STAR TREK: DISCOVERY Delayed Until May 2017
The new Star Trek series, which didn’t debut during the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, now won’t debut in its original time frame, either.
CBS announced that the new Trek will be pushed back to a May 2017 start, with The Good Wife‘s spinoff moving up to take its place on the calendar.
In a joint statement released by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman, the concern was that the effects and production needs of the series would be such that a February 2017 start date just wasn’t practical:
“Bringing ‘Star Trek’ back to television carries a responsibility and mission: to connect fans and newcomers alike to the series that has fed our imaginations since childhood,” said executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Bryan Fuller.
“We aim to dream big and deliver, and that means making sure the demands of physical and post-production for a show that takes place entirely in space, and the need to meet an air date, don’t result in compromised quality.
Before heading into production, we evaluated these realities with our partners at CBS and they agreed: ‘Star Trek’ deserves the very best, and these extra few months will help us achieve a vision we can all be proud of.”
Given that we’ve not heard anything other than the lead character is female, the first officer, and will go by the moniker “Number One” (although probably not Majel Barrett’s character), this seems like an inevitable decision. Fuller did reveal that the show takes place ten years before the five-year mission shown in the original series, and this new story is set in the Prime universe instead of the Kelvin universe of the Abrams reboot films.
CBS president Les Moonves addressed the move in a media conference, saying it’s not anything to be worried about. “The producers came into my office last week and begged me – they said, “We are creating an entire universe; you know how fanatical Star Trek fans are. We’re creating this universe, we need a couple more months to get the effects right, to get the world right. PLEASE let us have until May.”
Moonves called Trek the “family jewels” and said he’d rather be late with a great show than on time with something that doesn’t deliver.
The pilot episode of Star Trek: Discovery will roll out on CBS’ broadcast network, with the entire 13-episode series exclusively on the CBS All Access digital platform.
