First up, Captain Pike will return for the Season Two of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which will be released on 15 June 2023.

Season two of Strange New Worlds includes the previously announced special crossover episode featuring both live-action and animation, and Lower Decks’ Tawny Newsome as Ensign Beckett Mariner and Jack Quaid as Ensign Brad Boimler joining the U.S.S. Enterprise. The episode was directed by Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Picard actor and director Jonathan Frakes.

That’s not all, Strange New Worlds has also been renewed for 10-episode Season Three! Hit it!

Next, we’re going to be rejoining our favourite gang from the lower deckes – Ensigns Boimler, Mariner, Tendi and Rutherfood – for a fourth season of Star Trek: Lower Decks, which will be released this summer.

Plus we’re getting more animated action as the series has been renewed for Season Five, with 10 episodes commissioned.

“Season 4 this summer! Season 5 being written now!” Star Trek: Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan wrote on Twitter after the announcement. “Lower Decks! Lower Decks!

“In Season Four of Star Trek: Lower Decks, an unknown force is destroying starships and threatening galatic peace,” McMahan further teased. “Luckily, the crew of the U.S.S Cerritos isn’t important enough for stuff like that! Instead, Ensigns Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, Rutherford and Provisional Ensign T’Lyn are keeping up with their Starfleet duties, avoiding malevolant computers, and getting stuck in a couple caves – all while encountering new and classic aliens along the way…”

That’s not all, for the kids (and adult kids), Star Trek: Prodigy will also be returning to our screens for Season Two, which will be heading our way this winter.

“That’s right — more Star Trek: Prodigy coming in 2023!” Prodigy writer Aaron J. Waltke Tweeted. “Season 2. 20 episodes. Wild surprises. Some of the boldest storytelling we’ve done yet, with familiar faces and new ones. Be sure to spread the word — now is the time to catch up! More viewership means more Trek.”

As previously announced, the fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discover will premiere in early 2024.

Psst: Want to catch up with the first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds? We’re giving away THREE copies of Season One on Blu-ray with our latest competition!

Simply click here and answer the question to be in with a chance! Don’t delay, this competition closes on 6 April. Good luck!

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season Two will be out on Paramount + on 15 June 2023, Lower Decks Season Four will be out this summer and Prodigy will be released this winter.

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Engage! Jean-Luc Picard is back in Star Trek: Picard for its third and final season this February and we have the brand new trailer, which reveals two new Season Three cast members.

Firstly, Outlander’s Ed Speleers will appear as a series regular who aids Beverly Crusher’s medical efforts on worlds Starfleet has forgotten, and 12 Monkeys’ Todd Stashwick will also appear in a recurring role as Captain of the USS Titan.

Check out the official full-length trailer here…

Star Trek: Picard Season Three features Patrick Stewart reprising his iconic role as Jean-Luc Picard, which he played for seven series on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and follows this iconic character into the next chapter of his life. LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner, Jeri Ryan, and Michelle Hurd star alongside Stewart in the third and final series of the hit show.

In the epic conclusion of Star Trek: Picard, a desperate message from a long-lost friend draws Starfleet legend Admiral Jean-Luc Picard into the most daring mission of his life, forcing him to recruit allies spanning generations old and new. This final adventure sets him on a collision course with the legacy of his past and explosive, new revelations that will alter the fate of the Federation forever.

Check out some familiar faces in the stills from the upcoming series here…

Amanda Plummer (Pulp Fiction) has also joined the cast this season in a recurring role as Vadic, the mysterious alien captain of the Shrike, a warship that has set its sights on Jean-Luc Picard and his old crewmates from his days on the Enterprise.

Furthermore, Mica Burton (Critical Role) and Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut (Cruel Summer) join in recurring roles. Burton plays Ensign Alandra La Forge, Geordi La Forge’s youngest daughter, and Sharpe Chestnut plays Ensign Sidney La Forge, the eldest daughter of Geordi La Forge and helmsman of the USS Titan. Daniel Davis will once again take up the role of  Professor Moriarty from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Star Trek: Picard Season Three will be released on Prime Video on 17 February. Following its premiere, new episodes from the 10-episode final season will be available weekly.

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Yet Roddenberry’s relationship with Star Trek was a complicated one. He was deeply possessive of the show, but he was also – occasionally – resentful of it. And while Trekkers deified him, Paramount was less smitten, often preferring to keep him as far away from Star Trek as they could without alarming the fanbase.

