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‘Star Trek’ CBS All Access Series Gets Gene Roddenberry’s Son As Executive Producer

By Tony Smejek
Published on: 10:54 PST, Mar 3, 2016

The Star Trek torch has now passed from Gene Roddenberry to his son, Rod, for the position of executive producer of the CBS All Access live streaming show, according to The Hollywood Reporter. COO of Roddenberry Entertainment, Trevor Roth, also joins Rod in the same position as well.

They will be joining writer Bryan Fuller, and executive producers Heather Kadin and Alex Kurtzman on the All Access CBS project set to debut in 2017. It’s “untitled” for now, as listed on IMDB.

Preceding that, Star Trek: Wrath of Khan writer and director Nicholas Meyer also joined the show as a writer, as well. This bodes well, since he indeed helped create the success of the franchise in the 80s classic film that starred Ricardo Montalban.

Showrunner Bryan Fuller gave his response to the Roddenberry lineage moving forward with the franchise on the streaming service, via The Wrap.

“And it is only fitting that Rod Roddenberry and Roddenberry Entertainment join our new ‘Trek‘ adventure to ensure that his father’s legacy of hope for the future and infinite diversity in infinite combinations runs through our tales as Gene Roddenberry intended.”

The new Star Trek All Access CBS TV series will also be joined by other production companies, such as Secret Hideout, Living Dead Guy Productions, and CBS Television Studios, all of whom will join forces to co-produce alongside Roddenberry Entertainment.

This year marks the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek, and Rod Roddenberry was cited as describing that the endearing quality of the show’s history addresses “moral dilemmas, human issues, complex characters and a genuine sense of optimism.” Nicholas Meyer pretty much launched the aforementioned qualities into the success that the franchise is currently known for.

Rod talked of honoring the legacy and the fans that have an appreciation for the Star Trek franchise and gave accolades for the talents of the crew of which he’s about to join, according to Deadline Hollywood.

“While I will always be humbled by its legacy and the legions of fans who are its guardians, it’s a genuine honor to be joining a team of imaginative and incredibly capable individuals whose endeavor it is to uphold the tenets of Star Trek’s legacy while bringing it to audiences in a new era and on a contemporary platform.”

Star Trek was initially not something Rod was into, even upon the death of his father. It was around that time, though, that he did take interest in to why the show was such a hit and had a great following. He was more into other non-sci-fi pop culture shows like Knight Rider and The Dukes of Hazzard, according to an interview reported by Red Eye.

It was upon seeing documentaries like Trekkies and Trekkies 2 that made him see the correlation between the Star Trek show/movies and the fans. This curiosity on the part of Rod made for his own documentary, Trek Nation.

There is no known plot synopsis, Meyer even stated he doesn’t know and hasn’t been yet given the green light to start writing. He’s had a fear of the shows being “re-treads,” but hopefully, with his influence, that won’t be the case as he’s accredited his creativity to being relaxed and of having fun during Wrath of Khan.

According to Deadline Hollywood, the new TV series is said to be unrelated to that of Paramount’s rebooted franchise as launched by J.J. Abrams in 2009. Speaking of the reboots, Star Trek Beyond is scheduled to debut on July 22, and is directed by Justin Lin. The new CBS All Access Star Trek TV series is set to launch in 2017.

[Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images]

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