The Star Trek Journal Episode 12: Starfleet Academy Season 1 (2026) Review

 Hey everyone, how're you all doing today? I'm actually doing very well. My health stuff has been taken care of and I'm recovering nicely from it. Which means I'm back to work on the blogs a lot more. Today on the Star Trek Journal, I'm gonna be doing my discussion/review of the first season of Starfleet Academy, which dropped its season finale last week. I'm really excited to talk about it. So let's get into it. Engage!

As I said in my initial thoughts on this show that I had been a little worried about it when Paramount announced they were doing a teen drama Star Trek series. Mainly because over the last 15 years or so, teen dramas have been hit or miss. For every Glee there was a Riverdale. For every big success there were three or four failures. My point is that because Star Trek had never done a teen drama show before, there was every chance this one wouldn't work. Thankfully, it did. Spectacularly in my opinion.

I talked about the first four episodes in my previous post on this show, and honestly, the remaining six episodes were pretty awesome. One of my favourites was episode 5, "Series Acclimation Mil", which was focused on SAM (played by Kerrice Brooks), the photonic being sent by her makers to be their Emissary. She spent the episode trying to find out what exactly happened to Benjamin Sisko after he disappeared into the Celestial Temple at the end of the DS9 finale, "What You Leave Behind". I loved this episode because SAM got to meet Jake Sisko, played by Cirroc Lofton, and Illa Dax (played by Tawny Newsome), the most recent host of the Dax Symbiont, who is probably the longest living Trill symbiont that we've ever met. This episode did legacy characters right. As did this season as a whole.

Holly Hunter as Nahla Ake was probably the most interesting character of the adult characters that were in this show. Being a Lanthanite, she has the same light attitude towards situations that we saw in Pelia in SNW. However, unlike Pelia, Nahla is less mysterious. Pelia was very much trying to pull off a TNG season 2 Guinan vibe, whereas Nahla feels more like TNG season 5 Guinan or Generations Guinan. 

Two characters that really surprised me the most this season were Tarima Sadal, played by Zoe Steiner, and Caleb Mir, played by Sandro Rosta. I know, Caleb was the audience POV character for this season, but he surprised me because they played him differently than most characters of his archetype (the loner bad boy type) have been played in the past. And that includes Ryan (Ben McKenzie) on The O.C. Actually, Caleb kinda reminds me of Ryan a little bit. I liked Tarima though because she was exactly how Deanna should've been on TNG back in the day and, well, due to circumstances out of Marina Sirtis's control, that character never quite reached her full potential, even in her later movie appearances and her appearances on Picard.

One thing I was a little disappointed in was the fact that Mary Wiseman only returned as Tilly for one episode. While it was a great episode, they hyped her up pretty hard in the initial press release that announced her return, alongside Jett Reno (Tig Notaro is still amazing), the Doctor, and Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr), and so it was disappointing that Tilly only showed up in one episode, and it was closer to the end of the season, even though they set her up in Discovery's final season to be at Starfleet Academy.

I've heard people bitch about the drama on this show. It's a teen drama series guys. It's closer in tone to Smallville, Riverdale, and The O.C. than it is to any of the other Star Trek shows. It's built differently because it's a completely different kind of Star Trek show than the others are. Which is good, because that's what made it fresh. Which is harder to do now that Star Trek has been around for almost 60 years.

Another complaint I always hear and it's one I had when Discovery first started coming out in 2017, is the amount of modern slang and language the writers put into the scripts. I've gotten used to it. Here's the thing, the shows from 60, 50, and even 30 years ago were mostly written by white men pulling from a writer's guide as to what could and couldn't be included in a Star Trek script. And I'm pretty sure there was something about including sophisticated dialogue in them. However, that's not how people speak in real life. Modern Star Trek has done their best to open the franchise up so that it would be more accessible to new viewers. And that includes using language that is familiar to the new person who might be watching Star Trek for the first time with Discovery or Lower Decks or even Starfleet Academy. Especially because Star Trek has so much technobabble in it that can easily go right over someone's head if they're not used to it.

