CBS All-Access’ beleaguered ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ is facing another bump in the road. On the plus side, it appears the show is now on track, with new showrunners >Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts and is set to begin production in Toronto next week. However, after the show was already bumped from a January debut to May, ‘Discovery’ is once again being pushed back, but CBS has not announced when it will premiere. Should CBS follow its original plan, ‘Discovery’ will air its first episode on network TV and all subsequent episodes will be available to simultaneously stream on All-Access.
CBS Television Studios released the following statement:
“Production on Star Trek: Discovery begins next week. We love the cast, the scripts and are excited about the world the producers have created. This is an ambitious project; we will be flexible on a launch date if it’s best for the show. We’ve said from the beginning it’s more important to do this right than to do it fast. There is also added flexibility presenting on CBS All Access, which isn’t beholden to seasonal premieres or launch windows.”
Part of the delay is due to the casting of Sonequa Martin-Green in the lead role as Lt. Cmdr Rainsford. Martin-Green, of course, is a series regular on AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead’ and there apparently was some concern about her appearing on two genre shows at the same time. ‘The Walking Dead’ returns on February 12 and will still be airing in May (one of the major sweeps months). So ‘Discovery’ is being bumped to avoid any confusion among fans. (But this CAN’T bode well for her ‘TWD’ character Sasha.)
Martin-Green joins a pretty star-studded cast, including Michelle Yeoh who is playing Captain Georgiou from the Starship Shenzhou, Doug Jones (‘Hellboy’) as Lt. Saru, a character who represents a brand new alien race in the Trek-verse, Anthony Rapp (‘Rent’) as Lt. Stamets, an “astromycologist” (i.e. a fungus expert), who will be the first openly gay character on a ‘Trek’ TV show, Chris Obi, Shazad Letifand Mary Chieffo as Klingons T’Kuvma, Kol and L’Rell respectively.
Showrunners Berg and Harberts have quite a track record, having executive produced ‘Reign’, ‘Revenge’, ‘GCB’, ‘Pushing Daisies’, ‘Wonderfalls’ and ‘Roswell’ among others. In addition to serving as showrunners, both will also executive produce ‘Discovery’.
Does this delay worry you? Or do you think the show will be worth the wait?
Source: Entertainment Weekly
