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.
Looks like someone admired Ralph McQuarrie’s never-used “Planet of the Titans” design for the Big E. The registry makes it seem pre-TOS, but who’s to say Starfleet doesn’t pull a Marvel Comics and start renumbering their ships from #1, possibly over and over?
The delta shaped main section and the flat placement of the nacelles is probably a callback to the one of the original proposed designs by Ralph McQuarrie:
It’s the Ralph McQuarrie/Ken Adam Enterprise concept from the early development of the first movie — complete with space dock!
Look what nerds we are! We all three jumped in at the same time with the same answer!!!
#nerdsrool
The ship looks like the IDIC symbol. :)
Great title. Fugly ship.
In addition to the ship looking a little Klingon-influenced, the music in the teaser definitely has those hints as well.
@ragnarredbeard Not Klingon influenced, retro-Starfleet influenced. This is NCC-1031, Kirk’s Enterprise was NCC-1701 (the general ship design, has a bit of that as well…).
@8/bruceiv: However, there are instances where Starfleet registry numbers have not gone upward in a perfectly linear fashion. The Constellation, a contemporary of the Enterprise, was NCC-1017 (because they just rearranged the decals on the model kit). The Grissom, which seemed to be a newer, movie-era ship, was NCC-638. And the Kelvin‘s NCC-0514 seems too low for the 2230s. So the number doesn’t prove a pre-TOS time frame. (And consider that the ship design is based on concept art for a post-TOS movie. That might be significant.)
“This video is not available” :(
I remember that cross design between the Enterprise’s saucer and a Star Destroyer. It can be seen in The Art of Star Trek, a book covering all of the shows and films, written by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens. I still own a hardcover copy of the book. There are a lot of interesting designs, both used and unused.
Interesting that it’s launching from an asteroid base (as per McQuarrie’s concept art). Starfleet doesn’t tend to use those. Could this be some sort of black project (with the asteroid concealing the drydock from sensors)?
The Tholians use asteroid docks. And they do like reddish colours and triangles. . .
Just saw the teaser. There’s no doubt about it. The Enterprise launches from a space dock within an asteroid’s core. That’s exactly like the McQuarrie design sketches in the book.
It’s great to see Bryan Fuller and production designer Mark Worthington using those designs as references. Very 1970’s vibe.
Between the retro stylings of the ship and the Klingon-esque beats in the music, I’ll venture a guess of pre-TOS, as an intermediate step between NX-01 and the Constitution Class. During this time period, rivalry with the Klingon Empire will likely be high.
Which could explain the severity of the response to Axanar.
I love the ship, and I love the name. I have all sorts of theories, such as maybe it’s a joint Federation-Klingon mission, or, if set post-TOS (even post Nemesis) the characters are forced to use an old prototype ship because of… reasons. And I predict a female captain.
So stoked for this, and it premieres in January! I thought it’d be more towards mid-2017. What a time to be a trekkie!
Honestly, I think people are reading too much into this footage. It’s just concept art or test animation, so it might not be what the ship actually looks like in the show (at least not in detail), and it might not be using the final registry number. Remember, the prototype for Voyager looked like this.
The saucer in that prototype still looks kinda like the final version. And while Discovery might not look entirely like what is shown in this teaser, I think the final look will be pretty close, or they wouldn’t be showing this with such fanfare.
@17/MaGnUs: Yeah, but people are trying to read all sorts of things into the details. “Oh, it has a low number, and the design looks kinda retro, so it must be pre-TOS!” “Oh, the number ends in ’31’ so it must be about a Section 31 ship, because of course an ultra-secret organization would go flying around in its own dedicated ship with their name emblazoned on it!” And those details are exactly the sorts of things that we can’t assume are finalized yet.
Wow, did someone really posit that it might be a Section 31 ship?
Can’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twait!Can’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twait!Can’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twait!Can’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twaitcan’twait!