The writers of DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise started doing this as early as 1994 or 1995 (around DS9's third season). Because they were the first Star Trek shows to not have any input from Gene Roddenberry whatsoever, and so they didn't feel beholden to his level of verbal sophistication. Nor did they feel the need to have a character quote Shakespeare in every piece of dialogue. Sure, it might date Starfleet Academy a bit as the show gets to be nearly 40 years old, as TNG is close to being now, but people will still enjoy it. Just as people still enjoy One Tree Hill, The O.C., and Glee today as much as they did 20 years ago when those shows first started. 

There's so much more I could talk about. But, I think I'll save that for another time. Afterall, this Star Trek blog will be around for a very long time to come. I plan to talk about episodes, books, comics, characters, ships, technology, and the shows's production history as we go along. Right now though I just wanna say that I really enjoyed this season of Star Trek. It was engaging, fun, interesting and proof that Star Trek can tackle just about any genre and make that genre feel fresh. 

I gotta go and clean up from dinner so I can get myself ready for my next appearance on The VHS Club Podcast, tonight at 9 pm ET. Katie, Nat, and I are reviewing the 1989 movie, The Wizard. Until then live long and prosper!

The Star Trek Journal Episode 11: The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard Book Discussion

 Greetings fellow Trekkies! I'm back with another Star Trek book discussion. I finished reading The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard the other day and I'm here to talk about it. Like with my last post on The Autobiography of James T. Kirk, I'll be focusing on what parts of Star Trek canon were used, what parts weren't used, and what parts were changed from how they were either depicted on screen, or from how they were described on screen. Engage!

Published in hardcover in 2017, The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard paints a very different version of Picard's life following the events of Star Trek Nemesis than what we saw in the novels being published at the time, or what we'd see in Star Trek: Picard only a little over two years later. In fact, Picard's childhood is depicted very differently from the way we'd see it in Picard season 2.

David A. Goodman, who wrote The Autobiography of James T. Kirk returned to handle Picard's life story. Like with the Kirk book, I find it interesting what parts of Picard's life (as seen on TNG) that he chose to ignore. He also kind of fixed a problem that I had with the Kirk book. In my last post I mentioned that there is no way Kirk would've been able to include classified material in his autobiography due to the events of the movies from The Wrath of Khan to The Voyage Home being considered classified by Starfleet and the Federation Council. In this book, Picard (as written by Goodman) mentions briefly his reuniting with Richard Galen, his Archaeology professor at Starfleet Academy, as depicted in the TNG season 6 episode, "The Chase", but goes on to merely mention that nothing came of it following Galen's death. Of course, as a reader I know that that wasn't true, since "The Chase" had long reaching consequences for Star Trek storytelling going forward, even as recently as season 5 of Star Trek: Discovery. 

I find it interesting that, like with Star Trek V in the Kirk book, Goodman completely ignores the events of Star Trek: Insurrection in this book. He skips from First Contact right to Nemesis without even mentioning the events of the ninth movie (third in the TNG series of films). Again, I get it, Insurrection was disliked by a lot of people when it first came out back in December, 1998, but Picard played a huge role in that film, so for Goodman to ignore it entirely, without even so much of a mention as he did with Star Trek V in The Autobiography of James T. Kirk, is, at the very least, disrespectful to the people who made that movie. Especially because he framed his mention of Star Trek V as a movie on a planet that Kirk and the crew had visited during the Five-Year Mission, and were revisiting during the latter stages of the TOS movie era. 

Surprisingly, the book also completely ignores the post-Nemesis series of novels that Pocket Books had been publishing at the time, starting with Death in Winter by Michael Jan Friedman in 2005. Which is interesting because Paramount hadn't chosen to end that continuity of books at the time Goodman was writing this book because Star Trek: Picard hadn't been announced yet, and nobody, not even Alex Kurtzman, knew how much Voyager and DS9 would play into Star Trek: Picard or any of the other late 24th Century/early 25th Century shows that we've had over the last six years. Discovery's first season was just starting to come out when this book was published, so they hadn't even decided to send the Discovery into the 32nd Century yet. So those novels were still the prominent Beta Canon source for information on Picard's life after the events of Star Trek Nemesis.

