New Star Trek TV show - Star Trek Discovery

Kev W

Technocentral wrote: »

You can't be a fan of Trek without loving TOS, Spock was one of the best characters in any form of Sci Fi ever, full stop.

Of course you can.

So.. does anyone actually know how this is fitting within the timeline?

Kev W

They're not saying yet, probably it hasn't even been decided.

If I were betting on it my money would go on it being concurrent with the movies but with a different crew.

If I were deciding it it would be set in the original timeline post-TNG, keeping the movie and TV versions separate and allowing for characters from the TV shows to return for guest appearances. That seems really unlikely though.

Thargor

It'll be new timeline, of course it will, they're not interested in serving Trek fans, they're interested in money through audience numbers and nobodies going to throw away 100 million worth of advertising that the films provide, it would be like Marvel putting Agents of Shield in a different universe to the Avengers.

Agent Coulson

Leslie Moonves Explains Why 'Star Trek' Went to CBS All Access

One of the most common responses to news that Star Trek was returning to the small screen was the surprise that it would run on CBS' digital VOD subscription platform, CBS All Access.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday during its third-quarter earnings call, CBS Corp. president and CEO Leslie Moonves explained why Star Trek is boldly going where it's never gone before.

"A lot of conversation went into what we were going to do [with Star Trek]. All Access is very important," Moonves told analysts, stressing that CBS will remain both a content supplier of second-window fare for Netflix as well as a competitor.

"We remain a good partner for Netflix and Hulu. Star Trek is a family jewel; it's an important piece of business for us as we go forward," said Moonves. "We're looking to do original content on All Access and build up that platform. Netflix is our friend a competitor. They compete with [CBS Corp.'s] Showtime. All Access will put out original content and knowing the loyalty of Star Trek fans, this will boost it. … There's about a billion channels out there and because of Star Trek, people will know what All Access is about."

CBS announced Monday that its new Star Trek series, which hails from its sibling studio, would be executive produced by Alex Kurtzman. The series will premiere in January 2017 on the network with subsequent episodes produced exclusively for its digital subscription VOD platform, CBS All Access. Star Trek will be the first original scripted series produced specifically for its digital platform and comes as every series in the cult classic is already part of All Access' programming library. Moonves also stressed that Star Trek will be the first of a scripted expansion for All Access.

The executive also stressed that all of the Star Trek series have done "exceedingly well" in streaming on All Access and noted that the beloved franchise still "resonates today."

"All the series have done well in terms of streaming, he said. "Added in to that, Star Trek is a huge international franchise. Our international distribution guy is going crazy; he can't wait to get out to the marketplace and sell that. Right away, we're more than halfway home on the cost of the show from international alone. The risk is small in seeing the track record. We think it'll be great and bring in a lot more subscribers. We're really excited about it."

Star Trek 2017 will introduce new characters seeking imaginative new worlds and new civilizations, while exploring the dramatic contemporary themes that have been a signature of the franchise since its inception in 1966. The next series comes four months after the beloved franchise celebrates its 50th anniversary.

While Moonves declined to provide the total number of subscribers, he revealed that All Access posted its largest subscriber growth yet in September and recently debuted on Apple TV.

Moonves opened the call by noting that the company can "live long and prosper" with a nod to the property. He said additional announcements about Star Trek — both behind and in front of the camera — would be coming soon.

"[Star Trek 2017 is a] world-class effort that will make all Star Trek fans proud," he said, calling Trekkies the "most passionate fans in the world." Moonves anticipated "millions" signing up for All Access, which will allow diehards to watch the new series any time, any place and on any device they'd like — a move the exec said is consistent with how many viewers are watching CBS' content.

Going forward, Moonves said that there have been conversations about offering a $9.99 ad-free version of All Access to compete with Hulu's similarly launched effort.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/why-star-trek-went-cbs-836710

charlietheminxx

I enjoyed the new movies but I don't want to see a whole series in that timeline. We need to be moving forward into the future instead of back to start! Would love the see the doctor (EMH Mark 1) pop up at least in a cameo. I think the new series should certainly start after Voyager. We are apparently in the golden age of TV, if they could not screw this up then that would be great.

squonk

To me, based on the above, it sounds lke they needed to plant a flag for that CBS All Access service. They figured the very best way to do that was to do a Star Trek series. That'd certainly get the world talking. Job done!

