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'Star Trek: Discovery' Gets September Premiere Date On CBS & CBS All Access, Season 1 Split In Two (deadline.com)

Posted by msmash on from the cool-beans dept.

Nellie Andreeva, writing for Deadline: Star Trek: Discovery will debut Sunday, September 24, with a special broadcast premiere on the CBS TV network airing 8:30-9:30 PM. The first as well as the second episode of the sci-fi series will be available on-demand on CBS All Access immediately following the broadcast premiere, with subsequent new episodes released on All Access each Sunday. Originally slated for a January 2017 premiere, Star Trek: Discovery's debut was first pushed to May and then to fall 2017. At CBS' upfront presentation, the company announced that Star Trek: Discovery's first-season order had been increased from 13 to 15 episodes. The expanded season now will be split into two. The first eight episodes will run Sundays from September 24 through November 5. The season then will resume with the second chapter in January 2018. The break also will allow the show more time for postproduction on latter episodes.

34 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. Captain's Log, Stardate 43125.8 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    We have entered a spectacular binary star system in the Kavis Alpha sector. Doesn't this asshole star realize gender isn't binary?

  2. As a lifelong Star Trek fan by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As a lifelong Star Trek fan I could give two shits. DSN was plenty of ST for one lifetime, and BSG pretty much put a bullet in the idea of Star Trek as the best ship-based SciFi franchise.

    1. Re:As a lifelong Star Trek fan by elrous0 · · Score: 2

      Yeah, in a post BSG world, Star Trek is going to look pretty hokey if they don't really have their writing game in order. And DS9 was the last Star Trek series to have good writing for its time, and that was 20 years ago.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    2. Re:As a lifelong Star Trek fan by Grishnakh · · Score: 2

      BSG pretty much put a bullet in the idea of Star Trek as the best ship-based SciFi franchise.

      You have got to be kidding. While I heartily agree that the BSG miniseries and first 2 seasons were fantastic, it quickly went down the drain, starting with the occupation of New Caprica, and especially later with the "Final 5" and the ridiculous series ending. That all really kinda ruined BSG for me, especially as far as being "the best ship-based Sci-Fi franchise". Unfortunately, unlike the Matrix movies where I'm somehow able to block the latter two installments out of my mind for the most part, I haven't been able to do that with BSG.

      Honestly, BSG should be a testament as to why this "story arc" idea needs to be throw in the trash. It just doesn't work, because of the realities of network TV. (Obviously, I'll exclude HBO shows like GoT from this because they really do order them all in one season, and Netflix shows are even better because they produce them a whole season at a time and release the entire season at once.) The problem with this story arc stuff is that the writers can't come up with an actual plot arc that spans the entire run of the series because they have no idea how long the show will last before the network pulls the plug on it, so they just make shit up as they go along. It became obvious BSG was doing this sometime in season 2, and we saw the same thing with LOST.

      ST:TNG really had a better format: self-contained episodes you can watch any time without needing to know all the details of what happened in previous episodes. Then, if the network cancels it, you're not just left hanging, like in "Terra Nova" or "Firefly".

    3. Re:As a lifelong Star Trek fan by Richard_at_work · · Score: 3, Informative

      When BSG was airing, Ron Moore routinely did a pod cast on each episode - he makes it painfully clear in those pod casts that the "Final Five" were not a thing at all until the writers noticed that the fan base had cottoned onto these missing five humanoid cylons and started writing them into the core of the story.

      Thats why they had to fudge it at the end to account for the screwed up numbering (we had numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 named early on - of course they had set apart the five so it would make no sense to slot them in as 7, 9, 10, 11 and 12, so they slotted "Daniel" in as 7 and all of a sudden we went from 12 models to 13).

      That right there ruined BSG for me - it became obvious that there was no overall story arc planned out, it was being made up as they went.

