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Protagonist of Star Trek: Discovery is a Callback to the Original Pilot


Bryan Fuller revealed that the lead character of Star Trek Discovery will have an interesting callback to the pilot of Star Trek: The Original Series, Ain't It Cool News reports. It was revealed earlier that the new lead will be a human woman and now Fuller has unveiled that she will be referred to as "Number One". This is a callback to a character in the unaired pilot of the first Star Trek series.

Fuller said, "When we introduce our protagonist, she is called 'Number One' in honor of Majel Barrett's character in the original pilot. And as we were first talking about the series, talking to CBS, we said intially we will only call this character Number One." Fuller says that the character's real name will be revealed before the end of the season, though.

The pilot Fuller is referring to is called "The Cage". This unaired episode had Christopher Pike starring as the captain. Spock was the science officer in this pilot and a woman referred to as only "Number One" was the second-in-command. As Fuller mentions, she was played by Majel Barrett.

Since this series is set 10 years before the original, it might be possible this character is one and the same as the pilot's number one. Maybe she's the original second in command of the ship before Spock?

Fuller also revealed several other details in the interview. He only wants to produce 10 episodes of the series a year (however, the first season will be 13 episodes). He revealed a bunch of fellow staff members for the show as well: writers Nicholas Meyer (Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan), Jesse Alexander (Heroes, Hannibal) and Kemp Powers, known for writing plays like The Shooting. His fellow showrunners will be Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts, who Fuller worked with on Pushing Daisies and Wonderfalls.

I'm excited to see what Number One will turn out to be like and think the callback is cool. What do you think of the news? Are you excited for the new series?

Read: Star Trek: Discovery is Set Before The Original Star Trek

Read: Star Trek: Discovery Announced as The New Series Coming to CBS

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