Production Wraps On First Season Of ‘Star Trek: Discovery’

(Photo: Twitter/Ted Sullivan)

Late last night executive producer and co-showrunner Aaron Harberts announced that Star Trek: Discovery has wrapped production.

Art Director Matt Middleton also sent out a tweet this morning announcing the big moment, and thanking the crew.

These followed a heads up earlier on Wednesday from makeup designer James MacKinnon, showing this countdown board from Pinewood Studios in Toronto where Discovery is shot.

As we reported in our interview yesterday, the season finale was directed by Akiva Goldsman.

Over 9 months of production

The end of shooting comes 36 weeks after the show began production in January, which is just a little bit less time than it took to shoot the first season of Star Trek: Enterprise, although that show had 26 episodes compared to Discovery‘s 15.

The first two months of production for Discovery were taken up mostly with shooting the two-part premiere (“The Vulcan Hello” and “Battle at the Binary Stars”), which included extensive location shooting in Jordan in February. There was also a production hiatus for a few weeks in April to allow time for scripts to be completed.

Behind the scenes shooting the USS Shenzhou (Twitter/Aaaron Baiers)

Much work remains to be done

While principal photography has wrapped, there is still much post-production work to finish the the 15-episode season. Four episodes have already been released. Five more episodes are coming in 2017, wrapping up the first “mini-arc” for the show. The season will pick up again in January 2018 with the remaining six episodes.

While all indications are Discovery will be picked up for a second season, the official word on that has yet to come out. If the show does get the greenlight, there is no word yet on when it would go back into production, but executive producer Alex Kurtzman has indicated a second season may not be available until early 2019.


Star Trek: Discovery is available exclusive in the US on CBS All Access with new episodes released Sundays at 8:30 pm ET. In Canada Star Trek: Discovery airs on the Space Channel at the same time. Discovery is available on Netflix outside the USA and Canada with new episodes made available Monday at 8 am BST.

Keep up with all the Star Trek: Discovery news at TrekMovie.

 

 

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So those fans complaining that the producers should “listen to the fans” more and make adjustments to the series — don’t hold your breath! I’m confident they did a first-rate job on this season and I bet CBS will order another one in no time. Congrats, Team Disco!

I agree they should weigh feedback. For example, if the plan was to kill Lorca at seasons end, I would hope they’d reconsider.

The problem with a series like this is, they dont have time to use feedback to make changes during the season. Its relatively short and the story telling method means they are pretty locked in for Season 1. But I imagine they would all get together and discuss what worked, what didnt etc before really getting to the meat of their Season 2 story.

What a waste of money those Jordan shoots were. I LOVE that they did on-location shooting. But for literally no reason. That intro scene was very forgettable.

So forgettable that you are still talking about it 3 weeks after…

You cant be that dense.

Let’s play nice, TUP.

okay okay! :-) My apologies.

Just thought the same thing as I read that, TUP. That extensive filming in Jordan could have likely been done in Arizona.

or not at all. It seems like the worst scene to date.

I liked the scene better than you did, but agree that the time and production expenses, which I’m guessing were huge, weren’t much justified by the finished product. I mean, it was pretty, but so what? That teaser really had little to do with the rest of the show, other than to establish the student/mentor relationship between Georgiou and Burnham, and that could have taken place anywhere.

Now, the “Loot Train” sequence in this season of Game of Thrones was location money well-spent.

I actually really liked the opening scene. It does stand out to me. I guess you were getting something from the fridge. lol

They walked. And spouted totally unnecessary exposition if you look at it realistically. Michael tells the Captain what their mission is because WE need to know. Surely the friggen Captain knows the mission. lol

Im shocked the studio didnt look at that scene and ask “why do we NEED to film this on location when its literally just sand?”

It strikes me as the same issue that hurt the opening scene of STID. its like the writers had an idea for a ship reveal and then wrote a scene to explain it and it just didnt work.

It wasnt terrible, dont get me wrong. But I found the flashback of Sarek bringing Michael to the Schenzhou infinitely more interesting and would have considered that for the opening and jumping off point. In fact, having them approaching the ship in a shuttle and giving us a beauty shot fly by akin to TMP would have been better.

