The voyages of the USS Discovery will “be coming in the beginning of the fall,” according to CBS CEO Les Moonves. And with that news, millions of Trekkies breathed a sigh of relief. The seventh TV show in the mega sci-fi franchise — Star Trek: Discovery — is beaming down to Earth sooner rather than later.
As reported by Trek Movie on Wednesday, Moonves spoke on a panel about the future of the entertainment industry in Beverly Hills, California. Obviously, the future of Star Trek was a huge talking point. Putting to rest the idea that the show would be delayed indefinitely, Moonves said that the production on Discovery is “going extremely well.” So, while many fans and critics have been worrying that the delays might signal that there was something wrong with the new Trek series, the top brass is, at the very least, putting out the opposite message. In any case, a fall release should be cause for some celebration from Trekkies.
In addition to confirming the fall release, Moonves also revealed how integral a Netflix partnership was to the success of not only Discovery but the franchise as a whole. “We couldn’t afford to do Star Trek, or the quality of the show, without Netflix help who bought the rest of the world,” he said. Moonves is referring to two things here. First, CBS experimented with putting all of the Star Trek shows onto Netflix with the sole purpose of seeing how the franchise would be received on streaming services. And the results were really positive. “They don’t share the information, but…we knew Star Trek did extremely well.” Moonves said.
But the second Netflix/Star Trek connection is the fact that Star Trek: Discovery will be streaming internationally on Netflix while remaining on CBS All Access in the U.S. Moonves explained this is because “you know that a Star Trek will travel,” meaning its contents and themes have a global audience, as opposed to other CBS prosperities (Moonves cited “The Good Wife”) that have demographics which are more American-centric.
When Discovery was first announced in 2015, CBS indicated that the pilot episode would be broadcast on the regular network, while the rest of the series would be streaming only. As of this writing, it’s unclear if that is still the case or if the show will exclusively be available in the U.S. on CBS All Access and internationally, on Netflix.
For now, hardcore Trekkies and casual fans alike eagerly await the first offical photos, more detailed character descriptions, and of course, a trailer.
