God, I miss the 90s... Playmates Star Trek, Kenners Jurassic Park, Ban-Dais Power Rangers, Lego... it was a glorious time.

Kids love the aliens... its why, as you pointed out Star Wars does so well.... and I do agree... its why I was pointing out what AA did with Klaang

In what alternate reality are kids remotely interested in Star Trek? Its not this reality thats for sure...

The whole reason Art Asylum then Diamond Select and now McFarlane not Playmates, Hasbro or Mattel have the licence is because Star Trek doesnt appeal to kids.

Star Wars does so well in toy stores due to Star Wars ALWAYS doing so well in appealing to kids through great marketing and storytelling through the movies and animated shows since its inception. It changed the way movies were marketed and since then has done incredibly well to appeal to both parents and the kids of those parents. Its a right of passage that if youd grown up on Star Wars, youd pass that down to your kids because every incarnation of that franchise has been geared towards appealing to the younger generation.

If I had kids, Id not want them watching Discovery thats for sure. Far too violent, far too graphic and honestly, its far too dull and complex for kids that just want to be entertained and for a family to share together.

Star Trek has never had that kind of popularity and ultimately when Star Trek could of been that generational show during TNG, that is passed down from parent to child, the franchise stopped trying to appeal to kids and new audiences that would have got their parents to buy them Star Trek toys. Instead of an animated series that was spun off TNG with a new crew, new ship, new exciting aliens, Star Trek got darker, more political and more mature and complex in its storytelling through DS9, Voyager and by the time Enterprise came along, no kid wanted Trek, no kid cared about an ageing TNG crew from the 80s on the big screen and whilst the 2009 movie was the bright reimagined Star Trek kids would of really got onboard with... one movie wasnt going to be enough when most movies of the day had multi-platformed releases and tie ins. Abrams plan to make Star Trek that mega-franchise with multiple areas of merchandise, including an expansive toy line, was thrown out by CBS and that was it.

If you want a toy line that has a great mix of vibrantly coloured aliens and not just the main cast in their standard uniforms then Star Trek is not the toy line for you. CBS and Paramount need to step up and produce a Star Trek animated show and all the bells and whistles that comes with doing something like that. A show that appeals to both the old fans and their kids. A show that is a shared family experience like Star Wars is.

Quite honestly, if Picard and Kirk dont sell well this year, we probably wont be seeing anything from McFarlane next year and like most of the more recent toy companies coming in to do Star Trek toys, itll flop.

I believe that what DST will reveal is that they have the rights to produce toys based upon he JJ Abrams Star Trek film franchise... if so, would you buy the toys they produce?

What Id really love for McFarlane to do is an electronic lights and sounds USS Discovery... 20 inch replica built from the digital CGI model, display stand included. Features spinning spore drive disk.

As for full crews? Meh, I just dont think thats ever going to happen with the classic Trek characters as most were not popular enough... Harry Kim? Belana Tores, Tom Paris, Nog, Rom, Kira, Dr Crusher... I love them all but do I really want action figures of them? Probably not.

Well, they seem to do quite a few figures depending on popularity. Stranger Things and Walking Dead have had a lot of releases, Stranger Things this year especially. If Star Trek: Discovery continues to appeal to a new audience and fans alike as it has done this first season, then theres always the possibility that McFarlane will do more than just two figures a year.

I think they are also aware that by doing just two figures, they run the risk of interest in their product dying.

As for a line of identical figures? I dont think thats really important with Discovery. I dont think many could confuse Saru with Burnham or an Emperor Georgio with Lorca. Tilly, Burnham and Stamets could all come in different costumes as theyve been seen wearing variations of the standard Starfleet uniforms (prison garbs, away team combat gear, space suit etc...)

I think most consumers will want to see a mix of both the main cast and some cool aliens. Certainly Id love to see the Torch Bearer figure - that costume was gorgeous. Id love to see Mudd in his andorian helmet and also a Tardigrade. Most of all though, Id like to see the core characters that make the show great.

