Today’s Star Trek 50th Anniversary panel at San Diego Comic Con ended on one heck of a tease: the full title of the new show.
The Bryan Fuller-helmed series will go by the name Star Trek: Discovery. (Fancy logo above!) The U.S.S. Discovery (NCC-1031) will also be the name of the ship our intrepid crew is aboard. It’s a small reveal, but a hefty one–giving the show a title and a ship with that name means that we will be expecting the crew to, ya know, discover stuff.
It’s a heartening place to start, for sure. Star Trek: Discovery is set to premiere early in 2017. And here is the very first footage! Keep in mind, this is likely from a concept art reel:
The footage was titled “Test Flight of Star Trek’s U.S.S. Discovery.” Is it just me, or does that look like a cross between you average Federation starship and a Klingon vessel? Could that be a hint about what awaits us?
UPDATE: Fuller gave more information about the show in a press conference later in the weekend. Via Buzzfeed:
- According to Fuller, the first season is essentially a “novel,” meaning that the show will be completely serialized.
- Filming won’t begin until fall of this year.
- A new episode will appear every week, no word yet on how many episodes long the first season will be.
- Fuller wants to emphasize the show’s progressivism: “If anything, I feel like what the new series has to do is continue to be progressive, continue to push boundaries. To continue telling stories in the legacy that Gene Roddenberry promised, which is giving us hope for a future.”
- It will be set in the Prime universe.
- The series will premiere on CBS, then begin streaming on subscription services–CBS All Access (U.S.), Bell Media (Canada), and Netflix (everywhere else).
- The ship’s design is based on Ralph McQuarrie concept art from Star Trek: Planet of the Titans, which never got made. The design isn’t final, which is why the production team hasn’t commented on it directly.
- io9 reports that this design showed up in both Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and a couple of Next Generation episodes. They also speculate that if Federation ship registry numbers go chronologically, then the Discovery might be older than the Enterprise.
- Also from io9:As for the ship name, there was a starship Discovery in operation during The Next Generation. It had a tiny, tiny mention in the first season episode “Conspiracy.” It shows up in Starfleet’s files, where an order regarding the Discovery’s rendezvous and personnel transfers with other ships is read by Data.