Gene Roddenberry would have loved to have fathered another series that was adored as much as Star Trek, but another success always eluded him. Though it wasn’t for want of trying. His career is littered with television pilots that never took flight, with books that were never finished, with movies that never lived up to their potential.

So when everything else failed, he found himself, in the twilight of his life, back at the bosom of his most famous creation. However, much as he might have hated it, every newspaper report, when he died on 24 October 1991, referenced Star Trek in its headline.

Reading those obits, it’s brain-blowing how much Eugene Wesley Roddenberry packed into his 70 years on this Earth. Writers now, generally speaking, aren’t armed with the same real-life credentials as Roddenberry experienced. His wasn’t a moneyed, cloistered background, of private schools and Harvard and New Yorker internships. Majoring in police science at Los Angeles City College, Roddenberry joined the United States Army Air Corps when he was 20 and became a pilot for Pan-Am when he was 24, in 1945. Two years later, a plane he was piloting crash landed in the Syrian desert. Roddenberry dragged injured passengers from the burning plane and led the group to get help. In total, 14 people died in the crash.

Roddenberry quit Pan-Am in 1948, itching for a job in which he could flex his creative muscles. But with few writing jobs out there for a one-time pilot with two young kids, he applied for a job with the Los Angeles Police Department. After just over a year in the traffic division, he was transferred to the newspaper unit, where his responsibilities included penning press releases (writing at last!) and speeches for the Chief of Police. It was around this time that Roddenberry had his first professional brush with television, when his boss assigned him as technical adviser for a new police procedural series titled Mr District Attorney

Roddenberry soon proved so invaluable that he started penning scripts for the NBC show, which in turn led to writing gigs on the crime series Highway Patrol and on the political drama I Led Three Lives. By 1956, struggling to juggle his dual careers of policeman and writer, he resigned from the LAPD.

Roddenberry’s first job as a full-time TV scribe was on the long-forgotten anthology show The West Point Story, eventually penning a third of the series’ overall episodes. There were other shows too, all unremarkable in their own ways – the westerns Bat Masterson and Jefferson Drum, the seafaring adventure show Harbormaster, the crime drama Highway Patrol. All the time though, Roddenberry was beavering away on his own series pitches. Some made it to pilot – The Wild Blue, Police Story, 333 Montgomery (starring DeForest Kelley as a Perry Mason-styled big city lawyer), others never even got that far.

He finally hit upon a pitch that CBS wanted with The Lieutenant in 1963. It was on this show that he made many of the professional connections that would continue into his next created series, from producer Gene L. Coon and casting director Joe D’Agosta to actors Gary Lockwood, Leonard Nimoy, Walter Koenig Nichelle Nichols and Majel Barrett.

The Lieutenant had benefited from having the US Department of Defense as advisors, but they withdrew their support after Roddenberry, ever the provocateur, pressed ahead with an episode titled ‘To Kill A Man’, about racial prejudice in the Marine Corps. The Lieutenant’s days were numbered after that.

The Lieutenant was canned in 1964, and Roddenberry swiftly began work on the pitch that would, just a few years later, become Star Trek. In fact, that original treatment was a thrifty blend of various story ideas Roddenberry had been toying with over the years. One rejected pitch, from 1956, focused on the crew of a cruise ship. Another had an airship, peopled by a multiracial crew, travelling the world. The difference this time was that Roddenberry had given the pitch an attention-grabbing science fiction makeover.

Star Trek was never a ratings topper over its three years on television. In fact, it veered perilously close to cancellation at the end of its second year, only to be given a last-minute reprieve (although it was moved to the less hallowed slot of 10pm on Friday nights). Roddenberry, pissed off and burned out, stepped down from his day-to-day running of Star Trek after its second year. The show’s third and final season was overseen by the less visionary Fred Freiberger.

Star Trek was also never, at the time, a prized asset for Paramount. It took over 15 years, it’s said, for the series to become profitable (even in 1982 the series was $500,000 in the red) and the show had the stink of failure about it. Roddenberry felt that he was “perceived as the guy who made the show that was an expensive flop”. He later said of the years after Star Trek: “My dreams were going downhill because I could not get work after the original series was cancelled.”

