Piecing together DSC's time-frame choices

[Lord Garth]

I've had some free time (and can't sleep), so I have what I think to be the "how" and "why" for Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman settling on "when" DSC took place. This is me putting the pieces together in a way that I think makes the most sense.

DSC was never intended to stay in the 23rd Century. The plan was for DSC to start off in the TOS Era, go to the TNG Era, and then go to The Future. Pulling a quote from Trekmovie.com relaying an article from Entertainment Weekly.

Bryan Fuller’s Original Pitch For ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Included Going Beyond TNG Era – TrekMovie.com

According to Entertainment Weekly, Bryan Fuller’s original pitch to CBS had the show starting in Discovery‘s time, but then moving through the eras of Kirk and Picard and then going beyond that, reaching a time period that hasn’t been seen in Star Trek before. He wanted to do something like American Horror Story, which resets its storyline each season, and described it as a “platform for a universe of Star Trek shows.” However CBS decided to create a single serialized show and see how it performed before agreeing to anything that elaborate.

So, originally, Bryan Fuller didn't even want to stick with the same crew from season-to-season, but CBS wanted him to stick with one crew.

I don't know when the idea to create Picard happened, but we didn't hear anything about it until mid-2018 and they must've had the idea going on for a little bit, trying to work it out with Patrick Stewart, so the idea for PIC must've been floating around during DSC's first season. Though I think, based on the design of the Klingons, they didn't decide they wanted to do PIC until after they'd already gone through with redesigning the Klingons. Before production of DSC began, if they already knew they were going to eventually make PIC, I don't think Alex Kurtzman would've let Bryan Fuller redesign the Klingons. Because Alex Kurtzman wouldn't have wanted to have to deal with "Then what would Worf look like?" So, in turn, the idea to do multiple Star Trek series must've come a little bit later on, not right away.

I'm going to assume that once Alex Kurtzman wanted to make PIC, the idea for DSC going into the TNG Era was dropped. They'd want to save re-introducing the TNG Era for PIC. So instead of going from the TOS Era to the TNG Era to The Future, they streamlined their idea to DSC just going straight from the TOS Era to The Future. All that leads me to believe that DSC was never intended to stay a prequel. Not even from Day One.

"So why even go to the TOS Era at all?" The Kelvin Films were hot at the time, and they probably wanted to distance themselves from anything associated with the Berman Era, at least to start off with. Nemesis bombing and Enterprise getting cancelled early cast a long shadow. That ruled out the 22nd and 24th Centuries, leaving them with starting off in the 23rd Century before heading off to The Future. Then they could work TOS stuff in, which the Kelvin Films made popular again. Bryan Fuller wanting to tell a story based on something referenced in TOS fits in with all of that. It went with what they wanted to do anyway.

So DSC was always going to start in the TOS Era and it was always going to go into The Future. It was just a matter of hammering out the specifics. That's why they had time crystals in Season 1 and the fake-out when Discovery left the Mirror Universe and ended up in the future... except it was only nine months in the future. It was a tease before they did it for real. And "Calypso" was them testing the waters for what they could do.

Speculation Only: I think it's also why Discovery's sets don't look TOS-Like or Updated-TOS-Like. It's still television. They still have a pattern budget. They built the sets to be used across the entire series. Once they built them, they wanted to stick with them. They didn't want to have to build a whole new bunch of ship sets every season. So they went with something that wouldn't have such a TOS-y look once they weren't in that era anymore. I think that might've played a hand in them designing Discovery to look the way it did, inside and out. The Enterprise in DSC (and later SNW) looks the way it does because they weren't going to take the Enterprise out of the 23rd Century, so they went with "Updated TOS" for the Discoprise instead of "Updated Trek in General" like they did for the Discovery itself.

Even here, though, they tried to split the difference. The Discovery was based off a design from the abandoned 1970s Star Trek movie, Planet of the Titans. So they could have their cake and eat it too, and say technically the original design was meant for a 23rd Century ship. It would've been a TOS Movie Era ship, which would make a TOS Movie Era design in the TOS Era be like the equivalent of a Concept Car. Fitting for an experimental ship with an experimental Spore Drive. In-universe, if it all worked out, Starfleet could've called it "The Starship of Tomorrow!" A direction they could've gone in. But of course, one way or another, the writers were going to make sure something would happen so it wouldn't be.

