
New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017 - ocdtrekkie
http://www.startrek.com/article/new-star-trek-series-premieres-january-2017
======
dogma1138
Kinda worried that this will be a "web-only" series, Star Trek needs quite a
good production to work well, The budget for a TNG episode was 2M$ which was
pretty unheard off back then and is even considered expensive these days (GOT
which is currently the most expensive running show has about 6M per episode
and when you count the fact that TNG had 24-25 episodes per season the overall
season budget was almost the same).

I'm really hoping that the web production will be more akin to Netflix or
Amazon Studios quality and budget rather than the usual network webseries tie
in.

Also anyone has any ideas about the cast? there was a very long standing rumor
/ pre-production "Captain Worf" show that was supposed to happen but never
did, I really hope that this won't be in the rebooted universe because it was
well kinda meh.

Enterprise wasn't great (4th season was amazing tho), if this will be of the
same quality as TNG/DS9 or even "mom we got stuck in the holodeck again"
Voyager this would truly blow my mind, but as of now I am pessimistic beyond
hope until I can see the cast, writers, and canonical premise.

~~~
exelius
Sci Fi shows are expensive to make period - which is why there aren't usually
a lot of them on TV. Just think about it: for a normal sitcom or drama,
costumes can be bought off the rack and shots can be done on location or on a
sound stage with easily-sourced furniture / decoration / etc.

Everything on a Sci Fi (or fantasy) show has to be custom-made; from the
costumes to the wall decorations to the light fixtures to the furniture.
Custom making these things isn't easy, because they first have to be designed
so they look like they "fit" stylistically, then built. A show like Star Trek
will also have extensive makeup / prosthetics to depict the many different
races.

Besides, Star Trek is an active franchise with two recent, very successful
movies. No studio exec would ruin a franchise like that with a half-assed,
underproduced web series. Because you can't do Sci Fi cheaply without becoming
B-movie quality, this show will have to have at a minimum Stargate Atlantis
levels of production value. They may just be putting it on the web because the
Star Trek demographic doesn't watch network TV and the web is a better way to
reach the core audience for the show.

~~~
baldfat
> Sci Fi shows are expensive to make period

So never saw the Dr. Who series int he 1970s and 1980s :)

Personally I loved the campy Dr Whos a lot.

BBC - "Your almost Out of Budget and you have 3 part series to finish"

Producer - "No problem we will put a trash can over that guy and tape up a few
trash bags, throw some kids paint on it and there is our new monster." "We
will also call the gravel pit see if we can use it as a location during there
lunch breaks."

~~~
exelius
Yeah; I'm excluding the campy Sci Fi from this -- any of the low-budget movies
that the Syfy channel made, for example. They weren't intended to be good or
even draw a large audience, and they did pretty well considering their
budgets. But they didn't have the baggage or expectations that the "Star Trek"
name brings with it.

And even with Dr. Who, most of the action takes place in the present day --
which helps with saving money on costumes and sets.

~~~
KingMob
Let's not forget all the Doctor Who episodes that take place in the past,
which effectively means they can raid the wardrobes of whatever BBC period
drama is being filmed that week...

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danso
I was a big Trekkie when I was younger...but I'm surprised at how poorly the
show has held up when rewatching on Netflix. I think what spoiled me was the
revamped Battlestar Galactica. It's not the dated special effects that bother
me, it's the way the utopia of Star Trek's future and technology began to
provide way too many plot crutches. By the end of TNG, it seemed like every
crisis resolution involved reversing the polarity of some piece of equipment
or weapon at the last minute. DS9 was my favorite series up until the latter
seasons, where again, fancy technobabble would save the day over well-written
plots. I never watched much of Voyager or Enterprise...but it seemed the
technobabble only increased, with time travel being thrown in for variety.
With Voyager, the absurdity of tech continued from the beginning...IIRC, even
though Voyager was banished in the middle of nowhere with purportedly limited
resources, some technicality about how the holodeck worked allowed them to
basically use the holodeck all the time, as if it ran on magic and dreams
(which is basically what the holodeck stood for in all the new series). Even
the utopian future of no-currency was rendered a bit absurd with DS9 and the
introduction of Ferengi as main characters, and constant mentions of "gold-
press latinum"

BSG spoiled me because it showed, credibly that a space-faring future is
unlikely to be clean and sanitized. I think one of my favorite aspects of BSG
were the mundane ones, such as how having everyone spread out on different
ships hampered logistics and communications. In Star Trek, of course, this was
solved with instant communication devices, though the impact of instant
communication in TNG-and-on seems rather limited compared to what we
experience in the Internet-age.

