‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Nominated For 5 Saturn Awards

The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films just announced their nominations for the 45th annual Saturn Awards—and the CBS All Access series Star Trek: Discovery picked up five. In addition, our adopted show The Orville picked up three. For the first year, the Saturn Awards will be available to view live via streaming.

Discovery Picks Up 5 Saturn Nominations

Just like it did for its first season, Star Trek: Discovery garnered five Saturn Award nominations this year. The Saturn Awards divides television nominations between broadcast/cable shows and streaming shows, with Discovery being one of the most highly nominated streaming shows this year, only trailing Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House, which picked up six. Discovery is nominated for Best Science Fiction, Action & Fantasy Series, which it won last year. Show star Sonequa Martin-Green was nominated for Best Actress, which she also won last year. For the second year in a row, Doug Jones was nominated for Best Supporting Actor and joining him this year are Wilson Cruz and Ethan Peck.

The following are the categories where Discovery has been nominated:

BEST STREAMING SCIENCE FICTION, ACTION, & FANTASY SERIES
Black Mirror    
The Expanse 
Lost in Space             
Good Omens 
Russian Doll   
Star Trek: Discovery
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan

BEST ACTRESS IN STREAMING PRESENTATION
Carla Gugino The Haunting of Hill House  
Sonequa Martin-Green Star Trek: Discovery 
Elizabeth Lail You  
Natasha Lyonne Russian Doll 
Molly Parker Lost in Space  
Krysten Ritter Marvel’s Jessica Jones 
Kiernan Shipka Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN STREAMING PRESENTATION
Wilson Cruz Star Trek: Discovery  
Michiel Huisman The Haunting of Hill House  
Timothy Hutton The Haunting of Hill House  
Doug Jones Star Trek: Discovery  
Ethan Peck Star Trek: Discovery  
Maxwell Jenkins Lost in Space  
Michael Sheen Good Omens  

Wilson Cruz picks up his first Saturn nomination

Orville Lands 3 Saturn Nominations

Fox’s The Orville – Seth MacFarlane’s homage to Star Trek: The Next Generation – picked up three nominations in the broadcast and cable television categories, with the same pattern as it did last year. The show was nominated for Best Science Fiction Television Series and both Seth MacFarlane and Adrianne Palicki were nominated for their leading roles.

The following are the categories where The Orville has been nominated:

BEST SCIENCE FICTION TELEVISION SERIES
The 100   
Counterpart  
Doctor Who 
Krypton  
Manifest  
The Orville  
Roswell, New Mexico 
Westworld   

BEST ACTOR ON A TELEVISION SERIES
Grant Gustin The Flash 
Kit Harington Game of Thrones  
Sam Heughan Outlander  
Andrew Lincoln The Walking Dead  
Seth MacFarlane The Orville  
Bill Pullman The Sinner 
Jeffrey Wright Westworld  

BEST ACTRESS ON A TELEVISION SERIES
Caitriona Balfe Outlander  
Melissa Benoist Supergirl  
Emilia Clarke Game of Thrones  
Sandra Oh Killing Eve    
Adrianne Palicki The Orville   
Candice Patton The Flash  
Jodie Whittaker Doctor Who  

The Orville and its two leads pick up nominations for the 2019 Saturn Awards

Saturns to be streamed

The 45th annual Saturn Awards will take place on Friday, September 13, 2019, at the historic Avalon Theater in Hollywood, California. The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films has also announced a new multi-year partnership deal with veteran television producer Justin W. Hochberg as part of a new revitalization of the Saturn Awards and for the first time since the one-time TV airing in 1978, it will be available to global fans via a streaming partner to be announced shortly.

The reinvigoration of The Saturn Awards also includes the creation of an Awards Advisory Board with members of the TV, film, animation and fan community. The board’s role will be to help produce the annual presentation and ensure it rigorously honors fans and fan culture. Board members that have joined the advisory board thus far include writer/producer Roberto Orci (Star Trek, Transformers 1-3), Christina Steinberg, producer of the Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, filmmaker Dean Devlin (Independence Day), producer Roy Lee (It, Bates Motel), Director Robert Rodriquez (Alita: Battle Angel, Cannes winner Sin City) and Oscar-winning director Peter Ramsey (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) among others.

Orci is well known to Star Trek fans and regular readers of TrekMovie. “I’ve been a fan of the Saturns my entire career,” says Orci. “I cannot wait to roll up my sleeves to help celebrate pop culture’s most impactful storytellers. For every geek, cosplayer, nerd, and underdog, this one is for us.”

Roberto Orci and Justin W. Hochberg have joined the Saturn Awards team to help produce its first live show stream

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It will be nice to be able to watch the Saturns. I caught the TV airing as a kid. I somehow was able to commander the big TV (out of two) to watch the whole thing.

Good news, certainly! I have grown very very tired of people who choose to criticize Discovery for what it isn’t, rather than offer constructive commentary, positive, negative, or indifferent, on what it is doing: making adjustments to how a Star Trek story can be told to today’s audience, of which we all are a part.

How have the adjustments ultimately improved the quality of a story told within the star trek?

I would say the story, the most important aspect, has suffered hugely at the expense of the adjustments. By adjustments I assume we’re talking about the seralised nature, the increased budget, the extended action sequences, the larger sets, and the more dramatic nature of the show and heightened melodrama?