Burnham, Mirror Uniform Burnham, Space Suit Burnham, Lorca, Stamets, Saru, Admiral Cornwall, Tyler, Voq, LRell, Tilly, Georgio, Emperor Georgio, Sarek, Mudd, Tardigrade, TKuvma, Torch Bearer, Culber.... I cant see them doing any more obscure figures initially.

As for classic Star Trek... Spock, Data, Worf Id imagine are a given. Khan... Id love to see Archer, Phlox, TPol, Janeway, Sisko, 7of9, Odo, Borg Queen, Riker, Quark, Dukat, Uhura, Scotty, McCoy, Gowron, Martok, Shinzon, Gorn, Salt Vampire, Kor, Kang, Kurn, Chapel, Rand, Troi, Wesley Crusher, Tucker, Death of a Redshirt box set... not many really...

TKuvma should still be made but Id not launch your new figure line with him.

Burnham
Lorca
Saru
Tilly
Stamets
Voq
LRell
Emperor Georgio
Tyler

... is what Id start the line with before I got to some of the lesser seen characters like TKuvma, Mudd, Sarek, Cornwall...

I also think that because Disocvery is a success, to put out older characters from the older series beyond Kirk and Picard is a bit pointless since DST have just given us 15 years of those characters. Id say McFarlane are keen, Id like to see what they come up with.

Retailers are also more likely to want product from the more recent Star Trek movies as well as the iconic ships they know will sell: The Enterprise IS Star Trek - while you might get fans who love Voyager and DS9. Its the Enterprise, much like the Millennium Falcon, that most people identify with.

Id not be at all surprised if DST launched the 2009 USS Enterprise. Say what you will about the choices made in relation to canon and the story being more Star Wars in tone... the Enterprise was gorgeous. The 2009 movie is also one of those movies that hasnt diminished in popularity with the movie going public

I wouldnt be surprised at all. DST for the past 15 years have been making product based upon long since gone Star Trek shows and movies.

I think theyre probably waiting for season 2. Lets face it. stranger Things, even The Next Generation never got toys until it was a proven success. Lets just hope that like Stranger Things, Discovery continues to be a major success going forward. I also think that they thought TKuvma was going to be a bigger character in Star Trek than he was, so it could be that they are working on a new selection of figures to launch the line with.

Well... DST replied on Twitter:

A few of the items we have in development are nearing completion, hope to reveal them soon -- not the ones you are expecting, though.

Retailers are asking us to run more of these ships, so they look at these and place orders. Old ship sales fund new ship sales. We are not happy about the delay on some items, but other Trek items are moving faster than expected, and we are excited to show them off.

It seems as though there is some movement on Star Trek at DST. Id surmise that they have the Kelvin Timeline movies licence and have product being shown to retailers based on that licence.

I think by SDCC we could see more Trek merchandise than weve seen in a while. Im just sad that Star Trek doesnt seem to be something that really inspires kids play anymore, thats a sad thing that can only be rectified by CBS or Paramount agreeing to make an Animated TV series and getting Playmates back to do the toys... like theyve done with TMNT

It is a joke. Star Trek has been really poorly treated by DST. No wonder theres little to no retailer interest in their Star Trek merchandise.

Im certainly not expecting a Star Wars sized merchandising machine but Im so disappointed in what weve seen from every company. Theres actually nothing brand new, its all items weve seen before!!!

Lets start with the turd in the room:

Diamond Select Toys:
What an utter joke. Three action figures and two ships plus the TNG phaser supposedly in development and all they can muster are ships weve seen and got before multiple times over the last 10-15 years... thats a shambles.

Quantum Mechanix:
Weve seen all of those 12 inch figures before... nothing new at all. Three new magnetic badges, a Locutus figure and a crappy Enterprise D in the same scale as a far superior one from Eaglemoss... big woop...

McFarlane:
Weve seen this stuff before!!!! Its nothing new at all.

Gentle Giant:
Some plastic ships that you stick to surfaces?!? Right, ok...

