Discovery Writers Talk Trek at Mission New York

One of Saturday's most-eagerly anticipated panels featured Star Trek: Discovery writers Kirsten Beyer and Nicholas Meyer teaming up to preview the upcoming Trek series.

"I'm part of a team," Meyer said, explaining his participation in Discovery. "I think our job in that room  is to help Bryan realize his vision for the show. I will adjust/adapt my thinking to be part of that group... enterprise."

Beyer has written six of the Voyager relaunch novels since 2009 and she's written Buffy the Vampire Slayer novels.

"I share this with Bryan Fuller... I did not want to write," Beyer said. "I wanted to write for Star Trek. I was invited to pitch for Voyager and the first person I pitched to was... Bryan Fuller."

"There's no saying no in the room," Beyer said. "Every idea is listened to. Everyone is coming at this with different levels of Trek familiarity and different levels of TV and film experience. Bryan has a very specific idea of what this show is and where we are going. And we are trying to help him flesh that out."

"What I bring to it is a grounded, flat-footed, earthbound mentality," Meyer said. "I'm an outsider and I always have been. I'm learning what streaming is."

What does Beyer, as a longtime Trek fan, want to see on Discovery? "The sense of optimism that has always been imbued by Star Trek," she replied. "And I'm not worried about that. It's a shared goal of everyone in the room."

Beyer announced that she will be the "admiral," the liaison, on complementary Discovery projects produced in collaboration with Pocket Books and IDW Publishing. "There will be one novel and a series of comics that will be tied to the new series," she said. "So I have the great fortune of working on the novel side of it with David Mack. And teaching me about comics is Mike Johnson. They're meant to coincide with the show." Regular Star Trek artist, Tony Shasteen, will join Johnson on the comics.

Why set Discovery 10 years before TOS? "It was about finding a space in the chronology," Meyer said. "He (Bryan) looked and found this opening. That 10-year pre-Kirk thing, I have to say, it's pretty clever."

One woman explained that she is a lifelong Trek fan and implored the Discovery team not to "screw it up." Meyer implored people to temper their expectations, arguing that fans  -- fans of anything -- don't always know what's best for them. He then asked people to go into Discovery with "open hearts and open minds," suggesting they'll enjoy it more that way.

"Everybody working on the show," Beyer assured the fan -- and everyone in the room, "wants exactly what you want."