This is how I see what their thinking must've been for the series and why they made the decisions they did. Whether those decisions were the right ones to make or the wrong ones to make can be debated forever.

I'll be interested to see how much of this -- or if any of it -- actually turns out to be the case, once the Non-Disclosure Agreements expire and they can start talking these things openly.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I don't know when the idea to create Picard happened, but we didn't hear anything about it until mid-2018 and they must've had the idea going on for a little bit, trying to work it out with Patrick Stewart, so the idea for PIC must've been floating around during DSC's first season

Actually, it somehow span out from a Short Trek idea which would have had Nichelle Nicols' Uhura meet a young cadet Picard. I can't find the source, though.

 

[Weyoun 251]

I've had some free time (and can't sleep), so I have what I think to be the "how" and "why" for Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman settling on "when" DSC took place. This is me putting the pieces together in a way that I think makes the most sense.

DSC was never intended to stay in the 23rd Century. The plan was for DSC to start off in the TOS Era, go to the TNG Era, and then go to The Future. Pulling a quote from Trekmovie.com relaying an article from Entertainment Weekly.

Bryan Fuller’s Original Pitch For ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Included Going Beyond TNG Era – TrekMovie.com



So, originally, Bryan Fuller didn't even want to stick with the same crew from season-to-season, but Bryan Fuller wanted him to stick with one crew.

I don't know when the idea to create Picard happened, but we didn't hear anything about it until mid-2018 and they must've had the idea going on for a little bit, trying to work it out with Patrick Stewart, so the idea for PIC must've been floating around during DSC's first season. Though I think, based on the design of the Klingons, they didn't decide the wanted to do PIC until after they'd already gone through with redesigning the Klingons. Before production of DSC began, if they already knew they were going to eventually make PIC, I don't think Alex Kurtzman would've let Bryan Fuller redesign the Klingons. Because Alex Kurtzman wouldn't have wanted to have to deal with "Then what would Worf look like?" So, in turn, the idea to do multiple Star Trek series must've come a little bit later on, not right away.

I'm going to assume that once Alex Kurtzman wanted to make PIC, the idea for DSC going into the TNG Era was dropped. They'd want to save re-introducing the TNG Era for PIC. So instead of going from the TOS Era to the TNG Era to The Future, they streamlined their idea to DSC just going straight from the TOS Era to The Future. All that leads me to believe that DSC was never intended to stay a prequel. Not even from Day One.

"So why even go to the TOS Era at all?" The Kelvin Films were hot at the time, and they probably wanted to distance themselves from anything associated with Berman Era, at least to start off with. Nemesis bombing and Enterprise getting cancelled early cast a long shadow. That ruled out the 22nd and 24th Centuries, leaving them with starting off in the 23rd Century before heading off to The Future. Then they could work TOS stuff in, which the Kelvin Films made popular again. Bryan Fuller wanting to tell a story based on something referenced in TOS fits in with all of that. It went with what they wanted to do anyway.

So DSC was always going to start in the TOS Era and it was always going to go into The Future. It was just a matter of hammering out the specifics. That's why they had time crystals in Season 1 and the fake-out when Discovery left the Mirror Universe and ended up in the future... except it was only nine months in the future. It was a tease before they did it for real. And "Calypso" was them testing the waters for what they could do.

Speculation Only: I think it's also why Discovery's sets don't look TOS-like or Updated-TOS-Like. It's still television. They still have a pattern budget. They built the sets to be used across the entire series. Once they built them, they wanted to stick with them. They didn't want to have to build a whole new bunch of ship sets every season. So they went with something that wouldn't have such a TOS-y look once they weren't in that era anymore. I think that might've played a hand in them designing Discovery to look the way it did, inside-out. The Enterprise in DSC (and later SNW) looks the way it does because they weren't going to take the Enterprise out of the 23rd Century, so they went with "Updated TOS" for the Discoprise instead of "Updated Trek in General" like they did for the Discovery itself.

