admits, "In season 1, the smartest thing we did was wave the white flag. We said, ‘Hey, we know this technology works, but we don't know exactly how it works.’" Chris says during COVID restrictions, Strange New Worlds separated virtual production and ran two parallel schedules: one for everything that wasn't virtual production, and one with all of the virtual production scenes. Led by Fisher, who directed 90% of the production shot with the AR wall, Strange New Worlds' virtual production had its own assistant director and its own director of photography in season 1.

As producing director, Fisher found directors for Strange New Worlds' episodes he would then recommend to executive producers and co-showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers. "The right director for the right episode," Fisher says. After initial awe at the AR wall and a learning curve, Fisher says each director, from Jordan Canning to Dan Liu to Valerie Weiss, to even Jonathan Frakes, embraced the technology, and "all of them ended up being successful with virtual production.”

How Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Directors Worked On The Show

When it came to marrying the right director to the right Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode, Fisher says, "We're lucky that the show that Henry and Akiva created is a great show. So we already start with the top list of the best directors in town. There was a lot of interest in coming onto our show. Then we just start curating those lists."

The first thing that a director should ask is, ‘What is the strange new world? What genre?’ You start unfolding all these sort of things, and then we'd start looking for directors that had experience in that. The trick with our show is that we also wanted to make sure that you didn't have to be a Trekkie and have a deep love for Star Trek, but that could manifest in lots of different ways.

The 'strange new worlds' in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds weren't planets, but genres, from a musical, to a soap opera, to puppets, to Vulcan comedy, to intense drama aboard the USS Enterprise. Fisher explained the "really fun process" of developing Strange New Worlds' episodes:

"I'd usually come up with a short list based on the season breaks. Akiva and Henry would always give me the season break very early on. These are the 10 concepts. Sometimes it was a sentence. Sometimes it was a paragraph. Sometimes it was a script. I would get a sense of the entire season, how to spread it out, how to balance it, and then I'd get approval from the studio and my bosses, and then I'd start reaching out to [directors]."

We hired a lot of female directors. Season 4: eight out of ten directors were female.

"So many of our directors, like Jordan Canning, like Valerie Weiss, when I first reached out to them, were like, ‘You're calling me for a Star Trek show? Do you know I haven't done any VFX?’" Fisher laughs. "What we needed were really incredible filmmakers who were storytellers. Jordan Canning, in some ways, is the best example because she wasn't really on the radar for American productions. I very much believed in hiring directors from Canada when you're shooting in Canada. We hired a lot of female directors. Season 4: eight out of ten directors were female. There's no mandate for that. Those were the best directors for the show."

Fisher has effusive praise for Star Trek legend Jonathan Frakes: "There's just a totally different experience having Jonathan Frakes on set. It really just changes everything. He's such a good person, and my favorite thing about having Jonathan come direct is I get to have dinner with him.” Chris notes that Frakes was contacted to direct for seasons 4 and 5, but his schedule was busy with other shows like Stuart Fails to Save the Universe on HBO Max.

Our show very much ran like the ethos of Star Trek. We were a very egalitarian show. We looked for a certain type of director and person to come and be a leader in a way that Star Trek inspired. So it was a really fun process.

ScreenRant: When you get the season break or scripts, were there any times when you looked at what Akiva and Henry wanted to do, and you're just like, "How are we going to pull this off?"

I would say almost every time, and that's what makes the show great. I think if I didn't have that, if I feel like we’ve done it before, that would be a red flag. Looking ahead at season 5, I'm not going to spoil anything here, but the premiere was really a rug pull. I was like, ‘Wait, I honestly don't know for the first time if we can actually do that, and of course, we could.’ But every episode was like, ‘Oh my gosh, here we go again!’ That was the joy of my job.

Virtual production was, in some ways, like a really good episode of our show. A group of smart science-forward people have to solve a problem together. That was really the story of virtual production, which is like a great episode of Star Trek. So was every episode. Let's bring people from all around the world that share a common goal and that solve a problem together. It was very meta. Making the show was very meta in terms of what Star Trek is, or at least what it means to me.

Directing Celia Rose Gooding In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4's Finale

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds boasts an immensely talented cast. For Chris Fisher directing Strange New Worlds season 4's finale, "Tomorrow's Enterprise" hinged on Celia Rose Gooding, who portrayed two different versions of Lieutenant Uhura one year apart, and at some points, in the same scene.

It's really impossible to overstate how hard this show, this episode, was for Celia. She was in every scene every day, and often playing different versions of herself on the same day, especially once they do the Freaky Friday, and they're on different ships. It was so confusing for her, but she had her own internal map. It was just a masterclass to watch her, and I'm saying a masterclass of an actress who has done nothing but masterclasses for five seasons. This was that extra gear. I tip my hat to her.