What Goodman doesn't ignore is the four issue comic book miniseries, Star Trek: Countdown published by IDW in 2009. This comic served as a backstory for the 2009 movie, and what Picard and the Enterprise's involvement with the destruction of Romulus and the supposed disappearance of Spock and Nero from the 24th Century, before we see either of them in the movie. Countdown is the one comic that was canon prior to the development of Star Trek: Picard due to it being tied into the 2009 movie and the fact that the story for the comic was created by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who had written the movie.

I like that this book spends a lot of time with Picard and his friends at Starfleet Academy, leading up to Picard getting stabbed by the Nausicaans, which we first heard about in the season 2 episode, "Samaritan Snare" and then saw in the season 6 episode, "Tapestry". There we got a better sense of Corey and Marta and their friendship with Picard than the episode allowed for. It was interesting to see how their friendship began.

Unlike the Kirk book, there isn't as many timeline gaps to fill with the Picard book, since TNG had four more seasons of TV than TOS had, and not as much time passed between the end of the series and the first movie, or even between the first and second TNG movies. However this book shows how Picard met Tasha Yar, Geordi La Forge, Deanna Troi, Worf, and Data, as well as Beverly Crusher (she wasn't married to Jack yet, so she was still Beverly Howard).

The 2007 novel, The Buried Age by Christopher L. Bennett, covered the period between when Picard was forced to abandon the Stargazer in 2355 and when he took command of the Enterprise-D in 2364. This book actually covers similar territory, though like most of what this book covers in comparison to other Star Trek media depicting this era, it covers it in a slightly different way than how The Buried Age portrays it. Which is fine. In this book Picard is a freelance troubleshooter for Starfleet Command, going to trouble spots that a starship couldn't necessarily go to.

Goodman does a decent job in trying to narrow down the big important moments in Picard's life. Particularly during his Academy years and during his time as captain of the Enterprise-D. For instance, even though Jason Vigo appeared in "Bloodlines", there's no mention of Miranda Vigo, Jason's mother during the pre-Enterprise days. Or even during his Stargazer days.

This is a really good book, and I actually like it better than the Kirk book. However, having said that, Goodman had a much harder job with this book because we know so much about the life of Jean-Luc Picard, even back in 2017 when this book came out. Goodman had a lot more information to go through and decide what would be included and what had to be left out.

That is it for today. I'm going to try to put out my post on The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway sometime between now and Monday, but I can't make any promises. As you know I'm taking next week off for life reasons, so me getting that post out before Monday will depend on when I finish reading the book. We'll see though. Live long and prosper my friends.

The Star Trek Journal: Episode 10: The Autobiography of James T. Kirk Book Discussion

 Greetings fellow Trekkies! I hope you are all well in this difficult time. I'm back for another Star Trek discussion. Today's discussion is going to be on the 2015 novel, The Autobiography of James T. Kirk by David A. Goodman. I reviewed this book almost two years ago over on Josh's Geek Cave, but this time around I'm going to focus on what parts of Star Trek canon were used in this book, what parts weren't used, and what parts were presented in a different format than how we were presented with it on screen. Engage!

As I mentioned in the intro, this book was published in 2015. Back then Discovery was in the very early stages of development. I don't think it had even been announced yet. Naturally, that means that this book doesn't include anything from Strange New Worlds since that show didn't exist yet. However, the early parts of Kirk's life were lifted from the Prime Timeline version of the events seen at the very beginning of the 2009 movie. Kirk was born on Earth, not on the Kelvin, but both George and Winona, Kirk's parents, served on that ship under the command of Captain Robau, played by Faran Tahir in the movie. But, being that the rest of the movie takes place in an alternate reality, none of the events of the movie itself are included in this book.

As I mentioned in my original review, I was very glad to see how Goodman connected the dots between TOS, and the first six movies, as well as events that Kirk mentioned throughout the three seasons of TOS, that took place years before we met Kirk in "The Man Trap". Though with the book being free of network scheduling stupidity, Kirk brings up the events that led to Gary Mitchell's death from "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the second pilot episode produced for TOS, first. Though, "The Man Trap" isn't mentioned at all in the book. Obviously the events from all 79 episodes couldn't be included in this book, but I do find it interesting that certain episodes weren't brought up at all. Being that this is Kirk's autobiography, it makes sense that certain episodes would have more focus since he was the central character in those particular episodes. However I do find it interesting that while Goodman writes Kirk's first meeting with Captain Koloth, who was played by William Campbell in "The Trouble with Tribbles", as a cadet at Starfleet Academy, "The Trouble with Tribbles" isn't mentioned at all.

