Brontoforumus

Bryan Fuller will be showrunner on the new TV series.

The creative plan is for the series to introduce new characters and civilizations, existing outside of the mythology charted by previous series and the current movie franchises.

Not sure what that means, exactly, but sounds good.

The real question is if, at long last, we'll fulfill Roddenberry's promise and get space lesbians. Maybe we'll get an entire race of space lesbians who reproduce by spitting at each other while Amok Time theme plays.

So just like real lesbians.

Nicholas Meyer joins the new show as consulting producer and writer.

(He's the guy who wrote and/or directed the even ones.)

Birth Movies Death cites "trusted" unnamed sources as saying that the new series will be set in the original universe, that the first season will take place after Star Trek 6 and before Next Generation, and that each season will be a standalone story with a different cast and setting. (Like Fargo, True Detective, American Horror Story, etc.; I guess the term people are using for that format now is "anthology series", even though when I hear "anthology series" I think of the Twilight Zone/Outer Limits/Alfred Hitchcock Presents format.)

I like that idea a lot.

Yeah, there's so much to explore in the universe, and bouncing around to different places and times has real potential. Plus, the anthology format means the potential to bring in bigger stars than a regular ongoing series.

On the other hand, "a Star Trek series made up entirely of first seasons" doesn't exactly sound like the most appealing pitch. It's a franchise that's pretty well-known for taking awhile to find its footing in each successive installment, so there's a real potential downside to flipping the reset button every year.



ETA: Another smart thing about setting the first season between the first two series and other seasons potentially later is that it closes the door on having any guest appearances by characters from other shows early on* but leaves it open as a possibility for later. That's a pretty good way of handling it; make the first season fresh and standalone to appeal to new fans, and save the stuff that appeals to longtime viewers for later.

Plus it'd be nice to see the Next Gen crew together one last time before the inevitable reboot with James McAvoy as Picard.

* technically they could use characters from Enterprise, but I am pretty sure "remind the audience of Enterprise" falls somewhere below "karaoke night at Shatner's house" on the list of things anyone wants to do.

Thad wrote:Plus it'd be nice to see the Next Gen crew together one last time before the inevitable reboot with James McAvoy as Picard.

surely they'd at least get Tom Hardy

I want to do karaoke night at Shatner's house more than ANYTHING.

Yeah that sounds pretty appealing to me, too.

For a moment I thought Brentai said "I want to do karate at Shatner's house more than ANYTHING."

...I do too.

Thad wrote:* technically they could use characters from Enterprise, but I am pretty sure "remind the audience of Enterprise" falls somewhere below "karaoke night at Shatner's house" on the list of things anyone wants to do.

But I liked Enterprise :(

Well, it was only a matter of time before the Kardashians got into politics.

Well, it looks a damn sight better than the last trailer. Still can't say as I'm excited, but it could be good.

Meanwhile, Paramount has apparently dropped its Axanar suit, reportedly due to pressure by Lin and Abrams.

Good for them. I think the law was on Paramount's side (mostly; Marc Randazza made a pretty persuasive argument that the Klingon language is not copyrightable (PDF), but Axanar clearly used a hell of a lot of other elements that were) but suing your fans is not very good business.

oh geez I didn't realize these were still being made

Holy shit!

XD

Oh wow.

One of his best.

Sulu will be canonically, openly gay in Star Trek Beyond.

George Takei is actually opposed to this, for a few reasons. One is that he thinks creating a new character is better than altering an existing one; another is that he feels it contradicts the character as Roddenberry conceived him. A third is that he believes this retroactively implies that his version of Sulu was closeted.

There's something to be said for all of these points, and I respect Takei's opinion, but I don't know that I agree with it. First of all, there's not really much in the original series to establish Sulu's sexuality at all -- if the creator and actor both intended for him to be straight, then that's perfectly valid and Takei has a right to think that's the "true" interpretation, but I don't see it up there on the screen.

Second, it would probably be a good idea not to take the "these are the same characters, just younger" premise too seriously. How did Nero blowing up Captain Kirk's father make Sulu gay? The same way it made Khan white, and caused Uhura and Spock to date. For as much time as the first movie spent telling us that these are the same people, younger, in a timeline that was altered by a couple of major events, I think it's a lot more constructive and accurate to look at it as a reboot, as loosely-similar characters with the same names experiencing loosely-similar events to TOS.

Pegg and Quinto repsectfully disagree with Takei's interpretation.

And of course new characters and gay Sulu aren't mutually exclusive; I hope we'll see some LGBTQ characters on the new TV series. But if "just make a new character" were an option, this movie series wouldn't exist at all; its entire purpose is to capitalize on nostalgia by reusing the characters from TOS.

The one thing about Sulu and sexuality that I've heard of is that he had a daughter that showed up in Star Trek Generations... I just looked it up and apparently in the Star Trek animated series he showed up with a female companion in one episode, and apparently there were recurring hints of him potentially being interested in Uhura plus blatant mirror!Sulu hitting on Uhura?

But Space-Adopted-Daughter or Technobabble-Legitimized-Two-Biodads-Daughter both seem plausible and the only stuff directly mentioning non-mirror!Sulu and sexuality is from the animated series, a book, and some 'Starship Creator' software - I don't know what, if any, of that is considered canon.