    4. Re:As a lifelong Star Trek fan by Rakarra · · Score: 2

      My general feeling for the "quality" of BSG -- absolutely excellent for the first 1.5 seasons, culminating in the Pegasus storyline. After the Pegasus arc, Season 2 floundered and stumbled a bit until the end, but the end of Season 2 was excellent, and I think the New Caprica storyline and the exodus was extremely well done as well. Once they escaped New Caprica, the series floundered a lot more and nosedived, never to recover. Even while I liked overall the season 3 ending, the final five thing was a bit ridiculous, as was the final reveal of "the plan." (Actually, The Plan was quite a good movie. I rather enjoyed it) Spoiler: The Cylons' plan was merely to blow up the 12 colonies, and that was about it. All those episodes of BSG that told us the Cylons had a plan.. well, the plan was over at that point. After colonies were nuked, the Cylons were rolling with the punches, reacting to what the humans were doing and trying to sabotage them.

  3. I'll reserve judgement, but... by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Desgrassi Jr. High cast (sans the kid in the wheelchair) is not exactly filling me with confidence. Are they making a show to tell a good story--or to advance a very specific political/social agenda?

    But I'll reserve judgement, out of respect for the Battlestar Galactica reboot, which I also expected to suck but which turned out great.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re: I'll reserve judgement, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah, but Roddenberry wouldn't even recognize liberalism today. Re-segregation, white male hatred/discrimination, a culture of victimhood, the demonization of masculinity, etc.? He sure as shit wouldn't see any of that as part of the Star Trek vision. Star Trek was supposed to be a universe where we had CONQUERED all of that bullshit.

    2. Re: I'll reserve judgement, but... by sexconker · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Now the new stuff coming out has been great! Arrival, Interstellar, Passenger, I'm forgetting a couple of others were written by real science fiction writers - Rodenberry wasn't.

      You can't see it, but I'm shaking my head left and right.

      Arrival was fucking stupid. We start with aliens and some interesting premise about communicating with them, but we end up with political bullshit that gets solved with time travel, telepathy, and essentially magic. The whole premise is shot when that shit happens because: Why couldn't the aliens use their time travel telepathy bullshit to help themselves? Why couldn't the aliens see / prevent the bomb? Or even more to the point, why couldn't the aliens see learning our language and then just communicate with us in out language? The whole fucking time they're sitting behind their glass barrier and watching Pam from The Office (I know it's not her) pantomime shit. The only thing missing was a Speak and Say toy. The aliens didn't do a damned thing to communicate with us, despite it being revealed that they'll need our help one day.

      Interstellar? Are you fucking kidding me? It devolves into time travel and spiritual/magical wankery so fucking quickly. And the first half is more about the fucking dust bowl than it is about sci-fi. As with any time travel movie, there are plot holes out the ass. But it doesn't fucking matter, I guess, because the movie is focused on a couple of people and how they are sad and dumb. The final scenes are like they watched 2001's LSD trip and decided to try and make something that makes even less sense.

      Passengers? Well that started out with some potential, at least. But it ended up being a romance/drama movie more than a sci-fi movie. I get that the dude struggled with the idea of opening someone's capsule up and all that. But once the decision was made to open one up, why did he have to choose a useless lady? I don't even remember her credentials. Oh wait - I do. She had none. She was writing a book. Maybe next time when you're browsing through all the records you'll pick a mechanic, a machinist, a tech, a security officer, or anyone who can help you fix shit. He had three problems.

      1) Why did I wake up early / what's wrong with the ship?
      2) How can I go back to sleep in a pod so I don't die alone?
      3) How can I get through the security door?

      He chose to solve problem 4 - I'm sad and lonely and haven't gotten laid in a long time.

      I'm not saying problem 4 wasn't a problem that needed solving. But he could've also solved problems 1, 2, and 3 had he picked the right person (or people) to wake up. There's a lot of the hemming and hawing about not wanting to wake even a single person up because it would doom them to die on the ship and (nearly) alone. But you've got trouble in River City, son. Trouble with with a capital T. Every fucking day he spent enjoying the bar from The Shining and not working on the problem was irresponsible and, more importantly, stupid.

