AARON J. WALTKE

From development to greenlight to production to post usually lasts years, as everything from scripts to character designs to environments, style, editing, music and FX are meticulously created from scratch!

Sometimes for this reason, it means even a show’s very existence is kept secret for quite a while.

For instance, we nearly finished writing the entire 52 episode run of Trollhunters for Netflix before it was even announced. Followed by another year or two of production to finish them all!

There was a full year after Douxie became immortal where he ate nothing but toothpaste, just to see what would happen.

PS. WE LOVE YOUR WORK

The writers room decided that as magical creatures, they would exist with their own biological rules. They are made of “living stone” that is sustained by energy from Heartstones, but seem to receive some sustenance (or perhaps just enjoyment?) from eating.

Time certainly flies — but I’m glad our work made an impact on so many young minds!

They all hold a special place in my heart. I’ll always love Trollhunters and Tales of Arcadia, because I had the chance to collaborate with so many incredible artists and work with the Maestro, Guillermo del Toro.

Star Trek: Prodigy was a dream come true. As a lifelong Trek fan with unapologetic love of all things science fiction, the opportunity to play in that sandbox was life changing.

My day-to-day depends on what stage the project is. It might involve early brainstorming with collaborators, pitching ideas, breaking episode beats, breaking how a season arc or a feature film will be structured, writing an outline or script, meetings to review art/casting/animation/current cuts of an episode or movie, notes discussions, revisions, or very often all of the above.

Generally speaking, it falls into one of three buckets: discussing art and story, giving notes, and having meetings to discuss the above and determining the direction we are taking. These responsibilities divide my time between writing and executive producing.

If you're not allowed to answer, my backup question is do you think it's easier or harder to write Wings of Fire than Star Trek, and do you think writing you did for previous shows is helping you for shows you're currently working on?

I have a list of actors I’d love to see for each role, but unfortunately I’m not allowed to share that sort of thing due to NDAs. I hope you understand!

As for the writing process itself, all my past experiences in storytelling certainly contribute to my approaches to future projects. I’ve written or co-written well over a hundred episodes of television — it might be closer to two hundred now! — so the rhythms of character and plot and emotional arcs eventually get tattooed on your brain, by sheer exercise.

As for writing on Star Trek versus Wings of Fire, they are similar in a lot of ways — balancing personal journeys set against a backdrop of wonderfully rich worldbuilding and lore. The biggest difference is, of course, inventing original stories in the world of Trek versus the art of adaptation of an existing tale with the novels.

The skills overlap, especially in finding where one might expand or simplify while staying faithful to the material, but they do involve different approaches!

It was played as a joke. A couple of in-universe explanations:

1.) She watched so many of her serial stories on TV that her memories and the plots of the episodes became indistinguishable.

2.) She is a potential wizard who was unaware she had magical adeptness and never received training, but it manifested in a long life.

Epic, wondrous, blazing with adventures untold…