Paramount have confirmed that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will conclude with a fifth season, which will consist of six instead of the normal ten episodes. The good news is that this is still some way off: Strange New Worlds' third season is only debuting on 17 July, with the fourth season in production.
Strange New Worlds only exists because of a fan campaign, after the characters were well-received in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery (2019). Delayed by the COVID pandemic, the show debuted in 2022 and attracted very positive reviews for its focus on standalone episodes and a lighter tone than Discovery, which had a much more critically mixed reception, as well as its casting and its focus on an ensemble. Season 2 (2023) was also well-received.
Season 3 is debuting over two years after the second season, but Paramount+ are keen to the get the next two seasons out as fast as possible, hoping to release Season 4 in 2026 and Season 5 in 2027.
The move comes after the ending of Discovery, Picard and both animated shows, Lower Decks and Prodigy. This will only leave one Star Trek series, the forthcoming Starfleet Academy, in production.
Admiral Picard receives a cry for help from a very old friend: Dr. Beverly Crusher, his former chief medical officer. Warned not to trust Starfleet with the distress call, Picard joins forces with old allies Will Riker and Seven of Nine to surreptitiously guide Seven's new ship, the USS Titan, to a rendezvous with Beverly. The information she shares reveals a danger to the very heart of the Federation, and the returning threat of two of Starfleet's greatest foes.
The old maxim that a Star Trek spin-off show doesn't really start getting good until its third season is, once again, proven correct. Picard's first two seasons had good ideas, solid supporting casts and, naturally, an iconic lead in Sir Patrick Stewart's Jean-Luc Picard, but they were also awash with poor and muddied characterisation, vaguely-defined enemies and variable, at best, writing.
The third and final season of Picard doesn't magically solve all of these problems, but it does make one huge commitment to draw in fans of The Next Generation: bringing back the entire cast of that show. Leaving the underwhelming film Nemesis as their last hurrah always felt a bit disappointing, so giving them another final adventure is a good idea...provided it's good, of course.
In some respects, the season makes some of the same mistakes as earlier ones. There's a lot of faffing around pursuing false leads before the real extent of the enemy threat becomes clear, and the show once again suffers from being built around mysteries. Mysteries are a fine, single genre of storytelling, but it feels like modern shows have drawn too many bad lessons from the likes of Lost in hyping up big mysteries and bigger reveals that almost never land, and Picard's final season spends a bit too long on setting up mysterious events, red herrings and false leads rather than engaging in proper storytelling. Particularly problematic is keeping the true scale of the enemy threat under wraps until the last couple of episodes of the series, meaning we get a bit too much wheel-spinning before that revelation and then we have to wrap up that story with almost indecent (if spectacular) haste.
But this season also makes some very good choices. There are distinct character arcs here, and Gates McFadden gets more to do in her first few episodes in this season then she arguably did in the entire seven years of TNG and four subsequent feature films. It's not just limited to the old regulars, with Voyager and Picard vet Jeri Ryan getting a nice arc as Seven of Nine, and Michelle Hurd getting a small but solid storyline as Raffi, the last actor surviving from Picard's completely original cast (the wonderful Orla Brady gets a couple of scenes in the first episode and is then unceremoniously ejected from the story). Newcomers Todd Stashwick, Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut and Ed Speleers also get some solid material as Captain Liam Shaw, Ensign Sidney La Forge and Jack respectively.
Arguably the MVP of the season goes to Jonathan Frakes as Captain Riker. Frakes was very good as Riker but had to grow into it (arguably not starting to really nail the character until TNG's second year and episodes like A Matter of Honor), and since TNG ended he has focused on directing and reportedly suffered anxiety before returning to the role since he had not acted for so long. However, he is outstanding, giving a warm and witty performance whether he's bouncing jokes off Worf, arguing with Picard over the correct course of action or engaging in romantic banter with his wife.
The season has been both praised and criticised for its evocation of nostalgia. In one sequence the crew visit the Starfleet Museum and get to see all of the surviving "hero ships" from previous Star Trek shows: the NX-01 from Enterprise, the USS Voyager from the titular show, Kirk's Enterprise-A from three of the original films, and even the time-travelling Klingon Bird-of-Prey from "the whale thing." Professor Moriarty from TNG shows up as a hologram sentry. The show tactically deploys the theme music from every previous Star Trek incarnation like weaponised emotions. The "good old days" are evoked, a lot. This risks being sappy, but the writing also finds actual reasons in the plot for this stuff. Rather than just saying, "hey, remember that Klingon Bird-of-Prey from San Francisco Harbor, that was cool, right?", its antiquated technology actually plays a key role in the plot. Rummaging through a ton of old artifacts in the Daystrom Institute Archive isn't just an excuse to wink at William Shatner's terrible Star Trek novels, but also provides the crew with an important piece of the puzzle.
In this way, Picard's final season manages to keep things balanced between fuzzy-nostalgia and the dramatic stakes of the unfolding story. It even manages to round off a bunch of story and character arcs left hanging from the original series in a relatively organic and interesting way (even if Picard's tendency to reintroduce a beloved side-character only to brutally murder them five minutes later remains fully intact). But it has to be said that the main storyline is a bit on the vague side. The enemy's plot feels uncharacteristically over-complicated and too reliant on Starfleet personnel holding the idiot ball en masse to really work, and there are canon and continuity plot holes you could comfortably steer the new Odyssey-class Enterprise-F through. For a show that's simultaneously making such a huge deal of continuity, there are some curious choices being made here on what old ideas to invoke and which to blatantly ignore.
Ultimately, this season ended up reminding me a lot of The Force Awakens. The plot is often held together with duct tape and clothes pegs. But a promising, young new cast and the steady hand of experienced veterans help paper over a lot of the problems, and effective use of nostalgia and returning characters makes you forgive a lot. The final season of Star Trek: Picard is not the smartest slice of Trek, but it also has a lot of heart, and it is fun in a way the previous two seasons very much were not. For parking your brain in neutral, chuckling at gag callbacks all the way to the start of TNG and cooing over some great action sequences, this is fairly solid entertainment, and it also makes a reasonable case for itself as a backdoor pilot for a new show focusing on the younger characters introduced in this season.
The third and final season of Star Trek: Picard (****) is streaming globally on Paramount+, and also in some territories on Amazon Prime, right now.
