Fan Expo 2017 & Star Trek Discovery Spoilers: Star Trek Discovery Panel Recap Including What Star Trek Novel Is Influential On TV Series

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Fan Expo 2017 and Star Trek Spoilers for Star Trek Discovery follows.

TrekCore has a detailed recap of the Star Trek Disovery Production Panel from Fan Expo 2017. Here is an excerpt, but there is a lot more here.

FYI, here is what one of the houses of Klingons will have characters look like.

There appear to be other types of Klingons a la the various interpretations we’ve seen on film and TV. How many will show up on Star Trek Discovery remains to be seen.

Anyhow, Star Trek: The Final Reflection, a novel from 1984, is cited as an importance reference for Star Trek Discovery. It is available in at least three different editions per the pics embedded below.

    [Star Trek Discovery art director Matt] Middleton… made several references to the 1984 Star Trek novel The Final Reflection, a seminal look into the Klingon Empire by author John M. Ford, a work that Discovery cast member Kenneth Mitchell (Kol) has also used in his character research – likely a suggested read from the show’s leadership team as a heavy influence on the series.

      Middleton: We also sought not just to have fun with the architecture, but also the details that spoke to the history and culture of the Klingon race. As a touchstone, we looked to John Ford’s THE FINAL REFLECTION which was a work really used as a launching-off point for the Klingons by Bryan Fuller.

      There is Klingon text on the steps [inside the ship], we have a lot of ritual torches and sarcophagi and glyphs, and other details. For example, [one section of] the Klingon text… was all carefully researched and taken from transcripts from THE FINAL REFLECTION, and we made sure that we had accurate Klingon translation.

      This one, says [speaks Klingon to audience] which reads: “‘I will go now to Sto’vo’kor, but I promise one day I will return.’ Then Kahless pointed to a star in the sky and said, look for me there, in that point of light.”

      Which is a big promise from Kahless!

    This ancient phrase attributed to Kahless may be a clue to the purpose behind the Klingon Torchbearer we’ve now seen featured in multiple trailers – perhaps the key to “uniting the Klingon houses” is related to some kind of ‘return’ of Kahless the Unforgettable.

      Middleton: We always sought to ingrain these details into the actual set, and this adherence to detail and reverence for all things Klingon permeated our art department, and we had much delight in taking on the roles of the Klingons and thinking about how we can pay them the most honor.

      This got into details like the game of Klin zha from THE FINAL REFLECTION, a game that warlords play against each other as a teaching game to teach military strategy… and bloodwine cups, which even have text on them — translated in this case to “May Your Blood Scream.”

      The sarcophagus ship for us was an exercise in how can we make this even more intricate, more elaborate, and more worthy of Star Trek universe.

Again, more here at TrekCore from the Star Trek Discovery panel at Fan Expo 2017.

John is a long-time pop culture fan, comics historian, and blogger. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief at Comics Nexus. Prior to being EIC he has produced several column series including DEMYTHIFY, NEAR MINT MEMORIES and the ONE FAN'S TRIALS at the Nexus plus a stint at Bleeding Cool producing the COMICS REALISM column. As BabosScribe, John is active on his twitter account, his facebook page, his instagram feed and welcomes any and all feedback. Bring it on!