Star Trek

Eh. I don't see why arguing should be a bad thing. Half the franchise is people arguing about ideas. Philosophies, scientific theories, battle strategies, trade agreements. Obviously all this is hypothetical, but the premise is still that it's a potential future, even if that requires the occasion retcon, so I don't see why discussing the speculative part of speculative fiction should be verboten.

But as far as Trek goes, I am a Niner first and foremost. I don't think that the Federation is perfect, and I'm not sure it's even attainable, let alone within the next 130 years. But I have to allow that stranger things have happened. I don't think anybody alive during the Industrial Revolution was expecting to harness the power of the atom or send a man to the moon. The right discovery can change a lot very quickly.

Complacency is a concern, a definite problem the Federation has. I'm just saying we can find other ways to motivate people. If we aren't good enough at doing that yet — frankly the Federation could stand to be a lot better at it — it's something we can work on. Hell, our computer and tablet technology outstripped any SF writer's predictions for what that could be going on 15 years ago now. I fully admit I wasn't expecting 3D printing or VR to catch on even as much as they had. I'm pretty cynical, for the most part. But we've done better than I thought. So if we manage not to all die off in some humanocentric catastrophe, who knows what we'll do next.

Oh, and I keep forgetting to add this — hell yes to bringing back the Cardassians. Although lore-wise I'm not sure they'd be in any shape to revisit their past role? And maybe it would be better if they had learned and grown from the horrors of the Dominion War rather than falling back into their old ways? But I do think the allegory still works.

Edited by Unsung on Mar 11th 2021 at 10:04:11 AM

Patrick Stewart has the classiest Twitter.

According to Deadline, the upcoming Strange New Worlds series rounded up its additional series regulars for the crew, including:

• Babs Olusanmokun (Black Mirror, Dune (2021))
• Christina Chong (Tom and Jerry, Black Mirror)
• Celia Rose Gooding (Jagged Little Pill)
• Jess Bush (Skinford, Les Norton)
• Melissa Navia (Dietland, Billions)

Today's William Shatner's 90th birthday. Happy birthday, Captain.

Happy Birthday, Jim.

And today would've been Leonard Nimoy's 90th birthday. Interesting that he and Shatner were born 2 days apart.

There's an active crowdfund campaign for a retrospective Voyager documentary right now which is a companion to the Deep Space Nine-focused What We Left Behind, and their campaign has so much involvement from Enterprise people that it's clear that's where they intend to go next.

455 Films did For The Love of Spock, The Captains, William Shatner's Get A Life, and Chaos on the Bridge. I'm starting to get the feeling that they consider For The Love of Spock their TOS documentary and especially Chaos on the Bridge their TNG documentary, but I don't see them as part of the same series as What We Left Behind like To The Journey is trying to be. Those two are about tracing the narrative arc of the full length of production and the legacy of it with the cast, crew, and fans. They're love letters. For The Love of Spock is focused on Spock specifically, and even more specifically, Adam Nimoy's relationship with his father being Spock. Chaos on the Bridge is just under an hour and has a much smaller scope, specifically about the writers and producers fighting for control of the show in the first two seasons.

While a lot has been said about the legacy of TOS and TNG and what it means to the participants and fans while the later Berman spinoffs were always underappreciated next to them, I think the closest they have to what What We Left Behind was doing is the Trekkies series.

I've been going through Voyager again recently, with a new appreciation for it. It took a really long time to find its own way, but it had, and still has, so much potential as a premise, and with that cast, and what those writers managed to pull off in between the more mediocre and derivative episodes. I'm always curious to hear more about it. In a way more so than the more successful series, just because the ratio of What Could Have Been seems so high.

Star Trek: Picard season 2 teaser, and an old familiar "friend" is dropping by. Scheduled for 2022.

Video not available. Seems something happened.

Probably region-locked to the US. Someone will probably re-upload it.

Star Trek: Discovery teaser. Negative Space Wedgie incoming later this year.

One of the characters I thought Picard season 1 was most lacking in terms of "people Picard has unfinished business with". Not the one I was expecting though.

Uh. With such an emphasis on time in the Picard S2 trailer, I wonder if they are going to aim for time travel or alternate realities. With such a character around it would be easy.

Just hope they won't tie too much with Discovery. I had been content to stay clear of that series and would not like to be forced to watch it to appreciate what happens in Picard.

Edited by C105 on Apr 6th 2021 at 11:10:49 AM

Alas, it looks like this teaser is unavailable, too. Again, perhaps region-locked. :/

Gotta go onto star trek’s Twitter account for a non region locked one.

For those who can see it, here's the trailer for Lower Decks season 2, coming in August.

The Next Star Trek Movie Has a Stardate in 2023

I kinda think the Kelvin timeline as awhole maybe be phased out now permanently. The main universe has been the main focus now in everything.

The Kelvin timeline was only really created cause they couldn't use the prime timeline due to the whole Paramount/CBS split issue.

Now that that is settled we see a Kelvin universe person in Discovery and Klingon Kelvin weapons in Lower Decks.

Man I was a really big fan of the Kelvin timeline films, but I kind of glad this is it's own thing. If only because I feel like Beyond was a good ending point for that series.

Edited by Bullman on Apr 10th 2021 at 8:06:38 AM

The Kelvin Timeline was never really meant to be a full splintered universe, just a snapshot of re-envisioned characters with new actors. It's really no surprise that entirely new works (not just tie-in material) went back to the main timeline instead of continuing with the altered "anything can happen" canon, as things like destroying Vulcan really doesn't do much except as a shocking moment because across all of the shows and movies we've only really been to Vulcan a handful of times.

The main impact the Kelvin Timeline movies seems to have had was the destruction of Romulus.

I'm fine with that. I know some people wanted to see a story where the Romulan Star Empire was this major power at their height warring against the Federation, but like...we've seen the Federation at total war with both the Klingons (sort of) and the Dominion. Showing a total war with an enemy that makes a point of subterfuge would be super tricky to avoid just retreading ground. But fracturing the Star Empire means that more of the actual culture can be revealed, and I think Picard handled that part really well.

Romulans are second only to Klingons in terms of Star Trek villains. At nearly 45 years now there is not much to offer in an all-out Federation/Romulan war because of the wars and cold wars they've already had in canon. Picard picking up the aftermath of the destruction of Romulus and seeing what would happen in the implosion of a local superpower is a whole lot more interesting.

I guess it's not possible with how canon has progressed, but I'd have liked to have seen an actual reunification of Vulcans and Romulans. There'd surely be a ton of story potential there.