Star Trek

This is a great interview with some significant behind the scenes perspective, and affirmation that fan advocacy is having an impact.

KEVIN: When interested parties with offers come forward, we’re going to be a part of that conversation. . . All we know at our level right now is that there’s active talks happening, right now. . .

** TREKCORE: What can Prodigy fans do to support the efforts that might be happening behind the scenes?**

DAN: I think they’re doing exactly what they —

KEVIN: They’re doing more!

DAN: More than we ever asked for, or expected.

KEVIN: All the noise they’re making out there is fantastic. I don’t think that telling Paramount+ to pick us back up again is going to happen; I think they’ve made their choice. Now it’s about telling Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, or whoever that “Hey, here’s a great freaking show!”

DAN: Just tell people about the show! Because I think Prodigy looks like one thing from an outsider’s perspective — it could look like a young show, or a show that someone might not be into. But when people say “There’s some great storytelling in there!” or “You don’t even need to have children to enjoy Prodigy…”

KEVIN: Spread the word, it’s an all-ages show.

• The title refers to the Gorn Hegemony, the name of the polity from which the Gorn hail. It was first mentioned on screen in the ENT episode, “Bound”, but it as used non-canon as early as the 1992 novel, “The Disinherited”.

• Captain Betel’s log gives us the stardate as 2344.2. Seeing as we’re in the season finale, let’s look at both seasons.

• The USS Cayuga is visiting a world outside Federation space, Parnassus Beta, which a colony built on the ”small town model,” and it was “made to look like the old Midwestern United States,” and certainly not like a backlot in Pickering, Ontario, just outside Toronto. In “Sub Rosa”, we were introduced to the Caldos colony, which was modelled to look like a Scottish village.

     • Like an authentic midwest American town, the Parnassus Beta colony is having trouble making sure everyone is vaccinated.

     • The Parnassus system is named for the mountain in Greece, and all the businesses we see are also named for Greek mountains or mountain ranges.

     • Despite being outside the Federation, the medical clinic still features the Starfleet Medical caduceus.

• Several the officers on the planet are wearing excursion jackets, and we get close up enough on Batel to see that the patch on her shoulder reads "USS Enterprise".

     • Based on the length of the word, it also looks like ensign Doug's shoulder patch is also the Enterprise one, we don't get a clear enough look at it that I saw.

• Nurse Chapel has tagged along for the ride so she can reach her fellowship with Doctor Korby. Korby was first mentioned in “What Are Little Girls Made Of” as Chapel’s fiancée. His expedition will go missing on the planet Exo III approximately two years after this episode.

• ”I’m not busting into song every ten minutes, so that’s a minor victory.” Pike is referring to the events of the previous episode, “Subspace Rhapsody”.

     • Pike is fidgeting with the Opelian mariner’s keystone Batel gifted him in “Among the Lotus Eaters”.

• A Gorn Destroyer, previously seen in “Memento Mori” breaks through the atmosphere.

• ”I’ve seen them up close and personal, and they’re not hard to understand, Bob. They’re monsters.” In “Arena” Kirk monologued of the Gorn, “Like most humans, I seem to have an instinctive revulsion to reptiles. I must fight to remember that this is an intelligent, highly advanced individual. The Captain of a starship, like myself. Undoubtedly a dangerously clever opponent.”

• According to Spock’s display, the Cayuga was a Constitution-class Heavy Cruiser, which settles the question as to whether or not it might be a second Sombra-class starship.

• We previously saw the Gorn Hunter ship class in “Memento Mori”.

• The Gorn have sent Starfleet an image with a demarcation line separating the Parnasus system. According to Tim Peel, the motion graphics designer for SNW, the intent is that as planets move through the system they’ll end up on the Federation side, tempting Starfleet to engage in rescue or reconnaissance missions, and eventually the planet will cross back into the side claimed by he Gorn, at which point any stragglers will be fair game to use as food, or breeding incubators.

     • According to display of the planet, Parnassus Beta’s year is 402 days. Whether that’s Earth days, or the 26.5 hour Parnassus Beta days is not explicitly clear.