None of that has improved the quality of story-telling. Maybe for a younger generation, who perceive realism in a different way, it comes across more real and easier to engage with (no doubt if I could travel back in time and watch Burbage performing Shakespeare it would look ridiculous to me, but very real to the audience at the time) but the story telling hasn’t improved. Season 2 doesn’t make any sense. At least Season 1 had a story that you could follow.

How exactly does Season 2 not make any sense?

Hey Chuck, I’d say that on balance much of the commentary here on TrekMovie is intended to be constructive.

Most of us were very positive towards the adjustments that took place heading into S2.

But I don’t think that anyone but the most uncritical fan would say that S2 was not marred by the turnover in the writers room. Even Discovery’s most favourable professional critics have pointed out the major plot discontinuities in S2.

So, Discovery has struggled in its first two seasons…but not necessarily more than did TNG. That said, some of those ‘adjustments for today’s audience’ make Discovery more vulnerable to behind-the-scenes problems than earlier series.

I’m glad to see Discovery get the nod of nominations for its strengths. Having seen some of the other series, that were much stronger on plot and character coherence/continuity, I don’t expect it to win as a series.

I could see a supporting actor win based on specific episodes. As much as SMG did a great job with what she was given, the emotionally all-over-the-place arc and drawn out melodramatic scenes in the midst of intense action don’t seem like the kind of scripts to attract votes for best female actor.

Wow TG47, its amazing how much we think a like. You said it all for me.

And I was someone who really ended up hating a lot of season 1 BUT still went in very excited about season 2. And its not even a contest that I think season 2 was a much better production than season 1 as a whole, but the show still suffered from some pretty ludicrous writing by the end. I can’t even follow how the time travel worked on this season, it was really confusing and convoluted. That’s saying a lot, even for Star Trek lol. But as you said it probably isn’t any worse than most second season Star Trek shows either and it definitely had a lot of great gems which I have a feeling people will look back on and still consider them classic episodes decades from now like New Eden and If Memory Serves.

But that is the problem with the serialized nature of shows. If you don’t like how the story as a whole goes down, it can mar the rest of the season for you even if you do like a lot of it. And I also agree, I don’t see it winning either. Probably some of the actor’s categories it will win though as it did last season. I really think the cast does a great job as a whole and its nice to see Ethan Peck nominated. That could’ve been a disaster lol. But for many its still the writing as a whole that is the problem with the show even if everything else at least looks great.

I started off hopeful about season 2, and remained so for the first few episodes – especially New Eden – but then the poor, overly-melodramatic writing and like you said, convoluted story lost me and I stopped watching, with no regrets. I’m tuning in for Season 3 only because they’re finally moving forward in the timeline and hopefully the writers room will get a makeover.

I agree that I think the writers room needs to be some 95% different for season 3 to have a decent chance at improving.

I think people have offered plenty of constructive criticism on the show’s shortcomings (for me it always comes back to the writing and not maintaining coherence for long story arcs); problem is some people (and I don’t mean you) simply cannot tolerate any criticism or disagreement from their own opinions.

Seth MacFarlane had received a Best Actor nomination? Seth MacFarlane? Seriously?

Yeah… That really made my head spin. I guess that goes to show you the lack of higher quality actors in the genre but even still… Seth is at best an adequate actor. That’s the nicest thing I can say about him. If the show were move comedic I might buy it but they went for serious drama this year. No way does he exude that.

Nothing about that show should be nominated. It’s a thoroughly average series. But the emmy’s tend to be about “name” and he has a name, so Orville gets some nods.

These are the Saturns. Perhaps they rely on name recognition too? That’s the only way top explain Seth being on any top acting list.

Ah you’re right. But I stand by my statement. It deserves no recognition.

That nomination will make his ego explode.

Finally Star Trek Discovery is getting the recognition it truly deserves, i liked the original series and all the ones that came after it but Discovery took it forward in leaps and bounds giving new life to star trek in general. its ability to follow Gene Roddenberry’s dream to boldly go where no one has gone before certainly stands out in this new series by miles!
well done to everyone involved in creating Discovery i salute you all on a job well done.

Still weird that they separate streaming from TV. For an awards series focused on sci-fi (and one that is streaming!) they’d be smart to be ahead of the curve and just integrate them.

Sometimes I think they just make up categories so they can include as much genre stuff as possible or pidgeon-hole specific titles into categories that aren’t necessarily a good fit. I’m not sure if it was the Saturns or some other awards show that gave Iron Man a best science fiction movie award after The Dark Knight won best comic book adaptation.

It’s not weird at all. Streaming shows tend to have a tremendous production advantage over their network counterparts with longer seasons. In fact, I think it ought to be broken down by how many episodes are produced. Not just streaming vs broadcast/cable. In this sense, they are already ahead of the curve. At least when compared with the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences they are.

I’m not sure I agree with any of that.

Very disappointed Anson Mount did not get a nomination. I think that he was the entire key to anything good in Season 2.

Same here; he was by far the best thing in S2 for me and his omission in any best actor category (I think his role was large enough to go beyond a supporting cast member) just sticks out like a sore thumb.

It is odd to see Green get the nom and not Mount.

I find the nominations to be pretty odd here.

Good luck to all! Certainly Martin-Green and Peck both deserve a win and praise for their outstanding work this season. Separately, but most certainly for the work they did together.