      He had access to everyone's records. He could have found a few people with skills / clearance to help him repair/reset the pods, fix the ship, or get past the security door to wake up people with more clearance / skills to repair/reset the pods and fix the ship.

      But no, he waits months (or years) to just choose Katniss Everdeen, who provides no help on the whole "shit's on fire, yo" front. And when they do get a 3rd person, the whole thing about "Oh no, they woke up and now they're doomed to die here." is still focused on Katniss instead of the new dude who is actively dying a painful, drawn out death.

      I can look past the generic reactor core shit, and the ship is broke but it don't know it's broke setup. But the movie as a whole had so very little to do with sci-fi and much too much to do with romance.

      As for ol' Gene Rberry, I agree. He wasn't really a sci-fi writer.

    3. Re:I'll reserve judgement, but... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The irony is that if the original series came out now, these same people would be complaining bitterly about the diversity.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    4. Re: I'll reserve judgement, but... by Voyager529 · · Score: 2

      Time travel is a cheap-ass way to fix a problem deus ex machina, essentially, and writing anything that centers around time travel? You're asking for disaster. You almost certainly end up painting yourself into a corner, ruining any chance of redeeming your work. That's what authors have told me, at least.

      See, I think time travel can be an interesting mechanic as long as it's used properly, the rules are applied consistently, and the story is deeper than 'fix the thing'. Back to the Future gained mass appeal because it was a plot device tangential to the real theme of the movie - the fact that Marty came to realize he shared more in common with his parents than he thought. We forgave the butterfly effect problem and the motion of earth and the solar system in order to allow the rest of the story to advance. The new series "Timeless" has been fairly good because they've kept to the rules they established at the beginning and the fact that the slight alterations are historical fact to everyone who didn't travel through time.

      Star Trek has been a mess with respect to time travel because the rules change a lot. The TOS crew achieved time warp in a craptastic Klingon vessel, but neither Picard nor Janeway gave it the ol' college try a hundred years later? In Voyager's case specifically, "Year of Hell" was a good concept that couldn't stand up to scrutiny, because "destroying the ship" did exactly what everyone wanted, including the antagonist, because "destruction" became "never existed", which made no sense, and that's completely sidestepping everything Captain Braxton did, or the fact that Starfleet would even have a fleet of timeships in the first place. I'm not even going into the mess that was "First Contact", but it's most heinous crime was giving the Borg some form of time travel capabilities that they then never used thereafter. Then, there's Doctor Who. Want to talk about a deus ex machina...he comes at just the right time to fix a thing, unless it's arbitrarily deemed a "fixed point in time"...

      As stated, I think it's indeed very difficult to make a time travel story, but not impossible, as long as consistency is met and the story primarily uses time travel as a means to an end rather than a crutch upon which to base an otherwise thin-at-best story.

    5. Re:I'll reserve judgement, but... by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

      Which was really the whole point. Even down to the Sulu with his husband scene in the last film. It's just done very matter-of-factly. There's no attempt to editorialize it. This is just how people are in the 23rd century, apparently.

      Enterprise's last real story arc was about a xenophobic lunatic who wanted to get rid of all the undesirables (in that case, non-humans), but it's pretty clear the intent here was very much to bring up anti-immigrant sentiment in the US and other Western countries after 9-11. I suspect some people on Slashdot right now would believe that the writers were deliberately forcing their SJW beliefs on poor long suffering people who just want to be able to shout "Tell the Mexicans to fuck off" and have no one disagree.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  4. Re:Yet another trek by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The question for me is, why would I want to pay $6/month just to watch a few episodes of Star Trek: Discovery?

