The first part of this review is free from major story spoilers. The end of the spoiler-free section is clearly marked.
I know what you’re thinking: Trekking with Dennis reviewing a horror film?! And it isn’t even October! What’s going on?
Well, I’ll let you in on a secret: 28 Days Later is one of my favourite horror films of all-time, and I enjoyed 28 Weeks Later, too. So when Danny Boyle announced there’d finally be a sequel to this genre-redefining zombie story a few years ago, I was immediately interested. Horror may not be my thing a lot of the time, but every now and then I don’t mind a good scare.
This is also my second zombie story in the span of a week! A few days ago, I watched Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ zombie episode, so after this I think I’m gonna need a bit of a break from zombies for a while.
A trio of posters for the film.
28 Years Later was… interesting. But I’ll be honest: it wasn’t really what I expected. Less a horror film than a coming-of-age family drama with a zombie backdrop, 28 Years Later leaned on its post-apocalyptic setting to tell a story focused on a handful of characters. Spike, the main protagonist, got most of the film’s attention, and that was certainly an interesting – and potentially controversial – choice.
There was some fantastically creative cinematography in 28 Years Later. The film cut sequences from its post-apocalyptic present-day with imagery from war films and historical re-enactments, drawing parallels between those situations. The “Boots” refrain, heard in the trailer, surprised me by being an integral part of the film, not just a marketing stunt, and it was suitably haunting to hear that recitation atop imagery of zombies going feral. 28 Years Later was also creative with its use of colour; blood-red scenes were used for emphasis at key points in the story.
An example of a blood-red sequence.
If you know me, you’ll know I’m a scaredy-cat. And 28 Days Later is up there as one of the most frightening films I’ve seen; its depiction of sprinting infected redefined what zombies could be and made them genuinely terrifying. For me, 28 Years Later just… wasn’t all that scary. It was gruesome when it wanted to be, sure; blood, guts, and other viscera are almost omnipresent in its world. But its jump-scares felt rather predictable – I could sense that something was coming, even when the film wasn’t trying to signal it. And while these sprinting zombies retain some of their fear factor, I suspect that two-plus decades of other horror films – many of which were inspired, directly or indirectly, by Danny Boyle’s work – have kind of… lessened that, a little.
I put off watching 28 Years Later until I felt I was in a good frame of mind for horror… but I really didn’t need to. There were tense moments, without a doubt. And the film is not bereft of new ideas; special categories of infected, who are bigger and stronger than your “standard” sprinting zombies added a new danger. But when I think back to that first viewing of 28 Days Later, and how I could scarcely bring myself to walk into the kitchen the next morning when it was still dark… nothing in this film really came close to recapturing that level of horror.
Director Danny Boyle (right) with Edvin Ryding and Alfie Williams on the set of 28 Years Later. Photo Credit: IMDB
I don’t mind that, by the way. In fact, after the intervening years have not been too kind to my own mental health, I think I prefer a film like this! But I do think it’s worth noting that the belated follow-up to one of the most horrifying depictions of zombies ever brought to screen – and a film that had a massive impact on the zombie genre – wasn’t actually as scary as I expected. And if a big old scaredy-cat like me can make it all the way to the end without wetting their pants, then maybe some folks with a greater appetite for horror than I might even find 28 Years Later to be… tame.
All that being said, this is still a film I’d happily recommend. If you enjoyed 28 Days Later and want to know what happened next, or if you just enjoy a good zombie flick, there’s a lot to appreciate and enjoy. Some of it is a bit more artsy and a bit less gory than some of the more mindless films in the zombie genre, but whether that’s offputting or something to celebrate just boils down to personal taste! Speaking for myself, I think 28 Years Later was about right. It struck a good balance without leaning too much into gory horror, and even though some of its character moments could feel a bit clichéd, I still rooted for young Spike and wanted to see him succeed on his adventure.
The infected are coming!
It was also interesting to catch a glimpse of post-apocalyptic life many years into the rage virus outbreak. Seeing how new communities formed, how people have to find new roles, and how some people just… seem to lose themselves. That was all interesting stuff.
So even if 28 Years Later wasn’t the scare-fest I’d been expecting, I generally enjoyed it for what it was. Up next, we’ll get into the narrative in a bit more detail – so if you don’t want to see spoilers for the film’s plot, this is your opportunity to jump ship! But I hope you’ll come back after you’ve seen 28 Years Later to get my take on the film’s story.
This is the end of the spoiler-free section. There are story spoilers for 28 Years Later (as well as 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later) from here on out.
I really did not expect 28 Years Later to be a coming-of-age story mixed in with family drama. Spike’s quest to help his mother was relatable and sweet, and all credit to young Alfie Williams, who took on a challenging role and rose to the occasion.
What I’d say, though, is that there were some pretty big clichés on this side of the story. Spike catching his dad cheating on his mum, and their subsequent confrontation… it played out like something from a low-budget soap, not the highly-anticipated sequel to a film that redefined a genre. It wasn’t poor, but it wasn’t great… and I don’t even think it was wholly necessary to jump-start Spike’s quest. His mother’s illness, and the knowledge of a doctor on the mainland, was enough.
There was a fair amount of personal drama on this side of the story.
I also struggled to buy Spike’s rapid acceptance of his mother’s death. We got a bit of protest as Dr Kelson explained that her condition was terminal, but the film went pretty quickly from that moment to Kelson giving Isla her coup de grace, and Spike just kind of… went with it. Yes, he was drugged in the beginning, but after she died – at Dr Kelson’s hand – he didn’t really react. He placed her bleached skull atop the pile and that was that. On to the next quest – to bring the baby back to the village.
This had been Spike’s driving force for basically the entire film – his mum’s ill, he wants to help. He undertakes a very dangerous and deadly quest to help her, and when she can’t be helped he goes from grief and devastation to acceptance in basically an afternoon. Maybe you could read into that, something about the harsh realities of post-apocalyptic life making people more hardy… but it didn’t come across that way for me. It just felt either rushed or underdeveloped.
Isla’s death was handled pretty quickly, especially for Spike.
Many great horror films use their supernatural settings to take their characters on this kind of journey of growth, and I don’t think 28 Years Later was wrong to want to tell that kind of story. The apocalypse – zombie-related or otherwise – can make a great backdrop for character arcs, personal conflicts, and drama of all kinds. Spike had an understandable motivation, and Dr Kelson also felt like a real person – someone who’s been living in this world, figuring out how to survive for such a long time that he seems “crazy” to outsiders.
But that’s where the real characterisation seemed to stop. Erik, Jamie, the other villagers, and even Isla all felt pretty flat; less fleshed-out people than archetypes or caricatures, serving a narrative function, yes, but often in a shallow or obvious way. If you know me, you’ll know I’m always an advocate for stories that delve into themes of mental health, and Isla’s story in 28 Years Later definitely touched on that. But how she presented during her “episodes” was pretty tropey, and the way she’d snap out of it when the story demanded it – showing lucidity at key moments to have conversations or advance storylines – was pretty basic.
Isla.
Can we nitpick? I like to nitpick. How did Dr Kelson – some 28 years after the collapse of civilisation in the UK – manage to maintain a stockpile of medications like morphine and iodine? I mean, he was practically bathing in the stuff, and he’d need to re-apply his iodine defence any time he ventured beyond his skull island home, so… how much iodine must that be after almost thirty years? I think Kelson was probably the film’s second-most-interesting character after Spike… but as I say, I like to nitpick!
Those questions aside, I really liked 28 Years Later’s take on a post-apocalyptic world. The abandoned train was probably one of my favourite settings – not least because I’m a bit of a train fanatic! But catching glimpses of overgrown towns, the gas-filled petrol station, and decaying buildings and infrastructure was all interesting stuff. It really felt like a world that had been left to decay and collapse for 28 years.
The train.
28 Years Later raised several questions that I hope next year’s sequel, The Bone Temple, can answer. How are the infected – which the first two films depicted as dying off en masse after a month or so – still alive in such great numbers this long after the virus broke out? The first two films made it pretty clear that the infected didn’t eat and would just die out, but 28 Years Later establishes that tribes of infected roam around, feeding on wildlife, and apparently breeding with one another, too. It’s a big change from the depiction of the infected in those first films, and it warrants an explanation.
There were echoes of I Am Legend in this presentation of “alpha” infected. The idea that some infected could display greater intelligence, assuming some kind of leadership role in their group, reminded me of that film. It also reminded me of the Resident Evil video games, and how there could be “special” categories of zombies – usually serving as bosses! In that sense, I didn’t feel that the alpha was a particularly original creation, but still – it’s something that should be explained. Assuming, of course, that an explanation has been written.
“Samson,” one of the alpha infected.
What do we make of the “Jimmy Savile” gang? I can’t help but feel that was done purely for shock value; Jimmy Savile being such a thoroughly vile person whose high-profile crimes shocked the entire country. In the film’s universe I guess it makes sense: Savile’s crimes weren’t uncovered until 2011, whereas in the universe of 28 Years Later, society collapsed in 2002. I remember watching Jim’ll Fix It as a kid in the ’80s, and the scale of what went on at the BBC with Savile is… even all these years later, words fail me.
But in the context of 28 Years Later, I hope – truly hope – that there’ll be more to this than just a cheap stunt to end this half of the story. Jimmy – the child from the beginning of the film – seems to have grown up to lead this gang of Savile impersonators… but why? Is it some attempt to cling to part of the world that they lost? Is it just a cult? Whatever it is, I hope there’s more to it than just an attempt to shock and offend, because otherwise it’s in pretty poor taste. I will reserve judgement, though, until I’ve seen The Bone Temple.
Jimmy.
So I think I’m all zombie-ed out for a while!
I hope this has been interesting. I can’t shake the feeling that a film I’d waited more than twenty years to see wasn’t as impactful as I’d expected, even though it was solid and entertaining in its own way. But I don’t dislike 28 Years Later, and I’d certainly recommend it to fans of the original films, horror fans, and even to folks like myself who aren’t horror aficionados but just want to check out some of 2025’s big releases.
I will await The Bone Temple and the continuation of this story with some trepidation. A good ending could reframe parts of 28 Years Later, making them feel better in hindsight. But equally, a poor ending or a lack of a suitable explanation for some of the film’s narrative beats could make both pictures feel… underwhelming. I guess we’ll see next year.
28 Years Later is available to stream now on Amazon Prime Video, and will be released on DVD, Blu-Ray, and other streaming platforms in the months ahead. 28 Years Later is the copyright of Columbia Pictures and/or Sony Pictures. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the following Star Trek productions: The Original Series, Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, and Starfleet Academy.
You might’ve missed it in the din of other Comic-Con news, but we’ve recently learned that a pitch for a new Star Trek series is in the offing. Spearheaded by Strange New Worlds showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers, the project would be a continuation of sorts – picking up after the end of Pike’s tenure in the captain’s chair of the Enterprise and showing the first missions under Kirk’s command. I wanted to get into the pitch today and share my thoughts.
Akiva Goldsman is all over modern Star Trek – he’s worked on Discovery, Short Treks, and Picard, as well as serving as showrunner for Strange New Worlds. And Henry Alonso Myers has been Strange New Worlds’ executive producer and showrunner since Season 1. The duo are currently preparing a formal pitch for their successor series, presumably to the newly-merged Skydance/Paramount corporate entity. At Comic-Con, Goldsman encouraged fans to get in touch with Star Trek’s corporate overlords to support the pitch.
Akiva Goldsman (pictured) and Henry Alonso Myers have teased this Year One pitch. Photo Credit: StarTrek.com
So… is this a good idea?
If you’re a regular reader, you’ll have heard me say this a thousand times: more Star Trek on our screens is always going to be a good thing, and it’s always going to be something I’ll do my best to support. Then there’s the whole “no one’s asking for this” argument. Many shows that “no one” asked for turned out to be fantastic, and in today’s insular fan communities, often the kinds of things people are asking for would either be flat-out terrible or would be so niche that they’d never attract a mainstream audience. I often point to Star Trek: Enterprise as an example of a series that “no one” was asking for around the turn of the millennium, but it actually ended up telling some wonderful Star Trek stories.
Those are my caveats! And I mention them before we go any further because, to be blunt about it, I’m not sold on this Year One pitch.
You heard me, Spock.
There are several factors to consider, and we’ll run through them in turn.
First of all, let’s think about what appealed to fans about Strange New Worlds in the first place – why was this show even made? The short answer is Anson Mount and his portrayal of Captain Pike. During Discovery’s second season, Mount joined the series alongside Ethan Peck as Spock and with a smaller role for Rebecca Romijn as Una. Mount’s commanding portrayal of Pike led to calls for a “Captain Pike show,” with the fan campaign seeming to catch ViacomCBS off-guard.
Ethan Peck’s take on a younger version of Spock was interesting, and Rebecca Romijn was fantastic in her scenes as Number One, too, but when we step back in time to early 2019 and Discovery’s second season… it was Captain Pike that really appealed to fans. Anson Mount showed us a wonderfully complex man; an upstanding Starfleet officer willing to make whatever sacrifices were necessary to save the galaxy and complete his mission. And we lapped it up.
Captain Pike boards the USS Discovery for the first time.
What is the “Captain Pike show” without Captain Pike? Because, if you boil it down, that’s what this Year One idea sounds like. Replace Pike with Kirk, but keep the sets and some of the other cast. Presumably they’d also shuffle off characters like Ortegas, Pelia, and La’an, too – replacing them with familiar faces from The Original Series. In an interview shortly after the Comic-Con panel, Myers mentioned Sulu, Dr McCoy, and even potentially bringing Chekov into the Year One show.
But without Captain Pike… would the show still work? I mean, on a basic level I suppose it would; sticking with the same semi-episodic formula would at least keep the same fundamental tone. Pike, though, has been such an important factor in Strange New Worlds’ success that I really don’t think it would be a good idea to ditch him, of all people, and try to carry on. In fact, I’d go so far as to say the inverse of this pitch would be a better idea – Fleet Captain Pike’s adventures in the year or two before his accident, with Anson Mount carrying on and potentially bringing some of his Enterprise colleagues with him, would be the show I’d rather see!
What is “the Captain Pike show” without Captain Pike?
There’s a problem of repetitiveness, too. In short, we’ve seen Kirk’s five-year mission already. Not only that, but we’ve seen it twice thanks to the Kelvin timeline films. Star Trek ’09 and Into Darkness both looked at how Kirk came to sit in the captain’s chair, as well as his early adventures as captain of the Enterprise. And, of course, we have The Original Series. While we didn’t see Kirk’s first day on the job in The Original Series… did we need to?
The Original Series took us through eighty adventures with Kirk and co. aboard the Enterprise. And while it’s been interesting to see Kirk meeting people like Uhura and Spock for the first time in Strange New Worlds, setting the stage for some of those future storylines, I don’t think it’s something we need an entire new series to do. What could we learn about Kirk, and his relationships with other members of the crew, that Strange New Worlds and the Kelvin films haven’t already shown us?
Concept art of the USS Enterprise produced for Phase II in the 1970s.
To me, this Year One idea feels like the least-interesting chapter of a story where we’ve already seen the beginning and the end. We’ve seen two different versions of Kirk meeting Spock, Kirk meeting Uhura, and Kirk coming aboard Pike’s Enterprise. We’ve seen where Kirk and his crew would end up decades later – and plenty of adventures in between. What do we gain from Year One that we haven’t already seen from Strange New Worlds, the Kelvin films, and The Original Series? Where’s the hook – what’s different about these stories?
If Strange New Worlds’ writers and producers had kept Kirk – and other TOS characters – away from the show, maybe there’d be more of a compelling argument. I suggested way back when Strange New Worlds was first announced that the show could end with Kirk boarding the Enterprise for the first time, meeting Spock, and setting the stage for The Original Series – but that would’ve been the series finale. Instead, they wanted to bring in Kirk, Uhura, Scotty, and other familiar characters from the beginning – which has been fun to see, don’t get me wrong, but it also works against this new pitch. It’s kind of a “pick one or the other” type of situation, and with Strange New Worlds having included these characters, introduced them to one another, and shown the beginnings of those relationships, it’s kind of stolen the thunder of this Year One pitch before it was even made.
Jim Kirk has already been a part of Strange New Worlds.
Since Nemesis was in cinemas all the way back in 2002, Star Trek has spent a lot of time on prequels. Enterprise, the Kelvin films, Discovery’s first two seasons, and Strange New Worlds have all been set in the years before The Original Series – meaning there have been fewer opportunities to advance the overall timeline of the franchise. I don’t think I’m the only Trekkie to say that maybe it’s time to give the prequel idea a break for a while, and if there is to be more Star Trek in the years ahead, to focus instead on moving the timeline forwards.
Starfleet Academy will do that, and that’s a positive thing. But look at the reaction to Picard’s third season – fans have been clamouring for some kind of successor show set in that same time period. Even though the original Legacy idea didn’t get off the ground, there’s still a ton of support within the fan community for a new show set after Picard, one which could potentially connect with characters, factions, and storylines of The Next Generation era – Star Trek’s real “golden age.”
What about a sequel instead of a prequel?
I don’t want to come across as mean or nasty, but I think there’s a bit of a generational disconnect here. Akiva Goldsman is in his 60s, and Henry Alonso Myers is in his 50s. When people say “Star Trek” to folks of that age, their thoughts turn first and foremost to The Original Series – Captain Kirk, the rubber-suited Gorn, papier-mâché boulders, and wacky adventures that took the Enterprise to a planet where everyone dressed like 1920s Chicago. I’m not insulting anyone’s age – I’m the wrong side of forty myself! But if you ask fans of my age or younger what Star Trek looks like… you get more answers about The Next Generation and shows of that era than you do The Original Series.
My point? That’s where at least a plurality of the fan community is at right now. Yes, Starfleet Academy has potential as a young adult show in the far future setting. And yes, Strange New Worlds has been absolutely fantastic as a prequel. But if we’re talking about commissioning a new series… please, please pick the 24th or 25th Century! That’s the message you’re gonna hear from many fans my age, at least.
A lot of older folks still think Star Trek begins and ends with The Original Series.
If there was infinite money for Star Trek, and the franchise was riding high, bringing in millions upon millions of dollars and turning Paramount+ into a must-have subscription, then I’d say go for it. But we don’t live in that world. I seriously doubt whether there will be any more Star Trek seasons commissioned after Starfleet Academy unless something almost miraculous were to happen, but if there’s room to add another series to the lineup… I just don’t want it to be another prequel.
Star Trek should have almost limitless room to grow – there’s an entire galaxy of alien races, subspace phenomena, and strange new worlds to explore. But returning to the same handful of characters over and over again is incredibly narrow-minded and narratively limited. We’ve seen the adventures of Captain Kirk already, and thanks to his inclusion in Strange New Worlds, we’ve also seen the very prologue to those stories that this Year One pitch seems to be focused on. If Kirk and The Original Series characters had been kept out of Strange New Worlds, maybe this idea would feel a bit stronger. But as it is… I’m not convinced at this stage that Year One would be the Star Trek project I’d give the green light to if I were in the Skydance boardroom.
Spock and Kirk in a promotional still for an upcoming Strange New Worlds episode.
I suspect, though, that all of this will be a moot point. Skydance may be interested in Star Trek as a cinematic franchise, but I’m not so sure they’re going to commit to any new television or streaming projects. With talk of merging Paramount+ with another streaming platform to try to revive its fortunes, and the current deal with Secret Hideout and Alex Kurtzman due to expire next year, Skydance will almost certainly want to bring new folks on board. Maybe someone will see the potential in a new Star Trek series in the second half of the 2020s after the merger is complete… but will it be Goldsman and Myers’ Year One pitch? I’m sceptical.
That was a lot of negativity and dumping on Year One. So let’s flip the script and try to look at things from the other side. What are the points in favour of this idea?
The USS Enterprise.
Firstly: continuity. Continuing Strange New Worlds, in some form, with at least half of its characters sticking around represents a thread of continuity between Star Trek projects. You could look at it in the same way as the expansion of Star Trek in the 1990s, with Deep Space Nine and Voyager following on from The Next Generation. There’d be at least one character – Spock – who appeared in Discovery, stuck with Strange New Worlds, and then joined Year One. This ties together the modern Star Trek franchise and gives more casual viewers a reason to stick with Paramount+ and check out some of the other shows. This is how you convert sometime viewers into fully-fledged Trekkies!
I know there are a lot of folks who enjoyed Picard – especially Season 3. And Lower Decks has its fans, too. But for me – and plenty of other Trekkies – Strange New Worlds has been the highlight of modern Star Trek. It’s taken the franchise back to its roots with its episodic tone, focus on exploration, and willingness to dip its toes in different genres. There have been some outlandish storylines, too – just like we got in The Original Series and other classic shows. So if any part of modern Star Trek has earned the right to a successor series… shouldn’t it be Strange New Worlds?
If any modern Star Trek show deserves a sequel, surely it’s gotta be Strange New Worlds.
The counter-argument I’d make to that last point, though, is that if the producers and executives want more Strange New Worlds… then just commission a sixth season. Instead of cancelling the project (with truly awful timing, right as the marketing push for Season 3 was starting), why not just keep it going? Practically any storyline you could think of for Year One aboard Kirk’s Enterprise could work more or less the same as a Strange New Worlds episode. If Kirk is integral to the story, well… would you look at that? We’ve already got Kirk in Strange New Worlds!
But Kirk is actually the next point in favour of this successor show. Paul Wesley has been great in the role since he first appeared at the end of Season 1, and I can absolutely see him carrying a new series as this younger version of the character. Wesley has embodied the role, showing us a nuanced performance that fits somewhere in between Chris Pine’s rough-and-ready action hero and William Shatner’s classic portrayal. We’ve seen a softer side to Kirk, particularly in some of his storylines involving La’an, but also the captain we remember from The Original Series in the fantastic Season 1 finale.
Paul Wesley has been fantastic to watch.
And there is scope to tell stories with this version of Captain Kirk. One thing I’ve hoped to see in Strange New Worlds is the burgeoning friendship between Kirk and Spock – something we got a tantalising glimpse of in Season 2. Year One could certainly explore that – and explain, perhaps, why science officer Spock became Kirk’s second-in-command. Then there’s another Kirk that Strange New Worlds included: Sam. We could get a deeper exploration of the Kirk brothers’ relationship in the years before Sam’s untimely death. How would Kirk react to his brother serving under his command, or having to order his brother to undertake dangerous missions? That could be an interesting idea.
I think we saw in the disappointed reaction to Strange New Worlds’ cancellation that there are passionate fans of this series, its characters, and its episodic style. It’s the only live-action series of this new era that has really tried to lean into what Star Trek used to be; the esoteric and outlandish sci-fi ideas, an aesthetic that borrows a lot from The Original Series’ mid-century designs, and a spirit of exploration that other shows with serialised stories, existential threats, and scenery-chewing villains just didn’t have. Strange New Worlds has appealed to a lot of Star Trek fans in a way that Picard and Discovery didn’t, and with Starfleet Academy apparently borrowing some of those serialised ideas with its young adult cast, there’s definitely room for a show like Year One to pick up the “classic Trek” baton.
There’s still room on television for a “classic” Star Trek series.
Without that kind of show, leaning on the legacy of past iterations of Star Trek, Trekkies like myself don’t really have a home any more. Discovery and Picard had their moments, but for me, Strange New Worlds has been the best of the bunch by far. If that kind of episodic, exploration-focused Star Trek were to just shut down… even if Starfleet Academy continues and a new Kelvin film enters production, there’ll be a hole in the franchise for myself and a lot of other fans.
Then there are practical matters. Starting production on a new series is an expensive business – but Year One would be comparatively cheap. Most of the main characters are already in place, so there’d be less of a need for a prolonged casting process. And – as Goldsman pointed out at Comic-Con – the sets for Pike’s Enterprise still exist right now. With the new series being set on the same ship, there’d be no need to build anything new; production could end on Strange New Worlds one day and begin on Year One the next.
Year One could make use of existing sets.
That might seem trivial compared with everything else we’ve been discussing – but to a newly-established corporation which is looking to finally turn a profit on a loss-making streaming service? Keeping costs down is a good thing, and certainly a point that the higher-ups would take into consideration. There’d still be contracts to address, but if production could transition from one series to the other with the same cast and the same behind-the-scenes team in place… that could save a lot of money in contrast to commissioning something brand new.
A “young Kirk and Spock” idea was considered by Gene Roddenberry in the late 1960s, when The Original Series was struggling. So in that sense, this kind of idea has pedigree and has been looked at before. Trekkies had plenty of conversations about that in the run-up to Star Trek ’09, when Kirk and Spock would finally be shown meeting for the first time at Starfleet Academy! But the same principle applies here: it’s not a million miles away from spin-off ideas that have been kicking around for decades.
Kirk and Spock’s first encounter was also shown in Star Trek ’09.
With all that being said… this would not be my first choice for a new Star Trek series. The biggest point in its favour is arguably how easy it would be to set up. But if Skydance and Paramount are so financially messed up that saving money on building sets is a major consideration, then to be blunt about it, Star Trek has already failed and would only be living on borrowed time.
I have thoroughly enjoyed Strange New Worlds. But if Year One’s pitch is basically “let’s do more Strange New Worlds!” then… why not just go for Season 6? Why risk ditching Captain Pike from “the Captain Pike show” that Trekkies were so passionate about asking for in 2019 and 2020? If I felt like Pike had worn out his welcome or that we were coming to the end of the line somehow… then sure, I guess it would make sense. But Pike is still one of the best things about Strange New Worlds, and if there was one character to preserve for a successor show… it’s gotta be him.
Why not just commission a sixth season if we want more Strange New Worlds?
I like Paul Wesley’s take on Kirk, and I’ve enjoyed having him in Strange New Worlds as a recurring character. I think there’s scope to do more with this incarnation of Kirk, too – and I hope we’ll see that in Seasons 3, 4, and 5. And I don’t doubt Wesley’s ability to carry a spin-off, either. I just question how necessary Year One would be in light of Kirk’s role in Strange New Worlds. Given that he’s going to appear a few more times before the end of the series, and we’ve already seen him with Spock, Uhura, and others… what could Year One realistically do with him and his relationships with his crew that we haven’t already seen or can’t reasonably infer?
More Star Trek on our screens is great – and I welcome any pitch from creative folks who have already worked with Paramount and thus have the necessary connections to get the ball rolling. If Year One were to get the green light – which is at least possible, surely – then I would watch it, I’d do my best to support it, and I’d be rooting for its success.
Kirk in a promotional photo released ahead of Strange New Worlds Season 2.
If it was up to me, though… I don’t think this is the pitch I’d give the green light to.
What I want more than anything is a Strange New Worlds-style episodic adventure series set somewhere beyond the Picard era. Such a show could pick up dangling narrative threads left over from The Next Generation and the other 1990s shows, potentially visiting the Gamma and Delta Quadrants, and just pushing the timeline forwards again. Starfleet Academy’s 32nd Century can do some of that – at least in theory – but because it’s that much further forwards in time, its opportunities to make those connections are more limited.
However, I can see why this pitch would hold some appeal, both to fans and to the executives that Goldsman and Myers will need to win over! A successor to what is arguably the best and most successful live-action Star Trek show of this modern era is not, in theory, a bad idea by any means. And with the cast largely in place, sets already built, and apparently some stories already being considered… maybe the time is right. Maybe this Strange New Worlds sequel/Original Series prequel is what Star Trek needs at the current moment. There’s something to be said for going back to the franchise’s roots to shore things up, and with major corporate changes inbound, keeping some threads of continuity is also a point in the pitch’s favour.
Concept art of the USS Enterprise produced for Phase II or The Motion Picture.
So that’s my take. I wouldn’t necessarily choose Year One if I had something like Legacy on the table… but I don’t loathe the concept and I could see it being enjoyable. I have my suspicions at this stage, though, that Skydance’s new leadership may not be interested in the idea. After all, is it just a coincidence that Strange New Worlds was cancelled right as the corporate merger was happening? If Skydance’s folks were interested in the show, they could’ve said so during the process and kept it on the air in its current form.
If Year One goes ahead, though, I’m sure I’ll have more to say. Coming out of this year’s Comic-Con we also got news about the audio drama/scripted podcast Star Trek: Khan, which I’ll be taking a look at in the days ahead. And if you missed it, I’ve recently taken a look at the first trailer, photos, and details released about the upcoming Starfleet Academy series. Click or tap here to take a look at that.
Later this week we’ve got A Space Adventure Hour as Strange New Worlds’ third season rolls along. We’re past the show’s halfway point now, which is a bit of a sad thought. But who knows? Maybe Year One will pick up the story in the years ahead.
The Star Trek franchise – including all shows and properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global (soon to be Skydance). Some images courtesy of Forgotten Trek and/or the Frogland Set Blueprint Archive. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Beware of spoilers for Season 1 of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. We will be discussing casting, photos, posters, the trailer, and comments from the team behind the series. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: Section 31, Picard, Discovery, and Voyager.
It’s Comic-Con season, which means Paramount has rented some very expensive auditoriums to preview some of its upcoming projects! Among those are several new seasons of Star Trek. This time, we’re going to take a look at some of the photos, news, and of course, the first trailer released for Starfleet Academy.
Star Trek needs to demonstrate that it can grow; it needs to be more than just the preserve of people my age, reminiscing about the shows we enjoyed in the 1990s. If there’s going to be a future for Star Trek beyond the second half of the 2020s – which, with all of these cancellations, and a corporate merger to boot, is categorically not guaranteed – new fans and especially younger fans need to get on board. Star Trek needs these people to show up in droves, and ideally stick around and watch other shows, too. We can’t afford to be gatekeepers or try to push people out – it’s up to us to ensure that the Star Trek fan community is a welcoming place for newcomers.
Here’s hoping Starfleet Academy will bring in new viewers and new fans!
Paramount has made attempts to do this already. We saw it with Prodigy and we saw it with Section 31. Prodigy didn’t succeed because of corporate decisions on the Paramount side – absolutely moronic decisions, to be blunt about it. And Section 31 was a perfectly adequate action-heavy B-movie, but probably not the kind of film that could bring in legions of new fans. Again, corporate idiocy is partially to blame; forcing the Section 31 folks to condense a story written for a full TV series into the runtime of a single film instead of commissioning an all-new script being the most obvious example.
After these failures to grow the Star Trek brand and fan community, Paramount’s hopes now lie with Starfleet Academy. And while the Skydance merger could present a new opportunity for Star Trek on the cinematic side of things, on television/streaming… this feels like the last chance saloon for the franchise, I’ll be honest with you. If Starfleet Academy doesn’t prove that Star Trek still has room to grow and can appeal to a younger generation of television viewers, I don’t see how Skymount or Paradance (or whatever the new corporate entity will be called) could reasonably justify spending more money on the franchise. As we’ve discussed before, the next few years could bring the final seasons and episodes – certainly the last ones I’ll get to see.
Sorry if that’s a bit of a depressing note to start on, but I wanted to be up-front about the challenges Star Trek is facing right now – and the hopes riding on Starfleet Academy to potentially turn things around.
Captain Nahla Ake.
With all of that out of the way… what did I think of the trailer? And of the other announcements and comments? Well… it’s early days, but I’d say it looks reasonably good at this stage. The visual language of Star Trek is present – even though, in this 32nd Century setting, some of that is diminished or just a bit different. But Starfleet Academy feels closer to past iterations of the franchise than the Section 31 movie did earlier this year. I noted with some disappointment that Section 31 basically erased all of the aesthetic features and common design elements of Star Trek in what was apparently a mad rush to tell a generic, comic book-style action flick. Starfleet Academy isn’t doing that – which is something I can appreciate.
There need to be these threads of commonality in a long-running franchise – particularly if your objective is to convert sometime viewers of a single series into fully-fledged fans. It’s difficult to go from Section 31 to even some of the episodes in DS9 or Discovery which prominently featured the organisation, simply because of how little those stories have in common visually – never mind in terms of narrative or tone. Visual language sets the scene; it’s the first thing a viewer encounters. And there’s enough in what I saw of Starfleet Academy to firmly place the series in the Star Trek universe. That’s a positive thing in my book.
Jay-Den Kraag, one of the new cadets.
We can also see this in the new choice of font. The new typeface was shown off on the promotional posters released for the series as well as at the end of the trailer. I don’t know if this is going to be the show’s new logo, but it’s basically using the same font as the one used in The Motion Picture, several subsequent films, and two of the shows from Star Trek’s ’90s heyday. This is an interesting choice – not least because Starfleet Academy already had a logo that used a kind of rounded version of the typeface used on starship hulls! I happened to like that one, but I was impressed to see this older font brought back.
Starfleet Academy’s uniforms are, naturally, based on those seen in Discovery. We get a mix of colourful uniforms on some of the senior officers, which seem pretty close to those seen in Discovery’s fourth and fifth seasons, with a toned-down grey look for the cadets, which is similar to what we saw in Discovery’s third season. While I think I might’ve liked to see a bit more colour on the cadets, there’s also gotta be a way to distinguish, at a glance, between the cadets and other Starfleet personnel – so this feels like a pretty good compromise.
The cadets in the cafeteria.
Then we have combadges! The oval design from Discovery seems to have been changed – at least for the cadets and Academy personnel. The familiar Starfleet delta is still present, of course, but it’s surrounded by a circle with two extended “wings” at the bottom. I’d like to see the badges up close – I assume they’ll be similar in function to Discovery’s tri-com badges, which incorporated transporters, tricorders, padds, and communicators all in one.
The design is creative, though, and I assume at this stage that the new combadges are primarily going to be used by Academy cadets and instructors. The cadet badges seem to look a little different to those on other Starfleet officers, too, which is interesting – and another way to help tell people apart! I think I saw Admiral Vance – who’s returning from Discovery – wearing the more familiar oval tri-com badge, which is why I think these ones could be exclusive to the Academy. Still, the “wings” give the badges a unique design, and I’m glad the familiar Starfleet delta is still prominently featured.
Close-ups of several combadges.
Though it may not be the main focus – and we only caught a couple of glimpses in the trailer – the USS Athena is described by Paramount’s official blurb as “an integral part of the Starfleet Academy campus.” If we assume that the ship we saw in the trailer is the Athena, then the design deviates a little from the usual saucer-neck-body-nacelles of past hero ships. The ship we glimpsed in the trailer seemed to have a movable C-shaped section, with a circular saucer above it. I’d like to get a better look at the ship from all angles before rendering judgement – and this might not even be the USS Athena.
First impressions, though, are positive. I think I’d have preferred something with a bit more of that visual language we were talking about – a ship with a saucer and two nacelles. But this is the 32nd Century, and Starfleet is doing things differently! We’ve already seen several very different Starfleet vessels of this era in Discovery, and the ship from the trailer is at least closer to previous Federation craft than some of those! It’s also possible that this ship, in fact, doesn’t belong to Starfleet at all, but to the season’s villain.
The spaceship from the trailer.
Inside, I felt that the bridge of the USS Athena looked awfully similar to Discovery’s bridge – so much so that I’d call it a redress of the same set rather than an all-new creation. If you think about it from the in-universe side, this doesn’t make a ton of sense. The USS Discovery is a retrofitted 900-year-old ship by this point in the timeline, and we shouldn’t really be seeing much of its design, lighting, and overall aesthetic being repeated. I don’t think it looks “bad,” but rather that some aspects of the design just feel a little too familiar. And while we’ve admittedly only seen the bridge while apparently at red alert, it’s awfully dimly lit. This was a criticism some folks had of Discovery’s sets, too.
On the more positive side, I liked that the bridge was wide and expansive, and seemingly has room for multiple different cadets – and possibly teachers, too – at every post. The chairs having Starfleet delta-shaped bases was cute, too. The design also incorporates a large ramp, and several different levels radiating out from the elevated captain’s chair in the middle. Those are all fun features, too, and I daresay I’ll get used to this design in time – just as I did with the USS Discovery and Strange New Worlds’ redesigned Enterprise.
The new bridge.
We saw small teases of the Academy itself, and the sets which have been constructed to depict it. There’s some kind of assembly area, a cafeteria that reminded me of one I used to have lunch at when I was at university, an observation deck or a room with a view over San Francisco, and a bench in an outdoor space. I don’t know how much time we’ll spend at any of these locations, but they all looked solid.
The CGI used to depict the Academy was on form. I liked seeing the opening shot of the Golden Gate Bridge, the wider shot of a futuristic San Francisco, and obviously the Academy buildings themselves. Paramount’s VFX has improved a lot in recent years, and Starfleet Academy is reaping the rewards. There’s enough continuity with previous iterations of Star Trek for long-time viewers to feel that the Academy is in the same place – and especially if you compare some of the shots in the trailer with the Academy’s most recent appearance in Star Trek: Picard, I think you can see the similarities.
The USS Athena approaching Starfleet Academy.
Alright, let’s talk about the characters!
The trailer seems to have shown clips of most of the main and secondary cast, and in addition we got photos for each of them – which you can see below. There are five main cadets, who will presumably be the show’s protagonists across Season 1, three returning characters – two from Discovery and one from Voyager – the Chancellor of Starfleet Academy, and the season’s main villain. If you’ve followed my coverage of Starfleet Academy since the series was announced back in 2023, you might remember me saying that I’m a tad sceptical about a serialised story with a villain; Star Trek has done the whole “existential threat to the galaxy” thing over and over again in recent years, and not always successfully!
The main cadets (and the poster).
I’m still hopeful, though, that Starfleet Academy will be closer in structure, tone, and style to Strange New Worlds than to the likes of Picard and Discovery – more episodic in nature, retaining character arcs and some serialised trappings, but throwing the cadets into a variety of different situations. Such a story could work with a main villain; the villain’s plan could run parallel to the cadets’ adventures, or he could only appear to bookend the story, for instance.
I’m still not convinced that a series like this needs to have one overarching villain, especially not one with a connection to a main character and who apparently poses a threat to the entire galaxy, as has been previously teased. That basic story outline has, for me, worn out its welcome after being recycled in every season of Discovery and Picard.
Nus Braka: the season’s main villain.
One thing you can’t criticise Starfleet Academy for is its casting. Paul Giamatti will play the aforementioned villain – described as a half-Tellarite, half-Klingon who has a connection to one of the cadets. Given that we have a Klingon cadet… that seems like a possible point of connection! Holly Hunter, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in 1993’s The Piano, is playing the Academy Chancellor/Captain of the USS Athena. So we have an Oscar winner and an Oscar-nominated star occupying those two roles!
Additionally, I’d suggest that Starfleet Academy was clever in its choices of who to include from past iterations of Star Trek. Oded Fehr has been brilliant as Admiral Vance; one of the highlights of Discovery’s later seasons for sure. Tig Notaro has been a blast as Reno, too. And Robert Picardo… coming back as the Doctor in live-action after his role in Prodigy! That’s fantastic, absolutely fantastic! I half-theorised, half-hoped that we might’ve seen the Doctor in Discovery after the series shot forwards in time, so having him here is going to be wonderful.
Captain Ake flanked by the Doctor and Admiral Vance.
My only teeny tiny concern at this stage with the returning characters is this: will the series strike the right balance between the young cadets, the new Academy personnel, the villain and his crew, and the returning characters? The Doctor has been billed as a recurring character, so I’m expecting we won’t just get a series premiere cameo, like we did with Dr McCoy in Encounter at Farpoint. But if it was me in the writers’ room, I’d be sorely tempted to spend a lot of time catching up with the Doctor, and I think there has to be a balance there!
Firstly, we should establish whether this is the original Doctor or his Living Witness backup copy! But then, will the Doctor just be a kind of advisor or even just an instructor for some of the cadets, or will he play a larger role in their mission? I know the Doctor has been featured in Prodigy, but this is going to be his first live-action appearance since Voyager, and catching up with even a tiny fraction of the things he’s been up to in the hundreds of years since we last saw him would be a priority for me. But… this is a new series, and with presumably ten episodes in Season 1 and an unknown number in Season 2, we really have to give the new characters a chance to shine on their own.
The Doctor.
One other interesting-looking character is the half-Jem’Hadar, half-Klingon first officer of the USS Athena. I hope we get to learn a bit more about the Dominion in this era through her eyes, and that she isn’t just present as an “easter egg” for fans. Discovery dropped the barest of mentions of the Dominion War in either Season 3 or 4 (I forgot which; oops) but we didn’t really get an exploration of what the road to peace looked like. Given the actions of the renegade changeling faction in Picard’s third season, there were clearly complications after the war. But how was peace ultimately achieved, and did it last? Those are still open questions.
Also… aren’t Jem’Hadar artificially created? I always imaged that the Dominion churned them out fully-formed as adults, so how does one get a Jem’Hadar hybrid of any kind? Do… do Jem’Hadar have genitals? I never thought about that before, but now… this character’s inclusion seems to raise some questions. Joking aside, I hope this character won’t just be present in a background role, and that we’ll get to spend a bit of time with them, considering the implications of a half-Jem’Hadar Starfleet officer, and what that could mean for diplomatic relations between the Federation and Dominion in this era. For all we know, a renegade band of Jem’Hadar defected centuries ago, and she’s one of their descendants. But in any case, I’ll be very interested to find out.
Lura Thok: the half-Klingon, half-Jem’Hadar first officer.
Four of the five cadets have a speciality, and one was listed as “undeclared.” Within those specialities, we have two commanders, one science – who Paramount later clarified wants to be a medical officer – and one operations. If you think of the typical Starfleet crew from past shows, we’e missing a couple of key positions! Most notably an engineer, though that could cross over with operations, I guess. And the two command cadets could both be competing for the same spot, or one could be aiming for a role like helm officer, where personnel typically wear the command colours.
As for our “undeclared” cadet… that’s an interesting word choice, isn’t it? This character was described as an “orphan with a troubled past,” potentially teeing up a connection with the season’s villain, and also as an “unlikely” Starfleet cadet. But that word – “undeclared” – keeps coming back for me. It’s not a synonym for “don’t know” or “hasn’t chosen yet;” instead it’s a word that could mean “I know but I haven’t told you.” So… could this be some kind of Starfleet Intelligence career path, or maybe even something connected with Section 31? The other cadets have red, gold, or blue trim on their uniforms; this character’s is dark grey or black. That could suggest some kind of Section 31 connection… couldn’t it?
Is this cadet possibly in Section 31?
There were several interesting name-drops, references, and “easter eggs” in the trailer, with a “James T. Kirk Pavilion” and a wall of names which included not only several familiar characters but a handful of producers and writers, too! But the one I want to focus in on the most is something the trailer lingered on for only a couple of seconds: Benjamin Sisko, Emissary of the Prophets. Was this just another callback, like Kirk’s pavilion? Or… might we finally get to learn what became of Sisko after he disappeared in the Fire Caves?
To be clear: I’m pretty confident that Avery Brooks won’t be reprising his role. As much as I’d love nothing more than to see Sisko return, I just don’t think it’s gonna happen. Brooks has been quoted as saying he didn’t want to return to the character, and as fans we have to respect and accept that. But with this moment in the trailer… I can’t help but wonder. Is it just a reference? Or are we going to get a storyline which might finally answer the question of what happened to Sisko? Sisko did promise to return one day, and it makes sense that he’d have done so while his friends and family were still alive, right? So maybe – maybe – we’ll get some kind of confirmation that Sisko did return from the realm of the Prophets sometime in the late 24th or early 25th Centuries.
Captain Sisko’s appearance…
So I think that’s all of the specific points I wanted to delve into. The trailer overall was solid. I liked the soundtrack, I liked Captain Ake’s inspirational speech, and I think we got a glimpse of the series without really spoiling any key story points – which is important! I am getting a teenagery/young adult vibe from some of the clips featuring the cadets; there could be at least one blossoming romance, they seem to visit a club of some kind, and the way they interact together just feels like a secondary school or university group of friends – which is what they are, at the end of the day.
Does that mean that Starfleet Academy won’t be “my thing,” though? I suppose it could, if the show really leans into teenage storylines about fitting in, first loves, and rebelliously sneaking off-campus to visit a bar! But I’m okay with that – even if it means I don’t personally vibe with everything the series has to offer. In my opinion, its most important objective is to win over younger viewers, appealing to a new audience and turning some of those folks into Trekkies for the first time. I hope that Starfleet Academy can be the “first contact” for a legion of new fans, in the same way as The Next Generation was for me in 1991. Realistically… this could be Star Trek’s last chance to do that.
I hope a new generation of fans will fall in love with Starfleet Academy – and Star Trek.
That’s all for now. I think there are some really interesting ideas, characters, and designs in the Starfleet Academy trailer and photos, and I’m glad to see Paramount making a start with the show’s advertising push. We won’t be seeing Starfleet Academy until 2026 – as I think most of us were expecting. So there’s plenty of time over the next six-plus months for Paramount to tease us with a few more clips, trailers, and details! If that happens, be sure to check back here on Trekking with Dennis – because I’ll be doing my best to cover all of it.
Comic-Con also included a tease of a very unusual Strange New Worlds episode from Season 4, as well as our first look (or should that be “first listen?”) at Star Trek: Khan – the scripted podcast/radio play set on Ceti Alpha V. I’ll be taking a look at that in the days ahead, if you’re interested. And later this week we’ve got A Space Adventure Hour – the next instalment of Strange New Worlds’ third season.
Until then… Live Long and Prosper!
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will premiere on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available in 2026. The Star Trek franchise – including Starfleet Academy and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Beware minor spoilers for Indika’s story – and major spoilers for the game’s world and mechanics.
I love seeking out games that feel unique – and if there’s one word I’d use to describe Indika, that would be it. This game is a mix of third-person puzzling, some platforming elements, a “walking simulator,” and some fun 2D platforming levels inspired by titles from years gone by. It’s a short but eclectic experience; a memorable game that I thoroughly enjoyed.
I beat Indika in a single play session – something I don’t think I’ve done with a game for quite a long time! So this is not an epic experience that’s going to last dozens upon dozens of hours… and that’s something to be aware of heading into it. However, unlike some recent titles, Indika is priced fairly. At £20 here in the UK (though I got it at a slight discount via the Epic Games Store) its price feels more than fair for the runtime it provides, and I will always credit publishers for recognising this!
The title character.
During my playthrough I did encounter a bug – just one, though. At one point, Indika got stuck in the environment partway through climbing onto a platform, and the only way around it was to restart the level. This highlighted something I don’t really appreciate: the lack of a free save system. Indika is generous with its checkpoints, sure, and the only other time I died I didn’t have to go all the way back to the beginning or anything. But… being able to freely save is a pretty basic feature, and even in a game as short as Indika there’s really no reason not to incorporate it.
But that’s basically all of the negatives out of the way!
Indika is a narrative experience as much as a “game” – there are entire sections where the only thing you’re required to do is walk from point to point. There are side-rooms to explore and a few collectables to pick up – which are worth finding, if for no other reason than to appreciate the design work that went into making them – but much of the game unfolds like this. I can see some people finding that “boring,” and while such things are subjective, for me I enjoyed this slower pace.
There’s quite a bit of walking in this game.
Despite the way the game seems to present itself at first, this isn’t a “horror” title – not by my definition, at any rate. There are some creepy and unsettling elements for sure; a game where the player character speaks to a demonic entity is gonna have that! But in terms of frightening moments or jump-scares… there really weren’t any. And that’s coming from a total scaredy-cat who’s easily frightened!
What you get with Indika’s narrative is a lot of philosophy – the age-old debate about God’s existence. And maybe you’ll say I’m projecting my own biases here, but I felt Indika came down firmly on the side of atheism. Despite being a nun, the protagonist is clearly struggling with questions of faith, and her mental illness – which is how I’d interpret her hallucinations – is preventing her from fitting in with her fellow nuns at the convent. Having encountered a runaway convict, Indika bounces her ideas about God and the problems of omnipotence and evil off of him. These conversations were genuinely interesting.
Ilya and Indika had some interesting philosophical conversations.
Both of the main characters – and Indika’s companion, too – felt fleshed-out, and they seemed to fit the world they inhabited. We got to see really interesting glimpses of pre-First World War Russia, a country struggling with industrialisation and the challenges that it brought. Indika’s convent felt like a place unchanged by the passage of time, but the world she stepped into was one of steam trains, factories, and industrial danger. The world could feel bleak – its wintery setting definitely adding to that tone – but never empty. I loved crunching through the snow during the outdoor sections!
There’s something about snow in video games that I just really enjoy. Seeing Indika and Ilya leave footprints was a nice touch, too. While the snow isn’t at the same level as a title like Red Dead Redemption II, it isn’t a million miles away. And considering this game was made by a much smaller team with a lower budget… I think it’s pretty fantastic the way it’s turned out. In the west, we tend to associate Russia with freezing winter conditions – even though, of course, the country has three other seasons – so in that sense, the snow also felt on theme!
Indika outside of the convent.
One of the projects I chose when I was studying history at university was the history of colour photography. Among the earliest surviving colour photographs were taken in the late 1900s and 1910s by Sergey Prokudin-Gorskii – a Russian photographer who was commissioned by the Tsar to take colour photographs across Russia. I immersed myself in Prokudin-Gorskii’s photographs while working on my project, and I was fascinated by this glimpse into pre-Communist Russia. I know folks say black-and-white photographs feel atmospheric, but there’s something about colour that’s just so much more real!
I bring this up because I felt echoes of Prokudin-Gorskii’s photographs in Indika. The convent, some of the wooden houses and buildings, the dirt roads… I remember seeing all of those things in those photographs. The juxtaposition between massive imposing religious buildings made of stone and adorned with gold and bright colours with small, wooden houses in which everyone else lived… it’s striking. And you can see why, in years gone by, people would be drawn to churches and cathedrals. For my money, developers Odd-Meter did a great job recreating this bygone era in video game form, and it brought back memories for me of working on that university project and exploring the forgotten world depicted in those photographs.
A selection of Prokudin-Gorskii’s photographs of Russia, circa 1909-1915.
For a game that was – mostly – an intense, philosophical narrative experience set in a realistic historical setting… Indika blended in some very “video-gamey” elements! Its pixel art font – used in menus and the levelling screen – was a real throwback, as were the way points were collected in-game. Points appear in front of Indika when collecting items in the game world or lighting candles – but they appear as big, glowing, pixellated blocks. They reminded me of something out of the 8-bit era, and that was clearly a deliberate choice. It added to the surreal nature of the game, and I think it worked exceptionally well.
Then there’s the game’s soundtrack and… well, sound-scape might be a better term. There were some beautiful and haunting melodies created for Indika, but there were also some retro throwbacks that felt like something you’d have heard on an arcade machine in the ’80s! Again, it’s the surreal blending of the game’s detailed world with these modern/retro game elements that just… worked. It shouldn’t, and I think in a worse game it wouldn’t have worked. But here, the total clash between the world around Indika and these retro gaming visuals and sounds actually felt great. If the story is partially about Indika’s mental health, I kind of read the gaming elements as part of that. Part of her hallucinations – both visual and auditory.
Receiving points.
These tied in with some wonderful 2D platforming sections. Indika presented its flashback sequences in this retro pixel art style, which is something I found incredibly creative. It felt kind of like if a film or TV show depicted its flashbacks in black-and-white or sepia. It’s the game saying “these events happened in the past.” And what better way for a video game to depict the past than with older visual and gameplay styles?
These sections also provided a clear boundary between the present and the flashbacks, making them feel completely distinct. Although I described them as “2D platformers,” there was more to it than that. We got a Pac-Man-inspired section, running around a maze-like level, a multi-lap bike race, and two very different platforming sections. These all felt unique, with no single play style being repeated throughout the flashbacks. They were also some of the most technically challenging parts of the game – or perhaps my 2D gaming skills are just rusty! My arthritic hands don’t help, either, with sections requiring near-perfect timing of jumps! But I struggled through and got there in the end.
One of Indika’s 2D levels.
Depicting such intense sequences in this way was kind of an odd choice. Indika’s flashbacks tell a tale of the protagonist’s first romantic encounter – with a boy from a different culture, and it doesn’t end well. There were some light-hearted moments in these 2D levels, particularly near the beginning, but the story took a dark turn later on. And the pixel art, upbeat 8-bit music, and fun retro level design… it clashed with that. But as above, I think the clash is the point.
The 2D levels weren’t the only creative ones, though. Indika did some clever things with some of its 3D environments, too – including a series of rooms which rotated, having you walking on walls and having to move objects ways that don’t conform to the laws of physics! Some games have tried to show mental illness and fractured minds before, but there’s something so unsettling about walking into a room with absolutely no explanation, and no expectation that it’s going to be something different… only to realise it’s upside down, walking on walls… and with some kind of strange multi-limbed demon just out of sight.
This level felt especially creative.
Other 3D puzzles were more basic, akin to something you’d see in games like Uncharted. “Basic” is not a synonym for “bad,” and these puzzles – involving things like moving objects on a crane or using a ladder to bypass a locked door – were entertaining enough. None of them were especially difficult to solve, though I would point out that the game doesn’t hold your hand and just kind of drops you in the puzzles, leaving you to figure it out. As another hallmark of what we might call “old-school” game design – in a modern gaming landscape dominated by in-depth tutorials and the dreaded quest marker – I think I like this even more!
Then there were sections of levels that used different or interesting mechanics. Repeatedly rotating the control stick to wind a winch was interesting – and reminded me of some Nintendo 64 titles from back when the analogue stick was a brand-new invention! Then there was a moment where Indika had to balance on a narrow beam that gave me flashbacks to Shenmue II! If you remember that level… does it haunt you, too? Indika also gives you control over a couple of different vehicles, as well as some pieces of machinery, and there’s a couple of tense chase sequences, too. There’s a surprising diversity of gameplay styles on show given the game’s runtime.
Reminds me of Shenmue II…
I’d also be remiss not to mention Indika’s incredibly creative use of the protagonist’s hallucinations. Without giving too much away, at a couple of points in the game, Indika experiences a vivid hallucination, but can keep it at bay through prayer. Alternating between the hallucination and the “real” state of the world changes the level, and opens up different pathways to get from one end to the other. It’s a really creative mechanic that wasn’t over-used, and it worked exceptionally well.
So Indika was not the kind of game I would’ve ordinarily chosen. It’s a short experience (my playthrough clocked in at just under four-and-a-half hours, including the credits, a couple of deaths, and one 2D level that took a few attempts). But it was really interesting – a philosophical video game with a message about faith, God, and the way the world works. It was wrapped up in an interesting narrative about a renegade nun with a mental illness, and touched on how mentally ill folks can be treated and shunned by society. As someone with a mental health condition myself, I appreciated the message, the depiction, and how the game handled that side of things.
One of Indika’s hallucinations.
Russian developers Odd-Meter actually left the country during work on Indika due to the political situation there. But almost the whole team is Russian – there are Russian-language voice options available if you want to get more of an immersive experience.
I would absolutely recommend Indika. I had a blast with it, and I really can’t think of another game quite like it. As I said at the beginning, this was a completely unique experience, both narratively and mechanically. Maybe you think four-plus hours is “too short,” but again I would point to the game being – in my view, at least – fairly-priced for its runtime. We aren’t talking about a £75 title, here.
Indika is a game I’ll happily recommend.
So I hope this has been interesting! I thought Indika had only just been released, but it actually came out over a year ago. I guess I’m a bit late to the party, but never mind! The game was on sale recently, at least on PC if you use the Epic Games Store. It could also be one to wishlist ahead of the big Christmas sales, because it might drop in price again.
This could’ve absolutely not been my cup of tea! The idea of a mentally ill protagonist with a horrifying demon whispering in their ear, a clash of visual and musical styles, the philosophical conversations, lack of combat, and short runtime… they could all be offputting, I guess. But I really liked this game. It’s the kind of title I think we can point to when highlighting the work of smaller, independent development teams, and it’s also a fine example of video games as a narrative art form.
Indika is out now for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S/X. Indika is the copyright of Odd-Meter and/or 11 Bit Studios. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-3.
By my reckoning, Shuttle to Kenfori marks the halfway point of Strange New Worlds’ run. We learned ahead of Season 3’s premiere that the series will be cancelled after a cut-down fifth season, clocking in at forty-six episodes in total. With this being the show’s twenty-third outing… that’s it. The halfway point. Does that change how we approach Shuttle to Kenfori? It shouldn’t… but it seemed like something that was worth mentioning before we get started.
Going into Season 3, the “Klingon zombie episode,” which had been teased in one of the trailers, was definitely one of the stories I was most curious about! I’m not the world’s biggest fan of horror, but there have been some fun zombie flicks over the years, and after more than 950 episodes and films… I like that Star Trek can still try new things and surprise me! We’ve had horror-themed episodes before, from Empok Nor to Strange New Worlds’ own All Those Who Wander, but this is Star Trek’s first fully-fledged zombie episode. And while I don’t think it was perfect, Shuttle to Kenfori showed why it was worth trying out this kind of story.
Zombies! Aaahhhh!
Let’s get a couple of negative points out of the way first, then we can gush about how great other parts of Shuttle to Kenfori were!
Firstly, the episode’s opening act was too short and too abrupt. We went from “everything’s fine, Captain Batel is getting her own command” to “she has days to live” in a heartbeat. Compounding that was how curtailed the scene in sickbay felt with Pike, Spock, Chapel, and M’Benga. We would later learn that Captain Batel, Spock, and the medical duo had discussed her condition off-screen, but that didn’t make the scene feel much better. In the moment, watching the episode unfold, this foundational sequence needed much longer to play out.
In a matter of seconds, Dr M’Benga and Spock laid out that Captain Batel’s infection was back and that they happened to know of the only plant in the galaxy capable of curing her. Then we got a very short discussion of where the plant might be found… and that was it. It kick-started the story, sure, and the subsequent revelation that the rest of the characters had discussed it off-screen kind of helps, but it still felt very rushed. Going from “the infection’s back” to “but we already have a cure in mind” to “let’s undertake a dangerous off-the-books mission” in less than two minutes just… it’s poor pacing.
This sequence needed to be longer.
I get that this moment isn’t what Shuttle to Kenfori is all about. But we’ve gone from Captain Batel being cured and ready to take command of a new ship to being days or even hours away from a Gorn-induced death in practically no time at all. All of Shuttle to Kenfori’s story arcs hung off this moment in the opening act… and it was just way too short. Past Star Trek stories would’ve lingered here for several minutes, scanning Captain Batel, realising her infection has returned, throwing out half a dozen technobabble cures then shooting them down… heck, we could’ve gotten an entire montage of Chapel, Spock, and M’Benga running through different possible ideas before settling on the flower. It wouldn’t have needed to last more than, say, five minutes… but it would’ve given the rest of the story a much stronger foundation.
While I wouldn’t say that the rushed opening act soured me on Shuttle to Kenfori from the beginning, I was definitely left with a sense of “wait, was that it?” as the episode’s main storylines got underway. I also felt that these problems of pacing and perhaps a slightly too-short episode were present in Hegemony, Part II last week – so I hope this isn’t going to be a running theme throughout the season. I’m all for stories that are bold and try to do a lot with their runtime, don’t get me wrong! But when the opening act is blitzed through too fast, there can be implications for the rest of the story, no matter how strong it might be.
The plan to acquire this flower was arrived at very quickly.
The second major critique of Shuttle to Kenfori is its Klingon storyline. In short… there was a lot going on when Pike and Dr M’Benga touched down on the titular planet, and I’m not convinced we needed this additional villain and complication. It made the zombies themselves – which, surely, should have been the episode’s fear factor and main antagonist – kind of secondary, especially towards the end, and there just wasn’t any need for it.
Narratively, I liked Dr M’Benga’s involvement with the Klingons – we’ll get into that later when I talk about some of the things I liked about Shuttle to Kenfori. But as a concept, in an episode that was already busy with several characters competing to be in focus? I think it was a bit of a misfire, to be honest. Star Trek’s first ever zombie story should’ve done more with the zombies – zombies that were genuinely frightening and must’ve taken a ton of work in the makeup department! Instead, the zombies were relegated to background status pretty quickly, literally looking in from the outside behind an impenetrable narrative force-field as Dr M’Benga’s Klingon adversary took centre-stage.
This episode didn’t need a second antagonist. The zombies were more than enough on their own.
I was kind of reminded of later seasons of The Walking Dead with how this played out. If you know me, you’ll know I’ve said more than once that The Walking Dead – AMC’s zombie apocalypse TV series – should’ve ended after perhaps three seasons, because it wore out its core premise and its zombies stopped being the main focus. The Walking Dead’s writers switched things up and started finding human antagonists for Rick Grimes and his group to deal with, most of whom in the later years were pretty repetitive and basic. That show needed to do that because its core premise – the zombie apocalypse – was itself tired and worn out. But Shuttle to Kenfori is brand-new and its zombies have literally never been seen in Star Trek before. We just didn’t need a sentient antagonist when the undead monsters were already filling that role.
For me, I’d have preferred Shuttle to Kenfori if Pike and M’Benga were trapped in the zombie-overrun research facility with no Klingons present. And then, in another episode, Dr M’Benga could’ve gotten his Klingon enemy and ritual combat, because I genuinely liked what Strange New Worlds did with this storyline. I just feel that smooshing them together into one didn’t let either the zombies or the dishonoured Klingon Bythra truly shine. If we were three seasons into a Star Trek zombie show, and the zombies were beginning to wear out their welcome, then I could see why you’d do a story like this – it’s what The Walking Dead has been doing since about Season 4 of the main show and in most of its spin-off projects. But this zombie idea was so creative and new that having a Klingon antagonist just wasn’t necessary – and I wish we’d gotten to see more of Pike and Dr M’Benga taking on the zombies.
Captain Pike killed a zombie.
I will caveat all of that by saying that the Kenfori zombies could return later in the season. There were promotional posters for Season 3 released a few weeks ago, and one of them showed Pelia and Scotty seemingly surrounded by zombies. Scotty was present in Shuttle to Kenfori, but he stayed on the Enterprise, and Pelia was entirely absent. So maybe I’m reaching and maybe it’s a stretch, but could there be a second zombie story in the offing? If so, and if the zombies are the main focus… maybe we can revisit this side of Shuttle to Kenfori and be a little kinder in hindsight.
There were plenty of ways to turn the zombies into the story’s main adversaries. After Pike and Dr M’Benga retrieved the flower sample, they could’ve been confronted and chased by a small group, becoming trapped in the facility. Looking outside, they’d realise their shuttle was cut off by a massive horde of zombies, and that they’d have to hunker down and wait for extraction. Rushing from room to room in the abandoned facility, they’d have to find shelter – all the while Spock and Una would be conspiring to make them wait longer and longer for a rescue, just as happened in the actual episode. We could’ve got more zombie action, more conversation between Pike and Dr M’Benga about Captain Batel’s condition, and – as a nice little bonus – a longer opening act that didn’t feel so rushed! Two birds with one stone, as they say.
Another zombie.
Alright, that’s enough about that for now. With those two issues aside, I really liked Shuttle to Kenfori. It was a ton of fun to get this kind of Star Trek zombie story, seeing zombified Klingons was somehow even scarier than human zombies, and the zombie sequences at the abandoned research base were pitch-perfect. The sets were decrepit and decaying, the prosthetics used to create the zombies were fantastic, there were some neat uses of the AR wall, and props used to create the Klingon skeleton, the important flower, and the half-eaten leg were all either gruesome or beautiful.
On the practical side of things, Strange New Worlds has been absolutely wonderful. Puppets, prosthetics, and physical props are back – and they’re back in style! CGI can work wonders, sure, but there’s something about physical props and practical effects that – for me, anyway – can’t be beat! They’re part of what makes Star Trek feel like Star Trek, and Shuttle to Kenfori had plenty of prosthetics for the zombies and some absolutely phenomenal props. I don’t think a Klingon d’k tahg (dagger) has ever looked better or more realistic in any episode, we saw a classic Original Series-inspired tricorder, and everything about the research base just screamed “danger.” I love it!
There were some fantastic props in Shuttle to Kenfori – like this d’k tahg.
Star Trek is science-fiction, and while it’s never been “realistic,” Star Trek stories have always gone out of their way to emphasise the science side of things. Even when dealing with wacky and ridiculous storylines, the franchise has always tried to ground those things in its own fictional science. Races like the Q or the Prophets were always perceived as “just another alien,” not some kind of god or deity, for instance, and even the silliest stellar phenomena – like Season 2’s improbability field that caused everyone to burst into song – were presented as having a scientific basis which could be scanned, studied, and understood.
Shuttle to Kenfori does the same with its zombies. They’re the result of an infection of moss spores, not some kind of supernatural entity or undead monster, and I really appreciated that. It doesn’t lessen the fear factor to know where the zombies came from or why they exist, but it keeps the franchise’s scientific tone. There was also kind of a The Last Of Us vibe as a result; these zombies, like the ones from that franchise, are a natural phenomenon caused by plants. The episode clearly leaned on other zombie properties, too: the title is reminiscent of the Korean zombie film Train to Busan, and even the name of the planet Kenfori is derived from actor Ken Foree, known for his role in Dawn of the Dead.
Whose leg is this?
Star Trek has arguably told zombie-adjacent stories before. The biggest example of this, as I’ve discussed before, is the Borg: Star Trek’s own cybernetic zombie faction! But the Borg are also a different kind of villain presented in a different way; there’s something about Shuttle to Kenfori’s mindless, monster-like moss-zombie abominations that’s totally unique. I love that Strange New Worlds has been bold enough to go there – and to tell these horror-inspired stories. We’ve seen it with the Gorn, and now we’re getting this new and creative zombie idea.
If the Borg represent your typical Night of the Living Dead zombies – shuffling around at a slow pace – then the zombies in Shuttle to Kenfori were closer to those from more modern titles like 28 Days Later or the aforementioned Train to Busan. Sprinting at full pelt after Captain Pike and Dr M’Benga, these zombies were truly scary! The jump-scare at the window about made me piss my pants, and the way the horde of zombies tumbled over one another desperately trying to grab our heroes… it was riveting stuff right out of a modern horror film!
These zombies were terrifying – and this was a great jump-scare.
Here’s a question I bet you weren’t expecting: did Shuttle to Kenfori make you think of Tuvix? Voyager’s “meme episode” definitely came up for me, with a flower that can merge DNA seeming quite familiar! I don’t think that means we’re gonna get a half-Gorn Captain Batel at the end of the day, or some kind of horrific Batel/Gorn “Brundlefly,” but it was interesting to hear about this flower and its unusual properties.
There was more to Shuttle to Kenfori than just the zombies – so let’s talk about that next!
Captain Batel’s Gorn infection coming back was something I kind of predicted last week after the opening pair of episodes. There was a lot of talk about her “re-absorbing” the Gorn DNA, especially in Wedding Bell Blues, and I just felt it hinted at there being more to this story than met the eye. In that sense it wasn’t a total shock – though I stand by what I said in my review of Hegemony, Part II: spoiling her survival in trailers and marketing material was a mistake. But I do think it’s interesting that, despite the Gorn themselves apparently taking a little nappy-nap, their influence and impact on our characters is going to stick around.
Captain Batel isn’t feeling too well…
The mind-meld sequence really hammered home how dangerous and unsettling this idea of a Gorn infection truly is. Spock seemed to perceive not only Gorn DNA but an actual individual Gorn somehow inside of or sharing Captain Batel’s body, and that concept is pretty horrifying, if you think about it! The parasitic Gorn eggs draw a lot from the film Alien, where the xenomorphs infect humans in a similar way, and I noted in Hegemony, Part II how truly grotesque the latter stages of that infection looked – brought to life, again, with some fantastic physical special effects work.
The inclusion of Gamble – the new nurse – was also interesting on this side of the story. I said last time that I wondered if Strange New Worlds was teeing him up as either a baddie in disguise or as a secondary character who could be killed off later in the story; when Spock flung him across the room in a Gorn-induced rage, I wondered if that might’ve been poor Ensign Gamble’s end! I like that Strange New Worlds is at least trying to add to its cast – and not just with returning legacy characters. Gamble is still a character I can’t quite place; if he is going to be killed off, fleshing him out and keeping him around in sickbay sequences makes a lot of sense. And if he’s going to take a villainous turn, I think it’s concealed well enough at this stage that the twist will still work!
Ensign Gamble with Captain Batel.
The mind-meld also gave us some very creative camera work/CGI. I love the idea that we were seeing things from a kind of “Gorn eye view,” percieving the world the way they might, with distorted colours and sensing things like heat from their prey. I can’t quite remember if All Those Who Wander did something similar… but I think so. Right? Regardless, this effect was creative and fun, and it really hammered home how this alien entity is still – somehow – alive inside Captain Batel. The CGI camera filter, with its hexagonal shapes, also harkened back to the original depiction of the Gorn captain in Arena – with his trademark silver, insect-like eyes.
Spock’s mind-meld also raised the stakes. The infection isn’t just going to kill Captain Batel, but it could spawn another Gorn – or perhaps multiple Gorn. And we saw in Season 1 how even juvenile Gorn and hatchlings can be deadly! So in that sense, Captain Batel’s infection isn’t just a danger to her, but it’s a potential danger to others, too – like the aforementioned Ensign Gamble! If I had to make a prediction or theory, by the way, I’d speculate that the young nurse will be killed in some kind of Gorn incident related to Captain Batel’s condition!
A Gorn’s view of the world.
Also on the Gorn side of things, we had Lieutenant Ortegas. I touched on this last time, as she’s clearly suffering from some kind of Gorn-induced PTSD-type condition. Una and La’an noted that she’d passed her psychological evaluation and was deemed fit to return to duty, but there’s clearly more going on. We didn’t get anything as explicit as last week’s Gorn reflection/haunting (I’m loathe to say it was an out-and-out “hallucination” without more evidence), but Ortegas is clearly being reckless and insubordinate due to how she’s feeling.
This has potential, but I think it needs to be handled with care. As a secondary or even tertiary story element in an episode which was largely focused elsewhere, there wasn’t a ton of time to dedicate to Ortegas. While what we saw was interesting and does hint at her mental state not being great… I also feel echoes of some of Discovery and Picard’s half-arsed mental health story attempts. Modern Star Trek has admirably tried to include these kinds of stories… but hasn’t always done so with care. An exploration of post-war or post-captivity PTSD is a genuinely interesting narrative concept, and one that could be heart-wrenching if done well… but it’s also a storyline which needs sufficient time dedicating to it. That doesn’t mean an entire episode, but it does mean more than just a few scenes and sequences.
Ortegas on the bridge.
Ortegas’ run-in with Uhura kind of encapsulates this for me. At the briefing, Ortegas interjected with her own riskier but faster rescue plan. But when Una opted for Spock’s slower approach, Ortegas seemed to lash out at Uhura for not backing her up. But this lasted all of a few seconds, and didn’t come up again. Ortegas’ main conflict – if we can characterise this kind of thing as a “conflict” – was with Una. This left her interaction with Uhura kind of sticking out; it needed more than just a couple of lines’ worth of setup, and more of a payoff. If that pattern repeats across this storyline… I worry it won’t achieve everything it aims for.
And that would be a real shame. Melissa Navia, who plays Ortegas, was genuinely compelling to watch this week, and after the Gorn attack, it stands to reason that someone would be suffering some lingering effects. Given Ortegas’ background in the Klingon war as well, there’s a real opportunity to talk about post-traumatic stress, grief, fear, and the lingering after-effects of trauma. I just hope that this opportunity will be fully seized and not fumbled – like Picard and Discovery arguably did.
This Ortegas storyline clearly has room to run.
On a more positive note, I felt Ortegas’ frustration as her plan was shot down. When you’re already on edge, suffering, or just not feeling your best, frustration can boil over – and in a chain-of-command situation, like there is in Starfleet, if your superiors don’t go with your idea, that can absolutely be the kind of thing that sets people off! This side of the story was handled well, and I kind of like the idea of leaning into this and showing Ortegas going rogue, trying to force the situation.
One way or another, this will be resolved. And it’s more realistic than in earlier iterations of Star Trek, where characters would go through some horrible trauma one week and be totally fine the next. I appreciate that Strange New Worlds – which is more episodic in nature than other recent projects – still keeps these ongoing character arcs. It makes people like Ortegas feel more well-rounded; fleshed-out people not just characters. I’m just crossing my fingers and hoping that this PTSD-type storyline manages to stick the landing when it counts.
The Enterprise.
On this side of the story, we got to see Una in command. She’s sat in the captain’s chair before, of course, but this was one of her first real outings where she had to make impactful command decisions; really embracing the role of first officer. Una was clearly taking inspiration from the way Captain Pike runs his ship, but there were enough differences in her approach and the way she handled both the briefing and the Ortegas situation to keep things interesting; she wasn’t just a stand-in for Pike in those moments.
XOs in Star Trek shows have a challenging role: they can’t outshine their captains, but they can’t be too different from them when in command, either. I think we got a great example of how a first officer should behave when left in command in Shuttle to Kenfori – Una was her own person, running the briefing and commanding the ship in her own way. She clearly had the respect of her colleagues – Ortegas’ misbehaviour aside! But she’s also leaning into Captain Pike’s style of command, listening to people, taking suggestions, and then deciding on a plan based on the best evidence available to her. It was a fun sequence, and I’m glad we got to see her taking the reins for a change.
Una got a turn in the captain’s chair while Pike was away.
Although I criticised the inclusion of Bytha and her Klingon band, there was a lot to love on this side of the story. Set aside questions of whether the story needed to be told alongside Shuttle to Kenfori’s zombies for a moment and consider it as a standalone thing. We got a callback to Dr M’Benga’s war service, in which we know he was notorious for killing dozens of Klingons. It also connected to the Season 2 episode Under the Cloak of War in a big way, too. But moreover, what we got on this side of the story was one of the most “Klingon” performances in modern Star Trek.
Discovery’s Klingons could feel a bit muddled, sometimes. They were still Klingon, don’t get me wrong, and there are things to admire with that show’s Klingon war arc. But Strange New Worlds has returned the Klingons to a more familiar visual style and also a tone closer to “classic” Klingons, if you take my meaning. Bytha, who was the daughter of Dak’Rah, was very concerned with matters of personal honour and the standing of her family’s house in Klingon affairs – and this felt like something out of The Next Generation era in the best way possible.
Bytha firing her disruptor.
Bytha was an interesting character, and I liked that her motivation was more complex than just “revenge.” It tied into what we know of Klingon houses and concepts of honour, harkeing back to stories involving Worf, Gowron, and Martok in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Even when surrounded by zombies and with her team dead, Bytha couldn’t stop herself challenging Dr M’Benga to ritual combat in line with Klingon codes of honour, and I found that fascinating and realistic based on what we know of the Klingons.
Bytha’s death was also particularly gruesome! She went out on her own terms, staying true to her beliefs and restoring her honour. I liked Dr M’Benga using honour against her, by beating her and refusing to finish her off. This set the stage for Pike and M’Benga being able to escape, but also gave Bytha an ending to her story that was, if nothing else, fitting. There wasn’t a ton of time to develop Bytha, but we got to know enough about her to understand why she was there, what she wanted, and who she was as a character. Christine Horn, who played the character, did a great job, too – she avoided falling into the trap of going over-the-top or leaving Bytha feeling one-dimensional. Though not in focus for the entire story, I felt she was a compelling villain – even if I’d have preferred to see her in a different episode, perhaps!
Bytha was an interesting Klingon character.
At the end of the episode, we saw Pike and Captain Batel reunited. And this was one of the most emotional sequences in Shuttle to Kenfori. Captain Batel tried to explain why she didn’t tell Pike everything straight away, and there were a couple of pertinent lines in there. “I don’t have the space to worry about how my dying hurts your feelings” is a powerful sentiment, and I think it encapsulates how she’s been feeling and how Pike can react. I don’t think Pike is actually that selfish, by the way, but we’ve seen over the course of his relationship with Batel that he isn’t the perfect partner and doesn’t always know what to say.
There’s also a message about medical consent and terminal illnesses. Pike’s story, going back to Discovery’s second season, has been building up to his own impending accident and disability. With Captain Batel, Pike is the one on the outside having to deal with her worsening health and potential terminal illness, and I think we got a powerful sequence exploring that. The failure of a treatment, an almost desperate, last-ditch attempt to find a new solution, and Captain Batel keeping Pike out of the picture because of how he might’ve reacted. It was riveting, dramatic stuff – but I’m glad that they came back together at the end. I’m curious to see what will come of this treatment – something tells me Captain Batel isn’t out of danger just yet.
Pike and Batel embrace.
So that was Shuttle to Kenfori. With the exception of a rather rushed opening sequence and a Klingon villain who, while compelling in her own right, was ultimately unnecessary for the zombie story, I think it was an outstanding episode. The horror theme was present throughout, the zombies themselves were frightening and incredibly well-designed, and we moved along key storylines involving Pike, Captain Batel, Ortegas, Dr M’Benga… and possibly our new Ensign Gamble, too!
Obviously, though, this episode will be remembered for its zombies. While I don’t want Strange New Worlds to spend too long on any one storyline – as its episodic nature has been one of the best things about the series – I’m kind of hoping we revisit the zombies in the future. It seems strange for Starfleet to just abandon the planet Kenfori with its zombie infestation, and I’m sure the scientists would be very interested to learn more about this contagion, how it spreads, the moss that causes it… and maybe if it could be weaponised. That seems like something that the Klingons might be interested in, too – and if Bytha’s statement is anything to go by, the Klingons knew what they were about to walk into. Then there’s the Scotty and Pelia poster I mentioned earlier – is that hinting at a second zombie story later this season?
Are more zombies on the agenda later this season?
But that’s all for today. A tense, gruesome, and occasionally frightening episode – but it was a lot of fun! As Strange New Worlds hits the halfway point, I can already tell I’m not gonna be ready to let go of this wonderful series when the moment comes. It really has been the high-water mark of modern Star Trek, returning to the franchise’s episodic, exploration-focused roots – while also being brave enough to try completely new and different things.
Next week we have the retro-inspired Space Adventure Hour, and also the apparent return of Kirk. This will almost certainly be a total change in tone from Shuttle to Kenfori’s horror offering, so if this wasn’t to your taste and you’re hankering for something a bit more light-hearted, I think you’re in for a treat!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-3 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform exists. The first two seasons are also available on DVD/Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Let’s do something we haven’t done for a long time: talk about Animal Crossing!
For some context, Animal Crossing: New Horizons briefly became my most-played Nintendo Switch game… before being overtaken by Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. I enjoyed the game in 2020 and into 2021, but I felt it was far more limited than it should’ve been and I burned out on it more quickly than I expected. When I compare New Horizons to its predecessor – a game I was still playing from time to time when New Horizons was released – I think it comes up short.
Nintendo also didn’t give New Horizons the level of support and updates I would’ve hoped for. In true Nintendo fashion, they abandoned the best-selling Switch-exclusive title after little more than a year, giving a handful of free updates (some of which re-introduced items and features that had been added for one holiday season, then removed), and one piece of paid-for DLC. Neither the free updates nor the paid DLC addressed what I considered to be New Horizons’ most egregious flaws and missing features.
Concept art for some of the villagers in New Horizons.
It was a real shame to see some of New Leaf’s best elements – things which gave that game genuine longevity and kept me returning to it – stripped out of New Horizons. And while some of the things New Horizons added did improve the overall Animal Crossing experience… the trade-off wasn’t really worth it. Losing minigames and Tortimer’s island basically meant multiplayer wasn’t fun and offered very little to do besides having a wander around… and honestly, that got boring pretty quickly. Some players have crafted great islands, don’t get me wrong, but if all I can do is look around… let’s just say it reminds me of being dragged around stately homes and botanical gardens by my parents when I was a kid. And no, that is not a compliment!
So with New Horizons and New Leaf in mind… what should the next Animal Crossing look like? The tl;dr? The best of both worlds – while also learning from other recent games in the casual life-sim space. That’s what I’d want to see from the next game in the series, which is surely already in development for the Nintendo Switch 2.
Could a new Animal Crossing game be imminent?
There are rumours flitting around that a new Animal Crossing game might be teased as early as this month, with 2026 being talked about as a potential release year. I think it makes sense for Nintendo to line up a new Animal Crossing relatively early in the life of the Switch 2, especially if the more expensive system isn’t selling quite as well as its predecessor. Attracting that large “cozy game,” casual playerbase would make a lot of sense, so 2026 sounds plausible to me.
With all that being said, my usual caveats apply! I have no “insider information” about the Animal Crossing series. I’m not claiming to know when the game will be released or what new features might be included. Everything we’re going to discuss today is a wishlist from a fan, and nothing more. It also goes without saying that all of this is the subjective, not objective, opinion of just one person. If I recommend a new feature that you think sounds awful, or I miss out something you believe should be obvious… that’s okay. There ought to be enough room in the Animal Crossing community for polite discussion and respectful disagreement.
With all of that out of the way, let’s take a look at my Animal Crossing wishlist.
Wish #1: More options in the character creator.
Hairstyles in New Horizons.
New Leaf and New Horizons don’t exactly have a ton of character creation options. There are a handful of eyes, noses, mouths, and hairstyles… but a modern title on more powerful hardware could expand this by a lot. We could see dozens of hairstyles, new hair and eye colours, and facial features, all of which would help us create unique and personalised characters. The new game will almost certainly stick with the familiar Animal Crossing art style, but even within that framework there’s a ton of room to do more.
I’d like to see different body types – villagers of different heights and weights. There could also be new facial hair and makeup options, too. I felt New Leaf’s customisation options were solid enough on the 3DS – but I gotta be honest: I expected more from New Horizons coming more than half a decade later on a much more powerful system. The Switch 2 really ought to be able to handle many more character creation options, and isn’t the point of a life simulator to, y’know, simulate your life? A lot of folks want to be able to put themselves into the game – so Nintendo really ought to make that happen!
Wish #2: Learn from the successes (and shortcomings) of similar games.
Taking a selfie in Disney Dreamlight Valley.
One of my favourite games of the last few years has been Disney Dreamlight Valley – despite its monetisation issues. Dreamlight Valley is itself inspired by Animal Crossing – but it’s also a game that took the life-sim formula and did more with it than any Animal Crossing title so far. In particular, being able to easily move buildings around by hopping into an editor mode on the fly is something the next Animal Crossing series could really use. Imagine if, instead of having to go to Tom Nook, wade through dialogue, wait 24 hours, and only be able to move one house at a time… you could just move any of them any time you wanted? And imagine if, instead of being permanently stuck with wherever you happened to site the museum or the shop… you could pick them up and move them around as your town expands. That would be neat, huh?
Then there are things like unique villager quests that could be a lot of fun. Other cozy life-sim titles, like this year’s Locomoto, also have better editing and customisation tools that I think Nintendo should take a serious look at. I don’t play a ton of these types of games, so I don’t know every new feature that might be kicking around out there, but there are bound to be others that I haven’t seen or can’t call to mind right now! The long and short of it is that Nintendo shouldn’t just look inwards at New Leaf and New Horizons, but outwards at other games in the genre. There are plenty of games on the market in a similar space – and some are a whole lot better than Animal Crossing right now.
Wish #3: Proper menu/inventory icons.
Pockets in New Horizons.
When I played New Leaf on the 3DS, I didn’t really mind that there was only one inventory icon for furniture, and one for clothes. But on the Switch? You’d have thought each individual item could’ve gotten its own unique icon. At the very least, it should’ve been possible to see at a glance whether I’m carrying a wardrobe or a teacup. These are pretty basic quality-of-life things that would make navigating menus, storage, and inventories so much smoother. It would be way easier to find crafted items, gifts, tools, and the like if each item had its own icon.
There’s no real reason why each item can’t be given its own inventory icon. It would’ve been possible on the Switch, so it’s certainly going to be achievable on the new system. It’s a pain the arse to scroll through storage and inventories, trying to find a particular item of clothing or piece of furniture – and there’s just no need for it any more. On older hardware? Sure. But now? It’s time to have a proper, well-organised inventory!
Wish #4: Item durability needs to piss off.
Ugh.
I don’t think I’ve ever played a single game – not one, ever – where I’ve thought to myself “gosh, I’m glad my tools/weapons break. That just makes this game so much more fun!” And I’ve definitely never been playing a game and thought “you know what would make this better? If my tools and guns randomly stopped working while I’m trying to use them!” I can’t think of any game where item durability is implemented well and actually makes sense – except, perhaps, for Minecraft.
New Horizons had pathetically awful item durability. I get that maybe your bottom-tier, basic tools wouldn’t work as well or last as long as proper ones. But come on… even the top-tier golden tools break after a handful of uses. And it’s such a pain in the arse to be halfway through a big task – like watering a flowerbed or breaking a money rock – only for your tool to break. And with no status indicators nor any way to keep track, tools seemed to break completely at random. I get the idea behind it… but it wasn’t fun. I don’t play a game like Animal Crossing for realism, and I definitely don’t play it to get frustrated when my pissing watering can breaks.
Wish #5: Either use announcements properly or don’t include them.
No, Isabelle. No, it fucking doesn’t.
Isabelle’s morning announcements were absolutely useless most of the time. She’d let you know about big things, like events, but she’d also not let you know about everything… with her stupid little “oh, that doesn’t count as news” really pissing me off more and more as time went on. The town noticeboard wasn’t much better, with even basic things not being posted there. If you’re going to include a feature – or two – in a game like this specifically to make announcements about important events and things going on… use them. Otherwise they’re just a waste of time.
I’d like to start my play session with a proper announcement of what’s going on. But Isabelle wouldn’t tell you if a special character was visiting, or if it was the last day to see a certain event. And the noticeboard hardly got anything added to it. I’m pretty sure I missed seeing characters like Gulliver and Redd a few times because their visits weren’t made obvious. If you don’t have a lot of time to play, getting a roundup of what’s happening that day can be really important, and when there are built-in features especially created for this purpose, it just seems ridiculous not to take advantage of them.
Wish #6: A proper third-person camera. (As a togglable option)
The standard camera angle.
This one might be controversial! Animal Crossing games have all had the same kind of top-down/isometric camera angle. But having played Dreamlight Valley, as discussed above, one thing I believe would really add to the immersion would be a proper over-the-shoulder third-person camera. Being able to explore the world from that perspective would be a game-changer – literally – and I think it would add a lot to the Animal Crossing experience.
However, because this would undoubtedly be controversial, I think it should be included as an option, not as something mandatory. The standard Animal Crossing camera could also be present for folks who want the more “traditional” experience. The rest of us can have fun exploring our villages a bit more up close and personal!
Wish #7: Multiplayer mini-games.
Balloon hunting on Tortimer’s Island in New Leaf.
The reason I was still playing New Leaf years after its release – and the reason I don’t play New Horizons any more – is the multiplayer mini-games on Tortimer’s island. Being able to fire up New Leaf and play those games with friends was a ton of fun, and it kept me engaged with the game for way longer than I otherwise would’ve been. The mini-games were a blast, too, with plenty of different options on Tortimer’s “tours.”
It was such a shame that New Horizons didn’t include any of that. It meant multiplayer got boring really quickly, and while you can “make your own fun,” at least in a limited way… that doesn’t make up for it. Proper, structured games to play with friends made a world of difference to New Leaf, and I really felt their absence harmed New Horizons. I bought Switch Online entirely because a friend wanted to play New Horizons together… but both of us bounced off pretty quickly after we’d visited each other’s islands and realised that there wasn’t actually a lot to do there.
Wish #8: Mini-games that can be played at will. (No randomness/waiting)
Playing hide-and-seek in New Leaf.
I’d like to be able to go up to my favourite villager and invite them to play a game. I don’t want to have to go up to everyone over and over again and hope that someone will ask me to play hide-and-seek! As the player, I should be able to choose when to start these mini-games, and pick from the list of available options. Maybe certain characters can refuse my request if they’re in a bad mood or something… sure. That could add to the immersion. But I should be able to start these mini-games at will to give me something to do when I’m not weeding or fishing!
This would also be present in multiplayer. After arriving at a friend’s town, we could choose to start a game of something like hide-and-seek with some of the villagers from their town, and that could add to the fun. But instead of approaching characters and hoping to get the right dialogue prompts, this should be a permanent fixture; something we can always ask our villagers to do.
Wish #9: Support the game for 6+ years instead of just 18 months.
Happy Home Paradise and its associated update were the last major content additions to New Horizons – barely eighteen months after the game launched.
Nintendo dropped the ball by abandoning New Horizons so quickly. Look around at the cozy life-sim genre and what do you see? Ongoing support for multiple years from all of the big developers. New items, events, and gameplay features are frequently added, often for free but sometimes as paid DLC. Nintendo did this for the game’s first year, but a lot of that was really spent on patches and on adding features that, frankly, should’ve been present from day one. The next game in the series should get continuing support really for the life of the Switch 2, but at least for five or six years instead of one or two.
This should also include listening and responding to community feedback. If players ask for, say, more vegetables to plant… then add them in the next update. The best long-running titles have devs who engage with and listen to players, and while Animal Crossing has done some of this, sometimes – like reducing the scope of the Easter event – there’s a lot more that Nintendo could do on that front. I’d love to see the next Animal Crossing given years’ worth of free updates. If the game’s gonna sell tens of millions of copies, it’s not like adding new items every now and then is gonna break the bank!
Wish #10: More shops. (All of which can be placed anywhere, and all of which can expand.)
The shopping street in New Leaf – with construction underway to expand Nook’s Cranny.
After New Leaf had an entire shopping street, it was kinda pathetic that New Horizons only got two shops. And after New Leaf’s main shop got five or six expansions, taking it from a tin hut to a full-blown multi-storey department store, it was pretty lame that Nook’s Cranny only got one solitary upgrade in New Horizons. Even when Nintendo relented to pressure and added Brewster’s coffee shop back into the game, it wasn’t able to be placed in the world and could only be a new room in the museum. That just made me sad.
So the next game should have, at a minimum, all of the shops from New Leaf, and all of them should be able to be placed in the world. There could be options to place two shops in the same space, or to put the coffee shop inside the museum – but these should be optional, not mandatory! If I want to place the coffee shop in its own dedicated building out in the game world, I should have that freedom. And all of these – including the coffee shop – should get at least one level of expansion. The main shop should get half a dozen.
Wish #11: Massively expanded villager dialogue. (And more villager personality types than there are available slots)
Dialogue got pretty repetitive…
New Horizons gave you ten slots on your island for villagers to move into. But there are only eight villager personality types! What that meant in practice is you’d get at least two villagers who were word-for-word identical to one another. Combine that with some pretty lazy and sparse dialogue, and you’ve got a recipe for boring, repetitive character interactions. Some common events – like walking into a villager’s home while they’re crafting – literally only had one possible line of dialogue, meaning even if you didn’t have two of the same personality type you’d still always see the same text every single time that event triggered.
Given that every Animal Crossing game just uses text for dialogue, adding a huge amount of additional text wouldn’t inflate the size of the game or really have any noticeable impact whatsoever. That goes double for the Switch 2, so I really hope that the next game in the series can have… oh, let’s say quadruple the amount of dialogue, with new villager personality types to further mix things up. And there should be more personality types than there are housing slots available in your town – so you’re always going to have a reason to mix things up and bring in new villagers.
Wish #12: Farming and cooking from day 1.
Recipes after one of the final New Horizons updates.
By the time New Horizons introduced crops other than pumpkins, I’d already given up on the game. Some of the new farming and cooking things looked neat – but not neat enough to warrant starting a brand-new island or returning to my old one! It would be great if the next game could include these pretty basic features from day one, and not strip out gameplay elements to “add” later while expecting praise! Farming crops and cooking recipes are bog-standard life-sim features and should be present from the beginning.
I love how Dreamlight Valley handles these things, though. Crops can be farmed for cash if you have enough space, but they need watering and attention. And also crops are ingredients in all of your recipes. Food in that game can be consumed for extra energy, given to villagers to boost your friendship, sold for cash, or even used for decoration. New Horizons had some of that, but I think it could be massively expanded to make farming and cooking integral parts of the experience.
Wish #13: Some kind of drivable vehicle.
Yep, exactly like this!
If we assume that New Horizons’ successor is going to have a larger map, it would be neat if we could get some kind of bike or kart to make traversing the game world a little faster. This could be a late-game item, meaning you’d need to invest a lot of time and money into acquiring or crafting it, and it could be limited to only being drivable on paths/roads, not just everywhere. But it could make doing your chores a lot more fun – and it would feel like there was something to work towards beyond house expansions, new furniture, and so on.
Depending on what kind of setting the new game goes for – it could be a return to the forest, a city, or another island of some kind – then different vehicle options could be found to fit the game. Perhaps an even bigger project for your new village could see you build your own railway line, with a train and different buildable stations around the village. That could be a ton of fun, too, and a great way to include the Animal Crossing train, which was absent from New Horizons.
Wish #14: New special characters and events.
Maybe not this guy, though…
New Horizons introduced a couple of new special characters to run things like the fishing tourney and the bug-off. But these events weren’t new, and they played out pretty much the same as in previous entries in the series. I’d like to see brand-new special characters tied to new events – maybe a hide-and-seek championship or a scavenger hunt. Either of those could introduce a new character to organise and manage the event, mixing things up and giving players something new to do at least once a week.
This could also expand to include new annual holidays or seasonal events; we got things like the wedding and the fireworks nights in New Horizons, but I’m sure there are others and different ones that a new game could include. I don’t think Animal Crossing should go overboard here; we don’t need a special character and event every single day! But having new ones in the mix, helmed by new characters, would be a lot of fun.
Wish #15: Go easy on the monetisation.
Welcome Tour – and the Switch 2’s launch overall – doesn’t leave me feeling optimistic for this one.
New Horizons, despite its limitations, was priced fairly. Given recent behaviour from Nintendo – jacking up prices left, right, and centre, and going all-in on microtransactions in mobile games like Mario Kart Tour – I don’t want to see the next Animal Crossing game monetised to death. We don’t need “season passes,” paid-for skins, or dozens of tiny “item packs” to add content to the game for a fee. The game should be reasonably-priced, with plenty of free updates throughout its life, and one or perhaps two expansion packs – provided they’re sizable and not overpriced.
This is a source of concern, I’ll be honest with you. I can absolutely see Nintendo trying to cash in on the Animal Crossing series, charging for items, features, characters, currency, and all sorts of things that should be included with the game. I was disappointed when Dreamlight Valley’s monetisation got out of hand, and you don’t need to look far to see life-sim games with ridiculous price tags. The Sims 4, for instance, costs over £1,300 if you were to buy all of its various content packs and DLC.
So that’s it.
What will come next for Animal Crossing?
We’ve taken a look at a whole bunch of things that I’d like to see from the next Animal Crossing game!
This series has a lot of potential – but for me, at least, New Horizons didn’t live up to it. Most of what we’ve discussed today could – and I would argue should – have been part of New Horizons or added to it later. So in that sense, I don’t think I’m being unreasonable or asking for anything totally crazy from the next game in the series.
I’m not sure what the developers have in store, though. Could we get a new game set in an urban environment, for instance, or are we going to stick with the deserted island? Will characters like Tortimer and Kappn have bigger roles this time, after being effectively absent in New Horizons? What will be the new game’s biggest addition or transformation? Those are all open questions!
If Nintendo gets this right, the next Animal Crossing could be the game that convinces me to save up for a Switch 2. But if it looks like it’s going to be drowning in microtransactions and monetisation… maybe I won’t bother.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is out now for Nintendo Switch. The next Animal Crossing game is presumably in development, but no release date has been announced at time of writing. The Animal Crossing series – including all titles and properties discussed above – is the copyright of Nintendo. Some screenshots and artwork courtesy of IGDB and Nookipedia. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-3. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: The Original Series Season 1, The Next Generation, Voyager, and Picard Season 2.
After an explosive and action-packed season premiere, Strange New Worlds opted for a complete change in tone in Wedding Bell Blues. There were some lighthearted sequences, a callback to a fan theory that’s been kicking around for literally decades, and, unfortunately, a bit too much cringe humour for my taste. Despite that latter point, Wedding Bell Blues had its moments, and the apparent confirmation of that decades-old fan theory was worth the price of admission alone!
For me, though, I suppose Wedding Bell Blues is going to be another episode that I don’t revisit very often. This obsession that the show’s writers have with putting Spock in situations that are emotional or just wacky and cringeworthy… it’s overstayed its welcome. And while I will happily admit that there can be humour in that premise… I’m thoroughly done with it at this point. Spock Amok, The Serene Squall, The Elysian Kingdom, Charades, and Subspace Rhapsody all included some kind of “Spock comedy” or “Vulcan comedy,” and I just think that we’ve really reached the end of the line with it. Any joke – even great ones – stop being funny when they’re repeated too often, and this whole “Vulcans are stuck up and rigid, so let’s turn that into comedy” idea wasn’t especially strong to begin with. At this point… well, let’s just say I hope we don’t get too much more of that going forward. And yes, I’m aware that we have Four-and-a-Half Vulcans still to come later this season.
I’m done with “Spock comedy” at this point.
That being said, there were some interesting and entertaining moments in Wedding Bell Blues, and when the episode switched to Spock and Dr Korby trying to undo the damage, things largely improved. Dr Korby made for a fun character, even though his introduction as Spock’s rom-com/Hallmark movie dating rival wasn’t spectacular! Dr Korby originally appeared in The Original Series first season episode What Are Little Girls Made Of? where Kirk and the crew encounter him – after a fashion – on a frozen planet.
It’s been a while since I re-watched What Are Little Girls Made Of?, so my recollections of that story are a little fuzzy! But from what I remember, the “Dr Korby” that the crew – and Nurse Chapel – encountered wasn’t quite the same, either due to the mind-transferring process he went through or, perhaps, because of years in isolation and the traumatic experiences he went through. I’m not sure if Strange New Worlds’ version of Dr Korby is going to appear again after this episode. If he doesn’t, I think we’ll look at Wedding Bell Blues as a bit of mildly interesting backstory. But if he does come back, I think there’s potential to expand the character further, and perhaps show us a glimpse of a darker side, something that might inform his TOS appearance. Because I didn’t really get much of that from Wedding Bell Blues, to be honest. If Dr Korby had been substituted for a brand-new character, it wouldn’t have made any real difference to this particular script.
Dr Korby in Spock’s cabin.
We’ll come back to Chapel, Korby, and Spock, because I really want to get into this Trelane and Q connection!
For some background information: Trelane was a character who first appeared in the episode The Squire of Gothos, also from the first season of The Original Series. He was portrayed as a trickster, capturing and toying with Kirk and the crew – before being reprimanded by his parents. When Q appeared at the beginning of The Next Generation some twenty years later, fans immediately made the connection. Q and Trelane felt so similar that “Trelane is a Q” became a popular theory in the Trekkie community. But it was never confirmed, despite Q making repeated appearances in The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. Even a visit to the Q Continuum itself didn’t confirm it!
The character in Wedding Bell Blues is credited simply as “Wedding Planner,” and John de Lancie – Q from The Next Generation – is credited as voicing “Wedding Planner’s father.” However, ahead of the season we were told that Rhys Darby – who played the “Wedding Planner” – was playing the role of a familiar character, and after Wedding Bell Blues aired, showrunner and executive producer Akiva Goldsman confirmed that the two are the same character. With that in mind, I shall be treating the “Wedding Planner” as Trelane and the other energy life-form as Q.
Trelane with a pint-sized Spock.
I love that Strange New Worlds went out of its way to confirm this old fan theory and really lean into the Trekkie community. Moments like this connect disparate parts of Star Trek together, and while we can argue the toss about changes to the Gorn from one show to the other, Trelane’s appearance here was pitch-perfect. It was right in line with The Squire of Gothos, and the fact that John de Lancie returned to voice Q at the end of the story just made it so much better.
As an aside: have we finally seen the Q in their “true” form? Q has always been able to change his form, but in all of his appearances – and the appearances of other members of the Continuum – we never got confirmation of what the race actually looks like in its native form. I think there’s a case to be made that the energy cloud from The Squire of Gothos and Wedding Bell Blues is what members of the Q Continuum look like when they aren’t deliberately assuming another form. And that’s kind of cool!
Is this Q’s true form?
So after almost forty years, we’ve gotten an explicit connection between Trelane and the Q! I don’t know about you, but I think that’s exceptionally cool, and a great little wink to fans of both The Original Series and The Next Generation. It was also subtle enough that new viewers who aren’t familiar with any of those shows wouldn’t have been left scratching their heads. The ending to The Squire of Gothos was repeated in a pretty similar way, and the meaning behind it – that this entity was little more than a child, toying with living beings – still works even without any of that prior knowledge of Star Trek. It works just as well in 2025 as it did in 1967!
After such a long time, with fans speculating about Trelane and Q since before there was the world wide web… there were risks to this storyline. And I just love that there was enough boldness in the writers’ room to go there. I can see this point being contentious with some older fans, perhaps; not everyone was on board with the “Trelane is a Q” theory. You don’t have to look too far to find old forum threads and blog posts denouncing the notion! But for me, this storyline was well-executed, it doesn’t really prevent you from enjoying any of the Q episodes or The Squire of Gothos in isolation, and given that Trelane seems to have been in disguise most of the time, we can even argue that Spock, Uhura, and Scotty not remembering this encounter makes sense. Heck, if you need a head canon explanation for that: Trelane used his Q powers to make everyone forget about this by the time of The Squire of Gothos!
Trelane is officially a member of the Q Continuum!
Star Trek was one of the entertainment landscape’s first real “shared universes;” pioneering the idea before the name even existed. And it’s nice to get little reminders, now and then, of storylines set in other eras or of fun episodes we remember from older Star Trek shows. There are good ways and bad ways to do this; Wedding Bell Blues, for me, stayed on the right side of the line. There’s enough wiggle-room for people who hate this idea to say that, well, maybe the Wedding Planner and Trelane aren’t one and the same, or that nothing we saw on screen explicitly proves that it was The Next Generation’s Q who showed up at the end. But for fans who’ve bought into the Trelane-Q connection over the years, I think it’s great to see that theory finally confirmed.
Rhys Darby was fantastic as Trelane, too. Informed, perhaps, not only by the original performance of the character by William Campbell in The Original Series, but also by John de Lancie’s Q, I felt we got a complex take on the character. Trelane’s lighthearted, positive energy masked some truly dark impulses and urges, and his total disregard for forms of life he considered “inferior” or beneath him really shone through. There was a distinct creepiness to Trelane, even when he was mincing around, talking about wedding dresses and cake samples. Darby put in a fantastic performance to bring the character to life and make him believable, despite the very unusual situation.
Rhys Darby was great in this role.
Speaking as we were of head canon, here’s one that I think makes some character moments in Wedding Bell Blues flow better! When Spock and Dr Korby approached various characters to explain the “mass delusion” phenomenon, even people who should be receptive to that conversation completely brushed them off. Worse, people like Captain Pike even seemed to ignore or forget what Spock was telling them moments later, and just generally acted out-of-character. When Spock left his own bachelor party, for instance, none of the other attendees – his friends – bothered to go after him or find out what was wrong.
So my head canon is that Trelane’s magic wasn’t just causing the delusion, it was also forcing everyone to react in this way. They were all 100% wedding-focused, and anything that didn’t gel with Trelane’s new scenario was either not retained or pushed aside. That’s really the only way I think we can account for people like Pike behaving the way they do; refusing to listen to his science officer and a prominent, well-respected doctor when confronted just doesn’t fit his character otherwise. For me, this head canon explanation fits pretty well, but I can understand why some viewers might not like the behaviours of Captain Pike and some of the other characters in the episode.
The bachelor party.
The idea that only strong emotions – like anger or love – could break through Trelane’s spell was interesting, and it’s an idea which feels very “Star Trekky,” if that makes sense. It’s a bit of a cliché, sure; love being this supremely powerful emotion capable of saving the day can feel like a worn-out trope. But here, I think it worked well enough. Perhaps if we’d got just an extra line or two between Korby and Spock to technobabble some nonsense about love generating strong brainwave frequencies or something, maybe that would’ve been an improvement. Not essential, perhaps… but an improvement.
Love breaking through the delusion also set up the end of the episode, and Spock being able to get through to Chapel. Calling back to the story about her and Dr Korby climbing a mountain and looking out over the stars was creative and also cute, and despite my overall feelings about Spock being pushed into this love rivalry story that felt like something out of a low-budget Hallmark movie, this moment worked. Spock knew what he had to do; he took a chance on what he felt was the only way to break the illusion for Chapel, and hoped that doing so would shatter it for everyone else.
