Rumors of a renewed interest in CBS merging back with former corporate sibling Viacom have been floating about the entertainment industry for the past few months, with the latest round of merger discussions starting to hit the news back in January.
We’ve mostly stayed out of covering the rumors this time around, as the last time such speculation came up back in 2016, merger plans between the two corporations fizzled out — but today, Deadline Hollywood is reporting that CBS Corporation is ready to make an offer to buy Viacom, possibly ‘within days.’ If such an offer was accepted and approved, current CBS president Les Moonves would retain leadership of the merged companies.
This won’t be an easy negotiation, it seems, as CBS’s reported offer looks to be below Viacom’s current market value, a unusual ‘lowball’ offer to kick off the process.
It is unusual for deal negotiations to start with the acquirer valuing its target at a discount. The fact that CBS’s first bid for Viacom infers such a valuation reflects how CBS views its position in the U.S. media landscape as superior to Viacom’s.
Deadline details how the financial sector is responding to the news:
Wall Street investors have quickly seized on the potential advantages of such a combination, which would bring together CBS’s top-rated broadcast network, with its prime-time lineup and sports programming, the premium cable channel Showtime and Viacom’s two dozen cable channels and Paramount Pictures studio.
Many of those who take the optimistic view of Viacom have recommended a premium of between 10% and 30% over its current value, making the below-market opening offer a little more sobering of a starting point.
A bulked-up CBS-Viacom would have the financial wherewithal to bid for increasingly expensive sports rights, and gain leverage in negotiations with TV distributors, both traditional pay TV providers as well as with online streaming services that are gaining popularity with viewers.
CBS president Les Moonves.
This is a big deal for Star Trek fans, of course, as we’ve spent the last decade-plus watching Trek develop under two separate corporate owners — CBS maintains control over all Trek television development, as well as the past fifty years of Star Trek television programming, while Paramount Pictures (owned by Viacom) retained control over the Trek film properties, including the first ten features and the three Kelvin Timeline movies.
Back in 2016, Moonves cleared up a long-standing rumor about Trek competition between the two corporations, explaining that the then-untitled Star Trek: Discovery series, contractually, could not debut until at least six months after Paramount’s Star Trek Beyond film was in theaters.
When [CBS] split from Viacom ten years ago, January 1, 2006, one of the big sticking points, as you can imagine, was “Star Trek.” You know, we both wanted it.
They said “It’s a movie!” and I said, “No, no, no, it’s a TV show.” Actually, we’re both right. So they kept the feature film rights, we kept the television rights; they have [“Star Trek Beyond”] coming out July 22.
Our deal with them is that we had to wait six months after their film is launched so there wouldn’t be a confusion in the marketplace.
This split also impacts the lack of crossover elements — aside from minor dialog or prop-based references — between the two companies’ Trek holdings; as Star Trek: Discovery writer Erika Lippoldt told The Alpha Quadrant podcast (via TrekMovie):
Just because of the rights issue, we can’t use anything from the films, so that’s just something that we’re always aware of.
ALL films, ’cause it’s a Paramount property, not CBS.
Corporate mergers are all the rage in the entertainment industry, as behemoths Disney and 21st Century Fox are in the process of a large-scale consolidation, and CBS and Viacom certainly are two halves that might make a more well-suited whole.
Now that it looks like things are really getting real between the two companies, we’ll be sure to bring you the latest news as it breaks on this ongoing story.
Star Trek comic group editor Sarah Gaydos, who has been helming the Trek comic imprint at IDW Publishing for the last few years, announced today that she’ll be leaving the publisher for a new role as Editorial Director of Licensed Publishing at Oregon-based Oni Press.
Gaydos’ first contributions to the Trek comic line at IDW began with Star Trek: Ongoing #25 in 2013, and over the past few years has overseen the flagship Trek titles Star Trek: Ongoing and Star Trek: Boldly Go set in the Kelvin Timeline, crossover series bridging Trek and Green Lantern and Planet of the Apes, as well as mini-series runs Starfleet Academy, Star Trek: Mirror Broken, and the Star Trek: Waypoint anthology — and of course, the recent Star Trek: Discovery comics as well.
