This week on Priority One — We’re joined by Guest Host – Star Trek Online’s Community Manager Mike “Ambassador Kael” Fatum to chat about Star Trek Online’s 10th Anniversary. Star Trek gets some superbowl love; Wil Weaton invites us into the Ready Room; and, in On Screen we’re setting up for an adventure with Star Trek Picard Maps & Legends… And of course, we can’t sign off without sharing your incoming messages.
Of course, as always, before we wrap up the show, we’ll open hailing frequencies for your incoming messages
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This Weeks Community Questions Are:
CQ: CQ: What do you think Guinan has been up to since Star Trek: Nemesis?
AND
CQ: CQ: Did you enjoy the 10th anniversary episodes? Where do you think the Star Trek Online story is going now?
by Shane Hoover
Wil Wheaton has traveled a long way from his days on Star Trek The Next Generation. He has become a successful writer, a sought-after audio book narrator, a podcast and web series host, and returned to television as himself in “The Big Bang Theory”. And the release of Star Trek: Picard sees Wheaton finally return to TV screens for Star Trek. No, he’s not appearing as a character in the series. Not yet, anyway! Instead, he’s been tapped to host the aftershow, “The Ready Room”. He sat down to chat recently on a number of topics with Wired.Com’s podcast “The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy”. Among those subjects was, of course, his place on “The Ready Room”. Asked what he thought makes an aftershow like this work, Wheaton offered, “What I’m trying to do is…be the person inside the room for all of the nerds out in the audience. Because until I was in the room, I was a nerd out in the audience. (39:46)
He wanted to be bringing up the questions that he would have wanted asked as that “nerd”.
On the subject of watching Star Trek at home, Wil says that his wife, Anne, was definitely not a Star Trek fan. Though he concedes “I imagine the experience of watching Next Generation with me is not the best experience, because I talk through the whole thing. Because everything triggers a memory.” (45:42) . However, the couple have watched every episode of Star Trek Picard, and Wil was surprised to find that “She is crazy about it. She loves Picard in a way that I didn’t think was possible!” (46:21)
That reaction from his wife has given Wheaton hope that Picard may bring together lots of other couples where one spouse is the “nerd” and the other is the “muggle”, as he says.
You can catch “The Ready Room” every week on Facebook Live, following the release of new episodes of Star Trek: Picard.
This Sunday evening, 102 million viewers sat down to watch the U.S.S. Enterprise warp onto their televisions. Okay, okay, maybe that’s not exactly why they sat down. But thanks to a typically big budget Super Bowl commercial from retailer Walmart, that’s exactly what those 102 million viewers got to see. The one minute TV spot opens in orbit above Earth. With the distinctive new warp sound effect from Star Trek: Discovery, the show’s new U.S.S. Enterprise appears on screen. From there, the commercial parades through a who’s-who of Sci-Fi franchises – The Lego Movie, Flash Gordon, Men in Black, Bill and Ted, Mars Attacks, Arrival, Blade Runner, Marvin the Martian, and even Star Wars. In another shot, with the Enterprise hanging in the sky, two store employees laden with shopping bags are beamed out to deliver their goods.
And, in a follow-up bit of viral marketing, the company invited social media users to engage to see another short scene. In this one, a Walmart employee beams back to the store with a rapidly overflowing bag of tribbles, before pleading with people to adopt the tribbles.
Aside from being a bit of Trek related fun in the Super Bowl advertising, this must be considered a remarkably high profile splash for CBS’s ever active promotions team. How many viewers in 102 million might have seen this and thought “Wow, that Enterprise looks amazing! I should watch the new show.”?
According to a recent press release from ViacomCBS, Star Trek: Picard, along with the Grammy Awards live stream, drove CBS All Access to a new record for subscriber sign-ups in a single month. Not only that, but Picard’s premiere set a new high water mark for the streaming service’s record of total streams. The previous record was set back in 2017 by the series premiere of another Star Trek show, Star Trek: Discovery. Without sharing specific viewership data, CBS has announced that Picard drove subscriber volume up by over 115%, and reached more than 180% of the record set by Discovery. Speaking in the press release, Marc DeBevoise, President and CEO of CBS Interactive, said “We’ve seen tremendous continued growth in the service, and the new records we’ve experienced due to STAR TREK: PICARD, the GRAMMYs and a fantastic season of football are a phenomenal way to kick off what will be a fantastic year for CBS All Access.”
On the back of the show’s strong performance, CBS All Access has now released the first episode, “Remembrance” to view completely free on the streaming service’s website or mobile application. If you haven’t pulled the trigger on a subscription yet, this is your chance to get a glimpse of the show.
by Jake Morgan
This week on Priority One, we sat down with Star Trek Online Community Manager Mike “Ambassador Kael” Fatum to talk all things Star Trek Online – including the 10 Forward Live Stream, the recently released ARG publicity push, and what’s to come for Star Trek Online! We would like to extend a huge thank you to Mike Fatum for his time and engagement!
