CBS planning a second STAR TREK series...which is also a prequel

CBS's Star Trek: Discovery finally starts airing in September and it'll be interesting to see how well the show does. The series has already made a strong profit from overseas sales (mostly through Netflix) before it even arrives on CBS All Access in the United States, so it will be interesting to see how well it does. However, not willing to let the grass grow below their feet, CBS are already planning a second new Star Trek series.

Anyone up for 10 episodes of Khan hanging out in a spaceship in a desert? Anyone?

This new idea is...a bit unnecessary. Nicholas Meyer, who has been providing writing and production assistance on Discovery, is revisiting arguably his greatest triumph - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - to plan a series (possibly a limited mini-series) exploring what happened to Khan and his band of genetically-engineered exiles on Ceti Alpha V during the fifteen years between the Original Series episode Space Seed and the events of the movie.

I should, of course, point out that The Wrath of Khan answered this pretty well: the guys and girls played chess a lot, read Moby Dick way too much, and a bunch of them died. And that's kind of it.

CBS, please listen. What most fans want is a new series set 20+ years after the events of TNG, DS9 and Voyager, really exploring the Final Frontier and setting up new characters and events that should have the chance to be as iconic as what has come before. This constant stream of reboots and prequels is unoriginal and denying a new generation of viewers the chance to get their own crew of characters to relate to. I suspect Discovery will be good and this new Meyer series will probably be good, but neither have the freedom to tell stories the way they may want, as both are handicapped by canon and continuity (or risk ignoring it and irritating fans, as the unwarranted changes to the Klingons have already shown). Let's see something new, cool and interesting.