Conventions and Events, Star Trek Las Vegas

Star Trek Discovery Panels. Pt 2

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Having already sat through two hours of Star Trek Discovery Panels, I was eager to hear more!

Star Trek discovery desperate hours

Star Trek Discovery – Creature Designers

Next up was Glenn Hetrick and Neville Page to talk about designing and creating the aliens we can expect to see in Discovery. What we received was an in-depth exploration of the development of characters, delivered in a concise and consciencous manner.

(please note incorrect twitter handle was used in this tweet. Should be @glenn_hetrick)

Glenn and Neville showed us images from their design software which showed us the level of detail that goes into perfecting how the prosthetics will behave.

As for the Klingons, they designed them from the inside out! They took the Klingon skull as the starting point and considered what features a predatory animal has. They often include holes in the bone to allow sensor receptors access to the skin. This was the logic behind the bald look as they felt hair would impede a predators senses.

Our favourite design feature was the inclusion of the Klingon logo into the design:

A question from the audience asked Neville and Glenn if they had any discussions with Michael Westmore (Make Up Designer  for TNG through to Enterprise). They had met him in the TV show special FX’s show FaceOff and said they were both inspired by him.

Conclusion: Any worries that they are making Klingons look different for the sake of it was alleviated. They are working creatively to enrich a species which could so easily go stale from over exposure.

Highlight: At the end of the talk they said that having attended STLV and meeting the fans directly it has created a stronger connection between the creatives and the fans, this will lead them to go back and work harder for Star Trek Discovery. Although given the high standard they have already contributed, this hardly seems possible!

Weird Bit: Audience member saying they were concerned about the look of Klingons. Fair enough if that’s your opinion but open criticism without constructive feedback makes me wince.

Comics and Novels

The final Star Trek Discovery panel of the day was about comics and novels. Featuring Kirsten Beyer (Novelist and TV Writer), Sarah Gaydos (IDW comic editor), Mike Johnson (comic writer), David Mack (novelist) and Ed Schlesinger (Editor Pocket Books).

What is unique about this series is that there will be Novels and Comics wrote alongside each other, with authors having access to Discovery storylines to write around them.

You won’t need to read the comics or books to understand the show but they add to the story.

The panel gave us some sneak peaks of what we can expect including:

And the first Discovery novel by David Mack:

It’s set before Discovery airs and involves Burnham having to face a man she has been avoiding for some time! (why do I suspect this is a pointy eared man and not something lame like the dentist?)

It also features a familiar starship. Again, probably not the Botany Bay.

Discovery Desperate Hours will be available 26th September 2017 and you can pre-order it on Amazon now.

Asked whether books and novels would be considered canon, Sarah Gaydos gave a considered answer saying all comics and books work within the guidelines of canon but it’s so much more complicated than that. There wasn’t a straight yes or no, but it certainly leaned towards ‘not canon’.

Conclusion: This is how we are going to survive the weekly waits for each episode! I’ve not been one to read comics however in recent years I have read the Kelvin Universe comics and am now reading the TNG Mirror Universe ones. They are right, they greatly enrich the story telling and allow you to see and hear the characters in your imagination with new content to explore.

Highlight: Surprise guest Dayton Ward entered the stage to reveal the second Discovery book which will be available early 2018. Plus getting to see the covers for the first time.

Weird bit: Probably the connection to canon, I can understand that it would be limiting to the creative process of the TV show if they had to consider books and comics in the long lineage of Star Trek lore but with the colloborative process of this series makes me ponder if there could be an exception. If anything to stop those squabbles at the bar with fellow Trekkies when they pull out a beta fact.