Today’s [news](http://www.polygon.com/2017/1/18/14312680/star-trek-discovery-delayed) has two parts:
Star Trek: Discovery, CBS’ upcoming addition to the long running sci-fi series, has been delayed again.
There’s now no release date for the show beyond ‘when it’s ready’.
And then:
CBS confirmed today that James Frain would play Spock’s father.
(I’ll leave aside that when Mark Lenard portrayed the 2260s Sarek he was 43, James Frain portraying the 2250s Sarek is 48. He’s meant to be a 90-100 year old Vulcan, you can have a little creative licence there).
Put together I’m officially downgrading from ‘cautiously optimistic’ to ‘worried’.
Sarek first (and why do they have to say ‘Spock’s father’ here – anyone paying attention to casting news on a new Star Trek TV show knows who Sarek is). Canonically Spock is in his mid 20s by this point, indeed he’s [begun to serve on the Enterprise](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Spock#Starfleet_career). So this is a Sarek who doesn’t much like Starfleet. He’s an ambassador, so perhaps some role in negotiations with the Klingons makes sense. So I can’t really say that this is a big stretch – but something about this feels wrong to me. Perhaps it’s that they’re trying too hard to shoehorn in links to the Original Series, maybe it’s the idea of recasting Mark Lenard.
But the indefinite delay is more worrying. Not because it won’t be out soon (although it was originally supposed to be out *next week*). But rather because it suggests that they’re frantically reworking everything to create a story and a plan. Which means that they’re junking whatever they had to start with. I think starting something like this without a clear idea of the story you want to tell isn’t going to end well. It begins to seem like there’s something of a [death spiral](https://www.dynamichypocrisy.com/blog/2016/2/19/the-death-spiral-of-middle-management) going on.