It’s getting close, now. On September 24, the first new Star Trek series in years will debut. Star Trek Discovery is said to take place in the Prime timeline, setting it in the same continuity as everything else in the Trek-verse save the Abrams movies. Which means it’s a good time for a history lesson.
Image: CBS
Our lesson for today comes from The Templin Institute, a new YouTube channel dedicated to discussing “nations, organisations and factions from alternate worlds,” according to the channel description.
In just a few minutes, their new video runs down the Trek timeline at around the time Discovery is set, roughly ten years prior to the events of the original series. The video gives a handy survey of the galactic politics and the status of the major alien races to help get us back into the Trek mindset.
Now, to be fair, it’s not clear how much Discovery will adhere to the established canon. Executive Producer Akiva Goldsman has said that the series will have “its own standalone story with its own characters and its own unique vision of Trek,” which could indicate that the established canon is not the highest priority.
At any rate, it’s interesting to see where other creators have taken the universe in this time period and to then go on to see how Discovery differs. I’m looking forward to finding out more about the seemingly new take on the Klingons here.
How about you? What are you hoping to see when the series shows up?
Comments
9 responses to “Catch Up On The Star Trek Timeline Before Discovery With This Video”
Prime timeline is all I needed to hear. Woo! New ‘Trek!!!
Even tho everyone hated it, I ended up enjoying Enterprise and grew fond of some of the crew members, and was sad to see it end so quick. A few nods to some of that continuity wouldn’t go astray imo.
Not too many though, cos yes, objectively it was pretty average. Lols.
??
I’ve always had a soft spot for Enterprise and seeing how the Federation and Star fleet were formed.
As for Discovery things don’t bode well but I will wait and see before writing it off.
Pet peeve 1. The uniforms are wrong !
Well previous Star Trek series have usually had a cameo from previous Trek as a sort of sendoff (Next Gen had Dr McCoy, DS9 had Picard, Voyager had Quark and Enterprise had Zephram Cochrane) so who knows, maybe an elderly Admiral Archer will turn up for a scene.
He was a good captain, sure he was a little stiff and overly quixotic, and he was naive and far too trustful, but damn it, he punched on hard. And his love of dogs knew no bounds! Oh porthose, I wonder if the cheese killed you in the end?
To be honest Im looking forward to The Orville a lot more than this. Still hoping both turn into a great watch though.
I hope it’ll be good, but what I really want is not a new “unique vision of Trek,” what I want is more of Roddenberry’s unique vision.
I dunno. I feel like if you’re not going to try your best to capture his original vision, then don’t call it Star Trek – you’re cynically leeching brand power for your own Sci-Fi show/movie, nothing more.
I mostly agree, although DS9 was a deliberate move away from Roddenberry’s specifications (particularly the ‘no interpersonal conflict’ and ‘idyllic Federation’ ideas) and it turned out pretty well. That said, DS9 was still pretty solidly anchored to the framework set up by TNG, whereas Discovery seems to be trying to abandon a lot more.
The thing about Trek is that it was always an allegory for US. It needs to reflect the era it is made in and give us hope that we can be something better in the future.
Setting this show in the Trek timeline (both timelines as its pre Kelvin) is great so long as the futurism doesn’t suffer. Since so many of the things we’ve seen in later Trek have actually come to pass already (like iPadds and wearable tech) it’s not important to me to adhere too strongly to minutia. Fascinated to see how this goes!