Currently filming its first season, with an eye on a 2025 launch date, is the latest series in the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Some kind of Starfleet Academy project has been rumored since the ’80s, for both film and TV. But one is finally happening at last. Starfleet Academy is the fourth Paramount+ Star Trek live-action series, and the ninth live-action Star Trek series overall. Here’s everything we know so far about the upcoming Star Trek: Starfleet Academy series.

Title

The official title of the upcoming Paramount+ series is Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Although, we think that most fans will simply refer to it as Starfleet Academy without the brand name attached. We also imagine in the greater Star Trek fandom the name of the show will be shortened even further to ST:SA.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’s Plot

The new series is a spin-off of Star Trek: Discovery, and will take place in the 32nd Century, some 800 years after the time of Star Trek: Picard. After a period of 100 years where the Federation dwindled to a handful of worlds, and Starfleet was a small operation, Starfleet Academy will introduce the first class of cadets in a century. Below is the official description from Paramount+:

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will introduce us to a young group of cadets who come together to pursue a common dream of hope and optimism. Under the watchful and demanding eyes of their instructors, they will discover what it takes to become Starfleet officers as they navigate blossoming friendships, explosive rivalries, first loves and a new enemy that threatens both the Academy and the Federation itself.

Behind-the-Scenes

Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau will serve as co-showrunners for Starfleet Academy. Gaia Violo wrote the series pilot. Kurtzman of course is the head honcho for all things in the Star Trek universe on Paramount+, including Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and Picard.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’s Cast

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy has a robust cast, headlined by Academy Award winner Holly Hunter. She’ll be the captain and chancellor of Starfleet Academy, presumably still located in San Francisco. She’s the third woman to headline her own Star Trek series, after Kate Mulgrew and Sonequa Martin-Green. The series’ main villain is none other than Paul Giamatti, who plays “A man with an ominous past connected to one of our cadets.”

Speaking of the cadets, in the roles of the student body we’ve got Karim Diané, Zoë Steiner, Kerrice Brooks, Bella Shepard, George Hawkins, and Sandro Rosta. Legacy actors from Star Trek: Discovery joining the series include Tig Notaro, Oded Fehr, and Mary Wiseman. The biggest surprise in terms of legacy Trek actors is Star Trek: Voyager‘s Robert Picardo. He returns as the Emergency Medical Holographic doctor.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Release Date

There is no release date yet for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, but it’s expected in the latter half of 2025 on Paramount+. Presumably, it will drop some months after Star Trek: Strange New Worlds wraps up its third season.

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The Star Trek: Starfleet Academy series is starting production soon, with Holly Hunter attached as the lead. The Paramount+ show will take place in the same timeframe as Star Trek: Discovery’s third through fifth season, in the 32nd century. This is some 900 years after the time of Picard, Seven of Nine, and other familiar characters from the franchise’s glory days. So why set Starfleet Academy in this time period, instead of one more familiar, and frankly, more popular? Here’s what Star Trek TV’s head honcho Alex Kurtzman had to say to Variety when asked about why this timeframe:

There’s a specific reason for that. As the father of a 17-year-old boy, I see what my son is feeling as he looks at the world and to his future. I see the uncertainty; I see all the things we took for granted as given are not certainties for him. I see him recognizing he’s inheriting an enormous mess to clean up and it’s going to be on his generation to figure out how to do that, and that’s a lot to ask of a kid.

My thinking was, if we set Starfleet Academy in the halcyon days of the Federation where everything was fine, it’s not going to speak to what kids are going through right now. It’ll be a nice fantasy, but it’s not really going to be authentic. What’ll be authentic is to set it in the timeline where this is the first class back after over 100 years, and they are coming into a world that is only beginning to recover from a cataclysm — which was the Burn, as established on Discovery, where the Federation was greatly diminished. So they’re the first who’ll inherit, who’ll re-inherit, the task of exploration as a primary goal.

In Discovery, “The Burn” occurred in the 31st century, when warp capability was neutralized for a century for unknown reasons. The crew of Discovery solved the mystery, allowing the Federation and Starfleet to return to their glory days. Discovery established that Tilly (Mary Wiseman) was an instructor for this new Academy. So we imagine she’ll appear in the series at some point. Kurtzman also confirmed that the show would take place on Earth (in San Francisco) as well as in space. (Yes, this means the show is going to focus on space cadets). Kurtzman also confirmed that the primary set “is the biggest we’ve ever built.” Will the Academy grounds look very different from the days of Wesley Crusher on TNG? Hey, Cambridge University has some buildings built in 1290, so you never know.

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The intergalactic journey of U.S.S. Discovery is coming to an end. Paramount+ has revealed that it is ending Star Trek: Discovery with the upcoming fifth season of the show. The fifth and final season of series will officially release on April 4, 2024. At the fan convention CCXP, we saw a clip from the upcoming final season—a season that will see Captain Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery uncovering a mystery that will send them on an epic adventure across the galaxy to find an ancient power whose very existence has been deliberately hidden for centuries. But there are others on the hunt as well … dangerous foes who are desperate to claim the prize for themselves and will stop at nothing to get it.

Discovery‘s fifth season wasn’t necessarily meant to be the end. But according to The Hollywood Reporter, additional filming was set to help craft a conclusion for the series. Discovery was historic for many reasons. Debuting in 2017, it was the first streaming series in the franchise’s history. It was also the first Trek series since the cancellation of Enterprise some 12 years earlier.

Discovery launched a whole world of Trek in the streaming world, first on CBS All Access, then on its successor, Paramount+. This lead to Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and most recently, Strange New Worlds. Of course, it was also the first Star Trek series with an African-American woman in the lead, and the Trek series with its first regular trans character.

Discovery was unique in Trek canon for several reasons. It began as a prequel to the original series, set some ten years before the time of Kirk on the Enterprise. But at the end of season two, they propelled the starship Discovery over 900 years into the future. This allowed the show to explore a completely different era in the Star Trek timeline. It was also unique in that the lead character was not a Captain or Commander. But she eventually evolved into taking command of the ship by the end of the third season. It will be interesting to see if Star Trek remains in this time period for future series, or returns to the past.

When Will Star Trek: Discovery‘s Fifth and Final Season Release?

As mentioned, the final season of Star Trek: Discovery has set its Paramount+ release date for April 4, 2024.

Originally published on March 2, 2023.

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During an era of reboots and revivals, The Man Who Fell to Earth is a bit of an anomaly. The Showtime series uses both the Water Tevis novel and 1976 Nicholas Roeg film of the same name as source material. But the series is a continuation, instead using Thomas Jerome Newton’s story as a jumping off point. This time, another Anthean, Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Faraday, arrives on Earth to complete Newton’s mission. And with the help for former scientist Justin Falls (Naomie Harris), they may save Anthea and Earth. It’s an ambitious move, tackling a story that once featured David Bowie in the lead role. But Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet seem up to the task.

Nerdist chatted with Kurtzman, The Man Who Fell to Earth‘s co-showrunner, writer, and director, about continuing the story, and the importance of injecting humor into the story.

Nerdist: The Man Who Fell to Earth is a continuation of the story from both the novel and film, using those both as source material. How did you and your co-showrunner, Jenny Lumet, decide to incorporate certain elements from those stories in creating this whole new story?

Alex Kurtzman: I think that what Tevis did in the novel and what Roeg and Bowie did in the film were extraordinary in that all great science fiction, even if it’s writing about the future, it’s really talking about now, and that’s what both of those pieces of work were doing. For the novel, Tevis was, I think, working out many of his personal demons while writing that, and I think he felt like an alien.

