New Star Trek: Discovery details have been revealed by series producer/showrunner Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, American Gods), who told Ain’t It Cool News that the female lead — a lieutenant commander aboard the title ship — will be referred to as “Number One,” with her real name to be revealed towards the end of Season 1. Fuller also noted that the first hour of the 13 episodes is written by himself and Alex Kurtzman, with the second hour penned by Nicholas Meyer (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country), and the the series will take place in the Prime (William Shatner) timeline as opposed to the Kelvin (Chris Pine) timeline to avoid conflict with future movies.
“I would strongly recommend that we never do 26 episodes,” Fuller said. “I think it would fatigue the show. Ideally I would like to do 10 episodes. I think that’s a tighter story.”
Gretchen Berg & Aaron Harberts (“Wonderfalls,” “Pushing Daisies”) will serve as co-showrunners on the show, with Jesse Alexander (“Alias,” “Heroes,” “Hannibal”), Kristen Beyer (various Star Trek novels), Aron Eli Coleite (“Heroes”) and veteran Trek series writer Joe Menosky also onboard the writing staff.
Fuller previously revealed that Star Trek: Discovery, which will debut on CBS in January 2017 before the show makes its permanent home on the streaming service CBS All Access, will have a female, human lead and that they are hoping to cast a diverse actress for the role. The male lead might also be diverse, and there will be robots as well.
“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 previously told EW. And will there be a gay character? “Absolutely we’re having a gay character,” he added.
The first season of Star Trek: Discovery will be told over 13 episodes. Fuller said that “each episode is a chapter, within each chapter will be a beginning, middle and end.”
Star Trek: Discovery is set about 10 years before Captain Kirk’s mission.
“There’s an incident and and event in Star Trek history, that’s been talked about but never been explored. To do this series, we’re telling a much more serialized story, to dig deep into a very tantalizing storyline. And we have a character who’s on a journey, and in order to understand something that is alien she first has to understand herself,” Fuller added.
Fuller also said that for the first season, they will be sticking to new characters, but moving forward, original “Star Trek” characters could appear in some form.
Star Trek: Discovery will begin production in Toronto in September. Alex Kurtzman and Fuller are co-creators and executive producers for the new series, based on Gene Roddenberry’s original series. Fuller launched his career writing for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. Kurtzman is co-writer and producer of 2009’s Star Trek and its follow-up Star Trek Into Darkness.
The series is produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Kurtzman’s Secret Hideout, Fuller’s Living Dead Guy Productions and Roddenberry Entertainment. Alex Kurtzman, Bryan Fuller, Heather Kadin, Gretchen Berg & Aaron Harberts, Rod Roddenberry, and Trevor Roth will serve as executive producers.
