Category: Star Trek Musings

Old Men Take Command Of Starship… Does Not End Well

So, in our latest episode of Star Trek: Picard, my new favorite character in all of Star Trek, Captain Liam Shaw, is incapacitated by the enemy bird ship and transfer command over to Captain Riker, who subsequently takes in retired admiral Picard as his first officer. This disappoints me greatly because Shaw is genuinely one of the better characters on this show and he deservers better than to be written off in such a fashion. However, he does get to contribute one tidbit to the overall plot.

Continue reading “Old Men Take Command Of Starship… Does Not End Well”

Discovery Comes To An End In 2024

Source: https://blog.trekcore.com/2023/03/star-trek-discovery-to-end-with-season-five-in-2024/

Coming early 2024 is the fifth – and final – season of Star Trek: Discovery, the series that pretty much kickstarted this current era of Star Trek series and has been through a number of incarnations of its own. From Klingon Wars to Red Angels to 32nd century burns to DMA things or thongs or whatever, Discovery has undergone various changes along the way, but it’s coming to an end.

I dropped off the Discovery ride midway through the third season and never really jumped back. Even before then, it was a series that I’ve always had mixed feelings about. So while I’m not going to be sad by its run coming to an end, it does surprise me. And maybe there is a bit of concern if it’s the only one that’s going to get the ax.

It’s not secret that the various streaming services have been struggling. Paramount has made some streaming cuts to try and save some money. One wonders if an option being pursued is cutting down on the Trek shows since those tend to be on the pricey side of things. Maybe I’m overthinking things, but it does give some food for thought.

In any event, Star Trek: Discovery airs its final season in 2024. All the best to the cast and crew who had made that show possible.

Haven’t We Been Here Before? – The Picard Season 3 Pre-Show Ramble

Tonight is the premiere episode of the third season of Star Trek: Picard.

The big TNG reunion season. The final season. The final journey. A clean break from the previous two seasons. That sort of thing. And you know what? Early reviews have been enthusiastic. It’s the best Trek in years. It’s the TNG reunion we should’ve had years. The press has been positive. Perhaps a bit too positive. This shouldn’t be cause for concern. This shouldn’t be raising any red flags. This shouldn’t be raising any shields. But it does on all counts.

The reason being that… I’ve been here before. I’ve seen this all before.

Continue reading “Haven’t We Been Here Before? – The Picard Season 3 Pre-Show Ramble”

Random Thoughts On… Star Trek: The Motion Picture – The Director's Edition (2022 Version)

