Submitted by Tourism Kingston
Last December, cast and crew of Star Trek: Discovery came to Kingston to shoot scenes in a unique location: Kingston Penitentiary. The Kingston-based episode airs on Christmas Eve.
Much of the series Star Trek: Discovery takes place in space, so it relies heavily on special effects. Many of their episodes are shot in front of a green screen on a sound stage. But occasionally, the script calls for something special, a location so unique that it’s worthwhile to bring cast and crew away from their Toronto production studio. The series pilot, in 2017, was shot in Jordan. Iceland provided the perfect location for the first episode of season 3. And for an episode airing Dec. 24., Star Trek came to Kingston.
Location manager Melissa Warry-Smith describes how the TV shoot came to Kingston. “The script outline I received described a scene with ancient stepwells,” she says. Kingston Penitentiary’s spacious “Shop Dome,” with its double staircase and catwalk circling the soaring limestone walls, proved to be the perfect location for the scene, complemented by sets built at the production crew’s studio in Toronto.
Kingston Pen has been the site for a few other TV shoots recently (Alias Grace, Titans, and Murdoch Mysteries) but Star Trek: Discovery was the first otherworldly one. “It ended up being the perfect location for what we needed to do, including lighting the space properly,” says Warry-Smith. “And we had to do a lot of things [to transform the space].” For that, the crew counted on a number of local contractors who were already familiar with the building. Warry-Smith praised the work of the staff at the Kingston Film Office, part of Tourism Kingston, saying that they made the four-day shoot, and all the preparation leading up to it, go extremely smoothly.
An initiative of the Kingston Film Office and Queen’s Film and Media also gave local film students the opportunity to be part of the Star Trek experience. “Some of the students helped us with security,” says Warry-Smith, “and we were able to give them tours [of the set]. “It’s exciting for the students to see what goes on in a production and get a better sense of this as a career choice.”
All told, the direct economic impact of the Star Trek: Discovery shoot was more than $160,000 to the Kingston community, spanning everything from accommodations to local labour, suppliers, and equipment rentals. “It was an incredible way to end a record year in 2019 and cap off a very successful six-month trial that saw more than a half dozen productions at KP,” says Film Commissioner Alex Jansen. “Correctional Service Canada has been great to work with, and we’re really excited about the future potential.”