He must have felt like an alien as he was writing it and used science fiction as a metaphor for everything he was going through. Nicholas Roeg captured that beautifully. And certainly Bowie’s singular performance did an amazing job of pairing an incredible sense of loneliness, and what it means to be isolated on [Earth], and to long for your home, and not knowing if you’re ever going to get back to your children and your wife.

Those were all elements that Jenny and I really wanted to hold onto. The thing is that those two stories also end in great tragedy. They’re both incredible tragedies. It’s not that we wanted to avoid tragedy, but we see enough tragedy around us all the time now. It felt to us like we needed also to remind people why life is precious and why we, human beings, actually are worthy of survival, as opposed to not—although it’s entirely dependent on the choices that we make from here. So, unfortunately, the themes that Tevis is bringing up, and certainly Roeg has echoed in the film, are timeless. We were just inheriting all of that and wanting to put a modern spin on it, because we certainly are at an inflection point now that seems even more extreme than it did then.

I was curious when I heard that Thomas Newton (now played by Bill Nighy) was going to be a part of this new story, but seeing the dissonance between him and Faraday is intriguing. Was there ever an iteration of The Man Who Fell to Earth without him?

No. There really wasn’t. We knew that we were taking a really big swing just even stepping into the realm of David Bowie, which is riddled with every possible pothole you could ever hit. Because to try and imitate Bowie would’ve been a massive mistake. And what we certainly didn’t want to do was create a character that in any way was the pale imitation of him. In the novel and in the film, the character of Thomas Newton is essentially passive. He comes here with a mission, but he gets sidelined by human vices and frailties. The first thing we recognized was that aside from the fact that we just didn’t want to do a Bowie impression, which would’ve been a terrible mistake, we couldn’t write a character on a television show that could sustain over time that was that passive.

The dramatic tension that was interesting to us was the idea that Faraday comes here really as a drone, who on his planet is only used to understanding how to follow orders. What he realized very quickly is that the person he’s used to following orders from might be insane. That suddenly makes you go, “Wait a minute. Am I even on the right mission?” And that felt really interesting to us.

Absolutely. Speaking of Faraday, how did you partner with Chiwetel Ejiofor to establish his otherworldly quirks and physicality?

Chiwetel and I worked very, very hard on what the physicality of the character would be. The first thing that Chiwetel said was, “In order for me to understand how I move here, I have to understand how I moved on Anthea,” and the idea that gravity was different. So, gravity would crush his body. That came actually from a very specific thing in the novel and in the film, which is that in the film you see Bowie’s character, Thomas Newton, get into an elevator.

Suddenly his nose starts to bleed and he collapses, because just the small movement upward is such tremendous pressure on his body, and it crushes him. That was a detail that we actually found really interesting and we wanted answers to. And so Chiwetel and I riffed off that and began to build a character who had to move a certain way because his body was acclimating to gravity now.

Also we came up with a whole language on Anthea—the way that the Antheans communicate—which you’ll learn more about in later episodes of the season. But the woman who plays his wife is a woman named Coral Messam, who’s also an incredible choreographer. Coral choreographed all the dancing in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe film, Lovers Rock… And so, we spent a lot of time together working on what that physicality was. When Faraday says in the pilot, “f***, money now,” and he moves his hand up like this, [Kurtzman demonstrates the movement, moving his index finger upwards] that actually is the Anthean version of “now.” So, you wouldn’t know it, because Chiwetel had invented that language and we [were like] “Okay. How do you say that in Anthean?” Then, he could incorporate it into his physicality.

Justin is another really fascinating character. How did you craft Justin as the grounding yet complicated force in The Man Who Fell to Earth?

Well, Jenny and I knew right out of the gate that Justin is essentially the audience. It’s one thing to ask the audience to relate to an alien character, but they’re going to need an anchor in a human being. One of the things that we like so much about science fiction, or any genre, is the idea of how very ordinary people react in extraordinary circumstances. And audiences can often really relate to that.

It’s also where you get a lot of your humor, because human reactions to insanity like that can be really funny. Not because you’re reaching for a joke, just because the behavior is funny. And that was exciting. But we needed somebody who could be the audience, and Naomie has this natural radiant, empathic quality. You just instantly connect to her when she’s on screen. Jenny and I built the character of Justin in the pilot in a very particular way, and it was really something when Naomie opened her mouth for the first time and started saying the words, it was exactly what we had had in our head for the three years that we’d been writing it, which is a very special moment.

Justin and Faraday’s missions are linked and they have a really profound connection when they’re together. How did you build the parallels between the characters and setting up that dynamic?

A lot of it was on paper. Justin is a woman who is a once in a generation mind, and it’s because of her once in a generation mind that she got into what she perceived as big trouble, and ended up shutting down emotionally as a result of what happened. When we meet her, she’s very much on autopilot. She’s like, “I’m just trying to get through my day. I’m just trying to get enough money to feed my child and keep my father alive for as long as I can.”

And when Faraday meets her and says, “You are essential. You’re vital to the mission. You matter,” it’s ringing a distant bell in her that’s very hard. She hears it, but she doesn’t want to hear it. And once she accepts the mission and they begin to connect with each other, part of what she, in turn, teaches Faraday is that as an Anthean, it’s not that he didn’t feel things. It’s that they didn’t process things the way human beings process them.

Antheans can still love their children, and love their families, and mourn the dead, but they don’t process it in an emotive way. We took the spirit of what happens to Thomas Newton in the novel and in the film, which is that he becomes more human, but what we said was, we don’t just want it to be about him becoming an alcoholic. We actually want it to be about him discovering all the different shades of what it means to be a human being, to discover what it means to love somebody openly, to understand what it means to lose somebody and what that actually feels like, what it means to laugh, what it means to love your children openly, what it means to miss your children.

The Man Who Fell to Earth airs on Sundays on Showtime.

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Alex Kurtzman is the man behind most of the current Star Trek. He co-wrote two of the J.J. Abrams-produced movie sequels in 2009 and 2013. And then, his Secret Hideout productions has been behind Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, and the upcoming Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on Paramount+. Not to mention Star Trek: Prodigy, the animated Lower Decks, and more.

But via a profile on Kurtzman in The New York Times, we learned he’s also developing a TV series set in Starfleet Academy. Other Trek producers have floated the idea of Starfleet Academy series in years past. However, none ever made it past the development stage. But it seems Kurtzman is intent on making it happen, and, recently, there has been some progress. Here are our ideas on just what such a series could look like. And when it would be set in the Trek timeline.

Kirk and Spock: The Academy Years

Paramount Pictures

The 2009 Star Trek film reboot by J.J. Abrams already showed young Kirk, Spock, and McCoy as Starfleet cadets. In that movie, Kirk and Spock were not exactly the best of friends in their younger days. However, that was all in the alternate Kelvin timeline. A series about Kirk and Spock as Starfleet Academy cadets in the prime timeline might be worth exploring. This was actually the subject for a Starfleet Academy movie script back in the ’80s, meant to be Star Trek VI. But ultimately, Paramount made The Undiscovered Country instead. A streaming series might be a possible avenue for this idea. Maybe as a limited series.

