Category: Star Trek Musings

I Exist To Die – How To Introduce A New Character And Then Kill Them Off

ENSIGN NEW GUY. We hardly knew you.

The following is a dramatization…

“Hello! I’m Ensign New Guy training as a nurse to replace the nurse on the U.S.S. En-Ter-Prize! I am a likable guy who is liked by everyone on the ship because they appreciate my work ethic!”

“Hey, New Guy! We’re letting you know that Nurse Chapel is gonna stick around after all.”

“Oh… okay, cool. So I guess I’m done here.”

“Not exactly. I put in word to Starfleet to extend your stay on board the Enterprise. Everyone on the ship likes you and so do I. Therefore, you can stay if you want.”

“Goddamn, Doc! That’s pretty swell of you. I’d love to stay on board the En-Ter-Prise for as long as you need me!”

“Great! Fantastic… hmmm… I wonder how well you look in a red shirt?”

“What’s that, Doc?”

“What? Oh! Never mind. Forget I said anything. Why don’t you charge the biobeds and stuff?”

“Already took care of that, Doc. And I also did all the other stuff you want me to do because I want to impress my superiors with my awesome work ethic.”

“Great! Fantastic! Say, New Guy. How’d you like to join the landing party on the planet below to explore some ominous ruins that could be potentially dangerous?”

“Golly willickers, Doc! I’d love to be part of the landing party! Hey, this is a real cool orb. I wonder what it doe… AAARGGGH!! MY EYES! THAT ORB MELTED MY FUCKING EYES!”

“Oh, it’s worse than that, New Guy. That orb also melted your brain!”

“OH NOES! WHAT AM I GONNA DO, DOC?! I DON’T WANNA DIE!”

“Don’t worry, Ensign. I’ll do everything I can to save you… oh, hey, Captain with the Gorn babies. How are we doing today? Hey, what are you doing?! DON’T HURT THE NEW GUY!”

“Heh, heh, heh… There is no new guy! I’m the evil entity trapped in the orb and I’ve taken over this red shirt’s body. Now I will kill everyone on this ship and use it to take over the galaxy!”

“Not if I can help! Don’t worry, New Guy! I’ll save you yet!”

zap

“WHAT THE FUCK, CAROL KANE?! WHY DO YOU BLOW NEW GUY’S BRAINS OUT?!”

“Because he’s evil and must die.”

“It was HIS FIRST MISSION!”

So yes, the young handsome nurse that they introduced in the second episode of the season ends up getting killed in the fifth episode… and you want to know the amazing thing about this whole deal? They actually cast a black dude to play this poor bastard.

Finally… some diversity in our corpses.

A Bad Year For Jim Kirk

Ah yes… the year 2268… in which the young, dashing James Kirk as played by veteran actor Paul Wesley is somehow transformed into being played by daring young gun actor William Shatner and all the sets are somehow cheaper than they were when Captain Pike was in command.

I’m telling you; it’s the hair. Once they swapped captains for one that wore a hairpiece, everything went to shit and then everyone lost their memories. How do you account for all these people not knowing things that happened years ago?

But yes, through Amazon Prime, I recently gifted myself a Paramount Plus subscription service to go along with the Netflix sub that will happen this week so that I can watch the Summerslam replay. No, I will not be watching Section 31, but I will catch up on Strange New Worlds.

Oh Hey, This Is Still A Thing…

I wanted to wait on this for a couple days before dropping it; the last piece of business that will be published as I make my way back home…

But yes, the Khan audio program – a thing that was teased back in the last decade when new Trek was on the verge of being unleashed – is finally premiering in September. And it’s giving old Trek veterans like Tim Russ and George Takei some work… yes, this is a Khan thing that they somehow turned into further adventures of Captain Sulu. What a world.

To be honest, this is the thing that intrigues me the most. Not because I’m anxious to learn more about Khan and how we’re going to butcher this character even further (despite the involvement of Star Trek II director Nicholas Meyer), but I’m fascinated to see how well this performs and if it will lead to other similar projects. For all the talk about wanting to produce more legacy Trek content, I’m surprised that the thought never occurred to follow the same road as Doctor Who; pivot to audio dramas. I’d imagine it would be more cost-effective (only hire actors to speak in a booth and have some bits of music and sound here and there) and you’d be able to tell stories that wouldn’t be bound by whatever broadcast restrictions or limitations are imposed.

Star Trek isn’t about the special effects. It’s about the stories… and sometimes, the science helps too. You don’t need TV to tell good stories, just good performers and a good script.

Hopefully KHAN gets the ball rolling on that.

On The 31st Day… I Continue To NOT Watch Section 31

It is July 31st of the year 2025 and I am following the 31st Rule Of Acquisition, which is to never make fun of a Ferengi’s mother. And why would I do that? She gave me good financial advice, such as not wasting money on a subscription service like Paramount Plus so that I can continue to NOT watch the Section 31 streaming motion picture starring Academy Award Winner Michelle Yeoh.

