I’ve now spoken to screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman enough that I can tell their voices apart without even having to refer to my notes of who said what. Between Fringe and Transformers and Star Trek, I’ve seen them not only at press junkets but events in between as well. Now it’s time to talk about the second season of Fringe, with a few hints about Trek 2 as well. 

Crave Online: What else is coming up in season two besides this parallel universe that you introduced in the finale? 

Roberto Orci: Josh is going to really take charge. 

Alex Kurtzman: Peter’s character last year was very much about finding himself kind of blackmailed into the position he was in of having to be his father’s caretaker. He was always faced with the possibility of running. That was what was interesting to us, was that he was a character who could bail on everyone else at any second. I think a lot of what happened towards the end of last season and what we see at the beginning of this season is leading to his commitment to say, “I’m the guy. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it my way. I’m taking charge now. If you want me to help in the Fringe division, then you have to go through me to figure out how we’re going to get to cases.” That’s going to be I think a very different way of approach for the character. 

Crave Online: How involved will you and J.J. Abrams be this season? 

Roberto Orci: We’re sort of divvying up so we’ll kind of oversee one, J.J.’ll oversee one and we’re all together once or twice a month planning what the next big steps are. Then we have an amazing staff that divvies up the episodes. We get together on the phone and improve the stories so we’re all in there. Jeff and Joel are the ones who are physically on site handling all the horrible things that we’re protected from, in addition to doing what we’re doing with us. But we’re all in there creatively. 

Crave Online: Are you masters of multitasking? 

Roberto Orci: Well, we are. That’s part of why we all like doing shows together is because we make it easier for each other to be involved than it would be if any one of us were involved alone. So sometimes J.J. can see them when we can’t but then we can get together with J.J. The more people are in the know, the more everyone can continue to be creative. That’s part of the flexibility of having safety in numbers. 

Alex Kurtzman: And I think we’ve learned a lot from television. Television really teaches you the discipline. 

Roberto Orci: How to multitask. 

Alex Kurtzman: Having to work on many things at once because you’re breaking story while writing a script while shooting an episode while posting another one. 

Roberto Orci: There’s plenty to do. 

Alex Kurtzman: The key is you have to keep your quality level high and that’s why you have other people around you to make sure that you are keeping your quality level high. 

Crave Online: How do you two divide up your time? 

Roberto Orci: Crisis, we just split up as they come. In terms of writing we do together and we spend a certain amount of our day writing. Then on the various projects that we’re developing, there’s one or the other who becomes responsible for it and we try to be together at both but when we have to divide it, he develops half of our slate and I develop half of our slate with our team. 

Crave Online: Who’s on point with Fringe? 

Roberto Orci: Well, on that it’s both of us. Any time, although when we’re writing it, we write it together. On Fringe, it’s me. 

Crave Online: Has an element of Fringe surprised you that wasn’t obvious when you started? 

Roberto Orci: Actually, the idea of the parallel universe thing was something that Jeff Pinkner and the staff came up with together once we had the pilot already shot. So while we had an inkling of we wanted some singular answer that explained what was causing the fringe, it was actually Jeff Pinkner and the staff that actually came up with that, pitched that to us. So here we are talking about what the second season’s going to be and it was the team that we assembled that came up with it. 

Crave Online: Do you have to wait for word from Leonard Nimoy that he’s available or willing before you do a William Bell script? 

Roberto Orci: We do like two in advance at a time. We’ll go, “Hey, you up for two more?” Buy one get one free kind of thing. 

Crave Online: What are your thoughts on parallel universes? 

Alex Kurtzman: I think they exist. 

Roberto Orci: It’s the latest thinking on it, you know. Anything that can happen does happen. That’s what Mr. Data said in Star Trek: The Next Generation. It seems to resolve a lot of the paradoxes that exist but who knows. It’s an old idea by now. It’s not a new idea. 

Crave Online: How many conversations have you had about who Mrs. Bishop could be? 

Roberto Orci: We’ve had a few but that definitely seems like a big target that you want to make sure you build up to correctly.

Crave Online: Is there any internal discussion about making sure the alternate reality of Lost’s plane not crashing isn’t too similar to your alternate reality? 

Roberto Orci: You’re talking about Lost? I don't know anything about what goes on over there. I tell them never to tell me anything because I don’t want to steal any of their ideas. I haven’t even seen the show in two years. To me that’s a whole other world.

Crave Online: Isn’t there a danger of accidental overlap if you don’t talk? 

Roberto Orci: Maybe. Someone will tell me about it. I’m not going to go out there. Enough people watch Lost that I hope they’ll tell me if we’re doing something too similar. 

Crave Online: Do you still have a research team bringing you stuff? 

Roberto Orci: Oh yeah, absolutely. That’s partly why we made the technical consultants staff writers, so that they could be both in house staff writers and our in house research team.