Starfleet Academy: Valedictorian Picard

Paramount Pictures

Several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation told stories of Jean-Luc Picard’s past as the most accomplished member of his class in Starfleet Academy. He was the prize pupil of archaeology professor Richard Galen, and won the Academy Decathlon while only a freshman (as told in The Best of Both Worlds.) He also romanced several ladies, and gained quite the reputation. Showing Picard as a cocky and brash student, before he’s humbled with a near-death experience as a young ensign (as seen in the TNG episode “Tapestry”) might be a good subject matter for a Starfleet Academy series.

Starfleet Academy: Worf’s First Adventures

Pocket Books

Another former TNG character who might make for a good lead in an Academy series would be none other than Worf. Mainly because he was the first Klingon in Starfleet. What was it like for the Son of Mogh to go through an almost all human Academy? Especially since many humans still regarded the Klingons as savages. It would be a fascinating lens to tell a Starfleet Academy story through and an excellent jumping-off point for a series. While it might be difficult to replace Michael Dorn in the role, we think there are young actors who could do it. And maybe they could include Dorn in bookend sequence—one where old Worf tells tales of his younger days as the only Klingon in Starfleet.

Nova Squadron

CBS 

In the TNG episode “The First Duty,” we learn that during Wesley Crusher’s time at the Academy, he became a part of a group called Nova Squadron. This was an elite flight team, and each cadet flew a single pilot spacecraft. They were on campus stars, performing elaborate formations and maneuvers no one else at the Academy could rival. Their recklessness caused the death of one of their comrades, and a subsequent cover-up nearly resulted in their expulsion. Following a new set of cadets years later who are trying to redeem the Nova Squadron name would make for a fascinating series. Think Top Gun meets Star Trek, and you have a unique premise for a Starfleet Academy series.

Starfleet Academy: First Class

Paramount Pictures

This would be a prequel, telling the story of the very first class of students at Starfleet Academy. It would probably take place sometime in the 22nd century, when the Starfleet charter was first incorporated. This would have a kind of futuristic The Right Stuff vibe. It would mainly focus on the very first young people who would set the example for future generations. The students who wrote the book on what it means to be a Starfleet officer. It would be a fun way to show how the earliest interactions between alien species in Starfleet went as well. Think X-Men: First Class meets outer space adventures, Right there, you’ve got yourself a show.

Starfleet Academy: New Frontiers 

Paramount+

As much as prequels can be fun, Star Trek as a franchise should always look to the future. This is why the Starfleet Academy series we want to see most is actually a spinoff of Discovery. In that series’ third season, Discovery travels to the 32nd century. At that time, Starfleet is a shell of what it was. All due to interstellar travel now severely limited due to an event called “The Burn.” At the end of the season, the Discovery crew solves the Burn mystery, and the Federation is on its way to becoming viable again. It would be cool to see the first generation of Academy students on Earth in centuries, trying to reshape a new Starfleet for the future.

Originally published on August 4, 2021. 

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The Star Trek television universe is continuing to expand. Last year, an animated series was announced aimed at younger audiences set in the Trek universe, for Nickelodeon. Now, that series officially has a name. Announced at the Star Trek Universe Comic-Con@Home panel, the new series has the title Star Trek: Prodigy. The show will follow a group of lawless teens who discover a derelict Starfleet ship, and use it to “search for adventure, meaning and salvation.”

The CG animated series is the work of Emmy Award winners Kevin and Dan Hageman, whom you’d know for Trollhunters and Ninjago. As with all modern Trek, Alex Kurtzman is an executive producer, along with Roddenberry Entertainment. The animation comes from Secret Hideout, which is CBS’ all-new animation arm.

Nickelodeon / CBSViacom

Star Trek: Prodigy will debut sometime in 2021, although they gave no solid release date. This would be the sixth Star Trek series currently running, as it joins ViacomCBS’ Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Lower Decks, and the upcoming Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and the Michelle Yeoh-starring Section 31 based series. This beats anything Trek related that came out at the franchise’s peak in the ’90s; at most there were just two Trek-based series on at a time.

Although we have a name and basic premise for the series, there are still several big details that remain a mystery for the fans. For starters, we don’t know when the show takes place. Does it take place in the same 23rd century era as Discovery and Strange New Worlds? Or will it be the post- The Next Generation world of Star Trek: Picard? Hopefully, even though this is going to be an animated series primarily aimed at kids, it isn’t a “kid’s show” in the same way that Star Wars: Rebels and Clone Wars were. We hope this boldly goes somewhere engaging for the whole family.

Featured Image: Nickelodeon / CBS Viacom

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Trek fans have legit reasons to be enthusiastic about this series. Anson Mount’s Pike was one of the best parts of season two of Discovery, and Ethan Peck wound up being a worthy Spock as well. With its bright color palette and retro-ish design, most fans finished the season wanting more of this version of the Enterprise and her crew. But there are a few things that executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman should absolutely do if they want Strange New Worlds to truly fire on all thrusters.

CBS All Access

Both Discovery and Picard are well made sci-fi shows with high production value and winning casts, but they often feel like Star Trek as seen through the filter of other series. Both shows are concerned with mimicking the story structures of more recent genre hits. By this, I mean the season-long mystery propelling the narrative forward—a method popularized by Lost and dozens of other shows since. Series producer Akiva Goldsman has already said (via Variety) that Strange New Worlds would be more episodic, sticking to classic “one and done” stories, while having an ongoing narrative element surrounding the characters.

This is the right move. It would make Strange New Worlds the perfect opportunity to get back to basics for the fifty-four year old franchise. Essentially, we can once again have a show that begins with the opening narrations of “Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise…” A show about a Federation starship with the best crew in the fleet, seeking new life and new civilizations.  And that’s something we as Star Trek fans haven’t had for a long time. Not since Star Trek: Enterprise went off the air in 2005.

CBS All Access

Strange New Worlds can get back to basics for the Star Trek franchise is to do three specific things. First, hire actual science fiction writers to pen some of the scripts. The original 1960s series featured some of the biggest and most prolific sci-fi writers. For example, Harlan Ellison penned “The City on the Edge of Forever.” One of the weaknesses of both Discovery and Picard is that it seems the only sci-fi the writers seem to know is stuff from other movies and TV shows. It’s time for Trek to get its pioneering sci-fi cred back. Give us stories that don’t immediately call back to other well-known franchises.

Secondly, Star Trek was famous for once having had an “open door” submission policy for scripts. This meant that novice writers could write their own screenplays and submit them directly to the Star Trek production office. Several episodes from the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager eras were ones purchased via this open submission policy. True, hundreds more sat on the shelf eternally. Still, this policy kept fresh ideas from outside the writers’ room coming in.

CBS All Access

If Strange New Worlds is more episodic in its format, then it’s the perfect opportunity for both of these aspects of Trek production to return. A new writer coming up with a cool story would have an easier time if it doesn’t have to fit into a season-long narrative. It would also be a huge boon for the show to get an established sci-fi writer to produce a script for them.

There’s one more thing this show needs to do in order to find success: cut the continuity loose. The issue constricting Discovery in much of its first two seasons is already bogging down Strange New Worlds. That issue is the notion that it’s a prequel to the original  ‘60s Star Trek series. Because of its prequel status, we know exactly where Spock and Pike end up. For a hopefully long-running series, that can create a host of problems in creating dramatic tension.

CBS All Access

But if they somehow revealed this is a branched timeline (similar to the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movies) then that opens up a universe of possibilities. If they want a young Lt. James Kirk to join the crew at some point, they can. They won’t have to worry that the original series gave him a different backstory. Escaping continuity would create the same storytelling liberation that Discovery hopes to achieve by jumping 900 years into the future for season three. As it stands, the Enterprise in Star Trek: Discovery looks very different than the one seen in the original series. They might as well make it official and assign this show its own timeline.

