Hey, everybody.
It's Sonequa Martin-Green and it is Star Trek Day.
We are very glad that you're celebrating with us from home.
I'm excited.
The entire disco family is excited
because I have the honor of sharing with you.
The exclusive first look of the official trailer
for Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery,
and with everything going on in the world right now,
it's an honor to be a part of something that has hope.
and equality, and unity at its center.
And it's an honor to share it with you first.
So without further ado,
let's see what the crew has been up to.
[Michael Burnham] We traveled into the future.
[whooshing]
930 years.
A one-way trip.
No going back.
Burnham to Discovery. Come in.
[Beeping] Discovery do you copy?
[Heaving]
[Red Angel Suit Computer] You have reached year 3188.
Is there life here, anywhere?
[Red Angel Suit Computer] Mutliple life signs detected.
Yessss!
[Saru] We are completely disconnected,
but we are also together.
You're not from around these parts.
The Federation mostly collapsed after The Burn.
What's The Burn?
The Burn was the day the galaxy took a hard left.
The Federation isn't just about ships.
The Federation is it's people.
I've always believed that you were out there somewhere
and that we were a part of the Federation, no matter what.
Welcome to the future.
Dysfunction aside, you all make a pretty good team.
Dysfunction is the team.
We've just accepted it.
No we haven't.
True believer.
Yeah.
Time traveler.
There was no other way.
The thing is, you got no authority here.
Let's show them who we are.
[Laughs in amazement] What?
We all want a future that's real.
That matters.
The Federation gave us the resources and the mandate
to solve the biggest, most troublesome problems
in the galaxy.
Though I may question,
and I may fear
because the problems often seem insurmountable,
but haven't we always risen to meet them?
We have work to do.
But if things were easy...
It wouldn't be worth it.
[Laughs] -: Mm?
Thank you, Sonequa, for setting up
that awesome trailer. And wow,
I cannot wait to talk about this.
So now I am joined by Star Trek: Discovery's
Executive Producers and Co-Showrunners,
Alex Kurtzman and Michelle Paradise.
And I'm also excited to introduce
one of Disco's newest additions,
actor David Ajala, who plays Cleveland "Book" Booker
in Season 3.
Thank you, guys, for joining me.
It's so nice to have you.
-: Thank you. -: Pleasure.
Before we dive in, to everyone at home, Season 3
of Star Trek: Discovery premieres October 15th
on CBS All Access in the United States, airs on Bell Media
CTV Sci-Fi Channel, and streams on Crave in Canada.
And on October 16th on Netflix in 190 countries,
that's a lot of countries.
But thank you guys so much for making the time to chat
with me today.
So, let's dive in with the most important question.
What's your new favorite moment from that trailer?
And, also, was that a new logo I saw?
It was a new logo.
The logo that we did for Season 1 had a variant
that was very related to the Klingon storyline.
And that started feeling less relevant to us
in Season 2 and certainly in Season 3.
So, Michelle and I felt pretty strongly
that we needed to change the logo analysis.
We are now jumping a thousand years in the future.
It needed a new look and feel.
And that's it.
And that's our look and feel.
[laughs]
And your favorite parts of the trailers?
I gotta know.
There are two parts that, well
-: three parts actually that--
Actually, I'm not gonna give you one answer.
When Burnham screams. When she finds out
that there's life here. I've seen the trailer
I don't know how many times,
I've lost count of how many times
I've seen the trailer as we've been working on it,
and it gives me chills every single time we hit that moment.
And then the moment where she's laughing
as Book is doing the weapon against the guys.
There are some very funny moments in the premiere
surrounding that moment, that are really fun.
And then the moment of our heroes in the science lab
with Reno and Stamets and Tilly, they're just so funny.
So anyway, that's not one, that's three.
David, what about you?
There's so many,
but that pure joy that we experience through Burnham.
When she knows that the moment is real and she celebrates
there's still hope, was massive.
And just throughout the whole trailer,
just the feeling of hope amongst the characters
really resonated with me.
Yeah.
