"STAR TREK DISCOVERY" WILL HAVE FEMALE LEAD – SET 10 YEARS BEFORE ORIGINAL SERIES

Star Trek Discovery, the new Trek series due out in January from CBS, will have a female lead according to Showrunner Bryan Fuller speaking at CBS's Television Critics Association press event. Interestingly, the lead won't be the ship's captain, but rather will be a lieutenant commander.

A unique point of view

This will be the first time any Trek has moved away from the POV of the ship's captain. “We’ve seen six series from captain’s point of view,” he explained. “To see one from another point of view gives us a richer context.” Who will fill the role has yet to be determined. “It’s about who’s the best actor,” he said. We're going to delve into something that was for me always very tantalizing and to tell that story through a character who is on a journey that is going to teach her how to get along with others in the galaxy," Fuller said . "For her to truly understand something that is alien, she has to first understand herself."

Set 10 years prior to The Original Series in the Prime Universe

The show will NOT be set in the movie universe as created by JJ Abrams for his film series (THANK GOD!). It will take place ten years before Kirk, Spock and company set out on their Five Year Mission. That's far closer than I thought it would be. On a related note, Fuller mentioned that he loved the character of Amanda Grayson, Spock's mother who married the Vulcan Ambassador Sarek. Amanda was played by the great Jane Wyatt in the TOS episode "Journey to Babel" and in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Does that mean the character will actually appear in some way? Will a young Spock appear? Holy crap!

Gay characters will exist

Fuller, a gay man himself, stated that "Absolutely we’re having a gay character ." That element is one of the last taboos to be broken by a Star Trek production and it's long overdue. “What can we say about diversity in every role,” he added. “We’ll probably have a few more aliens than you typically have on the show. We wanted to paint a picture of Starfleet where we’re going to have new exciting aliens and also new imagining of existing aliens,” Fuller said via Entertainment Weekly.

A new visual style?

Fuller addressed the nature of a story that takes place 10 years before another show made in 1966 (TOS). "We can redefine the visual style,” he said. “We get to play with all of the iconography of those ships and that universe. Since we are doing this series in 2016 and all of the other series have been produced [at a time that] isn’t as sophisticated as we are now with what we can do production-wise, we’re going to be reestablishing an entire look for the series — not only for the series, but for what we wanted to accomplish with Star Trek beyond this series.”

This, frankly, confuses the hell out of me.  If you change the style, then this is not actually set in the Prime Universe, but one similar. If you change the visuals, you change the story and the universe in which it takes place.

This sounds like a defacto reboot. And I'm all for that!

LLAP,

Don