Gaydos at ‘Star Trek: Mission New York’ in 2016.
Gaydos’ final involvement with IDW’s Star Trek titles will be for this spring and summer’s releases, the upcoming TNG Mirror Universe miniseries Through the Mirror and Terra Incognita, as well as the next Discovery miniseries, Succession, which focuses on the USS Discovery crew’s Mirror Universe counterparts. The first Star Trek: Discovery Annual longform graphic novel releases this week as well, which Gaydos oversaw.
There’s not yet been any announcement on who will be taking over the Star Trek comic line following Gaydos, but we’ve reached out to IDW and will update our reporting as soon as they’ve announced her replacement.
If for some reason your favorite pastime is reading Star Trek technical manuals and collecting back issues of Cat Fancy (and why wouldn’t it be?), have we got a treat for you!
And as we said in our original review of her work, you really know what to expect when you pick up a book titled Star Trek: The Next Generation Cats. Lots of Star Trek. And lots of cats. But no matter how much you expect to find regarding either of those two worthy subjects, you’ll get even more in this creative tome for both Trek and cats.
Whether it’s Geordi LaForge pouncing on top of his engineering table to try and catch a blinking light in “Cause and Effect,” or Wesley playing “The Game” by actually biting and clawing at his wire-framed headset, Park’s art and deep-cut Trek (and cat) references continue to exceed our lofty expectations.
Her whimsical, artistic style is once again powerful and vibrant, and includes impressive layers of screen-accurate authenticity. In fact, the 50-plus pieces of art represented in this book cover a grand total of 26 episodes of Next Generation across its pages.
There’s Data pulling Wesley out of the water by his scruff in “Encounter at Farpoint.” And there’s Data again, pawing at one of his very own cat paintings (meta!). And there’s Beverly Crusher and Deanna Troi with an early morning cat stretch in a particularly frisky scene from the third season TNG episode “The Price.” There’s no end to Parks’ clever juxtaposition of cats being cats and Trek being Trek.
(Of course, there are limits to how much we can take! The image of fierce tabby cat Tasha Yar hissing at the feline-shaped outline of Armus in “Skin of Evil,” made us immediately turn the page to avoid thinking about how that particular catfight was going to end!)
Parks’ art and deep-cut Trek references continue to exceed expectations, throughout. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen the literal fat cat, K’Mpec, the leader of the High Council, sitting on his throne in front of a clowder of Klingon cats, throwing side-eye shade at Worf and his Cat’Dich in “Sins of the Father.”
If kittens are your thing, Parks doesn’t miss a trick by including the transporter malfunction arrival of Picard, Keiko, Ro and Guinan in “Rascals” (with their oversized clothes and all). Elsewhere, Guinan and Ro are featured again with the introduction of the two fast feline friends in “Ensign Ro.” “My name is Guinan. I tend bar. And I listen,” purrs the fluffy bartender with the big purple hat.
And there is nothing better than seeing Scotty return to TNG, portrayed once again as a Scottish Fold (natch!), this time sadly clutching his bottle of green liquid catnip as kitty Captain Picard looks on.
If there is one major critique in this rendition of Trek cats from Parks (and it’s the first issue we’ve had with any of her creative choices), it was her decision to portray Picard as a hairless Sphynx cat. Yes, we get it, and we know that some people find Sphynx cats endearing, but Picard is majestic and handsome and proud, and a Sphynx cat is none of those things. It’s not a good fit beyond the obvious initial hairless pun.
And oddly, there is no mention of Spot or Ode to Spot, although a Horga’hn does make an appearance, as does Livingston the fish (but who knows how long he’ll last on a ship full of cats).
In what will be a surprise to no one that has read this far in a review of a Star Trek cat book, guess which mischievous foil to the Enterprise cats and crew shows up in the opening pages and closing pages of the book? Not even sure we have to say it, but he’s the kind of cat you just know is up to no good thing in any encounter with a laser pointer. And this Q cat’s luxurious robes and icy stare will not soon be forgotten.
In the end, any list of favorites from the scores of pictures in this great addition to the Star Trek oeuvre will likely include the final image of the entire TNG crew playfully at home around the horseshoe of the Enterprise-D bridge. The two-page spread purrfectly captures the verve of both our love for The Next Generation, and our love of cats.