I think that I agree with my esteemed colleagues
and I feel like obviously the Federation
is not where it was and yet our characters
enter into this timeline and the whole season
is about trying to bring it back.
So you're into a world where it's very reflective
of the world that we live in now.
And I believe very reflective
of Roddenberry's essential vision of optimism.
That it is in the darkest times
that we have to hold that beacon of light up
to guide us back.
And I think the trailer captures the tone
and the feel of optimism and hope and keep climbing uphill,
even when things are rough.
Absolutely, for Alex and Michelle to quote Burnham,
I have to ask,
what is The Burn?
David said, it's when the galaxy took a hard had left.
It's obvious, right?
[laughs]
Oh, yeah, just that casual time. [laughs]
Is there any, without spoiling it,
any little more information we can get
from what is this catastrophic event?
What happened to the Federation didn't happen
because the Federation collapsed in on itself
'cause there was disagreement or strife.
That's not what happened.
Federation was sort of strong as ever.
And obviously something cataclysmic went down
that changed everything.
Lots to think about there.
Again, for Alex and Michelle at the end of Season 2
we watched as Burnham and the Discovery crew
were hurdled into the future.
Why did you guys make the decision
to go almost a thousand years
into the future for Season 3?
Michelle, you wanna take it?
Sure.
It's an exciting prospect.
It's an exciting opportunity to be beyond established canon
and to get to see what a whole new world
would look like.
So, we spent a lot of time in Season 2
in the midst of so much canon.
And in addition to telling the stories of our heroes,
telling the story of Pike, telling the story of Spock.
Filling in some of the blanks
that we were all curious about after The Original Series.
And so then to jump into the future
and to know everything that came before
and to be in a position where we could honor all of that
and also have kind of fresh snow ahead of us
was just a really exciting place to play story-wise.
And for David you're obviously here
because you were playing Cleveland "Book" Booker,
let's talk a little bit about him.
What is he like?
Without, giving away too much?
Just what's the vibe?
I think the main thing that was special
about this character was his sense of purpose.
And to find a sense of purpose that was bigger than himself
allowed him to continue living life.
It was a backstory that kind of loosely discussed
with Michelle and Alex.
I tell you what, he's gonna inject something special
and he's gonna bring out something special
in Michael Burnham,
and Michael Burnham will do exactly the same thing for him.
How does he come into contact with Burnham?
Michael Burnham literally bumps into Cleveland Booker.
And their first interaction
-: -and I think it's quite romantic--
is throwing cuffs and fists.
Oh God, that's what everybody wants.
It's the most romantic way to meet, is just--
That's the best way, too.
It's very sexy.
I highly recommend it.
100%.
Right off the bat, throwing hands.
That's how you know you're made for each other.
You're an equal match.
I love it here.
The best way to break the ice,
I assure you.
Alex and Michelle,
since we've heard David's view on Booker,
how would you describe him?
He is kind of your child in a sense.
So, how do you feel about Book.
Having watched David's work,
I think we had a very strong instinct
that he was just gonna be spectacular in the part.
And what was so impressive to us,
starting in the first episode, was how easily
he just slipped right in.
It was like he's been doing the show for a really long time.
And the thing that was most beautiful to watch
is his dynamic with Burnham over the course of the season,
because Michael has had a series
of very complicated relationships
that never really allow her to, I think,
flourish, a certain part of her to flourish.
And we talked about the idea
that she would need to meet her match,
in a way, who seemed initially very, very different
from her.
Like she is selfless, he is selfish.
It's the easy binary.
But over the course of the first episode,
she comes to realize that,
that's a very incorrect first judgment
and that, in fact, they have a lot more
in common than she realized.
And then we keep peeling that back
over the course of the season.
Yeah, just to add onto that.
He's someone who was born into this new world
that we come into.
So, while our heroes have the perspective
of 930 years ago, when the Federation was strong
and everyone knew what it was,
he comes from this time that's very, very different.
And so, actually Book helps become a window
into this new world for us.
He becomes kind of the eyes
through which we see the everyday present
for those who were born into this new future
and our heroes coming in
with a completely different perspective.
It's a really helpful way to have made that jump
to the future is to have that anchor for us
in what David does with that character.
