The Star Trek Journal Episode 8: Star Trek Fandom - Then and Now

 Greetings fellow Trekkies! I know it's been a while since I posted here, but I haven't had much to talk about and I didn't want to review season 3 of Strange New Worlds episode by episode anymore as I was increasingly having less to talk about as each episode came out. But, we're now less than 24 hours away from the beginning of a new Star Trek odyssey with the debut of the first two episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy and I thought I'd talk about the Star Trek fandom, what I've read concerning their thoughts in 1987 when Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted, and how it compares to Starfleet Academy and the spoiler free reviews I've seen of the show. Engage!

In the '70s and '80s there was a series of books called The Best of Trek, which was filled with articles and reviews for various Star Trek projects out at the time, beginning with The Motion Picture in 1979. Trek was a Fanzine published by fans of the franchise, and these books compiled articles and reviews that had to be left out of the fanzine proper, or ones that had been published in the periodical and were good enough to highlight in a book. In book #14, there are several pieces either reviewing the first several episodes of TNG, comparing it to TOS, or speculating on where the series could take Star Trek in the future. 

Back when TNG premiered in 1987, there was a lot of doubt and trepidation surrounding the premiere. Doubt because nobody knew if it was actually going to happen as Star Trek: Phase II was supposed to premiere with the episode, "In Thy Image" ten years earlier, but it never materialized. Instead, "In Thy Image" was turned into Star Trek: The Motion Picture and released two years later. Trepidation because nobody knew what Star Trek would look like without Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the rest of the crew of the Enterprise. Afterall, fans were used to those characters as they'd been around for 20 years at the time Paramount announced in 1986 that a new Star Trek series was in development and would debut in 1987 with a new Enterprise and a new crew. 

Today, we await the debut of a new Star Trek series. Broadcast television barely exists, yet the concept of television still exists, and just like fans did in 1987 when TNG's premiere approached, we wait with abated breath for the first truly new Star Trek series to debut since Enterprise began airing in 2001. Yes, we've had other Star Trek shows since then with Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds, but they've all been linked to the Star Trek shows of the past. And while Starfleet Academy has some connections to the past, most notably Robert Picardo reprising his role as The Doctor, the Emergency Medical Holographic program first introduced in Star Trek: Voyager, Starfleet Academy is moving forward, which Star Trek should've been doing all along, instead of looking back as much as it has in the past 25 years. 

And like the writers of The Best of Trek in 1987-1988, we have fans such as Jessie Gender and Sean Ferrick (of the website and YouTube channel, TrekCulture) keeping the rest of us informed and updated on what the show is like and assuring us that we will like it. 

I would like to quote Walter Irwin from his review of Star Trek: The Next Generation in The Best of Trek #14: "Yes, my friends, Star Trek: The Next Generation is real Star Trek. And once again, we will have to take the good with the bad. Gene Roddenberry and his wonderful staff, along with Paramount Television, have presented us with a wonderful and-to be honest-long overdue gift. But, as always, we are the bottom line: it is up to us to keep the show alive, to make it so much more than even Roddenberry imagines it could be, to make it part of our fandom, our universe, our lives."

Walter Irwin, The Best of Trek Book #14, page 191, November, 1988 (originally written in September, 1987).

In their reviews of the first six episodes of Starfleet Academy both Jessie and Sean said something similar, reminding those of us who are Star Trek fans, to support the new show in the way fans supported Star Trek: The Next Generation back when it aired its first season during the 1987-1988 Television season. In fact, if you changed a few sentences in Walter Irwin's quote, he easily could've been talking about Starfleet Academy rather than The Next Generation.

That goes to show that it doesn't matter what decade you're in, Star Trek fans, true Star Trek fans, remain the same. They ask the same questions, and they hope for the same things to be in every Star Trek show. Not because they want every Star Trek show to be the same, but they've grown accustomed to the franchise providing social commentary through Science Fiction allegory, therefore it has become a staple of Star Trek's storytelling, regardless of who the writers are. 

Personally, I am very excited for Starfleet Academy. It's something that I feel should've been on TV a long time ago. Particularly in the 2000s when teen dramas such as Smallville, Degrassi: The Next Generation, One Tree Hill, and The O.C. were extremely popular and Sci-Fi shows such as Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe, and Doctor Who were airing. I was a teenager in the early to mid 2000s and I would've loved a Star Trek show like Starfleet Academy when I was 15 or 16 years old. Not that I didn't enjoy Star Trek: Enterprise, the Star Trek show that was airing at the time, but the lack of teenagers in a space setting at the time led me to look towards the teen dramas that I already mentioned as well as sitcoms like That '70s Show, and Malcolm in the Middle as those shows had the teenage characters I could identify with more than I could the 30 to 40 year olds that populated Star Trek at the time.

