10 Reasons To Stop Hating Star Trek: Discovery

When you pop on an episode of any television series, especially since the advent of streaming, it is easy to forget just how much work went in to making it. If you are fully immersed that means they have done their job, but it pays to pause for a second to consider the efforts made behind the scenes.

When it came to designing the props for season one of Star Trek: Discovery, an almost forensic amount of care and attention was put into ensuring a connection and continuity to The Original Series. As shown in the season one DVD/Blu-ray special featurette Prop Me Up, devices such as the phaser and the tricorder were, in essence, "reverse engineered," keeping the core '60s aesthetic whilst accounting for a logical progression in the in-universe interim.

The tricorder was a particular challenge given the advancements in medical technology in the real world. As property master Mario Moreira described it, "We started thinking about gloves, smart fabric, holograms on the wrists, but that failed the concept [of] reverse engineering from The Original Series".

Executive producer Alex Kurtzman also stated, "Obviously we look far more modern than The Original Series […] [but] it would be strange if something had been really advanced and then suddenly went backwards ten years later". Whether they were entirely successful at that is up for debate, but the communicators still flipped, and phasers still had a stun setting.