Even here, though, they tried to split the difference. The Discovery was based off a design from the abandoned 1970s Star Trek movie, Planet of the Titans. So they could have their cake and eat it too, and say technically the original design was meant for a 23rd Century ship. It would've been a TOS Movie Era ship, which would make a TOS Movie Era design in the TOS Era be like the equivalent of a Concept Car.

This is how I see what their thinking must've been for the series and why they made the decisions they did. Whether those decisions were the right ones to make or the wrong ones to make can be debated forever.

I'll be interested to see how much of this -- or if any of it -- actually turns out to be the case, once the Non-Disclosure Agreements expire and they can start talking these things openly.

Assuming the anthology plan stayed and we saw a new crew etc each season, does the ship still get called Discovery (and so each season is a different iteration of it so we then get Disco C in the TNG era, Disco G in the 26th cent etc) or does the ship name change also

 

[Jedman67]

I wonder if Lorca was always supposed to be a MU or if that was added after the first couple of episodes were already aired.

 

[XCV330]

I wonder if Lorca was always supposed to be a MU or if that was added after the first couple of episodes were already aired.

There are some consistencies like his aversion to bright light, though that could have been tacked into the scripts pretty late.

I do have one jarring issue with those early episodes: in Context Is.. he put Burnham in a chamber and dialed her in to see all these worlds by some kind of remote viewing, without any tardigrade or jumping. That in itself seemed extremely useful. Why did we never see that again?

 

[Jedman67]

There are some consistencies like his aversion to bright light, though that could have been tacked into the scripts pretty late.

I do have one jarring issue with those early episodes: in Context Is.. he put Burnham in a chamber and dialed her in to see all these worlds by some kind of remote viewing, without any tardigrade or jumping. That in itself seemed extremely useful. Why did we never see that again?

I did just watch that, and it's ambiguous enough that it could be either a VR thing, so only she could see it, a storytelling feature so its only the audience who sees it and not Burnham, or a holographic display, of which we see plenty over the course of DSC.
In fact, my biggest hangup is the virtual PADD's and holographic keyboards in S3-4 of Discovery

 

[Dar70]

I've had some free time (and can't sleep), so I have what I think to be the "how" and "why" for Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman settling on "when" DSC took place. This is me putting the pieces together in a way that I think makes the most sense.

DSC was never intended to stay in the 23rd Century. The plan was for DSC to start off in the TOS Era, go to the TNG Era, and then go to The Future. Pulling a quote from Trekmovie.com relaying an article from Entertainment Weekly.

Bryan Fuller’s Original Pitch For ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Included Going Beyond TNG Era – TrekMovie.com



So, originally, Bryan Fuller didn't even want to stick with the same crew from season-to-season, but CBS wanted him to stick with one crew.

I don't know when the idea to create Picard happened, but we didn't hear anything about it until mid-2018 and they must've had the idea going on for a little bit, trying to work it out with Patrick Stewart, so the idea for PIC must've been floating around during DSC's first season. Though I think, based on the design of the Klingons, they didn't decide they wanted to do PIC until after they'd already gone through with redesigning the Klingons. Before production of DSC began, if they already knew they were going to eventually make PIC, I don't think Alex Kurtzman would've let Bryan Fuller redesign the Klingons. Because Alex Kurtzman wouldn't have wanted to have to deal with "Then what would Worf look like?" So, in turn, the idea to do multiple Star Trek series must've come a little bit later on, not right away.

I'm going to assume that once Alex Kurtzman wanted to make PIC, the idea for DSC going into the TNG Era was dropped. They'd want to save re-introducing the TNG Era for PIC. So instead of going from the TOS Era to the TNG Era to The Future, they streamlined their idea to DSC just going straight from the TOS Era to The Future. All that leads me to believe that DSC was never intended to stay a prequel. Not even from Day One.

"So why even go to the TOS Era at all?" The Kelvin Films were hot at the time, and they probably wanted to distance themselves from anything associated with the Berman Era, at least to start off with. Nemesis bombing and Enterprise getting cancelled early cast a long shadow. That ruled out the 22nd and 24th Centuries, leaving them with starting off in the 23rd Century before heading off to The Future. Then they could work TOS stuff in, which the Kelvin Films made popular again. Bryan Fuller wanting to tell a story based on something referenced in TOS fits in with all of that. It went with what they wanted to do anyway.

