A surprising amount of information has dropped recently about Star Trek: Discovery, with more news due to hit in October – though there has been a suggestion we could learn a tiny bit more in early September.
For international viewers, like myself, we recently learned that Netflix has secured the international airing rights for the series – which has upset our American friends, and understandably so, but as someone who has spent his entire Star Trek loving life having to wait months for episodes, it’s nice to not be facing that particular barrier with this incarnation of my favourite series.
As well as word on how the rest of the world will be able to watch the new series, the following exciting teasers were delivered by the man himself, Bryan Fuller:
- The new lead character won’t be the Captain, it will be the First Officer of the Discovery. The First Officer, called simply “Number One” (in fine Star Trek tradition) for now, will get a name eventually;
- Number One will be female and she will hold the rank of Lieutenant Commander;
- The show is definitely in the Prime timeline, and will be set ten years before James T. Kirk takes command of the Enterprise;
- The ship we saw in the preview shown a few weeks ago is still being tweaked and that design is not the final design;
- The show will ‘bounce off’ of an event that was spoken about in the original series, but never explored. That event isn’t the Kobyashi Maru, nor is is the Battle of Axanar or the Earth-Romulan War… guesses anyone?
- There will be robots and more aliens that we’ve ever seen before… whether those aliens and robots are on the ship or just appearing throughout the series we don’t know right now;
- The first season will have a 13 episode order, with Bryan’s preference for following seasons to be 10 episodes in length;
- Section 31 might make an appearance;
- Each episode will run about 48 minutes – slightly longer than the 44 minutes most modern versions of Star Trek have run;
- There will be an openly gay character;
- Traditional aliens from the original series will get a bit of a revamp;
- The uniforms will be different to those seen in “The Cage”, but no word on how similar they will be to the uniforms worn by Kirk and crew in the Original Series;
- The music is still being figured out with a good chance some of it will be reminiscent of the Original Series scores.
A really interesting theory from Joseph Baxter, a writer for SciFi news site Blastr, had me really excited recently – because I love it, and I so want it to be true! Okay, I’m still excited about it!
He theorises we might already know the lead character. He wonders, in a very well reasoned argument, if this mysterious Lieutenant Commander is none other than Majel Barrett Roddenberry’s character from “The Cage”, known only to us fans as Number One.
That would be AWESOME!
Despite only appearing in “The Cage” and the re-edited version of that episode called “The Menagerie” parts one and two, Number One has a huge fan following. That character sparked something in fans that has not faded in 50 years.
Bryan has said that this Number One is an homage to the original character created by Gene and his wife, but he hasn’t confirmed whether or not it is that character.
I hope so. That would be poetic.
Bryan has said that the next main “info dump” will come in October, but Nicholas Meyer and Kirsten Beyer are holding a discussion panel at the upcoming Mission: New York convention in a few days time and they might be authorised to drop a few more details.
Otherwise, we’re going to have to wait about a month for more news.
This is all pretty exciting stuff! The pilot starts filming any day now (sometime in September) so there’s a chance we’ll get tantalising stills from the sets as January draws closer.
What information will come out next? The best guess most of us who are monitoring Trek news can come up with, is that the next news items will be focused on casting.
We might get to learn who the new lead is, or if not, at the very least we might hear about some of her shipmates. I think we’ll also get another look at the ship soon, probably not the final design, but another evolution.
As more news comes to light, I’ll be sure to post it here.
There are a couple of really good articles covering Bryan’s announcements over at the wonderful TrekCore. To read them, click here and here.
Keep an eye out on Twitter. Bryan sometimes drops teasers from his Twitter account, and if we see one we’ll repost it on our Twitter @SciFiSitesAus. If it’s a big teaser, we’ll post it here on Star Trek: Sentinel.
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