The one thing that I am looking for in this new iteration of Star Trek is that the characters are written in a way that doesn't feel like they're retreads. We have a Klingon, a Betazoid, and a Lanthanite as main characters in the new show. All three are species who have been represented in the main or recurring casts of the past. So I don't want Jay-Den Kraag to just be Worf again, I don't want Tarima Sadal to just be Deanna Troi again, and I don't want Nahla Ake to just be Pelia again. I want them to be different and distinct from those three previous characters. Which can be very hard to do on a series that's been around for as long as Star Trek has been.

I'll be reviewing the two episode debut sometime on Friday, but like I said, I am very excited for this new Star Trek show. I just hope it'll be something fresh that still feels like Star Trek.

That's all I have for you for today. I'll be back on Friday with my review of episodes 1 and 2 of Starfleet Academy. Until then, I'll talk to you all later. Live long and prosper.

"Hailing frequencies closed".

The Star Trek Journal Episode 7: Strange New Worlds Episode 5 Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I've had a pretty busy week this week, so I decided to take the week off from the blogs this week, except for this episode review. Today is a review of this week's episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, "Through the Lens of Time". I'm actually amazed that we're already halfway through the third season of SNW. Luckily, we know that we still have two seasons left of the show after this one, so I'm excited to see what the cast and crew have in store for us in those final two seasons. Let's get into the review shall we? Engage!

To be honest, I don't really know what to think about this episode and I really don't have much to say about it. It was okay for what it was, but I honestly feel like the characters were pushed aside for this episode. There were threads that intrigued me, particularly with the new dynamics between Christine and Korby, and La'An and Spock, but they were put aside in favour of the evil ancient species trope that was the focus of the episode.

I have a hard time watching Science Fiction that prefers to just focus on the Science Fiction elements and forgets about the characters. For example, in this season we got introduced to Ensign Dana Gamble, a medical officer, who was assigned to the Enterprise as a replacement for Nurse Chapel while she was away with Korby. He was introduced in "Wedding Bell Blues", but he just kinda popped in and out of the previous two episodes, and now he gets killed at the end of the episode, without us learning anything about him. Which is the biggest complaint I had about Airiam's death in "Project Daedalus" from season 2 of Discovery. The only difference is that they tried to give Airiam a backstory at the beginning of the episode that she died in, but it didn't prevent her death from feeling hollow. Even Tasha Yar's death in "Skin of Evil" from the first season of TNG felt less hollow than Gamble's death, and her's was a senseless, unnecessary, death.

I get that Gamble wasn't a main character, but even with guest characters and supporting characters, in order to feel something when they're killed off, the show's writers have to give the audience a reason to feel it when that character dies. If we hadn't spent years with Spock before he died in The Wrath of Khan, and hadn't seen his friendships with both Kirk and McCoy develop over the course of that time, his death at the end of the movie wouldn't've meant as much, if anything. I know that Goldsman and Myers greenlit the script for this episode, but they didn't write it themselves, and they didn't create the character of Gamble. Kirsten Beyer and David Reed did for "Wedding Bell Blues". But, I think the writers of "Shuttle to Kenfori" and "A Space Adventure Hour" did not do enough with the character to justify killing him off in this episode. There was nothing to it. It may have meant something to M'Benga, but Gamble wasn't in enough episodes to really flesh out his relationship with M'Benga.

I know, I'm being harsh on this episode and harping on this one thing, but between the fact that nothing else really happened in this episode, and the fact that I KNOW this show can do better with character development and earning character deaths, like with Hemmer back in season 1, this episode falls very short when it comes to its quality. Which is fine, since not every episode can be really good. But, even the worst episodes of SNW that aired in the first two seasons I found stuff to talk about. Even if I didn't have very much to say about them. Here, for me, there was nothing. 

Anyway, that's all I have to say about this episode. I'll be back next week with a lot more posts. I also have a less busy week next week, so I'll actually feel up for blogging. Until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Live long and prosper.

The Star Trek Journal Episode 6: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3, Episode 4 Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing well. Today at the Star Trek Journal I'm going to be reviewing this week's episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, entitled, "A Space Adventure Hour". There will be spoilers because I can't talk about this episode without them. So, if you're a Star Trek fan who is watching SNW week to week, and you haven't watched this week's episode before reading my review. Engage!

"A Space Adventure Hour" is very much a nod to the holodeck episodes of TNG, DS9, and Voyager. Specifically the holodeck malfunction episodes that all three shows did a few times each in the late '80s and the '90s. And I was here for it. I loved this episode.

