The All Encompassing Star Trek Thread

[odessasteps]

 

[Raziel]

Announcements coming out today that the next season of Lower Decks, the 5th, will be it's last.  Also, Strange New Worlds is already renewed for Season 4 (even though Season 3 isn't coming out til next year).

[TheVileOne]

On 4/12/2024 at 12:58 PM, Raziel said:

Announcements coming out today that the next season of Lower Decks, the 5th, will be it's last.  Also, Strange New Worlds is already renewed for Season 4 (even though Season 3 isn't coming out til next year).

I hope any potential Paramount acquisition doesn't kill Strange New Worlds.

Just as an example, the Discovery acquisition killed a lot of WB shows, especially animated ones, even ones that got renewed. Plus we all saw what happened to Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme.

Edited April 14 by TheVileOne

[odessasteps]

At least we are still getting the Batman cartoon, which on paper has the best pedigree of all the things shelved or axed. 

[Eivion]

Sad about Lower Decks ending, but it also felt like that was coming soon regardless. 

Very happy to see Strange New Worlds renewed. That has been the best of new Trek by far though I still hope we get a post-Picard series following Seven and Jack Crusher at some point.

 

3 episodes into Discovery's final season and its fine so far. Not big on the major story path this season as it feels like something that was ignored for good reason, but the stuff beside it focused on characters is solid.

[AxB]

[Raziel]

And your Chancellor of Starfleet Academy is... Holly Hunter.  

 

Still waiting for a green light for Legacy.

[Eivion]

We are not getting Legacy as long as Academy is happening. They are clearly focusing their budget towards that.

[J.H.]

21 hours ago, Raziel said:

And your Chancellor of Starfleet Academy is... Holly Hunter.  

 

Still waiting for a green light for Legacy.

Man now I want Gary Busey in Starfleet. Not as a character. Just Gary Busey as himself in Star Trek!

James

[Raziel]

So I've decided to rewatch Star Trek, starting with TOS (I'm doing release order, as chronological is all fucking screwy with the timeline shifts), and that despite my fandom, I've never seen every episode of any series.  So..

 

I'm half way through S1.  It's weird seeing stuff that was released outside of production order, so of course there's inconsistencies.  Of the early episodes, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the second pilot, was a standout.  Also, God DAMN "Balance of Terror" was a fucking great hour of television.

[Eivion]

Finished the series finale of Star trek Discovery. I thought it was decent enough for what they had going on with the show though it still pushes the reality of how the show being so focused on Burnham as a lead has hurt much of it since the very beginning. Even the epilogue is too long for something focused on one character. Discovery is a show that will always frustrate me because there is plenty of aspects I like about it, but the writing never fully came together as a whole. This is why I have avoided rewatching Voyager and catching any of Enterprise.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I enjoyed the finale of Discovery. I have a lot to unload about the show, both what I loved and what I didn't. I got nowhere else online to write about it besides here, so I'm committed now. So get ready for a really long post soon. 
But, one thing. Sonequa Martin-Green was tremendous throughout the show. 

[Eivion]

1 hour ago, Johnny Sorrow said:

But, one thing. Sonequa Martin-Green was tremendous throughout the show. 

As much as Burnham and a lot of the writing surrounding her at times annoyed me I will say I do think Sonequa Martin-Green did a good job with what she was given. I quite liked her chemistry with Doug Jones and the actors for Tilly, Rayner, & Book.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I will add this for now. They didn't know this was going to be the last season until they'd already almost completed it. And it shows in the finale. Besides the epilogue, there's a few things that feel like reshoots. 
Oh, and the guy from Battlestar Galactica who played Commander Rayner this season was the best part of the season. 
And, since DS9 is my favorite Star Trek show, and is the best one, I loved all the little references all season. Dominion War references and the bad guys were the Breen! Burnam almost goes full Sisko! And we get Sisko's baseball! 
Oh, and Enterprise gets some love with the Cronenberg reveal.

Edited May 31 by Johnny Sorrow

[Craig H]

This is  what they decided to end the series on? Ok then. This wasn’t Dexter bad, but STD was NEVER great, it was rarely good, almost the entire cast can’t act to save their lives, and the storytelling is just bland at best.

I don’t really have much more to say  than that.

Now, what I really care about is the future of Trek. I had to learn this from the Red Letter Media folks of all places, but Kurtzman is that much of a fucking baby that they’re not going to proceed with a follow up to the Picard finale, maybe the best Trek thing they’ve made? So Terry Matalas has an awesome idea for going forward, it’s clear from Picard season 3 and all of 12 Monkeys that he’s the man for the job, but nope, we’re going to get Starfleet Academy and Section 31. Starfleet Academy has been in development hell for what feels like forever because it’s not interesting and Section 31 is the least Trek thing ever. Fucking Kurtzman. This guy blows.

And Matalas has moved on to a Marvel series, presumably Vision Quest because that’s probably the thing that’s most up his alley. This feels like Tim Kring leaving heroes to make Pushing Daisies, except Kring didn’t get pushed out.

