The Official Star Trek Thread

[7,052,770]

PSA: They went ahead and released episode 7 (the Lower Decks crossover) yesterday, and will move up the release dates of 8 through 10 by one week.

[7,052,770]

PSA: They went ahead and released episode 7 (the Lower Decks crossover) yesterday, and will move up the release dates of 8 through 10 by one week.

It was decent, but probably the weakest of the season so far. Unlike most of the fanbase, I'm neither hating or fanboying out right now.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

Really liked the crossover episode. I'd put it behind 'Charades' as my favorite episode of the season.

So far, the season is ok. Nothing horrible or anything, but not much has really stood out to me besides those two episodes.

It also doesn't help that I'm seeing the dual strikes + Paramounts struggles and getting the sense that the Trek franchise may be put to rest again for the forseeable future.

[Middle-aged Europe]

The Lower Decks crossover episode currently is the best-ranked SNW episode on IMDb. Personally I wouldn't regard it as that good. It does however highlight the show's overall strengths. Unlike Discovery's often overly bleak, melodramatic, shallow, clichéd plotlines SNW doesn't shy way from breaking new ground, while at the same time embracing whacky fun whenever the opportunity presents itself.

This episode is a crossover with an animated series. As such, the episode is also partly animated. Two of the animated characters make it to the "live-action universe" though and are then of course portrayed by their respective voice actors from the animated show. One of the animated characters has purple-coloured hair, therefore his live-action version does too (of course!). This is probably how the episode was originally pitched by the writers.

Just like Season 1's All Those Who Wander must have been pitched as "let's do a Alien/Aliens plot in the Star Trek universe: the Gorn are Xenomorphs, La'an is Ripley, and the episode will be - by Trek standards - really, really gory". And then they just ran with it.

Next week's episode will be a musical episode btw. Because this is Strange New Worlds, you know.

[Middle-aged Europe]

As for the overall quality of this season so far... they seem to hit the mark about half the time.

The Broken Circle, Among the Lotus Eaters, and Lost in Translation were rather weak/boring/generic. This is basically SNW redoing Star Trek: Voyager and/or the first two seasons of Enterprise.

Ad Astra Per Aspera (thrilling courtroom drama dealing with relevant social issues in the finest tradition of classic Trek episodes like The Measure of a Man), Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (good character development for La'an and SNW Kirk), Charades (whacky fun), Those Old Scientists (whacky fun too) were rather strong.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Okay, today's "Klingon War" was unusually... heavy.

Alongside Ad Astra Per Aspera the most serious one this season.

Some musing about guilt, shame, forgiveness, the lack thereof, justice, and revenge.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Finally caught up and watched that musical episode.

I guess it's okay enough, if you happen to like that kind of thing.

The one thing that made it stand out is Christina Chong's (La'an) performance. Jesus, can that woman sing. She should do an album or something.

Now on to the season finale.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Season 2 finale sure does deliver.

SNW's Big Bad, "Xenomorphs-meet-the-Borg" the Gorn are back, and just like in the previous season, the episode is ripe with Alien references.

By the end our heroes look pretty screwed, although canonically we already know that Enterprise will somehow survive this cliffhanger.

[k120]

Okay, today's "Klingon War" was unusually... heavy.

Alongside Ad Astra Per Aspera the most serious one this season.

Some musing about guilt, shame, forgiveness, the lack thereof, justice, and revenge.

This was by far the most frustrating episode of the season.

Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.

Show

Ortegas just comes off as a bigot. Dr. M'Benga commits murder, Chapel covers for him...and they're still supposed to be the good guys?

Lower Decks S4 is off to a good start. It was great to see Voyager and we're getting some interesting character arcs. And Moopsy!

[Middle-aged Europe]

After a rewatch of the third season of Picard the final ten episodes kind of grew on me and I would now rate them on par with SNW or LD.

