It has been 11 years since a Star Trek television series has been on the air. And while there has been considerable disagreement about the tone and direction of J.J. Abrams’ reboot of the franchise, the movies have been financially successful to the point of giving Hannibal and Pushing Daisies creator, as well as former Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine writer, Bryan Fuller the reins in producing the next Star Trek TV series for CBS’ new All Access streaming service. Titled Star Trek: Discovery, the series has been called a “novel” by Fuller, with the 13 episodes of the first season its “chapters.”
Discovery will not be connected to the current film series —which Paramount officially labels the “Kelvin Timeline”— and is presumably set in the original “Prime” timeline of William Shatner’s and Leonard Nimoy’s Kirk and Spock. While the actors have yet to be cast and not much is known about the story, there were some interesting details released today at Comic-Con.
Star Trek Beyond, which hit the theaters this weekend, made news recently by revealing Sulu (John Cho) is gay. While over the years some of the characters have been depicted or interpreted as bisexual, this is the first time in the franchise’s five decade history that a major canon character was revealed as explicitly gay.
Today and in previous interviews, Fuller has stated Discovery will “reflect societal progress as well as push it even further.”
From Matt Goldberg’s interview with Fuller at Collider:
Star Trek has never filmed certain subject material because it was filmed at a time when showing a gay character or showing certain kinds of characters was frowned on. What I’m so looking forward to is to see you guys be so progressive and all-inclusive. Are you looking at it that way?
FULLER: Absolutely. I think the progressive audience that loves Star Trek will be happy that we’re continuing that tradition.
One of the things I love about TV is you can really go hardcore sci-fi because you’re not trying to hit four quadrants.
FULLER: Right, right. And because we’re CBS All Access, we’re not subject to network broadcast standards and practices. It will likely affect us more in terms of what we can do graphically, but Star Trek’s not necessarily a universe where I want to hear a lot of profanity, either.
- The Discovery’s design seems to be based on Ralph McQuarrie’s proposed 1970’s redesign of the Enterprise for a Star Trek movie that was to be named Planet of the Titans. McQuarrie is best known for his work on Star Wars and the original Battlestar Galactica, and his production art for Planet of the Titans sorta merges Matt Jefferies’s original Enterprise with Mcquarrie’s aesthetics. When the movie didn’t happen, the redesign went through multiple variations —for the Star Trek: Phase II TV series that didn’t happen either— and McQuarrie’s design was thrown out for Andrew Probert’s updated version of the Enterprise, which made its debut in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
- Fuller’s Trek may be an anthology series, where —a la American Horror Story— each season features different characters, different setting, and a different story, and may or may not be somewhat connected. So it could jump around in Trek’s history, with one season being set before the time of Kirk and Spock. And possibly another happening after the events of the Dominion War, beyond both Deep Space Nine and Voyager.
- The ship’s designation, NCC-1013, seems to imply Discovery is set at some point in-between Star Trek: Enterprise and The Original Series.
From Danette Chavez at the A.V. Club:
Fuller moderated the panel on Saturday afternoon, where he was joined by William Shatner, Brent Spiner, Jeri Ryan, Michael Dorn, and Scott Bakula. But the producer couldn’t really contain his excitement, and teased the reveal of details of his Star Trek series by tweeting a picture of the new captain’s chair, which looks more suited to a ship than a starship. Fuller also handed out doughnuts to the legions of fans waiting to get into the panel.
- As Fuller alluded to in the interview above, things might go to more adult places with the story. All of the previous Treks have had to deal with network obligations and censorship to some degree or another. Now, they will have the openness to go in whatever directions they would like if this new streaming service operated similar to Netflix, where sex and harsh language is presumably not off limits. Also, all of the previous series had to deal with producing seasons with around 20 or so episodes. And sometimes having to stretch story across that many episodes really showed. So, if its only 13 episodes at a time, the series will be able to get across the story in a much more efficient way.
- The casting for the series is reportedly being done “through a colorblind prism and a gender-blind prism.” In an interview Fuller gave back in 2013, he talked about wanting to do a Star Trek series and his vision for it.
At the time, Fuller expressed a desire to skip over featuring the Enterprise—leaving it and its adventures for the then-J.J. Abrams-directed movies—and instead focusing on the Reliant, the ship Khan captures and uses against Kirk in The Wrath Of Khan. Even more interesting than those plot ideas, though, was who Fuller saw as his preferred candidate for the captain’s chair: Angela Bassett, possibly with the assistance of Rosario Dawson.
“I want Angela Bassett to be the captain, that’s who I would love to have, you know Captain Angela Bassett and First Officer Rosario Dawson. I would love to do that version of the show.”