Chapel breaks free from the spell.
In The Squire of Gothos, the crew of the Enterprise arrive at a planet where Trelane is already present. Yet here, in Wedding Bell Blues, it appears as if Trelane has travelled to Earth… and I wish we’d learned a little about that. Why was Trelane interested in Earth, and why did he feel drawn to Spock when he had ten-plus billion people to potentially toy with? I just didn’t feel we got a satisfactory explanation for that, really. Yes, Trelane is a trickster and a child, but at least encountering him where he is – out in space – made a degree of sense. And for Q, he set puzzles and challenges for Picard, Janeway, and Sisko… but they always served some kind of purpose. Trelane is just playing around, which is the point of the story, but even kids who are playing have reasons for choosing the games they play.
One other thing I liked about Trelane, though, is how we can read his story of wanting to help people fall in love through the lens of what we know about Q. If you know me, you know I generally disliked Star Trek: Picard’s second season, in which Q prominently features. But at the end of that story, we learned that Q cares, in his own way, about things like love – and he has some kind of innate desire to help people fall in love. Or at least he does for certain select people! But this kind of connects with Trelane in Wedding Bell Blues; he saw how down Spock was about losing Chapel and he wanted, in his own somewhat twisted way, to “help.” That interpretation is there, even if it’s built on less solid foundations.
Trelane’s story can arguably connect to Q’s in Picard Season 2.
Love could be blossoming in Strange New Worlds this season. Spock and La’an seemed to share a moment towards the end of the story, dancing together. I interpreted their earlier scenes as purely friendly, with La’an – who apparently has a hidden talent for dancing – helping Spock learn to dance ahead of the Federation Day celebrations. But their moment at the end of the story, with La’an joining Spock as he sat alone, then asking him to dance? Maybe I’m reaching… but in the kind of rom-coms that Wedding Bell Blues borrowed from, those sorts of moments can lead to big romantic entanglements!
In addition, we also have the clearly burgeoning relationship between Uhura and Beto – Lieutenant Ortegas’ brother. When I saw Uhura and Beto in a pre-season promo photo, I thought he might’ve been some kind of villain; perhaps the photo wasn’t a particularly flattering one, but he was giving me a bit of a creepy vibe! In the episode itself, though, we got plenty of flirty banter between the two. Unlike with Spock, Chapel, and Korby, which I found way too cringeworthy, I generally enjoyed this sub-plot. Giving Uhura a love interest, particularly one with a connection to another member of the crew, could be a lot of fun.
They’re just friends… right?
Could Beto’s drone-camera and his filmmaking job become plot points in another story? I wondered if he might’ve had a role to play in Wedding Bell Blues while I was watching the episode; his camera, I suspected, might be able to see through Trelane’s disguise even if no one else could, and that could’ve led to the mystery unravelling. In any case, Wedding Bell Blues set up this hobby/job of Beto’s, and then called back to it to reinforce it, so I can’t help but think we might get something out of it further down the line. Watch this space, I guess.
Uhura got one of the best costumes in this episode! Not at the wedding/Federation Day party… her very 1960s-inspired outfit that she wore to the bar earlier in the story. Strange New Worlds has leaned into a ’60s aesthetic in a way that Enterprise and Discovery never really did. There are still a ton of thoroughly modern trappings, but the show has those connections to The Original Series. Uhura’s outfit was fantastic – but I wouldn’t say it looked out of place aboard this version of the Enterprise. That isn’t an easy line to walk, and generally I think Strange New Worlds gets it right most of the time. Uhura’s new hairstyle, which debuted in this episode, looks fantastic, too.
I love Uhura’s outfit in this sequence.
After the dust settled on the wedding/Federation Day, there are still a couple of lingering Gorn-related questions. I noted last time that Spock and Chapel’s plan to save Captain Batel didn’t involve removing her Gorn infection, but changing how they approached it so that the Gorn would be “re-absorbed” by her body. That line didn’t stick out too much at the time, but the fact that “re-absorbtion” and Captain Batel’s ongoing treatment was mentioned again here? It raises some questions! Is she going to be suffering some kind of ongoing Gorn-related health issue? And if so, could we see the Gorn return in a future story? Could the Gorn infection ultimately still claim her life?
I was surprised to see La’an so casually brushing off her Gorn encounter. I get why it had to happen for narrative reasons – with Ortegas clearly suffering after her near-death experience, having another character going through a similar Gorn PTSD-type situation might be too much. But La’an is a character who has been thoroughly defined by her encounters with the Gorn, both in the show and as part of her backstory. Yes, there’s a three-month time-jump at the beginning of Wedding Bell Blues, and we can argue that La’an might’ve processed some of what happened off-screen. But something about her line to Spock about the Gorn threat being over now… it didn’t sit quite right.
Is Captain Batel in the clear?
However, as mentioned it’s Lieutenant Ortegas who seems to be in focus for a lingering Gorn storyline. Although she seems to have physically recovered, there’s a psychological toll that she doesn’t seem to have addressed yet. She may not have even admitted to anyone that she feels haunted by the Gorn and by her experiences in captivity. This is clearly going to run for more than one episode, perhaps blowing up later in the season in a big way – or conversely, with Ortegas seeking help from someone like Captain Pike, Dr M’Benga, or even La’an. I felt that, if La’an had been the one to get this kind of PTSD-type storyline, she had a great connection already with Una, so she could’ve been someone to turn to.
Ortegas hasn’t been in focus as much across the first couple of seasons, and I don’t think it’s unfair to say that she doesn’t have a “bestie” in the same way as some of the other main characters do! That’s a limitation in some respects, but it also means that she could potentially talk to anyone – so maybe it’s better to say it opens up different possibilities. Dr M’Benga would be interesting both for his medical expertise as well as his own traumatic backstory from the Klingon war. Captain Pike could be very sympathetic, too. And La’an, I think, might make a particularly compelling character for Ortegas to seek out. Not only does La’an have that Gorn experience, but she was the one who rescued Ortegas from captivity, saved her life, and then carried her to the ship they used to make their escape.
Ortegas is clearly haunted by her Gorn encounter.
As an aside: Wedding Bell Blues was creative in its use of reflections creative camera shots. We caught a glimpse of Trelane through the window before he first appeared, we saw the view directly from Beto’s camera-drone, and at the end, Ortegas’ feelings of being haunted by her Gorn experience were shown through a reflection in the window.
What do we make of the new nurse? The ensign that Una and Dr M’Benga went out of their way to keep aboard the Enterprise? Is he – as I suspect – going to take a villainous turn? Or is he being set up as a glorified redshirt; a Discovery-esque secondary character with minimal backstory, being fattened up to be slaughtered? Those are my two guesses!
Some of that may come later in the season… or not, if I’m totally overreaching. For now, it’s sufficient to say that I liked some of what Wedding Bell Blues had to offer – but I was less keen on its Hallmark movie plot. Spock and Chapel have run their course as a couple, and I’m glad that the series is finally seeming to put that idea to bed. But I’m not wild about all of these “emotional Spock” and “comedic Spock” storylines. There are other ways to include the character, other ways to demonstrate his growth, and other things to do with Vulcans besides joke about how formal and stuck-up they are.
Redshirt or secret bad guy?
I’m glad that Strange New Worlds doesn’t double up its episodes every week. Don’t get me wrong: I’d love to pay less for Paramount+, and a shorter season would help with that! But two episodes at once is a bit much; binge-watching some shows is a ton of fun, but for a brand-new season of Star Trek? I like to give the episodes room to breathe. A nice week-long gap is what I need!
So we’ve reviewed both of the Season 3 premiere episodes. They were pretty different, and obviously my preference would be Hegemony, Part II by quite a long way! But I did enjoy the Trelane-Q fan theory being confirmed all these years later, and it was fun to get a kind of Q-ish or Q-adjacent storyline for Spock. Dr Korby, despite a pretty disappointing love triangle story and a weak introduction, was a fun character, and a good foil for Spock as he was forced to team up with arguably his least-favourite human! And we got some fun moments with Sam Kirk, Uhura, Chapel, Ortegas, and her brother, too.
Not my favourite episode, thanks to its cringe humour and Spock-Chapel-Korby love triangle. But an episode with plenty of redeeming features.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-3 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform exists. The first two seasons are also available on DVD/Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Beware of spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-3. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: The Next Generation Seasons 3-4, Deep Space Nine Seasons 4-6, and Discovery Season 5.
After a frankly ridiculous two-year wait, Strange New Worlds is back! Hegemony, Part II is the conclusion to last season’s excellent cliffhanger, picking up right where we left off with the Gorn attack on the non-Federation planet Parnassus Beta. And, as always, I have a lot to say – so buckle up, this could be a long review!
The tl;dr is this: Hegemony, Part II wrapped up its key storylines… but perhaps didn’t have quite enough time to do so flawlessly. The episode was good, unquestionably, and I think the two parts of Hegemony form one of the show’s strongest and certainly most explosive and action-packed offerings. But as the credits rolled and the Enterprise set course for Earth, I couldn’t help but feel that an extra ten minutes or so would’ve been necessary to really achieve what this episode’s writers and director wanted. There were a few moments that were just a little too short, that needed a bit more explanation, or where we could’ve spent just a tad longer lingering on key characters. Maybe a fifty-five-minute cut of the episode would’ve been better than the forty-five-minute version we ultimately got.
Captain Pike and the crew are back!
Before we go any further and get into the meat of the review, I’d like to give my usual disclaimer! Everything we’re going to talk about today is the entirely subjective opinion of just one Trekkie. If you detested Hegemony, Part II and think I’m rating it far too highly, or you love it more than I did and you feel I’m being unnecessarily harsh… that’s okay. There’s plenty of room in the Star Trek fan community for differences of opinion and polite discussion. I share this review with the online Trekkie community in that spirit.
We waited two years with the cliffhanger ending to Hegemony, and a massive part of that was the question of what would happen to Captain Batel. Would she survive her Gorn infection… and what would it mean for Pike if she couldn’t be saved? Batel was a great character to endanger; as a brand-new character, she could easily be killed off, and as someone so closely connected to Pike – whose future is set in stone – their relationship is doomed one way or another. We also saw, in Season 1, how deadly a Gorn infection could be with Hemmer’s untimely death. So again, to reiterate that: it was a fantastic storytelling decision to place Captain Batel in this incredibly dangerous position.
Captain Batel was infected at the end of last season.
So why, then, did the absolute fucking morons who’ve somehow managed to waddle into Paramount’s marketing department completely spoil Captain Batel’s survival weeks ahead of Season 3’s premiere? It completely ruined that storyline, undermined some genuinely tense sequences, and rendered some great performances by Anson Mount, Jess Bush, and Ethan Peck completely impotent. Thanks to her appearance in two trailers and photos released ahead of Season 3, we could tell that Captain Batel was going to survive. And while I concede that for a more casual audience that would be less of an issue (folks who don’t follow Star Trek on social media would’ve been less likely to see these spoilers) I still don’t think that excuses it.
This cliffhanger had been simmering away for two years, and while we knew Melanie Scrofano would be back as Captain Batel in Hegemony, Part II… her status in the rest of the season could’ve easily been kept under wraps. As soon as I saw her in those trailers, I knew she was going to survive, because those clips were clearly taken from after the Gorn conflict. And the photos released for subsequent episodes just hammered that home even more. There was absolutely no reason for this; there were other clips that could’ve been chosen, or Batel could’ve even been edited out of the clips in which she appears. Why go to all the bother of setting up this otherwise fantastic and engaging storyline, which was performed beautifully and emotionally by all involved, and keep it under wraps for almost two years… only to blow it with a few weeks to go? Paramount is utterly useless, which is why Star Trek as a whole is probably going to be disappearing before the end of the decade. But things like this are such incredibly basic mistakes that I cannot fathom how they were allowed to happen. Knowing Captain Batel would survive significantly harmed my enjoyment of this storyline in Hegemony, Part II – and there was just no need for that to have happened.
Captain Batel’s survival was spoiled ahead of time for anyone who follows Star Trek on social media or who was paying attention to the ad campaign for the new season.
The sad thing about all of this is that, episode-ruining spoilers aside, Captain Batel’s storyline gave us the episode’s best and certainly most emotive performances. We got some fantastic moments with Anson Mount, as he beautifully portrayed Pike struggling with Batel’s condition, and Jess Bush, who took us through Chapel’s strengths and vulnerabilities when facing a traumatic situation. Ethan Peck showed off a softer side to Spock, here, too, picking up last season’s relationship with Chapel. We’ll get into that a bit more later – because Spock and Chapel have kind of run their course for me – but again, it was a solid performance and a new situation for Spock.
Melanie Scrofano spent a lot of Hegemony, Part II lying asleep on a table or bed, but when she was awake – both before and after her experimental surgery – she also contributed to some of the story’s most heart-wrenching moments. Asking Chapel to “take her out,” if there was no solution, and in those final scenes with Pike, we saw Captain Batel at her best and her most vulnerable simultaneously. That’s not an easy thing to communicate, especially with limited screen time, but it was utterly fantastic. It’s such a shame that this entire storyline was spoiled ahead of time for no good reason.
Pike with Batel at the end of the episode.
In The Original Series, there was a suggestion that Nurse Chapel had “a thing” for Spock. Strange New Worlds took this bare-bones idea and really expanded upon it, pairing them up in a romantic way. However, if Spock is to continue his character arc – one which should bring him more in line with the character we’re familiar with – then I think this relationship has run its course. And in Hegemony, Part II, I didn’t feel this side of Spock and Chapel’s story really added very much. It wasn’t as bad as anything Discovery did with its forced drama, but there were moments that came close, as Spock and Chapel seemed to lose focus on the task to talk about their relationship. I don’t think this otherwise-interesting story needed to be interrupted by relationship drama, and both characters seem to be on different trajectories right now. That’s for the best, and while their entanglement was occasionally fun and could be called back to in the future, keeping them as friends will, in my view, work a lot better going forward.
With Dr M’Benga missing in action, it fell to Spock and Chapel to perform Captain Batel’s life-saving treatment – and this was interesting. We could absolutely nitpick and say surely a ship the size of the Enterprise has at least one other doctor (as evidenced by Dr M’Benga’s original appearance alongside Dr McCoy in The Original Series), but for the sake of the story, I think it worked well! Spock and Chapel made a good pair in this kind of environment, tackling a problem neither of them was fully-qualified to solve and being forced to think outside the box. The callback to Una’s Illyrian heritage was good, and a creative way for the episode to technobabble its way to a resolution by relying on something which been set up all the way back in Season 1.
With Dr M’Benga nowhere to be found, it fell to Spock and Chapel to save Captain Batel’s life.
If you recall the episode Ghosts of Illyria, where we learned about Una, we also discovered that the Illyrians’ penchant for genetic engineering left their people particularly resistant to disease and infection. I love that Star Trek – and Strange New Worlds within its own story – has this depth of lore. A technobabble miracle could’ve always been found to save Captain Batel, but referencing events and characters from earlier in the show’s run strengthened this significantly, and gave Spock and Chapel’s plan a truly solid narrative foundation. It worked great – and it connected to Una’s backstory in a way I’ve been hoping Strange New Worlds will continue to do.
The only part of this that I felt was rushed was the surgery itself. While Chapel’s hand was literally on the scalpel (alright, the weird techno-device with blinking lights), Spock intervened and suggested changing their entire plan. That’s already a bit flimsy, in my view, and it came without much setup. A longer episode could’ve dedicated just a minute or two more to Spock and Chapel working out ideas, and stretched out this moment a bit longer, which I feel would’ve strengthened it. The idea of flipping the problem around was creative, but the explanation just felt a bit rushed in the moment, and I would’ve happily enjoyed seeing them actually enacting some part of their new plan.
This was not the ideal moment for a total change of plans…
Speaking of things that were rushed: Scotty and Pelia’s explanation of how the Enterprise could fly into the binary stars. It felt like Scotty came on the bridge, sat down, and worked out this incredibly complex plan in the span of just a few seconds, when he hadn’t been briefed or known anything about what was going on just a moment earlier. The prior sequence with Scotty and Pelia was great, and it did something I really hoped Strange New Worlds would do – give Scotty room to grow, showing us that he isn’t quite the miracle-worker from The Original Series just yet. That was communicated incredibly well, and I really hope we get more with Scotty and Pelia, building on their difficult history together and their somewhat antagonistic working relationship.
But the moment on the bridge needed more. We needed to see Pike, Pelia, and Scotty slow things down and figure out their plan at a more reasonable pace. Pacing of these technobabble ideas in many Star Trek episodes can feel rushed, so this isn’t a unique issue by any means. However, that doesn’t make it less of a problem here, and considering this scheme was the lynchpin of the entire operation to stop the Gorn… I just think we needed to arrive at it a bit more slowly to allow it to sink in. Could you even explain what Scotty’s idea involved? It was so rushed that I don’t think I could off the top of my head.
Scotty’s plan was explained a bit too fast for my liking.
As the apparently-final act in Strange New Worlds’ multi-season Gorn conflict story arc, I would’ve liked to have spent a bit more time on this moment. Planning, scheming, coming up with different ideas… kind of like we saw Rom, Dax, and O’Brien doing in the Deep Space Nine episode Call To Arms. That episode saw the characters trying to come up with a way to stop Dominion reinforcements coming through the Bajoran Wormhole, but the scene was just the right length, and we saw the characters talking through several different variants of the plan before settling on the one they ultimately chose to enact. The circumstances of the conflict are different in Hegemony, Part II, but the complexities of the situation involving Gorn hibernation rituals, stellar flares, and the engineering challenges of the Enterprise’s shields and hull still require some discussion and debate.
After I’d written in my notes that Strange New Worlds was doing exactly what I wanted to see with Scotty – showing that he isn’t perfect, that he has room to grow – this scene kind of undermined all of that. Scotty leapt into action, coming up with the perfect plan on the spot in a matter of seconds. And the plan was creative and interesting! I liked that Strange New Worlds, once again, is connecting back to story threads that had been set up in earlier episodes with the Gorn using light to communicate and having sensitivities to light. But again, I feel a fifty-five-minute episode could’ve communicated this at a better pace.
I wanted this sequence to be a bit slower-paced.
Speaking as we were of Deep Space Nine’s Dominion War, I felt echoes of another fantastic episode in Pike’s desperate attempt to stop the Gorn. Sacrifice of Angels sees Captain Sisko, on the Defiant, making a last stand against an encroaching Dominion fleet, and Pike’s attempt to warn Starfleet and stop the Gorn invasion as their ships swarmed definitely reminded me of that moment. When Pike gave the order to open fire, and Una replied incredulously, reminding him they’re facing an entire armada… again I felt echoes of Sisko and Dax on the bridge of the Defiant. It was really impressive moment – in both episodes!
And we can kind of compare the resolutions to those stories, too. The Prophets intervened in Sacrifice of Angels, removing the Dominion fleet. Pike and Scotty’s solar flare plan to “put the Gorn to sleep” likewise averted the attack without actually turning it into a large-scale battle or a wider war. Star Trek has a knack for finding technological or engineering solutions, even to what seem on the surface to be military problems, and that’s been a core tenet of the franchise going all the way back to the beginning. Using the knowledge they’d gained about the Gorn in this way, the crew was able to turn back the tide and avert a wider invasion. That’s kind of a neat idea, even if parts of the buildup to it weren’t flawless. You could also compare this plan to Picard and Data putting the Borg to sleep in The Best of Both Worlds.
In my review of the Hegemony, Part I, I noted what I consider to be a particularly significant plot hole, and unfortunately, Part II doubled-down on it. In brief: Admiral April asserts that the Federation doesn’t want to become involved in a wider war with the Gorn, effectively ceding Parnassus Beta to the Gorn Hegemony. Because Parnassus Beta wasn’t a Federation colony, and April was choosing to prioritise Federation worlds, that was a sacrifice he was okay with making. But that doesn’t make sense in-universe.
The attacks on the USS Cayuga and the USS Stardiver by the Gorn are, in effect, declarations of war against the Federation. Parnassus Beta may not be a Federation world, but those starships are both Starfleet vessels crewed by Federation citizens. April’s argument makes no sense when he has that information, and the losses of the Cayuga and Stardiver were known to him by the time he boarded the Enterprise to debrief Captain Pike. Everyone was acting as if the only attack was on Parnassus Beta – but the attacks on not one but two Federation starships prove the Gorn’s wider militaristic intent. I could have happily entertained a storyline about appeasement, about not reacting emotionally when provoked, or anything along those lines. But for April, Pike, and everyone else involved to just ignore what happened to the two ships, and not even mention those attacks as a reason for or against taking certain actions… it rubs me the wrong way. I don’t think it makes sense based on what we know of April, of Starfleet, or even of Captain Pike himself. While I didn’t really expect Part II to completely change this angle based on what we saw last time, I’m a bit disappointed that the writers doubled-down on this mistake. It makes Admiral April look either uncaring to the point of sociopathy or totally incompetent, and I think Pike’s failure to bring up the attacks on Starfleet ships to support his case doesn’t do wonders for his characterisation, either.
Admiral April completely ignored the attacks on the USS Stardiver and USS Cayuga.
The final part where I think a slightly longer episode might’ve been beneficial was with La’an and the captured members of the away team. This is less important than Captain Batel’s treatment or Scotty’s plan, as I felt these scenes were generally pretty great. But spending an extra minute or two, spread across those sequences, might’ve allowed for a couple of things – Ortegas having to figure out how to pilot the Gorn ship and La’an taking a bit longer to locate the Gorn warship’s transporter codes. Both of those points seemed to be blitzed through quite quickly, and while they didn’t not work, I think they could’ve been improved with a slightly slower pace.
Think about it: you’re hacking into a totally alien computer system for the first time ever. And Strange New Worlds has gone out of its way to really emphasise the “other-ness” and truly alien nature of the Gorn, with no universal translator or even any real communication at all. So you hack into this computer, and just instantly scroll to the transport frequencies like you were finding your favourite song in Spotify. It took me ages to get the hang of Windows XP after I’d been used to Windows 98… do you really believe La’an is gonna hack the Gorn in an instant? She’s a security officer, not even an engineer or tech expert. I just think this could’ve benefited from another few seconds, even, showing her scrolling, taking wrong turns, or getting locked out and having to work around it.
I found it hard to buy La’an’s perfect hack of the Gorn computer system.
Likewise with Ortegas. Ortegas’ story at the end of Hegemony, Part II is basically summarised in the line she repeats to herself: “I fly the ship.” But… it’s not a familiar ship. It uses a weird interface (that reminded me a little of Mr Garrison’s bike invention in South Park (if you know, you know)), it’s in an alien language, and frankly… “I’m a pilot, so I can pilot anything” is a bit of a flimsy excuse when you’re dealing with a totally different kind of technology. I would’ve liked to see her struggle, just for a moment, with figuring out the controls – and that could’ve actually added to the tension as the away team attempted to escape the Gorn while under fire.
I don’t think either of these are particularly egregious, but since we’ve been talking about moments that felt a little cut down or where we could’ve seen things expanded, I felt it worth including them.
Sticking with Ortegas for just a moment, Strange New Worlds really succeeded at convincing me that she was in danger. When the adult Gorn attacked her as the away team made their escape, I genuinely feared for her survival in a way that I didn’t with practically any of the others. I mentioned this in Part I in relation to Chapel; I tried to explain that Chapel was an awful choice for the kind of “death fake-out” that the story went for because she’s a familiar character and this is a prequel series. Ortegas has no known future – so the thought that she could genuinely be killed off was right there, front-and-centre.
Ortegas seemed to be in big trouble…
Obviously I’m glad that Ortegas seemingly lives to fight another day! We haven’t spent that much time with her, one-on-one, across both seasons of the show so far, and I think there’s a ton of potential in her character as a really enthusiastic pilot – something Star Trek doesn’t always have in its helm officers! But the way Hegemony, Part II signalled that she was in danger was done incredibly well. This is a series that has already killed off one main character, something Discovery and Picard refused to do, and I just think that adds to the stakes. Putting these new characters in danger, when they aren’t guaranteed to survive, ups the tension and drama and keeps me on the edge of my seat.
The injuries to the away team – and Ortegas in particular – were pretty gruesome and horrific, at least by Star Trek standards. I was reminded of Mass Effect 2′s “Collectors” in the depiction of the Gorn prison/feeding chamber, and the acid dissolving their skin, Ortegas’ injured hand, and the general slimy and grotesque feel of the place all added to that sense of the Gorn being totally otherworldly and alien. Star Trek’s depictions of humanoid aliens – the “nose and forehead” types – don’t always convey how truly different alien life might be, but this new take on the Gorn really does – and I like it!
Ortegas’ injury was pretty brutal by Star Trek standards.
As I said either last season or in my write-up of Season 1, Strange New Worlds’ depiction of the Gorn is clearly influenced by the likes of the Xenomorphs from Alien – with a dash of Jurassic Park’s velociraptors thrown in for good measure! The acid, the slime, the ooze – all of that really adds to the kind of monstrous presentation of the Gorn that the show is going for, and it feels like a real masterstroke to take this under-explored alien race from classic Star Trek and reinterpret it, while also going into way more detail. I recently re-watched The Original Series’ Season 1 episode Arena, where the Gorn made their first appearance, and while the two shows have very different takes on the Gorn… I don’t think they’re a million miles apart. The DNA of Strange New Worlds’ Gorn is still present in Arena, and while there are different designs and there are clearly limitations to the older portrayal, the core concept of a reptillian monster remains.
Last year, I criticised Discovery’s fifth and final season for some pretty slapdash and amateurish uses of Paramount’s expensive AR wall! There were several places in that season where the AR wall was just not well-integrated with the physical props around it, and the effect looked cheap. Not so in Hegemony, Part II, where the AR wall stage was thoroughly transformed to become the Gorn prison. It was such a horrifying setting, and the AR wall helped bring it to life in a way that a static background arguably wouldn’t have. It’s one of the best uses of the AR wall I’ve seen so far, and proof that – at least sometimes – Paramount does know how to properly use the things it spends all its money on.
This was a well-constructed set.
Another area where Hegemony, Part II excelled in the visual department was its presentation of the binary stars. The CGI for the stars was fantastic, but what was even better was the cinematography at the episode’s climax, showing Pike and others on the bridge as they flew close to these binary stars. Parts of that reminded me of the film Sunshine (co-starring a certain Michelle Yeoh) which depicted a mission to the sun. Well worth a watch if you’ve never seen it, by the way! But that film also had characters in close proximity to a star, struggling with the radiation and bright light. For my money, Hegemony, Part II did a great job here.
The visual of the infant Gorn growing in Captain Batel’s body was also gruesome – and also inspired, perhaps, by Alien. The wriggling, pulsing creature under her skin was a horrifying thing to see – and I think it was so much better done as a physical prop than it would’ve been if it had been CGI. CGI is great, and it’s better today than it was when, say, Enterprise used it to create its take on the Gorn some twenty years ago! But I still enjoy physical special effects, especially in a franchise like Star Trek, so this proto-Gorn/Gorn foetus… thing was so much better for being created that way!
Captain Batel’s Gorn infection. Yuck.
I will be curious to see whether Strange New Worlds follows up La’an’s story from this episode in future. She was clearly struggling with being back in Gorn captivity, having flashbacks to her childhood. I don’t think we need a Discovery-style “let’s all sit around and talk about our feelings” kind of thing, but if La’an is meant to be suffering with PTSD from her Gorn experiences, I hope the show doesn’t just completely drop this idea going forward. If we have truly seen the last of the Gorn in Strange New Worlds, she might not have to come face-to-face with them again, but there could and arguably should be some kind of follow-up to what she went through.
La’an and Una have established a strong bond, so perhaps Una could be the one she turns to at first, if indeed she’s struggling. There is value to good and well-written depictions of mental health, and while modern Star Trek hasn’t gotten this right a lot of the time, I’m willing to give the franchise another chance. At the very least, there’s a strong foundation for that kind of story to build on if the writers want to take La’an down that route in the future.
I’ll be interested to see what comes next for La’an after this.
Captain Pike is also seemingly not at his best, with the toll of command and stress about Captain Batel clearly weighing on him. It was agonising for Pike to have to entrust Batel’s treatment to Spock and Chapel while he remained on the bridge, and you could see that etched on his face. His moments of hesitation also hammered home for me how he might be struggling – and feeling the heavy burden of command is something we know Pike feels. His first introduction – in The Cage – shows him talking to Dr Boyce about this very issue. Perhaps the Gorn conflict has exacerbated that for Pike, or maybe it was just the stress of Captain Batel’s condition. Either way, I think we got a complex and nuanced depiction of Pike in Hegemony, Part II, as he seemed to waver and hesitate, perhaps second-guessing himself, while also having moments of firey passion and intense vulnerability.
As I said above, this was a fantastic performance from Anson Mount. I’ve said this before, but I was sceptical of the decision to bring back Pike when he was announced as a character in Discovery’s second season – but I was so very wrong about that! This complex performance, taking Pike through the wringer as he had to balance protecting his ship, the wider Federation, and Captain Batel… it was a masterclass, truly.
Pike went through all of the emotions in this episode.
Martin Quinn has also been a joy to watch. Yes, there are issues with Scotty’s way-too-fast plan near the climax of the story, but his earlier conversations with Pelia showed a different side to the character, and Quinn brought that to life in a way I wasn’t expecting. Scotty is suffering after the loss of the Stardiver, and being forced to go toe-to-toe with Pelia again, listening to her berating him for not documenting his work, it was definitely something I think we needed to see. Scotty’s emotional reaction, storming out as he reiterated that his crew and commander are dead… it was heartbreaking stuff.
Here’s a question: does Captain Batel’s treatment and survival undermine Hemmer’s sacrifice in Season 1? Hemmer’s name was mentioned, albeit briefly, in Hegemony, Part I, but in Season 1 his act of self-sacrifice was presented as a brave decision. Not only did he spare himself a horrendous fate, he prevented new Gorn from being spawned and saved his shipmates. But Pike was right: Hemmer didn’t give them a chance to save him. It seems now, based on what we saw with Captain Batel, that there might’ve been a chance to save Hemmer’s life.
Could Batel’s treatment have worked for Hemmer, too?
This comes just a few episodes after All Those Who Wander (thirteen episodes later, if you’re keeping score). We’ve seen two characters suffer the same infection not that far apart, but only one of them was able to be saved. At the very least, I’d suggest this paints Hemmer as reckless or hasty; at worst, perhaps his death starts to feel like a bit of a waste. I like Pelia, and as a replacement for Hemmer I think she’s been a lot of fun. Her relationship with Scotty is interesting, too, and there’s a lot of potential there for both fun moments and some deeper conversations, perhaps.
But Hemmer was unique. He was Star Trek’s first ever Aenar (or Andorian of any kind) to be a main character, the first since Enterprise to revisit the Andorians and their Aenar sister race. I felt his death came too early in the show’s run; Hemmer had only been present in six episodes before his demise. As a result, we didn’t really get to know him particularly well, nor was there much of an opportunity to explore what an Aenar officer might be like. Hemmer’s visual impairment, pacifism, and even his relationships with most of his colleagues were things the show touched on but never got the chance to really delve into. I’m glad Captain Batel is still around, and having spent some time with Pelia, I think she’s been a fine addition to the cast, too. But this treatment for the Gorn infection, while clearly dangerous and experimental, kind of brought all of that back for me, and emphasised again how Hemmer departed the show a little too hastily.
Okay, enough about poor Hemmer! He wasn’t even in this episode.
Hemmer was replaced by Commander Pelia – and now Scotty has joined her.
Assuming that Hegemony, Part II is the culmination of Strange New Worlds’ Gorn conflict storyline… how do we feel about that? This is something that was set up early in Season 1, picked up steam in the wonderful horror-tinged All Those Who Wander, and that came back in a big way at the end of Season 2. Don’t get me wrong: I love that Pike and the crew found a scientific, non-violent solution to the Gorn threat. But given the buildup and the way it played out in the episode… was it good enough? Or was it maybe a little anticlimactic?
That word, “anticlimactic,” is what I put in my notes about the way this storyline wrapped up. I just can’t help feeling a little underwhelmed that, after two seasons of buildup, scarring backstories, a main character’s death, and a two-year-long cliffhanger, the Gorn basically being sent to bed without any dinner, like they were misbehaving toddlers, is the right way for this story to end. I think it also raises questions about the nature of the Gorn; if they’re really so easily manipulated, how did they invent things like warp drive in the first place? If they’re able to be triggered into hibernation by a few flashes of light… how did they ever make it to the stars? This version of the Gorn seems animalistic, not intelligent, and while we can see that they clearly possess spaceships and technology… I don’t think that gels with how the Gorn themselves are presented on screen. Had there been a different ending to this story – perhaps involving communication – I think that feeling could’ve been averted.
You can’t eat Lieutenant Ortegas, you naughty little rascal! Now, off to bed with you!
I’m all for non-violence and peaceful conflict resolution! Some of the best Star Trek stories involve diplomacy, negotiation, and compromise. And even after Strange New Worlds reinterpreted the Gorn to be these kinds of animalistic monsters, I still felt it was possible we could’ve sat down with the Gorn leader and hammered out some kind of deal. Captain Pike and Admiral April would’ve been great at that, and I think we could’ve seen a very conflicted Captain Pike trying to negotiate a peace treaty while Captain Batel was fighting for her life. That could’ve been really interesting.
But this trick of the light – using the Gorn’s sensitivity to solar flares against them – I dunno. Perhaps because that part of the puzzle was resolved quite quickly, as discussed above, it just feels a little… underwhelming. Pike and the crew were staring down an invasion fleet one minute, then the next the Gorn just turned around and went home to take a nappy-nap. It… I’m struggling to find the right words, to be honest. I think “underwhelming” and “anticlimactic” are in the mix, though.
Pike and the crew tricked the Gorn… into going back to sleep.
Star Trek has always been a franchise that sought out scientific answers, even to the toughest questions. But something about the way Pike and the crew basically tricked the Gorn into abandoning their invasion plans isn’t quite sitting right. And if this is to be the Gorn’s final appearance in the series – which Pike implied it could be as the Gorn retreated – I wonder if that’s good enough. As a resolution to this two-part story, I think it works. But as the ending of a multi-season arc involving numerous characters across several episodes, which has been Strange New Worlds’ biggest ongoing story thus far? Hmm. I can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed.
I don’t think Strange New Worlds would’ve benefited from an ongoing war. We’ve seen that in Deep Space Nine, Enterprise, and Discovery in different ways – and some of those worked well. But for the kind of episodic, exploration-focused show that I’ve loved to see so much, a long-running war would’ve completely changed the tone – and not for the better, in my view. So in that sense, I’m glad Hegemony, Part II wrapped things up with the Gorn. But the pacing of Scotty devising the plan, and even the implementation of this attempt to trick the Gorn into going beddie-byes… it just doesn’t seem to quite fit with all of the dramatic moments that led up to it.
An adult Gorn.
The space battles were tense and exciting, and the way the Enterprise moves in space feels much more responsive and three-dimensional than it did in years gone by. The design of the smaller Gorn ships felt like something right out of The Original Series with its three-spoke design, and it felt like a bit of a cool throwback in that sense. In Arena – the original version, not the remaster – there is no Gorn ship, but if there had been, I can absolutely picture it looking like Strange New Worlds’ Gorn vessel! Oh, and I loved the sequence as the away team escaped – the cutting back-and-forth between their ship and the pursuing Gorn was great, and it reminded me a little of Star Wars’ famous starfighter dogfights and the trench run!
The larger Gorn ships are truly spectacular! The closest thing in Star Trek I could think of was either the huge Dominion battle cruiser from DS9 or the massive Breen warships from Discovery’s fifth season. There was something, again, very “alien” about this design; it seemed like something from another sci-fi property – like Warhammer 40K, perhaps – rather than Star Trek! And I think I mean that as a compliment; this version of the Gorn needs a warship that embodies the same traits and the same design philosophy – and I think we got that both inside and out.
The Gorn warship.
So that was Hegemony, Part II. I think the cliffhanger was wrapped up reasonably well, and if my biggest complaint isn’t actually to do with the story itself, but rather Paramount’s amateur-hour, cack-handed marketing… well, that’s not really the fault of the episode! I stand by what I said, though: a slightly longer cut, giving just a couple of extra minutes each to Scotty, La’an, and Chapel across their storylines would have been to the benefit of Hegemony, Part II.
So… roll on Wedding Bell Blues! It’s a bit of an oddity to see two episodes premiere at once, but it’s not unheard of in the current streaming landscape. With the Enterprise bound for Earth, and a wedding seemingly on the horizon, the next episode seems like it’ll switch things up and be a nice change of pace. I think we need that after two quite intense war stories!
Be sure to join me in the days ahead for a review of that. Until then, I hope this has been interesting!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-3 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform exists. The first two seasons are also available on DVD/Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
The recent cancellations and studio shutdowns in the games industry – and at Xbox in particular – got me thinking. There are a lot of games that just never made it to the launchpad for one reason or another, and some of them sounded genuinely fantastic. Given how poor a lot of corporate decisions are, I don’t buy the argument that “any cancelled game would’ve been bad; that’s why they cancelled it!!1!” – which is something some armchair critics like to say. That seems to be a bit of a “cope;” a way to brush off the cancellation of a title that could’ve been a ton of fun.
So today, we’re going to take a look at ten cancelled games that I really wish had seen the light of day.
You don’t have to tell me, I already know the argument: some of these games might’ve been crap, and maybe there were good reasons behind their cancellations. Noted. Got it. We don’t need to go over that again!
Let’s talk about some cancelled games.
If I may suggest the obvious counter-point: some of these games might’ve been good! Some of the titles on this list seem to have been cancelled not for any reasons pertaining to quality, but for financial reasons, changes in priorities, or studios and intellectual property changing hands. Those things have next to nothing to do with the actual game, and while it’s true that not every decent-sounding cancelled game would’ve been great… I still wish we’d been able to see them and judge the finished products for ourselves.
As always, everything we’re gonna talk about is the entirely subjective, not objective opinion of just one person. If I highlight a game you think sounded awful, or ignore a title you think is obvious on a list like this… that’s okay. There ought to be enough room in the gaming community for differences of opinion. The games are listed in no particular order.
With that out of the way, let’s jump into the list.
Cancelled Game #1: Agent (a.k.a. Rockstar’s Agent) Early 2010s
The game’s logo.
Agent was first teased in 2007 by Sony, purportedly as a PlayStation 3 exclusive from Rockstar Games. Further details weren’t announced until 2009, when it emerged that the title would feature a secret agent in a 1970s Cold War setting. Obviously, the first point of comparison was James Bond, and that was more than enough to pique my curiosity! I didn’t own a PlayStation 3 until late in the console’s life, but Agent was perhaps the title I was most interested in after The Last Of Us.
Rockstar went radio-silent on Agent for years after the 2009 announcement. Occasional “leaks” would emerge, but there was nothing concrete. Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two, renewed the “Agent” trademark twice, and seemed to imply to investors as late as 2013 that the game was still being worked on. However, another 2013 project, Grand Theft Auto V (and its online mode in particular), seems to have redirected Rockstar’s development resources.
One of the leaked screenshots.
By 2015, the project seems to have been abandoned, and I really do believe that Rockstar’s change of focus to Grand Theft Auto Online is the main culprit. Comments from at least one former Rockstar developer suggest that team members were reassigned from Agent to support Grand Theft Auto V after 2013, with the popular and financially successful online mode clearly being more of a priority for Rockstar and Take-Two.
It wouldn’t be the last project Rockstar would sacrifice at the altar of Grand Theft Auto Online. A single-player expansion was planned but never released, Red Dead Redemption II’s online mode was ignored when it failed to generate the same kind of revenue as GTA’s, and you better believe we’d have seen Grand Theft Auto VI, and perhaps other Rockstar titles – like a sequel to Bully – if the studio hadn’t gone all-in on GTA Online after 2013. Agent seemed like it had the potential to live up to stealth-action titles like GoldenEye and the Hitman series, and its ’70s setting sounded particularly fun.
Cancelled Game #2: Star Trek: First Contact 1998-ish
A game based on First Contact? Cool!
MicroProse created one of my favourite games ever: 1997’s Star Trek: Generations. Yes, the game is a pretty basic “Doom clone,” and yes it came out three years too late… but it was a ton of fun to play through an expanded version of the Generations story, with little connections to other episodes from The Next Generation. MicroProse had the Star Trek license in the mid-late 1990s, and after releasing Generations in 1997, the studio began work on an adaptation of First Contact.
For an action game or a first-person shooter, you could hardly pick a better Star Trek story than First Contact! Battling the Borg on the lower decks of the Enterprise-E, teaming up with Picard and the crew… it could have been a genuinely fun and exciting Star Trek experience. I doubt First Contact would’ve really crossed over to the mainstream and brought in a bunch of new fans… but you never know. A few years later, Elite Force managed to do just that.
A leaked screenshot of an early build of the game.
MicroProse’s financial problems seem to have impacted its ability to work on this game, though. The studio planned to use the then-new Unreal Engine, which would’ve allowed for better graphics and fully 3D models (Generations used a much older engine designed for DOS games that relied on 2D sprites for the most part). The jump in quality would’ve been noticeable, and First Contact could’ve been a good-looking game by 1998 standards!
A title based on First Contact is still one of my fantasy Star Trek games all these years later. Retaking the lower decks of the Enterprise-E, battling the Borg in close quarters, and perhaps having to rely on hand-to-hand combat and thrown-together weaponry… it just sounds so tense and exciting! It could also be a great horror-tinged game, with the Borg being a genuinely difficult and frightening antagonist. There was a ton of potential here, and it seems as if the game was cancelled through no fault of its own.
Cancelled Game #3: Super Mario 128 1997-99
Whee!
A sequel to Super Mario 64 was planned for the Nintendo 64’s disc drive accessory – but the hardware failure led to the game’s cancellation. There’s a bit of confusion surrounding this title, because Super Mario 128 also refers to a completely different project that was in early development for the GameCube! But the 64DD version would have been much closer to Super Mario 64 than Mario Sunshine.
Originally, Super Mario 64 was supposed to include multiplayer, with the second player being able to control Luigi via split-screen gameplay. It sounds like Super Mario 128 was going to pick up this idea, using the 64DD’s more powerful capabilities to include a two-player mode. Luigi was confirmed by developer Shigeru Miyamoto to have been part of the project throughout its development, and rumours have suggested that Peach’s castle from Super Mario 64 would’ve returned as a location.
Luigi would eventually be playable in Super Mario 64 DS.
Another idea that Miyamoto supposedly had for Super Mario 128 was spherical levels or environments. We’d eventually see this idea in Super Mario Galaxy a decade later, but I’ve always wondered what it might’ve looked like if even one level had been like that back in the Nintendo 64 era! A direct sequel to the events of Super Mario 64, perhaps re-using and upgrading some of the same levels and environments just sounds like a lot of fun, and having a two-player couch co-op mode with Luigi and Mario together would have been fantastic.
Ultimately, the failure of the 64DD doomed this version of Super Mario 128. It seems that Nintendo kept the name, for a time, and the project was either switched to the GameCube or a new GameCube project was created with the same name shortly after the turn of the millennium. Elements of Super Mario 128 have appeared in several 3D Mario games over the years, including spherical levels in Galaxy and a return to Peach’s castle in Odyssey.
Cancelled Game #4: Perfect Dark Reboot Late 2020s
The game’s logo.
After showing off Perfect Dark just a few months ago with an action-packed, exciting trailer… Microsoft and Xbox have now cancelled the project. Not only that, but the studio Xbox had created specifically to build Perfect Dark has been completely shut down and its staff have largely been laid off by Microsoft. This feels like a pretty shocking turn of events, and I think it’s a colossal disappointment that we aren’t going to get the promised Perfect Dark reboot.
Perfect Dark was Rare’s follow-up to the smash hit GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64, taking the same gameplay style but transposing it to a corporate-dystopia futuristic setting. Protagonist Joanna Dark was compelling, and the game was just a ton of fun both in single-player and multiplayer back in the Nintendo 64 days.
A glimpse at the game.
There aren’t that many single-player-focused first-person shooters any more. There’s id’s Doom series, and occasionally a title like Deathloop will come along, but for the most part, modern FPS titles focus almost exclusively on lucrative multiplayer modes that can be monetised to death. Perfect Dark represented something different – a bit “old school,” for want of a better term – in a modern gaming landscape dominated by those kinds of titles. And at a time when Microsoft’s biggest FPS franchise, Halo, has been flailing around, Perfect Dark could’ve been a much-needed boost. Heck, if it was good enough it could’ve even eclipsed Halo, taking Xbox in a different direction.
The gameplay that we saw a few months ago is real – though it was a “vertical slice” of a very incomplete game at the time it was produced. There really did seem to be a lot of potential in a return to this series and this style of first-person shooter. Maybe there were more problems behind-the-scenes than we’ve learned so far, and maybe Perfect Dark was just taking too long to be ready. But it’s a disappointment that we’ll never get to see it for ourselves.
Cancelled Game #5: TimeSplitters 4 Late 2000s
An early version of the game’s logo.
TimeSplitters 2 is genuinely one of my favourite games of its era. Fun, fast-paced, with a unique story and art style… it was just a blast to play either alone or with friends. A third TimeSplitters game was also well-received – though I didn’t play that one for myself! Developers Free Radical Design announced that a fourth entry in the series was coming, but then they switched to develop the critically-panned Haze.
Haze’s failure seems to be what doomed TimeSplitters 4. Free Radical Design went into administration, and although it was initially announced that TimeSplitters 4 might be able to be saved, it didn’t happen. The studio was shut down, and the TimeSplitters license eventually ended up at Embracer Group after passing through several other hands.
The Chicago level from TimeSplitters 2.
TimeSplitters’ unique level design – jumping through different time periods and using weapons from those eras – made it something a bit different, and there was something about its fast-paced gameplay, especially in multiplayer, that was just plain fun. I have wonderful memories of playing TimeSplitters 2 on the original Xbox with friends, kicking back after work with a game that was different from anything else on the market and just really entertaining to play. The single-player campaign was great, too.
TimeSplitters 4 feels all the more disappointing because the game seemed, for a brief period in the early 2020s, to be getting a reprieve. However, a second cancellation was confirmed a couple of years ago, with the resurrected Free Radical being shut down for a second time. Again, this seems not to have been the fault of TimeSplitters 4, but rather due to issues within parent company Embracer Group.
Cancelled Game #6: Shenmue III 2003-ish
Is this what Shenmue III would’ve looked like circa 2002?
Before you get angry and start screaming at me that “Shenmue III came out in 2019!!1!” – I know. I’m not talking about that version of the game. What I’m lamenting is that the original Shenmue saga couldn’t be continued on the Dreamcast, and that fans had to wait almost twenty years for a sequel to Shenmue II that wasn’t what it was originally supposed to be. If the Dreamcast had been a success and Shenmue III had been created in the early 2000s, it would have certainly been a different game – and probably a longer one, too.
There were rumours back in the day that Shenmue and Shenmue II could’ve been ported to the PlayStation 2 after the Dreamcast’s demise… and that could’ve also been something that saved the series. I firmly believe that the Shenmue saga is one of the best stories ever told in the medium, and it’s positively criminal that it’s never been concluded. There were chances in the early 2000s to salvage the Shenmue project, but its reputation, high pricetag, and connection to the failed Dreamcast all counted against it… as did the second game’s low sales.
Shenhua and Ryo.
If Shenmue had continued, one way or another, in 2003 instead of 2019, I think we’d have gotten a much larger game for starters. And without the intervening couple of decades, this version of Shenmue III would undoubtedly have been closer to fans’ expectations – and possibly exceeded them. One of the reasons Shenmue III felt disappointing to some fans, in my opinion, is that the 2019 version wasn’t able to take advantage of years’ worth of changes and improvements in game design.
Shenmue III in the early 2000s would’ve also been a stepping-stone – one part of an unfolding story. I can’t speak for every Shenmue fan, but I genuinely expected the crowdfunded 2019 game would conclude the game’s main story. It didn’t – and that alone convinced me not to even buy it at first. But in 2003, that would’ve been a non-issue, so even if the story and settings of Shenmue III had been exactly the same, I believe the game would’ve been far better-received. Unfortunately, Shenmue was a masterpiece that was, in many ways, ahead of its time. Players in the early 2000s weren’t as interested in what the first two games had to offer, and the Dreamcast’s shaky position in a market that was about to be dominated by the PlayStation 2 sealed its fate.
Cancelled Game #7: Life By You 2024-26
One of the game’s promo images.
Life By You was one of a handful of Sims-inspired life simulator games that were all in development at the same time in the 2020s. And it was probably the one that appealed the most to me! Electronic Arts has monetised The Sims 4 to death – it costs, at time of writing, more than £1,300 to buy all of the available add-ons and expansions for that game. That’s a consequence of EA having the life-sim genre basically all to itself for years. Titles like Life By You threatened to change that.
I don’t know what Life By You’s monetisation might’ve looked like. Developer and publisher Paradox is not exactly known for being light on the DLC with its grand strategy games, many of which have DLC totals that can run to several hundred pounds. But I think competition in the life-sim genre is a good thing, and as someone who enjoyed The Sims in the early 2000s, I was definitely interested to see what another big studio could’ve done with the same basic gameplay idea.
This looks like it would’ve been the game’s build mode.
inZOI and Paralives are two other new life simulators that are both coming out soon, though I would note that inZOI’s early access seems to have been a little *too* early! But both of those games are by smaller teams – and while there’s nothing wrong in the slightest with smaller studios, new studios, and indie developers, the bigger name behind Life By You was at least part of the draw, in my opinion. I’m still very interested in those other games, and I hope they both give The Sims 4 a run for its money! But if they don’t, or if they aren’t as good as people are hoping, I really think we’ll come to regret the cancellation of Life By You.
We don’t know what happened behind-the-scenes, but Paradox put out a statement saying that “a version we’d be happy with was too far away,” seeming to indicate that development was not progressing at a pace the publishing side of the company was happy with. It’s worth noting that Paradox was able to write off a significant portion of the game’s development costs against its annual income… which may have also been a factor in the game’s cancellation. Paradox also called the game “high risk,” and claimed in a meeting with investors that they’d be less likely to invest in similar titles in the future.
Cancelled Game #8: Whore of the Orient 2013-16
The only image of the game that ever leaked.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: that’s a horrible title for a video game! But setting the title aside, Whore of the Orient sounded genuinely interesting. It was the brainchild of the people behind L.A. Noire, the police investigation game published by Rockstar in 2011. Team Bondi was eventually rolled into a new studio to develop Whore of the Orient, but most of the senior team stayed to work on the project.
Whore of the Orient would’ve made use of the same facial capture technology as L.A. Noire, but targeting a PlayStation 4/Xbox One release, I think we’d have seen some noticeable improvements on that front. The game was to be set in Shanghai in the 1930s, with political intrigue, the rise of communism, and criminal gangs. We don’t know much more about its story, but that premise sounds like something genuinely different, and potentially very engaging.
Whore of the Orient would’ve been set in Shanghai, circa 1930s. Photo: Shanghai, 1927
We haven’t seen another game quite like L.A. Noire, and I’d have loved to see what the original developers could’ve done with the improved hardware of the PlayStation 4 generation. L.A. Noire hasn’t really aged well, with its facial capture stuff feeling just a bit too janky, but the same technology running on more advanced hardware could’ve really been something special.
As to the story, there aren’t any games I can recall that are set in 1930s China, so that alone would’ve made it stand out. We don’t know why the game was cancelled, only that parent company KMM Interactive pulled the plug sometime between the final update on the project, which was in 2013, and June 2016, when the news was belatedly announced to the public. Perhaps the story never came together, maybe the technology wasn’t working right, or maybe the game got too big and ambitious for its budget. In any case, it’s disappointing that the L.A. Noire folks didn’t get a second chance to tell a different story.
Cancelled Game #9: Half-Life 2, Episode Three and Half-Life 3 Late 2000s
Promotional art for Episode Three.
Half-Life 3 has become a meme at this point; the ultimate example of a video game that we’re never gonna play! But there was a time when either Episode Three or a full Half-Life 3 were very much on the agenda. But that was before developers Valve decided to dedicate all of their time to Steam, Dota 2, and the Counter-Strike series. As above with Perfect Dark, there’s a gap in the market for single-player first-person games, and the Half-Life series should be well-positioned to fill it.
Half-Life’s story is incomplete. Worse, it just… ends. There’s no conclusion for any of the characters or storylines, just a big, almost twenty-year-long void. And at this stage, despite occasional rumours… I don’t think the Half-Life series would print money in the way the first two titles did. It’s been too long, a whole new generation of players have come along who don’t even know that Valve used to make games, and quite honestly, I’m sceptical about Valve having the talent to produce a top-tier single-player game after so much time has passed.
A leaked screenshot of an early build of Episode Three.
There was that VR game a couple of years ago, and rumours occasionally fly about a potential new Half-Life title. Valve, unlike many of the other developers on this list, is still around – and still printing money hand over fist thanks to Steam. But the company’s focus has changed, and I don’t think most of the folks there are interested in another entry in the Half-Life series. It’s just sad that such an interesting setting and cast of characters can’t get any kind of conclusion, and it’s frustrating that there’s not really a good reason. If the studio had closed or if the previous entries in the series had flopped… fair enough. But Half-Life is held in high esteem and Valve clearly has the resources to invest. They just never did.
I also think we’re at a point now, for fans of the series, where any new game would struggle to meet expectations. It’s been so long, and Half-Life 3 has seen its status massively inflated, so any announcement would generate insane levels of hype. No game – no matter how good – could realistically reach the heights players would set for a new Half-Life… so maybe it’s better this way?
Cancelled Game #10: Star Wars: Project Ragtag Mid-2010s
Concept art for the game.
After the Walt Disney Company acquired LucasFilm in 2012, they also acquired the game studio LucasArts… and promptly shut it down. Disney handed the Star Wars license to Electronic Arts, who commissioned Dead Space developer Visceral Games to create a Star Wars third-person adventure game. Project Ragtag was being helmed by Amy Hennig, who had written and directed the Uncharted trilogy. Everything seemed to be coming together, and a genuinely great Star Wars game was in the offing.
But in 2017, EA didn’t just cancel the game, they closed down Visceral Games as well. According to Hennig, this decision was taken months before the team was made aware of it, and EA apparently planned to re-use some of the work Visceral had done for a rebooted open-world title. That project never saw the light of day, either.
An early build of an in-game environment.
Project Ragtag was supposedly a “heist game,” being set sometime during the events of the original Star Wars trilogy. Last year’s Star Wars Outlaws sounds kind of similar in theory, and I think that’s a good starting point, at least, when considering what Project Ragtag might’ve felt like to play. I’ve long argued for more stories set in the Star Wars universe that don’t just rely on the Jedi and Sith or on bringing back familiar faces, and I felt Project Ragtag had the potential to be a wonderfully engaging experience.
The director and studio both had pedigree, so there were plenty of reasons to be optimistic. Maybe the game wasn’t coming together… or maybe Electronic Arts was desperate for open-world, always-online multiplayer titles that seemed like better monetisation prospects in the second half of the 2010s. EA would go on to publish Jedi: Fallen Order a few years later, though, so maybe they learned their lesson!
So that’s it.
A selection of Mega Drive/Genesis games.
We’ve talked about ten cancelled games that I really wish we’d been able to play!
Some of these have been sore spots for decades; others are new, but still sting. Sometimes a game being cancelled does ultimately lead to something better, either because the creative folks move on to different projects, or even because some of the work done on a title can be repurposed. But there’s no point in denying it: a game I’m looking forward to getting cancelled just hurts.
There are a few titles where cancellation feels reasonable under the circumstances or may have been expected. Some games sound too good to be true and may have proven too ambitious, or just didn’t come together in the way their developers hoped. These things happen, and as I’ve said before: game development is not a sure-fire thing. There can be all manner of reasons why a decent-sounding project struggles when the concept comes up against the real world.
Game development is not a straightforward process!
But all of these games sounded good to me, and I regret that they were cancelled before I could try them! As someone who follows the games industry – and who spent a decade working on the inside – I keep up to date with upcoming games, and even allow myself to get excited, sometimes! That inevitably brings with it a degree of disappointment when a title either doesn’t live up to expectations, or doesn’t even make it to release.
I hope this hasn’t been too depressing. And who knows: maybe some of these games will get a reprieve one day. If Age of Empires IV can be developed sixteen years after Age of Empires III, or a new 3D Donkey Kong game can launch in 2025 – more than a quarter of a century after Donkey Kong 64 – then maybe there’s still hope!
All titles listed above may still be in copyright with their respective developer, publisher, and/or studio. Some screenshots and images courtesy of IGDB, DJ Cube, and Shenmue Dojo. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Picard Seasons 1, 2, and 3 – including the endings of key storylines and the final scenes and sequences of the series. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: The Next Generation and Voyager.
Although the series only ran to a total of thirty episodes, it’s going to take a long time to properly deconstruct and assess Star Trek: Picard. It’s now been a couple of years since the series finale aired, and although there have been pitches for both a successor show and a potential movie, it seems at this stage that neither of those are moving ahead. It’ll take a while to fully dissect Picard and the show’s place in the Star Trek franchise – and I originally planned to write this piece shortly after the show’s finale – but what we’re going to do today is take a tentative step in that direction.
I’ve put together a list of the significant storylines that Picard either abandoned outright or left unfinished, and I thought it could be interesting to take a look at them. Each of the show’s three seasons was a relatively self-contained story, but as we know, serialised storytelling like this has its drawbacks. Seasons 1 and 2 in particular both ran out of road and failed to wrap up key storylines and character arcs by the time the credits rolled. Subsequent seasons also failed to pick up the baton and do anything with these incomplete narratives – something that feels particularly odd when considering that Seasons 2 and 3 went into production back-to-back.
Sir Patrick Stewart taking a break during production on Picard’s first season.
There are a surprising number of abandoned and unfinished storylines to look at, and there’s almost certainly more to say about most of them than can fit on a list like this – so stay tuned in the future for longer looks at some of these subjects!
My usual caveats apply: everything we’re going to discuss today is entirely subjective! If you didn’t care for a particular story and see no need for it to be continued, that’s okay. Likewise, if you feel that the writers and producers did a great job with these stories, that’s okay too. There’s room for differences of opinion within the Star Trek fan community! I’m not even necessarily saying that the decision to abandon some of these storylines was the worst possible thing that could’ve happened; there are characters that weren’t popular and stories that were less interesting than others, and there are defences, justifications, or at least excuses we can make in some cases for why a storyline wasn’t continued.
Harry Treadaway, Isa Briones, Evan Evagora, Alison Pill, Michelle Hurd, and Santiago Cabrera during production on Picard Season 1.
But there are also stories that I would’ve very much liked to see concluded – one way or another! Some of these could have been wrapped up by way of a line or two of dialogue, and the abandonment of certain characters and narrative threads feels inexcusably poor – especially from a flagship, high-budget television series.
There were clearly problems and issues behind-the-scenes on Star Trek: Picard… but that’s something we’ll have to discuss in more detail on another occasion.
Let’s jump into the list – which is in no particular order!
Abandoned Storyline #1: What happened to the surviving ex-Borg?
Ex-Borg aboard the Artifact.
Toward the end of Season 1, the Zhat Vash triggered a failsafe aboard the Artifact that killed hundreds or perhaps even thousands of ex-Borg by blowing them out into space. But as we saw in Et in Arcadia Ego, not all of the ex-Borg were killed. Some survived the journey to Coppelius and the rough landing as the Artifact was dragged to the planet’s surface… but they were dumped from the story shortly thereafter.
Part of Seven’s arc in Season 1 appeared to be setting her up to take on some kind of leadership role with the ex-Borg, possibly working alongside Elnor, who had pledged his sword to their hopeless cause. After the untimely death of Hugh, the remaining ex-Borg were without leadership – and perhaps more importantly, without anyone to advocate on their behalf.
One of the Ex-Borg survivors on Coppelius.
I think it stands to reason that the Federation would have taken in the XBs as a matter of principle – but as we learned from Seven of Nine in Season 2, life wasn’t always fair to former members of the Collective. The ex-Borg aboard the Artifact seemed to be especially vulnerable, with some having only just been reawakened after years in stasis. Many may not know where they are – and some appeared to be from races not native to the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. There would be a lot of work to do to care for the ex-Borg and help them get settled in the Federation.
This was a storyline that Season 2 could have picked up, especially with a focus on Seven’s relationship with the Borg and with the introduction of a new Borg faction. Even a line or two of dialogue confirming that the Artifact and ex-Borg were under Starfleet’s care would have been something! This was a pretty significant storyline that ran throughout the entire season, and it feels incomplete at best.
Early in Season 2, killing off Elnor felt like a bold move. It wouldn’t have been my first choice, as there was a ton of potential in Elnor not only as a young character who could potentially have carried the Star Trek franchise forward, but as the first Romulan to serve in Starfleet. But when that decision had been taken, as the season wore on it appeared to be working. Despite all of the flaws and issues with Season 2, one of the storylines that was working well was Raffi’s. She had to come to terms with the death of someone she viewed as a surrogate son, and we saw her go through different stages of grief. It was harrowing, riveting, and exceptionally well-performed by Michelle Hurd.
At the last second, though, Elnor was resurrected by Q’s magical powers – massively and catastrophically undermining Raffi’s Season 2 arc, and rendering incredibly powerful sequences impotent and meaningless. As the curtain fell on Season 2 and we heard from actor Evan Evagora that he wouldn’t be returning for Season 3, this resurrection felt incredibly pointless. For the sake of one bad, overdone sight gag (in which Elnor’s disgust at a beverage made him the butt of a joke) an entire season’s worth of emotional storytelling had been undone.
Elnor.
Elnor was a wasted character in Picard. His role in Season 1 was minor, and he appeared to serve as comic relief half of the time. Aside from one spotlight episode, he seemed to be glossed over by the writers and ignored by other characters. The potential he could have had was already being squandered – so his death, while disappointing in more ways than one – at least achieved something insofar as it gave motivation to Raffi and allowed her Season 2 arc to unfold.
But Season 3 could’ve offered Elnor a potential reason to return from the grave. Most of the young characters, aside from Jack Crusher, were fairly bland and forgettable, so when they found themselves assimilated by the Borg toward the end of the season, some of the impact of that was lost. These were kids that we just didn’t know well enough to get truly invested in. But Elnor, after everything he’d been through, could have been different. If he’d been included in Season 3, perhaps replacing one of the La Forge sisters (of which there didn’t need to be two), then the whole Borg storyline could’ve been strengthened, the stakes raised, and a narrative reason found for Elnor’s unexpected resurrection.
As an addendum, it’s worth noting that the USS Excelsior, on which Elnor was serving at the end of Season 2, was destroyed in Season 3. So is he alive? Dead again? Who knows… and who cares? Clearly not the writers…
Abandoned Storyline #3: Why did Q die? (And is he still dead?)
Q at the end of Season 2.
I have a longer theory post about this, which you can find by clicking or tapping here if you’re interested in some speculative ideas. What I didn’t say then, or at least not as strongly, is this: if you’re going to write a story that hinges on the imminent death of a character, with that character’s entire arc and motivation for their actions being derived from the knowledge of their impending death, then you really ought to explain why that character is dying! Especially, in this case, as we’re dealing with Q: a super-being who has always been presented as being functionally immortal.
But there was no explanation written for Q’s death. It’s possible that Q himself didn’t know, or that he was simply reaching the end of his natural life – a lifespan that may have been finite after all. We can read between the lines, perhaps, or use one of my theories as head-canon to explain that members of the Q Continuum aren’t entirely immortal after all.
Is Q back?
Or we could have done that… if Q had stayed dead. In yet another profoundly odd and contradictory move for two seasons of television that were produced at the same time by the same showrunner and team, Q returned at the end of Season 3 in a post-credits scene. Forget the in-universe explanation. I know Q said that time isn’t linear for him, and if we assume that the Q seen at the end of Season 3 is younger than the Q at the end of Season 2 then it all works out in a mildly paradoxical way. Time travel is like that in fiction.
But from a production point of view… to hinge the entire plot of Season 2 on Q’s impending death, to make that the emotional core of what was an already incredibly weak and convoluted story, and then to undo that death a mere ten episodes later for the sake of a cameo so short it was barely even a clip? It’s mind-boggling how strange some of these narrative decisions are. Is Q dead? Is this the same Q? Why did Q die? Did he stay dead or was he revived? We don’t know – and even if Legacy had gone ahead, I doubt we’d have found out.
Abandoned Storyline #4: Did the Coppelius synths have to relocate?
Synths on Coppelius.
One of the most badly-rushed parts of the Season 1 finale concerned the Romulans’ decision to withdraw from Coppelius when confronted by a Starfleet armada. The culmination of the Zhat Vash plot involved the destruction of the Coppelius synths, and having found out where they were located, Commodore Oh broke cover and led a Romulan fleet to the Ghulion system. But she almost immediately stood down and withdrew her forces.
I was never convinced by this, and I think it’s something that needed a lot more screen time in order to be convincing. As a fanatical zealot, Oh simply didn’t seem like the kind of person who would be convinced to change her plan because of one speech and the presence of a new obstacle. Although she did withdraw, it wasn’t clear why. Had she abandoned her crusade after seeing Soji close the portal? Or was she planning to come back later and blow up Coppelius Station?
The Romulans could return and annihilate the synths before Starfleet had time to do anything about it.
The Zhat Vash, and indeed the Coppelius synths, disappeared from the story at this point. We don’t know what became of Oh, of the Romulan fleet, or the Zhat Vash. And we don’t know whether the Coppelius synths were safe now that the Romulans knew of their location. It seemed plausible to me to think that they might have to be relocated for their own safety – but this was never shown on screen.
At the beginning of Season 2, Soji said that she had been “travelling” since the end of the ban on synthetic life, meeting with representatives of other races. But that doesn’t mean that all of the synths were doing the same thing! Despite their importance to the story of Season 1, the synths were dropped without a conclusion to their story being written.
Abandoned Storyline #5: How did Vadic and the Borg Queen come to work together?
Vadic: Season 3’s villain.
I detest what Picard did with Vadic. It felt like such a thorough and underwhelming waste of a potentially interesting villain – all to bring back the Borg for the third season in a row. But setting that aside, while we learned that the Borg Queen and this splinter group of disaffected Founders were working together… we never learned how that came to happen. It might not be “essential” to the story in the same way as some of the other points on this list, but it would’ve been interesting.
“Just because” or “use your imagination” aren’t particularly good excuses, in my book, and I would’ve liked to see a flashback to the Borg Queen and Vadic meeting for the first time. Which of them devised this scheme? Did the Borg try to assimilate the changelings at first? How quickly did they come to realise they had a common enemy? And how did they even figure out Jack Crusher was Picard’s son, let alone that he could be used for the purpose of activating a “sleeper agent army” of Borg?
Floaty McFloatface…
All of those points would’ve added interesting background to the story of Season 3, and while I understand that the writers wanted to keep some of the mysteries going so as not to blow the big reveal, once the Borg’s presence was known, a flashback could’ve filled in a lot of the blanks. I don’t think this would’ve needed to take up an entire episode, and it would’ve been enough to simply show their first contact and the beginnings of their planning.
I like that Picard Season 3 slowed down, in places, to give us moments with the returning characters – but the trade-off for that is that some big narrative beats were left unexplained. Given that Vadic’s performance was over-the-top and could feel quite one-dimensional, seeing her devising this scheme and working with the Borg Queen – even just for a handful of flashback scenes – could’ve improved how I feel about her as a character.
Abandoned Storyline #6: Where’s Narek?
…and he was never seen again.
This truly fits the definition of “abandoned.” After the plot to stop Sutra and Soji from contacting the “super-synths” in the Season 1 finale, Narek was captured by the Coppelius synths. We last saw him lying on the ground, being apprehended. Narek then promptly disappeared from the story and the series… never being so much as mentioned again.
Narek’s disappearance is one consequence of Picard’s first season being so poorly-structured. The story simply ran out of time, leaving the final episode with way too much to cram in and nowhere near enough time to pay off everything that had been established. Narek simply ended up as one of several elements on the chopping block – but as a major character, someone whose story we’d been following for the preceding nine episodes, I kind of think we’re owed a conclusion. Apparently a scene involving Narek being taken into custody was scripted, but I don’t think it was even filmed given the narrative constraints placed upon the finale.
Narek with Soji.
Season 2 could’ve provided this. All it would’ve taken was a single line of dialogue in the premiere: Dr Jurati could say something to Soji along the lines of “how do you feel now that Narek’s been sentenced? I heard he won’t be getting out for years, and the Federation has refused all requests to return him to Romulan space.” It’s as simple as that, and the mystery would’ve been solved. Given how slowly Season 2 plodded along, and how uninteresting most of it was… we could’ve even gotten an entire “Narek on trial” episode right at the beginning!
We simply don’t know what happened to him, though. And while Federation custody is plausible, it’s not impossible that the synths kept him in custody, executed him, turned him over to the ex-Borg, or even that he managed to beam up to one of the Romulan vessels and escape. For a main character to just be dumped in this way… it’s pretty pathetic for a big-budget series supposedly being made by professionals. And even when we take into account that most of the rest of the Season 1 cast were dropped after Season 2, Narek’s disappearance still feels the most egregious.
Abandoned Storyline #7: What happened to Dr Jurtati’s new Borg faction?
Dr Jurati/the Borg Queen.
When Starfleet came under attack by the Borg-Changelings, you know who could’ve been a metric fuckton of help? A literal Borg Queen. But even if Dr Jurati and her “Friendship is Magic” Collective were too busy taking care of the mysterious anomaly from the end of Season 2 (more on that in a moment), it would still have been nice to know that. As it is, she and her cuddlier, friendlier Borg Collective seem to have just… fucked off.
The Jurati-Borg represent something new for Star Trek: a different kind of Borg Collective, not based on violent and forced assimilation, but building some kind of community. Or… at least, I think that’s what they represent. Despite a painfully constipated buildup, we didn’t actually get much of a payoff to Jurati and the Borg Queen merging. As a result, this faction feels less like a proper, fully fleshed-out Borg splinter group and more like a hollow plot device: something with which to bookend the story.
Dr Jurati’s ship.
If Legacy had managed to get off the ground, I’d have desperately wanted to see the Jurati-Borg back for at least an episode or two. I think she could’ve been a particularly interesting foil for Seven of Nine; a Borg Queen, but a different kind of Queen, sharing some of the traits Seven would remember while being a fundamentally different kind of person.
This also ties in with the abandoned “mysterious anomaly.” After showing up to both kick off the plot of Season 2 and then reveal they were actually there to save the day in the season finale… we just never learned more about this faction or the anomaly. For a franchise all about exploring the unknown… I just think that’s pretty poor. And yes, Dr Jurati wasn’t the main focus of Picard, but she’s still a main character, and she spent close to 400 years off on her own, setting up a different kind of Borg Collective. Learning at least a little about that would have been interesting, and a nice way to conclude her story.
Abandoned Storyline #8: Who was responsible for the transwarp anomaly?
The transwarp anomaly in Farewell.
Bookending Season 2’s story was the mysterious anomaly. It threatened to unleash a huge amount of energy, devastating an entire sector of space and potentially destroying an entire fleet of ships… but we have no idea who caused it, what their aim may have been, or if it was simply a weird naturally-occurring phenomenon.
The Jurati-Borg certainly believed that this transwarp anomaly was a threat, and we can infer that it may have been an exceptionally powerful weapon. There are a few factions within Star Trek that could, in theory, be capable of that kind of attack. I think we can rule out the original Borg Collective for two reasons. Firstly, according to Season 3 of Picard, the Borg are in disarray and on the verge of collapse. And secondly, if it were a Borg attack, you’d think a centuries-old Borg Queen, with knowledge of the Collective and its technologies, would have recognised that.
The “guardian at the gates.”
To me, it feels profoundly odd that Seasons 2 and 3 went into production back-to-back, with mostly the same team at the helm, but this storyline didn’t carry over. It could’ve been set up, without much additional effort, as a prelude to Vadic’s scheme in Season 3; perhaps the transwarp anomaly was supposed to be a distraction, or perhaps it was her first attempt to attack the Federation, before realising she could ally with the Borg. It wouldn’t have taken a lot of effort to write the anomaly into the plot of Season 3.
In practically no other Star Trek story is a plot point like this left unresolved. If there’s an enemy, our heroes stop them. If there’s a mystery, we get answers. If a space phenomenon shows up, we get an explanation – even if it’s pure technobabble. The mysterious anomaly being abandoned like this is not only totally unprecedented… but it’s also incredibly unsatisfying. Everything Picard and the others went through built up to this moment… and we don’t know who’s responsible.
Abandoned Storyline #9: So… who’s Picard married to these days?
So did Picard stay married to Laris…
The entire plot of Season 2, according to Q, was that Picard had unresolved trauma from childhood that was keeping him isolated and preventing him from falling in love. Setting aside Picard’s romantic entanglements in The Next Generation, we’ll accept this explanation for now. By the end of Season 2, Picard returned to his vineyard where Laris was waiting for him. And he seemed finally ready to take the next step into a final frontier of his own.
Laris appeared very briefly at the beginning of Season 3, but promptly disappeared after Picard set out to find his ex… Dr Crusher. After that, we learned that Picard and Crusher had conceived a son some years earlier, and Laris was never mentioned again. After the Borg-Changeling scheme was defeated, Picard reunited with Dr Crusher to escort their son to his first Starfleet assignment. So… where’s Laris?
…or did he get back together with Dr Crusher?
I don’t necessarily think that the end of Season 3 suggests that Picard and Crusher rekindled their relationship. But now that Picard knows about Jack, he’s clearly planning to take more of an active role in his son’s life, meaning he and Dr Crusher will remain on speaking terms. Is Laris okay with that? Does Picard having a son change things for her? Could Picard be the one feeling conflicted, torn between two women, two families, and two potential lives? We didn’t get any exploration of what Picard’s past and Jack’s arrival in his life could mean for his new relationship – and again, to reemphasise a point from earlier, Seasons 2 and 3 were in production at the same time. The writers knew, when giving Picard and Laris their “happy ending” in Season 2, that his past relationship with Dr Crusher was about to be thrust into the spotlight.
There are multiple ways to interpret what we know. One is that, after the events of Season 3, Picard resumed his married life with Laris, even if things may have gotten a tad awkward. But the other is that Picard and Dr Crusher got back together, explaining why they were both with Jack when he arrived aboard the Enterprise.
Abandoned Storyline #10: Who were the “alliance of synthetic life,” and what were their goals?
The Beacon.
The faction I nicknamed the “Mass Effect Reapers,” for their similarities to that video game antagonist, disappeared after Season 1 and weren’t mentioned again. But because of the aforementioned time crunch as Season 1 wrapped up, we really never learned much about them, who they were, what their objectives might’ve been… or what the consequences would’ve been if they’d shown up.
If Season 1 had been structured differently, an alternative ending could’ve shown the “super-synths” actually making it through the portal over Coppelius – and being confronted by the Federation and Romulans. It would’ve surely fallen to Picard, with his diplomatic talents, to defuse the situation, and we could’ve spent an episode or two with this faction, learning a little about where they came from, why they wanted to save their fellow synthetic life-forms, and perhaps if they’re connected to someone like the Borg.
This was as much as we saw of the “super-synths.”
There are two competing theories, as I see it, for what these guys might’ve wanted. The first is that their offer to the synths – as depicted in their beacon on Aia – was genuine, and they truly wanted to help all artificial life-forms survive what they viewed as an inevitable attack by organics. The second, much more sinsiter explanation, is that the beacon was a trap. When a civilisation has advanced sufficiently to develop synths, those synths would trigger the beacon – allowing the “alliance of synthetic life” to show up, kill everyone, and harvest their resources.
Option B would be more interesting, in theory! But it would’ve also dominated at least one season’s worth of storylines, and given the way Season 1 landed for a lot of folks… I think it’s probably okay that we moved on from the super-synths. But it would still be interesting to learn more about them. As it is, they feel pretty one-dimensional; a powerful enemy with no face, no clear goals, and not even a proper name.
So that’s it.
The rebuilt Enterprise-D bridge under construction ahead of Season 3.
We’ve talked about ten of Picard’s abandoned and unfinished storylines.
With the show over, and Legacy not being greenlit anytime soon, I suspect these narrative threads will be forever orphaned! They’re far from the only storylines in Star Trek to never get a proper resolution; the parasite-aliens from Conspiracy spring to mind, but I’m sure you can think of others. With Starfleet Academy soon to hit our screens, bringing Star Trek back to Discovery’s far future… maybe there’s an outside chance some of these events will be referenced – but I wouldn’t bet on it.
We’ll talk about this in more detail on another occasion, but two years on from Picard’s finale and I think my opinion of the show has worsened. There are some genuinely good episodes in the mix, some creative storytelling, and some wonderful moments of characterisation. But there’s a growing feeling that the show as a whole was a bit of a missed opportunity; that Star Trek’s return to one of its most popular characters and its most successful era should have done more to re-establish the franchise and set the stage for more. Legacy’s failure to get off the ground is, in a way, an indictment of the fact that Picard didn’t live up to Paramount’s expectations – and we have some questionable storytelling decisions to thank for that, in my view.
A console aboard the USS Titan.
It speaks to Paramount’s lack of care and unprofessionalism that a big-budget flagship series left so many characters and half-finished storylines behind. After running to a scant thirty episodes across three seasons, there really shouldn’t be this much abandoned content to talk about. One day, I’d love to get a Chaos on the Bridge-style documentary about what happened behind-the-scenes, because I bet there’s a lot we don’t know.
Although Picard has finished its run, there are still going to be things to say about the show from time to time! I’d love to do a longer retrospective piece about the series one day, because while I followed along and wrote reviews of all thirty episodes, I haven’t really been able to sit back and assess the series as a whole. With the benefit of hindsight – and with Picard potentially being the only 25th Century series we’re ever gonna see – I think there’s more to say that I may not have considered during the show’s original run.
So I hope you’ll stay tuned. There will be more Picard content to come in the months and years ahead.
Star Trek: Picard Seasons 1-3 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in the United States and other countries and territories where the service is available. The Star Trek franchise – including Picard and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Beware spoilers for the following games: Batman: Arkham Knight, Mass Effect 3, Halo Infinite, and The Last of Us Part II.
Microsoft’s latest round of layoffs has really hammered home how shaky some parts of the games industry feel as the 2020s roll along. Big games – like the remake of Perfect Dark, Rare’s long-awaited Everwild, and an unnamed title from ZeniMax Online – have all been canned as Microsoft “restructures” its gaming division… despite making literally more money than it ever has in its corporate existence. And all of this comes after some ridiculous studio closures barely twelve months ago. But the Xbox situation got me thinking… which other games and studios could be in danger?
So that rather depressing topic is what we’re going to tackle today. To be clear: I don’t think the entire games industry is heading for some kind of repeat of the 1983 “crash.” Gaming is too big nowadays, and there are so many people playing games, that the idea of gaming as a whole ever disappearing or experiencing that kind of huge slowdown just doesn’t seem feasible anymore. So to reiterate that last point: I am not predicting an industry-wide “crash.” But there are multiple publishers and developers that I believe are in danger – and one badly-received game could, in some cases, lead to their exit from the industry altogether.
This piece was prompted by the Microsoft and Xbox news, but it’s not only Microsoft-owned studios that could be on the chopping block. There are issues at outfits owned by Sony, too, as well as third-party publishers and developers.
Xbox just announced another round of layoffs.
A few caveats before we go any further. Firstly, if you or someone you know works at one of these companies, please know that I don’t mean this as any kind of attack or slight against you or the quality of your work. This industry can be brutal, and as a commentator/critic, what I’m doing is sharing my view on the situation. What I’m categorically *not* doing is saying any of these companies “should” be shut down. I really don’t want to see more people in the industry put out of work. I spent a decade working in the games industry, and I worked for companies that went through tough times. I know what it’s like to feel like your job is on the line… and the last thing I want to do is rub salt in the wound or make things worse.
Secondly, I have no “insider information” from any of these developers or publishers. I’m looking in from the outside as someone who hasn’t worked in the industry for more than a decade at this point. Finally, all of this is the entirely subjective, not objective, opinion of just one person. If you disagree with my take, think I’ve got it wrong, or you’re just convinced that a company’s next game is sure to be an absolute banger… that’s totally okay. Gamers can be an argumentative lot sometimes, but I like to believe there’s enough room in the wider community for polite discussion and differences of opinion.
With all of that out of the way, let’s get started.
Endangered Studio #1: Halo Studios
Is the long-running Halo series in trouble?
Halo Studios, formerly known as 343 Industries, is Microsoft’s in-house development team working on the Halo franchise. But… well, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that 343/Halo Studios has never released a *big* hit. The closest they’ve come, in more than a decade, was remastering the original Halo games… and even then, we have to give the huge caveat of the bugs and performance issues that plagued early versions of the remasters.
Whether we look at Halo 4, Halo 5, Halo Infinite, the Halo Wars spin-off, or the mobile games… Halo Studios hasn’t exactly taken the gaming world by storm. Infinite was supposed to be the Xbox Series X’s “killer app;” a launch title to really sell people on the new console and make it a must-buy, just as the original Halo: Combat Evolved had done some twenty years earlier. That didn’t happen, and the reception to that game – including from yours truly – was pretty mixed.
The cancellation of the TV adaptation won’t help.
Although Halo Studios has been hit by Microsoft’s layoffs in recent weeks, and a recent leak suggested that “no one at the studio is happy” with the state of their next title right now, I still think Xbox will give them another chance. The Halo series and Xbox are inseparable, at least in the minds of some players, and the name recognition and series reputation still count for something. But I don’t think those things will count indefinitely, so if the next Halo game isn’t a smash hit, Halo Studios will be in trouble.
This also comes after the failure of the Halo TV series. I happened to think the show was decent for what it was, but I understand where a lot of the criticism was coming from. That hasn’t helped Halo Studios’ case, though, and one of the best opportunities to grow the brand was squandered.
As a final note: every story has a natural end. I would suggest, perhaps, that Halo – or at least the Master Chief’s story – has pushed past that point. Recent narratives felt overly complicated, and I felt that Halo Studios was having to invent increasingly silly reasons for why the Master Chief was still fighting the Covenant and the Flood. Maybe the franchise just needs a break?
Endangered Studio #2: Ubisoft
Ubisoft publishes the Assassin’s Creed series, among others.
Ubisoft hasn’t been in great shape for quite some time. I think it’s fair to say that Ubisoft’s open world level design has stagnated, and a lot of players have kind of hit the wall when it comes to that style of game. But because the studio has doubled-down on that formula and that way of making games… it might be hard to find a way back.
Ubisoft has slapped its open world style on franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Avatar, and even Star Wars… but many recent games have felt pretty repetitive; the same thing every time, just with a different coat of paint. I’m on the record saying that the open world formula doesn’t work for a lot of games, and although I don’t play a ton of Ubisoft titles… I think the repetitiveness of their games is a contributing factor, at least. Open worlds can be fun, but they can also be bloated and uninspired.
Star Wars: Outlaws wasn’t particularly well-received.
Earlier in 2025, a lot of folks seemed to be saying that Ubisoft’s financial situation basically meant that Assassin’s Creed: Shadows was the company’s “last chance.” I’m not sure I’d have gone that far myself; there are clearly other projects in the pipeline that at least have some potential. But Shadows seems to have been a modest success, at least, which has probably bought the company some time. A remake of the popular Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag could be a much-needed boost, too, if it succeeds at grabbing a new audience.
But in the longer-term, Ubisoft needs to try new things. Its open world formula worked for a while, but repetitiveness and stagnation seem to have crept in. There are only so many open world “collect-a-thons” that anyone can be bothered to play, and if it feels like the same game is just being given a new skin every time… that’s not a lot of fun, in the end. Just Dance can’t keep the company afloat forever, so something’s gotta change, and soon.
I’m still crossing my fingers for that Splinter Cell remake, though!
Endangered Studio #3: Nintendo
Nintendo recently launched the Switch 2 console.
Bear with me on this. Nintendo is a titan of the games industry… but it’s also a more vulnerable company than folks realise. I don’t think people fully appreciate how big of a risk the Switch 2 has been with its high price, sole exclusive launch title, and repetitive design and branding. The console may have sold well in its first couple of weeks on sale – though, as I noted, it didn’t seem to have sold out everywhere – but that’s to be expected from a company with a well-trained legion of super-fans! The real question is still whether casual players, families, and people less connected to the gaming world will be willing to shell out for a console that’s now competing with the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in terms of price.
I don’t know anyone – not one single person – who only owned a Nintendo Switch as their sole gaming device. I’m sure some people do, but most folks I spoke to bought a Switch for one of three reasons: to play a handful of Nintendo exclusives, like Mario Kart 8 and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, to play some of their favourite games in a handheld format, or for their children to play some kid-friendly titles. The Switch was well-positioned for any of those use cases… the Switch 2, at its higher price point, is less so.
The Switch 2 and its games are expensive.
In 2013/14, when the Wii U was clearly faltering, Nintendo still had the 3DS to turn a profit and keep its corporate head above water. But now, the company is all-in on the Switch 2… meaning there’s less room for manoeuvre if things don’t go to plan. Because of Nintendo’s unique position in the industry, if its hardware falters it’s gonna be in big trouble, and the Switch 2 represents a departure from a successful business model. The Wii, the Switch, and Nintendo’s handhelds have all been well-positioned and well-priced to attract casual players… I’m not so sure the Switch 2 is. The company has some cash in reserve to keep going for a short while… but not indefinitely.
For those of you screaming that “it’ll never happen!!1!” I would remind you of Sega’s unceremonious exit from the console market just after the turn of the millennium. If you’d asked any gamer in the late ’90s what the future held for Sega, no one would’ve predicted that the Dreamcast’s failure would lead to the company shutting down its hardware division altogether. Nintendo is at the tippy-top of the games industry, and the Switch has been a phenomenally successful console. But its position is more precarious than people realise, and it would only take one console failure to throw the company into chaos. To be clear: I don’t necessarily think that Nintendo would just shut down and that would be that… but a Sega-style exit from the hardware market, and far fewer Nintendo games being produced, could happen. Never say never.
Endangered Studio #4: Naughty Dog
A gaming “Easter egg” in Uncharted 4.
Naughty Dog developed Crash Bandicoot for the first PlayStation, the Jak and Daxter games, the Uncharted series, and The Last of Us. Although The Last of Us Part II proved controversial (I once said a 3/10 seemed like a fair score for that game), it seems to have sold pretty well, and the first title has been remastered… twice. But when Naughty Dog premiered a trailer for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, the reception was less than glowing.
That game seems like it’s still a way off, too, and it might realistically launch as one of the final titles of the PlayStation 5 generation. But with the Uncharted series seemingly on the back burner, and after the controversy surrounding The Last of Us Part II… can the studio survive if Intergalactic underwhelms? I think there’s a very real possibility that Sony would be swift and brutal in that event.
Will Intergalactic be well-receieved by players when it’s ready?
It’s silly to pre-judge any title based on a single trailer that didn’t show so much as a frame of actual gameplay. Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet might have a silly, clunky name… but we really don’t know much about its story or what it’ll feel like to play. Naughty Dog has pedigree (get it?) so I think there are reasons to be optimistic about their next game. But I can also see a world in which Intergalactic doesn’t succeed in the way Sony is surely demanding.
There are some upcoming games that are generating a ton of buzz and excitement. So far, Intergalactic isn’t amongst them. Maybe that will change as we get closer to the game’s launch and the marketing campaign kicks off. But maybe it’ll always be one of those games that just… didn’t do much for a lot of people. If that’s the case, Naughty Dog could be in trouble.
Endangered Studio #5: Turn 10
It’s already the end of the road for Forza Motorsport.
Turn 10 are the folks behind Forza Motorsport. Or they were. As of July 2025, the Motorsport series seems to be going on hiatus, with Turn 10 suffering significant layoffs. The spin-off Forza Horizon series had been developed by another Microsoft subsidiary: Playground Games. But with Playground working on the new Fable title, it seems as if Turn 10 might be working on Forza Horizon 6 in the months ahead.
The Forza Horizon games are a ton of fun… but they’re also more arcadey, and the open world design isn’t Turn 10’s style. I can’t help but feel the studio only still exists after Forza Motorsport’s disappointment because Microsoft needs someone to take over the Horizon brief now that Playground Games is busy with Fable. After Forza Horizon 6 launches, if the main Motorsport brand is still on the back burner… what could Turn 10 realistically do?
Forza Horizon 5 was great, though…
If Xbox is going to persevere with its home consoles in the future – and I suspect that it will – then those consoles will need at least one proper racing game. Turn 10 had been providing that for the brand since 2005, back when the first Forza Motorsport launched on the original Xbox. There are third-party racing games, of course, and Microsoft has several on Game Pass, including rally titles, Formula 1 games, and more. But Forza should be a genuine competitor to Sony’s Gran Turismo series, and again, it should be giving players an incentive to consider picking up an Xbox console.
With Turn 10’s main series seemingly shut down, at least for the foreseeable future, and after having already suffered with layoffs, I’m not sure where the studio finds a successful future. Maybe if Forza Horizon 6 knocks it out of the park… but even then, I could see Microsoft returning that series to Playground Games.
Endangered Studio #6: Bethesda Game Studios
Hi, Todd…
To be clear: we’re talking about Bethesda the developer, not all of the studios under Bethesda’s publishing umbrella. There are several factors here, so let’s go over all of them. Starfield was a disappointment and its DLC didn’t salvage the project. Fallout 4 and Fallout 76, despite achieving success in recent years, launched to controversy. The Elder Scrolls VI is still a ways off, which has pushed a potential Fallout 5 to the mid-2030s or beyond. Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 are thus the only Fallout titles that Microsoft can push to players enamoured with the Fallout TV series.
For me, this boils down to the success or failure of The Elder Scrolls VI. If that game truly lives up to the hype and reaches the high bar set by Skyrim, then Bethesda will be okay and will continue developing games for years to come. If it doesn’t, and it ends up closer in reputation and sales to Starfield… that could be it. Curtains. Microsoft will retain the studio’s various IP, but could conceivably distribute the ones that still have potential to other development teams. Speaking of which…
Can The Elder Scrolls VI save Bethesda?
With the Fallout TV show proving to be a hit, it’s pretty clear that Microsoft is hankering for a new game. There have been all kinds of rumours, with a Fallout 3 remaster seemingly the only one that’s guaranteed at this stage. But could Microsoft tap one of its other developers to make another Fallout spin-off, or perhaps something like a New Vegas remaster? If that were to happen, and if that hypothetical game were to eclipse Bethesda’s entries in the long-running series, that could be another nail in Bethesda’s coffin. Bethesda only has two well-known franchises under its belt, so if one of those were taken away – even on an alleged “temporary” basis – that could be hugely symbolic.
Here’s my take: Bethesda made some great games in the 2000s, but has shown absolutely no ability to move with the times in the almost fifteen years since Skyrim. The studio’s leaders seem to have bought into their own hype, believing that every game they develop will automatically be as well-received as Skyrim… and can be heavily-monetised without repercussions. There is still merit in the original Bethesda formula; an open-world game that turns players loose and opens up factions, questlines, and exploration. But other studios are doing similar things… and doing them way better. Bethesda feels like a bit of an outdated dinosaur, still clinging to Skyrim’s success more than a decade later. One more poorly-received game could be the end of the line.
Endangered Studio #7: Bungie
Promo art for Bungie’s Destiny 2.
We talked about the Halo series a moment ago, but that franchise’s new developer isn’t the only one in trouble. The originators of the Halo franchise, Bungie, are in dire straits right now, and could be only a year or so away from closure. The Destiny games may have sold reasonably well, but I don’t think it’s unfair to say that the whole “live service” thing didn’t exactly go to plan for Bungie. Then came the development of Marathon… something I talked about a few weeks ago.
Marathon was in a world of trouble after a seriously underwhelming closed playtest left critics and fans feeling like the game needed a lot of work. Then came the news that Bungie had – not for the first time – plagiarised a whole bunch of art assets for the game without payment or credit to the artist. These pieces quite literally define Marathon’s “quirky” visual style… which was pretty much the only thing the game had going for it.
Marathon is in a huge amount of trouble.
Sony recently acquired Bungie for what many have argued was an overly inflated price. A delay to Marathon has recently been announced, but any goodwill or positive buzz that the game could’ve had has entirely evaporated at this point. It’s at a point where even a total overhaul won’t be enough; Marathon is pretty much dead on arrival, even after the delay. So… what happens to Bungie if that’s the case?
Sony can be just as brutal as everyone else when it comes to killing off underperforming studios. Just ask Firewalk, Pixelopus, Bigbig Studios, or London Studio. Bungie should not consider itself safe simply by virtue of its name or its high price tag… if Marathon fails, which it inevitably will, there are gonna be some tough questions asked by Sony. If Bungie can’t prove that they have something big lined up… that could be it.
Endangered Studio #8: BioWare
Taash from Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
Mass Effect: Andromeda. Anthem. Dragon Age: The Veilguard. BioWare has endured basically a decade of failures since the launch of Dragon Age: Inquisition, and it’s difficult to see Electronic Arts being willing to put up with another title that doesn’t live up to expectations. And I’m afraid there are serious questions about the studio’s next project: a sequel to the beloved Mass Effect trilogy.
I have a longer piece in the pipeline that I’ve been working on for a while about the importance of endings – and how, in the modern entertainment industry, very few stories are allowed to come to a dignified, natural end. The Mass Effect trilogy, with its buildup to the defeat of the Reapers, is an example of that… and it’s hard to see how telling another story in that universe won’t feel tacked-on, repetitive, or underwhelming in comparison to what’s come before. That was a big part of the Andromeda problem, in my opinion: after literally saving the galaxy, there’s basically nowhere for Mass Effect to go.
Where does Mass Effect go after literally saving the galaxy?
I don’t buy the criticisms of Dragon Age: The Veilguard failing because it was “too woke.” I think a lot of armchair critics seized on a single line from one character and tried to make the game all about that. But there were clearly issues with The Veilguard, not least its stop-start development, multiple changes in focus, and deviation from the art style of the earlier games. I hope BioWare has learned something from that experience… but, to be blunt, they should’ve learned those lessons already from Andromeda and Anthem.
I will almost certainly play Mass Effect 4. So BioWare can take comfort in the fact that they have at least one guaranteed sale right here! But… am I optimistic? I’m curious, sure, and I want the game to be good. But I also can’t shake the feeling that it’s going to be a story that’s just going to struggle to make the case for itself. Why, after Shepard beat the Reapers, do I need to see this new story? What’s going to be the hook? And without that… will it be worth playing? This is surely BioWare’s absolutely final chance, and with EA notorious for shutting down underperforming studios, everything is now riding on Mass Effect.
Endangered Studio #9: Firaxis Games
Are the barbarians at the gates?
Like BioWare above, Firaxis is on a bit of a weak run right now. XCOM: Chimera Squad underperformed on PC, leading to its console port being cancelled. And Marvel’s Midnight Suns was also considered a disappointment by parent company Take-Two Interactive. Then we come to this year’s Civilization VII, which is struggling right now. Civ VII is currently underperforming, with players seemingly preferring to stick with Civ VI or even Civ V, and there’s criticism of various aspects of the game – not least its three-era structure.
I believe Civilization VII has potential, but there’s clearly a limited window of time to really showcase that potential before panic sets in. At time of writing, there have only been a couple of significant updates to the base game, which launched almost six months ago. Players are still calling on Firaxis to patch bugs, rebalance key features, and add more to the game… and many of those players seem to have drifted back to Civ VI while they wait.
A lot of players tried Civ VII but have already drifted back to Civ VI.
Other “digital board games” inspired by the venerable Civilization series have been eating Firaxis’ lunch, too. They don’t have the genre all to themselves any more, and I think we’re seeing the limitations of releasing a partial game, then hoping to sell expensive DLC to patch the holes. Civ VI did that, too, but there was arguably a stronger foundation to build upon and a fun base game to get players interested in the DLC in the first place.
I suspect Firaxis will get another chance. Even if work on Civilization VII were to end sooner than expected, 2K still recognises the strength of the series and its name recognition. But if a hypothetical Civ VIII or some other sequel or spin-off were to flop, too? That’s when Firaxis could be in real trouble.
Endangered Studio #10: Rocksteady Studios
Batman and a villain in Arkham Asylum.
No, not Grand Theft Auto developers Rockstar, we’re talking about Rocksteady – the team behind the Batman: Arkham series and last year’s critically panned Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. In 2015, Arkham Knight suffered horribly with a ridicululously poor PC port, but the Arkham series has been otherwise popular and well-received, especially by Batman fans. But in 2024, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was not, and left many players wondering how such a bad game could’ve taken Rocksteady such a long time to craft.
The bottom line is this: Kill the Justice League has lost parent company Warner Bros. Games more than $200 million. That’s… well, that’s not exactly great news when you’re trying to keep the lights on! These live service types of games are notorious for being expensive flops in a lot of cases, and what often follows an expensive, poorly-reviewed title is a studio closure.
Suicide Squad: Killed Its Studio…
There are rumours that Rocksteady has already been laying off staff, first in the QA department, and later in other technical fields, too. The studio also has no new game on its schedule at time of writing; it seems some staff are still working on Kill the Justice League in supporting roles, while others may be working to assist Portkey Games with a new version of Hogwarts Legacy. Again, that doesn’t bode well for the studio.
Practically all of the studios we’ve talked about today were once well-regarded and had at least some popular and successful titles in their back catalogues. But with the Arkham series having wrapped up a decade ago, I don’t think its lingering goodwill will be enough to save Rocksteady. Kill the Justice League was a game outside of the studio’s area of expertise, seemingly forced on them by Warner Bros. Games, and it sucks that they couldn’t stick to making the kinds of single-player titles at which they excelled.
So that’s it.
Xbox prompted me to think about this topic…
We’ve talked about a few developers and publishers that *could* be in danger in the months and years ahead.
As I said at the beginning: I’m never rooting for anyone to fail. Well, except really low-quality shovelware or games with abusive gambling baked in! But those obvious exceptions aside, I don’t want to see games fail or studios closed down, and I especially don’t want to see hard-working developers and other industry insiders losing their jobs. There’s more than enough of that going around without adding to it.
But as a critic and commentator who talks about gaming, I wanted to share my opinion on these studios in light of what’s been going on in the games industry. There are plenty of examples of high-profile failures, collapses, and shutdowns. Whether we’re talking about Atari, Interplay, most of Maxis, Sega, THQ, Lionhead, Acclaim, or Neversoft, one thing is clear: being a well-known brand with a good reputation isn’t enough. The games industry is cutthroat, and not all companies – not even those that seem to have scaled the heights and reached the very top of the gaming realm – can be considered safe.
Maybe I’m wrong about some or all of these companies – and in a way, I hope that I am. But at the same time, gaming is like any other industry and it needs innovation. If the same companies dominate the gaming landscape forever, things will quickly stagnate. What gives me hope is that there are plenty of smaller studios producing new and innovative titles, and some of them will go on to be the “big beasts” of tomorrow.
So I hope this has been… well, not “fun,” but interesting, at any rate. And please check back here on Trekking with Dennis, because there’s more gaming content and coverage to come!
All titles discussed above are the copyright of their respective developer, studio, and/or publisher. Some screenshots and promotional artwork courtesy of IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I’m back with another edition of my infamous Gaming “Hot Takes!” I’ve officially given up on numbering these; I think this might be piece number four or five, but I’ve made several other posts over the last few years in which I share a few of my “hot takes” on gaming and the games industry in general. As I’ve said before, it’s never long before something in the world of gaming comes along to prompt another “hot take,” so that’s what we’re gonna look at today!
Video games are… well, they’re pretty darn good, to be honest with you. And I always like to make sure you know that I’m not some kind of “hater;” I like playing video games, and there are some titles that I genuinely believe eclipse films and TV shows in terms of their world-building, storytelling, or just pure entertainment value. We’re going to tackle some controversial topics today, though!
Let’s get into some gaming “hot takes!”
Before we take a look at the “hot takes,” I have a couple of important caveats. Firstly, I’m well aware that some or all of these points are the minority position, or at least contentious. That’s why they’re called “hot takes” and not “very obvious takes that everyone will surely agree with!” Secondly, this isn’t intended to be taken too seriously, so if I criticise a game or company you like, just bear that in mind. Finally, all of this is the entirely subjective, not objective, opinion of just one person.
Although gamers can be a cantankerous bunch, I still like to believe that there’s enough room – and enough maturity – in the wider community for respectful discussion and polite disagreement that doesn’t descend into name-calling and toxicity! So let’s all try to keep that in mind as we jump into the “hot takes,” eh?
“Hot Take” #1: If your game is still in “early access,” you shouldn’t be allowed to sell DLC.
Pre-purchase to play early!
“Early access” means a game hasn’t been released yet, right? That’s what it’s supposed to mean, anyway – though some titles take the absolute piss by remaining in early access for a decade or more. But if you haven’t officially released your game, your focus ought to be on, y’know, finishing the game instead of working on DLC. Paid-for downloadable content for games that are still officially in “early access” is just awful.
Star Citizen is arguably the most egregious example of this. The game – from what I’ve seen – would barely qualify as an “alpha” version, yet reams of overpriced downloadable content is offered for sale. Some it exists in-game, but a lot of it is really just a promise; an I.O.U. from the developers, promising to build a ridiculously expensive spaceship if and when time permits.
Expensive DLC ships in Star Citizen.
Early access has a place in gaming, and I don’t want to see it disappear. But that place is with smaller independent projects seeking feedback, not massive studios abusing the model. Selling DLC that doesn’t exist for game that also doesn’t fully exist feels like a total piss-take, and given how often these things go horribly wrong, I’m surprised to see people still being lured in and falling for what can, at times, feel like a scam.
There have been some fantastic expansion packs going back decades, and I don’t object to DLC – even if it’s what I would usually call a pack of overpriced cosmetic items. But when the main game isn’t even out, and is supposedly still being worked on, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that charging money for DLC is wrong – these things should either be free updates or, if they’re definitely going to be sold separately, held in reserve until the game is launched.
“Hot Take” #2: Bethesda Game Studios has basically made four good games… ever.
Yup, you heard me.
Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim. That’s it. That’s the list. From 2002 to 2011 – less than a decade – Bethesda Game Studios managed to develop and release four genuinely good games… but hasn’t reached that bar since. Bethesda has spent longer as a declining, outdated, and thoroughly mediocre developer than it ever did as a good developer. The studio is like the games industry equivalent of The Simpsons: fantastic in its prime, but what followed has been a long period of stagnation, decay, and mediocrity as they’ve been completely overtaken and eclipsed by competitors. To be blunt… I don’t see Starfield’s next (and probably last) expansion pack, or The Elder Scrolls VI, changing that.
There is a retro charm to the likes of Arena and Daggerfall, and I won’t pretend that Fallout 4 didn’t have its moments. Even Starfield, with all of its limitations and issues, still had interesting elements, and the ship-builder was genuinely fun to use… at least at first. But since Skyrim in 2011, I would argue that Bethesda has been in decline. In fact, I believe Skyrim’s unprecedented success broke something fundamental in the way Bethesda’s executives and directors think about games. Gone was the idea of games as one-and-done things to be created and released. Replacing it was the concept I’ve called the “single-player live service,” where titles were transformed into “ten-year experiences” that could be monetised every step of the way.
Starfield has an in-game marketplace comparable to even the worst free-to-play mobile games.
As I said recently, I don’t have a lot of faith in The Elder Scrolls VI any more. It seems all but certain to contain another disgusting in-game marketplace for skins, items, and even entire questlines and factions. When there are so many other games to play that aren’t hideously over-monetised… why should I bother getting excited for The Elder Scrolls VI? Even worse, it’s being made in Bethesda’s “Creation Engine;” the zombified remains of software from thirty years ago that clearly isn’t up to the task and hasn’t been for a while.
