The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Series has plot twist for viewers: paid streaming
After debut on CBS, new ‘Trek’ move its $6-monthly online sister network
Spock famously said, “Live long and prosper.” And for 51 years “Star Trek” has been doing just that.
Now CBS is taking the venerable franchise boldly where it’s never been before — to a streaming site.
On Sept. 22, the network will premiere the first episode of the bigbudget, all-new “Star Trek: Discovery,” but if you want to see the other 14 episodes of the first season, you’re going to be paying at least $6 a month for CBS All Access.
With only about 2 million subscribers to its streaming channel, the network is obviously counting on “Discovery” to bring in new subscribers, especially since it reportedly costs around $6 million to $8 million per episode. That is getting into “Game of Thrones” territory without any dragons.
Once the first episode has aired on CBS, the second episode will be available immediately following on CBS All Access.
“So you can see what we’re doing,” says Morgan Seal, senior director of communications for CBS All Access. “We’re trying to push that big megaphone of broadcast into the subscription service for that second episode on the same night to get people subscribing and watching the entirety of our series.”
After that, the episodes will be available at any time on CBS All Access, with a new one dropping each week until Nov. 5 for a total of eight. “Discovery” will then resume in January with seven more being rolled out.
CBS reportedly set a goal of 4 million All Access subscribers by 2020, which seems reachable, but is that profitable enough for the network with a big-ticket item like “Discovery”?
Of course, “Star Trek” is a worldwide phenomenon.
At the Tuesday-night premiere of the first two episodes, there were members of the audience dressed up as Starfleet characters — and remember, this was a Hollywood industry screening. William Shatner — Captain Kirk, himself — was on hand signing autographs along with Nichelle Nichols who played Lt. Uhuru on the original series
TV critics and writers are embargoed from revealing anything about it, but from what was shown, fans aren’t likely to be disappointed.
“Discovery” is the first “Star Trek” series in more than a decade, and stars
Sonequa Martin-Green (“The Walking Dead”) as a Starfleet First Officer Michael Burnham, who was the first human to attend the Vulcan Science Academy. The character is the first non-captain or commander to head a “Star Trek” series.
It is set about a decade before the original series when the Federation and the Klingons were in a heated conflict. So while there is still the Prime Directive and aims of exploration, the situation is not episodic like the original 1966 series created by Gene Roddenberry.
“This is the most serialized version of ‘Star Trek’ that has ever existed,” says Akiva Goldsman, a producer-writer on the show,
“and as such, it’s long-form character storytelling. And without conflict, there is no long-form character storytelling.”
Like practically everyone associated with “Discovery,” the Oscar-winning writer of “A Beautiful Mind” is so much of a “Trekkie” he got himself cameos in both the 2009 movie reboot (as a Vulcan council member) and in the follow-up, “Star Trek Into Darkness” as a Starfleet admiral.
Goldsman says the part of the idea for the “Discovery” was to look at how the optimistic outlook of the Federation in Roddenberry’s series came to be.
In the series, “we are in a time of war, and we are trying to find out who we are as a Federation and as
a coalition of peoples in the face of adversity,” says Goldsman.
“Discovery” was created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman, both huge “Trek” fans.
“Bryan and I were really looking for a way to bring something new to ‘Trek’ that both fans and people who’d never seen the show before could experience,” says Kurtzman, who cowrote the 2009 reboot film. “We also knew that, in order to justify it being on a premium-cable service, it had to be huge.”
Originally, the show was slated for last year, but the scope of the project proved too much, and they had to tell Les Moonves, chief executive officer of CBS, they needed more time.
“We told him all we want to do is deliver a great ‘Star Trek,’ and the worst thing that we could do would be to compromise the show to meet an air date,” says Kurtzman. “It would hurt us as fans of the show. We know it’ll hurt fans out there.”
Because the delays caused scheduling conflicts with other with other projects he was writing and producing, Fuller left the show, though his production company is still involved.
Now, all Kurtzman and company have to do is deliver. Obviously, they are going to need more than the franchise’s fanbase.
“For us, ‘Star Trek’ is deeply meaningful,” says Goldsman, “but it doesn’t mean we are not going to
tell stories that people who don’t like ‘Star Trek,’ or have never seen ‘Star Trek,’ won’t enjoy.”
And what about those hardcore fans who will be hitting social media if there is something they don’t like about “Discovery” or think it violates the “Star Trek” canon?
Kurtzman says he can’t be overly concerned about that, calling the writers’ room a “kind of supreme court of opinions that I think allows us to both stay true to canon but also to stretch the boundaries of it.”
Adding, “One of the things that has always make ‘Trek’ interesting is when different voices come into that writers’ room and push those boundaries.”