Julie McNamara taking the long view when it comes to Star Trek

Julie McNamara, head of original content for CBS All Access, is well aware of the dangers of too much Star Trek coming out too fast.

It seems like the last few weeks have been filled with one Star Trek announcement after another. Another animated series, more Short Treks, numerous new television series, the list goes on and on. And the kicker is that Star Trek: Discovery showruuner Alex Kurtzman and company might not even be done yet.

With a torrent of new Star Trek content in the pipeline, fans have to start to wonder if it is going to be too much, too soon. The risk of franchise fatigue is very real, just ask Star Wars fans and they’ll no doubt tell you their sad story.

However, it would seem that Star Trek fans have nothing to worry about in that regard. The Wrap recently spoke to CBS All Access Executive Vice President of Original Content Julie McNamara about just that issue. She said that while there is a lot of Star Trek on the drawing board, they don’t plan to oversaturate the market.

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"“There’s no benefit to just pushing out into the marketplace tons of ‘Star Trek content. That’s not our intention. We’re looking to mine it wisely and effectively.”"

That said, how does CBS All Access plans to schedule all these new Trek projects so that franchise fatigue doesn’t set in? McNamara said that isn’t really an issue right now because while there have been a ton of announcements, nothing is even close to hitting the streaming service anytime soon.

"“When I look at how the schedule is theoretically laying out on my desk, it does not feel like it’s one after another.“Some of these can be considered as replacements as opposed to additions. These ‘Trek’ shows take a lot of incubation, because they’re very prep heavy, visual effects heavy… we’re seeing it more as we’re getting a good jump on making sure that there is a good fulsome stream of ‘Trek’ material.”"

McNamara also mentioned that there are currently no plans for Discovery to serve as a backdoor pilot for the Section 31 series and that Michelle Yeoh is committed to appearing in both the second and (to be announced) third seasons of Discovery. So it is entirely possible we may not even see Yeoh’s Section 31 series until Discovery has ended its run.

In addition, since the animation will take over a year to produce, Lower Decks won’t arrive until 2020 at the earliest and the same can be said for the second younger-skewing animated series announced earlier this month.

So it would seem despite all the news, the only Star Trek fans can expect anytime soon will be Star Trek: Picard, which is scheduled to arrive late in 2019, and more Discovery. Which is apparently all part of the plan.