Category: Star Trek Musings

So once upon a time, there was a show called Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It was the one with the black man who became captain at the tail end of the third season. Anyway, there was a 2-part episode called “Past Tense”, where the crew is warped back in time to a pivotal moment in Earth history called The Bell Riots, a violent confrontation in the sanctuary district of San Francisco. It’s one of the classic episodes of Star Trek that deal with serious issues in a way that give it gravity and weight, unlike today’s Trek where serious issues are not dealt with so much as one side hammered in while we cut to dancing Klingons and crying crewmen.

The date that the Bell Riots occured?

August 30th, 2024.

It’s been two weeks since then… and not a peep of a Bell riot nor any mention of anyone named Gabriel Bell.

So… what happened? More timey-whimey bullshit that we have to fix up. Did it get pushed up the timeline much like the Eugenic Wars were pushed up when 1996 came and went without so much a peep of a Khan Singh in the world news?

Well, I’m sure Alex Kurtzman and the crack creative heads at Star Trek World Headquarters will eventually solve this conundrum… maybe… maybe not…

Either that, or they’ll produce another Trek show with 10 hour-long episodes of crew people doing nothing but cry on the bridge or something. Hey, we need to fill the void left behind by Discovery, so might as well get on that bandwagon.

Anything has to be better than that Section 31 thing they’re crapping out…

So… Section 31… eh…

Yeah, I’ll be frank; this looks pretty bad… not just as a Star Trek thing, but just as a thing that exists. You’d have a better chance of getting me excited if you just remade Earth: Final Conflict into a Tee Vee Movie instead.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting out of Section 31… but this sure ain’t it. But at least I can say that this looks bad whether it’s a Star Trek thing or not because it just looks terribly generic.

But then I saw the SNW clip and…

I need a bit more time on that one, kids.

Tomorrow, Star Trek: Discovery airs its final episode after five seasons of… stuff.

I’ll admit that Discovery is not a show that I was a huge fan of. I didn’t care for the first season’s redoing of the Klingons, the focus on “WAR! I’M GONNA STAB YOU IN THE FUCKING FACE” aspect, the main character was a bland, lifeless slab, and then pivoting to the Mirror Universe as an excuse to keep Michelle Yeoh around despite having her character killed off in the pilot… that and the uniforms with their weird collar things. Bad.

Second season was a little better, owing almost entirely on the performance and charisma of Anson Mount’s portrayal of Captain Christopher Pike. You still had issues with lots of emotional padding, lots of staring into blank space, evil robot things that remind me of the Borg without calling it the Borg, and once again, the main character is a lifeless vortex of charisma, which is sad considering the actress playing her is anything but.

Third season moves things into the distant future… where the Federation is all but gone and we have to figure out what the burn is… I dropped off after a couple episodes. Show did nothing for me. And even whenever I try to get back into it recently, I’m like… nah, this does nothing for me. This does so much nothing for me that I never bothered with the fourth season.

So I go back and watch some of this fifth season and… yeah, there are still some issues. Lots of emotion, lots of crying, lots of staring into blank spaces, lots of extras posing as main characters… but they gave the main character some personality for once. She certainly has nice hair.

The uniforms are still kinda ass, though… but at least the collars look like proper collars and not whatever the fuck they had before.

So yeah, Discovery didn’t do much for me… but it did get the ball rolling so that we’d get these other shows, which I tend to prefer. Discovery’s second season gave way to Strange New Worlds, Picard was a thing that happened, Lower Decks is a thing (that’s also coming to an end after five seasons), and we’re getting a Starfleet Academy show… in the FUTURE.

And also a Section 31 movie… because that was such a hot thing.

So yeah… thanks for five years of Trek, Discovery… you didn’t entertain me all that much, but you have a fanbase that loved you for what you were and that counts for something. Here you go. Have a gold star.

This has been my Tim Talk.

So the Star Trek Paramount people released another Very Short Trek… this one called Worst Contact and featuring the TNG crew making first contact with an alien race who pick their noses and are not familiar with the concept of basic hygiene. I am told this is hilarious and yet when I was done, my only question was “When does this get funny?”

I get that these are supposed to funny little shorts, but it would be nice if these things were actually funny. The only one that I remotely enjoyed was the Holiday Party one, where Spock shows off a blooper reel of sorts. I thought Clip #15 was an excellent blooper.

Beyond that… eh. Maybe next time, if you guys decide to do this again, maybe someone whose one highlight isn’t a drawn-out gag that overstayed its welcome ages ago. Hell, maybe get someone who knows how to write actual comedy. I don’t even care if it’s consistent with Star Trek canon – if you want to make me laugh, give me something funny… YOU DUMMIES!

Make it blow.

See?

That’s funny.

It’s Star Trek Day… apparently.

So they uploaded a new Short Trek animated thing where the captain says a metaphor and ends up offending somebody. It’s a cute little bit. And then it kept going. And it kept going. And then it kept going. And then finally the ship blew up.

What the fuck did I even watch?

Moral of the story; shut the fuck up and you won’t offend anyone.

So we’re about five episodes into the second season of Strange New Worlds and… it is okay. Not great, not good, just… okay. This feels less like “strange new worlds” and more like “let’s rehash stuff” worlds. I will say it’s nice to see the current Trek regime remember what Klingons look like and give us proper Klingons for once. The second episode resolved the whole Number One on trial thing and she’s back on the ship. Third episode is another time travel story that gives us another dose Paul Wesley as Jim Kirk, which is… fine. And then the fourth episode was a thing that happened. I have yet to see the fifth episode.

Beyond that, however, the big news on the Star Trek front seems to be the cancellation of Star Trek: Prodigy. Even though they announced a second season and apparently, that’s in the can, it’s no longer going to be a thing unless they find someone else to pick it up. Not only that, but they’re also taking the show off Paramount+ and using it as a tax write off. There’s a couple shows that they’re pulling from the service and cancelling, but… I don’t know. I’ve heard good things about Prodigy. I have not seen it myself, but apparently, that was a really good show.

Unfortunately, I might have little time to do it, since it was also announced that most of the Star Trek shows will be removed from Crave – which is the Bell streaming service up here in Canada. It’s supposed to happen at the end of the month, but you’ll be able to watch all your favorite Treks on CTV… except I don’t want to watch on CTV; I want to watch on a good quality streamer that doesn’t shit the bed with endless commercials.

For the record, Netflix Canada still has most of the classic Trek shows – it’s only missing the animated series – but who knows how long that’s going to last? In any event, that’s going to be a bummer and it further highlights the drawbacks of streaming. This is where people are going to flaunt the wonders of physical media… which is fine and dandy until those tapes and discs stop working and you’d have to resort to “alternative means” of watching your favorite shows.

So I guess the only ideal solution of full blow preservation in any field is to be a pirate.

Good luck with that.