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A New ‘Star Trek’ TV Series Will Debut in 2017
- ecopoesis 11y agoStrange that CBS is going to be putting this only on streaming (CBS All Access). I'm not sure if that's a brilliant bet on the future or a foolhardy miscalculation.
- gkoberger 11y agoYou wouldn't like Star Trek on CBS proper. Shows on TV need to be mainstream to work, given how advertisement works. By putting it online, they're changing the expectations: it doesn't have to appeal to everyone. Rather, it can be made for a niche audience, which is good for Star Trek. That's why Arrested Development (in theory) can work on Netflix but not FOX.
- WorldMaker 11y agoYeah, I don't think Star Trek meshes with CBS demographics right now. They'd likely end up with NCIS: Star Trek Edition. That said, I probably wouldn't mind a young adult soap opera Star Trek for the CW network. The issue with CBS' digital efforts is that they are a strange island unto themselves and Star Trek alone is unlikely to get too many more visitors to their island. They really need to consider a partnership with Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, or something left field like Vudu or HBO Now. But of course they are stubborn and probably won't. (Does it make financial sense to anyone right now to spend $5/month on just CBS shows when the same could go to most of a Netflix or Hulu subscription with a much broader content base?)
- WorldMaker 11y agoWhat's with all the downvotes? Was it the CW comment? If so, are the downvoters not currently watching CW's Flash? That sort of light-hearted, inter-personal drama-fueled show would work for Star Trek, I think.
- voidlogic 11y ago>Shows on TV need to be mainstream to work, given how advertisement works. Counter point, the extremely strong viewing numbers of ST TNG...
- yk 11y agoHopefully but I am a lot more cynical. I guess they want to start with what they believe is their strongest franchise. The job of the new Star Trek is to draw the audience to streaming, and the series needs mass appeal for that.
- untog 11y agoCBS has a rich history of using Star Trek to promote new methods of giving viewers content. The track record is... spotty.
- rhino369 11y agoIt's the perfect way to capture revenue from a somewhat niche audience that has a strong demand for the content. 72 bucks a year for Star Trek is a no brainer compared to other star trek fan spending. It's how sports leagues fund their streaming: you pay a lot for the content. Sure not many sign up, but the real fans more than make up for it. The real problem I foresee is the large overlap in star trek fandom and internet pirates.
- kanzure 11y agoother thread fell off the frontpage already? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10492824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10492824
- gre 11y agoSomeone killed it. Don't want hn to become slashdot /s
- s5edvvddd 11y agoProduced by Alex Kurtzman who was also the producer of Michael Bay's Transformers , Star Trek remakes which are basically the lowest common denominator action movies, and Scorpion the series about incredibly incorrect portrayal of hacking and hackers. This is going to be action schlock, a series like TNG will never be made again. I don't want too sound too depressing, just letting you know to adjust your expectations.
- untog 11y agoI'll be the contrarian optimist: Star Trek movies are, on average, bad. Compare Star Trek: Nemesis to an episode of TNG - it's guilty of everything you attribute to the new Star Trek movies. The only reason it got a pass was because of the goodwill that the TNG show garnered for its characters. So I choose to believe/hope that a TV show isn't doomed to have the same outlook as the movie. I expect I may well be wrong, but...
- Jtsummers 11y agoNemesis didn't get a pass with any fans I know. It's pretty much considered the worst of the first ten movies excluding possibly 5, depending on the fan.
- ConceptJunkie 11y agoOh, V was much worse. Much, much worse.
- Jtsummers 11y agoI've had friends put V and X on the same level, but personally I agree.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- malgb 11y agoInsurrection was the closest film to a TV episode.
- dbcooper 11y agoIf only we could have Bryan Fuller as show-runner, with Mads Mikkelsen as Captain.