I guess there is still SNW, but I can’t see that running for much longer.

[Eivion]

2 hours ago, Craig H said:

This is  what they decided to end the series on?

Not really? Wasn't their choice. They found out they were canceled I think during the strike. They were clearly setting up the Breen as a big bad for the next season.

 

[Ace]

My biggest complaint about Disco is that it wasn't a real ensemble. It was the Michael Burnham show with occasional Saru, Tilly, and Culber/Stamets bits.

[Raziel]

19 hours ago, Craig H said:

 

Now, what I really care about is the future of Trek. I had to learn this from the Red Letter Media folks of all places, but Kurtzman is that much of a fucking baby that they’re not going to proceed with a follow up to the Picard finale, maybe the best Trek thing they’ve made? So Terry Matalas has an awesome idea for going forward, it’s clear from Picard season 3 and all of 12 Monkeys that he’s the man for the job, but nope, we’re going to get Starfleet Academy and Section 31. Starfleet Academy has been in development hell for what feels like forever because it’s not interesting and Section 31 is the least Trek thing ever. Fucking Kurtzman. This guy blows.

And Matalas has moved on to a Marvel series, presumably Vision Quest because that’s probably the thing that’s most up his alley. This feels like Tim Kring leaving heroes to make Pushing Daisies, except Kring didn’t get pushed out.

I guess there is still SNW, but I can’t see that running for much longer.

What's going to suck is that by the time Kurtzman relents (or someone at Paramount realizes how much money is being left on the table and makes him relent), Matalas, Speleers, and Chestnut will have moved onto something else big and Legacy isn't going to work well without Jack and LaForgecita.  

[Raziel]

Meanwhile, my run through all of Trek continues, as I've got about 9 episodes of S1 left.  One thing I realize is that when I watched TOS as a kid, WPIX didn't seem to care about broadcast order and just ran whatever episode they wanted (except for Menagerie, I remember that always ran back-to-back) But there's stuff I'm seeing in S1 that I swore took place later, but nope, all S1.  S1 also seems to be the one loaded with the most "Classic" episodes, as I've seen Where No Man Has Gone Before, Naked Time, Balance of Terror, The Enemy Within, and Conscience of the King already, and still have Space Seed and City on the Edge of Forever THIS season.  

 

It's also neat seeing Squire of Gothos and realizing that Tremane was the prototype for Q.  

[Matt D]

Briefly, on Discovery: I agree that it was probably too much the Burnham show. There was some rotation of the deck/engineering crew over the years and it made people come off more secondary. I can't name too many people the crew past  Saru, Tilly, and Stamets as noted above. Even when they got focus in previous seasons, that was mostly ignored later on when they could lean more on plot instead. Honestly, it's a lot of different shows in one. The season arcs changed the status quo so thoroughly that the focus overall feels disjointed.

That said, I really did appreciate Burnham after the future jump when she represented a sort of idealism of the Federation so strongly and powerfully that it changed the galaxy. That's the sort of message I want from Star Trek.

In other news, the 11 year old has expressed some desire to see some Star Trek (having seen every Star Wars thing but Andor basically). And I'll probably start her with some select TOS (I was looking at the episodes and I really don't remember the last season at all even though I saw them all in syndication when I was a teenager in the 90s) and go from there.

[Raziel]

Also, another observation;  there was always a story about Nichols thinking of leaving Trek after Season 1, because she thought she was just there for window dressing.  And she was right, she had nothing to do for pretty much all season.  I'm also thinking it had a bit to do with all the shit that went down with Grace Lee Whitney as well.  Looking to see how she got bumped up in S2.

[odessasteps]

 

[Raziel]

It's interesting how Trek between TOS and DS9 downplayed money existing, as, at least through the 1st half it's run, many references to money, how much Starfleet has invested in kit and personel, etc.  Shit, S1 had Kirk trying to pay multiple times for Dilythium crystals.  

 

Anyway, well into S2.  Mirror, Mirror was odder than I remember, and seemed an odd concept for them to recycle in pretty much every other series but TNG.  

Amok Time remained a neat episode.  Going back to S2, City on the Edge of Forever remains a classic, having prime Joan Collins in it didn't hurt.

So far, S2 had way more for Nichols to do, compared to S1.  Although handwaving her having "no memory' after Nomad scaned her in Changeling, and it took a week to get her back to Starfleet Comms officer was, odd.  And they really sold the hell out of Koenig joining the cast.

[odessasteps]

Well, putting a Russian on the crew in 1967 was a big deal. 
 

id say by DS9, you have Quark and the Rules of Acquistion and Latinum etc. and I guess a lot of life on DS9 is about commerce, with shops and trading ships.

[Johnny Sorrow]

One of the funniest things in DS9 was when Jake needed latinum to get a baseball card for his dad. When he tells Nog that humans have moved past money, Nog's like, "How's that working for you?"