Monday, November 2, 2015

New Trek Series




Well this was a surprise - details here. My own thoughts:


  • In general I think it will be good to have a new Trek show out there
  • I don't like that it will only on this new CBS streaming service. If it was on Netflix or one of the existing cable channels, sure. But now you're asking people to pay for this CBS service separately to access it. I get the business reasoning - I just don't like it.
  • The people behind it:
    The new series will be produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Kurtzman’s Secret Hideout. Kurtzman and Heather Kadin will serve as executive producers. Kurtzman is also an executive producer for the hit CBS television series Scorpion and Limitless, along with Kadin and Orci, and for Hawaii Five-0 with Orci.
    I am not sure how much of this is a plus or a minus. Kurtzman also was involved in the two JJ Abrams movies and I have mixed feelings about those. I haven't heard anything earth-shattering about Scorpion or Limitless and while I enjoyed Hawaii Five-O the first couple of seasons as a sort of Miami Vice redux, I don't know that any of them show any aptitude for doing something like Star Trek. That said, I didn't know much about anybody on the Next gen series other than Roddenberry himself and that turned out alright. 
  • Setting? The article does mention that it has nothing to do with the next Trek movie, and I keep seeing internet chatter that CBS only has rights to the original universe while Paramount only has rights to the new movie universe but I don't know how true that is. Is this set in some known Trek time period? Is it a new, separate continuity or is it tied to one of the existing ones? I'm very interested in where they will take this.
  • The important stuff will be, regardless of platform, writing and acting. If they can hit on one, it will do alright. If they hit on both I think it will get some serious attention. Note that going to a streaming channel instead of broadcast TV means the standards are very different. We could be looking at 12 episodes per season and more blood/sex/nudity/violence than we are used to seeing. That's never been a thing with Trek, really, but it's never really had the option to push the limits like this either. 
This is clearly part of a business plan at CBS to push their streaming channel to the next level, and that's fine. Hey, if it gets us a decent Trek series then it's a big positive. I hope that we see something akin to the new Star Wars approach where they are willing to acknowledge and embrace the past stories and characters but also not afraid to push out in new directions with new characters. 

It's all very vague right now but hey, it will give us something to overanalyze for 2016 after Force Awakens is old news.

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