All Things Star Trek

[Sommerswerd]

Q: What must I do to convince you [that I'm mortal]?
Worf: Die.

I loved that response... perfect deadpan by Worf. One of my favs.

 

[warpus]

I have not been enjoying the last couple episodes of Star Trek: Discovery. The time travel one was my fav episode this season by far.

It just feels like a season of MacGuffin chasing sprinkled in with occasional fan service. The time travel episode felt more standalone and was more interesting as a result. The rest of the episodes have them going around the galaxy collecting clues, and it just seems like a lazy approach for a season. The whole premise involving the Progenitors was interesting at first, but then the whole thing devolved to MacGuffin chasing. I like some of what we're seeing, in the latest episode there's an interesting culture they interact with, but the overall story just isn't moving me much. I enjoyed the previous season more.

 

[Perfection]

I like 5th season of disco. It's good star trek.

Yeah the quest is a overused trope but like it's a better arc than 4th season. And that's not a total dig on the 4th season, i just felt it drag at times, there were some solid episodes for sure

 

[warpus]

Honestly, if all these episodes were standalones then I would have enjoyed them more. There is good Trek in there, I agree, but what ties the episodes together as a grand story arc feels lame to me, and not well thought out, and I've been focusing on that as a result. The time travel episode allowed me to mentally separate from the grander arc for whatever reason, and I ended up enjoying that one the most as a result.

The way I see it, if you're going to do a season-long story, make it compelling and interesting. This one just feels.. well.. you've heard my opinions on that already. This season would have been better served with a collection of standalone episodes, IMO. They had good ideas for most of the episodes. Did they really need to be a part of a larger arc? That's the thing to do these days I guess, but what Trek fan wouldn't appreciate a solid set of standalone episodes? The show's name implies the discovery of things, and that's what they've been doing in each episode, discovering new cultures and exploring planets, so maybe the focus should have been on that, and not on a larger arc that falls flat. Hey, maybe the conclusion to the grander story at the end of the season will tie it all together in a satisfying way that will justify this approach, but if we're going by past seasons then I'm not really that hopeful. It just seems like the writers for this show always try to come up with an epic and grand premise for each season, as a way to pull us in, but the way the grand story plays out is always lacking. Maybe the focus should have been on each individual episode instead, like in classic trek. The writers seem better equipped to handle these smaller non-epic non-grand in scale sort of stories.

This might be a tired line, but I feel like SNW really walks that line quite well. A lot of episodes are connected, but each episode has that standalone episode feel that feels so Trek. I wish Discovery and Picard had done more of that. Their grand ideas never really pan out or pay off in the end, but there's solid ideas in the episodes

 

[EgonSpengler]

‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Series Casts Holly Hunter in Main Role (EXCLUSIVE)

The "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" series at Paramount+ has cast Holly Hunter in a lead role, Variety has learned.

variety.com

That's a pretty good get. I haven't seen her in anything in a while.

Hunter previously starred in and executive produced the TNT crime series “Saving Grace,” which aired for three seasons. She won Emmy awards for the made-for-television movies “The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom” and “Roe vs. Wade.” Most recently, she starred opposite Ted Danson in the NBC comedy “Mr. Mayor.”

I thought Saving Grace was a good show. It was sorta your typical American crime procedural, but with a bit of Christian mythology over it - one of the characters was Hunter's guardian angel, played by Leon Rippy. It was kinda fun. It was also set in the Midwest - Oklahoma City - which you don't see on television much.

 

[Clubber Lang]

TJ Hooker wants back in -

Shatner, Pine, or a Kirk triple whammy: where should Star Trek boldly go next?​

With the fate of the next film up in the air, the original captain wants to get back on the Enterprise – it could be a genius feat of nostalgic casting or a desperate attempt to regain past glory



It probably says something about the gaping void where Star Trek movies ought to be sitting right now that even 93-year-old William Shatner reckons he might have a chance at getting back in the Enterprise command chair, albeit with a bit of futuristic de-ageing tech. Speaking to the Canadian Press a couple of weeks ago, the original Captain James Tiberius Kirk suggested he could easily play a younger version of the erstwhile Star Trek admiral, thanks to a company he’s working with that specialises in software that “takes years off your face, so that in a film you can look 10, 20, 30, 50 years younger than you are”.