Bethesda’s decline has been slow, and folks who skipped titles like Starfield and Fallout 76 might not be aware of just how bad things have gotten. Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe The Elder Scrolls VI will be a miraculous return to form. I hope so – I never want to root for a game to fail. But with so many other role-playing games out now or on the horizon… I just don’t see it measuring up as things stand. And in a way, I can’t help but feel it would be better in the long run if another studio were to take on the project.
“Hot Take” #3: There won’t ever be another 1983-style “crash.”
It ain’t gonna happen.
Given the absolute state of modern gaming – at least insofar as many of the industry’s biggest corporations are concerned – I genuinely get where this feeling is coming from. But I think the people making this argument either don’t fully understand the 1983 crash, or don’t appreciate how massive gaming as a whole has become in the decades since then.
In short: in 1983, video games weren’t much more than pretty expensive digital toys. The home console market was relatively small, and like so many products over the years, it was genuinely possible that video games themselves could’ve been a flash in the pan; something comparable to LaserDisc, the hovercraft, or, to pick on a more modern example, Google Glass. All of these technologies threatened to change the world… but didn’t. They ended up being temporary fads that were quickly forgotten.
Fast-forward to 2025. The games industry is massive. So many people play games in some form or another that the idea of a total market collapse or “crash” is beyond far-fetched. That isn’t to say there won’t be changes and shake-ups – whole companies could disappear, including brands that seem massive and unassailable right now. Overpriced games and hardware are going to be challenges, too. Changing technology – like generative A.I. – could also prove to be hugely disruptive, and there could be new hardware, virtual reality, and all sorts.
But a 1983-style crash? Gaming as a whole on the brink of disappearing altogether? It ain’t gonna happen! There is still innovation in the industry, though these days a lot of it is being driven by independent studios. Some of these companies, which are small outfits right now, could be the big corporations of tomorrow, and some of the biggest names in the industry today will almost certainly fall by the wayside. Just ask the likes of Interplay, Spectrum HoloByte, and Atari. But whatever may happen, there will still be games, there will still be big-budget games, and there will still be hardware to play those games on. Changes are coming, of that I have no doubt. But there won’t be another industry crash that comes close to what happened in ’83.
“Hot Take” #4: Nintendo’s die-hard fans give the company way too much leniency and support – even for horribly anti-consumer shenanigans.
If you dare to criticise Nintendo, fans are going to riot!
I consider myself a fan of Nintendo’s games… some of them, at least. I’ve owned every Nintendo console from the SNES to the first Switch, and unless something major comes along to dissuade me, I daresay I’ll eventually shell out for a Switch 2, too. But I’m not a Nintendo super-fan, buying every game without question… and some of those folks, in my opinion at least, are far too quick to defend the practices of a greedy corporation that doesn’t care about them in the slightest.
Nintendo isn’t much different from the likes of Ubisoft, Activision, Electronic Arts, Sony, Sega, and other massive publishers in terms of its business practices and its approach to the industry. But none of those companies have such a well-trained legion of die-hard apologists, ready to cover for them no matter how badly they screw up. Nintendo fans will happily leap to the defence of their favourite multi-billion dollar corporation for things they’d rightly criticise any other gaming company for. Price hikes, bad-value DLC, lawsuits against competitors or fans, underbaked and incomplete games… Nintendo is guilty of all of these things, yet if you bring up these points, at least in some corners of the internet, there are thousands of Nintendo fans piling on, shouting you down.
Welcome Tour.
Obviously the recent launch of the Switch 2 has driven this point home for me. The console comes with a very high price tag, expensive add-ons, a paid-for title that should’ve been bundled with the system, an eShop full of low-quality shovelware, literally only one exclusive launch title, and over-inflated prices for its first-party games. But all of these points have been defended to the death by Nintendo’s super-fans; criticising even the shitty, overpriced non-entity Welcome Tour draws as much vitriol and hate as if you’d personally shat in their mother’s handbag.
Very few other corporations in the games industry enjoy this level of protection from a legion of well-trained – and pretty toxic – super-fans. And it’s just… odd. Nintendo has made its share of genuinely bad games. Nintendo has made plenty of poor decisions over the years. Nintendo prioritises profit over everything else, including its own fans and employees. Nintendo is overly litigious, suing everyone from competitors to its own fans. And Nintendo has taken actions that are damaging to players, families, and the industry as a whole. Gamers criticise other companies when they behave this way; Electronic Arts is routinely named as one of America’s “most-hated companies,” for instance. But Nintendo fans are content to give the corporation cover, even for its worst and most egregious sins. They seem to behave like fans of a sports team, insistent that “team red” can do no wrong. I just don’t understand it.
“Hot Take” #5: “Woke” is not synonymous with “bad.” (And many of the people crying about games being “woke” can’t even define the word.)
He seems like a reasonable man…
In some weird corners of social media, a game (or film or TV show) is decreed “woke” if a character happens to be LGBT+ or from a minority ethnic group. And if such a character is featured prominently in pre-release marketing material… that can be enough to start the hate and review-bombing before anyone has even picked up a control pad. The expression “go woke, go broke” does the rounds a lot… but there are many, many counter-examples that completely disprove this point.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a game where: the player character can be any gender, and their gender is not defined by their genitals. Players can choose to engage in same-sex relationships, practically all of the companion NPCs are pansexual, and there are different races and ethnicities represented throughout the game world. But Baldur’s Gate 3 sold incredibly well, and will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the best games of the decade. So… is it “woke?” If so, why didn’t it “go broke?”
The famously not-woke-at-all Baldur’s Gate 3.
Many “anti-wokers” claim that they aren’t really mad about women in leading roles, minority ethnic characters, or LGBT+ representation, but “bad writing.” And I will absolutely agree that there are some games out there that are genuinely poorly-written, or which have stories I just did not care for in the least. The Last Of Us Part II is a great example of this – the game’s entire narrative was based on an attempt to be creative and subversive, but it hacked away at too many of the fundamentals of storytelling to be satisfying and enjoyable. But you know what wasn’t the problem with The Last Of Us Part II? The fact that one of its secondary characters was trans and another female character was muscular.
Good games can be “woke” and “woke” games can be good. “Woke” games can also be bad, either for totally unrelated reasons or, in some cases, because they got too preachy. But to dismiss a game out of hand – often without playing it or before it’s even launched – because some armchair critic on YouTube declared it to be “woke” is just silly. Not only that, but there are many games that contain themes, storylines, or characters that could be reasonably described as “woke” that seem to be completely overlooked by the very folks who claim it’s their mission to “end wokeness.” The so-called culture war is just a very odd thing, and it’s sad to see how it’s impacted gaming. I would never tell anyone they “must” play or not play certain games, but I think it’s a shame if people miss out on genuinely fun experiences because of a perception of some ill-defined political concept that, in most cases, doesn’t have much to do with the game at all.
So that’s it!
It’s a-me, Mario!
We’ve looked at a few more of my infamous “hot takes!” I hope it’s been a bit of fun… and not something to get too upset about! It’s totally okay to disagree, and one of the great things about gaming nowadays is that there’s plenty of choice. If you like a game that I don’t, or I enjoy a genre you find boring… that’s okay. If you’re a super-fan of something that I’m not interested in… we can still be friends. Even if we don’t agree politically, we ought to be able to have a civil and reasonable conversation without screaming, yelling, or name-calling!
Be sure to check out some of my other “hot takes.” I’ve linked a few other pieces below. And I daresay there’ll be more of these one day soon… I keep finding things in gaming to disagree with, for some reason. It must be because I’m getting grumpy in my old age; I’m just a big ol’ sourpuss!
Have fun out there, and happy gaming!
All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective publisher, developer, and/or studio. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1, 2, and 3, Star Trek: Enterprise Season 4, and Star Trek: The Original Series Season 1.
It’s been more than five years since I set up this website. In that time, I’ve written hundreds – literally hundreds – of articles, essays, and reviews all about Star Trek. But this’ll be the first time I’ve written up a full re-watch of an episode of The Original Series. I must be the first Trekkie in history to write up a re-watch of an episode of The Animated Series before The Original Series! But this catastrophic failure of Trekkie-dom comes to an end today, as we sit down together to watch the classic first season episode Arena.
I’m going to split this article into two parts. We’ll talk about Arena on its face, including some of the episode’s production history – and the reason why the creator of the iconic Gorn costume went uncredited and unknown for almost a decade after the episode aired – and then we’ll talk about the Gorn themselves in a bit more detail. Spoiler alert if you haven’t watched Strange New Worlds and still plan to, but the Gorn appear prominently in that show. That’s actually part of the reason why I wanted to re-visit Arena ahead of the third season premiere!
The Gorn and Captain Kirk…
Arena is an iconic episode – and the Gorn captain has to be one of The Original Series’ most recognisable villains. In fact, I was a little surprised not to see Arena on the list when I did my recent recap of IMDB’s top-rated Star Trek episodes – according to that site’s users, Arena ranks a measly 19th out of The Original Series’ 79 episodes! I think I’d have put it a fair bit higher than that; it’s gotta be a top ten episode, at the very least! It has a strong story, expanding our understanding of the Federation, while also containing enough of that esoteric sci-fi “weirdness” that makes Star Trek the franchise we know and love.
It’s also best-known, of course, as “the Gorn episode,” introducing the famous reptillian species to the franchise. But Arena is as much about another alien race – the Metrons – as it is about the Gorn. The Metrons feel, with the benefit of decades of hindsight now, almost like a prototype of what would become the Q Continuum – millennia ahead of the Federation, considering themselves to be enlightened, but not above a bit of interference in galactic affairs. The Metrons have never returned to Star Trek, though, and I can kind of understand why: for a “morality play” like Arena, they work well as a somewhat neutral arbiter. But as the franchise has expanded, we’ve seen fewer of these kinds of stories. Modern Star Trek in particular lends itself much more to the inclusion of the Gorn than it does the Metrons!
An unnamed Metron from the end of the episode.
Because the battle at Vasquez Rocks is so well-remembered, it can be easy to overlook the first part of Arena – but the away mission to Cestus III is one of the first season’s most tense combat sequences. Drawing on war films for inspiration, with an unseen enemy and whistling noises reminiscent of World War II-era mortars, the entire away mission to the destroyed outpost is – for the time, anyway – really exciting stuff. This is also one of the first away missions to be shot on location – i.e. not on a sound stage or backlot. Following the previous episode, Shore Leave, which was also shot in the Los Angeles area, Arena took the cast and crew to a set near Vasquez Rocks which had been built a few years earlier for a different television series.
I think I’m right in saying that it’s this away mission sequence in Arena, which used several pyrotechnic explosions to create the effect of the Gorn attack, that led to both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy suffering from tinnitus – a condition that causes ringing in the ears and can be painful. The Original Series used pyrotechics throughout its run, but this battle sequence pushed the performers to act in close proximity to these explosive devices. Knowing the impact the sequence had on the actors, that does taint how we view it. Because as exciting and intense as the Cestus III mission was, no television scene is worth suffering from life-long after-effects.
One of the explosions on Cestus III.
The first part of Arena, it could be argued, plays out similarly to Balance of Terror, which would’ve premiered just a month or so earlier. The attack on a Federation outpost, pursuing a powerful but unseen enemy… it starts the story in a familiar way. But the episode soon takes a completely different turn with the intervention of the Metrons. What begins with a deadly raid and an attack on the away team seems to be building up to another starship battle – but just as the Enterprise seems to be catching up to the Gorn vessel, the Metrons rebuke both ships and crews for their violent nature.
The Metrons are an interesting addition to the story. Rather than just another enemy encounter or a straightforward action story, their intervention puts a different spin on things. Kirk, who seemed hell-bent on revenge at first, is forced to confront the way he handled the interaction, and this idea of revenge at any cost – mutually assured destruction, perhaps – is thrust into the spotlight in an uncomfortable way.
Spock, Kirk, and the crew on the bridge while the chase unfolded.
That’s part of the context behind Arena, this idea that seeking revenge isn’t healthy and is, in itself, a violent urge. But there’s more to it than that. The revelation that the Gorn considered Cestus III to be one of their planets, and that’s why they attacked the outpost, reframes things for Kirk, Bones, and the rest of the crew. The Federation may not have been aware of the Gorn claim, but either way, they settled an outpost on a planet that someone else considered to be their territory. There’s another analogy here that I think is particularly interesting.
The Original Series draws inspiration from the western genre. The idea of space as a new “frontier” conjures images of the wild west, and in Arena itself, Kirk refers to himself and the Enterprise as the only lawmen in this region of the galaxy. The Gorn, therefore, are this story’s metaphorical Native Americans, having a pre-existing claim to the land and attacking the Federation settlers who’d moved in on their territory. Maybe that wasn’t exactly how the story was written, but I think that reading is there, just beneath the surface. And for the 1960s – when the western genre was still riding high at the box office, with films like El Dorado, Ride in the Whirlwind, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – that’s kind of a progressive idea. To make the point that, in this case, the Federation may have been in the wrong… that’s a pretty neat inversion of the typical western-inspired frontier story.
Dr McCoy put it best: “we could be in the wrong.”
Vasquez Rocks has become an iconic location within the Star Trek franchise, and that really began here in Arena. The filming location, which is just inside the famous “thirty-mile zone” around the film studios in Los Angeles, has appeared in The Next Generation, Voyager, Enterprise, Picard, and two of the Kelvin films as well as The Original Series and The Voyage Home. It was a great choice for Kirk’s battle against the Gorn commander, and even though I’ve criticised some modern Star Trek productions for re-using the same filming locations too often, I think Vasquez Rocks is such an iconic spot that it gets a pass!
I absolutely love the original Gorn design, and even though it might not be as “realistic” as the updated variant seen in Strange New Worlds… I think there’s something special about the original costume. I always compared the Gorn to a Tyrannosaurus Rex – but that’s because I first watched Arena after having seen Jurassic Park in the mid 1990s! The design draws inspiration from real-world reptiles like the komodo dragon, using reflective, almost insect-like eyes and needle-sharp teeth to complement the monstrous design.
I just love this costume.
Wah Chang designed the Gorn costume as well as many other iconic Star Trek props. The tricorder, the flip-open communicator, and tribbles were all his creations – but he went uncredited for all of it, and was unknown until members of the Star Trek fan community uncovered his role in the 1970s. Chang seems to have been commissioned by Desilu – Star Trek’s production company – in a weird legal grey area; director and producer Bob Justman wanted to use Chang’s work, but Chang wasn’t a member of the prop-makers union. In a kind of workaround, Desilu would “purchase” items from Chang, but he was never credited on screen for any of his creations.
This is another great example of the early Star Trek fan community pulling together! Chang’s role was eventually uncovered in the 1970s by Trekkies, who were keen to find out more about some of the show’s iconic props and designs. It’s one of those fun little stories that, were it not for the dedication of fans, would’ve simply never come to light. Chang’s contributions to Star Trek – not only the episode Arena, but really across the entire first season – helped to define the look and feel of this vision of the 23rd Century. Who knows where Star Trek would’ve been without him?
The original Gorn costume.
There are some great moments between Kirk and Spock in Arena, as they wrangle with the aftermath of the Gorn attack on Cestus III and what it could mean. In the context of Arena itself, disregarding any other Gorn stories, we can see both points of view. Kirk argues that the attack – which seems, at first, to be completely unprovoked – could be the precursor to a wider invasion, and as the only ship in the area, it falls to the Enterprise to prevent that. But Spock is also correct – without more information about what happened, who perpetrated the attack, and why… Kirk is kind of jumping to conclusions. His line about seeking revenge hits particularly hard.
We’ll get into this more in a moment when we discuss the Gorn, but this is one area where more recent Star Trek productions – and Strange New Worlds in particular – arguably re-frame this conversation. As a veteran of conflicts against the Gorn while serving under Pike’s command, Spock is acutely aware of how bloodthirsty and vicious the Gorn can be, and how single-minded they are when staking their claims to planets that the Federation already occupies. There is wiggle-room here, and nothing in Strange New Worlds explicitly contradicts Arena (at least as of the end of Season 2). But it does change how we perceive these conversations – which, it shouldn’t need to be said, supposedly take place a decade or so after the events of that show.
The conversation in Kirk’s cabin.
Kirk’s hand-to-hand battle with the Gorn captain is a ton of fun. The lumbering monster reminds me of the titular Creature from the Black Lagoon with its heavy rubber suit and somewhat clumsy movements, and I just really love that kind of old-school style of creature design. The rubber suit may be old-fashioned compared to, say, the new dinosaur-inspired Gorn depiction from Strange New Worlds… but I think it’s light-years ahead of the awful CGI rendition that we got in Enterprise! The very “sixties” fabric used for the Gorn captain’s uniform just adds to the charm.
The fight has its tense and serious moments. Kirk’s two-handed attack, which we’ve seen him use to great effect across the show’s first season, has absolutely no impact on the powerful and muscular Gorn, which was interesting. We also see the Gorn’s own ingenuity as he devises a trap – Kirk ends up injured and seemingly about to be impaled… just in time for the ad break! But the fight also has moments that, almost sixty years later, seem almost cartoonish or campy. The obviously polystyrene rocks – which look even less convincing in HD on a large television set – are part of that.
The Gorn captain.
Then there’s Kirk’s “Wile E. Coyote” moment! Sneaking up on the Gorn captain from atop Vasquez Rocks, Kirk plans to drop a very large boulder on his opponent. And look, I get it: it’s a smart move given the circumstances. But the way this sequence is framed and shot makes it look like something straight out of the old Road Runner cartoon. It’s a ton of fun, but perhaps less tense or serious to a modern audience than it was intended to be in 1966!
The fight ends with Kirk choosing to show mercy to his defeated and injured opponent, impressing the Metrons and showing that, despite his earlier feelings about the attack on Cestus III, Kirk has learned something from the experience. His final conversation with Spock suggests that Federation diplomats might be able to contact the Gorn and peacefully resolve the Cestus III dispute. This resolution was clearly successful, because according to Deep Space Nine, Cestus III had a Federation colony again in the 24th Century… though we never saw this on screen for ourselves!
Captain Kirk’s plan was clearly inspired by the great tactician Wile E. Coyote.
With Strange New Worlds’ third season coming up, I want to talk a little bit more about the Gorn, and how Arena still has relevance to Star Trek today.
The Gorn have become Strange New Worlds’ most important villain, filling a role that the Klingons arguably did in The Original Series, the Borg did in The Next Generation, or the Cardassians and Dominion did in Deep Space Nine. Gorn stories have had profound impacts on Pike and the crew, from La’an’s tragic backstory, through Hemmer’s untimely death, and ultimately leading to the attack on Parnassus Beta, the infection of Captain Batel, and the abduction of Ortegas and many surviving colonists.
Strange New Worlds took the barest of outlines of the Gorn – a race who, since Arena, had only made a couple of other appearances in Star Trek – and changed them into a genuinely intimidating and threatening villain. Strange New Worlds’ depiction of the Gorn blends together the likes of Jurassic Park’s velociraptors with Alien’s iconic Xenomorphs. The new series takes the foundation established by Arena – that the Gorn are kind of monstrous reptillians – but pads it out with newer inspirations from the horror and sci-fi genres.
An updated depiction of the Gorn from Strange New Worlds.
If you take a straight reading of Star Trek as a whole, from the point of view of a “canon purist,” then I guess I can understand why this change might not work. It *is* a change, at the end of the day, and with Strange New Worlds being a prequel, the fact that a major conflict against the Gorn happened just a few years earlier – involving several of the same characters – arguably gets close to treading on Arena’s toes. I’m not a “canon purist,” though, and I’m perfectly happy to enjoy both of these different depictions of the Gorn on their own terms.
I wish I had the photoshop skills to bring Arena’s Gorn captain into Strange New Worlds! I think that would be a really funny visual, and would make a great little Star Trek meme. Highlighting the differences in these depictions would be fun, and much of that would come from how different they appear to be – even though, I would argue, in terms of how they’re depicted, the Gorn aren’t actually all that inconsistent.
A Gorn from the Strange New World Season 3 trailer.
Think about it: the attack on Cestus III and the total destruction the Gorn wrought isn’t far off what we see on Parnassus Beta in Strange New Worlds. The Gorn captain still makes the same kinds of horror-inspired “monster” noises, emphasising how different this life-form is to our familiar characters. The differences are really twofold: the limitations of the visual effects of the time compared to a more modern production with a higher budget, and perhaps more importantly, the limitations imposed on broadcast television at the time in terms of how graphic and horrifying visuals could be. For the mid-1960s, the Gorn captain is pure horror – and I think we can forget that because of how much time has elapsed and the kinds of things television shows today can do that they couldn’t do back then.
All that being said, I still adore the original Gorn design. I think it was incredibly creative, and Arena is just a fantastic episode all around, really. I think the parts we tend to overlook – the mission to Cestus III, the spaceship chase, and the involvement of the Metrons – are arguably the story’s most interesting parts, and to reduce Arena to Kirk and the Gorn squabbling in the desert is incredibly reductive and does Arena a huge disservice.
Captain Kirk fires his makeshift cannon.
So that’s it for now. The Gorn are coming back, though… and soon! Strange New Worlds’ third season is just a couple of weeks away at time of writing, and I’m really looking forward to the resolution of the cliffhanger from Hegemony last season. I’ll do my best to write up reviews of Hegemony, Part II and the rest of the episodes in a more timely fashion this time around!
I hope this has been a bit of fun. I’ve been wanting to do a full write-up of an Original Series episode for ages, but I kept putting it on the back burner for one reason or another. Stay tuned, though, because I’ll definitely return to Star Trek’s roots before too long! I’d love to tackle one of my favourite episodes next: The Doomsday Machine! I have no idea when that’ll be… but one of these days, for sure.
Live Long and Prosper!
Star Trek: The Original Series (a.k.a. Star Trek) is available to stream now on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available. The series is also available on DVD and Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including The Original Series, Strange New Worlds, and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are no major story spoilers for Dynasty Warriors: Origins, but minor spoilers may be present. All screenshots and images are from the first couple of hours of the story.
I usually go for games with deep worlds, rich character development, and engaging stories. But once in a while, it’s nice to step back from that and just button-mash my way through wave upon wave of enemies – and that’s precisely what I’ve been doing with Dynasty Warriors: Origins!
My relationship with this long-running series is… sparse, to say the least! Back in the PlayStation 2 era, I had a blast playing Dynasty Warriors 2 at a friend’s house, but until now, that was the only game in the series I’d ever played. I remember being impressed by the number of enemies on screen; twenty-five years ago, there really wasn’t anything quite like it! In fact, Shenmue’s climactic battle at the end of the game was the only thing that I can remember coming close at the time.
Battling the Yellow Turban army.
A few years ago, Dynasty Warriors 9 got torn to shreds by reviewers for its poorly-implemented and sparse open world design, one which left fans of the series and casual players alike severely disappointed. Origins appears to be Omega Force’s response to those criticisms, bringing the game closer to earlier entries in the series – while retaining a sense of scale thanks to a navigable map screen. If you know me, you’ll know I loathe publishers and developers forcing the open world model onto games that are completely unsuited to it… so for my money, I think it’s great that the Dynasty Warriors series has learned its lesson!
At the start of this year, and even as the game launched, Dynasty Warriors: Origins just wasn’t on my radar. It’s not the kind of game I’d usually go for, especially nowadays with arthritis in my hands making it more difficult than ever to play games with complicated button combos and parrying. Ugh – parrying. But thankfully, Origins has a solid easy mode, which meant I could play through the game at my own pace. I’m glad to see this kind of accessibility feature in a game like this; other developers could learn a thing or two from Omega Force in that regard!
A mysterious ally…
Despite my flippant remarks at the beginning, Dynasty Warriors: Origins has a story. It’s just that, for me at least, it came secondary to the gameplay and fun battle sequences, and it wasn’t something I felt particularly engaged with. In one sense, I’d argue the game’s story – and the way it’s performed – feels like a throwback to games of the PlayStation 2 era; dodgy voice acting and pretty basic cut-scenes made it feel like I’d stepped back in time to the turn of the millennium! Despite how that might sound, I actually mean it in a positive sense. Dynasty Warriors: Origins is a video game that puts gameplay front-and-centre, and the story scenes add to its old-school charm.
Not only that, but I found it to be a game I could dip in and out of with ease. While waiting for a delivery, I could jump into a battle. During an afternoon break, I could skirmish with some bandits. While my sausages were roasting in the oven, I had time to beat a Yellow Turban general. Being able to jump into the game for a few minutes and play through a short battle, or just scour the map-overworld for hidden collectables, turned out to be a ton of fun. There was no real commitment; the game didn’t demand hours of my time with cut-scenes, sparse checkpoints, or overly long, convoluted level design. I found myself appreciating that side of things way more than I expected.
It’s easy to jump into the game for a short time, play a skirmish or two, then do something else.
So far, it sounds like I’m shitting all over Dynasty Warriors: Origins’ story by saying it was unimportant, uninteresting, or just secondary to gameplay. While the latter is certainly true, both the overarching story of the Yellow Turban revolt and the personal story of the nameless Wanderer weren’t just fluff, and the game was definitely better for weaving its battles and skirmishes into one cohesive narrative. But this isn’t a story-laden game, in my opinion, and as someone unfamiliar with more than a quarter of a century of series lore, I found the game’s light touch on the narrative side of things to be great. I could follow what was going on, there were elements of mystery as the Wanderer suffered from a bout of “protagonist’s amnesia,” and the secondary characters were compelling enough – even though the voice acting felt, I’m sorry to say, rather amateurish!
But far from being a distraction, I just found that to be part of the game’s old-school charm. In the early days of voice-acted games, vocal performances could be quite poor. The technical side of things is usually great, but at least in the Anglosphere, we haven’t really had a plethora of top-notch voice actors. Other languages, where dubbing of films and TV shows are commonplace, might not find this to be the case! But in English, at least, it took a while for video games to really land decent voice actors. While no one in Dynasty Warriors: Origins was out-and-out bad… there was definitely a distinctly retro charm to some of the voice acting. Maybe if you come to the game from a masterpiece like Red Dead Redemption II you’d be turned off… but for me, I just took it in my stride, I guess!
Voice acting was charmingly… old-school.
Sticking with audio, the game’s soundtrack was absolutely fantastic – a “bop,” to use some Gen Z slang. I don’t know the name for this style of music – fast-tempo guitar and synthesiser music that’s totally anachronistic to the setting, but fits perfectly with the hectic, fast-paced hack-and-slash gameplay. The music really amps things up and brings these battlefields to life in a really fun way. It reminds me of certain other Japanese games in different genres: F-Zero, for instance, or Space Harrier. It’s definitely “video game music,” but with a fast tempo and really fun, upbeat style.
My usual red line is that music in any piece of media – film, TV, game, or anything else – should first and foremost “do no harm;” it mustn’t take the viewer or player out of the scene. In many cases, a good soundtrack or score blends into the work, going unnoticed but subconsciously elevating scenes, setting the mood, and so on. In Dynasty Warriors: Origins… the music punched me in the face, grabbed me by the ears, and didn’t let go! I might’ve objected to that; the anachronistic soundtrack could’ve felt too heavy and too dominant – but I ended up having a really great time with it. The music and battles just blend together so incredibly well, and far from being a problem, the domineering score actually made those battles feel so much more… epic.
A truly epic moment, elevated by a wonderful soundtrack.
It’s been close to a quarter of a century since I played Dynasty Warriors 2 at my friend’s place, but I was amazed at how familiar Origins felt compared to those memories and recollections. I might’ve played Dynasty Warriors 2 a dozen or so times, at the very most, but it left an impression thanks to its large-scale battles and seemingly vast numbers of enemies. Origins brought back those memories for me, and I could feel myself being transported back in time to shortly after the turn of the millennium – when I had hair long enough to tie back in a ponytail, and I was saving up money from my Saturday job to afford a Dreamcast!
Memory is a fascinating thing. And I’m sure if I went back to Dynasty Warriors 2 today – especially now, after having just played Origins – it wouldn’t feel the same; the graphics would seem outdated, the controls clunky, and the world would undoubtedly feel smaller than I remember! But Origins… it managed to feel exactly like those memories of playing Dynasty Warriors 2, memories that I hadn’t really thought about or dwelt on for a long time.
Origins took me back in time… not just to Ancient China, but to the turn of the millennium!
Last year, I wrote about EA Sports PGA Tour – a golf game from Electronic Arts. I talked about how golf is something I really don’t give a toss about in real life, but I’ve enjoyed a few golf games over the years, going back to Actua Golf 2 on the PC in the 1990s. Playing PGA Tour last year brought back those old memories of playing Actua Golf 2, as well as recollections of messing about with the golf game in Wii Sports a few years later! Dynasty Warriors: Origins has kind of done the same thing by bringing up those old memories of playing Dynasty Warriors 2 in my friend’s tiny bedroom.
I’m glad that I picked up this game. I saw a couple of reviews of it earlier in the year, and something about it just jumped out at me. Those old memories resurfaced for the first time in, well, decades, I guess, and Dynasty Warriors: Origins just felt like something I needed to play for myself. There’s always a danger that returning to something so long after the fact will be anticlimactic… but if there’s one thing I can say about Origins it’s that I’d never use that word to describe it! It’s fast-paced, hectic, and a ton of fun… as well as being a blast of nostalgia.
Killing an enemy general.
I’m reasonably confident in saying that in Dynasty Warriors 2 – and, I assume, most of the other games in the series – you’d choose from one of several unique, pre-made characters for battles and story missions. Origins presents you with a main protagonist, though there are a handful of other “companions” who you can switch to during some battles. The protagonist – the Wanderer – has pretty limited options for customisation. I’m someone who generally likes customisation options, so I’d have happily included a bit more on that front. There are a couple of different character outfits – and a few others locked behind the game’s pre-order versions.
Customisation is pretty limited, then! But I’ve said more than once that not every game needs complicated options, so for what Dynasty Warriors: Origins is, I guess it’s okay that there aren’t things like hairstyles or individual costume pieces to choose from. I still think those could’ve been fun additions, but their absence wasn’t some kind of “fatal flaw” that ruined the game for me. I just think it’s worth noting that, although you get a single playable character and can choose their name, your options for customising their appearance are severely limited. That’s a bit of a shame, because Origins has a pretty fun photo mode, and not being able to customise your character limits the usefulness of photo mode, to a degree.
There are very limited outfit choices and no other character customisation options.
Levelling up was interesting. Origins is quite generous with its skill points – but then, a lot of the options to unlock require huge amounts of points! So you’re still having to save up, even if you level up regularly. There are choices during the levelling up process, but a lot of these came down to priorities; do you want more health first, or a better attack? You’re gonna get both anyway – you kind of have to, unless you choose not to spend your skill points. But you can choose, at least, in what order to level up. This does get a bit more in-depth as the game progresses.
As above, I don’t think every game needs a complex RPG-inspired levelling system, and to be honest Origins would probably have been fine without this being included at all. However, it did add a bit of interest beyond simply choosing different weapons, and I didn’t feel it was overcomplicated on its face. I usually choose to level up health and stamina first, then weapons and damage – but players who want to go the other way, or who want to unlock specific moves, have those options.
Jumping through the air, slashing at baddies!
Because of the way the story progresses, there are battles and missions that can’t be completed. Without getting into spoiler territory, Origins presents you with a choice of factions partway through, and when you’ve made your choice, missions and battles tied to the factions you didn’t pick are locked. This adds replayability to the game, of course – and you can create a save point right before the moment of choice if you know it’s coming, so it’s possible to go back and just replay that portion of the game without all of the preamble.
Given how I wasn’t all that invested in the characters and story… I don’t think I’m gonna go back and do that! At least not right now. I had fun with Origins, but I don’t need to see every possible faction, boss, battle, and ending all at once. If and when I go back to the game, though, it’s nice to know that there are differences that will change the experience. Origins isn’t a linear game in that sense.
An early training/tutorial mission.
I generally liked the way levels and battlefields were laid out. There was a good mix of narrower paths and wider, expansive areas. The narrow pathways funnel enemies at you in larger, denser waves – which could be a ton of fun! – and they also keep you on the right track; in the chaos of a massive battle, it could be easy to wander off and get lost. The more open, expansive areas tended to be where bosses entered the battlefield, but these also allowed for waves of enemies to come at you from different angles in flanking manoeuvres.
One thing you find pretty quickly is that, for skirmishes and smaller, optional battles, these battlefields are reused. For smaller-scale skirmishes, different areas can be sectioned off so you aren’t always playing on the exact same area every time – and I think I’m right in saying that there are also different times of day and weather conditions that can trigger. But you soon come to see the same layouts and landmarks, even if you’re fighting different factions or enemy types. I didn’t find this to be immersion-breaking, or anything, largely because of the frenetic pace of these engagements! But I thought it worth noting that these levels are repeated throughout the game.
A battlefield map.
So I think we’d better wrap things up; I’ve rambled on for long enough!
Dynasty Warriors: Origins was a ton of fun, and a game I’m happy to recommend to fans of action, hack-and-slash, and the kinds of “double-A” video games that used to be commonplace in years gone by. For me, it was an unexpected blast of nostalgia, taking me back to memories of playing Dynasty Warriors 2 on my friend’s PlayStation 2 a quarter of a century ago. The core gameplay of this series doesn’t feel like it’s changed very much since then – which I mean in a positive way.
However, if what you want from your games are complex role-playing or simulation elements, or a realistic, immersive story… I don’t think that’s what you get from Dynasty Warriors: Origins. It’s not a cinematic experience… it’s a hack-and-slash video game. A lot of the time, I want those intense, detailed worlds, believable characters, and gripping storylines. But every once in a while, it’s nice to kick back and cut my way through a legion of unnamed baddies while listening to an epic soundtrack! I had a great time with the game – and maybe you will, too.
Dynasty Warriors: Origins is out now for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, and PC. Dynasty Warriors: Origins is the copyright of Omega Force and/or Koei Tecmo. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Beware minor spoilers for some of the entries on this list.
You’ve made it to the halfway point! That’s right: by my reckoning, the end of June marks the halfway point of the year, which I think makes it a great moment to look ahead and think about some of the entertainment experiences that await us. This piece isn’t for dishing out made-up awards and trophies; that’ll come at the end of December! No, what we’re gonna do today is take a look at five films, five games, and five TV programmes that are scheduled to arrive between now and New Year’s Eve.
Has the first half of this year gone by quickly? I think it’s a bit of a cliché to complain about the passage of time, but it really doesn’t seem like it’s been six months since I was taking down the Christmas tree! And yes, we’ll be thinking about Christmas again before you know it.
I’m already thinking about it…
But until then, we’ve got a summer and an autumn to get through – with plenty of interesting-looking entertainment experiences lying ahead. As I said, I’ve picked five films, five games, and five TV shows that I think could be fun as the second half of 2025 gets underway.
As always, I have a couple of caveats. Firstly, this list is just one person’s subjective opinion, so if I recommend a production you don’t care for or miss something that you think should’ve been obvious… that’s okay! There are plenty of things to be excited for this year, and we won’t always agree on which ones look best! Secondly, all titles below are on the schedule for 2025 at time of writing, but with everything going on in the world, some or even all of them might miss their intended release dates. Finally, I’ve grouped the list into three categories, but the individual productions are listed randomly, not ranked in order of what I’m most keen on!
With all of that out of the way, let’s dive into the list.
Film #1: Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
Biopics of musicians have been all the rage in recent years. After Bob Dylan, Elton John, Elvis Presley, and other performers have had their lives dramatised… in 2025 it’s the turn of Bruce Springsteen. I’m a pretty big Springsteen fan; his folk album We Shall Overcome (The Seeger Sessions) is one of my absolute favourite albums, though of course he’s better-known for his rock stuff!
Deliver Me From Nowhere is set during the creation of Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska – the album that spawned Atlantic City. I think it has the potential to be an interesting re-telling of an important chapter in the singer’s life, as well as an entertaining film to boot. If nothing else, it’s gonna have a great soundtrack!
Film #2: I Know What You Did Last Summer
Do we call this a sequel? A remake? A squemake? Whatever it is, I’m cautiously interested! The original I Know What You Did Last Summer, which was released in 1997, is one of those not-so-great films that had an impact on me because of when I watched it! I went to the cinema with some friends, with no plans for what we were gonna watch, and we picked this horror/slasher film at the last minute, not really sure what to expect. I found I Know What You Did Last Summer to be riveting stuff as a teenager, and even though I don’t think it makes such a good impression these days, it has a place in my heart for that reason.
Whether this adaptation/sequel will recapture the magic remains to be seen – but I think there are some reasons to be hopeful. Returning characters from the original, combined with a new story, could make for an interesting film… but we’ll see.
Film #3: Brick
I really don’t know what to expect from this German-language mystery-thriller – but the premise alone has me intrigued. Some people awaken to find their apartment building surrounded by an apparently impermeable wall, with no way in or out. The trailer showed several different characters in various apartments, some of whom may know something about what’s going on and why.
The film definitely feels “Netflixy,” if you get my meaning. But I think there’s enough of an interesting premise to carry the story, and it could end up being something of a sleeper hit. Maybe I’m wrong about that – but I’m eager to find out.
Film #4: Zootopia 2
Disney is still really into its sequels, eh? A follow-up to 2016’s smash hit, Zootopia 2 will see Judy and Nick back in action – this time both as members of Zootopia’s police force. The story will involve a renegade snake… and that’s about all we know so far! The original Zootopia was fun, though I admit I haven’t seen the Disney+ miniseries from a couple of years ago. Still, a return to this world could be entertaining, especially for the little ones.
In 2016, Zootopia and Moana seemed to clash, but this time Disney has managed to keep their sequels a year or so apart – which is good! Whether either of those films really needed sequels, though… well, I guess we’re about to find out.
Film #5: In Your Dreams
Another animated film now. In Your Dreams has a creative premise: two kids entering the dream world, looking to find the Sandman. I’m getting kind of a Spellbound vibe here, insofar as both films deal with kids trying to help their parents. The trailer was cute, and Netflix has done well with some of its animated pictures in recent years – so there’s definitely reason to be hopeful!
I just think the film looks great, and with Disney – as mentioned – focused on sequels, spin-offs, and remakes, there’s plenty of room for a studio like Netflix to muscle in and stake a claim in the animated realm. Last year’s Spellbound was one of my favourite films of the year, so In Your Dreams has the potential to build on that success.
Video Game #1: Donkey Kong Bananza
I don’t have a Switch 2, so chances are I won’t play Donkey Kong Bananza this year! And there are reasons to be sceptical of the game; I’m getting “double-A,” kind of mid-tier vibes from everything I’ve seen so far. However… as a big fan of DK’s last 3D adventure – Donkey Kong 64, which was more than a quarter of a century ago! – I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t intrigued. A recent trailer showing off Pauline – who appeared in the original arcade game and has recently become a mainline Super Mario character – has also piqued my curiosity.
As I said when discussing the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2: this isn’t the game you buy an expensive console for. But if I eventually get my hands on a Switch 2, I can absolutely see myself picking up Donkey Kong Bananza if for no other reason than to have another 3D adventure and maybe get some of those nostalgic Donkey Kong 64 feels!
Video Game #2: Mafia: The Old Country
I remember the original Mafia on the Xbox – I expected it to just be a ’30s Grand Theft Auto III clone! The game was a lot of fun in its own right, though, with a strong, engaging story populated by fun characters, not just film noir caricatures. Mafia: The Old Country is going to step back in time and hop across the Atlantic to Sicily, focusing on the growth of the Cosa Nostra at the turn of the last century. I really like this idea; not only the time period but the Sicilian location seem like they could be a ton of fun – and something a bit different.
The Mafia trilogy was remade from the ground up a few years ago, and the remakes are also well worth playing for any fan of third-person action-adventure games. It’s my hope that The Old Country will be in the same vein, and will tell an exciting and compelling crime story. I don’t want to fully board the hype train for any unreleased title… but I have high hopes for this one!
Video Game #3: Crimson Desert
At time of writing, Crimson Desert is still on the schedule for later this year. However, it’s been a while since we heard much about the game, though some journalists got to see it at one of the recent games industry events. In short… I’m not sure if we should expect a delay! But the game looks fantastic; a large fantasy open world that promises plenty to do and different ways to play.
Developers Pearl Abyss are well known for Black Desert Online, which is now over a decade old but still has a dedicated community. I think there are plenty of reasons to look at Crimson Desert with optimism… though, as mentioned, I wouldn’t be shocked if a delay pushes it back into 2026. Of all the games we’ve talked about today, this feels like the most likely one to miss its release window.
Video Game #4: Terminator 2D: No Fate
Playing through the events of Terminator 2: Judgement Day in a game that looks like it was made for the SNES? Sign me up, that sounds perfect! Everything I’ve seen of Terminator 2D: No Fate just gives me the nostalgic feels; like I’m a kid again, playing my SNES after school with some licensed side-scrolling game like Alien 3 or Super Star Wars. The graphics look perfect, the gameplay looks like a lot of fun, and it’s an officially licensed game based on a solid film. What could go wrong?
Alright, fine – maybe I’m getting over-excited! But it’s been a while since I saw a project quite like this one, and something about the visuals and the style of gameplay just really struck a nostalgic chord for me, even just from looking at the trailer. I really can’t wait to try it for myself.
Video Game #5: Copa City
Copa City fills a niche I didn’t realise existed! It’s a football game where the objective isn’t to score goals as a player or take charge of the team as a manager, but where you set up the infrastructure around the matches. It sounds like a “tycoon game” where you’re managing different aspects of the football event: things like transportation, setting up fan zones, and the like.
I think it’s a really creative concept – and there are already a handful of officially-licensed teams and stadia on board. Whether Copa City can make good on a neat core idea remains to be seen, but I like what’s been shown off so far, and I’m curious to try it for myself. I don’t see it eclipsing the likes of EA FC and Football Manager, but it could easily find its own niche as a football game with a twist.
TV Series #1: Fallout Season 2
The first season of Fallout was creative and fun – even if it wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever watched. The cliffhanger ending was compelling enough for me to want to see the next chapter, though, for Lucy, the Ghoul, and… everyone else. You know… those characters whose names I can’t call to mind right now! Bringing the world of the Fallout video game series into live-action was a good idea, and I can see why the series has been generally well-received.
It seems as if Fallout Season 2 is heading to the city of New Vegas – so fans of the game which was set there can expect plenty of callbacks and references to those events. Maybe I should finally and belatedly play New Vegas before the new season arrives in December? Don’t hold me to it, but I might give it a go if I can find the time.
TV Series #2: King of the Hill
King of the Hill was one of those shows that I used to watch occasionally, when it was on. It was never a favourite, but I usually cracked a smile or two at the antics of Hank, Bobby, Peggy, and the rest of the characters. I can’t say I’m surprised to see King of the Hill being revisited; revivals and reboots are all the rage right now, so why not step back to the show and see if it can connect with a new audience?
I’m not sure what to expect, really. As with the recent Phineas and Ferb revival, King of the Hill is stepping forwards in time – by quite a ways, judging by Bobby’s age in the recent teaser! That could open up new storytelling ideas… but it could also take something away from the show and what made it so appealing to fans in the first place. Will it be soulless corporate slop… or was there a genuinely good idea for a revival? Let’s find out!
TV Series #3: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
Call me overdramatic if you like, but A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is basically Westeros’ last chance to win me over! I enjoyed Game of Thrones… until it went off the rails toward the end. But I wasn’t especially keen on House of the Dragon, and I kind of drifted away from that show after a handful of episodes. With a focus on a different group of characters in a new era and setting, though… could A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms be the series that drags me back into the world of Westeros?
Maybe? I mean, why not, right? I’m not sure Game of Thrones really needs all of these spin-offs, but given how popular the original show was in its prime, I can’t exactly blame HBO for trying to recapture some of that magic. Will it work, though? And will this series succeed where Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon didn’t? I guess we’ll find out later in the year.
TV Series #4: Alien: Earth
I’m not at all caught up on all of the recent movies in the Alien universe, so I hope this TV series won’t lean too heavily on those for its main narrative arcs! A story like Alien seems well-suited to a big-budget TV show instead of just a film, so I’m certainly interested to see what kind of stories and characters we’ll see in a new format. The series taking place on Earth is an interesting idea, too, as exploring this future version of Earth is something none of the films have done.
I’m not sure I’d have chosen to make Alien: Earth as a prequel, though. My other concern is this: are the Xenomorphs still scary, and will they be scary enough to carry this new television format? Some recent Alien projects have, I would argue, degraded the Xenomorphs’ fear factor somewhat. Still, I’m curious and perhaps even hopeful that Alien: Earth can do something creative and a little different with this sci-fi property.
TV Series #5: King and Conqueror
I thought we were going to see King and Conqueror earlier in the year; filming wrapped ages ago and it seemed primed for a spring broadcast. Never mind! The series, set during the Norman Conquest of England, is set to be broadcast sometime before the end of the year. Starring Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as William the Conqueror, the series looks like it has a lot of potential to be a fun, interesting, and entertaining re-telling of an important chapter in history.
Every British schoolkid learns about the Normans in history class – but I can’t remember a big-budget adaptation of these events like this. In that sense, I think it’s going to be really interesting to see the Norman Conquest brought to life. I hope it isn’t over-dramatised, with love interests and soap opera-style personal drama getting in the way of things! But I have confidence in the BBC and American collaborator CBS to bring the story to life in a fun and engaging way.
Bonus: Star Trek!
Captain Pike and the crew are returning soon!
It wouldn’t be a Trekking with Dennis list without some Star Trek, eh? We have Strange New Worlds’ third season coming up very soon, and I’m really looking forward to another set of adventures with Captain Pike and the crew. Some folks have suggested that Starfleet Academy could also be broadcast before the end of the year; personally, I don’t think that’s especially likely… but you never know, I guess!
For me, Strange New Worlds has been the absolute highlight of modern Star Trek; a largely episodic series focused on exploration and adventure that brought the franchise back to its roots. Starfleet Academy, with its focus on teenage and young adult characters, could be a way into the Star Trek fan community for new, younger viewers – exactly the kinds of people the franchise needs to attract in order to shore things up. With the 60th anniversary next year, I’m hoping Paramount is holding something back to celebrate – but until then, we’ve at least got ten Strange New Worlds episodes to be sinking our teeth into!
So that’s it!
Are you excited to play a particular game later this year?
We’ve taken a look at a few of the entertainment experiences that lay ahead of us over the next six months. I think there are plenty of fun ones and things to get excited about – and I’m sure there are others that will seem to come out of nowhere and catch me off-guard! That always seems to happen.
So we’re already at the midpoint of the year… and I’m still catching up on some of the things I missed in 2022, let alone 2023, 2024, and the first half of 2025! I’m getting old… which probably explains why I have my own website instead of a TikTok page, or something! In any case, I hope this has been a bit of fun and an interesting look ahead to some of the things we might enjoy between now and New Year’s Eve. Speaking of which… I’d better make sure I’ve got all of my Halloween, Christmas, and New Year’s decorations ready. If the first half of the year is any indication, the holidays are going to sneak up on me with lightning speed!
Have fun out there!
All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, publisher, distributor, broadcaster, etc. Some photos and promotional art courtesy of IMDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Beware of spoilers for the following Star Trek productions: Deep Space Nine Season 6, Enterprise Season 3, Discovery Seasons 1-5, Picard Seasons 1-3, Prodigy Season 1, Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-2, and Starfleet Academy.
Eight years ago, Star Trek returned to its small-screen home after over a decade in the wilderness. However, in 2025, thanks to a corporate merger, an under-performing, loss-making streaming platform, and some laughably idiotic decision-making by morons in suits, it feels like Star Trek might, once again, be coming to the end of the road. The cancellations of all but one series, failures to get a new feature film off the ground, and Paramount+ continuing to flail around in a competitive market all indicate to me that Paramount and Skydance are at the very least considering bringing production to a halt.
There will be time in the months and years ahead to talk about who’s to blame and what precisely went wrong. But that isn’t the purpose of today’s article. Instead, I want to take a look ahead. Beginning with the assumption that Skydance/Paramount aren’t interested in producing more Star Trek after the second half of the 2020s, what stories should the franchise’s writers and producers aim to tell over the next three or four years? Is there room to resolve dangling story threads, throw in a bit of fan service, and perhaps revisit characters and factions we haven’t seen in a while? Or… should Star Trek’s corporate overlords roll the dice again and chase trends in the hope of bringing in new viewers?
An early tease of Star Trek’s small-screen return. Photo Credit: TrekCore
2016 doesn’t feel like a particularly long time ago. But it’s been nine years since we got those early teases of what would go on to be Star Trek: Discovery, and since then, production has ramped up only to tail off again far more quickly than I’d expected. To go from the excitement of Star Trek’s return to the very real prospect of its total cancellation in the span of less than a decade is making my head spin! But realistically, after the cancellation of most of the main shows and with the corporate merger seeming to have put a stop to any new announcements… that’s where we’re at. If Star Trek isn’t bringing in viewers and helping Paramount+ on its long road to profitability… what did we expect? Corporations aren’t going to piss away money forever on something that isn’t making a profit… even if the reason why Star Trek, in its current incarnation, has struggled is, I would very strongly argue, entirely the fault of executive fuckwits making appalling decisions!
The cancellation announcement of Strange New Worlds kind of embodies that for me. Season 3 is literally days away, the cast and crew are about to start making the rounds on the interview circuit, hype for the new season is beginning to build… and that’s the moment that Paramount’s executives decide to announce that the show’s cancellation. This coming just a couple of years after they had to rapidly un-announce a new Star Trek film when it emerged that none of the cast had actually signed onto the project. After the merger is complete and these morons are all laid off… I hope not one of them ever works in the entertainment industry again.
But as I said, that’s not what we’re here to talk about on this occasion!
Former Paramount CEO Bob Bakish.
I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the Star Trek stories that I’d most like to see. If Star Trek does get fully cancelled later in the decade, and remains off the air for a good number of years as happened in the ’70s and the 2000s/2010s… this could be it for me. This could be the last new Star Trek I’m gonna see. Because of my health, sticking it out to the 2040s or beyond for a possible, hypothetical revival seems… well, it seems unlikely, to be blunt about it! So the next few years could bring me the final batch of Star Trek stories that I’m going to be able to watch. It’s with that mindset that I approach this piece.
So let’s clear a few things up before we go any further. These story ideas are pure fantasy, meaning I have no “insider information,” I’m not claiming any of them will actually be made, and it’s very likely that nothing we’re about to discuss will ever actually be seen on screen! This is a wishlist from a Trekkie, and should be taken in that spirit. Secondly, all of this is the wholly subjective take of just one person. If you hate all of my story concepts, or if I don’t mention a favourite of yours… that’s okay. There should be enough room in the Star Trek fan community for different ideas and the kind of polite discussion that doesn’t descend into argument and toxicity.
With all of that out of the way, let’s take a look at some of my story ideas.
Story #1: Bring back the Xindi.
Xindi in Enterprise.
The Xindi have technically appeared in Discovery – albeit in a non-speaking, background role. And Xindi-Reptillians were also seen in a slightly bigger capacity in Prodigy’s first season. But we haven’t gotten a proper Xindi story since Enterprise – not one that examines the Federation’s relationship to the faction, at any rate. I’d love to see the Xindi revisited in a big way, catching up with them after the events of Enterprise and perhaps finding out a little more about what became of them after the disappearance of the Sphere-Builders.
Starfleet Academy could, for instance, introduce a Xindi cadet – perhaps one of the first Xindi to be a Starfleet officer in some time. Or Captain Pike could be sent on a diplomatic mission to the Xindi homeworld barely a century after the attempted attack on Earth. Either of these shows could incorporate a Xindi storyline, and it would be a lot of fun to either lay the groundwork for a future Federation-Xindi alliance or see what became of that in the far future.
Two Xindi from Prodigy’s first season.
A story set in the far future could also reference the Sphere Builders and perhaps expand upon something Discovery never really explained: the ban on time travel. It always struck me as an impossible thing to enforce, especially given the shattered state of the Federation, but perhaps a Xindi character in Starfleet Academy could lecture the cadets on the dangers of trying to interfere with the past.
If Pike and the Enterprise visit the Delphic Expanse, we could get a story about the Xindi’s first attempt to reconcile with Earth. They might’ve retreated back to their homeworld after their defeat, and this could be the first time they’ve reached out to the Federation in decades. There could even be a resurrection of the plot to attack Earth, perhaps some disaffected Xindi faction feels that it’s the only way to restore their world to greatness. If so, Captain Pike could have to follow in Archer’s footsteps and stop them!
Story #2: A sequel to In The Pale Moonlight.
Garak and Sisko.
Have you ever wondered what might’ve happened if the Romulans ever figured out what Garak and Sisko did during the Dominion War? I have! And it’s one of my all-time favourite fantasy storylines. I don’t think this would even need to include Sisko or Garak necessarily – though I’d love to bring back both Avery Brooks and Andrew Robinson to reprise their roles. But a story set sometime after the Dominion War could revisit this absolute cracker of an episode and address some of the lingering questions that it posed.
Though this could be another far future story, I guess, where I think it would work best would be in the Picard era. Perhaps the Romulans discover, in some of the documents and data that they saved from the supernova, the fake recording that Sisko and Garak created and revisit it, finally realising that it was fake. That could have massive implications for Romulan-Federation relations… or maybe the new Romulan government, relying on the Federation for aid and supplies after the cataclysm, would choose to cover it up. If Legacy had gotten off the ground, this would absolutely be a story I’d have wanted to see in that show.
This could’ve been a great episode of Star Trek: Legacy…
I can picture it already: Starfleet contacts the Enterprise, ordering Seven, Raffi, Jack, and the rest of the crew to parley with the Romulans. Seven’s Romulan connections from Picard Season 1 could come into play here, justifying Starfleet tapping the Enterprise for the mission. Upon arriving at the new Romulan homeworld, several angry Romulans – leaders of the Senate and Tal Shiar, perhaps – confront her over the deception. Seven and the crew genuinely have no idea what’s going on; Sisko and Garak told no one. In desperation, Seven contacts DS9, potentially being received by a familiar face.
At this point, the story could go in lots of different directions – all with plenty of those shades of grey which made In The Pale Moonlight so compelling. There could be genuinely uncomfortable real-world parallels – the lies told in order to start wars, threats of aid being withheld from desperate survivors of the supernova, and good people forced into impossible situations by the actions of others a generation ago.
Story #3: A 60th Anniversary Special.
Janeway and Tuvok with Sulu and Rand from Voyager’s 30th anniversary episode, Flashback.
In 1996, two episodes were produced that really aimed to celebrate Star Trek’s thirtieth anniversary: Trials and Tribble-ations and Flashback. Both were, in my humble opinion, excellent – though fans have a clear preference for Trials and Tribble-ations! It’s been a frankly astonishing twenty-nine years since then… meaning Star Trek’s 60th is just around the corner.
A decade ago, Star Trek Beyond was the only production released during the 50th anniversary year, but Discovery was already filming. This time, I’d really love to see Paramount go all-out, using all of the resources at their disposal, to really celebrate all things Star Trek. Obviously this idea felt more likely before the recent cancellation announcements, and I would note that we’ve already had an excellent crossover between Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds that kind of occupies a similar space! But that wasn’t an anniversary special… so I think Star Trek and Paramount can do something, at least, to mark the occasion.
Star Trek has recently done an ambitious crossover episode.
There are two shows in production that could – somehow – cross over. The best idea I can come up with at this stage would be the Starfleet Academy cadets running a simulation of Kirk’s Enterprise… which I realise sounds a lot like the maligned These Are The Voyages, but I think that same concept could’ve worked if it had been handled better and wasn’t intended to serve as Enterprise’s finale! So let’s say that, under the direction of Tilly and Vance, the cadets are aboard Kirk’s Enterprise, using the sets built for Strange New Worlds. What next?
Well, Strange New Worlds already has Kirk, Spock, Uhura, and Scotty – so we could use those characters and revisit a classic episode from The Original Series! Perhaps something like The Doomsday Machine, with the cadets observing Kirk’s actions for their assignment. This could mutate into a “the holodeck done goofed” type of story, perhaps, with the cadets having to genuinely fight for their lives alongside Captain Kirk and Spock. It wouldn’t be a pure crossover in the sense that Pike and some of the other Strange New Worlds characters would be missing… but I think it could be a huge amount of fun.
Story #4: Save Captain Lorca!
Captain Lorca.
This has been a theory/fantasy of mine going all the way back to the announcement of Section 31 in 2019! In short, the prime timeline version of Captain Gabriel Lorca, from Discovery’s first season, switched places with his Mirror Universe counterpart before the events of the show. Mirror Lorca is dead – but we never learned what became of our universe’s version of the character. Admiral Cornwell just assumed that he’s dead… but Lorca always struck me as a resilient, resourceful man. So maybe there’s a way that he managed to survive.
Section 31 obviously went on to be a completely different thing, but we still have a show set in the 23rd Century where this kind of rescue mission might be possible: Strange New Worlds! Captain Pike confirmed back in Discovery that he knows about the existence of the Mirror Universe, and while any crossover story would have to keep characters like Spock, Uhura, and Scotty out of it, I think it could be made to work. Furthermore, we could get a glimpse of Pike’s past; perhaps he served with Lorca before either of them assumed their commands, or maybe they became friends while working together as starship captains.
Captain Lorca is trapped in the Terran Empire.
In my fantasy version of the story, Admiral April would contact Captain Pike with a top-secret assignment. Starfleet has received a brief message from across the divide between universes, confirming that Captain Lorca is still alive. Based on what Starfleet learned from the USS Discovery’s time in the Mirror Universe, they’ve found a way to send a small ship through the looking-glass – and Pike, as one of the few officers aware of the Mirror Universe and because of his connection to Lorca, has been chosen to lead the mission. Pike would select Ortegas to be the shuttle’s pilot and another character – perhaps La’an for security or Pelia to keep the shuttle flying and maintain its systems – for a clandestine mission akin to the one Picard undertook in Chain of Command.
Once in the Mirror Universe, Pike and the others would have to trace the source of Lorca’s signal – it’s coming from a Terran Empire prison camp. They’d come up with a plan, break him out, engage in a shootout with a few Terrans, and possibly catch a glimpse of Mirror Spock before making it home safe and sound. I think this could be a really fun story – and a great way to bring Star Trek’s current crop of shows full-circle by returning to the events of Discovery’s first season.
Story #5: Captain Pike vs. the Borg Collective!
The first Borg drone ever seen in Star Trek.
Okay, now we’re getting silly. But I still think that a Borg Strange New Worlds episode isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds! Let me explain why. Firstly, just like the Captain Lorca episode above, this one would have to take place in an alternate timeline. Somehow, someway, thanks to some technobabble interstellar phenomenon, the Enterprise is thrust into a parallel universe – one in which the Borg have come to dominate the entire galaxy. Pike and the crew would have to face off against a horde of cybernetic adversaries while struggling to make it home.
Characters like Spock and Una could suggest that this cybernetic race – the Borg – might not exist in the prime timeline, potentially explaining how Pike’s run-in with the Borg was never mentioned by anyone else! I think that clears up that particular issue much better than Enterprise did with its Borg episode! But I also like the idea of leaving just a little bit of ambiguity right at the end – perhaps Pike submits his report, and the camera hangs on Admiral April as he looks pensive and concerned.
How would Pike handle the Borg threat?
After Picard arguably overdid it with the Borg, I can appreciate why bringing them back so soon might not be to everyone’s taste. And when there are so many factions and races from past iterations of Star Trek still waiting to be revisited, I can entertain the argument that doing another Borg story might not be the way to go. But when I think about the most iconic villains in Star Trek, the toughest enemies to beat, and the most frightening… the Borg are absolutely up there in all three categories, and I think they’d pose a massive challenge for Pike and the crew.
The most important thing for me is setting a story like this in an alternate universe, not the prime timeline. There’d be enough wiggle-room to have an encounter like this without treading on the toes of fantastic episodes like Q Who and The Best of Both Worlds that way.
Story #6: Push the Burn into an alternate timeline.
The Burn.
As a parting gift to potential future Star Trek storytellers, I can’t think of anything this current crop of shows could do that would be better than pushing the Burn and the far-future setting into an alternate reality. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to see Discovery and Starfleet Academydecreed to be “non-canon,” and the far-future setting had some interesting ideas that led to some genuinely great episodes. But… as the ultimate destination for the entire Star Trek galaxy, the Burn and the post-apocalyptic hellscape it created are incredibly depressing. Not only that, they risk constraining future stories, making them feel meaningless or unimportant.
Any new Star Trek project set prior to the 32nd Century becomes, by default, a Discovery prequel. And when we know how awful Discovery’s far future was for pretty much everyone… that’s not great. It completely changes how we view stories like Picard’s third season; we knew, even subconsciously in the backs of our minds, that even if Picard managed to save the day and defeat the Borg, the Burn was still going to happen. No other Star Trek project has done more to restrict and reframe subsequent productions than Discovery’s third season.
Any Star Trek episode or film set in the 23rd, 24th, or 25th Centuries becomes, by default, a prequel to Discovery’s far future… and the Burn.
And I think, all things considered, “post-apocalyptic Star Trek” didn’t work as intended – at least not in Discovery with the kinds of stories the production team wanted to tell. So let’s assume Starfleet Academy will get two seasons before a cancellation in 2027 or 2028. The absolute best thing that show could do in its final episode is find some way to push this version of the future into a pocket universe or alternate timeline. You’d have to come up with some kind of technobabble and a reason why; maybe the Burn will have knock-on effects that ultimately lead to some additional disaster, and the only way to prevent it will be to travel back in time and stop the Burn from ever happening. I don’t know. But there’s gotta be someone who could write a story like that!
What this story would have to do is thread the needle. Discovery and Starfleet Academy could continue to exist for folks who enjoyed them – and I certainly hope to be among the people who enjoy Starfleet Academy! But the main storyline of the Burn could push those shows into some kind of parallel universe – paving the way for Star Trek projects in the future to not have that massively depressing destination.
Story #7: Star Trek: Legacy.
The Enterprise-G.
This one isn’t a single “story” so much as an entire TV movie! In short, I’d love to see Terry Matalas’ Legacy pitch revisited, somehow. If we stick with our assumption that cancellation is coming, then it seems beyond unlikely that a brand-new big-budget series is going to get out of the starting gate. But maybe, just maybe, there’s room to turn Legacy into a Section 31-style TV movie. If it does well in that format, then who knows? Maybe Skydance/Paramount will want a continuation.
I really hope that the negative reception Section 31 received earlier in the year won’t dissuade Star Trek’s corporate overlords from revisiting the TV movie idea. There are so many stories that could work in that format – even if they couldn’t carry an entire series on their own. While I’d absolutely love to see Legacy in its originally-envisioned form as a full-blown series, a TV movie could be the next best thing… and a way to test the waters to see if the 25th Century could be Star Trek’s saviour.
Seven and Raffi could return…
I’ve argued repeatedly that the Star Trek franchise can’t just coast on nostalgia and past successes, and needs to do more to bring new, younger fans on board. That’s something I hoped Section 31 could’ve done… but that doesn’t seem to have happened, unfortunately. A restructured Legacy, with just enough of a connection to Star Trek’s past without going overboard, could be the gateway into the franchise for new fans – connecting back to characters from The Next Generation era while setting the stage for new adventures in the 25th Century.
I’ll caveat all of this by saying that no one knows what was in the original Legacy pitch – it might’ve been absolute dog shite that we would’ve all despised! And there’s clearly a reason why Paramount didn’t go for it in 2022/23. But as with other missed opportunities in recent years – like Quentin Tarantino’s film idea – I can’t help but feel the decision not to move forward was the wrong one. Perhaps Legacy can still be revived, even if it has to be a one-off TV movie instead of a full series.
Story #8: “Cardassia Prime.”
If you’re a regular reader, you might remember my fantasy “episode pitch” for Strange New Worlds from a few months back. I titled the story Cardassia Prime, and it would tell the story of first contact between the Federation and the Cardassians. But wait, there’s more! I’d also bring an elderly T’Pol into the story, serving as an ambassador and diplomat for the Federation in her later years.
The episode would start with Captain Pike receiving new orders – a Federation colony ship has been attacked by an unknown faction, and a special ambassador is coming aboard the Enterprise to help defuse the situation. The ambassador will be revealed as T’Pol – now well over a hundred years old, but still working for the Federation. I’d love to see some interaction between an elderly T’Pol and a younger Spock; perhaps she’d have some advice for him on working closely with humans and discovering personal connections with them that could foreshadow Spock’s deep bond with Kirk.
This episode would feature an older T’Pol.
We’ll also discover that the aggressive, territorial power T’Pol has been sent to negotiate with is the nascent Cardassian Empire – and they’ve laid claim to a system that a Federation colony ship inadvertently ventured into. This kind of hostile first contact, with an emphasis on competing claims for star systems along a shared border, could set be the precursor to the Carsassian Border Wars of the 24th Century, foreshadowing events referenced in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. I like the idea of a non-violent resolution; Captain Pike shouldn’t have to fire his phaser even once, despite Cardassian intransigence!
We’ve never seen how first contact between Starfleet and the Cardassians went, and I just adore the idea of an episode bringing together elements from all three of Star Trek’s main eras: the 22nd Century, represented by T’Pol, the 23rd, obviously represented by Pike, Spock, and the Enterprise, and the 24th, represented by the Cardassians, who were first introduced in that era and who were a major antagonist. If you want a longer look at my “Cardassia Prime” story outline, you can find it by clicking or tapping here.
Story #9: 32nd Century Klingons.
A Klingon Bird-of-Prey.
After shooting forwards in time far beyond anything we’ve seen in Star Trek before, Discovery disappointed me by showing us remarkably little of the galaxy in this era. With storylines focused on the next “massive galactic threat” and Burnham’s soap opera-like personal relationships, the show just didn’t even try to give us a bigger picture look at some of the factions and races we remember. A few were glimpsed – literally, just glimpsed in the background with a single character, like a Ferengi or Lurian. But we’ve seen hide nor hair of the Klingons.
Of all the races in Star Trek, the Klingons are perhaps the most iconic and narratively important. So it feels odd to have spent three full seasons in Discovery’s far future without so much as glimpsing a single solitary Klingon! There are so many ways this could’ve gone, too – the Klingons could’ve become fully-fledged Federation members by this time, returned to isolationism, or even broken their alliance to become an enemy once again.
Gowron and Martok in Deep Space Nine.
And then there’s the Burn. The Burn was, in a roundabout way, caused by a Federation citizen aboard a Federation ship… so what would the Klingons make of that revelation? How did the Burn even impact their empire – or whatever was left of it by the 32nd Century? Is there still an extant Klingon state at all, or did their empire fall apart centuries ago, with surviving Klingons existing as second-class citizens under the jurisdiction of the likes of the Breen or Emerald Chain?
I’d love to see Starfleet Academy begin the process of answering these questions! Even though, as stated above, I think pushing this vision of the far future into a separate timeline would be for the best, I’m still curious to catch up with the Klingons in this era, finding out what happened to them in the centuries after we last saw them.
Story #10: Tie up Picard’s loose ends… or some of them, at least.
Hi, Narek…
Who are the “alliance of synthetic life,” and what were their goals? Who created the mysterious transwarp anomaly/weapon? Could those two stories, from Seasons 1 and 2 of Picard, be related somehow? I’d love to get some closure on these two apparently-massive storylines that Picard’s writing team dropped without bothering to explain!
This is another storyline that could’ve emerged in Star Trek: Legacy… but I think there’s at least the potential for Starfleet Academy to tie up these loose ends. Even if all we get is a short scene, a few lines of dialogue, and confirmation that the super-synths tried to attack the Federation before being defeated by a renegade Borg ally… that would be something. Maybe we could learn that Starfleet established relations with the “alliance of synthetic life” and they maintain an embassy. If the writers really wanted to lean into this idea, we could even connect it to a synthetic character like the Doctor – who we know is coming back in Starfleet Academy’s first season.
The mysterious anomaly from Season 2.
As I’ve said before, Picard was a jumbled, contradictory mess of a show – one that dumped characters and storylines with no explanation, overwrote significant story beats from one episode to the next, and while it managed to pull out a satisfactory ending to its third season… there was a lot left on the cutting-room floor as the credits rolled. Getting some kind of closure to some of these points – even centuries later in a completely different context – would be fantastic.
As Trekkies, we like the world of Star Trek to make sense. And when whole storylines which appear to involve impossibly-powerful enemies and adversaries just disappear without a trace… well, that isn’t very satisfying. Even if Starfleet Academy could find time to include a couple of throwaway lines of dialogue referencing and providing some kind of closure to the super-synths and the mysterious anomaly… I think that would do a lot to improve how I feel about those storylines.
So that’s it… for now.
Star Trek Online’s USS Excalibur.
With Strange New Worlds not even halfway through its four-and-a-half season run, and Starfleet Academy having been announced but not so much as glimpsed yet… it feels strange to be thinking about Star Trek as a whole potentially being shut down in just a few years’ time. However, unless something massive changes – and quickly – that seems to be what we’re headed for. It’s a depressing thought, especially since cancellation in the late 2020s could very well mean that these upcoming episodes and stories will be the last brand-new Star Trek I’ll ever see. But what can you do, eh?
I hope this has been an interesting thought experiment, at least. There are some stories and episode ideas that I’d really love to see brought to the screen over the next few years, and if they’re to be among the last in this current incarnation of Star Trek… well, let’s just hope they’re good ones!
Thanks for tuning in, and as always… Live Long and Prosper!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Season 1 are in production and will be broadcast on Paramount+ in the months ahead. Other Star Trek shows and films are already on the platform now, and may also be available on DVD and/or Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including all episodes, films, series, and other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the following Star Trek shows: The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise. Minor spoilers are also present for Discovery, Picard, Section 31, and Starfleet Academy.
Today I thought we could have a bit of fun with the Star Trek franchise! If you didn’t know, IMDB – that’s the Internet Movie Database; a website all about films and TV shows – allows its users to rate episodes on a scale from one to ten. The site then brings all of these ratings together, allowing you to view a ranked list of the most-popular episodes in a television series. This time, I’m gonna pick the top five highest-rated episodes for the first five Star Trek series and talk a little about them. I’ll discuss what I liked – or disliked – about each episode, and then I’ll answer a simple question: would I include this episode among my personal favourites? Would it make the cut?
If that sounds like fun, then buckle up! Some of these are going to be controversial, that’s for sure.
Before we get into the list, I have a few caveats and points of note.
Star Trek’s first crew.
Firstly, all of this is subjective, not objective! If I heap praise on a story you despise or criticise one of your favourites… that’s okay. There ought to be enough room – and enough maturity – in the Trekkie community for civil conversations and polite disagreement. This is all just one person’s opinion, at the end of the day. Secondly, I’m a huge Star Trek fan, and I have been since the early ’90s. I don’t adore every single episode, but I still consider myself a Trekkie and a supporter of the franchise, so nothing said below should be taken as “hate.”
Finally, I’m covering the first five Star Trek series – from The Original Series to Enterprise – in this piece, and I’m not counting The Animated Series nor am I including the cinematic franchise. Perhaps a future article can look at the newer Star Trek shows, though they have fewer episodes each and thus picking a top five might be a bit less interesting. For now, though, I’m sticking with the first five shows – so don’t expect any Picard or Lower Decks here. I’ll start with The Original Series and move forward through the shows in chronological order, finishing with Enterprise. Episode rankings are taken from IMDB as of mid-June 2025, and are listed in reverse order – starting with the fifth-highest and finishing with the highest-rated.
Phew! With all the details out of the way, let’s get started.
The Original Series Episode #5: The Trouble With Tribbles, Season 2 IMDB Rating: 8.7/10
The Trouble With Tribbles is absolutely iconic, and it’s one of the few episodes from The Original Series to have genuinely cut through to the mainstream in a big way. If you asked random non-Trekkies about not only The Original Series, but the Star Trek franchise as a whole, it wouldn’t be long before someone mentioned this episode, the tribbles themselves, or the iconic Kirk meme that was born here.
The Original Series could be funny, and The Trouble With Tribbles uses humour to great effect. The character of Cyrano Jones is a ton of fun, and while the conflict with the Klingons and the infestation of tribbles can be tense at points, the episode is best-remembered for its sense of humour. Kirk dressing-down the officers involved in the fight is also an iconic scene – though one that takes a completely different tone. This episode also spawned Trials and Tribble-Ations… which I suspect we’ll discuss in more detail in a moment.
Would It Make The Cut? ✅ Yes. ✅
The Original Series Episode #4: Space Seed, Season 1 IMDB Rating: 8.7/10
Here’s a “hot take:” I think Space Seed’s status is overinflated because of The Wrath of Khan and how popular that film became. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a good episode – but because its story is basically the prelude to such an important film for the Star Trek franchise, I think some folks might be over-appreciating it just a little. There are some great moments between Khan and Kirk, including an epic fight sequence, and we get to see Khan’s “superior intellect” firsthand for the first time.
Space Seed deals with genetic engineering, looking at how wrong that could go, while also using it as a critique of racism and the idea of a “master race.” It was also one of the first Star Trek episodes to delve into the history of the future; its vision of mid-1990s Earth and the Eugenics Wars have become integral parts of Star Trek’s canon. It’s an interesting episode in its own right, and not just because it set up The Wrath of Khan. However… there are stronger episodes from the first season of The Original Series, and while Space Seed is good, there are other episodes that I prefer.
Would It Make The Cut? ⛔ No. ⛔
The Original Series Episode #3: Balance of Terror, Season 1 IMDB Rating: 8.8/10
Balance of Terror is another absolutely iconic episode. It introduced the Romulans, explored their historical conflict with Earth, and their surprising connection to Spock and the Vulcans. It introduced cloaking technology, the neutral zone, and the Romulan Bird-of-Prey, all of which have become integral parts of the Star Trek franchise, even appearing in recent seasons on Paramount+. This was also Mark Lenard’s first Star Trek role, playing the unnamed Romulan commander. Lenard would go on to play Spock’s father, Sarek.
The episode draws on World War II films – particularly submarine films where tense ship-to-ship combat took place without the enemy being in sight. It was one of the Star Trek franchise’s first battle or war stories, laying the groundwork for future space battles. The interplay between Kirk and the Romulan commander – recognising one another as kindred spirits – was incredibly poignant, and the xenophobic character of Lieutenant Stiles grounded the story and gave it another real-world parallel. Stiles was one of the first human Star Trek characters to express such feelings of hatred. Balance of Terror is, in a word, fantastic.
Would It Make The Cut? ✅ Yes. ✅
The Original Series Episode #2: Mirror, Mirror, Season 2 IMDB Rating: 9.0/10
If you’re a regular reader, you may have heard me say this before, but here goes: I really don’t like the Mirror Universe. It lends itself to pantomime-style, hammy, over-acted performances, practically no Mirror characters have any nuance, as they seem to care about nothing beyond murder, torture, and torturous murder, and the whole setting just feels incredibly flat, boring, and one-dimensional. Mirror, Mirror, as the first episode to explore this setting, was interesting at first, and I’m happy to cut it a bit of slack as the progenitor of this idea, though.
Furthermore, Mirror Spock might be one of the best Mirror Universe characters, as he’s shown to be willing to listen to our universe’s version of Kirk. Compared to some of the other caricatures we meet in the episode, Mirror Spock is definitely the most interesting and complex. I suspect that, were it not for the Mirror Universe’s over-use in modern Star Trek, or if Mirror, Mirror had been a one-off, I might rate it a bit more highly. I still think its an interesting episode, and certainly one of the better Mirror Universe stories even all these years later, but it’s also not one of my favourites… and I guess it’s kind of tainted by association with some other, far less-enjoyable visits through the looking-glass.
Would It Make The Cut? ⛔ No. ⛔
The Original Series Episode #1: The City on the Edge of Forever, Season 1 IMDB Rating: 9.2/10
I knew The City on the Edge of Forever was a popular episode, but I’ll be honest: I didn’t expect to see it at the top of the list, way ahead of the competition! This is a great story, though, one which really leans into the idea Gene Roddenberry had of making Star Trek episodes akin to fables, with complex themes of morality seen through a futuristic, sci-fi lens. The choice Kirk has to make in The City on the Edge of Forever is truly heartbreaking, and the buildup to it is played exceptionally well.
The first season of The Original Series was basically flying blind, seeing what worked. And clearly, time-travel to Earth in the recent past was something that resonated with audiences in a big way. For me personally, time-travel to 20th (or 21st) Century Earth has never been my favourite story concept in Star Trek, as what interests me the most is the franchise’s look at the future. And I would humbly suggest that the existence of the Guardian of Forever could challenge and completely change Starfleet’s mission of exploration – yet the Guardian was only revisited once, in The Animated Series, before disappearing for nigh-on fifty years! Given its popularity, though, and its apparent cut-through to a wider audience, perhaps The City on the Edge of Forever could be a great starting point for new fans?
Would It Make The Cut? ⛔ No. ⛔
The Next Generation Episode #5: The Measure of a Man, Season 2 IMDB Rating: 9.1/10
Star Trek can do courtroom drama exceptionally well, and The Measure of a Man is a fantastic example of this kind of storytelling. It’s also an episode with a complex message about the nature of life and sentience – ideas which are arguably more important today, thirty-five years later, than they were at the time of its production. Because we’re attached to Data as a character after spending two seasons with him, and we’ve come to see him as a member of the crew, Bruce Maddox comes across as a real antagonist – someone who’s trying to use his position and a legal loophole to, in effect, “kill” Data.
The episode presents a challenge for both Picard and Riker, too. Riker arguably gets the tougher brief, having to argue against his friend’s right to exist and his sentience. But, as Data would tell him at the end of the story, he did what he had to do and played his part; refusal would’ve led to Data being turned over to Dr Maddox. Picard’s speech about the nature of life, and Starfleet’s mission to seek out new forms of life, is incredibly powerful, too. But… is The Measure of a Man one of the absolute best of the bunch from The Next Generation, when there are so many other outstanding episodes and stories? I’m not even sure it’s the show’s best courtroom episode, with The Drumhead being a genuine rival for that title!
Would It Make The Cut? ⛔ No. ⛔
The Next Generation Episode #4: All Good Things…, Season 7 IMDB Rating: 9.1/10
I’m pleasantly surprised to see the series finale here. All Good Things is a fantastic episode, and a great way to bring The Next Generation full-circle. Q makes a return, setting one of his best and most complex puzzles yet, challenging Picard to think about time itself in a non-linear way. Having three distinct time periods on the go in a single story was challenging, but it was so creative and clever how Picard instantly moved between them. There was some fantastic cinematography on this side of the story, too, with close-up shots lingering on Picard as he slid between the three different eras.
It was great to welcome back Denise Crosby as Tasha Yar, and to catch a glimpse of our characters’ lives in the future, too. Some of the ideas originally presented here would later become plot points in Star Trek: Picard more than twenty-five years later, keeping a thread of consistency across different iterations of the franchise. All Good Things was a spectacular finale, one that brought together the entire crew in different and creative ways, and its anti-time eruption was a genuine challenge and puzzle for Picard.
Would It Make The Cut? ✅ Yes. ✅
The Next Generation Episode #3: The Best of Both Worlds, Seasons 3-4 IMDB Rating, Part I: 9.3/10 IMDB Rating, Part II: 9.2/10
For some bizarre reason, IMDB ranks the two halves of The Best of Both Worlds separately, but I’m amalgamating them for my list. This story brought back the Borg for their first major clash with Starfleet – and what a clash it was! The Battle of Wolf-359, Borg assimilation, Picard’s transformation into Locutus, Riker’s challenging relationship with Commander Shelby, and the Borg’s first major attempt to attack Earth. The tension builds slowly across the first part, culminating in Picard’s abduction and assimilation – a cliffhanger to end Season 3 in just the most shocking and incredible way!
Part II picks up the action, and sets a huge challenge for Riker – and the entire Federation. The crew of the Enterprise-D want to rescue Picard and undo the damage done to him by the Borg, but they’re also Earth’s last line of defence after the Borg Cube made light work of the assembled Federation ships at Wolf-359. The plan to kidnap Locutus, then Picard managing to break through his Borg assimilation just enough to strike the crushing blow… it was all pitch-perfect, fantastic, outstanding television. There’s a reason why The Best of Both Worlds is held in such high esteem.
Would It Make The Cut? ✅ Yes. ✅
The Next Generation Episode #2: Yesterday’s Enterprise, Season 3 IMDB Rating: 9.2/10
Now that I see how highly-ranked Yesterday’s Enterprise is, suddenly the decision to bring back the character of Rachel Garrett in the recent Section 31 movie makes a lot more sense! Joking aside, this really is a fun episode. One question I remember having, as a Trekkie in the early 1990s, was this: what happened to the Enterprise-B and Enterprise-C? Yesterday’s Enterprise introduces the Ambassador-class Enterprise-C and explains its pivotal role in history, maintaining the alliance with the Klingons and preventing a catastrophic war that threatened to wipe out the Federation.
We get an examination of a disturbing alternate reality, one in which the Federation and Klingons have been at war for years. Guinan plays a hugely important role, too, being the only character aware of how different the timeline could be. Tasha Yar makes a return, and this episode also tees up Sela as a future villain. Yesterday’s Enterprise also presents an impossibly tough decision for Picard, Garrett, Yar, and Lieutenant Castillio – returning the Enterprise-C to its own time means certain death for all on board, but staying in this war-ravaged future would likely mean the demise of the entire Federation.
Would It Make The Cut? ✅ Yes. ✅
The Next Generation Episode #1: The Inner Light, Season 5 IMDB Rating: 9.4/10
This wasn’t a huge surprise. The Inner Light is widely praised by fans of The Next Generation as one of the show’s best episodes. But I’ll level with you: I’m just not into it. There’s some emotional storytelling, sure, and the impact of these events would have repercussions for Picard. But I struggled to really connect with most of the long-dead people of Kataan, and this episode’s deliberately slow pace and departure from the Enterprise-D and most of our familiar characters just… well, to be blunt, I find it pretty boring.
I don’t hate The Inner Light, but it’s actually been a while since I even watched it; I tend to skip over it when re-watching The Next Generation as it just doesn’t do much for me. There are some positives, and I appreciate that this episode’s events were referenced more than once going forward; the impact it had on Picard’s character was significant. It also spawned one of the Star Trek franchise’s best and most-recognisable melodies: the Ressikan flute theme. However… it’s not among my favourite episodes, not from The Next Generation as a whole nor even from Season 5, which I generally consider to be the show’s strongest individual season.
Would It Make The Cut? ⛔ No. ⛔
Deep Space Nine Episode #5: The Way of the Warrior, Season 4 IMDB Rating: 9.0/10
The Way of the Warrior brought the character of Worf to DS9, establishing him as a regular for the second half of the show’s run. At first, I gotta admit that it felt a little odd to see Worf interacting with Sisko, Dax, and the others… but it didn’t take long for him to settle into his new role! The Way of the Warrior also re-established the Klingons as antagonists – at least for the remainder of the season. After the transformation in Federation-Klingon relations that we saw in The Next Generation, this was a change of pace, and it set up several fun episodes across the season.
Gowron and Martok were fun additions to the story, which also progressed the changeling infiltration storyline that was a precursor to the Dominion War. Worf’s inner conflict between his Klingon heritage, his friendship with Gowron, and his ties to Starfleet was on full display, and the way he had to navigate that difficult environment was riveting stuff. Michael Dorn put in one of his best and most complex performances as Worf, and Sisko got a bit of an arc that harkened back to his own considerations about his future in Starfleet from the beginning of Season 1. All in all, a fun, action-packed episode.
Would It Make The Cut? ✅ Yes. ✅
Deep Space Nine Episode #4: Duet, Season 1 IMDB Rating: 9.0/10
Duet is an episode of twists and turns, double-bluffs and triple-bluffs – and it presents a fascinating story of a man trying to atone for the crimes of his government. Through the character of Marritza, Duet also examines the idea of the complicity of low-ranking personnel in heinous crimes, something we deal with all too often in the real world. Marritza forced Kira – and us as the audience – to see the Cardassians as more than just faceless thugs and murderers, exploring the complex nature of Cardassian morality and using that sci-fi lens to examine real-world conflicts.
Duet is a powerful story for Kira, and Nana Visitor puts in one of her best performances. It’s also a good story for Odo, as we see his steadfast dedication to finding out the truth – no matter what others might’ve wanted to believe or think. Duet builds its twists and turns masterfully, eventually leading to a genuinely heartbreaking conclusion. It’s a powerful episode, one that showed the benefits of Deep Space Nine’s slower pace and focus on a single setting.
Would It Make The Cut? ✅ Yes. ✅
Deep Space Nine Episode #3: The Visitor, Season 4 IMDB Rating: 9.1/10
The Visitor has some interesting elements. It’s always fun for me, as a Trekkie, to catch a glimpse of a possible future for some of our beloved characters, and The Visitor shows us that. It’s also a relative rarity insofar as it’s a Jake Sisko episode – Jake only appeared in 71 episodes across Deep Space Nine’s run. Tony Todd, playing the older version of Jake, gives a genuinely emotional performance, which has to be one of the best individual performances by a guest star pretty much anywhere in Star Trek.
So I appreciate what The Visitor does. Its story highlights the importance of Benjamin Sisko and his role in the history of the Federation, it’s a great Jake-Ben story, focusing on their relationship, and its glimpses of the future were fun. However… it’s not one of my absolute favourites in Deep Space Nine, despite all of the positives. There are simply other episodes that I find to be more enjoyable, powerful, emotional, or entertaining, and while I’m not surprised to see The Visitor at or near the top of other fans’ lists… it wouldn’t be there on my own list. There isn’t one overwhelming “issue” or “problem” I can point to, which I guess is a tad frustrating. It’s simply that I could think of at least a dozen episodes I’d rank higher.
Would It Make The Cut? ⛔ No. ⛔
Deep Space Nine Episode #2: Trials and Tribble-Ations, Season 5 IMDB Rating: 9.3/10
Made to celebrate Star Trek’s thirtieth anniversary, Trials and Tribble-Ations was an incredibly creative episode. The filmmaking technology required to blend new actors in with old footage was still relatively new, having been pioneered by the film Forrest Gump, and I’m fairly sure I’m right in saying that this episode was the first time it was used for television. As a celebration of the Star Trek franchise, you could hardly think of anything better than a story connecting the old with the new – in this case, having Sisko and his crew travelling through time, meeting Captain Kirk and visiting the original USS Enterprise.
Such a premise could’ve felt gimmicky and fan-servicey. Worse, it could’ve been poorly-written! But Trials and Tribble-Ations was fantastic, and I can vividly remember watching it when it premiered, absolutely stunned at seeing the DS9 crew in TOS uniforms – and Captains Sisko and Kirk meeting face-to-face. The frame narrative involving the Department of Temporal Investigations was fun, too, and kept the story grounded in the 24th Century. The premise was exceptionally fun, the technology worked perfectly, and the end result was exactly what the writers and producers intended: a genuine “love letter” to Star Trek and the Trekkie community.
Would It Make The Cut? ✅ Yes. ✅
Deep Space Nine Episode #1: In The Pale Moonlight, Season 6 IMDB Rating: 9.4/10
Yes, yes, yes! In The Pale Moonlight is an absolutely outstanding episode, full of moral grey areas, sneaky schemes, and one of Star Trek’s most recognisable memes to boot! There was a time, shortly after its broadcast, when In The Pale Moonlight seemed incredibly controversial in the Star Trek fan community; I vividly remember conversations online about “betraying Gene’s vision of an enlightened future” and Sisko’s actions being so far beyond the pale that they’re indefensible! I’m both astonished and thrilled to see that the passage of time has been kinder, and that fans now appreciate just how brilliant this episode is.
Sisko and Garak made for a wonderful pair in this episode, scheming together to drag the Romulans into the Dominion War under false pretences. What holds the episode together, though, is the absolutely incredible log entry that Captain Sisko records. This is one of Avery Brooks’ best performances in the entire series, showing off his wonderful range as Sisko runs the gamut of emotions, re-telling the story of how he lied, broke various laws, and was complicit in the murder of a Romulan senator. An absolutely riveting, must-watch episode for any Trekkie.
Would It Make The Cut? ✅ Yes. ✅
Voyager Episode #5: Message in a Bottle, Season 4 IMDB Rating: 8.7/10
I adore Message in a Bottle. The episode marks the halfway point of Voyager’s run, making it the perfect moment to establish a tentative link between the stranded ship and the Federation back in the Alpha Quadrant. It was also a ton of fun to get a story where the Romulans are the antagonists! Guest star Andy Dick made a perfect foil for Robert Picardo’s Doctor as a newer version of the Emergency Medical Hologram, and the two performers had great on-screen chemistry, leading to some absolutely hilarious interactions.
The USS Prometheus was an incredibly fun concept, too, and we got a really detailed look at the ship both inside and out, which was great. It was such a clever idea to send the Doctor’s programme to the Alpha Quadrant, and what resulted is not only one of Voyager’s funniest episodes, but one that packs a powerful emotional punch right at the end. After more than four years alone, Captain Janeway and the crew finally have one small link to Starfleet, and Starfleet promises to work on ways to get them home.
Would It Make The Cut? ✅ Yes. ✅
Voyager Episode #4: Living Witness, Season 4 IMDB Rating: 8.7/10
Living Witness has been a topic of discussion for a while here on the website thanks to Discovery’s far future setting! It was an interesting idea for an episode, one that took on the complex idea of the unreliability of history and memory, initially painting the crew of the USS Voyager as villains centuries after the ship passed by a planet. It’s definitely a story with a message, one that’s in keeping with Star Trek’s established formula of looking at real-world issues through a sci-fi lens.
Parts of Living Witness can feel challenging and even uncomfortable, as we’re forced to watch some very inaccurate depictions of the crew of Voyager. The Doctor has a hard time convincing people of his version of events, too, which adds another layer to this. But that’s part of the point and message of the story! All that being said, I think there are better Voyager episodes. Living Witness is creative and clever, and really, nothing about it is bad per se. I can just think of other episodes that I’d rank more highly.
Would It Make The Cut? ⛔ No. ⛔
Voyager Episode #3: Timeless, Season 5 IMDB Rating: 8.7/10
Timeless shows us just how badly wrong Voyager’s journey could’ve ended up! Trying a new method of propulsion to reach the Alpha Quadrant, the ship ends up crash-landing, killing everyone apart from Chakotay and Harry Kim. The older versions of these characters – who’ve had years to sit with the consequences of what happened – travel to the wreck site to right that wrong. The crash sequence and the visual of the wrecked Voyager beneath the ice are both absolutely stunning and incredibly impactful.
I’m not usually wild about episodes where the magical, perfect Seven of Nine is the only one who can save the day! But in Timeless, her involvement works really well, and scenes with the Doctor and the older Chakotay and Kim are intense and emotional, too. It was also great fun to see Geordi La Forge in an episode of Voyager! A very creative premise and great execution.
Would It Make The Cut? ✅ Yes. ✅
Voyager Episode #2: Scorpion, Seasons 3-4 IMDB Rating, Part I: 8.9/10 IMDB Rating, Part II: 8.8/10
IMDB counts the two halves of Scorpion separately, but I’m combining them. To be honest, Scorpion is a story I have mixed feelings about. Voyager over-used both the Borg and Seven of Nine in the second half of its run, and both of those issues kind of began here. On its own merit, Scorpion is great. The Borg and Species 8472 are both powerful and dangerous enemies, and the idea of Janeway teaming up with the Borg when there were no other options was a great twist on the anticipated Borg conflict. Seven of Nine, despite my later feelings about the character, also gets a great introduction.
And I guess the point of this exercise is to try to judge these episodes on their own. Scorpion may have led to too many Borg and Seven stories later on, but it should get a pass as the first of them – and arguably the best, too. It was definitely an explosive cliffhanger to end the show’s third season, and I like how truly different and “alien” Species 8472 feel compared to a lot of other Star Trek races we’ve seen. It’s also an important episode for Voyager, introducing Seven of Nine and setting the stage for Kes’ departure.
Would It Make The Cut? ✅ Yes. ✅
Voyager Episode #1: Blink of an Eye, Season 6 IMDB Rating: 9.0/10
I’ll level with you: I did not see this coming! The only Voyager episode rated 9/10 by IMDB’s users is… Blink of an Eye? Really? I guess I’m more out-of-touch with the Trekkie community than I thought! Don’t misunderstand me: I don’t particularly dislike this episode. It’s an interesting premise and a fun look at a very “alien” kind of world. But as the best episode in Voyager’s entire run? Did the writer or director start a campaign to get people to upvote it, or something? I just… I genuinely would not have expected to see Blink of an Eye hailed as everyone’s favourite.
There was something in Blink of an Eye that I felt didn’t work particularly well. The Doctor supposedly spent years alone on the planet after a transporter glitch, but after a couple of lines of dialogue the profound impact that had wasn’t really explored or acknowledged. With that exception, though, I think Blink of an Eye makes good on a quite creative core idea. I certainly enjoy the episode and what it has to offer. But as the absolute best of Voyager? I’m afraid I’m still not convinced.
Would It Make The Cut? ⛔ No. ⛔
Enterprise Episode #5: Zero Hour, Season 3 IMDB Rating: 8.5/10
As the culmination of a season-long arc to stop the Xindi and their super-weapon, Zero Hour is intense. Hoshi is traumatised, Archer seems to make the ultimate sacrifice, and T’Pol commands Enterprise on a mission to destroy the Sphere-Builders’ base. There’s a lot going on, but it builds to an explosive finale… with just enough left at the very end for one final twist, a twist which sets up the beginning of Season 4 and the end of Enterprise’s Temporal Cold War storyline.
I found the conflict with the Xindi to be interesting overall, but there’s no denying that the season dragged its feet reaching this point. The time travel stuff was never my favourite part of Enterprise, so in that sense I’m glad to see Zero Hour as the beginning of the end of that particular ongoing storyline. Where this episode succeeds is with its core characters. Two pairings/interactions stand out: T’Pol with Trip and Archer with Hoshi. However, the story finds time to give everyone a moment in the spotlight, and its bittersweet moment as Archer is apparently killed while succeeding in his mission was, on first viewing, at least, genuinely impactful.
Would It Make The Cut? ⛔ No. ⛔
Enterprise Episode #4: Azati Prime, Season 3 IMDB Rating: 8.5/10
Another episode from near the end of Season 3’s ongoing conflict with the Xindi and Sphere-Builders, Azati Prime sees Archer and the crew getting closer to their objective. We get to see Archer confront the creator of the Xindi weapon, Degra, and a bit more of an exploration of who the Xindi are and how the Sphere-Builders have been able to manipulate them. Archer’s “suicide mission” attack plan always felt a bit over-the-top, but in the context of the story it works well enough.
This is also the episode where we see the Enterprise-J – a future version of the famous starship. I enjoy the Enterprise-J sequence; I just wish the episode’s budget had allowed us to spend a bit more time in this setting! Though the Temporal Cold War was never my favourite part of the show, this moment with Daniels and Archer was surprisingly fun. As an episode taking place partway through a season-long story arc, it can be hard to know where to place Azati Prime, but I think it does its thing well enough.
Would It Make The Cut? ⛔ No. ⛔
Enterprise Episode #3: Carbon Creek, Season 2 IMDB Rating: 8.5/10
I usually don’t enjoy Star Trek stories, in any series, which involve time travel to 20th or 21st Century Earth. So Carbon Creek, which is primarily a flashback, not even featuring most of the regular cast, taking place in the 1950s… it shouldn’t be an episode I care for very much. But you know what? It’s a surprising amount of fun, and watching a crew of pre-First Contact Vulcans struggling to exist in human society made for some funny and even emotional moments.
I’m glad there aren’t too many Carbon Creeks in the Star Trek franchise. Any franchise which overcomplicates its own fictional history risks turning viewers away or making future stories less impactful. But as a genuine one-off episode, this ’50s setting, dripping with cute Americana, really does work. The Vulcan characters are all distinct and engaging, T’Pol’s frame narrative as she recounts the tale to Archer and Tucker is fun, too, and yeah. Just an all-around enjoyable affair, and a bit of a change of pace.
Would It Make The Cut? ✅ Yes. ✅
Enterprise Episode #2: Regeneration, Season 2 IMDB Rating: 8.5/10
If you read my provocatively-titled piece Ten Star Trek Storylines That Should Be Non-Canon a few weeks ago… you might think you know where I stand on this one! Long story short, the history of Borg-Federation contact is already stupidly overcomplicated thanks to Voyager and First Contact. Throwing in this episode with Archer coming face-to-face with 24th Century Borg drones, and ending with them transmitting a message to the Delta Quadrant? I mean… it’s just another narrative hurdle, in a sense.
However! Regeneration is a ton of fun if you take it on its own merits. No one expected Captain Archer and his 22nd Century crew to encounter the Borg, and given that these Borg are from the future to boot? It made the Collective feel genuinely frightening and dangerous again, something I’ve argued that Voyager had begun to lose toward the end of its run. So yes, this episode complicates things for Star Trek as a whole, and it kind of makes Starfleet look incompetent! But… I really like it. And I’m pleased to see the controversy that swirled around the episode at the time of its broadcast has died down.
Would It Make The Cut? ✅ Yes. ✅
Enterprise Episode #1: Twilight, Season 3 IMDB Rating: 8.6/10
I knew Enterprise fans thought quite highly of Twilight, but I don’t think I expected to see it top the list! This episode takes place in an alternate timeline, one in which the Xindi weapon was successful. I liked the subtle callback to The Wrath of Khan’s Ceti Alpha V, and the implication that, even if humanity had been able to remain hidden, another disaster was only a century away. That just added to the tragedy of the situation.
Where Twilight excels, though, is in its character relationships. This version of T’Pol, having lived with Archer for years as his caretaker, is much softer and completely different, and the relationship between them has clearly evolved. Jolene Blalock plays this incredibly well, so it’s no wonder, really, than this episode is held in such high esteem. Phlox, Tucker, and others also get moments in the spotlight as the Xindi finally track down humanity’s last outpost, and while the episode’s conclusion has always felt a little rushed to me, I think overall it’s a pretty solid story. After Season 3’s serialised arcs, this alternate timeline made for a fun change of pace.
Would It Make The Cut? ✅ Yes. ✅
So that’s it.
The USS Enterprise engineering set (later used for The Motion Picture and The Next Generation) under construction. Photo Credit: Forgotten Trek
We’ve looked at the top five highest-rated Star Trek episodes for the first five shows… according to the randos over at IMDB, anyway! There were a few surprises in the mix – both in terms of inclusions and exclusions. Looking down the full episode ranking lists, I was genuinely shocked to see some of my favourites languishing in the lower reaches, and some episodes I generally don’t care for soaring high! But I hope this has been a bit of fun, at any rate.
I’m already formulating another idea – maybe taking a look at a few of the lowest-rated Star Trek episodes and sharing my thoughts on those, or doing the same thing again with the modern shows. If I’m gonna do that, though, I’ll actually have to finish watching Lower Decks and Prodigy! Those are still on my to-do list.
Thanks for joining me this time. And thanks to IMDB for publishing these ratings and lists. It was a lot of fun to revisit these episodes and spend a little more time in the Star Trek galaxy.
All five Star Trek series discussed above can be streamed on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available. The Star Trek shows are available to purchase on DVD; The Original Series, The Next Generation, and Enterprise are also on Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including all shows, films, and other properties mentioned above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. Credit to IMDB for the episode ratings, which were accurate at time of publication in June 2025. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Over the past couple of months, leading up to and in the immediate aftermath of the big Xbox Games Showcase presentation, I’ve been hearing rumours about Bethesda Game Studios. Today, I wanted to get into some of what I’ve heard – and debunk a couple of commonly-repeated rumours, too!
Bethesda was notably absent from Xbox’s big summer presentation, with no mention of either Starfield or the upcoming Elder Scrolls VI. To be blunt with you: I’m not surprised that either of those games were absent. In fact, I’d probably have been more surprised if Todd Howard had toddled out onto the stage to make a big pitch! The Elder Scrolls VI is – as we’ll get into in more detail in a moment – still multiple years away from release, and Bethesda has already been burned by its way-too-early announcement. And Starfield? Well, let’s talk about that.
What – if anything – is next for Starfield?
When Starfield wasn’t so much as mentioned at the Xbox Games Showcase, I saw a lot of folks overreacting. “Starfield is being abandoned!” said one. “Bethesda is ignoring it and moving on!” cried another. While I agree with the overall sentiment that Starfield underwhelmed in terms of both critical reception and sales, and is certainly in trouble, I don’t believe that we need to write its obituary quite yet. Let me explain why.
Starfield is, according to solid insider information, getting a PlayStation 5 port in the not-too-distant future. I wouldn’t be shocked to hear talk of a potential Switch 2 port, too, but that’s much more speculative on my part. But Microsoft and Xbox wouldn’t want to announce this news at their event; it’s like saying “you might as well just buy a PS5!” Instead, it seems much more likely to me that Starfield will be announced for PlayStation 5 later in the year – almost certainly in time for Christmas. Alongside that announcement may well be another piece of DLC.
Starfield may be landing on PS5 soon…
Starfield hasn’t yet had a standalone expansion pack that Microsoft can really use to measure its future prospects. By that I mean that Shattered Space was sold as part of Starfield’s premium edition bundle, which players needed to buy if they wanted to play the game on its real release date in 2023 instead of a week later. Many folks who may have switched off from Starfield already paid for Shattered Space, even if they didn’t play it, and the expansion’s standalone sales in 2024 will be impacted by that. I feel absolutely convinced that Bethesda has enough in the tank for one last Starfield push – and a second expansion pack is certainly gonna be a part of that.
If Bethesda and Xbox have good sense, they’ll announce a PlayStation 5 “deluxe edition” port of Starfield, including not only Shattered Space but also the new DLC, as well as a similar release of the bundle for Xbox and PC. I’d imagine this DLC will be later this year; Shattered Space was in the autumn, so expect anywhere from September to November for this DLC. Some have pointed to Bethesda tradmarking the name “Starborn;” that could be the next DLC’s title.
“You cannot go that way.”
So Starfield should be getting a second piece of DLC and a PS5 launch – with a potential Switch 2 port if things go well. But things are not going well right now, and Starfield is really in the last chance saloon. Failure to light up the board on PS5, and/or another poorly-received expansion pack will almost certainly lead to the game being quietly abandoned. There might still be occasional patches to fix major bugs and issues, but if Starfield doesn’t get its redemption arc soon, there really won’t be any point in Microsoft greenlighting even more money on the game’s continued support.
So Starfield isn’t dead… yet. We’ll have to see whether the next DLC addresses the game’s many issues, and whether it’s as big and transformative as it needs to be. Starfield needs something on the scale of Cyberpunk 2077′s Phantom Liberty, as I’ve said before. Whether Bethesda can even do something like that, though… well, we’ll find out later in the year, perhaps.
Reviews for Starfield on Steam have been mixed, and the game’s former players didn’t show up in big numbers for Shattered Space.
Up next is The Elder Scrolls VI. I’ll level with you: I’m astonished that anyone thought they’d see this game at the Xbox Games Showcase this year. Some super-fans are still clinging to the desperate “cope” that The Elder Scrolls VI is coming out next year. It isn’t. It simply is not. It’s way too early in its development cycle – a cycle that has only lengthened over time. No, The Elder Scrolls VI might – if Bethesda pushes and Microsoft is okay with a buggy mess – make a late 2027 release date. But realistically, I still think 2028 or even 2029 are more likely.
Starfield took five full years of work. There were changes to Bethesda’s creaking, zombified, thirty-year-old game engine which took up some of that time, sure, but the game still took five years to make and polish. Microsoft insisted on a year-long delay which was largely spent on bug fixing; I shudder to think what Starfield might’ve looked like if it had been pushed out on its original release date! But why, then, have some folks convinced themselves that The Elder Scrolls VI will be ready in half the time? Bethesda hasn’t been working on the game since 2018; development only started in earnest after Starfield’s release in late 2023, and realistically, a significant portion of Bethesda’s team was still assigned to Starfield for several months after, working on hotfixes, patches, and DLC.
Todd Howard announced The Elder Scrolls VI seven years ago.
So let’s be bold and make a prediction: you will not see The Elder Scrolls VI this year. Not a teaser, not a trailer, not concept art… nothing. You probably won’t see any of that stuff next year, either, unless Microsoft has supreme confidence in the game and its ability to make a 2027 release date. The Elder Scrolls VI is still a ways off and it needs time in the oven. And there’s another potential wrinkle in this equation, too: the Oblivion remaster that was released earlier this year.