Strange New Worlds has the opportunity to be the Star Trek series that unites all generations of Trek fans. Something that evokes the core Gene Roddenberry ethos, but with modern storytelling verve and conviction. Something bright, something positive, and something that regularly gives us hope for the future in a time when we need it most.

Featured Image: CBS All Access

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It’s been almost five years since Hannibal aired its final episode, but now the other half of the Silence of the Lambs‘ duo of lead characters is getting her TV own series as well. Via Deadline, CBS has announced that Clarice, an ongoing series about F.B.I. agent Clarice Starling, will air in the 2020-2021 season. Pretty Little Liars’ Rebecca Breeds portrays Clarice.

Jodie Foster, of course, originated the role. She won her second Academy Award for it. Julianne Moore later played Starling in Ridley Scott’s Hannibal a decade later. The new show will be executive produced by Star Trek: Picard’s Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet.

Warner Brothers

CBS released an official synopsis for the series, describing Clarice as “a deep dive into the untold personal story of brilliant and vulnerable FBI Agent Clarice Starling as she returns to the field in 1993, six months after the events of  The Silence of the Lambs.” This suggests to me that the show will be in continuity with the movie. That doesn’t bode well for anyone who was hoping for an crossovers with the dearly departed Hannibal.  Kal Penn, Nick Sandow, Michael Cudlitz, Lucca De Oliveira and Devyn A. Tyler will also star.

The big question about the show is mostly in regards to continuity. If it follows the original film’s continuity, then it could either lead up to the events of the 2001 version of Hannibal or just outright ignore it. Thomas Harris’ novel Hannibal is also very different from the movie, so maybe they’ll head towards that version of events instead? It is also possible that they can’t use or reference Hannibal Lecter. Bryan Fuller and the producers of the 2013-2015 Hannibal TV series couldn’t use the character of Clarice Starling. Somehow the rights to her character were separate.

Orion Pictures

A ’90s-set series featuring a young female F.B.I. agent hunting down serial killers sounds like a surefire hit. Even if they can’t show or mention certain cannibalistic murderers. It will also be interesting to see if this plays out like a normal CBS procedural that just happens to feature a well known character. Maybe it will become something more complex and with a season long narrative. Fingers crossed that this proves to be as interesting and ultimately surprising as the Hannibal series.

Featured Image: Orion Pictures

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Paramount Pictures

Star Trek ’09 is somewhat controversial among fans, because it forgoes the more intellectual tropes of most Star Trek series and movies in favor of big action. J.J. Abrams gave fans a big budget reinvention of the original characters, and it did not sit well with a lot of the fanbase. But when it was released, critics and many casual fans praised it as the shot in the arm the franchise so desperately needed at the time. But even those of us who loved it (and I count myself among them), always noted that Eric Bana’s main villain Nero was very one dimensional. Frankly, his motivation didn’t make much sense. Although Bana plays the character with mustache-twirling glee, it was still all pretty surface-level on the page.

Paramount Pictures

In the film, Bana plays a Romulan Captain named Nero. He commands a huge mining vessel, and is off world when a supernova destroys his home planet of Romulus in the 24th Century. This all happens during the era of the Next Generation crew. On his home planet were his entire family, who were lost. He is thrust back over a century in time, and is now hellbent on revenge against Spock and the Federation, for “allowing his family to die.” He spends the next two decades waiting for the older Spock to return to the past, so he can destroy the planets Vulcan and Earth in front of him. All as an act of revenge for the Federation being responsible for what befell Romulus.

Paramount Pictures

But in the context of the actual film, his anger makes no sense. Why would the Federation be responsible for a supernova, which is a natural occurrence? Well, Star Trek: Picard actually explains that. We learn in the series’ first episode that when it was revealed that a nearby star would explode and destroy Romulus, the people of that world asked their old enemies the Federation for help. They hoped Starfleet would help to relocate the 18 billion inhabitants of that planet out of the blast zone. The Federation agreed, and Admiral Picard commanded an enormous rescue fleet. A new fleet of ships was being constructed to help relocate some 900 million Romulans. But an attack from synthetic organisms on the fleet yards destroyed that new armada, and the plans to save the rest of the Romulan people was halted.

Paramount Pictures

So now, when Nero says in the film that “your Federation stood by and did nothing,” he’s kind of right. It is certainly not proper reasoning for destroying two other planets, but it gives Nero far more justification for his rage. Even his anger against Spock makes more sense now. Even though we know the elder Leonard Nimoy version of Spock tried to help the Romulans with his red matter device, Nero could have seen him as a figure revered enough in the Federation to have at least attempted to convince them to do more. Spock’s hubris that he could save the Romulans with his scientific knowhow proved devastating.

Paramount Pictures

Ever since Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the franchise has been chasing Khan-like villains. This due to Ricardo Montalban’s legendary performance, which gave the villain believable nuance and characterization. But the subsequent Trek features never lived up to Khan. Both Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: Nemesis tried to have villains that were driven by a singular goal like Khan was, and they just didn’t work. The thing that made Khan so great was that even though we knew he was a bad dude, we at least partially understood his desire for revenge against James Kirk. Nero was another villain who didn’t have that, but it’s safe to say that he now he does.

Of course, this is the co-writer and co-creator of Star Trek: Picard kind of fixing his own mistake. Alex Kurtzman co-wrote both Star Trek ’09 and the new Picard series, and probably has heard over the past decade from fans that Nero’s motivations for revenge don’t make a lot of sense. So he saw Picard as a way of creating realistic motivation for him, and thereby fixing one of his previous movie’s biggest flaws.

Picard can’t fix Star Trek ‘09’s other big flaw involving Nero however, which is this: If Nero is sent back in time to a reality where his home planet of Romulus hasn’t been destroyed, why not use those 20 years to warn his people that their sun is due to wipe the planet out of existence? Instead, he just waits around for decades to enact his revenge scheme. Ultimately, it turns out that this was more of a flaw in the editing of that film than of the writing.

Paramount Pictures

The deleted scenes for Star Trek ’09 actually do deal with this plot hole. In a cut sequence, we learn that the Narada, Nero’s ship, is captured by Klingon forces almost as soon as it is sent back in time, and after he destroys the USS Kelvin. He is held in a prison planet for over two decades, after which he escapes and regains his ship.

Paramount Pictures

The escape from the Kligons part is mentioned by Lt. Uhura in the final film, but we never actually seen him get captured by them. So in the final cut, it seems like he just wasted 20-plus years waiting to get revenge, when in fact he was being held captive. Maybe he planned to save Romulus after his whole revenge on Starfleet plot?  But we’ll never know, because he died, so that plan never came to fruition. But by not addressing it in the final film, it’s kind of a dent on his character. And it’s one that only a longer cut of Star Trek ’09 can fix. Star Trek: Picard can’t do the heavy lifting on this one, no matter how much it’s improved Nero overall.

Featured Image: Paramount Pictures

The post How PICARD Fixes One Big Problem with STAR TREK ’09 appeared first on Nerdist.

There have been many captains in Star Trek history, but for many of us, the pinnacle of Starfleet leadership was and always will be Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Sir Patrick Stewart played the part during seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and then went on to play him in four feature films. This totaled 15 years in the captain’s chair. And after Star Trek: Nemesis, both he and the fans thought this was the end of the line for Jean-Luc.

