“Star Trek: Discovery,” the first official “Star Trek” series in the franchise since the end of “Star Trek: Enterprise” on 2005, has been waiting to premiere for such a long time. It has been touted as a valuable content to be made available at the OTT-subscription streaming service Cbs All Access.
While there has been a smattering of news in past months, mainly of casting, there has been no new info on when the series will premiere save that it will be sometime in the fall. Following another dearth of the word from the network and producers, CBS All Access finally decided to grace those who have been waiting long with the very first trailer for “Discovery.”
First footage and more episodes
The first teaser trailer with actual series footage was unveiled by CBS All Access during the main network’s presentation in New York Wednesday, May 17.
Also, CBS Interactive president Marc DeBevoise announced that from the original order of 13 episodes, the count had been upped to 15 for the first season.
As a special treat, the first episode will be aired on the main CBS channel before it, and all subsequent episodes become available exclusively on All Access. As a cherry on top, the streaming service will also throw in “Talking Trek,” an after-show program for “Star Trek: Discovery.”
Presenting the trailer itself at the CBS upfront was the show’s lead star Sonequa Martin-Green, a veteran of “The Walking Dead” who in “Discovery” will be playing the role of Michael Burnham, a human raised by the Vulcan people and first officer of the titular Federation starship USS Discovery.
The series will also star Jason Isaacs as Burnham’s superior Captain Lorca, Michelle Yeoh as USS Shenzhou Captain Georgiou, Rainn Wilson as human galactic criminal boss Harry Mudd, James Frain as Vulcan astrophysicist Sarek, and Doug Jones as Discovery’s science officer Saru.
A decade before the original series
The interesting thing about “Star Trek: Discovery” is that while it’s generally set ten years before the recorded voyages of Captain James T.
Kirk in the USS Enterprise, the timeline it’s supposed to follow is that of the original 1960s TV series starring William Shatner, rather than the reboot history of the 2009-onwards film series starring Chris Pine.
The trailer reveals that Martin-Green’s character of Burnham grew up in Vulcan as a child in the care of Sarek, father of original series character Spock.
Before serving in the Discovery, Burnham appears to have been part of the Shenzhou bridge crew. In one scene the ship encounters and is attacked by forces of the Klingon Empire. This may be what the series blurb mentions as one background event referred to in the original series.
