Star Trek News and Rumour's

[Freak]

To get this thread back up and running. I got some news for you lucky lot living in the States.

The Deep Space Nice Documentary "What We Left Behind" is only available in Cinema Today 05/13/19.
As for the rest of living outside of the States, still no news on when we will be able to see it.
But what I heard from people that have already seen it, it very good and one of the best Trek Documentary's made so far.


Here is a interview with Nana Visitor, Armin Shimerman, Andrew Robinson and Ira Steven Behr about the in Documentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoKAumPUfDw&list=WL&index=39&t=1600s

[Freak]

So it goes from good news to bad.
Patrick Stewart has just announced that the up coming Picard Series will not be on Netflix but Amazon Prime.
The link below is to the announcement on the official Star Trek Twitter account.

https://twitter.com/StarTrek/status/1127921503209525248


It has not been a secret that Netflix has not been happy with CBS and the direction they are taking Star Trek in.
Netflix paid CBS and unknown sum of money for all past Star Trek shows and the exculive rights to show Star Trek Discovery and future shows internationally, this pritty much paid for season 1 of STD and weather the show did well or not CBS would not lose out.
However due the fan reception of STD and what was produced, Netflix was not happy as they wanted Star Trek and got something far from it. Shortly after Season 1 had finished airing Netflix slamed on the breaks and infomed CBS that they will not be paying anthing more toward STD and demanded the show be brought back inline with the rest of the Trek shows. This meant CBS now had to foot the budget of season 2 on their own.
Given what we got for season 2, needless to say the fan base and Netflix where extermel unhappy as CBS attemtp to fix the show just made it worse.

Netflix and other dirtabutor along with CBS Mechanide Partners where brought in to CBS to look at what was planned for the Picard Serise. (Story outlines, look of the show, costumes etc) None of them where happy what where planned and outright refused to pick up the licences to show and make products for it. Unless the show goes back to looking and being more inline with TNG, DS9 and Voyager and not a contiunation of the look of STD and the JJ films.
With only a few months before production was to begin. CBS told Alex Kurtzman to make the changes, it was leaked he was not happy with being forces to change everything. Alot of the new changer where rejected again and Kurtzman was told to go back and redo everything. With all this going on the Picard Serise missed it start date and any leaked news/rumours dried up until this announcement.

So with this announcment what does it mean? Well it looks like Netflix is still unhappy with the Picard Serises and had pulled out, this is also most likely the case with Mechanide Partners.
Given the timeframe CBS gave Kurtzman to make these major changes that was demanded, it unlikely the morjority of them could be made as they had already gone past their film production start date and thefore would be losing money with having to pay for the sound stage, production staff, actors etc sitting around and not doing anything.

Now I don't know about you guys, I don't have Amazon Prime as I don't use the site offten enough to warrent it and when I did use the free trail I found their steaming sevice a joke, with having to pay extra for some content.
about 99% of the people I know don't have Amazon Prime and not all of them are into Star Trek. However all of them do have Netflix. Needless to say, I would not surprise if this the case for most people and I am unwilling to pay for it just to watch this show. As Alex Kurtzman said, I'll go round to a friends house to watch it if it any good. Which I don't has it Kurtzman.

[scifidude79]

I have Amazon Prime. I order a lot of stuff from Amazon, plus I do enjoy their streaming video service and their streaming music service. I also occasionally rent movies on Prime, new releases and such. They also stuff you pay for that you own after you buy it. So, they're a cross between a streaming service like Netflix and a digital store like Google Play or iTunes. To be honest, Amazon Prime Video is similar to some other streaming services. Hulu has extra channels that they charge money for, and so does Sling (streaming cable TV service.) You can add channels to Prime for a fee, including CBS All Access. So, it's not really a surprise that CBS was able to partner with Amazon.

[Freak]

Outside of the States and Canada, the next biggest market for Trek is Europe. I have been looking round and found that Amazon Prime is not that big in Europe compared to the States. Their numbers are no where near Netflix so by going with Amazon, CBS has shoot themselves in the foot. As they have now lot a huge number of viewers by this move.

 

[scifidude79]

Yeah, over here, we have about as much programming included with Prime as we do on Netflix. I almost said there was a lot on there in my last post, but then I realized it might not be so in Europe.