Making this a La'An focused episode was awesome. In seasons 1 and 2, La'An focused episodes were very angst ridden and super dramatic, because they involved the Gorn or aspects of her past. So it was fun to have a fun little episode that took place in the holodeck for a change. Christina Chong did such a wonderful job playing a lighter, less burden heavy version of La'An. Her chemistry with Ethan Peck was fantastic. More on that in a bit.

So La'An was ordered by Starfleet Command to test the holodeck to see if Starfleet could eventually incorporate the system into every starship in the fleet. So she tested it with the help of Spock and Scotty and decided to use the Amelia Moon mystery novels as the program to test the new system with. Amelia Moon is like Dixon Hill, Sherlock Holmes, and Bashir's secret agent persona from "Our Man Bashir". The story she created was an original, similar to how Data and Pulaski created an original Holmes mystery for Data to solve in "Elementary, Dear Data", which resulted in the creation of Professor Moriarty. In this case, it created a Spock hologram as the murderer, because La'An is familiar with Spock and she would never suspect him as the murderer.

The story that La'An participates in is about a Sci-Fi television series in the 1960s called The Last Frontier, which is basically the original Star Trek series, and the SNW cast plays the actors and creator/producer of the in universe series. And while Anson Mount plays the producer/creator, TK Bellows, the Gene Roddenberry analogue, he actually looks more like legendary Sci-Fi author, Isaac Asimov, the way he looked in the '60s. Asimov was huge fan of Star Trek and defended it immensely during the time it was on the air. So, to have him honoured in an episode of Star Trek is fitting. And it makes sense for SNW in particular because Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers are huge Star Trek fans. Though neither of them wrote this episode, because they're the showrunners for the series, they were involved in developing the story for this episode, and are pretty much in charge of the easter eggs found in SNW.

Now, to the thing I REALLY want to talk about in this episode. Spock and La'An. In "Wedding Bell Blues" La'An was teaching Spock how to dance so he could surprise Chapel with his new ability upon her return to the Enterprise following her fellowship with Korby. But, obviously, she came back with Korby as her new boyfriend, which led into that episode's shenanigans. Even still, they dance together again during the Federation Day celebration at the end of the episode and the whole time I was thinking, "They aren't gonna have Spock and La'An be in a romantic relationship with each other are they? Nah, they couldn't be! Could they?". So when they kissed at the end of this episode I was like, "I was right!". I think this will be an interesting storyline if done correctly.

The thing about any romantic relationship that the writers put Spock into in this show is that none of them can last since Spock needs to be back with T'Pring by the time the events of "Amok Time" occur, so that she can break up with him to be with Stonn. Beyond that though, I was surprised the writers put them together so fast, given it's only been two episodes since they danced together. They took a season and a half to get Spock and Chapel together and they only lasted for four episodes before she dumped him extremely publicly in "Subspace Rhapsody". So maybe they intend Spock and La'An to have a lasting relationship that ends for some reason. As long as that reason isn't La'An's death, I could be all for it. I do not see Spock or La'An going for a casual relationship or a one night stand, so if the writers are putting them together romantically, then they're putting them together for the long haul. We'll see what happens.

Overall, this was a fun episode. I loved the murder mystery. It felt like a single episode mystery from Only Murders in the Building. I also loved the fact that the sound effects people used the original TOS sound effects for scenes depicting The Last Frontier and the fact they used the original TOS title font for the opening and closing credits. 

I think that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back next week with more posts. Until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Live long and prosper.

The Star Trek Journal Episode 5: Starfleet Academy and Khan teasers, and the State of Star Trek in 2025

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a hot and humid Monday. This weekend was San Diego Comic-Con, THE comic book and pop culture convention of the year. Over the weekend we got news from the Star Trek Universe, including two teasers, and that's what I wanna talk about today, along with the state of Star Trek in this year. Engage!

When Star Trek: Starfleet Academy was first announced back in 2018, I was really excited because Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage were going to be the showrunners. Having been a big fan of The O.C. in the 2000s and Marvel's Runaways in the 2010s, I knew that any teen drama Star Trek series would be in good hands with them in charge. However, when it was announced in 2023 that Schwartz and Savage had moved on and Starfleet Academy would have Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau as showrunners instead, I was much more on the fence. I'm not against Kurtzman as the showrunner of a Star Trek show. However teen dramas, and shows involving a main cast of teenage characters in general, are very hard to do and there have been very few of them in the last twenty years that have actually been good. And I didn't know if Kurtzman would be able to manage that challenge.