Though, to be honest, I didn’t need Ferengi to follow that advice. I was heeding that just fine beforehand. Still, I thanked her for the advice and the tube grubs.

Oh Wait… Never Mind…

Could you have at least waited for Season 3 to end before you teased the next one?

Also, you only have a dozen-ish episodes left and you’re wasting one of them on a MUPPET SHOW?

At least Stargate used Supermarionation for their puppets. At least THAT was different… and also well done, but it was just a bit. Maybe this is just a bit… I’m hoping it’s a bit…

Starfleet Academy Trailer… Meh

The next great Star Trek series to take place in the 32nd century, featuring a ragtag crew of Starfleet cadets who will no doubt experience conflict among each other, fight in the shadows to preserve the light, and presumably find a way to defeat Pau Giamatti’s alien villain from unleashing some sort of superweapon thing… that’s the general plot, right?

I like the Klingon hybrid… I like that Robert Picardo still has work… I like that the Jem’Hadar have infiltrated Starfleet… I’m not feeling Holly Hunter’s narration, but that could also be because this wallpaper music is so loud and overpowering that it just… eh.

Honestly not really feeling this one… it doesn’t look bad or anything, but it just feels like generic sci-fi schlock… which, I guess, could be the same argument made for any Star Trek series made that isn’t coasting on nostalgia.

Starfleet Academy airs in 2026. I’ll be holding off for the next season of Strange New Worlds in the meantime unless the next trailer really blows my socks off.

The LA Starship

Source: https://trekmovie.com/2025/06/17/captain-kirk-to-be-resurrected-for-new-star-trek-the-last-starship-comic-series-set-in-far-future/

New Star Trek comic from IDW… this one resurrects Captain Kirk, puts him in command of what looks like a hackjob rebuild of the old Enterprise, and gives him a new crew to explore the new post-BURN galaxy of the future. Yes, they’re doing a Star Trek comic set during the Burn – the event that set up the third season of Discovery where all the Federation ships blew up at once and we have no Federation – and they’re bringing back Jim Kirk to command this new series… and his old ship.

I don’t know about you folks, but I find this concept somewhat fascinating and I’m genuinely curious to see how it plays out.

It’s no secret to anyone who has frequented this blog for however long it’s been that I was never the biggest fan of Star Trek: Discovery. I respect the show for getting the ball rolling on this current period of Trek television that has been – in every possible context – hit or miss. It’s also no secret that Discovery lost me during its third season when they made the jump to the future in order to not fuck up any more canon and/or continuity… because we have Strange New Worlds to pick up that flag, after all. Hey, I gave it a shot… but the glacial pacing despite season runs being half of that of an old school Trek show, the constant overemoting, staring into the distances, the modern-day dialogue that feels like the script were written by teenagers… yeah, by the time we’re rehashing the Mirror Universe stuff, that’s when I decided to call it quits. I largely skipped over the fourth season and gave the final season a try… eh… meh… meh.

So I get that there are some folks who are less than thrilled that the current ongoing Star Trek comic available is going to cover this Burn period that had only been alluded to on Discovery… mostly because of their distaste for Discovery, but mostly because – despite their endless cries of moving Trek forwards – they’d rather “GIVE US STAR TREK LEGACY YOU HACK FRAUDS!” or something like that. And listen, I get it. I wasn’t too keen on Discovery in any way, shape, or form… but I wouldn’t mind something that would explore this Burn period of Trek lore more up close and honestly, doing this in comic book form is probably the best way to explore this sort of thing.

Star Trek comics have often been hit or miss, but oftentimes, the misses are usually based on the material they have to work with or maybe the concept they’re going for doesn’t quite work. That said, IDW’s Star Trek has consistently been very good. Their two comic series starring the Kelvin Timeline crew were pretty good, their Year Five series was excellent, and I actually did enjoy their most recent Trek series that lead up to Lore Wars, which… ended up being one of those rare misses, but the stuff before that were fun reads.

Yeah, the idea of a revived James Kirk on board a haphazard rebuild of the old Enterprise with a new crew exploring a galaxy that took a hard left after the Burn and all but obliterated the Federation as a result is a pretty bonkers idea on paper… but that’s why the comic book format is perfect for this sort of thing. And if you think this sort of thing is out of left field for Star Trek as far as comic stories go, you clearly need to go back and read some of the old shit that DC and Marvel used to put out back in the day. Hell, go back and read the old GOLD KEY comics where they really played loose with the source material and then come back and tell me this is too wacko for Trekko.

