Scott Bakula is headed back to CBS in a new role, this time to lead an untitled detective drama now in early development. Mike Sussman will write the project and executive produce, and Bakula will also executive produce.
The project comes from Dean Devlin’s Electric Entertainment, and it puts Bakula on a different track from the one many fans had in mind. The character he is expected to play is described as quite a leap from the man he portrayed on NCIS: New Orleans, which means this is not a simple return to familiar territory even if it does reunite him with Sussman.
That reunion may be the hook for viewers who have followed Bakula’s television work for years, especially with Star Trek: Enterprise having marked its 25th anniversary on Sept. 26. But this is not the Star Trek follow-up some had hoped for, and Bakula and Sussman are not teaming up for a United series tied to Enterprise.
That gap matters because the new project arrives with almost everything still unwritten in public. No official production date has been revealed, and it is too early to guess a release window for the collaboration. For now, the clearest detail is the simplest one: Bakula is back in business at CBS, and the next chapter for him and Sussman is a detective drama, not a return to Enterprise.
For readers hoping for the other reunion, the answer is already clear. Star Trek: United appears to have virtually no chance of coming to fruition, while Bakula’s CBS project moves ahead as an early-stage procedural with no title, no date and no premiere window yet attached.