Kirk was, of course, killed off in 1994’s Star Trek: Generations. Yet given the propensity for alternate timelines in mainstream sci-fi fantasy these days (and the fact that one was already introduced in the 2009 JJ Abrams-directed reboot) it would be no surprise at all to see him back on the deck of the Enterprise, like some kind of AI-assisted, uncanny valley facsimile of his former self, grinning with lurid romance at Uhura while fiddling with his (rumoured) corset.

Meanwhile, Kirk 2.0, Chris Pine, is completely in the dark as to whether his version of the cocksure interstellar navigator will ever be back on the big screen, following recent suggestions that a new screenwriter is on board to pen the long-gestating sequel to 2016’s Star Trek: Beyond. “I honestly don’t know,” he told Business Insider when asked for an update on the long-mooted Star Trek 4. “There was something in the news of a new writer coming on board. I thought there was already a script, but I guess I was wrong, or they decided to pivot. As it’s always been with Trek, I just wait and see.”

Given that yet another version of Kirk (played by Paul Wesley) now exists in the excellent, and rightly popular, TV show Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Pine and Shatner can probably be forgiven for wondering if Paramount studio will ever get around to returning to their own timelines. And this week comes news suggesting that none of the Kirks are likely to be hitting the multiplex anytime soon: Andor director Toby Haynes is reportedly on board to oversee a new episode that will take place close to the present day, and is likely to focus on the creation of Starfleet and humankind’s first contact with alien life. It is expected to be the first in a new series of films overseen by super-producer Simon Kinberg, previously best known for the highly mercurial X-Men movies.

Doesn’t this all sound a little bit like Enterprise? Maybe Paramount should just bite the bullet instead and give us the triple-Kirk, multiple timeline movie that is probably the only way to rescue this aching franchise, before Shatner himself finally fuses with the Borg and is no longer available. Given 2009’s reboot made such capital out of featuring two Spocks, this is probably the only way to go one step further and deliver the Spider-Man: No Way Home of Star Trek movies, and surely Shatner deserves it in the week in which his valedictory documentary You Can Call Me Bill hits digital platforms. They could even throw in the actor who played young Kirk in Abrams’s first entry, along with Sandra Smith (who once portrayed Kirk trapped in the body of a woman in the infamous Original Series body swap episode Turnabout Intruder). It would be like those Doctor Who specials in which all the previous inhabitants of the Tardis turn up at once, except with a lot more American accents and Tribbles.

On the other hand, maybe it really is time to leave the Kirk era behind and see if Star Trek can flourish without constantly telling the same story over and over again like the filmic equivalent of a particularly wonky Möbius strip. It didn’t work with Enterprise, but hey-ho. Quentin Tarantino won’t be showing up any time soon to give us his mooted “hard R” take on Starfleet’s ongoing mission to seek out new life, so really where else is there left to go with this stuff?



My bet, and secret hope, is that Shatner somehow finds his way into at least one of these new Star Trek big screen concepts, even if the result is the modern-day, hi-tech equivalent of Game of Death’s foolish attempts to keep the splendour of Bruce Lee posthumously alive via the magic of mirrors and a bad cardboard cut out of the martial arts star’s face. There is simply no other Kirk like him. And while there are those who will tell you that the much-missed Leonard Nimoy’s wonderfully taciturn Spock was the real reason Star Trek is still going after the best part of seven decades, it is hard to imagine anyone who really loves this preposterously long-running space saga not doing so because of some kind of secret crush (guilty or not) on this most brilliantly pompous and swaggering of screen presences. He’s 93! And he still reckons he should be given another go in the hot seat – maybe we should just give him the chance?