I also find it interesting that certain events would be allowed to be included in the book at all. From an in universe point of view, Kirk shouldn't've been allowed to include the events of The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock in the book because everything surrounding Project Genesis and the Genesis Planet was classified by the Federation Council in 2285. And with this book having been written and published in 2293, shortly before Kirk joined Scotty and Chekov on the Enterprise-B, as seen in Generations, that's only eight or nine years after the events of both movies, therefore they should still be classified and unable to be included in a personal account of events.

Obviously from a real world perspective, they had to be included because they're important parts of the TOS series of movies. Nevertheless, using the in universe perspective of it being a document written by Captain Kirk himself, there's no logical explanation as to why Kirk would be allowed to include classified information in an autobiography being released less than a decade after those events occurred.

Star Trek V isn't included in the book in terms of the actual events of the movie. However, at one point, Kirk, McCoy, and Chekov return to planet 892-IV probably just before the events of The Final Frontier and discover that Kirk got Drusilla, the slave girl presented to him by Claudius Marcus and Merik, pregnant during their intimate moment in the episode, "Bread and Circuses", and she gave birth to a son, Eugenio. Eugenio became a movie director and directed a film, "The Final Frontier", where the Enterprise goes to the center of the galaxy to find God. Which is the plot of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, minus Sybok and everything going on on Nimbus III and on the Enterprise-A in the actual movie. 

I get it, Star Trek V has been the most hated Star Trek movie to ever come out, before Star Trek Into Darkness came out in 2013, but I've seen more understanding towards The Final Frontier in recent years than I have in the past, because people know what kind of restrictions that Shatner was under as a director, with a reduced budget and working with an effects house that clearly didn't know what they were doing in comparison to ILM (who were unavailable to work on the movie). So to have it omitted from this is a very glaring one simply because Kirk does have a character arc in the movie.

Another thing that I found very interesting about this book is how it portrays the character of Admiral Nogura. As in many TOS novels, Nogura has an expanded role in this book, being that he was a character only mentioned in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which came out in 1979 and basically started the modern era of Star Trek, beginning with the 26 constant production of Star Trek movies and TV shows that ended in 2005 when Enterprise was cancelled. We never saw him on screen. 

In books such as Enterprise: The First Adventure and The Lost Years he was portrayed as this old wise admiral who gave Kirk command of the Enterprise prior to TOS, and then promoted him to admiral upon his return from his historic five year mission. Here though, he's portrayed as a Bad Admiral, like Cartwright, Leyton, Pressman, Kennelly, and Dougherty, who attempts a more militaristic stance against enemies such as the Klingons and Romulans, or makes alliances with those enemies in order to maintain the status quo in some circumstances (Cartwright with factions of the Klingons and Romulans). Which is something I never got from The Motion Picture or the novels that he was an actual character in, as him being, despite the Federation being in a state of cold war with both the Klingon Empire and the Romulan Star Empire at the time of the V'GER incident as depicted in that movie. Though it would give Kirk an actual reason for wanting to return to commanding the Enterprise in the movie or to resign from Starfleet as he mentioned he did at some point as mentioned in Generations, with most material stating that period of Kirk not being part of Starfleet as taking place between The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan, which is why Kirk was an admiral in The Wrath of Khan even though he was still a captain at the end of The Motion Picture.

I also like that Kirk's pre-TOS timeline is made a bit clearer. Especially because in TOS his time in Starfleet Academy and when exactly he met Gary Mitchell and Ben Finney and when he served on the Republic and the Farragut. Again though, this book was published in 2015, long before Strange New Worlds ever went into development, so the Farragut was still being depicted as a Constitution-class starship rather than the Bellerophon-class starship that it's depicted as in Strange New Worlds.

