'Star Trek: Discovery': Decoding the 1st Trailer of Trek's New Chapter

'Star Trek: Discovery': Decoding the 1st Trailer of Trek's New Chapter

The first full trailer for "Star Trek: Discovery" hints at a complicated past for one of its main characters, while bringing in famous alien species such as the Vulcans and the Klingons.

"Discovery" is set about 10 years before the original "Star Trek" series that featured Capt. James T. Kirk, Science Officer Spock and other memorable characters.

As such, the trailer focuses heavily on Spock's father, Sarek (played by James Frain). You can see more series here from our sister site Newsarama. But let's take a close look at our first glimpse of Trek's new chapter to see what's in store fans in the final frontier. -SNIP-

Yes, Remans. That’s what this weird-ass Klingon redesign looks like.

I missed a number of Enterprise episodes. Conversely, I’ve seen TOS about a dozen times each, TNG & DS9 just about once, although I rewatched a modest amount of TNG in the last year or so on BBC America to see if they held up. I never was that big into the post-Kirk crews, and rather wished they had done that late ‘70s series as originally planned. Alas, with Nimoy refusing to participate in it, it would’ve been disappointing and probably would’ve only run for a year or two, a la Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers.

I seem to vaguely recall the “virus” claim for Klingons. With my theory, I figure the Arne Darvin incident forced the Federation to thoroughly investigate its employees to find any hybrid infiltrators (since Darvin would’ve been one of many placed in sensitive positions). Once the proverbial “jig” was up, and the profound embarrassment to the Klingon Empire for undertaking said failure, most of the hybrids that were active along the Federation border sought to “restore” their Klingon-ness by undergoing surgical and DNA modification (why the elderly Kor, Koloth and Kang had changed their appearances).

An alternative Star Trek series from the ‘80s postulated there were three racial categories of Klingons: One were the humanoid hybrids, the second were the “standard” Klingons not genetically manipulated, and the third (lesser known) were another genetic design, the “Battle Klingons” which would be dispatched to the most dangerous areas, as they were “disposable.” They were designed entirely for warfare, a Kamikaze class. They resembled standard Klingons physically, but were much stronger, but lacking in intelligence beyond strictly following orders. The “Battle Klingons” were the ones seen in the early scenes of The Motion Picture, dispatched with orders to destroy V’Ger.

What is this “alternative Star Trek series from the 80s?” Never heard of it.

“Commander Chapel “

Are we making her Nurse Chapel’s sister or something? ;D

Huge missed opportunity not having “Number One” in the reboot. In fact they should have had Pike as the main character with Kirk remaining a JR. Officer instead of implausibly going from cadet to Captain in 5 minutes.

Star Trek V was a mess, and Shatner couldn’t pull it together as a director (Nimoy was better at that). Too many errors and folks acting silly to the point of being out of character. The high point was the stunningly beautiful Cynthia Gouw as the Romulan Representative to Nimbus III (before they fuglified the Roms). The Klingon crew was like Brats in Space, a decided embarrassment, to say the least (except for General Korrd, but he was too soft for a Klingon).

I wasn’t clear, I meant an alternative series of books and tech manuals, some for gaming. There was an explosion of them in the ‘70s and ‘80s, some very high quality (some that went into fuller descriptions of races, ships, biographies of the crew). I was big into collecting them in the ‘80s and amassed a large collection.

From one alternative series done by William Rotsler, who did a few books (a biography of the TOS crew and a set of short stories which would’ve made a few decent one hour episodes from the post-TMP film era). He was the person credited with giving Uhura her first name of Nyota (Roddenberry never did). Rotsler, curiously, gained minor notoriety before getting into science fiction by working in the adult film industry. You can read his wiki entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rotsler

A lot of fans and several books postulated that Nurse Chapel and Number One were sisters, and it’s generally been considered to have been widely accepted since (with Number One alternatively referred to as Commander Chapel, though much with Uhura, I don’t believe she was formally given any name when they shot the pilot). The network execs were so put off by her character (ostensibly a strong female command role) that NBC ordered Roddenberry to fire her. He had to sneak her in as Nurse Chapel (she dyed her hair blonde) and used her maiden name for the pilot credit.

Actually, a bit of confusion as Nurse Chapel (a Lieutenant to start off) was already a Commander by her last appearance in the films, so some speculated her older sister was an Admiral by then.

As for soliciting my comments about the Faux Trek reboot, you know what I think of the whole thing. They should’ve left it all be and moved on to the period after TNG/DS9/VOY with brand new characters, ships and so forth instead of that Star Wars fanboi dropping a nuke on the entire canon and franchise. Since I presume “Discovery” will be in the Faux universe, it will be just as easy for me to write the whole mess off.

Some Klingons act really retarded, like the one in Star Trek V who wanted to fight the Enterprise for no reason, though certainly no one ordered him to do that so I guess that doesn’t fit with “Battle Klingons”.

There was a line in the script that got cut where the female Klingon on the bridge (Vixis) said that the Klingon Empire's highest bounty was put on Kirk's head, likely because of Kirk killing Kruge and his crew and taking their bird of prey in Star Trek III. The bit where Klaa apologizes later was added in as a reshoot, probably to provide the rationale that Klaa's attack wasn't legitimate. The novel doesn't include it, instead just having Korrd seize control of Klaa's ship from him by nearly choking Klaa out.

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