This is a little technical, but bear with me. Oblivion was remastered using a process that combined two different game engines. Oblivion’s original code is still there, running on Gamebryo/the Creation Engine. But layered on top of that is Unreal Engine 5, which renders the game’s graphics. This process has led to Oblivion looking absolutely fantastic, by the way… so might Bethesda want to implement the same technology into The Elder Scrolls VI? I mean, it would be pretty awkward if the game launches and people begin comparing it unfavourably to the Oblivion remaster! If Bethesda does choose to go down that route, that could add to the game’s development time – and it’s something Bethesda may not have even considered until recently.
The Oblivion remaster adds Unreal Engine 5 graphics to the game’s original code.
There is one additional consideration here, one that could bump up The Elder Scrolls VI’s release date a little. It seems that Microsoft may be intending to launch new hardware in 2027 – and you could hardly get a better-sounding launch title than the sequel to Skyrim! Microsoft might want The Elder Scrolls VI to be the new Xbox console’s “killer app;” a system-seller that could potentially outmanoeuvre PlayStation. If that’s the case, maybe the 2027 holiday season could be a targetted release window.
Finally, there’s talk of a remaster of Fallout 3 using the same process as Oblivion. With a new season of the Fallout TV series officially on the schedule for December this year – a mere six months from now – could we see that remaster sooner than we think? Timing it to coincide with the new season would be perfect, if Bethesda and partner Virtuos could manage it. It might be a tall order to release the Fallout 3 remaster so soon after the Oblivion remaster, though! Still, there could be news of that game sometime around the holidays, as hype for the show’s second season builds.
Could a potential Fallout 3 remaster be released in time for the show’s second season?
So that’s it for now. Those are the Bethesda rumours I keep hearing – and my response to them!
I’ve been a Bethesda fan since I played Morrowind on the original Xbox back in 2002. I still consider that game to be one of the best I’ve ever played, and I’ve enjoyed other Bethesda titles in the Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises, too. But I’ll be honest with you… I’m not excited about anything the studio has on the slate right now. Starfield’s absolutely appalling microtransaction marketplace – which feels like something from a shitty free-to-play mobile game – speaks volumes about the company’s current direction and how they view their audience. Even if The Elder Scrolls VI looks great, and even if Starfield were to get a miraculous new update and expansion that completely transformed the game… I just don’t want to support that kind of behaviour in the single-player space.
Look around at other single-player role-playing games. Baldur’s Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077, Kingdom Come: Deliverance… none of them have the kind of egregious in-game marketplace and paid mods that come baked-in with Starfield. If you think The Elder Scrolls VI will be spared the same fate, well… I wouldn’t bet on it. Bethesda has been trying to implement these kinds of paid mods and microtransactions for years, and I don’t see the company being persuaded to stop now.
Words cannot express how much I hate this.
Whether you’re okay with that… that’s up to you. For me, at the very least it’s reined in my potential hype or excitement for The Elder Scrolls VI. And even if Starfield were to get that Phantom Liberty-sized DLC that it desperately needs, if the microtransactions and paid mods remain in place, I’m still not inclined to play it or support it. It’s sad, because Bethesda used to be one of my favourite developers and, as I said, they created one of my favourite games of all-time. But this greed… it’s just sickening, to be honest with you.
Anyway, we got a little off-topic there at the end, but I think I said everything I wanted to about The Elder Scrolls VI and Starfield based on the rumours I keep hearing! I hope this has been interesting, at any rate. A lot of this is speculative, but I’m fairly confident about most of my predictions and my analysis!
Until next time!
Starfield and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered are out now for PC and Xbox Series consoles. All titles discussed above are the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, Xbox Game Studios, and Microsoft. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Phineas and Ferb, including all of Season 5.
Phineas and Ferb’s fifth season was one of my most-anticipated entertainment experiences of 2025. I’m a pretty big fan of the show, having first encountered it shortly after its original premiere in 2007 or 2008, back when I used to have a satellite TV subscription! When Season 5 premiered on Disney+, I didn’t just binge the entire thing right away; I wanted to take things a bit slower and give each episode a chance to settle. That being said, I still finished the whole season in under a week, so maybe my self-control isn’t as good as I thought!
If you just want the tl;dr, here it comes: Phineas and Ferb Season 5 was wonderful. Some episodes were truly outstanding, reaching the bar set by those earlier stories in the 2000s and 2010s. Others weren’t as spectacular, but even in the ones I found less enjoyable, there were still fun moments, creative storytelling, or jokes that managed to win a chuckle. I think I laughed out loud at least once while watching all eighteen/nineteen episodes (the numbering gets a little bit weird; we’ll cover that as we go), which I think says a lot.
Phineas at the beginning of the new season.
I think we should start by getting a handful of negative points out of the way before we talk about all of the good stuff.
First of all, the new season was quite self-referential, calling back to episodes, story beats, jokes, and even internet memes spawned by Phineas and Ferb’s original run. That, in itself, is not a problem, and at least some of these “meta” moments were funny, added something to the story, or just plain worked. But for me, Season 5 came very close to crossing a line that basically no series ever gets right, turning in-jokes and winks to the audience into cringeworthy fan-service. Relying too heavily on the past, even in a revival like this, doesn’t allow new storylines to stand on their own two feet, and while some self-referential “meta” moments in Season 5 were incredibly good fun… others strayed too close to that line for comfort.
Secondly, Season 5 basically ignored Dr Doofenshmirtz’s character arc from the latter part of Phineas and Ferb’s original run. The season premiere saw him – apparently at random – deciding to “turn evil again” after an entire year of being a good guy, and then none of that was ever acknowledged again. Doof was back as we last saw him – which, for me, felt a little hollow. Don’t get me wrong: it was fun to see him back in his element, and to have more wacky adventures with him and Perry. But the way it was handled left something to be desired. I’m not sure how the show could realistically have done a better job here – except, as I mentioned more than once before Season 5 aired, if these new episodes had been set in the same endless summer as before, instead of one year later.
Doof is evil again.
The one year time jump wasn’t mentioned a lot, and didn’t really do much for most of the characters. Though nominally “older,” the only kid character whose age was even mentioned was Candace, and that was just a throwaway line. Everyone just kind of… reverted to type, if that makes sense. And for a show whose main characters are children, I’m not sure that feels right if you step back and think about it. When you’re a kid, one year is a massive amount of time, and none of us were the same at age ten as we were at nine, or at sixteen as we were at fifteen. While I’m not saying I wanted to see whole character arcs for the kids or big personality changes, what I am saying, again, is that the time jump doesn’t seem to have achieved very much. I’m left wondering why it was included at all.
We saw Candace finally achieve one of her biggest goals – something she’d been pushing for going all the way back to the beginning of Season 1: getting her driver’s license. And the episode was funny – we’ll touch on that in a moment when we look at each episode in turn. But… after getting her driver’s license, Candace literally didn’t use it again for the entire rest of the season. In the very next episode, we even see her riding her bike.
This was literally the episode after Candace passed her driver’s test.
As with Doofenshmirtz above, this kind of speaks to a bigger issue for me. Candace has grown as a character over the course of an entire year, and finally scored one of her biggest accomplishments – something even her brothers don’t have. This happened early in the season, and there were fifteen more stories in which Candace could’ve driven a car, even just in the background of a scene, not necessarily as a major plot point. But it didn’t happen. I love episodic television, and a big part of Phineas and Ferb is that it’s an episodic show where things “reset” from one episode to the next. But for something so important and meaningful for a character to be completely sidelined… it doesn’t feel right, somehow. And it all adds to that same feeling I was talking about with the time-jump: was it really necessary?
There were eighteen individual stories in Season 5 – the opening pair of episodes form a single story, and the Meap episode was also feature-length. Across those episodes, we spent at least some time with most of what I’d consider to be the show’s recurring characters… but by no means all. There were some noteworthy absences, as well as several characters whose roles were very minor. The likes of Jeremy and Norm got very few lines, Roger Doofenshmirtz was seen but didn’t really interact with the plot in a big way, Love Handel only appeared in the background to sing a song, and Irving – who’d climbed the ranks to become an honourary member of the friend group by Season 4 – was entirely absent aside from a couple of background cameos.
Irving was notably absent in these new episodes.
There were also a few character groups or pairings that didn’t appear in Season 5. The relationship between Dr Doofenshmirtz and Vanessa was barely touched upon, as they hardly spent any time together. The Flynn-Fletcher family didn’t actually do anything all together, either; no family vacation, no road trip, not even sitting down for a meal. With Roger and Norm effectively absent, Doofenshmirtz didn’t have either of them as character foils, and there was no Charlene, either. Major Monogram only had Carl. And Candace spent very little time with Stacy, Jeremy, or any of her other friends.
As above, there wouldn’t have been time for every conceivable duo or group to get an outing, and there’s still Season 6 to come. The first four seasons took time to even introduce some of these characters, let alone build up relationships between them, and I’m not really trying to demand everyone everywhere all at once! But… I felt some of these absences. Doof and Vanessa not getting any time together was particularly noteworthy given how the show’s original run ended and how important Vanessa is to Doof’s arc. Norm’s absence was similarly felt. Then for the kids, Irving disappearing and Jeremy getting basically a single scene all season long kept things focused on the principal characters, sure, but it also limited their potential interactions outside of their core friendship group. None of it is egregiously awful, and if you just watch a single episode, you wouldn’t even notice anything was amiss. But taking the entire season as a whole… it felt odd to reach the end with the absences and lack of interactions we’ve discussed.
Roger didn’t get much screen time – or any scenes with his brother.
I guess the positive spin I could put on all of that would be that this is a revival, and the writers and producers may have wanted to take their time re-establishing the show’s core formulae and character dynamics before adding in too many secondary characters and side characters. That’s a reasonable argument in some ways, as Phineas and Ferb Season 5 is also intended to bring in new viewers alongside returning fans.
Okay, okay. That’s probably enough negativity for now. Phineas and Ferb doesn’t need to be nitpicked to death. So let’s move on and talk about the things I enjoyed. Thankfully, that’s pretty much everything else.
If you read my pre-season “wishlist,” you might remember me saying that what I wanted out of this revival was, in a word, more Phineas and Ferb. And that’s pretty much what I got: the show has returned to its classic formula, with two-and-a-half storylines that intersect, plenty of wacky inventions, fun musical numbers, and a good-natured sense of humour. Not every episode was perfect, but I’d happily watch all of them again… and again. No season of television is going to be filled with five-star episodes, but there were several in Phineas and Ferb Season 5. Even when the new season was at its worst, there were still laugh-out-loud moments, emotional scenes, enjoyable songs, beautiful animation, and other things to enjoy. No episode this time was irredeemably awful, and I’d say that the new season’s overall quality was about where I expected it to be. Perhaps it’s closer in tone and quality to Season 4 of the original run than to Seasons 1-3 – and if you know me you’ll know I felt Season 4 wasn’t quite reaching the bar of those earlier seasons. But it was still good – and so is Season 5.
You can just hear this image, right?
When I reviewed Candace Against The Universe a few years ago, I said that one of the best things the film did in its opening moments was re-establish the world and characters of Phineas and Ferb, making it feel like nothing had changed and that everyone we remembered was still there, living their lives in the Tri-State Area. And once we got over the new season’s opening sequence, which was set at the kids’ school, I think the rest of Season 5 nailed that feeling again. Most of the main storylines felt like they could’ve been lifted from the show’s original run, and with the exception of the season premiere and its obvious time-jump, narratively the rest of the episodes blend in with the rest of the show. In a few years’ time – and regardless of whether more Phineas and Ferb is produced after Season 6 – it probably won’t even be noticeable to play some of these episodes in a random order, mixed in with others from the show’s original run.
One of the biggest differences – and where Season 5 might actually be noticeably different from Season 1-4 – is in the animation. Some character outlines felt softer and less blocky, colours tended to be flatter, with less differentiation, and there’s something about a lot of the characters’ eyes – particularly background and secondary characters – that just felt a little… off. I don’t know how else to put it. I will say that, despite some pre-season fears, this was something I got used to. And I think the animation lines up with Season 4 and Candace Against The Universe more than it does with Seasons 1-3. It wasn’t bad per se, but maybe there’s been a change in Disney’s animation software or a different animation studio… and I think it’s worth mentioning, at least.
A selection of background and secondary characters.
The songs were all top-class, and I enjoyed all of them. I would note that it was a bit strange how not every episode got its own original song this time around; the episodes More Than An Intern and Agent T (For Teen) got versions of songs from the original run of the show rather than their own compositions. They were fine, though.
My favourite songs of the season would have to be When The Tri-State Aurora Comes Around and No Sleepin’ At A Slumber Party, both of which were great fun. The Tri-State aurora sequence – which we’ll talk about more in a moment – was absolutely stunning, and the music elevated it even more. It really was a great sequence. The rest of the songs were good; Submarine Sandwich Submarine and License to Bust felt the most “classic,” like they’d come from the show’s original run. But all were in keeping with the tone of the series, really.
Next, I’ll run through each episode one by one and talk about what I liked (and didn’t like) about each of them. Then at the end, I’ll share my final thoughts on Season 5 as a whole.
Summer Block Buster/Cloudy With A Chance Of Mom:
The opening musical number – and a cheeky reference to Hamster and Gretel.
This episode had the difficult task of re-establishing Phineas and Ferb’s world five years after we last saw it. And I think it hit all of the right notes. We got to see the last day of school before summer – and I like the implication that the boys’ “What I Did Last Summer” presentation took the entire year. Doofenshmirtz “turning evil again” was skipped over too quickly, but that says more about the decision to set this new season a year later than anything else. The big musical number at the beginning was a ton of fun, and felt in line with some of the epic songs from special episodes like Summer Belongs To You.
As a season premiere, the second half of the story was kinda risky! It didn’t follow the show’s typical formula; mixing things up by involving Linda directly in the story. But that decision gave real stakes and emotional weight to what the kids had to do, and I think it worked exceptionally well. All in all, a wonderful way to kick off the new series. And yes – I’m counting these two episodes as two halves of one story!
Submarine Sandwich Submarine:
The sub under construction.
I liked the callback to Candace’s sandcastle-building award from the previous summer – but this was a storyline where I definitely felt the absence of Jeremy. Even if Stacy or one of Candace’s other friends had been there I think her side of the story could’ve worked just a little bit better. The boys’ side of the story was neat, though, and I liked the visual impact the submarine made. The giant fish was kind of random, but weirdly in keeping with other sea monsters the show has introduced!
Doof and Perry had a classic battle in his lair, one that reminded me a little of their famous hot dog/bratwurst duel, thanks to the abundance of food. Doofenshmirtz’s inator did cover up the boys’ invention – literally, covered it with sand – but was also a bit of a twist on what viewers might’ve been expecting. As noted above, this episode also had a very classic song, and the whole thing had the feel of a Season 2 or 3 episode – which I mean as a compliment.
License To Bust:
Candace taking her driver’s test.
The boys’ gecko gear was cool, and reminded me a little of their rubberisation ray from Night of the Living Pharmacists insofar as it allowed the kids to bounce all over town. This invention wasn’t the main focus of the story, though. As mentioned above, I’m a little disappointed that Candace getting her driver’s license – finally, after more than four seasons! – wasn’t so much as mentioned in subsequent stories, and that puts a little bit of a downer on the ending of her storyline here.
That being said, the driving test sequence was a ton of fun, as was the song. And Doofenshmirtz’s inator – while arguably less destructive than some of his creations – interfered in just the right way to bring everything together. If future episodes do more with the idea of Candace being able to drive, I’ll definitely place License To Bust higher in my rankings! For now, it was fine as a one-off story.
Dry Another Day:
Luging through town!
Phineas and Ferb has done the “it’s the hottest day of the year, so let’s do something icy” thing more than once, but the infinitely rolling luge wheel definitely made the concept feel fresh! Candace skiing was a fun visual, and the entire sequence with the song was fantastic, too. The concept reminded me a little of Season 4’s “foam town,” probably because both were big rolling wheels, but the luge idea was definitely original.
We got a glimpse at a Doofenshmirtz backstory! Hooray! Doof told us a little about his childhood as he schemed to store his oil at the swimming pool. That was fun, and the water park was actually a surprisingly detailed and interesting location to visit. The hammerhead shark slide was especially creative. Again, this just felt like a classic, fun Phineas and Ferb episode that I’d happily revisit.
Deconstructing Doof:
The therapist.
This felt like a pretty “meta” story concept at first, but the way it brought together Doofenshmirtz and Candace – who worked so well together in the Season 4 finale in 2015 – was genuinely fantastic. It makes sense, if you think about it, that someone might be able to piece together the unusual goings-on around Danville, figuring out why these wonderful inventions are always gone by the end of the day. Does that take something away from the “magic” of an animated show? Well… maybe. But I think it worked pretty well.
I wasn’t particularly keen on this episode’s main song; it was fine but just not to my taste, I guess. Not every callback in every episode worked or won a smile, but the therapist’s line about a platypus being a metaphor definitely did! The reference to the Season 2 episode Brain Drain was played deadpan and absolutely perfectly, and it was just a ton of fun. I had to pause the episode for fear of laughing so much I’d miss something good!
Tropey McTropeface:
The arrest of the “mother mugger.”
I didn’t expect much from this episode when I saw the title, I’ll be honest. But the story was, surprisingly, much more coherent and fun than I’d been expecting. The story of Michael Bublé’s involvement is actually sweet: his son had been a huge fan of the show, and they’d watched it together when he was suffering from a serious illness, with Phineas and Ferb becoming something positive for them both at a difficult time.
There was quite a lot going on in Tropey McTropeface aside from the titular zoetrope; a mugger loose on the streets of Danville, Perry and Candace’s bath appointment, Doof’s plan to rotate city hall… it was a busy episode, but still connected everything together. I don’t think it was the highlight of the season, but a better episode than I expected based on the title.
Biblio-Blast:
Doofen-plants!
Perry’s lair entrances were one of Phineas and Ferb’s original elements, but as the series dragged on, they became less prominent. Biblio-Blast has one of the best, though: that pinball sequence was incredibly detailed and great fun. Though a bookcase might not seem like the wildest idea at first, it was another part of the episode that felt like it was harkening back to earlier episodes where the boys’ inventions were sometimes a bit more child-like and grounded. The sequence of the bookcase being built – set to the show’s Quirky Worky Song – was also in that classic vein.
Doof’s story with the evil plant monsters reminded me a little of Night of the Living Pharmacists, and it’s certainly one of the worst backfires of any of his inventions! The design of the plants was quite unsettling, too, meaning they worked well as antagonists on this side of the story. The main song was definitely one aimed at kids – but hey, if it encourages anyone to read more or stick with reading, that can only be a good thing! Oh and the plant-themed reprieve was genuinely cool. Buford also had some great lines in this episode.
A Chip To The Vet:
Buford, Candace, and Jeremy.
I think I’m right in saying that A Chip To The Vet is the only episode in which Jeremy speaks – though with a different voice actor in Season 5. As noted above, I think his absence was felt, and even here, really, he didn’t play a huge role or advance Candace’s story in a big way. The main vet-themed portion of the story was neat, though, and seeing Perry and Doofenshmirtz doing battle in a completely new location was fun. You’d think the OWCA would be equipped to deal with something as common as microchipping – but then again, it is just a cartoon!
Okay, the goat jump-scare? It got me – and it was hilarious. As was Doof listing all the things he could chip before figuring out he could use the chipper on Perry. The kids’ pet wash was fun, too, and as with Doof and Perry it was great to see them do their thing somewhere other than the back yard. We also got a rare “platypuses don’t do much” line right at the end, too!
More Than An Intern:
Carl.
This story has a message that I think will resonate very strongly with Phineas and Ferb’s returning fans. A lot of folks are working multiple jobs in the “gig economy,” just trying to make ends meet. And while I wouldn’t have expected a critique of this phenomenon from what is nominally still a kids’ show… I think it’s actually a powerful story. Carl – OWCA’s unpaid intern – has to work multiple other jobs just to pay the bills, and even while he loves his work with the agency, he’s forced to take on all of these other jobs. Major Monogram’s obliviousness is also a big part of this story – perhaps a comment on the “boomer” generation and their unawareness of how tough things really are.
As with Candace and her driver’s license above, this is a story that I would’ve wanted to see have genuine repercussions. Even if Carl doesn’t immediately get paid by the agency, having Major Monogram show a little more appreciation in subsequent episodes would’ve been nice. The rest of the episode was fun, don’t get me wrong, and I’m aware we’ve really only commented on the messaging this time. But it really is an important message, and one I was pleasantly surprised to see the series tackle. Carl really was the perfect character for this story, too.
The Aurora Perry-Alis:
The Tri-State Aurora.
This episode was actually pretty mixed for me. I loved the cruise ship setting, the song, and the whole sequence with the aurora. The animation work to bring the aurora to life was genuinely beautiful; among the best parts of a season where environments have all been outstanding. However, I think The Aurora Perry-Alis maybe tried to cram in just one element too many. Between Monogram’s aunt, Vanessa reconnecting with Monty, the kids building their inventions, Candace and Linda at the spa, Perry and Stacy, Doof and Perry getting miniaturised, the disgruntled cruise employee, and Lawrence stuck in a conga line… there wasn’t quite enough time for every character and narrative beat to shine in the way I’d have wanted.
That being said, I really enjoyed the episode when it settled down, particularly near the end. The moment where everyone just stopped to enjoy the aurora was sweet, and it reminded me a little of the calm, relaxed feeling at the end of the New Year’s Eve episode from Season 4. A mixed bag, for sure, but a great song, some stunning animation, and a solid ending manage to hold it together.
Lord of the Firesides:
How could a disagreement about cupcakes get so out of hand?!
I’m glad that we got one episode where Isabella was with her Fireside Girls group and separate from the core characters. The conflict between the two groups of girls was pretty basic, and the twist – that it was all caused by one of Doof’s inators – wasn’t exactly concealed! But it was solid enough, and led to plenty of fun moments as the Fireside Girls’ meeting rapidly descended into chaos. The heavy metal-inspired song and red, firey imagery all worked well on this side of the episode.
Doof and Perry’s story – renewing their business licenses – was neat. Having the pair on roughly the same team works well as an occasional change of pace, and a story about bureaucracy is in line with what we saw of Danville in episodes like Season 4’s Where’s Pinky? which was also set at city hall. Definitely a bit of a change from the characters’ usual shenanigans – but one that worked.
The Candace Suit:
So many Candaces…
You know how some episodic shows have a throwaway line, joke, or scene that works in context but just… doesn’t have the legs to be a standalone thing? Yeah. That’s The Candace Suit for me, at least on the side of the story involving Buford and his life-size moulds. When that was brought up in Season 3’s Doofapus, the idea of a random character like Buford making life-size moulds of people was such a non-sequitur that it was funny. For me, The Candace Suit dragged out that idea way too far, killing the joke… but also taking a strangely dark turn that, while arguably in character for someone like Buford, didn’t sit right.
Perhaps because I found the premise stretched too thin, I wasn’t wild about this episode’s song, either. Doofenshmirtz and Perry didn’t have as much time in the spotlight this time – which is fine in theory, but I wish the main storyline had been stronger. I know this all makes it sound like I detested this episode; I really didn’t. I just think it exhausted its core premise pretty quickly, and over-stretched what should’ve been a throwaway one-liner that, in my view, didn’t really have enough in the tank to be a fully-fledged story on its own.
Agent T (For Teen):
Stacy gets a turn in the spotlight!
If The Candace Suit took a narrative beat from the show’s original run and overdid it, Agent T (For Teen) is an example of how to do things right. Taking Stacy’s knowledge of Perry’s secret identity from Season 4’s Happy Birthday, Isabella, Agent T (For Teen) picks up that storyline and expands upon it. Stacy’s role here was a lot of fun, and it’s great that another secondary character got a spotlight episode like this. Stacy’s interactions with OWCA – first through the funny instructional video and later when speaking to Major Monogram – were fantastic.
The earlier part of the episode, which saw Stacy and Candace working together at a fancy event, was also funny, but where Agent T (For Teen) really excelled was in those moments with Stacy, Perry, Doof, and the returning Dr Diminutive. I’d wondered if anyone from L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. might appear in these new episodes; I wouldn’t have chosen Dr Diminutive necessarily, as Rodney is by far the more iconic character, but his role was surprisingly fun. Doof’s evil organisation also seems to have gotten a serious upgrade… will that come into play in a future story, perhaps? Oh, and the reworked “Agent P” song? Cute.
The Haberdasher:
The titular character.
This is another episode that just… didn’t wow me, to be honest. The callback to the “I’d have x number of nickels” meme was fun, sure, and guest star Alan Cumming gave a genuinely great vocal performance. But something about the deep dive into OWCA’s hat-making and the character of the Haberdasher himself just… didn’t do it for me. I realise that’s horribly subjective, by the way!
Doof’s evolution into a weird mothman-hybrid was truly disturbing, though, and I’ll definitely give the episode its dues for that particular design! And seeing Buford, Baljeet, and Isabella interacting and building things without Phineas and Ferb was a fun idea – one I wish we’d seen a bit more of, to be honest.
Out Of Character:
Buford Van Stomm: film director.
When an episode takes established character traits, or introduces new ones, as part of a storyline, things can work really well. When an episode – with an ironic name – introduces something that doesn’t seem to fit a character for the sake of artificially manufacturing a storyline… well, you get an episode like Out Of Character. I can’t remember if Baljeet has had to act before, I think he must’ve at least once in an earlier episode, though! But even if he hadn’t, surely someone as smart as he is could grasp the concept of acting. As a result of that, I felt the bulk of the kids’ story was built on a bit of a flimsy premise.
However! That didn’t ruin Out Of Character for me, and I loved the return of the Space Adventure fictional franchise. The retro sci-fi, kind of Star Wars or Star Trek-inspired vibe was beautiful, and seeing the kids getting all invested in their roles was an absolute blast. Doof’s inator – turning people’s faces forgettable – was a creative idea, and led to a fun visual effect, too. I also felt a cute little nod and wink to Act Your Age, with Buford taking on a leading role in the filmmaking process. A fun episode – even if the premise was a bit annoying!
Meap Me In St. Louis:
Remember this clip?
I’ll level with you: the two Meap episodes weren’t really my favourites from the original run of Phineas and Ferb. I’m not sure why, exactly; I’m a huge sci-fi fan and both episodes had fun moments, backstory, and character interactions. But they didn’t blow me away, so Meap Me In St. Louis wasn’t exactly at the top of my list when I was looking ahead to Season 5! That being said, there were still plenty of fun moments in this feature-length episode. I felt the “checklist” of moments from the trailer was a bit too on-the-nose, and the core story of Big Mitch seeking out a substance he could use to rule the galaxy was a tad repetitive… but other than that, it was a surprising amount of fun.
Meap Me In St. Louis (which I’m pretty sure is supposed to be pronounced “Saint Lew-iss,” but one battle at a time, eh?) gave most of the main characters plenty to do. Meap teaming up with Candace was fun, Perry and Doof working together again was also cute, and while the song was very silly, I actually kind of liked it. Again, some beautiful animation work to bring the outer space and seasonal changing sequences to life, too.
No Slumber Party:
I loved this.
I already highlighted this episode’s song, which was just fantastic, and really the entire premise was a blast. Doof’s desire to spread evil by spoiling a TV show (a hilarious Friends parody) was absolutely pitch-perfect for his level of evil-doing, and his stay awake-inator was on theme, too. I’m surprised Disney okayed a Friends parody, given that the show is owned by a competitor, but I’m glad the higher-ups were good with it because it was genuinely hilarious.
The kids’ competing slumber parties were cute, too, and it was nice to get at least some interaction between Vanessa and Candace before the season ended! The boys’ invention looked really cozy – exactly the kind of thing I’d want to hang out in and watch movies! And Candace’s attempt to get Linda to see it was one of the best in the season as she dragged her downstairs, with the awake-inator missing her multiple times. A really fun episode that took place at night for a bit of a twist, and that had a fun song to boot.
The Ballad Of Bubba Doof:
Dr Doofenshmirtz with his swamp-dwelling cousin.
I can see a universe in which “Doofenshmirtz has a redneck Cajun cousin” works as a premise. However… I wasn’t wild about this character in this version of the story. Firstly, it felt a bit mean-spirited; too many stories across the world of entertainment look down their noses at rural or small-town America, particularly in the Appalachian and southern regions, and some of the stereotyping just leaned into that in an uncomfortable way. And secondly, I just didn’t find Bubba to be particularly fun or engaging as a character.
There are some positives to this episode, though. I liked Bubba’s inventiveness, and his successful trapping of Perry. Monogram and Carl had some fun scenes together, and it was nice to see them outside of the OWCA headquarters in a completely different environment. The kids’ forced perspective town was fun, leaning into the Western genre in a big way. Not entirely original, perhaps, but still good. All in all, though, I wouldn’t say this was the strongest end to this new season.
In Conclusion…
Most of the main characters in the season premiere.
So we’ve talked about all of the individual stories. While researching for this article, it seems as if there might be four more episodes to come later this summer… so maybe this isn’t the full Season 5 review, after all. I wonder why Disney did that and didn’t drop those remaining stories at the same time as the rest of the season?
Anyway, setting that aside, I had a great time with Phineas and Ferb’s revival. There were some fun stories with the kids, Candace, Perry, and Dr Doofenshmirtz, and after such a long time away, it felt incredible to be back in the Tri-State Area all over again. Phineas and Ferb’s fifth season, while imperfect, is still the best animated series I’ve seen in 2025, and will absolutely be a contender for “TV show of the year” when I do my annual end-of-year awards in December. Check back after Christmas to see if it makes the cut!
I watched (most of) Season 5 with a big grin on my face!
I’ve rambled on for long enough, so it’s time to wrap things up. There were some episodes and storylines that weren’t as strong as others, and there were a few weird quirks with the animation, especially for secondary characters. But despite those glorified nitpicks, I had a wonderful time. I felt genuinely sad when I realised I was coming to the end of the season; I just didn’t want it to be over! For anyone with Disney+ and who enjoyed even one Phineas and Ferb episode in the past, Season 5 is an easy recommendation.
If there are four extra episodes to come in July, be sure to check back because I’ll definitely share my thoughts. And when Season 6 is ready, I hope to be able to review those episodes, too. Until then, if you want to check out ten of my favourite episodes from Seasons 1-4, you can find them by clicking or tapping here. And I wrote a longer piece about the Christmas special back in December to mark its fifteenth anniversary, which you can find by clicking or tapping here. Until next time… and have a wonderful summer!
Phineas and Ferb is available to stream now on Disney+. Season 5 is also being broadcast on the Disney Channel in the United States. Phineas and Ferb – including all episodes mentioned above – is the copyright of Disney Television Animation. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Beware of very minor spoilers for Strange New Worlds Seasons 1 and 2, Discovery Seasons 1 and 2, and Picard.
If you follow Star Trek on social media, or really any of the big Star Trek fansites or channels, you’ve probably already heard the news that Strange New Worlds is to be cancelled after a truncated fifth season. I find this to be an especially disappointing blow, as Strange New Worlds has been the best show – and by far the best live-action show – since Star Trek’s small-screen resurrection back in 2017. Captain Pike has been telling us in voiceover form that the Enterprise is on a “five-year mission,” of course, but I’m not gonna lie: a big part of me was hoping that this show would continue to go from strength to strength, pushing past that five-year mark.
This decision is quite clearly coming from the corporate side. Paramount’s finances have been bad for a long time, Paramount+ is on shaky ground as very much a second-tier streaming service, and the ongoing Skydance merger seems to be pretty convoluted, even by industry standards. So I’m not stunned at this news – just as Discovery’s cancellation, Lower Decks’ cancellation, and the lack of interest in Star Trek: Legacy didn’t shock me too much, either. But that doesn’t make it any more pleasant or easy to digest.
Skydance and Paramount are involved in a messy buyout/merger.
It seems odd to announce the cancellation at this stage: a few weeks before Season 3’s premiere, and potentially two, three, or even four years before the show’s fifth and final season will be broadcast. Is it not at least possible that high viewership and a strong fan reaction to Seasons 3, 4, and 5 could make the show a more intriguing business proposition? With the Skydance merger still ongoing and a new leadership team potentially coming in, mightn’t they be interested in the flagship series for one of Paramount’s biggest franchises? Or conversely, did Skydance insist on cancelling Strange New Worlds – and perhaps other Star Trek projects, too – ahead of the merger?
We may never learn exactly what happened or what the ins and outs of it all were. But it’s disappointing in more ways than one to learn that Strange New Worlds isn’t being given more of a chance. I don’t know what the show’s viewership has been like, but I would remind everyone that Season 1 wasn’t available internationally at first, so there’s only really been one full season that was available around the world on Paramount+ on broadcast day. It feels premature to cancel the show when you bear that fact in mind. And that’s not to mention that, historically speaking, Star Trek shows tend to improve as they go along, picking up more support and viewers from their second seasons onwards.
Adrian Holmes (Admiral April) with Anson Mount (Captain Pike) on the set of Strange New Worlds Season 4.
Then there’s the shortened fifth season. Season 5 will run to a mere six episodes instead of the usual ten. What, were those extra four episodes really fucking up the budget that badly? Is Paramount so broke that the corporation can’t stump up a few extra dollars for four episodes of a series that’s already in production, where the majority of its sets are already built, and the main roles are already cast? C’mon… that’s just pathetic.
Strange New Worlds has been the high-water mark of modern Star Trek. But, as with almost everything Paramount’s executive fuckwits have touched over the past decade, some appalling decision-making at the highest levels has worked against the show and its prospects. Oversaturation of the Star Trek brand is a major contributing factor, with Strange New Worlds having to compete for attention against four other Star Trek shows at various points, including episodes of Picard which were literally broadcast on the exact same day. Then there was the piss-poor decision to cut off the series from anyone outside of the United States during its critical first season. And even when Strange New Worlds was available and wasn’t being trodden all over by other Star Trek shows… it didn’t get much of a marketing budget, hardly any tie-in merchandise, and Paramount always seemed to treat the show as secondary to Discovery and Picard. Even as those shows came to the end of their runs, there wasn’t as much love for Strange New Worlds as there should’ve been.
Captain Pike in the series premiere.
I heaped praise on Paramount back in 2020 for commissioning Strange New Worlds. The show wouldn’t have come to exist without the incredibly positive reaction fans had to Pike and Spock’s roles in Discovery Season 2, and I think it’s worth acknowledging how at least some folks at Paramount had the basic business acumen to recognise that. Strange New Worlds was prioritised ahead of Section 31, arguably contributing to that series being put on hold and eventually re-worked into the TV movie we got earlier this year. And I stand by what I’ve said multiple times: that was the right decision. Fans were clamouring for more adventures with these versions of Pike and Spock, as well as for an episodic series that returned Star Trek to its roots. It’s no exaggeration to say that Strange New Worlds is the Star Trek show that I and many other Trekkies had been waiting for for a very long time.
There’ll be time in the months and years ahead to give Strange New Worlds a proper autopsy, discussing what went wrong, what went right, and what lessons the newly-formed Skydance-Paramount corporation can learn for Star Trek’s future… if Star Trek has a future beyond the next few years. But for now… I just feel like wallowing, to be honest with you. The timing of the news caught me off-guard, with Season 3’s marketing campaign ramping up, and while a five-season run is in keeping with modern Star Trek and with Pike’s “five-year mission,” I’m still disappointed to learn that the end is nigh for Strange New Worlds.
The USS Enterprise.
Let’s talk a little about the timing, because this really is a bit of an oddity, isn’t it?
We’re weeks away from Season 3’s premiere. A new trailer was released just a few days ago. The cast are soon gonna be out and about on the interview circuit. This is categorically not the time to announce that the show is being cancelled! It risks overshadowing the marketing push for Season 3, and it risks turning away potential viewers. What’s the point, after all, in tuning in for Season 3 if the show’s about to be canned? A lot of people won’t read the whole press release; they’ll hear “Strange New Worlds is being cancelled” and push the series out of their minds. Paramount has always struggled with timing – and with plenty of other incredibly basic things that practically every other entertainment corporation handles better – but even by their standards this is pretty bad.
The only thing I can think of to justify the announcement is this: the news was about to be leaked. Someone at Paramount got wind of an imminent leak and jumped in first, trying to head it off. Maybe that’s what happened… I don’t know. It seems to me to be the only logical justification for the timing of this announcement.
Spock.
So what does all of this mean for Star Trek’s future?
This might have to be the subject of a longer piece in the weeks ahead (when I’ve had more time to process things and get my thoughts in order) but I have a couple of things to say at this stage.
Firstly, I sincerely hope Strange New Worlds can be Star Trek’s last prequel series – at least for a good long while. There were fun moments in Enterprise, Discovery’s first couple of seasons, and the Kelvin films… but for a franchise that’s always been about looking to the future, prequels have never felt right to me. Strange New Worlds has, in my view, been outstanding… but if there is to be more Star Trek on our screens in the years ahead, let’s move the timeline along instead of re-treading old ground. Many Strange New Worlds episodes would’ve worked just as well – if not better – had they been set in the Picard era. A few small tweaks here and there and you’d be all set!
Star Trek doesn’t need another prequel series.
Secondly, I feel increasingly certain that, by the time we get to 2028 or 2029, Star Trek as a whole will cease production.
There are other projects in production right now: two seasons of Starfleet Academy and potentially at least one season of Tawny Newsome’s “workplace comedy” show. To me, a reasonably plausible timeline might see us get Starfleet Academy next year, Strange New Worlds Season 4 in 2027, Starfleet Academy and/or the comedy show in 2028, and Strange New Worlds’ finale in 2028 or 2029. But after that? Paramount’s merger will have fully concluded, and it’ll be up to the new executives to decide what – if anything – they want to do with Star Trek.
When Paramount+ was beginning its painfully slow rollout a few years ago, I said that I wouldn’t be surprised if the streaming platform doesn’t make it to the end of the decade. And despite talks of a potential merger of Paramount+ with another platform, I feel like that looks more and more likely, too. The future of streaming feels like it’s going to consolidate around a few large, profitable platforms, meaning second-tier, unprofitable ones like Paramount+ are on the way out. I don’t see the merger changing that, either.
Will Paramount+ survive the decade?
What that means for Star Trek is that, if the franchise survives, it’ll likely be licesned out to someone like Netflix or Amazon in the future, rather than being made for Paramount’s own platform. Even in the Paramount+ era we’ve seen this; Prodigy was recently licensed to Netflix, though that deal is shortly coming to an end. With Netflix having been burned before, though, with both Discovery and Prodigy… will they want to make another investment in this beleaguered brand? If Star Trek kind of fizzles out in the second half of the 2020s, will it be an appealing prospect to any big streaming platform in the future?
Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. It’s still possible that the remaining seasons of Strange New Worlds or Starfleet Academy will bring in new viewers, attracting new eyes to Star Trek at just the right time to greenlight more from the franchise! Maybe that’s a little too optimistic for this moment, but my point is that you never know. Strange New Worlds is fantastic with its episodic storytelling, and Starfleet Academy has the potential, at least, to appeal to younger folks. There are a couple of glimmers of hope there, I feel.
Here’s to Strange New Worlds…
But none of that can hide the disappointment of today. Strange New Worlds – the show spawned by a fan campaign and which quickly became the best thing Star Trek has done in years – is cancelled. And Season 5 won’t even manage a measly ten episodes.
I’m glad that Star Trek was resurrected in 2017, and there have been some fantastic, hilarious, and emotional episodes produced over the past eight years. But we’re seeing the effect of Paramount’s epic mismanagement now; shows failing to find an audience, being either cut off from the world or squashed up too tightly together, and ultimately the result is premature cancellation. I don’t know what the future might hold for Star Trek beyond Strange New Worlds’ finale… but I hope whoever’s in charge of the franchise by that point does a better job than the current crop of executive morons.
Despite this disappointing news, I still hope to watch and review Strange New Worlds Season 3 later this summer, so be sure to check back for that. Until then… well, I don’t really have any encouraging or optimistic words to end on, I’m afraid.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream now on Paramount+ and are also available on DVD and Blu-ray. Season 3 will premiere on the 17th of July. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds and all other properties discussed above – remains the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I have a longer piece in the pipeline about a document titled A.I. 2027, which you may have seen doing the rounds. I’ll save most of my thoughts on A.I. and its future disruptive potential for that, so be sure to check back. But today, I wanted to tackle a more specific use for artificial intelligence, and how we could see a change in the way we engage with and consume entertainment in the not-so-distant future.
This was prompted, in part, by a conversation I was having with a friend about A.I. 2027. Spoiler alert for my longer piece, but I compared the possibility of a “do-everything” general A.I. system to things like 3D televisions, Google Glass, and the Concorde supersonic jet. All three are examples of technologies that seemed to be on the cusp of revolutionising various aspects of our lives… but didn’t. I can’t help but feel that future predictions of general or super-intelligent A.I. – either as a horseman of the apocalypse or as a revolutionary technology about to deliver some kind of utopia – are, at best, far-fetched! But generative A.I. models, which are more limited in scope, do have the potential to play a huge role in the future of entertainment.
And that’s what I want to address today.
Is A.I. about to revolutionise entertainment?
If you’d asked me in 2005 what the future of entertainment would look like, I would not have been able to predict user-generated content on platforms like YouTube and TikTok becoming massive, popular, and hugely profitable. But in 2025, barely 24 hours go by for me without watching at least one video on YouTube or spending a little time scrolling TikTok. The widespread adoption of broadband internet, social media, and smartphones with built-in connectivity and cameras facilitated this transformation in the way literally billions of people engage with entertainment.
It’s not a stretch to say that there are people today – adults as well as kids – who don’t care much for television, films, or even video games. Their primary sources of entertainment come from social media – and from user-generated content specifically. It turns out that a lot of people enjoy watching things no media executive could’ve ever dreamed of: vlogs, workout routines, makeup tutorials, video game “let’s plays,” and even ASMR. If you’d told me in 2005 what some of the most popular YouTube and TikTok pages would look like twenty years later, I’d have struggled to believe it!
These kinds of videos didn’t seem like they’d be the future of entertainment just a few short years ago!
All of this is to say that a revolution in how we engage with media is nothing new. It’s already happened over the past fifteen to twenty years – and that came after a century of changes as we went from live music and theatre productions to the cinema, television, video recording, video games, and so on. Nothing in the entertainment sector stays still for very long, so there are definitely changes coming. Whether my prediction is right… well, if I’m still here in a decade or two, we can revisit this piece and see!
So what is my prediction, exactly? What is this big, revolutionary, A.I.-driven change that I foresee?
In short: user-controlled movies, TV shows, and perhaps even video games. All monetised by big corporations, all licensed and based on subscription models, and all generated by A.I.
Are A.I.-generated films and TV shows going to be part of the future of entertainment?
Imagine Star Trek’s holodeck, where you can tell the computer what you want to see, but on a flat screen. The biggest names in entertainment at the time will have either developed or bought out A.I. systems to power this content, and you’ll see celebrities, actors, and anyone famous copyrighting or trademarking their likeness and voice, ready to be licensed out. Some performers will be contracted solely to one big entertainment powerhouse, others might be “jobbing it” wherever they can make a buck. “Traditional” – i.e. human-created – films, TV shows, and games will still be made, and social media likely won’t go away, either. But A.I.-generated, customisable, tailored entertainment is going to be a big deal very soon.
You can already see the beginnings of this. Google’s Veo software is just one example of text-to-video A.I., and people are already using it to make their own videos of all kinds of things. The real revolution in the implementation of this technology won’t actually be its development, but its monetisation; how big companies can extract the most money possible for their service will determine how it’s used going forward. Right now, if I ask one of these programmes to generate me a video of Darth Vader in a hot tub, it’ll do it without question – but LucasFilm and Disney won’t be happy about that. As soon as there’s a viable method for monetising these things, we’ll see A.I. models go the way of film and TV streamers – walling off their own intellectual property, and licensing it out for a fee.
Google’s Veo video generator is one of several that already exist.
Maybe one of the big names in entertainment today – Netflix, for example – will buy out one of the big A.I. companies, using their software exclusively on their platform. Or conversely, maybe one of the big A.I. companies will buy out someone like Disney or Netflix, in a not dissimilar way to how Amazon was able to purchase the venerable MGM Studios a few years ago. Both of those seem possible – but the end result will be the same: content and IP locked behind a paywall, available only to those willing and able to pay.
But for those lucky folks, a world of possibilities opens up.
You’ll sign into your new A.I.-Netflix hybrid, and along with the pre-made programmes and perhaps other user-generated content, there’ll be a simple prompt: “What would you like to watch today?”
Big entertainment corporations – like Netflix – surely see the potential in A.I.-generated content already.
From there, your only limit will be your imagination. “I want to see a film that’s about two hours long, starring John Wayne as a mercenary in outer space, with Kate Mara as his love interest, and a pink robot voiced by Brent Spiner as the villain. They should pilot a spaceship called the R.M.S. Wombat, there should be a soundtrack by Bon Jovi, and the entire story should be a metaphor for the dangers of secondhand smoking.” A split-second later… and bang! You’re watching your fantasy film with whatever parameters you’ve given the A.I. It’ll be capable of pulling off shocking twists, bringing long-dead actors back to life, and even generating brand-new stories in established fictional universes.
Imagine being able to fire up Paramount’s A.I. (or, let’s be realistic, the A.I. company that owns whatever remains of Paramount by that point) and generate brand-new Star Trek stories. Maybe you’ve always wanted to know what would’ve happened if Captain Picard died after his assimilation by the Borg, or what might’ve happened if the USS Voyager was destroyed, with a handful of survivors being taken in by Chakotay and his Maquis crew. Or perhaps you want to see an expanded look at an existing story, potentially filling in some of the blanks in between established events. You could even look at a story from the other side, like seeing the Dominion War from the Cardassian perspective. All of those things feel plausible with A.I. integration.
We might be able to make our own Star Trek stories one day…
As A.I. technology gets better, its ability to retain information will improve. This means that, the more you use an A.I. programme, the more it gets to “know” you – or at least it gets better at predicting your reactions, your likes, and your dislikes. This means that our hypothetical A.I.-Netflix hybrid will very quickly get to know what kinds of stories you like, what generates the best responses from you, and will be able to use that information to fine-tune and personalise the content it generates for you.
It’ll be kind of like having your own personal film studio. As the A.I. retains all of the information and storylines it’s generated, it’ll be able to make sequels, prequels, and expand on certain story points. If you really liked a character in an A.I.-generated film, it’ll be able to make a spin-off, just for you, tailored to what you liked about the character and the kinds of stories it knows you responded well to elsewhere. Heck, it could even generate a casual vlog-style series based on your favourite celebrity or character, kind of like how we see A.I. chat bots based on fictional characters today.
Imagine having your own film studio in your TV or phone, ready to turn your ideas and thoughts into real, ready-to-watch content.
By now, you’ve heard the criticisms of A.I. Its supercomputers use more energy than entire countries. It’s stealing people’s art, writing, and more. It’s capable of “lying” or “hallucinating” falsehoods, spreading misinformation. It’s going to put millions of people out of work. And I don’t dispute any of those things, nor am I “championing” the use of A.I. in the entertainment space. This prediction is based on what I’ve seen from my limited engagement with the world of A.I. so far. I don’t actively use A.I. myself; I don’t really have a place in my life for an A.I. chat bot, and I’ve never needed to use A.I. to generate anything. But I see people using it more and more, and to me, the scenario outlined above feels like a plausible next step for the technology as it currently exists.
The big things from the corporate side are how to lock down their A.I. models and monetise them, as well as how to prevent competing A.I. systems from “trawling” their content and using intellectual property that they claim ownership of. After all, it’d be no good to offer your service for sale if a free competitor could do the exact same thing without the price tag! But if there’s one thing I can say with certainty after more than forty years of existing in this capitalist economy, it’s that you should never underestimate the ability of corporations to find a way to monetise… everything.
Whichever corporation figures this out first is gonna make a lot of money…
Twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to predict the rise of social media, user-generated content, and subscription services. All of those things seemed to come out of nowhere, catching me off-guard. The idea that people would spend hours each day watching what are basically other people’s home videos… that would’ve seemed positively ludicrous, even in 2005. But some people did see that potential, and more importantly, were able to get in early and monetise the heck out of it.
With generative A.I. being the current trend, it’s easy to write it off as a flash in the pan; another 3D television or MiniDisc. And maybe that’s still going to be the case; I haven’t watched a 3D movie in years, and my MiniDisc player has been gathering dust in the attic since the mid-2000s. But right now, with the amount of money being thrown at generative A.I. software, it feels at least plausible to me that, a few years from now, we could all be generating our own high-quality films, TV programmes, and perhaps even video games from simple prompts, with the only limitations being our imagination… and our wallets.
Remember MiniDisc?
I don’t know if that’s the kind of future I want… but I gotta be honest: part of me feels intrigued by the possibilities A.I. could offer. Being able to get tailor-made, fully customisable movies… there’s genuine appeal there, and whoever gets it right first stands to make a ton of money. I don’t think such a marketplace means that films, TV shows, and video games created by human beings will disappear; there will still be a place for creativity, imagination, and innovation. But there could be far, far fewer of those types of films, TV shows, and games being created if the big corporations go all-in on generative A.I. in the way I’ve outlined above. As with all things A.I., that basically means a ton of people are gonna be out of work. That undeniably taints the finished product; A.I. will come with an obvious, and pretty devastating, cost.
But for a lot of people… well, we already know that the cost to human lives doesn’t matter if they enjoy the finished product. Video games are still frequently created under “crunch” conditions, an exploitative practice I saw firsthand when I worked in the video games industry. Batteries rely on cobalt and lithium, mined by underpaid or even enslaved workers in horrible conditions. People pay for cheap clothes and shoes made in sweatshops. The list goes on… and my point is simple: don’t expect some kind of moral crusade against A.I. to change a lot of minds if it hasn’t in the cases we just mentioned.
Whether A.I. is here to stay, and whether I’m even close to being right about its potential future role in entertainment remains to be seen. I don’t know how much time I’ve got left, but if I’m still here in a decade or two, let’s revisit this piece together. Perhaps we’ll share a chuckle about how wrong I was, and how I exaggerated a flash in the pan technological fad way beyond its capabilities. Or not.
All brands and properties mentioned above are the copyright or trademark of their respective studio, distributor, broadcaster, etc. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
When the Nintendo Wii launched here in the UK in late 2006, pre-orders sold out well in advance. I was on a waiting list that was months long, and it wasn’t until almost half a year later that I managed to finally get my hands on a console. In 2017, though I wasn’t on a waiting list and didn’t buy a Switch right away, I was well aware that there were waiting lists and some folks found it difficult to get their hands on a console on launch day. That’s to say nothing of the problems Sony and Microsoft had when the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles launched a few years ago. Those machines were out of stock everywhere for basically an entire year – at least here in the UK.
Nintendo emailed me shortly after the Switch 2 was announced; a marketing circular hyping up the new console and inviting pre-orders. I didn’t actually meet Nintendo’s stringent pre-order requirements, having cancelled my Switch Online membership for lack of use a while ago! But Nintendo has been pushing hard for pre-orders, and there was even a minor controversy a few weeks ago when it seemed that Game, the UK’s only remaining chain of video game shops, had messed up some folks’ pre-orders. The Switch 2 was all set to be the hottest piece of tech of 2025 and looked like it’d be hard to find!
Which makes it feel profoundly odd that today, on launch day, consoles are available everywhere I look.
The Nintendo Switch 2 hasn’t sold out… at least here in the UK at time of writing.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a damning indictment of the Switch 2 that it hasn’t sold out. In fact, if you remember my criticisms of Microsoft and Sony back in 2020, you’ll know that I argued then that companies needed to do more to ensure they had enough stock to go around before launch. Playing into the hands of touts and scalpers was really poor from both Xbox and PlayStation, and on the one hand I’m glad that Nintendo seems to have been better-prepared.
But on the other… I can’t shake a funny feeling. Nintendo has never been well-prepared for… well, anything. Go back twenty years and you’ll find jokes and memes doing the rounds about Nintendo machines and games being unavailable or out of stock, and I think I’m right in saying that even the beleaguered Wii U had stock issues when it was released back in 2012. So… has Nintendo finally got it right? Did the company, for what could be the first time ever, manage to gauge public interest perfectly, and successfully manufacture and ship enough units all across the world?
The Wii was out of stock everywhere for months after its launch.
Or could there be another explanation?
Is the Switch 2 still in stock today because… well, there just isn’t as much interest in the console as Nintendo had hoped? Even if you’re the hardest of hard-core Nintendo fanatics, you can’t deny that the Switch 2’s marketing campaign has been dominated by the high price of games, as well as the increased price of the system itself. I warned that pitching the Switch 2 at a comparable price to Xbox and PlayStation consoles would invite potentially unfavourable comparisons, and for gamers interested in a handheld, there are cheaper and more versatile handheld PCs on the market.
Then there’s the launch lineup. As I said last time, the only game I’d really call a “system seller” or “killer app” is Mario Kart World – the game which has attracted a ton of criticism for its price tag. Donkey Kong Bananza isn’t a launch title, and as a game in a second-tier franchise I doubt it would be a huge mover of Switch 2s on its own anyway. What other games are there at launch that are going to attract players? Enhanced ports of a handful of Switch 1 titles and underwhelming versions of games that look and run better on other consoles? I don’t mean to be unkind, but I doubt many folks are buying a £400 console to play Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess or the paid-for demo Welcome Tour.
Nintendo is clearly banking on Mario Kart World to shift a lot of consoles.
Maybe this is a weird quirk of the UK market, and perhaps gamers in the United States, Europe, and Japan are going to be waiting a while to get a chance to play on Nintendo’s latest machine. But I’m not so sure, and I’ll be very curious to see the Switch 2 sales figures – if Nintendo announces them – sometime in the autumn when the company talks about the current financial quarter.
There are issues in the UK with the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, inflation, and a government that seems hell-bent on punishing the poorest and least-well off in society. So that could absolutely be a contributing factor to why people aren’t confident in investing in a brand-new, relatively expensive, luxury item like a games console. But if that were true, I’d have expected to see sales of Xbox, PlayStation, PC, smartphones, and other gadgets in decline – which is something that hasn’t happened.
Another UK retailer (Game) has Switch 2 consoles in stock.
So what’s going on? Maybe I’ll check back in a couple of days’ time and find that Switch 2 consoles are out of stock. Or maybe Nintendo finally got one right and managed to produce enough consoles to meet launch demand. There’s a first time for everything, after all. But I can’t shake the feeling at this very early stage that something isn’t quite going to plan, and that the Switch 2 might not be reaching the sales targets Nintendo and their corporate investors had in mind. But I’m not going to write the console’s obituary just yet! There’s still plenty of time for things to change; it’s literally the machine’s first day on sale. However, the simple fact that consoles haven’t already sold out has definitely caught me off guard.
If you put a gun to my head and told me to predict, right now, how well the Switch 2 would perform across its lifespan… I’d say that I still expect it to do well with Nintendo’s core fanbase, but that it might struggle to reach the same number of units sold as the original Switch. The price tag is a big part of that… but so is the console’s uninspired design. For decades, Nintendo consoles were new, innovative, and fresh. Sometimes that worked, and sometimes it didn’t work quite so well, but what you could never say about Nintendo was that they were stagnant. The company built a reputation around innovative, fun, family-friendly games. The Switch 2 is the company’s first console to feel repetitive and samey… and maybe, just maybe, that could be another contributing factor.
Or I could be totally wrong and by Saturday, it’ll be a six-month wait to get a Switch 2! Still… strange times.
The Nintendo Switch 2 is available to purchase now. The Switch, Switch 2, Super Mario, and other properties discussed above are the copyright of Nintendo. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Beware minor spoilers for Phineas and Ferb, including the Season 5 teasers and trailers.
By the time you read this, the season premiere of Phineas and Ferb’s revival might already have aired! I’m working hard to get this piece out before the full season hits Disney+, though!
I’ve talked about Phineas and Ferb on a few occasions here on the website. The show is unironically one of my all-time favourites, and moreover, it’s something I often turn to when I’m not feeling great or struggling with my mental health. To say Phineas and Ferb is one of my “comfort shows” wouldn’t be wide of the mark.
So I have a few thoughts about its imminent revival!
The revival’s promo posters.
It goes without saying that all of this is the entirely subjective opinion of just one viewer, so if you hate my take, think I’ve missed something important, or I’m excited about something that sounds awful to you… that’s okay! There should be enough room in the fan community for polite and civil discussion. I think it’s also worth noting, in a piece like this, that I don’t have any “insider information,” and I’m not trying to pretend that anything we’re about to discuss can, will, or must be included in Season 5.
Phew! Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about some of my hopes, fears, and expectations for Phineas and Ferb’s revival.
Early character designs from the show’s original pitch.
This first point is a big one, but it can be kind of difficult to quantify. Too many reboots and revivals feel corporate and forced; soulless, money-grubbing “content” created not with any artistic vision or integrity, but to please shareholders and/or pad out the increasingly meagre lineup of a streaming platform in a fractured marketplace. I remember that, in the mid-2010s, the rumour was that Phineas and Ferb’s creators felt they had ideas for a potential fifth season – so that’s good news. But at the same time, I’m acutely aware that Phineas and Ferb is being revived for business reasons; Disney wants to use the revival to sign up and retain as many Disney+ subscribers as possible.
Corporate executives tend to treat existing brands and IP much more favourably than something new. We can see that in the marketing push Phineas and Ferb’s revival has gotten; comparable recent projects, even from the same creative team, like Milo Murphy’s Law or Hamster and Gretel didn’t get the same love and attention from Disney. And that’s to say nothing of shows like Hailey’s On It, which was cancelled after just one season and seemed to get absolutely no marketing budget whatsoever.
Olivia Olson (left) with Perry the Platypus at the Season 5 premiere. Photo Credit: The Walt Disney Company
In short, will Phineas and Ferb feel… hollow? Will it be noticeably more corporate in its tone, and will that impact the enjoyment of the finished product? Anything Disney is and always has been corporate, but in its original form Phineas and Ferb was at least an original idea. Will this version be noticeably worse for being revived a decade after it went off the air?
Another way to think about this point is like this: are there genuinely good ideas left and new stories to tell with these characters? Or will it be obvious from the first episode that everyone involved just came back to earn a stack of money? There are some reboots and revivals that are so nakedly corporate that they’re painfully unwatchable; think Dexter or Sex and the City, for instance, though those shows are far outside of Phineas and Ferb’s animated comedy genre. I guess I’m just worried that there’s nothing left in the tank; that all of the good episode ideas were made during the show’s original run, and that this revival will not only fail to recapture the magic… but might even taint the original series by being obviously soulless and so much weaker.
Co-creators of Phineas and Ferb Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh at the Season 5 premiere. Photo Credit: The Walt Disney Company
And I think there’s a valid cause for concern in that regard. I don’t believe it’s an especially “hot take” to say that, outside of a few special feature-length episodes, the quality of Phineas and Ferb seemed to dip during its fourth season. It seemed, even then, that some premises had been done and done again, and that certain characters were more or less played out in terms of how far their arcs could take them. There were still some enjoyable episodes in the mix, but they tended to be ones that flipped the script or tried something different.
This ties into my next point. The revived series is going to be set one year later, meaning everyone will be a bit older. What impact will that have on character dynamics? Will Candace be as high-strung at sixteen as she was at fifteen? Will Phineas and the gang still be together on the same terms as before? The character this matters most for is Dr Doofenshmirtz; after an entire year as a “good guy,” and having had multiple adventures in Milo Murphy’s Law, how will he be different and how will that impact his relationships with Vanessa and Perry?
How will the time-skip (and character regression) affect Doofenshmirtz and his relationships?
I can’t help but feel it was a mistake to move the timeline along. It risks undermining the powerful and emotional ending that the show’s original run got in 2015, and for an episodic series… would anyone really notice if the new episodes were set in that same endless summer? We can argue that some characters didn’t really change a lot over the course of the show, but Doofenshmirtz definitely did – and having him “become evil again” after going through everything and promising to change for Vanessa’s sake just… it doesn’t sit right, somehow.
The opposite problem might also arise. If we’re saying the kids are all a year older, it’ll seem strange if they look, dress, and behave exactly the same way, won’t it? I think it’s unlikely that the time-skip will do anything narratively; there won’t be some big off-screen adventure that happened during the school year that will be called back to. So if the time-skip doesn’t do anything for the story, and doesn’t seem to have affected most of the characters either, based on what we’ve glimpsed from trailers and teasers… why do it? Why not set the new episodes in that original summer, before the events of the series finale?
If all the kids look and behave the exact same way, why not set the new episodes during the original summer?
The combination of Doofenshmirtz’s arc being potentially regressed or overwritten and the apparent lack of change to any of the other characters has me concerned that the time-skip will be seen as a mistake. I can see the reasoning behind it, and the temptation to give the kids another 104 days to plan all-new adventures. But there are drawbacks to it, too, and I can’t help but feel that these outweigh any potential benefits.
I mentioned that Phineas and Ferb was, in its original incarnation anyway, an episodic series. And one of my biggest hopes for the revival is that it stays that way! I don’t need Phineas and Ferb to become some kind of weird serialised cartoon, with each episode setting up the next and ending on a cliffhanger. There’s more than enough serialised storytelling out there; one of the most appealing things about Phineas and Ferb has always been that each episode is a self-contained adventure.
Linda and Candace as they appear in the Season 5 trailer.
Many episodic shows from the past are being brought back in a new, serialised form. Just look at the Star Trek franchise as an example, but I’m sure you can think of plenty of others. Episodic storytelling was the order of the day a few years ago, but in the aftermath of successful shows like Lost and Game of Thrones, every media executive seems to be demanding season-long narrative arcs nowadays. I hope that Phineas and Ferb won’t fall victim to this, and that Disney’s producers have recognised that the show’s episodic style is a core part of its identity and one of the biggest reasons why it worked so well.
Two-part episodes, feature-length specials, and the like are all okay, of course! But I don’t want to log in to Disney+ to find that each episode leads directly into the next; that Season 5 is one long narrative arc. It just wouldn’t be right for Phineas and Ferb, and it would almost certainly make it feel much more corporate, bland, and unexceptional in the ways we were discussing above.
Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh on stage at the Season 5 premiere. Photo Credit: The Walt Disney Company
I have one specific casting concern, and I’m not really sure how best to broach this. Richard O’Brien – who voices Lawrence, the boys’ father – is 83 years old at time of writing. And throughout the revival’s marketing campaign, I haven’t so much as glimpsed him. Is O’Brien part of the revival? He’s tentatively credited on IMDB, but only for one episode of Season 5, which feels like a placeholder. I haven’t heard talk of the role of Lawrence being re-cast, but I haven’t seen or heard anything from Richard O’Brien himself or the show’s production team to confirm his involvement.
Phineas and Ferb is no stranger to re-cast roles, of course. Ferb – literally one of the title characters – was re-cast in 2020 for Candace Against the Universe, and I think that passed by inoffensively enough. But it would be a shame to lose Richard O’Brien, or to see the role of Lawrence diminished if he’s not able to voice the character as often or as freely any more. I guess we won’t know for sure until the new season arrives, but O’Brien’s absence and silence have left me a little concerned about a potentially reduced role for one of the core members of the Flynn-Fletcher family. Lawrence may not have always been the centre of attention in the way Linda is with Candace, but he’s often been an important presence in episodes, setting up key storylines or just butting in with a funny one-liner.
Lawrence with the boys in Season 3.
I’m not an artist or an animator, so please be aware of that caveat as I make this next point. From the clips and still images I’ve seen so far, something feels “off” about some of the background characters. I’m not sure if it’s something in their eyes, something to do with the colour palette used, or how they’re integrated into scenes, but some of these secondary characters feel floaty and lifeless. It’s like they’re not really there; ghostly, almost transparent presences.
Could that be connected to Disney using a different animation studio, or even just different digital animation software? I’m not sure. I hope it’s not something that’s gonna be too noticeable throughout the revival, though! The main characters – at least from what I’ve seen so far – stay true to their original designs and don’t seem to be impacted by whatever animation changes have been made. That’s positive, for sure, and visual/artistic styles are usually something I can get used to (or get over) given enough time. But from what I’ve seen so far, some of these secondary characters have left me feeling unimpressed.
I’m not wild about how some of these secondary characters looked in the trailer and sneak peek.
So I think that’s everything I had to say on the negative side of things. Let’s try to be a bit more positive now and look ahead to some of the things I’m most looking forward to!
First of all, to counter some of the negative thoughts I had about the show’s time-skip, I think there’s at least some potential in that idea. It gives the writing team – who are a mix of old hands and newbies – a virgin, unspoiled landscape for telling new stories. There’s no need to worry about how certain character beats or narrative moments might impact stories which are supposedly set further along the show’s timeline, and there’s unlimited room for growth for pretty much all of the characters. In an episodic series – which I’m crossing my fingers and hoping Phineas and Ferb will continue to be – there’s perhaps less of a need for consistent character growth, but the potential is still there.
The team during production on Season 5. Image Credit: Dan Povenmire
With the kids all being one year older, that could potentially open up new storylines, too. The original run of the show saw various characters develop crushes, but only older characters like Candace and Jeremy got to take things further and develop a full-blown relationship. Could someone like Buford or Ferb get a partner this time? That could be an interesting thing to explore.
And on the teen side, with Jeremy potentially leaving for university and Candace old enough to drive, there could be new storytelling potential. How would Candace react to Jeremy leaving, for example? If she’s able to drive, could that mean more adventures for her and her friends, or her and her brothers, without any adult supervision? That could definitely open up new locations further afield for adventures and building projects!
Is Candace gonna get her driver’s license?
One of my favourite episodes of Phineas and Ferb is the Christmas special from Season 2, and even though it’s June and the show’s usually set in summer… I wonder if we could see another holiday-themed episode either this season or sometime further along in the revival. There were a couple of Halloween episodes during the show’s original run, too, and that’s always a fun holiday to visit! It would be fun to see at least one episode – even if it’s not feature-length – set outside of the summer during one of the holiday events.
And speaking of special episodes – how about another vacation or travel story? Phineas and Ferb took characters to Hawaii, Africa, France, Japan, and my native UK… but there’s huge potential to visit locations all across the United States and around the world. The boys could visit Australia, the Amazon rainforest, or even Antarctica as part of one of their adventures, or maybe Dr Doofenshmirtz will visit a country like Spain or South Africa while pursuing an evil scheme. There’s a huge amount of storytelling potential when characters step outside of their usual environment, and the show used this to great effect last time around.
Phineas and Ferb visited England in Season 1.
So far, I’ve only heard one song from the revived series: Summer Is Starting Right Now which is from the season premiere. The songs in Phineas and Ferb have always been one of the best parts of the show, and at least the first song from the revival seems to keep that trend going in the best possible way! The song feels like it’s right out of the original series, in tone, in terms of vocal performances, and everything. Given that I want to feel like Phineas and Ferb basically picked up where it left off, the revival’s first song definitely hits the right notes for me.
And I think that last point pretty much encapsulates what I want to see from this revival. Sure, there are going to be new stories to tell and new ways for characters to interact and for the two-and-a-half storylines to intersect. But for me, the point of doing a revival of this type is to give fans new stories which stay true to the original formula. That isn’t to say there’s no room for experimentation, but fundamentally, what I want out of a Phineas and Ferb revival is quite simply… Phineas and Ferb.
I hope Season 5 is going to be a blast.
I want to see Phineas and the gang inventing and building impossibly awesome and fun projects. And I want to see Dr Doofenshmirtz work on an evil scheme to conquer the Tri-State Area. Candace should be on top form trying to get the boys in trouble, and Perry needs to be pushing Doof’s self-destruct buttons. These storylines should come together at the climax of the plot, with Doofenshmirtz’s inator somehow causing the boys’ mom not to see what they’d built. That’s Phineas and Ferb in a nutshell, and it’s what made the show so enjoyable to watch during its original run. I really hope the revival won’t stray too far from that wonderful formula.
Despite some concerns, I’m genuinely excited to welcome Phineas and Ferb back to our screens after such a long absence. You might remember me talking about the show’s Christmas special back in December; it’s something I revisit with fondness every holiday season. Phineas and Ferb is one of my favourite shows, and I really hope this revival will succeed at recapturing the magic.
Check back some time soon for a review… I’ll be sure to let you know if it achieves that objective!
Phineas and Ferb Season 5 will premiere on the 5th of June 2025 on the Disney Channel in the United States, with all ten episodes being available on Disney+ on the 6th of June 2025 in the United States and “select markets.” The rest of the world will follow later in the year. Phineas and Ferb is the copyright of Disney Television Animation and/or The Walt Disney Company. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Doctor Who, including the finale of Season 15.
Almost five years ago, I wrote a piece here on the website titled Another New Doctor Won’t Fix Doctor Who. In that article, I argued that the revived series had pretty much run its course. The Doctor’s old adversaries were played out and had lost their fear factor, new villains were bland and forgettable, and the quality of the writing – particularly when it came to companions, but also for villains and even the Doctor – seemed to have taken a nose-dive. So… have the most recent seasons and specials changed my mind about that? I bet you’ve already guessed my answer from the title of this piece!
I’ll hold up my hands and openly admit that I’m no longer a regular Doctor Who viewer. I’m approaching this subject as an ex-fan; a viewer who’d be willing to come back if things changed, but not someone who regularly tunes in any more. If that makes my take somehow less valid to you… that’s totally okay. But I wanted to be up front about where I stand before we go any further. As I like to say, all of this is the subjective, not objective, opinion of just one critic!
I haven’t been a regular Doctor Who viewer for a while.
When it was announced a couple of years ago that David Tennant would be reprising his role – not for a crossover with Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor, nor for a special episode set in an earlier era – I rolled my eyes so far back in my head that I thought I’d gone blind. Nothing screams “desperation” quite like trying to bring back a long-dead character… and for all intents and purposes, regeneration in Doctor Who is akin to “death” for that incarnation of the character. Tennant’s return to the role smacked of a desperate attempt to play the nostalgia card by a showrunner and writers who’d run out of ideas.
Disney recently stepped up to partially fund Doctor Who’s production, with the expectation that new episodes would air on Disney+ around the world. That investment gave the show a significantly higher budget, but it will have come with expectations or even demands from Disney to meet certain viewership milestones. Tennant’s return can certainly be seen through that lens; Doctor Who’s writers recognised that something hadn’t been working really since Matt Smith’s departure all the way back in 2013, and tried to course-correct the only way they knew how. It didn’t work, and that’s putting it mildly.
The Doctor regenerates.
Billie Piper, who played Rose Tyler in the first couple of seasons of the revived Doctor Who, appeared at the end of the most recent season finale – apparently as a new incarnation of the Doctor. As with Tennant’s return above, this smacks of utter desperation and a flailing attempt to use fan-service to bring back the show’s wayward viewers. As one such wayward viewer, I wanted to share my thoughts on this move… and why I don’t expect it’ll work.
The first and most obvious thing to say is this: stories end. Every story has a natural lifespan, and when character arcs are complete, storylines are played out, and there’s nowhere left to go… that’s it. It’s time for the curtain to fall, the credits to roll, and everyone involved to move on. Given the lack of success and dwindling viewership Doctor Who has been finding of late… the show’s at that point. To be blunt, it’s been there for a while. And while there have been creditable attempts to revive its fortunes, these just haven’t worked and the decline has continued.
Behind the scenes during production on a recent episode of Doctor Who.
This is not meant to be an attack on any of the actors involved in recent seasons of Doctor Who, nor of casting decisions, either. On the contrary, I think both Jodie Whittaker and Ncuti Gatwa are fine performers, and from what I saw of them in the title role, they gave it their all. But some actors are too late to the party, arriving too late into a show’s run to have an impact. Peter Capaldi will forever be my case study in that regard; he was, in my view, pretty much the perfect actor to play the ancient time-traveller, but he got absolutely awful, boring, and uninspired stories for pretty much his entire time in the Tardis.
Some fans may be happy with Billie Piper’s return and the idea of some kind of Rose-Doctor hybrid. I don’t really engage much with the “Whoniverse” fandom online, so I’m not really in a position to judge. But her return isn’t just about pleasing hard-core fans; it’s much more cynical than that. It’s an attempt to shine a spotlight on Doctor Who and to convince lapsed viewers to give the series a second (or third) look. But it’s also an admission from the showrunner and writers that there are no more original ideas in that writing room; that the only thing they can think of is to recycle actors and characters over and over again. When Billie Piper’s done in the Tardis, who’s coming back next? Matt Smith? Noel Clarke?
Doctor Who is running out of actors and characters to bring back…
I stand by what I said almost five years ago: if there’s no one at the BBC (or Disney) with a genuinely good, original idea any more, then the show should take a break. Time has flown by, but it’s been twenty years – two entire decades – since Doctor Who returned to our screens in 2005, and this incarnation of the show just feels like it’s run its course and has had everything possible thrown at it. With ratings in what seem to be a terminal decline, putting the brakes on before any more harm is done to the brand is arguably the least-bad course of action.
Doctor Who has huge spin-off potential, though, so I don’t believe the end of the main series needs to mean the abandonment of the “Whoniverse.” I wouldn’t like to say what the hard-core fandom might be interested in, but speaking for myself, I’d certainly be interested in a miniseries or film set during the Time War, potentially building on the excellent 50th anniversary special from 2013. There are other spin-off ideas, too, like a series following UNIT or even a revival of Torchwood.
There are other things that the BBC could do with the Doctor Who IP without continuing the main series.
But for the main series? This should really be the end. Billie Piper’s return is the clearest indication yet that the writers have completely run out of ideas, and it’s genuinely sad to see one of the sci-fi genre’s oldest institutions reduced to this bland, uninspired, fan-servicey slop. In theory I get it: you’ve tried new things and they haven’t worked, so retreat to familiar ground and give the fans some “red meat;” something you’re sure will attract attention and get people talking. But it’s just so… empty. So hollow and pathetic, and so very far away from the excellence that was on show in 2005.
Nowadays, it seems as if well-established programmes and franchises aren’t allowed a dignified end. They must be strung out at all costs until every last ounce of value has been extracted from them, no matter the implications for fans and viewers. In the age of streaming, big corporations want well-known names and brands to pad out the lineup on their platforms, and it seems to me that Doctor Who has fallen victim to both of these malicious entertainment industry trends. It isn’t Billie Piper’s fault, by the way, any more than it was Ncuti Gatwa’s, Jodie Whittaker’s, Peter Capaldi’s, or David Tennant’s. She just happens to embody the failure of Doctor Who’s writing, ambition, and overall direction in this moment.
Almost all of the Doctors…
I’m not going to watch Doctor Who for the foreseeable future. And I was a bit of a Billie Piper fan back in the day; I bought her album Honey to the B back in 1998! But her return to this series at this moment feels unnecessary, forced, and like a total desperation play by writers who are out of their depth and out of ideas. Maybe there’s a way for Doctor Who to ride out this current slump and come back stronger – but if there is, it’ll take a total overhaul on the production side, not just a particularly egregious example of stunt casting.
This is usually the point where I’d tell you that I’ve been wrong about these things before and I’ll keep my ear to the ground when Doctor Who returns to see what Billie Piper’s role will be and what her take on the Doctor might look like. But the truth is… I don’t think there’s any realistic chance that the next season of the show will be any better than the last few. Whether Billie Piper is going to be present for a one-off special or a whole season, I don’t think it matters. The series has already lost pretty much everything that made it work, and desperately bringing back a long-gone actor in a way that doesn’t make sense or line up with anything in-universe just… isn’t gonna change that.
This won’t save Doctor Who.
As a Brit, I want to see British entertainment properties and brands succeed. There’s a weird sense of pride in something like Doctor Who; a series that used to be able to hold its own in a genre dominated by American brands with significantly higher budgets. But I’d rather see the money being thrown at the show invested elsewhere, perhaps giving a new sci-fi or fantasy series a chance. Doctor Who did some great things in both its original incarnation and after its 2005 revival. But in both cases… it ran out of steam. And just as happened in the late ’80s, it’s time to recognise that. It’s time to put the show to bed for a while. Maybe in another fifteen or twenty years, a new generation of writers who grew up on the revival will come in with fresh ideas and the Doctor and the Tardis can make a return. But right now? It’s sad to say, but I think it’s over.
If a new Doctor couldn’t turn things around, if reimagining the Doctor in different ways didn’t help, and if revisiting David Tennant’s popular and successful time in the Tardis also made no difference… what hope does Billie Piper have? I fear that, whatever the writers may have in mind for her, she’s walking into a bear pit. Her exit from the show in 2006 was heartbreaking, but it was also impactful, powerful, and part of an engaging storyline. I fear that her return to the show, in whatever form it may take, will be none of those things. It would be such a shame if one of the show’s most memorable companions ends up being tainted by a totally unnecessary and desperate return.
Doctor Who is out now and may be streamed on Disney+ around the world and on BBC iPlayer in the United Kingdom. Most seasons of the revived series are also available on DVD and Blu-ray. Doctor Who is the copyright of the BBC, BBC Studios, and/or Bad Wolf. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I almost titled this piece Anthem: Just Cancel It, accidentally using the name of BioWare’s failed live service title… which I think is a reflection on how bland, generic, and forgettable Marathon is as the name of a video game. I’ll be honest: Marathon was never going to be my thing. I’m not interested in extraction shooters, competitive FPS titles, or really even online multiplayer in general. I didn’t play Bungie’s Destiny or Destiny 2 over the past ten-plus years, and in my humble opinion the company hasn’t really done anything halfway interesting since Halo Reach back in 2010. But the controversy swirling around Marathon has been inescapable over the past few days, so I felt compelled to share my thoughts on the upcoming game anyway.
Marathon should be cancelled. That’s the bottom line, and the reason is simple: right now, Marathon is on course for a Concord-esque failure, something which would surely condemn Bungie itself to the ignominious fate of being shut down. Although a lot of money has been invested in this game from Bungie, Sony, and elsewhere, it stands absolutely no chance of making its money back due to the controversies it’s embroiled in. Wasting more time on development is pointless; even a significant delay and total re-working of the game and its art assets won’t save Marathon now. If Sony and Bungie push ahead they’re just pissing away even more money. It’s time to cut your losses and try something else.
Just cancel Marathon.
This didn’t start with stolen art, but the revelation that Bungie – or, according to the studio, an unnamed “ex-employee” – stole a significant number of pieces of artwork that “somehow” ended up in the game has completely ruined whatever reputation Marathon might’ve been able to garner after an unimpressive closed play-test. Given how integral many of these art assets are to the game – literally defining its visual style – even removing the blatant thievery won’t be enough.
Marathon employs a deliberate visual style. When I saw it, quite honestly I didn’t like it. The game looked unfinished to my eye, as if character models and environments were all using placeholder images, waiting for higher-quality finished assets to be implemented. If you’ve ever seen an early build of a video game, you might know what I’m talking about. Marathon just looked like an early alpha version… unfinished. But that’s kind of beside the point, because that was a deliberate choice on the part of the developers. Unfortunately, however, it turns out that that entire aesthetic was stolen without accreditation or reimbursement from an artist who was never employed by Bungie.
AntiReal’s tweet.
Like Concord last year, Marathon is arriving too late in a saturated market. Like Concord last year, Marathon is going to charge would-be players money up-front in a genre where the most popular titles are free-to-play. Like Concord last year, Marathon doesn’t have enough maps, characters, or basic features (like proximity chat) that other games in the genre have. And like Concord last year, Marathon has a generic and uninspired name, bog-standard gameplay, and really nothing special at all… other than its visual style.
I might not have been impressed with the way Marathon looks, but I can’t deny that the game’s aesthetic gives it something to help it stand out. In fact, it’s pretty much the only unique selling-point that Marathon could’ve reasonably been said to have. Art styles are a very subjective thing, but I can see a game that looks like Marathon finding an audience, or at least having its visuals as a key talking point at launch. That alone could bring in players… but now it’s ruined; soiled by Bungie’s incessant plagiarism.
The only thing Marathon arguably had going for it was its visual style.
This has happened before. Bungie has plagiarised art assets in Destiny 2 not once but twice, and has admitted as much. The studio is also embroiled in a lawsuit at present over stealing written work; in this case the storyline to one of Destiny 2′s expansion packs. And when Bungie launched a Nerf gun as a merchandising tie-in for Destiny 2, it turned out that the studio had also stolen the artwork that they used for that product. Plagiarism has become a way of life for Bungie, it seems.
Earlier in 2025, some players got to get their hands on an early version of Marathon – and the reaction was pretty poor. Some praised the game’s art style – ironically, given the theft of assets that has since been revealed – but noted that the game itself needs more time in the oven. There aren’t enough levels, the game is missing basic features, and while gameplay isn’t bad per se, it still needs a lot of work to reach the bar that fans of the extraction shooter genre would expect from a premium title. Marathon was already in big trouble… so this plagiarism controversy should be its death knell.
A close-up look at one of Marathon’s weapons.
It can be difficult to admit defeat and recognise that something you’ve worked hard on isn’t going to achieve its objectives. I get that, believe me. But to be realistic, that’s where Marathon is. I don’t think a delay is going to be enough. I don’t think stripping out all of the stolen art is going to be enough. I don’t even think that reworking the game from the ground up is going to be enough. At this point, it’s time to strip the game down to its basic parts, see if any of it is salvageable, and if possible, bring those pieces over to another project. There are bound to be some things – like animation work, weapon designs, or tweaks to the game engine – that could be recycled into another game.
Last year, the writing was on the wall for Concord before it even launched. And in 2025 (or 2026 if Sony and Bungie insist on a delay) the same feels true of Marathon. And I would argue that Marathon was already doomed before it emerged that Bungie had, once again, used stolen art assets all over the game. But given how controversial this blatant plagiarism has become, any residual support Marathon might’ve been able to count on seems to have evaporated. I really don’t see any successful path forward for the game at this point.
If Marathon launches, it’ll be this year’s Concord.
I’m glad that AntiReal (or 4nt1r34l), the artist whose work was shamelessly stolen, was able to draw attention to what happened. Big companies can often feel like they’re above the law; that “little guys” have no power over them so they can do whatever they like. Social media and internet activism have shown, at least in this case, that people can come together when a company misbehaves. And make no mistake: Bungie would not have acted nor made any public statement on the issue if it hadn’t gone viral and picked up attention online. They’d surely have tried to brush it under the carpet and ignore it.
So it’s time to cancel Marathon. The game had a bunch of other problems even before it emerged that its entire visual identity – basically the only thing it had going for it – was based on thievery and plagiarism. This really should be the final nail in its coffin. Pressing ahead and trying to rework the game ahead of a purported launch this autumn won’t lead to any kind of success, so it’s better for Bungie and Sony to cut their (significant) losses and cancel the game. Unless they’re hoping to break Concord’s record as PlayStation’s biggest-ever failure.
At time of writing, Marathon is targeting a September 2025 release date. Marathon is the copyright of Sony and Bungie (or at least, the non-plagiarised parts are). Concord is the copyright of Firewalk Studios and Sony. Some images, screenshots, and promo artwork courtesy of Bungie and/or IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for A Minecraft Movie.
In mid-2011, I was dating a partner who loved watching YouTube “Let’s Play” videos. One of their favourite games to watch was the as-yet-unreleased Minecraft, and they insisted I download it and give it a try. So while I can brag that I played Minecraft while it was still in beta… I’m sorry to say that I was unimpressed at first! I remember thinking that the game was a scruffy-looking thing all about building mud huts and digging holes in the dirt, but I played it with my partner for their sake more than mine. I eventually got the hang of it, and I remember building a few fun things like a castle with a lava moat and a pyramid made of red bricks that took forever to craft!
If you’d told me then that Minecraft would remain at the top of the charts for the next fifteen years, be worth billions of dollars, and be the subject of a big-budget Hollywood film, I’d have called you out on your bullshit – because there was no way any of that would be possible. Shows what I know, eh? A Minecraft Movie is the latest adaptation or addition to a growing franchise, one which now comprises multiple spin-off games, toys, merchandise, and even books. Minecraft has become a well-established brand in its own right; a household name that even elderly relatives and non-gamers are familiar with!
The main characters.
Even having seen Minecraft’s phenomenal growth and success, I still wouldn’t have thought it was a good choice to adapt for a narrative feature film. The main game is all about creativity and making your own fun – something that I felt wouldn’t translate well to a linear narrative on the big screen. But Warner Bros. teamed up with Mojang and owner Microsoft to do just that, bringing in established names like Jack Black and Jason Momoa to lead a star-studded cast. And you know what? I actually really liked A Minecraft Movie.
A Minecraft Movie was an incredibly fun watch. I sat there the whole time with a smile on my face as its fast-paced but easy-to-follow story raced past, and there were plenty of laugh-out-loud moments along the way. I felt the film was self-aware, not taking itself too seriously while staying true to what I remember of its source material. There was nothing ground-breaking here in terms of narrative or filmmaking, but that’s just fine. A Minecraft Movie’s writers, producers, actors, and director knew what kind of film they wanted to make and went all-in. The result was a surprisingly fun time. In fact, A Minecraft Movie is the best thing I’ve seen so far this year. Does that mean I have the emotional intelligence of a twelve-year-old? Let’s talk about that!
Minecraft has gotten its own feature film adaptation.
I chose those words carefully, and I don’t mean it as any kind of insult. A Minecraft Movie is a kids’ film first and foremost, but I’ve always said that the best films made for children have something to offer to adults, too – and A Minecraft Movie is firmly in that camp. While watching it, I felt echoes of being a kid all over again, as if it was a Saturday afternoon and this was the film my friends and I had chosen to watch at our local cinema. I got swept along in the simple good-and-evil story, the emphasis on creativity, and a typical yet incredibly fun and high-energy Jack Black performance… and I genuinely had a whale of a time.
The story that the team created was a good fit. It took elements from Minecraft’s surprisingly deep lore and used them to tell a pretty basic “stop the evil villain from conquering the world” story, one which found time to include most of its main characters and even had a sub-plot about a man missing his dog! I was concerned going into A Minecraft Movie that the story would be too basic; too much of a cookie-cutter storyline. But there was enough of a setup, enough characterisation, and enough of a journey for Henry and Steve in particular to make it absolutely stick the landing.
A behind-the-scenes look at one of the sets constructed for the village. Photo Credit: Minecraft Wiki
Jack Black is one of those performers who’s instantly recognisable in basically every major role he’s ever played. He brings a ton of energy to his performances – and I think that worked incredibly well here, even though I admit I was sceptical at first! In Minecraft (the main game, at least; I’m less familiar with the spin-offs), Steve is a blank slate for the player to inhabit. A film needs characters with understandable motivations and recognisable personality traits, and there were more than enough of both in this depiction of Steve. In one sense, Steve represents the ultimate escapist fantasy – he quit his mundane and boring life to chase his dreams, and found a whole new world in the process.
The high-octane energy that Jack Black brought to the role was pitch-perfect for the kind of film A Minecraft Movie wanted to be and for the kind of young audience it sought out. It was also a ton of fun to watch, as Jack Black’s performances usually are! Steve’s desire to reunite with his pet dog Dennis (a name I appreciated for obvious reasons!) kept him grounded, and it was a perfectly understandable reason for him to team up with the rest of the main characters.
Steve.
Henry felt like the film’s point-of-view character, at least at the beginning, and I think he worked well in that role. He was the “player character” insofar as he was figuring out the rules of the world before the gang encountered Steve, and I think anyone who’s played Minecraft, especially in the early days, can relate to figuring out how to knock down trees and craft basic structures! As an outcast, someone with few friends, and someone who struggled to fit in, Henry was also someone that I think a lot of the film’s younger audience will be able to relate to – as well as older folks like myself who remember being in a similar position once upon a time.
Continuing the idea of A Minecraft Movie as an escapist fantasy, Henry is kind of in the same category as Steve – looking to get away from a troubled life plagued by bullies in a new school. He’s introduced to a world where his creativity and imagination – two things kids have in droves – are incredibly important, and where he can put his unique skills and talents to use.
Henry escaped to a fantasy world.
Henry’s sister, Natalie, was less keen on hopping over to a new world – but she rose to the occasion! Natalie had struggled with taking care of her brother, but her adventures in the world of Minecraft helped her discover her inner strength and build a stronger bond with him. Though she was in focus less of the time, she still got a satisfying arc.
Teaming up with Natalie for parts of the film was Dawn, and though I wouldn’t say she got as much of an “arc” insofar as she began and ended the story in a similar place, her love for animals shone through – and became important as the story reached its climax. She was a fun character, and made a great foil for Garrett and teammate to Natalie throughout the adventure.
Natalie and Dawn.
Garrett was an interesting character. Maybe this is just me, but I felt echoes of a real-life gamer personality called Billy Mitchell in the conceptualisation of Garrett. Mitchell, if you’re unaware, was world champion of the original Donkey Kong arcade game and achieved the highest possible score on Pac-Man, and was the subject of the 2007 documentary The King of Kong.
If Henry and Steve represent the escapist fantasy, Garrett was actually the character who felt closest to reality. His financial struggles were relatable, and the facade he put up while dealing with the potential collapse of his business – and his own loneliness and self-esteem issues – is something that hit close to home. In terms of his personality, Garrett was obviously a bit of a clown and someone we aren’t meant to really root for. Someone who presents as arrogant, cocky, and just rude isn’t going to be the easiest character to support. But A Minecraft Movie was surprisingly delicate in its handling of this character, and what we glimpsed beneath the surface was a deeply lonely, sad, and self-pitying man – one who (eventually) stepped up to help his newfound friends.
Garrett had an interesting arc across the film.
A Minecraft Movie felt, in places, like a kids’ film from the ’80s or early ’90s, and perhaps that’s part of why I liked it so much. Seeing Henry struggle as the new kid at school with bullies before running away to a fantasy world… it’s giving me The NeverEnding Story vibes, which is one of my favourite films from when I was a kid! The two are different in tone, style, pacing, effects, and so on… but there are also some similarities in terms of characterisation and story that I think were important for me personally in relating to A Minecraft Movie.
Visual effects in A Minecraft Movie took a bit of getting used to, to be honest. The game’s pixellated art style was completely changed for the film, with semi-realistic textures applied over Minecraft’s trademark cubes and blocks. When it came to things like trees and stones, I was fine with it. When it came to faces and animals… that’s where it took me a minute to adjust! I can see this being a possible point of contention; some game fans might not like the realistic direction, and some folks who are less familiar with the games might struggle with the blockiness of characters and animals in particular. But once I got used to the way the film looked, I didn’t have a problem with it. Some of the landscapes and vistas were genuinely impressive, and the way the film blended CGI with real actors and props was seamless and impressive.
Behind-the-scenes with some of the villagers! Photo Credit: Minecraft Wiki
The soundtrack was fantastic, too. An up-tempo score and high-energy pop and heavy metal songs were pitch-perfect for the film and its fast pace. Battling the bad guys – particularly toward the end of the film – was elevated by the use of music, and the entire soundtrack just made the film so much better. I’d also be remiss not to mention Steve’s Lava Chicken – the song reached number 9 on the UK music charts (and also charted in the United States and elsewhere) becoming the shortest-ever song to crack the top 20 at a mere 34 seconds long!
So that was A Minecraft Movie. It was fun. Simple, child-friendly fun.
I had a way better time with A Minecraft Movie than I could’ve anticipated, to be honest with you. This picture could’ve gone either way – it might’ve been utterly awful; the kind of kids’ film that might make the little ones smile but does absolutely nothing for me. Or it could’ve been “so bad it’s good;” the kind of film that’s worth watching ironically because of how poor the quality is across the board. But instead, A Minecraft Movie was genuinely enjoyable – a fast-paced, modern kids’ film that feels like a throwback to the ’80s and ’90s in the best possible way.
A Minecraft Movie was a fun ride.
A Minecraft Movie is an easy recommendation now that it’s available to watch at home. Whether you have little ones or not, and whether you’re familiar with the video game or not, I think it’s a ton of fun and easy to get stuck into. Having some basic knowledge of Minecraft might help elevate some plot points here or there, but the film is a soft landing for folks who don’t have that background, and I don’t think you’re going to miss much if you’ve never played the game or any of its spin-offs.
I doubt I’ll say that A Minecraft Movie is my favourite film of 2025. There’s still more than half of the year to go and some big blockbusters on the way. But in terms of pure entertainment and laugh-out-loud fun? I had a blast switching off and going on a whirlwind adventure in this strange blocky world! Definitely check out A Minecraft Movie if you haven’t already.
A Minecraft Movie is available to buy or rent now via Amazon Prime, Google Play, and other video-on-demand platforms. A Minecraft Movie will be released on DVD and Blu-ray in June 2025. A Minecraft Movie is the copyright of Warner Bros., Legendary Pictures, Mojang Studios, Vertigo Entertainment, and/or Microsoft. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Beware of minor spoilers for Star Trek: Enterprise.
I’m a few days late (my cat needed an emergency trip to the vet; she’s fine now, don’t worry!) but the 13th of May was the twentieth anniversary of Enterprise’s final episode. These Are The Voyages saw the controversial series end in similarly controversial fashion, with what many fans continue to believe is one of the least-impressive finales in the franchise’s history. But this piece isn’t about These Are The Voyages. Instead, I thought it would be interesting to step back in time to those dark days in 2005 and think about how far Star Trek had fallen – and the franchise’s seemingly-impossible resurrection barely four years later.
I’ll let you in on a little secret – a secret which, for someone who runs a website partly themed around Star Trek, might seem shocking! I wasn’t a regular Enterprise viewer during the show’s original run. Here in the UK, Enterprise was broadcast on Channel 4 in the first half of the 2000s, and while I still considered myself a Trekkie at the time, I just found myself less interested in the show and what it was trying to do. It coincided with a busy period in my life, too, which probably didn’t help!
A sketch of the NX-01 Enterprise.
It wasn’t until years later, after Enterprise had gone off the air, that I bought the DVD box sets and watched the series in full. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I misjudged Enterprise when it was in production, and I regret not watching the show and doing more to support it during its original run. For me, Enterprise has become a great counter-argument to an expression one hears all the time in online fan communities and the wider discourse around media in general: “no one asked for this/who’s asking for this?” In 2001, I don’t think many Trekkies were asking for a prequel series like Enterprise. But twenty years later the series’ reputation has been rehabilitated for a lot of those folks, with Enterprise routinely being held up alongside the shows of The Next Generation era and included in Star Trek’s “golden age.”
I first came to hear of Enterprise’s announcement on the radio sometime around the turn of the millennium, and I can vividly remember thinking that I didn’t want a Star Trek prequel. The franchise had always been about looking ahead to the future, so stepping back in time for a kind of navel-gazing series about its own fictional history – which would have to be heavily constrained by the weight of hundreds of episodes dictating what could and couldn’t be introduced – just seemed wrong for Star Trek. And all of this was happening at a time when another infamous prequel – The Phantom Menace over in the Star Wars franchise – had been received incredibly poorly. I tuned in for Enterprise’s premiere in late 2001, but after that I only watched the series sporadically until I picked up those DVDs.
The main cast in a publicity photo for Season 3.
But as I said: this isn’t meant to be all about Enterprise!
In 2005, although I hadn’t been a regular viewer of Enterprise, I was still bitterly disappointed to learn that no more Star Trek was being made. Ever since I’d first found my way into the fan community almost fifteen years earlier, Star Trek had been a mainstay on our TV screens. I’d bought most of the films and a few episodes on VHS, I was starting to collect The Original Series and The Next Generation on DVD (remember those big chunky plastic boxes the first sets of DVDs came in?) and I had action figures, video games, and other merch, too. Star Trek’s apparent cancellation felt… personal. It felt like I was losing a part of myself – and a connection to my childhood/adolescence.
By 2005, I was done with school and university and I was working full-time. When we’re in our late teens and early twenties, life can feel like it’s changing fast, and that was the case for me, too. I’d moved out, first to a shared flat at university, then all the way across the Atlantic for a year-long exchange programme, and then again to a large city for work. I was in what I thought was my “forever” relationship and was working toward an engagement, and juggling all of these changes while balancing my fragile mental health. One of the few consistent things in my life was Star Trek, and even though I wasn’t particularly bothered about Enterprise at the time, I just expected the franchise would continue indefinitely. I guess you could say I was taking Star Trek for granted, unable to conceive of the idea that there’d be no new films or episodes being produced.
Remember when Star Trek DVD box sets looked like this?
I was also far less aware of behind-the-scenes events in those days – or perhaps I just didn’t do the legwork to find out! I was dimly aware of the fact that Enterprise and Nemesis hadn’t been well-received in some quarters of the fan community and hadn’t been financially successful, but what that really meant for Star Trek was kind of over my head. The idea that the franchise might disappear entirely due to this lack of support – and an inability to turn enough of a profit – was something that didn’t really click for me until it happened.
If you’d asked me in the days after Nemesis but before Enterprise’s cancellation what I thought the future held for Star Trek, I’d have said that I’d expect Enterprise to run to the “standard” seven seasons, and toward the end of its run there’d be at least one new series announced. On the Star Trek forums and fansites of the time, rumours abounded of pitches for new shows! Two that we know were actively worked on included one set on the USS Titan with Troi and Riker, and another titled Star Trek: Federation, which would’ve been set hundreds of years after The Next Generation era. Ironically, both of these ideas would be seen on screen – albeit in very different ways from how they were originally pitched – in the rebooted Star Trek franchise after 2017!
We did eventually get to see Riker’s time in command of the Titan!
All of this is to say that Enterprise’s cancellation, and the fact that Viacom/Paramount weren’t interested in commissioning a new series, came as a huge shock in 2005 – and a bitter personal blow. Star Trek had been a big part of my life, especially in the 1990s as I navigated school, social life, adolescence, and all of the drama and nonsense that comes with that! It had been an escape from the real world sometimes, a chance to feel like I was part of a better world, and even a way to connect with people around me – especially at university. It took a while for the idea of Star Trek’s cancellation to sink in – and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a depressing idea and something I struggled with.
I was far from the only person to have been left disappointed by a television show being cancelled, of course. And I’m sure we all have our examples of single-season shows that didn’t get the love and attention we feel they deserved! Two of mine, by the way, would be Space Precinct and Terra Nova – but those are stories for another time, I guess! To get back on track, Enterprise’s cancellation was – as I say in the title of this piece – the “end of an era.” The series had come to an end, but so had Star Trek itself. That was difficult for me to really wrap my head around, and I spent several days in a bit of a tailspin, frequenting Star Trek forums and fansites, desperate for any news of a new show or some kind of last-second reprieve. Obviously nothing was forthcoming.
Scanning for signs of life…
Taking stock of Star Trek as a whole felt incredibly bittersweet. There had been some fantastic adventures with all of the different crews of Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and the various Starships Enterprise – but I still wanted more. After feeling lonely and isolated as the only Trekkie in the small rural area where I grew up, I’d gone on a journey with the franchise as it grew in popularity, finding new friends who shared at least some of my passion for Star Trek. I’d even tried to introduce my then-girlfriend to the franchise – though she wasn’t particularly interested, despite my best efforts!
I could appreciate the good times I’d had with Star Trek: classic stories like The Best of Both Worlds, the intrigue of tales like In The Pale Moonlight, and Voyager’s epic seven-year journey home. With the franchise being converted to DVD, and re-runs still happening on television, I didn’t feel like I was in danger of never seeing Star Trek again… but I still wanted more. This property that had been so big in the ’90s, so omnipresent on our television screens, and just so damn good couldn’t possibly be over. I was left feeling dejected.
I’d been a massive fan of Star Trek through the 1990s.
For the franchise to have fallen so far in such a short span of time was stunning. The second half of the ’90s saw three Star Trek shows on the air pretty much continuously here in the UK: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager were on television three nights a week, and when new seasons weren’t airing re-runs of older episodes would take their place. Star Trek books, action figures, and other products were in shops, even in the small towns around where I grew up. Star Trek versus Star Wars was the nerdiest argument you could have… and it just seemed as if the franchise was on top of the world. Star Trek had made it – so how did it all go so wrong so quickly?
In 1996 and 1998, there’d been three Star Trek projects in the span of a single calendar year: seasons of Deep Space Nine and Voyager, and the films First Contact and Insurrection. It seemed like you couldn’t move for Star Trek, and as the Trekkie in my friend group, I was finding myself being asked more and more often about the franchise and which episodes were best. Star Trek’s growth just seemed… unassailable.
In 1998, there’d been three Star Trek projects on our screens at the same time.
By early 2005, rumours of Enterprise’s struggles were all over fansites and forums. But even so, I genuinely expected a reprieve for the franchise as a whole. Enterprise could be written off as an unsuccessful experiment, and Star Trek could get back to producing another show like The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine. That was how I felt, and even when I saw people discussing cancellation and talking about the failures of Nemesis and Enterprise together, I guess I was just in denial about the severity of the problem.
When the news broke, it was a shock. And it really felt like the end of an era; we’d soon come to see Star Trek as this complete package – ten films, five shows, and that’s it. The recent arrival of the DVD box set meant that Star Trek would never be too far away, and I planned to finish my collection and acquire every single episode! But when it seemed as if Star Trek was really over… I was upset.
Captain Archer (or rather, a hologram of him) in These Are The Voyages.
It wouldn’t be too long, though, before a new rumour hit the internet! A Star Trek revival was being planned, helmed by the incredibly successful J J Abrams – creator of Alias and Lost and the director of Mission: Impossible III. To go from the dejection of Enterprise’s cancellation and Star Trek’s apparent end to this reboot within a year or so was wild; the mid-2000s were a strange time to be a Trekkie, that’s for sure! This film would ultimately turn out to be Star Trek ’09, the reboot that kicked off the Kelvin timeline trilogy.
So what’s the point of revisiting 2005 twenty years later? Why drag up those old feelings and memories now that Star Trek is back on our screens in a new streaming landscape?
Star Trek’s back… right?
The truth is… I feel echoes of 2005 right now. If you’re a regular reader, you might remember my essay 2022: A Great and Terrible Year for Star Trek, in which I took Paramount and the franchise’s producers to task for the many missteps and mistakes they’d been making. The worst problem, at least as far as I see it, is franchise fatigue. Star Trek has quickly become oversaturated in the first half of the 2020s, and it’s genuinely difficult to keep up with everything, even as a big fan and as someone who literally runs a Star Trek website.
Moreover, Star Trek’s fan community doesn’t seem to be adding a lot of new members, despite some valiant attempts by writers and creative folks. Projects like Prodidy, Strange New Worlds, and Section 31 should’ve been rolling out the welcome mat to untold numbers of new viewers and fans, but mismanagement by Paramount has squandered many of those opportunities. At time of writing, I think Star Trek is maybe a year away, two at the most, from another 2005.
The wreck of the USS Protostar…
And I don’t want that to happen. There are still lessons that Paramount hasn’t learned from 2005 that need to be applied. And there are new challenges that the franchise faces in a transformed media landscape that Paramount has utterly failed to get to grips with. As I’ve said before: 20th Century thinking is desperately failing to keep Paramount afloat in the 21st Century.
I love Star Trek. I loved it in 2005 and I love it today. I want to see Star Trek continue because I want as many people as possible to fall in love with this incredible universe and the wonderful characters who inhabit it. But as Paramount is caught up in a complicated buyout/merger, and as its streaming platform continues to struggle, I don’t see a bright future for Star Trek. I hope that I’m wrong, and I hope the franchise’s name still has the power to bring in curious viewers. But as I look around at cancellations, mismanaged projects, franchise fatigue, and more… I definitely feel echoes of 2005 all over again. I hope the next couple of years won’t also turn out to be the end of an era.
Star Trek: Enterprise and most other Star Trek films and shows discussed above can be streamed on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available, and may also be available on DVD and/or Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including all properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I was partway through writing this article about the recently-announced delay to Grand Theft Auto VI when Rockstar unexpectedly released the game’s second teaser trailer – so bear with me while I re-write a few sentences and shuffle things around!