[MadKoifish]

Amazon is like cable tv pay to get in and pay for anything worthwhile. Almost all new shows are on season passes or buried in specialty channels you pay way too much for. Also these season passes are often far more costlier than the brds when released. Then again this age and time that is if your lucky if they release brds.

I have prime for other things and have not streamed anything off it in years. Every time I go to look for something it is 15usd this 10usd that. It is like getting access to see older BBC docus I have to pay some 15usd a mo channel fee.

I guess it depends on what you watch and what happens to be there. Amazon sucks as download ownership is stuck at 720p 2ch audio (in crappy aac codec) and pretty meh video compression then you have to set up all the annoying DRM crap and install dodgy playback devices.

Really though Prime video is more of a perk of getting prime for shipping and other services. I also think prime is free for those with amazon black cards. Last I checked it was 99usd a year. If you buy enough from the stupid place it quickly pays for itself.

[Freak]

I tired it a few years ago. Found the legend of korra which I nor the kids had seen and wanted to watch it.
You could watch the fist season for free, but then had to pay for the others.
As I said earlier, we don't buy enough off Amazon to justify the cost of Prime and only being able to watch limited programs without having to pay extras is not worth it. It part of the reason why Netflix is so popular in Europe, One payment once a month and everything is covered in that payment.

Dan, I don't know what it like in the States, but here most of the BBC Documentry get put on Netflix (sometimes for a limited time.) even though we have BBC Iplayer in the UK for BBC Content. Though everything there is time limited.

[scifidude79]

I pay the monthly fee for Prime, because I don't like that $99 annually payment plan.

I've been watching Gerry Anderson's UFO on there lately. Good stuff.

[Freak]

You guys know about this from me talking about it, but I thought I'll post it here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddGDn40GNmU

[scifieric]

Thank you, Dean!

[MadKoifish]

There is a lot of gardening and cooking stuff on amazon as archives and older shows that you have to pay the channel fees for or ala cart. Only the large BBC docus get on flix here in the US. Really hate region locks and regions in general.

Did not know prime had a monthly fee set up shows how recent I looked at it but if they have UFO I might hae to go back in and set my client up to view with it as it has been decades since I seen an ep of it.

Marathoning farscape as a friend ripped the brds but his final season are cropped 16X9 video in 1080p so ewww. He is overseas atm so I have to wait to find out if the brds are like this or if he borked it. They used the PAL dvd source and scaled em so much cleaner and even smoother than the crappy US dvds. But if the brd 4th season is 4X3 on the brds I wont be picking them up T_T. Also noticed my US dvd cuts seem shorter than these brd rips.

[scifidude79]

I've never seen UFO, so I've really been enjoying it. Farscape is on there too, I think Babylon 5 is too. The thing I hate about those services is how they remove stuff. I was watching The A-Team on there a year or two ago, then they removed it from Prime.

A note on the monthly fee: it costs more in the long term. The $99/year plan costs less in the long term, if you don't mind coughing that much up at once.

[Freak]

Yeah it a right pain in the ass when they remove stuff.
Before Netflix did the deal with CBS for all the shows and STD, they had TNG up and only a few seasons.
I was halfway though watching season 2 when they pulled it. I was so happy when they brought all the shows back.

[Freak]

Some news on the DS9 Doc "What We Left Behind", it coming to DVD/Bluray and streaming in August. As to which streaming service, it has not yet been announced.

[Freak]

CBS had it annual "upfront" presentation for advertisers yesterday and they have finally revealed the title to Sir Patrick Stewarts New trek show.

It will be know as Star Trek: Picard

https://twitter.com/StarTrek/status/1128774612735614976



Really, that the name you came up with? This was the best possible title for the show you could come up with.
Any hope I have for this show is slowly disappearing. That not to say I won't give it a chance, but at this point I am not expecting a lot.

In other news, CBS also confirmed that in Canada, Picard will be airing on Space.
I find it interesting that for the States and the rest of the world we have to pay for a subscription service, but in Canada they don't. Yes I know Space is a cable channel, but most people already having this and I would not be surprised that it thrown in with their Broadband connection or the other way around.