Iceland was a prominent filming location for the third season of CBS TV show Star Trek: Discovery. The season’s first episode begins with a crash landing on Hverfjall mountain in the country’s north. The producers chose Iceland’s otherworldly landscapes to portray the planet Hima in the year 3188. Vísir reported first.
Goðafoss waterfall, Kleivarvatn lake, and the Blue Lagoon are also pictured in the series’ third season. Shooting in Iceland took place last year and the production took advantage of the Icelandic state’s payback program, which reimburses 25% of the cost of TV and film production incurred in Iceland as an incentive to encourage both local and international filming.
“[W]e jumped to the future, and so we wanted a place that looked very different,” executive producer Alex Kurtzman told TrekCore of the filming location. “I’ve wanted to shoot in Iceland for a really long time, so we looked at a bunch of different options and Iceland turned out to be doable – so we did it!”
Star Trek: Discovery is not the first series to use Iceland to depict other planets. Interstellar (2014) used Iceland’s Svínafellsjökull glacier and other locations to depict two different planets. Star Wars films have also cast Iceland in the role of another planet, including Star Wars: Episode VII and Star Wars: Rogue One.
Watch the Star Trek: Discovery third season opening scene on Hverfjall.