Since the OP states that the new series shares the same writers as the
rebooted movies, I'm assuming that the altered timeline will be adopted by the
new TV series? The reboot Star Trek films were flashy and entertaining in the
way that modern action films are entertaining...but they took up the
technology-as-deus-ex-machina to the next level...Scotty created a
teleportation device that rendered starship travel moot and, of course, life-
giving Tribbles.

~~~
ant6n
I feel with Netflix making watching episodes in order and re-watching shows
much easier, DS9 is holding up pretty well. If you ignore some of the techno-
bs and make a leap of faith on the religion stuff, the dialogue (while
theatrical) is tight, the acting (besides the doctor) is pretty good, there's
some suspense between the characters. The story evolves. Rewatching I
especially like Quark, Garak, Odo - the characters that are not human and
their different perspectives.

~~~
beat
DS9 was in many ways the best of Star Trek. Season-long plot arcs worked
really well (Gul Dukat was a villain for the whole series! Oh, how he
evolved!), and the focus not just on characters, but the relationships between
characters, was fantastic. The Season 5 finale, when the Federation abandons
the station and families are torn apart? Incredible.

~~~
krapp
Ironically, the best Star Trek series was the one that deviated the furthest
from Roddenberry's vision.

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beloch
Trek at it's best:

1\. Isn't afraid of being slow, talky, and philosophical (Sorry J.J.). TNG had
many excellent episodes specifically because it was willing to risk being
"boring", while DS9 evolved Trek into the homogeneous "action" formula that
has dominated Voyager, most of Enterprise, and the recent movies.

2\. Is a force for idealism. The captains of Star Trek are paragons of
humanity, and are supposed to find the high ground when tackling murky issues.
The original series featured the first on-screen interracial kiss. TNG dove
into many thorny ethical issues. While TNG took a hard stance against torture,
Enterprise portrayed it as a useful tool.

3\. Boldy goes to new places. Star Trek (2009) did nothing new geographically,
but at least it went off the reservation by destroying a storied and beloved
Trek locale. Not everyone liked that, but at least it was daring. Into
Darkness (2013) aped Khan badly, completely missing out on what made the
original character and movie special. In general, the Trek movie franchise has
been chasing Khan for too long, and needs to focus on other aspects of Trek.

4\. Is smart about technology, and self consistent. Nerds pay attention to
this stuff. Khan beaming directly from Earth to the Klingon homeworld
functionally obliterated the vastness of space in the rebooted Trek universe.
Trek doesn't need to blow previously imagined sci-fi tech out of all
proportion to be interesting. It's strength, historically, has been inventing
new technologies and examining their impact on humans. Is there anything in
the new Trek movies that, in a few decades, we're going to be saying, "Hey,
Trek predicted this!".

5\. Doesn't solve everything by modifying the deflector dish. (Corollary to 4)
Voyager, I'm looking at you. All of the series occasionally penned "tech" into
their scripts to lazily magic their way out of situations. At some point this
became standard practice and as much a part of the formula as always having at
least a few minutes of "action trek", no matter how inappropriate it was to
the episode. This is a crutch that should be used as sparingly as possible.

6\. Features interesting, well-developed alien cultures. The original series
may have debuted the Klingons, but it was TNG that fleshed them out into a
living, breathing culture. TNG debuted the Cardassians and Bajorans, but DS9
benefited greatly from exploring the cultures of both these races. The formula
of Voyager forced a return to shallow portrayals of "species of the week", and
the show suffered greatly as a result.

~~~
dogma1138
DS9 had to deal with the "grey" areas of civilization and military
organizations in the latter seasons and they did it very well, as well as what
happens to society when it has been griped by fear (e.g. shapeshifter agents
on earth).

Enterprise started kinda ok (not great) but then 9/11 happened (which happened
technically like a week or 2 before the 1st season aired, but it was too fresh
to touch) which meant that it had to deal with that thing with it's very own
9/11 in the 3rd season.

