We’ll have to see whether David Ellison reorients the scheduling strategically. It’s hard to imagine he will not.

5 years ago, as the transition was happening after the remerger, the demographic statistics I saw showed that CBSAA/P+ had the best range of demographics. And it had the best youth/teen/kids audience after Disney+.

Unlike, NBC Universal’s problem with Peacock and Discovery+, which had two very different demographics with little interest the content the other offered, Paramount+ launched with a broad and diverse base.

But the programming and production choices of the past five years have brutally squandered that. It seems that the millennial, middle age Bro, and older male audience has been the target — live sports, Taylor Sheridan everything etc.

It already feels as though P+ has been reprogrammed to make the current US administration happy, pushing a certain kind of American exceptionalism, but that’s not a successful global business strategy.

It’s really only the content coming in from CBS linear and Star Trek that’s kept the balance on the platform.

We keep hearing about content being produced in Paramount’s South American studios or in agreements with partners in Spain and France, but none of that richness in offerings are making it to the North American platform. Netflix remains dominant in offering high quality content from outside Hollywood.

I agree. The more we see, the more enthusiastic I am.

The concept of an Academy show was in development hell for so long - basically, since the hiatus after Discovery’s first season.

And we know that it was originally kicked around before TNG went into production.

So, this seems to have been a hard one to make work. The cost to produce a high quality VFX-rich show that appeals to a teen and young adult demographic, requires that the show must also be rich enough elements to draw the wider Trek base.

I’m hopeful that, as with Prodigy, Starfleet Academy may be one of the rare shows that satisfies a mass demographic despite the streaming era.

The risk is that, like Prodigy, Paramount may not promote it broadly enough.

However, with A-listers heading the cast, one can hope that it will get a lot of promotion beyond the genre media.

Commodore should be abbreviated to Cmdre (Canadian Navy), CDRE (former US Navy) or CMDE (several including India).

But given all the oddities of NCOs in Trek, this a weird acronym for Commodore seems on-brand.

Still, I think it may be some kind of physicians’ designation the writers came up with. One would expect some kind of Medical Officer such as CMO, but could it be Commanding Doctor or something bizarre like that?

That makes sense. Something like this would need a lot of runway and would involve contractual obligations that could not be easily terminated.

This sounds very cool and a spectacular way (literally) to raise the profile of SNW and Trek generally with the SDCC attendees.

I just can’t square it though with firing the entire department at Paramount that made The Ready Room and other online promotional content that gets beyond the US market. The cost cutting choices are not obviously justifiable.

I’m going to say any or none of the suggestions here may be right.

And some of them, like Inner Light, are awful choices simply because their impact is very dependent on having the context the rest of the series and characters.

The main thing is that Star Trek has a wide variety of tones. The way to success is to provide excellent examples of very Trekie episodes that are in the genre or tone that your brother already likes.

Don’t show them action if they like cerebral mystery. Don’t show them romance if they like action. Don’t show them intense drama if they’re into comedy. If they’re into animated comedies or anime, start with Lower Decks or Prodigy not TNG.

Examples from this perspective…

If they like psychological horror, then TNG’s ‘Schisms’ or Voyager’s ‘The Thaw’ might be best.

If they like action, Discovery’s two part pilot might be the one or even the movie Star Trek (2009).

It seems that Christina has been able to convince the Showrunners to incorporate some of her own enthusiasms into La’an’s character.

In a TrekMovie piece, she’s quoted saying that she and Ethan Peck had a total of 75 hours of dance and fight choreography preparation over the season. The heaviest episode is in the back half of the season.

While I enjoyed the edgier La’an, Goldsman seems to have a very rigid idea that, in drama, trauma is the foundation of character development. It’s tiresome when every single character has to have a traumatic backstory, experience trauma in the show, or look forward to trauma (in Pike’s case).

So, as an example, it seems that the only way for Ortegas to have a character arc is for her to be traumatized and go through the process of overcoming that.

In that case, it’s better to have La’an move on. Between Tomorrow cubed and Hegemony II, we’ve seen two very significant life events for her that make it credible that she could finally more on.

University of Regina astronomer Prof. Sam Lawler @sundogplanets@mastodon.social was part of the team that discovered it.

Here’s the start of her thread on the release posted to Mastodon. Lots of cool stuff!

https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/114813850188903877

As a TAS fan, it’s great to hear that Alonso Myers and Goldsman are enthusiastically weaving in TAS elements where they can.

Between them and McMahan helming Lower Decks, we’ve had genuine determination to weave TAS into live action and put aside the claims that it isn’t canon.

I’m somewhat sad about the lack of Kzinti though. Larry Niven would be enthusiastic to have more Kzin in Trek from everything he’s written on that point.

So, this makes 5 different Star Trek series where John De Lancie has appeared as Q (if we’re taking Akiva Goldsman’s offscreen confirmation).

Doesn’t that put him in a tie with Jonathan Frakes as Riker?

I’m glad to get any kind of 5th season.

If there’s a new show, I would rather that they time skip forever to the end of TOS, after TAS.

A late year 4 and year 5 show would fit with the age of the cast, especially Paul Wesley as Kirk. Even Celia, who was a young Uhura in the first season of SNW is catching up given the slow pace of production and release with the pandemic and strike impacting timelines. Even if they just carried on, a TOS-based SNW spin-off wouldn’t be premiered before late 2027 or early 2028 at best.

Disappointed, but not surprised that SNW was sold as the lead into TOS - the entire show seems to have been based on that pitch to the senior executives obsessed with reboots.

It’s a great show but not what it could have been but likely the only version of it that could have been greenlit in this past decade.

I find I am delighted with Quinn’s Scotty.

I could have waited another season for him to be introduced - but I also could have been happier if SNW wasn’t so laser-focused on building the backstory of legacy characters vs giving us more of the new ones - and the cipher that was Number One.

Anyways…

Here’s a complication of TAS Scott images. I think that TAS Scotty looks somewhat in between Quinn and Doohan.

Fantastic!

And it looks like we need to hold the line again.

Someone seems to think the plain grey area on the left hand side of the saucer needs another decal.

I think a lesson learned for future years is that we can’t have any significant sections white pixels.

White areas are just an invitation to populate with other things.

I’m wondering if @ValueSutracted or @Corgana could save a screenshot of the Canvas pixel colour set. That way, next time a template is designed, it could have more of a one-to-one correspondence with the options in Canvas.

Other lesson (although it wasn’t a problem in previous years) is that if we want the website banner, we may need to get that sketched out very early.

In the end, it looks like the Big D is just blowing through some holograms or perhaps an asteroid belt.

Engage the main deflector array!

And it looks like it’s just a matter of holding the line now.

I worked out what to do with the red for the Bussard collector I’m the right nacelle to match the left.

But what colour is the light cyan blue in the middle for the dish supposed to be? Should we go with a blue of some kind since we’ve used all grays?

Thanks - I tried closing my browser view but when I relaunched from the link here, I just see the outline rather than the template.

Third try from the embedded link for the template and I am there.

deleted by creator

Ok

I clearly have forgotten how to be able to see our template.

I am logged in as a StarTrek.website user but not seeing it.