Hm, I can imagine Frain in Vulcan makeup looking more or less like Mark Lenard. As for prequelitis, I doubt that's gonna be much of a problem. AFAIK, Sarek and Spock aren't even on speaking terms during this time period, so there's not much risk of continuity snarls on that front.

I have to say, I'm a little confused. Thee production is starting, but we still have only a few people officially cast, and not all of them are even regulars. We still haven't seen the final look of the ship or anything else. That's a little weird, Then again they pushed back the premiere again, so I guess there's still time.

Looks like Paramount and CBS have settled with the producers of the Star Trek Anaxar fan film.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/cbs-paramount-settle-lawsuit-star-trek-fan-film-966433

They probably realized that a settlement was better than a prolonged court battle (I suspect the fan film producers probably didn't want a court battle either and told Paramount/CBS that they would agree to whatever changes they needed to make to their fan film to make the court action go away)

So Axanar is now gnna be a 2x15 minutes thing, if it actually gets made? Well, it's better than nothing, I guess. >_>

Pushing back the date this often is unusual, not announcing all actors before shooting starts is not. After all, if they're unsure of or unsatisfied with a casting choice, they can still change it while shooting. And it frequently happens with the main cast – see the Geneviève Bujold/Kate Mulgrew switch in Voyager.

Though I guess they DID announce Bujold before switching.

The producers can always tacitly pull out the, "Well, we did promise you a feature-length movie, [ibuuuut[/i] the people at CBS/Paramount kinda stopped us..." card. Thing is, I don't think for a moment that that will stem the (IMO well-deserved) backlash among their KS backers.

Disappointing, but seeing how I pretty much gave up hope of ever seeing it done at all I'm still rather happy with this outcome. The Prelude to Axanar is already probably the best Trek fan production I've seen (except for maybe World Enough and Time episode from Star Trek Phase II).

A new teaser trailer for Star Trek: Discovery is out.

The video basically announces that production has begun on the series but we also get a few glimpses of concept art for the ships, new uniforms, and perhaps a new alien.

The new ship still looks like shit. Even worse than the Enterprise J.

I actually recon the real reason Paramount came down so hard on fan content was because the fans were producing better content with no resources, no money and amateurs working on the project than Paramount and CBS have been producing with pros and a full budget.

The good news is that a local TV station has been running episodes of TNG, DS9 and Voyager plus I have all of Enterprise on DVD (plus I have various of the older films in my DVD collection and they sometimes get shown on TV as well) so there are plenty of ways to get my Trek fix without all the new crap.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/this-might-be-our-first-look-at-the-klingons-in-star-tr-1792262881

Sense- this picture makes none.

On one hand, I know the same arguent could be had back when The Motion Picture happened. On the other hand, since then we actually got a canon eplanation of the Klingons look, and a pretty good one in my opinion, so while it was easy to just handwave the change away back then as better make up effects and budget making more alien looking klingons possible and ignore any in-universe implication, now it really isn't possible.

Of course, if the show is good, I won't obsess over this, but it feels like a pointless change and hardly for the better.

Indeed. The whole issue about the visual design of the Klingons is already confusing enough. This is just compounding the error. Besides, this new design seems kinda derivative of the Xindi reptilians.

Some good news

http://io9.gizmodo.com/jason-isaacs-is-star-trek-discoverys-new-captain-but-n-1793044813

Jason Isaacs is a really good actor and a great choice for a captain.

I still find the whole "main character" thing they mention in the news confusing. There was never a main character in Star Trek before. Kirk wasn't any more of a main character than Spock or McCoy, and in every subsequent series the rest of the main cast had an even larger role. Could anyone seriously point to a single "main character" in Deep Space Nine?

The Sisko ;)

TNG, Voy & Ent would had been tougher to choose. But with DS9; while the other cast members are great and important; Siskos Char is the first coming to mind.

I'd actually say it would be way easier with Archer in Enterprise. Enterprise, much like TOS, had the three main characters and the rest as support, but Archer felt more like a main character even among those three than Kirk did in TOS.

But in DS9? I get where you're coming from, Sisko had the whole "Emissary" hting going on, but every character in that had just as much screen time and focus given to them. In that regard I think DS9 was the most "evenly spread out" series of them all- Voy was like that untill season 4, and since then Seven of Nine, Janeway and the Doctor definately got most of the screen time. TNG was pretty even, but there was still more focus on Picard, Data, Riker and Worf than geordi, Crusher or Troi.

Still none of the shows really had just one main character. Now, I'm not saying that such a change in the shows dynamic for DIscovery is a bad thing, we'll see about that. But if feels a bit weird.