New Star Trek TV Series to Premiere in January 2017

Star Trek is returning to the small screen. The next film in the long-running sci-fi franchise is due to hit cinemas in summer 2016, but now it has been announced that a new Star Trek TV show will premiere in January 2017.

The show is being developed at CBS by Alex Kurtzman, the co-writer of the last two hugely successful Trek movies. While the premiere episode would be broadcast on CBS's network channel, all subsequent episodes would initially screen on the company's All Access digital subscription service, making it the first show to launch on a broadcast network but air primarily on a VOD service.

In a statement, CBS Television Studios President David Stapf said: "There is no better time to give Star Trek fans a new series than on the heels of the original show's 50th anniversary celebration.

"Everyone here has great respect for this storied franchise, and we're excited to launch its next television chapter in the creative mind and skilled hands of Alex Kurtzman, someone who knows this world and its audience intimately."

This will be the first new Star Trek show for more than a decade--the last series was Star Trek: Enterprise, which ran for four seasons between 2001 and 2005. Since then, JJ Abrams has directed two movies, which recast the crew from the original series--2009's Star Trek and 2013's Star Trek Into Darkness.

The latest film, Star Trek Beyond, arrives in cinemas on July 22, 2016. CBS has confirmed that the new series "is not related" to the movie.

Disclosure: CBS is GameSpot's parent company.