But now eighteen years later, Stewart has returned to the role that made him an icon in Star Trek: Picard, premiering soon on CBS All Access. But just what did it take to get him back to the 24th Century? (Or is it the 25th Century now??) We got the chance to sit down with Sir Patrick, as well as the show’s producers Alex Kurtzman, Akiva Goldsman, and celebrated author Michael Chabon, to discuss just how this living legend convinced him to return to his most famous role after so many years.

CBS All Access

Picard returns to duty in a world he doesn’t truly recognize anymore in this new series, and in fact it’s the key to his whole character journey in the show. As Stewart says in our interview “The Federation is not what it used to be. Starfleet is not what it used to be.” Star Trek has always been about allegory to the modern day, so one can see how this connects to how many of us feel about the institutions we once all viewed as virtuous being somewhat less than that.

But it’s clear what excited Patrick Stewart the most about returning was exploring Picard’s haunted post-TNG life.. As he mentions, the TNG era Picard was pretty unflappable. He didn’t have a lot of sleepless nights, or regrets about any decisions he’d made in his long career. As Stewart mentions, only the character of Q could ever get under his skin that way (here’s hoping this means we get to see Q in some capacity on this show!) But this older version of Picard gives him a new angle to play, and that’s clearly what excited him most about returning to the role that made him a household name.

CBS All Access

It’s also interesting to note from this interview that one of things Patrick Stewart was adamant about was not doing any more Borg stories. Between TNG episodes like “The Best of Both Worlds,” where Picard became a part of the Borg,  and movies like First Contact, he thought that the hive-minded race had become played out. But the producers of Star Trek: Picard found a new angle by which address the cybernetic race, and from there the Borg were back in play. Even Trek’s most famous Borg, Seven of Nine, found a way into the story.

Star Trek: Picard is taking the franchise into the future for the first time in nearly twenty years. Since Voyager ended its run in 2001, every Star Trek project has been a prequel of some sort to the original series. But it’s thrilling that the man who is taking us into uncharted territory for the first time in so many years is Patrick Stewart. We can’t think of anyone better.

Star Trek: Picard premieres on CBS All Access January 23.

Featured Image: CBS All Access

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Sir Patrick Stewart is about to boldly go where he has been before: into the Earl Grey-loving shoes of Jean-Luc Picard. But why did the legendary actor return to his iconic role? Nerdist’s Hector Navarro spoke with Sir Patrick Stewart, Isa Briones, Alex Kurtzman, Heather Kadin, Akiva Goldsman, and Michael Chabon to get the inside scoop in our exclusive interviews.

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Originally set up at Hulu, the recent Disney buyout of Fox maneuvered CBS to steer the production to their own streaming platform instead. The series seems like it will only be loosely based on the original film and novel, and the titular man who fell to Earth won’t be the same character that Bowie played over 40 years ago. Instead, this new alien character will be based on.. Steve Jobs? Yes, according to comments made by Kurtzman, the alien who comes to our planet is going to be a tech giant.

In a statement, Kurtzman and series producer Jenny Lumet said the following:

“Walter Tevis’ visionary novel gave us a Tech God Willy Wonka from another planet, brought to life by David Bowie’s legendary performance, that foretold Steve Jobs’ and Elon Musk’s impact on our world. The series will imagine the next step in our evolution, seen through the eyes of an alien who must learn what it means to become human, even as he fights for the survival of his species.”

There is no word yet on who CBS has in mind to fill Bowie’s impressive moon boots, but it’s quite a tall order to try and recapture the magic that he brought to the role. Granted, that the lead alien will be a separate character from Bowie’s Jerome Newton is one hurdle overcome. Kurtzman is starting a writer’s room for the series in the fall, with production expected to begin sometime next year.

Images: British Lion Films

The post David Bowie’s THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH Is Becoming a TV Show appeared first on Nerdist.

Ever since we heard that we’d be getting a new Star Trek series focusing on Patrick Stewart’s character of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, fans have been speculating about just what the series’ plot would entail. We knew it would take place some 20 years since we last saw the character in Star Trek: Nemesis, but that’s about it. But in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, series producer Alex Kurtzman droped the first hints at what he has in store for the former Captain of the Enterprise-D. Most significantly, Kurtzman said, “Picard’s life was radically altered by the dissolution of the Romulan Empire,†referring to an event that occurred in J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek film.This one sentence gave fans two strong clues about what is to come. First: The events of the 2009 film, which rebooted the franchise into an alternative timeline, won’t be negated. We will see how the destruction of one of the principal powers in the entire Star Trek canon will affect the universe we last properly visited in 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis. And second: Fans should prepare themselves for a very different Jean-Luc Picard than the one we’re used to. If the notion of what happened to Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi sent you into a tizzy, you might want to brace yourself.Here, we’re going to break down just why the Romulans are so important to Trek lore, and what the destruction of their Empire could mean for Star Trek as a whole, and for Picard himself, in this new series.

What This Means for Star Trek Canon

The Romulans first appeared in Star Trek: The Original Series first season episode “Balance of Terror.” They were revealed to be a violent offshoot of Spock’s own Vulcan race, having departed Vulcan thousands of years before, during the time that the culture embraced logic and rejected emotionality. The Vulcans who left their home planet evolved into the Romulans, and although still brilliant, remained warlike and hostile. They developed the cloaking technology used prominently throughout various Trek series.They appeared only two more times over the course of the original series; the Klingons took their place as the main antagonists for the Enterprise crew, something that continued through to the original feature films. But when the Klingons and the Federation made peace during The Next Generation era, the Romulans once again emerged as Starfleet’s deadliest adversaries, and remained as such throughout the course of TNG‘s run.Despite a brief alliance with the Federation during the Dominion War on Deep Space Nine, the Romulans continued on as a threat to the Alpha Quadrant (the area of space where most of Trek takes place), and once again attempted to destroy the Federation in the last TNG-era movie, Star Trek: Nemesis. Granted, more moderate elements of the Romulan race took control of the Empire thereafter, and we learn that tentative peace talks had begun by the end of that film. But the worst was yet to come for that proud species.The biggest change to the Romulans was seen in J.J. Abrams’ 2009 big screen reboot of Star Trek, where we learn that the Romulan homeworld was destroyed by a supernova, a tragedy that Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, who was living on Romulus trying to unite his own race with their offshoot cousins, failed to prevent. Although the rest of that film took place in an alternate timeline, in the “Prime Timeline,” a huge power in the galaxy had now been decimated, and fans have long wondered just what that means for the original Trek universe.The destruction of the Romulan homeworld would leave a huge power vacuum in the Alpha Quadrant. The Federation’s biggest antagonist since their earliest days is now crippled, and whatever survivors are left have no power base or ancestral home. Does this leave an opportunity for their bitter blood-rivals, the Klingons, to swoop in and bring them to their knees? And how would the benevolent Federation deal with millions of former enemies now needing their help to survive? And if the Klingons do indeed try to take over what’s left of the Romulan Empire, would that create a new conflict with the Federation? At the end of the day, the decimation of Romulus would fundamentally change everything we know about the Star Trek universe fans have followed for 50 years.

