'HIT IT.' Star Trek Strange New Worlds picked up as series with Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn and Ethan Peck as Captain Pike, Number One and Spock.

by Thinus Ferreira

Yet another new Star Trek series has been ordered to a first season pick-up, this time Star Trek: Strange New Worlds with Anson Mount as Captain Pike, Rebecca Romijn as Number One and Ethan Peck as science officer all reprising their season 2 Star Trek: Discovery roles for the new spin-off.

ViacomCBS' video streaming service CBS All Access that will be rebranded within months, has ordered Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to series, set a decade before Captain Kirk commanded the USS Enterprise.

No starting date nor episode count has been announced for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

"Fans fell in love with Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn and Ethan Peck's portrayals of these iconic characters when they were first introduced on Star Trek: Discovery last season," says Julie McNamara, executive vice president and head of programming at CBS All Access, in a statement announcing the new series.

"This new series will be a perfect complement to the franchise, bringing a whole new perspective and series of adventures to Star Trek."

Anson Mount in a video message says "We're going to get to work on a classic Star Trek show that deals with optimism and the future".



Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will be produced by CBS Television Studios, Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment and is the third live-action Star Trek series following Star Trek: Discovery on Netflix that will have a third season later this year and the recent Star Trek: Picard.on Amazon Prime Video that has been renewed for a second season.

An animation series, Lower Decks is being produced for Nickelodeon.

The series premiere of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was written by Akiva Goldsman with the story by Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet. All 3 of them will serve as executive producers, alongside Henry Alonso Myers, Heather Kadin, Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth.

"This is a dream come true, literally," says Akiva Goldsman. "I have imagined myself on the bridge of the Enterprise since the early 1970s."

Alex Kurtzman says "When we said we heard the fans' outpouring of love for Pike, Number One and Spock when they boarded Star Trek: Discovery last season, we meant it. These iconic characters have a deep history in Star Trek canon, yet so much of their stories have yet to be told."

"With Akiva and Henry at the helm, the Enterprise, its crew and its fans are in for an extraordinary journey to new frontiers in the Star Trek universe."

TV NEWS ROUND-UP. Today's interesting TV stories to read from TVwithThinus - 11 January 2019.

Here's the latest news about TV that I read and that you should read too:

■ The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) admits it has underpaid thousands of temporary staffers for years.
"This error should not have occurred, and we apologise to any casual employee who has been underpaid."

■ MultiChoice's DStv Now is broken - and things don't look good.
Problems in Kenya and MultiChoice tells a customer: "We do not have the turnaround time yet for when the services will be back on."

■ Netflix interested in opening a production hub in Toronto, Canada.

■ People from Cameroon picket outside the SABC in Cape Town.

■ British pay-TV customers actually pay a "loyalty penalty" for staying with one company too long instead of switching.

■ German viewers are different: They continue to pay for traditional pay-TV while the country is also seeing massive growth in the use of video streaming services.
Germany also has one of the highest levels of smart TV ownership in Europe.

■ As Anson Mount takes over as Captain Pike and hopefully brings more stability to Star Trek: Discovery's second season, his command style will hopefully mark a return to classic Trek storytelling.


■ Mozambique arrests another journalist.
Amade Abubacar, working for the state-owned Radio e Televisao Comunitaria Nacedje de Macomia in Mozambique's northern Cabo Delgado province, was grabbed by police at a bus stop while conducting interviews.


■ A 1950s TV show had a fear-mongering conman named Trump who wanted to build a wall.

■ A fishing boat from Deadliest Catch on Discovery Channel (DStv 121) capsizes, killing 3 in notoriously violent waters.

■ Turkey in shock as horrifying family secrets unfold on live television - ending with the police showing up and arresting an entire family as the audience and presenter applause.

■ Has Netflix won the battle for your TV screen?

■ The abusive has-been Jeremy Clarkson formerly of Top Gear on the BBC, slams the BBC for "suffocating the life out of everything".
Forgetting that he tried to suffocate the life out of the Top Gear producer Oisin Tymon who he physically and verbally attacked in 2015.

■ beIN resumes transmission in Egypt two days after the pay-TV operator started a blackout over a carriage dispute with Egypt's CNE over the commercial terms of providing sports content.

■ Kevin Hunter, husband of Wendy of The Wendy Williams Show on BET (DStv 129) tore into talk show's staffers blaming them for the stories about his alleged philandering.
Staffers thought he was going to give them an update about Wendy's bad health. Instead Kevin ranted for almost an hour about the leaks coming out of the show to the press.

■ A shirtless AJ Kapa and Cole Sprouse of Riverdale seen on M-Net (DStv 101) get wet and wild during a male bonding vacation in New Zealand as they frolick in Lake Wakatipu.

■ The best future-focused science fiction film and TV coming in 2019.

■ Kit Harington of Game of Thrones seen on M-Net (DStv 101) tells GQ Australia that "everyone was broken" by the time filming on the upcoming 8th and final season wrapped.

