Star Trek: Discovery EP on Writers' Room Fact-Checkers

CBR

By Liam Nolan

Published Jul 15, 2017

Star Trek: Discovery executive producer Alex Kurtzman has said there are people in the writers' room who are dedicated solely to keeping the upcoming show from breaking canon.

Star Trek: Discovery is already shaping up to differ from other iterations of Gene Roddenberry's iconic franchise by more regularly killing off main characters and doing away with the "no conflict" mandate. However, in an interview with CNET, series co-creator and executive producer Alex Kurtzman, has said that the first new Star Trek TV series in 12 years is paying close attention to established continuity. According to Kurtzman, there are people in the writers' room who are dedicated solely to making sure that the show doesn't break with the canon established by other Star Trek series.

"You have got a roomful of people with very different and very devoted relationships to Star Trek in that writers' room. And that carries on a pretty proud tradition of Trek being written by fans," Kurtzman said. "You have to respect canon as it's being written. You cannot say, 'That never happened.' No, no no, you can't do that, they would kill you. Star Trek fans would kill you. No, you have to respect canon. You have to understand the timelines and what the different timelines were and what the different universes were and how they all worked together. You have to keep very meticulous track of who, what, where, when and why. And we have people in the writers' room whose sole job is to say, 'Nope, can't do that!'"

Star Trek: Discovery is a prequel to the original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. As those series often have references and allusions to what has occurred before them in the timeline, Discovery's production crew will certainly have to pay attention to small details in order to avoid breaking continuity or saying something inconsistent with those series. Discovery also takes place after the events of Enterprise, so it will have to contend with the events established by that series as well.

In the United States, Star Trek: Discovery debuts Sunday, September 24 on CBS, before moving to the CBS All Access streaming service for follow-up weekly installments. In Canada, the series debuts on CTV and Space at 8:30 pm ET, with its second episode set to air immediately after on Space — subsequent episodes will air Sundays through November 5. Internationally, the series will debut on Netflix.