With the 4th season they pretty much went into "concept-album" fan service
type of self containing arcs and it was pretty damn freaking good, they
brought allot of excellent talent specifically Manny Coto which pretty much
made the biggest fan service production once he was made the executive
producer and the exclusive writer of the show. With maybe 1 or 2 exceptions i
put every episode of Season 4 of Enterprise in my personal hall of fame both
in terms of Star Trek and general Scifi episodes.

Episodes like In a Mirror, Darkly, These Are the Voyages, United are what Star
Trek should look like and they had a full season of them.

~~~
serge2k
These are the voyages is widely considered one of the worst episodes of trek
and an insult to the series.

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munificent
99% press release trying to demonstrate the economic viability of CBS All
Access. 1% about Star Trek.

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gdubs
Currently re-watching the Next Generation on Netflix. The remastering is
wonderful; you can really see the film-level quality in things like Geordi's
visor, etc. What I miss most about the Star Trek universe is its optimism;
particularly during The Next Generation days. Sci-fi has largely mirrored the
militarism of the past decade. If the new series brings back some of that
optimism, I'd be excited.

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eslaught
While we're here, let's also acknowledge some of the fan-funded efforts that
have been keeping the spirit alive:

[http://www.startrekaxanar.com/](http://www.startrekaxanar.com/)

[http://startrekrenegades.com/](http://startrekrenegades.com/)

I, for one, am really looking forward to Axanar as much or even more than
these official series.

~~~
dogma1138
Renegades was nigh godawful. Prelude to Axanar reminded me of the real-action
adverts that big budget games have these days was very HALO 3-eque, not good
or bad persay, but it was just a relative short (20min) for their kickstarter
so not much to judge it by, the VFX looked professional but very un-Star Trek
like which was some what disappointing but unless you have the DS9 effects
team that managed to make 3D-CGI look like filmed scaled models or the team
behing BSG/Firefly you won't probably get the realistic look either.

~~~
eslaught
Renegades I won't dispute. But I felt like Prelude was exactly what it set out
to be and did quite well for that too. Both are doing remarkably well
considering the budgets they've been given (even Renegades).

In this day and age we have the privilege to pay for what we want to see, if
we feel like it. People love to complain, but seriously, if we aren't willing
to pony up the cash for something, why should we expect to studios to produce
what we want to see? Even paying for a Netflix subscription will split your
money so many different ways that the studios aren't going to be getting that
much at the end.

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tsunamifury
Two Words: Starfleet Academy.

It would be perfect to introduce a new crew and follow them through the
Academy years. They could either do the backstories of existing characters to
introduce new ones. You can combine the fun of Hogwarts-eque school, with
younger drama, and still throw in lots of science and adventures.

~~~
ck2
Didn't they do Starfleet with the Bakula series?

~~~
qbrass
Enterprise was set before Starfleet existed, where nobody knew what they were
really doing. The idea was for the crew to make the mistakes that set the
precedent for future Starfleet's regulations.

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vanderZwan
> The brand-new Star Trek will introduce new characters seeking imaginative
> new worlds and new civilizations, _while exploring the dramatic contemporary
> themes that have been a signature of the franchise since its inception in
> 1966_.

Although the series is aimed more at the US than the rest of the world, What
if they decided to tackle the current migration issues? Those will only become
bigger in the future as climate change will provoke more mass migrations.

Aside from being contemporary, the topic is a great source of material for
dramatic stories too.

EDIT: Could tie in neatly to the Vulcan planet being destroyed in the new
timeline.

~~~
ericcumbee
I'm really hoping its not set in the new timeline. My hope is that it is a
continuation of the Post Deep Space Nine/ Dominion War/ Voyager timeline. I
would hope they look at whats happened in the books set in that period. The
final borg invasion, the rise of the typhon pact, and Dr.Bashir from DS9
becoming sort of a Ed Snowden character.

~~~
moomin
+1 for any proposal that casts Siddig el Fadil as anything other than a
terrorist.

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acheron
"CBS All Access"? Nobody wants to buy individual streaming services from every
studio/network. Stop trying to make it happen. Just sign a deal with Netflix
or Amazon[1] and accept you missed the boat.

[1] And really Amazon is only acceptable because it's free.[2]

[2] Given that having Prime is pretty much non-negotiable anyway.

~~~
rhino369
Netflix and Amazon don't seem to be interested in becoming the Comcast or
direct tv of the Internet.

