We’ve got a shiny new trailer for Star Trek: Section 31, the long-awaited spinoff film that brings back Michelle Yeoh’s magnificent Phillipa Georgiou from Star Trek: Discovery. The film will give us the backstory for Georgiou’s evil Mirror Universe counterpart, where she was a despotic emperor who murdered millions of her own people.
As previously reported, Yeoh’s stylishly acerbic Georgiou was eventually written out of Discovery, but fans took hope from rumors of a spinoff series featuring the character. That turned into a spinoff film, and we’ll take it. Miku Martineau plays a young Phillipa Georgiou in the film. Meanwhile, Yeoh’s older Georgiou is tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets as part of a black ops group called Section 31, while dealing with all the blood she’s spilled in her past.
Any hardcore Star Trek fan will tell you that Section 31 was first introduced as an urban legend of sorts in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Apparently Ira Steven Behr—who came up with the idea of a secret rogue organization within Starfleet doing shady things to protect the Federation—took inspiration from Commander Sisko’s comment in one episode about how “It’s easy to be a saint in paradise.” The name is taken from Starfleet Charter Article 14, Section 31, which allows Starfleet to take extraordinary measures in the face of extreme threats—including sabotage, assassination, and even biological warfare.
“Lower decks! Lower decks!” The fifth season of Star Trek: Lower Decks will be the animated series’ last (boo!).
Star Trek: Lower Decks is a particular favorite among Ars staffers; it’s arguably the best of the recent crop of Star Trek shows, along with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. So we were disappointed when we learned that the animated series would be ending with its fifth season. Paramount+ debuted the first teaser for S5 during the Star Trek panel at San Diego Comic-Con over the weekend, along with a teaser for Star Trek: Section 31—a spinoff film from Star Trek: Discovery featuring Michelle Yeoh’s Philippa Georgiou—a clip from Strange New Worlds S3, and the latest news about Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
The Lower Decks teaser opens with a suitably nostalgic recap of some of the highlights of the adventures of the plucky crew of the USS Cerritos, inviting viewers to join them for one last adventure. Cue Boimler (Jack Quaid) and Mariner (Tawny Newsome) in voiceover objecting to that description (“Yeah, right, we’re not done voyaging—we’ve hardly even cracked one quadrant yet”). Their S5 mission involves a “quantum fissure” that is causing “space potholes” to pop up all over the Alpha Quadrant (“boo interdimensional portals!”), and the Cerritos crew must close them—while navigating angry Klingons, an Orion war, and who knows what other crazy developments?
The final season of Lower Decks premieres on Paramount+ on October 24, 2024, and will run through December 19.
Newsome is already committed to her first post-Lower Decks project: co-writing the first live-action Star Trek comedy with franchise head honcho Alex Kurtzman. There’s no title yet, but Deadline Hollywood reports that the premise will involve “Federation outsiders serving a gleaming resort planet [who] find out their day-to-day exploits are being broadcast to the entire quadrant.” So, a Star Trek Truman Show? Color us intrigued.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S3
A first look at what’s coming in the third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Strange New Worlds marked a welcome return to Star Trek’s original episodic structure. The franchise’s Comic-Con panel featured a special sneak peek at the upcoming first season. The clip is a callback to the S2 episode “Charades,” in which a higher-dimensional race, the Kerkohvians, accidentally reconfigured Spock’s half-human, half-Vulcan physiology to that of a full-blooded human—just before Spock was supposed to meet his Vulcan fiancee’s parents.
The S3 clip has the situation reversed: The human crew must make themselves Vulcan to succeed on a new mission. They succeed in record time but aren’t able to change back. The Vulcan versions of the Enterprise crew are hilariously on point, and a long-suffering Spock must endure repeated references to his inferior half-Vulcan status.
We also learned that Cillian O’Sullivan will join the recurring cast as Dr. Roger Korby. ToS fans will recognize that name; it’s a legacy character (originally played by Michael Strong). Korby was a renowned archaeologist in the field of medical archaeology, introduced in the episode “What Are Little Girls Made Of?‘ as Nurse Chapel’s long-missing fiancé. That’s bound to cause problems for SNW‘s Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush), who is currently romantically involved with Spock. SNW S5 will premiere sometime in 2025, and the series has already been renewed for a fourth season
Speaking of Strange New Worlds, remember that fantastic S2 episode (“Substance Rhapsody”) in which a quantum probability field caused the entire crew to break into song? Executive producer Akira Goldman revealed during the panel that he is toying with the idea of a Star Trek stage musical, although he cautioned that “We’re in the very early stages of figuring out whether we can bring a version of [“Substance Rhapsody”] to the stage.”
Star Trek: Discovery returns for its fifth and final season after a two-year hiatus.
It’s been two years since we had new episodes of Star Trek: Discovery, which debuted in 2017. Now Paramount+ has dropped the official trailer for the fifth and final season of the spinoff series.
(Spoilers for prior seasons below.)
As previously reported, Sonequa Martin-Green plays Michael Burnham, an orphaned human raised on the planet Vulcan by none other than Sarek (James Frain) and his human wife, Amanda Grayson (Mia Kirshner)—aka, Spock’s (Ethan Peck) parents. So, she is Spock’s adoptive sister. As I’ve written previously, the S2 season-long arc involved the mysterious appearances of a “Red Angel” and a rogue Starfleet AI called Control that sought to wipe out all sentient life in the universe.
