Star Trek Discussion

Well, more Trek news.

The new series has an official name and short teaser that shows the ship; Star Trek Discovery.
In related news the series will be available in America on CBS All Access, Canada on Bell Media and everywhere else on Netflix. In what might prove to be a futile hope CBS will be releasing the series two days earlier in the US than elsewhere. I say futile because I can't see fans of Trek being overjoyed at being asked to pay extra in the US to get the series two days early.

Star Trek Beyond is getting good reviews, with the gay reveal of Sulu apparently having a connection to the plot. More specifically it is noted that he is married to a man and they have an adopted daughter - long time Trekies might actually recall we saw Sulu's daughter in Generations as the helmswoman of the Enterprise B.

The reviews do seem to be coming from what I consider respectable sources and from reviewers who are in some cases trekies.

As far as I know it will only be on Netflix in the UK and outside North America.
There is always a chance it might end up on broadcast tv/cable, but when would depend on the specifics of the Netflix deal.
Personally I've long been of the opinion that CBS is either going to have to cancel the new series or move it to TV by the end of its second season. The other option now might be to just move it entirely to Netflix.
Moving it to TV would probably require more than a 13 episode season, but would allow it to enter the syndicated market where Trek has spent almost all of its life. But as I noted several pages back a full 22 episode series has problems, most notably cost, so might turn out to be considered unviable regardless of who is in charge.


In other news; The opening weekend box office for Star Trek Beyond in the US was $59.6 million, compared to the $71 million for Into Darkness. This is higher than some predictions, and sequels do tend not to do quite as well. But might be a sign that either people are losing interest in this version of Trek or Paramounts handling of the franchise has resulted in boycotts.
Short of a massive drop off next week, these figures would be enough to justify a sequel - which was already confirmed last week. And certainly be enough for the Paramount execs to pull their blankets made of $100 dollar bills over their heads and pretend all is well. However if Discovery fails, and the trend continues of making $150 million films and those films seeing the same sort of drop off...

Trek doesn't seem to be in critical condition. But does show the early signs of a franchise heading for trouble. Much will depend on how well the new series does and if CBS/Paramount comes to its senses regarding fan films. The latter however will probably require a change of management that I don't see happening until its too late.

to me, the "new improved" Trek, just doesn't have enough to create loyalty.

This is going to be confusing...
Scott Bacula as Jonathan Archer on star trek Enterprise was supposed to be the pre-runner to the original series... and that got dropped after just four series for some strange reason.
Set a century before Kirks lot, are they now going to jump through the pre-Kirk years in blotches trying to do a Star-Wars prequel-to-the-prequel type thing?..

I would have though it better to go back and follow what happened after Archer as some kind of continuation thing, who is doing the script writing here?.. and yes, I have noticed the trail of banana peel coming out of the offices already. Have they hired the ex-AOL junior programmers again?..

Enterprise was cancelled due to poor ratings, although the ratings used for this didn't include watch later features which were starting to take off during the shows run. The first two seasons were dull for the most part, with some good episodes but an over-reliance on time travel and stories that could have come from Voyager or TNG to the point several episodes actually felt like they were Voyager scripts where they'd just changed the character names. Season three they tried to change things up, and while it again over-relied on time travel (The fall back of the writers in question) worked much better with only minor bumps halfway through - More a side effect of trying to have a season long story arc over 22 episodes than issues with the overall story or capabilities of the writers.
Season 4 started with a two part story that can be listed as two of the worse Trek episodes ever seen. You know its bad when they start with a REALLY bad Doctor Who story and throw in every trope they can think of. The rest of the season except the finale is pure Trek Gold.

The number of sets needed is probably going to be comparable to TNG, in I'm guessing 5 fixed sets plus four or five swing sets (Those redressed to appear as different areas of the ship as needed. An example would be the crew quarters). They will probably also reuse existing sets as Paramount had the foresight to have them placed in storage rather than scrapped. They did this for TNG which used sets built for ToS films, including Admiral Kirks quarters which became Rikers quarters on TNG. (TNG sets ended up being used for the later ToS films)

The size of the Discovery isn't known, so its hard to say what rank the ships commander would hold. Although the teasers make her look big, we don't actually see her next to something of known size - say a Constitution class ship - to give us a good idea. Lest we forget Sisko took command of DS9 when only a commander, and I think he was still at that rank when given command of the Defiant (Which was a very small ship). So it isn't impossible that the lead character might be the ships captain. Or they might have a commander in charge who gets killed leaving the main character in charge and getting a promotion. (Riker ended up as a Captain in Best of Both Worlds, although he reverted to commander when Picard returned).
I wouldn't actually be surprised if this is what they have in mind, since we are used to the captain being the hero killing him or her off during the season would be a logical way to give a more adult tone.

Last part, which slipped my mind when I last posted. There was some comment about seeing familiar faces. I'm going to guess this means that one of the Enterprise crew will appear in at least one episode prior to their time on the Enterprise. I would guess that the plan will be to get one of the actors from the films to reprise their role. Given the 10 year gap I would guess Spock, although Doctor McCoy might also be an option. These are the only two characters who wouldn't have to be recast. They might decide to have Captain Pike in command of the Enterprise...although I *think* at this point the Enterprises Captain was actually Robert April.

Interesting that they used the Enterprise design form ST Phase II.

There is a virtual run being set up that will be to honor the 50th anniversary of the show. The charity has not been designated yet, but the run organizers said they typically give about 50% of their proceeds to charity. The shirt looks epic, and the medal will be one of the best ones in anyone's collection. More deets here - vr.redpodium.com/run-long-prosper

If you're starved for Star Trek, try www.startrekcontinues.com

They're an award winning group of fans who are producing the "fourth season" of ST:TOS by writing new scripts and recasting the roles.

They are, by their own admission, insane.

Lest you think this is just a couple of people in their garage, many are actual professionals in the movie industry.

For example, Grant Imahara plays the recast Sulu.

Frankly, they're the best of the fan films, with an attention to detail that is staggering, considering that it is all volunteer and completely non-profit. They are even a 501(3)c charity.

At least is Star Trek Discovery is not a starting program for CBS All Access then they not say it caused the failure of the project, it may well have tanked before it's released.