“Star Trek: Discovery” star Sonequa Martin-Green; Jan Thijs/CBS(BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.) — Star Trek: Discovery will debut next month on CBS All Access after a nine-month production delay. At the Television Critics Association summer press tour, executive producer Alex Kurtzman and star Sonequa Martin-Green, explained why the delay was worth it.
“It had to be huge,” Kurtzman said. “And I don’t mean huge just in terms of scope, I mean huge in terms of story and emotion and character.” He added, “An air date was looming that was going to compromise the quality of the show.”
There were also practical considerations. “Obviously there’s a lot of CG augmentation, but we wanted to build sets that felt immersive and real, where the actors could move around and it didn’t feel like everything was a set extension,” Kurtzman explained. “And we wanted the costumes to be elaborate and we needed to cast correctly and we just wanted to do it right.”
Martin-Green said that doing a Star Trek show is a big deal to her and everyone working on it. “This is an epically grand, yet microscopically-tuned, deeply emotional story. And, we just, um, we don’t take it for granted… we don’t take it lightly.”
Kurtzman also debuted the show’s theme — played by a 60 piece orchestra, and combining pieces of the classic theme with something fresh.
Star Trek: Discovery premieres on CBS on September 24 before moving to the network’s streaming platform.
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