Starfleet Academy has actually been the target for a Star Trek series as far back as 1986, when Paramount was looking to bring Star Trek back to television prior to the release of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. According to various books and magazine articles (they're all mentioned in the "Undeveloped Star Trek Projects" article on Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki), before Gene Roddenberry was brought in to do the show that became TNG, one show that was in development was a show set at Starfleet Academy, and another, by Sam and Greg Strangis, was to have a group of cadets running a new Starship Enterprise. Harve Bennett who produced four Star Trek films that came out between 1982 and 1989, had also planned to do a movie for the 25th anniversary of the franchise that would have Kirk and the original crew at Starfleet Academy with a wraparound that would have Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley return as Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. That eventually became Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, without Bennett.

There have also been numerous episodes, books, and comics that were set at Starfleet Academy. Not to mention we had Starfleet cadets on the Enterprise in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. So the idea of a Starfleet Academy focused story has been around for close to forty-five years now.

I started to get excited for this new show when it was announced that Mary Wiseman would be appearing as Tilly, Tig Notaro would be part of the main cast as Jett Reno, and Robert Picardo would be reprising his role as the Doctor from Voyager. That was the hook for me since I'm such a huge fan of Star Trek: Voyager and I loved Reno and Tilly on Discovery. 

Having said that though, after watching the teaser that we got over the weekend, I'm excited for the show because of its premise. The basic premise is that Starfleet is returning the academy to its traditional campus on Earth for the first time in 125 years and the cast of cadets we'll be introduced to will be the first to grace the hallowed grounds of Starfleet Academy. The grounds occupied by legends such as James T. Kirk, Kathryn Janeway, Benjamin Sisko, Christopher Pike and their crews. So I am really excited to see what possibilities the show will present us. Not to mention tons of easter eggs and return of species such as a Jem'Hadar, who is actually a female that is a Klingon-Jem'Hadar hybrid, as well as a Betazoid woman. Other than an appearance in the Lower Decks episode, "Empathological Fallacies", we haven't seen a Betazoid (that wasn't Deanna Troi or her and Riker's daughter, Kestra) in Star Trek since Ensign Jurot in "Counterpoint" from Voyager's fifth season, so it'll be interesting to see the Betazoids in the 32nd Century finally, as well as a Klingon, as we're gonna have a Klingon cadet.

I'm really excited for Starfleet Academy and I'm hoping it doesn't fall prey to the tropes and flaws of modern teen dramas. Or if it does, it's at the very least entertaining as it does so.

Now, Star Trek: Khan is a scripted podcast that will show how Khan and his followers survived on Ceti Alpha V between "Space Seed" and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. I've gone on record before that I am not a fan of Khan and feel that he is an extremely overrated villain. That's still true today. However, I'm interested in this show because of its framing story, which has a journalist or historian trying to piece together Khan's time on Ceti Alpha V, following the events of Star Trek VI, with George Takei reprising his role as Captain Hikaru Sulu, and Tim Russ reprising his role as Tuvok. This is the younger, Ensign Tuvok though that served under Sulu onboard the Excelsior as was revealed in the Voyager episode, "Flashback" from the third season. So that's the part I'm intrigued by rather than Khan's story itself.

Personally, I feel that we don't need to know how Khan and his crew survived on Ceti Alpha V. It really doesn't matter because all that actually matters is that he survived long enough to be in The Wrath of Khan. But, if it has to be told, I'm glad it's being done as a podcast and it's being done the way it's being done, with the framing story. This was supposed to be a miniseries on Paramount+ but due to unknown circumstances, it was turned into a podcast. And this was long before Section 31 had come out, so I can't even begin to guess as to the reasons why this series was turned into Star Trek's first audio drama like the ones produced for Doctor Who. Which is interesting.

Before I go, I'd like to talk about the state of Star Trek as a whole in the year 2025. I've seen people online comparing the state of Star Trek today to the state of Star Trek when Enterprise ended back in 2005. There are some similarities. For example, as I talked about in the very first post on this blog, Star Trek Communicator ended publication shortly before Enterprise finished airing and the most recent Star Trek magazine, Star Trek Explorer, ended publication a few months ago, just after Lower Decks finished airing. Another example is that Rick Berman's contract with Paramount for Star Trek was ending in 2006, about a year after the Enterprise finale, and the end of Alex Kurtzman's contract with Paramount for Star Trek is ending next year, in 2026. However that's where the similarities end.

While there aren't as many Star Trek shows on the air this year as there have been in the last five years with Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, and Prodigy having all finished production and finished airing, we still have Strange New Worlds for two and a half seasons, Starfleet Academy premiering early next year, and the potential for more Star Trek shows and movies is present as well. Also, the big reason we haven't heard about anything more for any future Star Trek shows or movies is that the acquisition of Paramount Global by Skydance Media hadn't been approved yet, so I think the people at Star Trek waited to announce further projects until that had been finalized and approved. According to Wikipedia, the merger is expected to close next week on August 7th. 