I agree that flashback with Burnham’s and Sarek was one of the better scenes in the pilot, but much of its effectiveness was due to context, i.e. Burnham’s current circumstances as an accused mutineer sitting in the ship’s brig. It wouldn’t have been nearly as good as a cold opener.

To me, that’s the whole problem with the first two épisodes. Dramatically, they were unnecessary. I think it could very well have worked if the opening scènes had been of Burnham in the shuttle and then the whole series worked towards explaining what had happened on the Shenzhou. It would have appealed to the viewers’ sense of curiousity (How did she get there?).

Very Cool!

4 episodes in and Star Trek: Discovery is not what I expected. When the series premiered I was a bit unsure. The material that was available before the launch of the series didn’t exactly give long time Trek fans a lot of hope but I tried as hard as I could to keep an open mind.

THE GOOD:

The USS Shenzhou ship –
I Like the design of the ship. It felt like it was a Starfleet design. The bridge torque sensors were a nice touch though it felt like all they did was take some sound loop from youtube.

Captain Georgeau –
Why did they have to kill her? She’s only been in 2 episodes plus the small cameo in EP4, but she managed to become one of my favorite characters.

Saru –
Another easily likable character. I dont know why exactly but scenes with him make the show seem a little closer to the Star Trek I wanted.

Lorca –
Mysterious but intriguing. Determined to win the war and not sit in a chair. So far I like him, he commands respect.

THE BAD:

Stamets – There is NOTHING about this character that I like. He just comes off as a jerk. I cant believe Lorca hasn’t shipped his butt off the ship yet for the attitude this guy gives.

Klingons – They still look ridiculous but as I try to ignore the aesthetics I can’t help but be annoyed by every other aspect of this iteration of the Klingons. First of all, The shows decision to have klingons speak klingon in their scenes has really become an issue for me because the Scenes just drag on, the delivery of the lines is slow and kills any real flow. The Klingon culture differences between this and TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT are too much. They are too different.

Discovery – I’m sorry but the whole Mushroom Drive (sorry, Spore drive) is ridiculous. It begs the question that if The USS Discovery had this magical travel anywhere in the Universe in an instant – prototype or not – why didn’t starfleet pull the project out to rescue Voyager in the Delta quadrant? why do they have separate warp drives? why are they rescuing a planet that mines Dilithium if they can use magic mushroom power? Were the writer’s high? Also spinning saucer? whats that all about. Imagine walking around the ship looking for a room located on the outter part of the saucer and suddently the inner part starts spinning like crazy.

Burnham – I don’t particularly care for this character. She’s pretty strong but her personality stinks. This isnt a shot at the actor, who’s doing good with the role, but the actual character that the writer’s dreamed up is just — meh.

So in closing…

MORE Saru
MORE Lorca
LESS Burnham bummer
LESS Stamets – in fact just kill him off
MORE Flashbacks to Georgeau
LESS Klingons
MORE Explaining the differences
NEW Ship
NO Mushrooms

You’re being unfair in judging a season as if its complete after four episodes.

We can simply assume the Spore Drive doesnt work or is otherwise shelved for some reason since, as you pointed out, it simply isnt around in Voy’s time.

Stamets is interesting. The reason he hasnt been shipped out by Lorca has been explained. It’s HIS science and he knows how it works. He’s valuable enough that he gets away with being a jerk. And why is he so angry? Thats been explained too. His research has been coopted by Starfleet for the war effort.

We will surely get more insight into Stamets. Revisit this issue at the end of the season.

It’s just astonishing to me that there are fans out there who seem to believe with all their heart and soul that this show’s producers are unaware of the fact that this “spore drive” doesn’t appear in any future iterations of Trek.

And the reason is right in front of us–they have to torture an innocent creature to make it work. That’s just a non starter.

Lorca and Saru are my favourites so far.

The klingons have not really gelled for me either. The subtitles/klingon speak are annoying. This is Science FICTION. We do not require aliens to speak in alien language, and that should be common sense from a dramatic point of view. I mean, why not nake space soundless while we are talking REALITY. Oh, that would be horrible! Of couse it is! Imagine a space battle with no sound. That is reality. But it aint fun!

“didn’t exactly give long time Trek fans a lot of hope”
How about you speak for yourself, okay?