■ The Sopranos at 20: Television learned the wrong lessons from The Sopranos.

■ Surviving R. Kelly and the unstoppable power of true-crime documentaries.

■ The Bachelor's focus on Colton Underwood's virginity shows a bigger problem.
This season highlights the strange lens through which we as a society view sex.

■ 11 bizarre reality shows that weren't too weird for TV.
From Sperm Race to Splash, to a 23-year old naked man confined to a tiny apartment.

■ New American drama series, The Passage, is decent, at a time when decent might not be enough.

■ IMDb, the film and TV website owned by Amazon, is launching a free streaming video channel, IMDb Freedive, that will be available in the United States on its website.

■ Showmax slows everything down to 60fps for a derivative looking teaser trailer for its local drama series The Girl from St Agnes, copying MTV's Teen Wolf and Netflix's Elite with someone running through the woods and swimming in the school's pool.

Star Trek: Discovery on Netflix South Africa releases a teaser trailer for the 2nd season; first 4-part characters-driven miniseries will be entitled, Star Trek: Shorts.

One of the several planned miniseries of the revived Star Trek franchise with Star Trek: Discovery will be called Star Trek: Short Treks, with the science fiction drama series that unveiled a teaser trailer for the second season that will start in early-2019 on Netflix South Africa.

With CBS Television Studios that last month expanded its Star Trek: Discovery franchise contract with the series' co-creator and executive producer Alex Kurtzman into a new 5-year deal that will include several possible miniseries, animation and spinoffs, Alex Kurtzman at Comic-Con 2018 in San Diego on Friday during a Star Trek: Discovery panel revealed that the first miniseries will be entitled Star Trek: Short Treks.

Similar to Star Trek: Discovery that is on the CBS All Access in America and available on Netflix outside of the United States, Star Trek: Short Treks will also become available on Netflix South Africa.

Star Trek: Short Treks will have 4 episodes - between 10 and 15 minutes each - and will roll out monthly as it tells specific character-driven stories. Rainn Wilson who appeared as Harry Mudd in the first season of Star Trek: Discovery will be the subject of one of the episodes and will also direct it.

Another episode will introduce Craft (Aldis Hodge) who discovers that he is the only human on a deserted starship.

Another episode will reveal more about the backstory of the Kelpien Saru (Doug Jones), and a 4th episode will chronicle the character of Tilly's (Mary Wiseman) friendship with an unlikely partner aboard the USS Discovery.

"There is no shortage of compelling stories to tell in the Star Trek universe that inspire, entertain and either challenge our preconceived ideas or affirm long-held beliefs, and we are excited to broaden the universe already with Short Treks," said Alex Kurtzman.

"Each episode will deliver closed-ended stories while revealing clues about what's to come in future Star Trek: Discovery episodes. They'll also introduce audiences to new characters who may inhabit the larger world of Star Trek."

The show also released a new teaser trailer for the upcoming second season of Star Trek: Discovery with episodes that will roll out weekly from early-2019, although no specific date has yet been released.

Anson Mount has joined the show as Captain Christopher Pike who takes command of the USS Discovery due to a new mystery - the appearance of red flares across the galaxy - with Rebecca Romijn who will make guest-appearances as the new version of the USS Enterprise Starfleet character Number One that was originally portrayed by Majel Barrett Roddenberry.

TV NEWS ROUND-UP. Today's interesting TV stories to read from TVwithThinus - 10 April 2018.

Here's the latest news about TV that I read and that you should read too:

■ The SABC's disappointing coverage of the life of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela after her death last week.
Why the lack of historical footage on the South African public broadcaster?

■ Naspers' SVOD service Showmax run by MultiChoice, says that in Africa expensive data is slowing down the growth if internet television. 

■ North Americans are the world's biggest TV watching addicts, spending 4 hours per days watching television.

The rest of the world spends nearly 3 hours per day watching TV. Meanwhile millennials and young adults are spending more time on their cellphones and watching TV that way.

■ HBO's Westworld creators are so scared of spoilers leaking about the upcoming 2nd season that will be on M-Net (DStv 101) that they've decided to do spoilers themselves.

■ CBS television executives are freaking out over a looming Charlie Rose expose in The Washington Post.

■ In a new episode "No Good Read Goes Unpunished" The Simpsons addressed the stereotype criticism over the Indian Apu character - and are now facing new complaints. And why The Simpsons' tasteless response to the Apu controversy is so heartbreaking. 

■ Colton Haynes is returning to Arrow seen on M-Net (DStv 101) as a series regular for the 7th season.

■ Star Trek: Discovery available on Netflix South Africa has added Anson Mount who will play Captain Christopher Pike in the second season.

■ FOX News (StarSat 261 / Cell C black 502) accidentally shows viewers that FOX News is the least trusted American TV news channel.

■ How Netflix and Amazon are driving a global reality TV renaissance although the online demand for reality series is still relatively small compared to scripted series.

■ The first photo of the older, reunited Murphy Brown cast.