Now, it doesn't sound like any of the regular Star Trek people are involved here at all. That could be a good or bad thing. Rick Berman didn't do the franchise any favours in the end I felt. I'm no fan of the JJ-verse movies but they breathed new life into the franchise.

I can't see this going any other way than the JJ-verse to be honest. They've spent millions making 3 movies that sucked in a whole swathe of new fans. Now, wheteher those fans ever went back to watch TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY or just rewatched the movies is another question.

AFAIR Kurzman is involved in the Hawaii Five O reboot. I find Five O entertaining and a good lighthearted watch so I'm not sure if I should be worried about this. One of the problems with the films is they're a shoot em' up in space. That's not a Star Trek show I want to watch. Five O, for all it's silliness, does tackle some more serious issues. It's not a 100% bubblegum show. I'm starting to worry that they may be considering pitching a JJ-verse show with shades of Five O. I think this could be populate but nothing related to the Star Trek we all know and love. I really hope I can be proved wrong. I really want to be.

Another consideration is that one of the things that has always made Star Trek great was the ship. Mostly the ships were actual models used. Given that they're talking of airing this in 13 months time, it sounds like it could be a huge CGI fest. I'm starting to feel like this could be a cheap grab series that will have bigger payoffs with profits and little input in terms of work on models and decent CGI. For now though it's all speculation. I suppose it'll be next year before we know more but a year turnaround for a complex show like Star Trek seems like exceptional progress if they can do it well.

Antar Bolaeisk

It does sound like they're not too interested in making new Star Trek, just in making something onto which they can call Star Trek to sell their new service.

Kev W

Wow, the pessimism here is genuinely depressing.

Thargor

Kev W wrote: »

Wow, the pessimism here is genuinely depressing.

If the films this series will most likely be based on had been any good people would be swinging from the rafters, but they were A. Moronic sh1t and B. stuck in the past rebooting tired old ideas like everything these days, people want new updates in Star Trek not origin stories and other crap like that.

Kev W

Thargor wrote: »

If the films this series will most likely be based on had been any good people would be swinging from the rafters, but they were A. Moronic sh1t and B. stuck in the past rebooting tired old ideas like everything these days, people want new updates in Star Trek not origin stories and other crap like that.

So it's best to get the moaning in now, I suppose. God, imagine if they ended up making a great show and we never got to whinge about it at all!

Antar Bolaeisk

Kev W wrote: »

Wow, the pessimism here is genuinely depressing.

I'd love for it to be great, I want it to be great, I just think it's being made for the wrong reasons and by the wrong people. I really hope I'm wrong.

Kev W

I'm not sure what "the wrong reasons" are in this context. They want to make a TV show, there's not a great moral weight to that.

Thargor

Kev W wrote: »

So it's best to get the moaning in now, I suppose. God, imagine if they ended up making a great show and we never got to whinge about it at all!

This is something 99% of the Star Trek fanbase dont want to see, Gene Roddenberrys vision being torn up and shat all over for the sake of a generic action movie/tv show that contributes absolutely nothing to anything. The way they portrayed the female characters in both films tells you everything you need to know about the people makingthese films. If you dont think people are going to complain about that with something like Star Trek you're deluded. I heard Star Wars fans weren't too happy about the Phantom Menace either, might want to watch out for some moaning there aswell.

Blazer

ziedth wrote: »

I'm a massive DS9 fan really enjoyed TNG I felt Voyager had its moments kinda suffered through the original series and just couldn't even attempt enterprise so I'm fairly excited about this. If it hovers somewhere between Voyager and TNG I'll be very happy

Enterprise was a lot better than people give credit for. For me Voyager was by far and away the worst Star Trek ever

Kev W

Thargor wrote: »

This is something 99% of the Star Trek fanbase dont want to see, Gene Roddenberrys vision being torn up and shat all over for the sake of a generic action movie/tv show that contributes absolutely nothing to anything. The way they portrayed the female characters in both films tells you everything you need to know about the people makingthese films. If you dont think people are going to complain about that with something like Star Trek you're deluded. I heard Star Wars fans weren't too happy about the Phantom Menace either, might want to watch out for some moaning there aswell.

I think the pertinent difference between The Phantom Menace and the newly announced Star Trek is that we KNOW that The Phantom Menace is rubbish.

