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Bryan Fuller just finished a brief tease about Discovery for the CBS press event.

http://trekmovie.com/2016/08/10/breaking...character/

http://trekcore.com/blog/2016/08/bryan-f...y-details/

The basics....

---the series will be 13 episodes, with closed ended episodes but tied together with a season long arc like a novel
-- the series will have a female lead but she will not be the Captain, in order to give the show a different point of view
-- the series will have a gay character
-- it will be an ensemble show with 7 main characters, with more alien crew members

and here are the two biggest teasing elements....

-- the series is set 10 years BEFORE Kirk's five year mission
-- and it will revolve around a historical event mentioned in TOS but never before seen on screen

hhhmmmmm...... that sounds like it could be Axanar..???  It's the right time period, the 2250s....  But according to Fuller this is not the case.  I am going to have to dig out my Star Trek chronology and do some investigating.... LOL.

On the flip side, I am getting stoked for this show.   I hope they do not reimagine or modernize  the look of the show too much and keep to the look in terms of costumes and technology as established in TOS, in particular the episode "The Cage".   Fan films such as New Voyages, ST Continues and Starship Farragut clearly show it can be done and still look great for modern viewers.

- The lead character not being the Captain/Commander? That's a pretty big departure (From Sci-Fi in general, not just Trek shows ). Will it still feel like Trek? We'll see.

- Also not sure about the 10-years-before setting. Just do a Star Trek show, we don't need a prequel thing full of references, cameos and potential inconsistencies. We tried that already and look where it got us.

I'm still hopeful and excited though.

My first thought on seeing the ship was that it looked like the love child of a Klingong Battle Cruiser and a Constellation Class Starship. It's certainly different, and I'm not offended by it and it's growing on me.

I definitely agree with  about maintaining visual continuity with TOS or pre-TOS both in terms of uniforms, and bridge and other technologies. It obviously shouldn't be exactly the same, but look like a logical earlier aspect. Such technology isn't going to change dramatically in 10 years time. 

I'm not a fan of the focusing on some other crew as the lead. I get trying to break out of the mold, Trek has been redoing the same thing for a long, long time.. but the Captain as the focus just works, and it is one reliably good part of Trek and isn't broken. There are other areas to steer clear of imo, but not this. But again, we shall see. 

One thing I know, I won't be going behind no CBS paywall for it. I'll wait for Netflix.

Fuller has stated the show will be about the character's journey.... so maybe the lead character is the audience pov and we will follow her as she rises through the ranks and experiences pivotal Trek events.... or by the end of the first arc she will become the Captain????

Honestly, Fuller is very clever and has revealed little to nothing about the actual show.  He is such a tease...lol.   

Though I would enjoy a show that is not completely Captain-centric.  DS9 certainly touched on this idea, with such a large ensemble cast, it could tell stories that all other Trek series could never explore.  Or I am reminded of the fan series Hidden Frontier, which dealt with multiple starship crews and POVs, all dealing with the same threat.  In fact, the character list so far does not sound like a typical Trek show....
[size=medium][font=Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif] “a female admiral, a male Klingon captain, a male admiral, a male adviser and a British male doctor.”[/font][/size]

The McQuarrie design makes more sense now that the time period has been revealed.   The Constitution Class starship was still relatively new (10 years-ish), so it would make sense there may have been competing starship designs.  Though I hope they fine tune the design more and make it more graceful.   But who knows, maybe its suppose to be butt ugly as part of the plot... lol

The Trekmovie site has come up with a nice layout in this article showing the main points that are currently known about the new show - www.trekmovie.com/2016/08/30/everything-we-know-so-far-about-star-trek-discovery-in-one-handy-infographic/

I'm assuming the male Klingon captain is not part of the federation? They definitely aren't on good terms at this point in time as far as I understand.

A hint of what the basic premise involved in this might be - www.trekmovie.com/2016/09/09/bryan-fuller-reveals-balance-of-terror-is-touchstone-of-discovery-story/

(09-11-2016, 05:50 AM)ImperialFighter Wrote: [ -> ]A hint of what the basic premise involved in this might be - www.trekmovie.com/2016/09/09/bryan-fuller-reveals-balance-of-terror-is-touchstone-of-discovery-story/

While still very vague, it does put the teaser video in a new light, as the Discovery appears to be launching from an asteroid base much like the ones described in Balance of Terror.