Roddenberry had been aching to break into movies for as long as he had been writing. There were various near-scrapes, including an attempt to reboot the moribund Tarzan franchise, but, when that was downgraded to a TV movie, he bolted.

Roddenberry’s first big screen credit was to come with a tawdry sexploitation flick titled Pretty Maids All In A Row. It was directed by Roger Vadim, the Euro auteur who had introduced the world to Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Woman and helped make Jane Fonda a futuristic pin-up with Barbarella, but even his super-hip name attached to the movie couldn’t save it. Pretty Maids All In A Row bombed (although Quentin Tarantino once named it as one of his top 12 all-time movies), and Roddenberry’s dreams of big screen glory were dashed.

With little writing work on the horizon, Roddenberry began to fill his time guesting at science fiction conventions. If he couldn’t feel respected in the meeting rooms of the major studios and networks, at conventions he was lionised. Here he would screen episodes of Star Trek and begin painting a picture of himself as the man who kicked against the corporate pricks, the radical visionary who fought against a philistinstic and reactionary network.

He was still pitching to those networks however. His 1969 divorce had him paying $2,000 a month to his ex-wife and Roddenberry needed the bucks. One pitch, Genesis II, a joylessly solemn post-apocalyptic drama about a Buck Rogers-like character from the 20th century waking up in the 22nd, made it to pilot stage, but in the end CBS, looking for a more seemingly sure-fire ratings champ, opted for a Planet Of The Apes series.

Equally luckless was The Questor Tapes, which headlined Robert Foxworth as an android with an incomplete memory searching for his creator (so, a little bit Data, a little bit Star Trek: The Motion Picture). But Roddenberry found himself forever butting heads with Universal, who wanted numerous format changes. Unable to come to a compromise, Gene Roddenberry walked.

During this time, Roddenberry was still dining out on Star Trek, and, at the beginning of 1973, there seemed hope that Star Trek might return, only this time as animated series. The company Filmation beat out Hanna-Barbera for the cartoon rights, and although Roddenberry had no interest in running the show on a day-by-day basis, he corralled together most of the creative talent for the series’ 22-episode run, including TOS veterans DC Fontana, David Gerrold and Marc Daniels.

Still believing there was mileage in the Genesis II concept, Roddenberry pitched it again to rival network ABC, with a fresh monicker – Planet Earth – and a new leading man in the livelier John Saxon. But it wasn’t picked up. Neither was his next pilot, the occult detective drama Spectre. It seemed that unless that programme had ‘Star Trek’ in the title, none of the networks were interested.

The first rumbles of Star Trek’s second coming were felt in the mid-Seventies. The initial idea was for a new TV series, and indeed plans were being drawn up for a two-hour pilot, and a series of 13 episodes. But Star Wars’ barnstorming box office performance convinced Paramount that Star Trek was potentially more profitable as a big screen event. Before too long, Star Trek: Phase II, as it had become known, had become Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Roddenberry was tasked with reworking writer David Livingstone’s Phase II pilot script, ‘In Thy Image’, for the multi-million dollar movie. In fact, The Motion Picture’s script would ping-pong between the two of them, with eventually even William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy having a crack. But unlike the television series, Roddenberry wasn’t the one in charge, and his objections to one scene cooked up by his leading man were effortlessly overruled.

Roddenberry was barely involved with the Star Trek movie sequels. His official title on Star Treks II-VI was ‘executive consultant’, which meant he would cast his eye over any script and would make notes for the director. But, crucially, the director wasn’t obliged to read them. Gene Roddenberry was a king in exile.

Which is why Star Trek: The Next Generation meant so much to him. In many ways, especially in those first few seasons, it’s the purest example of Roddenberry’s dreamily idealistic vision of Star Trek.

The initial brainwave for a rebooted series had come, in the summer of 1986, not from him though, but from Paramount. And Roddenberry had actually turned them down on their first offer, unimpressed with their initial plans for the series. But Paramount knew that any Star Trek series launched without the blessing of its original creator would be a damn hard sell, especially without the comforting presence of Shatner, Nimoy or Kelley.

So, with a bounteous pay packet (he was awarded a bonus of $1 million in addition to an ongoing salary to produce the series), Gene Roddenberry was once again the head honcho of a Star Trek TV series. His health, however, in 1986, was the worst it had ever been. His recreational drug use had ballooned in the fallow ‘executive consultant’ years and his drinking was so out of control he checked himself into a drying out clinic upon getting the Next Generation gig.

