There is no more stopping CBS and its paid subscription arm Cbs All Access as September 24 rolls in, the promised premiere date of “Star Trek Discovery.” This is the long-awaited full TV series set in the sprawling “Star Trek” universe before the film series reboot, over a decade after the 2005 conclusion of “Star Trek: Enterprise” on UPN. In-universe on the other hand, “Discovery” takes place about a decade before the events of the celebrated “Original Series” broadcast on NBC in 1966. Just ahead of the premiere, the official title sequence of the show has been teased, featuring some interesting visuals, while executive producer Akiva Goldsman dropped hints on interpreting the design of the Starfleet uniforms on this era.
Unique intro
As stated, CBS has made available the opening sequence for “Star Trek: Discovery” just before the grand two-episode premiere on both CBS broadcast and All Access streaming. The production design on the titles remarkably sets it apart from all the shows and films before, eschewing the traditional star-field aesthetics or even the historical retrospective done in “Enterprise.” Instead, they went with abstractions and elements of surrealism, blending technical specs of the titular new starship USS Discovery with the crew’s equipment and gear.
The central piece of the intro for “Star Trek: Discovery” is certainly the namesake starship, the design of which appears to be a blending of the classic contours of the iconic starship Enterprise from past main series, and the more streamlined Enterprise from the same-named 2001-2005 UPN series.
It is certainly eye-catching (literally) to look at the Discovery sailing in front of a gigantic human eye in one instance, or past what looks like an alien flower with tentacles. Other technical visuals that the intro focused on are the bulky spacesuits of the crew, plus the classic hand phaser and flip-top communicator carried over from (or will carry over to) the Original Series.
Explaining the uniforms
Speaking of the “Star Trek” Original Series, one of the memorable design conventions there was the bright colors of the Starfleet crew uniforms. The costuming has evolved in succeeding series, but the sensibilities remained constant, all the way down to “Discovery” now. Akiva Goldsman, the executive producer, has decided that the costume uniforms will trade in the bright colors of the past with a more subdued color scheme.
As seen in previews, the USS Discovery personnel have mostly blue jumpsuit uniforms with various metallic-colored highlights. The highlights skew to the color scheme used ever since the original series: Gold for command, Blue for Sciences and Red for Operations. The main character Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) has gold uniform highlights as the ship’s First Officer for example, with rank level shown as pips on the Starfleet badge on the left breast.
All these juicy tidbits on the world simply makes for more excitement as “Star Trek: Discovery” comes alive on both CBS this Sunday, September 24, with its first two episodes “The Vulcan Hello” and “Battle at the Binary Stars.”