The delay to Grand Theft Auto VI is going to be disappointing to a lot of people – but it’s also unquestionably the right call. Developer Rockstar Games is well-known in the industry for its abusive “crunch” practices in the run-up to big launches, so anything that potentially mitigates that and makes the working environment better for people is a hugely positive thing. Given Rockstar and Take-Two’s insane financial resources, and the continued revenue stream from Grand Theft Auto V’s online mode, there’s absolutely no justification for pushing to meet a self-imposed, arbitrary release window. If the game needs more time and more work, then delaying it is the right move.
Grand Theft Auto VI has been delayed to May 2026.
From a gameplay perspective, a delay is the right call, too. Since internet connectivity became commonplace on home consoles in the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 days, more and more corporations have taken what I call the “release now, fix later” approach to game design – releasing a broken, unfinished game with the promise of patches and updates later to smooth things out. This rarely works as intended, and there are so many examples of games which should’ve been good that ended up being soiled by a poor launch. Even success stories, like Cyberpunk 2077, are still tainted for a lot of players, and will always have a little asterisk next to them explaining that, while the final version of the game may have been great, the launch version was piss-poor.
I don’t have any “insider information” from Take-Two or Rockstar, so I don’t know what might’ve been going on behind the scenes to prompt this delay. There wasn’t even an official release date for Grand Theft Auto VI, just a vague “2025” from the original announcement. As I said at the time, a delay felt like a reasonable prospect, so I’m not particularly surprised by the news. A second delay from spring to autumn 2026 also feels plausible – so watch this space, I guess!
Part of the game’s open world as seen in the recent trailer.
I’ve said it before and I’ll undoubtedly say it again: game delays are a good thing and should be celebrated, not criticised. I get it: it’s never fun when you hear that a game you’re excited about is going to be delayed, but if it means the finished product will be better (and, y’know, actually finished) then it’s going to be worth it. A game as large as Grand Theft Auto VI purports to be will take time for QA testers to work through, and I’m content to give Rockstar and Take-Two additional time to polish the experience and launch a better, more stable, less glitchy game. Even if that means waiting a year or two!
Thankfully, the reaction to delays from most players and fans these days is mature and acknowledges that simple reality. I think all of us have been burned at least once by a buggy, glitch-riddled, clearly unfinished game – and nobody wants to go through that again! There will be some upset players, of course, but I think most folks are mature enough to understand that this news, while it may be disappointing, will ultimately mean the launch version of Grand Theft Auto VI will be more polished and just an all-around better experience.
Hopefully Grand Theft Auto VI’s delay will result in a better finished product.
I do have a couple of things to add about the game, though, particularly now that we’ve seen the second teaser trailer.
Firstly, I’m a little disappointed that we still haven’t actually seen any bona fide gameplay in any of the marketing material that Rockstar and Take-Two have released so far. Both teaser trailers may be comprised of “in-engine footage,” but they show cut-scenes, carefully-curated clips, and content that may have been rendered especially for the game’s marketing. What we haven’t seen is any actual gameplay, and while you might say that’s fair enough if the game is more than a year away from launch, Grand Theft Auto VI was, until a few days ago, on the schedule for this year. I would’ve expected to see some glimpse of its gameplay by now, especially with Rockstar preparing that second trailer.
Any idiot can put together cut-scenes, clips, and pre-rendered artwork and make a compelling trailer. Trust me, I used to work in games marketing, so I know what it takes to showcase even the worst and most uninspired titles! Some absolutely atrocious games look decent in their own marketing material, and it’s a bit of a red flag for a game to have potentially been a few months or even just a few weeks away from launch with no gameplay on show.
Any game can look exciting with a carefully edited trailer comprised of pre-rendered cut-scenes and CGI.
This leads into my next point. I… I don’t feel blown away by anything we’ve seen from Grand Theft Auto VI so far. With the caveat that we still haven’t seen any official gameplay, the pre-rendered footage and cut-scenes that have been shown off just haven’t really stood out to me as being particularly special. There are some fantastic-looking games at the moment, particularly in the third-person action/adventure space, and for a game that Take-Two may genuinely try to sell for $100… I haven’t really seen anything in the Grand Theft Auto VI footage that could come close to justifying that.
That doesn’t mean I think the game “looks bad” or will be unenjoyable. But rather that I’d say it doesn’t look like anything special compared to the current crop of AAA titles on the market. Elden Ring, the remastered version of The Last of Us Part II, Alan Wake II, and even Rockstar’s own Red Dead Redemption II – which is now six-and-a-half years old – don’t feel particularly far behind what I’ve seen of Grand Theft Auto VI. Considering the upcoming game’s price point and all the hype around it, I would’ve expected to see a bit more by now to really sell me on why this’ll be a “once-in-a-generation experience;” the kind of thing I can’t afford to miss out on.
Nothing on show has really blown me away so far.
Grand Theft Auto VI looks like it’s going to be an outlaw story; a “modern-day Bonnie and Clyde,” with protagonists Jason and Lucia starting from a low point but taking Vice City by storm. I like that idea in theory, though a narrative can be hard to judge at this distance! But what I really want to see from Grand Theft Auto VI is its world. The characters and the story are incredibly important, of course, but that’s something I’ll discover for myself as I play the game. At this point in the marketing, we need to get a feel for the scale and depth of the world, and start to see what new gameplay features might be included.
Red Dead Redemption II is Rockstar’s magnum opus, and one of the finest games I’ve ever played. But after more than six years – seven going on eight by the time Grand Theft Auto VI actually launches – and an entire console generation, we should be seeing improvements. Grand Theft Auto V was originally released in 2013 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and players who skipped Red Dead Redemption II will be expecting much more significant improvements and changes. So far, from a couple of pre-rendered trailers, I’m just not feeling much of that.
Jason and Lucia – the game’s protagonists.
I don’t doubt that Grand Theft Auto VI will be a good game – but with the level of hype that’s been swirling around the project for over a decade at this point, will it be a great one? Can it possibly live up to these sky high expectations – and its rumoured $2 billion budget? If the game is on par with other open world titles from the last few years, will that be good enough for players who’ve been waiting for it for such a long time? These are the questions that Rockstar and Take-Two will have to answer – and the marketing campaign so far, while it’s admittedly at an early stage, hasn’t exactly dazzled me.
For those inclined to seek out such things, there are leaked videos and images of Grand Theft Auto VI – some dating back several years. I don’t want to judge the game based on leaks; having worked in the games industry in the past, I know the final build of a game can differ substantially from early versions! But the leaks are undeniably part of the conversation – and again… nothing’s really blowing me away. I see what looks to be a solid third-person action/adventure game, similar in tone and style to Grand Theft Auto V thanks to the familiar tropical setting, and… that’s it. Pre-judging a game based on leaks is silly, but what I’ve seen so far reminds me why I thought it would’ve been better for Grand Theft Auto VI to have been set in a different environment and possibly even in an earlier time period, too.
Should Grand Theft Auto VI have been set in a different city without a beach and palm trees?
You might remember me talking about this years ago. Before we had any official news about Grand Theft Auto VI, I said that I feared a modern-day story set in another tropical city by the beach might just be too samey and too familiar, and wouldn’t do much to give players invested in Grand Theft Auto V a reason to switch. Time will tell, of course, but I wonder if part of the reason why I don’t feel so enthused by the recent trailer (and the leaked footage) is because of how samey and familiar parts of it feel.
So that’s it for now. Grand Theft Auto VI has been delayed – and while that isn’t exactly fun, it’s good news in my book. I’d rather play a better, more polished version of the game a year later than a broken, buggy, unfinished version a year early. As to the story, setting, and gameplay, though… I’m not sure. I’m confident the game will be fun, and that could be good enough, I suppose. But for a game which could end up being the most expensive ever, raising the price of AAA games across the board, and after such a long wait in between titles? Rockstar and Take-Two still have work to do to convince me Grand Theft Auto VI will be worth the price of admission.
Oh, and there’s still not gonna be a simultaneous PC release, which is pretty shitty behaviour from Rockstar and Take-Two.
Grand Theft Auto VI is currently in development and is currently targeting a May 2026 release date. Grand Theft Auto VI is the copyright of Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
Y’know, the more I think about it, the more convinced I become that this particular article would’ve been a better fit for April Fool’s Day rather than Star Wars Day. But I’m committed now… so here we go!
Happy Star Wars Day, friends! May the Fourth be with you… and all that. This year, I thought it could be a bit of fun to mark the occasion by revisiting one of my least-favourite Star Wars films – and probably one of the worst films I’ve ever seen – 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker.
X-Wings and Star Destroyers on a promotional poster.
It was in late 2019 that I embarked on the project that eventually became this website, and for a sometime Star Wars fan, that was a bit of a strange period. The Last Jedi had proven to be massively controversial within the fan community, and the discourse around that film had become incredibly toxic. Solo: A Star Wars Story had flopped, I really wasn’t keen on the first season of The Mandalorian, and it seemed as if the only bright spark in the franchise was Jedi: Fallen Order. I desperately hoped that The Rise of Skywalker could do the impossible by bringing the fan community back together and ending the sequel trilogy on a high.
Though I consider the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries to be the worst piece of Star Wars media that I’ve seen, The Rise of Skywalker isn’t far behind. It was an atrocious film, one that I’d seriously consider putting on a list of “the worst films I’ve ever seen.” But re-hashing what I didn’t enjoy about the film isn’t the purpose of today’s exercise!
Surely this can’t be a visual metaphor…
Because it’s Star Wars Day, and in the spirit of positivity, I want to talk about some of the things The Rise of Skywalker got right – or at least got less wrong. Despite my overall feelings about the film, its story, the thought process that went into creating it, and more… there are some highlights worth mentioning. You might remember some of these if you read my two separate articles about the film in 2020 and 2021, but I’ve also added a couple of points that I didn’t mention in those earlier pieces.
In my essay titled In Defence of Luke Skywalker, I talked about how the depiction of Luke’s depression in The Last Jedi was generally well-written and conveyed an important message. It may not have been what fans wanted or expected from Luke Skywalker – particularly folks who’d bought into the old Expanded Universe stories, which depicted him as a flawless all-conquering superhero – but it was powerful and it resonated with me. The idea that anyone, even someone heroic, can fall victim to the “black dog” of depression is an important message, and it was well-told in The Last Jedi.
Luke’s depiction and death were controversial aspects of The Last Jedi.
The Rise of Skywalker undid most of that, unfortunately. But it couldn’t entirely erase what had come before. If you take Luke’s story across the sequel trilogy, you can read it as recovering from depression – and that is a positive, hopeful, and uplifting message. The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi show Luke at his lowest: suffering a catastrophic defeat, almost giving in to a dark impulse, grieving the loss of his students, failing at his life’s mission to restore the Jedi Order, and succumbing to depression. He retreated to Ahch-To to die.
But after the events of The Last Jedi, Luke found a reason to believe again. And The Rise of Skywalker takes that concept and expands upon it, showing us Luke – in ghostly form – happier, more connected to the Force, and more willing to lend a hand when the galaxy needed him. To drag out the depression metaphor from The Last Jedi, this is the recovery phase. Not everyone who suffers with depression gets to that point, but seeing it depicted on screen like this can give hope and inspiration to people in that situation.
Rey with Luke’s ghost.
Sticking with deceased characters, Han Solo got more of a send-off in The Rise of Skywalker than he did in The Force Awakens. Han’s death was shocking in that film, but its suddenness was immediately followed up by action set-pieces and the “trench run” over Starkiller Base – meaning we didn’t get to sit with the impact of it for very long. Bringing Han back – albeit for a role that was clearly intended for Leia – was somewhat cathartic, and getting to spend a little more time with him was a net positive for the film.
Because this sequence was told from Kylo’s perspective, we got to experience some of the feelings of grief, loss, and regret that he felt at killing his father. We can debate whether such an action is ever forgivable or redeemable, but The Rise of Skywalker wanted to give Kylo a redemption arc akin to that of Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi. Seeing this vision of Han Solo helped with that, or at least didn’t detract from it. And Adam Driver put in a stellar performance in these sequences – as he did across the entire film, really.
The Rise of Skywalker gave us a bit more closure on Han’s death.
I know we’re trying to be positive about The Rise of Skywalker and this next point is very much a backhanded compliment (at best), but it’s my article so I’m gonna include it! The line “somehow Palpatine returned” has become one of those “so bad it’s good” moments for me. It wasn’t when I first watched the film, but the more I’ve sat with that line the funnier I find it to be. I still think everyone involved with writing, approving, and directing this line should be blacklisted from the entertainment industry for life… but on days when I don’t want to take Star Wars too seriously, or where I’m so depressed I need a good laugh, “somehow Palpatine returned” is there for me.
The line has also become one of my go-to examples of poorly-written dialogue, as well as an example of Star Wars’ overreliance on other works of media to set up important narrative beats in mainline films. Not only that, I think there’s something encouraging and even inspirational about this line. “Somehow Palpatine returned” reminds me that I’d have to do an exceptionally poor job to write something worse, and that there’s apparently a very low bar for pitching scripts for big-budget films. So maybe my Hollywood dreams haven’t entirely evaporated, eh? Jokes aside, this line is awful, and it’s become emblematic of the failures of The Rise of Skywalker and the sequel trilogy as a whole. But it’s also unintentionally hilarious as the film’s writers and Disney’s executives tell on themselves; no one could be bothered to write an explanation for Palpatine’s stupid resurrection, and this storyline was set up as part of a merchandising tie-in deal with the video game Fortnite. For all those reasons and more, it’s an excellent example of what not to do in filmmaking.
“Somehow Palpatine returned.”
To get back to something a bit more genuinely positive and inspiring, I’d like to highlight Lando Calrissian’s role in The Rise of Skywalker. I don’t know why Lando was absent in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, but Billy Dee Williams made the most of his return to the role in the third instalment of the sequel trilogy! In fact, I could’ve happily spent a lot more time with Lando; watching him heading out across the galaxy, rallying the citizens to the cause would’ve been quite something to see.
Lando’s last-second arrival at the head of a massive fleet was pretty much the only moment in The Rise of Skywalker where I felt a twinge of emotion. I’m a sucker for a “desperate last stand” kind of story, and seeing the ordinary citizens of the galaxy rising up in unison against Palpatine and the Sith felt good in the moment. As Poe, Finn, and the rest of the Resistance seemed to be on the cusp of defeat, Lando raced in to save the day, leading the galaxy in a unified last stand against autocracy and fascism. The scene where he and his fleet dropped out of hyperspace was powerful, and was probably one of the best individual moments in The Rise of Skywalker.
Lando arrives to save the day!
Although I wish the sequel trilogy as a whole had done more with the idea of a Force dyad, some of the moments between Rey and Kylo were at least interesting. There was also some creative cinematography employed as Rey and Kylo had visions of one another despite being far apart. The scene where Rey was in Kylo’s room was one such moment, and I think the way the film transitioned between two different locations was creative.
I would’ve liked to have gotten more of an explanation of the Force dyad; how it came to be and what else Rey and Kylo could’ve done with it would have been fun to see. The idea of two characters with totally opposing points of view and objectives having this unintended bond – one they couldn’t rid themselves of – was also an interesting concept in theory, and I think we saw at least some of that potential in The Rise of Skywalker.
Kylo and Rey formed a rare Force dyad.
Finn’s story was not great in The Rise of Skywalker – or really across the sequel trilogy as a whole. But as a concept, the idea of a rogue stormtrooper breaking free of his indoctrination was interesting. And The Rise of Skywalker made at least a bit of an effort to expand upon that with the new character of Jannah – another defector that Finn encountered during the mission to Endor.
If Luke Skywalker’s story was an analogy for depression and mental health, Finn and Jannah’s can be seen as deprogramming from a cult or escaping an autocratic society. There are real-world parallels that are interesting – and open to interpretation. I don’t think The Rise of Skywalker was perfect in its execution of this idea, but I will give the film credit for trying, and for expanding our knowledge of ex-stormtroopers and the reasons why some might defect or abandon their posts.
Finn with fellow ex-stormtrooper Jannah.
Sticking with Finn, his “bromance” with Poe was certainly an enjoyable part of his story and characterisation, and one which was in focus in The Rise of Skywalker more than it had been in The Last Jedi. The two worked well together, and although I felt Oscar Isaac was rather phoning it in with his performance, the same can’t be said of John Boyega. Boyega did his best to carry this character relationship, and I could’ve happily spent longer with Finn and Poe.
There are a few other acting performances that stand out to me. I think being able to separate one’s thoughts about a performance from how we might feel about the script or narrative decisions is important – so it’s worth crediting actors and actresses who give it their all, even when they’re part of a train wreck! I mentioned Adam Driver above, and he’s literally never been anything less than outstanding in any film I’ve seen him in. One day he’s going to win one of the big awards – mark my words.
Kylo on the battlefield.
Though the sequel trilogy was never meant to be Palpatine’s story, Ian McDiarmid clearly relished reprising his role, and threw himself into it. Palpatine dripped with malice every time he appeared on screen. I may loathe what the film did with General Hux, but I’d be remiss not to include Domhnall Gleeson’s performance as being praise-worthy. Hux’s pure hatred for Kylo really came through thanks to Gleeson’s work, and even though the storyline was a tough sell, he clearly gave it his all. Kelly Marie Tran, though only on screen for a couple of minutes, did well with the material she had, and I think it’s a shame we didn’t get to spend more time with Rose.
So I think that’s about it.
I wish I could tell you that it was fun to revisit The Rise of Skywalker. But at the very least, I think we managed to find a few notes of optimism amidst the wreckage; small things here and there that achieved some measure of success, struck the right emotional or narrative chord, or just didn’t fail as comprehensively as the film around them. Maybe you enjoyed The Rise of Skywalker more than I did – and that’s great. The Star Wars franchise should be big and diverse, and there’s plenty of room for differences of opinion when it comes to the best and worst parts. Nothing about this is “objective,” at the end of the day!
Looking at a wreck. Seems fitting, eh?
There’s more Star Wars to come – which is genuinely good news! Andor’s second season is currently airing, a second season of Ahsoka is planned, and there are several upcoming films on the schedule, too. Upcoming films include pictures based on Rey and Lando, a spin-off from The Mandalorian, a new trilogy, and the intriguing-sounding Star Wars: Starfighter. So despite the controversial reception the film got, The Rise of Skywalker didn’t doom Star Wars’ future prospects!
I hope this has been a bit of fun to mark Star Wars Day – or at least something a little different. I wanted to try to take one of the worst films in the franchise and talk about some of its better aspects, partly as a challenge to myself and partly because it’s Star Wars Day. Thanks for reading, and May The Force Be With You!
Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker is available to stream now on Disney+ and is also available on DVD and Blu-ray. The Star Wars franchise – including The Rise of Skywalker and all other films and properties discussed above – is the copyright of Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I’ve been critical of PlayStation and Nintendo in recent months for unnecessarily jacking up the prices of their consoles and games – and now it’s Xbox’s turn. If you haven’t heard, the prices of Xbox consoles, Xbox games, and most Xbox accessories are rising, coming hot on the heels of a significant price hike in Xbox’s Game Pass subscription service.
Don’t believe the lies: this isn’t because of “tariffs” or “inflation” – if anything, these price hikes are a cause of, not a reaction to, inflation. Xbox, like Nintendo and PlayStation before them, planned to jack up their prices months or even years ago. The latest economic turmoil may be a convenient excuse and shield – just like covid, “supply chain issues,” and inflation were a few years ago – but they aren’t the real reasons. The real reason is simple: greed.
Xbox consoles, games, and accessories just got a lot more expensive.
Not even two days ago, at the end of April, Microsoft bragged to investors on an earnings call about how well their Xbox brand and gaming division were performing. Where PlayStation, Nintendo, and other big players in the industry have been mostly stagnant for a couple of years, Xbox enjoyed significant growth – leading to higher than expected profits. Microsoft attributes this to the successes of Game Pass, the Call of Duty series, and Minecraft – the latter of which is probably connected to the release of A Minecraft Movie in cinemas.
The news caused Microsoft’s share price to rise, dragging up other related tech companies at a time when the stock market has been on a downward trend. Partly thanks to the continued success and growth of Xbox, Microsoft is now worth well over $3 trillion – that’s trillion, with a T. In spite of making record profits and enjoying growth that other gaming companies are struggling to maintain, less than two days later Microsoft has turned around and told customers and families that we’re going to have to pay significantly more for their products. They’re too expensive to make in these “challenging economic times.”
Microsoft boasted about ever-growing profits – including in its gaming business – mere hours before this announcement. Image: Microsoft Investor Relations
Although these price hikes will have been planned months or years in advance, the timing of this announcement is – at least in my opinion – connected to the Nintendo Switch 2 situation that we talked about last month. Nintendo may have been roundly criticised for its announcement that games like Mario Kart World will cost $80/£75… but that doesn’t seem to have impacted pre-orders all that much at this stage. In fact, Nintendo announced record pre-order numbers at least in Japan, and as I suggested would happen, the vocal backlash to Nintendo’s announcement hasn’t been met with a comparable “boycott” or even a noticeable decrease in sales.
The same must be true of Sony and PlayStation. PlayStation consoles rose in price not that long ago, and the PlayStation 5 Pro became one of the most expensive pieces of hardware ever when it launched last year. But despite generating online protests, Sony’s devices and games have continued to sell – leading to the company making record profits in 2024. In that environment, Microsoft might as well join in, right? From a business and financial perspective, they’d be silly not to – it’s like leaving money on the table.
Nintendo was the first company to announce an $80/£75 game last month.
But for those of us who live in the real world, where incomes haven’t risen in line with inflation and where government help is harder to come by than ever, it’s a pretty tough pill to swallow. Nintendo and Xbox may claim at this stage that only “some” games will be priced at $80/£75 going forward, but that’s unlikely to hold for very long. Less than five years after the base price of games already went up by $10, another permanent price hike is happening. And if speculation about Grand Theft Auto VI turns out to be true, this might not be 2025’s only price rise. As I said when discussing the Nintendo Switch 2 situation just a couple of weeks ago: by this time next year, $90 or even $100 could be the asking price for AAA games across the board.
“But game development is expensive!” Or so goes the whiny retort from corporate sell-outs. Here’s my problem with that: if your corporation has literally never made more profit before in its existence, as is the case for Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft… that argument is dog shit. The same corporate suits can’t brag to investors and shareholders about how much money they’re making, then in the very next breath plead poverty to consumers and players. It doesn’t work like that – you gotta choose one or the other. If these companies were genuinely struggling to keep the lights on, I guess I’d be more receptive to that kind of argument. But when you see the financial reports and hear how eagerly the vacuous suits boast of their financial success, it’s pretty grating to be told that selling games for an already-inflated price is somehow “unaffordable.”
Microsoft brags about profits one minute then tries to plead poverty the next.
I said this several years ago, but here we go again: there really shouldn’t be a “cost of living crisis.” What we have is a “cost of greed crisis,” where almost every major corporation is making more money than ever, but they continue to jack up their prices to squeeze even more profit out of overstretched and overburdened people. It’s not because of “tariffs,” it’s not because of some nebulous concept of “inflation,” it’s pure and simple greed. And it’s disgusting.
That’s the lens through which I see Xbox’s price hike – and Nintendo’s and PlayStation’s, too.
The problem is that those three companies have an effective monopoly on the console gaming space. And while I’d never want to libel anyone by suggesting the executives at all three corporations are colluding to rig the market and raise prices… I wouldn’t put it past them. And if Xbox follows Nintendo’s lead and raises its prices to match – with Sony presumably set to do the same thing soon, too – what’s the difference? The end result is the same for those of us who just want to play a game or two.
Corporate greed is to blame.
The reality is that, even with disruption to the stock market and a potential recession looming, Microsoft and Xbox could’ve easily absorbed any financial impacts and still turned a very healthy profit. Nintendo could’ve done the same – even if it meant making a net loss on individual Switch 2 consoles in North America, the company would remain profitable. These price rises are a choice, one driven by corporate greed.
The main reason why I criticised PlayStation for hiking up the price of its consoles was because of how unusual a mid-generation price hike is. And Xbox is now firmly in the same camp. The trend for decades has been that consoles and games get less expensive as time goes on, not more. This console generation may have had some great games, but in many ways it’s been underwhelming. There’s been far less innovation, with corporations largely choosing to play it safe. There hasn’t been much by way of graphical improvement, thanks to companies choosing to launch many of their biggest titles on last-gen hardware. And there are fewer and fewer console exclusives – especially on Xbox’s side.
Most of Xbox’s biggest brands and games are available on other platforms.
With all of that in mind, is an Xbox Series S worth the new price of $400/£300? And is a Series X worth $600/£500? When the majority of the consoles’ price hikes are going directly into the pockets of investors, shareholders, and executives – and not to the people who are actually developing games – I’d say no. Absolutely not.
At the end of the day, as consumers we’re pretty stuck. If you want a home console, there are only three names in town – and they’re all jacking up their prices. If you want a brand-new game, from here on out they’re gonna cost $80/£75 at a minimum. Gaming just got a whole lot more expensive for no good reason.
All brands mentioned above are the copyright of their respective corporation/owner. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Conclave.
The Catholic Church elicits a huge amount of curiosity from the faithful and non-faithful alike. Just look at the rumours of what might be contained in the secretive Vatican Archives – everything from Jesus’ hidden love child to proof of UFOs, depending on who you ask! Any organisation that has sustained itself for close to two millennia would, naturally, evoke such feelings, and the recent death of Pope Francis has shone a spotlight on the church and its peculiar processes. It’s with this mindset that we come to last year’s film Conclave.
According to CNN, streams of Conclave have skyrocketed by over 3000% since the Pope’s death – with viewers eager to catch a glimpse of what goes on inside the walls of the Sistene Chapel. I would caution anyone that Conclave is surely an exaggerated and dramatised take on these events; the real meeting to choose Francis’ successor is highly unlikely to involve conspiracies to buy votes, breaking and entering into the Pope’s private chambers, or a nun who conceived a secret child! But the church’s secrecy – and its difficult history – quite frankly lend themselves to this kind of dramatic presentation. In some respects, Conclave is arguably less bonkers with some of its storylines than the real history of the papacy!
Cardinal Lawrence with the deceased pope.
Conclave had been on my radar since it premiered last year, and I daresay I’d have gotten around to checking it out eventually. But like thousands of other viewers, it was real-world events which prompted me to fire up the film at this particular moment. I’m not a Catholic – nor even a Christian at all – but the timely nature of the film made it seem like an interesting thing to watch in April 2025. I was dimly aware that Conclave was based on a novel by British author Robert Harris – who also wrote Munich, which was the basis for another film I reviewed a few years ago – but that was the extent of my knowledge of the film before I sat down to watch it.
I particularly enjoyed Conclave’s cinematography. I’d like to highlight the way scenes and characters were framed, directing our focus to specific cardinals and other characters at key moments. The use of focus was also particularly clever; certain documents or screens were deliberately left out of focus to heighten the tension. The camera work could feel claustrophobic at points, successfully conveying the feeling of being isolated from the world outside the walls of the sequestered meeting. At others, wide, expansive shots gave a sense that characters were trying to remain secretive, keeping important conversations private.
Director Edward Berger with Ralph Fiennes on the set of Conclave.
The film’s score was also excellent. Several big, dramatic musical stings punctuated key moments in the story, underlining how characters were feeling or what had just happened to them. The use of silence, too, came into play, and had a similarly dramatic effect. As the conclave descended into bitter in-fighting, the score did an excellent job of conveying how serious things were and how characters were reacting.
Let’s talk about that in-fighting a bit more, because it’s basically the main focus of Conclave’s story for much of the film. Officially, cardinals are supposed to elect the best and most qualified person to the papacy – with the guidance of God and prayer, naturally. But in the real world, I daresay it’s never quite worked out that way! Politicking in the Vatican – and amongst the cardinals specifically – is not as overt as it is in most legislatures around the world, but it’s present nonetheless, with all the same factionalism and pettiness as you’d see anywhere else. In some ways, Conclave made the college of cardinals feel like an office or a group project – complete with spitefulness, attempts to sabotage competitors, backhanded compliments, and more. Anyone who’s ever sat on a committee, taken part in a meeting, or been forced to work on a project as part of a group would recognise some of these things in Conclave’s depiction of the cardinals! And I would imagine that side of the film isn’t particularly inaccurate.
The cardinals bickered and fought.
Conclave’s designers did a great job recreating the look and feel of the Vatican. The Sistene Chapel, where a good portion of the action takes place, is a very famous location and was obviously the most important to get right, but I felt all of the locations and sets were appropriate. The cardinals’ private rooms felt almost like a prison, adding to that sense of isolation that we talked about earlier, and that was a creative choice which worked well. There was also a kind of gentle decay to some of the buildings, reflecting both Rome’s ancient origins and, perhaps, the church’s age and vulnerabilities. Having spent time in Italy myself, the sets and buildings all felt like they could be real – even those which weren’t directly copied from real life.
One of the things Vatican-watchers often say is that a papal conclave is unpredictable. Pope Francis’ election in 2013 is just one example of an “unexpected” candidate winning the election – though I doubt his election was as dramatic as the one depicted in the film! But it just goes to show how a papal conclave can take unexpected turns; in the film’s case, a terrorist attack takes place partway through the election, unnerving the cardinals and setting the stage for an unexpected character to take centre-stage.
The new Pope Innocent.
But was Cardinal Bentiez genuinely an unexpected candidate? His surprise arrival toward the beginning of the film – cloaked in typical Vatican secrecy – seemed to be setting him up to play an important role, even while the film appeared to linger on other characters. In that sense, I wouldn’t say I was stunned by this “big shocking twist,” but it was interesting nevertheless. With the film being told largely from the perspective of Cardianal Lawrence, I would’ve liked to have seen a bit more of his reaction to Benitez’s election – after a slow buildup, he seemed to be readying himself to accept that he was best-placed to take the reins of the church, only to lose out in dramatic fashion thanks to the bombing. Having spent so much time with him prior to that moment, and with the big revelation about Cardinal Benitez, the film then ended quite abruptly.
Perhaps Robert Harris’ novel, on which Conclave was based, spends more time with Cardinal Lawrence – not just at the end, but really throughout the story. There were places in the film where Lawrence was in focus, but with no dialogue to go on, it was left to Ralph Fiennes’ facial expressions to convey what he may have been thinking. There may be a degree of interpretation as a result.
Cardinal Lawrence was the film’s point-of-view character.
Conclave was told primarily from Lawrence’s perspective, though it wasn’t always immediately clear why certain cardinals were favoured or opposed. Cardinal Tremblay, for instance, was depicted as a rival to Lawrence and someone whose papacy he wouldn’t favour, yet they didn’t seem to be particularly ideologically opposed. Before the revelations about Tremblay were shown, all we as the audience had to go on was suspicion – Lawrence’s suspicion. Perhaps that says something about the way cardinals operate during a conclave, and how rumour or even “bad vibes” can influence the way a cardinal may be inclined to vote.
The same is true of the revelations about Cardinal Adeyemi; only Lawrence discovered the full truth, and refused to reveal it to the rest of the conclave. The other cardinals, fearful of scandal, abandoned his candidacy amidst rumour and speculation that wasn’t even seen on screen. It makes you wonder, perhaps, how easily one might derail a cardinal’s potential path to the papacy!
Scheming and digging into cardinals’ backgrounds was a big part of Conclave.
Given current events, Conclave was an interesting watch. And it really is impossible for me, at the current moment, to separate the film from what’s happening in the real world. There have only been two papal conclaves in my lifetime – in 2005 and 2013 – and given the secrecy and relative rarity of these events, it’s natural to be curious and to want to peek behind the curtain! Conclave felt like a somewhat realistic depiction, even though some elements of its story strayed into exaggeration and even fantasy.
So that was Conclave. It was an interesting watch, particularly at the current moment, and I’d happily recommend the film to anyone with even a passing interest in the church and/or what’s currently going on. The real-world conclave is scheduled to start in just over a week (at time of writing) and who knows? It could be just as dramatic and interesting as the one depicted in the film. We’ll never know!
Conclave is available to stream now on-demand on platforms like Amazon Video. The film is also available on DVD and Blu-ray. Conclave is the copyright of FilmNation, Indian Paintbrush, Focus Features, and/or Black Bear UK. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
In March of 2006, I distinctly remember rushing out of the office as soon as the workday ended to meet a friend. I didn’t yet own an Xbox 360, but my friend did – and he’d pre-ordered the sequel to one of my favourite games of all-time! I darted from the city centre down a side road to my friend’s place, which was a tiny attic apartment with one minuscule window and a sloping ceiling. As soon as I got there, we fired up The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and I spent the rest of the night hanging out with him as he created his character, played through the game’s iconic opening sequence, and stepped out into the world of Tamriel.
It wouldn’t be until 2008 or 2009 that I got to play Oblivion for myself, but when I did I had a whale of a time. I remember thinking that, while the game was more limited in some respects than Morrowind had been, other elements and mechanics more than made up for that deficit – and gave Oblivion a truly immersive world. All of the characters were fully voice-acted, facial animations and lip syncing looked great, and your character could mount and ride a horse! And the main storyline of Oblivion – the quest to find the Emperor’s heir and stop an invasion from another realm – was riveting stuff. I genuinely enjoyed my playthrough of Oblivion and its Shivering Isles DLC, and although I haven’t returned to the game since then, I still consider it to be a fantastic experience.
Stepping out into Oblivion’s open world for the first time is an iconic scene in gaming for everyone who played through it.
I’d been hearing rumours of a remaster or remake of Oblivion for at least a year. But as you may know, I don’t like to cover hearsay here on the website, so I was content to wait until we heard from developers Bethesda and Virtuos in an official capacity before talking about the game. Earlier today, the Oblivion remaster was shown off – and I gotta say, it looks great. It won’t be a totally modern game, as it’s still built on the same bones of the original, but it’s been updated with all new graphics, additional voice acting, and some gameplay tweaks to bring things like combat and exploration closer to modern standards. As I write this, I’m actually downloading the Oblivion remaster and I plan to play it as soon as it’s ready!
But – and you knew there had to be a “but” coming after all of that – I feel pretty sickened by Oblivion’s £10 “Deluxe Edition.”
I’ll give Xbox and Bethesda a lot of credit for bundling Oblivion’s main pieces of DLC in with this remaster. Oblivion is almost twenty years old, and it’s retailing for £50 here in the UK, so trying to charge extra for Shivering Isles or Knights of the Nine would’ve been just plain wrong. But Bethesda is a greedy company, so there’s still something extra that players can purchase separately – and it’s connected to one of the most notorious episodes in the company’s history.
The Oblivion remaster is launching with a £10 “deluxe edition.”
In April 2006, Bethesda released Oblivion’s horse armour DLC – one of the first pieces of small-scale cosmetic DLC for a single-player game. And the company was roundly criticised for trying to sell such a tiny and meaningless piece of content. Unfortunately for us all, and despite the relentless attacks from critics, the horse armour DLC sold reasonably well – well enough for Bethesda to keep going down this DLC road. Look at Starfield’s utterly disgusting in-game marketplace – which resembles something out of a free-to-play mobile game – to see where this approach ultimately led the company.
Other corporations in the games industry took note of both the backlash to, and the financial success of, Bethesda’s horse armour DLC… and it’s not unfair to say it was a harbinger of things to come. Many games now launch with little pieces of content hacked off to be sold separately, and it’s gotten so bad that I daresay most people won’t even bat an eye at the Oblivion remaster coming with a “deluxe edition.” But I’m afraid I do – I didn’t like it in 2006 and I like it even less now. Bethesda is, I would argue, one of the guiltiest parties in the games industry when it comes to pushing for and normalising the idea of single-player microtransactions – and that’s something which can quite literally ruin a game for me.
The original Oblivion’s horse armour DLC was incredibly controversial in 2006.
So the Oblivion remaster is launching with an expensive £10 “deluxe edition.” Contained within that is the typical bullshit you might expect: a collection of JPEGs that self-importantly claims to be an “art book,” the game’s soundtrack, and… wait, what’s that? Surely it can’t be… horse armour? Bethesda wouldn’t do that again, surely? But it is. It’s horse armour.
Oh piss off, Bethesda.
Seriously? After all of the controversy in 2006, with horse armour becoming the quintessential example of bad-value DLC, you’re really going to do this again? It must be a joke, right? A self-aware nod and wink to fans and players. But Bethesda is still earnestly asking you to cough up an additional £10 to access this “deluxe edition” content, complete with horse armour.
We’re really doing this again, huh?
I could be wrong, because I haven’t played Oblivion in more than fifteen years at this point, but the “deluxe edition” horse armour in this remastered version doesn’t look the same as the original 2006 version. But is that because it’s brand-new content or is that just the way it looks in the remastered version? Visuals have changed across the board, so I genuinely can’t tell at a glance. If it’s brand-new, I guess that’s at least marginally better. But if this is the original horse armour updated for the remaster, still being sold separately… I mean. I’m at a loss for words.
Super Extra-Special Platinum Premium Deluxe Editions of most games are usually poor value. Worse, they carve out content that was developed alongside the main game and fully-integrated into it to be sold separately for extra cash. I really do miss the days when games came feature-complete out of the box, and when expansion packs added a meaningful amount of content. But to sell a “deluxe edition” for a twenty-year-old game which is already retailing for £50 is piss-poor from Bethesda. And that’s not even mentioning that this “deluxe edition” contains the poster child for bad-value DLC; horse armour was received so universally poorly that it became a meme and remains the textbook example of this kind of single-player microtransaction to this day. Heck, I’ve used horse armour as an example of a shitty microtransaction on several occasions here on the website.
Staff at Virtuos working on the Oblivion remaster.
I thought it was a joke when I first saw the leaked image of Oblivion’s “deluxe edition.” I could believe that Bethesda and Xbox would be greedy enough to create a poor-value “deluxe edition” of a twenty-year-old game, but when I saw the horse armour bit… I genuinely thought it must’ve been a joke. It looked like something a troll had mocked up to poke fun at Bethesda and the old controversy. But no, this is real. It’s 2025 and Bethesda is asking you to pay extra for horse armour in Oblivion all over again.
I think the Oblivion remaster looks good. The presentation that Bethesda and Virtuos put together was genuinely entertaining, and the people involved all seem to be passionate Elder Scrolls players and fans. That leads me to believe the game is in good hands. I’m a Game Pass subscriber, and the Oblivion remaster is available there, so it felt like a no-brainer to fire it up and step back into that world for the first time in more than fifteen years. But this “deluxe edition” has really taken the shine off the game for me. I don’t know if anyone else cares as much as I do; this doesn’t feel like a Nintendo Switch 2 type of situation, where the price is overshadowing everything else. But would it really have been such a financial hardship for Bethesda to offer the “art book,” soundtrack, and fucking horse armour as freebies? Is that content worth £10 to anyone?
A promotional screenshot of the Oblivion remaster.
Bethesda could really use a win right now. The company has endured basically a decade of controversy, with Fallout 4, Fallout 76, Starfield, and even some of its mobile games all having issues and being criticised. With The Elder Scrolls VI still years away, this launch of the Oblivion remaster was a chance to get people talking about the company and its games more positively for a change. It was an opportunity to remind players why they liked Bethesda’s games to begin with, as well as to keep the series in our minds as production on The Elder Scrolls VI continues. I can’t help but feel this “deluxe edition” greed is getting in the way of that, at least somewhat.
And I have to ask: was it worth it? This article could’ve been titled something like “Bethesda stuns everyone by shadow-dropping a remastered version of Oblivion!” and I could’ve spent this time talking about my memories of the game, what I like best about the remaster, and how cool it is in 2025 to see a big game being released immediately after its announcement. Instead, we’re talking about horse armour again, and how Bethesda is a greedy, money-grubbing company. We could’ve been reminded of what Bethesda games were when they were close to their best, but instead we’re reminded more of Starfield’s microtransactions than Oblivion’s storytelling.
I’m gonna play the Oblivion remaster, I’m gonna try to push the stupid “deluxe edition” out of my thoughts, and if I’m lucky (and if Virtuos hasn’t screwed things up) I daresay I’ll have a fun time getting lost in the world of Tamriel all over again. But I’m disappointed that the game launched like this, and I really don’t think it would’ve been too much to ask to include those tiny pieces of content in the already-expensive price of the remaster.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is out now for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S & X. The game is also available on PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, Virtuos Games, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I’ve been looking forward to the game I’d been tentatively calling “Mario Kart 9” for years. Seriously, check out the dedicated Mario Kart page here on the website; five years ago, I was already putting together fantasy retro cups and talking about which characters could be included. I first played Super Mario Kart when I had a Super Nintendo in the early ’90s, and one of my favourite memories from my time spent working in the games industry is getting to play Mario Kart 8 in 2013 – a full year before it launched – at an official Nintendo press event. I’ve played every mainline game in the series on their original consoles (and maybe on a cheeky emulator, too) and I’ve had so much fun playing by myself and with friends. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is my most-played Switch game by quite a long way, and I still go back to it to play my favourite tracks every now and then.
So let’s re-emphasise that for the record: I am a Mario Kart fan!
Why do I feel the need to start this piece with such a big disclaimer? Well, having sat down to watch the Mario Kart World Nintendo Direct broadcast with pretty high expectations… I’m left feeling a little disappointed. Usually I don’t like to criticise a game before it’s even been released, but the way Nintendo is pitching Mario Kart World – and particularly how the corporation is pricing the game – hasn’t left a good first impression.
How do you feel about Mario Kart World?
I knew and understood that Mario Kart World would have fewer racetracks than Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has. That seemed blindingly obvious to me years ago, even before the Booster Course Pass doubled the number of tracks, so I don’t necessarily think it’s a problem or a bad thing that the new game will launch with what looks to be 32 race courses instead of 96. But… there’s no getting away from the fact that with fewer tracks comes less replayability and less diversity of environments. I can fire up Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and play a racetrack I haven’t seen in months; Mario Kart World’s roster – at one-third the size – will wear out its welcome relatively quickly in comparison.
And that comparison matters because, according to Nintendo, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (and presumably the Booster Course Pass, too) will be playable on the Switch 2. Not only that, but it’ll be slightly less expensive for way more racetracks: copies of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe retail for less than £40 here in the UK, with the Booster Course Pass as a downloadable add-on for an additional £22.50. The price of Mario Kart World is going to be £67 digitally or £75 for a physical copy.
Mario Kart World’s official Nintendo Store listing.
Some of the new and re-imagined racetracks look good, don’t get me wrong. Boo Cinema looks especially creative, DK Spaceport looks new and retro at the same time, and I really liked the new look at Wario Stadium from the N64 – which, in its original form, was one of my least-favourite tracks from that game.
There are a couple of oddities, however, among the roster of tracks. Firstly, even if you put a gun to my head I wouldn’t have included Sky High Sundae; that bland track is one of the worst from the Booster Course Pass and when there were so many better options, I don’t know why a boring food-themed oval would be included here! DS Desert Hills was also fairly uninspired in its original form, though at least there’s a bit more room for improvement there, perhaps. I’m also a little concerned about the Crown City racetrack being part of two different cups; not sure what’s going on there or how those tracks will be different, but I guess we’ll find out.
Boo Cinema looks like a very creative racetrack.
On the character roster, my main of Dry Bones is included, which was important for me personally! And obviously the cute cow is going to be a fan favourite, as will new additions like the Hammer Bro and Monty Mole. But again… Mario Kart 8 Deluxe still comes out on top here, and there are going to be some pretty disappointed players whose favourite drivers aren’t coming back this time. The likes of Isabelle and the Villager from the Animal Crossing series, Link from Zelda, Diddy and Funky Kong, and most of the Koopalings from the Super Mario series don’t seem to be included. There are also noteworthy omissions from Mario Kart Tour – the phone game that has proven to be quite popular. King Bob-Omb, Donkey Kong Jr., and Peachette are all missing. And where oh where is Pink Gold Peach?!
There also appear to be no Mii characters or other user-created characters. Again, this could be a bit of a blow to players who liked to put themselves into the Mario Kart experience.
I can’t be the only one who thought this character would have a different name, right?
I’m not especially disappointed that underwater driving seems to have been removed. In most cases in Mario Kart 7 and Mario Kart 8, underwater sections felt pretty samey, especially in tracks that weren’t really designed with that in mind. Amsterdam Drift is a case in point; its bland concrete channels filled with crystal-clear water felt nothing like the city they were supposed to represent. Having said that, removing a feature is something rare for the Mario Kart series… and Mario Kart World seems to have sacrificed several popular features and ways of racing.
In addition to underwater racing, we’re losing the glider and anti-gravity, too. This is going to be more of a limitation than you realise, as it’s going to impact which tracks can be brought into the new game in future. Courses like Mario Kart 8′s Mario Circuit, which used anti-gravity in a big way, or Piranha Plant Cove, which was almost entirely underwater, seem to be ruled out as future inclusions due to these changes.
Dry Bones racing on Piranha Plant Cove.
And we’re still just getting started with removed features. Battle Mode seems to have gotten a significant downgrade, not only in terms of there being fewer battle types available, but also with a lack of dedicated battle arenas. The Direct didn’t focus on Battle Mode for long, as it’s seemingly an afterthought in Mario Kart World, but from what we did see, all of the battle mode footage seems to be taking place on regular racetracks. Some of the tracks may have areas cordoned off to turn them into makeshift arenas, but that’s hardly the same thing has creating dedicated, hand-crafted ones. Fans of Battle Mode (a category into which I do not fall) may not be thrilled with these changes.
Then we come to the vehicles themselves. Kart customisation has been entirely removed. Instead of choosing wheels, bodies, and gliders separately – as we did in Mario Kart 7 and Mario Kart 8 – karts now come as complete units. There are different models to choose from, sure, but again the lack of customisation means there’s less choice than in previous titles. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe had literally hundreds of possible combinations, but Mario Kart World is narrowing this down with pre-made karts and bikes.
There are no customisation options for vehicles this time.
200cc mode has been present in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Mario Kart Tour, but again it was noticeably absent from the Nintendo Direct. Is it possible that this mode is locked by default and needs to be unlocked through gameplay? Sure… but then why hasn’t Nintendo said so? Is it possible that this mode is locked and needs to be paid for to unlock it? That was the case in Tour, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the reason for Nintendo’s radio silence. I’m gonna level with you – I’m a 150cc racer! 200cc has always been a bit too fast for my taste, but again it’s not just about what I want or what I’d miss. The fact that this mode – which is popular with some of Mario Kart’s biggest fans – is missing is significant.
So let’s recap. There are fewer battle modes with seemingly no dedicated battle areas. One-third as many racetracks as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Missing drivers, including some fan-favourites from the most recent game in the series. No vehicle customisation. No underwater or anti-gravity racing. And possibly no 200cc mode. If that’s the sum total of what’s been removed, it begs the question… what’s going to take the place of all of these missing features?
Battle Mode appears to have received a downgrade.
Mario Kart World’s marketing thus far has really hyped up its open world. That’s the main new feature; an inclusion so big it’s literally in the game’s title.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: an open world is not the right choice for a lot of games. Too many franchises and series that try to emulate this popular style not only don’t do a good job, but they lose what made their earlier iterations so successful and/or unique in the process. There are plenty of examples of bland open worlds that are just too empty and too devoid of meaningful gameplay to be fun… and parts of the Mario Kart World Direct and marketing material are making me feel nervous in that respect.
Mario Kart World’s map.
If the free roam mode were an entirely optional thing, I guess I’d say it wasn’t a huge deal. It would still be frustrating in some ways that Nintendo chose to add this open world area at the expense of some of the features, characters, and gameplay components we talked about above, but if it’s an optional thing that I can turn off and not engage with… that’s tolerable, right? But Mario Kart World is being built from the ground up around this open world mechanic… and I’m concerned that it’s going to have a negative impact on the main thing I want out of a Mario Kart game: fun, arcadey racing.
Driving from one racetrack to the next, either in Grand Prix mode or in one of the Knockout Rallies, could be a lot of fun, but that’ll depend on how interesting the in-between areas actually are. Some of the free roam highways and roads looked pretty straightforward, with not many twists or turns and no noticeable obstacles aside from a few cars. But what really concerns me the most is that in this mode – which is apparently the default – races are knocked down from the usual three laps to just one.
How interesting will this free roam mode actually be?
To reiterate that: instead of racing three laps of each racetrack, the default option in Mario Kart World will be to race one lap, with these in-between sections taking up the rest of your time. Even if the open world is bigger, more interesting, and laid out better than I’m expecting based on what I’ve seen so far… that can’t be right, can it? The whole point of a Mario Kart game is to race around fun, well-constructed, cleverly-designed racetracks. To cut back on the main aspect of gameplay for this open world aspect just strikes me as being wrong; it’s as if Nintendo’s own developers and producers don’t realise what people want, expect, and enjoy the most in a Mario Kart game.
There have been open world racing games before. Forza Horizon 5 is one – and that’s a game I happen to really enjoy. But games like that are designed in such a way that every road and off-road track can be raced on, and I just don’t get that impression from Nintendo’s marketing material so far. If you’ve played Forza Horizon 5, for example, you’ll know that basically every road in the game is included in at least one race, and there are all kinds of different vehicles, different races to get involved in, and different challenges out in the open world. There’s no distinction between the racetrack and the open world; every road can be driven on in free roam mode and raced on in a variety of different races. That doesn’t appear to be true of Mario Kart World, which seems to have 32 racetracks separated by open world areas.
Four examples of the game’s open world away from the racetrack.
The Nintendo Direct was the best opportunity to sell Mario Kart World and to show off how dense and full of stuff to do its open world is. Based on what was on display, I’m just not feeling very confident in this aspect of the game. And when the open world is so important to Mario Kart World that Nintendo is even willing to cut out laps of the main racetracks in Grand Prix mode, that isn’t great.
As far as I could see, there are four things to do in the open world. Firstly, you can drive from one racetrack to another in either the Rally or GP modes. Secondly, there are switches to hit which allow you to collect blue coins. What these coins do or whether there’s any point to them beyond a collect-a-thon wasn’t clear. Third, there’s a second kind of coin referred to as a “Peach Medallion” to collect. Again, what these do isn’t clear. Finally, there are question-mark panels to hit – but what these do, and what the point of hitting them is, wasn’t explained.
Do these challenges and collect-a-thons serve a greater purpose… or are they just filler?
Mario Kart isn’t a big, deep narrative experience. I don’t care about “spoilers” in a game like this, because there really isn’t anything substantial to spoil. So to me, this feels like a pretty big marketing fail on Nintendo’s part. By not explaining these open-world features in a bit more detail, Nintendo has left me with the impression that the blue coins, medallions, and question-blocks are basically going to be akin to the pigeons in Grand Theft Auto IV insofar as they don’t do anything, add nothing of substance to the game, and just serve to pad things out with unnecessary busywork for players. They could be an attempt to compensate for the lesser number of racetracks while offering a half-hearted justification for the open world format.
I could be wrong about that – and if so, I’ll definitely make a note of that if and when I play the game for myself. But speaking as someone who used to work in video games marketing, the fact that I’m coming out of this presentation with such a poor impression of the game’s biggest new feature and key selling-point? That’s not good, and Nintendo needs to do more in the weeks before Mario Kart World launches to clarify what some of these semi-hidden collectables will actually do, and if there’s going to be more to the open world than has been revealed so far.
Yoshi closes in on a hidden coin.
In theory, an open world Mario Kart game is not a bad idea. But the open world side of the game – if it’s going to be implemented in this way as a core feature around which basically the entire rest of the game is being built – needs to have more to offer than we’ve seen so far. A few random collectables doesn’t, in my view, justify sacrificing a dozen or more dedicated racetracks that could’ve been added to the game, and driving in between races doesn’t seem like it’s gonna feel all that special if all there is to drive on are straight highways or empty off-road fields and patches of dirt. This free roam mode could be a fun idea if it were just a little additional area for players to muck about in while waiting in a multiplayer lobby, or to kill time with a friend on the couch. But when the entire game is built around an open world like this… let’s just say I hope it’s better than it looks and has much more going on than we’ve seen so far.
Art styles are a subjective thing, and there’s no denying that Mario Kart World looks better than Mario Kart 8 Deluxe did. But I’ll be blunt: I don’t think it looks a lot better. The art style is basically the same as it was in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and while there’s more texture to some parts of the game – like tyres, for example, or the metal on a Bullet Bill – I’m just having a hard time seeing the graphics as being a significant upgrade given the price hike.
This is definitely the best Bullet Bill has ever looked.
Mario Kart World will be, at launch, the most expensive racing game on the market. Heck, it’s technically the most expensive video game of all-time as no other Switch 2 titles are launching at £75/$80. But when you take even a cursory look around at other racing games, even in the arcade racing space, Mario Kart World looks positively last-gen. Again, this isn’t a criticism of the graphics or art style on their own, but rather how the game is priced relative to its competitors and how the price is seen in relation to the most recent entry in the series.
After more than eleven years and two entire console generations, Mario Kart World ought to be a massive step up in visual terms. But it isn’t. It’s a step up, sure, I won’t try to deny that. But it doesn’t feel like a game that can really push the Switch 2 to its limits. Even if we compare the Switch 2 to the previous-generation Xbox One and PlayStation 4, there are games on those consoles which looked better and did more with graphical fidelity than Mario Kart World is seemingly aiming for.
Is Mario Kart World a significant enough visual and graphical upgrade given its high price?
In this respect, I feel like Nintendo is cheaping out. The corporation knows it has a winner in the Mario Kart series (Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold something like 60 million copies on the Switch) so there’s less of a need to push the boat out. Resources that could’ve been spent on improving the game’s overall visual style and graphical fidelity have been reallocated, because Nintendo feels confident that the new game will sell incredibly well no matter what.
There was a moment in the Mario Kart World direct where my favourite racer, Dry Bones, does a little spin and momentarily faces the camera. That animation seems practically unchanged from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (and trust me, I’ve spent hundreds of hours with Dry Bones in that game, so I know what his trick animations look like!) Neither the animation nor the character model itself look or feel noticeably different to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and I’m left underwhelmed by that. Nintendo has had years to work on improving the way Mario Kart looks… this new entry in the series feels like the least-impressive upgrade so far, at least in graphical terms.
This animation is lifted directly from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
Nintendo isn’t the only company to be graphically stuck, of course. I noted before the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 launched that this console generation was likely to be the least-impressive so far in terms of graphical upgrades, and I think four-and-a-bit years of cross-generational games have more than born that out! But Nintendo has been years behind Xbox and PlayStation in terms of graphical fidelity, so there was an opportunity with the Switch 2 and Mario Kart World to get closer to what current-gen (or even just last-gen) consoles were capable of. That opportunity doesn’t appear to have been taken, at least not fully.
So Mario Kart World looks better, but only iteratively so. Its deliberately cartoony style and bright colours covers some of that up, and I wouldn’t say anything about the game looks bad. But from my perspective, nothing about it blew me away, either – and again, this comes back to the price point. For $80, and as the most expensive racing game of all-time, does Mario Kart World look good enough? Is the graphical upgrade significant enough to justify a $20 price hike from a mere one generation ago?
This is the best Mario Kart has ever looked… but not the best it could have looked with a bit more effort.
Mario Kart World is going to add some new features that look like a lot of fun. I noted above that anti-gravity racing is gone, but replacing it will be grinding on rails and hopping on vertical surfaces. These look like they have some potential to open up different ways to race, and I’m in favour of that. Gliders may be gone, but racing in the air isn’t, with karts seemingly transforming into planes at different points. Again, this looks like it could be a lot of fun, and while it’s not exactly ground-breaking in the way the introduction of gliders was in Mario Kart 7, I’m at least pleased to see it remains a part of the Mario Kart experience.
Then we have a feature that I can already tell is gonna be controversial: re-winding gameplay! Speaking for myself, I can see this having a very specific use: practicing particularly difficult jumps or shortcuts. Think about it: how many times have you played a track with a very precise shortcut, only to fail it and have to re-start? This re-wind feature seems like it’ll help players who want to practice certain parts of racetracks, and I don’t really have an issue with that. I don’t see it being especially useful in actual races, though, but it almost feels like an accessibility feature in some respects, which if you know me you’ll know I’m keen on in games in general.
There’s a use for this feature. A limited use, sure, but still a use.
After proving to be a big hit in Mario Kart Tour (and Super Mario Odyssey, too) character costumes are coming to Mario Kart World. I like this – and I like the idea of unlockables! I just hope that Nintendo isn’t planning on selling skins like they did in Tour, trying to pretend like the most expensive racing game of all-time is a free-to-play mobile title. As I won’t be buying a Switch 2 at launch, I’ll be able to keep an eye on this from afar, and if it seems like a crappy skin marketplace is going to be added, that’ll be a huge red flag against Mario Kart World for me.
I gotta say, though, the way some of these costumes are unlocked feels a bit… weird. I mean, the way it was explained is that you visit some kind of roadside food truck, acquire a dish, and then your character is transformed. When I watched the Switch 2 Direct, I thought it was funny that Mario ate a cheeseburger then was wearing a stereotypically “American” outfit. That couldn’t be on purpose, I thought! But no, that’s literally how this mechanic works. Eat sushi and you get a Japanese costume. Eat a burger and your character turns into an American. I guess if you want to get a Spanish outfit you eat paella? Or if you eat fish and chips you turn British? It’s funny in some ways… I guess. But it also feels like it’s kind of stereotyping whole countries and cultures, boiling them down to one dish and one type of outfit. It also wasn’t made clear how many alternate outfits are present in the game – and whether characters like Dry Bones will have any. It seems like every character should have alternate appearances if this consuming food mechanic is a universal thing, but again this wasn’t explained in any of the marketing material.
Mamma mia! That’s-a one spicy pizza pie!
There are things I like in Mario Kart World. Some of the new items look interesting, like the coin shell and the ice flower. Kamek’s magic could be interesting, too, though I suspect it’ll be somewhat limited. I like the idea of character costumes even if I’m not entirely sold on how they’re unlocked and implemented. And there are some fun looking racetracks – both brand-new ones and reimagined retro courses. If Santa Claus gave me Mario Kart World for free, I would play it, I’d enjoy at least parts of it, and it would probably end the generation among my most-played Switch 2 games.
But a game can be good and still underwhelming, delivering a fun experience while failing to live up to the expectations that have been set for it. By pricing the game so high, Nintendo has set expectations that its marketing material strongly suggests Mario Kart World will not reach. Given the corporation’s penchant for monetisation and microtransactions, I’m also concerned that things like new tracks, new drivers, new costumes, and even items might be sold separately, driving up that sky high price even further.
It’s Nintendo headquarters… I mean Bowser’s Castle!
So that’s how I feel coming out of the Mario Kart World Direct.
Nintendo has, in my view, not handled this situation particularly well. Mario Kart World’s marketing campaign is overwhelmingly dominated by its record-setting price point, meaning everything is being viewed through that lens. The sky high price comes with sky high expectations, and Mario Kart World may struggle to meet them for some players – such as myself. Of particular concern is the open world – will there be enough to do and enough variety of driving experiences in between the racetracks to make it a worthwhile addition to Mario Kart? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
I hope this has been interesting – and not too depressing. If you’re beyond hyped for Mario Kart World, please keep in mind that all of this is just one player’s entirely subjective opinion, and I’m not trying to tell anyone how to feel or that they shouldn’t be excited for this game. In many ways, I’m still excited to play a new Mario Kart game. I’m just a little concerned that it won’t be as spectacular as it arguably should be given its price point, and as someone who used to work in games marketing, I’m left decidedly underwhelmed by the campaign Nintendo has created for its new console’s flagship launch title.
Mario Kart World will release alongside the Nintendo Switch 2 on the 5th of June 2025. Mario Kart World (and other titled mentioned above) is the copyright of Nintendo. Some promotional art courtesy of IGDB and/or the Mario Wiki. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Beware of minor spoilers ahead for Phineas and Ferb.
In just a couple of months, Phineas and Ferb will be back on our screens for the first time in a decade. Well, for the first time since Candace Against the Universe premiered as a one-off TV movie! So I thought it could be a bit of fun to take a look at ten episodes from the show’s original run that stand out to me.
I’ve talked about this before, but I encountered Phineas and Ferb when I was already an adult. When I used to have a satellite TV subscription back in the 2000s, I came across an ad for the show either just before or just after its premiere. Although I shouldn’t have been interested in a kids’ cartoon airing on the Disney Channel, something about the show’s writing or art style must’ve leapt out at me – so I gave it a watch. And I’m so glad that I did, because Phineas and Ferb has unironically become one of my favourite TV shows… ever.
It’s Klimpaloon!
The best children’s programmes offer something for adult viewers, too – and no, I don’t just mean that they keep the kids busy so we can get on with other things! There can be jokes that adults will find funny, storytelling that transcends the generational divide, or characters who exhibit traits that kids and adults alike can relate to. This explains the enduring popularity of the shows and films which strike the right balance – and for me at least, Phineas and Ferb is up there with the likes of SpongeBob SquarePants, Tom and Jerry, and the best of Disney’s animated films.
The show’s two-and-a-half storyline structure is really what makes it stand out. The boys and their invention are on one side, with their sister Candace trying to get them in trouble, while secret agent Perry the Platypus is on the other as he battles the self-proclaimed evil scientist Dr Doofenshmirtz. But where Phineas and Ferb really excels is by bringing these two halves of the show together – often, but not always, by ensuring Doofenshmirtz’s scheme will cause the boys’ invention to disappear. Particularly in later episodes, the writers would get creative with these intersecting moments, too, successfully subverting audience expectations!
So that’s a bit of background as we head into the list. But before we go any further, I have a couple of important caveats.
Phineas and Ferb co-creators Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh.
Firstly, I’m not “ranking” these episodes. Nor am I saying these are my “all-time top ten favourites!” These are just ten great episodes from Phineas and Ferb’s original run that I happen to really enjoy. Making some kind of tier list of all the show’s episodes or seasons will have to wait for another occasion. I’m listing the episodes in broadcast order, starting with Season 1 and going through to Season 4, and for the purposes of this list, one “episode” is one story. On Disney+ (and often during the show’s original broadcast run) two episodes would be paired up – but that’s not how I’m arranging my list.
Finally, nothing about this is in any way “objective!” Other fans of the show will have different favourite episodes, so if I pick an episode you hate or ignore one that you think should be obvious for a list like this… that’s okay! There ought to be enough room in the fan community for differences of opinion and polite disagreement.
With all of that out of the way, let’s take a look at ten of my favourite Phineas and Ferb episodes.
Episode #1: Are You My Mummy? Season 1
Of all the early Season 1 episodes to really nail the core concepts of Phineas and Ferb, Are You My Mummy? has to be one of the best. It’s an adventure story inspired by classic mummy and monster movies, but unlike some later stories which see the boys perform completely out-of-this-world feats, there’s something about the cinema setting that keeps things grounded. The boys go on an adventure, sure… but it’s an adventure in the basement of a cinema filled with “fakey promotional lobby junk,” and a misunderstood “mummy.” This kind of story – in which we see the world through a kind of child’s-eye view – wouldn’t always be present in the series, but I think it’s a big part of what makes Are You My Mummy? so charming.
Perry’s side of the story – in which he has to prevent Doofenshmirtz from flooding the city – is a ton of fun, too. The two halves of the episode come together in the basement of the cinema, with Phineas, Ferb, Candace, and Perry going on a water ride inspired by the likes of Disney’s own Splash Mountain.
Episode #2: Dude, We’re Getting The Band Back Together Season 1
Phineas and Ferb quickly became known for its songs and musical numbers, and Season 1’s Dude, We’re Getting The Band Back Together has several great tracks. An episode all about music – and the importance of music in the lives of the characters – was bound to have some excellent songs, and we get some outstanding additions to the show’s soundtrack here! It’s hard to pick a favourite, but You Snuck Your Way Right Into My Heart is definitely up there, and I’d be remiss not to also mention Ain’t Got Rhythm, which was nominated for an Emmy award.
The boys team-up with Candace is particularly cute, too, as it shakes up the formula of the show somewhat. It also shows Candace’s willingness to join in with her brothers – at least sometimes! – which is a fun change of pace for her character. Doofenshmirtz’s story of hosting Vanessa’s birthday party also sees him working with Perry for a change – and cements his status as one of the best dads in animation!
Episode #3: I Was A Middle-Aged Robot Season 2
This episode puts Candace and Perry in the driving seat, after a “mishap” with a memory erasing machine means Lawrence can’t take her to the father-daughter picnic competition. There are some fantastic moments of humour in this episode; I particularly love the sheer randomness of Perry’s robot being programmed in Dutch, and him having to use two Dutch-to-French and French-to-English dictionaries to operate it. Trying to explain it kills the joke, of course!
I Was A Middle-Aged Robot is another great family episode, as we see the boys, their mom, and their friends all get together to cheer on Candace and their dad. The obstacle course means a lot to her, so having everyone get together to support her just… gives me the warm fuzzy feels. Perry abandoning Doofenshmirtz – who seemed to have a whole story of his own lined up and ready to go – was funny, too.
Episode #4: Christmas Vacation Season 2
I know it’s the middle of April and we really shouldn’t be thinking about Christmas… but this Christmas special is one of my all-time favourites, and one I return to every single holiday season. I’m a sucker for the whole “Christmas is in danger, someone has to save it!” story cliché, and Christmas Vacation really sells it – with a Phineas and Ferb twist, of course. As you might expect, it’s Doofenshmirtz’s evil scheme that puts Christmas in danger, meaning it’s up to Phineas and the gang to restore Danville’s holiday spirit.
We talked about songs a moment ago, and Christmas Vacation has some truly outstanding musical numbers. Christmas Is Starting Now should be on everyone’s festive playlist, and that’s just one! There are so many good songs, some beautiful animation to bring the winter wonderland to life, and a fun holiday story keeping it all together. I have a longer piece about Christmas Vacation that I wrote last year to mark its fifteenth anniversary, so click or tap here to check it out.
Episode #5: The Doof Side Of The Moon Season 2
I’m pretty sure that the skyscraper in The Doof Side Of The Moon is the biggest thing the boys ever built! It’s gotta be one of the biggest, anyway, as it reaches all the way to the moon. The sequence of the skyscraper being constructed really is a ton of fun, with so many wacky and random building methods all thrown in together. Candace, naturally, wants to report on what her brothers are doing, and this time enlists the help of Albert… a character who really gives me the creeps! I think we all knew or at least remember someone like that from our school days – a very cringeworthy individual to say the least.
There isn’t as much going on with Doofenshmirtz and Perry in this episode, and Doof’s plan is silly even by his standards! But I liked his chart comparing his everyday evilness to the other “background evil” in the Tri-State Area. And Doofenshmirtz’s scheme was responsible for the building disappearing from the Flynn-Fletcher back yard!
Episode #6: The Belly Of The Beast Season 3
There are multiple references to the classic monster film Jaws in this episode, which is a ton of fun. The boys build a giant mechanical shark for Danville’s Harbour Day celebration, leading Candace and Stacy to hire a ship to chase after them. The ship’s captain is an incredibly funny character (and someone I hope will return in Season 5 or 6!) and there’s just a lot of fun to be had in this nautical setting. It takes most of the characters away from their usual haunts to do something a little different – while also paying homage to the kind of small-town celebrations that are common across the United States. There’s a lot to love on this side of the story.
Doofenshmirtz’s Taffy-Inator isn’t one of his wackiest or worst inventions; it’s basically just a large taffy machine. Why he wants to promote tooth decay, though… I’m still not clear on that! There were plenty of neat moments with Doof and Perry, though, and again it was fun to see them in a different setting for a change.
Episode #7: Magic Carpet Ride Season 3
I’ll be honest: this episode is primarily making the list for its song! Aerial Area Rug is epic and silly in equal measure, perfectly satirising Aladdin’s A Whole New World while retaining the same majestic tone. Songwriter Robert Lopez – who later wrote the songs for Frozen and Frozen II – put it together with help from the show’s writing team, and it’s just one of the absolute best in the series in my opinion.
Song aside, the episode is fun. The boys recreate a flying carpet that their dad saw on TV when he was a kid, and Doofenshmirtz tries to ruin his brother’s day – only to have it blow back on him. I actually feel sorry for Doofenshmirtz in Magic Carpet Ride, and I think it’s a great episode for exploring more of his feud with Roger.
Episode #8: Delivery Of Destiny Season 3
An episode told mostly from the point-of-view of a random side character? I know it sounds silly, but it really works! Not only that, but it’s a kind of uplifting story of a young man learning to appreciate his job – something I think we can all relate to in some way. There are some fun musical clips thanks to the inclusion of Love Handel, too. Seeing both the boys’ invention and one of Doofenshmirtz’s plots from a totally different perspective was genuinely interesting.
Delivery of Destiny is the kind of episode that wouldn’t have been possible prior to Season 3. It took the series, its characters, its world, and all of its tropes and completely flipped the script, showing us a glimpse of how things look from the perspective of one of the citizens of Danville. It also wrapped everything up in a fun self-contained story, too. Something a bit different – and that’s why I like it!
Episode #9: My Sweet Ride Season 4
This is probably a “hot take” and a bit of a generalisation… but I find that the quality of Phineas and Ferb seemed to dip a bit as Season 4 rolled around. There are some great episodes in the season, but I’d argue there were also a few less-enjoyable offerings, as well. My Sweet Ride is a blast, though! The nostalgic Americana of the Doo-Wop Hop and the classic car festival is a ton of fun, and the episode’s song is a classic retro-inspired number, too.
Phineas and Ferb trick out Candace’s new car – and let their dad take most of the credit! Doofenshmirtz’s crazy contraption is also a lot of fun, and gives us another glimpse of life in Drusselstein, which is neat. Monty and Vanessa continue their relationship and get a cute moment together, and it’s fun to get a story which brings almost all of the main characters from both sides of Phineas and Ferb’s world together in the same place.
Episode #10: Phineas and Ferb Save Summer Season 4
Season 4 has a bunch of feature-length episodes, and there are several I could’ve chosen to include here! This time, we’re going with Phineas and Ferb Save Summer – an exciting story which sees Doofenshmirtz’s evil scheme succeed, leading to his organisation trying to take over the world by forcing the planet into a new ice age! Although the boys and Doof are kept separate, their stories come together in the best way possible, leading to Phineas and the gang undoing the damage.
I really enjoyed seeing a different side of Doofenshmirtz. After his initial scheme succeeds, he gets swept along by other evil scientists – notably his nemesis, Rodney – and feels increasingly uncomfortable with the things they’re doing. We also see Perry’s animal colleagues at the OWCA captured after Major Monogram gets fired, leaving Carl and Monty in charge. There’s a fun battle sequence between the animal agents and the evil scientists, and Candace gets a sub-plot about achieving her childhood goals and overcoming a phobia. There’s a lot going on – and it’s all great fun!
So that’s it… for now!
Phineas and Ferb will be back on our screens in a couple of months!
There are literally dozens more episodes I wanted to include, so stay tuned – I’d love to revisit this topic in the future and pick out another selection of episodes. If you only have time to watch (or re-watch) a handful of episodes before Season 5 premieres, though, I hope I’ve given you a few ideas for where to start!
I’m cautiously optimistic about Phineas and Ferb’s revival. I really want to see the show succeed, and I hope the writers have found new stories to tell that will really get back to what made Phineas and Ferb so enjoyable during its original run. However… I would be lying if I said I didn’t have some concerns. Setting the new season a year later is good in some ways, as it allows for character growth and could give the characters new experiences and challenges. But it could also undermine the pretty definitive ending that the series got, and I can’t help but feel that setting the new episodes in that original endless summer might’ve been a better call. I’d love to be proven wrong, though!
The cast and crew of Phineas and Ferb Season 5. Image Credit: Dan Povenmire on Instagram
Speaking of Season 5: when it premieres later this year I’m planning to review it, so I hope you’ll swing by for that! I’ll talk about all of the episodes and go into detail about what I liked (or didn’t like, if it comes to that). I’m definitely crossing my fingers and hoping for an enjoyable time. Back in 2020, Candace Against The Universe was pretty good, so there are reasons to be hopeful.
Until then, I hope you enjoyed this look at some of my favourite episodes from Phineas and Ferb’s first four seasons. Who knows… if Seasons 5 and 6 are successful, a renewal could be on the cards and there could be many more stories still to tell in the Tri-State Area.
Phineas and Ferb Seasons 1-4 are available to stream now on Disney+. Some episodes and films are also available on DVD and/or Blu-ray. Phineas and Ferb Season 5 is scheduled to premiere on Disney+ and the Disney Channel in the United States in June 2025. Phineas and Ferb is the copyright of Disney Television Animation and The Walt Disney Company. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
When I took a look at Nintendo’s Switch 2 broadcast earlier this month, I noted that the price for games has gone up – and that could be offputting for some players and families. It turns out that Nintendo’s self-inflicted price problem has blown up and quickly became one of the biggest talking points coming out of the presentation… so today I thought we could look at the issue in a bit more detail. We’re also going to answer a deceptively simple question: will it matter? Or by the time the console launches, will most people simply brush off the price hike and buy one anyway?
First of all, let’s separate the price of the Switch 2 console itself from the price of at least some of its flagship games. £400/$450 – which is the current price at time of writing, prior to any tariff-related adjustments – didn’t strike me as being terrible. It’s more or less in line with the current-gen Xbox and PlayStation consoles, sitting somewhere in between those consoles’ cheaper and more expensive variants. But is that the right price point for a Nintendo console – particularly one which is a hybrid, and far less powerful than its competitors?
The Switch 2 will sell for £430 here in the UK. Image Credit: Smyth’s UK
In 2018, I paid £280 for my Nintendo Switch. That’s just seven years ago, yet the price of a Nintendo console has gone up by 42% in that short span of time. That doesn’t feel right the more I think about it – and going back to earlier console generations, this is Nintendo’s biggest price jump… ever. In the ’90s, the price of Nintendo’s consoles stayed at $199 in the United States, even as inflation set in. The GameCube in 2002 cost the same $199 at launch as the Super NES had in 1991. From there, Nintendo consoles jumped up an average of 22% each generation from the GameCube to the original Switch. You can check out the numbers and do the sums for yourself if you like – all this information is publically available online.
All of this leads to a reasonable question. What is the Switch 2 offering to justify a 42% price hike over its predecessor?
It isn’t innovation. As we discussed last time, Nintendo seems content to double-down on the Switch format, not doing anything radically different. The Wii U, Wii, Nintendo 64, DS, 3DS, and other Nintendo machines all offered some kind of new or innovative way to play when they launched, but the company seems to have thrown in the towel on that front – at least for this current generation.
Elden Ring – as it will appear on Switch 2.
It isn’t better graphics, either. The Switch 2, as I noted in my response to the Nintendo Direct, looks okay, but nothing blew me away in graphical terms. Some titles – like Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, and Hogwarts Legacy – look noticeably worse on the Switch 2 than they do on other consoles or PC. Look at the trees in the screenshot above – see how flat and two-dimensional they look? Compare that screenshot from the Switch 2 to a comparable one from Elden Ring running on a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series console and see how there’s a significant downgrade.
So the Switch 2 is, in essence, an iterative improvement on the original Switch format. It retains the branding, the same colour scheme, the same cartridge format, the same hybrid nature, and the same controls, too. Graphically, it may be an incremental improvement – but it’s going to be running cutting-edge titles in a noticeably worse way than its two similarly-priced competitors. Some of the biggest games around – Grand Theft Auto VI most noticeably – won’t run or even attempt to run on the system, too.
Mario Kart World running on a Switch 2 in handheld mode.
But people don’t buy a Nintendo console to play Elden Ring, right? Not as their primary console, anyway. Most folks I’ve spoken to have enjoyed the Switch’s portability, and have commented on the novelty of playing full AAA games like The Witcher 3, Monster Hunter, or Minecraft on a portable device. But those same people have, almost universally, owned a PC or another console which they’ve used as their “primary” gaming machine.
Look at the best-selling Switch games: they’re almost all Nintendo originals. Super Mario Odyssey, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Breath of the Wild, the Pokémon series… these are the games people buy a Switch for. And in comparison to the current Switch, there’s no doubt that the likes of Mario, Luigi, Donkey Kong, and Pokémon are going to look better on the new machine. Nintendo has even shown off “enhanced editions” of some popular Switch games that will get visual upgrades on Switch 2.
Is the $450 price point too high for a console like that, though?
Is the Switch 2 overpriced?
Speaking for myself, I won’t be buying a Switch 2 this year. My original Switch felt like a good deal at under £300, but I’ve only seriously played four games on it in the seven years I’ve owned it: Luigi’s Mansion 3, Super Mario Odyssey, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. I’ve tried my hand at a few other games, but that’s it. Four games in seven years. And I won’t be the only person in that position… the reality is that Nintendo consoles have a pretty specific use, and the days of people choosing a Nintendo console instead of an Xbox or PlayStation are pretty much gone. So… who’s gonna pay $450 for a secondary console? Or a console that their kid is asking for?
By pitching the Switch 2 at the same price point as an Xbox, a PlayStation, and more importantly, handheld PCs like the Steam Deck, Nintendo is inviting comparisons to those devices. A Steam Deck, which starts at $349 in the United States, would be a much more versatile machine in many ways, and arguably a better purchase than a Switch 2 for someone looking to play games on the go. Can Nintendo really win over players and parents at this price point?
The Switch 2 will be more expensive than a base model Steam Deck – and almost the same price as an Xbox Series X.
Really, the only thing the Switch 2 has going for it are its exclusives. And I gotta be honest here: the Nintendo Direct really only showed one which I could see being a system seller. Donkey Kong Bananza is the kind of game you buy when you’ve already got the console and you’re shopping for things to play. There’s no new Mario game or Mario spin-off. And there’s no Animal Crossing title, either, which could’ve taken advantage of the casual audience that showed up in droves for New Horizons. The Switch 2’s “killer app,” at least at launch, is Mario Kart World. That’s it. Everything else has either much more of a niche audience or just… won’t shift consoles on their own.
I don’t want to undervalue Mario Kart World. The game does look good, no question. Nintendo has always had the premiere kart-racer, and that shows no signs of changing! But as I said in my look at the Switch 2 Direct… I can’t justify £430 (which is the bundle price for the Switch 2 + Mario Kart World here in the UK) to play one game. And this is where the next problem comes in, because for a lot of people… one game might be all they can afford.
Mario Kart World.
£75 ($80 in the US) for Mario Kart World is just obscene. Not only is it a ridiculous price for a simple kart racing game, but it’s a massive jump from the price of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – and other games on the current-gen Switch.
I paid £41 for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch, a similar price for Mario Kart 8 when I was one of about seven people who owned a Wii U, and I paid £32 for Mario Kart Wii in early 2009. Even allowing for inflation – which has punched all of us in the face in the last few years – we’re talking about game prices almost doubling from the Switch to the Switch 2 in some cases. I don’t have receipts for every Switch game I’ve bought, but the ones I could find average out at around £45. At the high end I’d pay £50, at the lower end closer to £30 or £35 for a brand-new Switch game. Even going from £50 – the RRP for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – to £75 is a jump of 50% from one generation to the next; if a new Animal Crossing game is similarly-priced it’ll have basically doubled. These are massive increases, there’s no two ways about it.
The next Animal Crossing game could easily be £75/$80 too.
There does seem to be some flexibility with pricing, as Donkey Kong Bananza will be less costly than Mario Kart World. So perhaps Nintendo is aiming to use the highest price only for its flagship titles, with “lesser” games in second-tier franchises coming in at the slightly lower price point. That’s not a bad idea in theory – and it’s something that the games industry has always done. But if the “lower” price for titles like Donkey Kong Bananza is still north of £60/$70… that’s not gonna feel like much of a saving.
There was talk earlier in the year of Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar potentially pricing Grand Theft Auto VI at $80, $90, or even $100 when it launches, and Nintendo’s price hike may well have cemented that – if it wasn’t guaranteed already. And this is another area where players are rightly concerned: if Nintendo gets away with jacking up its prices, what’s to stop everyone else in the industry from following suit? Gaming could be about to get a lot more expensive – less than five years after the basic price of many titles already leapt up by $10.
Take-Two and Rockstar must feel like celebrating right now!
This is not entirely Nintendo’s fault, of course. And there’s truth to the argument that these price rises were going to happen sooner or later anyway, if not with the Switch 2 then with Grand Theft Auto VI, and if not then then at the very latest by 2028 or 2029 when new Xbox and PlayStation consoles launch. But I don’t think that absolves Nintendo of blame; despite what the corporation’s mega-fans might want to tell you, it’s a greedy, money-grubbing company that will do anything to make an extra buck or two. Look at the Pokémon series as a prime example: two nearly-identical versions of most games are released. Why? To wring extra money out of Pokémon’s biggest fans. Nintendo, unlike most other gaming powerhouses, rarely puts its titles on sale – and if it does, the discounts are far less generous than those you’d see elsewhere. Despite its attempt to cultivate a family-friendly image, Nintendo is as ruthless and greedy as every other big corporation out there – something hammered home by this price hike.
So the question players will have to wrangle with is this: no matter how good a game like Mario Kart World might look, could it possibly be worth $80? Is any game worth that much? And given that at least one DLC or “season pass” seems like a guarantee, is Mario Kart World going to be worth the $110-140 that the complete version will cost? I’m a Mario Kart fan and have been for decades, but when you start talking about the next entry in the series hitting triple figures like that… I mean, it’s pretty offputting.
If Mario Kart World is getting the expected DLC or a season pass, the price could be well above the currently-stated £75/$80.
There are die-hards who turn up for every Nintendo game and every console – and the company knows it has those people in the bag. But where Nintendo has found success over the past twenty years has been with a more casual audience. People who don’t play a lot of games might pick up a Switch to play one or two party games or cozy titles like Animal Crossing. Folks who already have a PlayStation or Xbox might pick up a Switch as a secondary console to play some first-party Nintendo games or to play their favourite titles on the move. The price point of Switch 2 games really gets in the way of that casual approach. It transforms the way folks will think about the console and its games from a secondary machine or a casual multiplayer experience into a bigger investment. And that could be seriously detrimental to its prospects. If Nintendo has mis-read where the bulk of its audience is, and misunderstood the reasons for the Switch’s success, this unashamed greed could prove the Switch 2’s downfall.
With all that being said, my gut feeling at this point is that the Switch 2 will find an audience. It may not launch to the unparalleled success of its predecessor right away, and it might never catch the Switch’s incredibly impressive 150 million sales. But I don’t think we’re looking at the next Virtual Boy or even another Wii U situation; there are enough players invested in Nintendo’s core titles to make the Switch 2 at least somewhat profitable. And, despite what we’ve talked about, there’s evidence from players already that price rises are acceptable. There will be complaints, no question – but at the end of the day, there are plenty of examples of players being vocal and upset about the price of a new game, only for that game to sell really well. It happened at the start of this current generation when prices went up, it’s happened incrementally with premium special editions and the like, and I see no reason why it won’t happen for Nintendo this time.
Donkey Kong Banaza will cost more than most other big releases this year, like Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Kingdom Come Deliverance II.
What all this means, then, is that gaming is about to get even more expensive. If you think PlayStation and Xbox will sit idly by and let Nintendo raise its prices while they don’t… I’m afraid you’re going to be proven wrong. It might not happen on the day the Switch 2 launches, but as we’ve already seen from Xbox and PlayStation this generation, if they can get away with it they will. And if there was any lingering fear at Take-Two headquarters about jacking up the price of Grand Theft Auto VI, I think we can safely say that’s gone, too. If GTA 6 launches later this year as scheduled, we might be looking at $90 or even $100 for AAA games across the board by this time next year.
Inflation has impacted games companies. But when they’re also making record profits… I really don’t have a lot of sympathy. Nintendo’s share price recently dropped a little due to tariff-related shenanigans that have impacted basically every publically-traded corporation, but the company made record profits across the Switch’s lifespan. “Game development is too expensive” doesn’t really fly as an excuse when Nintendo made $3.25 billion in profit last year.
Three of Nintendo’s senior developers.
Most of us in the real world haven’t seen our incomes rise with inflation, and even in the games industry that’s true for developers and other employees. As Nintendo jacks up prices by 40% for its consoles and 33% for games, do you really think that money is going into the pockets of the folks who work there? Is anyone at Nintendo – aside from the executives, naturally – getting a 40% pay rise? I doubt it.
Food for thought, anyway, if you’re considering buying a Switch 2.
Gaming is getting more and more expensive, that’s for sure. With Nintendo pitching the Switch 2 at a comparable price point to Xbox and PlayStation consoles, as well as portable PCs, while jacking up the prices of its games beyond the current industry standard… all I can really forsee at this stage is comparable price hikes from other corporations. But maybe Nintendo’s gamble won’t pay off. Maybe we’ll look back on this decision in a couple of years’ time and say that the hefty price tag doomed the Switch 2 before it could even get out of the gate. I’m not rooting for it to fail, but I will be keeping an eye on the situation!
The Nintendo Switch 2 launches on the 5th of June. Pre-orders for the Nintendo Switch 2 are available now. The Switch 2, Super Mario, Mario Kart World, and other properties discussed above are the copyright of Nintendo. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Strange New Worlds Seasons 1 & 2, as well as the trailers, clips, and teasers for Season 3.
As soon as I published my Strange New Worlds Season 3 wishlist last week, Paramount decided to drop a brand-new trailer! I really do have the worst timing when it comes to these things; it isn’t the first time something like this has happened! Today, I thought we really ought to take a look at the trailer, as well as the two other “clips” that have been revealed so far. Knowing my luck, Paramount will release another one later this afternoon!
In 2024, we got to look at two extended clips from Strange New Worlds Season 3. I must’ve missed the second one; the only one I’d seen was the Vulcan one that I talked about in my look at Star Trek’s Comic-Con showing last summer, but Paramount also released another clip that I think got lost in the marketing blitz for Section 31. As the TV movie’s January release got closer, that’s where my Star Trek focus fell, anyway!
Most of the main and recurring characters.
We’ll start with the clips and then look at the trailer, because there’s plenty to say about all three.
The Vulcan clip I’ve already covered – check out my piece about Star Trek at Comic-Con by clicking or tapping here – but to briefly recap, it depicts Pike and several other members of the crew being “turned into Vulcans” for some kind of mission to Spock’s homeworld. The surgery appears to be much more than just cosmetic, with the away team seemingly taking on Vulcan personality traits and suppressing their emotions. One thing I didn’t mention last time (because I hadn’t really thought about it) is this: isn’t Vulcan emotional suppression something that requires a lot of education and training? I mean, Vulcans don’t just come out of the womb with natural barriers to feeling their emotions; we’ve seen from Spock in Strange New Worlds itself how this ability is a learned one, not a natural phenomenon.
I know this probably sounds nit-picky, but I like Star Trek (and every other fictional setting that I get invested in) to remain basically consistent. Star Trek stories from as far back as the episode Sarek in The Next Generation era showed how Vulcans are not naturally emotionless; this is a learned trait or skill that takes a long time to master. And while I hope this episode is fun – which it looks like it will be – I think Star Trek should be consistent with these things.
Pike and the crew – in their Vulcan guises.
I’m also cognizant of the fact that, in basically every Vulcan-centric story so far, Strange New Worlds has taken a comedic approach. There’s a lot of fun to be had with the Vulcans, don’t get me wrong, but in Strange New Worlds a lot of it has relied on a peculiarly American style of “cringe” humour that I just personally don’t find all that funny. This new Vulcan episode looks to be taking a similar approach to those used in Season 1’s Spock Amok and Season 2’s Charades. Both of those stories relied on a premise summed up thusly: “Vulcans are all uptight, formal, and proper, so wouldn’t it be funny if something went wrong?” It’s basically slapstick; the same kind of comedy used in mid-century films like The Bellboy or Carry On Teacher. I can tolerate that kind of thing in small doses, but after Strange New Worlds has already done the whole “aren’t these stuck-up Vulcans kind of funny?” thing twice already, maybe a more straight-laced Vulcan episode might’ve been a change of pace.
There’s no shortage of examples in Star Trek of how Vulcan episodes can be entertaining, emotional, and funny – without necessarily going to such a comedic extreme. While I’ll be happy to give this episode a chance when it premieres and I don’t want to render judgement prematurely, a big part of me hopes there’ll be more to it than just cringe humour and an unserious, comedic look at Spock and the Vulcans. I kind of feel like Strange New Worlds is getting close to exhausting that premise.
A promotional still released for the Vulcan episode.
With all of that being said, the idea of an episode harkening back to the likes of Amok Time and perhaps some of Enterprise’s Vulcan stories is intriguing, and I like the idea of a story set on Vulcan which could expand beyond Spock and T’Pring. Bringing more of the characters into the episode in this way – by surgically altering them to be Vulcans – opens up a lot of different possibilities. There’s definitely going to be a comedic angle to this story – we can all see that already! But perhaps there’s also going to be a chance to spend some time with other Vulcans and take a look at aspects of Vulcan history and culture that we’ve seen elsewhere in Star Trek.
This could also be a fun way to bring back a character like Sarek. In my wishlist, I talked about the possibility of bringing in James Frain, who played the character in the first two seasons of Discovery. That could be a lot of fun, and we could get a closer examination of Sarek’s feud with Spock, perhaps. Strange New Worlds also teased Sybok – Spock’s half-brother – in Season 1, and he could be a fun character to include. Maybe we could learn why Sybok was apparently hospitalised or imprisoned, and set the stage for his role in The Final Frontier.
Will this episode revisit Spock and his family?
The second longer clip is the one I’d totally missed until now, but you might’ve already seen it a few months ago. This clip was released in the autumn, but somehow it managed to elude me!
This clip appears to pick up right after the cliffhanger at the end of Hegemony, with Captain Pike on the bridge of the Enterprise after learning that La’an, Ortegas, and a large number of the Parnassus Beta colonists have been abducted by the Gorn. It could be the very first scene of Season 3 – but there could also be something else in between, perhaps set on the Gorn ship with the abductees or even at Starfleet with Admiral April. In any case, the clip was exciting and definitely left me wanting to see the continuation of this story!
There was a lot of tension on the bridge as Pike and the crew had to figure out their options. Unable to defeat the Gorn vessel and with no way to retrieve the kidnapped officers and colonists, the only thing they can think of is to place a kind of rudimentary tracking device on the ship – allowing them to keep track of this specific Gorn warship in what seems to be a spiralling conflict. I liked the way Pike and the rest of the crew considered different ideas – and how they were all that perfectly-written Star Trek technobabble that we all know and love!
Mitchell, Pike, and Una on the bridge in a promotional photo.
It was also fun to see Una take the helm – with Ortegas missing in action, someone else had to sit in that seat, and Una seems to know how to handle the ship! My only real criticism is that the whole thing took only three minutes or so – which doesn’t seem like a lot of time for the crew to have co-ordinated a complicated shield-breaking manoeuvre. I liked the idea of ramming the Gorn ship, I just felt we could’ve seen a bit more work on the bridge or in engineering to prepare the Enterprise for this unconventional tactic.
We’ll have to see how that shakes out in the finished episode, though!
After the cliffhanger, Season 3 promises to start with a bang. As I said last time, I wonder if Strange New Worlds is teeing up this Gorn conflict to run across multiple episodes this season, or whether it’ll be resolved somehow in that first episode. With a fourth season confirmed (and already in production) could the war with the Gorn spill over into next season, too? There’s a lot to consider on that front! I really appreciate Strange New Worlds’ episodic nature, though, so I hope that if the Gorn war does run on, it doesn’t come at the expense of the wonderfully diverse storytelling we’ve been enjoying across the first couple of seasons.
The Enterprise.
Finally, in this clip (and at the end of Hegemony) something appears to be affecting Captain Pike. I noted in my review of Hegemony that in the final seconds of last season, Pike seemed to freeze – almost like he wasn’t sure what to do. In this clip, he seemed to be experiencing something else, though, not merely an adrenaline rush, fear, or exhaustion… but something different. My first thought was that it could be related to his time crystal – the warping effect at the very end of the clip, with Pike remaining in focus as the bridge seemed to dissolve around him, felt like something Discovery’s time crystal could’ve done.
There’s also the possibility, perhaps, that Pike is infected with the Gorn parasitic eggs like Captain Batel, and he’s beginning to feel the impact. And we can’t discount the possibility that Strange New Worlds is going to do what both Picard and Discovery have done (with varying results) and try to tell a story about Pike’s mental health and the burden he feels. That would be in character – going all the way back to The Cage we got a scene with Pike talking about the responsibility of command and how it weighs on him. Pike had already been through a lot on the day the clip is set – Captain Batel is in mortal danger and he’d just learned that several of his crew had been abducted. So it’s not unreasonable to think those events would impact the captain. If Strange New Worlds is going down this road, though, I hope there’s enough time to do justice to a storyline like this. Unfortunately, modern Star Trek hasn’t always got that right.
Is everything okay with Captain Pike?
The final trailer (so far, at least) was much more diverse. Rather than just a single extended clip, we got teases that seem to come from multiple episodes. There’s less to go on in terms of story, but there were a ton of interesting-looking things in the mix! I’ll try to hit everything, but please forgive me if I miss one or two. I’ve watched the trailer several times over, but my ageing brain might not have taken everything on board!
Let’s start with the Gorn. We got a similar visual of Gorn ships bearing down on the Enterprise as we saw at the end of Hegemony and in the Gorn-themed extended clip that we just talked about. That’s almost certainly from the first episode of the season, picking up right after the cliffhanger. There was also a shot of an adult Gorn – this time without a space suit! The monstrous depiction of the Gorn, clearly inspired by Alien’s xenomorphs, will definitely carry through into this season. Captain Pike and La’an also seemed to be aboard a Gorn vessel, or perhaps on a Gorn planet, firing phaser rifles.
A Gorn.
I saw what looked like eggs or egg sacs in one clip, and while that could be from a different episode, it looks like it’ll be related to the Gorn. If Starfleet (or Captain Pike and the Enterprise on their own) are taking the fight to the Gorn, could they have figured out a way to even the odds? If so, perhaps that’ll be the way this Gorn conflict is brought to a close – a kind of stalemate.
I’m also intrigued by what looked like – and bear with me on this – a zombie Klingon!
We only saw this character for a handful of frames, so I could be totally misreading it, but we saw a Klingon with a whip and then what looked like a zombified Klingon. Perhaps this Klingon has been infected with Gorn parasitic eggs – that was my first idea. But this could also be a completely different story focusing entirely on the Klingons. If it’s going to be “zombies,” perhaps we’re getting another horror episode along the lines of Season 1’s All Those Who Wander.
Is this… is this a zombie Klingon?!
There was also a very brief clip of Dr M’Benga running away from someone – or something – that was following him through a door. I couldn’t be totally clear on that, but whoever was following him looked like they could have the same kind of infection as the Klingon in the previous clip. Those could easily be from the same episode, and having Dr M’Benga present would make a ton of sense – he could be looking for a cure for whatever this contagion is that affected the Klingon and presumably other people, too.
The main talking point coming out of this trailer has obviously been the throwback, retro sci-fi aesthetic that at least one episode will employ! I’m getting kind of “Captain Proton” vibes from these clips, which seem to lean into a deliberately old-fashioned look. Star Trek, of course, took inspiration in its early days from old sci-fi serials, something that Voyager’s writers acknowledged with their Captain Proton creation. I’ll be curious to see how this plays out – maybe it’ll be something like last season’s Subspace Rhapsody, where strange space phenomena mess with the Enterprise! Or it could be something completely different.
Kirk, Ortegas, and Chapel aboard a very retro ship!
Star Trek has made a bit of a mess of holographic technology, so although we arguably “shouldn’t” be seeing a holodeck in this era… we clearly will be in at least one episode. This could be a fairly standard “the holodeck done goofed” story, with the main characters trapped in a holographic environment. Or it could be something closer to Season 1’s The Elysian Kingdom, which transformed the crew into characters from a fairy tale. Maybe these aren’t the real characters at all, they’re just holograms with the same appearances! This holodeck story seems to be distinct from the retro sci-fi story above, but they could be part of the same episode if we’re dealing with technology which can change the way the ship and crew look.
Pelia “wiring up” the Enterprise with, of all things, telephones, though… I’m really not sure what to make of that one! Parts of the ship looked darker than normal, so could there be a power drain forcing the crew to fall back on analogue technology? If so… why do they even have old-fashioned telephones on board? Perhaps these clips are all part of the same story and we’re going to get an episode all about analogue technology that features a holodeck, a retro sci-fi serial, and an underpowered Enterprise with telephone wires running everywhere!
Spock and La’an on a holodeck.
Could Strange New Worlds be about to confirm a very old Star Trek fan theory?!
If you missed this one, many fans have speculated that Trelane – from The Original Series episode The Squire of Gothos – is a member of the Q Continuum. That theory has been doing the rounds since The Next Generation premiered, but it’s never been officially confirmed in canon. In one clip in the trailer, a character who looks very similar to Trelane, and is wearing a similar costume, raised his hand and snapped his fingers in a very Q-like manner! So does that mean we’re getting a Trelane/Q episode this time… and if so, will that old theory finally be confirmed?
Trelane was arguably less dark than Q, but this character – judging by their facial expression – looked quite serious, at least in the very brief clip we saw. So maybe we’re not going to get a fun and whimsical adventure, but something a bit deadlier? That’s a total guess, but it would certainly be a bit of a change from what fans might be expecting!
Is this a new take on Trelane?
Other short clips from the trailer seemed to include a three-armed alien – which could be the first live-action depiction of an Edosian. Arex, from The Animated Series, was an Edosian, and the race has also been seen in Lower Decks, but never in live-action. The face looked, to me, closer to the Kelpiens than what I’d have expected a live-action Edosian to be, but it was a very short clip so maybe in the finished episode we’ll see more. This could also just be a background character, though!
I also saw a blue-tinted star, the Enterprise (and several other ships) docked at a planet or starbase encased in a dome, Uhura having a drink with someone who instantly gave me bad and creepy vibes, and the Enterprise being rocked by a “Praxis effect” shockwave of some kind. There’s not a lot to go on in any of these clips, but they all definitely feel exciting in different ways, and I’m curious to see where all of these episodes are going to go!
Is this three-armed character an Edosian?
There were several other clips that could be from the Gorn fight, including one of Captain Pike encountering a strange-looking spaceship or shuttlecraft. I’m not sure if this is a Gorn vessel or not, but Pike’s away team uniform and the general darkness of the setting make me think it’s at least a possibility. There was also a clip of the Enterprise’s shields being impacted by some kind of light or plasma; again there’s not much to go on in either of these very short clips, except to say that they’re intriguing and exciting.
Spock and Chapel seem to have gotten back together in one clip – though something about it feels “off;” maybe it’s Spock seeming too emotional. In any case, I’m thinking that this could be a dream, an alternate timeline, a flashback, or something else – anything other than simple reality! This clip could be from the Vulcan episode, or it could be set on the dome-starbase mentioned a moment ago.
A dome-covered planetoid or starbase.
So I think that’s everything for now. Those are all of the things I noted from these three clips and trailers, at any rate!
It took me a while to work my way through Strange New Worlds Season 2, but when Season 3 arrives later this year I hope to get through all ten episodes in a more timely manner! There are a ton of interesting ideas presented in these trailers, and I’m really excited to see what Season 3 will have in store when it arrives this summer.
If I had to pick, I’d obviously say that a conclusion to the Hegemony cliffhanger is one of the things I’m most keen to see – but I’m also particularly intrigued by the diseased or “zombified” Klingon that we saw. What kind of episode will that be – and am I even close to right with my guess?
Pelia (and the rest of the crew of the Enterprise) will be back on our screens this summer!
The retro sci-fi thing looks… interesting. At least, I hope it will be. I gotta confess that Captain Proton was never my favourite part of Voyager, and I just hope a story that uses that kind of aesthetic won’t be too self-referential and “meta” to the point of killing the joke. Some shows and franchises which run for a long time can do that, and it ends up feeling less fun than fan-servicey sometimes. I don’t like to be a buzzkill, though, and I will definitely go into all ten episodes with an open mind!
So that’s all for now. When the season premieres later in the year, please check back. I’m hoping to review all ten episodes, and if there’s the opportunity, perhaps I’ll even craft a theory or two, too. I hope this has been a fun look ahead.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 will premiere on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the service is available in Summer 2025. Seasons 1 and 2 are out now on Paramount+ as well as on DVD and Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Yesterday was a big day for the entire world. No, not because of Trump’s tariffs… there was a Nintendo Direct all about the upcoming Switch 2! I thought it could be interesting to break down what was revealed (and talk about a few things that weren’t, too) so that’s what we’re going to get into today.
First of all, I have to admit that I’m surprised about the name and branding, as well as the overall look of the console. Last year, I said that I felt pretty sure that Nintendo wouldn’t use the name “Switch 2,” and that the console would likely come with a new colour scheme to distinguish itself. I was wrong on both counts… and I hope that won’t lead to any confusion. Switch 2 game cards are going to be the same size and come in similar packaging, with the same red colour. There could be some disappointed kids on Christmas morning unwrapping a Switch 2 game when they only have an original Switch – and I’m a little surprised that Nintendo didn’t do more to help the console differentiate itself from its predecessor.
Nintendo executives Kouchi Kawamoto, Tetsuya Sasaki, and Takuhiro Dota presented the Switch 2 broadcast.
The same is true of the name. Every Nintendo console so far has had a unique name, even if those names were similar. The Super Nintendo Entertainment System followed the Nintendo Entertainment System, for example, but where a lot of folks seemed to get confused was with the Wii U. “Switch 2” is much more straightforward, so I don’t think there’ll be anywhere near the same level of confusion from the general public! But I am a bit surprised that the new console retains the Switch name, colour scheme, branding, and even really the same design. There are changes, particularly with the new Joy-Cons, but on a superficial level it’s hard to tell the consoles apart.
And I guess Nintendo is playing it safe. The Switch has been a massive success, so why risk doing something new and innovative when there’s clearly still a huge demand for this kind of hybrid system? The drawback, as a player, is that Nintendo has been the last of the massive game companies to really invest in innovation, and if they’re stepping back from that… it kind of leaves the gaming landscape feeling pretty static going into the second half of the 2020s. I mean, no one really expects a new Xbox or PlayStation to do something wild and unexpected; Nintendo has been the only game in town when it comes to inventing new control schemes and new ways to play. Not all of those have worked, of course, and playing it relatively safe is probably the smart move from a business point of view. But there was nothing earth-shattering in the Switch 2 Direct in the same way as there was when the original Switch, Wii U, Wii, or even GameCube were announced.
The Nintendo Switch 2.
Even though my platform of choice these days is PC, I confess that I really only use the mouse for strategy games; I generally prefer to use a control pad most of the time. But if there’s one thing I could say about the Switch 2 that feels different and interesting, it’s using a Joy-Con like a computer mouse. Nintendo isn’t new to this, by the way – there was a SNES mouse in the 1990s that was used in titles like Mario Paint. But it’s a first for a home console in the current generation, and Nintendo seems to be leaning into the mouse idea in a big way. I can see it being phenomenally useful in games like Civilization VII, which will be coming to the Switch 2, and I’m sure fans of first-person shooters will appreciate the idea of using it in titles like Metroid Prime 4, too.
What most intrigues me, though, is the idea of using both Joy-Cons at the same time – basically like having two mice. I’ve never seen a game which played that way, yet if you think about it, the possibilities for dual-mouse gameplay seem almost limitless! It’s something quite simple, yet it’s never been tried before (or if it has, it never caught on). Nintendo showed off a basketball-inspired game called Drag X Drive which seems to use the two Joy-Cons in this way – but I hope it won’t be the only game to offer that kind of control scheme. Drag x Drive looks great, and it’s wonderful to see some disability representation in a presentation like this, too. I’d really like to see what other developers might be able to do with this way of controlling a game.
Using two Joy-Cons like this could be a really creative way to play games.
We’ll talk more about games in a moment, but if we stick with hardware for now… I was a bit surprised that Nintendo didn’t go into more detail about the Switch 2’s specs. We got a bit of information about the built-in screen, which will now be 1080p (full HD) instead of 720p, and that the Switch 2 can also scale up to 4K when docked. But there wasn’t a lot of meat on the bones; what kind of processor does the system have, how much VRAM, and pretty basic things like that weren’t mentioned.