Like its predecessor, Star Trek: The Next Generation Cats not only makes a great coffee table book, but is also a great gift for family and friends. The fun and vibrant art from Jenny Parks is clever, original and packed with deep cut Trek references — and is an absolute steal at its current $10.50 price point.
2018 marks the 25th Anniversary of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and we’re kicking off our new video series taking you back to the way this show was meant to be seen… as a grainy, overplayed VHS recording of the original syndicated airing!
Today we debut our first video comparison in this series, using the Orb of Time to jump all the way back to January 1993 with a look at “Emissary,” the series premiere, in all of its VCR-recorded glory.
Check back soon as we traverse the wormhole once more to the next chapter in our DS9 Rewind video comparison series, looking “Past Prologue,” the fan-favorite second episode of the season!
– Just kidding of course – happy April Fools Day! –
The first collection of composer Jeff Russo’sStar Trek: Discovery score arrived back in December, capturing a selection of music from the first nine episodes of the season — and now, the full track listing and preorder details are here for his second collection, coming this week!
Star Trek: Discovery — Season 1, Chapter 2debuts from Lakeshore Records on digital music services Friday, April 6, and contains 22 new tracks from Episode 10 (“Despite Yourself”) through the finale (“Will You Take My Hand?”). The 22-track album includes plenty of music from the Mirror Universe, Hugh Culber’s favorite Kasseelian Opera, and the new recording of the classic Star Trek theme from the finale’s end credits.
We would have preferred cover art featuring one of the different poster designs created for Discovery‘s first season — at least for a visual differentiation from the first album — but the artwork above (obtained via Amazon) does at least have “Chapter 2” on it.
Here’s the full track listing:
1. Burnham Take Over (1:31)
2. I Can’t Rest Here (1:22)
3. Dishonor Yourselves (2:20)
4. Tell Me the Truth (6:29)
5. The Rebels Haven’t Completed Their Evacuation (1:50)
6. I’ll Take It from Here (2:09)
7. Kasseelian Opera (2:31)
8. The Lorca I Knew (2:38)
9. 212 Days of Torture (1:27)
10. Biotoxins (1:58)
11. Come in Discovery (2:30)
12. Safe to Drop out of Warp (4:26)
13. Lorca is Finished (2:26)
14. Coming Home (1:21)
15. Initiating (3:02)
16. Qo’nos Bar Source (2:54)
17. Not a Lot of Humans Here (1:57)
18. I’m No Good (2:36)
19. War is Over (4:48)
20. I’ve Never Been to Vulcan (0:55)
21. Incoming Transmission (1:12)
22. Theme from Star Trek (Discovery End Credits Version) (1:02)
Composer Jeff Russo on the ‘Discovery’ scoring stage. (CBS)
Like the first Discovery soundtrack, the Season 1, Chapter 2 collection will be available digitally through Amazon, on iTunes, and on Spotify when it lands this Friday. For those of you who prefer their soundtracks in physical form (like us!), the album will be available on CD on May 25, and can be preordered now at Amazon.
As always, you’ll find our full review of this upcoming Star Trek: Discovery soundtrack as soon as we get our hands on the new music… so stay tuned!
This year’s Hugo Award nominations, an annual celebration honoring the best science fiction and fantasy writing and literature, have been announced — and Star Trek: Discovery now follows in the footsteps of the classic Star Trek series and several of the franchise’s best installments.
Today the seventh episode of Discovery‘s first season, “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad,” was nominated in the category of Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form, with the writing team of Aron Eli Coleite & Jesse Alexander, as well as director David M. Barrett, named with it.
This episode of course was one of the few standalone tales of Discovery Season 1, featuring a revenge-seeking Harry Mudd (Rainn Wilson) taking over the USS Discovery through a series of ever-escalating time loops. In addition to his repeated killings of Captain Lorca (Jason Isaacs), the episode also featured the bloom of romance between Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif).
“Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad” has some tough competition in the Hugos this year, nominated against the Trek-esque “USS Callister” episode of Black Mirror, the Doctor Who Christmas Special “Twice Upon a Time,” and two episodes of NBC’s afterlife comedy The Good Place.
