Star Trek

In honor of the September 8th anniversary of the original Star Trek series premiere, Paramount Plus has assembled a free-to-watch YouTube playlist of the first episodes (including two-parters like “Encounter at Farpoint”) of most of the franchise’s series, along with a handful of shorts. They’re free from September 7th – 13th.

That doesn’t include Star Trek: Prodigy, which is over on Netflix, and not free.

The pandemic and arrival of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds put the kibosh on a Paramount Plus series built around Michelle Yeoh’s Philippa Georgiou. But the Mirror Universe empress is back in the first trailer for Star Trek: Section 31 — Olatunde Osunsanmi’s upcoming film that will dig deeper into her dark past.

Yesterday, the NYT said there were discussions of entering exclusive talks, and now multiple outlets report the companies have entered a 30-day exclusive negotiating window. Bloomberg even says, “Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, has reached a tentative agreement to sell her stake to Skydance.”

The hold up now is apparently the second step of Paramount and Skydance reaching a merger agreement. As for other hopefuls, Variety reports a $27 billion all-cash bid from the private equity firm Apollo was declined.

Paramount still hasn’t settled on a partner, but the New York Times reports negotiations with Skydance over a possible merger have reached the step of “discussing entering into exclusive talks.”

Star Trek: Discovery really found its own voice once it leaped forward almost 1,000 years into the future, but for the series’ final season, showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Michelle Paradise say they looked to classic Indiana Jones movies for a new sense of adventure.

The show started mired in the past and has now journeyed to the far future where its characters peddle a brand of optimism that’s sorely needed. I’ll be bummed to see the show go.

As with previous seasons it will air exclusively on Paramount Plus, and the first two episodes will air back to back. As for the plot of the final voyage of this ship and crew? It will involve taking on an “ancient power”.

The fifth and final season will find Captain Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery uncovering a mystery that will send them on an epic adventure across the galaxy to find an ancient power whose very existence has been deliberately hidden for centuries. But there are others on the hunt as well…dangerous foes who are desperate to claim the prize for themselves and will stop at nothing to get it.

Start guessing on which ancient evil will cameo in the comments.

It’s apparently an origin story that “takes place decades before the original 2009 Star Trek film,” Deadline reports. It will have some notable star power attached: Toby Haynes, who directed multiple episodes of Andor, is set to direct the movie.

Icons from the original series are “boldly going” into deep space for a permanent space burial — including show creator Gene Roddenberry, his wife Majel (Christine Chapel), Nichelle Nichols (Nyota Uhura), DeForest Kelley (Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy), and James Doohan (Montgomery “Scotty” Scot).

Their remains are aboard the ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rocket that successfully launched at 2:18AM ET last night.

I mean that literally, at least judging from the lighting-challenged clip from Discovery’s fifth and final season, which Paramount Plus shared today at Brazil’s CCXP 2023.

In what looks like almost the dead of night, Captain Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Book (David Ajala) try not to get killed by giant cloaking aliens with lava faces.

Star Trek Prodigy has completed its voyage home, landing safely on Netflix. The adorable kid-friendly Star Trek series aired one season on Paramount + and Nickelodeon starting in late 2021, but got the axe this June despite having its second season largely in the can.

Trek fans, being not new to this problem, launched a fan campaign over the summer begging other streamers, including Netflix, to take up the mantle — and, apparently, won. Prodigy’s first season will hit Netflix later this year, and my 10-year-old can continue shipping Dal and Gwyn with new episodes launching sometime in 2024.

On September 8th, Star Trek: Lower Decks star Jerry O’Connell will host a special program celebrating 57 years of the iconic science fiction franchise, streaming on Paramount Plus, Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook.

The first two episodes of Strange New Worlds will also be broadcast on CBS starting at 8PM ET/PT if you haven't already streamed it on Paramount Plus.

Lower Decks actors Tawney Newsom and Jack Quaid came up with some of the funniest moments of the Strange New Worlds crossover episode — Newsom’s Ensign Mariner spouting that Spock is hot and Quaid’s Ensign Boimler pulling the “Riker maneuver” — on the spot, per interviews cited by Gizmodo.

Trek alum and episode director Jonathan Frakes seemed envious in his Variety interview:

“[Improvisation] doesn’t happen a lot on ‘Star Trek,’ as you probably have heard,” Frakes says. “I mean, especially in our fucking show” — i.e. “Next Gen” — “they were so strict. It was like we were doing Shakespeare or Chekhov.”

And just because it’s very good, here’s the closer from Gizmodo’s James Whitbrook’s article:

We’re living in a golden age of exploring the fact that Spock Is Hot.

That’s right, the first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is free on YouTube ahead of the June 15th season two premiere — TrekMovie has links to all the episodes.

It’s got goofy episodic heart and a cool season-long arc. You can just watch it right under this post if you want:

Someone recently submitted a question to Slate’s advice column about being a surrogate to a couple named Miles and Keiko and worrying about developing feelings for Miles. That seems like a normal sex advice column question until you realize it’s also the exact plot of an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

If you’ve ever been curious about Star Trek, Strange New Worlds is the best place to start, and this teaser for season two really shows off all the different hats the show wears. There’s ample comedy. Some action. Some sad stuff. Plenty of aliens, and Captain James T. Kirk struggling with his greatest enemy, doors. June 15 can’t come soon enough.

Nearly the entire cast of The Next Generation returns for the final season of Picard and it looks like every single one of them appears in the final trailer. Also appearing: so many fights in space with spaceships, Seven of Nine, and actor Ed Speleers, who is apparently playing a friend of Beverly Crusher’s. The final season starts airing February 16 on Paramount Plus.

Star Trek’s William Shatner, who flew on Blue Origin’s tourist rocket last October, had this to say about his experience in space, and it sounds kind of terrifying.

I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth... The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness.

The movie lost its most recent director Matt Shakman last month to Marvel’s Fantastic Four reboot following his success with WandaVision, leaving the project once again without anyone at the helm. The currently unnamed Star Trek sequel was expected to hit theaters on December 22, 2023.

This news doesn’t mean the project is canceled, but it now feels like we’re just waiting for the Kelvin reboot’s demise to be made official after over three years of production hot potato.

Remember Bablyon 5? Alongside Star Trek: Deep Space 9, it was one of the first television shows to embrace long-term serial storytelling...on a space station. A reboot was planned at The CW, but with Warner Bros. Discovery stepping back from The CW and Nexstar gaining majority control of CW, the reboot is now in trouble, and its creator is asking fans for help.