Star Trek new series (2017 CBS online) update

[Jeff T]

The upcoming new show is entitled Star Trek: Discovery

The show will be set 10 years before Star Trek: The Original Series.... so quite a bit after the Enterprise prequel.

The rest of the hints/plans provided by Bryan Fuller can be found here: 

http://www.startrek.com/article/bryan-fuller-reveals-discovery-details

As we knew, Star Trek: Discovery will be coming to CBS All Access in January 2017, following the premiere on the CBS Television Network.

The surprise was that they noted that it will also be distributed concurrently on Netflix in 188 countries and through Bell Media in Canada. That is a huge development since this would mean that all of us with Netflix could watch all of the subsequent episodes as well without having to pay for an additional subscription service/fee.
Let's just hope that this plan doesn't somehow evaporate before that time.

Thoughts?

[Battle Lion]

I thought i had head that it wouldnt be available on US or canada netflix, only other country's?

either way, its going to be the most pirated thing since game of thrones.

[Kheren]

Star Trek made history because it was inovative, imaginative and as exciting as it was thought-provoking, funny as it was dramatic and especially open-ended in scope.

What do we have here?

Innovative? A soap-opera cliched cast of characters. Sorry but gay characters and focusing on a woman protagonist has been used... and overused... on TV for decades now. I wonder if they see themselves as socially visionary as Roddenberry had been with his ship full of women, aliens and race/cultures working on the same footing. But that was in the Sixties. This is standard Star Trek (and many other TVs & movies) now so nothing new here. And they decided to use a rejected (and most ugly) ship design of the seventies; this looks like the same lame, blundering attempt of orci & Kurtzman to pay lip service to the fans in order to excuse what they will purposefully do wrong. But again, it is certainly not innovative. Re-imagining classic aliens is not innovative either... and a sure recipe for fan anger.

Imaginative? A mini-series constrained background. With a story context based solely on a obscure TOS reference, jammed in a confined timeframe between the oldest and latest series set in the past, they tied their own hands with fifty years of canon. They will either have no suspense or stumble on the canon references like Enterprise did and in the same way provoke the ire of the fans.

Exciting? A prequel has rarely proven to be exciting, especially in Star Trek. And it's been done already. I guess they are trying to catch the ball of Axanar which did sound exciting because of the way it was presented and the focus of a single movie. I have a feeling that is in fact exactly why they pouced on Axanar; were they using the very same "obscure event talked about in TOS but never shown" and already doing it better?

Thought-Provoking? That is the core of science-fiction... but there is nowhere any reference to any science theme. TOS and TNG were about seeking out new life and new civilizations; DS9 was about life aboard a space station and a space war; VOY was about a new frontier and survival in space; ENT was about the rise of an interplanetary society. This is about... a woman, a gay and discovering oneself... Think I read this once on the back cover of a Harlequin novel...

Funny? Dramatic? Only the actual episodes will tell. But when you already know the outcome (whatever happen the Federation will prosper, the ships will get better, the Klingons and Romulans will end up this way etc), drama will at best be forced. Expect little scenes like young Spock at the Vulcan embassy, Young Kirk applying for the Academy and other such easy scenes to try to hook the fans to an otherwise bland storyline... the Abrams recipe.

Open-ended? The very context is already jammed in a short time frame set in the past where nothing can happen that will disrupt what will come after. The focus on one character will limit everything to that one character and rise or fall with it (her). The inspiration coming from a single event mentionned in passing in one series will soon dry out. Hardly the ingredients for a long term saga and new ideas.

All in all, I am quite disappointed but not surprised. This is standard TV producer-thinking result: make money with tried and proven recipes, exploit cliches and brand, use what is already there to minimize creative cost and risk and consider your average audience as having about 13 years old of mental maturity. I'll be watching this with very low expectations... the access-free pilot that is.

[Christopher Stevens]

All in all, I am quite disappointed but not surprised. This is standard TV producer-thinking result: make money with tried and proven recipes, exploit cliches and brand, use what is already there to minimize creative cost and risk and consider your average audience as having about 13 years old of mental maturity. I'll be watching this with very low expectations... the access-free pilot that is.

Unfortunately I feel the same way. Reading over the bullet points as they were released from the Convention, it was one disappointing thing after another. The timeline has so many interesting possibilities to go post Voyager, or even go a little past STOs setting. 2415 would have been good. Something new and exciting. Seeing a shoehorned story with little to no new possibilities doesn't interest me

[BLZBUB]

 So, in the interests of "Star Trek deserves the very best.", CBS All Access has announced a release date: May, 2017.

StarTrek dot com announced today: http://www.startrek.com/article/new-discovery-launch-date-may-2017

Executive Producers Kirkman and Fuller have said:

"“Bringing Star Trek back to television carries a responsibility and mission: to connect fans and newcomers alike to the series that has fed our imaginations since childhood. We aim to dream big and deliver, and that means making sure the demands of physical and post-production for a show that takes place entirely in space, and the need to meet an air date, don’t result in compromised quality. Before heading into production, we evaluated these realities with our partners at CBS and they agreed: Star Trek deserves the very best, and these extra few months will help us achieve a vision we can all be proud of.”

