Star Trek: Discovery and Picard Coordinating on Future Canon

At the end of Star Trek: Discovery's second season, the ship and the show jumped ahead 930 years in Star Trek's timeline. In doing so, the show went from being a prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series to the furthest future point in Star Trek canon. That move comes at an interesting time since Star Trek: Picard is also set to move the franchise past its previous endpoint, the film Star Trek: Nemesis. The two shows are set centuries apart from each other, but new Discovery co-showrunner Michelle Paradise confirmed they are coordinating to keep Star Trek's future straight.

"I would say, every iteration of Star Trek, we want to be aware of and we want to honor," Paradise said at the TCA press tour. "It's important to us to do that. Alex [Kurtzman], as he works on that and works on our show, he lets us know if there's anything that we need to be aware of in terms of history."

Kurtzman is the producer in charge of expanding the Star Trek television franchise, as well as being co-creator and co-showrunner of Star Trek: Discovery. Kurtzman said in the past that Discovery and Picard will not crossover with each other. Being set in the same universe but hundreds of years apart means coordination is about big-picture issues involving the franchise's universe and mythology.

"We're also aware that all of the iterations of Star Trek, so we really want to make sure that we're not doing anything in our show that directly contradicts something that we've seen established or that is being established on another spinoff," Paradise said.

Paradise also confirmed at the TCA press tour that Discovery will be staying in the 32nd century for the foreseeable future, with no return trip to the pre-TOS era. Following Discovery's panel at San Diego Comic-Con, star Sonequa Martin-Green spoke about what it means for the show to jump to the front of the line in Star Trek canon.

"Well, the beauty of going into the future – boldly, I might add, pun intended – is that everything is new," Martin-Green says. "So everything you will see will be new. And we were able, blessed, to shoot in Iceland for the first episode of season three and you are going to see a world that you've never seen before and we are not in Terralysium. We did not end there like we planned. So, now we have to figure out where we are, when we are, and who we are at this point now. So it's very innervating, to say the least, to be able to build canon moment to moment."

Are you excited to see the future of the Star Trek universe in Star Trek: Discovery's third season? Let us know in the comments section. Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 is now filming in Toronto. It is expected to debut on CBS All Access in 2020.