The amount of content Netflix and Amazon can create is limited. They cannot
pay for every tv show for 100-120 bucks a year. Look at what a mature company
like HBO produces for 180 a year. 3-5 hour long prestige dramas. 5-8 half hour
comedies. Some low expense reality tv like Bill Mayer or Real Sports.

Netflix may be able to scale better, if they get 80% of households they can go
cheaper. But they aren't going to be q total replacement for all media.

And you don't want them too. One company with control over all media would be
a disaster.

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wiremine
I'm a bit disappointed how pessimistic this thread is. They're bringing Star
Trek back! There are 1000 reasons it might fail, but it's GREAT to see them
trying. The ideals are timeless.

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beat
I, for one, am optimistic. Even though the JJ Abrams reboot movies sucked,
he's not the only one who can do the work. There are hordes of people in
Hollywood who grew up on Star Trek, love it properly, and want to bring back
the spirit of exploration and optimism and the ensemble cast work that make
the older series so compelling. I think the world needs a new Star Trek - one
that isn't just shiny effects, but holds true to the sense of hope and courage
that I loved and still love. And I know it can be done.

On the plus side, the quality of ensemble-cast science fiction tv writing has
exploded over the past 15-20 years, starting with how Babylon 5 and Buffy the
Vampire Slayer built season and multi-season story arcs that depended on
character growth. I would _love_ to see the sort of rich, passionate writing
that made Firefly, Walking Dead, and other shows so effective applied to Star
Trek!

And I'm a little biased toward the development of web-only series - some
friends of mine are doing Cartoon Network's first web-only series, and I'm
really hoping it succeeds spectacularly and points a new direction for CN.
Fixed timeslots in general are a dated way of doing shows now. Timeshifting is
the norm.

So yeah, hope for a bright future. And screw the Prime Directive.

~~~
codezero
What did you dislike about the reboot films? I really liked them, I thought
they were cast well, and were over-all pretty good.

edit: others in the comments have noted that the reboots are basically just
action sequences with none of the underlying social themes that made Star Trek
significant in the first place.

~~~
savanaly
They were fine action films, but they totally lacked the heart and soul of the
tv series, particularly the tv series' focus on exploration and diplomacy and
resolving conflicts without violence.

Granted, this has often been the case with Star Trek films (First Contact was
sort of an action movie for example).

~~~
Someone1234
> Granted, this has often been the case with Star Trek films (First Contact
> was sort of an action movie for example).

This is a point Trek fans rarely acknowledge.

Star Trek the TV show is often more thoughtful and deals with social
commentary well. However Star Trek movies rarely are.

Let's look at the classic Star Trek movies: Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock,
and The Undiscovered Country are all action films. The Voyage Home is a
comedy.

Which leaves just two: The Motion Picture and The Final Frontier which both
reviewers and audience alike pan for being some of the worst classic Trek
films.

Next Gen isn't much better: Generations, First Contact, and Nemesis are all
action films and Insurrection is extremely borderline.

So when people say "JJ Abrams ruins Star Trek by producing an action-
adventure" they're really ignoring the history of Star Trek films which are
full of only that.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
I thought "First Contact" was not a very good Trek movie. It always struck me
as a movie that was made from a non-Star Trek script that was retroactively
made into a Star Trek script. I also thought Captain Picard's behavior was
wildly inconsistent with how he was portrayed in the show... not where he went
all "Goodfellas" on the Borg in the holodeck, that was a fine character
moment, but when he "mercy killed" one of his crew. This was something the TV
Picard would never have done. He would have risked his life and the whole ship
to save that one crewman and not just given up so early one... after all, he
was dragged off and assimilated himself, but he was rescued and recovered.

"First Contact" also played fast and loose with established canon a lot more
than any other movie had done. I didn't care for the portrayal of Cochrane as
a drunk loser (although this has no bearing on James Cromwell's performance...
he is always great).

There's nothing wrong with action in Trek... it's built into the concept, but
the action was always less important than the Big Ideas... at least until some
of the movies, and especially the vapid JJTrek reboots came along.

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tantalor
> available exclusively in the United States on CBS All Access

> will also be distributed concurrently for television

So, is it on TV or not?