What This Means for Jean-Luc Picard

As for Jean-Luc Picard, the destruction of Romulus would have had a profound personal effect on him for sure. And not because he had so many run-ins with nasty Romulan commanders during the course of The Next Generation, or even because the Romulans once cloned him to create the younger, sadistic Shinzon (played by a young Tom Hardy in Nemesis), although those would be reasons enough for many.No, it’s because of his deep personal connection to one Ambassador Spock that the death of Romulus would change Picard. In the third and fifth seasons of TNG, Picard mind-melded with Spock’s father Sarek, and later, with Spock himself, in the two-part episode “Unification.” Because of this mind meld, He would have a deep understanding of who Spock was and what he wanted most in life, and towards the end of his days, Spock was working hard to unite the Vulcan race with their long lost Romulan cousins, living with an underground dissident movement on Romulus. In fact, as far as Picard knows, Spock died trying to save the Romulan homeworld.The destruction of Romulus would then have a profound effect on Picard, as he carries Spock’s thoughts and feelings inside of him. Because of this, he may be hellbent on saving what was left of the Romulan race, perhaps in order to reunite them with the Vulcans as he knew Spock would have wanted. Picard is a rational man to be certain, but when he sets his mind on something, he gets emotional (and becomes unstoppable). We doubt that aspect of his character has changed in his old age. In fact, he’s probably only become more inflexible.Picard is a man of honor and duty, and the character we came to love on Star Trek: The Next Generation would have felt duty bound to save what was left of the Romulan race. Given that Picard is roughly the same age as the actor who plays him, and Patrick Stewart is in his 80s now, we could see how he might want to spend his twilight years accomplishing one more significant thing for the betterment of the galaxy. And this could very well be it. And this mission could certainly carry multiple seasons of television.The new Picard series is set to debut on CBS All Access sometime in late 2019 or early 2020.

Images: Paramount Pictures / CBS / 20th Century Fox

The post How the New PICARD Series Could Change the STAR TREK Universe appeared first on Nerdist.

Ever since we heard that we’d be getting a new Star Trek series focusing on Patrick Stewart’s character of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, fans have been speculating about just what the series’ plot would entail. We knew it would take place some 20 years since we last saw the character in Star Trek: Nemesis, but that’s about it. But in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, series producer Alex Kurtzman droped the first hints at what he has in store for the former Captain of the Enterprise-D. Most significantly, Kurtzman said, “Picard’s life was radically altered by the dissolution of the Romulan Empire,†referring to an event that occurred in J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek film.This one sentence gave fans two strong clues about what is to come. First: The events of the 2009 film, which rebooted the franchise into an alternative timeline, won’t be negated. We will see how the destruction of one of the principal powers in the entire Star Trek canon will affect the universe we last properly visited in 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis. And second: Fans should prepare themselves for a very different Jean-Luc Picard than the one we’re used to. If the notion of what happened to Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi sent you into a tizzy, you might want to brace yourself.Here, we’re going to break down just why the Romulans are so important to Trek lore, and what the destruction of their Empire could mean for Star Trek as a whole, and for Picard himself, in this new series.

What This Means for Star Trek Canon

The Romulans first appeared in Star Trek: The Original Series first season episode “Balance of Terror.” They were revealed to be a violent offshoot of Spock’s own Vulcan race, having departed Vulcan thousands of years before, during the time that the culture embraced logic and rejected emotionality. The Vulcans who left their home planet evolved into the Romulans, and although still brilliant, remained warlike and hostile. They developed the cloaking technology used prominently throughout various Trek series.They appeared only two more times over the course of the original series; the Klingons took their place as the main antagonists for the Enterprise crew, something that continued through to the original feature films. But when the Klingons and the Federation made peace during The Next Generation era, the Romulans once again emerged as Starfleet’s deadliest adversaries, and remained as such throughout the course of TNG‘s run.Despite a brief alliance with the Federation during the Dominion War on Deep Space Nine, the Romulans continued on as a threat to the Alpha Quadrant (the area of space where most of Trek takes place), and once again attempted to destroy the Federation in the last TNG-era movie, Star Trek: Nemesis. Granted, more moderate elements of the Romulan race took control of the Empire thereafter, and we learn that tentative peace talks had begun by the end of that film. But the worst was yet to come for that proud species.The biggest change to the Romulans was seen in J.J. Abrams’ 2009 big screen reboot of Star Trek, where we learn that the Romulan homeworld was destroyed by a supernova, a tragedy that Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, who was living on Romulus trying to unite his own race with their offshoot cousins, failed to prevent. Although the rest of that film took place in an alternate timeline, in the “Prime Timeline,” a huge power in the galaxy had now been decimated, and fans have long wondered just what that means for the original Trek universe.The destruction of the Romulan homeworld would leave a huge power vacuum in the Alpha Quadrant. The Federation’s biggest antagonist since their earliest days is now crippled, and whatever survivors are left have no power base or ancestral home. Does this leave an opportunity for their bitter blood-rivals, the Klingons, to swoop in and bring them to their knees? And how would the benevolent Federation deal with millions of former enemies now needing their help to survive? And if the Klingons do indeed try to take over what’s left of the Romulan Empire, would that create a new conflict with the Federation? At the end of the day, the decimation of Romulus would fundamentally change everything we know about the Star Trek universe fans have followed for 50 years.

What This Means for Jean-Luc Picard

As for Jean-Luc Picard, the destruction of Romulus would have had a profound personal effect on him for sure. And not because he had so many run-ins with nasty Romulan commanders during the course of The Next Generation, or even because the Romulans once cloned him to create the younger, sadistic Shinzon (played by a young Tom Hardy in Nemesis), although those would be reasons enough for many.No, it’s because of his deep personal connection to one Ambassador Spock that the death of Romulus would change Picard. In the third and fifth seasons of TNG, Picard mind-melded with Spock’s father Sarek, and later, with Spock himself, in the two-part episode “Unification.” Because of this mind meld, He would have a deep understanding of who Spock was and what he wanted most in life, and towards the end of his days, Spock was working hard to unite the Vulcan race with their long lost Romulan cousins, living with an underground dissident movement on Romulus. In fact, as far as Picard knows, Spock died trying to save the Romulan homeworld.The destruction of Romulus would then have a profound effect on Picard, as he carries Spock’s thoughts and feelings inside of him. Because of this, he may be hellbent on saving what was left of the Romulan race, perhaps in order to reunite them with the Vulcans as he knew Spock would have wanted. Picard is a rational man to be certain, but when he sets his mind on something, he gets emotional (and becomes unstoppable). We doubt that aspect of his character has changed in his old age. In fact, he’s probably only become more inflexible.Picard is a man of honor and duty, and the character we came to love on Star Trek: The Next Generation would have felt duty bound to save what was left of the Romulan race. Given that Picard is roughly the same age as the actor who plays him, and Patrick Stewart is in his 80s now, we could see how he might want to spend his twilight years accomplishing one more significant thing for the betterment of the galaxy. And this could very well be it. And this mission could certainly carry multiple seasons of television.The new Picard series is set to debut on CBS All Access sometime in late 2019 or early 2020.

Images: Paramount Pictures / CBS / 20th Century Fox

The post How the New PICARD Series Could Change the STAR TREK Universe appeared first on Nerdist.

This week it was reported that writer/producer Alex Kurtzman has entered into a five-year deal with CBS All Access to oversee a variety of Star Trek series and mini-series. In the original report from Variety, their sources said four different Trek projects are in development:

1. A Starfleet Academy show from creators Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz, creators of Gossip Girl and Marvel’s Runaways.2. A limited series based around the character of Khan, most famously portrayed by Ricardo Montalbán in both the classic episode “Space Seed” and again in the film Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan. This would presumably be about his exile under the orders of Captain Kirk.