Star Trek has been nominated in many years of the Hugo Awards’ history, with wins for “The Menagerie” in 1967, “The City on the Edge of Forever” in 1968, “The Inner Light” in 1993, and “All Good Things…” in 1995. The most recent Trek nomination came for the first Kelvin Timeline film in 2010.
This year’s Hugo Awards winners will be announced on August 19.
As the Federation Starshp Voyager continues to lead the Full Circle Fleet in its exploration of the Delta Quadrant, Admiral Kathryn Janeway remains concerned about the Krenim Imperium and its ability to rewrite time to suit its whims.
At Captain Chakotay’s suggestion, however, she orders the fleet to focus its attention on a unique planet in a binary system, where a new element has been discovered.
Several biospheres exist on this otherwise uninhabitable world, each containing different atmospheres and features that argue other sentient beings once resided on the surface.
Janeway hopes that digging into an old-fashioned scientific mystery will lift the crews’ morale, but she soon realizes that the secrets buried on this world may be part of a much larger puzzle — one that points to the existence of a species whose power to reshape the galaxy might dwarf that of the Krenim…
After two years, author Kirsten Beyer returns to the 24th century with the release of her latest Star Trek: Voyager novel, Architects of Infinity.
The Star Trek: Discovery staff writer, who cut her teeth in the Star Trek universe writing some of the best Voyager books out there, delivers the ninth book in her run on the Voyager relaunch, telling the stories of what happened after Voyager left, and subsequently returned to, the Delta Quadrant.
Though this book was delayed in its release by nearly a year due to Beyer’s responsibilities on Discovery, in my opinion it was well worth the wait. Following on from 2016’s A Pocket Full of Lies, Architects of Infinity gives us a quintessential Star Trek story – a strange new world and an ancient civilization, layered with a rich character drama that advances the characters’ arcs in satisfying ways.
Architects of Infinity is exactly the kind of story that Star Trek is uniquely suited for – a classic tale of exploration that illuminates the wonder of scientific discovery. While it does not obviously advance some of the major storylines from the previous book, particularly as it relates to Voyager’s reintroduction to the Krenim, it does give us a lot to chew on – and a shocking cliffhanger!
Beyer has balanced her stories between those that return to familiar aliens or settings from the Voyager TV run with new concepts, and this book leans more towards the latter than the former. The main plot line for the book around the exploration of a mysterious planet in a binary star system where an ancient civilization has established a set of biodomes on the surface is a compelling one.
As the crews of the Full Circle fleet investigate, you really get that sense of wonder and desire for scientific discovery that Starfleet is meant to invoke. It’s an idea that the franchise has returned to too infrequently in recent years as – both on screen and in tie-in media – it has become more interested in action adventure tales. And while this book certainly is not without its action or adventure, it’s refreshing that the story revolves around a scientific challenge that the crew chooses, rather than simply needs, to solve.
One of the other triumphs of Beyer’s novels — and Architects of Infinity is no exception here — has been her ability to use the book format, and the need not to worry about budgets and production realities, to show aliens that are far more alien or depict scenes that are far grander than anything that could accomplished on television. Even a show with a budget the size of Star Trek: Discovery’s would probably struggle to make some of the things in these books a reality on screen.
In addition, Architects of Infinity is a stark reminder of the importance of gender diversity in Star Trek storytelling. This book explores a number of themes – particularly around consent and choice – that a male author would likely shy away from. These are important issues, and they’re ripe for exploration through Star Trek’s form of science fiction social commentary that the franchise has long been hailed for.
Harry Kim; Kamala, the Kriosian ’empathic metamorph.’
There are moral dilemmas around choice and consent baked into a number of character arcs, including Harry Kim, his relationship with the novel-original character Nancy Conlon, and their unborn daughter.
It also extends further with Beyer’s exploration of Ensign Gwyn, whose Kriosian heritage is explored in more detail and builds off The Next Generation episode “The Perfect Mate.” Beyer dives into the consent issues surrounding that culture and their empathic metamorphs, which were looked at in The Next Generation with the perspective of the day but were ripe for another look by modern standards.
