Son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenerry, Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry has signed on to the upcoming 2017 Star Trek television series in an executive producer role.
Roddenberry, who is also president of the Roddenberry Entertainment company and producer of the 2009 Trek Nation documentary, is coming on board to the CBS All Access series along with Roddenberry Entertainment chief operating officer Trevor Roth.
Les Moonves, president and CEO of CBS, has spoken before about the plans for Star Trek launching a new series next year on the CBS All Access streaming platform, and he spoke again today in front of CBS investors at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference about the nature of the service — and the desire that the digital competitors had for the new series.
In a brief new interview with Den of Geek today, returning Star Trek favorite Nicholas Meyer spoke a bit about the upcoming 2017 Trek series, to which he will be joining showrunner Bryan Fuller as a writer and contributing producer.
Well it sure seems that CBS is nabbing the best talent from Star Trek history, as writer-director Nicholas Meyer, who brought Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and Star Trek IV: The Undiscovered Country to the big screen, is now set to join 2017’s CBS All Access television series.
In a new interview released this week with the MORTIS horror-themed podcast, Star Trek veteran character actor Tony Todd described himself as being on a casting “short list” for CBS’s new Trek series coming to the CBS All Access streaming service in 2017.
Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum conservator Malcolm Collum tells us about how the Smithsonian team pulled apart the classic “Star Trek” USS Enterprise model for their work, and how the wooden starship was built to be disassembled as needed.
The Full Circle Fleet has resumed its explorations of the Delta Quadrant and former Borg space.
Captain Regina Farkas of the USS Vesta makes a promising first contact with the Nihydron—humanoid aliens that are collectors of history. They rarely interact with the species they study but have amassed a large database of numerous races, inhabited planets, and the current geopolitical landscape of a large swath of the quadrant.
When an exchange of data is proposed via a formal meeting, the Nihydron representatives are visibly shaken to be greeted by Admiral Kathryn Janeway. For almost a hundred years, two local species, the Rilnar and the Zahl, have fought for control of the nearby planet Sormana, with both sides claiming it as their ancestral homeworld.
The shocking part is that for the last several years, the Rilnar have been steadily gaining ground, thanks to the tactics of their current commanding officer: a human woman, who appears to be none other than Kathryn Janeway herself…
As I have said in probably every review of a new Star Trek: Voyager release since my review of Unworthy back in 2011, it amazes me how great Voyager has become under the skilled pen of Kirsten Beyer. Voyager was always my least favorite of the Trek television series, and yet the Voyager novels have, in recent years, become the ones that I anticipate reading the most – and this month’s A Pocket Full of Lies is certainly no exception.
While I generally enjoy most of the new releases from month to month, no author is more consistently great than Kirsten Beyer. More than anything else, her name on the cover of a Trek novel is an indicator of high quality writing and an engaging story. In this particular novel, we get a terrific story that builds on a number of earlier Voyager adventures from the series while bringing its own sensibilities to the ongoing mission of Voyager and the Full Circle fleet.
One of my favorite stories from Voyager’s seven-year television run was the two-parter “Year of Hell.” Featuring great drama and high stakes for the crew of Voyager, “Year of Hell” was a riveting couple of hours of television. Completely satisfying, that is, until the last ten minutes of the second part. Voyager is often known for using the “reset button,” and “Year of Hell” features the most egregious example.
Talk about reset buttons – but author Kirsten Beyer manages to partially undo it.
In one fell swoop, the entirety of the two hours of television are wiped out, without even a vague memory remaining in existence for the characters. A Pocket Full of Lies, however, finds a way to make that story actually matter to the current timeline, and that alone is worth picking up this novel.
Based on the cover design, I was already expecting the tie-in to “Year of Hell.” However, what I wasn’t expecting was a surprise continuation of story elements from the seventh season episode “Shattered.” A very middle-of-the-road-not-great episode of Voyager (in my opinion), “Shattered” apparently sparked the imagination of Kirsten Beyer in an interesting and unexpected way.
She is very good at taking mediocre storytelling from the series and crafting compelling adventures from them. In previous novels, Season Two’s “Twisted” was the basis of creatures encountered by Voyager, and the use of “Shattered” here makes me wonder if we should just comb Voyager’s catalog of episodes for any past-tense verb titles to discover where Beyer might next take the story!