So DSC was always going to start in the TOS Era and it was always going to go into The Future. It was just a matter of hammering out the specifics. That's why they had time crystals in Season 1 and the fake-out when Discovery left the Mirror Universe and ended up in the future... except it was only nine months in the future. It was a tease before they did it for real. And "Calypso" was them testing the waters for what they could do.

Speculation Only: I think it's also why Discovery's sets don't look TOS-Like or Updated-TOS-Like. It's still television. They still have a pattern budget. They built the sets to be used across the entire series. Once they built them, they wanted to stick with them. They didn't want to have to build a whole new bunch of ship sets every season. So they went with something that wouldn't have such a TOS-y look once they weren't in that era anymore. I think that might've played a hand in them designing Discovery to look the way it did, inside and out. The Enterprise in DSC (and later SNW) looks the way it does because they weren't going to take the Enterprise out of the 23rd Century, so they went with "Updated TOS" for the Discoprise instead of "Updated Trek in General" like they did for the Discovery itself.

Even here, though, they tried to split the difference. The Discovery was based off a design from the abandoned 1970s Star Trek movie, Planet of the Titans. So they could have their cake and eat it too, and say technically the original design was meant for a 23rd Century ship. It would've been a TOS Movie Era ship, which would make a TOS Movie Era design in the TOS Era be like the equivalent of a Concept Car. Fitting for an experimental ship with an experimental Spore Drive. In-universe, if it all worked out, Starfleet could've called it "The Starship of Tomorrow!" A direction they could've gone in. But of course, one way or another, the writers were going to make sure something would happen so it wouldn't be.

This is how I see what their thinking must've been for the series and why they made the decisions they did. Whether those decisions were the right ones to make or the wrong ones to make can be debated forever.

I'll be interested to see how much of this -- or if any of it -- actually turns out to be the case, once the Non-Disclosure Agreements expire and they can start talking these things openly.

No wait. That is not how I remember it. It was supposed to be an anthology show. Different ship, crew , situation, time etc....each season. Which I would have preferred .
But what WASN'T planned after they decided on Discovery was to send them to the 32nd century. That was done to free the writers up from anymore continuity issues. Than they go make SNW which is a little close to pre TOS but the writers still have issues with staying within continuity.....

 

[Lord Garth]

No wait. That is not how I remember it. It was supposed to be an anthology show. Different ship, crew , situation, time etc....each season. Which I would have preferred .

I said this in my post. Cutting-and-pasting from the original post and bolding the part you missed.

"So, originally, Bryan Fuller didn't even want to stick with the same crew from season-to-season, but CBS wanted him to stick with one crew."

That's literally what I said in one of my paragraphs.

But what WASN'T planned after they decided on Discovery was to send them to the 32nd century. That was done to free the writers up from anymore continuity issues. Than they go make SNW which is a little close to pre TOS but the writers still have issues with staying within continuity.....

You also didn't look at the link I provided which is from 2017.

Please read everything I posted and click on the source material I provide instead of just skimming. Thanks.

 

[Dar70]

I said this in my post. Cutting-and-pasting from the original post and bolding the part you missed.

"So, originally, Bryan Fuller didn't even want to stick with the same crew from season-to-season, but CBS wanted him to stick with one crew."

That's literally what I said in one of my paragraphs.


You also didn't look at the link I provided which is from 2017.

Please read everything I posted and click on the source material I provide instead of just skimming. Thanks.

No I read it. But you keep calling it Discovery.

Also I do not think they planned on Discovery time traveling to the future during the first season. Pretty sure it was decided to throw them out there that far because the show was not working as a pre TOS show. The fact that they first wanted to have an anthology show setting stories across all the centuries has nothing to do with why Discovery was sent to the future....

 

[Lord Garth]

I'm looking forward to when the NDAs expire.

 

[urbandk]

I would read a book about the making of modern Trek. Considering how many hoops they have had to jump through and last minute changes they've had to shoehorn in, it's nothing short of a miracle we are where we are right now.