Though the overall stable of Star Trek authors has shrunk over time, in addition to Beyer the only other women writing Star Trek fiction in recent years have been Una McCormack and Paula Block. Assuming the Star Trek novel line eventually resuscitates I hope the editors will consider finding additional women to add to their roster of regular writers, as the female perspective provides new angles for stories and directions for characters that only enriches the experience for all.
Beyer is a master at developing original characters and integrating them with the main crew, not least my favorite original character from Star Trek novels, the Voyager counselor Hugh Cambridge. While there is plenty of focus on the main characters, including furthering the Janeway/Chakotay relationship and the Paris/Torres family, this book has more of a “Lower Decks” feel to it. That famous season seven episode of The Next Generation showed the perspective of junior officers aboard the Enterprise-D, and several of the original characters Beyer has created for her novels take a step forward in this story.
Some of Voyager’s lower ranks are explored in ‘Architects of Infinity.’
In addition, Beyer explores the challenges that many of these characters face integrating with the Voyager clique – the group of characters that we know and love who made it through the Delta Quadrant together. While the old crew trusts each other implicitly, almost to the point of recklessness, the book explores how that impacts crew members who have joined since Voyager returned to the Alpha Quadrant and the lengths they take to get recognized and become part of the “family.”
In some of the books set after the series end, the integration of original characters with the TV characters is not always successful, but not so here. I am just as invested in Cambridge, Dr. Sharak, Captain Farkas, Doctor Sal, and Commander O’Donnell as I am in Janeway, Chakotay, Paris, and Torres.
In conclusion, if you like traditional Star Trek stories that encapsulate the “strange worlds and new civilizations” and “to boldly go where no one has gone before”” of the Star Trek mantra, I think you’ll get a big kick out of this book. And if you’re a Discovery fan looking to check our Beyer’s work – I probably wouldn’t start here because it’s like starting a show midway through a season, but I would definitely encourage you to revisit the earlier books in the series.
There has been some speculation online that Architects of Infinity will be the last Voyager novel, but as Beyer confirmed last year, she’s still contracted for one more tale — To Lose the Earth — that was commissioned prior to the expiration of Pocket Books’ license and can still be published. And given the epilogue to this book it is clear that Beyer did not write this to be the final in the series, it certainly seems we still have that to look forward to.
However, I would be remiss not to acknowledge that, with the exception of June’s Discovery novel, Fear Itself by James Swallow, there are no Star Trek novels from Pocket Books on the schedule for the foreseeable future.
If anyone reading is in a position to do anything about hurrying up the resolution of whatever issues have impeded the announcement of new Star Trek novels, please make it happen!
If you liked Architects of Infinity, you should check out:
Full Circleby Kirsten Beyer: The first Star Trek: Voyager novel of Kirsten Beyer’s arc follows the lead up to the decision to return to the Delta Quadrant with the Full Circle fleet. This series hit the ground running in the best way, with the greatest Voyager novel that had been published in years up to that point.
The Eternal Tideby Kirsten Beyer: The culmination of the first arc of Beyer’s Voyager series, The Eternal Tide is the story of the resurrection of Admiral Kathryn Janeway since her death in the Peter David novel Before Dishonor several years earlier.
A Pocket Full of Lies by Kirsten Beyer: The previous novel in the series ties together a number of episodes of the series that dealt with time travel in a fun way, revisiting “Year of Hell” and “Shattered” and spinning off a new tale. Honestly, this is my favorite book of the series to date.
Character backgrounds aren’t always well publicized in a franchise like Star Trek, but when they do get some time in the spotlight, that’s when they catch fan attention.
How many awesome stories have Trek novelists created that feature characters who only appeared for a few episodes and how well do fans respond to them? It’s a very familiar effect and it serves as the backbone for this look at T’Kuvma, the Klingon we hardly knew, in The Light of Kahless #3.
Written by Star Trek: Discovery’s Kirsten Beyer and IDW’s own Mike Johnson, we continue to look at T’kuvma’s background told to Voq by his most loyal supporter. L’Rell recounts the betrayal of his sister, the death of his nephew and other family histories that saw his beginnings as the herald of Kahless’s light in bringing the Klingon Houses together.