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Paramount have greenlit a new Star Trek series. Just days after confirming third and fifth seasons respectively for Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks, they have now confirmed a new Trek series altogether is in the offing.
Starfleet Academy will follow a group of Starfleet cadets as they come of age and uncover a threat to the Federation. There also indications that the show may feature legacy Star Trek characters as instructors at the Academy, either as recurring or regular characters.
Starfleet Academy does not have a confirmed time setting, as yet. A prior version of the show was actually in development set in the 32nd Century timeframe of Star Trek: Discovery's latter seasons, but it is unclear if this is still the plan, or the new show will be set in the time period of Star Trek: Picard or earlier.
No cast or crew has been announced yet, beyond current head-of-franchise Alex Kurtzman and Nancy Drew writer Noga Landau, who will serve as co-showrunners.
It's been a long road for this particular idea. Gene Roddenberry floated the idea of a Starfleet Academy show in the mid-1970s, featuring younger versions of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. The idea resurfaced during the Rick Berman era, although ultimately they preferred to periodically visit the Academy for single episodes rather than have a full show set there.
The show is anticipated to begin filming in 2024, probably for a 2025 debut.
The USS Discovery has been upgraded and integrated into the Starfleet of the 32nd Century. As the crew continue trying to adjust to life a thousand years into their future, they also face a new threat: a vast storm of energy, capable of destroying entire star systems. The Discovery crew try to discover the source of the storm and how to communicate with those who created it...if that is even possible.
Star Trek: Discovery is the show that has, for three seasons solid, given with one hand and taken away with the other. Exemplary casting, some great ideas and some great effects are constantly undercut by murky writing, chunky exposition, most character development taking place offscreen, and people constantly busting into tears for no immediately discernible reason, before the story nosedives towards its end into incoherence.
Season 3 saw a small but sustained uptick in quality. Pleasingly, Season 4 continues with that upward trajectory. We are presented with a huge, "proper SF" mystery which Discovery and her crew have to tackle through scientific research and careful deliberation, as well as diplomacy when the scale of the problem becomes clear. The result is a break with the tendency of the first three seasons to resort to firing phasers and solving problems with explosions. There are still some action beats, but these are more restrained and more Star Trek-y, for lack of a better term, than previously. Early episodes dealing with the mysterious artefact and attempts to penetrate or disable it recall Star Trek: The Motion Picture's dealings with the alien cloud V'Ger.
The show makes better use of its ensemble cast. Prior seasons had been very firmly "the Michael Burnham Show" but this season brings other characters to the fore. Saru gets a new role and a potential relationship, Tilly gets a new job (better-suited to her than her role last season), Stamets and Culber have much less intense issues to deal with, and Booker gets his own storyline separate from Michael's. Even the lesser-known bridge crew get a few more scenes in the sun this season, and more of a sense of Discovery as a community which has often been achingly missing in prior episodes.
As the season unfolds, it develops several simultaneously-developing storylines. Diplomatic relations with United Earth and Vulcan form key parts of the story, with entire episodes dedicated to overcoming diplomatic hurdles without so much as a phaser in sight. It's like watching a stronger 1989 episode of TNG all over again. There's also the attempts to find and then make contact with the aliens, which tap into the spirit of 2016 movie Arrival, and a subplot revolving around new character Dr. Ruon Tarka (a splendid performance by The Expanse's Shawn Doyle) who becomes something of an antagonist, but an unusually fleshed-out one. Discovery has struggled more than most shows in making a story arc justify a full season, but here they succeed, dividing the season nicely into beats in the larger story.
Even making Michael Captain works much better than expected. As a constantly mutinous and insubordinate officer, her character never really made sense. As a more cooperative and instead "nontraditional" captain, recalling the off-kilter inventiveness of Captain Kirk, the character suddenly comes to life in a way she didn't in prior seasons. It also helps that she's now only whispering about a tenth of her lines rather than half of them.
Problems still remain: murky and unclear CGI, some rather unlikely coincidences and plot contrivances, the show suddenly making a big deal of characters you don't really know anything about because they've never had much development, and some occasional leaps in plot logic. But these are constrained and indeed minor compared to the previous seasons.
Season 4 of Star Trek: Discovery (****) is easily the best season of the show to date, with an intriguing central storyline which unfolds in a compelling manner, with solid characterisation and a renewed dedication to Star Trek ideals that was lacking in the first few seasons. The show retains some of its earlier problems, but significantly moderated. It may have taken a long time, but Discovery is finally starting to realise its potential. The season is available now in the USA via Paramount+ and on various platforms in other countries.
Paramount have renewed the remaining two of their three live-action Star Trek shows. Discovery will be returning for a fifth season, whilst Strange New Worlds has had a second season confirmed before its first season even debuts. Animated show Lower Decks will also be returning for a fourth season. Picardwas renewed for a third season back in September and production is already underway.
All three shows have also had their launch dates confirmed: the final batch of episodes from Discovery's fourth season will start airing on 10 February, whilst Picard's second season will launch on 3 March. Strange New Worlds will then debut on 5 May. In addition, animated show Lower Decks is expected to return with its third season in the summer, with CG-animated show Prodigy already working on a second season, expected to debut late this year or early next.
Paramount+, the rebranded version of CBS All Access, has enjoyed significant success with its streaming service, last year reporting they were two years ahead of schedule with their expected customer base. Much of the service's success has been pinned on Star Trek, with the streamer inking a $160 million deal to keep Star Trek showrunner Alex Kurtzman on board until the end of 2026. The only other long-term success on the network is The Good Fight. However, the streamer is diversifying with a larger slate of drama and comedy projects, with the mega-budgeted Halo TV series due to launch in the coming months, as well as a Frasier sequel series in late 2022 or 2023.
The streamer is also making the bold choice to go international. Paramount+ will be launching overseas versions of its content in several dozen countries starting in the Spring, in some areas in conjunction with local streaming services. Controversially with the fanbase, Paramount has started pulling its Star Trek content from Netflix and Amazon Prime ahead of the move.
The multiple renewals also mean that Star Trek is catching up on Doctor Who in terms of the number of seasons confirmed in a franchise. Doctor Who has aired 39 seasons since its its inception in 1963, with a 40th already confirmed for 2023, as well as four seasons of spinoff show Torchwood, one of Class and five of The Sarah Jane Adventures, for a total of 50 seasons. These renewals will put Star Trek on 46 seasons.