We still have Tawny Newsome's Star Trek workplace sitcom supposedly still in development, though, again, because of the merger, we haven't heard anything official from Paramount about that show. And even though Strange New Worlds is ending, we still have Starfleet Academy on the air. Back in 2005 there were no Star Trek projects on the horizon as Enterprise had been canceled, and Paramount had also canceled Berman's plans for an 11th Star Trek feature film. The only real merger that was happening back then was between UPN and The WB in 2006, which dissolved both networks, leaving The CW in their wake. And being that any shows that had been on UPN prior to the merger, and had moved over to The CW for the 2006-2007 television season, were canceled by the end of that season, even if UPN hadn't canceled Enterprise in 2005, I doubt it would've lasted more than the five seasons it would've had if UPN hadn't canceled it when it did.

So Star Trek is in a very different place in 2025 than it was twenty years ago. I feel it's also in a much stronger place today than it was in 2005. Star Trek has always had low viewership since its inception back in 1966. In fact, it's never surpassed any of the most popular shows in the '90s. However, Star Trek fans have always been super passionate about their love for the franchise. 

The fans are who have kept Star Trek alive for almost 59 years at this point. Even when the general audience hasn't supported the various TV shows and movies. In the '70s we wrote fan fiction, published fanzines, wrote technical manuals and compendiums about the original series. In the '80s we bought the novels and comics, and wondered how Spock might return from the dead in Star Trek III. In the '90s we watched TNG, DS9, and Voyager as they aired new episodes every week, watched the reruns of TOS multiple times, AND bought all the shows on VHS, even if we didn't get every single episode. In the 2000s we bought all the shows on DVD, watched Enterprise every week, and continued to buy the novels. And you know why? Because Star Trek fans, true Star Trek fans, love Star Trek in all of its incarnations. 

Star Trek was never the highest rated show on TV. It was never the highest grossing movies of all time. We never cared though, because it was Star Trek. Whether a bald black man was blackmailing criminals to insure that the Romulans joined the war with the Dominion on the side of the Federation and Klingons, or a bald white dude was giving long speeches to his crew on the virtues of the Prime Directive, or a woman commanded a ship lost in the Delta Quadrant, or a Starfleet legend blew up his equally legendary ship to prevent the Klingons from capturing it, and because those same Klingons had just killed his son five minutes earlier. It was still Star Trek regardless. 

Because of all of that, Star Trek will never truly die. Oh sure, it might go off the air for 12 to 17 years at a time, but it will never truly go away. The classic shows are still airing in reruns on broadcast television. They're all available on DVD and most of them are available on Blu-ray. We have hundreds of novels, comics, and video games. And while new fans aren't going to come from the general audience very often, they will, and have, come from the families who watched the shows together when they aired on TV, whether it was the '60s, the '80s, the '90s, the 2000s, or present day. They come from children being introduced to Star Trek through their parents, as I was. They might even come from the children who watched Nickelodeon one day and discovered Prodigy, even if their parents aren't Star Trek fans. 

Star Trek is about hope, and the belief that Humanity will grow and evolve beyond the prejudice, hate, and greed that we experience in everyday life. It's about the fans who watch the show and say, "I want to make a difference for the better in this world I live in". It's about the people whose lives were changed by Star Trek. And, it's about that little boy who got to visit the set of TNG in January, 1993, as they filmed the sixth season episode, "Lessons", and the day of joy it brought him and his parents, at a time when they faced so much uncertainty. For that day that little boy could forget that he had disabilities as he got out of his wheelchair and sat in the captain's chair on the Bridge of his favourite starship (even though it was just a set from a TV show), pretend to fire phasers and photon torpedoes from Worf's tactical station, and pretend to set a course for the nearest starbase, maximum warp, because Captain Picard ordered him to, and be transported to a possible future where his disabilities wouldn't be so limiting. 

Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back later this week for my next episode review for season 3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and then I'll also be over either on Josh's Geek Cave or The Star Wars Journal for another post on one or the other. Until then, have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Live long and prosper!

The Star Trek Journal Episode 4: Strange New Worlds Season 3, Episode 3 Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? Today I'm doing a spoilerish look at this week's episode of Strange New Worlds, "Shuttle to Kenfori". I say spoilerish because I'm not going to talk about major spoilers but there are some callbacks to previous Star Trek episodes and movies that I want to talk about in this post. So, let's get into it.