If the series is indeed about dealing with the aftermath of the Romulan War, it will be interesting to see how they deal with the whole "no one knows what Romulans look like" continuity issue.   Enterprise certainly struggled with this and was mostly successful.    Though it might be more believable if Starfleet Command did know what the Romulans looked like but kept it a secret in order to reduce fear in the general populace and maintain their alliance with Vulcan?

I've been thinking that what makes a Star Trek series truly great is having totally unique and entirely new characters. It's how their uniqueness effects their ability to react to situations and how their skills help solve puzzles, that the crews encounter that makes for interesting TV.

For example here is the rise and fall of uniqueness in ST ...

TOS - Well everything was new and unique wasn't it but Spock being a Vulcan was the most interesting element.

TNG - An android, a Klingon, a bionically enhanced blind man, a child genius, an empath. All of these were entirely unique to TNG.

DS9 - A symbiote, a shapeshifter, a Ferengi. Not as many totally unique characters as TNG but the rest of the cast had a few new twists on their characters.

Voyager - A cranky temp medical Hologram was something totally new... erm, well, that's pretty much it for Voyager. You know we've had a Vulcan before guys? 7of9 was introduced in S4 adding a Borg character which improved things a little.

Enterprise - No unique characters. Yay another Vulcan! Maybe it's time to moth-ball ST TV for 10 years until we can come up with some new character ideas?

Discovery - We'll see, fingers crossed. As long as it doesn't feature another Vulcan, we'll be doing better than before .

While I absolutely agree Trek works best when it has an outsider character to provide an alternate perspective and voice, I think the issue with VOY and ENT was just bad writing or what I call the Braga Influence.... LOL.

I mean VOY, along with the Doctor (who I also agree was the best character of the show) had a Vulcan and Half-Klingon, which they almost completely ignored.   And Neelix and Kess.... why were they even there?  Great potential alien characters that were for the most part left under developed for dull human centric stories.

ENT had Dr. Phlox, who provided some interesting insights but for the most part was relegated to humour.  T'Pol did provide an alternate voice, often proving the Captain wrong on how to interact with other species and she brought new elements to how Vulcans were portrayed (though some would argue this has more to do with the actress's acting ability or lack of....? But I enjoyed her performance).  In fact, if Braga did one thing right with Ent, it was his new, if controversial, take on Vulcan.   

But I think both ENT and VOY suffered more from "Been-There, Done-That" Syndrome than anything.

DS9 clearly proved, you can take established Trek alien races, and breath new life into them and make them fresh and exciting again.

So I don't think you must have a totally unique character, ( I speaking in terms of using established alien races), you just need to be bold and do new unique things with them.   

When a franchise has been around as long as Star Trek, with countless tie-ins like novels, fans begin to think they "know" everything about a certain fictional character or race or planet.   When actually, due to the restraints of tv storytelling, we only ever really see the smallest sliver of a character's world or background onscreen, but we extrapolate from that in our imaginations and think we know more than we do.

I still find it funny at the fan outrage about Sybok being Spock's half brother.  I never had an issue with this.  It seemed totally in keeping with Spock's character and the extreme privacy he seemed have about himself and culture... not to mention, there were only maybe 3 episodes in it's entire 79 episode run that dealt directly with Spock's history or Vulcan... that leaves a lot of unexplored territory.  Plus, narratively, I thought it was brilliant.  Spock, who is half human struggles his whole life to be the perfect unemotional Vulcan, while his full Vulcan brother casts it all aside to embrace his emotions.  It's classic.

But like anything, in the end, it really just comes down to new ideas and good writing.   And Star Trek, under the reign of Rick Berman, was completely exhausted and mined dry by the time of Voyager and Enterprise.   But as long as it was still turning a profit, Paramount/CBS didn't care about protecting and shepherding the franchise towards a long future.   It's a shame really.  But at the same time, maybe it was appropriate that new Trek should vanish from out view screens for more than a decade, for even audiences can take something for granted and the only way to realize one misses and wants or needs something is to not have it....lol