Some rumours are stating that the third season of Picard will be last one, due to Sir Patrick Stewart's age (Stewart turns 82 in July), and once it ends it will be replaced by one of two new Star Trek series in development behind the scenes, a long-gestating series about Section 31 starring Michelle Yeoh, and a series focusing on the Next Generation fan-favourite character of Worf. No official confirmation of this has been given.
In addition to returning castmembers Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike, Rebecca Romijn as Number One and Ethan Peck as Spock, the series will star Celia Rose Gooding as Cadet Uhura, Jess Bush as Nurse Christine Chapel and Babs Olusanmokun as Dr. M'Benga, all of whom appeared previously on the original Star Trek series (with different actors, obviously). Additional actors include Bruce Horak as an Andorian named Hemmer, Melissa Navia as Lt. Erica Ortegas and Christina Chong as La'an Noonien-Singh.
Strange New Worlds is set on the USS Enterprise (OG Constitution-class, or at least the mildly-reimagined version which debuted in Discovery) some time after the events of Discovery's second season and some years before the events of the original Star Trek. According to both cast and crew, Strange New Worlds will be much more episodic than other modern Star Trek shows, focusing more on the original mission of exploring new worlds and getting into new adventures every week.
Strange New Worlds is expected to debut on Paramount+ in early-to-mid 2022.
Paramount have announced the launch dates for their next raft of Star Trek series.
In addition to Season 2 of Lower Decks, currently airing on Paramount+ in the USA and Amazon worldwide, the first season of Star Trek: Prodigy debuts on 28 October.
The new series, the first Star Trek show to be completely 3D CG-rendered, returns to the Delta Quadrant for the first time since the conclusion of Star Trek: Voyager in 2001. The series, set five years after the end of Voyager, features an all-alien, non-Starfleet cast of characters who stumble across the USS Protostar, an experimental Starfleet vessel despatched to the Delta Quadrant. The vessel is abandoned for reasons unknown, until it is found by a group of young aliens. The ship comes equipped with an Emergency Training Hologram, based on Admiral Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew reprising her role from Voyager), who helps them get to grips with piloting the vessel.
Prodigy is swiftly followed by Season 4 of Star Trek: Discovery, which will debut on 18 November, marking the first time since 1999 that two Star Trek series will air new episodes simultaneously (when the seventh and final season of Deep Space Nine overlapped with the fifth season of Star Trek: Voyager). The new season of Discovery sees the crew adjusting to life in the 32nd Century as they help the Federation and the Milky Way galaxy rebuild after the cataclysmic event known as the Burn, only to encounter a new anomaly which could threaten everything.
Finally, the second season of Star Trek: Picard will debut in February 2022. In the new season, a returning Q (an also-returning John de Lancie) apparently changes time into a dystopian nightmare, as part of a test for Picard. Picard and his colleagues utilise knowledge from a captive Borg Queen (Anna Wersching) to time travel back to the 21st Century and repair the damage done by Q.
Picard has been renewed for a third season, alongside rumours this may be the final season since Sir Patrick Stewart turns 82 next year and Paramount+ is developing several more shows with a view to one of them replacing Picard once it runs its course.
Alex Kurtzman, the showrunner-in-chief of Paramount+'s Star Trek franchise, has extended his deal with the streamer for another five and a half years. Kurtzman will continue to create, produce and spearhead Star Trek shows for Paramount until the end of 2026, in a deal worth $160 million.
Kurtzman began his association with Star Trek as a producer and writer on the JJ Abrams-directed movies Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness (2013). He was recruited by new streamer CBS All Access (as it was then) to help Bryan Fuller and his team helm the first Star Trek television series in over a decade, Star Trek: Discovery (2017-present). Fuller left during pre-production, reportedly over budget and creative issues, and Kurtzman was promoted to showrunner. With Star Trek: Discovery a huge hit for the nascent streamer, Kurtzman has overseen the franchise's expansion to incorporate multiple spin-off shows: Picard, Lower Decks and the to-debut-shortly Prodigy and Strange New Worlds. CBS and Paramount merged last year, with CBS All Access being rebranded Paramount+. It seems that the new corporate overlords are happy enough with the franchise's popularity to retain Kurtzman's services.
However, Kurtzman has proved a divisive figure with long-term Trek fans, due to a relaxed attitude to continuity and a perceived focus on cutting-edge visual effects over character. A repeated criticism is that major character development too often happens off-screen, and sometimes audiences are asked to care about the fate of a background character who's barely uttered a line of dialogue on-screen. His plots are often incoherent and muddled. However, some of his work has been better received; Lower Decks, in particular, has attracted critical and fan acclaim for its respectful-but-fun take on Star Trek's mythos. It also sounds like Kurtzman is adopting less of a direct role in each show to focus more on the business of running the whole franchise, with individual writers and showrunners much more responsible for each show. It sounds like he's becoming more like Rick Berman once Deep Space Nine and Voyager launched, entrusting shows to individual writers whilst making more big-picture, financial decisions behind the scenes.
It also sounds like active development has resumed on several projects previously put on hold. Kurtzman had indicated that five shows was a "sweet spot" for Star Trek and he didn't want to put another one on the air until one of the existing shows - probably Picard, since Patrick Stewart (who recently turned 81) is unwilling to play the role for a long run - reached a natural conclusion. However, the article suggests that they have resumed development on the Michelle Yeoh-starring Section 31 and an unusual new take on Star Trek, focusing on the Next Generation/Deep Space Nine character of Worf.
According to ill-informed YouTube channels, Kurtzman has continuously been on the edge of being fired and his shows cancelled for the past four years. No doubt they will continue to report that this will be the case.
2380. The California-class USS Cerritos is a Starfleet vessel specialising in second contact: turning up to fill out the paperwork and pick up the busywork that more prestigious ships don't have time for as they are on their way to their next adventure. A group of "lower decks" ensigns on Beta Shift are assigned to the most tedious jobs on the ship, but find themselves becoming indispensable to the operation of the vessel.
When a new, animated Star Trek series was announced a couple of years back, some serious grimacing took place among the fanbase. Alex Kurtzman's resurrection of the franchise with the live-action series Star Trek: Discovery had been a mixed bag, at best, and the fear that the new show might be Rick & Morty with a Star Trek rebranding was high. Rick & Morty head writer Mike McMahan being put in charge of the project did little to alleviate those fears.