The story so far: we learn about T’Kuvma’s return to his home, only to see his sister standing with his enemies… and his dead brothers and father on the floor. It is a betrayal, but one that T’Kuvma can recover from. His time at the Boreth monastery has taught him patience, resolve and given him great endurance.
He can recover from a great deal of adversity because of his ideals, but these form the basis of his character and these traits serve him well as as he eventually takes his loyal retainers out into space. There, they begin the search for the symbol that will hopefully bring his people together as a unified force to feed the Klingon desire for conquest.
And that’s the basis for the T’Kuvma who we were briefly introduced to in the first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery. This comic is all about backstory, which means that a character vital to the fabric of our understanding of Klingon history and culture in this new iteration of Star Trek finally gets his due. However, it is a somewhat frustrating story as we all know his eventual and premature demise.
But the motivations for this book are the real story here. Beyer is getting a shot at developing this character further in this book; that’s clearly a driving motivation for her. Mike Johnson is steadily continuing to build up his undisputed claim as THE Star Trek authority at IDW. His longstanding pedigree is without stain and it’s clear that any more he can add to the Trek mythos is clearly a sensible career move and working with the characters from Discovery can only add to his repertoire.
The Light of Kahless #2 sold about just over 8000 units back in January, according to comichron.com. That’s hardly an overwhelming number, but despite the sales, my personal opinion is that it’s more about getting a chance to play with the character more in a medium that allows for a greater degree of flexibility of storytelling.
Chris Claremont once told me that the greatest feature of comics is that he and a gifted artist like John Byrne or Walter Simonson could tell a story that would take Steven Spielberg millions of dollars to produce. It’s not a stretch of imagination to see that idea means that Beyer might get a wider latitudet IDW to contribute ideas that might not see ground in the Star Trek writers’ room.
As for Mike Johnson – well, this is clearly just fun for this master writer. Johnson is adding major Trek-credit to his portfolio by writing about the new version of Klingons that Discovery has introduced in this latest, and we have to acknowledge, canonical addition to Trek lore.
The question I want answered though, is will this series add something relevant to the new season of DISCO that’s shooting within the next month in my backyard, up here in Toronto? It’s a good question, because Trek fans all know how much influence ancillary medium like comics and novels add to the continuum of Trek.
After all, we all know how much of an influence The Final Reflection by John M. Ford has played in determining the important aspects of Klingon culture. The same can be applied to the work of Johnson. While numbers of the comic are not overpowering, they are read by the core of fans who influence the others.
The covers for this book aren’t as outstanding as I’d like to see, save for the main one by Tony Shasteen.
There are two IDW artists who differ in techniques that I absolutely am stunned by: J.K. Woodward’s painting and Tony Shasteen’s pencils. In this case, it’s Shasteen who does the art work on the main cover for this book and it is truly astounding in the simplicity of its delivery.
Shasteen has a gift for likenesses and his speed is pretty much the envy of many an artist, according to the comic gossip that I’ve been privy to. This cover is probably my favourite not only because of its accuracy but because of the emotional intensity. Because of the overpowering dental prosthetics the Klingon characters are forced to wear, the volume of their line delivery is perhaps subconsciously louder than one would expect.
Of course, Klingons shout, but when a reader looks at this cover, it’s very easy to imagine that volume and emotional expression. Shasteen manages to capture that in this image and it’s definitely a success in my book.
Cover B is a photo of actor Ken Mitchell as Kol — enough said.
The first retailer-incentive cover is from George Caltsoudas, and while I normally am not a fan of figurative illustrations that he often comes up with, he has been known to take my breath away sometimes. This one truly captures the spirit of the “new” Klingons of this series and should really be a main cover instead of a photograph.
The same applies to Declan Shalvey’s wonderful illustration of a Klingon combat vessel on the second retailer-incentive cover; the ‘cleave ship’ which cut the USS Europa in half during the Battle of the Binary Stars. Shalvey’s illustration has generated a curiosity in me; I’d like to learn more about this ship. But, in my opinion, that’s what a cover is supposed to do: foment interest in the details of the story.
