Executive-producer Bryan Fuller (Hannibal) dropped a massive nerd info-dump yesterday at the Television Critics Association press tour, revealing a bunch of new details about his upcoming show, Star Trek: Discovery . You can read all the bullet points that we learned about Trek's return to TV (well, to CBS All Access) right here . But Fuller also delved a bit into the design of the show's new starship, which of course is also called Discovery, and it turns out that the look of the vessel will continue to evolve beyond what was previewed at San Diego Comic-Con last month.

Ralph McQuarrie's Enterprise design from the 1970s

"Everybody got a glimpse of what the ship looked like as a work in progress," Fuller said of that SDCC preview. "And so much of that has already changed because that was -- that design wasn't even finalized. It was, like, 'What can we share with folks at Comic-Con that lets them into the process?' And already I look at that design and go like, 'We've got different nacelles. We've got different lines there.' So it's an evolution, and we're finding that look as we get closer and closer to production."We always knew that the ship in the teaser wasn't the final version, just because it was clearly not a finely detailed CG model. But it's interesting to hear that the creators behind Discovery are actually still playing with the actual design of the ship. Fuller also confirmed that the Discovery is based on a version of the Enterprise that iconic Star Wars designer Ralph McQuarrie came up with for an un-filmed Star Trek movie from the 1970s. (That movie, which would've been directed by Philip Kaufman, was called Planet of the Titans. Ken Adam also worked on that original design with McQuarrie.)"One of the touchstones for the inspiration is we were looking at what is going to be the feel and aesthetic of a new Star Trek series?" said Fuller. "I think J.J. Abrams, in the 2009 movie, really launched a fantastic reimagining of what Star Trek could be in that Kelvin timeline. And so as we were looking to have something distinct about what our Star Trek was going to look [like], we looked back at -- there was an abandoned Star Trek series in the '70s. It was actually for a movie. And Ralph McQuarrie had done some wonderful illustrations, and we saw those and saw sort of harder lines of a ship and started talking about race cars and Lamborghinis in the '70s and James Bond cars and started working on the designs, taking those inspirations and coming up with something completely unique to us."Star Trek: Discovery will debut in January of 2017.With reporting by Eric Goldman

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