Fortunately, those fears have been proven groundless. Star Trek: Lower Decks is, genuinely, a fresh and enjoyable take on the Star Trek mythos whilst also paying its dues to the shows and movies that have come before it. Whilst Discovery and Picard have served up some solid instalments and had good ideas, they have also more frequently felt like shows whose writers have never watched a single episode of Star Trek in their lives, serving up generic and all-too-often lifeless adventures which are a disservice to their talented casts. Lower Decks avoids these pitfalls.
There is still much here that the Star Trek hardcore purist will recoil from - the very idea of a comedy series taking place in this universe is enough for that - but on almost every level Lower Decks is a winner. The writing is sharp and funny, the storylines benefitting from the shorter, more focused run-times and, despite the gags, the tone and atmosphere is much more in line with The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine (shows which managed to frequently produce, very successfully, comedy episodes like Qpid and In the Cards).
Most episodes feature classic Trek set-ups, such as the crew clashing with an alien race who have claimed salvage rights over Federation technology or a cultural misunderstanding leads to hostility with a race the Federation is trying to diplomatically win over. The twist here is that the adventures are not told from the POV of the pioneering and brave bridge crew of the Federation flagship, but from the perspective of the lowest-ranking four ensigns on a ship dedicated to paperwork and bureaucracy. The USS Cerritos is an old, ill-maintained vessel which has the dirty job of popping along to planets after much more glamorous vessels have already made first contact and headed off to their next adventure.
The core castmembers are excellent: Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome, Space Force), an experienced officer with good instincts who has been promoted several times, but demoted again due to her irreverent attitude; Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid, The Boys), a stickler for the rules who has excellent book knowledge but is inexperienced in the field; D'Vana Tendi (Noël Wells, Master of None), an enthusiastic fan of Starfleet with an irrepressible appetite for adventure; and Sam Rutherford (Eugene Cordero, The Good Place) a human engineer adjusted to life with a new cybernetic implant. This foursome is key to most of the adventures, either together or divided into two teams (usually Mariner/Boimler and Tendi/Rutherford). A subplot also usually follows the bridge crew of the Cerritos as they also try to deal with whatever crisis is going on, usually with less success.
The upstairs-downstairs dynamic between the bridge crew and the lower deck officers is entertainingly handled and used as a way to comment on Star Trek tropes. So yes, the show confirms that "most" people use the holodeck for sex, not for playing poker with Stephen Hawking and Isaac Newton, and that whilst some officers might like to do a jazz or classical recital in the bar, some other crewmen want to form a 1970s punk rock band instead. The show also reveals that the adventures of the most powerful and advanced ships sometimes leak out to the rest of the fleet, Starfleet Security be damned, leading to confused crewmen on other ships learning about Lore teaming up with the Borg or Dr. Crusher having a relationship with some kind of space ghost.
There is a tension in Lower Decks between self-referential humour for hardcore Star Trek fans (the sort of people who jump up and cry "WE NEED ENGINES TO MAKE US GO!" when the Pakleds show up) and making the stories and humour work for people who've never seen an episode of Star Trek in their life. I suspect people in the latter category may occasionally be left behind by rapid-fire references to the the joggers of Rubicun who murder people for walking on the grass, cameo appearances by Q and debates over the racial stereotyping of the Ferengi (a reference to the heated, real-life debate about the Ferengi being racial stereotypes of Jews or not). But the show also does a good job of rooting the conflict of any episode in contemporary issues related to characterisation: Boimler's perfectionism, Mariner's fun-loving hyper-competence being undermined by her lack of confidence in pursuing a Starfleet career and so forth. This allows episodes to stand alone even when they are fair to brimming with references to quasi-obscure episodes of a TV show that aired the better part of forty years ago (or even to the original series more than fifty years ago).
Aside from the self-referential tics, there aren't too many negatives. A few of the episode premises are stronger than others, and a few gags threaten to feel tired: a holodeck version of Microsoft's Clippy feels like a gag unearthed by archaeologists and carefully chiselled free, although it does then result in one of the show's finest, extended comedic sequences, so it's hard to be too down on that. The show also makes the Discovery/Picard mistake of feeling a little too reliant on bringing in characters and events from other Trek shows to save the day rather than letting our heroes stand alone. These minor issues are offset by the entertaining tone of adventure and exploration.
The first season of Star Trek: Lower Decks (****½) is easily the finest slice of Trek to emerge since the 2005 hiatus, and the most enjoyable season of Star Trek to air this century. With breezy writing, fun characters and a comedic tone set over genuine Star Trek ideals, it shades its recent live-action siblings. The season is available to watch now on CBS All Access in the USA and on Amazon Prime in much of the rest of the world. A second season is currently in production and should air later this year.
The USS Discovery has been propelled forwards to the 32nd Century as part of a move to hide important technical data that threatens their timeline. Upon arrival they discover that the galaxy is in ruins, the result of a disaster known as "the Burn" which made dilithium inert and thus destroying every ship with an active warp core at the time. The Federation has fallen from more than 350 member civilisations to a bare handful, and is facing a threat from a competing alliance known as the Emerald Chain, which believes in money, slavery and advancement through struggle, concepts the Federation left behind a millennia earlier. As the crew of the Discovery try to settle into this bleak new world, they realise their Spore Drive gives them the ability to do what no-one else has done before: to discover the origin of the Burn and help restore the Federation to its former glory.
The firsttwoseasons of Star Trek: Discovery were an exercise in frustration: superb actors, occasionally really good ideas and tremendous production values constantly being let down by spotty plotting, nonsensical scripts and character arcs that we are often told are happening but of which we see little to no evidence on-screen.
Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery is, unfortunately, more of the same, although it does emerge as probably the series' strongest season by a nose. It has a terrific setup, with the Discovery and its crew emerging into a genuine brave new world and having to find out what is going on, and some superb new production design, with the Federation and non-Federation starships of the 32nd Century being a battery of impressive, intriguing ideas, such as ships made of programmable matter which can switch size and shape in an instant which feel like they've come out of an Iain M. Banks novel.
