Following Star Trek’s legacy, the new show reminds us about the power of inclusion and diversity at a time when Americans seem more divided than ever.
There’s Jean-Luc Picard, Benjamin Sisko, Kathryn Janeway, Jonathan Archer and now, for a brief moment, me.
I’m trying hard not to geek out.
Along the right wall of the ready room is a bank of flat-panel monitors. One in particular catches my eye. It’s a map of several planets with a red line dividing United Federation of Planets and Klingon Empire territories. Aaron Harberts, one of the showrunners of » Star Trek: Discovery » and our tour guide for the day, says the line will change from episode to episode — a detail most viewers may not even catch.
At left, Capt. Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) of the USS Shenzhou prepares to leave the ship with First Officer Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green). Burnham spent seven years on the Shenzhou before transferring to the USS Discovery.
But talking to the cast and people behind the show, it’s obvious they’re looking to fight a far more important battle: one for acceptance.
Cast members of the upcoming series discuss their characters and how each fits into the Trek universe.
Enter Star Trek, based on a future universe envisioned by Gene Roddenberry where such issues were resolved long ago. «Discovery» picks up the original show’s mantle of diversity and social commentary, which Roddenberry conceived of and aired during the civil rights battles of the 1960s. It focused on different peoples and races (human and alien) working together for the greater good.
The new show boasts a darker, more modern take on Star Trek, complete with complex characters who disagree, change and potentially die throughout an evolving serialized arc. But it preserves Roddenberry’s core principle.
To many involved with «Discovery,» that’s exactly what we need right now.
«I’m excited for what this show represents and for what I truly hope it will do,» says Sonequa Martin-Green, who plays First Officer Michael Burnham, the first black woman to headline a Star Trek series. «I just hope that we can incite change.»
It’s not easy being food. Starfleet Lt. Saru is a Kelpien whose species must constantly dodge being eaten on his home planet.
The casting of Martin-Green as the lead character in «Discovery» sparked a reaction of a different sort after the announcement was made in December.
Critics from across the internet derided «Discovery» as too diverse, even tossing around the concept of » white genocide .»
«It surprised me — but it didn’t,» Martin-Green says in an interview at the Shangri La Hotel in Toronto, Canada, where the show is being filmed at Pinewood Studios. «In those first few encounters, I realized that the hypocrisy is real. You can be a part of something that has been a champion of diversity and still have naysayers.»
As she points out, if you’re criticizing the show’s efforts to present a more diverse future, you’ve missed one of the central points of Star Trek. The original series, after all, cast a black woman, Nichelle Nichols, as Lt. Nyota Uhura, the Enterprise’s communications officer, and a Japanese-American man, George Takei, as Lt. Hikaru Sulu, the ship’s helmsman.
Why are the Klingons bald? That and other mysteries will be explained in future episodes. The Klingon on the right, known as T’Kuvma (Chris Obi), just wants Klingons to be Klingons.
«To have people of color out in space is quite revolutionary,» says Miki Turner, assistant professor of journalism at the University of Southern California. Roddenberry «did it during a time when it was not expected and wasn’t accepted in some quarters of the world.»
Star Trek also featured its first black commanding officer, Benjamin Sisko, in » Star Trek: Deep Space Nine » in 1993 and its first female captain, Kathryn Janeway, in » Star Trek: Voyager » in 1995.
«Discovery» goes further. The decision to revolve the series around Martin-Green’s character, First Officer Burnham, gives it a different point of view than the typical captain-centric focus.
The show also features a gay couple played by Anthony Rapp (Lt. Paul Stamets) and Wilson Cruz (Dr. Hugh Culber).
«Star Trek for 50 years has pushed so many boundaries, but this has been one blind spot,» Rapp says. «There’s a sizable LGBT contingent, and they’ve been hungry and clamoring for it.»
Then there’s Captain Lorca, played by British actor Jason Isaacs, best known for playing Lucius Malfoy in the «Harry Potter» film franchise, who says he chose a southern accent because he didn’t want to try to follow Patrick Stewart. He worked with a dialogue coach to create an accent that was an amalgamation from different states, working off the assumption that those boundaries would fade in the future.
When he was training for the film «Black Hawk Down,» Isaacs noted that the southern accent was common in the military, even among soldiers who were from the north.
«Something about it conveys something military about him,» he says.
Capt. Philippa Georgiou, played by action-film legend Michelle Yeoh, is another pivotal figure. Commander of the USS Shenzhou, Georgiou’s ready room features shadow puppets called wayang kulit, a nod to Yeoh’s Malaysian heritage.
And we haven’t even gotten to the aliens yet.
Take a guess, then hit play. You might be surprised!
Co-showrunners Harberts and Gretchen J. Berg began production and casting for «Discovery» before the 2016 US presidential election and shot the pilot less than a week after President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January. So don’t be surprised to see some political influences bleed into the scripts. That’s particularly the case with the Klingons.
The communicator is powered by an Apple iPod Nano display.
Here’s how Harberts describes Klingon leader and chief antagonist T’Kuvma: He comes to power under the creed «Remain Klingon,» promotes isolationism and rails against the Federation because its multicultural approach will erase what makes Klingons, Klingons. Mary Chieffo, who plays T’Kuvma’s battle deck commander, L’Rell, describes the Klingon leader as someone who does a lot of talking.
That may sound familiar.
Harberts never mentions Trump by name but alludes to finding inspiration in real life.
«When you’re distressed about things and you’re a writer, you get to write about it,» he says. «You try to create the reality you hope to happen.
«It’s so important that we are dealing with some of these issues,» Harberts adds, a reference to the recent events in Charlottesville.
If there’s another controversy surrounding «Discovery,» it’s with the look of the Klingons themselves. The characters have different ridges on their foreheads and lack the long mane of hair seen in prior series, the kind of tweaks that drive minutia-obsessed Trekkies mad.
«Discovery» will have separate badge insignias for different fields such as in command, medical and operations.
The people behind the show promise the different look will somehow fit in with Star Trek’s established canon, which, admittedly, is already pretty inconsistent when it comes to Klingons.
«It’s not arbitrary,» says Chieffo, who enjoys the hairless look. «So much can happen in 10 years.