And as for your comments on the spore drive, have you actually been watching the show? The last episode clearly gave a reason why this drive won’t be used in the future. Ethics aside, even if they did use it again, they would have needed to know where Voyager was, which they didn’t know for much of the series.

The separate warp drive is because the spore drive is a prototype (and hardly even that, it’s an experiment) and didn’t go very far at first.

The saucer doesn’t spin, the upper and lower surfaces do. The actual deck remains fixed. That’s why the thrusters are on the edge of the saucer.

It’s fine that you disagree with things and have your own opinion, but it just seems like you’re finding excuses to badmouth it.

I liked Stamets. He is uncomfortable all the time, a pressure cooker. But it totally changes when the scientific solution appears to the dilemma of the previous episode. Michael (what a silly name) hides what he feels, Stamets tries not to explode. I agree with the Klingons. That outfit is stupid. At first I thought it was something ritual. They should dress like warriors.

I like Stamets character so far. He’s got motives that make sense and that don’t jive with the wartime appropriation of the potential of his new science. So far him and Burnham have been the only scientific and curious characters. I like how different the main cast is among each other. They all have different motives that clash at times, and other times align. Unlike with TNG, where everyone got along. (I love TNG for different reasons)

I mostly like the fact that the show is addressing the point that there would probably be quite a few people in Starfleet who might feel very uncomfortable with suddenly having to act like soldiers (even if that was included in their training and theoretically part of the job). For all of its virtues DS9 never had the courage to go there during its Dominion War arc, and I’m glad that Discovery is telling their story.

I’m not happy this is a war heavy season, I never liked the battle heavy episodes from past iterations. But I do appreciate showing some of the hard dilemmas and trade offs that occur during war time. Agree DS9 was a little sanitiesed on that front. “In the Pale Moonlight” was one where they actually went there.

Brian can write he wants the gay character dead, but my comment gets deleted because I wrote Brian wants the gay character dead. #SMH Silence us gays, but not the ones that want us dead. Gotcha.

Brian didn’t mention anything negative about gays, just the character bein unlikeable. Your snarky commment was misunderstood as your own view and got deleted. Stupid misunderstandings.

Asking for the death of a *** character is okay, but snark… That’s just too much! Whatevs

Don’t worry about the Mushroom Drive. It’ll all become clear in episode 15 when they shelve the idea forever, and classify the spores, the mushrooms and even cute little Ripper all as something called “Protomatter”

Brilliant!

Now, they can look towards Season 2 proper. They really should try to get the shoe back on our screens for September next year, not in January 2019. This is a tv series, not a movie. We do not need endless SFX and the like. We want to see good character growth, good stories, good acting. Thats all I ask for.

Get working on season 2 right now! PLEASE!!!!!

Pretty sure that comment was meant as a jab at the OP. I didn’t get any anti gay vibe from Brian’s comment though. He just dislikes the character as written.

No anti-gay vibe, but let’s kill the first gay male character in Star Trek. That’s not antigay at all. Not at all.

Oh please, you are over reacting. The guy never even brought up his sexuality, only you did. He simply thinks he sucks as a character. Thats his right. And as someone who is very pleased there are now LGBT characters in Trek, you can’t turn it into some PC show either where they are completely off limits to being criticized out of fear someone is doing it because they are gay. That ALSO loses the point of diversity. Diversity means are there but you are also not treated any differently and he wasn’t. Learn the difference.

Save the outrage for people who actually have a problem for being gay, not for people who have valid reasons not to like a character.

I was trying to say diversity means everyone is represented but not treated any differently in the process. If you have to tip toe around characters because you don’t want to look like you are being prejudice against them because they are different then it kind of defeats the purpose and I say this as a minority.

I am loving Discovery though I’ll admit that I loved the first two episodes more (Wagon Train to the Stars/Classic Trek style) than the Discovery episodes (though love Lorca).