What an utter disaster Star Trek merchandise has become. Utterly redundant and useless.

Are you kidding me?!?! Diamond Select just completely summed up toy fair for Star Trek Toys: abysmal.

I think a lot of the different issues fans have with Discovery and certainly the Abrams movies is down to one particular issue and the opinion many have that Star Trek actually never needed rebooting in the first place...

Meh, the Enterprise D model looks tiny and looks worse than the Eaglemoss versions. So far underwhelmed by the Star Trek presence at toy fair... Jurassic World though! Wow Mattel have really done some great things.

Most of the lighting there is above directed down to illuminate the work space as well as foot lighting. Yeah there are some lights on the columns and I'm not a fan of that, but no where near as extreme as the Discovery. I suppose if you look at them Discovery was a natural progression from the E. In any case the point is the lighting is decorative and serves no functional purpose. Anyways my intention wasn't to go down a rabbit hole of complaining about minute details. I used some of these as examples, but it is definitely the series as a whole and many issues like these examples that put me off.

 

I think the Discovery bridge and the whole look of the show is gorgeous... If you take TOS out of the mix as not part of canon, then the look of this show fits right in there between Enterprise and TMP with some exceptions being the modern displays and view window. I agree though that because it's a show made 16 years after we last saw the Enterprise E on our screens, then yes this show absolutely fits design wise, perfectly into canon 16 years after the events of Nemesis.

 

I don't get how you can see night club with this bridge though. It's darker, more modern than any of the other bridges and the luminous displays perhaps could give off that vibe, but I must admit, the care and attention to detail here is something Star Trek really lacked during the 90's due to budget constraints. 

As to why it had to be set before TOS...welp, to be honest, why not? I don't think they've done a good job showing us why this story had to be told in that time period... but, I do think someone *could* theoretically do a good job of that and I wouldn't want that person restricted by ancient aesthetics, either.

 

I'm wondering if the story they told was one that would of been better served had it been set beyond Voyager, beyond known canon and continuity. One of the biggest criticisms leveled at Discovery is that it looks too far removed from what we know to be that period of time. 

 

I agree with you that the TOS cardboard 60's look isn't going to cut it in 2018 but that is the established look for that period of canon/continuity so why deliberately go back there, change the look of everything, tell a ham-fisted, hamstrung story that is ultimately going to piss more fans off than generate new fans. 

 

Everything I've said about Discovery being great I truly believe, but there is another side to that coin and it's a bit of a mess to be fair when there was so much potential in either staying true to the aesthetics of TOS (I don't mean cardboard sets, I mean staying true to the colour palette and design style) and telling a very modern, contemporary tale within the time period or indeed setting Discovery 50/100 years beyond Voyager and creating their own vision of the future from our world as it is in 2018... 

 

Having thoroughly enjoyed Discovery despite it's failings IMO, They've redesigned things and for what reason? 

I miss the days when we got an actual wave of Star Trek figures. Im very curious to see how far McFarlane takes Star Trek. Is this the next big toy line?

Im so confused as to why Star Trek isnt a big toy line. Maybe Disocvery will help change that but I feel like cbs should perhaps do an animated series on top of Discovery for younger fans. Theres definitely a market out there for a cool new series.

Also does anyone else remember figures for R rated/adult oriented movies like RoboCop and Terminator and Alien(s)... Id never seen the movies but thought the toys were awesome. I miss those days when toys were just good fun!

You don't inspire future generations of scientists by telling them the future is going to look like their grandparents' garage sale.

You are absolutely right... so why set the series in a period of time that did look like a grandparents garage sale?

The future for the next generation is beyond Voyager, not before TOS.