Last week, we talked about the upcoming 10th Anniversary Legendary Starship bundle – set for release on February 13th – and two of the ten announced ships in the 30,000 or 45,000 Zen MEGApack – the Nose Art Pilot Defiant and the Command “Ross” Galaxy cruiser. This week, FOUR new ships were announced – The “Verity Class” Odyssey Command Dreadnought Cruiser, The Miracle Worker “Post Nemesis” Sovereign Refit Assault Cruiser, the “Columbia Class” NX Temporal Escort, and the Kelvin Timeline Constitution Refit Intel Battlecruiser!
Since the release of Star Trek Online: Legacy on January 28th, Cryptic and it’s partners have been offering goodies galore. Steelseries started with a Federation Elite Starter pack key giveaway, alienware followed up with Age of Discovery Starter Pack, BOFF, and Poker emote keys, and Star Trek Online has launched a steelseries custom STO headset raffle – which also includes a Discovery Operations pack.
Along with bugs and fixes this week on PC, “Battle at the Binary Stars” (Normal, Advanced, and Elite), and “Mycelial Realm” (Normal) have been added to the available TFO lists, with Normal and advanced versions of “Battle at the Binary Star” and the normal version of “Mycelial Realm” becoming eligible for Random matching.
On Tribble, The Episode “Measure of Morality, Part 1” no longer rewards the Assault Squad Phaser Rifle, but instead now rewards Seven’s Dual Tetryon Rifles. True endgame also gets a boost – SPACE BARBIE STYLE!
The Borg Exoskeletal Frame has been made available for Bridge Officers in the Tailor, there are more hair options for Romulan Female and Romulan Male players, and Michael Burnham’s Short hair – “Tight Curls Raised” – has been added as a free unlock! To the tailor!
This week in Armada News:
Join us for TFO Tuesday – each Tuesday we team up with other Armada members to earn marks and dilithium.
We’re joined by talented Fan contributor ZEFilms to trek out the Picard Premier, and deep dive into Star Trek Online’s 10th Anniversary release: LEGENDS
seannewboy on 2020-02-11
wonderful show everyone.
Im surprised no one has compared the zhat vash to section 31? Am i the only one that will be disappointed if we end up with some secret Klingon group?
Tyler Maxwell on 2020-02-11
Hey P1 & Kael! Make the Lib Borg faction happen! 🙂
Star Trek: Picard, Episode 2 — “Maps and Legends”
I mean, yes making up a whole new Romulan secret group (the “Zhat Vash”) within the ALREADY very secret Tal Shiar sounds redundant and unoriginal on the surface. On the other hand, having Picard come back to TV after two decades with this big conspiracy coming out of nowhere threatening the Federation and the galaxy at large, and then saying “Oh, the bad guys are JUST the Tal Shiar!” in stock comic book villain fashion, well…that’s a bit of a letdown. We’ve seen most of the Tal Shiar’s evil tricks already, there’s no mystery or reason to be too invested in that conflict; Picard has beaten the Tal Shiar before, and he’d obviously do it again. So I’m not necessarily against this weird, previously unknown ‘millennia-old Romulan Illuminati’ group popping up to be the antagonists for ST: Picard.
As far as how Romulans could be paranoid about synthetics for thousands of years, when we in the real world barely have working robot vacuums, well apparently Vulcans (and by extension, “Romulans” <-*in a Worf voice*) had achieved interstellar travel centuries before Alexander the Great was ‘supposedly’ born, so it’s not completely unreasonable for Romulans to have had their ‘Rise of the Machines’ moment a long time ago, dealt with them, and decided “Yeah, robots bad. Let’s never have them EVER AGAIN.”
Also, why are all these folks so up in arms against synthetics (meaning androids & robots), and yet holograms are fine? Aren’t they both artificial lifeforms which could be subverted through various means to shoot at us meatbags? Why do the ‘lightbulbs’ get a free pass?
Jim Walsh on 2020-02-11
CQ: What do you think Guinan has been up to since Star Trek: Nemesis?
Whatever Guinan wants to be up to.
CQ: Did you enjoy the 10th anniversary episodes? Where do you think the Star Trek Online story is going now?
I didn’t enjoy either of them particularly as they are stand-alone and don’t advance the STO “story”. They also take one heck of a long time to complete, especially when compared to the FTFO, so aren’t an option to progress the free ship event. I get what the deal is at the moment and understand why these episodes were important to Cryptic, but I’m not a fan of the whole Discovery “thing” in STO as the whole idea of these being holodeck recreations of historical events sounds like the sort of corporate penny-pinching team-building exercise I get subjected to in my day job in lieu of training. One would hope that Starfleet hasn’t actually plummeted to those depths in terms of “leadership models”, though if they have, I can see why Jean-Luc Picard bailed on Starfleet.
ViL and the Iconian War were absolute standouts in STO and I really want to get back into my character actually participating in a story line that is part of the virtual world I spend far too much time in. This virtual world in a virtual world is too meta for me. The Season releases used to really engage me but the TV tie-in has failed to grab my imagination and I really hope we can get back to the creative people at Cryptic being allowed to do their best work again.
ChoyoUmiku on 2020-02-08
So far I am enjoying the Picard thrill Ride. Watching Mr Stewart get back into the role as if he never left it is amazing. I can’t wait to see this show continue as the story arc thus far has my attention. I want to know more about the betrayal in side the federation. Super stoked! #TeamPicard!
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