Star Trek: Discovery Reveals New Look at Discovery-A

Star Trek: Discovery jumped into the 32nd century for its third season. After making a more than 900-year jump in time, the old USS Discovery was showing its age. Luckily, the ship made contact with Starfleet, which set about retrofitting the ship and rechristening it the USS Discovery-A. Now fans can gaze upon a new shot of the USS Discovery-A in its full glory. Released via the Star Trek Logs Instagram account, which also revealed the existence of holodecks aboard the ship, the shot shows the Discovery‘s new exterior design. Note the new shape of the ship’s deflector dish and warp nacelles as you check it below.

The Discovery is now the USS Discovery NCC-1031-A or the Discovery-A, keeping the naming tradition established by the Enterprise‘s iterations. That includes the original Enterprise from Star Trek: The Original Series to the Enterprise-E in the Star Trek: The Next Generation movies. It’s a tradition Discovery revisited when it revealed the USS Voyager-J.

Fans may note that lettered designations are usually applied to brand new ships that bear the same name and registry numbers as their predecessors and not given to vessels undergoing a refit. It is possible Discovery received enough upgrades that it practically is a new ship, but the new designation also helps hide the fact that it traveled through time, breaking the temporal accord.

The most visible upgrade is programmable matter. That’s the shifting control substance that viewers first saw on Book’s ship in the season premiere. It is now present on the bridge crew’s control panels and used to give Discovery the detached nacelles that are all the rage in 32nd-century ship design.

Other upgrades include an internal systems update and new holographic PADDs for the crew. The crew also gets new Starfleet badges featuring the 32nd-century insignia design. The badges also function as communicators, personal transporters, and tricorders.

Stamets’ spore drive interface also got an upgrade thanks to Adira. Instead of jacking himself into the device to navigate, Stamets can now control the drive using two control pylons. The controls have a reactive gel topping in which Stamets can submerge his fingers. Adira also did the Stamets the solid of removing the interface jack from his hard, seeing as there’s no need to use it any longer.

What do you think of the Discovery-A? Let us know in the comments. New Star Trek: Discovery episodes premiere Thursdays on CBS All Access.