To Boldly Go Where Everyone Has Gone Before

CBS has announced plans for a new Star Trek TV series that will air in January 2017. The first episode will premiere on the CBS TV network and subsequent episodes will be available on the paid CBS All Access streaming service.

Good luck with that.

If CBS management pulled their collective heads out of their collective rears, they might be able to spot the three mountain size hurdles in their path to success.

First, as I've discussed before, CBS has the most customer hostile streaming policies of any of the major networks.

Missed the last few minutes of your show because the beginning was delayed? Have fun streaming it on demand because there's no way to fast forward. And you're burdened with this streaming restriction even if you're watching it through your cable provider, who presumably you've already paid for the "privilege" of watching CBS.

Looking at the iPhone app reviews for the big three networks shows just how far behind CBS is in customer satisfaction for their streaming service:

People are only going to watch this new Star Trek series if the show is so good that they're willing to endure a horrible viewing experience. And that brings us to the second hurdle.

CBS's recent track record with science fiction is not that good. No one's going to pay for pablum like Extant or Under The Dome. There's plenty of bad science fiction series available for free, but more importantly, there's also plenty of good science fiction series available for free. This new Star Trek series needs to be as good, if not better, than a series like Battlestar Galactica, and that needs to be apparent from the very first episode. Which brings us to the third and final hurdle.

The Star Trek TV franchise is creatively bankrupt. The film franchise reboot achieved success by focusing on the action/adventure aspects of the stories. A weekly TV show is not going to be able to compete with the special effects budget of a film. That means the TV show needs to excel at plot and character development, areas in which each Star Trek TV series in general has been progressively worse than its predecessors.

I've watched every episode of all five live action Star Trek TV series, but the idea of a new series that follows in the creative footsteps of the shows that came before it leaves me completely unexcited. I've had my fill of technobabble and cookie cutter crews.

It would be nice to be pleasantly surprised by the preview episode and watch something that's radically different from what we've seen before while still being familiar as Star Trek, but I'm not holding my breath. And I'm not paying for CBS All Access. If the series ends up being worth watching I'll wait for it on blu-ray.