3. A limited series whose plot details are being kept under wraps.

4. An animated series whose plot details are being kept under wraps.

That’s a lot of Trek over the next few years! But if Star Wars is going to expand to multiple streaming series as well as animated shows, why not Trek as well? Assuming each of these projects gets past the concept phase, here’s what we’d like to see from each of them:

The Starfleet Academy Series

Starfleet Academy is an idea that has been floating around in one form or another for decades, but has never gone past the idea stage. Back in the early ’90s, Paramount thought that the original crew might have finally gotten too old for the big screen, and figured that maybe the next film would feature younger versions of Kirk and Spock in a story set in their Academy days. Fans revolted, demanding one more film with the original cast, saying that this Starfleet Academy movie would be the equivalent of “Star Trek 90210.” Instead, we got the original cast back together again one last time in the excellent Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Another time a Trek spin-off centering around the Academy was rumored was when Wil Wheaton’s character Wesley Crusher left The Next Generation to go off to Starfleet Academy. It seemed we might see a show with Wes at the center of it, but those just turned out to be rumors. Nevertheless, a Starfleet Academy series does have merit. Maybe a group of cadets on a training mission, similar to what we see in the beginning of The Wrath of Khan? Hopefully something set in a previously unseen Star Trek timeline. We could even see younger versions of famous characters from the franchise in their youthful days. The possibilities are endless.

The Khan Series

A series about the exile of Khan and his genetically enhanced supermen has been rumored for a while, with talks of The Wrath of Khan director Nicholas Meyer writing and directing it. While this is maybe my least favorite idea on paper, with Meyer involved it could be a cool prequel series if executed correctly. Still, Alex Kurtzman had better do a much more capable job recasting Khan than he did in 2013 with Star Trek Into Darkness, because Benedict Cumberbatch didn’t resemble or sound like Ricardo Montalbán in the slightest. If you’re going to bring back Khan again, do better this time, guys.

The Mystery Limited Series

The unknown limited event miniseries is the one I’m most excited about, simply because it is probably the project that Sir Patrick Stewart is attached to. I say this because Stewart is a big enough star to not want to be tied down to a continuing series, but could probably be lured back to play an older Jean-Luc Picard for a limited series event…especially if it reunited him with his close friends from the TNG cast.

A limited series at this point in time starring Picard as the lead could be very intriguing for several reasons. The last time we left the 24th century’s Next Generation/Deep Space Nine/Voyager timeline, the Federation has just survived a brutal war with the Dominion—a war that brought together old enemies like the Klingons, the Romulans, and the Cardassians with Starfleet. Did this alliance hold after the war? What is the Alpha Quadrant even like two decades later? Trekkers having been dying to know, but the powers that be keep giving up prequels like Enterprise and Discovery instead.

Another reason why an event series set 25 years after the TNG finale could be extra intriguing is because the series finale of TNG, “All Good Things,” gave us a flash forward 25 years into the future. At the end, it was explained that it was just a possible future, but it would be interesting to see what events actually transpired for the Enterprise-D crew, and which didn’t, as we hit that “25 years later” date. The final chapter for the TNG crew was the universally panned Star Trek: Nemesis. The 24th century deserves a better send off than that.

The Animated Series

There hasn’t been a Star Trek Animated series since the mid ’70s, but now is the right time to do it. Animation affords Trek something that live-action doesn’t: freedom from the limits of a special effects budget, and thusly the ability to get really imaginative with alien and ship designs, and much more. Hopefully, a Trek animated series takes us even further into the future than we’ve ever seen before. If a limited series features Picard and other characters some 20 years since we last saw them, then let a new Star Trek: The Animated Series take the concept hundreds of years past where we left the galaxy, and maybe take us to an all new galaxy all together.

What would you like to see in these potential new Trek series? Be sure to let us know down below in the comments.

Images: CBS / Paramount

More from the final frontier

• A Star Trek vs. Transformers comic series is coming this fall
• Alex Kurtzman takes over Star Trek: Discovery
• Is Star Trek Land coming to Universal Studios?

The post What We Want to See from STAR TREK’s 4 New Series appeared first on Nerdist.

Earlier this month, CBS All Access revealed Star Trek: Discovery is undergoing a shake up in its second season with the removal of its showrunners. Screenwriter and executive producer Alex Kurtzman was named Discovery‘s new showrunner, and now Kurtzman will also be at the helm of additional Star Trek television projects.

Via The Wrap, Kurtzman has signed a development deal with CBS TV that will keep him under contract through 2023. Kurtzman’s expanded duties will include new iterations of Star Trek, which may include new TV series, miniseries, and possibly even animated projects. Here’s where things get really wild: The Hollywood Reporter (THR) adds that one of the new Star Trek series may be starring Patrick Stewart, who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard for seven seasons on Star Trek: The Next Generation and in four feature films.

This may be the Star Trek project Stewart was hinting at earlier this month. If so, it would mark the first official continuation of the TNG timeline since Star Trek: Nemesis. THR‘s report cautions Stewart’s return is far from a done deal, and there is no contract currently in place. But Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman are on board to produce the new Stewart-led Star Trek series, if it comes to pass.

If one of the new series is a continuation of TNG, it could potentially open the door for other original cast members to return. But we suspect it would probably introduce a new cast of characters to explore the universe alongside some of the veteran players. Variety reports the series in development potentially include a new series set at Starfleet Academy, a limited series with an unknown focus, a limited series centered on the story from Wrath of Khan, and an animated series.

Are you excited about the potential new Star Trek TV series? Engage your thoughts in the comment section below!

Images: CBS

More television news!

• Jon Bernthal’s returning to The Walking Dead.
• Voltron‘s showrunners talk about a galactic civil war.
• BBC’s dropping new comedies, including one with David Tennant.

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Star Trek: Discovery has only recently begun filming its second season, but it is already undergoing a major shake-up. According to a story in The Hollywood Reporter, showrunners Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts, who took the reins of running the show from Bryan Fuller before shooting started on the series’ first season, have been let go. Executive producer Alex Kurtzman, who wrote and produced the first two J.J. Abrams movies, will take over as showrunner and head of the Discovery writers’ room for the second season.

It’s said that the first five episodes of the season are already done, so Kurtzman’s takeover won’t really be reflected until episode six. According to the original report, Berg and Harberts were accused of abuse from some of the show’s writing staff, and several of the writers are said to have been very uncomfortable working on the series under their watch. Some had apparently threatened to file a complaint with human resources, or quit the show’s writing staff.

Also leaving the series is executive producer Akiva Goldsman, though it isn’t immediately clear if the controversies surrounding his departure—THR reports that he had “a management style that clashed with the writing staff”—are in any way related or comparable to the above.

The early seasons for modern Star Trek have always been filled with behind-the-scenes turmoil. The first two season of Star Trek: The Next Generation were filled with creative changes, and the plug was almost pulled on the show in its early days because of it. Similar stories abound for spin-off series Deep Space Nine and Voyager. Hopefully, Discovery finds the right people behind the camera who have a solid vision for the show based on good storytelling and less on plot twist sensationalism, and, more importantly, who treat their staff with respect and humanity. The cast deserves something better, and so do the fans.

What do you want to see change on Star Trek: Discovery? Be sure to leave your thoughts down below in the comments.

Images: CBS

More news!

• Everything that’s coming to SDCC 2018
• Is Batfleck officially out of the DCEU?
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The post STAR TREK: DISCOVERY Fires Showrunners, Replaces Them with Alex Kurtzman appeared first on Nerdist.

Star Trek: Discovery has given us our first glimpse at season two of the series with an all new trailer, which commemorates the start of production for the new season. You can check it out below, and then we’ll unpack all the new goodies this trailer gives us.

