Star Trek TV series debut delayed four months

Star Trek’s 12-year mission to return to TV is going to take a little longer than previously announced.

The stardate for the show’s launch has been pushed back to May 2017, EW has learned. The change gives showrunner Bryan Fuller and CBS Television Studios more time to prepare the ambitious sci-fi production and to continue their hunt for an ideal cast. The series — titled Star Trek: Discovery — was previously announced for January.

However, if you’re a fan of The Good Wife, there’s some silver lining here — the upcoming spin-off starring Christine Baranski and Cush Jumbo has been moved up from spring of 2017 to February.

“Bringing Star Trek back to television carries a responsibility and mission: to connect fans and newcomers alike to the series that has fed our imaginations since childhood,” said executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Bryan Fuller. “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.”

The show’s first three scripts are turned in, we’re told, and David Stapf, president, CBS Television Studios stated: “The series template and episodic scripts that Alex and Bryan have delivered are incredibly vivid and compelling. They are building a new, very ambitious Star Trek world for television, and everyone involved supports their vision for the best timing to bring to life what we all love on the page.”

Discovery will be a 13-episode serialized story — the first Trek TV show to not have an episodic format — focusing on a female lead character who’s a lieutenant commander on a starship. For more on Trek, see Fuller’s list of revelations about the show’s format and characters from last month’s press tour. The last Trek TV series was Enterprise, which concluded in 2005.

On The Good Wife spin-off front, the studio also confirmed that creators Robert and Michelle King will serve as showrunners on the new series. Most recently they launched the CBS summer dramedy, Brain Dead.

As previously announced, while Discovery will debut its premiere episode on CBS, subsequent weeks will be available exclusively in the U.S. on All Access streaming service. Outside the U.S., the show will be available on Netflix and in Canada on Bell Media platforms.