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Star Trek: Discovery – New TV Series Teaser Released

By John Freeman on July 25, 2016

San Diego Comic Con saw the release of the first teaser trailer for the new Star Trek TV show, which debuts in the US on CBS in January 2017, followed by around airing (except Canada) on Netflix.

Titled Star Trek: Discovery, the new series is set in the prime timeline created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman for CBS – the first Star Trek series since Star Trek: Enterprise ended in 2005.

As yet, we don’t know when the series will be set – or if, as rumoured actor Nathan Fillion has been cast as the show’s lead.

The newest Starfleet ship in the Star Trek TV franchise, the U.S.S. Discovery, unveiled during the San Diego Comic Con. Photo Credit: Courtesy of CBS Television Studio / ©2 016 CBS Television Studio. All Rights Reserved.

Bryan Fuller and co-executive producer Heather Kadin were at SDCC on a “Celebrating 50 Years” panel, alongside franchise series stars William Shatner, Brent Spiner, Michael Dorn, Jeri Ryan and Scott Bakula, and fellow Executive Producer Rod Roddenberry, the son of late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.

Fuller told a large crowd that the new series “needs to continue to be progressive, to push boundaries.

“There’s nothing like the guiding light that Gene Roddenberry hung in the sky.”

He also confirmed that more anthology nature of the series. “We’re going to be telling stories like a novel, chapter by chapter by chapter,” he told the astounded William Shatner, who pretended to not comprehend a non-episodic model.

A re-vamped USS Enterprise design by Ralph McQuarrie, created for an aborted 1970s feature

Set to premiere on CBS in January 2017, the series, set in the original “Prime” Star Trek universe, follows the adventures of the crew of the USS Discovery, a smaller long range exploration vessel whose design looks very similar to Ralph McQuarrie‘s designs for the the aborted 1970s feature film Star Trek: Planet of the Titans, a project which preceded the also-aborted Star Trek: Phase II TV series and was the brainchild of British writing team Chris Bryant and Allan Scott (Don’t Look Now), which was to have been directed by Phillip Kaufman, later director of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake starring Donald Sutherland and Leonard Nimoy.

Better known for his work on Star Wars, McQuarrie would of course go on to work on Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

Ralph McQuarrie’s USS Enterprise enters a dry dock

Fuller would not be drawn to comment on the similarity of the design.

Update, 28th July 2016: Co Executive Producer Heather Kadin says the ship design isn’t final. “I was surprised Bryan didn’t say that, actually [at SDCC],” she told TrekMovie. “I mean, we had three weeks to throw that together. We wanted to show fans… we’re super-excited by the score that this amazing composer, Phil Eisner, threw together as an audition and he did an incredible job.”

That said, she added: “The concepts of the ship are totally what we’re going for and they’ll be honed up until, I think, the day we deliver.”

• Watch the SDCC “Celebrating 50 Years” panel on StarTrek.com

• There’s more about the Star Trek: Planet of the Titans project on WhatCulture and here on the brilliant Forgotten Trek web site

• Model maker Jon Payne built a Federation starship – the USS Artemis – based on McQuarrie’s designs, utilising the wings from the old Aurora model of the vessel from Filmation’s Fantastic Voyage animated series, the Voyager

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John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.