Which is bad and upsetting news, but shouldn’t be particularly surprising news, since it’s September—four months before its original January premiere date—and we still haven’t heard of anyone being cast for this show yet.
So instead of hitting CBS All Access—already a questionable choice of venue for this show—in January, Discovery will now have four to five extra months to get ready to launch, according to the Wrap. And as much as we want more Star Trek right now, it makes total sense for this show to take more time. Executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Bryan Fuller’s statement on the delay reads in part:
We aim to dream big and deliver, and that means making sure the demands of physical and post-production for a show that takes place entirely in space, and the need to meet an air date, don’t result in compromised quality. Before heading into production, we evaluated these realities with our partners at CBS and they agreed: ‘Star Trek’ deserves the very best, and these extra few months will help us achieve a vision we can all be proud of.
Again, not a shock. Especially since this is a show that’s going to require a lot of effects—both practical and CGI—and has a showrunner who is also working on getting American Gods on TV.
On the one hand, everything we know about this show makes it clear that the January date was a bit of the pipe dream from the beginning. On the other hand, it’s still shocking that CBS didn’t get the ball rolling on this earlier to capitalize on Star Trek’s 50th anniversary year.