(written from a Production point of view)
The Ready Room is a companion series for the new main Star Trek series. It first premiered in January 2019 with the second season of Star Trek: Discovery. It is the third companion Star Trek series, the second series to not be set in the Star Trek universe, and the scaled-down replacement for Discovery season one's companion show After Trek.
An aftershow interview series, with no predetermined run time, The Ready Room was intended to be viewed after watching a new episode of the main series Star Trek series on CBS All Access at the time. The first, interview only (featuring only a very simple set), season was hosted by Naomi Kyle and streamed on Facebook Live the day after the debut of each Discovery episode, starting with the second episode of season two.
The second season was hosted by Wil Wheaton and covered season one of Star Trek: Picard, with a new episode available on both CBSAA and Facebook Live the same day as the Picard episode it was covering. [1] Aware that Picard was eagerly awaited by fans, the franchise opted to beef out the format with additional features, which included excerpts from special features that were already produced during the series' production for intended inclusion in whole on the later to be released DVD and Blu-ray Disc home video formats, as well as the inclusion of trivia questions and previews for subsequent episodes. The format therefore moved back closer to the format it was originally intended to replace, After Trek.
Episode list
Season 1
The Ready Room Season 1, 13 episodes:
Season 2
The Ready Room Season 2, 10 episodes:
Production staff
- Naomi Kyle – Host (Season 1)
- Wil Wheaton – Host (Season 2)
Background information
Franchise rival Star Wars has followed suit in producing aftershows, when it launched its first live-action series, The Mandalorian, which premiered to great critical and fan acclaim on streaming service Disney+, two months before Picard. Unlike The Ready Room however, the episodes of its aftershow, Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian were not streamed after each individual episode, but after the first season of the primary show had finished its original run. This had the advantage that the aftershow could view its season as a whole, and as a result substantially more in-depth attention was given to the behind-the-scenes aspects of the show in all its manifestations, than the second season of The Ready Room did, where these aspects were only addressed in a cursory manner through the special features excerpts, primarily focusing on performers and their roles instead. By being given a longer production lead time than was afforded The Ready Room, this was reflected in the much higher, far more professional, production value of Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian, even though the total run-time of its first season more-or-less equaled that of The Ready Room's second.
| Star Trek television series |
|---|
| The Original Series • The Animated Series • The Next Generation • Deep Space Nine • Voyager • Enterprise • Discovery • Picard • Lower Decks • Prodigy • Strange New Worlds |
| Companion series: After Trek • Short Treks • The Ready Room |
| Web content: very Short Treks |
| In development: Starfleet Academy |