Early episodes in the season include some of Discovery's best, bolstered by promising new additions to the cast such as David Ajala as Cleveland Booker and Blu del Barrio as Adira Tal. There's some genuinely interesting worldbuilding and it turns out that removing Discovery's previously grating tendency to contradict well-established Star Trek canon allows the show to breathe freer and more enjoyably. We even get some moments of genuine character development, such as Saru hosting a dinner for his bridge crew in which we get to see how what's happened has impacted on them. Such a scene would be de rigueur on an episode of The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine, but Discovery has so rarely bothered with such scenes that seeing one is genuinely surprising, and welcome.
By the latter half of the season, though, the show is starting to slip backwards to type. We get a lengthy new visit to the Mirror Universe which no-one asked for or wanted, and achieves little rather than making us remember that Michelle Yeoh's character is a mass, mass-murderer who still hasn't faced justice or redemption. The show then beams her off into her own spin-off series through the most contrived means possible. The three-part season finale is a morass of murky, confused CGI, confused character motivations that seem to contradict themselves from one scene to the next and wholly unearned praise and promotions. It does prove superior to the previous season finales though, particularly when the reason for the Burn is revealed not to be completely nonsensical and a few strong ideas are treated well (such as the notion of someone who's spent their entire life on the holodeck and doesn't understand what reality is).
The series does advance a few previous annoying tics and makes them even more grating: characters burst into tears several times an episode, often for no discernible reason; the audience is asked again to care about the departure of a regular bridge crewman despite that crewman receiving virtually no prior character development and mainly being a glorified extra (Commander Nhan what now?); some regular crewmembers vanish inexplicably mid-season without a trace (where did Lt. Nilsson go?); and some brand new crewmembers suddenly show up out of nowhere and are treated as if they've always been there (who is Lt. Ina and where did she come from?).
This season also features possibly the single most inexplicable shot in the 55-year history of the entire Star Trek franchise, when a battle takes place in a turbolift and it's revealed that the turbolifts are moving around some kind of weird, other-dimensional space which is considerably larger than the entirety of Discovery itself. Previous seasons had individual shots which were like this (including one on the Enterprise in Discovery Season 2) but they could be dismissed as one-off oddities, but this was a whole, extended action sequence taking place in this utterly surreal space. I have absolutely no idea what the hell was going on in this sequence or where it was taking place, since it clearly could not be on the ship (crewmen even point at a schematic of the turbolift system in the episode and it shows ordinary narrow tubes, as you'd expect).
An additional character oddity is Sonequa Martin-Green whispering half her lines for dramatic emphasis, something I don't remember her doing in previous seasons but now does continuously, which required constant volume adjustments because everyone else is speaking perfectly normally. As an acting choice that contradicts previous characterisation, this is the weirdest I've seen on television since Littlefinger started speaking with a Batman voice in Season 3 of Game of Thrones.
Against that, Season 3 of Discovery does a fair few things right. Doug Jones' spell as captain is superb, with him investing Saru with real feeling, warmth and a continuing sense of otherworldliness. He is easily the best actor and best character on the show, and the season's focus on him is a great choice. The accomplished Anthony Rapp also has much more to do with Stamets after a low-key second season. Despite the whispering issue, Martin-Green is at her best this season and is helped by Burnham having more of a discernible, actual character arc which makes a virtue of her previous terrible choices. The revisiting of old races like the Trill and the Romulan-Vulcan alliance is well-handled. Osyraa is the best enemy the show has thrown up so far, a relatively petty empire-building villain who has unexpected depths, and makes for a reasonable bad guy (especially when she turns out to have a few laudable qualities). The season also arguably achieves its goal of really putting the Federation against the wall and interrogating its values and finding that they still hold true. The weakened Federation rejecting a chance for peace that comes with too many caveats and concessions to a mass-murderer is a politically weak move but a morally strong one, and is laudable.
The result is, yet again, a season (***½) which has a lot of strengths which make the show watchable, and a lot of grating weaknesses. After three seasons Discovery should be a lot better than this, and it's a shame it isn't. It also doesn't help that Discovery has serious competition: The Mandalorian and The Expanse are comprehensively, across-the-board much better shows, and even Discovery's own animated spin-off, Lower Decks, is cleverer and has a lot better writing. But the show is at least showing signs of progress (albeit haltingly slowly) and getting better. The show airs on CBS All Access in the United States and Netflix in most overseas territories.
CBS has released the first teaser trailer for Star Trek: Picard. And immediately withdrawn it. They have released a nice poster though:
The story follows a retired Admiral Jean-Luc Picard (Sir Patrick Stewart) eighteen years after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis and fifteen years after he led a huge rescue mission with unforeseen consequences that led to Picard quitting Starfleet. Even Starfleet are uncertain why he did this. Since then Picard has been apparently working at his family vineyard in France (last seen in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Family). Circumstances bring Picard back into the Starfleet fold.
According to some reports, the rescue mission was an attempt by the Federation to help the people of the Romulan Empire due to the obliteration of the Romulan homeworld (as noted in the events of the 2009 movie Star Trek), the first time the events of the alternate "Abramsverse" or "Kelvin Timeline" have had a major impact on the Prime Timeline of the core Star Trek universe.
In a particularly geeky detail, this suggests that the official Star Trek timeline will have to be rewritten; the current timeline has the events of Star Trek: Nemesis taking place in 2379 whilst the destruction of Romulus is listed as occurring in 2387. The plot summary suggests that only three years elapse between the two events, presumably putting the destruction of Romulus in 2382 and setting this new series in 2400, bringing Star Trek into the 25th Century (or almost, depending on how you measure it).
Star Trek: Picard started shooting last month and will consist of 10 episodes, at least two of which will be directed by Stewart's old running-mate Jonathan Frakes. The Pulitzer and Hugo Award-winning author Michael Chabon is working on the series as a producer and writer.
The series is expected to debut on CBS All Access in the United States in late 2019.
In surprising news, the series will air on Amazon Prime worldwide, rather than Netflix (who currently air Star Trek: Discovery).
UPDATE: CBS have apparently removed the trailer they themselves put on YouTube. Curious.
CBS All Access has commissioned a new Star Trek: The Next Generation sequel project starring Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard. This will mark the first time that Stewart has returned to the role since the film Star Trek: Nemesis in 2002.
Patrick Stewart with Star Trek: Discovery star Sonequa Martin-Green.
Although firm plans have not yet been confirmed - such as the name of the series and if it will be an ongoing series or a one-off mini-series - CBS and Stewart himself have confirmed that the project is moving forward. The new series will be set approximately 20 years after the end of Star Trek: Nemesis and will catch up with Picard's situation at that point in time. This will also be the first project to revisit the Next Generation "era" (which also includes spin-off shows Deep Space Nine and Voyager) since Nemesis.