Meanwhile, we saw the Discovery has crashed-landed.
So, how are they going to get it up and running again?
'Cause a ship is, I've heard, pretty important to a crew.
Yes, they crash land into a future
and something goes wrong
with the ship that makes it basically impossible
for them to get back in the air.
So, they have to step out into the world and see
if they can find something
to help repair the ship and in so doing,
they get their first taste of what's actually going on
on the planet.
You, Alex and Michelle touched a little bit earlier
on the state of the Federation.
You said it wasn't that the Federation crumbled,
they were strong as ever, but something happened.
So we know that Starfleet
isn't what it once was by this point.
Can you hint at all without spoilers
about what might we see?
At the top of the season,
part of it is a mystery that Burnham
needs to figure out. Where is the Federation?
What kind of state is it in?
And that's something that she,
and then our heroes on Discovery also need to figure out.
And when we find it,
we'll find that it's still in existence.
It's just much diminished from what it was.
They're very much kind of in survival mode.
In a show that is already futuristic to us,
how did you two as showrunners
go about differentiating the look and feel of a universe
that's now a millennium after the already future.
We have an amazing, amazing team of designers
and creators and artists on the show.
And fortunately, their favorite job ever
is working on Star Trek.
So when you give them a task like this,
and you say, okay, we need to conceive
of something that feels totally unfamiliar,
and yet it has to have a certain familiarity to it.
That's really exciting.
It's a challenging proposition.
So, the world that Burnham walks into
immediately feels like nothing
you've seen in Star Trek before.
Just seeing all of the different designs coming in
and all of the different ideas, it was fascinating.
And that's, it also goes to because all of the folks
that we work with are huge fans of Star Trek in general,
they're familiar with all that's come before.
And so, even as we are pushing the envelope
and going into this new future
and finding new technologies and new ways
of doing things and exploring all of that,
it really is grounded in everything
that has been on the previous shows.
And speaking of new and shiny and interesting,
Discovery is introducing a few new characters this season.
Adira and Gray are two of them
that we have glimpsed in the trailer.
So can you guys talk about who they are,
how they factor into the season,
what's special about them?
We meet Adira in Episode 3
and we meet Gray in Episode 4.
And we can't tell you a whole lot about them
because that would reveal spoiler things,
but they do have a very unique and specific relationship.
Gray is Trill.
So there's a whole Trill mythology in Trek
that we're gonna be leaning into with this.
And Adira has a particular backstory of their own,
that I can't say too much about,
or it would reveal when we meet them
and how and all of those things.
But what I can say is that both of them
are just incredibly exciting actors.
It's so much fun to watch them work.
Michelle, you actually touched on it.
You mentioned the Trill who obviously
live for many, many years throughout different hosts.
So did that factor into why you wanted
to introduce a Trill in a time that's so far-flung
from the Star Trek that we've seen currently?
What's interesting about being a thousand years ahead
is that we can play them in new ways.
So you may think that you know a particular species
to be a certain way and maybe a thousand years later,
they're a little bit different than you might expect.
But at the end of the day,
I think it'll still feel very, very familiar.
The Trill have always been a very interesting case study
in questions of identity.
Because you're carrying so many different identities
within one consciousness.
And we explore that a lot with both characters
and it felt, for a show called Discovery,
you always want to be applying that idea
to all your characters.
Everyone is constantly in a state of self discovery.
I can't get more specific than that
without revealing anything.
Be very careful about how I choose my words
so that we don't spoil anything,
but we can't wait for people to see it.
You're just building up all of this hype.
I'm so excited [laughs]
Speaking of emotions, David,
I understand that Book has a cat named Grudge.
So, can you talk a little bit about Grudge?
First, I can say the Grudge is a queen.
She is feisty.
She's cute.
She's cynical, cautious, and wary of people.
But when she embraces you and takes you in,
she takes you in.
Tough love. I've had to work my way up the ladder.
[laughs]
Not only does Grudge sound like a perfect woman.
That sounds like the perfect segue to give the fans at home
a little glimpse at the real-life cat
behind Grudge, Leeu.
