How CBS All Access saved Star Trek

Alright I admit it, that headline is a little clickbaity. I’ve got a good reason for it, though. 

I don’t have too many mutuals on social media that are Trekkies, and I’m beginning to think the reason for that is because the ones I have are the only ones with open minds about the future of the franchise. Over the past few years, when I’ve engaged others in conversation about the CBS All Access shows, I’ve gotten some sharp, incredibly negative pushback about them. 

To put it simply, the purists in the fanbase think that Michael Burnham is the devil, the Klingons aren’t really Klingons and Sir Patrick Stewart is betraying his former self. I wish I was making that all up, but sadly I’ve seen people argue these points and others lately. They won’t even call Star Trek Discovery or Star Trek Picard part of the franchise. They’ve instead dubbed it “NuTrek,” and they add the Kelvin Timeline movies in that descriptor of course. 

These people are just as frustrating, close-minded and in some cases bigoted as their counterparts in any other nerd franchise that has existed for generations, but given that Star Trek is my all-time favorite franchise on the planet, this hits a bit different for me for a few reasons, not the least of which it completely flies in the face of franchise creator Gene Roddenberry’s message of tolerance and inclusion, but that irony is completely lost on these fools. 

Yes, I’m calling them fools because even though it’s all subjective and they are allowed to loathe the CBS All Access shows as much as they want, it doesn’t mean I have to agree with them or like their petty and selfish arguments. I don’t. It’s gatekeeping at its finest, and no one needs to deal with that level of arrogance and vitriol about a TV series. 

So part of how I’m dealing with that is parsing the revelation that CBS All Access, in all likelihood, has saved Star Trek as a franchise on some level. 

I’m going to pause for a bit to allow one of the gatekeepers' heads to explode, because I really hope that headline drew them into reading this out of anger. Fortunately for the rest of you, I have logic behind my stance, which I will now present to you. 

Four years ago was the 50th anniversary of Star Trek as a franchise…...and it was awful. Seriously, it was a pathetic event overall. 

Oh don’t get me wrong, Star Trek Beyond was GREAT, and as a movie it was a more than fitting golden anniversary tribute to The Original Series, but it suffered from arguably the worst marketing campaign I’ve ever seen for a movie. Barely any trailers or TV spots in major visibility, no mention of the anniversary of the franchise, and one of the spots actually spoiled the big twist of the movie, so much so that Simon Pegg, the actor who plays Scotty, actively told us all to NOT watch the spots and trailers and just trust him that the movie was good. 

When a member of your film’s cast is actively telling the audience “don’t watch our advertisements for the movie that are supposed to get you hyped to see it,” you have more than a problem on your hands. In fact, you shouldn’t have a job anymore because that’s dereliction of duty from a marketing standpoint. 

It gets worse. Nothing was done for the 50th anniversary in the United States. NOTHING. No big events, no interviews, no specials, nothing to let the general audience know that the greatest cult show of all time was turning 50 years old, even in the wake of a brand new set of movies that had rebooted the franchise into a new timeline for new fans that had never watched the shows before. There were no new home releases of the movies or the shows centered around the anniversary, and if you didn’t know any better, you swear it never happened. 

You know who DID celebrate the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, though? The BBC. Yep, sure enough the same BBC America channel that someone once told me needed to stop showing so much Star Trek because he wanted to watch British content only on a British channel, not only ran Star Trek marathons the week of the anniversary, but also had a special unedited airing of “The Man Trap,” the very first Star Trek episode ever aired, on September 8 in the evening, EXACTLY 50 YEARS AFTER THE FIRST AIRTIME ON NBC IN 1966. There was also a Steelbook set of the ten Prime Timeline movies where the spines lined up to form the Starfleet insignia, all pointing directly toward the 50th anniversary…...but it was only produced and sold in the UK. That’s still the only place you can buy it too, on either Amazon or eBay. I’ve checked.

Paramount didn’t just drop the ball on this in 2016, they threw it away and pretended it wasn’t there. Seriously. One of the most storied science fiction franchises in history that even they understood could be good for them if they rebooted the movies just seven years prior. Now maybe because at the time they were still split up from CBS there were some legal issues preventing them from doing anything big, but that’s still no excuse for botching the Beyond marketing since they have the movie rights. 

So the film didn’t do all that well in theaters. It wasn’t a bomb, but it was less than both Star Trek(2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness(2013) individually grossed during their runs, and the lackluster performance caused Paramount to put the movie series in a holding pattern, even though we had just learned about plans for the next one that was going to bring back Chris Hemsworth as Jim Kirk’s father George, reprising his brief role at the beginning of the 2009 reboot. Yes, the horrific and untimely death of actor Anton Yelchin, who played Chekov, also contributed to the uncertainty, but nothing was moving with Star Trek anymore after 2016, and fans of the Kelvin Timeline like myself are still waiting for an answer on the next movie. 

Enter CBS All Access, who was developing Discovery and despite some lengthy delays in production, were all set to launch their brand new Star Trek series on their fresh new streaming app. Their marketing actually existed, and made it clear that the show was set 10 years before The Original Series, in the Prime Timeline. They put Sonequa Martin-Green front and center as their lead, had an After Trek show air after each episode, and announced as loudly as they could that Star Trek was back on television for the first time in over a decade. Unlike the Beyond marketing, you couldn’t miss it. It was all over the Internet and TV spots galore. 

Fast forward to now and we have two full seasons of Star Trek Discovery that have aired, with a third season in post-production ready to air later this year at some point, a full season of Star Trek Picard with a second season ordered, a new animated series on the way, a series of shorter in-between episodes called “Short Treks,” and for good measure, a spin-off series called Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which will star Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike, Ethan Peck as Mr. Spock and Rebecca Romijn as Number One, all of them reprising their roles aboard the Enterprise in Season 2 of Discovery. 

Meanwhile, we’re still waiting on any news at all about the next Kelvin Timeline movie. 

Imagine if there were no Star Trek shows on CBS All Access. What would have happened to the franchise after 2016? Of course it would still exist, but only in reruns of the older shows and movies and the BBC America marathons. There wouldn’t be anything new to make available for the general audience of new prospective fans to the franchise, because Paramount seemingly couldn’t get its collective crap together on a plan forward after the Beyond marketing debacle. 

Now, thanks to CBS All Access, Star Trek is arguably as viable as it has ever been in an active sense on television. Not only is it an updated version of the franchise that appeals to the current TV audience while still giving long time fans the connections and references we all enjoy, but it’s taking advantage of The Streaming Age to position itself as a digital series, giving it even more freedom in a creative sense, and making it available to more than just a network TV audience. It is seriously taking Star Trek boldly where it has never gone before, if you really think about it. 

None of that is any reason for me or any other open-minded fan of the franchise to be upset. Nothing is desecrated or ruined from The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager or even Enterprise. If anything, the legacy of all those shows is now being enhanced, because even if most new fans of Discovery, Picard or the other new shows don’t go back and watch the classic ones, some of them will still give it a shot and be exposed to 54 years of TV and movie greatness, and I say it’s well worth it for that chance. 

So thank you CBS All Access, for giving my favorite franchise in the world a new life and brighter future after being around for more than half a century. There were times when I seriously wondered how Star Trek would adapt and evolve into the modern era of television and film, if it was ever going to. Now I don’t have to wonder or worry at all, because it’s in good hands, no matter what any angry, gatekeeping purist fool tries to say about it. The open-minded fans that embody Roddenberry’s original principles win, while they lose. 

In the tone of Zachary Quinto’s Spock from Star Trek(2009), “Live long and prosper.”