Although the main characters and the basic setup of The Next Generation have Roddenberry’s prints all over it, the reality is his grip on the series weakened considerably after that first season. Maurice Hurley was brought in as showrunner for the show’s second year, and, although Roddenberry was still being consulted (“you don’t know the difference between shields and deflectors!” he bellowed at Hurley during one meeting), his health was deteriorating fast.

A stroke in 1989 confined him to a wheelchair and his involvement in Season Three was virtually non-existent. Then, on 24 October 1991, he suffered a cardiac arrest and died, outside the offices of his doctor. Two weeks later, the Spock-starring Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ‘Unification’ aired with a on-air dedication to its late creator.

A year after his death, some of his ashes were flown in to space on the shuttle Columbia. Five years after that, on 21 April 1997, seven grams of his cremated remains were launched into Earth orbit aboard a Pegasus XL rocket. The rocket remained in orbit until 2002 when it disintegrated in the atmosphere.

All these years on, Gene Roddenberry’s name is still there, emblazoned over the credits of every episode of the Star Trek series, Discovery. It is a fitting tribute to a man whose stirringly bright-eyed vision of the future helped birth a culture-quake phenomenon, a writer who really did go where no writer had ever gone before.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture – Director’s Edition available on 4K UHD + Blu-ray now

The post The Complete Guide to Gene Roddenberry appeared first on Sci-Fi Tips.

As we outline in our ‘Complete Guide To Gene Roddenberry‘, Star Trek was never a ratings topper over its three years on television. In fact, it veered perilously close to cancellation at the end of its second year, only to be given a last-minute reprieve.

Star Trek was also never, at the time, a prized asset for its distributor Paramount. It took over 15 years, it’s said, for the series to become profitable (even in 1982 the series was $500,000 in the red) and the show had the stink of failure about it. Cretor Gene Roddenberry felt that he was “perceived as the guy who made the show that was an expensive flop”. He later said of the years after Star Trek: “My dreams were going downhill because I could not get work after the original series was cancelled.”

However, the first rumbles of Star Trek’s second coming were felt in the mid-Seventies. The initial idea was for a new TV series, and indeed plans were being drawn up for a two-hour pilot, and a series of 13 episodes. But Star Wars’ barnstorming box office performance convinced Paramount that Star Trek was potentially more profitable as a big screen event. Before too long, Star Trek: Phase II, as it had become known, had become Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Roddenberry was tasked with reworking writer David Livingstone’s Phase II pilot script, ‘In Thy Image’, for the multi-million dollar movie. In fact, The Motion Picture’s script would ping-pong between the two of them, with eventually even William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy having a crack.

Eventually released in 1979, Star Trek: The Motion Picture became the fourth highest grossing movie of the year and earned three Academy Award® nominations for Best Visual Effects, Best Art Direction, and Best Music, Original Score. The film successfully launched the Star Trek franchise beyond the original television series, despite having been rushed to theaters with incomplete special effects and forced editing choices.

In 2001, director Robert Wise revisited the film to refine the edit and enhance the visual effects.  His updated vision was released on DVD in standard definition and embraced by fans but has never been available in higher definition until now with Limited-Edition Star Trek: The Motion Picture—The Director’s Edition – The Complete Adventure on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray.

Meticulously assembled and restored by producer David C. Fein with Post Production Supervisor, Mike Matessino, both of whom originally collaborated with Wise, the film has been prepared for presentation in 4K Ultra HD with Dolby Vision high dynamic range (HDR) and a new powerful and immersive Dolby Atmos® soundtrack.*  Fein and Matessino assembled a team of special effects experts, led by returning visual effects supervisor Daren R. Dochterman, and utilized the extensive resources in the Paramount Archives to recreate the effects not just in HD, but in Ultra HD.  After more than six months of painstaking work, the updated movie looks and sounds better than ever while staying true to Wise’s original intention.

Not only that but Star Trek: The Motion Picture—The Director’s Edition – The Complete Adventure includes a plethora of special extras, including an exclusive deleted scene from the movie which we’re delighted to share with you right here at SciFiNow!

