by: Adam Glass – Staff Writer

Can you believe we are coming up on 50 years of Star Trek? And yes, another Star Trek film is coming out. Let me start by saying I’m not excited at all for Star Trek Beyond. From what I have seen in the trailer, it looks to be a “paint by numbers” action flick in the vain of ST: Insurrection. Plus, do we really need to see the USS Enterprise get destroyed AGAIN??? I was feeling Star Trek was soon to be dead and buried.

Then a few months ago it was announced that Star Trek would make its way back to television albeit on a digital channel by CBS. This started me thinking maybe this is what the franchise needs. It’s been off TV since 2005 when Enterprise was cancelled so maybe enough time has gone by to give it a new shot in the arm. I didn’t hold on a lot of hope because there were too many questions that were unanswered and a lot still are.

Sure, Bryan Fuller is attached as “Showrunner”. He has some Trek cred as a writer and producer on Star Trek: Voyager and a couple of Deep Space 9 episodes and geez….he developed the very excellent Hannibal TV series but it still was not enough to really get me pumped.

That all changed when last week it was announced that Nicholas Meyer was tapped to write the series along with Fuller. You may remember Meyer as the man who made Star Trek famous again in the 1980’s by writing three of the best Trek movies of all time. He is the man responsible for the “even number effect” as he wrote (uncredited) and directed ST II: The Wrath of Khan, wrote ST IV: The Voyage Home and again wrote and directed ST VI: The Undiscovered Country. Now this is getting me excited!!! I personally can’t wait to see what they will come up with.

But it doesn’t end there! It was announced yesterday that Rod Roddenberry, son of the late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, as well as Trevor Roth would be joining the series as executive producers. It seems like they really want to get Star Trek television back on track in a serious way and I personally can’t be more happy.

There are still a ton of unanswered questions. Will the series take place in the new movies timeline? If not, where in the original timeline will it take place? What about the cast??? These will all be answered in due time but I’m really not that worried anymore. Star Trek on TV seems to be in incredible hands.

The new series will debut in January 2017 on CBS with all other episodes only being available in the US on the VOD  service CBS All Access.