• The crew has duct tapped random bits of scrap to a shuttlecraft so they’re disguised as debris to fool the Gorn Hunter. In “Lower Decks” Geordi and Taurik marked a shuttle with phaser burns to fool the Cardassians.

• ”Don’t worry, I did this a hundred times during the war.” It was established in “Those Old Scientists” that Ortegas served on the front during the Federation-Klingon War.

• “I thought you were a test pilot.” Pike’s first assignment out of the Academy was test pilot, as per “Light and Shadows”.

• La’an relates her memories of surviving on the Gorn breeding planet as a child. La’an’s history with the Gorn was established in the series premiere, “Strange New Worlds”.

• La’an questions why the Gorn ”younglings” aren’t fighting for dominance, which they apparently did in her experiences on the breeding planet, as well as when we saw them in “All Those Who Wander”.

• It’s Scotty! From Star Trek! Montgomery Scott first appeared in the second TOS pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before” played by James Doohan. Since then the character has been played by Simon Pegg in the Kelvinverse films, as well as Matthew Wolf briefly offscreen in the alternate future Pike experienced in “A Quality of Mercy”. Here he’s played by Martin Qinn, who, unlike all the previous actors, is Scottish.

• Doctor M’Benga and Ortegas discuss having learned that Nurse Chapel beamed back to the Cayuga right before the Gorn arrived in system. ”I’m not sure how I’m going to tell her sister,” Ortegas mentions having once met Chapel’s identical sister who is named Kristine, and happens to also be a nurse serving in Starfleet.

• ”If you had answered like that in my class, I would have given you an A+.” Number One received a C in Pelia’s class at the Academy, as per “Lost in Translation”.

• ”Placing those rockets is a near impossible task. No human can do this.” Spock was a huge influence on Captain Solok, introduced in “Take Me Out to the Holosuite”, who published over a dozen papers on the relative merits of humans and Vulcans.

     • “...I am the only member of the crew who can pull this off.” Apparently it’s not just humans, but also Tellarites, Andorians, Illyrians, Lanthanites, Bolians, Denobulans, and whatever other non-Vulcan crew people are serving aboard the ship whom Spock looks down on.

     • Spock was right; no human could possible place a rocket on to the ship, wait for it to adhere itself, and move on to the next spot to repeat the process, which is what we see Spock doing on the wreck of the Cayuga.

• We see an adult Gorn with a rather lengthy tail. Or at least a mechanical tail built into its space suit. In previous episodes where we’ve seen adult Gorn -- “Arena”, “The Time Trap”, “In a Mirror Darkly, Part II”, “Veritas”, and “An Embarrassment of Dooplers” -- none of them have had tails.

     • We also saw a Gorn skeleton in “Context is for Kings” and no signs of tail.

• Batel has been infected by Gorn eggs. She claims it takes ”about a day and a half” for the eggs to mature. According to the records aboard the USS Peregrine in “All Those Who Wander” it took days for the eggs to mature in a human host.

• Batel invokes Hemmer and his sacrificing his own life for the good of everyone else in “All Those Who Wander”.

• The saucer of the Caygua crashes into the surface of Parnassus Beta, destroying the Gorn interference field tower. Fortunately Chapel was certainly the only one aboard the ship at the time of the attack who survived, and Spock didn’t just send a bunch of others still unconscious or trying to work their way off the ship to their deaths.

• We see a Gorn transporter effect, and it is green.

• Pelia is the only person this episode to call lieutenant Scott ”Scotty.”

• Admiral April orders the Enterprise to withdraw from the Parnassus system, despite the fact that Starfleet officers, and human colonists, were just beamed up by the Gorn. In “Saints of Imperfection” Pike gave a speech: ”Starfleet is a promise; I give my life for you, you give your life for me, and no one gets left behind.”

• In the final scene of the episode, Scotty and Pelia are working on his jury-rigged Gorn transponders in sick bay when the eggs in Batel’s arm hatch, exploding out out and spattering emerald viscera all over Scotty’s face. We get an extreme close up on his hundred yard stare, as he whispers hoarsely, ”It’s green,” echoing lines spoken in “By Any Other Name”, and “Relics”.

