Star Trek: Discovery Showrunners Explain Delay

Screen Rant

Star Trek: Discovery Showrunners Explain Series' Premiere Delay

By Dan Zinski

Published Jun 19, 2017

Star Trek: Discovery showrunners Aaron Harberts and Gretchen J. Berg explain why they took seven extra months getting the show ready.

After a pair of premature premiere announcements followed by a pair of delays, Star Trek fans could be forgiven for wondering if Star Trek: Discovery would ever hit the air. Now that the show is moving forward again and an official ironclad premiere date has been announced, fans can relax knowing that the show is definitely going to be a reality.

With Discovery clipping ahead at full impulse power (if not exactly warp speed), the series' showrunners can talk about why they needed to leave Trek fans hanging for all those extra months. Waiting for star Sonequa Martin-Green to be done with The Walking Dead was part of it, but another part was the desire to make sure they created something that lived up to fans' lofty expectations.

Star Trek: Discovery showrunners Aaron Harberts and Gretchen J. Berg spoke to EW about the delay and explained that they needed the time to guarantee that the show's world would be as fully realized as possible (echoing and expanding upon earlier comments from producer Alex Kurtzman). Harberts said:

“There’s is so much artistry and custom craftsmanship that go into every prop, every costume, every set. These things have to be designed and manufactured. We flew a costume designer to Switzerland to pick up the fabric for the Starfleet uniforms. Several items on our uniforms are 3D printed. Some of our sets can take over six weeks to make. CBS has given us the time and the money to make something the fans will find worthwhile.”

Berg added:

“You can’t cut corners or have 95 percent of what’s on screen be completely original and inspired and then have five percent something you bought at a store. It has to be cohesive — and it is. I’m so proud of what’s on screen, it’s so beautiful and it’s taking world-building to a whole new level.”

Considering how much attention Trek fans can pay to little details, it was probably a smart move to take the extra time and get everything down pat. Had Discovery's producers rushed the show into production and not been thorough in addressing all the little aspects of the world they were creating, right down to the tiniest details, the result likely would have been something very disappointing to the fans who waited all that time.

As Kurtzman said in a recent interview, Star Trek: Discovery on the visual side of things is stretching beyond what any previous Trek TV series has been able to do, and is really more like a movie than a TV show. Now the question is, can Star Trek: Discovery live up to previous Trek series when it comes to story and character? Those elements are at least as important as making sure everyone's costumes look sharp.