- InclinedPlane 11y agoNo thanks, I'll pass. I adore Star Trek, but this ain't it. It's just action crap dressed up in Star Trek's clothes. Which is a shame because too much of Sci-Fi on television and in the theater is just action, we need more thoughtful and interesting science fiction, the sort of stuff that made Star Trek a cult hit and transformed it into a cultural phenomenon despite running for less than three seasons originally.
- elif 11y agoWow, it was nice of them to send you a review copy of season 1.
- ZanyProgrammer 11y agoAfter the last decade of TV, what a lot of people refer to as the Golden Age of Television, I'm not placing my hope in something that CBS is producing. I have a feeling it'll be a dash of the Abrams-verse, mixed in with Voyager and Enterprise writing and style. I'm hoping that's not the case, but I worry that whatever debuts on CBS will appear incredibly underwhelming compared to the last 10 years or so of television drama.
- Nimsical 11y agoSilicon Valley's productivity will fall by a few percentage points during that week. So excited :P
- pmontra 11y agoAm I the only one who doesn't like those links to the NYTimes requiring registration or social login? Here's the news from another source http://www.startrek.com/article/new-star-trek-series-premieres-january-2017 http://www.startrek.com/article/new-star-trek-series-premier... (courtesy of the other thread)
- Bud 11y agoEasy to dodge the paywall: 1) copy the part of the url containing the story's title 2) paste just that part into the URL bar (to do a Google search) 3) the story will come up as the first hit, click on it, boom, no more paywall This works for quite a few major sites. (WSJ, New Yorker, etc.)
- InclinedPlane 11y agoOr, just click the link that says "web" for the story, then click the top link.
- gajomi 11y agoI am only somewhat familiar with Star Trek (mostly by way of TNG), but I think it would be cool to see a conflict with a re-imagined version of the Ferengi. I never heard any exposition on the details, but the Federation is supposedly an essentially egalitarian post-scarcity economy with a religion of space exploration. In contrast, the Ferengi always seemed much closer to our own society: they are cold blooded capitalists with misogynistic tendencies, but still manage to maintain a vibrant civilization in space, in which they uphold contracts and maintain infrastructure. And so it would seem that at the hypothetical interface between the Ferengi and the Federation there would be not just a huge culture clash, but moral and political scandals of the highest order, mostly concentrated around (1) the exploitation of Federation members by Ferengi (2) incidental macroeconomic chaos within Ferengi society due to the Federation sending free aid, setting artificial price restrictions within their markets, etc. If one redesigned the Ferengi with a non-goofy appearance and a cool demeanor they could be made relatable, in the same way that one can relate to the various capitalist villain archetypes: wall street narcissists, oil tycoons, drug kingpins and so on.
- dnautics 11y agoI think it's star trek canon that the Ferengi never had any internal problems with slavery (of other Ferengi) or genocide. I think it would be much more interesting to explore the creepier side of this supposedly egalitarian post-scarcity economy... I mean think of how wierd it is that a military organization is in charge of scientific exploration, that all the individuals on the starship are tracked at all times, etc...
- serge2k 11y ago> that all the individuals on the starship are tracked at all times don't we already do that on our spaceships?
- boxy310 11y agoThe timeline changes from the new Star Trek movies imply that the Vulcans (pacifist science beatniks driven by cold logic) hold dramatically less sway over Starfleet Command, which is why Admiral Marcus almost succeeded in a coup. Kirk always had a mixed-bag relationship with Starfleet and had to go to bat up against them in Spock's favor. Picard also foiled a number of infiltrations on Earth during the early seasons of TNG. Dr. Bashir and Chief O'Brien repeatedly tussled with agents of Section 31 on DS9. Tom Riker ended up fleeing Starfleet so he could fight with the Maquis, who were betrayed by the Federation and tortured by Cardassian overlords. Sisko himself murdered an ambassador and implicated the Dominion in a diplomatic plot to get Romulans to join the war. There's a hell of a lot of well-intentioned extremists, even in Star Trek's utopia. Now what happens when you take away the biggest voice of reason? Sends shivers down my spine to think about what kind of darkness in the hearts of men the crew of the Possibly-Enterprise will wrestle with.
