LOS ANGELES _ It's been a dozen years since a crew boarded a Starship to boldly go on a mission to find television viewers. The short-lived "Star Trek: Enterprise" on the now defunct UPN network was the last television series that was part of the "Star Trek" franchise, which began in 1966 with the NBC drama starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.
Since then, we had the syndicated "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (1987-1994) and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" (1993-1999) plus UPN's "Star Trek: Voyager" (1995-2001). A Saturday morning animated version ran from 1973-1974 featuring many of the actors from the original TV show.
The long drought for Trekkies comes to an end at 8:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 24, when "Star Trek: Discovery" debuts on CBS before taking up permanent residence on the streaming services of CBS All Access. The fact that this is the first broadcast offering in the franchise to be on a premium service meant the team behind the production could not sit back and be as complacent as a room full of Tribbles.
Executive producer Alex Kurtzman, whose familiarity with the franchise comes from producing the feature films "Star Trek" and "Star Trek Into Darkness," describes the new series as a very ambitious endeavor. Once the decision was given to make it so in regards to creating a new series, the number one concern was staying true to the basics but making this version something the fans will embrace and still be accessible to those who don't know a Romulan from a Klingon.
"It had to be huge and I don't mean huge just in terms of scope. I mean huge in terms of story and emotion and character, and we spent a lot of time talking about how to build this world," Kurtzman says.
What they came up with are the adventures of the USS Discovery as commanded by Captain Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs) and Lieutenant Commander Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green). For those trying to keep up with how all the stardates fit together, the new series will take place a decade before events in the original series, when there was still trouble brewing with the Klingons.
Isaacs has some big shoes (and plenty of torn shirts if the show follows the path of the first series) to fill taking on the role of a starship captain. Being part of a massive franchise is nothing new to Isaacs as he portrayed Lucius Malfoy in the "Harry Potter" films. As for the "Star Trek" world, he started watching the exploits when the original "Star Trek" was broadcast in England in the early '70s.
"In England, when I was 8, there were only three channels. The thing we fought most about was which channel we were going to watch at night. And there was never an argument when 'Star Trek' was on," Isaacs says. "I don't know that I thought about being an actor, but the notion that I would get to stand one day and say, 'Energize,' and point phasers and run in exactly the same way they did 50 years ago _ run to the left run and run to the right _ because there's no CG way to look like you are being hit by a torpedo, other than an embarrassing way.
"It's unimaginable that we are doing it and that we get paid for messing around like children in the backyard."
At the same time, Isaac and all the cast are well aware of the legacy infused in the series by creator Gene Roddenberry more than 50 years ago that has been a big part of every series. The new series � just like those that have gone before � will act as a prism to offer a different look at events that are happening today.
Isaacs sees "Star Trek: Discovery" as a way to explain the "craziness" that is going on in today's world.
"We are separating and isolating. And I don't know how to explain it to my children. I don't know how to tell them why there are people in power who say and do these awful things and create this much division," Isaacs says. "There's a lot of conflict between us. We are complicated characters for complicated times.
"Our journey through the struggles that we have together and where we fall out or don't fall out, whether we make poor or good decisions, are everything the show was always about but for the 21st century and for the nuanced times we live in, definitely."
Helping tell that story will be Martin-Green who comes to the series with her own familiarity with big franchises having played Sasha Williams on "The Walking Dead." Her time on the AMC series prepped her for the "Star Trek" approach because it also used fantasy and fiction to deal with contemporary issues in a world.
Martin-Green's excited about playing her character, who also will be a bridge to the original series because (SPOILER ALERT) she's Spock's half-sister.
"War is the greatest conflict of all, really, but it's also just about asking those really deep those deeply profound questions of 'Who am I, and who are you, and how do I relate to you? How do we live with each other? How do we make acculturation a two way exchange rather than me dominating you or you dominating me?' which is one of the most beautiful pillars of 'Star Trek,' in my opinion," Martin-Green says. "But I think that it's one thing to speak of a utopia. It's one thing to tell our kids, 'Oh, this is what a utopia looks like,' especially when we are living in a dystopia in a sense. Right?
"But to be able to see it in an action, to be able to see us aspiring to it. We haven't reached this perfection yet, but we are trying. I think that that's going to be really compelling because you are seeing us try and fail and try again and fail and try again."
If you want to keep up with the successes and failures of the Discovery crew after the opening night, a new episode only will be available online at CBS All Access each Sunday. The initial eight episodes will be broadcast through Sunday, Nov. 5 and the remainder will begin airing in January 2018.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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