Of course, that’s the drive of this book: generate more interest in the character and the background of the television series in order to add more viewer investment. There is so much that fans want answered that can’t come out in the limitations of the episode. Supplementary media like comics and novels help to fill in the gap and give fans that sense of fulfillment and these are the comic creators who can make that happen.
I’m looking forward to the end of this miniseries in April, to not only learn if there is any more content that will tie into the second season of Discovery, but also to see what was hoped for T’Kuvma’s character. In addition to The Light of Kahless #4, IDW has both the first Discovery Annual coming soon, as well as their next four-issue miniseries Succession, set in Discovery‘s Mirror Universe.
Lots of Star Trek: Discovery comic action is still on the way — watch for my reviews as those stories arrive.
Announced today by Variety is the news that Star Trek: Discovery executive producer Alex Kurtzman will helm the forthcoming Season 2 premiere, set to start filming next month in Toronto.
This episode, which kicks off the second season following both the arrival of the USS Enterprise (as seen in “Will You Take My Hand?”) and Section 31 (should the WonderCon clip be considered canon), will be Kurtzman’s first time in the Star Trek director’s chair, though of course he has been part of the franchise since the first Kelvin Timeline film went into production in 2007 in both writing and producing capacities.
No date has yet been publicly announced for when Discovery will return to television, but previous estimates have been either late 2018 or early 2019 based upon statements made by the production team.
Jonathan Frakes on set with Sonequa Martin-Green and Mary Wiseman. (CBS)
Also expected to return to Toronto for Discovery‘s second season is Trek actor and director Jonathan Frakes, who told a crowd at Lexington Comic & Toy Convention that he’s already started getting scripts and story outlines from the earlier entries in the upcoming season, but there has not yet been any formal announcement of him being assigned an episode.
Keep coming back to TrekCore for the latest in Star Trek: Discovery news!
Last Saturday’s Star Trek: Discovery event at WonderCon Anaheim brought all of the creative team leaders behind the show out for a look back at last season — along some minor glimpses ahead to Season 2.
Yesterday, CBS rolled out the entire hour-long panel on YouTube for those of you who couldn’t make it in person (unfortunately region-locked to the USA), which you can watch right here:
After the panel concluded, the Discovery guest speakers dropped in to the Wondercon press room, where many of the team sat with members of the media to discuss their role in the show, and what’s yet to come, in more detail.
Executive producers Aaron Harberts and Gretchen Berg spoke with Whedonopolis (believe us, despite the odd thumbnail above!), covering a wide range of topics — from the benefits of producing the first season ‘in a vacuum’ from fan feedback (allowing the team to commit to decisions in production and writing without second-guessing) to confirming the length of the upcoming season (13 episodes).
One of Harberts’ primary discussion points was about the newnew through-line of Star Trek: Discovery for year two.
“This season, for lack of a better word, is sort of about spirituality in ‘Star Trek.’ What is the role of serendipity versus science? Is there a story about faith to be told, leaps of faith? We are dealing with space; we are dealing with things that can’t be explained and you have a character like Michael Burnham who believes there is an explanation for everything.
So one of the things we’re very interested in is tackling that idea as it sort of rolls out — and it doesn’t just mean religion, it means patterns in our lives. It means connections that you just can’t explain. It’s about who enters your life, and who leaves your life, and these indelible impressions that people make and the journey that you take – and you don’t realize that along the way, you gather things up that you need.
That’s one of the biggest ideas right now, and it’s threaded through all of our characters’ lives.”
Young Michael Burnham receives a mind-meld from Sarek.
But not all of Season 2 will be those kind of hopeful-sounding moments, as Harberts also noted that more of Michael Burnham’s backstory will be revealed — especially the aftermath of her near-death as a child on Vulcan at the hands of Logic Extremist terrorists.
“We are going to discover a little bit more this season about what happened after the Learning Center bombing; there are some pretty big things that Michael took away from that.
There are some things that we are going to uncover that not only talk about what happened then, but what are some of the ramifications are from that horrible terrorist event that was waged on this innocent child.”
Sara Mitich as Lt. Commander Airiam.