- transfire 11y agoAnother three seasoner? This time written for action where the only "moral" around is "death to the terrorists". I hope not, but I do worry.
- pasbesoin 11y agoDidn't think it would happen, but in private conversation I've been hoping/advocating for giving Whedon and his associates the opportunity to do the next series, if he/they were interested. It would probably be a bit different -- I don't know where he would take it -- but there would likely be interesting characters and character development. As it is, I want something that returns to the kind of quality I found in the middle and later seasons of TNG, once it really caught its stride. I also thought some of the Voyager episodes were quite engaging, particularly those involving Seven of Nine and some of the other... "trans"-human characters. Star Trek, whatever series, has always been particularly good when it comes to exploring what it means to be... "sentient", to choose a word perhaps less open to misinterpretation that "human", though I would choose to define "human" as something other than our specific species. And characters at the boundary of "human" (I guess that is the word that really speaks to me) have often been very interesting and effective vehicles in this regard. P.S. Perhaps it is in part that some of the other series became more interesting to me when some of the TNG writers migrated to them. I don't or no longer know the series timelines (in this world, as television shows) sufficiently to consider this more closely, off the cuff.
- erickhill 11y agoA similar story like this one was posted this morning. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10492824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10492824 Within one hour it had nearly 200 up-votes, and over 120 comments. Then, suddenly, it was flagged and buried into the archives of Hacker News. While this may not be "Hacker News" it is obviously content that resonates with a large percentage of the HN community. I hope the mods just let it be this time.
- Bud 11y agoThey didn't; it dropped from #2 to out of the top 200 or so instantly. I emailed the mods to ask if I had done something wrong, and was informed that this post was "off-topic", because it was not "deeply interesing" and/or did not satisfy intellectual curiosity. Very aggressive modding, and very silly modding.
- krapp 11y agoThe truth is, the only intellects that matter here are those of the mods. If they don't find a subject interesting, it's objectively uninteresting.
- RevRal 11y agoChiming in with a slightly relevant blog post from Peter Watts about a re-imagined "Spock's Brain": http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=4335 http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=4335
- anotherevan 11y agoIt's a shame that they would be very unlikely to option New Frontier by Peter David. He created some great characters there (although I think the latter books have gotten a bit screwy). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_New_Frontier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_New_Frontier
- kingmanaz 11y agoThe "dark" fetish in television, particularly in sci-fi, is growing increasingly tired. Shows like TNG, which would take one on a voyage to a positive, better future, are being replaced by blue-tinted melodramas filled with beige characters. Trek's downward spiral began with DS9, and the trip to the future has gotten progressively dingier with every subsequent effort. I'll be hoping for a Trek with new worlds filled with new solutions to current problems, but expecting another dreary Breaking Bad tinged with Walking Dead, this time--yawn--amidst the stars.
- leepowers 11y agoIt's just an announcement - it's way too early to tell how the series is going to turn out. That being said, I would be surprised if the reboot becomes a cultural landmark like TOS. I just hope it's at least good, compelling television. At best I hope it captures the genius of good Star Trek: exploring new ideas, concepts, and perspectives, with clever & humane writing, capable acting, and good special effects. I hope it's not too heavy on the action/drama, like _The Walking Dead_ or _Game of Thrones_. These are both excellent series that are highly entertaining to watch. But they make me _feel_ first and _think_ second. Good Star Trek episodes are like puzzles. You're thinking "what the heck is going on?", "what strange phenomena is this?", etc. The best ones draw you in and then delight you with the reveal. They almost have a Twilight Zone quality to them.
- Bud 11y agoI've just heard from the HN powers that be that this post was flagged for being "off-topic". That's right: Star Trek is off-topic in a techie geek forum. I have officially seen everything. I'd be very mildly ticked about this, if it weren't so amusing. :)