We’ve been hearing a lot about future ‘Star Trek’ shows lately, both in the form of rumors and formal announcements. But what we haven’t heard as much of is when we can expect to see these shows. In addition to flagship series ‘Star Trek: Discovery’, the confirmed slate also includes the animated ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks‘ and a pair of as-yet untitled shows focused on Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard and Michelle Yeoh’s Philippa Georgiou.
If you’re wondering why the powers that be have been so quiet about premiere dates, well, it’s because these things take a while to make. In fact, franchise steward Alex Kurtzman noted at the TCA Press Tour that each new ‘Trek’ takes “two years to build.” That fits with what we’ve seen not only with the occasionally rocky road that ‘Discovery’ took to its 2017 launch, but also with the Picard series, which was announced last summer and is currently expected to air late this year.
So where does that leave the Georgiou series? Well, as you might have figured out, we’re in for a bit of a wait. But specifically? It’s too early to say at this stage, but while the seeds of the show will reportedly be sown during the current season ‘Discovery’, the spinoff won’t arrive for at least another year. In fact, Kurtzman was fairly clear on that point as he summed up the current progress of the series:
“Our hope is that we will have a script in the next couple months and then as soon as ‘Discovery’ season three is over, we’re rolling on that show. That’s the hope.”
So it depends on exactly when the next season of ‘Discovery’ airs, but a safe bet would be that the earliest we could expect to see the Georgiou show would be summer 2020. But of course, the character will be back on our screens long before then
Speaking more broadly, Kurtzman revealed that the talks for a Georgiou-centric spinoff began “the minute [‘Discovery’] became successful.” Which is hardly surprising. Michelle Yeoh, after all, is one of those actors you keep around as long as you can, and her character’s recruitment into Section 31 (in a deleted scene from the first season finale) provided nothing if not a compelling way to keep her character in the picture.
Kurtzman also hinted that Section 31 itself was the key to some of the story points they are hoping to explore, both in the Georgiou series and in whatever future appearances the organization might make on ‘Discovery’:
“If you know Section 31, you know that by the time ‘Deep Space Nine’ comes around they’ve gone underground and they are this mysterious organization – but there’s nothing official about it. In the [season two] promos that you’ve seen so far, Section 31 has a badge. There’s a ship and all these different things, so the question is: how do they get from here to there? What happened in that window of time between those two pivot points in Section 31’s evolution?”
Be sure to check back with ScienceFiction.com for the latest news on this and other ‘Star Trek’ projects as it becomes available!