Thrusters on full! Production has begun on season 2 of #StarTrekDiscovery! Season 1 now streaming: https://t.co/yrMuoDTRl9 pic.twitter.com/mIRSQljvyy

— Star Trek: Discovery (@startrekcbs) April 26, 2018

So what have we gleaned? For starters, we see Star Trek 2009 and Star Trek Into Darkness co-writer Alex Kurtzman directing the first episode of the season, as was recently announced. But even more interesting is that we see the original series uniforms being made, and what appears to be the back of the Enterprise‘s Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), all decked out in original series gold. We all see a screenshot of the original series red mini-skirt uniform, so it seems we’ll finally get an answer as to why the Enterprise design aesthetic is totally different to the rest of Starfleet at this time.

It’s also interesting to note the voice overs we hear for this trailer are from actor Jeffrey Hunter (the original Captain Pike from the first Star Trek pilot “The Cage”) as well as some from Leonard Nimoy as Spock. We know a younger Spock will appear in flashbacks, but this is our first hint that an older Spock will appear. No actor has been cast yet for the role, at least officially. In addition, we see many sets being constructed, including one which looks like it could be the bridge of the original Enterprise. Could Discovery finally be giving us episodes that explain all their wonky continuity?

Does this new trailer have you excited for season two of Discovery? Be sure to let us know down below in the comments.

Images: CBS All Access

More television news!

• The next Star Wars animated series has been announced.
• Legion finally made Syd more than a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
• Double Dare is coming back.

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The new Star Trek series Discovery is only a few months away from launching, and many longtime Trekkers have been worried that this prequel show might not adhere to the fifty plus years of continuity already established. After all—based on the trailers so far—the show, which is set a decade before the five year mission of Captain Kirk and Mister Spock on the Enterprise, looks very different aesthetically to anything in the classic series. Will CBS make sure that there are no major continuity contradictions to established Trek canon?

It appears so, as according to a report over at CNET, Star Trek Discovery producer Alex Kurtzman (who co-wrote the first two J.J. Abrams Star Trek films) said they actually hired a few Trek fact-checkers (and some superfan writers!) for the writers’ room to make sure that every storyline and episode idea does not  step on the toes of established facts and stories within the canon of the Star Trek universe. No easy task, as we are talking about five live action series and some 700 episodes of television. You can read an excerpt from Kurtzman’s comments below:

“Without spoiling anything we are adhering to a timeline and sticking to the rules, but also I think finding some new areas and avenues that have only been alluded to, but never fully explored.”

“You have to respect canon as it’s being written. You can’t say, ‘That never happened.’ No, no no, you can’t do that, they would kill you. Star Trek fans would kill you. No, you have to respect canon. You have to understand the timelines and what the different timelines were and what the different universes were and how they all worked together. You have to keep very meticulous track of who, what, where, when and why. And we have people in the writer’s room whose sole job is to say, ‘Nope, can’t do that!'”

These comments are interesting, because—based on the trailers—we have a group of Klingons who look totally different from anything we’ve ever seen before in original Trek, and uniforms that contradict the look of the Starfleet uniforms used in the original series episode “The Cage,” which also took place ten years before Kirk and Spock.

Some things obviously are just going to be somewhat different, due to advances in special effects, but based on what we’ve seen, this all looks much more like the J.J. Abrams’ “alternate timeline” of the recent films than anything in the original series. Here’s hoping the writers on Discovery can somehow make this all work.

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Star Trek: Discovery premieres September 24 on CBS, and the series will run exclusively on the network’s CBS All Access streaming service.

Are you excited for this latest addition to the long running Trek mythology? And how well do you think it will adhere to established canon? Let us know down below in the comments.

Images: CBS 

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There have been a lot of questions about Universal’s new The Mummy film, directed by Alex Kurtzman, since the trailer dropped on Sunday evening (on Monday, I shared how the film fits into any existing Universal Monsters continuity). One of the biggest question marks seems to be why the choice to include Dr. Jekyll, played by Russell Crowe, was made. Dr. Jekyll, while a major character from horror literature, was never one of Universal’s major monsters–despite being in 1953’s Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. So why him? Why now? Kurtzman explained it was all in service of the story.”There was a lot of debate about whether or not to put Dr. Jekyll in the movie,” Kurtzman began, “because the minute you say ‘Oh, it’s The Mummy, but also Dr. Jekyll’s in it,’ you guys are all going to say ‘are you trying to sell me on a shared universe all of a sudden?’ Which seemed a reasonable question. In the footage shown to Nerdist and a few other outlets, Dr. Jekyll introduces Tom Cruise‘s Nick Morton to Prodigium, the clandestine, monster-finding organization which will likely be the S.H.I.E.L.D. of the universe.“We wanted to understand the context of the Mummy in the larger world,” he continued, “and we wanted to explore that monsters have existed for millennia, and we knew as the story evolved we wanted there to be an organization that was maybe cataloging them, following them, collecting them.” By necessity, then, there needed to be someone who understood that world, and could bring Morton into it. “We could make up a character to fit that role,” Kurtzman continued, “or we could look at monster mythology and say ‘is there a character who could organically fit into The Mummy story, that wouldn’t detract from The Mummy story, but would in fact enhance it?'”Kurtzman said there needed to be a learned, professorial, medical and scientific type to be that character, a harkening back to the classic films in which there was always a learned doctor who aided in the monster fight in some way. (A lot of the time in those old movies, it was a character played by Edward Van Sloan–fun fact.) This led Kurtzman and company to the character of Dr. Henry Jekyll, though to add him, it needed to be a reflection of the Morton character’s unreliable, conflicted nature. His character gets cursed by the Mummy and that makes him torn between good and evil. “You’re talking about a character and a movie that’s really going to explore how much human and how much monster is going to exist within this guy,” Kurtzman explained. “Where is the line between them, and can both of those things exist within one character? Well, I could also be talking about Dr. Jekyll, so that’s when we said ‘these guys are really mirrors of each other.’ Now there’s a reason to put him in the movie, because he’s a reflection of Nick’s character arc.”But don’t expect The Mummy to be populated by dozens of other Universal Monsters characters. He said, Jekyll aside, the movie is a Mummy movie and this won’t be a backdoor team-up movie. Kurtzman cited The Avengers as the way of doing it right, by introducing each individual hero first, something he was quick to point out, was essentially started by Universal with their monster team-up movies. Don’t hold out too much hope, however, for a full complement of monsters in one film.”The promise, the fun of bringing [all the Universal Monsters] together,” Kurtzman explained, “is they’re probably going to fuck each other up pretty badly. It’s not going to be a pretty room with those guys in it, and that’s a lot more exciting than people who are going to behave nobly and predictably.” Which, by its very nature, is how a shared universe of heroes has to largely behave. “That becomes a much more interesting prospect,” he continued, “so the question becomes, how do you get them to work together? I don’t know yet. Also, to what end? Why would you bring them together? There also has to be some unifying reason. And we might not bring them all together. We might just do one or two.”As great as it would be to see a The Monster Squad-style team-up of all of the Universal crew, it might be more special if we only get specific pairings. In any case, I got the sense from Kurtzman that the universe of Universal Monsters is very special to him, and the individual films need to warrant any kind of fan-exciting character inclusion.Keep watching the Nerdist feed for more insight into The Mummy and other titles that might be of interest to you, and let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Images: Universal

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist, and a massive horror nut. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!

And what about some weird, snake-based horror?

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