Star Trek: Discovery

As fans who have been following the somewhat-troubled pre-production saga of ‘Star Trek: Discovery,’ the first newly-televised version of the franchise in over 12 years, likely know by now, the show will have a 15-episode first season – a season that will follow a more serialized format than any of the other incarnations of televised ‘Trek,’ which have all been largely episodic – and too comedic for the current TV climate, according to one of the new series’ stars.

During separate panels and press interviews at San Diego Comic Con, a few of the folks working on ‘Discovery’ weighed in on the topics.  First up, we have Co-Executive Producer Heather Kadin speaking about the serialized nature of the new show:

“The idea of having a story that continues, to be able to follow these characters through fifteen episodes, not just a weekly mission, but their emotional journey, which I think you can even tell from the clip. It’s a really emotional show and I think we get to do that because of the way we’re telling the story over all of that time.”

Next, actor Rainn Wilson – who will portray Harry Mudd as a holdover from the 1906s “original series” version of ‘Star Trek’ – spoke about how “dark” this show will be, compared to the other TV installations of the franchise:

“This particular universe is a very dark time for the Federation and for Starfleet, with this war happening, so I don’t think it would be appropriate in this universe, I talked to the writers about this, to have as many jolly whackadoodle episodes that were often in ‘The Original Series’ and in ‘The Next Generation’ because, and that’s one of the wonderful things about ‘Star Trek,’ you could have some episodes that were almost comedies.

Interesting that Wilson spoke about the show as “this particular universe” – we’ve been led to believe so far that ‘Discovery’ is taking place in the same thematic universe as the one established by all the other televised incarnations of ‘Star Trek,’ yet he seems to be speaking of the new series as almost being set in a different realm altogether… hmm…

‘Star Trek: Discovery’ will premiere on CBS on September 24, 2017, before moving to streaming-only service CBS All Access for the remainder of its 15-episode first season.