Thargor

Well they're 2 for 2 in the clueless about Star Trek stakes so it would be a strange thread where everyone was super excited about how they were going to pull it out of the bag on the third attempt!

Technocentral

Thargor wrote: »

If the films this series will most likely be based on had been any good people would be swinging from the rafters, but they were A. Moronic sh1t and B. stuck in the past rebooting tired old ideas like everything these days, people want new updates in Star Trek not origin stories and other crap like that.

So true, action film rubbish aimed at teenage boys. They could have chosen any film franchise, they were fook all to do with Trek.

Technocentral

Blazer wrote: »

Enterprise was a lot better than people give credit for. For me Voyager was by far and away the worst Star Trek ever

I'd say the TV ranking is:

1. TOS (by a long shot). 9/10
2.TNG (brilliant overall apart from awful bloody characters like Q and Troi.) 7.5/10
3. Voyager, some fantastic episodes, great captain and secondary characters like Harry, Tuvok and Seven of Nine. 6.5/10
4. Deep Space Nine, (pretty good, 5/10).

Enterprise, awful generic sci fi. (2/10). Hope new one is a smart reboot like Battlestar, if so it could be great. But ifs just a bunch of pretty boys and girls taking part in frenetic action scenes aimed at the masses it will be a waste of time.

ixoy

For myself:
1. DS9 - Loved the darker, serialized arc in the second half of the show
2. TNG - Great cast and some very clever stories
3. TOS - Good cast but I found the scripts weaker
4. Voyager - Weak. Little to recommend it in general, Doc aside. And Neelix. Ugh.
5. Enterprise - Just no.

New series will be set in the rebooted film universe. They're not going to resurrect a TV show that finished 10 years ago to general indifference. I'd love if they did and set it post DS9's aftermath or even further into the future. It's not going to happen because the Trek fanbase for that isn't there next to the new one created from the show.
Hopefully it'll be set quite far apart from the new films but I'd suspect the timelines will be fairly concurrent so as to firm their grasp on the market.

ziedth

I will definitely be less excited if it more from the Abrahams time. Post Voyager/DS9 I'll be climbing the walls but I'd even settle for something a bit different something like a section 31 story would be deadly.

pixelburp

Thargor wrote: »

This is something 99% of the Star Trek fanbase dont want to see, Gene Roddenberrys vision being torn up and shat all over for the sake of a generic action movie/tv show that contributes absolutely nothing to anything. The way they portrayed the female characters in both films tells you everything you need to know about the people makingthese films. If you dont think people are going to complain about that with something like Star Trek you're deluded. I heard Star Wars fans weren't too happy about the Phantom Menace either, might want to watch out for some moaning there aswell.

Thing is, that's the films you're talking about; TV is quite simply a whole different narrative ball game & I don't think it's wise to assume all the strokes made in the cinema will find their way to the TV screens. There simply isn't the budget or limited running-time to mirror the kind of set-pieces and broad narrative strokes the films did.

TV dramas need stronger characters and respective story arcs to thread a series together into a coherent whole. And no matter what money gets ploughed into this, it won't be enough to have the same spectacle of the cinematic siblings. There's still a chance that ultimately the characters will be rotten anyway (network TV likes its tropes and hackneyed characters), but the nature of the beast means a TV show has to slow itself down, play the long game, and let its characters breath.

If anything, a TV show in the Abrams universe could well be the kind of character-focused, utopia-set vision of the new Star Trek universe fans would have craved. In that sense, there's more reason to be positive than negative & assume it's going to be 20-odd episodes of Carol Marcus in her underwear.

briany

I thought Voyager was a fantastic series. It opened up a lot of possibilities that the other series couldn't explore as much, given that the ship was travelling through unknown territory. In many ways it was monster-of-the-week television at times, but it remained fresh and interesting because of that.

The original series was probably fantastic upon first viewing back in the 60s, but much like many series from that time it now looks horribly campy and dates in many places.

Blazer

Technocentral wrote: »

I'd say the TV ranking is:

1. TOS (by a long shot). 9/10
2.TNG (brilliant overall apart from awful bloody characters like Q and Troi.) 7.5/10
3. Voyager, some fantastic episodes, great captain and secondary characters like Harry, Tuvok and Seven of Nine. 6.5/10
4. Deep Space Nine, (pretty good, 5/10).

