This episode of Priority One is sponsored by Gameprint.net. Get your starship 3D printed and save 20% off your order when you use offer code PRIORITY20.
This week, we’re Trekking Out the newly-named director of the Picard Series, and the announcement makes Trek history. Picard also reunites with an old friend, two new cast mates, and some serious speculation, and Star Trek: Discovery gets a 3rd season…and a new co-showrunner.
Then in Star Trek Online and gaming news, we’re catching up on the last few weeks and we’ll discuss the fate of Star Trek Online’s Foundry.
COMMUNITY QUESTION: What will you miss most about the Foundry in Star Trek Online? Do you have a favorite mission?
by Jake Morgan
Picard Gets Directors
The as-yet-untitled Picard series is set to start filming in mid-April, and news of its cast and crew are starting to hit. On Friday, March 1st, the director for the premiere and its follow up episode were announced: Hanelle Culpepper.
48-year old Culpepper is a prolific television director who is no stranger to Star Trek. She previously directed Star Trek: Discovery’s 1st season episode “Vaulting Ambition”, and Season 2’s upcoming episode “The Red Angel”.
In a press release, Star Trek Captain Alex Kurtzman said of Culpepper, “Hanelle is a gifted and dynamic filmmaker whose directorial choices are always deeply rooted in character. I’ve been a fan of her work since she started with us on Discovery, and she’s the perfect person to re-introduce the beloved character of Picard to longtime fans and new viewers alike. We’re thrilled she’s joining our Trek family on this next adventure.”
Picard Gets Frakes
The accomplished Hanelle Culpepper is not the ONLY director more-or-less announced for Picard’s newest adventure. Star Trek’s Jonathan Frakes is also set to take the seat…the DIRECTOR’S seat.
Sitting down with “Writer Experience Podcast”, Frakes confirmed his involvement in old-friend Sir Patrick Stewart’s Star Trek series: “Now, my season looks like ‘Star Trek: Discovery,’ the new wonderful ‘Star Trek’ series; the Picard show, which Patrick [Stewart] is launching; and ‘The Orville,’ which is some people’s new ‘Star Trek.'”
Frakes also said of the CBS expansion of Star Trek “My understanding is that [showrunner] Alex Kurtzman and [his production company] Secret Hideout are creating a ‘Star Trek’ oeuvre that will hopefully allow fans of Trek to have something fresh to see all the time. […] So, there is a world that is being created by Kurtzman and his team that will hopefully continue for many years and provide entertainment, and obviously conversation, about ‘Star Trek’ for decades.”
Picard Gets a Cast
Keeping with the Picard series, on Monday, March 4th, two new cast members of the still-untitled-Picard series were announced: Michelle Hurd & Santiago Cabrera.
Michelle Hurd, a 52-year-old actress from New York City, most recently starred in the NBC drama “Blindspot”, but has made appearances in several shows over her 30 year career, including “Another World”, “Law and Order: SVU”, “Ash vs Evil Dead”, and “Daredevil”.
40-year-old Venezuelan Born Santiago Cabrera has recently starred in the CBS drama “Salvation” and, according to Deadline, is “one of the most sought actors for pilots this season.”
Now for the bibs and sauce…It’s #treknugget Trekulation time!!! Deadline reporter Nellie Andreeva stated in her article “No details are being revealed about the characters Cabrera and Hurd are playing, but I hear Cabrera will play the pilot of Picard’s ship who also is a skillful thief. Hurd is playing a former intelligence officer who is a brilliant analyst with a terrific memory that has not been affected by her drug and alcohol abuse.”
Discovery Gets a Third Season
The CURRENTLY running Star Trek – Discovery – also got some good news this week. On Tuesday, CBS announced the show has been renewed for a third season. With the announcement, it was also revealed that Season 2 co-executive producer Michelle Paradise would be promoted to Season 3 co-showrunner.
Paradise has served only one season as a Discovery Co-Executive Producer, but has also Produced CW’s “The Originals”, and Logo’s comedy, “Exes & Ohs”.
by Anthony Cox
The Sun is Setting on the Foundry
Since being introduced almost eight years ago, The Foundry has been a place where the most creative Trekkies in Star Trek Online have been able to forge their own stories and missions in the ever expanding Star Trek mythos. Earlier this week Cryptic made the announcement that with the April 11th update, the Foundry would no longer be part of Star Trek Online and Neverwinter. According to Mike “Ambassador Kael” Fatum the fate of the Foundry had been internally discussed for well over a year. During a special live stream Q&A, Ambassador Kael lamented the internal struggle some of developers faced while trying to find a solution. As a thank you, Cryptic is planning to give rewards to those who have played Foundry missions, authors who have created missions, and anyone who has had a mission spotlighted. After April 11th all of the Foundry missions will be backed up and archived with the hopes that a way can be found in the future to bring some of that content into the live game. For links to the announcement and the live stream Q&A trek out the show notes.
