When Does STAR TREK: DISCOVERY Take Place Anyway?
A couple of months ago I told you that sources claimed Star Trek: Discovery was to be set some time after the events of Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country. These were good sources, and I had multiple sources tell me the same thing. Showrunner Bryan Fuller later threw water on that report, and so we were left wondering just when the heck the show will take place.
The reveal of the new ship at Comic-Con last month gave a big clue, one that Fuller confirmed as a clue to Aint It Cool News:
“There’s a big clue in the number of the ship [NCC-1031] that indicates when we’re set,” Fuller said.
That registration number tells us a couple of things. First of all, it's an NCC, which means it's set later than Star Trek: Enterprise, where we had NX numbers. BUt it's also a four digit number, which means the Discovery was launched earlier than The Next Generation, where new ships have five digit numbers. And if we assume that these numbers are handed out chronologically, we can assume the Discovery launched before the Enterprise (NCC-1701).
That narrows it down a bit, but it doesn't fully tell us the story. After all, the Enterprise was kept in rotation for a hundred years, just with letters after its numbers (ie, the ship in The Next Generation is the NCC-1701-D). The original Enterprise, before it blew up in Search for Spock, was in service for upwards of 20 years,
Now, the footage we saw at Comic-Con, with the Discovery coming out of an asteroid drydock, does hint that the show will follow a new ship (although that's not certain either. It could have been in drydock for repairs. But the optics of it made it seem like the ship was being launched), so with the earlier than-Enterprise number the best guess we could have is that the show takes place sometime after the Kelvin (NCC-0514) didn't explode (this show is in the main timeline) and some time before the events of the original Star Trek pilot, The Cage.
That makes me curious about what uniforms will be worn on the show. Will they be the jumpsuit-type worn on the Kelvin, or the proto-TOS tunics worn on the Trek pilot? Or will Fuller's show blaze a totally different, intermediary design? I hate to admit that this is the kind of stuff that has me really excited for more info on the show.
One last thing: the proper way to shorten Star Trek: Discovery is DSC, not STD. All Trek shows have their post-colon titles shortened, with the ST left off. Thus Star Trek: The Next Generation is just TNG. Voyager is VGR. Deep Space 9 is DS9. Enterprise is ENT. And Discovery is DSC.