 

[Xerxus]

Bryan Fuller's ideal version of the look of Discovery wouldn't necessarily have been what we saw on screen. At some point he was hyping up uniform colors that didn't end up being used.

https://twitter.com/BryanFuller/status/771872524619489280?s=20

I think he dreamed too big and had too much disagreements with Kurtzman about the look of the show (especially regarding budget) which ultimately lead to his dismissal.

I wonder if Lorca was always supposed to be a MU or if that was added after the first couple of episodes were already aired.

From some behind-the-scenes interview (maybe After Trek?), Isaacs said he was told the twist right from beginning.

But we also know that Bryan Fuller's Mirror Universe wasn't what we intended. It was supposed to be more of a "Parallels" type alternate reality where it was supposed to show an alternate choice from "Battle of the Binary Stars"

So, there was something in the mistakes made by Burnham in “Battle of the Binary Stars” that had this ripple, but the Mirror Universe was always meant to be an exploration of a small step in a different direction. So, it wasn’t necessarily the Mirror Universe we know from all of the other series. It was something that was closer to our timeline and experience, so you can still recognize the human being and go, “What did I do? How did that seem like a good decision for me in that moment and how do I continue with my life forward?” And everything was a sort of an extrapolation out on that. So, there were things that I wanted the Mirror Universe to function in a narrative exploration of like “Oh fuck, if I just didn’t do that one thing, everything would be better.”

As opposed to, “I don’t recognize that person, I don’t know who that person is, because they are a diametric opposite of who I am.”

https://trekmovie.com/2020/04/29/br...mirror-universe-plan-for-star-trek-discovery/

I think Fuller's version of the character was that he was ultimately a very damaged and flawed person, not from an alternate universe. The arc of Burnham doing a (bad) mutiny against Georgiou and then a justified mutiny against Lorca was baked into the first season character arc. We saw some version of this.

The show was comissioned with 13 episodes. It wasn't until partway through that they were given two more episodes. I believe the extra two (set after the MU arc) was intended to just wrap up the Klingon storyline because nobody wanted to do it anymore. The plan post-Fuller would have been to continue the Klingon-Federation War in Season 2, but they were given two more episodes to wrap it up. They pulled in MU Georgiou for the "justified mutiny"

 

[Tuskin38]

Bryan Fuller's ideal version of the look of Discovery wouldn't necessarily have been what we saw on screen. At some point he was hyping up uniform colors that didn't end up being used.

It was clarified later that the tweet was a joke. He was just comparing that company’s shirts to Star Trek

 

[Xerxus]

It was clarified later that the tweet was a joke. He was just comparing that company’s shirts to Star Trek

I didn't know that but think he would probably have stuck closer to TOS visuals.

I know that Gersha Phillips did not work with Fuller at all and basically started over again.

I wasn’t the first designer who worked on them, so I’m not sure what the mandate was from Bryan Fuller for those [earlier] ones. When I took over, our mandate was to do something that felt real. There was a lot of talk of looking at Ripley from Alien. This idea of grounding something in reality, and still honest to the Starfleet look and feel.

https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/star-trek-discovery-costume-designer-interview/

Discovery‘s creative team was shaped by Fuller, including several previous collaborators like director Vincenzo Natali and cinematographer Guillermo Navarro. However, the show’s vision did change after his departure. EW reports that while the new showrunners worked from a “detailed template” set out by Fuller, CBS dropped “the more heavily allegorical and complex story line” and redesigned the uniforms, which Fuller wanted to look more like the 1960s costumes.

https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/star-trek-discovery-bryan-fuller-interview/

 

[Jedman67]

This idea of grounding something in reality, and still honest to the Starfleet look and feel.

I think the 2 piece navy design is more "grounded" but the gold filigree and piping really doesn't fit IMO. And that jacket has to be freaking tight to wear.
As a TOS homage, the only thing i'd change about the SNW costumes is the micro-printing. That screams "2020's Scifi" to me. I'm fine with texturing, take a page out of the FC/DS9 book. Otherwise it's perfect. The tactical vests and combat-casual additions were great, although I'm on the fence with the magic CGI spacesuit helmets.