I have to assume that this was a deliberate choice – that Nintendo knows the internals aren’t spectacular, so opted to talk about cameras and voice chat instead. From a totally unscientific look at the Switch 2 Direct – with the obvious caveat that a video presentation compressed for YouTube isn’t going to look its absolute best – I was underwhelmed with the graphics. It didn’t help that most games shown off aren’t brand-new, but nothing about the graphics on display really impressed me. If I had to guess, I’d say the Switch 2 is probably about on par with something like an Xbox Series S, which in turn was comparable to the previous generation of home consoles. So we’re talking about graphical fidelity that might’ve looked great in 2012… but is nothing special in 2025. That’s nothing new for Nintendo, of course, and it isn’t to say that (most of) the games on display didn’t look good! But it is notable that there doesn’t seem to be a significant graphical leap considering the price of the console and its games.
We didn’t get much of a look at the Switch 2’s internals this time.
One part of the Switch 2 that has me nervous is the magnetic Joy-Con connection. Despite Nintendo’s promises, the dual magnets to hold the controller in place when in handheld mode just don’t seem as sturdy as they would need to be to keep the console safe. The way it was explained in the Direct also made it seem like something that could be accidentally knocked, so even if the magnets are as strong as advertised, the mechanism to keep them working might be vulnerable to bumps, drops, and knocks. If you want to screw with your friend when they have a Switch 2, flicking the little magnet button might be a naughty way to mess up their gameplay!
Alright, let’s talk about price. The console itself doesn’t feel over-priced. It’s an increase from the Switch, but after eight years (and an inflation problem in the interim) that’s to be expected. But the price of games has jumped up quite a lot, too, with Mario Kart World seeming to retail at £66 for a digital-only version and a whopping £75 for a physical game cart in a box. That’s more than the so-called “standard price” of most other video games on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series consoles, at least here in the UK. Assuming other titles will be similarly-priced, the Switch 2 seems like an expensive proposition right now.
The Switch 2 – with Mario Kart World included – retails for £430 here in the UK. Image: Smyth’s UK
There are other gripes with the way things are priced, and a lot of this is the typical and expected anti-consumer shite from Nintendo that the company’s fans always try to pretend doesn’t exist! Selling the Switch 2 camera separately is fine; not everyone is going to want one. But charging £50 for what looked like a cheap, crappy webcam that, even in Nintendo’s own marketing broadcast, didn’t seem to output a particularly high-quality image? That feels like highway robbery.
Why on earth is Switch 2 – Welcome Tour something to pay for? Nintendo bundled Wii Sports with the Wii when that console launched, introducing players to the Wii remotes and motion controls. If there are things I need to know about my new Switch 2, and Nintendo has created an interactive presentation for the express purpose of explaining those things… it’s not unreasonable to expect that to be included in the price, is it? The console is going to be £400 ($450 in the United States) at a minimum, so why be so stingy with this Welcome Tour thing? It also feels like an exceptionally bone-headed move… who’s really going to buy Welcome Tour, even if it’s only like £5? I can’t see it being a popular item.
Why is Welcome Tour something I have to pay for?
I can’t help but feel Nintendo missed a trick with its Game Chat feature, at least based on the way it was marketed in the Direct. Being “alone together” would’ve been great… five years ago when it was lockdown! But now? I know online gaming is huge and it’s gonna find an audience, but the choice of marketing language just strikes me as odd. It’s as if Nintendo thinks people are still stuck at home, desperate to find ways to connect. There were other ways to show off this feature without harkening back to the covid era which, quite frankly, a lot of people want to forget.
Game Chat, on its own, is nothing new or revolutionary. People have been using voice chat while gaming for literally decades at this point, so Nintendo is unusually late to the party. I do, however, like the promise of a microphone that can isolate a voice and cut out background noise, and a camera that can crop out the background. Neither of these things are new; streamers have been using green screens to appear in their live streams for years. But to have it work smoothly, in real-time, with several people at once… that’s impressive. If it works as advertised!
The Switch 2 will have a camera accessory.
Let’s get into the games! After all, what good is a console without any games?
I’ll do the third-party titles first, because I don’t really have that much to say about them. As I said above when we were talking graphics, none of the third-party games blew me away. In fact, Elden Ring in particular seemed to have gotten a noticeable downgrade, at least based on gameplay and screenshots that I’ve seen. The trees in particular looked exceptionally flat and two-dimensional, and I just didn’t think the game looked its best. The same was true of Cyberpunk 2077, which looks and runs great on my PC but seemed downgraded and less visually impressive on the Switch 2.
On the one hand, these are large, demanding games, so the fact that they’ll run at all on Switch 2 is impressive in itself. But… Cyberpunk 2077 is a game approaching its fifth anniversary and that launched on last-gen hardware (albeit in a poor state). So, the fact that it doesn’t look great on the Switch 2 seems to suggest that the internal hardware is lacking, which could have a knock-on effect for games later in the console’s lifespan. Maybe Switch 2 games in 2025 will look pretty good, but by the time we get to 2029 and a new PlayStation and Xbox are in the offing… what will players make of the Switch 2’s capabilities by then?
Elden Ring’s open world has never looked… flatter.
I’ve been intrigued by IO’s Project 007 since it was announced, and I’m a tad disappointed that we didn’t get so much as a whiff of gameplay. The game was teased… but that’s all! It’s not a bad thing necessarily, and it’s great for Nintendo fans to know a new Bond game is coming to Switch 2. But given that the game was prominently included in the Switch 2 Direct, I would’ve liked to have seen something more!
Onward to Nintendo’s own games!
So… the Switch 2 is launching with two cartoony racing games? Did I get that right? In addition to Mario Kart World, there’s also going to be Kirby Air Riders, which is the sequel to a GameCube title that I think I might’ve played once. As with so many things Nintendo does… this has confused me. By all means, have both games on the Switch 2. But should they both be releasing in the same year, perhaps just weeks apart? And should they have both been shown off as part of the new console’s marketing campaign? Really, Nintendo… you couldn’t have prioritised another game for 2025 and pushed Kirby Air Riders to next year? It just seems… repetitive.
Did the Switch 2’s launch announcement really need two cartoony racing games?
When the Mario Kart World broadcast arrives later this month I might have more to say! But for now, I like the look of the new game. I’m not sold on the “free roam” idea necessarily, but it could be a fun addition and a way to shake things up. Games like Forza Horizon have done fun things with more of an open world design, and as long as there’s content and not just empty roads and fields, it should be okay. The Mario Kart series has always given players options, so adding new modes like “free roam” and the knockout race should be fun. I’m not sure how much I’d personally play either, but I can see them both becoming beloved by some Mario Kart players.
There seem to be character costumes in Mario Kart World, which is fantastic. And new mechanics seem to include transforming vehicles (I saw a boat, a plane, and a snowmobile), bouncing off walls, and even grinding on rails and cables. I’m not sure how big all of these new features will be, or whether they’ll only be available at certain places in certain racetracks – that’s almost certainly gonna be the case for the big articulated lorry that we saw! But these features all look like a lot of fun. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has been great on the Switch, and I’m hopeful for Mario Kart World’s prospects on the Switch 2. I just hope Nintendo won’t ruin the game by overly monetising features like alternate costumes.
Mario Kart World is getting its own dedicated Direct in a couple of weeks, so there might be more to add then. Be sure to check back!
Mario Kart World is the Switch 2’s big launch title.
The final game to talk about is Donkey Kong Bananza. I was hoping for a new 3D Donkey Kong title – the first since Donkey Kong 64 a quarter of a century ago – and Bananza looks… well, it looks okay. I was kind of getting more of a Yooka-Laylee vibe than an Astro Bot vibe from the reveal, if that makes sense. I’m not sure it’ll be the first game I buy for the Switch 2, but if it reviews well I’ll definitely give it a try. I enjoyed Donkey Kong 64 on the Nintendo 64, and it’s definitely a treat to welcome back DK for another 3D adventure.
There were a couple of absences from the game lineup, though. There was a tiny glimpse of what looked like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but other than that there was no mention of the series. Given that New Horizons is the best-selling Switch-exclusive title, that’s a bit of an oddity in my opinion! I guess that means a new Animal Crossing game isn’t imminent. There was also no new 3D Mario game – nor a 2D Mario game or a Mario sports title, come to that. A new 3D Mario title is unlikely to be too far away, and Donkey Kong Bananza is clearly intended to be in the same space for players. But I was a little surprised to see absolutely nothing from either of these big titles which I assume are in development.
Donkey Kong is back for his first 3D adventure in a quarter of a century!
The final thing to talk about is pre-ordering. If you’re a massive Nintendo fan, you pay for Switch Online, and you play a ton of games… you still might not be able to pre-order a console. Why? Because even if you’re a paid Switch Online member and have been for years, if you haven’t opted in to marketing emails from Nintendo, you can’t pre-order from the Nintendo shop. What utter dog shite is that?
I had hoped Nintendo would’ve learned from the Wii and Switch about ensuring there’ll be enough consoles to meet demand, but apparently not. Nintendo seems to be deliberately setting up pre-orders in such a way as to assume there won’t be enough to go around… or, if I put my cynical hat on for a moment, to create an artificial and forced sense of scarcity. An attempt to drive up sales by playing on fans’ fears of missing out is just scummy, and I really hope that there will be enough Switch 2 consoles for everyone who wants one on launch day – and especially later in the year as Christmas approaches.
Given the weird pre-order requirements, will there be enough Switch 2 consoles for everyone who wants one on launch day?
So I think that’s everything from my notes!
Will I buy a Switch 2? Probably… but it’s unlikely to be in 2025. I really do like the look of Mario Kart World, and as someone who’s been playing Mario Kart since the first game back in the SNES days, I’m definitely excited to try it out for myself. On its own, though, Mario Kart World is a big ask when you’re talking about spending £430! Maybe when there’s news of a new 3D Mario game and/or the next Animal Crossing title, the Switch 2 will feel more like a “must-buy!”
So if you’re planning on pre-ordering a Switch 2, I guess you’re glad to hear that there’s at least one fewer competitor out there for what could be a limited number of consoles at launch!
I don’t think I can justify the expense of picking up a Switch 2 in June!
The Switch 2 Direct was interesting, but I think it’s too early to really judge how successful the console will be. On the one hand, the original Switch has been a resounding win for Nintendo. But on the other, the high price of games on Switch 2 could be a hindrance, and while I could be alone in this, I feel that the new console’s design and marketing haven’t given it a strong identity of its own. Piggybacking on the Switch’s success could prove to be a masterstroke for Nintendo… but someone at the company said the same thing about the Wii U drawing on the popularity of the original Wii, and look how that turned out!
After the Mario Kart World Direct later this month, I may have more to say about that title. And as the year rolls on and the Switch 2 launches, I’ll definitely be checking out the reviews. I daresay I’ll have more to add before too long – so be sure to check back from time to time for more coverage of Mario Kart, the Switch 2, and Nintendo in general. I hope this look at the Switch 2 Direct has been interesting!
The Nintendo Switch 2 launches on the 5th of June. Pre-orders for the Nintendo Switch 2 go live on the 8th of April. The Switch 2, Super Mario, Mario Kart World, and other properties discussed above are the copyright of Nintendo. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Strange New Worlds Seasons 1 & 2, including the season finale. Spoilers are also present for Enterprise Season 3 and Picard Seasons 2 & 3.
Today we’re going to take a look ahead! There’s been a recent hint that Strange New Worlds might premiere at the end of July; a so-called “leak” from Sky in the Netherlands put the show’s broadcast date in Europe on the 1st of August, and with the 31st of July being a Thursday – Strange New Worlds’ usual broadcast day in its first two seasons – that could line up. I’d been working on the assumption that we’d see the show sometime in the late summer or autumn, so if Strange New Worlds runs for ten interrupted weeks beginning on the 31st, that would take it through August and September with the season finale airing at the beginning of October.
Whether or not that timeframe is anywhere close to accurate, though, it got me thinking about Season 3 and what I’d like to see whenever Strange New Worlds returns!
Strange New Worlds has been, for me, the absolute highlight of modern Star Trek. There have been a couple of episodes that weren’t as good as the others, sure, but the show’s episodic tone feels like a breath of fresh air after Discovery and Picard. Spending more time with Captain Pike has been wonderful, too, and I’m really hoping for a renewal announcement sometime soon to give the series a thoroughly-deserved fifth season. Perhaps there’ll even be some kind of celebratory episode in Season 4 to mark Star Trek’s sixtieth anniversary!
Season 3 is coming soon!
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves a little! What I’d like to do today is share some of my wishes for Strange New Worlds Season 3 – the things I really want to see, and perhaps one or two pitfalls that I hope can be avoided. Despite taking a long time to work my way through Season 2, I’m really looking forward to Season 3 and hoping for another outstanding batch of episodes!
Before we get into the wishlist, a couple of important caveats. First of all, this is just the subjective opinion of one old Trekkie. If I miss something that seems obvious to you or “wish” for something that you think sounds atrocious… that’s okay! There’s plenty of room in the Star Trek fan community for polite discussion and differences of opinion. Secondly, I’m not claiming that anything below will definitely be part of Season 3 of Strange New Worlds. I have no “insider information;” I’m just a random Star Trek fan sharing their thoughts!
So let’s talk about some of the things I’d like to see in this upcoming season.
Wish #1: Keep the episodic format.
Captain Pike, Mitchell, and Una on the bridge.
This has to be my biggest single wish for Season 3. As I said earlier, Strange New Worlds being a largely episodic show is one of the best things about it – and one of the best decisions that Paramount has taken with the Star Trek franchise in decades. It’s not just that Picard, Discovery, and even Prodigy have been pretty serialised affairs, but basically every sci-fi and fantasy show on TV is, too. In its heyday, Star Trek was an episodic franchise, and I can’t be alone in thinking it works better that way. Being able to visit different planets and meet new aliens every week is part of what makes Star Trek feel like Star Trek, at least for me, and it’s really been wonderful to see Strange New Worlds bringing this back.
There’s still room for characters to grow and evolve, as we’ve seen already in the show’s first couple of seasons. But with Season 2 ending on a cliffhanger – and a possible war with the Gorn breaking out – I’m a tad nervous that Paramount plans to focus on the Gorn storyline at the expense of others this time around. I really hope that won’t happen, because I really think it’d be to Strange New Worlds’ detriment.
Spock in a teaser image from Season 3.
Across just twenty episodes and two seasons, Strange New Worlds has had episodes in a diverse range of genres – from horror and war to comedy and even a musical. I really hope the show’s writers keep that wonderful mix of different stories going, because it’s a huge part of what makes Strange New Worlds so enjoyable. I also think it’s helping the show – and by extension, Star Trek as a whole – stand out in a streaming landscape that’s overwhelmingly dominated by serialised storytelling.
Episodic storytelling allows a range of characters to be in focus across the season, not just one or two primaries with a handful of supporting roles. Writing the show this way also gives us a lot more opportunities to meet different aliens, visit different planets and locations, and for the Enterprise’s five-year mission to genuinely feel like one of exploration. By keeping this episodic tone, Strange New Worlds can get back to Starfleet’s mission of seeking out new life – with detours, here and there, of course!
Wish #2: Revisit Una’s Illyrian heritage.
A promotional still of Una as she’ll appear in Season 3.
After standing trial at the beginning of Season 2, we didn’t spend a lot more time with Una. Crucially, her Illyrian heritage – which caused such problems for her – wasn’t so much as mentioned again, and we never got to see her interacting with any other Illyrians. I hope that this genuinely interesting backstory won’t just be ignored in Season 3, because there’s a ton of potential to expand our understanding of Una as a character – and also revisit a faction we haven’t seen since Enterprise.
There are a lot of ways a story like this could go, and it wouldn’t have to be the main focus of an entire episode necessarily. Perhaps Una could be given a B-plot in which she has to return to her homeworld for some reason, or some of her relatives could come to visit her aboard the Enterprise. How would her surviving family members react to seeing her serving aboard a Federation ship? Are there any lingering ill feelings from the Illyrians toward Starfleet given their run-in with the NX-01 Enterprise and the Federation’s ban on genetic engineering? Those could be interesting angles to explore.
A 22nd Century Illyrian starship as seen in Enterprise.
As we were just saying, Strange New Worlds is an episodic show – so after Una’s true backstory was revealed in Season 1, and she stood trial in Season 2, the show just had other things to do and other stories to tell. That’s totally okay; I don’t want a multi-episode arc where only the Illyrians are in focus! But it would be nice to call back to those earlier episodes and not just completely ignore this side of Una. Her Illyrian heritage is part of what makes her the Starfleet officer she is – and I think there are interesting and creative ways the show could approach the topic.
If we don’t get much of this in Season 3, then perhaps it can be included in Season 4 or 5 instead!
Wish #3: Some kind of character growth for Scotty.
Scotty may remain aboard the Enterprise in Season 3.
In my review of Hegemony, I noted how Scotty seems to have arrived in Strange New Worlds pretty much fully-formed. He’s confident enough to interrupt two captains when they’re having a private conversation, and he’s mechanically skilled enough to have built a Gorn transponder out of random pieces of equipment he found on a Federation science ship. So… where does that leave this younger version of the character? Is there any potential to see him grow and evolve now that he’s presumably going to be a recurring or even main character on Strange New Worlds?
Another element of Strange New Worlds that I’ve really enjoyed has been seeing how Spock and Uhura in particular started out at least somewhat different to how they are in The Original Series. Both of them have changed and grown over the course of the show’s first couple of seasons, and in Spock’s case, I’d argue that he still has a way to go to become the stoic, logical Vulcan that we’re familiar with. Even Kirk, though very much a secondary character, has room to grow in order to become the captain we know and love.
Pelia with Scotty at the end of Season 2.
So I’d like to see Strange New Worlds show us, somehow, that Scotty isn’t perfect just yet! Maybe he’s not as confident as he seemed on Parnassus Beta, and he needs the mentoring of a senior officer like Pelia before he can become the “miracle worker” from The Original Series. Perhaps he’s mechanically skilled but inexperienced when it comes to working on a Constitution-class ship, and he’ll need some time to adapt. Or maybe he’s a bit socially awkward with people he doesn’t know very well, and it’ll take someone like Uhura to help him come out of his shell after he transfers to the Enterprise. Any or all of these could be interesting ways to give Scotty room to grow.
Part of the point of doing a prequel series, especially one that focuses on familiar characters, is to expand their backgrounds and show us how they became the people we remember. If Scotty arrives fully-formed, with perfect engineering skills and the same basic personality that we’re familiar with from The Original Series, it might well be fun to spend some more time with him… but it’ll also be a bit of a missed opportunity.
Wish #4: Bring back Sarek to explore more of his feud with Spock.
Sarek (as he appeared in Discovery’s first season).
I genuinely enjoyed James Frain’s take on Sarek in Discovery’s first two seasons. Strange New Worlds has already brought back Spock’s mother, Amanda, and she’s been a welcome addition to the show. Journey To Babel suggested that Spock and Sarek became estranged when Spock chose to study at Starfleet Academy instead of the Vulcan Science Academy, but I’ve always wondered if there might be more to it than that. I guess technically this would come close to treading on the toes of “canon;” Amanda told Kirk in The Original Series that Sarek and Spock have been estranged for eighteen years, and Strange New Worlds takes place ten years or so earlier. But I think it could still work!
In any case, it would be fun to see Sarek again, and even if we don’t learn a lot more about this feud and estrangement, seeing the awkwardness of Spock having to navigate the complicated situation could make for a fun or interesting episode. Perhaps the Enterprise could be called to Vulcan for an assignment, and Sarek and Amanda would come aboard – or Spock could be invited to their home.
Spock and Sarek in The Voyage Home.
Sarek and Captain Pike didn’t meet face-to-face in Discovery, but there could be a relationship there to build upon that we haven’t seen. And this could also be a way for Strange New Worlds to reference Discovery and Michael Burnham; I’m surprised that Spock hasn’t talked more about his adopted sister. There’s no reason for him to keep this a secret, and it could have implications for someone like Ortegas – a veteran of the Klingon war that Burnham had a role in sparking.
An episode featuring Sarek could also bring back T’Pring – Spock’s wife. The teaser clip from last year’s Comic-Con (and one set photo) seem to suggest a Vulcan story will be part of Season 3, so at least we know we’re going to get something to do with the Vulcans! As to whether Sarek will appear, though… I mean, why not?
Wish #5: Cross over to the Mirror Universe and find Captain Lorca.
Captain Lorca.
Trekking with Dennis asking for a Mirror Universe episode?! Has the world gone mad?! Seriously, though, despite my general dislike of the Mirror Universe as a setting (and its overuse in modern Star Trek), if there’s one good reason to visit Star Trek’s most famous parallel universe it’s this: rescuing the prime timeline version of Captain Lorca.
Lorca was a big part of Discovery’s first season, but the man we came to know was actually an imposter: he’d switched places with his prime timeline counterpart and sought to use Discovery and her spore drive to get back to his home universe. That seems to imply that the real Captain Lorca got stranded in the Mirror Universe, and despite Burnham and Admiral Cornwell thinking he’s dead, I can’t shake the feeling that Lorca might’ve found a way to survive!
Could Lorca have found a way to survive in the Terran Empire?
We know that Pike is aware of the existence of the Mirror Universe; he said as much to Georgiou in Discovery’s second season finale. With Pike and Lorca having been Starfleet captains at the same time, it stands to reason that they know each other – and perhaps they’re even friends. Somehow, Lorca might be able to get a message across the divide between universes, leading Starfleet to send Pike on a particularly difficult rescue mission!
I think Spock would have to be kept out of this story – prime Spock, at least. It could be fun to see Mirror Spock, if only for a scene or two! Uhura and Scotty would also have to be left out, so as not to tread on the toes of Mirror, Mirror. Perhaps Captain Pike takes someone like Ortegas on a specially-modified shuttle, spends time in the Mirror Universe while he tracks down and saves Lorca, and then returns to the Enterprise. I think it’s a really fun idea, one that would connect Strange New Worlds back to Discovery while also allowing for a visit to a very different setting.
Wish #6: Don’t introduce another character from The Original Series.
The main characters of The Original Series.
Spock, Uhura, Chapel, Kirk, and now Scotty – Strange New Worlds is filling out its main and secondary rosters with a lot of legacy characters! Some stories featuring characters we remember from The Original Series have been great and will continue to be great in Seasons 3 and 4, too… but as I said before Strange New Worlds premiered: I don’t want the show’s main focus to be on these people. It’s just as important to spend time with people like Pelia, Ortegas, and La’an – as well as Pike, Dr M’Benga, and Una.
So with all that in mind, let’s not introduce someone like Chekov, Sulu, or Dr McCoy this time! I think having yet another Original Series character would start to unbalance Strange New Worlds, tipping the scales in that direction a little too much. I already noted, in several of my Season 2 reviews, that Captain Pike seemed to be less present in what fans originally called “the Captain Pike show,” and I think there’s a real danger that the writers will choose to focus on legacy characters at the expense of the rest of the crew. A good mix of stories featuring legacy characters sometimes, new characters other times, and different pairs and groups working together is what I want to see going forward.
An away mission…
If the likes of Kirk and Scotty stick around – as I assume they will – and no one else is leaving the show or taking on a lesser role, there’s really not a lot of room in the cast for another legacy character. Season 3 is gonna be ten episodes long, and in order for the show to spend time with the growing group of characters it already has, there just won’t be time to do justice to someone like Dr McCoy or Sulu. Plus, if someone like that were introduced for a one-off story, there’s gonna be a huge temptation to keep them around and bring them back, as we saw with Paul Wesley’s Kirk. Now, I’ve found Wesley’s take on Kirk to be a ton of fun and I’m glad there have been episodes where he was included. But I’m also conscious of the fact that too many legacy characters could overwhelm Strange New Worlds and detract from what made it so appealing in the first place.
There’s a parallel here with Star Trek: Picard. That show introduced several new characters, but jettisoned all but one in between its second and third seasons, leaving character arcs incomplete, stories untold, and quite frankly, a bit of a mess in its wake. There was a mad rush to bring back Picard’s friends from The Next Generation for “one last adventure”… but that was never how Picard was originally pitched. As much fun as Season 3 was, there was also a ton of wasted potential in new characters that just never got a turn in the spotlight. I really hope Strange New Worlds won’t repeat that mistake.
Wish #7: A major storyline for Ortegas.
Ortegas in the captain’s chair.
For Season 2, actress Melissa Navia requested a reduced role, which explains why her character – Lt. Ortegas, the Enterprise’s pilot and helm officer – wasn’t a huge presence. Ortegas is probably the new character we’re least-familiar with at this stage, and I think it would be great if we could get at least one episode in Season 3 where we learn more about her, her history, or where she gets more of a central role.
It was fantastic to see Ortegas play a role in Hegemony, finally getting her wish to be part of an away mission and showing off her piloting skills. We also came to learn that she’d been a test pilot for Starfleet – harkening back to the early days of NASA and space exploration here in the real world, where many of the early astronauts were test pilots. Ortegas also served during the Klingon war, as we saw in Under the Cloak of War, so that could be another piece of her history to delve into at some stage.
Ortegas on an away mission.
As I was saying above, I’d really like to get to know some of the new characters created for Strange New Worlds. We’ve spent some time with La’an, Hemmer got a bit of development before his untimely demise, and we’re getting to know Captain Batel, too. I hope that the time is right for an Ortegas spotlight, giving her a significant storyline of her own in one episode next season.
If I had to create something, I’d want to go with a story all about piloting. We could flash back to Ortegas’ time at Starfleet Academy, perhaps, showing her testing out a brand-new type of shuttlecraft or fighter. And we could get a story akin to something like Drive from Voyager’s seventh season – an episode that focused on shuttle racing. At any rate, I’d like a storyline that really puts Ortegas in the pilot’s seat, and even if it was just a one-time thing that took up half of one episode, getting to spend a bit more time with her would be fantastic.
Wish #8: A connection to a storyline from Enterprise and/or The Next Generation era.
The filming model of the Enterprise-D from The Next Generation.
If you haven’t read it yet, please check out my “pitch” for a Strange New Worlds episode that I’ve titled Cardassia Prime, because I go into detail about a hypothetical story that would bring together elements from across the Star Trek franchise. Click or tap here to check it out!
In short, I’d love to see an episode that brings together narrative elements from Enterprise or something from The Next Generation era – and ideally does both. There are many ways this could go, but I really like the idea of an older T’Pol meeting up with Spock, giving him advice on serving in Starfleet, and showing us a glimpse of her life a century or so after we last saw her. That could be a ton of fun.
T’Pol could still be alive in the mid-23rd Century.
Given that Strange New Worlds has also brought back the exploration side of Star Trek in a big way, I’d also like to see Pike’s Enterprise making first contact with a faction we’d come to spend more time with in the 24th Century. In my fantasy episode that I linked to above, I suggested that the Cardassians would be a great choice. First contact with the Cardassians has never been shown on screen, and if it didn’t go well it could foreshadow the conflicts that the Federation would have with the Cardassian Union in the 24th Century. Plus we’ve only seen the barest glimpses of Cardassians in modern Star Trek, despite how important they were in Deep Space Nine.
But really, this kind of story could involve any race or faction from The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, or even Voyager – though the latter might be a bit tricky! Captain Pike could make first contact with anyone from the El-Aurians to the Breen, or we could even see the return of someone like the Xindi or Suliban. Strange New Worlds has done new and creative things with the Gorn, so maybe a faction that was only seen once – like the Sheliak or the Klaestron – could be ripe for further exploration.
Wish #9: Captain Pike versus the Borg!
Borg vessels and an exploding planet…
In my provocatively-titled piece “Ten Star Trek Storylines That Should Be Non-Canon,” I argued that Enterprise’s Borg episode – Regeneration – added an unnecessary complication to the already muddled history of Borg-Federation contact. I’ve also made the case that Star Trek has over-used the Borg in recent years – most notably in Picard, where the Borg were present in different ways in all three seasons. So why do I think a Borg story would work in the 23rd Century, then?
First of all, this is pure fantasy! I’m 99.9% sure that Paramount wouldn’t do a “Captain Pike versus the Borg” story under any circumstances, so let’s state that up front. But if I think about incredibly fun one-off episode ideas, bringing back the Borg for a battle with one of my favourite Starfleet captains in what I consider to be the best modern Star Trek show… I’d really like to see how creative Strange New Worlds could be with the Borg Collective. Would it be fan-servicey to a ridiculous degree? Probably. But would it be a ton of fun? I think so!
Touching up a performer’s Borg makeup on the set of Picard.
Star Trek exists in a multiverse, right? There are parallel universes beyond the ones we’ve seen on screen, so who’s to say there isn’t an alternate timeline where the Borg overran the Alpha Quadrant in the 23rd Century? Through some kind of space phenomenon, Captain Pike and the crew find themselves in this parallel universe, having to battle the Borg while also searching for a way home. Someone like Spock could even theorise that the cybernetic race that dominates this universe may not exist in the prime timeline, giving some justification for how this storyline could co-exist with what we already know of the Federation’s history with the Borg.
A parallel universe could also be a great opportunity to re-work and modernise the Borg. Although Picard’s second season quickly went off the rails, I stated in my review of the season premiere that the new depiction of the Borg Queen – with an updated design and new abilities – was genuinely frightening; by far the scariest and most intense the Borg had been in a long time. Strange New Worlds has dipped its toes in the horror genre already with episodes featuring the Gorn, so this kind of story could take on a similar tone. I think it would be a blast, anyway!
Wish #10: Surprise me!
Not like this, though…
Alright, I guess this one’s just a big old cliché, but it’s my list so I’m keeping it! Strange New Worlds has, over the course of just twenty episodes so far, contained plenty of twists, turns, shocks, and surprises – and I hope we’ll get more of that this time around. There’s been a mixture of comedy, horror, exploration, adventure, and so much more, and most of the time I haven’t been able to predict what was going to happen or what kind of episode was coming up next. I’m absolutely in love with a show that can surprise me, and I really hope Strange New Worlds can continue to do so.
For example, I have no idea what’s going to happen to Captain Batel following the events of Hegemony. Batel was one of the characters featured in the Season 3 promotional posters… but does that mean she’s safe? Or is Paramount deliberately trying to mislead us? I genuinely don’t know whether Dr M’Benga and Nurse Chapel will be able to cure her condition in time, nor how Captain Pike would react if she passed away. It’s a genuine cliffhanger which is keeping me on my toes!
Captain Batel is in stasis.
We’re obviously going to get at least one Gorn conflict episode at the beginning of the season, and there’s also at least one Vulcan storyline in the mix, too. But beyond that, I really have no idea where Strange New Worlds is going to take us in Season 3. Will there be an episode with the Klingons, perhaps? Or a deep cut to a random storyline from The Animated Series that hasn’t been mentioned on screen for decades? I like not knowing, and I like that Strange New Worlds is the kind of show that can take me on this kind of adventure!
This also ties back into what I was saying about episodic storytelling. Discovery and Picard both had season-long storylines – and while they could be mysterious and surprising in their own ways, they were also a lot more linear. Captain Pike’s crew encounter different aliens and visit different places every week, and that’s led to some genuinely unexpected storylines and episodes. As I said above, it just feels right for Star Trek.
So that’s it!
The Enterprise (and her crew) will be back soon!
With Season 3 perhaps arriving in late July or early August, we don’t have that long to wait. Less than four months from now, Strange New Worlds could well be back on our screens, and I really can’t wait to see what the series has in store!
I hope this wishlist has been a bit of fun and maybe a little interesting, too. I’d love to see the show include everything we’ve talked about – but some are definitely firmly in the realm of fantasy! The most important thing for me is that Strange New Worlds remains a largely episodic series – albeit one with character growth and some of the other modern trappings that serialised TV has brought to the table. When each episode has a different planet or new alien race to encounter, it opens up a ton of storytelling options. Strange New Worlds has done courtroom drama, horror, comedy, and even a musical – and I’m really excited to see what’s going to come next.
The Enterprise under attack by the Gorn in the Season 2 finale.
When Strange New Worlds returns later this year, I’ll do my best to follow along with reviews. I don’t have the best track record – it took me a while to get caught up on Season 2! But I’d really like to follow along week-to-week this time if I can, so I really hope you’ll join me for that. Who knows, I might even craft a theory or two, too, if the series lends itself to such things!
Thanks for checking out my Strange New Worlds wishlist. If you haven’t seen my Season 2 episode reviews, you can find them all by clicking or tapping here. Earlier this year I also checked out the Section 31 TV movie, and you can find that review by clicking or tapping here. There’s more Star Trek content to come here on the website, but until then… Live Long and Prosper!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 will premiere on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available later in 2025. Seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream now and are also out now on DVD and Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Beware of spoilers for the following Star Trek productions: The Next Generation Season 1, Deep Space Nine Season 6, Voyager Season 1, Generations, Star Trek ’09, Discovery Season 2, and Picard Season 2.
Almost four years ago I had a lot of fun writing a piece here on the website called “What If…? Star Trek Edition!” I took the basic concept behind the then-new Marvel miniseries What If…? and applied it to several storylines from the Star Trek franchise that I found interesting. Speculating and getting creative was a blast, so… let’s do it again!
If you missed the miniseries (or my earlier post), I’ll briefly explain how this works! We’re going to look at five stories from across the Star Trek franchise and ask a simple question: what if things went differently? What would the consequences be for Starfleet, the Federation, and some of the characters we’ve come to know and love if, for example, Spock wasn’t resurrected on the Genesis Planet or Captain Janeway and the USS Voyager tried to reach the Gamma Quadrant terminus of the Bajoran wormhole? I covered both of those topics in my post from 2021, by the way, so be sure to check it out – you can find it by clicking or tapping here.
Harry Kim and Quark.
Alternate history has been an interest of mine for a long time – so we can consider this an “alternate history of the future,” if you like! With the Star Trek franchise slowly but surely heading toward the 1,000-story mark, there are a lot of places where narratives could branch, and where the Star Trek galaxy could end up in very different situations! As a Trekkie, and as someone who likes to spend time in this setting, it’s a ton of fun to come up with these ideas and consider how they might play out.
As always, a couple of important caveats! All of this is the entirely subjective take of one old Trekkie. If you hate all of my ideas, think I’ve got the wrong end of the stick, or if I miss something that seems totally obvious to you… that’s okay! There ought to be enough room in the Star Trek fan community for differences of opinion. None of this is close to being “canon,” anyway, so there’s even less of a reason to get upset about completely made-up Star Trek stories that will never be seen on screen!
Alright, let’s jump into the “what if” scenarios!
What If…? #1: What if… Captain Picard and Q never met? The Next Generation, Picard Season 2
Picard’s first encounter with Q.
This is a really interesting one – and it might not go the way you think! Looking back over Picard’s run-ins with Q during The Next Generation, there really aren’t many places where we could say that their interactions had wide-ranging consequences. I have my pet theory that Q deliberately saved Picard and the Federation by making them aware of the Borg threat (click or tap here for that one, it’s one of my favourite Star Trek theories!) but that’s not the angle I’m gonna take today. In this case, we’re going to say that – for whatever reason – Picard and Q never met, never developed their complex relationship, and Q never set any puzzles for Picard to solve. In fact, Q stayed away from humanity and Starfleet altogether in this alternate timeline.
As noted, Q’s interactions with Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D almost always involved problems or scenarios of his own devising. So without Q on the scene, the Enterprise-D’s mission actually proceeds slightly more smoothly than it did in the series; the absence of Q doesn’t matter in a big way to the seven-year cruise. Every other episode and story plays out more or less the same, from the mystery at Farpoint Station to the ship’s destruction over Veridian III. Picard assumes command of the Enterprise-E, then the Romulan rescue armada, before retiring from Starfleet.
The voyages of the starship Enterprise would proceed in exactly the same way… just without Q’s occasional shenanigans!
But here’s where things change. After the mission to rescue Soji and being named Chancellor of Starfleet Academy, Admiral Picard is aboard the USS Stargazer when a mysterious anomaly is detected. The Stargazer, the Excelsior, and a handful of other ships race to the scene, where they’re confronted by a massive subspace anomaly that Seven of Nine thinks could be a huge transwarp conduit. Attempts at communication fail, and with only a handful of Starfleet ships on the scene, there’s no way to prevent the conduit from unleashing its triquantum waves.
Aboard the Stargazer, Picard and the crew look desperately for solutions – but there are none. Without the Borg, their vessel, and their knowledge of the situation, there’s no way to stop the transwarp conduit from doing what it was designed to do: launching a massive attack on the Federation. Its triquantum waves blast across several sectors of space, destroying the Starfleet ships as they attempt to escape, as well as several starbases and Federation colonies. Having expended its initial wave of energy, the conduit then falls eerily silent, as if waiting for instructions… or for its operators to emerge.
This time, there’s no one to stop the transwarp anomaly…
Because Star Trek: Picardwas a jumbled mess of a show, we don’t know who made the transwarp anomaly. My pet theory is that it’s something to do with Season 1’s super-synths, but it could also be the Borg, the Dominion, or any one of a number of Star Trek baddies! In this timeline, though, the anomaly’s initial attack would be successful – because there’d be no Q to throw Picard and his friends into the alternate reality that eventually led to Dr Jurati’s assimilation and the creation of a Borg splinter group. Without the Jurati-Borg’s presence at the site of the transwarp anomaly, there was no way to stop its energy from being unleashed.
What would happen next? I’d imagine that whoever made the anomaly would be pleased with its success, and if it was a transwarp conduit – as Seven theorised – then it could serve as a gateway for any ships that the attacker had. With a devastated sector and no intact ships remaining in the area, any invader would quickly be able to establish a massive bridgehead right in the heart of Federation territory, and if they have more transwarp conduit weapons… who knows? The next target could be Earth.
What If…? #2: What if… Section 31 and the Federation accidentally created the Borg? Deep Space Nine, First Contact, Discovery Season 2
Early concept art of the Borg.
If you’re a regular reader, you might remember my theory that Discovery’s second season – which featured a time-travelling spacesuit and an AI that could “assimilate” humans using nano-bots – was originally pitched as a “Borg origin story.” So what if that’s actually what happened? In this timeline, Section 31 and the Control AI are going to be uncovered as the true progenitors of the Borg!
Here’s how it went down: after chasing Captain Pike and the USS Discovery all over the quadrant, Control and its fleet of automated drone-ships finally have them cornered. Using the assimilated body of Captain Leland, Control boards Discovery and attempts to seize the all-important Sphere Data that it needs – but the battle in space is going poorly, and Control seems to be on the verge of defeat. Not wanting to give up, Control switches tactics. Instead of the Sphere Data, Control races to the science lab and steals the Red Angel suit that Burnham and the crew have finished working on.
The “assimilated” Captain Leland.
Staring down an armada of allied ships in space and Discovery’s security team just outside the doors, Control is trapped. With no other options, Control uses the Red Angel suit to escape – but because the suit is malfunctioning, Control ends up in the distant past. Trapped on a planet in the far-flung Delta Quadrant, anchored in time the same way Gabrielle Burnham was, Control surveys its surroundings. The planet is primitive, populated by humanoids in an early stage of development – with no spacefaring technology. Control has some nano-bots remaining, and the Red Angel suit… but that’s it. It decides that the best course of action is to assimilate some of the local humanoids and work on producing more technology – hoping to one day return to Federation space and finish what it started.
For me, the biggest question is this: does the Borg Collective still know all of this as of the late 24th Century? Or has the passage of time and countless assimilations over the millennia led to this information being forgotten, buried somewhere in the depths of the Collective’s knowledge? My personal take is that this is something the Borg Queen would know – but in the Collective’s run-ins with Starfleet, it’s gone out of its way to avoid revealing this truth.
The Red Angel suit can be used to travel through time.
But the Borg Queen is clearly not the same as Control – so what happened there? Perhaps the Queen regards Control as her “ancestor,” in a sense, or maybe Control merged with a particularly strong personality that it assimilated early on. Dr Jurati, in Picard’s second season, merged with the Borg Queen rather than simply becoming a Borg drone, so the same principle could apply here. It does beg the question, though, as to why the Borg Collective didn’t set its sights on Earth and humanity decades earlier if Control’s desire for revenge is hard-coded into the Collective’s DNA!
More interestingly, I wonder what Starfleet would make of this revelation. Let’s say that, after the Battle of Sector 001, Starfleet was able to analyse the remains of the Borg Cube and found remnants of 23rd Century Federation programming in the Borg’s systems. Further analysis eventually led to one inescapable conclusion: the Control AI is the basis for the Borg, making the biggest threat to the galaxy an accidental Federation creation. Perhaps that knowledge could be used by Starfleet’s Borg experts to find a weakness or a way to communicate… but it would also be a serious blow to morale.
What If…? #3: What if… the USS Voyager was destroyed over Ocampa? Voyager Season 1
The destruction of the USS Voyager!
In this alternate timeline, we’re going to say that the USS Voyager and the Val Jean – Chakotay’s ship – were both transported to the Delta Quadrant as we saw in Caretaker. But during the battle for the Caretaker’s Array, it’s Voyager, not the Val Jean, that ended up being destroyed by the Kazon. Some survivors made it to the escape pods and were taken aboard by the Maquis, with Chakotay ordering B’Elanna to fire up the engines and get the ship out of range of the Kazon as quickly as possible!
The first character we’d miss would be the Doctor – and with no surviving medical staff (and apparently no medically-trained Maquis, either) that would quickly become a problem for the crew of the Val Jean. I’m also going to suggest that Neelix and Kes wouldn’t be a part of this crew – or if they were involved, they’d remain aboard Neelix’s ship rather than try to cram aboard the already-overcrowded and cramped Maquis raider. As to what else would be different… well, it depends on who survived the destruction of Voyager.
Chakotay’s Maquis raider – the Val Jean.
I’m going to assume that Captain Janeway went down with the ship – as she once told Naomi Wildman that it’s part of a captain’s duty. That was half-joking, perhaps, but I can’t see Janeway abandoning the ship while any members of the crew were still aboard, so I’m gonna say she was lost with Voyager. Among the survivors, though, would be Tuvok, Harry Kim, Tom Paris, and B’Elanna Torres, as well as Seska, Ensign Wildman, and engineer Carey. There’d likely be a clash between Tuvok and Chakotay over command decisions, but Chakotay would pull rank – figuratively speaking – and remind the Starfleet survivors that they’re aboard his ship, so he’s in charge. However, as a concession given the difficult situation, he’d offer senior roles to Tuvok and Carey, and Kim would take up a role on the bridge.
Living conditions would be difficult, though. Voyager was kind of inconsistent with this, but we got hints in several episodes that there might’ve been about twenty-five or so Maquis aboard Voyager. If we assume that there’d be at least forty survivors from Voyager’s original complement of 150, the Starfleet personnel would outnumber the Maquis – which could lead to a lot more tensions aboard a Maquis ship than it did aboard Voyager. The small raider – which probably wasn’t equipped for a long voyage – would struggle to accommodate so many people, and with fewer replicators (if they even worked at all) the ship would have to make many more stops to forage and hunt for food and supplies.
Chakotay would remain in command of his Maquis vessel.
Equinox offers an excellent look at how a ship less well-equipped than Voyager might’ve handled being stranded in the Delta Quadrant. Despite the Val Jean’s personnel being arguably better prepared to survive than Captain Ransom’s crew, the limitations of the ship, the difficult living conditions, and the constant danger would all take a toll on the survivors. Morale would be low among the Starfleet personnel after Janeway’s death, and the reality of the situation would sink in for them over the first few days as they struggled to adapt. Having to share bunk beds and malfunctioning replicators would lower morale even further.
Chakotay would do his best to avoid the Kazon, and without the technologically-advanced Voyager to pursue, I daresay they’d be less interested in chasing the Val Jean, so the ship would make slow but steady progress toward the Alpha Quadrant. After several months (or perhaps a year) of planet-hopping, the Val Jean would encounter something strange: an old Earth automobile floating in space. This would lead them to a planet with a human settlement; the descendants of abductees from Earth. Most of the Starfleet personnel would disembark here, choosing to stay on the planet rather than remain aboard Chakotay’s ship. Chakotay and the Maquis would stay for a while, too, enjoying the friendly atmosphere and making repairs to their ship. After an extended stay, though, would anyone want to re-join the mission back to the Alpha Quadrant on a ship dangerously unsuited for such a voyage?
What If… #4: What if… the Romulans figured out what Sisko and Garak did? Deep Space Nine Season 6
Garak.
Perhaps this one won’t always be a “what if!” One of my fantasy Star Trek episodes is a follow-up to the outstanding Deep Space Nine episode In The Pale Moonlight, and I’d really love to see a sequel of sorts one day. But for now we’re going to make up our own version – and connect it to other parts of Star Trek, too!
There are two time slots for this, and both are interesting – so this is kind of two “what ifs” in one!
Firstly, we have the obvious question: what if the Romulans figured out what happened before the end of the Dominion War?
The Romulans have figured out that “it’s a faaaaaake!”
Shortly after the Breen joined the Cardassians and the Dominion, the Tal Shiar uncovers the truth behind the assassination of Senator Vreenak. How they figured it out doesn’t matter; all we need to know is that the proof is irrefutable. As a result, the Romulans terminate their alliance with the Federation and Klingons at the worst possible moment – just as Breen weapons are proving to be a tactical and technological hurdle for the allies to overcome. Worse, a few days later the Romulans announce a non-aggression pact with the Dominion, shortly followed up by an official alliance. In short, the Romulans have switched sides.
It’s no secret that the Romulans have long coveted Federation systems, and promises from the Dominion about ownership of Vulcan combined with a need for revenge swayed the Romulan senate. They began collaborating openly with the Dominion, sharing technology like cloaking devices with their new allies. The Cardassian rebellion led by Damar would be quickly crushed by the combined might of the Dominion, Breen, Romulans, and Cardassian collaborators, and would be far less effective and far-reaching. With the axis shored up and bolstered by Romulan troops and Romulan intelligence, they’d be back on the front foot ready to press home their advantage. The obvious first targets are Bajor and DS9; control of the wormhole would be vital. From there, it could be a very short war indeed…
Garak and Captain Sisko.
The second scenario is the one I still hope to see on screen one day. In this timeline, the Romulans discover what happened – but only years after the war is over. The destruction of their homeworld took a toll, and the Romulan Empire is in a difficult position. Romulan leaders demand the extradition of those responsible, but with Sisko “missing in action” and apparently residing with the Prophets, there’s really no one to prosecute. Garak’s involvement remains unknown, and he wouldn’t stick his head above the parapet!
But the Romulans would make a fuss, doing whatever they could to make life difficult for Starfleet. One action the Romulan government takes is cutting off Federation researchers from a derelict Borg vessel that they control, and ordering all Romulans to leave Federation space. The result? Soji doesn’t head to the Artifact, Laris and Zhaban leave Earth, and the synths at Coppelius Station remain hidden from Starfleet. But not necessarily hidden from everyone…
What If…? #5: What if… Captain Kirk didn’t die on Veridian III? Generations
Picard stands over Kirk’s grave.
This is one of the biggest “what-ifs” in Star Trek – at least for fans of a certain age! Kirk’s death in Generations was controversial, though I’d argue it was at least fitting for his character that he gave his life in an act of sacrifice, saving the crew of the Enterprise-D and the population of Veridian III from the Nexus. But in this alternate timeline, Kirk and Picard are able to stop Soran without Kirk losing his life.
Kirk would reunite with Picard and then meet up with the crew of the crashed Enterprise-D, before boarding a rescue ship bound for Federation space. Upon reaching a starbase, Kirk would be absolutely stunned to disembark only to be greeted by Spock and Montogomery Scott! Scotty had survived to the 24th Century in a transporter buffer (as seen in the episode Relics) and of course, Vulcans live longer lives than humans so we know that Spock is also still alive. This reunion would be incredibly touching, and Kirk would spend time with his old friends, catching up on almost eighty years of Spock’s life and also learning of Scotty’s 24th Century adventures.
Kirk would board a rescue ship and return to Earth.
Kirk would be debriefed by Starfleet Command about his time in the Nexus and would also seek out other members of his crew. Dr McCoy would have passed away, but at least one other member of the Enterprise’s bridge crew – someone like Uhura or Chekov – could still be alive in this time period, though they’d be very old! Kirk would visit them at their home, catching up on the events of their lives after he’d last seen them. Having decided to retire from Starfleet around the time the Enterprise-B was commissioned, Kirk would consider returning to his home – which has been preserved as a museum by Starfleet for the last eighty years – but I’m not so sure that that’s what he’d do.
We know that, in between the events of Relics and Star Trek ’09, Scotty was still working in some capacity – it’s in this era that “transwarp beaming” is invented. I’m going to say that, for the purposes of this alternate timeline, Kirk would return to Starfleet. In an unofficial capacity at first, he’d work with Scotty and Spock, and might also be visited by an old rival: the Klingon Captain Kor, now a Dahar master. Kor would invite Kirk to Qo’noS, where he’d see the results of his work to bring about peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire.
Kirk could still have some adventures and new experiences in the 24th Century.
Kirk would also be present at the launch of the Enterprise-E, reuniting with Picard as the ship undertook her first cruise. Scotty would also be present, having opted to join his former captain at the launch of the latest ship to bear the name Enterprise. Kirk and Scotty would have departed the ship shortly before the Battle of Sector 001, though. Kirk would be offered a promotion back to the rank of Admiral, and he’d join Starfleet Command in an advisory role; many senior Starfleet officers and admirals would call upon the famed officer for advice.
Where I think Kirk could be most influential, though, is in the aftermath of the synths’ attack on Mars. In the prime timeline, Picard was unable to convince Starfleet to proceed with their plan to help the Romulans, but I think Kirk would be on Picard’s side here. As a living legend and someone of such high standing in Starfleet Command, Kirk’s word would carry a lot of weight. As a result, Picard’s rescue armada would be rebuilt, and many more Romulan lives could be saved before the Hobus supernova. Among the evacuees would be Nero’s family – meaning Nero never attacks Spock’s ship, the two are never pulled into a black hole, and the alternate reality seen in Star Trek ’09 would never begin.
So that’s it!
Concept sketch of the USS Enterprise in drydock from The Motion Picture.
We’ve taken a look at five “what if” scenarios set in the Star Trek universe. I hope this has been interesting – and perhaps a bit of fun, too!
There are a lot of places in Star Trek where things could’ve gone very differently, and something as small as the absence (or presence) of a single individual has literally changed the course of history for the Federation and the entire galaxy. I can already think of plenty of other “what ifs,” so stay tuned! I’d love to revisit this idea again one day.
There’s plenty more Star Trek content coming up here on the website. So far in 2025 we’ve talked about some of my head canon, as well as some Star Trek stories that I wish weren’t canon at all! I’ve also reviewed the Section 31 film and finally caught up with Season 2 of Strange New Worlds. Season 3 will premiere later this year and I’ll definitely have something to say about it when it’s here! Until then, see you… out there.
Most Star Trek series and films discussed above are available to stream now on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the service is available. The Star Trek franchise is also available on DVD and Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including all films, shows, and properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Beware of minor spoilers ahead for Megalopolis.
One of the first films I ever owned on VHS was Apocalypse Now, which was directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It’s still one of my favourite films; a clever, chaotic, and occasionally subversive cinematic masterpiece that set an almost impossibly high bar for other epics and war films. Coppola is also famed for writing and directing The Conversation, the Godfather trilogy, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, among others in a career spanning over sixty years.
Megalopolis was supposed to land somewhere among those greats – perhaps, in Francis Ford Coppola’s imagination, even eclipsing the best of them to be regarded as his magnum opus. The film spent decades in development hell, with Coppola originally beginning work on the idea during production on Apocalypse Now in the late 1970s. By 1983, the idea to transpose the Catilinarian conspiracy to modern-day New York – using the analogy of Ancient Rome to comment on the rise and potential fall of democracy in the United States – was fully-formed… but for some reason, no studio would agree to bankroll the picture. I wonder why?
Director Francis Ford Coppola and star Adam Driver during production on Megalopolis.
Because no one in Hollywood would give Francis Ford Coppola the money to make Megalopolis, he funded the project entirely by himself. He had full control over the film; without a studio to kowtow to, the decision-making process about everything from the script to the cinematography to the marketing campaign ultimately fell to him. There’s no escape from the fact that this is Francis Ford Coppola’s vision – this is the film he wanted to make and waited decades to make.
So that begs the obvious question: is Megalopolis any good?
I am – to use some Ancient Roman-inspired language – a pleb. That word, if you’re unfamiliar, is derived from the Latin “plebian,” which was used in Ancient Rome to refer to all of the non-aristocratic classes. Commoners, if you will. And my cinematic tastes are definitely common! So for me, parts of Megalopolis went completely over my head and others were so bad they were quite literally laugh-out-loud funny. But maybe, just maybe, I also caught a tiny glimpse of the genius that Francis Ford Coppola has brought to several of his other films.
One of the first shots of the film.
Parts of Megalopolis were so experimental that they almost felt mad. Some scenes were akin to watching a fever dream, with imagery, language, and ideas all rolling around together in incredibly complex ways. It’s also the only film I’ve seen in years that felt like a stage play, with incredibly intense dialogue that mirrored its historical setting – and often quoted from it. I had to sit with Megalopolis for a while after I’d watched it to get my thoughts in order and let the film kind of drip through me… it was a strange experience.
And perhaps that word – “experience” – is how I’d best describe Megalopolis. I wasn’t just watching the film: I was experiencing it. It took me on a wild and sometimes incomprehensible ride through a re-imagined New York – or a twisted modern Roman Empire. It shook me up in more ways than one with its intensity… but then it also made me laugh because of how wooden and feeble other parts of it could be. It felt like I was watching two films at the same time: a stupidly over-the-top family melodrama and an experimental film about philosophy and politics.
Clodio and Crassus.
I want to focus on the film’s subtitle for a moment. Although marketed as Megalopolis or Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, the title card shows us a subtitle that I think perfectly encapsulates why the film is the way it is: A Fable. Megalopolis isn’t intended to be a strictly realistic depiction of fully fleshed-out characters living their lives – it’s meant to be a fable. Cinema has moved in the direction of realism over the course of decades, such that a film like Megalopolis feels weird and even unpleasant to an audience no longer used to its style. But I think it reflects a conscious choice on the part of the director – as well as several of its key performers – to deliberately lean into this kind of storytelling.
Before we can judge Megalopolis, I think we need to understand what it is – or at least what it aims to be. And to me, the subtitle is the best evidence of that. In a cinematic landscape dominated by films that use realism in everything from scriptwriting and dialogue to set designs and visual effects, Megalopolis stands out. It deliberately doesn’t do that – and for me, that was pretty jarring at first. If I’d been watching a comparable production on the stage, I’d have factored it all in ahead of time. But going into the film basically blind, not really knowing what to expect, this kind of experimental, almost “art film” presentation completely threw me.
I didn’t know what I was getting myself into…
And that’s what made Megalopolis so difficult to wrap my head around. I was watching some pretty heavy, stilted, and just plain unrealistic dialogue and thinking to myself “what the heck is this?” Characters mostly had names inspired by figures from Ancient Rome, and Roman themes and aesthetics permeated all aspects of the film. Some sets looked incredibly artificial – like something you’d have seen in a film from the 1950s, with hand-painted backdrops, cheap plastic props, or incredibly basic green-screen effects. Maybe I’m reaching and maybe Megalopolis’ philosophical tone is getting to me… but I feel like the artificiality is part of the point. Megalopolis wants its audience to be aware that it’s a film – that it’s artificial.
More than once, I’ve said that a film needs more than just a message or a point. You can make the best or most obvious point in the world – but if you wrap it up in a crap story, it won’t connect with its audience. Megalopolis has messages and points to make – it has them in spades. Coppola wants to use the challenges Roman democracy faced to highlight what he clearly sees as comparable challenges to democracy in the United States today. Megalopolis also has things to say about the role of art in our lives, the importance of family, human progress, rabble-rousing and demagoguery, the goals of civilisation itself… and more. But does it communicate any of these in clear and effective ways?
Erm… no. No, it does not.
Julia and Cesar high above New Rome.
Megalopolis’ experimental, arty tone – with long sequences where the camera spins and Coppola applies every kaleidoscopic filter and effect he can find – can be hard to watch. Further, a script which is already dense and heavy is delivered, in places, with laughably stilted and wooden performances. I wrote the following in my notes about halfway through the film: “how on earth does a fantastic director get these dire performances out of such an excellent group of actors?” Even keeping in mind what I was saying about the film’s deliberately unusual style, its desire to come across as unreal, and its intent to be a modern-day fable, most of the performances are shocking.
The standout performer is, as you might expect, Adam Driver. Driver hasn’t ever been bad in anything I’ve seen; his performance in Marriage Story was Oscar-worthy, in my view, and he was one of the highlights of the Star Wars sequels, too. But the rest?
Nathalie Emmanuel’s accent was inconsistent, varying from passable generic North American to atrocious New Yorker. That aside, she was solid but unconvincing. Giancarlo Esposito seemed to have no clue what was going on or what he was reading, and I got the sense that he was as lost making the film as I was watching it. Jon Voight (fun fact: I met his brother once) was just plain terrible, and again seemed to have no idea what was going on. Aubrey Plaza was totally miscast and inadequate for the role she was tasked with playing. And Laurence Fishburne – a regular collaborator with Francis Ford Coppola – read almost all of his lines in what I’d call an “I don’t give a shit” monotone. He was supposed to be the film’s narrator, introducing the various chapters and reading aloud various quotations.
Laurence Fishburne was not at his best in Megalopolis.
It takes a twisted kind of skill as a writer, director, producer, and cinematographer to get this group of actors – who have all been outstanding in other productions – to churn out such atrocious performances. According to Coppola, he encouraged improvisation on set, and even re-wrote lines and whole scenes while Megalopolis was in production. And yeah… I think we noticed. It must be difficult for performers to stay in character and engaged when everything’s in flux or when co-stars ad lib and completely change a scene they’d been preparing for. With other reported challenges on set, I’m sure Megalopolis was a difficult environment for some of the folks involved both on camera and behind the scenes. That could account for some of the sub-par performances, perhaps.
I’m not joking when I say that I literally laughed out loud at how bad some scenes in Megalopolis were. Stilted, wooden, hammy performances of a script written to be deliberately meandering and convoluted, shot on obviously fake, plastic sets with weird lighting… yeah. That’s not doing it for me. Quite a few scenes also ended very abruptly, as if midway through a conversation. The intention seemed to be a “mic drop;” the character said what the director thought should be an explosive or thought-provoking statement, so the scene could end. But more often than not, it just felt like a poor editing choice rather than anything even halfway profound.
One of the least-convincing windows I’ve seen in a film in a long time…
I was not the intended audience for Megalopolis, I guess. But I’ve said that before about other films or television shows that I genuinely enjoyed, that surprised me, or that I at least found redeeming qualities in. Maybe Francis Ford Coppola is content to ignore the opinion of such a common plebian and will insist that this film is art. Maybe he’s right – maybe it is art. But it’s also weird, hard to follow, unnecessarily dense, and populated by a cast of cardboard cut-outs rather than characters. There was a point to be made about the vulnerabilities of the American political system and how it could be hijacked by a charismatic snake-oil salesman – something which is arguably a more timely message now than it was when Coppola came up with the idea some forty years ago. But all of that was lost thanks to a wordy, philosophical script and offputting cinematography. Megalopolis is a film that just… thinks too much of itself. It’s snooty and stuck up.
At least, that’s how it feels to me.
What I can admire about Megalopolis is its experimentation – even when the result didn’t really stick the landing for me. At a time when far too many films play it safe, leading to a pretty stagnant environment in which cinema doesn’t seem to be pushing the boundaries and innovating any more, Megalopolis wasn’t afraid to genuinely try different things. Many of those things aren’t actually brand-new – they’re throwbacks to an earlier era of filmmaking and storytelling. But at the same time, there’s clearly a reason why studio after studio and distributor upon distributor passed on Megalopolis. It’s too “out there” for most audiences, and they recognised that when Coppola couldn’t. I don’t usually give entertainment industry executives any praise whatsoever, but the people who looked at Megalopolis and said “no thanks” got it right.
This is how I imagine most people reacted when Francis Ford Coppola showed them the script for Megalopolis…
Weirdly, I’m glad to have watched Megalopolis. Cinema should be challenging, sometimes, and I think it’s worth taking a detour to a film like this from time to time. It’s not one of those “so bad it’s good” films, and I honestly don’t know whether I’d want to watch it again. But it feels like a film that’s worth watching once, if that makes sense. Maybe because it’s so different to most of what’s streaming or in theatres, or maybe because it’s a legendary director’s passion project… I don’t know. And this shouldn’t be taken as a recommendation! I couldn’t realistically say that you should watch Megalopolis; I think it’s confusing, poorly-acted, and disappointing in more ways than one. But I also can’t shake the feeling that, for a very specific type of film buff or deep thinker, it could be the best thing they’ve ever seen.
So that was Megalopolis. I’m glad I watched it, and if nothing else, it’s prompted me to learn more about the Catilinarian conspiracy! But I’m thinking I need a palate-cleanser before I watch anything else… something like an episode of Tom and Jerry or SpongeBob SquarePants just to switch gears and turn my brain off. All this philosophy and Ancient Roman history is giving me a headache.
Megalopolis is available to stream now on several video-on-demand platforms and is also out on DVD and Blu-ray. Megalopolis is the copyright of American Zoetrope, Caesar Film LLC, and/or Lionsgate Films. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the following Star Trek productions: Deep Space Nine, Enterprise, Lower Decks, and Strange New Worlds.
Today I’d like to try something a little different. Rather than talking about Star Trek stories that we’ve already seen, I want to write a “pitch” of my own Star Trek episode. This is a story that I think would be a great fit for a future season of Strange New Worlds – or even to celebrate Star Trek’s upcoming sixtieth anniversary. I came up with the idea a couple of years ago, and I’ve already talked about it more than once here on the website.
In brief, what I wanted to create was a Star Trek story that brings together elements from different parts of the franchise – specifically the three different eras in which Star Trek shows have mostly been set (the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th Centuries). Combining these different parts of Star Trek results in what I think would be a really enjoyable episode, one which fans of different Star Trek shows could appreciate. Bringing these different elements together could be a fantastic way to celebrate Star Trek as a whole, too, and with the sixtieth anniversary coming up, part of me hopes that Paramount has planned something along the same lines.
Let’s create our own adventure for Captain Pike!
A couple of notes before we get started. Despite the title, this is not an “official” pitch! I’ve never had any official contact with Paramount or the creative team behind Strange New Worlds, and although I enjoy writing and have worked on websites, marketing material, and video games in a professional capacity in the past, I’m by no means a scriptwriter or creative type myself. This “pitch” is just for fun; it’s a concept that I think would make for a great Strange New Worlds episode… but it’s one that will certainly never be made.
And as I always say: this is all just one person’s take. If you don’t like this idea and think it wouldn’t work as an episode of Strange New Worlds, that’s totally okay! The Star Trek fan community is big enough for people to have very different opinions about what does and doesn’t make for a fun story. This is one that I think could work well – but I won’t be offended if you disagree!
Gene Roddenberry in the early 1970s.
So let’s get started by talking about the different elements I’ll be including. This episode, which I’m giving the working title of Cardassia Prime, will bring together characters and factions from three different parts of the Star Trek franchise. Representing the 23rd Century we of course have Captain Pike, Spock, and the rest of the crew of the USS Enterprise! But they aren’t the only familiar faces who’ll be making an appearance this time.
Strange New Worlds is set a century after the events of Enterprise, but with the long lives of several Starfleet races (and even humans in this era) it’s always seemed plausible to me that some characters may still be alive. I wanted to create a story in which an Enterprise character came aboard Captain Pike’s ship – and the most obvious choice has always been T’Pol.
An elderly T’Pol, as seen in the Enterprise Season 3 episode E².
T’Pol was the NX-01’s first officer, science officer, and Vulcan attaché, serving under Captain Archer during that ship’s missions of exploration and first contact. She stood by Archer’s side during the Xindi conflict, and played a role in changes to the Vulcan government in the 22nd Century, too. She was also instrumental in the creation of the United Federation of Planets. Everything we know about Vulcans tells us that there’s a high likelihood of T’Pol still being alive in the mid-23rd Century; both Spock and Tuvok lived exceptionally long lives, so there’s no reason to think T’Pol wouldn’t. She could even still working for the Federation or Vulcan government in some capacity as of the time Strange New Worlds is set.
I’ve taken this as a starting point for T’Pol and given her a job similar to Spock’s in The Next Generation two-part episode Unification. For the sake of this story, we’ll say that T’Pol – who played a major role in deepening the alliance between humans and Vulcans that ultimately led to the creation of the Federation – has since taken on an ambassadorial, diplomatic role for the alliance, and it’s in this capacity that she joins Captain Pike’s ship.
T’Pol’s job as a Federation ambassador and diplomant will be comparable to that of Spock’s in Unification.
What I’d love to see here, beyond the main thrust of the episode’s plot, is the interaction between an older T’Pol and the younger Spock. As the first Vulcan to work extensively with humans and serve aboard a human starship, T’Pol will surely have pearls of wisdom to impart, and may even look at Spock very favourably as someone following in her own footsteps. Although we’re dealing with two cool, logical Vulcans, I think there’s the potential for some genuinely emotional moments between T’Pol and Spock.
T’Pol will present Captain Pike with his new orders shortly after coming aboard: the Enterprise is to proceed to a region of space where a Federation colony vessel has accidentally caused a diplomatic incident by straying into a star system claimed by an unknown alien power. T’Pol’s orders are to defuse the situation and prevent it from escalating into a conflict; Pike’s are to get her there at top speed and do whatever she needs him to do to make it happen. We could see, in the opening act of the episode, T’Pol arriving aboard a Vulcan shuttle similar to the one used by Spock in The Motion Picture, as I think that would be a neat little callback and a fun visual presentation.
T’Pol could arrive aboard the Enterprise on a shuttle like this one.
The alien power at the centre of the story will be revealed to be the Cardassian Empire – as you’ve probably already figured out from the title! The Federation colony vessel was apprehended while attempting to scout planets in a star system that the Cardassians claim as one of their own, and this will be how the Federation and Cardassians made first contact – something that has never been depicted or explained on screen before.
By creating this backstory of the initial contact between the Federation and Cardassians, one in which war will be barely averted thanks to the efforts of T’Pol and Captain Pike, I think we can lend a bit of perspective to stories in The Next Generation and especially Deep Space Nine. We’ll uncover another chapter of Federation-Cardassian relations, and show that things got off to a rocky start – perhaps lingering ill-will from this incident even contributed to the border wars that we know the Federation and Cardassians fought in the years before The Next Generation.
The Cardassians will be this episode’s antagonists. Image Credit: IDW Publishing/Paramount
Because the Cardassians haven’t been seen in detail in Star Trek’s modern era, I think a lot of fans will be thrilled to welcome them back to the franchise. By setting up the Cardassians as the episode’s adversaries, we continue the theme of seeing them as an enemy that was present in Deep Space Nine, but by making the Federation colony ship the one to have made a mistake, we give them at least the barest bones of motivation for acting the way they do toward Starfleet and our heroes. These are not one-dimensional, “evil-for-the-sake-of-it” baddies, and they are able to be negotiated and reasoned with.
In fact, this episode won’t be violent. Captain Pike won’t have to whip out his phaser – or if he does, he won’t have to fire a shot. In true Star Trek style, communication, understanding, and cooperation will be the order of the day, and once it becomes clear what happened – that the colony ship inadvertently entered space claimed by the Cardassians – a pathway will be present that leads to a peaceful resolution. It will take all of T’Pol’s century of experience to avert a conflict and get these negotiations over the line, but it will be possible. Spock will have a role to play here, too.
Spock will join forces with T’Pol.
As a faction we spent so much time with in Deep Space Nine, we know a fair amount about how the Cardassians operate. They’re secretive, militaristic, and can be xenophobic. They fiercely defend their territory, have no qualms about conquering and subjugating others, and have a rigid legal code in which guilt is usually presumed.
But with more than a century of experience under her belt, T’Pol will be able to find a peaceful solution. Neither side wants war, and it’s ultimately going to be in both parties’ best interests to resolve the current situation peacefully – though both Starfleet and the Cardassians will stringently monitor their borders from this point onwards!
This episode will establish the Cardassian-Federation border.
In terms of the structure of the episode itself, I think I’d open with a short teaser in which Captain Pike, Spock, and perhaps other members of the bridge crew are preparing for the arrival of an ambassador. They’d be wearing their finest dress uniforms as the shuttle arrives, and there’d be an “honour guard” similar to the one seen in Journey to Babel. When T’Pol is seen for the first time, that’s when the opening titles would kick in. The next sequence would see Pike assign Spock as T’Pol’s aide while she’s aboard the ship, leading to some scenes between them in which we’d get the aforementioned bonding while en route to Cardassian space.
Spock would be curious about T’Pol; she’s somewhat of a legend in his eyes, as one of the first Vulcans to work so extensively with humans, and he sees parallels to his situation. There’s almost a kind of hero worship in the way Spock views T’Pol – something Chapel or Una might tease him about if they have a moment together later in the episode!
T’Pol.
As the Enterprise arrives in this new star system, the ship would be confronted by at least one Cardassian vessel. I’d want this ship to look like a stripped-down Galor-class vessel; different enough to be distinct, but similar enough in style and shape that it would be recognisably Cardassian for returning fans. I’m no graphic designer (as you can probably tell) but I think it’s important given the type of story we’re crafting that the design of the new ship is similar enough that it could reasonably be part of the same Cardassian Union that we’re familiar with.
The same would be true of the Cardassians’ uniforms. I wouldn’t want an exact duplicate of the Cardassian armour that debuted in The Next Generation, but as above with the way their ship looks, uniforms/armour would need to be familiar enough that a returning fan could recognise it and understand that it’s part of the same faction – just from an earlier era.
I’d like the Cardassian ship to be reminiscent of the Galor-class but without being identical.
The Cardassian leader would angrily tell Pike to leave the system, threatening the Enterprise before abruptly ending the communication. Pike would then summon T’Pol to the bridge, letting her take the lead when it comes to speaking to the Cardassians. Long-range scans would be able to detect the colony ship – but it’s under guard, and the Cardassians aren’t going to just let the Enterprise rescue it without putting up a fight. Not wanting to trigger a war – and perhaps thinking back on his experiences in the episode A Quality of Mercy – Pike would talk with La’an and Una about a backup plan… just in case T’Pol’s negotiations fail.
At this point, we’d learn that the Cardassians have long been aware of the Federation – but because of how closed-off their society is, they chose to spy from afar rather than make contact. This revelation would be unsettling; Spock would remark that the Cardassians know far more about them than they do about the Cardassians, leaving them at a disadvantage in either combat or communication.
The Cardassians’ first message would be abrupt and aggressive.
T’Pol would refute this, saying that she’ll use the Cardassians’ assumptions about humans, Vulcans, and the Federation to undermine their claims and turn things to her advantage. Hailing the Cardassians again, T’Pol and Pike propose face-to-face negotiations; these will take place not aboard the Enterprise, but aboard the Cardassian ship. T’Pol will represent the Federation, bringing with her Spock as an aide, Sam Kirk as an anthropological expert, and Uhura to help with any translation or communication issues.
As the away team heads to the transporter room, Pike convenes a meeting of the remaining senior officers. Pelia will bring Scotty along to the meeting, which is to further explore a backup plan – rescuing, if necessary, T’Pol and the away team as well as the impounded ship. La’an and Scotty will work on a tactical/engineering assignment to bring down the Cardassian ship’s shields; Pike wants to keep something in reserve in case things go off the rails.
La’an will be paired up with another legacy character this time!
The interior of the Cardassian ship will probably have to be just one room to keep the budget down, but with the AR wall I’d hope it could be a decently-sized space with a table for the two delegations to sit at. In keeping with the design philosophy we discussed above, there should be enough familiar elements to be recognisably Cardassian but without being a carbon copy of something from Deep Space Nine. I’m thinking of a familiar Cardassian computer display, perhaps doorway arches that are reminiscent of those aboard DS9, and similar lighting and colour schemes.
The Cardassian leader will argue that, under Cardassian law, the colony ship has been rightfully impounded and they have no plans to release it. They were guilty the moment they entered the system, and the Cardassians believe in the presumption of guilt. Unless T’Pol can actively prove their innocence, he plans to send the crew and colonists to a labour camp and seize the ship.
The Cardassian delegation will insist that the Federation colony ship violated their laws.
There will be some difficulty with the universal translator at this point, so the conference will go into recess. Uhura will be confused; the translation stopped working for no reason and she can’t figure out why. Spock begins to examine their equipment, but T’Pol will reveal the ruse: she deactivated the translator to give the team a bit of extra time to prepare a defence.
T’Pol will contact Pike, asking him to scan the system for any sign of a Cardassian presence or any kind of beacon or subspace buoy that could’ve warned the colony ship to keep away. Pike promises to do so and sets the crew to the task. With the translator “repaired,” T’Pol can begin her defence.
Uhura will have a role to play in the away mission.
T’Pol will argue that the colony ship couldn’t have violated any law as there was no way to tell that the Cardassians have laid claim to this apparently-empty system. There are no Cardassian settlements, no space stations, and no obvious military presence. To any passing ship, the system appeared empty, and the colony ship was well within its rights to enter the system and begin performing scans.
The Cardassians will dispute this, saying that ignorance of the law is not an excuse for breaking the law. The colony ship entered their system, that is beyond dispute. Furthermore, by conducting scans, the ship could’ve been spying for the Federation, trying to discover Cardassian military secrets. T’Pol remarks that, just because that’s how the Cardassians operate, it doesn’t mean Starfleet behaves the same way. She appeals to the Cardassians’ knowledge of Vulcans, reminding them that Vulcans are incapable of lying; if she swears the colony ship wasn’t spying, then it wasn’t.
T’Pol will use the Cardassians’ knowledge against them.
Pike contacts the away team, confirming that there’s no way the colony ship could’ve detected any Cardassian presence in the system. The Cardassians left no warning, no buoy enforcing their claimed border, and no indication whatsoever that they considered this empty system to be their territory. T’Pol thanks Pike for the information and adds it to her argument. She then chastises the Cardassians for arresting the crew of the ship without cause, and suggests that, if the captain won’t release the colonists, she’ll take the matter directly to the Cardassian government.
The Cardassian captain is clearly rattled by this idea, as he wants to solve the matter himself. Seeing the potential for a career-ending incident, he backs down – but insists that the Enterprise and the colony ship leave the system immediately. T’Pol agrees, noting that the system will be declared off-limits to future Federation vessels heading this way. She adds that, now first contact has been made, it would be logical for both the Cardassian Union and the Federation to designate a formal border; the Cardassian captain nods, and the away team departs.
Despite the Cardassians’ attitude, a peaceful resolution will be possible.
Back aboard the Enterprise, Scotty and La’an have struggled to find a way past the Cardassian ship’s defences; Scotty remarks that their ship is almost a perfect match for the Enterprise in terms of weapons and shields; a shooting match between them could go either way. Even with Ortegas’ fancy piloting, the vessels would still be evenly matched if a fight were to break out.
With the situation now under control, the Cardassians release the colony ship. Pike gets confirmation that the crew and colonists are all accounted for an unharmed, and the two ships depart the system. First contact with the Cardassians was eventful – but fortunately, non-violent.
Cardassia Prime – the original matte painting. Image Credit: Frogland Archive/Heritage Auctions
In her cabin, T’Pol would be sending a final message to Federation HQ before preparing to disembark. Spock enters, telling her how he appreciated getting to work with her on this assignment – and he will escort her to the transporter room. T’Pol gives Spock some words of advice on working with humans – but as she stands on the transporter pad, she gives Spock a smile before dematerialising. Spock finds this “fascinating,” and the credits roll.
Obviously I didn’t write any dialogue; this is an outline or concept rather than a full script! But I hope I’ve been able to communicate the broad strokes of what this Cardassia Prime episode would look and feel like.
The original Galor-class studio model.
My objective was to bring together elements from the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th Centuries, tying together all three of Star Trek’s “main” eras with one narrative arc. This storyline would also avoid treading on the toes of anything previously established in Star Trek; unlike Strange New Worlds’ introduction of the Gorn, for example, or Discovery’s redesign of the Klingons, the history of how the Cardassians and Federation made first contact has never been so much as mentioned. All we know for sure is that, as of the mid-24th Century, there had been a conflict of some kind situated on the border. This story would foreshadow that in a way, while also connecting events in the 24th Century to this earlier time period.
We absolutely could flesh out this story a lot more. In my head, the negotiation sequence is quite tense and takes up much of the middle and latter part of the episode. T’Pol and the Cardassian captain – who could be played by an actor who previously had a role in Deep Space Nine – would talk around each other for several minutes, and there’d be a real sense that she and the away team were in danger. I also wanted to make sure that Pike and the other characters back on the ship weren’t just sitting on their hands – though there could be a lesson there, I suppose!
I’d love to bring back a familiar actor from the Deep Space Nine era (Dukat actor Marc Alaimo pictured) to play this episode’s Cardassian captain.
I was a little hesitant to put this story treatment together for one primary reason: Jolene Blalock, who played T’Pol in all four seasons of Enterprise, had seemingly retired and hadn’t expressed a wish to return to the role. However, Blalock was convinced to reprise her role (albeit in voice form only) in Lower Decks, so I no longer feel it’d be impossible for Strange New Worlds to bring her back for a role like this.
Given the show’s place in the timeline, it’s not completely implausible to think one of the NX-01’s human crew members could still be around – Dr McCoy lived long enough to attend the launch of the Enterprise-D, after all! But given that they’d all be over 100 years old by the time of Strange New Worlds, it seems less likely that any of them would be as involved in Starfleet or as active. We could do something like Relics, bringing in a character who’d been in some kind of stasis for a long time, but when I considered all of the ways to include a character from Enterprise, the most logical choice was T’Pol.
T’Pol recently appeared in Lower Decks.
So that’s my “episode pitch!” I hope you didn’t get too attached to it, because it’s never going to be produced. Still, it’s fun to speculate and fantasise, and with Star Trek’s sixtieth anniversary approaching, I’d really love to see at least one episode that really celebrates different aspects of the franchise’s history. Since Star Trek returned to the small screen there have been plenty of moments where characters or factions from past iterations of the franchise have appeared – and that’s fantastic. I haven’t heard much about a potential sixtieth anniversary crossover or special episode, though, and realistically if something like that is gonna happen, production will need to begin fairly soon.
In 1996, Star Trek made a splash for its thirtieth anniversary! Deep Space Nine created the wonderful Trials and Tribble-ations, splicing the new and old footage to transport the cast into a classic episode of The Original Series. And some fans tend to overlook the equally enjoyable Flashback, which saw Captain Janeway and Tuvok pay a visit to the USS Excelsior under Captain Sulu’s command. I was a massive Trekkie back in ’96, and I remember the UK’s official Star Trek magazine ran a special edition for the anniversary. I think I still have my copy in the attic somewhere… I wonder if it’s worth anything?
The NX-01 from Star Trek: Enterprise.
We’ve veered off-topic somehow! To get back on track, I’d love to see an episode like my imagined Cardassia Prime as part of Star Trek’s sixtieth anniversary celebrations. A story which brings together different parts of the franchise, including a character crossover, feels like the perfect way for the franchise to celebrate all things Star Trek and to write a “love letter to the fans.” I’m glad that I was able to finally put (metaphorical) pen to paper and share the bare bones of this idea with you.
Strange New Worlds’ third season is coming up later this year, so I hope you’ll stay tuned here on the website for my take on the show’s real episodes when they arrive! Until then, I hope this has been a bit of fun. Thanks for joining me on this adventure with Captain Pike and the crew!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1 & 2 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the service is available. The series is also available on DVD and Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds and all other properties mentioned above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-5. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-2, Picard Season 3, Prodigy Season 2, and pre-release info for Starfleet Academy.
Did Discovery’s “post-apocalyptic” take on Star Trek work as intended from Season 3 onward? If not… what went wrong? Why might a far future setting with a galaxy in ruins have been the wrong choice for this franchise? If another group of writers had tackled the same concept in a radically different way, could it have worked better? What does it all mean for Starfleet Academy? Those questions and more are what we’re going to ponder today!
Although Discovery has now concluded its five-season run, there are still topics to consider and debate. And it’s only now – after the series has concluded and we’ve seen three full seasons of its far future setting – that we can truly begin to wrangle with the “post-apocalyptic Star Trek” idea that began in Season 3. I held out hope for a while – particularly when Season 5’s marketing material and trailers seemed to be teasing a different kind of story – that Discovery might be able to do something creative, interesting, and engaging with this new idea. But, for me at least, post-apocalyptic Star Trek didn’t really work.
Discovery’s “post-apocalyptic” setting began in Season 3.
I think it’s worth discussing this subject for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Discovery was the franchise’s flagship series during its run. It brought Star Trek back to its small screen home after more than a decade in the wilderness, teed up the excellent spin-off Strange New Worlds, and for our purposes today, it also created this far future setting. Shooting forward in time centuries beyond The Next Generation, Picard, and even anything we’d seen in time travel episodes elsewhere in the franchise, Discovery had a completely virgin, unspoiled setting and time period for the writers and producers to craft.
Secondly, while Discovery may be over, there’s more Star Trek to come – at least for the next couple of years. A second spin-off – Starfleet Academy – intends to keep this far future timeline going, and it’s not impossible to think that Paramount might want to set new films or shows in this era, too. Given the issues Discovery had, it’s important to understand what worked about the setting and what didn’t – so future creatives can double-down on the positives while avoiding a repeat of the mistakes.
The cast and crew at a table read for the Season 3 finale.
As always, a couple of important caveats before we go any further. This may be a controversial topic; Discovery has always elicited strong reactions from the Star Trek fan community (to put it mildly!) It’s worth keeping in mind that all of this is the entirely subjective opinion of one old Trekkie. I’m not claiming that I’m right and that’s that – different folks will have different opinions about some of these storylines and narrative concepts, and that’s okay.
If you followed along with my Discovery reviews, you’ll know that I’m a fan of the series on the whole – not any kind of hater. Some storylines worked better than others, and I pulled no punches in criticising episodes and narrative choices that I didn’t like. But I’m glad Discovery exists and remains a part of Star Trek’s official canon! The fact that we’re talking about whether the post-apocalyptic tone worked from Season 3 onwards – and what I personally didn’t like about it – shouldn’t be taken as me “hating” Discovery or any of its writers and producers. I share my opinion with the Star Trek fan community in the spirit of polite discussion.
With all that being said, if you aren’t in the right headspace to tackle a potentially controversial subject, that’s totally okay. This is your opportunity to jump ship if you’d rather not get into the weeds with Discovery and its “post-apocalyptic” tone.
Concept art of Season 2’s time-wormhole.
To begin with, I think we need to consider why Discovery’s post-apocalyptic vision of the future exists at all. I tackled part of this question in a different article – which you can find by clicking or tapping here – but here’s the short version: Discovery wouldn’t have left the 23rd Century if the writers, producers, and executives were happy with the show. The decision to shoot forwards in time is, in my opinion, a tacit admission from the folks at CBS that setting Discovery a decade before Captain Kirk’s five-year mission was a mistake. It was an attempt to rectify that “original sin” which, some may say, came two seasons too late.
But leaving the 23rd Century behind didn’t mean Discovery had to arrive in a galaxy devastated by the Burn. That was a creative choice on the part of the show’s writers and producers; an attempt to transplant Star Trek’s core themes of hope for the future, optimism, peaceful exploration, and a post-scarcity society into a completely different environment. And to be clear: I don’t think Discovery’s writers lost sight of what those concepts were or what Star Trek had been, as some have suggested. But they misunderstood how important those things were to the foundation of Star Trek’s setting, and why it was so important to see a vision of the future where many of the problems of today have been solved. In attempting to be clever and subversive – or perhaps thinking they knew better – they robbed Star Trek of not only its most important defining feature, but also one of the key differences between Star Trek and most other popular sci-fi and fantasy worlds.
Discovery’s co-showrunners for Seasons 3-5: Alex Kurtzman and Michelle Paradise.
A post-apocalyptic setting clearly appealed to executives at CBS because of how popular it had proven to be elsewhere. From the late 2000s and through the entire 2010s, shows like The Walking Dead, Falling Skies, The 100, Jericho, The Strain, and 12 Monkeys had found critical and/or commercial success, as had films like Children of Men and Snowpiercer, and games like The Last Of Us and the Metro series. Star Trek has occasionally set trends in entertainment – but it’s also never been shy about following them. After two seasons of Discovery that had proven controversial – and crucially, hadn’t been a resounding success commercially – piggybacking on an apparently popular trend wasn’t an awful idea in principle.
Discovery’s creatives wanted to take Star Trek’s foundational sense of optimism and hope and completely reframe it; using the same core ideas but in a radically different way. By taking away Starfleet and the Federation, and leaving much of the galaxy devastated, in ruins, or struggling for resources, there was potential – they believed – to tell stories about bringing people back together, finding hope in a bleak setting, and even considering the impact of this level of devastation on the crew’s mental health.
Early concept art of the USS Discovery circa 2016. Image Credit: Frogland Archive
At the peak of the Cold War, with America and the Soviet Union staring each other down atop piles of nuclear weapons that could destroy the planet, The Original Series presented a peaceful future in which humanity had overcome those struggles. Later, in the 1990s, Deep Space Nine’s Dominion War didn’t show a devastated Federation on the brink of defeat, it showed good people struggling to save the “paradise” that had been built. These shows were different from one another in many ways – but at the core, one of the foundational pillars of Star Trek is that the future is bright and it’s going to be worth fighting for.
This is something fundamental to Star Trek; it’s a huge part of what makes the franchise what it is. And there’s a massive difference between a show that says “humanity has overcome all of these obstacles, so let’s explore the galaxy” and one that says “everything is ruined but we can rebuild.” These two narrative ideas both have the themes of optimism and hope – but they’re very different kinds of optimism and hope, and they’re presented in totally different ways. It’s not so much that one works and the other doesn’t; see the list of post-apocalyptic media above, all of which use those themes and ideas in some form. But in this case, the post-apocalyptic setting took away something foundational from Star Trek’s setting, utterly transforming Discovery into a completely different kind of series.
The Burn.
Here’s the bottom line: Discovery didn’t do anything exceptional with its post-apocalyptic setting. I still think such a massive change to the core of Star Trek would’ve attracted criticism even if the show’s writing had been exceptional from Season 3 onwards, but the simple fact is that it wasn’t. There were some decent episodes and creative ideas in the mix, don’t get me wrong… but Discovery’s biggest problem both before and after this switch to a post-apocalyptic setting was that its storytelling was small, repetitive, and overly reliant on levels of interpersonal conflict and relationship drama that we seldom get outside of soap operas. In short, Discovery’s post-apocalyptic setting turned out to be nothing more than background noise; set dressing for less-interesting stories to play out in front of.
Such a huge change to Star Trek’s galaxy and the damage done to the Federation needed more time in the spotlight and it needed to serve a purpose. In Season 3, part of the story focused on the Burn and figuring out what happened. This story was an ultimately frustrating one, with dead ends and red herrings before arriving at an ending that no one could have predicted. Season 3 teased viewers with a mystery, stringing us along and seeming to reveal clue after clue in different episodes, only to then pull a bait-and-switch to something out of left-field that didn’t feel properly set up. It was pretty annoying – and I know I wasn’t the only one who felt that way at the time.
A 32nd Century market.
Worse, though, was that Season 3 spent such a long time on what felt like unimportant fluff in comparison to the Burn. The first episodes of the season showed us how far the Federation had fallen; humans on Earth couldn’t even travel as far as Titan, within their own solar system – such was the shortage of fuel and supplies. Earth and Vulcan had both withdrawn from the Federation, and Starfleet wasn’t able to contact many of the Federation’s outlying member worlds and colonies. But instead of exploring what this could mean and telling a story about figuring out what went wrong and how to fix it… Discovery’s writers told half-baked stories about depression, Burnham’s on again-off again relationship with Starfleet, Book and Burnham’s love affair, and more.
To be clear: I don’t think the post-apocalyptic setting would’ve been the right choice regardless, for the reasons outlined above. But Discovery’s writers didn’t even give that premise or the far future setting a chance to win me over. Instead, they tried to jump right back in with stories about Michael Burnham: Chosen One™ – and it just fell so incredibly flat.
Michael Burnham in the comic book Adventures in the 32nd Century. Image Credit: IDW Publishing/Paramount
There was a metaphor buried in the far future setting that could’ve been timely. But the end of Season 3 ruined it. By taking one of Star Trek’s core technologies – warp drive – and saying that the galaxy as a whole was running out of fuel, there was a chance for Discovery to do what Star Trek has always done: use a sci-fi lens to examine a real-world issue. We rely too heavily on limited supplies of fossil fuels here in the real world, and Season 3 could’ve made a point about the need to innovate, invent new methods of travel and power generation, and tie those issues into the theme of rebuilding and coming back stronger. That could’ve been a powerful story if done well, and it also could’ve finally found a proper use for Discovery’s most controversial addition to Star Trek: the spore drive.
But the discovery of a near-unlimited cache of dilithium toward the end of the season totally undermined all of that. It would be like writing a story about Earth running out of oil and humanity coming together to build new vehicles and methods of power that don’t rely on fossil fuels… only for the story to end with a massive untapped oilfield being discovered. This mixed messaging, and unwillingness to commit to telling stories that could’ve taken advantage of this kind of setting, really tripped up Discovery. The most powerful – and potentially interesting – ideas that could’ve been explored in this kind of setting were just left feeling flaccid and half-hearted.
The Verubin Nebula contained a massive cache of dilithium – and the answer to the mystery of the Burn.
Many post-apocalyptic shows and films tell character-focused stories, and these settings can lend themselves to high-stakes drama. But most of the time, the environment that the characters are confronted with – whether that’s a zombie apocalypse, an ecological disaster, a pandemic, or something else – is at least part of the cause of the tension and interpersonal conflicts. A character like The Walking Dead’s Governor is who he is because of the world he inhabits. Many of the arguments between characters in shows like The Strain or films like City of Ember happen because of the environment they’re in. Even relationships can begin – or be ended – by the stresses of a post-apocalyptic life, as we see in films like Shaun of the Dead or shows like 2008’s Survivors. But Discovery couldn’t even get this right most of the time.
Most of Discovery’s storylines in the far future could’ve worked just as well – better, even, in some cases – without the post-apocalyptic backdrop. Seasons 4 and 5 in particular are both in this camp. The Dark Matter Anomaly that devastated parts of the galaxy would’ve arguably been more impactful if it had been attacking a fully-intact Federation. And the threat of the Breen attack and the Progenitors’ device in Season 5 is the same. They would’ve worked in the same way Deep Space Nine’s Dominion War did: as threats to Star Trek’s post-scarcity technological “paradise.”
The flag of the Federation in the 31st Century.
Smaller storylines are also in this camp. Detmer’s half-arsed mental health story in Season 3, Culber’s equally weak depression in Season 4, Adira and their quest to help Gray be seen again, Burnham and Book’s mostly awful on/off relationship, the Ni’Var stories involving Romulans and Vulcans working together… would any of these have worked less well, or even been noticeably different, without the Burn and the devastation it had caused? Or would they have been able to play out almost exactly the same, beat for beat?
Taking the idea of societal collapse as a starting point, Discovery’s writers could have tied in themes of mental health. The character-focused storytelling that they wanted, with high levels of drama and plenty of “therapy-speak,” was potentially well-suited to the post-apocalyptic environment they’d created. But there was almost no attempt to link these two ideas; instead, characters would suffer or sulk for reasons completely unconnected to the world they found themselves a part of. This feels like a horrible missed opportunity considering the kind of show Discovery’s writers and producers wanted it to be.
Concept art of Burnham (and her costume) produced for Season 3.
For some reason, since Star Trek returned to the small screen, there’s been an insistence on serialised storytelling – but only for one season at a time. Self-contained narrative arcs have been the order of the day, which meant that the Burn, its origin, and crucially, its aftermath were only really in focus in Season 3. A couple of clips at the beginning of Season 4 – as well as a handful of throwaway lines of dialogue here and there – referenced the Burn, but for the most part, it disappeared after Season 3 was over.
There is a partial justification for this: Discovery’s production team were never sure whether cancellation was coming. If there might’ve been one thing worse than a devastated galaxy and an apocalyptic event, it would be leaving the reason for all the destruction unexplained with the show abruptly going off the air! So in that sense, I get why those decisions were taken. Star Trek was still finding its feet in a new entertainment landscape, CBS and later Paramount were on shaky ground amidst the “streaming wars,” and there was no guarantee of a renewal. Setting up the Burn and explaining it in a single season makes sense in that context.
But dumping the Burn after Season 4, and not doing more to explore the consequences of this massive event… that makes less sense to me.
Su’Kal at the source of the Burn.
Star Trek in its heyday was a primarily episodic franchise. There were season-long arcs in Deep Space Nine and Enterprise, as well as Voyager’s seven-year journey back to the Alpha Quadrant. But even in those frameworks, episodic storytelling was still the order of the day for Star Trek. I think it’s no coincidence that the best episodes Discovery told were the ones that were somewhat standalone. Episodes like Season 2’s An Obol for Charon, Season 3’s Terra Firma, Season 4’s Choose to Live, and Season 5’s Face the Strange are all at least partly self-contained affairs. Strange New Worlds has also taken on a much more episodic tone – something that has made that series an absolute joy to watch.
At the start of Season 4, I hoped that Discovery would go down a more episodic route. The Burn could be a starting point, and Discovery could’ve hopped to different planets across the Federation as the galaxy began to rebuild from its aftermath. A story of bringing hope to people who’ve been struggling to get by could have been exceptional if handled well, and the Burn – despite the issues it caused for Star Trek as a whole – was the perfect entry point for telling stories like that. Switching up Discovery to become a more episodic show could’ve given more of the cast a chance to be in the spotlight, with episodes focusing on different planets and different people every week.
Burnham’s brief encounter with these “butterfly aliens” was about as close as Discovery came to the idea of rebuilding the Federation.
To me, this feels like an open goal; a golden opportunity for Discovery to prove the haters wrong. It was a chance to do something meaningful with the Burn and the post-apocalyptic setting that Season 3 – with its unfolding mystery and close focus on Burnham – didn’t really have much time for. Moreover, it would’ve been a great way to explore other aspects of this 32nd Century setting, catching up with factions and races from past iterations of Star Trek.
Despite spending three seasons in the far future, we didn’t so much as glimpse a Klingon. Races like the Ferengi were seen in the background and there were throwaway lines that mentioned the Borg and the Gorn, but none of them ever showed up on screen. Given that the devastation of the Burn was supposedly a galaxy-wide thing, Discovery did absolutely nothing to show us what some of the most iconic and beloved factions in Star Trek were doing in this era or how they were coping. And then there’s the elephant in the room: the Burn was, in a roundabout way, caused by a Federation ship operating under orders from Starfleet HQ. What would the likes of the Klingon Empire or the Cardassian Union do if and when they learned that truth?
How would the Cardassians have reacted to the Burn – and its Federation origin?
Let’s draw the bare outline of a potential story that would take the Burn as a starting point, tie in one of Star Trek’s well-known factions, and use it as a springboard for some character-focused storytelling. This is just a thought experiment, but I think it’ll illustrate the point I’m trying to make!
After discovering the truth behind the Burn and ensuring it won’t happen again, Captain Burnham and the crew are tasked with jumping to the Klingon homeworld, where a Federation ship has gone missing. Upon arriving at Qo’noS, Discovery is confronted by angry Klingons telling them to leave, and they learn the missing ship has been impounded and its crew are being held. The Klingons, whose empire has fractured and who have been suffering the effects of the Burn for a century, blame the Federation for what happened – and in addition to holding one ship captive, they’re massing for war.
This would be hugely triggering for the crew of Discovery – they’re veterans of the 23rd Century Klingon war, a war Burnham still blames herself for causing. It brings back horrible memories for her and another member of the crew, and they have to wrangle with those feelings while trying to avert a war. The Klingon fleet is low on dilithium, but they’re willing to expend the last of their dwindling resources on a quest for vengeance. It falls to Burnham, Admiral Vance, and perhaps President Rillak to talk them down – offering to re-instate the Khitomer Accords and share the cache of dilithium with the Klingons.
An episode re-introducing the Klingons could’ve really leaned into the idea of a galaxy devastated by the Burn and its aftermath.
An episode like this would take Discovery’s post-apocalyptic setting and actually do something with it – using it as the driving force for all of the tension, drama, and personal conflict in the story. The Burn devastated the Klingon Empire and they blame the Federation. Burnham has to come face-to-face with the Klingons for the first time since the war, trying to prevent another conflict while also wrangling with the trauma of the last one. Crucially, we’d get to explore one of Star Trek’s most iconic alien races and catch up with them centuries after we last saw them.
If Discovery had told stories like this one, which took the post-apocalyptic tone as a foundation, I think it could’ve been more successful. At the very least, such stories would’ve made the Burn and its aftermath more meaningful, and we’d have gotten a broader exploration of the consequences. Life in a post-apocalyptic setting was never really in focus in Discovery, and aside from the first two episodes of Season 3 and a handful of other scenes here and there, it never stuck the landing. I’m not saying my story outline as proposed above is perfect, but it would at least have leaned into this post-apocalyptic idea and done something more with it.
Behind-the-scenes during production on Season 3.
Instead, much of the rebuilding and diplomacy seems to have taken place off-screen – if we’re to imagine it happened at all. After defeating the Emerald Chain and securing the Verubin Nebula and its dilithium, Starfleet and the Federation seem to have instantly rebuilt, with very little mention of the Burn and its century-long aftermath in Seasons 4 and 5. Considering how massive and transformative this event was for the galaxy, that’s just not good enough. If there was ever a place where the old Creative Writing 101 adage “show, don’t tell” was important, it was here!
Discovery would still have faced an uphill battle, I fear. Ruining the galaxy, devastating the Federation, and forcing survivors to scrounge for resources for decades feels antithetical to Star Trek in so many ways. But if there had been a conscious effort to lean into this idea and use it as a springboard for storytelling that was well-suited to a post-apocalyptic environment, it could at least have worked better or been less bad. The combination of a post-apocalyptic setting with stories that just didn’t fit made things noticeably worse.
The cast during production on Season 3.
That’s before we come to “the prequel problem,” though.
In brief, Discovery is set in Star Trek’s prime timeline – no matter what some fans might say or what head canon explanations we have, at time of writing Discovery remains in the prime timeline. Everything we’ve seen on screen from Enterprise in the 22nd Century to Picard at the dawn of the 25th takes place in this same setting – which means that the prime timeline is destined to be devastated by the Burn. Going back to watch older episodes of Star Trek doesn’t feel much different, at least not to me, but the Burn and all the chaos and ruination it caused is sure as heck going to taint future stories.
Take Picard’s third season as an example. Admiral Picard and his crew had to come together to defeat a conspiracy targeting Starfleet – and after a hard-fought struggle, they won and saved the day. But because Picard Season 3 premiered after we learned about the Burn in Discovery… at least some of its impact was blunted. Now, don’t get me wrong: Picard Season 3 wasn’t spectacular in its own right. But it was the best and certainly the most complete and coherent story that series had to offer – and yet because we know the Burn is coming in the future, it almost doesn’t matter what Picard and his friends did.
Other Star Trek productions – like Picard’s high-stakes third season – are also affected by Discovery’s post-apocalyptic setting.
You can look at this problem in two ways.
Firstly, we know in the back of our minds that the Federation will survive – no matter how high the stakes may be in a future project. When Admiral Picard was staring down Vadic and the Borg-Changelings, we knew that, somehow, they’d prevail and Starfleet would win the day. This is the basic problem many prequels have; it was present in multiple episodes of Enterprise, for example, even when that show was at its best.
Secondly, anything our heroes do is rendered somewhat impotent – or at least it’s tainted because we know that, no matter how hard they may work to save the day, the Burn’s gonna happen anyway. Earth and Vulcan will leave the Federation, dilithium will be in short supply, the galaxy will be in ruins, and it will be decades before rebuilding can begin in earnest. Any future story set in the prime timeline – whether it’s Strange New Worlds with its Gorn conflict, Picard’s battle against the Borg, or whatever happened at the end of Prodigy that I still haven’t seen – is a direct prequel to the Burn and the events of Discovery’s third season. Knowing that, even on a subconscious level, is a constraint on any story that aims to raise the stakes.
A Starfleet officer and a Gorn in Strange New Worlds Season 2.
Star Trek exists in – to use a modern term – a persistent shared universe. With the exception of the Kelvin films, which are off to one side, every other show and film exists in the same timeline, and no other series until Discovery has done so much to change the trajectory of that timeline for all of the others. By leaping forward by centuries, and then enacting this massive, galaxy-altering event, Discovery’s writers definitely left their mark on Star Trek. But like a crudely-graffitied penis on the wall of a bus shelter, it’s not exactly a mark that the rest of us wanted to see.
If Discovery existed in a vacuum – as it arguably did at the start of its first season – then perhaps I could understand this change a bit more. It would still be a massive change, and it would still be a constraint on future episodes in a way no other storyline arguably has been. But at least if Discovery were the only Star Trek show in town, racing into the future and depicting an event on this scale would’ve been more understandable and less… selfish.
Concept art of the USS Shenzhou from Discovery’s first season. Image Credit: Frogland Archive
Discovery’s third season was in production alongside Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, Section 31, and also while pre-production work was happening on the pitch for what would eventually become Strange New Worlds. The show’s producers and writers went out of their way to assure fans that Discovery remained in the prime timeline – and that, by extension, the world they were building in Season 3 is the ultimate destination for the prime timeline. And then, either ignorant of the impact it would have or not caring about it, they went ahead and wrote a story that not only altered the entire galaxy for their own show and any potential spin-offs, but for every other Star Trek show, too. Everything from Strange New Worlds to Prodigy became, by default, a prequel to Discovery. And because Discovery’s writers don’t do half measures, they went all-in on the Burn – devastating the entire galaxy, basically ending the Federation as a faction for decades, and utterly transforming Star Trek in the process.
In order for there to be a post-apocalyptic setting (which Discovery largely ignored after the first couple of episodes of Season 3) there had to first be an apocalyptic event. Because Discovery has never turned down the tempo or lowered the stakes, this event naturally had to impact not just the ship and crew, nor even the Federation, but the entire galaxy. And the consequence of this choice is that every subsequent Star Trek production, no matter how hard they try to ignore it, will take place in a pre-Burn galaxy. The Burn is locked in; it’s the direction of travel for the Federation and Starfleet. Not only is that a massive constraint on future stories… it’s also incredibly depressing for a franchise that has always been about a hopeful and optimistic depiction of humanity’s future.
Slaves at an Emerald Chain scrapyard in the 32nd Century.
When we talked about “head canon” a few weeks ago, I argued that it might be better for Star Trek as a whole to quietly push Discovery’s far future into an alternate timeline. That doesn’t mean abolishing it altogether, but if a future episode – say in the upcoming Starfleet Academy series – were to incorporate that… I think it would be for the best. Star Trek, in my view, ought to do more with the 25th Century setting established by Picard, but the Burn and Discovery’s post-apocalyptic future hangs over any potential new shows or films right now.
Speaking of Starfleet Academy, what does this all mean for the upcoming spin-off?
A series set at Starfleet Academy has been talked about for decades. Gene Roddenberry had the idea originally; his version of the show, as conceptualised in the late ’60s, would’ve seen Kirk and Spock meeting for the first time. Picard’s second season also teased us with a glimpse of the Academy around the turn of the 25th Century – and Prodigy also included similar themes in its second season. But this version of Starfleet Academy has been conceived as a spin-off from Discovery, not only set in the same time period but also bringing in several regular and recurring characters. The likes of Reno, Admiral Vance, and Tilly will be joining the show from Discovery.
The Tillman Water Reclamation Plant and Japanese Garden was the filming location for Starfleet Academy during The Next Generation era. Photo Credit: City of Los Angeles/L.A. Times
I could spend the next few paragraphs lamenting Starfleet Academy’s place in the timeline and explaining why I think it’d work better in the late 24th or early 25th Century. But let’s not do that, eh? Instead, let’s talk briefly about how Starfleet Academy could be more successful with this post-apocalyptic setting than Discovery was.
