...and CBS's reliance on the Star Trek franchise continues unabated as it
endeavors to milk that cash cow to drive even more adoption. Hello my fellow
explorers and welcome to The Week in Sci-Fi
it's Eman here and welcome to the series that explores the strange new worlds of
science fiction and science fantasy, so make sure you subscribe and click the
notification bell so you do not miss out. There's sci-fi news in that nebula, let's go
explore. Engage! Strange new worlds don't come much stranger than this piece of
news... so CBS is continuing its massive push to
drive viewers to its own streaming platform, CBS All Access. Now, Star Trek:
Discovery's obviously the most prominent results of that initiative and CBS's
reliance on the Star Trek franchise continues unabated as it endeavors to
milk that cash cow to drive even more adoption. We have recently had the mini
monthly episode Short Treks being released, of which the second episode is
imminent. Plus, we know that there is a new Star Trek Picard series set after
the events of Star Trek Nemesis but we now have the strangest bit of news to
hit in the Trek franchise - there is a new Star Trek series. It's Star Trek Jim but
not as we know it. Called 'Star Trek: Lower Decks' it is an animated series that's
clearly named in honour of the great The Next Generation episode 'Lower Decks' that
looked at the life of regular non-officer crew aboard the Enterprise D
although we've seen a cartoon featuring the original series crew, the underrated
'The Animated Series', this series is a... wait for it...
comedy. Yep, you heard that right Lower Decks
will focus on the support crew serving on one of Starfleet's least important ships
Probably like me, my first reaction was... but the series has been created by
Rick and Morty head writer Mike McMahan who apparently is a huge Trek fan and
this one sentence pitch from McMahan is what sold me on the entire idea: "I want
to do a show about the people who put the yellow cartridge in the food
replicators so a banana can come out of the other end"
I think that's pure brilliance and he went made me go from... to actually being
quite interested in seeing how this turns out but I do wonder if CBS is
destined to make the same mistake again with its cash cow. CBS already has a TOS
prequel series in Discovery, a post-Nemesis sequel series in the unnamed
Picard series and it has Short Treks to fill in all the gaps in between as
people wait for Disco season 2. An animated series wasn't a surprise, it had
been rumored (I thought that was where Jean-Luc Picard was going to feature
rather than his own series but Lower Decks being a comedy animated series has
taken me by surprise. They recently talked about the Picard series being
multi-season but they also said they would be careful not to overlap the two
The series of Discovery and Picard would not overlap on air and they would
have gaps inbetween to build fan anticipation. Yet, they already
commissioned the Short Treks episodes to kind of cull that fan anticipation
But this gives them something to watch inbetween and now they have this
animated series, which is a comedy, plus they have a rumoured another series
going on, which apparently may focus on and Wrath of Khan. S the last time
CBS played this game they had DS9 airing in tandem with Voyager and then they had
Enterprise come immediately following the end of Voyager, and this constant
Trek, constant milking of the cow, actually helped
kill the franchise for what was decades and it wasn't until JJ came along and
gave it the shot in the arm to revive the franchise. So I really hope CBS knows
what it is doing. From nearly announced series to cancellations of sorts. I say
of sorts because a Boba Fett film was never officially confirmed. Now we knew
that James Mangold was supposed to write and direct the feature, and considering
the amazing job he did with Logan, which by the way was my film of 2017 along
with Blade Runner 2049, so this project would have been something to
behold. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, Solo happened, which I believe was a
box-office failure only because it was released so soon after The Last Jedi,
which was riding a tail of negativity, which apparently was largely bot
fueled but who knows. So Disney have, in reaction, put a lot of projects on hold
and I believe the Fett film originally would have acted to set up the
Mandalorian TV series, but now as that project is already well under production
there is no need for the film, which is 100% not happening. And cancellations
have not only been happening on the big screen but also on the small screen. It
seems that in recent weeks cancellations have been the order of the day with the
cancellation of Iron Fist followed quickly by Luke Cage, which have shaken
things up in the Netflix-Marvel world. Unsurprisingly, this has got Daredevil
fans very worried about a potential season 4, which is yet to be greenlit
Nope, I'm not going to tell you... I'm not here to tell you that the series has
been cancelled. In fact, Entertainment Weekly talked to
the show's showrunner Erik Oleson about a potential season 4; this is what he had
to say: " I can tell you that I'm very hopeful to do a season 4. There has not
yet been any kind of an official pick up but if there is I'm very hopeful that I
will be part of it" So perhaps in this case no news is good news
and from cancellations we move one step backwards to postponements
An interesting post from Gal Gadot this week about the Wonder Woman 84
release being pushed back by a whole 7 months to June 2020. I assume this is
part of a bigger rethink about the entire DC Extended Universe and about
aligning how they move the franchise forward. I think how perhaps consider
rebooting the entire universe. Now what I find most interesting about this was Gal
Gadot's post is she called this move "super exciting" so if anybody can actually
figure out exactly why this news is 'super exciting' then please please feel
free to enlighten me in the comments below
finally, we have some really exciting news for fans of The Expanse. As you know,
following its cancellation of the deal with the SyFy channel, Amazon picked up
this superb series with Jeff Bezos apparently being a huge fan of the show
now it's not quite season 4 but season 3 is coming to Amazon Prime in the next
few days, which is fantastic news for anyone outside of North America, I
believe, who have yet to see it. Certainly I haven't had the privilege living in
the UK, so now I know exactly what I'll be watching after I finish season 2
of Star Trek: Voyager. Are you hungry for more sci-fi? How about daily snippets of
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are open so please chat to me: What do you think about Star Trek:
Lower Decks? Sad to see the Boba Fett film canned for
good? These were the top stories in the strange new worlds of science fiction
and science fantasy. Make sure you catch me next week as... I'll be back. Peace