~~~
nandhp
For the concurrent distribution, I believe they are referring only to
international distribution. For example, House of Cards was broadcast on
traditional TV channels in countries that did not have Netflix (like
Australia, New Zealand, and India).

~~~
ewzimm
They state in the press release that it will premiere on TV then move to their
steaming service.

~~~
metasean
> The new series will blast off with a special preview broadcast on the CBS
> Television Network. The premiere episode and all subsequent first-run
> episodes will then be available exclusively in the United States on CBS All
> Access

> will also be distributed concurrently for television and multiple platforms
> around the world by CBS Studios International.

\- CBS Television Network first, then

\- United States - exclusively CBS All Access

\- International, _except United States_ \- multiple other platforms

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oldmanjay
They'd better just blow out the stops, go like 4000 years in the future and
start imagining some out there stuff. I don't need people in makeup and masks
fondling iPads and acting all utopian cause Roddenberry said so.

~~~
yc1010
They had the PADDs on star trek more than decades before tablets where
released, yet another example of star trek being ahead of its time

as for your "Utopian" comment, in the last few decades we have entered the era
of plenty, the main problem encountered by startups we see here in HN is not
that they are not innovative its that their products/services get drowned out
in a sea of plenty

Given a few hundred years and plentiful+cheap energy it is not beyond the
realm of imagination to imagine replicators, hell on a recent cruise i
nicknamed then soda vending machines "the replicator" because the thing could
spit out hundreds of different drinks with a few taps.

So a world of the future would be fairly "socialist" as machines and cheap
energy allow people to devote their times towards science, exploration, art
etc, we are already seeing this happening today and further mechanization and
robotics will only speed up the trend

~~~
oldmanjay
I'll grant them 15 years ahead of the iPad, but the show was supposed to be
hundreds of years advanced.

My utopian thoughts aren't really around the economics. Star trek humans are
all pure of motive and work to do the right thing in all circumstances, modulo
plot-necessitated black hats. I'd prefer a bit more humanity there. Humans are
far more complex than the black-and-white morality plays star trek tends to
be.

If they make a show that has "wrath of Khan" level pathos to the characters,
I'm in. If it's action schlock or morality plays, the star trek brand isn't
enough to attract me, particularly if the technology alternates between
"stupidly unreal" and banal.

~~~
MichaelGG
Yeah the real part of the tech that kicks me out of the show is how shitty the
computers are. Having manual pilots doing anything seems absurd. In some
episodes, rigging the computer up to do something is seen as something tricky
and complicated.

Even in-universe, it doesn't make sense. The Holodeck is sophisticated enough
to fly ships through physically real environments. (They do physics tests in
the deck.) So just use whatever great AI system powering the Holodeck to do
whatever advanced maneuver you need.

Also, the biggest fake tech: The communicators. The show clearly shows a
person hailing another on the comm badge. BUT there's no delay in the
response. "Captain to LaForge" \- "LaForge here". We see that the recipient
always hears the entire message. We also see there's no delay in the reply,
much less than "Captain to" takes. I suppose this is easily solved by the
commbadge just reading neural patterns and determining who you're gonna call.
But there's no mention of that, and the badges don't seem to function that
way.

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logfromblammo
Star Trek is a franchise that was slowly being crushed by the mass of its own
canon--five television series, ten feature films, books, comics, video games,
and a devoted fanbase will do that.

That is likely why the Abrams films rebooted the universe--restarting from the
Captain Pike era--with a big enough change to justifiably say it changes
_everything_ that the previous continuity ever did.

And that is rather fortunate, because if they had made first contact in 2016
rather than 1996, people might conceivably be throwing money into the
Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter interfaces to the Borg-net, rather than
foolishly engaging in any futile resistance. The cube-ships would be
ruthlessly harvesting our most shareable lolcat videos, and everyone would be
walking around in identical jeans-and-hoodies outfits and calling everything
"amazing".

A reboot is really the only way to restore the franchise to its original
mission to simplify today's social issues and frame them up against the
backdrop of a more progressive starfaring society, so that people can get some
perspective on those things that might otherwise be too close to home in a
somewhat entertaining way.

For instance, given the South China Sea situation, I would guess that at some
point, the new Star Trek series would introduce some alien species as proxies
for China, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Japan, and maybe even Brunei, and
the China-aliens would be constructing artificial dwarf planets out of
hazardous nebulae using unlicensed Genesis devices, and using them as bases to
harass passing scientific and mercantile traffic. Then some of the people
watching would obsess over details and completely miss the broader point.

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thehodge
Hopefully this will be a look forward beyond Voyager rather than going back
again..