The big reveal was that the Red Angel was actually a time-travel suit worn by Michael’s biological mother. She had accidentally jumped 950 years into a bleak future in which Control had achieved its nefarious goal and had been traveling through time, leaving signals (in the form of the visions), hoping to alter that future. In the S2 finale, Michael donned a copy of her mother’s suit to lead Discovery over 900 years into the future. The crew of the Enterprise told Starfleet that Discovery was destroyed in the battle and was ordered never to speak of the ship or her crew again.
In S3, Michael, Discovery, and her crew arrived in the future and found that Control’s plan had been thwarted: Life still exists. But the galaxy was very different thanks to something called The Burn, a catastrophic event that caused all the dilithium in the Milky Way to explode and destroy much of Starfleet in the process. In the aftermath, with no warp drive possible, all the planets had become disconnected and were no longer governed by the Federation. Michael did, however, manage to locate one sole Federation liaison on a remote space station with the help of a new ally, Book (David Ajala).
The Discovery crew reunited with what was left of Starfleet, figured out what caused The Burn, and managed to defeat a rival syndicate known as the Emerald Chain, inspiring planets to start rejoining the Federation. Burnham finally became captain of Discovery after Saru (Doug Jones) opted to return to his home planet of Kaminar for a spell. And we bid a sorrowful farewell to Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh).
S4 opened with the plucky crew—including Saru as first officer—helping rebuild the Federation and celebrating the reopening of Starfleet Academy. They soon encountered a “gravitational anomaly” five light-years in diameter that destroyed Book’s home planet of Kwejian as it moved through the galaxy. It turned out to be a powerful technology belonging to an alien species with interconnected minds called 10-C, whose language employed mathematical equations. In the S4 finale, the aliens ultimately agreed to turn off their technology, thereby sparing Earth and other Federation planets.
The fifth season was already in development by March 2020, and the plan was to film those episodes back-to-back with S4. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and put those plans on hold. Filming didn’t happen until 2022. While S5 was originally meant to air last year, once Paramount decided to pull the plug and make it the final season, they needed to shoot additional footage in order to wrap up the series properly. Per the official premise:
The fifth and final season will find Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery uncovering a mystery that will send them on an epic adventure across the galaxy to find an ancient power whose very existence has been deliberately hidden for centuries. But there are others on the hunt as well… dangerous foes who are desperate to claim the prize for themselves and will stop at nothing to get it.
In addition to Martin-Green, Jones, and Ajala, much of the main cast is returning for S5: Anthony Rapp as Stamets; Mary Wiseman as Tilly; Wilson Cruz as Dr. Culber; Blu del Barrio as Adira Tal; and Callum Keith Rennie as Rayner. Eve Harlow and Elias Toufexis will reprise their recurring roles as Moll and L’ak, respectively. Returning as notable guest stars in S5: Oded Fehr as Starfleet Commander-in-Chief Charles Vance; Chelah Horsdal as Lair Rillak; Tara Rowling as T’Rina; David Cronenberg as Kovich; and Tig Notaro as Jett Reno.
The first two episodes of the fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discovery will premiere on Paramount+ on April 4, 2024; the remaining eight episodes will air weekly after that through May 30.
Enlarge/ Media firms are looking for allies to help them take the coveted media throne.
The CEOs of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and Paramount Global discussed a potential merger on Tuesday, according to a report from Axios citing “multiple” anonymous sources. No formal talks are underway yet, according to The Wall Street Journal. But the discussions look like the start of consolidation discussions for the media industry during a tumultuous time of forced evolution.
On Wednesday, Axios reported that WBD head David Zaslav and Paramount head Bob Bakish met in Paramount’s New York City headquarters for “several hours.”
Zaslav and Shari Redstone, owner of Paramount’s parent company National Amusements Inc (NAI), have also spoken, Axios claimed.
One of the publication’s sources said a WBD acquisition of NAI, rather than only Paramount Global, is possible.
Talks to unite the likes of Paramount’s film studio, Paramount+ streaming service, and TV networks (including CBS, BET, Nickelodeon, and Showtime) with WBD’s Max streaming service, CNN, Cinemax, and DC Comics properties are reportedly just talks, but Axios said WBD “hired bankers to explore the deal.”
It’s worth noting that WBD will suffer a big tax hit if it engages in merger and acquisition activity before April 8 due to a tax formality related to Discovery’s merger with WarnerMedia (which formed Warner Bros. Discovery) in 2022.
A union of debts
Besides the reported talks being in very early stages, there are reasons to be skeptical about a WBD and Paramount merger. The biggest one? Debt.
The New York Times notes that WBD has $40 billion in debt and $5 billion in free cash flow. Paramount, meanwhile, has $15 billion in debt and a negative cash flow. Zaslav has grown infamous for slashing titles and even enacting layoffs to save costs. But WBD is eyeing greener pastures and declared Max as “getting slightly profitable” in October. Adding more debt to WBD’s plate could be viewed as a step backward.
Additionally, Paramount is even more connected to old, flailing forms of media than WBD, as noted by The Information, which pointed to two-thirds of Paramount’s revenue coming from traditional TV networks.
Antitrust concerns could also impact such a deal.
WBD stocks closed down 5.7 percent, and Paramount’s closed down 2 percent after Axios’ report broke.
Of course, these details about a potential merger may have been reported because WBD and/or Paramount want us to know about it so that they can gauge market reaction and/or entice other media companies to discuss potential deals.
