We already knew that the second season of Star Trek: Discovery would bring some minor changes to the series’ standing sets up at Pinewood Studios in Toronto, but a series of interviews released this week have brought more focus to the modifications we’ll be seeing when the show returns later this month.
Way back in March 2018, production designer Tamara Deverell revealed that there’s been additional corridors constructed to expand the shooting area on the Discovery, along with the addition of a second door to the mess hall set — but it seems there’s even more than that early amount of changes in place.
You may have noticed that last season, the Discovery mess hall set also doubled for the crew quarters aboard the ship (as well as on the USS Shenzhou, RIP!) — but as Space reports, there was so much back-and-forth redressing of the sets that the production team decided to create a standalone set for crew quarters while they expanded the mess hall for additional functionality.
One of Discovery‘s art directors, Jody Clement, explains:
“It was a challenge on many levels, and we also ran into a lot of wear-and-tear on the set when we were changing it over. We lost an entrance into the Mess Hall, so we created a new one. Now it’s Mess Hall on Deck 5 instead of Mess Hall on Deck 2. We have multiple Mess Halls!”
Clement also revealed that while only one food synthesizer could be used for special effects work last year, now all five of them on the main wall are usable as needed.
Regarding that expanded corridor, Clement shared more details on the new size and shape of the hallway set, allowing for longer tracking shots and more options for shooting, including additional visual effects.
“Directors were finding it difficult to stage scenes. This year, in order to prevent them from having to stop and start over, we can do a continuous loop because we opened it up. The airlock has gone away and we’ve made the ceilings a little higher with some green[screen] space above.”
Stamets’ engineering bay has also gotten an once-over for the new year, says Clement, expanding a bit to let viewers see a larger space behind what was once just a blast shield. Clement told SFX Magazine that behind that once-closed wall is Discovery’s dilithium chamber, with a 30-foot-high printed backdrop at the rear of the set to give an even larger sense to the space.
And she told Space:
“You can see a series of pipes [through that hall] and then we have a backdrop just beyond those pipes to give the illusion that the chamber goes a lot further.”
Finally, the Discovery bridge also got some attention too — a dark area behind the captain’s chair has been retrofitted to be more ‘alive’ thanks to additional piping and lighting effects, and Captain Lorca’s standing-desk ready room is getting new life as a science lab.
We’ll get to see these new set changes in action when Star Trek: Discovery returns on January 17.