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BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — There will not be any crossovers between the current "Star Trek" movie franchise and the upcoming "Star Trek" series — they take place in different timelines.

"Star Trek Discovery" writer/showrunner Bryan Fuller confirmed that the new series will center on a female character; that she won't be a captain. The 13-episode first season will tell one big story that's somehow related to a famous (but previously unseen) event in "Trek" history — but Fuller is keeping quiet about what it is.

"There's an incident — an event in "Star Trek" history, in the history of Starfleet — that had been talked about but never really fully explored," Fuller said.

In response to an, ahem, rather geeky question from The Salt Lake Tribune, Fuller said the incident is not the talked-about-but-never-seen Earth-Romulan War.

"Close, but no banana," Fuller said. "That's a little further back."

He did say that once fans find out what the incident is, they'll smack their heads and say, "Of course!"

"Star Trek Discovery" — which premieres in January on the CBS broadcast network before moving online to CBS All Access — is set about 10 years before the start of the five-year mission portrayed in the original series. (The two timelines diverged about 20 years before "Discovery" will begin, as portrayed in the 2009 "Star Trek" movie reboot that first featured Chris Pine as Capt. James T. Kirk).

The main character in "Discovery" will be a human female, but she won't be the captain. She'll be a lieutenant commander, Fuller said, adding "with caveats."

"We've seen six series now from captains' points of view, and to see a character from a different perspective on a starship … felt like it was going to give us richer context to have different types of stories," Fuller said.

(No actors have yet been cast.)

And the first season will carry one big story arc — more like the later seasons of "Deep Space Nine" than any other "Trek" series.

"It's a novel, with each episode being a chapter of that novel," Fuller said.

Other tidbits of "Trek" information included:

• The video of the U.S.S. Discovery unveiled at San Diego Comic Con was a "work in progress" and has "changed considerably" since then.

• "Discovery" will have more aliens in the crew than previous series — both ""new, exciting aliens" and "re-imaginings of existing aliens."

Fuller said one of the new aliens will be named Saru, then stopped himself as he started to descibe him. Or her.

• It wasn't news, but Fuller confirmed that "absolutely, we're having a gay character."

• Fuller shot down rumors that the incident that will launch "Discovery" involves the black ops Section 31 from "Enterprise."

"No, but that is not to say that that might not be have some marble through the meat of our season," he said.

• The new show will "slightly more graphic content" than its predecessors.

"Well, there's a reason we call it 'STD,'" Fuller said with a smile. "We're going to have a broader spectrum to explore those issues, but it is still 'Star Trek.'"

• It's possible that characters familiar to fans from the original series could show up, but not until at least Season 2.