In a recent interview, Bryan Fuller spoke with Ain’t It Cool News about the hotly anticipated new CBS All Access series, Star Trek: Discovery.
So far all that we know about the new series, which is set before Star Trek the Original Series, is that it will feature a female protagonist alongside an openly gay character. In this interview Fuller sought to give Trek fans a few extra details about the show’s first season.
Firstly, Fuller says that Discovery’s female lead will be introduced to us simply as ‘Number One’:
“When we introduce our protagonist, she is called ‘Number One’ in honour of Majel Barrett’s character in the original pilot. And as we were first talking about the series, talking to CBS, we said initially we will only call this character Number One.”
The main character’s real name will be revealed towards the end of season one however.
Another reason to be excited is CBS have hired Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts as co-showrunners. Berg and Harberts previously worked with Fuller on Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies.
In an effort to keep Star Trek: Discovery fresh, Fuller and his co-showrunners intend to keep each season of the new show from between ten and thirteen episodes. This will be done to ensure a higher quality than is possible with a standard 26 episode per season format.
Fuller also discusses the decision to set ST: D in the Prime timeline, pre-Star Trek: TOS:
“Really when we developed the story it could take place in either Prime or Kelvin so the timeline was relatively inconsequential. But there was the cleanliness of keeping our series independent of the films. That way we don’t have to track anything [happening in the movie universe] and they don’t have to track what we’re doing. And you can have two distinct universes — one where Sulu is straight and one where Sulu is gay.”
Star Trek: Discovery is expected to begin airing sometime in 2017, with casting news expected in October.