Anyone working on that yet? There's so many of these in the finale, but there's also many from the other Gorn episodes. If you see this anywhere please post it here!

They're supposed to sound like TNG Klingons. Everybody sang in the squeaky range. A variety of voices would have been nice. Ethan Peck's a baritone. More than one note of Spock's big number could have been there.

By that I mean that the basic premise being: that the means of (re)creating new technology is lost, the current technology around is treated as sacred and the function marred in elaborate rituals or prayers because they don't know how to otherwise operate it, and to a lesser extent that new ideas or (often xenophillic) research is met with suspicion or outright rejected because it doesn't fit with the religious dogma.

I keep feeling that a similar group is somewhere in Star Trek, right on the cusp of my memory, but I can't seem to recall any specific examples.

For those unfamiliar, every month Simon and Schuster offers an array of Trek ebooks at a promotional discount price.

In the US and Canada, they are $ 0.99, in the UK £ 0.99z, through the major ebook platforms. Not sure about other countries.

It’s a great way to dip into Treklit at an affordable price. Even better, the authors get their full residuals for each book. It’s a win-win for readers and writers.

This month’s offerings include a trilogy of Q-focused stories from Greg Cox as well as several TNG books from a diverse group of writers, including Diane Duane. There are also some TOS stories from Greg Cox and Lee Corey. This group will be available until September 3rd.

Swallow is the author of several well received Star Trek tie-in novels, both for the new shows and the Relauch novelverse (as well as for some other fandoms).

He’s also one of a few British authors writing for Trek.

Strange New Worlds has been my favorite Trek since Next Generation, and if the quality continues, could easily be my favorite Trek ever. But with the e.p. wishing for more episodes per season, there’s a danger of diluting the show by adding weak episodes that would have never made it in a 10 episode season.

One of the things I’ve long admired with BBC shows is their normally low-episode seasons, which kept out a lot of filler that normally made it in to the broadcast shows from the states. But streaming (and before that, cable) changed things. Finally US based shows were able to create much lower episode seasons, allowing the creators to tell more of the story they wanted to tell, without stretching things out (too much), or being forced to add stories they weren’t thrilled with in order to fill the season. (Though, even with shorter runs, shows are still doing this. Picard season 2, for example, could have used some trimming. So, yeah, show runners are still being forced to fill seasons where X number of episodes were ordered before the story was fleshed out. Maybe it just seems more evident in serialized shows.)

I can’t help but think a longer season of SNW would be a “more is less” scenario. I’d much rather see Paramount create another Trek show that’s mainly episodic, that’s been shown the same attention to quality that SNW has received.

It's time to say goodbye to Strange New Worlds for a while... Here's Seán with all the ups and downs! Listen to The TrekCulture Podcast - Tuesdays on;Spotify...

While my preference isn’t to link to a vendor site, Round 2 (AMT’s parent) doesn’t seem to be posting these forthcoming releases on their own website yet. (Hope this is cool with community rules.) This vendor apparently saw these at a fair and booked supply. Credit to them for getting the information up.

Suggest folks outside the US contact their local/regional independent AMT stockists to see if they can preorder. Round2/AMT seems to be planning to have a presence at a series of toy fairs and trade events through the fall, so it sounds like there will be opportunities for other vendors to carry them.

Winter 2023-2024 seems the expected release time for these new models.

The TMP and Undiscovered Country Ktinga battlcruisers are newly rereleased along with the Enterprise D and the TOS K-7 space station.

I know a strictly military-focused show goes against Roddenberry's vision, but what are the chances that we could see some sort of war-focused Trek in the future? The scenes in "Under the Cloak of War" (SNW 2x08... yes I'm a few weeks behind) fascinated me. What would a MAS*H-style show look like in Trek? Could the show tell the story of the war exclusively from the medical perspective? Until now, we've only gotten glimpses of war shown through the eyes of our main characters (O'Brien, Nog, Chakotay, Burnham, M'Benga, Chapel, etc) and we've gotten fleet-level looks of battles, but very little on-the-ground coverage of war.

I'd prefer the setting to be some war set some time after PIC--something we as an audience know nothing about. What are your thoughts, Lemmy?