 Interesting comment in the comments section by jediknt14, that I can agree with: "CBS All Access cannot compete with Netflix in the US and to use Star Trek in an attempt to do so will fail."

[Kheren]

I guess they need time to rethink many things over.

The backlash of basically everyone, fans and non fans alike, about the restricted viewing access, the ugly ship throwback design and the meaningless "Trek in the city" plotline has them concerned... with good reason. If most of your viewing audience seems to have no enthusiasm at all about what you propose, it would be idiotic to invest millions of dollars in a predictable failure.

Even Hollywood producers are not that stupid.

Now we are hearing that they are basing their story idea around the TOS episode Balance of Terror; featuring the Romulans as the central adversary, lots of space action and galactic tension and well-focused and defined character portrayals and confrontations with emotional personal moments to make it more intense and gripping.

Yeah lot of potential there. And at least, they would be inspired by one of the best ones, even if that transposed submarine chase story was not that original or thought provoking in itself; but the action, the suspense, the character developpement and the discovery of a new intriguing alien culture was great.

They also insist that the USS Discovery shown was just an art concept, no way the final product. Hopefully that is true. Except for the saucer section, everything from shape to color to silhouette to proportions felt wrong. First time in Trek history that a new ship is unanimously disliked. Even the teapot Millenium falcon wannabe USS Defiant looked better than that 70's StarTrekWars reject.

And apparently, the late Majel Barrett will again be the computer's voice, having her voice recorded in phonems before her death so that they can have her say anything and be that voice until the end of time. Cute tidbit we can appreciate.

We can also hope that the excellent Nicolas Meyer (of Time After Time, Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock and Undiscovered Country fame) will at least counterbalance the inept Alex Kurtzman (of Trek 2009, Into Darkness, Transformers and Amazing Spider-Man disasters and fired from the latest ST Beyond director chair).

Apparently, their long term goal is to use this as a stepping stone to reboot classic Trek out of it's 60's look and feel with modern tech and production quality in sets, FX, sound, costumes, music, stories and acting. Basically what Abrams promised and never delivered.

But now we'll have to wait in May. Here's to hoping that I'll get a nice Birthday present.

[BLZBUB]

Star Trek: Discovery has announced their first 3 actors for the show, due out in 6 months.

http://www.startrek.com/article/star-trek-discovery-beams-up-three-cast-members

Doug Jones: Of Hellboy, Legion & Pan's Labyrinth, will play Lt. Saru, a Starfleet science officer and an alien species new to the Star Trek universe. 

Michelle Yeoh: Of Tomorrow Never Dies & Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, will play Captain Georgiou, the Starfleet captain aboard the starship Shenzhou.

Anthony Rapp: Of A Beautiful Mind & Rent, will play Lt. Stamets, an astromycologist, fungus expert and Starfleet science officer on the starship Discovery.

 While I am familiar with Yeoh's work and like the choice, Rapp, on the other hand, is an unknown to me. Jones is probably a good fit as well, but it does not say what ship he will be cast on.

[Kheren]

Let us hope that this means they trashed their Trek in the City concept.

The USS Shenzhou? What about the Discovery? They hire their first 3 actors but they will not be on the main story ship?

This production is getting weirder by the minute. Or maybe they just have no clue were they're going with this. A "new alien" seems to confirm this. Why a new alien? They couldn't make a lead character out of the dozens already known? Hope they have a good explanation why we will not see again this "new race" in the future (TOS and beyond) like we see no Denobulans after the 22nd century (Enterprise); which proved to be a meaningless and uninteresting species storywise.

I still keep my expectations low at this point, despite the good actors they hired (and they're barely six months before release...)

[BLZBUB]

Three star's have been cast as Klingon's in ST:Discovery: Chris Obi, Shazad Latif and Mary Chieffo.

http://www.startrek.com/article/qapla-discovery-introduces-the-klingons

Chris Obi, of Dr. Who and Snow White and the Huntsman, will play the lead Klingon leader, T'Kuvma.

Shazad latif, of MI-5 and Penny Dreadful, cast as the commanding officer of the Klingon's, Kol.

Mary Chieffo, of stage, film and television, plays a battle deck commander, L'Rell.

 I personally, have not seen any of these three's work, but I understand Ms. Chieffo is 6 foot tall ... so she should make a formidable female Klingon!

~

[Kheren]

And still no one for the main ship... weird.

And yes with those thick-soled Klingon boots, she will be towering, all the more beleivable as a Klingon woman on par with all those fierce warriors. More so since Klingons are quite sexist ("No woman can sit on the Council" Gowron TNG  Redemption part 1).