When Captain Batel's condition worsens following the events of "Hegemony, Part II" Pike and M'Benga must take a shuttle down to a planet that is in a system in dispute between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, but isn't owned by either due to treaties signed following the Klingon War, to get the chimera blossom, a rare plant that can form the basis of a therapy for Batel. Knowing that Starfleet Command would never authorize a mission, Pike and M'Benga covertly go down to the planet. But, they discover Zombies on the planet as well as the daughter of the late Klingon ambassador, Dak'Rah, who had been killed by M'Benga during his visit to the Enterprise in "Under the Cloak of War" last season. There's also a subplot concerning Ortegas left over from the end of "Wedding Bell Blues" last week.

Aside from Dak'Rah being mentioned again, his daughter, Bytha, mentions that due to Dak'Rah, between his war crimes and subsequent defection to the Federation, his house, the House of Ra'Ul, faced discommendation, something we haven't heard about since the DS9 episode, "The House of Quark". Even when Worf was called a traitor to the Empire by Gowron in "Way of the Warrior", it seemed different from his discommendation in "Sins of the Father". And because we didn't have a Klingon main character in Enterprise or any of the modern shows, discommendation hasn't been mentioned in 30 years. The other callback was the Klingons used a Viridium tracker, which was a device used to track ships and beings. One was given to Jurati in season 1 of Star Trek: Picard. It was similar to the Viridium patch that Spock placed on Kirk in Star Trek VI.

I liked this episode. It wasn't as good as last week's episodes, but still good. I enjoyed the character stuff with M'Benga and Pike, Pike and Batel, Ortegas and Una, and Bytha and M'Benga. However, I felt the Zombies were completely unnecessary. Mainly because the episode wasn't focused on discovering what had happened on Kenfori and the Zombies didn't make for a formidable enemy the way they've done in other shows and movies I've seen that they've been used in. But all the character stuff was great this week. Overall though, it was a good episode.

Alright my friends, that's it for me for this week. I'll be back next week with lots of cool posts on all three of my blogs. So until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Live long and prosper.

The Star Trek Journal Episode 3: Strange New Worlds Season 3, Episodes 1 and 2 Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing well for a Saturday. Today I'm here to review the first two episodes of the third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Unlike my Strange New Worlds episode reviews over on Josh's Geek Cave, these reviews won't have major spoilers. But, I do want to talk about the overall details. Engage!

"Hegemony, Part II" opens right where the season 2 finale ended, however, before the episode opens, we get, for the first time in at least twenty years, the classic "Last time on Star Trek [insert name here]" recap, which ends with, "And now, the conclusion". Now, this was how two part episodes, be it season finales/season premieres or random two part episodes in the middle of a season would open the second part with during The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, and if I remember correctly, they also opened two part episodes of Enterprise with in the early 2000s. Obviously for Strange New Worlds Anson Mount does that voiceover since we don't have Majel Barrett around anymore to do it, but to hear those words again when modern shows have recaps at the beginning of every episode with their own casts taking turns to do the voiceover, was a welcome blast from the past.

The episode itself was awesome. It did such a good job at maintaining the storyline started in the season 2 finale, which is not something many shows do these days. Mostly because most shows don't have cliffhangers at the end of a season these days, and the ones that do, use it as a hook for the cliffhanger at the end of the season, and then when the new season debuts, they abandon that storyline in favour of starting the storyline for the new season. But because Strange New Worlds is mainly an episodic show similar to the Star Trek shows of the '60s, '80s, and '90s, it's able to bring back the trappings of those older shows, particularly the ones from the shows made from 1987 to 2001, while also maintaining the feel of a streaming show made in the 2020s. That's one of the things I love about Strange New Worlds. It looks like a modern TV show, but it feels like a show from the '80s or '90s, with a little bit of '60s thrown in for good measure. 

So, the Enterprise crew is in a very tough situation with the Gorn, between Captain Marie Batel being infested with Gorn eggs, and the away team consisting of Lieutenant La'an Noonien-Singh, Lieutenant Erica Ortegas, Doctor Joseph M'Benga, and Lieutenant junior grade George Samual Kirk having been captured by the Gorn on Parnassus Beta, along with the colonists who survived on the planet following the Gorn's initial attack at the beginning of "Hegemony, Part I" last season. That's where we are when we return to the crew at the beginning of the episode.

Without spoiling the details, the ship makes it out of the situation, badly damaged, but intact, with the crew more or less the same. Unlike Discovery, who probably would've killed off one or crew members, Strange New Worlds kept everyone alive. Which is surprising as I thought they were going to kill off Batel since Melanie Scrofano, is the lead on the new Science Fiction series on SyFy Channel and CTV Sci-Fi Channel, Revival. But, I guess with the current model of television production for streaming services being a season of a show is filmed in its entirety before the first episode ever airs, Melanie is able to appear in Star Trek and play the lead in Revival as well. Which is great, because I think Batel will be appearing a lot more this season than she did in the first two seasons since she and Pike are getting pretty serious. 

