Next year’s ‘Star Trek’ reboot may have naked aliens and swearing, CBS digital chief says

[dbcooper]

There's an audio interview at the link.

Next year’s ‘Star Trek’ reboot may have naked aliens and swearing, CBS digital chief says

CBS is still making TV the old-fashioned way, and that’s where it says most of its audience is: 90 percent of viewers either watch TV live or on the DVRs plugged into their TVs.

But so far, the broadcast network has convinced more than a million people to pay $6 a month for CBS All Access, CBS Interactive CEO Jim Lanzone said on the latest episode of Recode Media with Peter Kafka. And it’s planning to use that digital platform to carry some of its big upcoming shows, including a “The Good Wife” spinoff and a reboot of “Star Trek.”

“Sci-fi is not something that has traditionally done really well on broadcast,” Lanzone said. “It’s not impossible, for the future, if somebody figures it out. But historically, a show like ‘Star Trek’ wouldn’t necessarily be a broadcast show, at this point.”

The first episodes of both of those shows will debut in broadcast, before the rest of the series move online. And once they go digital, they won’t have to play by the FCC’s broadcast rules — i.e., nudity! And cursing!


“The showrunners were like ‘Oh yeah, we could do that,’” Lanzone recalled. “Of course, the response is, ‘As long as it serves the story.’ But yeah!”

“Naked aliens, and humans?” Kafka asked.

“Theoretically.”

“And swearing?”

“Whatever future swearing, 300 years in the future, would be."

You can listen to Recode Media in the audio player above, or subscribe on iTunes, Google Play Music, TuneIn and Stitcher.

 

[Eronai]

I can't see an abundance of nudity in Star Trek, this reminds me of later seasons of Voyager and Enterprise where they kept saying the series would be "sexy" ... it just comes across as a giggling teenager's idea of what 'sexy' is.

I watch Game of Thrones and by this point I find the nudity and bonking more irritating than anything, it gets in the way of the story.

As for swearing, it's always been used in a humourous way on Star Trek (Data in Generations, O'Brien in Time's Orphan, for example). If it's not over-the-top (keeping in mind that families are wanting to watch Trek together), and used with humour, I perhaps wouldn't mind.

 

[Spot261]

I keep finding myself split on this, on the one hand I shudder at the Carol Marcus shot, the topless Kirk in bed with two aliens, etc.

But then I'm reminded just how much TOS relied on the short skirts, the Orion dancer, Kirk flexing his waxed pectorals (such as they were). Im not sure we've moved forward or backwards here.

 

[Christopher]

Oh, Roddenberry would totally have been down with nudity in Trek if he could've gotten away from it. Remember, his first feature film as a producer (first of two) was Roger Vadim's Pretty Maids All in a Row, a dark sex comedy that was, I think, one of the very first American movies to feature nude scenes after the R rating permitting them was introduced. He even tried sneaking a pseudo-nude scene into the G-rated Star Trek: The Motion Picture, with the Ilia probe in the sonic shower.

There's nothing wrong with nudity so long as it's not handled in a juvenile way. I'd be happy with a portrayal of a future society that's gotten over such concepts as bodily shame, that's just matter-of-fact about people being unclothed or having a consensual sexual interaction. With the profanity, on the other hand, I think I'd rather not see it played up. The Voyage Home suggested that cultural standards were different, that 23rd-century people didn't use profanity as casually as 20th-century people did, or at least not the profanities we favor in the modern era. (Which kind of goes with the earlier point, I think. In a culture without bodily shame, then anatomical or sexual expletives wouldn't carry as much weight.)

 

[C.E. Evans]

It could be a sign of desperation if Trek has to resort to nudity and f-bombs to attract more viewers. Or it could be that Trek is now aiming for a more adult-oriented demographic than say, Star Wars, which still tends to include stuff kids can watch too.

 

[Dukhat]

It could be a sign of desperation if Trek has to resort to nudity and f-bombs to attract more viewers.

Which is what happened with ENT. (Well, not outright nudity because it was still on regular television, but those decon scenes and masseuse T'Pol? Ugghh.)

Nudity is a fact of life these days in TV shows. The trick however, is not to show nudity just for the sake of nudity. Pointless gratuitous boobie shots are pointless.

But this thread title is misleading. All they're saying is that because of the nature of non-FCC approved broadcasting, they aren't restricted in what they can show. It's like when satellite radio first came out, everyone was saying "yay, everyone can swear now because they're not restricted by FCC rules!" Do you know how much swearing I hear on SiriusXM? None.