Enterprise, awful generic sci fi. (2/10). Hope new one is a smart reboot like Battlestar, if so it could be great. But ifs just a bunch of pretty boys and girls taking part in frenetic action scenes aimed at the masses it will be a waste of time.

Ever since DS9 I was hoping they'd make one just after the creation of the Federation and cover the Federation-Klingon war. I suppose it would have been expensive with the CGI effects etc.
I really thought Voyager was awful, couldn't stand Janeway and for me the only standout one was the Doctor.
DS9 on the other hand had Garak, Quark,Bashir, Worf, Dukat to name but a few.

Also Starring LeVar Burton

Blazer wrote: »

Ever since DS9 I was hoping they'd make one just after the creation of the Federation and cover the Federation-Klingon war. I suppose it would have been expensive with the CGI effects etc.
I really thought Voyager was awful, couldn't stand Janeway and for me the only standout one was the Doctor.
DS9 on the other hand had Garak, Quark,Bashir, Worf, Dukat to name but a few.

Personally, I think Voyager improved greatly in season 4 when Seven of Nine was introduced. Herself and the Doctor were at least interesting characters - the rest of the Voyager crew were a little bit one dimensional unfortunately, which really held the show back.

Although it's hard to admit anything other than TOS or TNG is my favourite series (especially given my username - although it was a close toss up between Also Starring LeVar Burton and Who Mourns For Morn?), DS9 is actually my favourite of all of them, and it comes down to the sheer amount of well rounded main characters & supporting characters (Garak, Dukat, Rom, Nog, Morn, Martok etc) and actually having good overall story-arcs with the war against the Dominion-Cardassian alliance for example. Granted the earlier seasons were a bit hit and miss (you could argue the same for TNG though), but like a fine wine it improved with age.

Never understood the great hatred people seem to have for DS9 - is it because it's set mainly on a Space Station rather than travelling on a ship like the other shows?

Blazer

I hated it too at the start for that exact reason..but then it really hit its stride..
I must definitely sit down to watch it back to back.

Preset No.3

I think the biggest thing will be how it stacks up against other CBS shows and other shows in its timeslot. Ratings is king and if it doesnt pull in the numbers with non trek fans then it is doomed.

syklops

Also Starring LeVar Burton wrote: »

Never understood the great hatred people seem to have for DS9 - is it because it's set mainly on a Space Station rather than travelling on a ship like the other shows?

No, I could be wrong but DS9 had at times a little too much religion/spirituality in it, particularly from the Bajorans but other species as well. For every fabulous episode of DS9 and there were many, the title would appear and you go "Oh no, this sounds religion-y", or the intro starts with a Bajoran priestess doing something, and you consider skipping to the next one.

Also Starring LeVar Burton

syklops wrote: »

No, I could be wrong but DS9 had at times a little too much religion/spirituality in it, particularly from the Bajorans but other species as well. For every fabulous episode of DS9 and there were many, the title would appear and you go "Oh no, this sounds religion-y", or the intro starts with a Bajoran priestess doing something, and you consider skipping to the next one.

I can agree with that point. The Bajoran's really bugged me too - it took me a couple of seasons to warm to Kira even, but at the same time because religions plays such a huge part in our world, I can appreciate them having a highly religious/spiritual race of people as major players in the series - and to be fair there's only a handful of those episodes over the course of the 7 seasons. Sure I'd roll my eyes at a couple of episodes, but there were episodes of every Star Trek series that had episodes where it would begin and within 5 minutes you'd think (oh, it's one of those episodes, sigh!). Even with those low points though, DS9 had so much to offer as a series, that it is odd that so many people can't stand it. Fair enough, I understand the hardcore "TOS/TNG until we die" type trekkies who despise anything other than those two series, but there's so many people who seem to rate Voyager over DS9 and it just makes me wonder have those people really watched both shows properly...

For me, it's this way -

1) DS9
2) TNG
3) Voyager
4) Enterprise
5) TOS

What I loved about DS9 is that it had among the best cast of characters. And it was completely different - all the other series were about exploration, but that was about political intrigue. Gul Dukat is one of the best antagonists ST has ever seen, up there along Khan, in my opinion. And the Dominion war was just superb.

Voyager gets a lot of flack, but it had some of the best episodes that ST ever had. Year of Hell is, of course, among the top. Plus TNG had its own missteps.. remember they met the equivalent of intergalactic Travellers.