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  5. Re:Run on? by shadowknot · · Score: 2

    From what I've read, in the US it wont be on Netflix (at least not until CBS All Access dies). Outside of the US it'll be the primary distribution method, not sure if that'll be simultaneous with the September release date mentioned in TFA though.

  6. Re:Yet another trek by MBGMorden · · Score: 3, Insightful

    People have been asking "have all the good stories already been told" for centuries, yet new ground continues to be broken.

    "Star Trek" is merely a starting point - and a limited one at that given that this is a brand new series. I'm sure they've got plenty of opportunity for good stores. That doesn't mean they'll deliver - it could be crap - but the chance is there.

    Then again I've always been of the opinion that even bad sci-fi can still be worth watching. I actually mildly enjoyed watching Andromeda . . .

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  7. Re:Yet another trek by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Yeah...

    I wish CBS would get on the ball and put their channel On Demand stuff like the rest of the networks like ABC, NBC have, on the existing streaming services like Playstation VUE...Sling, DirectTVNOW...etc

    I"m certainly NOT going to pay extra $6 just to get them on there, not worth it.

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  8. Want to check a great StarTrek series? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    See subject & Star Trek Continues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJf2ovQtI6w/ - this episode's outstanding (titled "The Fairest of them all")

    * "In every revolution, there's 1 man w/ a vision" & "Who told you that?" + "YOU did..."

    (These guys have REAL potential...)

    APK

    P.S.=> It continues (pun intended) after the StarTrek TOS episode "MIRROR, mirror" (bearded Spock & all)... apk

    1. Re:Want to check a great StarTrek series? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      I tried to view it, but apparently youtube.com is blocked by my hosts file...

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  9. CBS? What about Netflix? by GNious · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Who cares when it releases on obscure channel in a single country - Proper question is, when does it release world-wide on Netflix?

    1. Re:CBS? What about Netflix? by Misagon · · Score: 2

      Netflix has the exclusive rights to the show outside the US and Canada.
      Each episode will be available in 188 countries within 24 hours from the US premiere.

      You could have simply looked it up. ;)

      --
      "We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
  10. Re:Yet another trek by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When I rewatched Enterprise (or rather rewatched the first two and a half seasons and the rest of season 3 and 4 that I had simply abandoned), I found, quite sadly, that there were some rather good episodes, and some of the best came in the last season after the production team and writers clearly knew the show was dead. But it's always about two things; does the crew jive with the audience, and is there enough good stories to outweigh the bad ones?

    Obviously there are going to be rehashings, that's sort of inevitable consider the sheer volume of Trek episodes and movies out there, but if they can find a new angle then even a rehashed story can become interesting.

    I'll say this about it. Star Trek Continues has demonstrated how good writing and a love for the source material can produce some outstanding SciFi, so if some fans working with fundraised cash can put together some pretty goddamned good science fiction episodes, surely a big studio can do the same if it wants to.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  11. Re:Yet another trek by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The abrams movies weren't star trek, they were just shitty action movies with star trek character names and branding. they litterally through all of star trek in the garbage to create that steaming pile.

  12. Re:Yet another trek by EvilSS · · Score: 2

    The question for me is, why would I want to pay $6/month just to watch a few episodes of Star Trek: Discovery?

    Well if you are patient you don't have to pay anything (and can still be 'legal' about it). Just wait for the season to wrap up in winter 2018 and sign up for a free 7 day trial. Binge the show that week, cancel, then next year do the same thing with a new email address.

    OK that last part might be a bit sketchy, but still...

    --
    I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
  13. Re:Yet another trek by omnichad · · Score: 2

    That won't go over very well... But if the pilot's good, I'll catch it when it makes it to Prime or Netflix in the US maybe 5 years from now. I'm in no rush.

  14. Re:Yet another trek by x0ra · · Score: 2

    or just wait 24h and go on any streaming sites.

