According to startrek.com, a new Star Trek episodic series is coming to, well, not-TV in early 2017. The pilot will apparently air on CBS, but subsequent episodes will only be available through “CBS All Access,” their $6/month streaming service. It’s unclear as to whether this series will be in the new-movies continuity, the old-series continuity, or something else entirely.
From the people that brought you Scorpion!
But it’s new Star Trek!
But it’s just a gimmick to push their new online service!
But it’s new Star Trek!
We don’t know what it’s about yet!
But it’s…new…
…Someone hold me…
Update: [url=http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/star-trek-tv-series-works-828638]This article[/url] from the Hollywood Reporter absolutely fails to provide any additional information.
I like Trek and all but it’s not enough to make me buy into a streaming service for just one channel/distributor. It might have been enough to make me pick up Hulu though, but not a CBS Service.
Not an uncommon reaction where I’ve seen this discussed today. This feels very much like CBS trying to use the Star Trek name to try and ensure a success out of their online streaming service to me. Given the high overlap between the target audience and those likely to be well of aware of how to acquire shows through “other means” they’re going to have to offer a lot more than just Trek to ensure that people actually subscribe, I suspect.
As to the show itself, since we have very little details other than an implied return to the traditional exploration/world of the week premise of ToS and TNG, most probably set somewhere in the rebooted canon of the most recent movies. The first part is good, the latter part not so much, IMO – I’ll reserve judgement until CBS provide more details of the cast, production team and basic premise, but I’m still keeping my expectations pretty low.
The Trek universe has a lot of room for expansion. There are new life forms and new civilizations aplenty to visit on a new five year mission with a new crew. Alas, I don’t think anyone has the vision and the brass cojones needed to realize that universe in the way it deserves.
I read a synopsis once (30 seconds on Google turned up no references to it, so I may have imagined it) detailing the Trek universe at some point in the far future where all the races we knew from series past had morphed (in the way that real civilizations do). I think that the Klingons had become wandering warrior monks and the Romulans had joined the Federation, things of that nature. We now have two Star Trek universes from which to choose, do we stick with the original time-line, or follow the “Jim Kirk is the worst captain in history” movie-verse?
I have to say that I am slightly more interested in this than I am invested in the new Star Wars heresy (history will judge if it is all out blasphemy).
I am more hopeful for Star Wars. I’m a much larger Star Trek fan (as evidenced by my daughter, Majel,) but CBS is milking the brand in a bad way. They know that fans will watch any POS they slap the Star Trek name on. Disney could easily be accused of the same thing, but I think we’ve seen with Marvel and their own products that they know that to build a long time franchise you have to have a quality product. It may still all be chocolate and fluff with no real meat and potatoes, but it is Godiva chocolate, not Hershey’s.