Ladies and gentlemen, we finally know when we’ll be able to see Star Trek: Discovery. CBS has announced that the highly anticipated new Star Trek series will debut on Sunday, September 24th on CBS from 8:30pm ET to 9:30pm. The series premiere and the second episode will be available to stream the same night on CBS All Access immediately following the on-air premiere, and after this network TV debut, the rest of the episodes will be available exclusively on CBS All Access.
Moreover, even though Star Trek: Discovery is airing on a streaming service, CBS will not be making the entire season available at once. The 15-episode first season will be presented in two chapters: The first eight episodes will run once a week starting September 24th through November 5th. Then the second chapter of the series will resume in January 2018.
This is basically just the traditional network schedule on a streaming service, as most shows take a holiday hiatus over November/December and then return sometime in January/February. This practice has been ongoing for years, but recently networks have started using it as a marketing ploy, presenting the seasons in “chapters” or “parts”. So AMC gets to market Season 7 of The Walking Dead twice—once for its fall debut, and once again for its “second half” of the season, even though the winter hiatus is a normal part of TV scheduling.
Star Trek: Discovery was initially supposed to debut this past January as the first original series available exclusively on CBS All Access, but development took longer than expected when co-creator/showrunner Bryan Fuller was forced out. The premiere date was then pushed to May 2017, then finally an unspecified date sometime in the fall.
It’s kind of funny that a show from CBS, designed exclusively for streaming, will be debuting the same week as most traditional network TV series after all. Check out the official synopsis for Star Trek: Discovery below, and click here for what executive producer Alex Kurtzman recently told us about the show's LGBT representation.
Click here for Collider’s comprehensive list of TV premiere dates for all your favorite shows.
Star Trek, one of the most iconic and influential global television franchises, returns to television 50 years after it first premiered with STAR TREK: DISCOVERY. STAR TREK: DISCOVERY will follow the voyages of Starfleet on their missions to discover new worlds and new lifeforms, and one Starfleet officer who must learn that to truly understand all things alien, you must first understand yourself. The series will feature a new ship, new characters and new missions, while embracing the same ideology and hope for the future that inspired a generation of dreamers and doers.