Ninth Anniversary and Mirror of Discovery Launch on Console
Console captains can now battle against Captain “Killy” and the ISS Discovery as the Ninth Anniversary of Star Trek Online comes to Xbox and Playstation 4. Players can also participate in the Omega Molecule daily event provided by Q to collect more of the Ninth anniversary vouchers. Once you have 1,000 vouchers you can run the event project for the Tier 6 T’Pau Vulcan Scout ship. Also available is the Emperor’s Lock Box and Terran Empire regalia in the Lobi store. The Ninth Anniversary event runs from now until April 2nd.
Lobi Store & Key Sale
Speaking of the Lobi store, console captains can also take 20% off Lobi items. And keys in the C-Store are 15% off. For a limited time Key Bundles of 20 will come with an ultimate tech upgrade. These discounts last from now until March 15th.
Patch Notables
We mentioned this earlier, we wanted to remind you that in the most recent update on PC has given us a new character creation UI and experience. To celebrate this every player will be receiving 1 additional character slot.
Elio is a Northern New Jersey Cuban-American and graduate of Kean University, having earned his Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Performance in 2011. He has performed in internationally renowned performance halls such as Avery Fisher Hall with the New York Philharmonic, as a member of the Westminster Symphonic Choir, and in Beijing, China as a representative for Kean University. Since 2012, he has had the wonderful opportunity to Executive Produce Priority One – the premiere Star Trek Online podcast. Whether recruiting, managing the global team of talented volunteers, arranging interviews with special guests, editing, web-development, finding sponsors, managing crowd funding, or writing content for the podcast, Elio has a hand in it all. A long-time Trekkie, Elio has been watching the series since he was a child and sneaking in late night, back-to-back, episodes of TNG reruns. He finally embraced the Trekdom in college and spent many hours catching up on the entire multiverse…. instead of studying.
We are finally wrapping up our 400th celebrations with the last (but not least) of our interviews from Cryptic Studios. Anthony, Elijah and Kenna are taking a much-needed break from […]
Tyler Maxwell on 2019-03-12
Honestly? More than any controversial decision in the history of STO, this one felt like a gutpunch to me. 🙁
The thing that I love about the Foundry in STO is simply the breadth of stories and adventures available, made by players like you and me, that vastly expand upon the universe that STO has created, filling it with more life and personality than the STO team could ever make on their own. Sure, STO has plenty of its own official missions, and they drop a new one every 6 months or so, but the Foundry allows any player with an idea to make their Trek story and share it with the galaxy at large. Everything from diplomatic encounters to science expeditions, detective adventures and love stories, even just a cool clubhouse to hang out with a few friends; the Foundry allows players to create so many kinds of stories and places that make STO more than just a ‘Everyone is the hero of the same linear chain of combat missions’ generic kind of theme park MMO experience. (There’s exploration missions there in the Foundry too, for those who were complaining about that back in the day. :p )
I recognize the difficulties in maintaining a system of this complexity over so many years, and I don’t doubt the tireless efforts of many on the dev team to save the Foundry in spite of everything telling them that it was bad game business sense, not driving the metrics, wasn’t recouping the money spent on it, etc. Closing the Foundry will save Cryptic/PWE some dev resources sure, but I still can’t help but feel like this is a critical mistake, one that will make STO feel diminished in the long run. Not just in the loss of hundreds of thousands of user-generated missions that created a much larger in-game Trekverse, but also in the loss of those authors/players who brought their passion and creativity to the community, who are now looking towards new game horizons in the wake of this decision. I don’t mean to get all ‘doom and gloom’ over all this; I have every confidence that STO can and will survive this and create cool new things for players in the future. I’m just not sure if STO can thrive from this decision; beyond just the usual story mission to PvE queue/battlezone grind like every other MMO, what’s left than can give players new and old a reason to make this specific place their MMO home?
seannewboy on 2019-03-11
ELIJAH CALLED MY SHIP A WHAT? Au nan’ha-favi!*
Wonderful show everyone.Sad to hear about the foundry, i did not use it much, just certain authors. I think all MMO’s should have some sort of player created content, but it is a large thing to ask of developers. It really has to be a part of the design specs from the start. I would bet that that is the problem with the foundry, it was an add on, after primary programming.
* https://www.velocityreviews.com/threads/romulan-phrases.372121/
Ron K on 2019-03-10
What am I going to miss about the Foundry? Having a refuge from Cryptic content that I don’t want to play.
I keep hearing that Cryptic is “trimming the fat” and that they should trim some more but if you trim too much then people are going to leave the game. The Foundry is a big deal to a lot of people and a chunk of those people are going to disappear come April. Trim too much fat and this game WILL die just like that YouTube video suggested.
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