All the bios just say is that he was born in Upstate New York, and lived a majority of his life in San Francisco.

The reason I'm asking, is because I came up with an idea to do some sightseeing: visit the birth places of Star Trek characters.

I started to do some research, and discovered that there isn't a concrete hometown for Captain Archer. Only that he was born in Upstate New York.

So, what city do you think it is? If I were to guess, I would say Syracuse, or Ticonderoga.

Pretty good summary I feel of where we are up to with SNW after 2 seasons, including the commentary about how the show is handling TOS nostalgia and being prequel.

I had been curious to see what the Trekyards guys’ first-look analysis would be based on the preview clip shared at STLV. Thought others might be too.

As usual, I find they can be overly rigid on some points, but can agree that for a new, large science vessel that would carry families, Voyager-A seems to be lacking windows.

In Subspace Radio 38, Rob & Kev need a sonic shower after the slow march through the Federation-Klingon war and its ugly consequences that was "Under the Cloak of War". Reflecting on the Federation at war, they look back at "Yesterday's Enterprise" (TNG) and "The Siege of AR-558" (DS9).

Written by Henry Alonso Myers

Directed by Maja Vrvilo

Follow-up toot:

Then, a small window after that where the episodes get closed captioning, foreign translations and marketing looks before going to air — wherever that may be.

More on that later hopefully, but such deals are very slow moving — there’s a lot to work out. Stay tuned!

** Star Trek: The Motion Picture - Echoes #4**
Written by: Marc Guggenheim
Art by: Oleg Chudakov
Cover by: Jake Bartok

Tensions are at an all-time high with Chekov in a dire medical state while his evil doppelgänger, Akris, is supplying the Romulans with the Nightbringer weapon. The Enterprise crew's mission is clear: infiltrate the Romulan dreadnought and destroy the Nightbringer before Akris can bring the destruction he's inflicted upon his universe into theirs. But can Kirk and Nyota set their differences aside to ensure a peaceful resolution and avoid sparking a war with the Romulans?

So I'm partly posting this because I like DS9 and wouldn't mind chatting about its episodes once in a while, so I'd love to hear people's opinions in general about the episode.

My main reason though is to voice a complaint. In this episode, some self-obsessed genius terraformer guy comes to DS9 for his latest project. Sisko starts meeting this woman Fenna, who keeps disappearing. Despite this he falls for her. It turns out that this woman is a psychic projection created by Nidell, the unhappy wife of the terraformer. She can't leave him because her species mates for life. At the end, the self-obsessed terraformer makes an uncharacteristic sacrifice, killing himself as part of his final crowning achievement, so that Fenna can be free from their unhappy marriage. At the end, Nidell cannot remember the "relationship" she had with Sisko, and she goes to talk to him. She asks what Fenna was like, and Sisko says "she was just like you."

And to me, this was such a record scratching moment. Like, let's set aside the fact that Sisko has had all of three conversations with either of them, so he barely knows either of them. Fenna dressed in bright colors with elaborate hairstyles, she talked about the excitement/anticipation of the promenade at night, she suggested impromptu picnics. As far as we can tell, she's spontaneous, outgoing, curious, and wants to explore. Compare that to Nidell, who dresses in muted colors, with a more reserved hairstyle. She tells Sisko that she plans to return to her home planet for the rest of her life (and she seems quite young). All that suggests a less spontaneous and curious personality, the sort of person who is happy to live in their hometown their whole life. Which is fine, but it seems to me that these two people are nothing alike, except that they look the same.

I get that Fenna is supposed to be a manifestation of Nidell's subconscious or something. So maybe she secretly wishes to be like Fenna. But that doesn't make the line work for me. I'm not certain if we're expected to agree with Sisko, or if we're supposed to understand that Sisko is only saying this to be nice, since he still has feelings for Fenna and doesn't want to hurt Nidell. Either way is weird.

Anyway, that's my complaint. This episode doesn't go down in the history books as an exciting one, but I sure did enjoy everyone's exasperated reactions to the terraformer dude.

Would love to hear other people's thoughts :)