So yeah, you know what. The Last Starship, with its stupid looking title art, has piqued my interest and I’m looking forward to seeing how this turns out. Considering what has come out of the IDW camp in the past, I’m fairly confident that we’ll get an entertaining piece of business that will make the most of what they have to work with. This has me intrigued and I’ve sadly haven’t felt that way about a Star Trek project in recent memory.

And hopefully, this will sate any need for a Captain Kirk revival without having to back the Brink’s truck up Shatner’s barn or something. You want an ending to Shatner’s Kirk? Go check out that Unification short film that someone made last year. That’s a perfect note to close that character’s book on. We don’t need Shatner back to ruin that moment like several TNG moves and Picard did to ruin All Good Things…

Five Season Mission Doesn’t Quite Have The Same Ring

Source: https://trekmovie.com/2025/06/12/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-renewed-for-fifth-and-final-season/

Some guy on Facebook made the above banner. Sadly, I cut off the watermark to fit the screen. My apologies.

Anyway, it was recently announced that Strange New Worlds has been renewed for a fifth and final season… and will only be six episodes long. How many of those will be dedicated to silly gimmick episodes and making Spock look like a stooge because we don’t know good comedy or storytelling?

I have mixed feelings about this. Obviously, the fact that they’re ending it on five seasons is not much of a surprise; that seems to be the magic number with these things nowadays. I miss the days when Trek shows lasted seven seasons and each season had about 26 episodes a piece. That gave you more than enough room to do both the serious world and character building stuff to go along with the silly stuff.

Six episodes, though? Those had better be some amazing episodes for a final season… maybe give us an episode where Captain Pike’s hair grows so tall and stiff at an exponential rate it shatters the fabric of space-time. Or, hell, do a remake of Spock’s Brain. All the Spock episodes on this show seem like they were written by the same people shouting “Brain and brain! What is Brain?”

Still, Trekkies should be happy that the 23rd century retread is over and we can move on to new ideas and new concepts. Going forward, as they say…

**Paramount dangles upcoming Starfleet Academy show**

NO! WE DON’T WANT THAT TRASH! WHERE’S STAR TREK LEGACY, YOU HACK FRAUDS?!

That sounds about right, yeah?

Strange New World’s third season premieres next month.

RAW (June 9th, 2025) – Nobody Can Handle The Truth

It’s the RAW after Money In The Bank, where a couple people won briefcases that they’ll have to carry around for months on end until their eventual scripted cash-in takes place where they will win whatever title they will challenge in cheap fashion… oh and R-Truth was hired back after his contract ran out earlier in the month and fans protested because WWE wouldn’t re-sign him.

Well, they did re-sign him. And the first thing they did was have him cut a promo where he adopted a more serious demeanor and is now going by his real name. Yes, it took a contract expiration and a fan riot for WWE to free Ron Killings from this one-note joke character that he’s been playing for years and give him one last hurrah as the serious competitor that you only really saw ages ago when he was in TNA or even early on in his last WWE stint. Where they go from here is anyone’s guess, but whatever happens from hereon out, I hope it was worth it.

In other news, GUNTHER made Jey Uso pass out to win back his World title and end this YEET experiment that has been going nowhere. I’d imagine they need GUNTHER to hold a title so that they can fast track that rumored Goldberg match, but in any event, Jey Uso as the World Champion was worth a shot, but clearly not something that had anyone excited. Oh well.

Also, Nikki Bella made her return, teased future involvement, and got into a spat with Liv Morgan, who is supposed to be the heel in this program, but actually got more cheers than Nikki. That can’t be a good sign… also, the backstage bit where Nikki and IYO SKY is exchanging pleasantries and IYO claiming that Nikki “paved the way for the rest of us” felt so dirty and so wrong. I’m not going to deny Nikki was a major player back in the day, but let’s be real; the Bellas on top was not exactly a high point in the women’s division and it took the influx of NXT talent to really give the WWE women some actual worth. There is a reason why a lot of those Diva segments back in the day were called “designated piss breaks.”

Also, we have tournament matches for the King and Queen of the Ring titles, whose finals will be held at the next WWE Blood Money show at Saudi Arabia. And speaking of which, CM Punk – who once told some WWE Superstar to go suck on a blood money soaked dick in Saudi Arabia – will be challenging John Cena for the title at said Blood Money event. What a world we live in.

And that’s about it, really. To tell the truth – no pun intended – I didn’t watch the show… I’m only going by bits and pieces I’ve seen online as well as some recaps here and there. Haven’t renewed my Netflix subscription because I’m presently in the middle of a Paramount run, which may or may not continue if this Strange New Worlds thing ends up being worth a follow for the next couple months.

A friend did offer a recording of this Friday’s Smackdown show if I wanted to watch. Apparently, the big John Cena vs. Ron Killings rematch is taking place there. Should be fun to do a musings on… maybe give Impact a bit of a spotlight in a couple weeks.