A new news article has been published at TrekToday: In a media conference yesterday, CBS President Les Moonves spoke about why Star Trek: Discovery was delayed. “We’ve delayed our Star Trek... Continue reading...
“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." This is kind of encouraging. At least we know they are creating an entire universe for the show. Still Star Trek, but all new and original. I like how the producers blamed the fanatical fans for the need to delay!
I am convinced that when they were asked by fans if it was going to be Prime timeline, they thought that they meant 'prime time', and so they answered 'yes' As long as they keep those "fanatical Star Trek fans" happy, they will say anything
Ok, soooooo.... we have all the blame of this delay :/ Despite so, I expect more of the new show, there are no more excuses for a bad product.
Yeah I posted this in another thread. I don't think Moonves is happy. Still it may pay off with CBS All Access appearing on more smart TVs and with a more detailed, elaborate show that comes with time. Imagine this sort of thing back in the old days when Trek was either an afterthought, or it had to get on the network and it had to NOW to support the network. Streaming has really changed the, how, when and why of TV shows. RAMA
Somehow I doubt professional creators take the exact same view of the phrase 'creating a universe' as random (starved for speculation) fans do. No matter how many cues they take from the prime universe, they are building a brand new show on brand new characters in a brand new ship in a period of the canonical timeline which we know almost nothing about. And everyone (with any reasonable expectations) has known all along they were going to have to do a significant amount of visual redesigns, modernizing and upgrading, because make up and effects designed for 80s/90s tv aren't going to cut it in 2017. Hell, even TNG/DS9/Voy did that sort of thing and that was with other related shows on the air at the same time - Disc being the first Trek in more than a decade of an evolving tv landscape just has a bigger hurdle to clear. Not to mention the fact that they are quite likely to be designing their own new races and locations, just like every other Trek show has done. For all practical purposes, they might as well be creating a universe - just one that happens to fit in reasonably well with other pre-existing show universes.
Hollywood movies have hundreds of comic book editions to help build their universes. Star Trek have some past episodes, and fan novels, but it will require researchers to go through those and try to build up backgrounds for characters, institutions, other starships, alien races, and try to keep it in canon with these past materials. f there was an episode with say a 20 year old starship, what would it look like? What about the tech of that era, uniforms, etc. Without knowing the story they intend to tell with this first series, we can only speculate. But world building is what makes Star Trek so believable, and what influences current day technologies.
Also, ignoring or overwriting any established detail of the Trek universe that gets in the way of their making the show they want to.
I always thought the Kelvin was already in the Alternate Universe, and that at some point between ENT and the Kelvin the two Universes diverged. Anyway, am I the only one thinking they are redesigning the ship?
^ More like they're finishing designing the starship. (And the sets, and the uniforms, and the aliens, and...)
It'll end up as something along those lines, I think. What we saw in that video was a concept model based on a concept model, much like the highly exaggerated Phase II Enterprise that appeared in the TMP teaser poster in mid 1979. Just something to show the fans and say 'See this? We're not just talking - we're actually making a new Star Trek.' The final product will have only the most general resemblance to it.
If a few months' delay means a better product in the end, I'm all for it. I don't really care all that much for the reason why.
The had already re-designed the ship prior to the announcement of the shows delay. They haven't released the new design to the public yet.
Glad they are doing this, more time to add richer details and make the arc stronger for the season sounds great to me. I don't care about rushed CGI test footage: stories are way more relevant to my interests than special FX. But more time to get those polished can't hurt either! I can see why Moonves gave the ok, as he's so proud of crowing about: it's already paid for with presales. Fuller and company are VERY lucky Star Trek is popular enough to justify all those presales, otherwise it would've been: "Hell no, you deliver when you're contracted to deliver! I don't care if you gotta string the episodes together with action figures and cardboard! Cast isn't ready? Who cares. Go do it all on an etch-a-sketch with Shatner narrating, you better have those episodes ready!" Between this and Twin Peaks, I'm excited about episodic tee vee in 2017 led by incredibly charming, idiosyncratic auteurs! I'm glad both pushed the networks for more and got what they needed, it'll cut down a bit on excuses everyone makes later for the results. Still, it's very interesting how stories like this are seen through a prism of our expectations. There's so much unearned told-ya-so! Best of luck, team! love, a part-time fanatic