I tried the seven-day free trial of Paramount Plus recently and I was going to wonder if it was worth diving in with either a monthly subscription or maybe go long term and do the annual sub. Now the key reason you’d go for Paramount Plus is because all the Star Trek stuff is there. The old shows, the movies, and whatnots. Except… not all the Star Trek stuff is on there. You have the old shows – the good Trek, as some would call it – and you have all thirteen movies. But you don’t have the recent Trek. No Discovery, No Lower Decks, No Blunt Talk: The Next Generation, not even a Ready Room with that walking shill Wil Wheaton. So I’m guessing that stuff is on Crave, which I have as part of the Bell package and you don’t want to conflict. Okay, fine.
But you also don’t have the Star Trek II: Director’s Edition, which has some extra footage and slightly different cuts. You don’t have the Star Trek VI: Director’s Edition, which has some extra footage and slightly different cuts. However, they did just add the new 4k-enhanced Director’s Edition of The Motion Picture… which, for those who don’t know…
Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released in 1979 in a relatively unfinished state, owing to the fact that a lot of special effects fell short of what director Robert Wise intended at the time. So a couple decades later, he had the opportunity to finish the film as he intended, which gave us the Director’s Edition, which featured some additional footage as well as a reworked sound mix and some additional visual effects created from CGI. The Director’s Edition of the Motion Picture is often considered the definitive version of that first Star Trek film, but was done entirely in standard definition and without any regard for potentially migrating this over to a higher resolution; hence why all these years we had the Blu-Rays releases featuring the original theatrical release, which… I had not seen until that Blu-Ray release, because up until the point, all home video versions of The Motion Picture – barring the Director’s Edition in 2001 – was based on an extended TV cut that aired on ABC and featured additional footage; some of which eventually made it to the Director’s Cut.
And so after a couple more decades, which seems to be the appropriately timed interval for such endeavors, the team who developed the Director’s Edition got back together and this time, they had access to all the original film elements pulled from the Paramount Archives, they redid the opticals and CG effects to make them more consistent, and the end result, once again, is the most definitive take on The Motion Picture given the utmost care. Everything looks sharp, the new elements look better than they did before, it’s a much cleaner looking film, and quite frankly, if director Robert Wise was still around today – he passed away in 2005 – but if he were around to see this, I think he’d be pleased that the film he originally envisioned had finally come to fruition in the best possible way. Like, if you want the best version of The Motion Picture, this is it. And I’ve always preferred this cut over the original or the TV edit. The TV edit was the one I grew up on and there’re some cuts there I’d prefer over what ended up getting used, but this one feels like a nice balance and more refined.
Now make no mistake; at the end of the day, it’s still Star Trek: The Motion Picture and you either call it one of the greatest sci-fi epics ever made or one of the slowest. And as a movie, I think I like it more now than I did back in the day. Yes, the pacing can be glacial at times. Yes, the acting as a whole feels somewhat artificial and lifeless. There’s no joy to be had with this film and the few attempts at light humor feels contrived. But what this movie does is take you on a journey and is a visual feast.
We get Klingons, we see their ship, their new bumpy heads, their weird hair that thankfully they ditched for Star Trek III and gave them the wigs instead. Get to see Vulcan, Earth, that starbase they’d recycle the model countless times and you realize all this time they had the thing hanging upside down. That two-minute overture with the Enterprise beauty shots that is either adored or ridiculed. And the latter half is nothing but weird visual effects, strange alien constructs… never before has a giant flying space dildo tickle the imagination as much as V’Ger did in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
See, the key word is picture; you look at the pictures and the visuals. That’s the selling point. The wonders of space. Jumping from the TV show to this… anyway, whether you like the movie or not and The Motion Picture has its moments, and this new Director’s Edition is the best version of the film you could watch… and who knows? Maybe Shatner will get his wish and he can redo Star Trek V because that’s also a movie which could benefit from a Director’s Edition and honestly, I don’t know that’s never happened. Sure, it wasn’t the best film, it has flaws, but it’s the closest to feeling like part of the television show. There’s a central theme that is evaluated. There’s character moments. The ideas are there. The execution was lacking and it amazes me that there was never a desire on Paramount’s part to redo the film with new visuals. And honestly, I’d like to see that happen. In an age where we just got a brand-new version of Rocky IV that is a similar but different film from what we got back in ’86, the fact that we’ve yet to get some traction on a reworked Star Trek V confounds me. And… well, we’ll see in that regard.

Random Thoughts On… Star Trek Resurgence

A little late to the party… but I wanted to sit on this for a bit before sharing some thoughts…

This Star Trek: Resurgence video game that’s coming up or maybe it’s already out – I haven’t checked – but it looks vaguely interesting. And I thought it was a novel choice to make a Star Trek game and have it take place on a Starfleet vessel that isn’t the one anyone would be familiar with. It’s not an Enterprise; it’s not a Voyager; it’s random no-name Starship run by a new set of characters with their own duties and stuff to deal with. And I thought it’s a nice approach, because you can do an original Star Trek story with a new cast of characters and not have to worry about canon or anything like that. The only thing you’d have to worry about is the minutae, which shouldn’t be that difficult because usually, these Star Trek games do a fine job of conforming and respecting the lore… there are exceptions, of course, but games of this ilk, especially those who are reliant on lore – no pun intended, there – usually respect that lore.
So from what I’ve gathered, this is more of a choose-your-own-adventure game where you play a character and you are sometimes presented with a number of actions you can take in order to progress the story. THat’s my first impression from the few snippets of gameplay that I’ve see. I don’t know if there’s more to it, but that’s the impression I got is a sort of interactive move. The preview that they have… I don’t know who’s doing the Spock voice, but it’s almost – ALMOST BUT NOT QUITE – a dead ringer for Leonard Nimoy. I mean, you pay attention, it’s not quite the same voice, but it’s damn close and whoever they got did a fine job, and the rest of the cast perform rather admirably to move the scene and that sort of thing. So that’s one aspect of the game that I’m not too concerned with is the voice acting. The graphics kinda look a bit cheap and plasticky; you’d figure we’d be at a point where we’d be beyond that sort of thing with all these 4K-this and raytrace-that and all these fucking gimmicks… but I guess we need another console generation to get close that deepfake shit that people can pull off on their fucking phones or something.
But yeah, I am curious about this. And if it’s at the right price point and if the word of mouth for this thing is pretty good, then I may give it a shot, but if not… Steam sale, I guess… ‘cuz it’s probably not going to be on GOG. And you know? That would be nice.