Just because they can do something, doesn't mean they will.

 

[Christopher]

Just because they can do something, doesn't mean they will.

Right. There are some Netflix shows (e.g. Marco Polo) that are completely graphic with full frontal nudity and explicit profanity, but the Marvel Netflix shows still have some limits -- they're quite violent and use more profanity than the movies or Agents of SHIELD, but they never use the F-word, and though they show sex scenes and a significant amount of skin on occasion (especially in Luke Cage episode 1), they stop short of showing nipples or genitals. And even their violence has self-imposed limits, with anything beyond a certain level of graphicness kept off-camera. They want to be more adult than the movies and network stuff can be, but they don't want to be completely inappropriate for the larger Marvel audience.

So it stands to reason that a non-network Trek show would be the same -- going farther than previous shows/films, but not entirely outside the ballpark of the franchise as a whole. We do something similar in the tie-in novels, or at least I do -- go somewhat more adult than the shows, but not to an extreme.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Reboot? So it's no longer a prime timeline show?

 

[Spot261]

I wondered about that bit myself...

 

[Dukhat]

Uh, the page itself says nothing about a reboot. That's just the word that whoever made that link used.

 

[Christopher]

Uh, the page itself says nothing about a reboot. That's just the word that whoever made that link used.

Fandom has an overly narrow idea of what the word "reboot" can mean. It's long been an industry term referring to any revival of a dormant franchise, but fandom has come to define it far more restrictively to refer exclusively to a revival that reinvents the continuity (most likely because it was the 2004 Battlestar Galactica reinvention that first popularized the term "reboot" with the general public). So it creates some confusion.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Oh, I think we all know what a reboot means. It's a loaded term. Yeah, maybe it was nuBSG that made it that way, but there's no going back.

Edit: What @Dukhat said.

As for nudity and swearing? Meh. As long as it doesn't incorporate the "New Humans" that GR always used to go on about (basically people who walked around naked all the time and had some kind of group mind), then I'll call it even.

And the swearing...as long as Quentin Tarantino doesn't direct an episode, I think we're cool.

 

[Spot261]

Id be curious to see just how much more difficult an acting career would be these days for a young, attractive actress who insisted on keeping her clothes on. I've no doubt there's a lot of institutional pressure there on people who may not be entirely comfortable with it.

 

[Christopher]

Id be curious to see just how much more difficult an acting career would be these days for a young, attractive actress who insisted on keeping her clothes on. I've no doubt there's a lot of institutional pressure there on people who may not be entirely comfortable with it.

I dunno, it seems to me that, even in shows that have full frontal nudity, some characters still keep their clothes on. For instance, in Marco Polo, I think that only one of the lead female cast members has done full nudity, and that was mostly in the first season. It's mainly background extras who provide the nudity, with a few exceptions. So it does seem to be up to the individual actress to decide what she's comfortable with. Also, there's a lot of male nudity on TV these days as well, so I don't think we can really limit it to actresses (though of course it's not entirely a symmetrical question in this culture).

Also, there are always body doubles -- both actual and digital, these days. So a character can appear nude without the performer needing to do so.

 

[Spot261]

Yeah, I shouldn't have limited that to females you're right, but my point isn't that people are directly forced or pressured (i hope they aren't) as such, but that work must be more limited for those who indicate unwillingness. Yes there are the digital body doubles, but how much extra work and expense must that incur for a production team who might simply opt for another performer?

 

[Michael]

That's not really news, as Bryan Fuller made similar remarks in older interviews.

Sure, if it serves the story or the characters and results in a more mature show, bring on the profanity and nudity.

 

[Borgminister]

Do it a la Westworld and it'll be epic.

 

[Tenacity]

Do it a la Westworld and it'll be epic.

Massive orgies on the bridge?

 

[Mad Jack Wolfe]

Nudity is a fact of life these days in TV shows. The trick however, is not to show nudity just for the sake of nudity. Pointless gratuitous boobie shots are pointless.

Unless the boobies in question are themselves gratuitous and pointy. But I digress.

I'm in agreement. If such things fit organically with the flow of the narrative, fine. But be judicious with its use. Overreliance on "teh boobiez" just to prop up flagging ratings or ensure the attention of a certain demographic is puerile and annoying.

 

[Philip Guyott]

Nudity!

Well at least it would save them the hassle of having to design a new uniform.