Having said that though, I do think they'll kill her off at some point before the series finale at the end of season 5. Just because she's a character original to this show, and Pike ends up in a Starbase medical facility until Spock takes him back to Talos IV in "The Menagerie, Part II" in season 1 of the original series. At the very least she and Pike will break up at some point before the end of the series in season 5.

Now with episode 2, "Wedding Bell Blues", we're immediately thrown into cosmic entity hijinks and we meet Roger Korby for the first time since we first met him in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?", all the way back in 1966, during the first season of the original series. We also meet an unnamed cosmic being and his father. Rhys Darby, who I'm unfamiliar with, plays this being, and John De Lancie voices his father, who remains in non-corporeal form. Now, this isn't a spoiler because every Star Trek fan who has ever seen the episode, "The Squire of Gothos", again from the first season of the original series, knows that the child-like cosmic being is Trelane, originally played by William Campbell, from that original series episode. Apparently, Akiva Goldsman confirmed it in an interview, most likely on the aftershow, The Ready Room, but they couldn't name him in the episode because of canon reasons. Especially since Spock and Uhura didn't know who Trelane was when they beamed down with Kirk in "The Squire of Gothos".

I've said this before, and I'll probably keep on saying this, but one of the reasons I love Strange New Worlds so much is because it's not afraid to be silly and pure escapism, without losing the morals and values that fans are drawn to the franchise for. As much as I enjoyed season 1 and season 5 of Lower Decks, my biggest problem with it is that as a series that is primarily a comedy, it does stuff that require traditional two dimensional animation to make them believable to the audience watching the show, and because of that doesn't work in Star Trek canon otherwise, like the character of Counselor Migleemo, a member of the bird-like Klowahkan race. Don't worry, I'll talk more about Lower Decks in a future blog post.

Overall though, I had so much fun watching the two episode premiere of season 3 of Strange New Worlds. After two years it was great to be back on the Enterprise with Pike, Una, Uhura, Spock, Ortegas, La'an, Pelia, M'Benga, and Chapel.

That's going to be it for me for this week. Since Strange New Worlds appears on On Demand on cable on Friday mornings, I've decided to shift my Star Wars Journal and Star Trek Journal posts, so that The Star Wars Journal posts will come out on Mondays while these reviews will come out on Fridays, after I've watched the episode of the week. So until next week have a great rest of the weekend. Live long and Prosper! 

The Star Trek Journal Episode 2: How Original Series Characters Can Be Incorporated into Strange New Worlds

 Hey everyone, how were your weekends? Mine was hot and quiet. Originally I was going to talk about Star Trek Fandom and the two documentaries, Trekkies and Trekkies 2 today, but I had a conversation with my friend, Aaron, about season 3 of Strange New Worlds and the possibility of more Original Series characters being introduced, given that we've already got Uhura, Spock, Chapel, and M'Benga on the main cast, and Kirk and his brother, Sam, in recurring roles, with Scotty having been introduced in "Hegemony", at the end of the second season. With season 3 premiering on Thursday, I figured that today would be the perfect time to talk about this topic instead. Especially since there's a rumour going around that McCoy is going to be introduced in this season, alongside Scotty. So, let's get into it.

Strange New Worlds has been the most fun I've had with any Star Trek series week to week since I was five years old watching reruns of The Next Generation on CHRO back in 1992. I love Voyager, I enjoy Deep Space Nine and I appreciate what Enterprise was trying to do in the 2000s, but both Discovery and Picard had a rough start, I have a complicated history with Lower Decks, and Prodigy's biggest issue is that Paramount allowed Nickelodeon to have a part in getting the show produced. Strange New Worlds is the Star Trek series that I've consistently been the most excited for, not just season to season, but episode to episode as well. So, last night, when Aaron posed the question of how I think the writers were going to incorporate the remaining Original Series characters that we haven't seen on the show yet, I'd already been thinking about my answer because I'd also heard the McCoy rumour.

Besides McCoy, the main Original Series characters we haven't seen on Strange New Worlds up to this point are Sulu, Chekov, and Janice Rand. Chekov is sort of a take it or leave it character for introducing into the current show, just because that really does depend on whether or not Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers feel like bringing in Chekov as a way to leave the door open for explaining why Khan mentions in The Wrath of Khan that he recognized Chekov even though Chekov wasn't in "Space Seed", since he wasn't introduced until season 2 of Star Trek. 

