Star Trek Discovery Will Have a Female Lead, Be Set in Original Universe

Star Trek Discovery, the new TV series based on the long-running sci-fi space saga, will have a female character in the lead role, showrunner Bryan Fuller revealed during CBS's Television Critics Association event on Wednesday.

However, unlike Star Trek: Voyager - which ran from 1995 to 2001 and was the first Trek series to have a female officer in the leading role - Discovery's female lead won't be in the rank of a captain, but rather a lieutenant commander. Fuller explained this would allow them to see the Trek universe in a different light.

"We're going deep into something that was for me always very tantalising and to tell that story through a character who is on a journey that is going to teach her how to get along with others in the galaxy," he added. "For her to truly understand something that is alien, she has to first understand herself."

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While the series is set to debut on CBS All Access in the US and Canada and on Netflix around the world come January 2017, the role has yet to be cast. Fuller also spoke about continuing the trend of diversity set by the original series back in the mid-60s, something that will be showcased in Discovery with the cast of roughly seven protagonists, a gay character (to be played by an openly gay actor), and more aliens than any other Trek series.

The last bit of information Fuller revealed was regarding the show's focus. "We're set in the Prime universe, 10 years before Captain Kirk," Fuller said at the event. "We have the opportunity to bridge the gap between the Enterprise and the original series and really help us redefine the visual style of Star Trek." The Prime universe refers to the 1966-69 Star Trek series, and the new show will be set a decade before Kirk's five-year mission, not his birth.

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While the new series' first look had hinted at an entirely new universe, it seems that the team of Alex Kurtzman (co-writer on the first two films in the Trek reboot world), Nicholas Meyer (director on 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), and Fuller himself have decided otherwise.