One of the most moving scenes in "Tomorrow's Enterprise" was future Uhura thanking Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) for taking a chance on her as a young Starfleet cadet. In this Uhura's timeline, Pike had become an Admiral, and the USS Enterprise was now captained by James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley). Uhura was able to tell Pike what she meant to him.

“The Pike and Uhura scene is my favorite scene in the episode by far," Fisher says. "It was so layered and complex, giving Uhura a chance to thank this person for helping them in a way that they didn't recognize before. She didn't know how instrumental Pike was in her life until they had moved on, and she has the gift of time travel to thank this person face-to-face for being this inspiration that shaped and changed who they are. I just get the chills right now thinking of that scene. It is beautifully written and composed."

The Status Of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Fifth & Final Season

Image via Paramount+

In 2027, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will return for its fifth and final season on Paramount+, which will only be six episodes. Fisher will direct episode 5, the penultimate episode of the series, with Akiva Goldsman directing the finale. "With Akiva, we bring in the big gun for the finale. Just like it's always very special having Frakes on set, it's always very special having Akiva on set too. Especially for the actors, it means a lot to have him there. If there's a question you want answered, you just go straight to the source.”

ScreenRant: How far along in post is season 5 now? Are you involved at this point?

I have a personal anecdote: I am involved zero in the writers' room. I'm up in Toronto working on our virtual production stages. They take about 12 weeks to create. So while they're writing the scripts, they break the episodes. They send the episode breaks to Toronto. We start working on the virtual production stages. They start writing the scripts. So I have zero involvement in the scripts. That's all Henry and Akiva, and then I also have zero involvement in post after the director's cut. So I will watch the director's cut and give my notes on that, and then I walk away, and the showrunners handle everything from there.

And the beauty of that for me is that post takes so long that by the time the episode airs, like I've kind of forgotten a lot of the details. So I actually watch our show on TV like the fan of Star Trek that I am. I even watch my own episode, and I’m like, ‘Oh my god, that's so cool!’ I am able to really sit down, immerse myself in the show, and watch like a fan. So that's my very long-winded way of saying I have no idea what's going on in post. I know Henry and Akiva still have meetings because I check in with them. And I guess the only time I would be involved in post is if we needed to reshoot or something like that.

Speaking of reshoots, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds wrapped production on the series in December 2025, and the sets were torn down in the spring of 2026. However, Christina Chong told ScreenRant during our interview about Strange New Worlds season 4, episode 9, "Once Upon La'an," that she actually wrapped in February after returning to Toronto to film new footage with her dog, Runa Ewok, who joined the series.

“Yeah, that stuff we did do," Fisher confirmed, "As you know, a new group of people came in to run Paramount, and I think they had some creative notes on some changes. So yeah, we came up and did some Runa stuff and things like that.”

When Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ends, it will also conclude the 10-year era of Star Trek on Paramount+ shows executive produced by Alex Kurtzman. The future of Star Trek under Skydance is an open question. However, for Chris Fisher, wrapping Strange New Worlds was the personal end of an era that began under the most difficult of circumstances during the pandemic, and became a defining chapter of his career:

[Strange New Worlds] was five or six years of our lives, and the world was upside down for a lot of it. Our show really became a safe space in a lot of different ways. For the first two years, I have a young daughter and a family, and I didn't see them for nine months because I couldn't leave set. To leave to go home to see them for one day, I would have to quarantine for two weeks. That would mean I wasn't on set during the pandemic. I was the only creative executive producer up there, so I couldn't leave set.

So the entire season 1 and most of season 2, I wasn't able to go home. And then, of course, when I'm up there, you're eating three meals a day in a plastic bag, and you're not allowed to have any interaction with people. So, going to set and spending 12 hours a day making a show about the way the world ought to be was incredibly moving and powerful. It actually saved me. Going to work was the only joy I had in my life.

So it was really hard to see it end because it was such a moving experience, and that doesn't even start to shine a light on the honor it was for my career to be on this show. It personally was very, very moving, and very sad to see the sets come down. Our show took over a year to build all of our stages. It doesn't take long to bring them down. In some ways, that's a nice metaphor for life and for moving on. But I'm very proud of our show, very proud of the people that I got to work with, and it was hard to say goodbye.”

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 is streaming on Paramount+, while The Producer's Guide to Virtual Production by Chris Fisher is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold

Check out our other Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 interviews:

• Anson Mount
• Dave Foley
• Celia Rose Gooding
• Rachael Harris & Joe Lo Truglio
• Jess Bush
• Rhys Darby
• Diedre Hall
• Paul Wesley
• Christina Chong
• Celia Rose Gooding

• 

  Captain Christopher Pike

• 

  Spock