All this week we’ve been getting scattered new images from Star Trek: Discovery as we get closer and closer to the show’s September 24 premier date (the first episode will be aired on CBS with the rest on CBS’s streaming service). We haven’t jumped on too many as they’ve been single images that are kind of boring. However, this first look at a teleportation room deserves some comment.
This is the teleportation room for the U.S.S. Shenzhou (not the Discovery), but assuming all Federation ships have similar transport bays then it gives us an idea of what we will see. Even if they don’t, it gives us an idea of the general design of the series, and… it just looks weird. We’re supposedly in the TV show’s timeline, not the new movie’s one, but everything we’ve seen so far in terms of design just screams the movies. Say what you will about Enterprise, but they did a hell of a job making it feel like the designs of that show could eventually flow into the designs of the original series. Discovery is supposed to take place between those two or so, but it doesn’t look like it fits at all.
Look, I realize they’re updating this and they want to pull in audiences from the movies. To do that they’ll probably need to lean a bit towards making things more like the movies. However, in a series where canon is so important and so incredibly large, be so blatantly out of sync in terms of design is worrisome for the show overall. Hopefully the few things we’ve seen actually feel like they fit into the Star Trek universe once the we actually see the show.
