Star Trek: Discovery creator and executive producer Bryan Fuller dropped more hints about the upcoming series on Wednesday during an interview session with journalists attending the Television Critics Association Summer Tour. Among the revelations:
- The main character will be a woman, but not a captain. "We've seen six characters from the captain's point of view," Fuller said. “In order to understand something that is so completely alien from her, she must first understand herself. That's part of our journey on this planet, to get along, and that's part of our journey in this first season.”
- The first season will consist of 13 episodes, with the show as a whole serialized and playing out like a novel, “with each episode being a chapter of that novel,” Fuller revealed. “And within that chapter there's a beginning, middle and end. We will have episodes that exist by themselves, but are a part of a much bigger story."
- Casting for Discovery is underway.
- Fans, Fuller noted, can expect a diverse cast and crew, as well as a full range of alien species the crew will encounter. "Star Trek started with a wonderful expression of diversity in its cast," Fuller said. "We're absolutely continuing that tradition."
- And, yes, he confirmed, there will feature a gay regular character.
- "The thing that makes Star Trek such a lasting, vital part of pop culture is that it's us, and where we're going," he said, and that it offers hope that "we're going to make it through."
- As for the non-human characters, Fuller, answering a writer’s question, revealed that there will be robots on Discovery. And, in terms of aliens, the show will feature "more aliens than you normally do in a Star Trek show. We're going to have new, exciting aliens and also re-imaginings of existing aliens."
Responding to specific questions, Fuller also divulged the following:
- “There's an incident, an event, in the history of Starfleet that has been talked about (in previous Star Trek shows), but never fully explored."
- Section 31 is not directly involved in that incident/event, “but that's not to say that might not have some marble through the meat of our season.”
- The Discovery ship design is still a work in progress, he said, but it will feature elements of illustrator Ralph McQuarrie’s Star Trek: Phase II designs, along with those of 1970s-era race cars, Lamborghinis and James Bond vehicles.
- "She's not a central part of the show,” Fuller said of Amanda Grayson, Spock’s human mother, “but we love that character."
- It’s conceivable that Discovery could feature bridge crew characters from TOS, but for the moment he’s “digging” what he’s go with the new characters and not thinking that far ahead.
Star Trek: Discovery is coming to CBS All Access in January 2017, following the premiere on the CBS Television Network, and will be distributed concurrently on Netflix in 188 countries and through Bell Media in Canada.