What I appreciate the most though is depicting and making clearer the periods between The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan and between The Final Frontier and The Undiscovered Country because those eras in both Kirk's history and the history of the Enterprise and the Enterprise-A are the two most obscure eras of the ships under Kirk's command. While the various comics published in the '80s and '90s were set during these eras, very few novels were set between The Final Frontier and The Undiscovered Country, so it was nice to see these eras covered here.

As a Star Trek fan I love this book. However, I'm definitely more a fan of Spock rather than Kirk, which is why I actually like The Autobiography of Mr. Spock more than I like this book. But they're both really well written and well researched and planned out. Particularly in the scenes that Goodman had to make up for this book as they weren't based on footage from TOS or the TOS movies. I must also reiterate that I love what the book was trying to do in filling in the gaps of Kirk's life that we didn't see on TV or in the movies. At least we hadn't up to that point. I suspect that the end of Strange New Worlds will have Kirk replacing Pike as the captain of the Enterprise. 

I think that's going to be it for me for today. I'm currently doing a reread of all five Star Trek autobiography books that are out so far and I'm starting The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard, which I also did a review of on Josh's Geek Cave, and I'm planning on reviewing all five books as I finish reading them. Though I'm taking the week of the 23rd off for surgery as I'll be in the hospital and unable to do any blog posts. Live long and prosper my friends!

The Star Trek Journal: Episode 9: Thoughts on Star Trek: Starfleet Academy and the Last Year in Star Trek's history

 Greetings fellow Trekkies, how are you all doing today? I'm doing okay. It's been super cold lately, so I've been stuck in the house for the last week or so, but I'm doing fine besides that. Today I wanted to touch on some of my thoughts on Star Trek: Starfleet Academy now that we've had the first four episodes come out as well as what the last year in Star Trek has been like in terms of TV shows and movies. Trust me if I tried to talk about every Star Trek thing that came out in 2025, we'd be here all day. Engage!

I was a little bit worried when Paramount announced they were doing a teen drama series set at Starfleet Academy. Mostly because the last decade or so of teen dramas haven't been the greatest. Sure, we've had some good ones like Marvel's Runaways, but we've also had some really bad ones like Riverdale. So I dreaded how Star Trek would handle the teen drama genre. Thankfully, it worked out amazingly well. I'm not reviewing any episodes in this post, but I wanted to talk about the show as a whole so far.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is probably the freshest take on Star Trek we've had since Enterprise went off the air in 2005. I don't mean that in a derogatory way either. I loved Discovery, Picard, and Strange New Worlds and appreciated Lower Decks and Prodigy. However, all five of those shows were so heavily steeped in Star Trek's past, I felt like Discovery and Lower Decks could never truly stand on their own. I mentioned those two shows specifically because they're the only ones to not have legacy characters as part of the main cast of characters (except for Pike in season 2 of Discovery), nor do they have any legacy Star Trek actors in their casts either.

My favourite characters so far are Jay-Den Kraag, the Klingon cadet played by Karim Diane, and Genesis Lythe, played by Bella Shepard. I also like SAM (Series Acclimation Mil), played by Kerrice Brooks, but she hasn't had a whole lot to do after the first episode. Also, I love Gina Yashere's character of Lura Thok, the Klingon/Jem'Hadar hybrid woman who acts as Cadet Master at the Academy. And of course, the returning characters of Jett Reno, played by Tig Notaro, and the Doctor, played by Robert Picardo, are fantastic as well.

The Doctor was always one of my favourite characters on Star Trek: Voyager in the '90s and early 2000s, and while I regret missing his return performance as the voice of the character in season 2 of Star Trek: Prodigy due to it being a Paramount+ exclusive here in Canada (season 1 wasn't, just season 2), I was so very glad that Picardo agreed to reprise the role in live action after nearly 25 years.

As I said in my last post, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is going to be something special, and now, having seen the show, I can honestly say that it is something special. It's also a Star Trek show that we need right now. Especially with the way Star Trek has been over the last year. Not to mention the state of the world right now.

