YouTube Screenshot from the "Star Trek: Discovery" season 4 trailer
Production on “Star Trek: Discovery” has been temporarily shut down due to a potential exposure to Covid-19. On Saturday, Deadline reported that someone involved in the production of the show had come into contact with someone who tested positive for Covid-19. That individual is now quarantining for 14 days.
Though the person who came into contact with the infected individual likely didn’t have contact with anyone on set after their potential exposure, production has still shut down for two weeks.
Covid-19 Hits Close to Discovery Cast
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According to Deadline, the person who came into contact with a positive Covid case is a Zone A individual. “Discovery’s” pandemic policies split the cast and crew into different groups based on how close their contact is with the core cast and crew. Zone A individuals are people that have direct contact with the core cast and crew.
Deadline reported that the Zone A individual’s potential exposure happened while they were off the set. Additionally, they did not return to set after their contact with a Covid-positive individual.
However, production still shut down for two weeks to ensure the safety of everyone involved in the show. According to Deadline, the cast and crew of nearly 80 people will not have to quarantine. However, they will still be fairly locked down as Toronto, Ontario, where the show is filming, recently enacted new safety measures in response to a surge in Covid cases.
The delay likely won’t impact the release date for the show as filming and post-production have been underway for months.
‘Discovery’ has Taken the Pandemic Very Seriously
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The decision to start filming during a global pandemic wasn’t an easy one for the producers of “Discovery.” Showrunner Alex Kurtzman told the BlerdGurl podcast that the production team worked incredibly hard to ensure that everything was safe for the cast and crew when they returned to set in November last year.
CBS has spent an extraordinary amount of money to keep us safe. Everything we’ve asked for, we’ve gotten. We feel incredibly well supported. I feel as safe as I could possibly be in this little soft bubble of environment that we have. So it’s about staying vigilant about that, but also, finding a way to have fun while we are doing it.
Frequent “Discovery” director Olatunde Osunsanmi, who joined Kurtzman on the podcast, said that every decision the cast and crew made was focused on listening to the science and keeping everyone safe.
Both Kurtzman and Osunsanmi said that the pandemic has made everyone more discerning about the filming process. To limit their time on set, they’re not doing extra takes to gather backup footage for the editing process. So, they have to be very picky about the takes they do get.
They’ve had to make changes to every part of their filming plan to keep everyone safe.
‘Strange New Worlds’ had Covid Troubles Too
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Just a week and a half ago, the cast and crew of “Strange New Worlds” had a close call with Covid-19 as well. On April 14th, Deadline reported that an actor who was slated to guest star on the show tested positive for Covid-19.
Luckily, the actor was never on the set of the show before they tested positive. However, they did come into contact with a few crew members during a costume fitting. Those crew members went into quarantine, as did the actors.
Contact tracing determined that the exposure hadn’t impacted people on set, so production on the show didn’t shut down.