Stewart has indicated that Picard will no longer be a captain, which is quite likely as Stewart is now 78 and, assuming the new series is set exactly 20 years after Nemesis in the year 2399, Picard would be 94 (humans in the Star Trek universe live significantly longer than now). Previous Star Trek novels and TV episodes featuring glimpses of the future have suggested that Picard might have been promoted to Admiral, served in a mentorship or leadership capacity at Starfleet Command and then become a Federation Ambassador, or possibly left Starfleet to pursue his love of archaeology.
It is also unknown if other Next Generation actors may appear in the new series, although Jonathan Frakes (who played Commander Riker) is involved in the new Star Trek projects at CBS All Access as a director, and may return for this new series.
According to Stewart, the writers haven't yet produced a script and they are still at the brainstorming stage. On that basis we may not see this new series air until 2020.
CBS is planning multiple new Star Trek TV projects after inking a $25 million deal with producer Alex Kurtzman to effectively take control of the TV arm of the franchise.
First up, Kurtzman has becomeStar Trek: Discovery's sole showrunner after writer-producers Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts were fired for alleged bullying and unprofessional behaviour in the writer's room. This shouldn't affect production of Discovery, which has filmed five episodes of its second season with the bulk of the writing for the season already complete. Discovery is due to return to CBS All Access at the start of 2019.
CBS are also considering four additional projects. Already in development is a fresh take on the long-mooted Starfleet Academy idea, this time fronted by Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz (Runaways). Nicholas Meyer (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) is also developing a mini-series which will focus on the life of iconic Star Trek villain Khan Noonian Singh.
An animated series is also under consideration, but more interesting is another live action mini-series is planned, which is rumoured will be a sequel to the Next Generation/Deep Space Nine/Voyager era and may focus on Jean-Luc Picard, with Patrick Stewart being courted to return to the role. Stewart has never ruled out returning to the franchise and may be open to the idea, depending on the script. Stewart's last appearance as Picard was in the 2002 movie Star Trek: Nemesis, although he did return in 2006 to voice an appearance in the video game Star Trek: Legacy.
It's possible that some of these projects may air on CBS All Access and others on CBS itself.
The first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery have aired in the US and are now available on Netflix in most other countries. Here's my thoughts after watching both episodes.
CAUTION: SPOILERS FOR BOTH EPISODES
First up, the first two episodes, The Vulcan Hello and Battle at the Binary Stars, are a single two-hour episode, and really should have been presented as such. Dividing the two episodes doesn't help either half (and shutting the second episode behind a paywall in the US is a really bad idea). Secondly, the two episodes combined are a prologue to the rest of the series. We know that the premise of Star Trek: Discovery is that it will cover the adventures of the USS Discovery during a time of renewed Federation/Klingon hostilities, ten years before the events of the original series. These first two episodes establish the reason for the renewal of hostilities, but the Discovery itself and Captain Lorca (Jason Isaacs) are both MIA, which is a weird choice. At the end of these two hours we may have gotten to know a couple of the characters but we really don't know how the series itself will play out week-by-week.
Instead the two episodes focus strongly on Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), a Starfleet officer who had been been raised on Vulcan after her parents were murdered in a Klingon border skirmish. Burnham is a mass of contradictions, her human emotions straining against Vulcan logical training and conditioning, which leads to a couple of bad choices which stain her reputation. Burnham is the executive officer of the USS Shenzhou, serving under Captain Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), who has mentored Burnham extensively and considers her now ready to step up as a captain in her own right, just before a crisis gives her an opportunity to show those skills...and she fails. The two-parter ends with Burnham being court-martialed for mutiny and imprisoned.
There's a lot to unpack here and a full review will have to wait until the season (or at least the first half, which is airing as a discrete mini-season with a break over Christmas) is complete. It's a brave idea to show such a flawed central character in Star Trek and have them disgraced and having made several bad calls before the pilot is over. It's even odder to have them making those decisions for stupid reasons. Sarek reveals that the Vulcans would attack Klingon ships on sight, attacking with overwhelming force until they had earned the Klingons respect. With the Shenzhou already outgunned and then, seconds later, massively outnumbered by the Klingon reinforcements, this option - logical under other circumstances - is clearly not viable, but Burnham pursues it regardless of the change in circumstance. I'm hoping this is a well-thought out character flaw - Burnham's need to win Vulcan respect results in her pursuing courses of action through dogma which even Vulcans would reject - rather than bad writing, but I am not hopeful on that point.
Performance-wise, the episode is a strong success. Doug Jones is exceptional as Lt. Commander Saru and Martin-Green gives an excellent performance, especially compared to her less-developed role on The Walking Dead. Michelle Yeoh is, of course, utterly superb. The Klingon actors fare less well: the new Klingon makeup is incredibly restrictive and inhibits emoting. The need for all the Klingons to speak Klingon all the time also massively restricts their performance. Whilst the TNG-era Klingons could be theatrical and OTT, they at least got across their passion and the actors could go to town with the roles. The Klingon actors here might be doing exceptional work, but with both the make-up and language choice constraining them, we can't really tell. This is something they need to address moving forwards, otherwise the Klingons are going to be a pretty tedious enemy.
Effects-wise the show is quite impressive, with tons of ambitious tracking shots and full-on space battles. Things aren't as hectic and nonsensical as with the Abrams movies and some of the shots are breathtaking. However, there's less attention paid to things like strategy in the space battles, which devolve into lots of ships flying around firing at things randomly. Ship design could also be better: the Shenzhou is derivative of earlier designs (particularly the NX-01 Enterprise and Akira) and the Klingons are a baffling mish-mash of random designs which don't follow very logically on from established Klingon designs.
Discovery's connections with the rest of the Star Trek canon are questionable: Spock having an adopted human sister he never once mentioned ever seems...unlikely. The Shenzhou looks more advanced than Picard's Enterprise-D, let alone the Constitution-class Enterprise which (according to the timeline) is already in service at this point in Star Trek history (with Spock on board) under Captain Pike. And the less said about the awkward new Klingon design the better.