~~~
drunken-serval
Personally, I don't see anything wrong with going for an alternate timeline
and a modern take on starship design. As long as they don't turn Star Trek
into an action franchise, I'm okay with it.

~~~
alexbecker
> As long as they don't turn Star Trek into an action franchise

Oh god, that would be tragic.

~~~
ramblerman
Well that's pretty much what the last movie was.

That being said I thought it was quite good when you didn't think of it as
'star trek'

~~~
aidenn0
Yeah the two new movies were essentially action movies that captured the feel
of the TOS characters.

~~~
rhino369
All the movies except 1 and 4 were essentially action movies. And 4 was mostly
a fish out of water comedy.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
As much as it's often panned, Insurrection is the most Star Trek of Star Trek
movies. It's about the Prime Directive at it's core. The Undiscovered Country
is also a great example of a movie about diplomacy.

Sure, every movie is going to be action-packed for film screens, but those two
I felt stuck to Star Trek's ideals more than the rest, where the movie focused
on stopping a specific evil villain.

~~~
rhino369
It's been a while since I saw Insurrection and Undiscovered Country, but you
could make a similar argument about Star Trek into Darkness. It was about the
struggle between a militarized starfleet and a starfleet about discovery and
exploration.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I honestly just feel Into Darkness is a movie about Khan. I've never felt the
new Trek movies put out this discovery and exploration vibe. They certainly
haven't attempted to do so as of yet.

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lghh
I have always been interested in watching Star Trek, having watched some of
Deep Space Nine with my dad and thinking it was okay when I was really young
in addition to enjoying the new movies. I figure now is a good time seeing as
this is coming out in a little over a year. Any suggestions as to what order I
should watch it in or if I should avoid any of the series?

~~~
aidenn0
The original series is probably worth watching all of, just because there
aren't that many episodes, and a few of them are real gems; it also sets the
stage for some other things that are worth watching.

Read a summary of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (actually if you can, read a
summary of a summary, the pacing of the movie is so ponderous). The even
numbered movies are the best, but it's probably worth watching the 3rd one as
well for continuity. The majority of the fandom pretends that the fifth movie
never happened, and is well worth skipping.

The Next Generation (TNG) and Deep Space Nine (DS9) are the two that seem to
have the strongest following with Voyager being a bit divisive among the
fandom (depending on who you ask it either sucks or is good).

You will have to suffer through the first season of TNG and just trust that it
will get better.

DS9 can stand on its own fairly well, but if you want continuity you can watch
any time after season 5 of TNG. DS9 enters a fairly significant tone shift
around season 4, and season 1, like TNG, is not necessarily representative of
the entire series.

[edit] Here's a super-short summary of the above:

TOS

Movies: 2,3,4,6

TNG: at least first 3 seasons, if you don't like after season 3, drop. If
you're impatient, you can watch just the pilot than skip to season 3 and not
miss _too_ much.

DS9: Seasons 4 and 5 of TNG develop some of the races that are prominent in
DS9, so it's best if you wait until at least season 5 of TNG to watch, if you
really didn't like season 3 of TNG, then this will stand on its own though.

Voyager: It was _not_ my cup of tea; some fans liked it though.

~~~
gknoy
There are lists of episodes that hit the "classic" ones, but the original
series was remarkably suitable to binge-watching on Netflix, partly because
there were few seasons. Many of the episodes are retellings of classic tales,
some are downright lame or campy. However, the main characters' development is
good. There are some interesting discussions of ethics and philosophy in
there, as well.

There are certainly episodes that suck, but the better ones are things that
you will find have informed our pop culture lexicon, and are referenced in
many other things. Watch it for the characters, more than the individual
shows, IMO.

~~~
aidenn0
TOS is definitely YMMV; my wife flat-out can't stand it, while she will watch
TNG with me. And as you point out there just weren't that many episodes, and
they establish a base that all of the other series refer back to, so I agree
it's worth watching all of for all but the most minimal run-through of Star
Trek.

------
mason240
Any word on the setting and how the alternate timeline reset of the of 2009
movie fits into the cannon?

