Lower Decks, CBS All Access, and other Trek TV updates

A few Trek-TV updates today. No major news on releases just yet, but of sense of how things are progressing, and the media landscape Trek is working with. Continue below to find out more...

Mike McMahan, the creator of Lower Decks, the forthcoming Star Trek animated comedy, recently spoke to Inverse, about his other new animated sci-fi show, Solar Opposites, and gave a little update on where things are on the Trek front. He also gave a nice summary of what Lower Decks is all about, and it's relationship to wider Trek:

Within Lower Decks, there is a proper in-canon Star Trek show. It takes place during the TNG era. It's on a ship that feels like it’s always existed there and the bridge crew is dealing with big, never before seen Starfleet Star Trek type stories. So every episode has a thing like that happening in it. And then, on top of that, we've got A stories and B stories that are emotionally driven from the point of view of the lower deckers on the ships. So it was an area of storytelling that people had covered every once in a while on Star Trek, but never built a show around.

It was important to me that if you know everything about Star Trek and you watch this show then it fits into Canon and doesn't break Star Trek. In fact, it grows it. And if you know nothing about Star Trek, then all of the canon in Lower Decks feels like mythological, broad understandable sci-fi stuff. So you can still enjoy Lower Decks even if it's your first Star Trek show.

Book bits: To Lose the Earth cover, new book details, and schedule shuffling

Lots of Star Trek books news today, including new covers and artwork, new books, updated book details, and schedule adjustments. Continue below for updates on books on mindfulness, cocktails, starships, and the alphabet!

First up, some fiction news: We finally have a cover for the long awaited tenth book in Kirsten Beyer's Voyager relaunch series, To Lose the Earth:

1:1000 scale Discovery USS Enterprise incoming, and other model kit updates

Twenty-third century fans of all flavours should be happy with the latest model kit releases from Round 2 Models. Continue below for details of Wrath of Khan and TOS TV-era kits on the way. But first Discovery:

Having released the three hero ships of Discovery (Discovery, Shenzhou, and Enterprise) at 1:2500 scale pretty swiftly last year, Round 2's Polar Lights are now back with a bigger 1:1000 scale USS Enterprise kit. That makes for a pretty impressive 44cm+ long ship once built. Here's the box art (which seems to be a new style):

The amazing aliens of Star Trek Beyond

Star Trek Beyond featured more than fifty different alien species, with multiple unique beings for each race seen among the citizens of Starbase Yorktown, the corridors of the USS Enterprise, and on Altamid. The make-up department lead by Joel Harlow created such an incredible menagerie, that there's an entire book dedicated to their efforts in the production! Harlow and his team have also shared much of their work online, giving us a better chance to get to know many of the only briefly glimpsed species of Beyond. Continue below to check them out:

One of the most exotic designs was known as Shlerm, photos here from Joel Harlow's website show off both the impressive character design and their grand costumes:

Cherry Tree assimilate new ideas to create the Borg Cube ITX PC mark II

Makers of Borg Cube PCs, Cherry Tree, have remade their smaller Cube PC, the ITX, to create the new mark II model. Here's how the describe what they've done in their announcement:

Every company has that one product they look back at and think, “Why did we do it like this and not the other way?” A few weeks ago we came to this point with our little ITX Borg Cube, so we decided to reengineer the interior completely from scratch and the results are truly amazing. We were not only able to create more room inside and make the assembly easier, but also improve thermals. The Intel i7-9700 model plateaus at 69-71 degrees at 100% load. Every Borg Cube ITX mk ii build comes with 2 HDPLEX 200W DC-ATX Power Supplies, Noctua NH-L9i CPU Cooler and improved fans. Did we mention we also were able to lower the price?

The 7.5 inch cubed PC is available in either black or a translucent green variant. It is also available either as a fully built PC, or just a case, to build as you like. I believe the exterior is the same as previous versions of the ITX, but here's a look at the redesigned insides (you can compare to the previous version in one of my earlier reports):

Fleet Command's Borg event comes to a close with Mega Borg Cube, and Jaylah's assimilation!

Scopely have announced the finale of their months long Borg event, in the Kelvin timeline video game Fleet Command.

The final run of missions will set up an all out Borg invasion, culminating in the arrival of a "Mega Borg Cube", which obviously must be defeated!

Continue below to meet assimilated Jaylah, Borg tribbles, and check out the latest ships from the game. First though, here's come Borgy art they've been releasing to promote this:

Alternate worlds of Star Trek Beyond concept art: Altamid, Starbase Yorktown, swarm mechas, unseen ships, and more

Star Trek Beyond took us to several exotic strange new worlds, and every one of them was conjured from the minds of concept artists, who also thought up plenty of other ideas that never got picked to go to screen. Continue below to check out Altamid as we never saw it, Starbase Yorktown when it wasn't an orb and was full of Galaxy class ships, swarm drone mechas, and unseen starships.

Let's start with a visit to Starbase Yorktown, not quite as we know it. Concept artist Milena Zdravkovic has shared a large selection of her work from Beyond on her ArtStation profile, including this radically different take on Yorktown, as a long ribbon structure, with Galaxy class ships visiting (don't panic timeline fiends, just standing in for designs to come later I'm sure):

Another really striking image shows us a Galaxy-esque ship under construction:

Discovery round-up: Set photography, aliens, concept art, unrealised mirror universe, and season 3 update

In this latest round-up of Discovery behind the scenes stuff, we'll get a good look at some Disco sets, behind the scenes photos and stories from some of our favourite aliens, concept art, and details of the mirror universe that we didn't get. Continue below for all that and more, but first, and update on season three.

Replying to a tweet from actor Wilson Cruz, editor Scott Gamzon gave a quick status update on where production is:

Post production, Sound, VFX and Editorial are all hard at work from our homes.  It’s going to take longer and there have been challenges but the results will be worth the wait!

One wonders how the heck they're going to do the music from home! Here's hoping they find a solution soon and we're enjoying the far future before we know it.

Meanwhile CBS have been pushing Discovery as part of their general promotion of CBS All Access lately, including releasing this set of set photography for use as Zoom background:

Turn your baby into a redshirt

Stuck at home and just wishing your screaming baby would be devoured by a Dikironium cloud creature? Good luck, Aquarius have come up with an excellent signpost for every alien threat to know who to target, in their range of TOS uniform styled baby bibs. For more cautious parents, they also offer science and command styled uniform variants too. The cotton/polyester bids are velcro fastened with a plastic backing making them waterproof ready for dribbling babies (or you know, protection from venomous aliens). Check out the range below (images via Toynk):

Picard round-up: 360 set video, location and make-up photography, easter eggs, and more

Picard season one might be over, but CBS have still been working hard to promote the series, including increasingly some fun behind the scenes stuff coming from the official Star Trek and CBS channels. Continue below for a look at the actors and make-up artists at work, some great location photography, easter egg discussion, promo images and more.

First up, one of the coolest things released lately is a 360 video of Vashti set, specifically while rehearsing the scene where Picard and the former Romulan senator have their discussion. The video starts out tracking with Patrick Stewart as he walks into the scene, and then settles in the middle of the square. If you load it up at high res and full screen (or with a VR headset) it's like you're right there on the set, watching the hoards of people it takes to make a show like this. If you're geo-locked out of YouTube below it's also up on Facebook.