As the two-parter draws to a close, it has certainly set up an interesting paradigm that is worth exploring further. In terms of effects, casting and performances the show is very promising, but the writing needs to be better, the characterisation more coherent and the show really needs to start paying attention to the canon and stop trying to change things just for the sake of change (if you're going to do that, why even make a Star Trek show in the first place?). Based on this evidence, Discovery still has it all to play for and The Expanse is in no danger of losing its title as "Best Space Opera Show Currently on Air" just yet.
Star Trek: Discovery airs every Sunday on CBS All Access in the States and every Monday on Netflix in most of the rest of the world.
Bryan Fuller has stepped down as the senior executive producer and showrunner of Star Trek: Discovery. The surprising news has broken amidst reports of growing concerns at CBS about the production schedule for the show.
Originally Star Trek: Discovery was due to start filming early last month to air in January. This schedule was already ambitious, so when it was announced that the debut date was being dropped back to May 2017, it was hardly surprising. However, more surprising was the news that shooting has been delayed until November and the lack of any casting announcements. It has since transpired that many secondary and supporting roles have indeed been cast and set construction in Toronto is well underway, but Fuller and his team have struggled to find a lead actress.
The news cites Fuller's simultaneous showrunning work on American Gods for Starz. This was supposed to have wrapped up a few weeks ago, allowing Fuller to focus on Star Trek whilst his co-producers on American Gods oversaw post-production. It instead appears that Fuller has remained very hands-on with that show. And on top of that it's also been announced that Fuller is going to be helming a relaunch of Amazing Stories for NBC.
Producers Alex Kurtzman, Gretchen Berg and Aaron Herberts are stepping up as co-showrunners. Fuller will continue to be involved as a producer and writer.
Fuller had previously said that helming a Star Trek show would be his dream job, which may leave some fans questioning why he didn't commit to it fully and instead took on a new, full-time project as well.
CBS now hopes to make casting announcements for Star Trek: Discovery soon and begin shooting in the next few weeks.
Nerd World Report have a lengthy interview with Bryan Fuller, the producer/showrunner behind both Starz's American Gods and CBS's Star Trek: Discovery.
Fuller packs in a fair bit of info from both shows, including:
American Gods
The first, nine-episode season will cover roughly a quarter of Neil Gaiman's novel. A major and infamous event involving the goddess Bilquis will be in Episode 1.
Bryan Fuller read the novel of American Gods about a year after it was originally published, so was a fan of the book a long time before the TV show was conceived.
Star Trek: Discovery
The show opens with a two-part episode. Part 1 is co-written by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman and Part 2 is written by Nicholas Meyer.
The main character is nicknamed "Number One" in honour of Majel Barrett's character from the original Star Trek pilot, The Cage, but isn't exactly the same character.
It's not fully decided yet if the show will have a totally new score or will pay tribute to music from previous series.
Originally the series was conceived as being able to take place in either the original (or "Prime") timeline or the Abramsverse (aka "Kelvin Timeline"). Kurtzman and Fuller settled on the Prime timeline because it meant they didn't have to track what was going on in the movies and vice versa (although I suspect the legal issues played their part as well).
Both shows are being shot in Toronto, with American Gods wrapping up production shortly and Star Trek: Discovery now in pre-production. Both shows are expected to air in early 2017.
Executive producer and showrunner Bryan Fuller has confirmed that Star Trek: Discovery will be set about ten years before the time of Kirk, Spock and company. It will be a time when the Federation is still exploring new parts of the galaxy, when the Klingons are still hostile and when no-one's heard from the Romulans for ninety years. Other Trek staple species like the Cardassians, Ferengi and Borg are still decades away from being contacted.
Great, I guess? Discovery will be the third Star Trek project in a row - after the 2001-04 TV show Star Trek: Enterprise and the new alternate-continuity movies launched in 2009 - to go back in time and be a prequel or alternate take on stories we've already seen. And it's getting a bit stale, to be honest.
Star Trek is fundamentally about pushing things forward and doing new things. No-one is going to argue that the triple punch of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager (aka the 24th Century series) did exhaust an enormous amount of story possibilities as well as building up some complex continuity over the course of fourteen years, but a new Star Trek series set twenty or fifty years after them - effectively a Next Next Generation - would dispense with such issues as well as tipping its hat at what came before and allowing bold writers to chart out completely different concepts. Bryan Fuller's Star Trek: Federation concept, which depicted a faltering and weak Federation about to collapse and being reinspired by the adventures of a new USS Enterprise commanded by a distant descendant of James T. Kirk, was cheesy as hell but at least it allowed for the possibility of exploring new worlds and doing new things.
This isn't to say that Discovery will be a bad show. I'd be surprised if it was, with the likes of Fuller and Nicholas Meyer writing episodes, and the 13 episode run should allow for tighter storytelling with less filler and space-anomaly-of-the-week episodes. But it's also going to be constrained in its storytelling by concerns over continuity and we know that nothing is really going to get shaken up. It'll be Star Trek boldly going exactly where it's been before and that's really not cutting it anymore. But hopefully, if Discovery is a big success, we'll see another show that takes the much-needed leap forwards into the 25th Century and delivers to us something that really is fresh, interesting and new.
More interesting is the idea that the "main character" will be a lieutenant commander on the Discovery and the main cast focus and dynamic won't be the traditional bridge crew setup. Fuller also confirmed there would be more aliens, the show would feature robots and would also be inspired by a key event referenced in the original series but not shown. The only incident which might apply is the destruction of the USS Farragut, when a young Lt. Kirk escaped from a space monster that killed his captain and most of his crew. However, that seems to contradict Fuller's stance that there won't be any original series characters in Discovery, at least to start with.
Star Trek: Discovery debuts in January 2017 on CBS All Access in the United States, on SPACE in Canada and on Netflix in most of the rest of the world.
Star Trek: Discovery, the new Star Trek TV series that will launch in January, has already started generating a profit for CBS. Which is pretty good going considering not a single frame of footage has been shot for it yet (discounting some CG test shots released at the weekend).
Hollywood accounting is bizarre and obscure at the best of times, but this is an extreme example. CBS has pre-sold the show to Space in Canada and to Netflix in pretty much the rest of the world. Combined with a recent bump in subscribers to CBS All Access (where the show will debut), taking it over two million subscribers, this has made the show profitable. It is currently in pre-production in Toronto with filming next expected to start until September.
As part the announcement, CBS also confirmed that Season 1 of the show will consist of thirteen episodes.
