New 'Star Trek' TV Series a Go at CBS All Access

[Johnw1104]

My concern is that they'll base it in the universe of the recent movies for the convenience of not stressing previous continuity as opposed to the timeline we're all familiar with.

That it will be new characters and they'll be meeting new races is encouraging, though, as it implies it's not a reboot of a preexisting series and that they might be traveling to new areas.

The best pitch I ever read that I know Paramount received (I forget from which writer, but it's probably on that Star Trek wiki somewhere) was for the setting to be farther in the future with a Federation that is less constrained by technology but is analogous to the late Western Roman Empire, in that there are a number of invasions/migrations wreaking havoc and there's a great deal of animosity and mistrust between the participant races, and so the Federation is on the brink of dissolution. The enterprise, in this setting, is still the flagship of a diminished fleet, and they try to hold it all together and appeal to the better qualities of their allies and the enemies to not turn on one another and so forth. Evidently this would be the background arc addressed every few episodes while they'd have unrelated episodes, much like Deep Space Nine did.

Of course, given that pitch is many years old and it would require acknowledging the mythos of the previous series and abiding by the continuity at times (even though they're in the distant future), I imagine there's about a .01% chance of this series looking anything like that. I imagine they'll go with some simpler method, like placing this series in their new Vulcan-less timeline, as I doubt they'd simply wipe the slate clean and risk alienating a fanbase that's about as obsessed with the established lore and timeline as any you'll find.

I just hope it winds up taking the approach of previous star trek episodes as opposed to, say, a more action oriented series like Firefly or the Stargate franchise. With Doctor Who still going strong and the X-files returning for a short miniseries I've nothing to complain about.