Star Trek: Discovery

Well, it wouldn't fix that stupid Klingon BS design. But, I'd be more okay with this one. Since the look of the Borg is no doubt determined by what they have assimilated up to that point. Who's to say what they looked like 100 years ago?!

Probably much the same, considering the First Contact Borg that Archer & co sent back to the Delta Quadrant in Enterprise.

Memory Alpha lists the three actors cast as Discovery crew - Sonequa Martin-Green, Anthony Rapp and Doug Jones - as well as James Frain, the guy who plays Sarek, as the series regulars.

Everyone else, including the three actors cast on the Shenzhou and the three Klingon actors, and an actress playing a conn officer (not confirmed of which ship) - are listed as recurring.

I'd take that with a grain of salt for now, but it's interesting.

sarapen’s remark about the future of SF in the TRAPPIST thread, I actually think the look of the Klingons is a symptom of the fact that classic space opera’s probably going to go the way of “invaders from Mars or Venus” in the next few decades. Audiences, especially audiences that keep at least passing tabs on what’s going on in science news, know that any intelligent life beyond Earth is not going to look lifelike. So there’s a demand for stranger-looking aliens—Doug Jones’s likely character is part of that, but so is removing Klingons from the old space Mongol/space Viking look. But these characters are still going to act substantially human, have human motivations, and come from very Earthlike worlds. I think this is fine because Trek is a science fantasy, not hard SF, but it’s definitely positioned itself—and Trek fans position themselves—as being at the “hard” side of science fantasy, thus there’s stepped-up demand for alien-ness.

A while back on TOC Alurin remarked that he’d prefer that the aliens-of-the-week on Trek revert to the TOS mold, with most aliens of the week just looking human. Even the amount of convergence necessarily even for the more elaborate aliens-of-the-week (beyond foreheads—thinking of someone like this) we saw on DS9 and Voyager was at fantasy levels (nice how smiling and frowning, vocal inflections, masculine and feminine gender identities, etc. all lined up with humans). If your intent is to hold up a mirror to humanity, there’s no shame in using humans, and it doesn’t preclude having a Horta or condescending silicon microbes or exocomps or macroviruses or what have you for other sorts of stories.

What about that species from that random episode of Enterprise where there were like three biological sexes, and they were probably sexist against the one that wasn't male or female but honestly I don't remember because I just remember seeing like five minutes of the episode like 14 years ago?

And does Star Trek really count as hard sci-fi?

Also, shouldn't people really have known from the get-go with space opera that other intelligent life outside of earth almost certainly wouldn't look like humans?  And surely a large part of the reason why so many TOS aliens were just humans in shitty cheap costumes was because of technical and budgetary limitations, right?  And same for why so many TNG aliens just have weird foreheads or noses or hair or whatever?  Also, presumably a reason why so many space opera characters are humanoid is also because that's what's easiest for audiences to identify with?  Hence why in sci-fi, even in fictional universes with non-human-looking entities the main protagonist tends to be either human or one of the most human-looking characters?  Like how Luke is the main character in Star Wars instead of Chewbacca or R2D2 or that laughing mouse thing from Jabba's Palace?  Or like how even in something recent-ish with access to an enormous special effects budge like Guardians of the Galaxy the main character is Chris Pratt instead of Unrealistic Talking Raccoon, or Sentient Vin Diesel Tree or even that one Green (or Blue?) Skinned Alien Character?

Roy Batty's Pet Dove It obviously isn’t hard SF and people don’t expect it to be, but the tl:dr version of my point even within the realms of science-fantasy there are conventions that have become out-of-date and I think those may end up encompassing a wider range of science fantasy—much as “within our solar system” space opera went away with the first planetary missions I think “within our galaxy” ones might be going in a few decades, too.

I'm realizing now that the concept of the late-90s/early-00s children's book series Animorphs was basically just ripping off of whatever the Trill are, and also those shitty Season 1 TNG episodes where that dude's head explodes after he gets infected by some stop motion aliens.

SQUEEEEEEEE!!! I love Jason Isaacs. Love love love love. This is so exciting!

I wonder what the odds are on his character dying in the first episode?

Damn, I am really loving all the casting choices. I'm going to be so disappointed when/if CBS completely screws this up by making some shallow action show that bears no resemblance to Star Trek. Or worse, some shallow BORING show that bears no resemblance to Star Trek. I had a lot of hope when Bryan Fuller was in charge. Now, I'm kind of expecting it to be terrible. But damn, this is an excellent cast. I really hope it isn't terrible.

Also, I'm still not sure why there are 3 different ships in play, according to the casting notices.

Finally, I wonder what kind of ratings this has to get in order to get CBS to make more? I also wonder what it would take to get CBS to make a show set in the FUTURE, post-DS9 part of the timeline. That is the Trek I really want to see.

 Yeah, that is what I figure. And Isaacs will be playing the Sean Bean-type role. Still, I am so excited to see him on Star Trek.

I am trying to imagine what it would be like to have a new Trek show on air that I really like...... I'm not even sure I can. I'm trying to remind myself that TNG and DS9 were pretty weak in their first seasons, so maybe it won't matter if I don't love it right away?

Allamaraine! Allamaraine!

"Duet" is a legit classic.

I really, really like "Emissary" as well, and I have a soft spot for "Q-Less" because Vash is a BAMF and Sisko punches Q in the face. 

But yeah... it's slim pickings, TOS excluded.

- TNG has "Conspiracy," which is absurdly off-tone but entertaining, and the Bynar episode is kind of okay? 
- I barely remember anything about season 1 of VOY except that "Faces" surprised me with its quality.
- DS9 (see above)
- ENT had a fairly solid opener in "Broken Bow," a great Jeffrey Combs showcase in "The Andorian Incident", and a neat little character study in "Shuttlepod One," but on the other hand, Temporal Cold War.

Yeesh.

DS9's problem in the first season was mostly figuring out what kinds of stories it should tell. The shadow of being a TNG spinoff, and trying to replicate TNG's formula, is cast over most of the worst episodes of the season (like "If Wishes Were Horses," which even gives Sisko a freakout in an elevator similar to Picard's in "Where No One Has Gone Before.")

After that season Michael Piller told the writers to focus on stories about DS9, ones they couldn't do on TNG - the sorts of episodes that were among the first season's best, as noted - and the overall quality started picking up.

Desert Dweller Piller left DS9 after season two, which is also how long he stayed on Voyager - his last script for Star Trek television was Viyager's season three premiere.

He remained a creative consultant on both shows, which mostly apparently meant he read screenplays ahead of time (he demanded the original draft of "Darkling," a season three Voyager script, be changed or he'd have his name taken off the show, for example.)

Well, unless you spent a lot of time online arguing about Star Trek, which I was doing at the time. DS9 had a very vocal online fandom (much like its perennial rival, Babylon 5 - and it was Niners who introduced me to that show to begin with.)
They did! I know this because one of the white guys who auditioned for both Sisko and Janeway was the same guy - Gary Graham, who had previously been the lead on the cancelled FOX show Alien Nation and finally got a semi-notable Star Trek role as Ambassador Soval on Enterprise.