The main problem with Disco I have is that the writing was so messy. While the Burnham arc was a satisfying one from beginning to end, there were far too many roads taken with other characters and plots and then never fully fleshed out. To this day I still do not get why Harry Mudd had to show up at all?! The spaw drive technology... I mean did we really need it? What was Commander Landrys beef? Its as if the writers were like, quick we need something sci-Fi in this show, I know lets do a new drive system that needs a human! Its a cool idea but it kinda never fully gets thought out properly. And the war with the Klingons? It kinda went nowhere... as for the Mirror Universe? Why did we go there exactly? Ok Lorca was a baddie from that universe but this was Burnhams show... again lorca realised that this was a mirror to his universe and wanted Burnham to take back with him... he realised that the spaw drive could take him back but needed Stamets to do so many jumps for it to work... I mean thats just utter gobbledygook.

It wasnt that any of these ideas were bad idea necessarily, they were just executed really badly and never thought out or followed through and the final episode really showed how many corners theyd written themselves into during the course of this season up to the penultimate episode last week. Cornwall just giving up on Starfleets horrific plan to commit genocide? I mean first of all thats just crazy, and second of all if she was that easily persuaded not to do it, why even come up with the plan in the first place... everything felt very rushed, very slap dash and just very pointless.

There were some lovely nods to canon but on the whole, Im sitting here a day after watching the finale thinking about the whole season and saying, that was great but what did I just watch?!

The whole season felt like the TNG episode Conspiracy. Its as if Star Trek: Discoverys writers and producers had a great idea but through the problems they had encountered with Bryan Fuller leaving and having to rebuild the show after hed gone, perhaps made them have to rush and slap together something that still had the potential of being great through the brilliant cast but just never really spent enough time on the plot.

And that is really the crux of my problem with this season; its rushed plot and storylines. I have to give them credit though, this show has one of the best casts ever to appear on Star Trek. Burnhams arc was followed through, Stamets I think was underserved in the finale but had had some sort of closure, Tilly has just been wonderful all season. Lorca I felt was underserved once it was known he was from the Mirror Universe (my hope is now that the captain theyre going to collect is indeed prime Lorca), Sarus journey in this season seemed quite satisfying too and Ash/Voq... well Shazad Latif is just brilliant. They could of really messed that up but didnt.

All in all its the characters and the cast that hold this show together and are all testaments to no matter how badly the plot and storylines are constructed around you, if you have a top notch cast, you can achieve great things - thats what Disocvery is, its a superb cast and thats why hopefully season 2 will marry this superb cast to a more robust, simplified plot and tighter writing.

Im intrigued as to how theyll approach the TOS characters in this show. Pike and Spock? Will they be recast, will they indeed get Bruce Greenwood and Zachary Quinto to play their prime counterparts - that would be fantastic - or will they do some motion capture CGI and resurrect Leonard Nimoy and Jeffery Hunter...

Everything in Discovery looks like a progression from Enterprise, and could believably evolve into the aesthetic of the movie era.

TOS has always been the odd series out with an aesthetic that was completely abandoned and forgotten by Roddenberry as soon as he had a larger budget and more modern effects.

Thats true. TMP was really the birth of the franchise we know today in terms of its visuals.

Do you think it could flow quite nicely into TMP too? After seeing the Enterprise in tonights episode, it looks like it could quite easily be refitted into the USS Enterprise from TMP.

Ive thought that all along about Discovery, that it has more of a visual connection to TMP than TOS.

Putting aside its importance in popular culture, is it possible for people to entertain the idea that actually TOS could be glossed over in terms of its look?

I wasn't trying to negate your opinion or make some counter argument... I was just trying to understand it.
 
So... I was wondering if you considered any other series in the franchise... or even movies... since they did change a lot even with TMP... as re-boots? JJ verse aside of course. 

For me I think its easier to accept radical redesigns and changes if, like you said, the shows move forward within the fictional timeline. Had Disocvery been a sequel to Voyager then the look would of sat a lot better with me. I would technically call each incarnation of Star Trek that radically changed what had come before reboots of some kind. TNG rebooted Star Trek, The Motion Picture/Wrath of Khan rebooted Star Trek - but because they came after each previous incarnation, the redesigns and changes made were easier to except.