  15. Re:After what corporations did to... by MightyMartian · · Score: 3

    The problem was that Enterprise was utterly botched. They had the whole pre-Federation story to tell, and wasted an entire season on the stupid Xindi thing, and had the idiotic Temporal War meta-arc throughout the first three seasons, actually right into the fourth. It wasn't until the fourth, with the series' already on the chopping block that they finally decided to show how the Federation was founded.

    Enterprise actually had quite a few good episodes, and I actually thought Tucker, in particular, was an outstanding character who invoked the Montgomery Scott style of "Don't fuck with my ship!" attitude. But Enterprise squandered so many opportunities because Berman and Braga just couldn't get themselves out of the DS9-Voyager headspace, and littered what should have been a new start with the storytelling refuse of the two previous series.

    A proper Enterprise would have avoided big multi-episode story arcs for the most part, modeling itself more on TOS and TNG. I get that you cannot reasonably have every episode about the Vulcans, Andorians, Tellerites, etc., but I finally abandoned the whole thing somewhere in the middle of Season 3 because it seemed to be suffering the same kind nonsensical storytelling that I found so grating in Voyager. But by that point Berman and Braga had developed their cookie-cutter approach to scripts and story arcs, and they were going to stick with it come hell or high water.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  16. Re:Yet another trek by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 2

    The phrase I coined to refer to that is 'Star Trek-flavored movies'. Artificially flavored, of course. With sucralose.

  17. Re:Yet another trek by zlives · · Score: 2

    i am sure they have forseen this and will only allow you to watch 1 episode a month
    MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

  18. Re:Yet another trek by Strider- · · Score: 2

    maybe I'm too lazy to watch any new stuff, some of it I just don't get (maybe I'm too old). It seems to me when Roddenberry came up with his ST idea, it was new stuff. Space travel was new, having a command staff where not everyone is a white guy whose native language is english was new.

    Other than its progressive surface and the fact that it was in space, TOS really wasn't much more than a spaghetti western, in space. It was pretty much just an action series, with the bad guy of the week, and pretty much completely episodic. People forget that, and imho, the Abrams moves are a return to what Trek originally was.

    It wasn't until TNG and the later movies that things started to become pseudo-philosophical and the like, with the long drawn out conversations around conference tables and what not.

    --
    ...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
  19. Skipping by p51d007 · · Score: 2

    If it isn't on "free TV" I won't bother. Also, you can bet it will interject political correctness, and be biased against anything of a "democratic" nature.

  20. Re:'Streaming only', and other complaints by ZenShadow · · Score: 3, Informative

    Okay, wow.

    1: Star Trek Continues has never, to the best of my knowledge, been sued by CBS. In fact, they apparently have a pretty good relationship from what I've heard.

    2: Axanar was probably a scam. Do some research on the guy behind it, and then ask yourself: where did the million bucks go? They had pro-bono representation, so it's doubtful they spent anywhere near that on their short-lived defense. They produced only a few minutes of video. And they were so flagrant about violating Trek IP that they were single-handedly responsible for CBS deciding they had to clamp down on fan productions -- and CBS could have done far, far worse than they did.

    You can hate on CBS for a lot of things, but at least do it for something they deserve to be hated on for... Axanar is not so clear cut, and I have no clue where you came up with the supposed ST:C lawsuit.

    --
    -- sigs cause cancer.
  21. Re:Yet another trek by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

    You could wait for it to finish and then watch it all in one month for $6. Or just pirate it. If you weren't going to pay anyway then they didn't lose anything.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  22. Re:Star Trek fan but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    oh god it cast a female and black lead. SO PC. I AM SO OFFENDED. i am going to throw a tantrum on slashfuck because i am a sexist pig who deserves a kick in the balls from a hot dominatrix in leather.

  23. Their Klingons don't even look like Klingons by mfearby · · Score: 2

    I'll pass. It won't even be worth downloading a torrent off the pirate bay and will probably be another "Enterprise" joke.