Bryan Fuller, showrunner for the new CBS All Access TV series Star Trek: Discovery (or DSC, for short), just announced the time-frame for the highly-anticipated new series. It’s already been reported that DSC will take place in the prime universe (not the Kelvin timeline), but now we know when:
TEN YEARS before the original series!
Fans of the Axanar project nearly had a collective heart attack (including yours truly), until we realized that this time period is actually ten years AFTER the Four Years War depicted in the 20-minute 2014 fan film Prelude to Axanar.
Reported in this BREAKING NEWS article on Trekmovie.com, Fuller helped to calm Axanar panickers…at least somewhat:
When asked if it was set during the Romulan War, Fuller said “close, but no cigar.” Fuller also denied that the show will revolve around the battle of Axanar or Section 31, but he hinted that the clandestine Starfleet organization will pop up in DSC.
Now, this doesn’t leave Axanar completely out of the woods. An unnamed source confirmed to FAN FILM FACTOR that “…there is concept art that suggests early Klingon/Federation conflict will be a large aspect of the story.” As such, we could soon have canon that contradicts what Alec Peters originally had planned for the full Axanar movie (assuming it ever gets made) or even the already-released Prelude. It’s not clear whether Bryan Fuller has seen and enjoyed Prelude to Axanar (as J.J. Abrams and Justin Lin did) or if he wants to eliminate it from canon. I guess we’ll just have to wait until January to discover the answer (ouch, sorry).
Other interesting news from the article includes:
- There will be a female lead character who is NOT the captain of the USS Discovery. Instead, she will be a lieutenant commander, giving viewers a different perspective of missions than we’ve seen before on other series.
- The 13 episodes will each be stand-alone stories that form into a larger season-long arc.
- There will be a gay character.
- There will be seven lead characters.
- Despite the $5.99 monthly subscription fee, the new series will still have about 9 minutes of commercials per episode. (Really, CBS, really?)
So…lots to talk about!
Ah! This makes it quite clear. The Axanar lawsuit, then, had NOTHING to do with CBS’ worry with fan films, but rather because Axanar would set up a different canon than what Fuller wanted to create with Discovery. The lawsuit is nothing more than a diversion/delay tactic to stop Axanar until Discovery is launched in January.
I can see why CBS wanted to do this: By being so close to the time period of Axanar (TOS – 10 years for Discovery vs. TOS – 20 for Axanar), whichever project is released first would set into the heads of the fans as the more ‘correct’ canon, especially if the production values Axanar had proved in “Prelude” would carry over to “Axanar.”
I hope that the new show considers the television shows to be the only canon and that they reject everything else. The lives of the writers will be so much simpler without all that extra silliness slowing them down.
Picture group of Klingon’s hollering at the death of a group member!!!
Wow, this saga just keeps getting worse and worse for Axanar, and I think it’s clear now, why they came after them so hard! I’m sure most will be of the same opinion. At CBS comic con, it was suggested that the time period would be right after the Undiscovered Country, thus the new Starship design made more sense. Also the suggestion of Kirk making perhaps several appearances from the dead, or rather being brought back, such as the way Shatner wrote himself back into existence. At any rate, I’m astounded that now, the weasel is suggesting that the series starts in the immediate time zone of Axanar production, with similar elements. Here, let me HOLLER again !!!