One of the issues that Beyer explores in this novel is the idea of depression, and the effect this has both on the person suffering from it and on their friends and the people who care about them. Through the character of Nancy Conlon as well as, surprisingly, Tuvok, Beyer explores this issue with a deftness and sensitivity that is amazing to read. Conlon’s experiences especially resonated with me.
Having known several people who have suffered from severe depression and battle with despair on a daily basis, I found the reactions of Beyer’s characters to be grounded very much in reality. Harry Kim’s relationship with Conlon in particular felt very real, and I found myself empathizing with everyone involved in the situation. (Harry Kim, a compelling character… I would never have thought this possible before reading a Kirsten Beyer novel!)
The closing moments of “Shattered” sparked a new story idea for Beyer.
There are many more aspects of this novel that I haven’t even touched on, such as how our life experiences change who we are, and a great many more character moments that make this novel very much worth a read. For one thing, A Pocket Full of Lies handles the question of differing experiences making a person who they are in a much better way than, say, Star Trek: Nemesis does. And any novel that makes me really appreciate the character of Icheb is highly worthy of praise!
As an added bonus, a hanging plot thread from all the way back in The Eternal Tide is tied up in a very unexpected and pleasant way.
With 2016 just starting, A Pocket Full of Lies has already set the bar very high for Star Trek novels this year. A very fun and very compelling read, this novel not only tells its own story very well, but it also serves to expand on and enhance Voyager stories that have come before.
Add to that the fact that Beyer manages to undo the biggest reset button push of all of Star Trek, and A Pocket Full of Lies becomes a must-read. There are many big Trek novels coming out throughout this year, which is Star Trek’s 50th anniversary, and I have to say that they all have their work cut out for them if they hope to be the equal of this stellar novel.
Well, it looks like those of you worried about losing your Star Trek streaming access may be able to take a sigh of relief, as Amazon has seemingly renewed their availability to the live-action series through their Instant Video service.
Last month, we reported that Amazon’s video portal was listing a countdown to this Monday — February 15 — as an expiration to their licensing of CBS programming (including the five live-action Trek shows), but as of this morning that countdown is gone.
It looks like we can all take a sign that the Trek shows aren’t leaving the service anytime soon — we hope.
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While the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum team are working to bring the classic “Star Trek” Enterprise model back to its 1960’s appearance, there’s some invisible work going on inside the ship — to keep the wood-and-glue structure in one piece after fifty years of gravitational wear.
One of the Trek community’s wishes has come true today, as CBS has announced Bryan Fuller as the new showrunner (head writer) for next year’s new CBS All Access television series. The news came via Variety, which also shared a statement from Fuller:
My very first experience of ‘Star Trek’ is my oldest brother turning off all the lights in the house and flying his model of a D7 Class Klingon Battle Cruiser through the darkened halls. Before seeing a frame of the television series, the ‘Star Trek’ universe lit my imagination on fire.
It is without exaggeration a dream come true to be crafting a brand new iteration of ‘Star Trek’ with fellow franchise alum Alex Kurtzman and boldly going where no Star Trek series has gone before.
Fuller, who has just concluded a critically-acclaimed three year run on NBC and Gaumont’s co-production of Hannibal, has already contributed more than twenty episodes of “prime” Trek television, including Deep Space Nine entries “The Darkness and the Light” and “Empok Nor,” and an abundance of well-received Voyager scripts such as “Mortal Coil,” “Living Witness,” “Bride of Chaotica!,” and “Course: Oblivion.”
Executive producer Alex Kurtzman commented on Fuller’s participation:
Bringing Star Trek back to television means returning it to its roots, and for years those roots flourished under Bryan’s devoted care.
His encyclopedic knowledge of Trek canon is surpassed only by his love for Gene Roddenberry’s optimistic future, a vision that continues to guide us as we explore strange new worlds.
While Fuller is about to take on another television adaption this Spring — Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, for Starz — he will be on board for the CBS All Access Trek production expected to begin preproduction later in 2016.
As a reminder, Fuller has been talking about wanting to take on a TV Trek for several years:
I told my agent and told the people of J.J. Abrams team I want to create another STAR TREK series and have an idea that I’m kicking around.
I would love to return to the spirit of the old series with the colors and attitude. I loved VOYAGER and DEEP SPACE NINE, but they seem to have lost the ‘60s fun and I would love to take it back to its origin.
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