While I still think that it was an odd decision to film almost the entire season in darkness (what is this? Blade Runner? Highlander II: The Quickening? ), it works as a reboot of Star Trek: Picard and/or TNG's unofficial eighth season and/or TNG's unofficial fifth movie in form of a miniseries.

Bringing back these iconic characters was a great idea and thematically the season is held together with the overarching topic of "family", both metaphorically and literally: The former Enterprise command crew as an estranged family who gets back together, Picard got a son, Riker and Troi still deal with the loss of their kid, La Forge has issues with his daughters, Picard's complicated relationship with his "surrogate" daughter Ro Laren and so on...

Raffi Musiker is the only one of the show's original characters who is retained, but she is utilized as sort of a sidekick and foil for Worf in a very effective way. Jack Crusher (Junior) appears to be a cross between Jim Kirk and Han Solo with daddy issues, but the character works too. Captain Shaw is still a bit too over-the-top for my taste in his introduction (how does Starfleet allow someone to remain in command who willfully bullies his first officer on a regular basis?), but since this merely serves as a starting point for *character development* it is easily forgiven.

Speaking of character development, Worf is now a calm, meditative Zen master (which at the same time makes him a bit of a goofball who serves as comic relief with his sometimes misplaced fortune cookie wisdoms), Data has become almost fully human (but is also still a bit of a goofball due to this being a recent development), and Seven is a much warmer, kinder person almost three decades after being de-assimilated by Janeway.

TNG has effectively three finales now: All Good Things..., Star Trek: Nemesis, and The Last Generation. While Nemesis is still a major letdown, the other two episodes are almost on par with each other, and quite fittingly both end with the old TNG crew holding a poker game.

Only one question remains: Where the hell was Wesley (especially after him being teasered in the Season 2 finale)?

[°Leprechaun]

The episode where one alien is half black half white and his enemy is also but on different sides of his face, is a good reminder of the world today. Like in the episode, hatred of the "other" is everywhere.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Tonight I watched what must be worst piece of Star Trek ever produced... the episode Worst Contact from the animated mini-series Very Short Treks.

It's only three minutes long and features guest voice appearances by Jonathan Frakes and Gates McFadden and I recommend not to watch it.

It's just unfunny, pointless, and most importantly disgusting. In a sense, Trek's version of  The Human Centipede. Did Frakes need the money? Did he even get any money? Were execs at CBS on drugs? Were they kept out of the loop on this one? We'll never know.

[k120]

Tonight I watched what must be worst piece of Star Trek ever produced... the episode Worst Contact from the animated mini-series Very Short Treks.

It's only three minutes long and features guest voice appearances by Jonathan Frakes and Gates McFadden and I recommend not to watch it.

It's just unfunny, pointless, and most importantly disgusting. In a sense, Trek's version of  The Human Centipede. Did Frakes need the money? Did he even get any money? Were execs at CBS on drugs? Were they kept out of the loop on this one? We'll never know.

Fortunately it's not canon, so we can all safely ignore it and forget about it.

[Middle-aged Europe]

[Middle-aged Europe]

Even though it is marketed as a kids' show, I decided to finally give Prodigy a try and found it surprisingly enjoyable... surprisingly dark at times too. With its CGI cartoon, serialized narrative, robot characters, and Star Wars-esque main villains (John Noble who used to play "mad scientist" Walter Bishop on Fringe is delightful as the Big Bad here) it's fairly obvious that they were trying to emulate animated shows like Clone Wars or Rebels.

The one thing I'm still struggling with is the creative decision to simply retcon away the 70-year travel distance between the Alpha and Delta Quadrants, leading to all kinds of Alpha Quadrant species' casually popping up. There's a Tellarite, a Ferengi, the wreckage of a Klingon Bird-of-Prey. That Tellarite character is particularly jarring since (as a Delta Quadrant resident) he was unaware of the Federation's and Starfleet's existence, despite the fact that his species was one of the founding members in the other Trek shows. Don't know whether this will be explained in any way later on, so far I have seen the first half of Season 1.