First of all, let’s try to move back toward episodic storytelling. Look at what Strange New Worlds is doing – it’s possible to mix standalone stories with season-long arcs, and that blend works so much better than anything Discovery or Picard did. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a villain or a big, explosive storyline, as Strange New Worlds has repeatedly proven. It would be so much closer to what Star Trek has been in the past – and, I would argue, much closer to what fans want to see from this franchise.
The cast and crew of Starfleet Academy – the series is already in production.
Next, if Starfleet Academy is going to be set in this post-Burn era, the show really needs to lean into that in a way that Discovery didn’t. The show’s blurb talks about how the Academy is re-opening for the first time in decades… so that needs to be a big storyline. As the galaxy begins the slow process of recovery and getting “back to normal” after decades of decline, devastation, and depression, what does that mean for the new cadets, their families, their instructors, and their homeworlds? How has the environment these kids grew up in impacted their lives? Star Trek often does storytelling by analogy – so this could be a way to examine the real-world impact of the covid pandemic on education, just as an example.
Finally, I’d like to see an examination of the consequences of this galaxy-wide event on at least one other faction. Perhaps Starfleet Academy’s villain – who will be played by veteran actor Paul Giamatti – could be a member of a familiar race or faction seeking revenge for the Burn’s impact on his homeworld. At the very least, the Burn and the devastation it caused should be a significant factor in explaining who this character is and what motivates them. Having to survive in a broken, shattered world takes a toll – and that could explain why this villain is as bad as he is.
Paul Giamatti (Billions, John Adams, etc) will play a villainous character in Starfleet Academy.
Discovery did very little of that. Most of the show’s villains in Seasons 3, 4, and 5 weren’t bothered about the Burn or the post-apocalyptic landscape. The only exception, really, was Zareh; I at least felt that – over-the-top though he was in some respects – he was shaped by the world he inhabited. The rest? Generic, scenery-chewing bad guys who could’ve easily been part of a totally different story set in another era – or another franchise, come to that.
I don’t think Starfleet Academy can really “save” Discovery. By that I mean I don’t think we’re going to look back at the Burn and Discovery’s take on this post-apocalyptic setting after a couple of seasons of Starfleet Academy and re-frame it or change how we think about it. But there is potential, if I’m being as optimistic as I can be, for the new series to make more of this setting than Discovery did, and to perhaps use the post-apocalyptic tone in a different and more successful way, a way better-suited to the environment that the Burn and its aftermath created.
Captain Burnham and Academy cadets.
At this point, you can probably tell that I’d never have given the green light to a storyline like the Burn if I’d been in charge of the Star Trek franchise in the late 2010s! A post-apocalyptic tone clashes in a fundamental and irreconcilable way with Star Trek, taking away one of the franchise’s core beliefs and the main way it differentiates itself from other sci-fi properties. Even if the storytelling in Seasons 3, 4, and 5 had been stronger, this transformational change to what Star Trek is would have still been a hurdle; even the best narrative concepts and ideas that I can think of would’ve struggled.
But the truth is that, while Discovery did manage some solid episodes after arriving in the far future, the main story arcs weren’t all that spectacular. The Burn itself was a frustrating mystery that had too many dead ends and red herrings, and storytelling after Season 3 completely sidelined not only the Burn but the post-apocalyptic environment that it left in its wake. Discovery’s writers, in a rush to do other things and tell different stories that mostly focused on one character, didn’t do anywhere near enough to justify the Burn and the massive impact it had on the world of Star Trek.
Burnham and the crew on a promotional poster for Season 3.
In one of the first pieces I ever wrote here on the website, back in January of 2020, I warned that a post-apocalyptic setting might not be the right choice for Star Trek. But I gave Discovery a chance to impress me and to do something with that idea that I might not have been expecting. Unfortunately, I don’t think the show really did that. Most of its storylines – both big and small – didn’t need a post-apocalyptic setting to work, and the setting itself fundamentally altered Star Trek – not only for Discovery, but in a way, for every other show, too. One of the core tenets of Star Trek since its inception had been that humanity could overcome the struggles of today and build a better future. Discovery took that better future and upended it – really without a good reason or a narrative that justified something of that magnitude – and in doing so, changed the entire franchise. Sadly, I feel this was a change for the worse.
“Post-apocalyptic Star Trek” was wrong in principle and wrong in practice. It misunderstood why themes of hope and optimism worked in the franchise in the first place, it took away one of the foundations upon which successful Star Trek stories had been built for more than half a century, and it seems to have come about from an unfortunate mix of corporate leaders wanting to jump on a successful trend and writers who thought they were smarter and more creative than those who came before them. While Discovery didn’t abandon or lose sight of the themes of optimism and hope that had been so important to the franchise, it bastardised them and used them in completely different – and too often ineffective – ways.
Discovery’s writers and producers chose a post-apocalyptic tone beginning in Season 3 – and it didn’t work.
Moreover, “post-apocalyptic Star Trek” was executed poorly. The Burn – the event that caused all this devastation – unfolded in a frustrating way in Season 3, and I got the sense that for more than a hundred years, everyone in Starfleet had just been sitting on their hands as the world crumbled, waiting for Michael Burnham: Chosen One™ to swoop in, provide all the answers, and save the day. The Burn and its aftermath was then largely ignored in Seasons 4 and 5, despite offering the series – and the franchise – a chance to tell some genuinely interesting stories that could’ve expanded our understanding of this far future setting. By refusing to lean into the post-apocalyptic idea, Discovery’s writers failed to take advantage of the storytelling potential they had created.
Next, “post-apocalyptic Star Trek” impacts the rest of the franchise – from The Original Series to Picard. All of these shows now take place in a pre-Burn world, changing the way we understand them and perceive them on repeat viewings. For new Star Trek stories produced in the years ahead, this is going to be a lot worse because they’re basically all prequels to Discovery and its post-apocalyptic vision of the future. That knowledge challenges future stories and puts a brake on them in a way we haven’t really seen before.
All of Star Trek (except for the Kelvin films) now takes place in a setting we know is bound for an apocalyptic disaster.
Finally, “post-apocalyptic Star Trek” is likely going to be a constraint on Starfleet Academy. I want to be hopeful and optimistic about that series – and I have no doubt that, just like Discovery, there will be at least some fun and creative episodes in the mix. But the backdrop to the show is still a galaxy devastated by the Burn, and I don’t really have confidence in the current production and writing team at Paramount when it comes to doing something meaningful with that. If Starfleet Academy only pays lip service to Discovery’s post-apocalyptic world before racing off to do another “the entire galaxy is in danger!” story, it’ll feel like a waste. If that’s the kind of story the show’s writers want to tell, why not set it in a different time period that might be better-suited to that kind of story?
At the end of the day, a post-apocalyptic setting works for some stories and doesn’t for others. For the stories Discovery’s production team wanted to tell, it just wasn’t necessary for the most part – especially not after Season 3. Unlike other one-off ideas in Star Trek that the franchise has been content to brush aside, this one was so transformative and so utterly changed what Star Trek’s galaxy looks like that walking away from it isn’t possible. There just doesn’t seem to have been any kind of plan for where to take the series after Season 3 or how to use the post-apocalyptic setting to tell stories that wouldn’t have been possible in other iterations of the franchise.
Michael Burnham and the USS Discovery.
So let’s answer the question I posed at the beginning: what went wrong? Fundamentally, “post-apocalyptic Star Trek” wasn’t a good idea as it deviated too far from the franchise’s foundations and roots. It was executed poorly, with most stories either ignoring the post-apocalyptic setting outright or not using it to inform characters or narrative beats. And it relegates any future production set after The Next Generation era but before Discovery’s third season to the status of a prequel, with all of the problems that can bring.
I don’t hate Discovery. There are some genuinely great episodes in the mix, including after the show shot forwards in time. Coming Home, for example, really hits a lot of the emotional notes that it aimed for, especially in the scenes and sequences set at Federation HQ and around Earth. Face the Strange was creative and fun, and a story like Choose to Live felt like classic Star Trek in the best way possible. But given how the show didn’t lean into this post-apocalyptic setting in a big way, devastating the Federation, Starfleet, Earth, and the entire galaxy just doesn’t sit right. It didn’t come close to finding a narrative justification, and given the scale of the change and the resonating impact it will continue to have… that’s not good enough.
Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-5 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available. The series is also available on DVD and Blu-ray. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is in production and will premiere on Paramount+ in the future. A broadcast date has not yet been announced. The Star Trek franchise – including Discovery and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
The first part of this review is free from story spoilers. The end of the spoiler-free section is clearly marked.
Well this is a bit of a rarity for yours truly: reviewing a film while it’s actually new and still relevant! I recently sat down to watch Netflix’s The Electric State, a film that had been on my radar for a little while. If you know me, you’ll know that I always like to give new sci-fi and fantasy adaptations a chance… and while The Electric State was imperfect and took a while to find its feet, the film managed to hit at least some of the right notes for me.
Let’s start with what I didn’t like. We’ll get into a bit more detail if you stick around for the spoilery portion of the review, but in brief… the two main acting performances weren’t spectacular. Chris Pratt seems to have become omnipresent in what’s occasionally termed “genre” cinema, and the best thing I could really say about him in The Electric State is that his performance was workmanlike. He turned up, churned out a passable performance, cashed his cheque, and that was it. I didn’t see much passion from him, or really any indication that he cared much about the role or the story. It was fine. But for the benefit of Netflix and other studios: you guys know other actors exist, right? Try someone else sometime… they might do a better job.
Chris Pratt in The Electric State.
I don’t like to pick on younger performers too much, so I’ll say this: Millie Bobby Brown was the lesser of The Electric State’s two leads. There were moments in her performance that captured some of the feelings and emotions that the Russo brothers wanted the film to convey… but there weren’t as many of them as the role really needed. Some of Michelle’s biggest scenes – moments where I should’ve been on the edge of my seat or bawling my eyes out – just didn’t stick the landing, and unfortunately that’s due more to the performer than the writing or direction. I don’t doubt that Brown was genuinely invested in the role, but I think it took her to the edge of her capabilities… at least for now. She’s definitely got room to grow in the years ahead, and I hope The Electric State will be a film to look back on in a few years’ time to see how far she’s come.
The Electric State was juggling quite a few characters, meaning there was no shortage of storylines to cram in – along with some of the film’s loftier concepts and ideas that we’ll talk about later. As a result, I felt several critically-important moments were rushed, with not enough development given to key characters nor enough time for events to unfold naturally. It takes time for people – humans and robots – to warm up to one another, to share ideas, and to commit to working together… but The Electric State, on too many occasions, didn’t have enough time to do the work. This left some scenes feeling blitzed through, while in others, characters seemed to act out of turn or without detectable motivations.
Directors the Russo brothers with star Millie Bobby Brown.
I’ve said this more than once in other reviews, but perhaps for a younger audience – raised on short-form videos – that kind of hectic pacing might work. You’ll have to check out other reviews from younger folks to see if that’s the case! But for this old critic, I’m afraid that I needed to spend a little more time with some of the characters at those moments; going from “we’ve just met” to “let’s team up and save the world” needs more than just lip-service if I’m going to really buy into it.
On a more positive note, the film’s core story was great – and if the worst thing I can say about the main narrative is that I wish I could’ve seen it play out at a more reasonable pace, that isn’t the worst thing in the world. It just means that, for me, some scenes and characters needed a bit more work. The bare bones of the story were there – and it was a strong, solid, and potentially quite emotional narrative. I could feel, hiding just beneath the surface, some of those character moments and narrative threads… and it’s a tad frustrating, more than anything else, that they didn’t get the deeper, fuller exploration that they deserved.
A trio of characters in a promotional still.
And perhaps that’s The Electric State in a nutshell – if Mr Peanut will excuse the pun. It was a film that had a genuinely good story… but it fell short of being great for the reasons outlined above. That doesn’t make it a bad film by any stretch, and I could see myself watching it again one day. But it’s a little disappointing that some of these ideas, characters, and storylines were held back or cut short. Perhaps The Electric State would’ve worked better as a miniseries – say, five or six hour-ish episodes – instead of a two-hour film.
The film’s soundtrack was fantastic, and I enjoyed some classic hits like Judas Priest’s Breakin’ The Law and Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive, as well as reinterpretations of Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey and Wonderwall by Oasis. There were some truly great songs in the mix, and they were paired well with different moments in the film. The score was also fantastic – composer Alan Silvestri, who has also worked on titles like The Polar Express and Ready Player One – did a great job.
Michelle and Keats.
I don’t like to put a number on my reviews. One person’s idea of a seven out of ten might not be the same as another’s, and I think too many people skip over the actual review and just want to see numbers! But if you want to know if The Electric State is right for you, here’s what I’ll say: if you already have a Netflix subscription and you want to check out a different sci-fi title, you’ve got nothing to lose by firing it up. I would caution that it took me a while to fully get invested in The Electric State due to some of the issues outlined above, but once the film found its footing I was content to watch until the end. Would I be happy if I’d bought an entire month of Netflix purely to watch The Electric State, though? I think that’s a harder sell, to be honest with you.
Up next we’re going to talk about the plot in a little more detail. If you want to go into The Electric State un-spoiled, this is your warning to jump ship! If you’re still reading, let’s jump headfirst into the spoiler section of the review!
The film’s poster.
This is the end of the spoiler-free section. There will be story spoilers for The Electric State from here on out.
There are a couple of interesting real-world analogies that The Electric State was playing with – but I don’t think the pace of the film really managed to do justice to either. As I said above, a miniseries might’ve been a better fit for this story, because some of these potentially-interesting ideas about technological dependence, escapism, and abusive corporations deserved more time in the spotlight. In a stronger film, these ideas could’ve been key parts of the story; in The Electric State, they were basically just a backdrop for the adventure to play out in front of.
The neurocasters are a perfect metaphor for today’s smartphones, and the depiction of neurocaster addicts in The Electric State felt, in a couple of places at least, hauntingly accurate. How often do we hear about so-called “smartphone zombies” walking off bridges or into traffic, or even just bumping into people while lost in their own little worlds? The film’s message about putting down our devices, connecting with one another in real life, or even just – to borrow a Gen Z term – going outside to touch grass had potency. Unfortunately, this aspect wasn’t in focus for long enough to be as impactful as it should’ve been, and other storylines quickly overtook it.
The neurocasters could’ve been a timely metaphor.
And it’s a shame, because the time is right for a metaphor like this. There is value in a story that touches on themes of technological dependence and escapism – and I know from my own life that I spend too much time staring at a screen. The Electric State wanted to hold up a mirror to today’s society and say “look!” But it didn’t have enough time to really make this idea stick.
The same was true of the film’s corporate angle. Maybe I’m allowing current events to colour my reading of Sentre and Ethan Skate… but there was something in the presentation of this corporation and its shady leader that felt timely. A “big tech” company doing unethical things while putting on a friendly face in public… I mean, that hits close to home, right? Stanley Tucci was pitch-perfect in the role of Skate, by the way; he really made my skin crawl. And in this case, I mean that as a compliment!
Stanley Tucci played the villain exceptionally well.
I mentioned pacing earlier, and there were too many scenes in The Electric State that felt cut down or that I would’ve wanted to see expanded. Michelle’s encounter with the Cosmo robot, their first meeting with Keats and Herm, Mr Peanut’s colony of robots… all of these seemed to race by, and unfortunately, there was a lot left on the table (or the cutting-room floor). As a result, too many characters seemed to act unnaturally, being willing to team up when two seconds ago they’d been adversarial, or leaving their motivations unexplained. There was no clear explanation for why the Butcher’s drone – which had been crushed in a cave-in – could somehow be remotely re-activated without any kind of mechanical maintenance, no real explanation for why Keats didn’t abandon Michelle after he cost her his entire business, and so on.
Some characters felt less like real people than bare archetypes. Michelle’s foster father seemed to be “evil for no reason,” in line with some depictions of step-parents in old children’s stories. The doctor – the one who aided in Chris’ escape – also didn’t really have a lot of personality, though at least his motivation of wanting to do something to help a child in danger was understandable. I know I keep coming back to this idea, but a miniseries (or even just two films instead of one) could’ve lingered on some of these characters a bit longer, fleshing them out – and by extension, giving some more depth to what could feel like a pretty shallow world.
We needed to spend a bit more time with characters like Dr Amherst.
The idea of an artificial intelligence going rogue isn’t new, and we’ve seen it countless times in sci-fi. But because of The Electric State’s depiction of brightly-coloured robots based, at least in part, on fictional characters we’re familiar with, there was a bit more to it. The film also released at a moment where AI has been in the spotlight, with more and more folks using and becoming dependent on AI tools to do everything from homework to the business of government! Fears of rogue AI are nothing new, but The Electric State had at least a visually different – and occasionally striking – take on this idea.
Something we don’t always get in stories about robots turning against humanity is a peaceful outcome – and The Electric State offered a glimpse of what that could look like. Both sides started to see that there could be good in the other; that there might be a way to work together to achieve a lasting peace. Again, in the context of our troubled world, that isn’t a bad story to tell. However, this storyline also wasn’t all it needed to be to really bring that message home.
Is peace between humans and sentient robots possible?
At the core of the story were two character pairs: Keats and Herm and Michelle and Chris. Keats and Herm’s story of being on opposing sides of the war, only to end up together was a cute idea – but one I wish we could’ve seen more of. The Electric State wasn’t shy with its flashbacks, so why not flash back to the battlefield and show us, rather than just tell us, what happened to the two of them? Seeing it rather than just hearing about it would’ve been more impactful.
As for Michelle and Chris, there was a sweetness to a sister doing everything she could to help her brother. With this storyline being the film’s core – both narratively and emotionally – it was the most important one for The Electric State to get right. As above, I don’t think Millie Bobby Brown was outstanding in the role of Michelle; her best scene was probably the one at the mall where she, Cosmo, and several other robots were wordlessly watching the old cartoon. The young performers did their best, I have no doubt, and criticising the on-screen chemistry between them would feel a bit harsh. What I’ll say instead is that there were some good moments and some less-good moments on this side of the story. At times, it could feel like heavy lifting to remain fully invested in Michelle’s story.
Chris and Michelle in a flashback.
I touched on this above, but the designs of some of the robots were really interesting and made for a fun visual presentation. Inspired in part by the animatronics at Disney World and other theme parks, there were some genuinely neat designs in the mix. Cosmo – the robot inhabited by Chris – was perhaps the most important one to get right, and I think the animators and designers did a good job. A lot of the robots also looked dirty and decaying after years without maintenance, and that definitely came across.
One important point that I think The Electric State would’ve benefitted from explaining is why Cosmo couldn’t talk but every other robot we met could. I guess there was supposed to be some limitation – that Cosmo only had a handful of pre-programmed phrases – but this wasn’t really explained, and when we met a whole community of robots who could all talk much more freely… it felt a bit odd. The idea was interesting, and limiting Chris’ ability to communicate with Michelle served a purpose. But… it also meant that this pairing relied even more on Michelle to talk and emote, which wasn’t always the film’s strongest suit as we’ve already covered.
Chris seems to have had the bad luck of possessing the only robot in this world without the power of speech.
The Elecrtic State is supposedly set in 1994, and I guess Netflix was hoping that there’d be a lot of nineties nostalgia floating around to entice viewers. As someone who grew up in the ’90s… I didn’t really get much of a nostalgia blast from the film. There were some moments, sure: Sentre’s video presentation with ’90s-inspired graphics, some of the cars and vehicles on the road, the mall setting that would likely be half-closed today, and old PCs sporting CRT monitors and Windows 3.1 all spring to mind. But for a film that seemed to be pitching itself on its ’90s setting… I really didn’t feel all that much of it in the finished product.
Oh, and speaking of the nineties: that clip at the beginning of Bill Clinton? The voice was fine, but the ex-president’s face seemed to be very amateurishly pasted into the scene, and it didn’t look great. Visuals in The Electric State were generally good, but that moment wasn’t!
I liked this retro presentation of the neurocaster from the beginning of the film.
So that was The Electric State. It’s unlikely to win any awards, but it was okay for what it was. There’s plenty of room for new adaptations in a sci-fi genre that’s drowning in established franchises, reboots, and sequels, and I’m genuinely happy that Netflix gave the green light to a project like this. For my money, I’d be content to re-watch The Electric State in the future. I don’t think the film hit all of the high notes its directors were hoping for, and there are some limitations to the story and a couple of the key performances. But The Electric State wasn’t a terrible film.
I’ll be curious to take a look at the visual novel that the film is based on and see how different it is and how many changes were made. I stand by what I said earlier: this story, the one presented in the film, would’ve worked better if it had longer to play out. Netflix is well-known for its big-budget series… and perhaps expanding this story to five or six episodes instead of a single film would’ve been to The Electric State’s benefit.
Oh well!
The Electric State is available to stream now on Netflix. The Electric State is the copyright of Netflix and/or AGBO and Skybound Entertainment. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the Star Trek franchise.
We’ve recently talked about some of my Star Trek “head canon” – i.e. theories and ideas I have about Star Trek that aren’t confirmed on screen, but make sense to me! Click or tap here to check out that piece, by the way… I talk about things like cloaking devices, the Borg, and more. If that article was about things in Star Trek that aren’t canon but should be, then today we’re gonna do the exact opposite! These are ten Star Trek storylines that I fully believe should be non-canon.
Before we go any further, a couple of important caveats. First of all, this is a controversial subject! As Trekkies, we all have different opinions about what makes a fun and successful Star Trek story… and that’s okay. There should be enough room within the Star Trek fan community for differences of opinion and disagreement without spiralling into arguments. Everything we’re going to talk about is the entirely subjective opinion of one Star Trek fan, and I’m well aware that my opinion will be the minority one in some cases. As I’ve said before: no theory or opinion is worth getting angry or worked up over!
Early concept art of the Enterprise-D. Image Credit: Forgotten Trek/Frogland Archive
It should go without saying, but none of these stories or episodes will ever actually be “removed” from Star Trek’s canon. The title is really a tongue-in-cheek way of me saying that I either dislike a particular storyline or feel that its presence in the broader Star Trek universe is a stumbling block for other narratives that I prefer. This isn’t like that awful clickbait article that did the rounds a few months ago claiming that “Discovery is non-canon now!!1!” This is just for fun; a thought experiment for people like us who like to spend a bit more time with the Star Trek franchise after the credits have rolled.
With all that being said, if you aren’t in the right headspace to get into some potentially controversial Star Trek topics, this is your last chance to nope out!
Let’s jump into the list.
Storyline #1: The destruction of Romulus. Star Trek ’09, Picard, Discovery, et al.
Romulus was destroyed by a supernova.
In Star Trek ’09, the destruction of Romulus was kind of haphazardly thrown in as a way to justify Spock’s involvement in the story and tee up Nero as a villain. And at the time that film was being written, I guess it’s not unfair to say that a full-scale revival of the Star Trek franchise on the small screen seemed beyond unlikely! But after Star Trek was brought back and returned not only to the prime timeline but to the late 24th Century (and beyond), the destruction of Romulus has proven to be a difficult storyline for subsequent productions to navigate.
Picard was the first to pick up this story thread in its first season, showing a few flashbacks to Admiral Picard and his Romulan rescue plan. Romulan refugees also cropped up in Season 1… but the show didn’t really know what to do with them or how to handle the Romulans as a whole after the loss of their homeworld. The character of Elnor could’ve been a great point-of-view character for exploring this post-destruction Romulan Empire… but Picard’s writers had other ideas, and the character was abandoned.
Elnor was unceremoniously dumped before we could spend much time with him.
Discovery brought back the idea of Romulan-Vulcan reunification in the far future, and managed at least one creditable effort with that premise. But again, this story was a one-off and didn’t really go much further, even when Vulcan leader T’Rina became a recurring character. The fact that Romulus had been destroyed – centuries in the past from this vantage point – didn’t really come up in a big way, either, and I reckon Discovery’s Ni’Var storyline could’ve worked just as well without it.
The Romulans are one of Star Trek’s most iconic villains – perhaps in third place behind only the Klingons and Borg. To destroy their homeworld – the core of their empire – for what was essentially a throwaway scene and the backstory of an over-the-top villain… I dunno. It feels extreme, which Star Trek ’09 was in some ways. But any stories set after the late 24th Century are now constrained by this massive narrative beat, and will arguably miss out on one of the franchise’s best villains. The Romulans are certainly one of Star Trek’s most shadowy, clandestine factions, and damaging them so severely that it would take them decades if not centuries to recover, while also impoverishing at least some of their survivors… it places real constraints on future stories.
Storyline #2: Suspiciously human-like aliens on many different planets. The Original Series
These are meant to be aliens. From outer space.
When we reach the final frontier and explore strange new worlds… we’re going to meet aliens and totally new forms of life. We aren’t going to encounter an exact duplicate of Earth, a planet where everyone dresses like it’s Germany in the 1930s, or a planet where whose inhabitants – who don’t look even remotely alien – think they’re living in Ancient Rome. In a word… these old episodes of The Original Series (and some from The Next Generation, too) aren’t sci-fi enough!
There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this, of course: it was the ’60s, and The Original Series had a limited budget to work with. The show would use stages and props that had been built for other projects, or Paramount’s backlot, meaning explanations had to be found and aliens created to fit with those existing sets. There were also limitations to the prosthetics, puppets, and practical effects that could be designed and built, and with twenty-five episodes per season to write… some liberties had to be taken with the way aliens looked and behaved.
Kirk leads an away team to Miri’s planet: a clone or twin of Earth.
But for me… let’s just say I’ve always been less keen on these too-human alien societies. I think there’s an interesting head canon explanation (that I go into in more detail in a standalone piece that you can find by clicking or tapping here) that basically says that these are lost or forgotten human colonies from the early days of pre-Federation spaceflight. But that only works if you buy into my theory! As presented on screen, we’re meant to take these societies to be Earth-like aliens… and I just don’t think that works if we’re taking Star Trek seriously as a sci-fi universe.
Space is big and space is weird – so there are bound to be incomprehensible things out there for our heroes to encounter. But too often, especially in The Original Series, we’d get these “aliens” that were not only physically indistinguishable from humans, but whose societies and even planetary geography was identical to some part of human history, too. Don’t get me wrong, many of these episodes are a ton of fun and they’re part of what made Star Trek what it is today. But I just don’t think they have a place in the franchise any more… and they haven’t for decades.
Storyline #3: Most of the mission to 2024. Picard Season 2
Los Angeles as seen in Picard Season 2.
I’ve had a piece in my writing pile for a couple of years tentatively titled “Star Trek: Picard – The Movie,” in which I’m going to argue that Picard’s second season (which I generally didn’t like) would work so much better as a cut-down two-hour-ish movie rather than a ten-episode season. I’d keep the attack on the Stargazer and the arrival of the Borg, I’d keep the Confederation timeline and the Borg Queen’s corpse, and I’d keep Agnes’ assimilation. But after that I’d cut out almost all of the 21st Century stuff, including all the revelations about Picard’s past and Q being on his deathbed, streamline the story by saying Q’s real objective was to prevent the mysterious anomaly from destroying the Federation, and launch Picard and his friends back to the bridge of the Stargazer.
For me, Picard’s second season spent way, way too long wallowing in a boring 21st Century environment that robbed the story of basically everything that feels like Star Trek, and I didn’t enjoy it. There was the kernel of an interesting idea, with Picard having to confront childhood trauma. But that storyline completely fell apart, it didn’t expand our understanding of Jean-Luc Picard as a character in any meaningful way, and parts of it felt almost like “torture porn;” throwing Picard (and other characters like Raffi and Rios) into a series of traumatic events that served no real narrative function. Picard’s story just didn’t give us much of anything, Raffi’s was undone with seconds to spare at the end of the season, and Rios’ story was written in a weirdly contradictory way to facilitate his exit from the series.
The new USS Excelsior.
So I’d cut out all of that, and I’d streamline Picard’s second season into a much more reasonable two-hour movie. There’d still be time for what I said in my review was one of the best and most frightening presentations of the Borg that we’d seen in decades, there’d still be a way for Q to play a part, and we could hop over to the Confederation timeline for a little while to get a Mirror Universe-inspired alternate reality look at Picard and Earth. But the mission to the 21st Century could be seriously cut back to only a few minutes, with perhaps one objective for Picard and the gang: to ensure the Europa Mission launches on cue.
I really ought to finish writing up my longer piece on this idea, because I can’t fully do justice to it in just a few paragraphs! Stay tuned here on the website, because I daresay I’ll get around to it one of these days! For now, suffice to say that Picard’s random wandering through 21st Century Los Angeles (and a suspiciously California-like France) should be dumped.
Storyline #4: Captain Archer versus the Borg. Enterprise Season 2: Regeneration
Reed and Archer take on the Borg.
I genuinely enjoy Regeneration as a one-off episode, and I think it was a fun idea to bring the Borg into Enterprise… even if it was pretty obvious that the reason for doing so was to boost the show’s flagging ratings. But stepping back and thinking about what it means for the history of Borg-Federation contact, Regeneration really screws with a timeline that has already been meddled with!
There are three angles to approach this from, and all of them are bad. Firstly, we have what this storyline says about Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-E. First Contact made clear that Picard had ordered his ship hidden so as not to accidentally interfere with humanity’s first warp flight and the Vulcans’ arrival on Earth. But apparently they totally ignored, forgot about, or didn’t think to scan for Borg debris from the ship they’d destroyed. It presents Picard and co. as incompetent at best when it comes to cultural contamination, and given how meticulous we know he is… it just doesn’t track that there’d be all this debris left behind, including fully intact and functional Borg drones.
An assimilated shuttle versus the Enterprise.
Next, the Borg sent a message to the Collective in the Delta Quadrant, basically making the whole First Contact–Regeneration story a time-loop paradox. It also seriously muddles the question of how and when the Borg first encountered humanity. Was it when they received this message? Was it when they assimilated the Hansen family in the 2340s? Voyager had already messed with the Borg quite a lot thanks to Seven of Nine and the Borg Queen, so this additional complication was not helpful! Turning the story of humanity’s first contact with the Borg into this kind of paradox is not what I wanted to see.
Finally, there’s what this story says about Starfleet. Captain Archer encountered a race of cybernetic beings who sent a message to the Delta Quadrant. Years later, the Federation took in El-Aurian refugees whose planet had been attacked by the Borg. Yet for some reason, by the 24th Century, all knowledge of both of these events was suppressed, deleted, or just not taught at the Academy. Given how hard Archer and his crew had to work to stop a handful of drones, you’d think they’d have recorded the details of what they did and what they were up against so that future Starfleet explorers wouldn’t be starting from scratch. This is a typical “prequel problem” of the kind Enterprise created on more than one occasion. For all of these reasons combined, though, Regeneration’s 22nd Century Borg storyline joins this list.
Storyline #5: Warp 10 as a hard limit on travel. The Next Generation, Voyager Season 2: Threshold, et al.
The Enterprise-D jumps to warp.
Star Trek has been pretty inconsistent with how warp speeds and travel times are depicted. I have a head canon explanation that basically says Starfleet re-designates warp factors as newer and faster engines are created… but that only goes part of the way to plugging some of the apparent plot holes that almost six decades’ worth of stories have accumulated! Long story short, most Star Trek productions from The Next Generation onward present warp one as the speed of light and warp ten as an unachievable goal; a speed that would allow instantaneous travel anywhere in the galaxy. But that doesn’t fit with what we see on screen.
What is “transwarp?” Is it speeds faster than warp 10? The Borg seem to be able to travel beyond warp 10 through their transwarp network, potentially cutting the time needed to reach Earth from the fringes of the Delta Quadrant from decades to hours. Then there’s the notorious Voyager episode Threshold, which saw Tom Paris and Captain Janeway travel faster than warp 10 (though still not fast enough to reach Earth), before mutating into salamanders.
It’s Paris and Janeway…
I think it would be so much better if Star Trek dropped this idea that warp 10 is a kind of hard limit. Speeds beyond what we understand as warp 9.9999 are clearly possible, as we see the Borg, the Kelvan Empire, Arturis’ species, and many others are able to travel far faster than Starfleet. So why not drop this idea in favour of new warp factors – perhaps a show or film set in the Picard era could introduce the first warp 12 engine, for example, and Star Trek could grow from there.
Threshold as an episode can pretty much be written off, too! I don’t think anyone will miss it. Recent developments, like the Kelvin timeline’s transwarp beaming and Discovery’s spore drive, can also be used to travel great distances in a short period of time. There’s potential for future stories to pick up these threads, too.
Storyline #6: The Prophets are responsible for Sisko’s birth. Deep Space Nine Season 7: Image in the Sand + Shadows and Symbols
A photo of Sisko’s Prophet-posessed mother.
Star Trek has never believed in things like fate or destiny, and for me, this storyline about the Prophets deliberately conceiving Benjamin Sisko so he could one day become their emissary is dangerously close to that idea. It also turns Sisko’s entire arc across Deep Space Nine into a giant predestination paradox; he became the emissary because the Prophets created him. It challenges and undermines really his entire personality all for the sake of having a twist in a couple of episodes.
Part of what was interesting about Deep Space Nine was the intersection of religion and science. The Bajorans worshipped the “gods” of the wormhole, but Sisko and the rest of the Starfleet crew saw them as just another alien race to make first contact with. And Star Trek has always leaned more on the science angle than the religious whenever questions like this have come up; as the audience, we’ve always been on Starfleet’s side, too, seeing entities and aliens like these as another race in the galaxy – not deities who are responsible for guiding the lives of our heroes. Deep Space Nine ventured into spirituality in a big way, and until Seasons 6 and 7 mostly stayed on the right side of that line.
A high-definition render of the Bajoran Wormhole from the documentary What We Left Behind.
These episodes kicked off a longer story arc across Season 7 which also involved Kai Winn and Dukat. The conflict between the Pah-Wraiths and Prophets took on this Christian apocalyptic tone, with Sisko akin to an almost Christ-like figure, predetermined from before his conception to play a pivotal role in this struggle. While this story was interesting in its own right, it’s also inherently un-Star Trek in a significant way.
Because the Prophets exist outside of linear time, that gave Deep Space Nine’s writers a lot of wiggle-room. But for me, this paradox was a bridge too far. Star Trek can and should tackle religious themes, but in my view it works best when stories take a more detached and scientific approach to these topics.
Storyline #7: The Klingon-Augment virus. Trials and Tribble-ations, Enterprise Season 4, et al.
A Klingon affected by the Augment virus.
I don’t believe that every single aspect of Star Trek demands an on-screen explanation. The Klingons that Kirk met in The Original Series look different from those that we’d later see in The Motion Picture and from The Search for Spock onward – and that’s okay. Fans could make head canon explanations if they wanted, but there was just no need for an in-universe explanation of this change in prosthetic makeup… especially not one so convoluted.
The origins of this can be traced back to the otherwise excellent Trials and Tribble-ations – the Deep Space Nine episode made for the Star Trek franchise’s 30th anniversary. That story saw the crew of DS9 interacting with Kirk’s crew, using newly-developed editing techniques to integrate new characters with old footage. It was an incredibly creative episode and a fun story… but it came with a problem! At one point, a couple of characters make reference to the way Klingons look, asking Worf about it. This was the first on-screen acknowledgement that something had changed.
Worf’s line in Trials and Tribble-ations was the first on-screen acknowledgement of the aesthetic changes the Klingons underwent.
Enterprise, several years later, took this idea and ran with it, crafting an intricate (and pretty dumb) multi-epiosde arc that introduced the Klingon-Augment virus: a genetically-engineered creation that infected Klingons with human DNA, physically changing their appearances. In the writers’ minds, this “closed a plot hole,” but I would argue very strongly that it was one that never needed to be closed. Even if it did, and even if we desperately want to find a way to acknowledge the change in makeup used for the Klingons with an in-universe explanation… I just found this particular story to be convoluted and weak.
More recent Star Trek projects have, thankfully, quietly dropped this idea. The Kelvin films and Discovery admittedly had their own issues with re-interpreting the aesthetics of the Klingons, but Strange New Worlds – which is set in the 23rd Century and has featured the Klingons on more than one occasion – has basically reset the way they look. There’s no reason to bring up this idea again – and I sincerely hope Star Trek can continue to walk away from it!
Storyline #8: The Burn (as part of the prime timeline). Discovery Seasons 3-5
The Burn.
Discovery’s second season probably had some of its best individual performances, thanks to the inclusions of Captain Pike and Spock. But for me, most of Discovery’s best episodes actually came after the series shot forward into the far future, leaving behind much of what we’re familiar with in the Star Trek galaxy. Unfortunately, though, Discovery’s writers and creatives wanted the show to focus more on Burnham’s increasingly soap opera-like personal relationships and attempts at depicting characters overcoming traumatic events (that mostly didn’t work as intended). As a result, we didn’t spend as much time as I’d have liked with either the Federation or other factions in this potentially-interesting setting.
Another piece I’ll have to write up in full one day is whether Discovery’s “post-apocalyptic Star Trek” idea worked or even came close to working. But for now, I think we can at least make the case that the Burn is a pretty depressing future for the prime timeline, and that pushing Discovery’s far future into some kind of pocket universe or alternate reality wouldn’t be a terrible idea for the franchise as a whole.
Discovery never really did anything with its “rebuild the Federation” idea.
I’m hopeful that there will be more Star Trek on our screens in the years ahead – and that at least some of it will return to the 24th and early 25th Centuries. But any show or film using that setting (or really any pre-Burn setting) becomes, by default, a prequel to Discovery’s third season. That means, in the backs of our minds, we know that no matter what our new heroes might do, however they might find creative ways to save the day… the Federation and much of the galaxy is going to end up devastated in a few hundred years anyway. It puts a brake on future Star Trek stories in a way that we haven’t really seen before.
If Discovery had done more with the idea of rebuilding the Federation and restoring Starfleet values to the galaxy, that feeling would persist but it would be somewhat lessened, I feel. But because that didn’t happen, the Burn and its aftermath really are little more than fluff; background details for other, less-interesting stories to play out in front of. Given the sheer scale of the Burn and the devastation it wrought… that’s not good enough for me. I don’t want to remove Discovery’s latter seasons entirely, as there’s some good storytelling in there and some fun episodes. But finding some way to push it out of the prime timeline and into some kind of alternate reality… let’s just say it would be a net positive. Maybe in Starfleet Academy?
This is an uncomfortable one… but Neelix’s love for Kes in some early episodes of Voyager didn’t have the cutsey or romantic vibes that the writers may have been hoping for. The age gap between Neelix and Kes made the whole thing feel a bit… icky. Thankfully it wasn’t in focus for too long, because if it had been I genuinely think it could’ve ruined Neelix as a character.
Ocampans are a very short-lived species, and Kes was either one or two years old in Voyager’s premiere. The implications of that when considering Neelix’s feelings are just unpleasant, but even if you push that to the back of your mind, there’s no getting away from the fact that Kes is basically a teenager or young adult while Neelix is in the Talaxian equivalent of middle age.
A jealous Neelix.
We’d also see Neelix getting possessive of Kes, with episodes like Parturition and Twisted being prime examples of this. The contrast between Neelix’s usual jovial, friendly persona and the jealousy and anger he could feel has genuinely uncomfortable undertones. For anyone who’s ever been in a toxic relationship with a narcissistic or possessive partner, there are parallels in this presentation of the two sides of Neelix that could be triggering.
I wish we’d got to spend more time with Kes; in my view, she was unfairly dumped from Voyager. In recent years there’s been speculation as to exactly what happened behind-the-scenes, informed, at least in part, by actress Jennifer Lien’s struggles and issues. I don’t really want to get into all of that, but suffice to say that I would have happily kept Kes as part of Voyager’s roster if I’d had the option. But I’m glad that this Neelix romance angle didn’t stick around beyond the first couple of seasons – and that it was only present in a big way in a handful of stories.
Storyline #10: The Borg Collective has a leader. (And she’s weirdly obsessed with a couple of random humans for some reason). First Contact, Dark Frontier, et al.
The Borg Queen in her first appearance.
This could be one of my most controversial Star Trek “hot takes,” but… the Borg Queen kind of ruins the Borg. What made the Collective so scary in its first appearances was that it was akin to a force of nature; incomprehensible, unstoppable, and unable to be reasoned with. The Borg operated as one hive mind, with no individuals or individuality, united in common purpose: the pursuit of technology and an unknowable idea of “perfection.”
The Borg Queen was created because the producers/writers of First Contact believed that the film needed a villain for Picard and Data to wrangle with – a unique individual Borg who could have more personality than any drone. But this completely misunderstands what the Borg represented and what made them so frightening. In doing so, it robbed the faction of one of its most important and unique features. The Borg Queen’s apparent obsession with Picard, Seven of Nine, and humanity as a whole developed from this… and really takes a lot away from the original concept of the Borg as this incomprehensible, uncaring, unknowable adversary.
A different depiction of the Borg Queen.
A big part of many Star Trek episodes (so much so that it’s become a cliché) is “they were only trying to communicate!” Many of the franchise’s stories present our heroes with apparently hostile aliens or scenarios, only to learn later that what they wanted was to talk or be understood. Other stories introduce a villain who can ultimately be reasoned with, even if they initially seemed hell-bent on destruction. The Borg’s original presentation, prior to the introduction of the Borg Queen, precluded even the pretense of negotiation, compromise, or really any kind of meaningful communication. The Borg had one objective, and there was no way to dissuade them from it. They viewed humanity and the Federation as a resource, and nothing more.
By introducing a Borg leader, someone who has a unique personality (even though she claims to be a manifestation of the Collective; I’m not buying that based on how she comes across on screen) the most unique trait the Borg had has been erased. And what replaces it is little more than a generic “I’m evil for no reason and I love it” scenery-chewing bad guy. The Borg, prior to the Queen’s appearance in First Contact, were so much better, so much more frightening, and completely unique.
So that’s it… for now!
The Klingon monastery on Boreth.
We’ve talked about ten Star Trek storylines that should be non-canon… at least in my completely subjective opinion!
I hope this has been interesting. It’s certainly been a bit of fun for me to revisit some of these episodes and stories. Some, like Enterprise’s Borg episode, are totally fine in isolation… but start to create problems when you think about them in the wider context of the Star Trek franchise. Others, like Neelix and Kes as a couple, didn’t work from day one and I’d be happy to just pretend the whole thing never happened! None of these storylines will ever actually be “removed” from Star Trek’s canon, though, so if one of your favourites is on the list, don’t panic!
We’ve talked about questions of canon quite a lot in the past few weeks, and I’ve had a lot of fun writing about some of these subjects. My “Borg teasing” theory is something that I’ve been kicking around for literally decades, and I also had fun adding to my list of minor things in Star Trek that bug me! I don’t know what’s next – perhaps a longer write-up of one or two of the points on this list could make for a fun article or essay. Stay tuned, though, because there’s plenty more Star Trek to come here on the website in the weeks and months ahead!
Most of the TV shows and films referenced above are available to stream on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available. The Star Trek franchise is also available on DVD and Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including all episodes, films, and other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Futurama.
About a year ago, I took a look at Futurama’s eighth (or eleventh, depending on how we count things) season. I said in my review that a few episodes managed to win a chuckle here and there, but none were outstanding. This revived edition of Futurama still had a lot of work to do to justify its resurrection – something that was born in one of Disney’s corporate offices as executives scrounged around, desperate for content to add to Disney+ and hoping to successfully play the nostalgia card.
Futurama Season 9/12 is in the same vein – but less funny. In fact, I think I could count on one hand the number of times I laughed across the entire ten-episode season, which isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of what was once TV’s premiere sci-fi comedy series. Futurama has lost a step, and while it’s far from the only revived or rebooted show to fail at recapturing the magic… that doesn’t make me feel any better!
Futurama is back… for a bland and uninspired season.
Here’s the headline: I can’t say I hated any of the ten episodes this season. There were some moments of cringe humour – the kind that I personally can’t stand – and a couple of episodes that had clearly taken so long to produce that they felt way out of date. But despite the fact that I didn’t really find much of it to be all that funny, these episodes passed by inoffensively enough. They’d probably make for decently okay background viewing – the kind of thing I switch on while I’m distracted doing something else. There’s not a lot of content or story to get stuck into in really any of the episodes. This season is like the television equivalent of fast food; something to watch, but lacking in any real substance.
So while I’d definitely watch this batch of episodes again, it wouldn’t really be by choice. If I felt sufficiently bored and needed some background noise, they’d be fine for that purpose! But is that what fans want from Futurama? Is the series – which, in its prime, was one of the cleverest sci-fi shows around, and one of the funniest comedies, too – really just being relegated to this… slop? As corporations race to add ever more content to streaming platforms in a bid to retain subscribers, shows like Futurama are being butchered, turned into corporate-mandated fluff that executives can boast about to shareholders in their annual meetings. “Did you see how many fans came back to Disney+ for Futurama? That means we made a net gain of subscribers this quarter!” That’s why Futurama is back. And it shows.
Kif and Zapp.
I’d argue that this season fundamentally misunderstands not only what made the original Futurama so entertaining, but what a revived series should aim to be. This was a chance to tell new stories with characters fans came to know and love, but instead Futurama’s writers – almost certainly at Disney’s insistence – are trying to re-do the show’s “greatest hits.” Plot points are recycled, random characters from earlier episodes make cameos for no good reason, and even jokes are re-told in less funny, less entertaining ways. These last two seasons of Futurama should be a case study in how to completely misunderstand and overrate the importance of nostalgia as a driving force in entertainment.
As an example, the ship’s can opener – which causes Bender to sing uncontrollably and mangled him in the third season episode Bendin’ In The Wind – made a return… but not in any real way. A joke was made about Bender singing, another about the can opener being given its own quarters… but that was all. It was a reference to a funnier, stronger, and all-around better episode for no other reason than to say “hey guys, remember how good Futurama used to be?”
Concept art of Fry, Leela, Bender, and Amy circa 1998. Image Credit: Abrams Books/The Hollywood Reporter
And this didn’t just happen with jokes. A flashback to a young Hermes playing with blocks in the aftermath of a hurricane was a callback to How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back, only without any of the fun or emotional impact. Bender’s second trip to Mexico likewise lacked any of the charm of his first, and even flashbacks to Fry’s family in the 20th Century felt like little more than the show trying and failing to recapture the magic of better episodes.
All of these in-jokes, meta-humour, and self-referential moments came across less as fun little easter eggs for returning fans and more as callbacks to when the show was actually good. This is what I mean when I say the season overplayed its hand; little jokes and references here and there can, under the right circumstances, be fun, and fan service is not inherently a bad idea. But Futurama totally missed the mark on this occasion.
Remember when Futurama did that fun bureaucrat song in a much better episode?
I can’t help but feel that Futurama is taking the wrong lessons from the likes of Rick and Morty. Having originally inspired a whole new generation of sci-fi animated comedies, Futurama is now in the awkward position of trying to take storytelling styles and narrative concepts from them. Rick and Morty regularly breaks the fourth wall, references itself, and creates these meta-narratives that are funny – but messy. Futurama didn’t fully commit to that style, but this season tried to steal some of the trappings with almost no success.
Futurama doesn’t get the same leeway as the likes of Rick and Morty, which uses more violence, more sexual content, swearing, and so on. In that sense, Futurama feels more tame – but rather than lean into that, the show’s writers want their show to feel more “edgy.” But without being able to go further – perhaps constrained by Disney in a way that Rick and Morty isn’t – it just comes across as half-hearted… or half-arsed. The same is true of the show’s meta-jokes and self-referential humour: without being able to fully commit to being that style of show, Futurama can’t employ those moments effectively.
Could it be a visual metaphor for this season?
The series is in real danger of losing its identity. Futurama is unable to keep up with newer shows in the sci-fi animated space – shows that it inspired and that wouldn’t exist without it. It’s unable to fully emulate or copy them – and doing so would erase everything that makes Futurama feel like Futurama. But in an entertainment landscape that has changed massively in the quarter of a century since it debuted, Futurama can’t effectively do the same things it used to. Its attempt to mix a sci-fi setting with real-world parallels falls flat. Its episodic storytelling with character growth has plateaued and seemingly has nowhere left to go. Even its trademark mix of laugh-out-loud jokes with emotional moments that literally left fans in tears isn’t working any more. The jokes aren’t funny and the attempts at emotional storytelling feel thoroughly un-earned.
This is usually the part where I’d say something like this: “if the jokes and emotion landed for you, that’s great!” But I don’t think there are many Futurama fans in that camp. These two recent seasons feel so corporate and hollowed-out, so devoid of everything that made the original work feel special, and so utterly, irredeemably bland… that I really don’t know if anyone is loving Futurama any more. I think a lot of people will watch it and tolerate it – aside from a dated episode about NFTs and some jokes that were too cringe for my taste, there’s not much unpleasant about this season of Futurama. It goes down easy, as they say. But actually watching this season to enjoy what’s on offer? Is anyone out there doing that?
This episode’s NFT plot was out of date before it was even written.
Alright, let’s go through the episodes briefly and talk about which (if any) might graze the high bar of “yeah, I guess that one was okay.”
The One Amigo is a horribly outdated story about NFTs – the market for which tanked a solid two years before its July 2024 broadcast. Bender returning to Mexico felt like a significantly worse version of Lethal Inspection. That episode had genuine stakes, a great emotional core, and a twist. This one has Bender meeting a bunch of random Mexican stereotypes and no real ending. Seriously… Bender was “sacrificed” then, one scene later, was back at home just in time for the credits.
Up next was Quid’s Game, which honestly was just middle-of-the-road fluff. None of the characters ever felt like they were in danger, the flashbacks to Fry’s family were okay but didn’t really deliver much in terms of story or emotional weight. The twist – that Fry’s mother was secretly rigging the games so he’d win – was pretty obvious, and the return of Gedgie (from Season 6’s Cold Warriors) wasn’t particularly interesting, either.
Did you feel any of the characters were in danger?
The Temp called back to the episode Amazon Women in the Mood, setting part of its story in the aftermath of that episode. Though timelines aren’t something to be terribly concerned about in a show like Futurama, it was a little odd that The Temp repeatedly called attention to the twenty-three year time span. When characters don’t seem to age and the show appears to be mostly episodic with a floating timeline, it’s just a bit of a strange thing to bring up. The Temp was mostly okay, though, and the idea of a very forgettable person being accidentally abandoned was interesting.
Ah yes, a timely and delicate critique of bullfighting – that’s what Futurama needs. Or so the writers of Beauty and the Bug believed. We get it: bullfighting is outdated and cruel. But this episode added nothing to that conversation that hasn’t already been said, and it muddled its messaging with Bender’s quest to become a champion bug-fighter taking up much of the middle of the story. There wasn’t much nuance… and I just don’t see the point of a story like this.
A robo-matador in Beauty and the Bug.
AI chat bots have been in the news a lot – so one side of One Is Silicon, The Other Is Gold seemed pretty timely. But that Fyre Festival parody at the beginning? I mean, that was way too late to be biting and funny! Still, once the episode got going the idea of Leela falling prey to a chat bot was interesting, and the boys’ book club was surprisingly cute.
Attack of the Clothes annoyed me because it seemed to end on a cliffhanger… only for its story to disappear, never to be mentioned again. The world of “fast fashion” is, I will admit, not something I’m especially familiar with. But a story about not immediately disposing of things after one use could make sense. Attack of the Clothes, though, just felt like a vehicle for guest star Cara Delevigne. Some recent episodes of The Simpsons can be way too deferential to their guest stars, sucking up to them and showering them with compliments. Attack of the Clothes felt like that, at least in part. Is it fair to call it a good story concept ruined by a guest star who was a little too present?
Attack of the Clothes.
Planet Espresso wasn’t terrible at first, but it had that awful callback that I mentioned above, and also ended on another underwhelming cliffhanger. Are we ever gonna see those coffee aliens again? I doubt it – so why not finish the story in a more solid way? Having never met (nor even heard about) Hermes’ father, there wasn’t a lot for this episode to build on. I think the bare bones of the story had potential, but the emotional moments didn’t really stick the landing for me.
On a couple of occasions, Futurama has used one of these “three-stories-in-one” episodes to show off a range of different storytelling and animation styles. The Futurama Mystery Liberry was this season’s attempt to do that… but the animation was weirdly lacking, at least for me. There was an opportunity to really lean into different visual styles inspired by the comics and illustrations that the stories were drawn from, but that didn’t happen. The stories themselves, being less than ten minutes apiece, were pretty basic, but if you’re familiar with the likes of Nancy Drew and Tintin you’ll at least get most of the references. I thought it was a bit of a waste of guest stars LeVar Burton and Neil deGrasse Tyson, though.
LeVar Burton guest-starred in this episode – a play on his Reading Rainbow role.
Remember in the ’90s when everyone got obsessed with Beanie Babies? The writers of Cuteness Overlord do… and they thought it was worth making a timely critique of the phenomenon. I mean… do I even have to say it? There were echoes of the NFT episode here, too, which just felt repetitive, Amy seemed to act out of character in order to drive the story, and I just… I just don’t understand why you’d make an episode like this in 2024. In 1999, maybe. But now? The Beanie Baby fad died decades ago and you’d have to be my age or older to even remember it. What was the point?
In keeping with earlier seasons, Otherwise was this season’s attempt to end with an emotional sucker punch. But like last year, we seemed to spend most of our time following a different set of characters – who were all killed off at the end anyway. These parallel universe/alternate timeline stories really don’t have much to say, and given that these events will almost certainly not be brought up again in future… I just don’t feel much of an impact. There were some moments with Fry that came close to expressing the emotion that the episode wanted… but the ending wrenched most of that away.
The alternate dimension characters aboard their new ship.
So that was Futurama’s ninth or twelfth season. It’s hard to say I hated it given how plain and inoffensive most of it was. The worst I can say, really, is that references to things like NFTs and the Fyre Festival came years too late to be relevant – kind of like last season’s covid vaccine story. But on a deeper level, I really feel sad for Futurama. To be turned into this bland content slop just so Disney can play the nostalgia card amidst the “streaming wars”… I dunno. A show that was so influential that it basically created its own sub-genre deserves better than this.
There are two more seasons of Futurama to come – presumably later this year and in 2026. On current form, I don’t really expect to see the series improve significantly. I’d love to be proven wrong, and for the final two seasons to be a genuine return to form. But this revival feels so soulless and like such a misunderstanding of what viewers want and expect that I don’t have high hopes.
Futurama is available to stream now on Disney+. The series is also available on DVD and Blu-ray. Futurama is the copyright of 20th Television Animation, Hulu, and/or The Walt Disney Company. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: Beware of spoilers for the following Star Trek productions: The Next Generation Seasons 1-3, Voyager Seasons 4-7, First Contact, Enterprise Season 2, Prodigy Season 1, and Picard Seasons 1-3.
Let’s talk about everyone’s favourite Star Trek villain: the Borg Collective!
Okay, maybe that’s a tiny bit of an exaggeration! But the Borg are certainly up there as one of the Star Trek franchise’s most iconic and frightening villainous factions, and there’s no shortage of theories and speculation in the Star Trek fan community about how the Borg operate and what their methods and overall goals are. I thought we could touch on one aspect of that today.
I briefly outlined what I’m calling the “Borg Teasing Theory” in a post here on the website a couple of days ago. That piece was all about some of my personal head canon explanations of unseen, unexplained, contradictory, or vague things from across the Star Trek franchise – but I thought this particular theory warranted its own full article! Click or tap here to check out the rest of my head canon, if you’re interested in my take on the likes of warp factors and cloaking devices.
The Borg are coming!
So what’s the tl;dr of this theory? In brief: the two major Borg attacks on Earth during The Next Generation era – as depicted in The Best of Both Worlds and First Contact – weren’t 100% serious attempts to assimilate the entire planet or the Federation. They were, in a word, teases. The Borg Collective hoped to push Starfleet and humanity to develop new weapons, shields, scanners, and medical technology in the years after their incursions – which they would then be able to assimilate when they launched a full-scale invasion at some point in the future. In short: the attacks were not attempts at total conquest and were not intended to fully succeed at assimilating Earth.
We’ll get into detail in just a second, but before we go any further, I have a couple of important caveats. Firstly, all of this is the entirely subjective take of just one old Trekkie. If you hate this theory, think I’ve got it completely wrong, or feel I’ve misunderstood some key part of Star Trek that would invalidate it… that’s okay. None of this is canon or likely to ever be confirmed on screen anyway! Secondly, I’m not claiming to be the sole inventor of this theory. Other Trekkies may very well have come up with similar ideas independently, and I’m not taking credit for anyone else’s work or theories.
A Borg drone.
Finally, a word about fan theories. I like writing and I like Star Trek, so writing about Star Trek is a fun way for me to spend a little more time in this world. But no fan theory – not even one that seems totally plausible – is worth getting upset or worked up over. As I said a moment ago, none of this is canon and may very well be totally debunked in the future. Given the status of the Borg Collective after Picard Season 3 (and Paramount’s shaky finances), we may never get another Borg story anyway. But this is supposed to be a fun exploration of a theory I’ve had kicking around in my mind for decades, not something to take too seriously.
Phew, that was a lot! But with the caveats out of the way, it’s time to jump into the theory!
Let’s start by explaining what this “tease” is. As I outlined briefly above, I believe that the Borg were not fully serious or committed in their two attacks on Earth. My evidence for this is simple: on both occasions, the Borg sent only one single ship to Earth. A Borg cube can contain, depending on which episode we use as a source, up to 100,000 drones. Given the size of Starfleet, the number of ships at the Federation’s disposal, and even just the population of Earth itself (which could be somewhere in the region of 9-10 billion in the 24th Century) one ship and 100,000 drones doesn’t seem like a large enough invasion force.
A Borg cube hovering over Earth…
Assuming the Borg cube from either Wolf-359 or the Battle of Sector 001 managed to defeat Starfleet’s armada and Earth’s planetary defences, and was able to successfully transport down all of its drones, the logistics of assimilating such a large population don’t track. If Earth’s population is 10 billion and there are 100,000 Borg, that’s a ratio of 100,000-to-one – meaning each Borg drone would need to have a hand in the assimilation of 100,000 humans. With only a single ship, any ground invasion would be vulnerable to Starfleet regrouping and returning; the destruction of the cube would cut off Borg forces on the ground.
Despite jokes I’ve made before about Earth being undefended, it’s still the headquarters of the Federation, with Starfleet Academy and Starfleet HQ on the planet, too. There are going to be thousands of armed Starfleet security personnel, Federation HQ guards, Section 31 operatives, and others on the planet. Even if resistance was scattered at first, and the Borg were able to shut down Starfleet communications, resistance on Earth would be ferocious. To jump over to a different franchise for a point of comparison: look at the Reaper war in the Mass Effect series. The Reaper invasion of Earth was hampered at every turn by resistance fighters from all walks of life, led by the remnants of the Alliance military. There’s no reason to think a Borg attack on Earth wouldn’t lead to a similar resistance movement springing up, with armed civilians led by Starfleet personnel.
Even under extreme pressure, Starfleet tactical personnel would mount a significant resistance to any Borg invasion of Earth.
With the Borg preoccupied with a war of attrition on the ground, their sole vessel in space would be vulnerable. The cube might’ve been able to beat off Starfleet’s initial armada, but that was a hastily thrown together gaggle of whatever ships were on hand when the Federation realised what was coming. Ships were brought out of mothballs and unqualified officers were tapped to take command. With Starfleet being better-prepared and having time to regroup – while also calling on allies like the Klingons – round two against the cube would go a lot better!
So even if the initial attack was successful and the Borg managed to defeat a defence force and land drones on Earth, it would be a matter of time – days or perhaps a couple of weeks – before Starfleet would be back with a much larger fleet. The Borg cube may have beaten the Federation’s hastily-arranged defence ships, but the full might of Starfleet, combined with Klingons and other allies and backed up by tactical data gained from the earlier battle, would – in my opinion – have a strong chance of destroying the Borg’s only vessel in the system. After that, it’s just a case of landing as many troops with modulated phasers (and Klingon bat’leths) and mopping up the remaining drones.
Klingons wielding bat’leths could cut through a Borg army!
To me, this is the most likely outcome for both the Battle of Wolf-359 and the Battle of Sector 001. And the Borg, having studied humanity and the Alpha Quadrant, are undoubtedly aware of this. One ship, even maxed out with as many drones as possible, simply can’t assimilate Earth on its own – let alone expand the fight to the rest of the Federation and its allies.
But why do I think the Borg Collective has the resources to launch a bigger attack? Simple: take a look at the Collective in its Delta Quadrant home in Voyager. The Borg’s Unicomplex alone contained more than a trillion drones, with the entire Collective perhaps comprising quadrillions of Borg. There may be tens or hundreds of thousands of Borg cubes – not to mention other Borg outposts, space structures, and assimilated planets. The sheer scale of the Borg Collective is what makes it so powerful, so frightening, and such a dangerous opponent. So why would the Borg choose to attack Earth in such a small-scale way?
The destruction of the Borg cube in First Contact. Did the Borg plan for this outcome?
Given how powerful a single cube could be, a fleet of perhaps a dozen would make light work of anything Starfleet and its allies could muster. And with two million drones instead of just 100,000, the Borg’s ground offensive would be much quicker and would be more easily able to overcome any resistance. The assimilation of Earth could proceed much more smoothly – with only a minimal amount of extra investment from the Collective. For a faction with 10,000 ships, using twelve on this one task is barely a drop in the ocean. We’ve seen the Borg assimilate other Delta Quadrant races, like Arturis’ species from the episode Hope and Fear, using “overwhelming force.” One single cube is not, I would argue, the kind of overwhelming force needed to conquer Earth and the Federation.
So to be clear: this part of the theory states that the Borg have the means to easily overpower and outgun the Federation and its allies and achieve the task of assimilating Earth. They have no reason not to go all-in and fully commit to this invasion; they aren’t worried about loss of life, there’s no Borg economy to be damaged by building extra ships, and if their target is to fully conquer Earth and the Federation, they could do so with ease. But they don’t do that. Instead, on two separate occasions they’ve sent a single cube. Why?
The Enterprise-D battling a Borg vessel.
To answer that, we first have to consider what the Borg are and how they operate. The Borg are a hive mind, operating as one. They have assimilated – according to their own sources – at least 10,000 species across the thousands of centuries that they’ve existed. But because they’re one hive mind, they lack creativity. They lack inventiveness – and with that, we can infer that they don’t have the ability to create brand-new technologies any more.
The hive mind is adaptable, and having been introduced to something – say, a particular phaser modulation – the Borg can adapt. Adaptations are rolled out at transwarp speeds across the entire Collective, meaning that any Borg encountering that specific phaser modulation in future will be protected. But adapting to something isn’t the same as inventing – and this lack of creativity and inventiveness could be a problem for the Collective.
After being exposed to a new technology or weapon, the Borg can adapt.
So how does the Collective acquire new technology, then? If they don’t develop things themselves they must get them from somewhere, right? I mean, the Borg are more technologically advanced than the Federation and that didn’t happen by accident! The answer is simple: the Borg acquire everything from information to technology through assimilation.
This was their weakness when confronted with Species 8472. They couldn’t assimilate a single member of the species or one of their ships, so they were left blind and helpless. And this, I would posit, is the fundamental reason why they “tease” certain species – like humanity. We probably aren’t a unique case; I believe this is a tactic that the Borg will have deployed on countless other occasions against similarly creative and adaptable species. But it’s a tactic that the Collective knows can work to its advantage.
The Borg were unable to assimilate any member of Species 8472 or their technology – rendering them blind and ineffective against their attacks.
The objective is simple: by making a relatively small demonstration of their power, the Borg incite fear in their targets. This fear leads to huge investments in weapons, shields, starships, and the like… all of which the Borg want. On one hand, the Borg want to see if their target can find a weakness in the Collective and its technology so they can prevent anyone else from exploiting it in the future – basically rolling out a Collective-wide “patch” to fix any weaknesses or vulnerabilities that the target species may have identified. And on the other hand, the Borg want any species they target to have achieved their full potential – giving the Collective the best, newest technologies that the target could create. This is how the Borg – at least in my opinion – are able to acquire new technologies.
And this is what they’re doing to Earth, humanity, and the Federation at large. By launching these attacks, the Borg are pushing the Federation and Starfleet to develop new technologies, whether that’s weapons, ships, medical supplies, transporters, shields… the list goes on. Perhaps the second incursion was intended to see how far Starfleet’s new inventions had come, or maybe it was just a second “tease” to force Starfleet to keep working and keep inventing. Either way… it worked.
A Borg drone being killed by a phaser blast.
Why would the Borg target Earth, though? It’s not like they need Earth specifically for its location or resources, and Earth isn’t even close to the Borg’s native territory. The Borg are mostly in the far-off Delta Quadrant, though they may have colonies or outposts somewhat nearer to the Federation, such as on the El-Aurian homeworld. So the question remains: why Earth? When there are so many other planets and species in between the Borg’s home territory and the Federation, why jump halfway across the galaxy for an invasion?
We already know that the Borg don’t assimilate everyone they come across. In fact, the Borg can be downright picky – opting to ignore the Kazon, for instance, as they were deemed “unworthy” of being assimilated as they’d somehow detract from the Borg concept of perfection. It stands to reason that some species may be of more interest to the Borg – even those in a faraway part of the galaxy. I think the El-Aurians are a prime example: their homeworld, while nowhere near Earth, seems not to have been on the very borders of Borg space, either. Yet the El-Aurians were targeted – perhaps for their telepathic powers, or perhaps because the Borg considered them a threat. This is a species, lest we forget, that has tangled with the Q Continuum and forced them to the negotiating table. The same basic reasoning may apply to humanity.
The Borg deliberately targeted the El-Aurians (Guinan’s people), even though they may not have been anywhere near Borg space.
Humanity has to be one of the most resilient and creative species that the Borg have ever encountered. Humans were able to track a Borg vessel and develop technologies to keep themselves hidden from the Collective while studying them – this is what Seven of Nine’s parents, the Hansens, did in the 2340s. This may have been the Borg’s first encounter with a human… and their curiosity was piqued!
Then, not long after the assimilation of the Hansens, the Borg received a strange message. Originating two centuries ago in a far-flung part of the galaxy, it told the tale of a time-traveling sphere, a planet of spacefaring people, and a climactic battle. The Borg who survived the Battle of Sector 001 had crash-landed on Earth in the past, only to be awakened by humanity in the 22nd Century. Captain Archer and his crew were able to stop them – but not before they sent a message to the Collective in the Delta Quadrant. Between the message from the past and the assimilation of the Hansens, the Borg must’ve realised how significant Earth and humanity could be for the Collective.
A small group of Borg were able to signal the Collective in the 22nd Century.
After receiving this “blast from the past” transmission, assimilating the Hansens, or both, the Borg had humanity and Earth in their sights. But rather than launch a full-scale invasion in 2350 – years before the Enterprise-D’s encounter with a cube – the Borg took a more subtle approach. Firstly, they may not have been entirely certain of Earth’s location, instead sending ships to scout the Alpha and Beta Quadrants for signs of humanity and the Federation. Then, rather than attack straight away, the Collective bided its time, launching small-scale attacks on outlying colonies along the Neutral Zone to see what would happen.
By attacking both Federation and Romulan outposts (as seen in the Season 1 finale of The Next Generation), the Borg may have hoped to trigger a conflict between the two powers – before swooping in later to attack both of them. Or, perhaps more likely, this was the Borg’s first attempt to assimilate humans en masse to see if they were worth bothering with – and picking outlying colonies makes a lot more sense than rushing to Earth straight away. The Romulans may have been collateral damage, in that case.
The Borg destroyed multiple human colonies before attacking Earth.
In any case, the Borg determined that humanity was a worthwhile target – something that was only further confirmed by their encounter with the Enterprise-D a few months later. As an aside: Q may very well have saved humanity by his intervention in Q Who! I have a longer piece on this subject – which you can find by clicking or tapping here – but here’s the short version: the Borg knew about humanity and Earth years before Starfleet knew about them. By hurling the Enterprise-D into the path of a Borg vessel, Q gave Picard and the Federation valuable insight into the Collective, forewarning them of the attacks to come.
With the Borg determined to assimilate humanity, decisions had to be made about how to do so. The hive mind, operating as one, makes such decisions at light-speed, and after confirming humanity was a suitable target for assimilation, the Borg decided to “tease” the Federation, pushing them to design new weapons, shields, starships, medical devices, and so on… all so that the Collective could assimilate it later, adding to their perfection. This is how the Borg operate, and it’s why they chose to launch small-scale attacks against Earth instead of simply arriving en masse with overwhelming force.
Original concept art of the Borg. Image Credit: Frogland Archive/Forgotten Trek
From the Borg’s perspective, this approach is a win-win. Either their attack succeeds in full, with humanity and Earth being assimilated over a period of weeks or months, giving the Borg control of the planet and a staging-post for a larger-scale invasion of the Federation. Or it “fails” to achieve that objective, but in doing so provides the Collective with incredibly valuable tactical data on Starfleet, Earth’s defences, and so on, while also pushing the Federation to develop new technologies. The Borg want these technologies – either to “patch” vulnerabilities and weaknesses they may not be aware of or to add to their perfection.
There are real-world parallels. The Second World War led to the creation of modern-day computer technology, rocketry, and atomic power. The First World War led to huge advancements in flight, artillery, and motor vehicles. These are just a couple of examples from our own history of how war and devastation can lead to technological change. The Borg, I would argue, seek to artificially inflate the pace of technological advancement by baring their teeth and showing their target a tiny fraction of their power. In desperation, Starfleet and the Federation began working at pace to develop everything from phasers to starships – all ripe for assimilation by the Collective.
The first Borg drone ever seen in Star Trek.
So that’s the theory.
The Borg were not fully invested in assimilating Earth either in 2367 or 2373 – their only two direct attacks on Earth. These incursions had a different goal: pushing humanity and the Federation to develop new technologies that the Borg could assimilate later, when the time was right. By revealing themselves and showing Starfleet a glimpse of their power, the Borg believed their new target would, in effect, work for them, designing and building new weapons, ships, and other devices that the Collective no longer had the creativity to invent for itself.
To me, this theory made sense even as far back as when I watched First Contact in the cinema in 1996! Developments in Voyager, Enterprise, and more recently in Picard, too, have only added to this theory, expanding it and deepening my belief that the Borg really weren’t serious about conquering Earth. To them, the attacks served a different purpose. It took almost everything Starfleet had to beat the Borg, but given the sheer size and scale of the Collective, we know they had the resources to commit more ships and more drones to an attempted invasion of Earth. There has to be some reason why they didn’t send two or three cubes instead of just one – and to me at least, this idea makes the most sense and squares that circle.
Romulans and Borg as seen in the Lower Decks opening titles.
I hope this has been interesting! I doubt that this theory will ever be confirmed – and it may even be actively debunked one day, if we ever get another Borg story. Some of you might think that the Borg’s time travel in First Contact (or some other plot point from a Borg episode) already negates or invalidates this theory… and that’s okay! As I said at the beginning, this is just a fan theory or head canon, and it’s all subjective at the end of the day. I share this theory with the Star Trek fan community in that spirit.
Speaking of Borg stories… will we see another one in Star Trek anytime soon? After Picard did three separate Borg or Borg-adjacent stories in its three seasons, and with the Collective having appeared in Prodigy and Lower Decks in recent years… I think it might be a while before the Collective makes another appearance. I certainly think it should be a while; I can’t be the only one who feels a little burned out on the faction, especially after their omnipresence in Picard. If and when the Borg return, I hope it’s in a big way. I’ve been kicking around the idea of a “Borg invasion” series for a while – and that could be a really interesting way for Star Trek to go one day in the future. If a fourth Kelvin timeline film ever gets off the ground, I don’t think it’s impossible to think we could see the Borg there, too.
But unless and until any of that happens… this is my theory! I hope you enjoyed this write-up and found it interesting.
The Star Trek franchise – including most episodes and films cited above – can be streamed now on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the service is available. The Star Trek franchise is the copyright of Paramount Global. Header font/text courtesy of textstudio.com. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the following Star Trek productions: The Original Series Season 1, Deep Space Nine Season 6, Voyager Seasons 1, 5, and 6, First Contact, Discovery Seasons 1-3, Strange New Worlds Season 1, and pre-release information for Starfleet Academy.
Star Trek has a wonderfully rich and engaging setting – a fictional universe that operates by established rules that have been built up over decades. This “canon” is part of what makes Star Trek feel like Star Trek… and while I’m not a stickler for the tiniest minutiae of canon, the fundamental building blocks of the Star Trek franchise need to remain consistent for stories to work.
There are some places where Star Trek’s writers have been deliberately vague and ambiguous, and others where an apparent “plot hole” has been created, either by a new story seemingly overwriting an old one or by one of the prequel shows making an apparent change to what had been previously established. These things can pass by inoffensively enough, but as Trekkies, I think we have a natural curiosity about this setting – and a need to ensure that things make sense in the context of Star Trek’s long-established universe!
It’s… head cannon.
So that’s where head canon comes in. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, head canon (or headcanon, if you prefer; I like to write it as two separate words) is basically just a fan-made explanation for something that doesn’t appear on screen. A famous example from the Star Trek fan community is the belief some fans hold that Kirk and Spock were engaged in a romantic relationship. That’s something never shown on screen (nor even explicitly hinted at), but nevertheless has become popular in some quarters of the fan community.
There are also head canon explanations for apparent plot holes and head canon expansions that go beyond what we see on screen. Over the years, I’ve come up with several of my own – and it’s these that I want to share with you today.
Arex, Kirk, and Walking Bear on the bridge of the Enterprise.
Before we get started, a couple of important caveats! Firstly, this is head canon. None of this is official, none of it has ever been seen on screen, and it’s likely that none of it will ever be confirmed. I’m not saying that I’m right and that’s that – other fans can and will disagree, and that’s okay. I’m not claiming to be the only originator of some of these ideas. It’s very likely that other Trekkies have independently come up with similar head canon explanations for some of the story beats we’re gonna talk about today – so please don’t think I’m trying to take sole credit!
This is also the entirely subjective opinion of one old Trekkie. If you hate all of my ideas, if I miss something that seems obvious to you, or if my head canon explanations don’t make sense to you… that’s totally okay, too. There’s enough room in the Star Trek fan community for polite discussion and disagreement – and there’s no need to get into a fight about totally hypothetical things that will almost certainly never be confirmed on screen!
With all of that out of the way, let’s look at some head canon!
Head Canon #1: There are different types of cloaking device.
22nd Century Romulan vessels de-cloaking.
Prior to Enterprise, it was pretty well-established that Starfleet’s first encounter with a cloaking device came when the USS Enterprise, under Kirk’s command, engaged a Romulan warbird that was attacking Earth Outposts along the Neutral Zone. Cloaks continued to be used by the Romulans, Kligons, and others into the 24th Century – but Starfleet only used a cloaking device on a couple of occasions.
Enterprise changed all of that, firstly with the Suliban’s cloaking technology – which, admittedly, was never explicitly called a “cloaking device” on screen – and later when the Romulans were introduced. Since then, both Discovery and Strange New Worlds have set the precedent that cloaking devices were known to Starfleet years before Kirk’s encounter with the Romulans. So how can we square this circle?
A Starfleet simulation of a Klingon cloaking device.
My answer is that there must simply be different types of cloaking devices. Not only that, but Starfleet Intelligence is working around the clock to figure out how to detect cloaked vessels. Similar to how the code-breakers of World War II worked to break enemy encryptions and read messages, Starfleet is locked in a constant battle to un-cloak cloaked ships.
Perhaps in the aftermath of Discovery’s Klingon War, Starfleet thought they’d finally broken the cloaking encryption – and that’s why Kirk was so surprised to see the Romulan warbird disappear from his sensors. Every time the Romulans or Klingons invent a new type of cloak, Starfleet gets to work figuring out how to recalibrate sensors to break through. This “arms race” could have been going on for decades – or even centuries.
Head Canon #2: The USS Enterprise had a refit after Pike left the captain’s chair.
Strange New Worlds’ take on the bridge of the Enterprise.
Aesthetic changes from one Star Trek production to another usually don’t bother me very much – and I happen to really like the design of the USS Enterprise as it’s depicted in Strange New Worlds. The ship looks great inside and out, and some of the sets feel larger and more expansive than they did in past iterations of Star Trek, which allows for different types of shots, more characters on screen at once, and so on. But there’s no denying that the redesign hasn’t been wildly popular with every Trekkie!
So my suggestion here is simple: after Pike stepped down as captain of the Enterprise, the ship underwent a refit. Kirk would assume command of the refitted vessel in time for the five-year mission that we’re familiar with from The Original Series. This allows both versions of the Enterprise to exist in the same timeline without treading on anyone’s toes!
The Enterprise bridge in The Animated Series.
There is precedent for ships being refitted and completely transformed. The Enterprise itself famously underwent a refit a few years after the events of The Original Series – we see the final stages of that refit in The Motion Picture, where changes made to the ship became a significant plot point early in the film. So not only does Starfleet regularly refit its ships, but the Enterprise itself has been refitted at least once.
It really isn’t much of a stretch to think that a ship that’s at least a decade old by the time of The Original Series (something confirmed in The Animated Series more than fifty years ago) would have had at least some modifications and changes made to it. And given what we see on screen, the ship has changed!
Head Canon #3: Warp factors are re-designated as newer and faster engines are designed.
A flash of light left by a ship jumping to warp.
Warp speed has always been pretty ambiguous in Star Trek – and that’s a genuinely good decision! Pinning down exact speeds and distances risks constraining future stories, so leaving things vague and open-ended gives writers maximum manoeuvrability. But there are some instances where speed seems to vary a little too much!
Just to give one example, at the beginning of First Contact, the Enterprise-E was stationed near the Neutral Zone. But Captain Picard was able to get the ship back to Earth in record time when the Borg attacked; Starfleet had already begun to battle the Cube while the Enterprise-E was light-years away, yet the ship made it back in time.
The Enterprise-E at warp.
So here’s my head canon: warp five in Enterprise is not the same as warp five in The Next Generation. As new engines are designed and built, warp factors change. Instead of having to keep adding new decimals to warp 9.99999, Starfleet would simply revise how warp factors are calculated and referred to – accounting for discrepancies in speed and travel time.
There are still some holes in this idea, like what Starfleet’s “transwarp” experiment was and how it can take 75+ years to traverse the galaxy at warp 9.975 while warp 10 is supposed to be instantaneous travel everywhere. But I think the idea of Starfleet changing the way warp factors are calculated and referred to makes some degree of sense – and it could explain why some travel times appear to vary wildly.
Head Canon #4: Voyager didn’t run out of torpedoes and shuttles because the crew built replacements.
The USS Voyager. Image Credit: Robert Bonchune/TrekCore
I’ve actually tackled this idea before in a longer article – click or tap here to check it out! In short, some Trekkies have argued that the USS Voyager should have run out of torpedoes and shuttlecraft during its time in the Delta Quadrant – picking on a line from Season 1 in which Janeway said that there was “no way” to replenish the ship’s supplies. But I disagree with the idea that this is a plot hole and I can explain why in two words: Delta Flyer.
We see the crew of Voyager build not one but two Delta Flyers after getting stranded in the Delta Quadrant, using the ship’s industrial-sized replicator to do so. Though this may have been a drain on resources, it wasn’t fatal to the ship and crew by any stretch – so much so that they were able to build a like-for-like replacement when the first Delta Flyer was lost.
The Delta Flyer’s construction.
Furthermore, we saw Voyager trade with numerous planets, ships, and stations during its journey home – potentially acquiring resources like antimatter that may be needed for torpedoes, engine parts for shuttles, and so on. Maybe some things can’t be replicated, but through trade, Voyager could have been able to acquire these resources.
In short, I’ve never bought into the idea that Voyager firing “too many torpedoes” is a problem, and I think it’s easily explained through a combination of a resourceful crew, powerful replicators, and bartering.
Head Canon #5: Fashion trends, hairstyles, uniform designs, etc. change over time – just like they do in the real world.
The cast of The Original Series.
Take a look at photos from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. It’s really easy to see how fashion sense and style changed in a relatively short span of time out here in the real world. Now look at the arguments some Trekkies were making about uniforms or hair styles being “wrong” in certain new Star Trek productions. It seems silly… doesn’t it?
Discovery was set ten years before The Original Series. It’s not a stretch to think that hairstyles and designs for things like uniforms might’ve changed in that time. When Discovery debuted with its all-blue uniforms, I liked the idea of that style and colour existing in between Enterprise’s submarine-style boiler suits and the more familiar Starfleet uniforms of the later 23rd Century.
Some fans weren’t keen on Discovery’s uniforms.
The same principle can apply to alien races and other factions. Why were bald Klingons a problem in Discovery, for example? It didn’t bother me – and a simple head canon explanation could be that the Klingon Empire went through a phase of preferring shaved heads in times of war. Maybe it was a revival of ancient Klingon culture, maybe other Klingons did it in honour of their leaders.
There are some oddities with Starfleet’s uniform choices that have been introduced by different Star Trek productions. The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine seemed, for a time, to establish that space stations and starships had the same combadges but different uniforms, for instance – until that went out the window! But I don’t buy into the arguments that some Trekkies have put forward about these design and aesthetic choices. It really isn’t much of a stretch to think that the 23rd and 24th Centuries go through different fashion trends.
Head Canon #6: The “Borg Teasing Theory.”
The filming model of the original Borg cube.
I find it interesting that the Borg Collective – with its massively superior technology, huge fleet of near-unstoppable ships, and untold legions of drones – never really made a serious effort to conquer the Federation. On both occasions where the Borg directly attacked Earth, they sent a single ship and – at most – a few tens of thousands of drones. Why?
I’ve had a theory for a long time (that I really must write up in full one day!) that the Borg Collective has been “teasing” the Federation. Not for fun – but to push Starfleet to develop newer and better technologies for them to assimilate. It’s not unfair to suggest that humanity is one of the most resilient, creative, and versatile species that the Borg had encountered as of the mid-24th Century, but even so, conquering the Federation shouldn’t pose a challenge based on what we saw of the scale of the Collective in Voyager.
First Contact introduced the Borg Queen.
We know that the Borg seek “perfection,” and that they even ignore whole species if they think they have nothing to offer. Humanity clearly has plenty to offer the Borg… but in their push for even greater perfection, might the Borg be trying to see how far they can push the Federation?
The Borg attacks on outlying colonies, and later their attacks on Earth, prompted Starfleet to develop new and better weapons, shields, and medical technology. The Borg may have been hoping to assimilate these technologies later on – partly to add to their arsenal, but also partly to prevent them being used against them in a future conflict. By “teasing” the Federation with these smaller – but still pretty devastating – incursions, it’s basically a win-win for the Borg. Either their sole cube succeeds and assimilates Earth, then the rest of the Federation, or in its failure it not only gathers a ton of data, but also pushes Starfleet to develop newer and better things to assimilate in the future.
Head Canon #7: Discovery Season 2 was originally going to be an “origin story” for the Borg.
The “assimilation” of Captain Leland.
Is there such a thing as “production-side head canon?” I’m adding this one to the list either way! In short, no one is gonna be able to convince me that Discovery’s Control AI and time travel story in its second season was originally created/pitched as anything other than a Borg Collective origin story.
The way the Control AI was able to “assimilate” Captain Leland and others, using nano-technology, is just too eerily similar to the way the Borg operate to be a coincidence. When you add into the mix Burnham’s time travel suit… the stage was set for Control to become the progenitor of the Borg.
The Red Angel suit could travel through time.
With relatively few tweaks to the final act of Season 2, Control could’ve seized Burnham’s Red Angel suit and, perhaps staring down the barrel of a Starfleet armada, escaped into the past. Crash-landing on a remote Delta Quadrant planet, Control could use its remaining nanites to conquer the native humanoid population… setting the stage for the Borg Collective to be a Federation creation.
Now, I’m not saying this would’ve been a good story. And I’m definitely not saying that Discovery’s writing team could’ve pulled it off successfully. Those are moot points now, anyway. But unless someone comes forward with concrete, definitive proof that Season 2’s Control/time travel story was never intended as a Borg story… well, let’s just say that would be a tough thing to convince me of! I have a longer article about this theory, by the way, and you can find it by clicking or tapping here.
Head Canon #8: The Romulans eventually discovered Sisko’s underhanded tactics.
“It’s a faaaaaaake!”
One of my fantasy Star Trek stories is a follow-up to the outstanding Deep Space Nine Season 6 episode In The Pale Moonlight. But unless and until that happens, I’ll have to make do with my personal head canon! In short, I struggle to believe that Sisko’s actions in that episode – where he lied, schemed, and murdered his way to an alliance with the Romulans – would never come to light.
Whether this would set the stage for a full-scale conflict or not isn’t certain, and with the Romulan Empire in a much-weakened state in the early 25th Century, perhaps they wouldn’t be spoiling for a fight. Romulan leaders might even want to keep the revelation a secret, not only because it shows them in a bad light, but in order to avoid jeopardising an alliance that they relied upon in the aftermath of the loss of Romulus and Remus.
I think the Romulans will eventually uncover the truth…
So how could it happen? The only people involved were Garak and Sisko, and neither would be likely to spill the beans. Garak, though, might’ve boasted about his achievements in private, if not to Dr Bashir then to someone else back on Cardassia. It’s one of his biggest achievements if you think about it, and it could become a legend within the re-established Cardassian intelligence agency.
More likely, though, would be the Romulans re-examining the fake “evidence” of the Dominion plot to invade. Garak believed that any imperfections in the recording would be written off as damage from the shuttle explosion, but I’m not so sure. Under proper forensic examination, would the fake recording really hold up? Or could Senator Vreenak have sent a message warning about the forgery before his assassination? There are multiple ways this could go – and serious consequences for Starfleet if and when the truth comes out!
Head Canon #9: Starfleet will find a way to prevent the Burn – pushing Discovery’s far future into an alternate timeline.
The Burn.
If you’re a regular reader, you might remember that – only a few weeks ago – I pushed back hard against the idea that some or all of Discoveryhas been “rendered non-canon” by one brief clip in Lower Decks. And to be clear: I stand by what I said then! Discovery, at time of writing, remains fully canon, and its far-future setting is the ultimate destination for the prime timeline.
But the Burn is particularly depressing, and knowing that the Federation will suffer such a horribly devastating blow – even if not for centuries – potentially changes how we react to stories set in the 23rd, 24th, and 25th Centuries. So my current head canon is this: at some point in the future, perhaps after Discovery’s new spin-off, Starfleet Academy, has finished its run, the far future setting will be quietly dropped. If there’s more Star Trek being made at that point, or at some point in the future, it will either totally ignore those events or perhaps even find a way to imply that they didn’t happen.
The Burn originated on a wrecked ship in a toxic nebula.
We’ll need to discuss this in more detail on another occasion, but I don’t think that Discovery’s “post-apocalyptic Star Trek” idea worked. I don’t think the concept was a good one in and of itself, but I also feel that the execution was poor. Aside from a few moments in Season 3, Discovery never really did a lot with the idea of rebuilding the Federation, and the things we did see were smaller moments that were blitzed past to get to other, generally less interesting stories.
So I think there’s a case to be made to quietly push Discovery and Starfleet Academy into their own timeline at some future point. In my head, it works better that way – allowing Discovery to continue to exist and for Starfleet Academy to hopefully build on the foundations it laid, but also not constraining future stories that may be set in the 24th or 25th Centuries.
Head Canon #10: Section 31 regularly uses cloaking devices.
A Section 31 vessel of the late 23rd/early 24th Century.
Maybe I’m forgetting or overlooking an episode, but I can’t remember seeing Section 31 using cloaked ships. It seems logical to me, though, that the Federation’s black ops/off-the-books security organisation would take advantage of cloaking technology whenever possible. Starfleet may be bound by the Treaty of Algeron not to use cloaking devices… but does anyone really think that Section 31 – an organisation which has attempted genocide and overthrown governments – would abide by the law?
Section 31’s use of cloaked ships could also explain things like their abduction of Dr Bashir in Inquisition – the faction’s first appearance in Star Trek. That episode left it deliberately unclear how Section 31 was able to infiltrate DS9 to capture Bashir, but if you imagine them using a ship with a cloaking device, things start to fall into place.
Deputy Director Sloan.
Starfleet (and presumably the Federation government, too) refuse to officially acknowledge Section 31’s existence – at least in the mid/late 24th Century. So that makes it easy for them and their ambassadors to deny that any officially-sanctioned Starfleet or Federation ship is using a cloak in violation of the treaty with the Romulans. The Federation would, presumably, deny the existence of any such vessel and would abandon any captured Section 31 operative to their fate.
An organisation that likes to exist in the shadows would, surely, want to take advantage of every possible way to hide. Cloaks in Star Trek are imperfect – but they’re still very useful pieces of kit. For spies and assassins, a cloaked ship could be the difference between reaching a target and failing the mission. Section 31 would obviously use this technology – even if we’ve never seen it!
So that’s it… for now.
The Enterprise-A on a Klingon viewscreen.
I have a few other ideas that I didn’t have time for on this occasion – so stay tuned, because I might revisit this subject in the future. It was a bit of fun for me, and pretty cathartic to talk about some of these ideas. Several of these head canon explanations are things I came up with years or even decades ago, so it’s definitely fun to air them for the first time!
As I said at the start, this is just for fun and isn’t something to argue about or get upset over. Head canon is a great way for fans to plug holes or expand stories – but it isn’t worth taking too seriously; none of this will ever be seen or confirmed on screen. In fact, it’s quite likely that some of what we talked about today will be actively debunked in future!
I hope you’ll stick around here on the website, as there’s more Star Trek content to come! I finally finished reviewing Strange New Worlds’ fantastic second season a few days ago, and earlier in the year I took a look at the Section 31 TV movie, too. I hope you’ve found some of these head canon ideas interesting, in any case.
Most Star Trek shows and films discussed above can be streamed on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the service is available. Most of the Star Trek franchise is also available on DVD and Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including all films, shows, and properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Since writing up my first impressions of Civilization VII a few weeks ago, I’ve continued to play the game. Today, I wanted to cover a few points that I didn’t make in that original piece – which I wrote after about six hours of gameplay – as well as make one amendment to something I feel was unclear last time.
For the record, I still think Civilization VII has a lot of potential. But right now, there are things holding it back – as well as a few bugs and issues that I didn’t notice at first that really need to be patched out as quickly as possible. I’ve kind of hit the wall with Civ VII after about 40 hours of gameplay, and I probably won’t jump back in until the next update. There’s a reason for that, and we’ll begin there.
A scout near the edge of the map.
At time of writing, there’s a bug – or at least a major imbalance – that has totally ruined several games for me. In short, either AI civs are underpowered or barbarian city-states are overpowered. In several recent games I’ve played – or rather, attempted to play – this has led to barbarians conquering and defeating AI players before the game can really get going. There’s no way to increase the number of AI players in the game to try to counteract this, and it isn’t something that’s only happening on lower difficulty settings or certain maps, either.
Having barbarians and hostile city-states is great, it adds a whole extra dynamic to gameplay and it makes the very early game feel more tense and dangerous. But these mini-factions have to be balanced better, because they shouldn’t be able to knock out AI civilisations except under rare and unusual circumstances. Making them an obstacle for human players is great – but making them so overpowered that they can kill one, two, or even three civs in the ancient era before the game has a chance to get going… that ruins the game for me. And I’m sure it has for other players, too.
An AI city facing a barbarian raid…
…and the same city a few turns later after being captured.
I’m mostly familiar with Civilization VI. That was the first game in the series I played extensively, so it’s my point of comparison. Barbarian tribes in that game could be aggressive, particularly in the early game. And while I can’t call to mind any specific examples, it must’ve happened at least once that an AI civ was knocked out of the game by a particularly strong barbarian attack. If that did happen, though, it was a rare occurrence no matter what the settings were, and it simply isn’t something that should be happening so often in Civilization VII.
Because of the way Civ VII’s eras work, knocking out an AI player cuts down the amount of time an age lasts. In one recent game, the ancient age seemed to be over in a flash after not one but two AI players were defeated off-screen – presumably by barbarians. The game only has three eras to begin with… so speed-running one of them in this fashion isn’t great.
A hostile city-state/barbarian village.
That leads into my next point. This is much bigger for Civilization VII and much less easy to fix… but there really aren’t enough ages in the game, and the way they operate as effectively three mini-games in one feels limiting.
I’m an adaptable person, and Civilization VII’s new rules and new gameplay mechanics should be surmountable for me. I’m not lashing out at the game because I “don’t like change,” or I want to keep playing Civ VI. Having played quite a few games now, with different leaders and factions, I’m beginning to get used to most of the changes and differences – but the way eras function is something I’m still struggling with.
I mentioned in my first impressions that war doesn’t carry over from one era to another – nor do most units. Even units that survive an era transition don’t remain where they had been placed on the map; they’re either grouped together in an army or dropped one by one into cities and towns – which also don’t survive the era transition in their previous form. All cities except for the capital revert to being towns, losing all of the bonuses cities get and forcing you to re-convert them later.
The beginning of a new era removes some units entirely, relocates others, and changes most cities back into towns.
This really limits the way Civilization VII plays. To give one example: if I want to wage war in the ancient era, I basically have to build up my military from turn one and choose the first civ I meet as my target for conquest. There just isn’t enough time – even in a game with the maximum number of turns and eras that are as long as the game allows with its current, very limited options – to do things any other way. However you look at it, this is a limitation on play styles, because I’m forced to do one of two things. Either I have to write off the idea of an early war and conquest of a neighbour – which can be limiting and annoying, as AI civs have a tendency to forward-settle, placing cities right next to mine or even in the middle of my burgeoning empire. Or I have to prepare for war from turn one.
War can be time-consuming in a game like Civilization VII, and if you’re coming up on the end of an era, there’s basically no point in even starting one. The end of an era forces you to make peace with anyone you’re fighting, and it also removes units from the board and repositions others, meaning it isn’t possible to instantly re-start a conflict after the transition. This makes war in the early game much more limited – either you launch an attack as early as possible against whichever unlucky civ you’re right next to, or you’re stuck on the defensive, lacking enough time to build up a sufficiently-sized army to launch a full-scale conquest.
War in the ancient era.
The one thing a 4X strategy game like Civilization VII mustn’t do is limit your options. War, diplomacy, exploration, peace… everything should be on the table, and as the player I should feel in control. Sure, there are gonna be times where I’m under attack and on the defensive. And there should be unpredictable elements in there. But if I know for a fact that there’s basically no point starting a war once the era clock reaches a certain point, or that all I have to do is hold on for a few more turns because a mandatory peace treaty is coming as soon as the era ends… that puts real limits on even defensive wars.
Beyond just war, though, I find the way eras are handled to be pretty limiting. Each faction has unique civics to unlock, for example, but these come at the expense of the regular civics tree, and with one civics tree per era your choice is either fall behind the AI or sacrifice those unique policies and bonuses. In a longer game with one civics tree, it might be easier to catch up – or to race ahead in order to dedicate time later on to unlocking those dedicated civilisation civics. But the eras limit this mechanic in a pretty disappointing way.
Each faction gets its own unique civics tree.
Eras also limit exploration, and by extension what kinds of maps are available. Because the middle exploration era is entirely focused on colonisation, it’s impossible to speed-run a tech like celestial navigation in order to settle islands or continents that are separated from your starting area by ocean tiles. There are also resources – like cocoa, for instance – that are locked until the exploration era. It isn’t even possible to explore islands and continents elsewhere on the map before the game deems it acceptable.
Again… this is really limiting. I can’t build a ship or a scout and send them off to the far corners of the map; I’m stuck on my starting continent or island until one-third of the game has passed. This, in turn, limits what kind of maps are available – there are no Mediterranean maps, for example, with land surrounding a body of water, or single-continent maps with outlying islands. There are fewer map types and less map variety in order to accommodate this eras system… and for me, the trade-off isn’t close to being worth it.
All six of the available map types.
Then we come to era transitions, and choosing new factions. In my first impressions, I noted that most factions are locked until certain gameplay requirements are met to unlock them – and I should clarify that I was referring to this transition between eras. In one case, I had been playing as Isabella and chose Spain for the exploration age. But when the era ended, I literally only had one option for the modern age: Mexico. All of the other modern era civs were locked because I hadn’t, for instance, settled a city on tundra or dug three oil wells. Because these requirements were not communicated well – and were not communicated at all in the preceding era – I had no choice but to finish that game as Mexico.
Obviously I’ve got nothing against playing as Mexico, and I would’ve picked that civ eventually. But why should Civ VII be so restrictive with its faction choices? Even in more recent games where I’m more aware of these limitations and I’ve tried to overcome them, there are always some civs locked when the ancient age transitions to the exploration age, or when the exploration age gives way to the modern age.
Mexico’s unique unit: the Soldaderas.
I can understand the developers wanting to make sure players don’t accidentally shoot themselves in the foot by choosing a civ with bonuses that aren’t applicable or with unique abilities that they’d struggle to take advantage of because of the way earlier era(s) have unfolded. But these restrictions feel way too limiting as they’re currently implemented, and with the whole “choose one civ per era” mechanic being Civilization VII’s biggest new feature, it shouldn’t be so difficult and finicky to work with. This is basically the entire selling-point of the game – so why make it so limited and restrictive?
Part of the appeal of Civilization VII is the idea that I can chart my own unique route through history. I can start as Egypt, then become the Inca, before ending the game as Prussia. If I play as Spain and find I can only transition to become Mexico… that completely robs this aspect of the game of its one unique selling-point, and is yet another limitation on gameplay styles in a game that already has no shortage of those.
In this example, two modern age civs are locked.
I want to be able to choose in what order I move units or set policies. Sometimes, Civilization VII will arbitrarily limit this, forcing me to choose the benefits of a celebration before I can move units. If I’m in the middle of a war or trying to lay siege to a city, I want to focus on that first and foremost! If I select a unit, I shouldn’t be forced to do something else before I can order it to move or attack.
There also seems to be a bug where, after building the Dogo Onsen wonder, every city in my empire gains population (meaning I have to manually grow each city by adding a tile or specialist). This is pretty annoying, especially when you have twenty-plus cities; having to manually click through all of them, adding a tile or specialist, before the game will let you do anything else takes up a lot of time. Hopefully this bug can be fixed in the next update.
Growing a town is fun… growing twenty in a single turn? Less so.
Speaking of bugs, I’m concerned that natural wonders are glitched. In short, every single game I’ve played has had the same three natural wonders: the Grand Canyon, the Redwood Forest, and Zhangjiajie. I’ve seen the Great Barrier Reef once in one other game – and that’s it. There are, according to the Civ Wiki, fourteen others… but I’ve never seen any of them even once, not in any of the games I’ve played. And this isn’t because I always pick the same civ or the same map type: I’ve played most leaders and most civs at least once, and I’ve tried out all of the map types (but not every size of map, to be fair).
So… is this a bug? Or in forty-some hours of gameplay, have I just been randomly unlucky to continually encounter the same three natural wonders every time? There’s something to be said for that level of random chance… so maybe I should buy a lottery ticket this week! Seriously, though, there are already a pretty sparse amount of these natural wonders – way more need to be added. To keep encountering the exact same ones is just boring and repetitive. If this is a bug I hope it’s patched out. If not… what the heck’s going on?
There are more natural wonders… right?
I like the idea of crises. But unfortunately, this is another area where I fear a bug is causing games to feel repetitive and less-interesting – to the point where I’ve started turning off the crisis option when starting a new game. Crisis events throw up a challenge for your civilisation and force you to implement certain policies which have to be accommodated and worked around. But as above, in every single game I’ve played so far, I’ve encountered the exact same crisis in every age every time.
In the ancient age, I’ve only ever gotten the “revolt” crisis, which sees my empire tested by towns and cities losing happiness due to a variety of factors. There’s some potentially-interesting storytelling here, which is neat… but it gets boring game after game. In the exploration era, every game saw my cities laid waste by plagues. Again, this was potentially interesting, but it wore off after the fourth or fifth time I saw it in successive games. Then, when it came to the modern era, I don’t know if there even are any crises to be had – I haven’t encountered any.
A city afflicted by plague in the exploration age.
Adding in these kinds of events should be interesting. But if the same ones trigger every single time… is that a bug? I don’t play the game the same way every time, and with different leaders, different civs, and the game set up in totally different ways on different maps, why should I constantly encounter the same crisis events? It’s just another thing that feels, well, limiting. And it got to the point where I decided to just turn off crisis events altogether rather than have yet another instance of the same thing making my game feel repetitive and dull.
Finally, I’d like to talk about Civ VII’s art style – and particularly the way cities look.
I love Civilization VII’s graphics, and going for a more “realistic” look after the stylised and cartoonish Civ VI is a choice that I personally appreciated. It might not be to everyone’s taste, but I felt it was a step up, and I really like the way the game represents water and ships at sea in particular.
A battleship on the ocean.
However, there’s a problem – and I didn’t really notice it at first. In Civilization VI, it was really easy to tell at a glance which buildings you’d constructed in a city. Campuses and science buildings were blue, for example, and military buildings had red detailing. But in Civ VII, most buildings look very similar to one another, and with no districts or zones that are specific to certain types of building, they can be literally anywhere in a city. This makes it really hard to tell, without zooming in closely or digging through a menu, whether you’ve built all of the libraries and science buildings you wanted to, or whether a city has an important building like a railway station or a market.
This isn’t insurmountable, as it just takes a bit of checking. But when you have a sprawling empire of twenty-plus cities in the late game, it can be hard to keep track of every building. In order to ensure you’re getting the most out of your settlements and maximising your available yields, you need to be on top of what buildings you have and which ones you need. Being able to see, at a glance, which ones are present in which settlement is useful – and stripping this away to leave very generic-looking buildings and urban districts just gets in the way of that. It might make cities look “more realistic,” but it’s less useful and feels like a bit of a hurdle to smooth gameplay.
Can you tell at a glance which buildings this city has and where they are?
So after playing a bit more Civ VII (okay, quite a lot more) those are some additional points that I wanted to make. Later in the year, after the game has received more updates, patches, and its first pieces of DLC, I’ll definitely jump back in and see if I want to write an updated review or some additional notes.
I still believe Civ VII is fun – I wouldn’t have played multiple games over forty-plus hours if I wasn’t having a good time most of the time. But there are more limitations than there were in Civilization VI, and the core eras mechanic is one that I feel is doing more to hold the game back than it is to improve it, at least as things sit in March 2025. I’d love to see some bug fixes, changes to the way menus and tech trees are displayed, and perhaps some visual or graphical changes to make certain key buildings more obvious. Those things feel achievable in the short-term, and perhaps updates or expansions could address some of the bigger issues I’ve found.
I hope this has been interesting. I paid a lot of money for Civilization VII, so I definitely want to see the game succeed. I raise these points not out of spite but because I want to see Civ VII improved. There’s a lot of potential in this game… but some of it is being denied or restricted by creative decisions that have limited key aspects of gameplay. There’s plenty of time to make changes and improvements, though, and it’s still early days. I’m hopeful that, in the next few months, things will get noticeably better for Civ VII.
Civilization VII is out now for PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X consoles. Civilization VII is the copyright of Firaxis and/or Take-Two Interactive. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Silo Seasons 1 & 2.
In 2023, I awarded Silo’s first season the highly-coveted Trekking with Dennis Award for best TV show of the year. It beat off Star Trek: Picard’s third season – which was, in hindsight, probably that show’s best offering. If you know me, you’ll know I’m a Trekkie and a big fan of Jean-Luc Picard – so Silo must’ve been pretty darn good, then! It’s no exaggeration to say that I was really excited for Season 2 and the continuation of this engaging sci-fi mystery story.
It can be difficult to render judgement on the middle part of a fully-serialised story, so that’s a big caveat to everything we’re going to talk about. With Silo confirmed to be returning for two more seasons, we may look back at Season 2 with that context and revise some of these talking points and criticisms – and I wanted to be clear about that. With that out of the way, here’s the headline: Silo Season 2 was good but not great. One side of the story was a thrilling, enigmatic mystery populated by a wonderful cast of characters. The other felt like an overblown video game side-quest, complete with unnecessary stumbling blocks that seemed to exist only to slow things down, and was padded out with a handful of very barebones, one-dimensional characters.