Random Thoughts On The Motion Picture Director's Edition 4K Remaster Refurbished Edition On The Paramount Plus Thing.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released in 1979 in a relatively unfinished state, owing to the fact that a lot of special effects fell short of what director Robert Wise intended at the time. So a couple decades later, he had the opportunity to finish the film as he intended, which gave us the Director’s Edition, which featured some additional footage as well as a reworked sound mix and some additional visual effects created from CGI. The Director’s Edition of the Motion Picture is often considered the definitive version of that first Star Trek film, but was done entirely in standard definition and without any regard for potentially migrating this over to a higher resolution; hence why all these years we had the Blu-Rays releases featuring the original theatrical release, which I had not seen until that Blu-Ray release, because up until the point, all home video versions of The Motion Picture – barring the Director’s Edition in 2001 – was based on an extended TV cut that aired on ABC and featured additional footage; some of which eventually made it to the Director’s Cut.
And so after a couple more decades, which seems to be the appropriately timed interval for such endeavors, the team who developed the Director’s Edition got back together and this time, they had access to all the original film elements pulled from the Paramount Archives, they redid the opticals and CG effects to make them more consistent, and the end result, once again, is the most definitive take on The Motion Picture given the utmost care. Everything looks sharp, the new elements look better than they did before, it’s a much cleaner looking film, and quite frankly, if director Robert Wise was still around today – he passed away in 2005 – but if he were around to see this, I think he’d be pleased that the film he originally envisioned had finally come to fruition in the best possible way. Like, if you want the best version of The Motion Picture, this is it. And I’ve always preferred this cut over the original or the TV edit. The TV edit was the one I grew up on and there’re some cuts there I’d prefer over what ended up getting used, but this one feels like a nice balance and more refined.
Now make no mistake; at the end of the day, it’s still Star Trek: The Motion Picture and you either call it one of the greatest sci-fi epics ever made or one of the slowest. And as a movie, I think I like it more now than I did back in the day. Yes, the pacing can be glacial at times. Yes, the acting as a whole feels somewhat artificial and lifeless. There’s no joy to be had with this film and the few attempts at light humor feels contrived. But what this movie does is take you on a journey and is a visual feast. We get Klingons, we see their ship, their new bumpy heads, their weird hair that thankfully they ditched for Star Trek III and gave them the wigs instead. Get to see Vulcan, Earth, that starbase they’d recycle the model countless times and you realize all this time they had the thing hanging upside down. That two-minute overture with the Enterprise beauty shots that is either adored or ridiculed. And the latter half is nothing but weird visual effects, strange alien constructs… never before has a giant flying space dildo tickle the imagination as much as V’Ger did in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
See, the key word is picture; you look at the pictures and the visuals. That’s the selling point. The wonders of space. Jumping from the TV show to this… anyway, whether you like the movie or not and The Motion Picture has its moments, and this new Director’s Edition is the best version of the film you could watch.
And who knows? Maybe Shatner will get his wish and he can redo Star Trek V because that’s also a movie which could benefit from a Director’s Edition and honestly, I don’t know that’s never happened. Sure, it wasn’t the best film, it has flaws, but it’s the closest to feeling like part of the television show. There’s a central theme that is evaluated. There’s character moments. The ideas are there. The execution was lacking and it amazes me that there was never a desire on Paramount’s part to redo the film with new visuals. And honestly, I’d like to see that happen. In an age where we just got a brand-new version of Rocky IV that is a similar but different film from what we got back in ’86, the fact that we’ve yet to get some traction on a reworked Star Trek V confounds me. And… well, we’ll see in that regard.