Watch it here…

The Star Trek: The Motion Picture—The Director’s Edition – The Complete Adventure five-disc set includes the new Director’s Edition, the theatrical cut, and a special longer cut all on 4K Ultra HD along with the newly remastered director’s cut on Blu-ray, the previously released theatrical cut on Blu-ray and special features on Blu-ray.  The set is presented in deluxe packaging along with exclusive collectibles, including reproductions of original promotional material, a booklet with behind-the-scenes images, stickers, and more.

Find out more about Star Trek: The Motion Picture with our six fun facts…

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Listen up Trekkies! Paramount+’s Star Trek Day returns for the third time this September and will include back-to-back conversations with casts from across the Star Trek universe, live performances, exclusive news from Star Trek Original Series on Paramount+, a special tribute to Nichelle Nichols and more.

The global live-streamed event, which will be streamed from the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, will take place on Thursday, 8 September at 12pm PT/8pm BST and can be streamed directly from YouTube here.

On 8 September 1966, Star Trek debuted for the first time on television with ‘The Man Trap’, the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. Fifty-six years later, this important day and the franchise’s enduring legacy is honoured with the Star Trek Day celebration, providing fans with a memorable way to enjoy and celebrate all things Star Trek.

Here are some of the things you can expect from this year’s Star Trek Day…

Star Trek Day live-streamed celebration

Join Paramount+ and co-hosts Tawny Newsome (Star Trek: Lower Decks) and Paul F. Tompkins (Star Trek: Lower Decks), co-hosts of ‘Star Trek: The Pod Directive’ for two hours of free live-streamed conversations and programming that will unite iconic cast members from the television series as they gather in person to celebrate Star Trek, with a few surprises along the way.

The event will kick off live from the red carpet with co-hosts Jackie Cox (RuPaul’s Drag Race) and Mary Chieffo (Star Trek: Discovery) interviewing “Star Trek” cast members from past to present.

The conversations will include the casts from the following “Star Trek” television series:

• Star Trek: Picard with series stars Jeri Ryan and Michelle Hurd.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks, with voice cast members Tawny Newsome, Noël Wells and Dawnn Lewis.
• Star Trek: Prodigy with series voice cast including Brett Gray and Kate Mulgrew.
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds with series stars Rebecca Romijn, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia and Babs Olusanmokun.

Additional programming also includes:

• Nichelle Nichols Tribute, featuring a special video to honor the impact and influence of Nichelle Nichols.
• Behind-the-scenes set tour of Star Trek: Discovery with Wilson Cruz from Toronto, as he provides fans with an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at filming season five of the hit original series, along with appearances from Sonequa Martin-Green and other cast members.
• Put On Your Best Face where a fan will be transformed into a Star Trek alien by a series make-up artist.
• Star Trek Cosplay Runway, hosted by Jackie Cox, fans will strut the runway in their finest “Star Trek” cosplay.

Fans worldwide will be able to live-stream the “Star Trek Day” celebration for free at the Star Trek Day website and on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok.

After their initial airing, the conversation portions of the event will be available on-demand on Paramount+.

Star Trek Augmented Reality Delta Portals

Star Trek Day will also be celebrated with a one-of-a-kind opportunity for fans around the world with the debut of in-person Star Trek” Augmented Reality Delta Portals. The Delta Portals will be set up for a limited time in select cities internationally from Wednesday, Sept. 7 to Thursday, Sept 8. Each location will have three Star Trek Deltas, each seven feet tall and featuring QR codes that, when scanned on Instagram, transform the objects into mixed-reality portals that bring the user into the world of Star Trek.

Each augmented reality experience will be based on a current Star Trek series, featuring fully 3D alien planets, classic starships and iconic characters as they interact with both the virtual and physical worlds.

U.S. Locations:

• Los Angeles: The Grove
• New York: Hudson Yards
• Chicago: Water Tower Place

International Locations:

• London, United Kingdom: Science Museum
• São Paulo, Brazil: Shopping Cidade São Paulo (Note: Brazil dates are Thursday, Sept. 8 to Friday, Sept. 9)
• Melbourne, Australia: Federation Square

There’s also plenty more besides for Star Trek Day including the #StarTrekUnitedGives campaign, as well as a special merchandise sale (use the code “STARTREKDAY” for 20% off sitewide here)

Star Trek Day will be taking place on 8 September. Find out more here.

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