On Wednesday afternoon, fans finally got some more details about the upcoming Bryan Fuller series, Star Trek Discovery. At the show’s TCA panel, Fuller spilled the beans on what fans can expect from the CBS show. While no official casting has taken place, Fuller dropped the bomb that the lead of the show would be a woman, a lieutenant commander instead of the traditional captain. He explained that the prequel series prioritize diversity and that they would “absolutely” have a gay character, which is good news for CBS.
“Star Trek started with a wonderful expression of diversity in its cast … our lead of the show is going to be subject of that same level, of who’s the best actor and also what can we say about diversity on the show. We’ll probably have a few more aliens than you typically have on the show. We wanted to paint a picture of Starfleet wherewe’re going to have new exicitng aliens and also new imagining of existing aliens.”
He also gave fans an idea of what to expect in terms of tone and timeline, calling the series a “a Star Trek novel over 13 episodes” that takes place about ten years before Kirk’s original mission in the “Prime Universe.”
“There’s an incident and and event in Star Trek history, that’s been talked about but never been explored. To do this series, we’re telling a much more serialized story, to dig deep into a very tantalizing storyline. And we have a character who’s on a journey, and in order to understand something that is alien she first has to understand herself.”
While Fuller wants the focus to be more on new characters instead of old, he does hint that he would love to include Amanda Grayson, Spock’s mother.
“There’s so much about the history that once we get through this first season and establish our own Star Trek universe with the crew that going to be reimagining a lot of Star Trek elements, we’ll be looking in the second season to open up to more familiar characters and how they can feed into the [show].”
Fuller’s former show, Hannibal, was known for pushing the censor envelop with graphic violence and sensuality, and when asked if those elements would be coming into play in Discovery, he quipped “Well there’s a reason we call it S.T.D.” Spicy. Since the show will be on CBS’s All Access streaming, it won’t be held to the same standard’s as regular broadcasting, so expect the show to push the envelop a bit.
Now the real question remains: will we see the return of Captain Kirk?
(Via EW)
