After years of speculation, it now finally seems to be official: the next Star Trek series will launch on UPN in Fall 2001, just over half a year from now.

According to Rick Ellis, a media analyst at financial network On24, Viacom announced this at a conference with financial analysts yesterday, discussing their fourth-quarter earnings. "They did officially say, yes, there was going to be a next Star Trek series in the fall," said Ellis. "They were a little vague on what it is going to be, but one of the things that came out in the press conference this morning was that there was going to be a next Star Trek."

In addition to Star Trek, the press conference also dealt with UPN, the network that will be carrying Series V. According to Ellis, "they were generally happy about [UPN]. They seemed to think it was going to be around for a while. There were some questions about it, but it looks like they've managed to secure enough deals [that] UPN is going to be around for a couple more years."

The fact that Viacom has now officially confirmed that Series V will debut in Fall gives credence to recent rumours that suggested Paramount was scheduled to begin pre-production in just a couple of weeks. Rick Berman himself also recently said that he thought production on the pilot would begin in March and April, though he did note that the possibility of writers' and actors' strikes might delay the start of the next series, which of course is still a danger.

Even if there are strikes, though, it seems Viacom is at least committed to the next series, and it seems fairly certain now UPN will be the network to carry it whenever it comes out next season.

What isn't certain yet is what the series will deal with, and indeed in most recent interviews Rick Berman refused to give out any information on the actual concept and denied it had already made it to the internet. However, today SFX reported the following info:

The new series, which SFX Network learned this week will be added to the Paramount payroll on February 19, has already had preliminary pre-production work carried out. SFX Network understands, from our Trek spy sources, that the new series will indeed be set in the early days of the Federation - a concept which forms the provisional payroll title for the show within Paramount.

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