I grew up watching Starfleet captains ponder deep thoughts from their personal offices, which is why it's amazing to find myself in the ready room of Gabriel Lorca, captain of the latest ship in the Star Trek universe, the USS Discovery. (Before you go getting worked up about my leaving out James T. Kirk, did you know he was the only Starfleet captain who didn't have a ready room?) In front of me is a glass desk propped up to standing height by a triangular bronze and black base. The gunmetal hull slopes down toward me, a not-so-subtle reminder that this room and the bridge directly outside sit atop the saucer section of a Federation starship.
I'm trying hard not to geek out.
Along the right wall of the ready room is a bank of flat-panel monitors. One in particular catches my eye. It's a map of several planets with a red line dividing United Federation of Planets and Klingon Empire territories. Aaron Harberts, one of the showrunners of "Star Trek: Discovery" and our tour guide for the day, says the line will change from episode to episode — a detail most viewers may not even catch.
The screen is a visual cue that "Discovery," which is set to premiere Sept. 24 on CBS before moving to the CBS All Access streaming service, is set amid a war between the Federation and Klingon Empire in the mid-23rd century, a decade before the original series. (Editors' note: CNET is owned by CBS.)
But talking to the cast and people behind the show, it's obvious they're looking to fight a far more important battle: one for acceptance.
"Discovery" arrives at a time when the US is more divided than ever. From the tragic protests last month in Charlottesville, Virginia, to claims by a Google engineer that women aren't suited to work in technology, the nation is wrestling with racism, sexism and questions about its identity.
Enter Star Trek, based on a future universe envisioned by Gene Roddenberry where such issues were resolved long ago. "Discovery" picks up the original show's mantle of diversity and social commentary, which Roddenberry conceived of and aired during the civil rights battles of the 1960s. It focused on different peoples and races (human and alien) working together for the greater good.
The new show boasts a darker, more modern take on Star Trek, complete with complex characters who disagree, change and potentially die throughout an evolving serialized arc. But it preserves Roddenberry's core principle.
To many involved with "Discovery," that's exactly what we need right now.
"I'm excited for what this show represents and for what I truly hope it will do," says Sonequa Martin-Green, who plays First Officer Michael Burnham, the first black woman to headline a Star Trek series. "I just hope that we can incite change."
Legacy of diversity The casting of Martin-Green as the lead character in "Discovery" sparked a reaction of a different sort after the announcement was made in December.
Critics from across the internet derided "Discovery" as too diverse, even tossing around the concept of "white genocide."
"It surprised me — but it didn't," Martin-Green says in an interview at the Shangri La Hotel in Toronto, Canada, where the show is being filmed at Pinewood Studios. "In those first few encounters, I realized that the hypocrisy is real. You can be a part of something that has been a champion of diversity and still have naysayers."
As she points out, if you're criticizing the show's efforts to present a more diverse future, you've missed one of the central points of Star Trek. The original series, after all, cast a black woman, Nichelle Nichols, as Lt. Nyota Uhura, the Enterprise's communications officer, and a Japanese-American man, George Takei, as Lt. Hikaru Sulu, the ship's helmsman.
We may take such a diverse cast for granted now, but it was a wild concept when the show premiered in 1966
"To have people of color out in space is quite revolutionary," says Miki Turner, assistant professor of journalism at the University of Southern California. Roddenberry "did it during a time when it was not expected and wasn't accepted in some quarters of the world."
Star Trek also featured its first black commanding officer, Benjamin Sisko, in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" in 1993 and its first female captain, Kathryn Janeway, in "Star Trek: Voyager" in 1995.
"Discovery" goes further. The decision to revolve the series around Martin-Green's character, First Officer Burnham, gives it a different point of view than the typical captain-centric focus