Enterprise to a lesser extent again rebooted the franchise and suffers from the same problem as Discovery only to begin to fix it by season 4. Enterprise was 100 years before Kirk and Co. a lot could of happened in that century to explain the visual changes between Enterprise and TOS. When Enterprise eventually did visit the TOS era, it was faithfully recreated and Ive got to say, it didnt look as bad as I think everyone expected the 60s cardboard look to look on screen. I thought the Defiant in the Enterprise S4 Mirror Universe episode looked wonderful.

Dont get me wrong, I thought the Enterprise in Discovery looked fantastic and actually if you take TOS out of the franchise. The look of this Enterprise fits perfectly between the NX01 and the refit Enterprise from TMP and basically thats what Ive decided to do.

TOS is the exception here. TOS was the base prototype model for a franchise that began with TMP. If you discount TOS (as important a show as it might be) then from Enterprise, through Discovery and into TMP, visually it works. But yes, in my opinion Discovery is a reboot, all be it a visual one that very much says this is a Star Trek for 2017/18 rather than this is a period piece and a specific point in the prime timeline canon.

Some might think that redesigning and reimagining the look is very lazy, some may think it needed it because you cant have the same designs from the sixties in a Tv show made in 2017. I think theres a half way point in which the style of TOS could of been properly embraced and modernised without loosing the aesthetic of that show.

But Discovery is its own thing and I think despite being a bit of a jumbled mess plot wise. I cant really fault the production for not being passionate about making something worth our while. It hasnt tanked, its done very very well for itself despite all of the problems its gone through in coming together. The look of the Enterprise in Discovery isnt what Id have chosen for my imaginary 23rd Century Star Trek ship personally but I have to admit, the last 4/5 minutes of Discovery this week had me squealing with joy as the Enterprise came into view and the original Star Trek fanfare played. This is Star Trek guys, retooled, rebooted, revived for a modern TV audience and if youre willing to see TOS as a test bed for a franchise that began with 1979s The Motion Picture, then this series aesthetics does really fit into the gap between Enterprise and The Motion Picture.

I guess it depends on the person as to what makes it a reboot or not.

For me the visual continuity is just as important as the written stories continuity/canon so for me this is a reboot albeit a visual one.

 
It is? I mean.. that would be fine for me too... thats why I was suggesting its "K-Trek"... but did they say that in after trek or something and I missed it? 

I dont think its K (Kelvin?) Trek. I think its just another rebooted version of Star Trek.

I think theyve clearly learnt and been influenced a great deal from Ronald D. Moores Battlestar Galactica.

Its frustrating that they felt they needed to reimagine such an Iconic ship, such an iconic visual style but this obsession with redefining what Star Trek was begun with the cancellation of Enterprise. So you know what, its annoying but Im fine with it. A while back I said that Star Trek canon was inconsistent and I think this show proves it more than any other because with each iteration of Star Trek, the visual continuity and canon has been challenged and changed so many times to fit the story or to simply just fit into a modern Tv landscape. Its not Star Wars where theres a visual canon and continuity. Story wise, the canon has been significantly changed and altered over the past 51 years and in TOS, Im pretty sure the word canon never meant anything to Roddenberry or the writers of that show - it was all about the writing and the stories he wanted to tell - he never once Im sure, thought that it mattered that each episode didnt tie into the next in some way or another, these were just standalone morality plays.

So yes, Discovery is a full reboot of Star Trek and while they want to maintain certain parts of canon - its seemingly a word that perhaps doesnt mean as much to the executives or writers on Disocvery as it does to a small portion of fans.

Maybe its about how we see Star Trek and how weve come to like Star Trek that needs to be though of... Star Trek fans by and large love Star Trek because of its message of tollorance and hope, its optimism and moral outlook on humanity and while the ships are cool and the aliens are crazy looking, were they not just a means to an end in telling a compelling, thought-provoking stories.

Has Discovery done the former? Hmm, hit and miss this season, its been a bit of a mess but the cast are fantastic and the show shows real promise moving forward.