Starfleet Academy is here! The latest entry in the Star Trek franchise premiered on Paramount+ this week, and in the capable hands of executive producers and co-showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau, it’s everything fans have been waiting for. Set in Discovery’s far future timeline, the show focuses on the first class of cadets to attend Starfleet Academy since the collapse of the Federation more than 100 years ago.Kurtzman is a franchise veteran with four previous Star Trek series under his belt (Discovery, Short Treks, Picard, Strange New Worlds). Landau, on the other hand, is new to Star Trek but she’s not afraid to take on a beloved iconic property - in the last few years Landau created both Nancy Drew and Tom Swift for the small screen.
SciFi Vision caught up with Kurtzman and Landau ahead of the premiere. The pair described how their working relationship combines deep trust and creative debate to “make the diamond.” Star Trek: Starfleet Academy streams on Thursdays exclusively on Paramount+.
In Riot Women, Kitty (Rosalie Craig), recently released after having been caught shoplifting, is singing in a bar when she’s approached by depressed teacher Beth (Joanna Scanlan) at a time when they both need it the most.
The Hunting Party, which debuts its second season tonight on NBC, follows a small team of investigators, including ex-FBI profiler Bex Henderson (Melissa Roxburgh), CIA Agent Jacob Hassani (Patrick Sabongui), and prison guard Shane Florence (Josh McKenzie) who track down the worst of serial killers who have escaped the top-secret prison known as the Pit. The series, which is a hybrid of both procedural manhunt and serialized conspiracy thriller, picks up where last season left off, with the team having been disbanded and Bex pushing to get the hunting party officially reinstated in the aftermath of Odell (Nick Wechsler)’s attack.
Tonight, season two of The Hunting Party premieres on NBC. Equal parts procedural manhunt and serialized conspiracy thriller, the series follows a small team of investigators led by Bex Henderson (Melissa Roxburgh), who track down and capture the worst of the worst serial killers who have escaped from the top-secret prison known as the Pit. Picking up where the season one finale left off, in tonight’s all-new episode, Bex works to have the team reinstated to continue their search for the missing inmates, the first of which is Ron Simms (Eric McCormack), an escaped killer targeting women who are searching to find love.
Today, the Acorn TV original crime drama, My Life is Murder, returns for its fifth season. The eight-episode season season, starring Lucy Lawless as investigator Alexa Crowe, features all new intriguing cases, starting today when Alexa and her tech wiz Madison (Ebony Vagulans) investigate a cheer squad when a fitness influencer is suddenly murdered.
The Hallmark Channel reality competition Finding Mr. Christmas, which started out with ten aspiring male actors competing to become the next leading man for the network, closes out its second season tomorrow night when the top three contestants, Craig Geoghan, Rustin Cole Sailors, and Angel Garet, take part in their final star quality challenge. During the season finale, the three will film a three-part scene in three different locations that ends in a kiss. Acting in a scene alongside not only Ellen Krakow, but host Jonathan Bennett, judge Melissa Peterson, and actor Kristoffer Polaha as well, the finalists will see if they have what it takes to win it all.
When season three of Blue Lights starts, response officers Grace (Sian Brooke), Annie (Katherine Devlin), and Tommy (Nathan Braniff) are now two years into their jobs when they are pulled into a major drugs and trafficking case across Belfast. It becomes personal for Grace when she realizes that vulnerable teenager and drug runner Lindsay Singleton (Aoife Hughes) is the same girl she once tried to save in her social worker days. Meanwhile, Stevie (Martin McCann)’s promotion to sergeant changes the dynamic between them, leaving him torn between backing her instincts and enforcing the rules from his new position.
Blending historical fiction with an offbeat murder mystery during the Gilded Age, The Artist opens with the death of industrialist Norman Henry (Mandy Patinkin) and then rewinds to examine how a week-long gathering at his estate where the invited guests are prominent, influential people of the time, ended in murder. Among the guests is Danny Houston’s Edgar Degas, whose eyesight and career are fading.
The film Altered takes place in an alternate dystopian future where the world has turned to genetic modification as the path to survival and progress, leaving unmodified people, or “Specials,” like outcasts Leon (Tom Felton) and Chloe (Elizaveta Bugulova), branded as second-class citizens. From his workshop in the underground, Leon uses his mechanical skills to make devices that help the Specials to blend in among the genetically enhanced. When powerful politicians like Senator Frank Kessler (Richard Brake) escalate policies that endanger Specials everywhere, Leon and Chloe are pushed toward a dangerous mission that will force them to risk everything to fight for justice.
In Altered, Leon (Tom Felton) is one of the “Specials”, people who have not undergone genetic enhancements that now define status and opportunity in an alternate dystopian present, leaving him and others like him pushed to the edges of society. Working from the very bottom of the social order, he uses his mechanical skills to build devices that help other unmodified people like himself to survive and blend in among the genetically privileged. When new crackdowns threaten to erase what little freedom Specials still have, Leon, along with Chloe (Elizaveta Bugulova), a teen he took in after her parents died, are pulled into a fight against the oppressive system that forces them to risk everything.