The last six months have been good for fans of small screen Star Trek. The news that there would be new content in the Trek television universe meant that the franchise would be back in a non-movie form for the first time since Enterprise went off the air in 2005. There haven’t been too many details yet released about the upcoming CBS project, but we now know when and where filming will take place. The cast and crew of the new Star Trek series will begin work later in fall of 2016 in Toronto.
Due to a mandate that the new show could not debut until at least six months had passed since the latest big screen venture was released, the July 22 premiere date of Star Trek Beyond meant that Star Trek on CBS couldn’t come any time before the end of January 2017. News that filming will take place later in 2016 (via TrekCore) undoubtedly means that Trek will be ready for viewers sooner rather than later in 2017.
The CBS series – which as of now is still without a subtitle – filming in Toronto marks a big change from the other television installments in the Trek franchise. All five of the live-action Trek shows were produced in Los Angeles. Star Trek Beyond also filmed in Toronto, but the two projects are otherwise unrelated. We shouldn’t expect Chris Pine or Zachary Quinto to make any appearances in the new Star Trek show.
Of course, for those of us who don’t subscribe to the CBS All Access streaming service, we won’t be seeing the new Star Trek at all. In order to try to entice more folks to shell out the extra cash each month for All Access, Star Trek, with its built-in fandom, seemed like a logical choice for original programming. Only the pilot will be available as a taster to regular CBS cable subscribers. CBS head honcho Les Moonves has boldly asserted that Star Trek could launch CBS All Access into the streaming game alongside greats like Netflix and Amazon Prime, so it should be interesting to see if Trek has what it takes to give All Access a major boost.
From the details that have been released so far, there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic. Showrunner Bryan Fuller is a major Star Trek alum thanks to experience both writing and producing for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. Wrath of Khan writer and director Nicholas Meyer is creatively attached, and classic Trek actor Tony Todd may be on board for a role.
Hopefully, news of when and where filming will take place for Star Trek means that we’ll find out more about the plot and cast of the new show. In the meantime, check out our schedule of summer TV premiere dates to see what non-Trek series will be hitting the airwaves in the near future.