My Likes:
– The USS Shenzhou; especially the bridge – TOS bridge sensor sound effects, awesome displays, move that turbolift to the side so behind the captain was a computer screen and bring together the helm consoles, allow for some shots of the Captain over the helm and navigator and perfect.
– Shenzhou bridge crew – Loved the interaction between the crewmembers, some situational comedy, some conflict
– Michael and the Mutiny – Loved Michael’s mutiny, it was a surprise, it pushed the limits of Trek, based on the old Vulcan needs of the many vs the few and ethics. It is refreshing to see the main character be controversial, not all perfect needing redemption. Love her Vulcan angle too!
– Klingons and the Klingon War – These Klingons come off as powerful, over 50 races (houses), a reason why they are attacking the Federation, some real politics. Better yet a totally alien and different value system that the UFP. The Klingon War seems exciting, like it should be a whole series. Dying though for a Connie to take on a Battlecrusier.
– Starfleet and the UFP – the UFP with the Discovery, dilithium mines, talks of Andorians, Vulcans and Tellerites, and the hint of some private sector settles, awesome environment.
– Props – Love the phasers, communicators, tricorders and their sound effects. TOS SOUND EFFECTS MAKE EVERYTHING SEEM MORE ALIVE.
– Captain Lorca – Best part of the Discovery episodes so far is Captain Lorca. He is different, he is edgy, he has a war to win. He contrasts with crew members. This guy is a leader in a different mold.
– Most of the sets – Love how “TOS” the sets feel, sick bay, crew quarters, engine rooms with dilithium chambers, TOS sounds, turbolifts. Everything except the Discovery bridge.
– Serial format – Loving the overall story arc, want to see more.
– TOS hints – Love talk of Sarek, Amanda, Vulcan, Romulus.. can’t wait for Harry Mudd!
– Wagon Train to the Stars – the best parts of Discovery were seeing the Shenzhou ont eh frontier, Lorca worrying about how fragile the Federation is, the distress signal from Corvan IV and those settles mining dilithium on the frontier…. let us see how the Federation colonizes the unknown and how dangerous it is!

Not awesome (yet?):
– Spore Drive. I do like the Dune connection. I don’t like the jumping and the mushroom fake science. It has been growing on me but I hope this ends up being disastrous; that it invites an intergalactic invasion, that the spores are evil, etc that it can never be used again and while it may end up saving the Federation from the Klingons it ends up never being seen again because it is such a disaster/impractical. It’s growing on me though.. just don’t want this to be the transporter that wrecked Enterprise.
– Discovery bridge – No TOS sounds make it feel duller than the Shenzhou (score one for the 60s) saved only by the Red Alert klaxon and cool TMP symbol. The bridge is too big that poor Lorca has to walk around to talk to everyone and see the computers defeating the whole purpose of the rotating Captain’s chair TNG style, why even have a circular bridge then? The smaller Shenzhou bridge I think came off cooler as a result, all that new age tech and we literally get to stare at a Captain and a door for hours on end – stop putting the turbolift behind the Captain.
– Battle scenes – Why spend hours setting up fantastic battle scenes and then not show anything. Corvan V, awesome dilithium colony, under attack by Klingons. Let’s see some phasers and photon torpedoes, shields, energy redistribution. Where are the Klingon battlecrusiers? Where are the Constitution Class starships? This is the great war – don’t waste it!!!
– More TOS – Would love to run into the Enterprise under Pike, see what she can do. Why not destroy all this fancy holographic equipment with the Klingons placing some well placed EMP pulses that the Connie’s get to shine?? Connie vs D7 battlecrusiers for the win please.

Major Recommendation

MORE Wagon Train to the Stars – More Federation in jeopardy. More Federation civilians. More Starfleet in distress. More conflict! More unknowns! Bring it!

Let me know when it’s out on blue ray.

I “L-O-V-E” the show. Star Trek is finally back. Fresh. Modern. Cool. Thanks for the great work to all involved.

I am enjoying the show so far. Its not perfect and I still have some hang ups about it like it being set in this period when its clearly way too advanced and some of the characters come off too unlikable but that will most likely change in time. Overall I like that it is trying to do something different than the other shows. Fuller clearly set out to do something different in Trek although DS9 will probably remain the one that is very different than all the others and why I love it so much. But Discovery is clearly aiming at making a Star Trek for the 21st century and I admire that. I’m still hoping in time it will feel more like a show about exploration and not just one of covert operations and war but its still early and the show has a while to go.

I don’t know if I will love it as much as TNG and DS9 but I don’t hate it and thats a decent start at least.

I hope we DON’T get a season 2. This show is garbage.