Berg and Harberts were quick to jump on a question about Airiam — the augmented-human spore drive ops officer played by Sara Mitich — and the fan desire to learn more about her character.
Berg: “Her special ability is that everybody loves Airiam — I’m not kidding, everybody loves Airiam!
She is a character we will learn a little bit more about this year, and it is because she sort of captured everyone’s imagination — so I don’t want to give too much of it away — but you will learn a little more about Airiam this year.”
Harberts: “We love our bridge crew. What are the chances that you find these actors that come in, and they do such an incredible job, they’re such incredible people, and they’ve got such a spirit that it draws the audience in.
One of the things we hear a lot is, ‘Tell us more about them! Who are they, fill it out a little bit more!’ We have an opportunity to do that this year, and Airiam is part of the bridge crew. We have a lot of thoughts about who she was, what the Augments are all about, and we’ll dig into it.”
Their response shows they’re well aware of the attention the character received during last season, and they also seem to indicate Airiam may not be the only one of her kind…
Discovery‘s production designer Tamara Deverell, who joined the show mid-season last year, talked about one of her contributions to the Mirror Universe — the Emperor’s ship Charon — in this video from Terence Johnson.
“I started mid-season… and wham, I had to design the Terran ship – which was this giant ship – and I was like, ‘Guys, I really haven’t done this before!’ But I have great ship designers [on staff] here in LA and in Canada, all over the place. So that was a pretty exciting challenge.
When we designed the ship, I suggested that it needed its own power source; I wanted to put a [sort of] sun in — and then the writers went, ‘Oh, that’s cool, let’s make it a myceliam sun!’ and then they started writing it into the story, which was very exciting for me as a production designer to have designed something that then gets put into the actual story, instead of the opposite way around.”
The ISS Charon.
Deverell also revealed how the USS Discovery sets are being subtly modified and expanded for production on the second season of the show.
“In Season 2, we’ve added more ways in and out [of the sets] for the [filming] crew, and for the actors, the characters to flow through — so the mess hall used to have one door, now it has two; we’ve added another corridor, we call it the ‘loop corridor,’ so that on our stage sets characters can go around and around.
The directors were finding that — there were a lot of running scenes with Tilly, and there’ll probably be more — and just by the time they’d get up to speed they would have to stop and start again. So now we’ve got more halls, and more corridors.”
Those kind of minor set modifications aren’t new for Star Trek; for the second season of Deep Space Nine, a second walkway was added around the upper level of the Promenade set (outside of Quark’s Bar), and the Enterprise-D sets went through a number of changes between first and second years on The Next Generation.
The (formerly) single entrance to the Discovery mess hall.
When asked about the Constitution-class Enterprise seen in the final moments of the season, Deverell just smiled and answered coyly:
“Are you saying that we’re building the Enterprise?” [laughs]
In this video recorded by Bleeding Cool, series composer Jeff Russo shared a view more details about the upcoming soundtrack release featuring music from the second half of the season.
“We’re releasing a Volume Two, a CD and digitally, with music from episodes 10 through 15… and then there will be a deluxe vinyl edition which will have music from Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, but it’ll be selects because you can’t fit it all on four [records].
I think the vinyl will come sometime in June, but I think the digital version might come out in the next few weeks. And then the CD sometime right after that.”
Of course, we’ll have our review of the Lakeshore Records album as soon as it debuts.
Property master Mario Moreira and costume designer Gersha Phillips also sat with Bleeding Cool, and discussed a lot of topics relating to the props featured in the first year of the show, like the thruster suit seen in “The Vulcan Hello” and the Klingon weapons used across the season.
Moreira spoke about how Discovery follows in the footsteps of the Original Series, which had props that so clearly inspired real-world technologies — and how he wants to continue that legacy.
“What I want to do with prop design is not just not to the [Original Series]… the Original Series inspired the cell phone, inspired medical [scanners], it inspired so much — that’s what we want to do now, going in to the future with this series.
We want to invent something that will inspire someone to go, ‘Hey, you know what? That could work!'”
Keep coming back to TrekCore for all the latest in Star Trek: Discovery news!
S1 Soundtrack: Chapter 1
S2 Soundtrack
Novel #4:
Novel #5:
Novel #6:
