Development Announcement On November 2, 2015,
CBS announced that a new
Star Trek television series would premiere in January 2017, "on the heels" of the 50th anniversary of
Star Trek: The Original Series in 2016. This was the first
Star Trek series since
Star Trek: Enterprise concluded in 2005, and the first series to be developed specifically for the
CBS All Access streaming service.
Alex Kurtzman, co-writer of the films
Star Trek (2009) and
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), and
Heather Kadin were set as executive producers. The January 2017 date was the earliest that CBS could release a new
Star Trek series after an agreement the company made when it split from
Viacom in 2005.
Showtime,
Netflix, and
Amazon Video all offered "a lot of money" for the rights to stream the series, but after heavily investing in the new All Access service CBS believed that a returning
Star Trek could be "the franchise that really puts All Access on the map". In January 2016, CBS president Glenn Geller said the network would broadcast the first episode but was not creatively involved in the series, saying, "It really is for All Access."
Bryan Fuller After beginning his career writing for the series
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and
Star Trek: Voyager,
Bryan Fuller was announced as the new series'
showrunner and co-creator alongside Kurtzman in February 2016.
Nicholas Meyer, co-writer and director of
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), also joined the series as a consulting producer. In March,
Rod Roddenberry (the son of
Star Trek creator
Gene Roddenberry) and Trevor Roth of
Roddenberry Entertainment also joined the series as executive producers. Fuller said working with people previously involved with
Star Trek was "really about making sure that we maintain authenticity", and said Meyer—who is widely considered to have made the best
Star Trek film in
The Wrath of Khan—brought "a clarity and a cleanliness to the storytelling". Fuller had publicly called for
Star Trek to return to television for years, particularly because of its impact on minority groups, as he explained, "I couldn't stop thinking about how many black people were inspired by seeing
Nichelle Nichols on the bridge of a ship. I couldn't stop thinking about how many Asian people were inspired by seeing
George Takei and feeling that gave them hope for their place in the future. I wanted to be part of that representation for a new era." When Fuller first met with CBS about the series, the company did not have a plan for what it would be. He proposed an
anthology series, with each season being a standalone, serialized story set in a different era. This would begin with a prequel to
The Original Series, followed by stories set during
The Original Series, during
Star Trek: The Next Generation, and then "beyond to a time in
Trek that's never been seen before". Fuller compared this to what
American Horror Story did for horror, and described the proposal as a platform for "a universe of
Trek shows". CBS instead suggested he create a single serialized series to see how that performed. Fuller began further developing the concept of a prequel to
The Original Series. He announced in June 2016 that the first season would consist of 13 episodes, though he would prefer to produce 10 episodes a season moving forward. A month later, Fuller announced the series' title,
Star Trek: Discovery, and revealed that it would be set in the "Prime Timeline" which includes the previous
Star Trek series but not the modern
reboot films such as
Star Trek,
Into Darkness, and
Star Trek Beyond (2016). This was to keep the concurrent series and films separate, so "we don't have to track anything [happening in the films] and they don't have to track what we're doing". Also in July,
CBS Studios International licensed the series to Netflix for release outside the United States and Canada, a "blockbuster" deal that paid for the series' entire budget (around US$6–7 million per episode at that time). During pre-production on the series, Fuller and CBS had disagreements on its direction. The production began to overrun its per-episode budget and was falling behind schedule due to Fuller supervising all aspects of the series while also showrunning another new series,
American Gods. This caused frustration among CBS executives who felt Fuller should be focused on having
Discovery ready for release in January 2017. By August 2016, Fuller had hired
Gretchen J. Berg and
Aaron Harberts, whom he worked with on
Pushing Daisies, to serve as co-showrunners with him. A month later, he and Kurtzman asked CBS to delay the series' release so they could meet the high expectations for it, and the studio pushed the premiere back to May 2017. At the end of October, CBS asked Fuller to step down as showrunner, and announced a restructuring of the production: Berg and Harberts were made sole showrunners, working from a broad story arc and overall mythology established by Fuller; Kurtzman and Fuller would continue as executive producers, but with Fuller moving his attention fully to
American Gods; and
Akiva Goldsman would join as a supporting producer similar to the role he held on
Fringe alongside Kurtzman. CBS said they were still happy with Fuller's creative direction for the series, but some elements that came from him, including designs and "more heavily allegorical and complex story" points, were soon dropped. Fuller later confirmed that he was no longer involved with the series.
Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts With production set to begin in January 2017, "careful deliberation" was going into the series' production value and effects.
Ted Sullivan joined as supervising writing producer, and CBS Interactive president Marc DeBevoise revealed that the episode order had been expanded to 15 episodes. In June, CBS announced a new premiere date of September 24, 2017, and Kurtzman said he had discussed future seasons with Fuller before the latter's departure. Kurtzman promised that the series' "set-up, character, big ideas, [and] the big movement of the season" were all true to Fuller's original plans. In August, Goldsman said future seasons would have a "hybridized [anthology] approach" with each season having its own story arc and a mixture of new and familiar characters. Kurtzman added that the success of
Discovery could lead to other new
Star Trek series. By the end of August 2017, Berg and Harberts had developed a road map for a second season and the beginnings of one for a third. It was also revealed that an average episode of the first season had cost US$8–8.5 million, making it one of the most expensive television series ever made. This exceeded the original Netflix deal, but CBS still considered the series paid for due to the number of new CBS All Access subscribers that it was expected to draw. After the series premiere, Kurtzman said the producers wanted to avoid announcing release dates for future seasons due to the external pressure caused by delaying the first season's premiere after it was announced. Despite this, he hoped a second season would be available in early 2019. The second season was officially ordered in October 2017, and consists of 13 episodes. Goldsman did not return for the season after clashing with the series' writing staff, while Meyer was not asked to return for the second season. In June 2018, when production on the second season was underway, CBS fired Berg and Harberts. This was due to the first episode of the season going significantly over budget, as well as alleged abusive behavior by the pair directed at the other writers. Kurtzman was made showrunner and was set to "regroup" the writers room.
Alex Kurtzman and Michelle Paradise After Kurtzman took over, the second season was on track for a January 2019 premiere. There was enough of a delay in production that CBS extended the season's episode count to 14 as a way to amortize the cost of the delays. In February 2019, shortly after the season premiere, the series was renewed for a third season with writer
Michelle Paradise promoted to co-showrunner alongside Kurtzman. In October 2019, Kurtzman said the third season would consist of 13 episodes. Active development on a fourth season had begun by January 2020, and it was officially announced in October. Also in October, Kurtzman was asked how long he intended for
Discovery to continue, especially with other streaming series being cancelled during the
COVID-19 pandemic, and said there were "years and years left on
Discovery". He noted the precedent of several previous
Star Trek series running for seven seasons each. A 10-episode fifth season was ordered in January 2022. Paramount announced in March 2023 that the season would be the last for the series, which came as a surprise to the cast and crew who expected to make at least one or two more seasons. The decision came amid cost cutting for Paramount's streaming content. The season's ending was updated so it could better serve as a series finale.
Writing The series' writers room was based at Kurtzman's
Secret Hideout offices in
Santa Monica. The titular ship was named after
Discovery One from
2001: A Space Odyssey,
NASA's
Space Shuttle Discovery, and "the sense of discovery... what [that] means to
Star Trek audiences who have been promised a future by Gene Roddenberry where we come together as a planet and seek new worlds and new alien races to explore and understand". Fuller wanted to differentiate
Discovery from previous
Star Trek series by taking advantage of the streaming format of All Access and telling a single serialized story across the entire first season, inspired by the general change in television to tell those kinds of stories rather than the "new destination-based adventure each week" format mostly used in previous
Star Trek series. Fuller had been one of several writers during the 1990s pushing for
Deep Space Nine and
Voyager to move towards this style. The producers wanted to build towards Roddenberry's
Star Trek ideals and show that "you can't simply be accepting and tolerant without working for it", and chose to ignore Roddenberry's longstanding rule that Starfleet crew members not have significant conflict with one another. Fuller saw the series as a bridge between
Star Trek: Enterprise and
The Original Series—which are set over a century apart—but set much closer to the latter to allow
Discovery to use the latter's iconic designs and costumes; the series ultimately moved away from those designs after Fuller's departure. The first season tells the story of the Federation-Klingon cold war that had been mentioned in
Star Trek before but not depicted on screen. The season finishes with the end of the war, which allowed the writers to move beyond Fuller's established storyline. The second season has a more episodic structure than the first, though it still tells a single serialized story, and it introduces more elements from
The Original Series including the
USS Enterprise and its crew. A goal of the showrunners for the season was to "cement
Discovery firmly in the timeline" by reconciling some of the apparent continuity errors from the first season, such as why
Discovery characters and more advanced technology are not mentioned in
The Original Series or other previous
Star Trek media. They achieved this by having
Discovery and its crew travel over 900 years into the future at the end of the season which Kurtzman compared to the new timeline created for the film
Star Trek to avoid established continuity. Kurtzman felt the jump to the future had opened up new variables and storytelling opportunities that were preventing the series from feeling stale and confirmed that the series would remain in the 32nd century for the rest of its run. Discussing what makes
Discovery unique among
Star Trek series, Paradise said it was the mixture of serialized storytelling and a focus on action, adventure, and visual effects. She noted that
Discovery could feel separate from the rest of the franchise following the time jump to the future but explained that the writers were always looking for ways to connect the series back to past
Star Trek media to prevent this. Beginning with the third season, astrophysicist
Erin Macdonald joined the series and wider
Star Trek franchise as a science advisor. Macdonald said each series was on a "spectrum of science to fiction" and
Discovery was "way more on the science side", so to ensure scientific accuracy Macdonald became involved in all aspects of the series from developing plots with the writers room to reviewing that graphics and visual effects were correct in post-production.
Casting By June 2016, Fuller had met with several actors and said the series would "carry on what
Star Trek does best" by hiring a progressive, diverse cast, with Kadin confirming that the series would feature minority, female, and LGBTQ characters. In August, Fuller said the series would star a lieutenant commander, to be played by a non-white actress, rather than a captain like previous
Star Trek series. He also said
Discovery would include more alien characters than other
Star Trek series, and would feature at least one openly gay character. Fuller, who is gay himself, had been determined to see this happen since receiving hate mail while working on
Voyager when a character on that show was rumored to be coming out as gay. Fuller discussed the series' casting with
Mae Jemison, the first black woman in space who made a cameo appearance in an episode of
The Next Generation. He anticipated casting announcements in October, but none had been made by the end of that month. The majority of the series main characters were believed to have been cast by then, but no actress had been cast for the series' lead role. This was a source of "internal stress" at CBS. Several African American and Latina actresses were being looked at for the role, with CBS preferring a "fresh face" over an established star. The cast was believed to include a female admiral, a male
Klingon captain, a male admiral, a male adviser, and a British male doctor, with one of those male leads played by an openly gay actor.
Doug Jones and
Anthony Rapp were revealed to have been cast in November 2016, respectively as science officers
Saru and Stamets. Saru is a Kelpien, an alien race created for the series, while Stamets is the first
Star Trek character to be conceived and announced as gay.
Sonequa Martin-Green was cast in the lead role in December, when
Shazad Latif was cast as the Klingon Kol. In March 2017,
Jason Isaacs was cast as Captain Lorca of the USS
Discovery, and
Mary Wiseman joined as Tilly, a cadet. In April, Martin-Green's casting was officially confirmed and her character's name was revealed to be Michael Burnham. At the end of that month, Latif was recast to the role of Starfleet Lieutenant Tyler. The series reveals that Tyler is the undercover persona of the Klingon Voq, who is initially credited as being portrayed by the invented actor Javid Iqbal to hide the fact that Latif portrays both Voq and Tyler. Rapp revealed in July 2017 that
Wilson Cruz, whom Rapp had previously worked with on the musical
Rent, would portray Stamets' love interest
Hugh Culber. The character is killed off during the first season, which was criticized by some as following the "
bury your gays" trope, but the executive producers immediately released a statement with Cruz and LGBTQ
media monitoring organization
GLAAD saying the relationship between Culber and Stamets would continue to be explored. Cruz was subsequently promoted from his recurring guest role to the series' main cast for the second season, in which Culber is brought back to life. After the first season concluded with the
Discovery receiving a distress call from the USS
Enterprise, specifically from Captain
Christopher Pike, Harberts expressed interest in exploring that character;
Anson Mount was cast in the role in April 2018, and stars for the second season. Casting had begun by June 2019 for the new role of Adira, a non-binary character described as "incredibly intelligent and self-confident" with the potential to become a recurring guest throughout the third season. The next month,
David Ajala joined the cast as new series regular Cleveland "Book" Booker for the third season. Rachael Ancheril is also credited as starring for her appearances in the season, reprising her recurring guest role as Nhan from the second season. She is written out of the series in the third season's fifth episode. In September 2020, non-binary newcomer
Blu del Barrio was revealed to be portraying Adira, the first explicitly non-binary character within the
Star Trek franchise. They were promoted to the series' main cast in the fourth season along with recurring guest star
Tig Notaro as Jett Reno.
Callum Keith Rennie joined the fifth season as Rayner, a war-time Starfleet captain.
Design Fuller wanted to take advantage of modern effects, production design, and makeup to establish a new look for the series and franchise that previous
Star Trek media was unable to achieve. Mark Worthington and Todd Cherniawsky served as initial production designers for the series, and
Suttirat Anne Larlarb was hired as costume designer.
Glenn Hetrick and Neville Page of Alchemy Studios provided prosthetics and armor, with Page having previously designed for the rebooted
Star Trek films. Mario Moreira served as prop master for the series, with seven art directors, over nine illustrators, more than thirty-five set designers, and over four hundred and fifty painters, carpenters, sculptors, model makers, welders, set dressers, and prop builders all hired for the first season. The designers consulted with the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory for scientific accuracy. Tamara Deverell took over as production designer during production on the first season, but left after the second. She was replaced by
Phillip Barker, who was able to approach the third season as a fresh start due to the new time period. Barker helped develop the new 32nd century technology as part of his design process. Doug McCullough took over as production designer for the fourth season. Fuller had wanted the series' uniforms to reflect the primary colors of
The Original Series, but this was discarded after his departure, when Larlarb also left the series. Gersha Phillips took over as costume designer. Fabric for the series' Starfleet uniforms was custom-dyed in
Switzerland, and was a navy blue specifically mixed for the production. Gold or silver embellishments denoted divisions, while medical officers wear a "hospital white" variant of the uniform. The captain's uniform is the standard navy blue but with additional gold piping on the shoulders. Phillips attempted to create costumes with no seams using "No Sew" bonding techniques such as glue and tape, but the producers rejected this because they wanted to see more details in the costumes. Starfleet insignia badges were molded from silicon bronze, and then polished and plated by a jeweler to create custom colors for the series: gold for command, silver for sciences and medical, and copper for operations. Phillips was able to revisit the colorful uniforms from
The Original Series with the introduction of the USS
Enterprise in the second season, applying the colors of those original costumes to the design of
Discovery uniforms. She was also able to revisit her "No Sew" approach for the future Starfleet uniforms in the third season. These are mostly gray, with divisions represented by a colored stripe, but once the crew of
Discovery started wearing these costumes the producers realised that they clashed with the
Discoverys existing gray hallway sets. Phillips designed new uniforms for the fourth season that use the same primary colors as
The Next Generation, with red for command, gold for operations, and blue for science. Medical officers still wear white uniforms. Veteran
Star Trek designer
John Eaves designed starships for the series with Scott Schneider, and based the USS
Discovery on an unused
Ralph McQuarrie design for the
Enterprise from the unproduced film
Star Trek: Planet of the Titans. Fuller compared McQuarrie's design to 1970s Lamborghinis and cars from the
James Bond franchise. Sets for the
Discoverys interiors were described as a "tangle of corridors and rooms", and were designed to look like they could believably fit inside the ship. The graphics used for the Starfleet computer systems were designed to be believably more advanced than modern technology, but to also honor the look and feel of the designs used in previous series. These were updated for the third season to reflect the more advanced future technology, when
programmable matter was integrated into the
Discovery design. The opening title sequence was created by
Prologue using 2D motion graphics. The sequence depicts elements from throughout the history of
Star Trek—such as phasers, communicators, and the Vulcan salute—and deconstructs them. Prologue creative director Ana Criado said the producers wanted the sequence to be unlike any previous
Star Trek titles sequences. A blueprint theme was decided to acknowledge that the series is a prequel, "literally deconstructing
Trek iconography". The sequence was originally in black-and-white, but Criado said this was too "cold" and was replaced with a
Renaissance-inspired sepia look "to make it look like we are designing everything from scratch". The sequence was updated for each season. The third season introduces a new logo for the series to reflect its move to the far future and move away from the Klingon-inspired initial logo.
Filming Star Trek: Discovery is filmed at
Pinewood Toronto Studios, taking advantage of multiple
soundstages at the studio including the largest one in North America. Filming for the series also takes place on location around
Ontario, Canada, including at the
Aga Khan Museum in Toronto to portray the Vulcan Science Academy, the
Hilton Falls and
Kelso Conservation Areas, the
Scarborough Bluffs, the
Stelco steel plant in
Hamilton, and the disused
Kingston Penitentiary. The series spent more than () in Ontario, and created more than 4,000 jobs for local crew, in just its first two seasons. Location filming for the series also took place outside of North America, with some filming in
Jordan for the series premiere, and in
Iceland for the first two episodes of the third season. Kurtzman felt the visual style of the series had to "justify being on a premium cable service", and the producers worked closely with first episode director
David Semel to make the series look as cinematic as possible. They took inspiration from the wide scope of
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), including using a
2:1 aspect ratio, as well as from the modern
Star Trek films directed by
J. J. Abrams. The cinematographers wanted to emphasize on-set lighting sources to create a more realistic look and distance the series from the "stage" feel of
The Original Series. The lighting on set could be controlled, including changing their color for when the ship goes into alert mode. Harberts said that the cinematographers wanted the series to have a "
Rembrandt texture". For the second season, Kurtzman chose to use
anamorphic lenses with a
2.39:1 aspect ratio to "immediately [convey] a sense of scope and scale". He hoped that if the series was projected in a theater it would appear indistinguishable from a feature film. Frequent
Star Trek director
Jonathan Frakes said the series' producing director,
Olatunde Osunsanmi, encouraged all of the directors to "express ourselves visually in as exciting a way as possible", with Frakes describing the series' directing style as "shoot to thrill". Paramount+ constructed a
video wall to allow for virtual production on the fourth season as well as the spin-off series
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, utilizing technology similar to the
StageCraft system that was developed for the
Disney+ series
The Mandalorian. The new virtual set was built in Toronto by visual effects company
Pixomondo, and features a 270-degree, by horseshoe-shaped
LED volume with additional LED panels in the ceiling to aid with lighting. The technology uses the
game engine software
Unreal Engine to display computer-generated backgrounds on the LED screens in real-time during filming. Visual effects supervisor Jason Zimmerman noted that this was especially useful for creating the planets that are visited in the series since location shooting was limited on the fourth season by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Visual effects Visual effects producers were hired to begin work on the series during the initial writing period, with Fuller explaining that they wanted to develop distinct looks for classic
Star Trek effects such as digitally augmented alien species and transporter beams.
Pixomondo is the primary visual effects vendor for the series, with other vendors including Spin VFX, Ghost VFX, Mackevision,
Crafty Apes,
DNEG,
The Mill, and FX3X, as well as visual effects supervisor Jason Zimmerman's in-house team at CBS Studios. Visual effects shots for each episode on
Discovery typically take eight to ten months to complete, and include fully digital environments such as the shuttle bay of
Discovery, digital extensions of sets, shots of the
Discovery and other starships, digital creatures, holograms, and 32nd century technology such as programmable matter.
Music Several composers auditioned for the series, including Charles Henri Avelange, and Fil Eisler whose audition music was used for the series' first teaser.
Cliff Eidelman and
Austin Wintory were also considered for the role, before
Jeff Russo was announced as composer for the series in July 2017. Russo wanted the show's main theme to embody the ideals of
Star Trek and "a commonality in people" by only using chords that have a common note, with a melody then added over the top. The theme is bookended by elements of
the original Star Trek theme by
Alexander Courage. Russo acknowledged that not all existing
Star Trek fans were going to appreciate the new theme, but felt that regardless of how it compared to previous themes in the franchise it still accurately represented this series. Russo recorded the series' score with a 60-piece orchestra, initially at the Eastwood Scoring Stage at
Warner Bros. Studios in California. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, musicians for the third season were recorded individually and their performances combined. Individual soundtrack albums for the two chapters of
the first season were respectively released on December 15, 2017, and April 6, 2018. A soundtrack album for
the second season was released on July 19, 2019, for
the third on April 16, 2021, for
the fourth on August 26, 2022, and for
the fifth on October 18, 2024. ==Release==