CBS have confirmed that their new Star Trek series will be called Star Trek: Discovery. The new series will follow a mission involving the USS Discovery (NCC-1031), a Federation starship, and will be set in the "Prime" timeline (i.e. the same timeline and continuity as the original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager).
Executive producer Bryan Fuller would not confirm precisely when in the timeline the show would be set. He previously shot down a rumour that the show would be set between Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and Star Trek: The Next Generation and suggested that characters and actors from the previous shows could appear in later seasons of the new series, hinting at a post-Voyager timeframe. However, the USS Discoveryis a deliberately retro design (drawing on Ralph McQuarrie's 1970s concept art for Star Trek: The Motion Picture) and its early design number suggests it's an old ship, predating even the original Enterprise. Fans have already speculated that it's an old ship pulled back into service for some reason, or the vessel is carried forwards in time as part of the new storyline.
Little else is known at the moment, save that filming starts in September, the series will consist of between 10 and 13 episodes and the show will debut in January on CBS before moving onto CBS All Access in the States. Space will air the show in Canada and Netflix will broadcast the series in most other territories.
In January 2017, CBS will air the first new television episode of Star Trek in twelve years. It will be just over twenty-nine years since Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted, and just over fifty since the franchise started in the first place.
A new Star Trek TV show has been on the cards since Enterprise was cancelled in 2005, but development was delayed by the divorce between CBS and Paramount that saw the Star Trek rights split between the two companies. When Paramount began releasing its new Star Trek movies under the oversight of J.J. Abrams, CBS was also uncertain how to respond. It did not have the rights to make a TV show set in the Abramsverse and relations between the two companies were cool enough to make it unlikely they could get them.
A few things changed CBS's minds. One was the re-release of the original series and then The Next Generation in high definition. Although neither was the smash success they were hoping (and the prospects of a remastering of DS9 and Voyager now seem unlikely), both did reasonably well in international sales and performances on platforms such as Netflix. CBS were planning to set up their own platform, CBS All Access, and saw Star Trek as a potential vehicle to help get it off the ground.
In November 2015 CBS announced that it had commissioned a new Star Trek TV series, to debut on CBS proper with an event premiere in January 2017 but then to be followed by new episodes released exclusively through CBS All Access. International sales would be through more traditional channels.
Star Trek fans were initially disheartened by the news, feeling that locking Star Trek away behind a paywall for a minority service (the chances of CBSAA effectively challenging Netflix and Amazon are non-existent) in its fiftieth year was massively disrespectful to the legacy of the franchise. The news at Alex Kurtzman, who had worked on Star Trek(2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness, was the prime mover behind the series was also greeted with scepticism, although he is generally better working in television (such as on the excellent Fringe) than on film (such as the less-excellent Transformers movies).
However, in the months since then there has been a steady stream of good news. CBS announced that the showrunner for the new project would be Bryan Fuller. Fuller cut his teeth with several Deep Space Nine scripts before becoming a writer-producer on Voyager. He then worked on original, critically-acclaimed (if not massively popular) shows like Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me before working on the first season of Heroes, where he wrote several of the most popular episodes. His departure before Season 2 was cited as a key reason why the show's quality dramatically declined. His later work was highly acclaimed, particularly Pushing Daisies and Hannibal. Whilst developing Star Trek he was also working on the TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods for Starz, which is now shooting. Fuller brings a tremendous depth of experience in creating quality television with a deep knowledge and love of the Star Trek franchise.
Even more impressively, if that was possible, CBS announced that they had recruited Nicholas Meyer to provide support, advice and scripts. Meyer is the director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, as well as co-writing both movies and Star Trek IV: The Voyager Home. Those are the three most critically-acclaimed films in the history of the movie franchise. Meyer was also clever enough to take breaks between the films and only come back to work on the franchise when he was inspired by new ideas. Bringing Meyer on board was a very canny move, designed to appeal to old-skool Star Trek fans. Rod Roddenberry, the son of the late Gene Roddenberry, was also involved in the series as an advisor.
The premise of the new series is not known, although it is generally believed that the new series will not be set in the "Abramsverse" of the new movies, as CBS do not have the rights to it and there has been no formal announcement of a deal between CBS and Paramount to allow it. Based on comments from Fuller and alleged leaks from CBS, the new series may be set in the 71-year-gap between the opening scenes of Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: The Next Generation, but with a new ship and crew (not the Enterprise-B and C which were active during that period). The new series will apparently consist of 13 episodes telling one long, serialised story. There is also a strong rumour that the new series may adopt an anthology format, with future seasons able to move between time periods of Star Trek history and allow it to tell all-new stories or involve characters from prior series where appropriate.
Update:Bryan Fuller has shot down some of these rumours, denying both the pre-TNG timeframe and the anthology format. However, he has confirmed that the series will look to revisit previous Star Trek characters further down the line. It sounds extremely likely that the new show will still be set in the original timeline and probably post-TNG, post-DS9 and post-Voyager. Official confirmation of that has still not arrived, however.
We do know that the new series will shoot in Toronto between September and the start of 2017, and that the series will debut in January 2017. Casting should be announced in the next few weeks.
Fan reaction to the rumours and to the news of Meyer and Fuller's involvement was overwhelmingly positive, but soured a bit when CBS (and Paramount) took legal action against several Star Trek fan series that were in production. The Star Trek fan community had been producing films and even web series for more than a decade, such as Phase II, New Voyages and Of Gods and Men. Remarkably, these had become popular enough to allow them to include veteran Star Trek actors such as Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols and George Takei.
In 2015 a fan film called Axanar crossed a red line when it sought to raise funds from crowdfunding sites and use the money to pay professional editors, writers and actors. CBS and Paramount initiated legal action. Axanar won support from many fans and Star Trek Beyond director Justin Lin, as well as J.J. Abrams. However, an attempt by Lin and Abrams to get the motion dismissed backfired, with CBS and Paramount instead issuing guidelines that effectively made any fan films of feature length impossible. Some fans had regarded the Axanar project with scepticism and were unhappy with the allegedly profiteering nature of the project, but others decried what they saw as an attack on the fan community that had kept Star Trek alive in the long years between series. Star Trek returns to television screens in 2017 and it remains to be seen in precisely what format and how well it does. But it does show that there remains an appetite for the venerable SF franchise fifty years on from its origins, and there is still interest in exploring strange new worlds and seeking out new life and civilisations.