It seems like there are couple possibilities. 1) They act like the reset in
the 2009 movie didn't happen, and the new show is just set sometime after
TNG/DS9/Voyager, with the same continuity.

2) Everything is reset and we get a new show set sometime after the reset.

I guess there is this: >The new television series is not related to the
upcoming feature film Star Trek Beyond which is scheduled to be distributed by
Paramount Pictures in summer 2016.

~~~
smacktoward
Since the new series is being exec-produced by Alex Kurtzman, who was a
producer and co-writer on both the 2009 _Star Trek_ and _Star Trek Into
Darkness_ , it seems pretty safe to assume the series will be set in the new
timeline/continuity those movies established. I'd read "not related to _Star
Trek Beyond_ " more as them saying it won't be tied in any specific way to the
plot/characters of that film than that it'll be completely outside the
rebooted continuity.

------
fapjacks
Oh, no. Kurtzman ran Hawaii 5-O and Scorpion, two of the worst shows ever
produced in the history of television. This thing is going to blow hard.

------
ck2
Can't wait to see what it will be like, was entertained by every series so
far.

Hopefully more like most of the series and less like the new movies.

~~~
seehafer
Your wish is unlikely to come true, as the new series is being
written/produced by the head writer of the last two movies.

------
anotherevan
It's a shame that they would be very unlikely to option New Frontier by Peter
David. He created some great characters there (although I think the latter
books have gotten a bit screwy).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_New_Frontier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_New_Frontier)

------
luckystarr
I'm surprised nobody mentioned Star Trek Continues
[http://www.startrekcontinues.com/](http://www.startrekcontinues.com/) yet.
It's financed by donations and has imho very good acting and dramaturgy.

James Doohan's son Chris even impersonates Scotty. (Stays in the family, I
guess...).

------
jbob2000
I'm skeptical. TV shows in general have taken a turn for the worse lately,
with the best series not even really airing on cable. Here's to hoping it's
not just another cobbled-together excuse for showing you an ad every 10
minutes.

~~~
unixhero
They have most definitely not. There's just a higher signal to noise ratio.

You have * Fargo * Boardwalk Empire * Mr Robot * Suits * True Detective

These are stellar shows with high production qualities.

There's generally no ads on web streaming during the show.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
Hopefully this would be based after the end the war with the Dominion at the
end of Deep Space Nine. Enterprise and the new movies have made me tired of
Star Trek, not interested in prequels and origin stories any longer.

------
valm-
It appears we will all need to pay CBS %5.99 a month to watch this.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Yes, CBS has this weird notion that you will pay $5.99 a month _AND_ watch
commercials that you can't skip.

I get that they "think" its like this now, they get paid by the cable company
for their channel (the $5.99) and they send them content with commercials
(which they have sold), but the new world is NetFlix which charges monthly,
but has now commercials.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
People love to make the Netflix comparison, but it's generally silly. First-
run, current-season material is vastly more expensive than the backlogs and
cheap movies Netflix buys.

You couldn't/wouldn't want to pay for how much current TV shows would cost in
commercial free. Netflix works because they only buy cheap content.

~~~
maxerickson
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_dist...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_distributed_by_Netflix)

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Largely irrelevant. Netflix shows are at a budget Netflix controls, rather
than the pricing maze of licensing content from major networks. Many more
shows, often with higher budgets. And with a price premium because Netflix
would be competing with their own services if Netflix was given earlier access
to them.

~~~
maxerickson
My point was that they are actually producing "First-run, current-season
material". They have several shows that have gotten attention for their
quality.

You say "you couldn't/wouldn't want to pay for how much current TV shows would
cost in commercial free.", but a show with a 10 million dollar budget and a
million viewers would cost $10, not a lot more than Google Play for current
season stuff (per episode), so apparently people are paying about what it
would take.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
For just that show. And when you look at the hundreds of shows these streaming
services offer, at a potential cost of $10 a pop per user, per show, you start
to understand why you still see ads when you pay to subscribe. ;)

------
squeral
I'm a huge fan and hope it's an alternate timeline that can still stick to
some of the original stories. Maybe with refresh ship designs :)

------
erickhill
It sickens me that a post with this much activity and interest was modded out
of existence. Boo, Hacker News Mod, whoever you are. Boo. Lighten up.