Sulu is wide open for bringing him into Strange New Worlds because he was in the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before". In that episode he was the head of the astrosciences department, but by the next episode that was produced, "The Corbomite Maneuver" Sulu was at the helm, where he remained until he finally got promoted to captain and given command of the Excelsior in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. So, they can bring Sulu in pretty much anytime they want since there isn't anything saying he couldn't've been on the Enterprise prior to Kirk taking command. As long as they don't try to place him at the helm in any season of Strange New Worlds they introduce him in, if they do it at all.

Janice Rand, played by Grace Lee Whitney in the original series, can pretty much be brought in anytime as well. Even though she doesn't get introduced until "The Man Trap", according to the airdates of the show's first season though chronologically she was introduced in "The Corbomite Maneuver", being that Janice was a yeoman during her time on the show, she can easily be placed on the Enterprise or the Farragut or even whatever ship Captain Batel ends up commanding once she's recovered from the events that began with the destruction of the Cayuga at the beginning of "Hegemony" last season. If she doesn't end up dying in the season premiere, "Hegemony, Part II". 

 

In 1985, comic book writer, Mike W. Barr wrote a story called, "All Those Years Ago..." for Star Trek Annual #1. While the framing story took place between The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home, the main story takes place when Kirk takes command of the Enterprise and the crew sets off on the five year mission which the TV series is set in. The story disregards "Where No Man Has Gone Before" by having McCoy on the Enterprise as CMO even though he doesn't come onboard until sometime between "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "The Corbomite Maneuver". It also has Sulu as the ship's navigator rather than astrophysicist as he is in the episode.

In September 1986, Paul Kupperberg wrote a story called "Uhura's Story" for Star Trek #30 which also takes place prior to "Where No Man Has Gone Before" while Memory Alpha doesn't give many details, Memory Beta, the Wiki for Star Trek novels, comics and other extra material, says that McCoy is in the main story as is Sulu, though both Lee Kelso and Gary Mitchell are mentioned as being helmsman and navigator. That same month the novel Enterprise: The First Adventure, written by Vonda N. McIntyre, was published and she thoroughly ignored everything about "Where No Man Has Gone Before" by having McCoy as Chief Medical Officer, Sulu as the helmsman and Chekov as the ship's navigator, even though Chekov was either a Lower Decks officer or not even on the ship at that point.

 

The Autobiography of James T. Kirk by former Enterprise writer, David A. Goodman, which was published in 2015, is a bit more faithful by keeping Doctor Piper as Chief Medical Officer on the Enterprise and placing McCoy's mission to Capella IV, as seen in the episode, "Friday's Child", during the beginning of Kirk's five year mission as captain of the Enterprise. 

I mentioned all of this to say that having Scotty, McCoy, Sulu, and Janice Rand, in addition to already having Uhura, Chapel, and M'Benga on the ship in Strange New Worlds isn't a huge problem when it comes to Star Trek canon. In fact, it's the perfect time to introduce these characters in whatever capacity the writers see fit as long as it doesn't interfere with established continuity.

We already know that Kirk and McCoy have been friends since before Kirk took command of the Enterprise. And with Paul Wesley's role as Kirk being expanded in the third season, I see no reason we won't see McCoy during this season or even at some point during season 4 or season 5. With Janice Rand as well, we easily could see her show up at some point before Strange New Worlds ends at the end of season 5. I don't think introducing Sulu in season 4 or 5 will be a problem either. Simply because we never got that much background about Sulu in the original show, so anything the writers on Strange New Worlds do with the character is wide open, as long as he's where he's supposed to be when we first meet him in "Where No Man Has Gone Before". 

Honestly, I'm really excited for season 3 of Strange New Worlds to start on Thursday. Not just because we finally get the resolution of the cliffhanger that we got at the end of the second season, but because I can't wait to be back with Pike and the crew and see what hijinks they're put through this season. Also, I love the poster they have for season 3. It's like a combination of the posters they had for seasons 1 and 2.

That's all I wanted to talk about today. Like I said, this was a last minute change in the topic I was going to cover this week. But, it's an apt one since the third season of Strange New Worlds starts this week. I've got some movie related topics coming up over on Josh's Geek Cave in the next few weeks, as my friends on The VHS Club Podcast are covering some awesome movies on the show over the next month. I'll be appearing on the podcast to talk about Batman Forever, and then on August 14th, I'll be on the show to finally talk about A Goofy Movie. So, I'll be talking about Batman Forever on Josh's Geek Cave this week, and over on The Star Wars Journal, I'll be talking about something. Then, join me back here on Saturday for my review of the first two episodes of season 3 of Strange New Worlds. So, until then have a good evening and I will talk to you all later. Live long and prosper!