So let's check it out.
Everybody says that their cat can make a good set cat.
But it does take a specific animal to be able
to stay cool and calm and collected.
'Cause when cats are done, they're done.
[Leeu meows]
[Director] Action.
So, I'm Leslie Lawrence.
And I'm Michelle Smith.
And this is Leeu.
We put out a casting call for a large cat for the show
and he fit the bill.
And so far he seems to be a one-take wonder.
He's a Maine Coon and he's two years old.
He's 25 inches long, with the tail 40 inches.
He's currently 18 pounds.
Yeah, so the first thing with cats
is that they can spook easily.
So we have to make sure that the environment
that they're in, that we put them in, that they feel safe.
The second thing is to try and get him to look
exactly at camera.
So to do that, with him,
because he's pretty motivated with fast objects and he seems
to really like the tinfoil and the treat bag.
So we kind of try and get him to make the eye contact
that they want for the shot.
[Director] Cut it.
-: Let's rescue the cat.
[laughs]
Oh, my goodness.
I understand that Leeu,
I too am motivated with tinfoil and cat treats.
That's why I'm here today.
That was my fee.
Poor David, as a new member
of this Star Trek family,
and it is Star Trek Day.
So, actually happy Star Trek Day, everybody.
What does it mean to you to join Discovery
and the wider Trek community, who is really a Trek family.
It's profoundly special.
Really, really special.
So much so that I had reservations
of joining it because I knew what I was signing up for.
Star Trek, especially in a moment like this right now
in this moment, the many things that are happening
in the world, there's so much uncertainty. There's pain,
there's conflict, there's division.
And for me, Star Trek has always been
at the forefront of normalizing diversity,
people being different,
being embraced, the concept of hope.
So shows like Star Trek, for me,
shine so much more brightly,
especially in times like now. And to be a member of that,
and to be part of that fabric of change
is so rewarding.
You got me a little choked up there.
That was a beautiful answer.
And before I let you all go, Michelle, Alex,
is there anything else you can, want, are dying
to tell us about Season 3 or just Star Trek as a whole?
Anything you just wanna end on?
I'll let Alex wrap it up.
I'll just say I'm really,
really excited for people to see this season.
Everyone has put so much of themselves into it,
so much of their heart into it,
and we're excited for it to finally be out in the world.
Yeah, I think to echo what both my friends here said,
I think we all feel tremendously lucky
to be able to work on this show particularly now,
because as David was saying,
there is so much pain in the world right now,
and there's so much confusion.
And in some ways it feels like we're further apart
from each other than ever.
The fact that we're having this conversation
all in separate rooms, instead of together,
is proof of that.
And we get to come to work every day,
still and work on something that gives people hope.
And we get to work through our own understanding
of what's happening in the world right now,
through the metaphor and allegory of the stories
that we tell on Star Trek,
which I think has always been what Star Trek is.
You hold up a mirror to the world and you find
the right interpretation. And it's been helpful, in a way.
It keeps you sane.
And one of the things I think we feel most grateful for
is seeing how it impacts fans
and seeing how it gives them hope
in moments when sometimes it feels like there isn't any,
and that's what Star Trek does.
So I think for that reason,
we love coming to work every day,
we get to be a family together and that's a gift.
So sweet.
Thank you guys for ending on such an uplifting note.
Thank you all so much for joining me to talk
about Star Trek: Discovery.
Guys, it's been so much fun getting to talk to you.
Thank you Mica, you're real sweet.
Thank you.
And again, Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery
premiere's October 15th on CBS
All Access in the U.S.,
airs on Bell Media CTV Sci-Fi Channel,
and streams on Crave in Canada.
And on October 16th on Netflix in 190 countries.
Also, as a reminder today on Star Trek Day,
we are reviving our Star Trek United campaign,
where you can pitch in and show support.
For every person
that tweets the hashtag #StarTrekUnitedGives,
CBS All Access will donate $1
to organizations who do the real world work
of championing equality and social justice and the pursuit
of scientific advancements.
All what Star Trek is about.
So thanks so much and happy Star Trek Day, everybody.