This state of uncertainty in Star Trek began a little over a year ago when the final issue of Star Trek Explorer, which left us without a Star Trek magazine for the first time in 45 years. It was startling because we had several Star Trek projects coming out and the magazine was a reliable source of information on said projects. The cast of Starfleet Academy had been fully announced, the release date for Section 31 had been announced, and we were starting to get some details on season 3 of Strange New Worlds. 

Then on January 24th, 2025 Star Trek: Section 31, starring Michelle Yeoh was finally released after a little over six years since it had been first announced as a TV show. It wasn't good. While modern Star Trek shows have gotten criticism from certain corners of the internet due to its blatant diversity (sorry folks but Star Trek has been woke since 1966), Section 31 was the first Star Trek project since Star Trek Nemesis came out in 2002 to get criticism from even the most progressive Star Trek fans. Some people genuinely liked this movie, but the majority of people didn't. I think that's because this movie was written as the first episode of a TV series, and was written at a time when Paramount and Secret Hideout (Alex Kurtzman's production company) were doing everything they could to make Star Trek as much not like Star Trek as they possibly could. As a result, it just didn't work. 

Then on July 17th, 2025, season 3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds debuted, and it turned out to be a major disappointment. As I mentioned in my reviews of the first four episodes of the season, those first four episodes were solid. The problem is that the quality started dipping as the season went on and suddenly those who were covering the show on a week to week basis had less positive things to say about the season. For me they were falling on choices made in earlier Star Trek shows of the modern era to tell the story. Such as introducing a character, doing nothing with them, and then killing them off without any hint of what that character could've been had they survived. In this case it was Dana Gamble, played by Chris Myers. It's something I never forgave the writers for in Discovery season 2 with the character of Airiam. 

One of the criticisms I've heard from other people is that season 3 of SNW fell into the trap of nostalgia over story. Which is pretty true. First you had Q and Trelane showing up in season 3, episode 2, which I reviewed, then in episode 4, they did a holodeck episode even though Federation starships aren't supposed to have holodecks in the 23rd Century. On top of all that anytime they tried to do anything with Batel and Gamble's resurrected body being possessed by some ancient evil, it fell flat and just didn't work.

I've felt that Star Trek has been spinning its wheels for a long time. None of the current group of shows have moved the franchise forward. Oh sure, Discovery moved to the 32nd Century beginning with season 3, but it began as a prequel, with Burnham being the adopted sister of Spock and the adopted daughter of Sarek and Amanda. Not to mention the entire storyline in its fifth season focused on following up on a storyline from an episode of TNG that aired back in 1993. Speaking of TNG, Picard was a follow-up to Star Trek: The Next Generation, the TNG movies, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager, Lower Decks was basically the TV equivalent of a Greatest Hits album of Star Trek's past, and Prodigy was a sequel to Voyager with elements from TNG thrown in there for good measure (not to mention connections to season 1 of Picard). SNW is another prequel, though, unlike Discovery and the Kelvin timeline films (2009-2016), this one is leading into the first season of Star Trek: The Original Series. And because Enterprise was a prequel, we've been stuck in Star Trek's past, in many cases literally, since 2001. 

This is why I feel like Starfleet Academy is such an important show for the franchise. It finally moves the franchise forward while using legacy characters properly. Particularly Admiral Vance, Jett Reno, and Sylvia Tilly (who hasn't appeared in the show yet), as they live in that time period and would show up. Like Burnham and the rest of Discovery's crew. The Doctor also makes a good choice as a classic legacy character because he's a hologram and he could alter his image parameters to appear older than he had on Voyager, if only to accomodate the fact that he's played by a very human actor who has aged quite a bit since Voyager went off the air, nearly 25 years ago. Legacy characters should never overshadow the brand new characters in a franchise such as Star Trek. In fact, it's one of the problems I've had with Star Wars since The Force Awakens came out back in 2015. 

I think that's going to be it for me for today. To sum it all up, I love Star Trek: Starfleet Academy and I am very excited for what the rest of season 1 and all of season 2 brings us. I'm gonna do my best to post more on here as February rolls in on Sunday. Though I will have to take the last week of February and the first two weeks of March off (possibly) to accomodate life stuff happening those weeks. Until then, Live long and prosper.

Hailing frequencies closed. 

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.