Rumours, news and general speculation

[Nutso]

First look at Kol the Klingon

[Nutso]

12 new STD posters

It's all variations of this

[Reliant121]

He looks like an Andorian on steroids for heaven's sake.

[Graham Kennedy]

Has Discovery already been cancelled?

I mentioned upthread that the executives have already said privately that unless Discovery does much better than expected, the show will be cancelled after season 1. More rumours on this have come to light.

If (and note that IF) the rumours are true, here is what's going to happen.

The plan for Discovery was to have a multi-season show like any other Star Trek.

Fuller wanted to do ten episode seasons, describing the show as one big ongoing story; he wanted short seasons because he didn't want any "padding", any non-arc stories to slow up the main plots. However, the execs forced the first season to be extended to 13 episodes. Then you may remember a couple of months ago, it was further extended to 15 episodes for season 1.

The suggestion is that the real reason that the extra two episodes have been added is to complete all the season 1 story arcs and wrap the show up. The thinking is to then make a new show based on a completely different premise - and to sell people the idea that this was the plan all along.

Remember waaaay back, one of the mooted ideas for a new Star Trek show was to do an anthology show, jumping around different time periods? In fact, Fuller has now said that that's exactly what he suggested to them for their new show in the beginning. Well, that's what they plan to do.

That's what the rumoured new series by Nick Meyer about Khan's time on Ceti Alpha V is - it's being prepared now so that it can be made if Discovery fails, and although it's a whole new show, it will be sold by CBS as "season two of Discovery, the anthology show."

A loooot of damage control is going on behind the scenes. Keep in mind, Discovery is costing $6 million per episode - up to $90 million for the whole season. Netflix has covered almost all of that cost in return for the worldwide rights, the most they have ever paid for a show. And they did so on the basis that "Discovery was sold to them as the show Star Trek fans desperately wanted, and would absolutely adore when it came out." CBS themselves are hoping that Discovery will attract 4 million new subscribers to their CBS All Access channel. If and when Discovery does bomb, a LOT of executives and producers are going to find themselves having to justify their decisions when all that money swirls down the drain.

[Mikey]

Holy crap, between Netflix and CBS nobody will be able to figure out who'll be up against the wall first. It strikes me as incredibly odd that with the capital investment that has been made in this project, a handful of focus groups couldn't have been researched.

[Graham Kennedy]

Also, now I think about it, notice that the mooted new show is set on Ceti Alpha V and will not show anything of the Federation or Starfleet, right?

Well, remember what the video had to say about the licensing for Trek. It's now split between two different divisions of CBS, with the result that the division making Discovery doesn't actually have the right to make a show that closely resembles the original series. That's why Discovery looks as weird as it does.

So if that's true, this replacement would be the perfect series - without needing to depict anything of Starfleet, it would be able to have a complete new look with nobody complaining about it.

[Mikey]

I am forced to wonder who exactly thought it would be a 90+ million dollar series for which you didn't have the rights to the core intellectual property.

[Graham Kennedy]

I am forced to wonder who exactly thought it would be a 90+ million dollar series for which you didn't have the rights to the core intellectual property.

Put it this way. Les moonves, the CEO of CBS, reportedly didn't know the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars. Literally - he allegedly once asked for a report on how much money they had made off The Force Awakens, and it had to be explained to him that the movie wasn't part of the Star Trek franchise.

He's the guy who fired Fuller, for objecting to his demand that Discovery "must look like the most advanced Star Trek ever".

[Mikey]

Funny, if I ran my 5-figure job the way he runs a multimedia empire, I'd be shitcanned so fast my head would swim.

[Graham Kennedy]

It honestly seems to be true that the average Hollywood executive knows jack shit about why people like movies.

Ever see Kevin Smith's talk about the time he wrote a draft for a Superman movie? The guidance he got to write to was truly amazing - the executive producer wanted to put Chewbacca in it. Yes, seriously.

[Mikey]

It honestly seems to be true that the average Hollywood executive knows jack shit about why people like movies.

Ever see Kevin Smith's talk about the time he wrote a draft for a Superman movie? The guidance he got to write to was truly amazing - the executive producer wanted to put Chewbacca in it. Yes, seriously.

Well, as a fellow denizen of Dirty Jersey with Mr. Smith and erstwhile customer of his store, I tend to take anything he may say about such things with a large sack of salt. But it does seem that studio exec is one of the rare positions in which one may simply indulge childhood fantasy with a healthy dose of puerile self-centeredness and zero regard for common sense or actual attention to the purpose of the job.

[stitch626]

Its kind of scary but reading twitter comments from many of the folks who worked on previous series, I never realized how much they enjoyed their work.

[DSG2k]

In fact, I read through the first eighty comments and didn't find a single positive one. Not one.

The saucer aztec pattern is nice enough.

I like the tan coloration . . . the NX-01 always looked a little nickelsilver to me, so it isn't beyond the pale.

It seems to have plenty of windows, even if some just look out on other windows.

That's all the positivity I can provide, sorry. And even then, I had to specify the saucer in the first.

[DSG2k]

Well, remember what the video had to say about the licensing for Trek. It's now split between two different divisions of CBS, with the result that the division making Discovery doesn't actually have the right to make a show that closely resembles the original series. That's why Discovery looks as weird as it does.

I've taken a little swing at trying to track down some backup for that unsubstantiated claim from the video but came up dry. Even the Memory Alpha page he references no longer features the Bad Robot line.

This may just be pure self-created sucky rebootism, in other words, rather than a forced license-related sucky rebootism.

[Graham Kennedy]

Heres why the "Klingons" look different in star trek discovery

Per Trek Movie, the show’s creature designers Neville Page and Glenn Hetrick have revealed that these new Klingons are bald with more pronounced ridges – because they’re basically sensors. The ridges are tools that the Klingons, a predator race, utilized to climb the food chain.

Actor Mary Chieffo, who plays Klingon L’Rell, expanded on that idea.

“Obviously the hair was the biggest thing people noticed, or the lack thereof. And I will attest to the fact there is a reason my ridge goes back the way it does. There are sensors and pheromones…There is a whole reasoning behind it that is adhering to what has always been true in Klingon canon…So I deeply believe we are in line with what has come before but is also adding a new kind of nuance.”

Page also defends the notion that these Klingons can credibly exist in the same universe as the previous iterations, chalking up the discrepancies to the vastness of the Klingon empire:

“The Empire is very big. They don’t all grow up on Qo’noS. They don’t all live on the same planets and certainly those different planets would have different environments. So how would the cultures have evolved differently?” We tried to come up with cultural axioms for each house so each looks different and they bear a cultural patina like our cultures do here on Earth.”

Discovery‘s plot reportedly hinges largely on the Klingons, and the show is seemingly doing its best to both update and honor the legacy of what’s come before for them – it’s also a positive sign that they’ll actually be speaking subtitled Klingon. There’s plenty of precedent for changing up the look of the Klingons, and it’s good that the show’s creative team has seemingly thought out some pretty decent reasons for the changes this time. If Discovery stumbles, it seems unlikely that it will be because of the Klingons.

At this point, I don't think there's a lot of point in my reiterating what I think of this. Just thought I would throw the official excuse out there for you guys.