In short, Season 2’s good side was let down by its less-good side.
Juliette in the second silo.
So… which side is which? Unfortunately, I found Juliette’s story this time to be the weaker one. And that’s such a shame, because Rebecca Ferguson – who also gets an executive producer credit for Silo – has put in a fantastic performance across both seasons of the show. Last season, Juliette was at the centre of the story, unravelling the mysteries of the silo piece by piece. But this time, she was isolated from most of the rest of the cast, trapped in her own little narrative box. And that box, for me at least, felt like it was mostly comprised of unnecessary hurdles to a story that was almost instantly a “back-and-forth” that aimed to shuffle Juliette right back to the first silo.
On the other side of things, the story of the rebellion in the Down Deep, complete with double- and triple-crosses, as well as Sims’ scheming and Bernard and Lukas trying to uncover more of the silo’s secrets… that was all fantastic. These characters, who we met last time and have more of a foundation to build on, all felt real, their actions seemed to flow naturally from the circumstances they were in, and it was a truly gripping and fascinating mystery with stakes. Given that we know the world immediately outside the silo is still deadly and toxic, the danger to everyone was communicated well – and having gotten invested in these characters and their world, that gave this side of the story a lot more weight.
Sheriff Billings, Knox, Shirley, and Deputy Hank.
Stepping back from the moment-to-moment narrative beats, Silo has constructed a world that feels – to me, at least – like a dark mirror of the United States. Leaders are left to rely on increasingly unclear instructions left for them by the nameless “founders,” communicated through a legal document that, for many in the silo, has taken on the status of scripture. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term “American civil religion.” It’s a theory in American Studies/sociology that posits many Americans view documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights as akin to scripture, with some of the founding fathers elevated to the positions of prophets. It’s an interesting idea, and one far too complex to detail in a few sentences. Whether you buy into it or not in the real world, Silo is definitely drawing on similar themes and concepts for its depiction of its underground society.
Silo also holds up a mirror to our modern-day surveillance society. Cameras are everywhere in the underground city: in people’s homes, in common areas, and workplaces. And spying on the citizens are a hidden group who seem to exist outside of the official heirachy and structure of the government, reporting directly to the mayor. As a metaphor for CCTV, facial recognition, and even online surveillance by the likes of the NSA, you could hardly get more explicit!
The hidden camera room in the silo.
Both of these feel pretty timely. Silo goes to town with the idea of governments spying on their citizens – without their consent or knowledge. The dangers of such a sophisticated spyware network are obvious, including the ease with which someone could use that knowledge to become a dictator or autocrat, and we get to see that through Bernard’s characterisation. I read Bernard as someone who is out of his depth, but tries to use the immense power at his fingertips to retain – or regain – control of the situation as it begins to spiral. Again, there are real-world parallels there.
Silo also wants to reflect a class divide: the “Up Toppers” and “Down Deepers” representing the upper and working classes respectively. Becuase the action in Season 2 mostly focused on the mechanics and engineers on the lower levels, I don’t think we got as much of a look at the way society differs on the upper levels of the silo. We caught glimpses of it when we saw the larger, better-furnished apartments of people like Bernard and Judge Meadows, but with fewer characters in focus there was perhaps less of this in Season 2 than there had been in Season 1. The class war angle was interesting, though – and another place where Silo was clearly drawing on real-world issues for inspiration.
Behind-the-scenes during production on Silo.
Juliette’s dramatic exit from the silo at the end of Season 1 left her friends and former allies on edge. By refusing to clean the camera and walking out of sight, she inadvertently left people believing that the world outside is safe – and we know that it isn’t. Arriving at a nearby abandoned silo, Juliette comes to learn the potential consequences of this: the rest of the citizens will rebel and try to break out, resulting in their deaths. This kicks off her story of… needing to immediately get back to her original silo.
I gotta be honest: I already felt this was a pretty weak setup. Having survived when survival seemed impossible and escaped from tyranny… all Juliette is left with is “I need to go back right now,” seeking to save her friends. As the setup for what was ultimately a slow storyline that seemed to spin its wheels too much, I was underwhelmed from almost the first episode. Then, things seemed to plod along, with Juliette teasing tiny pieces of information out of the mysterious sole survivor of this silo… only to belatedly learn that there were several other younger survivors, too. She apparently didn’t notice them or their settlement while exploring.
The locked door to Solo’s vault.
These younger survivors were pretty uninteresting, and their storyline came too late in the season to give most of them any real depth or interest. Audrey, whose sole defining trait seemed to be that she wanted to take revenge for the death of her parents, instantly gave up on that. And the others – Eater/Hope and Rick – got even less background than that. I struggled to believe that these characters had really been living their whole lives in the ruins of this silo, trying and failing to break into Solo’s vault and scratching together whatever food they could.
Silo just didn’t give these characters enough depth, and what little story was afforded them seemed to evaporate pretty quickly. For no other reason than “maybe don’t,” Audrey abandoned her apparent lifelong mission to seek revenge for the death of her parents, and for no other reason than “maybe open the door though,” Solo abandoned his lifelong mission to keep the door to the vault sealed. It wasn’t even clear that Solo knew anyone else was still alive inside the silo – which might’ve been useful information. Had Audrey and Rick ever visited the vault door? If so, why’d they leave their parents’ corpses unburied? And how did their settlement have power when it was explained that only the IT department – at least one level below – had its own power source and the rest of the silo’s power was out? There are a few too many contrivances, cut-down moments, and characters lacking depth on this side of the story for my liking.
I felt these characters lacked any real depth or interest.
And that’s part of what gives it a “video game side-quest” feel. Every time Juliette seemed to get close to her new goal of returning to her original silo… something would get in the way. First it was finding a replacement suit. Then it was Solo holding her suit hostage until she activated an underwater pump. Then it was the kids kidnapping Solo. Then it was Juliette and Eater/Hope having to search for the code to get into the vault… it just went on and on. Solo had potential as an interesting character, and there were moments of that on this side of the story. But even before the kids emerged from hiding, the action in this second silo was really grinding along at far too slow a pace.
Speaking of the second silo… I’m afraid I was a tad underwhelmed by the setting, if I’m being honest. Do you know the term “bottle show?” It was originally coined in the 1960s to describe episodes of a television series made cheaply by recycling sets that have already been built, using only a handful of characters, and that are heavy on dialogue. Fans of the Star Trek franchise are very familiar with “bottle shows,” and parts of this side of Silo felt, to me, just like that. The sets were redressed to add vines and other obvious symptoms of decay, but they were otherwise identical… and for such an expensive series (Silo reportedly costs $30-$40 million per episode) the end result felt pretty cheap.
Juliette arrives at a second, identical silo.
In-universe, there’s a good reason for silos looking identical. Or at least, I assume there is. But watching the show as a viewer… the fact that Juliette escaped one silo only to land in another, basically-identical silo didn’t quite sit right. And while the second silo did a good job of conveying how wrong things could go and what the stakes were for Juliette’s friends if she couldn’t fix the mistake she inadvertently made, the visuals most of the time were unimpressive. The only exception were this silo’s flooded levels, which were genuinely interesting to see – not to mention tense!
As I said at the beginning: this is the middle of Silo’s story. There are two seasons to come after this, and if the characters we met in the second silo feature in a big way, getting more development in the process, it’s not impossible to think we could revisit their introductions and look upon it a bit more kindly. But despite a wonderful performance from Rebecca Ferguson, I felt she was hampered rather than helped by the writing and the way her side of the story was structured in Season 2.
Rebecca Ferguson plays Juliette Nichols in Silo.
Juliette’s evolving relationship with Solo definitely had its moments, though. Solo losing his temper and shouting at Juliette – and her cowering, afraid to look at him – definitely had uncomfortable echoes of real-world abusive relationships, as did his decision to hold her captive by denying her access to her suit. This metaphor was, perhaps, a little deeper, but it was there. Solo’s childishness masked that side of his character, but he can be quick to anger and manipulative. There was definitely an uncomfortable side to him – even if it was understandable how the traumatic life he’d led might’ve left him in that position.
We need to hop over to the original silo, though! That was the side of the story that I found much more engaging.
On the lower levels, there were double-crosses, triple-crosses, and multiple characters all working toward different ends to fit different agendas. No one – not even Bernard, spying from up top – knew everything, and that left Silo to be a truly engaging series. Even when Juliette’s story seemed to be spinning its wheels or distracted with another side-quest, there were fun characters and mysteries back in the original silo to keep the show on the rails.
The conspirators gather…
I have to be honest: going into Season 1 in 2023, I really did not expect much from Common. I’d seen him in Hell on Wheels – a series starring Strange New Worlds’ Anson Mount – a few years ago, but many musicians try their hand at acting and don’t really leave much of an impression. I was pleasantly surprised with his performance in Season 1 as the scheming Robert Sims, and Common excelled again in Season 2. Sims’ story expanded to include his wife this time, and they worked exceptionally well together as they tried to play both sides of the burgeoning rebellion to try to elevate their position in the silo’s heirachy.
Sims turned out to have more nuance in Season 2 than he did last time. After trying repeatedly to convince Bernard to let him in on the secrets of the silo and being spurned every time, ultimately being consigned to the important-sounding but powerless role of judge, Sims began scheming more overtly. The final rug-pull that it would be Camille, not Robert, who would be let in on the silo’s secrets by its AI controller… that was a fun and genuinely unexpected twist.
Robert Sims.
Unlike Juliette’s disconnected sequence of objectives in the second silo, Bernard and Lukas’ attempts to figure out the mysterious code unfolded in a much more natural-feeling way. I can see some folks making similar criticisms as I did of Juliette’s story, because Lukas seemed to run into several dead ends before progressing. But this code-breaking story – and the subsequent revelation of the hidden vault with its library and advanced computers – felt a lot more interesting, and I was much more engaged with both Lukas as a character and the consequences of this storyline.
Knox, Shirley, and Walker made for a fun trio – and the additions of both Sheriff Billings and Dr Nichols (Juliette’s father) added a lot to the character dynamics on this side of the story. The only criticism I have, really, is that I never bought Walker’s fake betrayal of her friends, seeming to sell them out to Bernard in exchange for Carla’s safety. I had in my notes words to the effect of “this doesn’t feel like a realistic turn for her character,” so the ultimate reveal that she was double-double-crossing Bernard wasn’t as big as perhaps Silo’s writers wanted it to be. There was still a very real sense that the story could’ve gone the other way… but all that would’ve done is spoiled her characterisation! In that sense it was still a twist, but one that wasn’t built on the strongest foundations.
Walker played double-agent in Season 2.
So Silo leaves us on a cliffhanger! What will happen to Juliette and Bernard – and will Juliette’s firefighter suit prove to be the difference in that burning decontamination chamber? What did the AI say to Lukas, and why did Bernard react by falling into such a depression? If Meadows was given the same information, why did she not communicate it to Bernard all those years ago? And what will become of the rebels – will some still try to break out, even after Juliette’s message?
Season 3 better hurry up and get here, that’s all I can say!
Seasons 3 and 4 are actually already in production; filming began in October, and both seasons will be produced back-to-back. I haven’t read the novel series that Silo is based on, but apparently there will be longer flashback sequences to the congressman and reporter we met in the Season 2 epilogue. I’m certainly curious to find out who they are and what their connection is to the silo.
What more does Bernard know?
I stand by what I said at the beginning: Silo’s second season had one incredibly strong and entertaining storyline… and one noticeably weaker one. I hope that Seasons 3 and 4 can do more with the second silo and the characters we met there; it might re-frame my thoughts on the way they were introduced and their arcs this time. However… part of me also hopes that, now Juliette is back, there won’t be a need to revisit these less-interesting characters or waste as much time on them going forward.
Silo continues to be mysterious, and I really can’t predict what’s gonna happen next. Bernard hinted at knowing more – he claims to know who is responsible for building the silo, but not why. And whatever Lukas told him in the final episode seems to have utterly destroyed his faith in the project – so what could that mean for the world outside? Is the entire world toxic, or – as Solo and Juliette seemed to be on the verge of discovering – is something within the silo itself poisoning the air in its immediate vicinity, trapping people inside? If so… why? What purpose could that serve? The fact that I have so many questions that I want answered is, quite frankly, an indication of how invested in the story I am and how much of a good time I’m having!
Season 2 ended on a firey cliffhanger!
So that was Silo Season 2.
I really can’t wait to find out what’s coming next – and I hope we’ll see Season 3 within the next twelve months or so. Some made-for-streaming shows take a long time in between seasons, but with production on the next chapter of Silo already well underway, I think there’s hope that we might see it at the tail end of 2025 or early in 2026. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed, anyway.
When Season 3 premieres, I’ll do my best to review it here on the website – so I hope you’ll stay tuned for that. Silo was my favourite TV series of 2023… will its second season repeat that feat this year? There’s still a long way to go and a lot of exciting TV coming our way, but if you swing by in late December, you’ll find out.
Silo Seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream now on Apple TV+. Silo is the copyright of Apple Studios, AMC, and Apple TV+. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Zero Day, including the final episode.
I recently binge-watched Netflix’s Zero Day, and I thought it could be good subject matter for a review here on the website. If you know me, you’ll know that I find American politics to be fascinating, and I’m also a fan of conspiracy thrillers. Zero Day ticks both of those boxes – so the miniseries had been on my radar for a while. I’m glad to have finally been able to check it out for myself!
Before we get into spoiler territory, here’s the headline: I liked Zero Day on the whole. It successfully built up tension through a complex web of storylines, its characters mostly felt real and engaging, and the core premise – a devastating cyber-attack that takes out a huge chunk of America’s connected infrastructure – feels timely. Exploring the impact of that from the political side was an interesting idea, and I felt echoes of a British series called Cobra, which looked at the political and governmental fallout from a natural disaster. Zero Day was not without its flaws, but it was a fun ride that I was happy to be swept along for.
Ex-president George Mullen.
Robert de Niro is one of Hollywood’s most famous faces – but I have to confess that I’ve only ever seen a couple of his films (Taxi Driver and Stardust, if you were wondering). He’s one of those actors that seems to be absolutely everywhere… but whose work I seem to have unintentionally avoided! I’m not much of a cinephile, I guess. But I was interested to see what this legendary actor could do with a television series – only his third television role. With made-for-streaming TV’s higher budgets, shows like Zero Day can feel more cinematic than they would’ve even just a few years ago, and with more time for a story to unfold, there’s a lot to be said for the format. I’m a big supporter of TV as an entertainment medium.
So let’s get to Zero Day, where Robert de Niro’s waiting.
Sorry, that was a terrible way to shoehorn in that reference. De Niro did a solid job in Zero Day, and was probably at his best in the scenes where George’s mental health was in focus. Some fictional presidents (or ex-presidents, in this case) feel like they’re obviously based on a real person, but I didn’t get that sense this time – at least not from de Niro’s performance. You could project elements of several recent presidents and political figures onto George Mullen, but none really leapt out as being definitive.
Mullen was an interesting character.
One thing I didn’t find particularly believable about Mullen was that he’d had an affair. Something about the way de Niro played the character as upstanding, trying to do the right thing, dedicated to the truth at all costs… it just didn’t gel with this part of the character’s backstory. If we’d seen part of the affair in flashback form, or even just seen George as more firey and temperamental at that point in his life, maybe I’d have been more willing to buy it. But based on what we see of the character in Zero Day, I’m not so sure it works. The thought that he might’ve betrayed his marriage vows and his family, and taken advantage of his status in a relationship with a power imbalance… it’s not so much that it feels icky, because that’s the point of the revelation. It just didn’t feel like something this character would do.
In that sense, this piece of personal history felt like a bit of a narrative contrivance. It was a way for other, villainous characters in the story to have something they could use against George and his allies rather than something that felt natural for the character. And look, I get it: people can change with age, and their temperament can mellow. Part of the story, as we’ll talk about in a moment, was to do with age and ageing and how getting older can change or limit one’s perspective. But in this case… it just didn’t feel natural to me, so when it came to the affair being used by the rather one-dimensional Monica Kidder as an attempt to blackmail George, all I could think was “oh, so that’s why they chose to include it.”
Monica Kidder, one of Zero Day’s conspirators.
Several of Zero Day’s villains – if we can truly define “villains” and “heroes” in a show with so many deliberate shades of grey – felt pretty flat for me. Kidder might be the worst of the bunch – though Gabby Hoffman put in a solid performance with the material she had to work with – but I’d also include Clark Gregg’s Robert Lyndon in there too, as well as the various thugs, Russian spies, and others. None of them felt particularly fleshed-out as characters, and when one of the advantages of television over film has always been that you have more screen time to introduce and explore your characters… that’s just a little disappointing.
I would also say that the Russian agents in particular felt like cardboard cut-out character stereotypes. Russians as villains – or just as nefarious criminals and gangsters – has been a trope of American entertainment going back to the dawn of the Cold War, so we’ve seen duplicitous and criminal Russian spies in so many different productions over the years. Although Zero Day did, in its own way, seek to make a point about this… the main Russian character we spent time with in the first couple of episodes was just a walking trope. The same was true of Zero Day’s apparently omnipotent Mossad agent, who knew everything before the Americans did.
Generic Russian spy/gangster #47.
Zero Day’s governmental and congressional villains did, I would suggest, work a bit better than the one-dimensional “tech bros,” hedge fund investors, and Russian stereotypes. I will give credit to the series for trying to make a point about America’s wealthy classes and how they might see an opportunity in terror and confusion, but it wasn’t the main focus of the story and it was a point that’s been made better in countless other productions over the years. I could’ve happily spent an entire episode, for example, on the ramifications of Lyndon making money via his insider knowledge of the cyber-attack, and how that has real-world parallels. Zero Day raised this idea, but either didn’t know where to take it or was forced to drop it before the point could be hammered home.
Dreyer was a fun character, though, and his story of wanting to create an event he could take advantage of – while having convinced himself he would be the hero in that situation – was genuinely engaging. Zero Day kept Dreyer’s involvement in the attacks and attempted coup secret until near the end of the story for dramatic effect, which worked well – but also left me wanting more! Particularly because the series ended without Dreyer being arrested, I guess that could feel a little unsatisfying. As the audience, we know George and his team have the evidence – but seeing it used to arrest or convict Dreyer would’ve been the natural outcome.
Speaker Dreyer turned out to be one of the main plotters.
There are a couple of important ideas raised by Zero Day that I’d like to talk about next. This first one isn’t necessarily part of the story, but it’s absolutely essential to whether Zero Day will be enjoyable or even watchable for some people. In short… this is a series that, while critical of America and its government in some ways, is also implicitly supportive of many of the institutions that are in focus. At no point does Zero Day propose seriously overhauling or changing the way some of America’s three-letter acronyms operate, even when we see torture first-hand, sanctioned by George and his commission. It’s not exactly flag-waving, thin blue line right-wing populism… but its unwillingness to go further in its criticisms, and its reliance on “good people doing the right thing” is a bit… I dunno. Hypocritical, perhaps?
One fact that’s universally true in all systems and all governments is this: when you give an organisation or agency a set of powers, it’s basically impossible to take those powers away. As President Mitchell is told by Dreyer, “you can’t put that genie back in the bottle.” But Zero Day ends with George stepping down, the commission he headed being dismantled, and the attack’s perpetrators under arrest. The implication is that the “good guys” won and things will go back to normal. But when the US government developed the weapon used in the attack, and the commission designed to investigate the attack abused its extraordinary powers… how can “let’s all get back to normal” possibly be the outcome we’re rooting for?
As the credits roll, has George really set things right?
Secondly, Zero Day touched on the idea of America as a gerontocracy – albeit in a particular way. A gerontocracy, if you’re unfamiliar with the word, is a nation-state governed by elderly people. At time of writing, a full one-third of the United States Senate and nearly 20% of the House of Representatives are over the age of 70 – as are the president and four of the nine Supreme Court justices. It’s absolutely worth taking the time to talk about this and criticise it, as the baby boomer generation continues to horde wealth and power. Zero Day doesn’t tackle this directly, but I did feel at least some of this through George’s characterisation.
It was left ambiguous at the end of Zero Day whether George was suffering from some kind of mental health issue or an attack by a neurological weapon. I kind of read Zero Day as aiming for the former, not the latter, but there could be arguments both ways. But his mystery condition comes across, at least in part, as being similar to the early stages of dementia. How many times was former president Biden criticised for his age? His apparent senility forced him to drop his re-election bid just a matter of months ago. And when George seemed to pause midway through a speech as his mind wandered? That reminded me an awful lot of Senator McConnell, who – at the tender age of eighty-three – has recently announced he plans not to run for re-election.
Was George suffering from an age-related illness like dementia?
As above, this message wasn’t the main focus – and I’m not sure that dementia is even the way Zero Day’s writers intended those scenes to be read. Instead, the series is really trying to set up this mystery of PTSD versus a neurological weapon… and leaves it deliberately open-ended, with evidence pointing both ways. While this was interesting and engaging while the series was running, it’s another story thread that doesn’t feel neatly tied up now that the credits have rolled.
And I’m assuming, based on what Netflix, de Niro, and others have said, that Zero Day won’t be returning. With its conspirators uncovered and outed, and the malware that led to the cyber-attack being patched out and rendered harmless, it’s hard to see where to take the story for a full second season. However… maybe one more episode wouldn’t have been a terrible idea. A kind of epilogue, showing the perpetrators on trial, the dismantling of the commission, and settling the question of Geroge’s mental state wouldn’t have gone amiss.
Dreyer at the end of the series.
Zero Day did find a lot to say about modern society and its reliance on connected technological systems. While it’s impossible (at least based on my knowledge of computer programming) for a single, universal computer virus to take down as wide a range of systems as Zero Day depicts, the core message of these incredibly important networks being vulnerable is a timely one. It wouldn’t take much to push a critical system to the point of failure, and cyber-attacks are a legitimate concern for businesses, governments, and even individuals.
There’s also the matter of privacy, which Zero Day raises. Corporations – like the fictional Panoply – have access to huge amounts of personal information, and how they use that information is something we need to be aware of at the very least. The alliance of “big tech” with certain political figures raises a whole new set of questions about privacy and ethics – something Zero Day touches on but doesn’t really delve into in a lot of detail.
The Zero Day Commission’s headquarters.
Zero Day was in development at least as far back as 2022, with filming getting underway in 2023. This was well before Joe Biden stepped down from his re-election bid, but I felt there was more than a little of former VP Kamala Harris in Angela Bassett’s portrayal of Zero Day’s President Mitchell. Something about her calm tone of voice, and perhaps choices of outfit and hairstyle, all seemed to be leaning into that presentation. Mitchell was a distinct character, and not necessarily based on Harris or anyone else, but there seemed to be deliberate choices in the way she was presented that drew inspiration from America’s first African American and female vice president.
Since 9/11, the war on terror, and America’s Patriot Act, we’ve seen a lot of films and TV shows tackle terrorist conspiracies and criticise the heavy-handed government response. Parts of Zero Day – the “enhanced interrogation” tactics, the commission’s unconstitutional powers, and nameless, masked police officers dressed all in black with guns – are all things we’ve seen before. Zero Day, as mentioned, seemed to stumble over the point it wanted to make about these things, trying to simultaneously criticise the abuses of power we’ve seen while also still wanting to present most of its protagonists as fundamentally decent people who were forced to do bad things by circumstances beyond their control. This presentation felt rather two-faced, as if the series and its producers weren’t willing to fully commit.
George’s commission rounded up a lot of people.
There are better depictions of America going rogue, breaking the law, and torturing people. And there are, for those interested, better flag-waving depictions of America as a virtuous land of freedom and liberty. Zero Day wanted to be the former, but its focus on an ex-president, law enforcement officials, and weirdly, the head of the CIA as its “good guys” really got in the way of that message. While the cyber-attack, the conspiracy behind it, and George’s efforts to uncover the truth were all interesting, engaging, and entertaining in their own ways, this confused message leaves the series as a whole feeling like a project that probably had a bit too much corporate meddling. It seems unsure of itself and unwilling to fully commit to exploring the consequences of some of its storylines, messages, and themes.
Zero Day raised a couple of other interesting points in a tangential way. Firstly, through the character of Alex we got to catch a glimpse of the effect politics can have on a young person. I’ve long felt that most politicians have to be narcissists – if not outright sociopaths – to put their families and young children through life in the public eye. The way some politicians almost seem to use their families as props, especially in the United States, is pretty sickening. Zero Day touched on this with the relationship between Alex and her father, and it’s one of the first productions I’ve seen to really do so. It was interesting, at any rate.
Alex Mullen – the daughter of the former president.
There was also the theme of addiction, which we saw in Roger’s character. Roger had seemingly overcome a heroin addiction – something that was used against him at the end – and while this was never in focus, I’m always keen to see stories about recovering addicts that are presented positively. Roger may not have been a pure and virtuous character, but he was realistic and human, and the way Zero Day handled his addiction didn’t feel tokenistic or clumsy in the way it can sometimes.
Music was used to great effect in Zero Day. Obviously the song Who Killed Bambi by the Sex Pistols was incredibly important to the plot – and I doubt I’ll be able to listen to it again without thinking of this miniseries! But throughout the show, the score was excellent – building tension to great effect. It was the quintessential thriller score, and it worked exceptionally well. Camera work was also solid; I particularly liked the West Wing-inspired “walk and talk” shots at the commission’s HQ.
There were quite a few of these “walk and talk” sequences.
So I think that was everything I had in my notes. Zero Day was an interesting and engaging political thriller – even if it wasn’t quite willing to fully commit to some of its themes and story ideas. I binged it in a couple of sittings, which is something I’ll only do if I’m really into a show, and the time seemed to fly by. It was absolutely worth re-subscribing to Netflix (a subscription I don’t keep most of the time) in order to be able to watch it. I daresay I’ll find a few other things to watch before my one-month subscription is up, too!
I had Zero Day on my radar at the beginning of the year, and I’m glad I was able to check it out. It’s unlikely to be my pick for “TV show of the year” come December, but having already seen a far worse miniseries in 2025 (Earth Abides, which I categorically do not recommend) it’s not gonna be the worst thing I’ve seen this year, either! It kept my attention well enough, but having gone back to it to put together this review and capture a few still frames… I guess I’m not gonna spend a lot more time thinking about Zero Day. It was good. Not exceptional, and not the best thing I’ve ever seen. But decent.
Zero Day is available to stream now on Netflix. Zero Day is the copyright of Netflix and/or Grand Electric Productions. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-2. Minor spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: The Original Series Season 1, The Undiscovered Country, and Lower Decks Season 2.
I’m kind of glad that it’s taken me such a long time to finish watching Season 2 of Strange New Worlds. A lot of you have been sitting with the cliffhanger ending to Hegemony for over a year already, but I’ll glide smoothly into Season 3 in just a matter of weeks! Are you jealous?
Joking aside, Hegemony was a great episode – and the Star Trek franchise’s first big cliffhanger ending to a season in a while. There are a couple of narrative beats that I wasn’t as keen on, which we’ll get into in due course, but Hegemony was a fantastic way to end the season. There was a constant sense of tension throughout, which peaked at key moments in the story, a fun re-introduction of a classic character from The Original Series, and plenty of action to boot. I’d probably say that Hegemony doesn’t quite hit the same level as A Quality of Mercy did at the end of Season 1, but that’s an exceptionally high bar for any episode to aim for!
The Gorn are coming!
In The Next Generation era, it seemed that almost every season would end with the words “to be continued!” From The Best of Both Worlds at the end of TNG Season 3 to Zero Hour at the end of Enterprise’s third season, there were only three seasons of Star Trek that didn’t end on a cliffhanger. But since the franchise returned to the small screen in 2017, we’ve tended to get self-contained serialised stories that run for a single season apiece. The closest is arguably Discovery Season 2, which ended with the ship and crew heading into an uncertain future – but that season also wrapped up all of its other key storylines by the time the credits rolled (probably because cancellation was a legitimate concern).
I respect the confidence of Strange New Worlds’ writers and producers to create a story like this as a way to end Season 2. It was bold because a third season was not confirmed (at least, not publicly) at the time Hegemony was being written. A season-ending cliffhanger also feels like “classic Star Trek” in the best possible way, and coming at the end of a largely episodic season that’s seen Pike and the crew thrown into a mix of different adventures… it just feels right. I’ve said more than once that Strange New Worlds is the high-water mark of modern Star Trek, and Hegemony with its cliffhanger ending is yet another example I can point to when critics ask what I mean by that!
Hegemony is the first season-ending cliffhanger in a while!
Hegemony’s cliffhanger ending does leave me feeling concerned, though, at least in one sense. Obviously we know, and have known for a while, that Seasons 3 and 4 are coming – and that’s great! Strange New Worlds isn’t going to be abandoned with this ending left unresolved. But one of the best things about Strange New Worlds has been its return to a more classic style of episodic storytelling – something which, I would argue, really suits the Star Trek franchise. Particularly after the wholly-serialised Discovery and Picard, bringing Star Trek back to its roots – while retaining character arcs and other modern trappings – has been wonderful to see.
Because Hegemony ended in such a way as to tease a longer story – perhaps a season-long arc involving a conflict with the Gorn, akin to Deep Space Nine’s Dominion War – I’m a little concerned about Season 3 stepping away from that episodic style. I hope I’m wrong, and the very small glimpses of Season 3 that we’ve caught so far don’t seem to be all about the Gorn, which is positive. I’m just hoping that what’s made Strange New Worlds such a joy to watch over the past couple of years won’t be watered down by the Gorn story that debuted in Hegemony, as it’s a storyline that could easily lead to that kind of longer arc.
Captain Pike watches from the bridge as the Gorn attack.
That being said, I won’t deny that I love a good battle or war story in Star Trek – and the aforementioned Dominion War arc in Deep Space Nine happens to be one of my favourites. Within Deep Space Nine’s longer seasons, there was still plenty of time for one-off stories alongside episodes about the war, and if the Gorn war is to continue in Strange New Worlds across Season 3, I’d hope the writers and producers will be able to strike a similar balance. It’s more difficult to do that in an age of cut-down ten-episode seasons than it was when Star Trek shows would regularly churn out twenty-two or even twenty-six in a year… but getting a mix of different stories should still be possible.
Hegemony built on Season 1’s excellent episode All Those Who Wander in more ways than one, and if there is going to be a longer, more protracted conflict that plays out over several episodes, we can re-frame that story as a serious bit of foreshadowing. After Memento Mori had re-introduced the Gorn in style, All Those Who Wander ramped up the fear factor, making the classic Star Trek race feel more like the Xenomorphs from Alien. It was this horror tone that continued though Hegemony, both in scenes set on the planet Parnassus Beta and aboard the wreck of the USS Cayuga.
Strange New Worlds has re-invented the Gorn.
As an aside: I love the name Parnassus Beta for a planet! It feels like something straight out of The Original Series, using a Latin- or Greek-sounding word for the name of the system. Where I was less keen, unfortunately, was the very generic “21st Century North American town” design used for the planet’s surface. Hand-waved away with a “but they wanted it to look like this, though” line from Captain Batel… I just felt the designers could’ve done something to make Parnassus Beta look a little more futuristic.
And look, I get it: there are limited budgets for any episode of Star Trek, so decisions have to be taken and compromises need to be made. Given that we mostly saw Parnassus Beta in the dark and boarded up after the Gorn attack, I think it was passable enough. Its introduction reminded me a little of The Original Series episode Operation – Annihilate! parts of which were filmed on location in California. In that sense that “classic Trek” vibe was present… but I’m not sure that’s necessarily a positive in this case! I guess I’d just have preferred to see a more futuristic take on a human colony rather than one that very clearly took place on a studio backlot (the Parnassus Beta scenes were filmed on a set created by Amazon Prime Video for the series Reacher, according to Memory Alpha).
Parnassus Beta.
As underwhelming as Parnassus Beta may have been in daylight, after the Gorn descended – and seemingly blocked out the sun – the place took on a completely different atmosphere. There were elements borrowed from both the horror and war genres on this side of the story. Parts of Parnassus Beta felt like they were from a World War II film with commandos parachuting into occupied Europe; others felt more like a werewolf or vampire flick. The monstrous young Gorn even reminded me of Jurassic Park’s velociraptors.
And this was reflected in the way the sets were designed and dressed. Boarded-up windows, thrown-together shelters, blood-stained walls showing the aftermath of a battle or abduction… this blend of horror and war tones soaked Parnassus Beta and turned a really bland and uninspired 21st Century settlement into a colony under siege. The aftermath of the Gorn attack was chaotic and bloody, with the few survivors that Captain Pike and the away team encountered hiding from the aggressors outside.
Parnassus Beta came alive after the Gorn attack.
The descent to Parnassus Beta in the shuttle was a fun sequence. It was great to see Ortegas in her element; she’s up there with Tom Paris, for me, as one of the few bona fide pilots in Star Trek, and it’s clear how good she is at her job and how much she loves it. There was a NASA vibe to her line about being a test pilot, and I liked that little harkening back to the early days of spaceflight.
Melissa Navia, who plays Ortegas, had asked for a reduced role in Season 2, so I was glad to welcome her back for this sequence. The “dropship” idea was creative, and we got to catch a glimpse of the surface of Parnassus Beta beyond the confines of the colony. It looked like a jungle or rainforest, at least at first glance, which was neat.
Ortegas in the pilot’s seat.
Let’s talk about Parnassus Beta’s status as a non-Federation human colony – and how that relates to both the episode Hegemony and the rest of Star Trek! As Trekkies who like to get lost in this world, it’s genuinely interesting to learn more about the galaxy, and how not every human colony is founded with Federation membership in mind. I think the existence of a colony like Parnassus Beta ties into classic episodes, not only where non-Federation worlds have been featured… but where Starfleet repeatedly encounters very human-like “aliens!”
I made the same point during Lower Decks’ second season after we were introduced to the Hysperians: a non-Federation group of humans who’ve based their society around medieval chivalry. The way in which these colonies are established and governed could account for the existence of planets like 892-IV in Bread and Circuses, the Earth twin world in Miri, and even Sigma Iotia II from A Piece of the Action. All of these feature societies inspired by old Earth civilisations… and I kind of like the idea that, somewhere in the 21st or 22nd Centuries, before the Federation existed and kept meticulous records, humans settled on distant worlds and brought aspects of their culture with them. You could even throw in the Irish stereotypes from Up The Long Ladder as another example… though maybe the less said about that the better, eh?
The USS Enterprise arrives at Parnassus Beta.
The point is… as disappointing as Parnassus Beta may have been from a visual standpoint, it does match up with other Star Trek stories about human colonies, particularly colonies outside of the Federation’s jurisdiction. Star Trek was first imagined, in the 1960s, as taking inspiration from America’s “Wild West,” and what could be more fitting than independent groups striking out on their own to settle the “wilderness?” And – if we continue to stretch the metaphor – what could be more fitting than the existing residents of that wilderness, whom the colonists apparently didn’t care enough to find out about, striking back?
So does that make the Gorn the Native Americans in our analogy? I guess that’s a little uncomfortable, too. But never mind! Parnassus Beta was an interesting setting in concept, and the relationship between Starfleet and some of these outlying human colonies is something I’d like to see explored in more detail in the future. Knowing what we know about the Maquis and other human settlements beyond the borders of the Federation, it was really interesting to get a tease of that in a 23rd Century context.
The shuttle arrives at Parnassus Beta.
However, Parnassus Beta and its non-Federation status led to one of the biggest contrivances in Hegemony. Admiral April explained to Captain Pike that Starfleet wanted to avoid all-out war with the Gorn… which is fair enough. And to that end, the Federation was willing to essentially sacrifice the thousands of settlers on Parnassus Beta by refusing to sanction a response or a rescue operation, effectively ceding the planet to the Gorn and abandoning the colonists to a rather grizzly fate. That part tracks, and as much as we might be on Pike’s side and want to help, there’s an internally consistent logic to this side of the story.
But the attack on the USS Cayuga changes the dynamic completely – and no one in Hegemony so much as mentioned that. The Gorn didn’t only attack a non-Federation colony: they also attacked and destroyed a Starfleet ship. The Federation may have no jurisdiction over Parnassus Beta, and I could believe that they’d be willing to abandon the planet to its fate in an attempt to appease the Gorn. I mean, we have similar stories in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine with human colonists near the Cardassian border, and the same thing happened there. But the attack on the Cayuga was an attack on Starfleet and the Federation; it was an act of war.
The Gorn had attacked the USS Cayuga and murdered most of her crew.
This is the central conceit of Hegemony, and it doesn’t work. In order for us to believe that Starfleet and the Federation want to avoid war with the Gorn, we have to believe that they’re willing to do so at all costs, including sacrificing their own officers and ignoring the attack on two of their own ships. Because we later learn from Scotty that not only was the Cayuga destroyed, but so was his ship, the USS Stardiver. Starfleet may not have known about the Stardiver at the time of April’s message, but they did know about the Cayuga.
In order to get to the rest of the episode and its genuinely wonderful and engaging story, we first have to get around this narrative obstacle. And try as I might to rationalise it, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. “Open war is upon you, whether you would risk it or not.” Those were Aragorn’s words in The Lord of the Rings, as he explained to King Theoden that Saruman and Sauron were on the march, and there was no way to avoid taking part in the battles to come. In the case of Hegemony, the Gorn have declared war on the Federation by the attacks on the Stardiver and Cayuga, no matter what Starfleet’s Admirals might want. By refusing to sanction a rescue mission or allowing the Enterprise to retaliate, forcing Pike to stay on one side of an arbitrary, Gorn-designated demarcation line, Admiral April and Starfleet were not acting rationally within our understanding of Starfleet and the Star Trek universe.
Admiral April ordered Pike to avoid antagonising the Gorn… after he already knew that the Gorn had attacked at least one Starfleet vessel.
And I think this is why I’d rank Hegemony lower than last season’s All Those Who Wander. Gorn attacks on Starfleet are a regular enough occurrence that Starfleet has contingencies in place, but when the Gorn obliterate a Federation starship they’re unwilling to recognise the reality of the situation. Maybe there’s meant to be a metaphor there, something about the drawbacks and limitations of appeasement or the necessity of smaller states being protected under the umbrella of larger alliances. But I don’t believe that’s how it comes across – it reads, to me, like everyone in the episode basically ignored this massive event in order to skip to the action set-pieces and to give Pike’s mission a “disobeying orders” foundation.
If we take our Wild West metaphor from a moment ago and drag it out further, this would be akin to the United States in the late 1800s seeing an army unit attacked on the frontier and doing nothing to respond because the town they were visiting happened to be outside of US jurisdiction. Would that have happened? Would any modern-day military accept an attack on one of its units and refuse to respond in kind? Starfleet is the Federation’s military – and while the attack on the USS Cayuga need not lead to all-out war, at the very least it would give Pike and Starfleet some leeway to respond instead of blindly agreeing to the Gorn’s terms without so much as attempting to negotiate. If we were solely dealing with the attack on the colony, this story would’ve worked so much better. But by bringing the Cayuga into it, it complicates things – and not in a good way, unfortunately.
Starfleet Command ordered Pike and the crew to stay on their side of this demarcation line.
There’s something inherently un-Starfleet about abandoning officers to their fate – especially when that fate has been shown to be nothing short of an agonising death. We could point to dozens of episodes across the history of the franchise – from The Galileo Seven in The Original Series to First First Contact in Lower Decks – where Starfleet officers have done everything in their power, including breaking the rules, to avoid leaving someone behind. And while that’s exactly what we see Pike and the crew do… they’re forced to disobey a very un-Starfleet order in the process.
Some Star Trek stories have a “badmiral” as either a quasi-antagonist or a straight-up villain. Others have shown admirals who are out of touch or even incompetent. And occasionally, as in a couple of notable Deep Space Nine episodes featuring Admiral Ross, we’d catch a glimpse of the weight of command. These stories could show how someone in a senior position has to deal with more than what we see on screen; our protagonists aren’t always privy to all of the information or don’t have a bigger-picture view of the situation.
Pike and the senior officers in the briefing room.
The best spin I can put on Hegemony’s Admiral April is that he isn’t sharing everything he knows, or that he’s struggling with the burden of command at a time of war. However… I don’t think that’s really how it comes across, and it feels like the writers of the episode far too quickly brushed aside the implications of an attack on the USS Cayuga and the USS Stardiver in order to tell a story about Pike and the crew disobeying orders to do the right thing. The problem, at least for me, is that the weak setup risks undermining that story. When it’s a story that works so well and has so many highlights… that’s just a bit of a shame.
But I guess, in the grand scheme of things, all of this probably feels like a glorified nitpick. Hegemony did explain that Parnassus Beta was outside the Federation, and Admiral April’s orders were clear. Perhaps I’ve overthought this aspect of the story somewhat… but it didn’t sit quite right with me for the reasons I’ve tried to explain.
A crate of experimental anti-Gorn weaponry.
Captain Pike’s storyline in Hegemony works… in the context of his relationship with Captain Batel and of his relatively small arc across Season 2. By the way: am I imagining things, or was Pike less of a presence in most of the stories this season? It felt like he was all over Season 1 but had been taking more of a back seat this time around. Perhaps we’ll have to explore that subject on another occasion.
To get back on topic: when I look at Pike’s story in Hegemony, I’m also looking at it in the context of Season 1. In particular, Pike doesn’t seem to have learned the lessons of A Quality of Mercy – at least insofar as triggering a potentially massive, Federation-threatening war goes. Pike’s personal story in last season’s finale was all about his impending disability and finding a way out of it… but it was also a story that touched on how to deal with a challenging adversary and how a few seemingly small mistakes can lead to conflict.
Did Pike act recklessly in Hegemony?
To me, it seems as if the Captain Pike of Hegemony hasn’t even met the Captain Pike of A Quality of Mercy. Sure, he has a personal stake in rescuing any potential Cayuga survivors due to his relationship with Captain Batel. But the actions he takes are deliberately provocative, disobeying an order from Admiral April and putting himself and his entire crew at ground zero of a potential war with the Gorn. For him to not even acknowledge the events of last season as he starts down this path feels… strange.
Both episodes put Pike face-to-face with a complex situation, a powerful enemy, and a potential conflict. Both episodes make clear that one mistake could lead to all-out war. Pike sees firsthand – and also hears from his future self – what the consequences of the Romulan war would end up being. Shouldn’t one of the lessons he learned last season be to be more cautious? Or are we going to try to argue that Kirk’s “shoot first, ask questions later” approach was the right one, so that’s what Pike ultimately took away from the situation?
Why do I feel like Captain Pike hasn’t remembered what he learned last season?
It just feels a bit of a narrative oddity that Pike is in a comparable situation just ten episodes later, but doesn’t appear to acknowledge it in any way. Maybe he’d still prioritise his relationship with Captain Batel and want to do everything he could to rescue her, the colonists, and any other survivors. I mean, that seems like the right outcome based on everything we know of the character. But how a character reaches their destination is just as important – and is often more important – than the destination itself. Pike could still have led this unsanctioned rescue mission, but having seen A Quality of Mercy and the difficult challenge he faced when coming into conflict with the Romulans… I just feel this episode could’ve done something to acknowledge that and make it clear how Pike felt and how he was drawing on those earlier experiences.
We talked about Strange New Worlds as an episodic series, and that’s genuinely one of the best things about it from my perspective as a Trekkie. But it’s never been an entirely episodic show, and that blend of the “monster of the week” with characters who grow and evolve feels like the perfect mix of classic and modern television storytelling. While I guess this probably seems like another big nitpick, for me it felt odd that Captain Pike was thrust into two comparable situations just ten episodes apart… and the latter story made no attempt to acknowledge that fact.
Captain Pike at the end of the episode.
We’ll shelve that for now, and focus on one of the weaker elements of Hegemony for just a moment. I found Spock and Chapel to be a wonderful pair across the first two seasons of Strange New Worlds, and Spock’s reaction to Chapel’s apparent death or abduction genuinely did a lot to carry the storyline. His scenes with Una in particular were powerful, and I don’t want what I’m about to say next to detract from that. This was great character-focused storytelling.
But… Chapel was one of a handful of characters whose presence, for a storyline like this, dramatically lowers the stakes. Strange New Worlds is a prequel to The Original Series, so anyone who’s seen it or has more than a passing familiarity with it knows that the likes of Uhura, Spock, and Nurse Chapel are characters on that show. That means, from the point of view of Strange New Worlds, they’re indestructible. For a storyline that wanted to have high stakes, and to put a character in danger… picking one of the characters that fans know will still be around when the credits roll took a lot away from it.
Chapel was never in any danger.
When Captain Batel was missing, I could genuinely believe that Strange New Worlds was about to kill her off. When she revealed to Captain Pike her parasitic Gorn infection, I likewise believed that her death could be imminent (though we’ll talk about that more in a second!) But when Nurse Chapel was apparently dead, killed along with the rest of the Cayuga’s crew… it simply wasn’t possible. And that knowledge lowered the stakes for me on this side of the story. Spock’s reaction to it did a lot to help this part of the episode and carry it across the line, as did Pike’s embrace of Chapel when he realised she’d survived. But on its own, I’m afraid it was a victim of the “prequel problem” that some storylines end up facing.
Although this storyline did a lot for Spock, giving him an emotional problem to tackle that he struggled with, I can’t help but feel there were other characters Strange New Worlds could’ve chosen to endanger. Someone like Pelia, Una, or La’an would’ve genuinely felt at risk of death in a way that Chapel didn’t, and the reaction of Spock – or a different character who might’ve been closer to the person in danger – could’ve still been present. Again, this is a consequence of Strange New Worlds being a prequel and using so many legacy characters. In future seasons, that constraint may get even tighter.
This was a good storyline for Spock, in spite of a weak foundation.
Spock excelled in Hegemony, for me, in his scenes with Una. I know not everyone watched (or liked) Short Treks, but if you remember the short episode Q&A… I felt their conversation was built on those foundations. That short episode saw Spock’s initial arrival aboard the Enterprise – several years before The Cage and Discovery’s second season – and put Spock and Una together as they got stuck in a turbolift.
This sequence leaned into their relationship – the beginnings of which had been shown in Q&A – and it also gave Una an excellent opportunity to shine. In this moment she wasn’t merely a commander, taking over from Pike on the bridge as he led the dangerous away mission, but a mentor, counsellor, and friend. It was absolutely worth the detour to remind us of that side of Una – and her capabilities as a leader who could inspire and offer comfort to those under her command.
Una with Spock on the bridge.
Scotty – this younger version of the character – got one of the best introductions in modern Star Trek. It reminded me more than a little of Star Trek ’09 and how that incarnation of Scotty first appeared, only with much darker undertones. For the first time in Star Trek, Scotty is being played by a Scottish actor, which is great to see. James Doohan did a fantastic job as Scotty in The Original Series, becoming one of the franchise’s most iconic and oft-quoted characters, so there are big shoes to fill for Martin Quinn – assuming Scotty will stick around in Season 3. Based on what we saw in Hegemony, I’m impressed.
Strange New Worlds has been transformative for Nurse Chapel, taking a secondary character from The Original Series and giving her some genuine depth. For Uhura and Spock, we’ve seen them as younger, less-experienced, slowly growing and evolving into the characters we’re familiar with. Scotty, for me, would probably lean more on the Spock side than the Chapel side, and I think there’s room to show where he came from before he became the miracle-worker that we all remember!
Scotty has made his Strange New Worlds debut!
I’m going to assume Scotty will be at least as present in Season 3 as Paul Wesley’s Kirk has been in Season 2, and there really is a ton of potential in this introduction. I’d love to explore more of his relationship with Pelia, which was hinted at in Hegemony, perhaps learning why this brilliant engineer didn’t get a good grade in her class at Starfleet Academy. There seems to be a bit of tension there, and a power imbalance, but I could see Pelia guiding Scotty as he grows into the role of the Enterprise’s chief engineer.
On the other hand, Scotty’s introduction and his technobabble explanations of force-field traps and Gorn transponders means he arrives almost fully-formed – at least in terms of his technical mastery. Scotty’s janky, thrown-together Gorn transponder is one piece of evidence that was highly significant to the story, but also his force field trap and the lure he created should be included there as well. Scotty clearly possesses all of the ingredients to become the chief engineer we’re familiar with – even the confidence to interrupt two senior officers when they were having a conversation!
Scotty aboard the crashed shuttle.
The question I have, with Scotty’s introduction, is what will become of Pelia? Pelia has been, for me, a bit of a disappointment this season. Not in terms of her moments on screen; I think she’s fantastic, and Carol Kane has done a wonderful job bringing her to life. But rather, Pelia has been almost absent since she joined the crew. Her biggest moment arguably came in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow – but that was a version of the character from more than two centuries in the past. Moments where engineering solutions have been needed have instead fallen to characters like Spock, Ortegas, and even Uhura, with Pelia playing a much smaller and more supporting role than I’d have expected from the chief engineer in a Star Trek series.
So if Scotty is about to join the crew of the Enterprise on either a temporary or permanent basis, becoming even a secondary character as Kirk has been… where does that leave the already-reduced role for Pelia? I think it would be a shame if she was brushed aside to give more screen time to Scotty; as much as I like bringing back legacy characters and bridging the gap between Pike’s Enterprise and Kirk’s, I don’t want all of the show’s time to be spent on that. There needs to be a balance between old and new characters – and with Pelia already seeming to play second fiddle, even in her own department, bringing Scotty aboard could make things worse.
Pelia and Scotty have met before…
The counterpoint to that, of course, is that with an established relationship to build on, and with Pelia’s knowledge of the Enterprise and her systems, we could get a kind of mentor relationship going on. Seeing Scotty grow – in confidence, if not in ability – into the character we’re familiar with under Pelia’s tutelage could be fun to see. And furthermore, it could give the writers more of a reason to include her in stories set in engineering.
The technobabble on Scotty’s side of the story, though – to get back on track – was wonderful. His explanations for how he threw together the false sensor reading generator and the Gorn transponder were pure technobabble and pure Star Trek, and I really do love that! It felt like classic Star Trek in the best way possible, and technobabble explanations with big, random words thrown in have always been a part of what made the franchise so fun. The props created to represent these pieces of kit were also throwbacks, resembling things we’ve seen in The Original Series. Again, I’m absolutely there for all of that!
Sam Kirk with Scotty’s sensor device.
I touched on Captain Batel a moment ago, and I’d like to get into her storyline in a bit more detail. Batel is very much an auxiliary character to Captain Pike – she’s giving him a reason to keep going in light of his impending accident, and the relationship they’ve embarked on is cute, sweet, and a little awkward, sometimes. They make a fun, very relatable pair. Pike’s fear of losing her – and his relief at discovering that she was still alive – was expertly emoted by Anson Mount.
Gorn eggs, though… was it too soon to bring back this idea after All Those Who Wander? I mean, it’s only been eleven episodes since Hemmer was infected and killed off, and I felt that Hegemony might be straying a little close to repetitive territory with Captain Batel’s infection. If this idea was brand-new for the episode, I think it would’ve been a lot more powerful – but it would’ve needed setting up, and there probably wasn’t time for that! If Strange New Worlds limits this infection to Hemmer and Batel, it will probably be okay. But I’d encourage the writers to avoid adding even more Gorn egg infections in Season 3!
Was it too soon to bring back the parasitic eggs?
Batel’s infection raises a big question, though: is she going to survive? On the one hand, it would be a profoundly odd storytelling move to have her infected but alive at the cliffhanger only to say “oops, we can’t save her” and kill her off in the first episode of Season 3. But on the other hand… Captain Batel kind of has to go, one way or another. I don’t mean that because I don’t like her character; on the contrary, she’s been a wonderful addition to the series, she’s given Pike a whole new dimension that we hadn’t really seen before, and Melanie Scrofano has put in a truly exceptional performance. She brings the right balance of command authority and personal warmth to make Batel a believable character – and a sweet partner for Captain Pike.
But at the same time, Pike’s knowledge of his future means their relationship can’t be sustained. Either they’ll have to break up, or… well, the writers will find another way to get Captain Batel out of the way. There could be an engaging story there, with Pike having to come to terms with grief and loss. Batel was a great character for Hegemony to put in danger (twice) because her departure from the show feels like an inevitability one way or another. Unlike with Chapel, who we all knew had to survive somehow, Captain Batel really did feel – and still does feel – like she could be about to be killed off.
A sweet embrace.
Partly this is because of the kind of show Strange New Worlds has been. Killing Hemmer before the end of Season 1 was a serious loss for the show… but it also really raised the stakes for all of the other new characters. With the exceptions of those we know survive to The Original Series or beyond, no one is safe. I criticised Discovery and Picard during their runs for putting their characters into dangerous situations, but refusing to go one step further and killing off all but the most minor secondary characters. Strange New Worlds has successfully raised the stakes in that regard, and if Captain Batel joins Hemmer in the “murdered by Gorn eggs” grave… that feeling will only grow.
Main character deaths are a hallmark of modern television storytelling, and in that sense Strange New Worlds is taking the lead of shows that pioneered what I’ve termed the “disposable cast” – the likes of The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, where no character could feel safe. There are limitations to this, due to the presence of legacy characters and the show’s prequel status, but as we saw this time with Captain Batel, Strange New Worlds can still elicit those feelings – and do so in style.
Captain Batel may not be long for this world…
I liked the zero-g battle between Spock, Chapel, and the adult Gorn aboard the wreck of the USS Cayuga. It felt a little silly to me that other areas of the ship retained their artificial gravity… I mean, did you see the state of the wreck? There was hardly anything left of the Caygua, so how was gravity still functioning?! But on the damaged bridge, in spacesuits and without gravity, the fight was genuinely exciting. Slowed by the lack of gravity and air, Spock wasn’t able to grab his phaser in time, and as it went spinning across the vacuum, I felt a lot more of the tension and excitement than I had until that point.
I think I’m right in saying that this is the first adult Gorn to be seen on screen in Strange New Worlds. I confess that I have a real die-hard appreciation for the old rubber suit from Arena; there’s just something special about those old practical effects that the modern redesign can’t touch. But for the way this version of the Gorn are being depicted, as scarily intelligent monsters, I liked the way this character looked. And I appreciate that there was an effort to use real practical effects for this sequence – a performer in a Gorn suit – rather than making the entire thing a CGI creation.
A Gorn in a spacesuit…
After the tense fight with the Gorn commander, his death actually felt pretty brutal. Drifting out into space with a damaged helmet, injured and leaking air… that’s a pretty gruesome way to go for anyone! The fact that it happened to a monstrous Gorn might’ve taken something away from that, but I actually found it to be an incredibly brutal moment – at least by Star Trek’s usual standards.
Sticking with the wreck of the Cayuga, I thought the set redresses worked pretty well. Sometimes in Star Trek, it can be pretty obvious when an existing set is being recycled and is supposed to be a new setting – Discovery’s transporter room trying to pass itself off as a Ba’ul prison cell in Season 2 is still one of the worst, and the first example that comes to mind! But the changes made to the corridor and especially to the damaged bridge really sold me on the wreck of the Cayuga as a real place, and it made a fun setting for Spock’s stand-off with the Gorn.
Spock on the Cayuga’s ruined bridge.
Should we address the status of Gorn-Federation contact? I mean, we’ve done other nitpicks so far in this review… so why not? If you wanna get technical about it, The Original Series first season episode Arena made it pretty clear that Starfleet hadn’t encountered the Gorn before. Because I didn’t review individual season 1 episodes of Strange New Worlds (the show wasn’t “officially” available outside of the United States for months after its premiere) I didn’t get a chance to address this at the time.
Long story short… I don’t really give a shit if Strange New Worlds contradicts Arena. Internal consistency and “canon” are important up to a point, but given the quality of the writing in all of Strange New Worlds’ Gorn episodes so far, I really don’t think it matters. If we were dealing with a bigger faction, one that had played a role in numerous episodes across multiple shows, then I might be more on the side of the canon purists. But given that the Gorn only ever appeared once in The Original Series and once in Enterprise, I’m content for Strange New Worlds to explore this faction in more depth. I think they work better as antagonists because of how unexplored they are than Discovery’s Klingons did, and I’m genuinely enjoying this “spacefaring monster” idea.
The Gorn captain from Arena.
This depiction of the Gorn led to an interesting conversation between characters. How do we define a “monster,” and given that the Gorn are clearly at least as intelligent as humans, do they even fit that definition? In fact, seeing as the Gorn appear to have access to technology that surpasses the Federation’s capabilities – a jammer that can block transporters, sensors, tricorders, and warp engines all at once is clearly much more advanced than anything Starfleet has – is “monster” even close to accurate?
As an aside: did it seem like the Gorns’ jammer affected their own sensors? Because it felt that way to me, and I wonder if we might learn more about how the Gorn acquired this technology in a future episode. The idea that their most powerful weapon also renders their own ships and soldiers blind is an interesting one – and after Scotty’s comments about a solar flare sending the Gorn into a hunting frenzy, we could be primed to learn more about them. My theory? I wonder if there’s someone behind the scenes manipulating the Gorn or pushing them to attack the Federation.
Maybe we’ll have to elaborate on that idea one day!
Could someone (or something) be influencing or manipulating the Gorn?
The “monster” conversation was a genuinely interesting one. It reminded me a little of Kirk’s anti-Klingon feelings in The Undiscovered Country, and it could’ve been a great way to make a point about how all of us can very easily “other-ise” cultures and peoples that we don’t understand. All-out war is a very real possibility here, but Star Trek has always been a franchise that promoted understanding, bridging cultural differences, and peaceful exploration. Perhaps there’s a story, somewhere, about how the Gorn don’t see humans as equals, and how it’ll take negotiation and convincing to get them to, y’know, stop eating us.
I could’ve happily spent longer on this conversation, and I think La’an would’ve been an interesting character to linger on. We’ve already seen her history with the Gorn, her fear, and how her feelings toward them can drive her… but how would she react to negotiation and peace? That could be an interesting angle for the series to explore. I love a good alien monster as much as the next sci-fi fan, don’t get me wrong, but the Gorn aren’t mindless animals – they’re warp-capable and intelligent, and I’d like to see that side of things explored in more detail one day.
La’an and Captain Pike on Parnassus Beta.
This review is already running long, so I think we’d better start to wrap things up. Hegemony was an outstanding episode, up there with the best of the best from Seasons 1 and 2. It was a fantastic way to close out Strange New Worlds’ wonderful second season, while also teeing up a story that could – in theory – run for multiple episodes across Seasons 3 and 4. The conflict with the Gorn is fascinating, and the Gorn themselves make for a wonderfully monstrous and intimidating adversary. My only concern is that Strange New Worlds has been a breath of fresh air with its return to episodic storytelling, exploration, and even some of Star Trek’s more ethereal and “weird” storylines… and I don’t want to sacrifice that for a serialised season-long story. Discovery and Picard already burned me out with repeated “the entire Federation is in imminent danger” storylines… so I hope that Hegemony can be a two- or three-part story and nothing more.
There were a couple of contrivances that saw Starfleet Command (and everyone else in the story) skip over the Gorn’s attack on a Federation vessel, and I confess I found that difficult. But once I got past that, the rest of the episode played out in truly exciting style, closing out the season with a bang. I had a truly wonderful time with Captain Pike and really the entire crew – and I can’t wait to find out what happens next when Season 3 arrives later this year.
The USS Cayuga.
This finally finishes my Strange New Worlds Season 2 episode review series – a series that I began when the show was first airing back in 2023. It took me so long because I basically burned out on Star Trek for a while, and I still have two full seasons of Lower Decks and some Prodigy episodes to get caught up on before I’m fully back up to speed with Star Trek. I’m probably the only reviewer who watched Section 31 before Subspace Rhapsody and Hegemony, so I hope you’ll forgive the lateness of these final reviews.
As I said at the beginning, though, it kind of worked out well for me, because now I don’t have so long to wait for the continuation of this wonderful story! Season 3 is well into post-production, and while we don’t have a broadcast date just yet, I would expect to see it in the summer or perhaps early autumn. There’s less congestion to the schedule this time around, so hopefully Paramount will give Star Trek room to breathe. That’ll give me time to get caught up on some of those other shows, right?
Season 3 will be on our screens before too long, though, so I hope you’ll join me for more reviews and perhaps a dash of theory-crafting. No promises, but I’d like to think I’ll get through Season 3 in a more timely fashion this year! And until then, stay tuned here on the website for more Star Trek content. In the first couple of months of 2025, I’ve already reviewed Section 31 and written up my recollections of Voyager to celebrate that show’s thirtieth anniversary. There’s more to come, so until then… Live Long and Prosper!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream now on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available. The series is also available on DVD and Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds and all other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This review contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-2.
I’ve been putting off this review.
After I re-started my Strange New Worlds Season 2 episode reviews in the autumn, this episode stood out as one that I just wasn’t looking forward to or was even interested in, so when it was the next one in the lineup I found myself procrastinating.
I will tell you up-front that I’m generally not a fan of non-animated musicals. I adore musicals in the theatre; seeing Wicked shortly after its West End debut is genuinely one of my favourite memories. And I like Disney-style animated musical films, too. But live-action musical films have never been my cup of tea.
Una and Kirk dancing aboard the Enterprise.
Worse, musical episodes in shows that are otherwise not musicals have been – in my subjective opinion, naturally – universally terrible. Whether it was in Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or even Scrubs… I really didn’t like what was on offer. I’m a fan of the camp and kitsch as much as the next person, but musical episodes have always been a bridge too far. They feel offputting, immersion-breaking, silly, and even fan-servicey sometimes.
So it’s with that background that I approach Subspace Rhapsody.
Let’s analyse and dissect Subspace Rhapsody.
I’m gonna do something a little different for this review. Rather than waste your time and mine with a two thousand-word explanation of why I’ve never liked musical episodes, I want to try to stay positive and focus on some of the things I liked or appreciated about Subspace Rhapsody. Because I’m not gonna lie to you: I would rather hammer a rusty nail into my scrotum than watch this episode again. It was so far beyond cringeworthy that I barely got through it once.
First of all, let’s talk choreography and songwriting.
Creating a musical – any musical, really – is a lot of work. Trust me, I know: I used to do amateur dramatics, and we’d always have songs and performances in our shows! Rehearsing Subspace Rhapsody must’ve been a challenge, and for choreographers and vocal coaches, having to work with actors who are not natural singers nor particularly practised in musical theatre will have been an additional challenge. A lot of work went into writing songs, working with the actors to get the best possible take when recording the songs, and especially choreographing some of the bigger dance routines. Getting multiple performers to dance and sing in unison is a creative and technical feat. The fact that I didn’t enjoy the result doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the skill that went into it!
Singing and dancing at the episode’s climax.
Redoing the Strange New Worlds opening theme as an a capella piece was creative, too. I actually didn’t mind the result – it was different from the usual theme (which happens to be one of my favourites in the entire franchise) while being familiar enough to still fit the opening titles. It was the right choice for this episode, and whoever came up with the idea deserves praise! As do the performers who vocalised the theme and the sound mixers who brought it together.
Secondly, the premise of the episode – a random space phenomenon causing chaos on the Enterprise – feels like something straight out of The Original Series or really any pre-Enterprise show. Subspace Rhapsody, in concept, wasn’t a million miles away from episodes like The Naked Time, If Wishes Were Horses, or Masks, which I mean as a compliment. Star Trek has always been ethereal and, for want of a better term, “weird” in its take on sci-fi, particularly in The Original Series and the early part of The Next Generation. It’s hard not to look at Subspace Rhapsody’s core concept through that lens, and stepping back to that style of storytelling after the intensely dramatic Discovery and Picard is a welcome change.
The improbability field felt like something right out of classic Star Trek.
The quantum uncertainty field – or improbability field – felt so familiar, in fact, that I could’ve sworn it had been used somewhere else in Star Trek before! Not for musical reasons, it just seemed like a very familiar term. I was wrong about that, it was actually new for Subspace Rhapsody, but the concept felt very “Star Trek.” We’ve seen space phenomena lowering peoples’ inhibitions, making dreams come alive, or turning the Enterprise into a stone pyramid, so why couldn’t there be something out there forcing people to sing? It’s not so outlandish that it couldn’t be part of Star Trek’s occasionally wacky galaxy!
The one side of this that I felt didn’t work as well as intended was the danger posed by both the field itself and the Klingons’ response to it. At no point did I feel the crew of the Enterprise – or the wider Federation, come to that – were in any real danger. And I know in Star Trek stories the heroes always find a way to save the day… but that isn’t what I mean. Plenty of episodes and films can still feel tense, even though at the back of our minds we know there’s going to be a solution. But Subspace Rhapsody didn’t convey that feeling well enough for me, even when the Klingon ships were bearing down on the Enterprise.
The Klingons were partial antagonists in Subspace Rhapsody.
I was, I must admit, pleasantly surprised with the quality of the singing in Subspace Rhapsody. Often, when non-singers are pressed to take on musical roles… it’s kind of obvious, and all the auto-tune in the world can’t hide a lack of talent and training. To my surprise, most of the cast did well – even though it could be obvious that the singing was pre-recorded and everyone was just miming along. Still, I’ll take reasonably good lip-syncing over bad singing any day of the week!
Sticking with the songs, there are a couple more positives. I appreciate that the songs were all original – this wasn’t a “jukebox musical,” trying to recycle out-of-copyright songs from years gone by. Having the crew sing about their feelings and what was going on around them was silly, yes, but better than if they’d burst into a rendition of something like Button Up Your Overcoat or Embraceable You. Songwriting takes talent, and putting together original songs inspired by classic musicals on a budget is no mean feat.
All of the songs were original.
There must’ve been a temptation to try to emulate the style of composers like Lin-Manuel Miranda, creating pieces of music with a much more modern style. For my money – which, admittedly, doesn’t go very far in an episode like this one – Subspace Rhapsody was better-served by generally sticking with a more trad-pop style. The episode’s final musical number (its grand finale) was a bit of a departure from that, but trying to do the whole episode in that style, or with a mix of genres like disco or hip-hop, wouldn’t have been a positive.
Obviously Subspace Rhapsody was a great episode for Uhura, picking up her character arc from Season 1 and referencing how Hemmer had inspired her. Her growth as an officer, and finding her place both in Starfleet and aboard the Enterprise, were also instrumental to her role in the story, helping her discover a solution to the improbability field. We didn’t get to learn a lot about Uhura this time, nor did she really change over the course of the story, but her role in Subspace Rhapsody felt like the culmination of her arc across the show’s first two seasons. It was nice to see.
Subspace Rhapsody was a big episode for Uhura.
Subspace Rhapsody was also a great episode for La’an – particularly her relationships with Kirk and Una. La’an lanced the boil of her feelings for this reality’s version of Kirk, and while it didn’t go the way she might’ve wanted, there’s something cathartic in the act of confession. Hopefully it’ll settle those feelings for her going forward. This felt like a pretty relatable moment; who among us hasn’t had feelings for someone and tried, awkwardly, to talk to them? I know I’ve been in the position of feeling conflicted about whether to confess how I feel and how to go about it! It’s part of the human condition.
La’an and Una make a fun pair; there’s a kind of big sister/little sister relationship between them, sometimes. For Una to be the one La’an turned to when she was struggling with what to do about Kirk felt natural in the context of their relationship across the series so far, and deepening their bond was something I appreciated this time.
La’an evolved her relationships with Kirk and Una this time.
The one character I’d argue that Subspace Rhapsody didn’t handle well was actually Captain Pike. Firstly, Pike seemed to trip over a pretty basic relationship hurdle in a way that didn’t feel right for his character. The “issue” in his relationship with Captain Batel was so incredibly simple that it didn’t make a lot of sense to me that he wouldn’t simply propose a different kind of vacation or try to find a compromise. Allowing something so small to eat away at him and potentially damage their relationship just doesn’t feel like something Pike would do – even though, again, it was kind of a relatable moment. Sometimes in relationships something small can seem intimidating, and maybe the story wanted to get at Pike being inexperienced with this kind of thing. It was still wide of the mark, but at least I get what the story wanted to say.
Secondly, Pike is known for his inspiring speeches and his ability to motivate his crew. For him to delegate that task at the episode’s climax – with potentially huge stakes and the survival of Starfleet on the line – didn’t seem right. Uhura was well-positioned to speak to the crew, sure, but no one does inspiration quite like a ship’s captain. We’ve seen Pike take on that role several times already in both Strange New Worlds and Discovery, and while I get this was Uhura’s moment… the way the script brushed Pike aside to get there didn’t sit right with me.
This wasn’t Captain Pike’s strongest episode.
We should also talk about Spock and Chapel, who seem to have come to the end of their brief relationship. I liked the callback to The Original Series on this side of the story – Roger Korby was a character from the Season 1 episode What Are Little Girls Made Of, and having him name-dropped here was interesting. I wonder if Korby will be mentioned – or even seen on screen – in Season 3.
I found both Spock and Chapel to be relatable on this side of the story… because I’ve been both of them at different points in my life. Leaving someone behind to take advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is hard, and being the one left behind as a partner goes somewhere you can’t follow… that’s probably even more difficult. Spock’s intense feeling of rejection really hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting, and I think it also shows how far Spock still has to go in order to become the stoic Vulcan we’re familiar with from The Original Series. This younger version of the character is still carrying more of his emotional human side – and it came through in that moment.
Spock is still – on occasion – an emotional character.
There were several creative camera shots in Subspace Rhapsody, as well as some great special effects and animated moments. La’an gazing out of the window during her solo song, complete with a zoom out to the Enterprise, was great – and it’s a pretty uncommon shot in Star Trek, when you think about it. Una and La’an floating with the artificial gravity having been deactivated was also a neat effect, and another rarity!
The Enterprise and three Klingon ships performing a kind of ballet in space was exceptionally creative, too, and tied into the theme of the episode really well. It was well-animated, and I liked seeing the D7 class (referred to as a K’t’inga class in the episode) back on screen once more. I also liked the classic warp effect that was used near the end of the episode as the Enterprise headed on to her next adventure.
Even the Enterprise and the Klingon ships couldn’t resist dancing.
Speaking of the Klingons, I felt more than a little of Deep Space Nine’s General Martok in Bruce Horak’s Garkog. Not only do the two characters each have a missing eye, but Horak seemed to be channelling J G Hertzler in his performance, particularly in his first scene. Garkog was a pretty minor character in the grand scheme of things, but it was sweet to welcome back Bruce Horak for the second time this season. I still think it was a mistake to kill off Hemmer so early, by the way!
I could’ve spent another scene or two with the Klingons. We got to see their musical “dishonour” on screen, but I would’ve been interested to get a different perspective on the improbability field phenomenon. Maybe we could’ve seen Garkog and his crew trying to find a solution before their encounter with Pike and the Enterprise.
General Garkog.
There were a couple of funny lines in Subspace Rhapsody that successfully won a smile. Pelia’s line in the briefing room about using the “zipper” was one, and Kirk’s a moment later about how he “almost understood” what Spock was saying was also a bit of fun. I would say that Kirk’s unspecified “commission review” felt like a bit of a clumsy way to shoehorn him into the story, but once he was aboard the Enterprise I enjoyed having him around.
So I think that’s everything I had in my notes this time.
Subspace Rhapsody was borderline unwatchable for me, and unless someone duct-tapes me to a chair and holds my eyes open, A Clockwork Orange-style, I will never watch it again. It was categorically not “my thing,” and I’m okay with that. Star Trek is an experimental franchise, and I welcome the creative team striking out in new directions, trying different things, and keeping Strange New Worlds a largely episodic project. As long as they don’t try to make a fully-musical series, I think I can cope with Subspace Rhapsody as a one-off.
La’an is spying on someone…
There were positives in the mix. Uhura and La’an got great moments of characterisation, Spock was particularly relatable, and it was fun to welcome back Paul Wesley as Kirk. His take on the character is fantastic, and I’m genuinely looking forward to spending more time with him in future. There was also some excellent cinematography and visual effects work.
On the musical side of things, here’s what I’ll say. There are some styles of storytelling, movie making, and entertainment in general that I personally don’t like or aren’t “my thing.” But I can still appreciate the skill, effort, and work that went into their creation, and I can acknowledge that they are exemplars of their genres. I don’t like opera, for instance, but I can still appreciate the years of training needed to sing that way, or the months of work and rehearsing that go into the staging of an opera.
Pelia, La’an, and Spock.
And that’s how I feel about Subspace Rhapsody, at the end of the day. I didn’t enjoy it – and I knew I wouldn’t before I watched it, hence all the procrastination – but I can tell that the cast, crew, and production team had a ton of fun with it. A lot of effort and practise went into some of the more involved musical numbers, and there was some genuinely great choreography – at least from my perspective as a layman. And as a Trekkie, I can appreciate other parts of the story even if the musical side of things really didn’t do it for me.
I hope this didn’t feel like too much of an attack on Subspace Rhapsody. If you liked it, or if you’re more a fan of musicals than I am, that’s great. And I will say that it looked like it would’ve been a lot of fun to work on as a dancer or background performer! It just wasn’t for me. I promised myself I wouldn’t watch Hegemony until I’d seen Subspace Rhapsody, so I really needed to get this out of the way to get to the end of the season! I’m ready to jump into that episode now… so stay tuned for what will hopefully be a more positive review sometime soon.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-2 are available to stream now on Paramount Plus in countries and territories where the service is available. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for all fourteen Star Trek films, including Section 31.
Almost five years ago, I put all of the Star Trek films into a ranked list. I talked about what I liked and didn’t like about each, and tried to justify my choices! But since I wrote that list, a couple of things have happened. Firstly, I’ve gotten better at using images here on the website – that old piece looks pretty janky in comparison to some of my more recent articles. But secondly – and way more importantly – there’s been a new Star Trek film since then!
I think Trekkies are still a little divided on whether the made-for-streaming Section 31 should count as a Star Trek “film,” and I get that. But for me, Section 31 has the runtime of an (admittedly rather short) film, it’s not a series, miniseries, or anything like that, it has mostly original characters, and it was afforded a higher budget than any individual Star Trek episode would’ve been. For all intents and purposes, Section 31 counts as the newest Star Trek film – the fourteenth since 1979… and hopefully not the last!
Section 31 is the most recent Star Trek film, and it’s on this list!
So today, I’m going to revisit the Star Trek films, this time using the internet-friendly tier list format that you might’ve seen on a couple of other occasions here on the website! I think most folks have a vague idea about tier lists at this point – but if you don’t, I’ll happily explain how it works.
Instead of giving each film a number from 1-14, which would be hard, we’re going to assign each film one of five tiers: D, C, B, A, and S. D-tier films are the least-enjoyable with noticeable flaws, C-tier titles are average or “just okay,” B-tier films are a step up, being above average, A-tier titles are getting really good, and S-tier is reserved for the absolute cream of the crop! Why is S-tier the top instead of A or something like A-plus? The truth is… I don’t know! But that’s the way everyone else does it, so I’m sticking with it! Some tier lists also include an F-tier for absolute disasters, but since I don’t consider any of the fourteen Star Trek films to be that bad, I’ve opted not to include it on this occasion.
Let’s fill out this blank tier list together!
Now that the explanation of the format is out of the way, a handful of important caveats!
Firstly, all of this is subjective, not objective. There is no “objectively best” Star Trek film, and even within the fan community opinions vary wildly on which titles are better and what makes for a good Star Trek story. So if I rank a title you hate highly or speak ill of your favourite… that’s okay! There ought to be enough room in the fan community for civil conversations and polite disagreement.
Secondly, this piece supersedes my old film ranking list, and I have made a couple of changes to where films were ranked five years ago. I’ll be leaving the old piece as it is, though – it’s a part of the website and it would be silly to delete it! But going forward, this is the official Trekking with Dennis Star Trek films tier list!
Admiral Kirk addressing his crew in The Motion Picture.
Third, I’ll rank each production in order of release, beginning with The Motion Picture and finishing with Section 31. Then I’ll show you the final tier list at the end. I’ll do my best to explain what I liked and/or didn’t like about each title to justify my ranking – but please feel free to vehemently disagree if you like!
Finally, all of this is just for fun! I like writing, I like Star Trek, and finding an excuse to talk about some of the Star Trek films that I love – or that I haven’t seen in a while – is supposed to be a bit of escapism. Nothing about this should be taken too seriously, because the point of Star Trek for me has always been entertainment and escaping to a fun vision of the future.
With all of that out of the way, let’s begin.
Film #1: The Motion Picture (1979) Tier: S
The Motion Picture had a complicated production history! It was originally envisioned as a television series, bringing Star Trek back as Phase II in the late 1970s after re-runs of The Original Series had been growing in popularity. Actors had been cast, sets were being designed, and scripts were written… but then, in 1977, another sci-fi film’s wild success led to Phase II being reimagined as a feature film. Star Trek as a cinematic franchise was born!
In my experience, Trekkies tend to underrate and underappreciate The Motion Picture. In a very literal sense, much of the visual language of Star Trek was born here, not in 1966: metal Starfleet badges, the warp core as an upright glowing tube, angled corridors, Starfleet Headquarters, the re-designed Klingons… and so much more. Sets built for The Motion Picture would remain in continuous use all the way through Enterprise’s cancellation in 2005, defining what makes Star Trek look like Star Trek for millions of viewers.
The Motion Picture also has one of what I consider to be the best starship introductions in the franchise – something that set the bar for other shows! Kirk and Scotty’s shuttlepod flight to the refit Enterprise – complete with Jerry Goldsmith’s Academy Award-nominated score – is beautiful, and I get teary-eyed every time I watch it. It’s one of the best moments in Star Trek for me, and everything about it is pitch-perfect.
I get that The Motion Picture’s main story isn’t for everyone. It was also a bit of a mess, with re-writes continuing even during filming, and that probably didn’t help. But for me, The Motion Picture plays out like an extended episode of The Original Series. It’s ethereal, thought-provoking, and not overladen with fast-paced action set-pieces. I think that’s to the film’s credit, even if many don’t agree.
I have a longer piece about The Motion Picture, written in 2019 to mark the film’s 40th anniversary. You can find it by clicking or tapping here.
Film #2: The Wrath of Khan (1982) Tier: S
For many folks, The Wrath of Khan is still the Star Trek franchise’s high-water mark; a film that no other in the franchise has even come close to. I wouldn’t go that far personally – I think there are a couple of other equally brilliant films, as we’ll talk about in a moment – but The Wrath of Khan is definitely up there! The mix of sci-fi with high-octane action proved to be a perfect blend for Kirk and the crew, with a vengeance-obsessed Khan becoming one of the best villains not only in Star Trek, but in all of cinema.
The Wrath of Khan has one of the best and most intense starship battles in the franchise. Drawing inspiration from submarine and naval battles in World War II films, the fight between the badly-damaged Enterprise and Khan’s USS Reliant is incredible. The sequence builds up tension masterfully – by showing the extent of the damage to the Enterprise, by robbing Kirk and Khan of their sensors in the nebula, and with Spock cleverly explaining Khan’s “two-dimensional thinking” as a way to convey the tactics of starship battles in a three-dimensional space.
Toward the end of The Wrath of Khan, we also get one of the most poignant and emotional moments in any film in the franchise… or really anywhere in the entirety of Star Trek, come to that. Spock’s death – sacrificing himself to save the Enterprise and his friends – really hits hard. Even though on my first viewing of The Wrath of Khan I already knew that Spock would be resurrected, there’s still a real emotional weight to this moment. Star Trek has attempted to do similar things with other characters (we’ll look at a couple further down the list) but none came close to matching this moment.
Ultimately, The Wrath of Khan was the first film to wrest control of Star Trek away from its creator, Gene Roddenberry, and to try new and different things with this cast of characters. It’s very different in tone and style from The Original Series, but that turned out to be a net positive for many fans – and many new fans, too. The Wrath of Khan firmly established Star Trek as a cinematic franchise.
Film #3: The Search for Spock (1984) Tier: A
Sandwiched in between the ever-popular Wrath of Khan and the light-hearted Voyage Home, I think some folks can overlook The Search for Spock. As the middle part of a trilogy, the film has the difficult task of moving the story along but without being able to draw all of its story threads to a firm conclusion. For my money, though, it’s a great film – and it manages a complicated sci-fi story exceptionally well.
The Search for Spock gave us an extended look at the re-designed Klingons from The Motion Picture, and also introduced the Klingon Bird-of-Prey, arguably the faction’s most iconic spaceship. It’s the film which re-introduced the Klingons in a big way, expanded the Klingon language, and introduced starship and uniform designs that have become inseparable from the faction. The Klingon Empire as we know it would not be the same – and might not be a big part of Star Trek at all – without The Search for Spock and its main villain, Kruge.
I’ve always appreciated the design of the Genesis Planet. The story of its creation is a bit “out there,” even by Star Trek standards, but the practical sets, props, and puppets created to represent the Genesis Planet all feel like ’80s sci-fi at its best. And yes, as a child of the ’80s I’m acutely aware of my biases here! But when I compare the way that The Search for Spock looks to modern Star Trek, with its CGI and AR wall… I can’t help it. I know what I like!
As the film that destroyed the original USS Enterprise, The Search for Spock was always going to court controversy. But I don’t agree with the take that “all of the odd-numbered Star Trek films are bad,” lumping The Search for Spock in with The Final Frontier. There are some wonderful moments of characterisation for David Marcus, Kirk, Dr McCoy, and others. And thanks to the insistence of director Leonard Nimoy, all of the main cast members got moments in the spotlight.
I have a longer piece about The Search for Spock – which was the first Star Trek film I watched – and you can find it by clicking or tapping here.
Film #4: The Voyage Home (1986) Tier: B
Maybe this is a “hot take,” but I’ve never been wild about The Voyage Home. As with similar Star Trek stories involving time travel to the modern day, its ’80s setting has left the film feeling so much more dated than any other in the cinematic franchise, and while I enjoy a good ’80s comedy as much as anyone else… it’s not necessarily what I want from a Star Trek film.
That being said, I don’t hate The Voyage Home by any stretch. It has some incredibly funny moments as Kirk and the crew attempt to navigate a time period that’s completely alien to them. Moments like Kirk asking if $100 is “a lot” of money, or Scotty trying to use a mouse to talk to a computer spring to mind as laugh-out-loud moments, and Spock having to cover his Vulcan ears to pass as a human is a fun look. Kirk and Spock’s confrontation with a punk on a city bus was also a hilarious moment.
On the sci-fi side of things, I really like the design and power of the “whale probe.” I think it’s unintentionally one of the franchise’s most unnerving alien creations, too. Its design harkens back to The Doomsday Machine’s planet-killer, but its power is used completely differently. The idea that this machine could simply disable all of Starfleet – and Earth – without breaking a sweat is already frightening, but when it can’t be reasoned with or even communicated with… that’s outright terrifying. Sometimes the Star Trek franchise can lean too heavily on “nose and forehead” aliens, but the likes of the “whale probe” remind us that the galaxy is a dangerous and sometimes incomprehensible place.
The Voyage Home did something Star Trek has often done: used a sci-fi lens to examine real-world issues. In this case, the loss of biodiversity and humanity’s impact on the environment were in the spotlight. The message was simple: we can’t predict the consequences of even a single species going extinct, and we should do everything we can to preserve biodiversity on Earth. That’s a good message, and it’s presented in a fun, creative story.
Film #5: The Final Frontier (1989) Tier: D
I said at the beginning that I wasn’t giving any F-tier rankings, and The Final Frontier is kind of the reason why. I get why folks don’t like it, and I think it has some obvious narrative weaknesses, as well as a smattering of sub-par special effects that make it less visually impressive than other titles in the franchise. But it isn’t a complete cinematic failure on par with something like Baz Luhrmann’s Australia or The Rise of Skywalker, so I think we can safely say that even the least-impressive Star Trek films avoid that ignominious fate!
Star Trek has delved into religion and religious-adjacent subjects before, so the idea of an alien claiming to be the god figure from various cultures isn’t totally out of left-field. But the execution of this storyline leaves something to be desired, and I just don’t think The Final Frontier really knew what it wanted to say or where it wanted to take this heavy idea.
The film also suffers from a little too much interference from William Shatner, who exercised his contractual right to helm a Star Trek film after Leonard Nimoy had his turn in the director’s chair. Shatner wanted to tell a story that put Kirk – and Kirk alone – centre-stage, as the sole character who could stand up to Spock’s villainous half-brother. Changes were made to the first draft of that story, when Nimoy objected to Spock’s characterisation, but Shatner’s determination to put Kirk front-and-centre still comes across.
I don’t believe that The Final Frontier is irredeemably bad. There are some wonderful moments, too, like the campfire sequence with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, Scotty’s line “I know this ship like the back of my hand,” and the away mission to Nimbus III. McCoy’s incredibly painful backstory is also one that hits close to home, and has to be one of DeForest Kelley’s best and most emotional scenes with the character. Kirk’s line to Sybok about “needing” his painful and traumatic moments – that they define who he is – is a powerful idea, too. I just feel that, taken as a whole, The Final Frontier misses the mark with some of its storylines and loftier concepts.
Film #6: The Undiscovered Country (1991) Tier: A
After the disappointment of The Final Frontier, it took some persuading for another Star Trek film to be greenlit. In 1991, with The Next Generation well underway and work progressing on spin-off ideas, there were some at Paramount Pictures who argued that Star Trek had moved on from The Original Series and its characters. A proposal to reboot Star Trek with a Starfleet Academy film was seriously considered, but ultimately Gene Roddenberry and others were able to convince the studio to allow the cast one final film to end on. The Undiscovered Country was thus given the green light.
The story here is great, and incredibly timely! The script uses the Federation and Klingons as a metaphor for the end of the Cold War; communists had been swept from power in 1989, and the Soviet Union was itself dissolved just days after the film’s premiere. The story of old rivals finding a path to peace, and old warriors with grudges finding a way to bury the hatchet, was an exceptionally powerful one – even if Gene Roddenberry hated the depictions of Kirk and Starfleet when he was shown an advance copy of the film.
We get to see an exploration of the Klingon Empire, including one of its brutal prison colonies, and how the Klingons of the 23rd Century came to be neighbours and rivals rather than enemies by the time of The Next Generation’s 24th Century. There was even a role for TNG’s Michael Dorn, who played an ancestor of Worf. The Undiscovered Country did a lot to bring Star Trek’s two eras together, and as one crew departed the stage, work on the next expansion of the franchise began. Deep Space Nine would premiere just over a year after The Undiscovered Country had been in cinemas.
The “Praxis effect” – a two-dimensional circular shockwave created by a planet exploding – was named for the destruction of the Klingon moon seen in The Undiscovered Country! In a very real sense, the film’s legacy goes far beyond the Star Trek franchise, with similar visual effects still being used in sci-fi and fantasy to this day. Special effects were great across the board, and The Undiscovered Country also has a fantastic ship battle between the Enterprise, Sulu’s Excelsior, and a cloaked Bird-of-Prey.
Film #7: Generations (1994) Tier: S
Is it controversial to say Generations is a good film? Because I honestly think it’s one of the franchise’s best. Bringing Kirk and Picard together was an absolute joy to watch, and I think it came at just the right moment, too – the film represents a handing of the torch from one crew to another. It didn’t come too soon, as this kind of story would’ve overshadowed The Next Generation’s characters before they’d found their feet. But by 1994, I really think the time was right for this kind of epic crossover.
I find Dr Tolian Soran to be an incredible villain, too. His motivations were easily understood, and while he absolutely needed to be stopped… part of me sympathises with him. The presentation of the Nexus as this heaven-like paradise realm, where time has no meaning and your heart’s desires can be made manifest, is the perfect motivation for someone like Soran – whose quest takes on a quasi-religious tone as a result.
Generations killed off Captain Kirk, drawing a line under Star Trek’s original incarnation. Kirk would, of course, remain important to Star Trek, and it wouldn’t be the final time we’d see a member of his crew on screen. But in that moment it did feel very final – and Kirk’s act of sacrifice to save Picard’s crew and the population of a planet he didn’t even know… it was an intensely emotional sequence.
Generations does a lot to explore the connection between Picard and Guinan, which would go on to be important in Star Trek: Picard, too. It was also a great film for Geordi and Data – the latter receiving his emotion chip and really expanding his programming beyond what he’d been capable of before. All of the main characters got a turn in the spotlight, and there were moments of mystery, emotion, and action throughout this wonderful film.
I wrote a longer piece about this film’s villain, Dr Soran, and you can find it by clicking or tapping here.
Film #8: First Contact (1996) Tier: A
First Contact is a fantastic film. But I’m docking a couple of points because of one element it introduces that I feel complicates – and crucially, detracts from – one of the franchise’s best, most iconic, and most frightening villainous factions. I’ll have to elaborate on this one day in a standalone piece, because there’s too much to fit into a few sentences right now, but in short: the Borg Queen kind of ruins the Borg for me. Worse, her presence takes away a lot of the Collective’s fear factor – especially when we get to her later appearances. I get it: First Contact is a feature film and it needed to have a single villain for Picard and Data in particular to face off against. But on the whole, I’d say the Borg Queen was not a net positive for the Collective or Star Trek.
But enough about that for now! First Contact re-introduced the Borg in style, depicting a deadly battle in space, and a slow-paced assimilation of the brand-new Enterprise-E. The scenes aboard the Enterprise’s lower decks in particular are incredibly tense; the Borg are far more frightening here than they had been in any of their earlier appearances. And although I have gripes with the Borg Queen as a concept, her scenes with Data and Picard – and the latter’s trauma stemming from his earlier assimilation experience – are all played exceptionally well.
First Contact also did a lot to set the stage for Enterprise – though that wasn’t necessarily the intention at the time! Enterprise does, though, build on what First Contact did with its depiction of Earth and humanity’s first efforts to build a faster-than-light engine. James Cromwell, who played Zephram Cochrane, would even have a cameo in Enterprise’s premiere.
Picard is the real star of the show this time, as he lets his emotions overwhelm him when faced with the Borg’s return. After the episode Family, we didn’t really get much exploration of Picard’s mental state and how he was coping with having been assimilated by the Borg, but First Contact took that as a starting point to tell a story touching on things like post-traumatic stress. It was genuinely interesting – and also left a lot for Star Trek: Picard to build on a quarter of a century later.
Film #9: Insurrection (1998) Tier: B
Insurrection gets an unfairly bad rap, in my opinion. I like some of the connections in the film to the wider world of Star Trek – nowhere else will you hear Troi and Riker mention the Dominion War, for instance! The Briar Patch is a fun idea both narratively and visually, leading to the crew being cut off from Starfleet HQ. It also sets up a particularly creative starship battle, which as always is something I appreciate!
Star Trek has, on several occasions, had a “badmiral” (a portmanteau of ‘bad’ and ‘admiral’) as a villain, and the concept of a rogue or renegade senior officer is an interesting one. The best villains have some degree of nuance, and Anthony Zerbe does an excellent job conveying this with the character of Admiral Dougherty. Dougherty genuinely believed that he was doing something great for the Federation… even though, with the story being told from the perspective of the Enterprise crew and the Ba’ku, he was the villain.
The Son’a were an interesting addition to Star Trek, and I’d love to explore a bit more of their culture one day – it’s a shame they’ve never returned. I would posit that the film’s twist – that the Son’a and Ba’ku are the same race – was imperfectly executed, but it was an interesting idea that achieved most of what it was aiming for. It’s also an idea that felt very “Star Trek,” harkening back to The Original Series episodes that had messages about war, race, and so on.
Insurrection has another great villain in Ru’afo, who doesn’t have that same nuance we were talking about, but was delicious to watch nevertheless thanks to an excellent performance from F Murray Abraham. It’s also a great film for Riker – who gets a turn in the captain’s chair during a tense battle, and also sees a starship manoeuvre named after him – and Data, whose “injury” and ethical reset kicks off the entire story. A story about a renegade crew who have to operate outside of the law to do the right thing? That’s something I love – and while I get there are criticisms of the main cast apparently acting “out-of-character,” that’s explained well enough in Insurrection itself.
Film #10: Nemesis (2002) Tier: D
Walking out of the cinema after the credits rolled, I remember feeling okay about Nemesis. But looking back, particularly after seeing Data being laid to rest in Star Trek: Picard’s first season, the deficiencies of the film are much more apparent. I would argue, with Brent Spiner ageing out of the role by 2002, that killing off Data made some degree of sense as a narrative point. But it wasn’t handled well in Nemesis, with the film rushing past Data’s death, pushing his friends to a “let’s all move on” type of ending that was just weirdly out-of-place and had completely the wrong tone.
Sci-fi tropes and character archetypes will land differently for different folks, and what I’d say about Nemesis’ main villain – played by Tom Hardy in one of his first big-screen roles – is that the idea of a clone of Picard isn’t as silly as it sounds! There’s genuine lore and story here, expanding our understanding of the Romulans and the way they operate, and I really did enjoy that side of the story. Shinzon also makes for a complex character; a human raised by Reman slaves, who has Picard’s DNA but none of his humanity.
Shinzon quite quickly turns to “I’m evil for no reason and I love it” with his characterisation, though, despite some early promise, and by the time the film moves to his plot to attack Earth and the Federation, the plot kind of goes off the rails. Much has been made of director Stuart Baird’s lack of experience and knowledge of Star Trek at the time of the film’s production (he hadn’t so much as watched a single episode of The Next Generation) and I think that comes across in the way the film treats most of the main characters, too.
After Insurrection hadn’t been particularly well-received, and with Enterprise struggling to find an audience, Nemesis didn’t do the Star Trek franchise any favours in 2002. It also seemed – for close to twenty years, anyway – to be a weak and unimpressive ending for The Next Generation characters and Star Trek’s 24th Century setting. As in any Star Trek project, pretty much, there are moments in Nemesis that work, but not enough of them to make the film a success.
Film #11: Star Trek (2009) Tier: C
I have some conflicting thoughts about 2009’s Star Trek. On the one hand, I was absolutely thrilled to learn of the film’s existence after Enterprise’s cancellation seemed to signal the demise of the entire Star Trek franchise. I did my best from 2006 to support the film while it was in production, and raced to the cinema to see it on the first day it was available. And I would make the case to anyone that Star Trek ’09 is a solid action/sci-fi film, a great introduction to Star Trek for newbies, and a successful title that proved the franchise could still bring in audiences and money at the box office.
But on the other hand, the film’s action-heavy storyline, re-cast classic characters, and fairly basic villain just aren’t what I come to Star Trek for. The new actors were given an exceptionally difficult job and were brave to take it on; I know some Trekkies who, to this day, have refused to watch any of the Kelvin timeline films because of the decision to re-cast Kirk and the crew. Some of the new actors got a lot of criticism before the film had even premiered due to that. Personally, I generally feel they all did a solid job… but there’s always gonna be a sense that they aren’t the “real” Kirk, Spock, Uhura, and so on. Some decisions – like pitting Kirk and Spock against one another, even coming to blows at one stage – really hammers home how different these versions of the characters feel.
Star Trek ’09 is unashamedly a reboot, and if you meet it where it is and you’re able to accept that, I think there’s a good time to be had with at least parts of it. But as someone who’d been a Trekkie for close to twenty years when the film premiered, who’d been immersed in the world of The Next Generation era in particular… I wasn’t really interested in a reboot. After Enterprise, I wanted to see Star Trek move its timeline forward again, not stepping back to re-cast classic characters for a pretty basic action story.
All that being said, I appreciate what Star Trek ’09 did for the franchise. If this film hadn’t found an audience and proved to studio executives that there was still life in Star Trek and still stories to tell here, that would’ve almost certainly been the end of the franchise, and I doubt we’d have seen Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, and the rest of modern Star Trek. Keeping the flag flying for the franchise after it had burned out on the small screen is the real legacy of Star Trek ’09 – at least for me.
Film #12: Into Darkness (2013) Tier: B
I would argue that Into Darkness is the high-water mark of the Kelvin timeline. There are still issues with the characters, some contrivances with the story, and so on… but the film’s script is generally much stronger than either of the other Kelvin films. Not only that, but this particular story – featuring notorious villain Khan and a “badmiral” scheming from within Starfleet itself – lends itself much more to the kind of action-packed film that JJ Abrams wanted to make.
Captain Pike’s death in Into Darkness genuinely hit me – it was unexpected in the moment, and Kirk’s reaction to the loss of someone he viewed as a surrogate father figure was truly heartbreaking. It’s definitely one of the most powerful moments for this version of the character, and the way it spurs on the plot was good, too. I also liked the callback to Star Trek ’09 with the “transwarp beaming” idea returning, this time as a problem to be overcome.
If you were online and involved in Star Trek discussion groups and forums circa 2011-2013, you would’ve almost certainly had Into Darkness’ big reveal spoiled for you ahead of time. Unfortunately, fans correctly guessed that Benedict Cumberbatch would be playing the legendary Khan – and going into the film with that expectation certainly put a downer on the scene where Kirk learns the truth. I always prefer to see films un-spoiled, but this rumour was everywhere at the time, so it was unavoidable.
For a variety of reasons, this story just feels stronger and, most importantly, better-suited to these characters and this style of film. Into Darkness is a better film as a result, with a consistent tone, understandable character motivations, and a pair of solidly entertaining villains. There are some contrived moments – and I don’t think Kirk’s sacrifice and “death” works anywhere near as well as Spock’s did in The Wrath of Khan, which Into Darkness tries to emulate in more ways than one – but on the whole, it’s not a bad film by any stretch.
Film #13: Beyond (2016) Tier: C
Penned by Scotty actor Simon Pegg, Beyond was a genuine, well-intentioned attempt to bring the Kelvin timeline films slightly closer to “classic Star Trek” in terms of tone and themes, and I really do admire the effort. There are moments that link up with Star Trek’s past – most notably Enterprise – and parts of the film, particularly its opening scenes, succeed at recreating at least some of that “mission of exploration” feeling that the other Kelvin timeline films didn’t spend even a second on.
But there are some flaws and weaknesses, though. The destruction of the Enterprise is by far the weakest loss of a ship in the franchise, as we just don’t have anywhere near as much attachment to it as we did to the original Enterprise, the Enterprise-D, and other ships that have been destroyed. The sequence was tense, particularly as the crew rushed to their escape pods, but the emotional weight of the moment didn’t ring true for me.
I felt that an actor of Idris Elba’s calibre was also squandered on a pretty basic “I’m mean and I hate everyone” type of villain. Krall had potential – the “lost” captain who felt abandoned by Starfleet and the Federation, and whose xenophobic and war-like traits were a century or more out of date. But the film didn’t do enough with Krall, and the big reveal that this alien-looking alien was, in fact, a human didn’t really stick the landing. Again, it was interesting in theory but kind of wasted by the time it came to the screen.
I might be alone in this, but I detest the name “Jaylah” for the film’s new character. A homonym of “J-Law” – the tabloid nickname given to American actress Jennifer Lawrence, who was a big star at the time thanks to her role in The Hunger Games – this reference just felt cringeworthy and unnecessary. I’m happy for Star Trek to take inspiration from a wide range of other films, including the likes of The Hunger Games, but don’t stoop to this level when it comes to character naming. It’s just… well, it’s pretty pathetic, to be honest.
I couldn’t end this section without also noting that Beyond was rather overshadowed by the deaths of Leonard Nimoy and Anton Yelchin in the months leading up to its premiere.
Film #14: Section 31 (2025) Tier: C
You have to try to meet Section 31 where it is. It’s a B-movie; the Star Trek equivalent of The Fast and the Furious or Transformers, complete with a cookie-cutter plot, some pretty mindless action, and plenty of tropes of both action flicks and spy movies. Once I realised that that’s what I was watching… I just kind of went with it. On those terms, I found Section 31 to be just fine.
Where my disappointment comes in is in the wasted potential. There was scope for Section 31 to be the kind of film that brings new eyes to Star Trek for the first time, genuinely expanding the fan community by making what can feel like a nerdy and overcomplicated franchise approachable. I don’t believe Section 31 came close to achieving that goal, unfortunately. And from my perspective, that felt like the biggest point in its favour and a key reason for making it.
I would also argue that Georgiou’s arc in Section 31 was pretty repetitive, dragging up her Mirror Universe origin and forcing her through a story that we’d already seen a lot of in Discovery. Dragging her back from the more complex character we’d started to see so she could re-start that arc wasn’t great. And that’s before we get into the weeds on whether a redemption story for someone at least as evil and despotic as Star Wars’ Emperor Palpatine was even possible, let alone successfully executed in Section 31.
There are also gripes with how disconnected this film feels from the rest of Star Trek, with the barest of references and none of the franchise’s visual language present. If, however, you can set most of that aside… there are fun moments hiding under the surface. And as I said a moment ago, if you can meet Section 31 where it is, on its own terms, I think it’s a perfectly adequate B-movie.
We’ve put all fourteen Star Trek films into a tier list. So let’s take a look and see how we did:
Well, I hope that was worth it! As you can see, we have more films in the upper tiers than the lower ones, and even the “worst” Star Trek films still have redeeming qualities – at least in my opinion.
I wanted to put this list together after Section 31 had premiered, updating my older list to include the new film. This piece almost certainly concludes my Section 31 coverage for the foreseeable future, as I really don’t have much more to say about the made-for-streaming movie at this point. If you’ve been following my coverage of Section 31, thank you! I hope you’ve found my take to be interesting.
The USS Enterprise at warp.
At time of writing, there are supposedly two Star Trek films in pre-production or at least being worked on in some capacity. The first is a Beyond sequel, bringing back the Kelvin timeline cast for another outing. And the second is supposedly set in between Enterprise and Star Trek ’09, perhaps serving as a kind of Kelvin timeline prequel. You can read my thoughts on that idea by clicking or tapping here.
There have been other film proposals pitched over the years. Sir Patrick Stewart teased fans in early 2024 with news of a Picard movie idea, but I don’t think anything came of that. For my money, I’d like to see Paramount do more with the TV movie format, using it to tell one-off stories that wouldn’t necessarily fit anywhere else in the franchise. With new sets having been constructed, and the AR wall too, there are almost no limits on the kinds of stories that could be told as one-off specials – and the budget for such a production would be lower than a feature film, too! With Section 31 proving to be a disappointment, though, I’m not sure whether that’ll ever happen.
The Enterprise and the Excelsior in orbit over Khitomer.
So I hope this has been a bit of fun! Beginning with Generations, I watched every Star Trek film at the cinema. Unfortunately, due to my health, I won’t be able to do that in future – which is why I enjoyed having Section 31 as a TV movie! But if there ever is another full-length Star Trek film, I’ll do my best to support it here on the website.
Until next time… Live Long and Prosper!
Most of the Star Trek films are available to stream on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available. The first thirteen films are also available on Blu-ray and DVD, and a Blu-ray release of Section 31 is planned. The Star Trek franchise – including all films and properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
In the ’90s and early 2000s, I was a pretty big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The show felt fresh and different; taking horror villains and tropes but bringing them into a fun, modern setting. There was a great cast of characters, too, that changed and grew over time, and some well-executed longer arcs mixed in with plenty of episodic storytelling. There’s no doubt in my mind: Buffy was a great show.
I haven’t actually re-visited Buffy the Vampire Slayer since it was on terrestrial TV here in the UK. The final episode would’ve aired in late 2003, I guess, meaning I haven’t seen it in more than twenty years! Can I still call myself a fan of something two decades later? I don’t know… but I still consider myself a fan, at any rate.
The main cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 2.
So why are we talking about Buffy today? The answer is simple, unfortunately: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the latest series to be targeted for a resurrection by its corporate overlords. They’re hoping to add more content to Hulu – an unsuccessful streaming platform. A Buffy reboot is in the offing… and honestly, I think it sounds like a terrible idea.
When interviewed about the reboot – which is still at a very early stage – Sarah Michelle Gellar likened the show’s revival to the likes of Dexter and Sex and the City. Y’know… those notoriously successful reboots that everyone just adores. Given that several members of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s old cast have retired from acting (or couldn’t be part of a reboot for other reasons), I think a more apt comparison would be something like Frasier. That show, which also had its heyday in the ’90s, was revived with only one of its main characters returning. And, as anyone could’ve predicted, it flopped.
Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy Summers) in 2024. Photo Credit: IMDB/Getty
A reboot is not inherently bad in and of itself, but it has to be created for the right reasons. There have to be new stories to tell, something more to say, and a purpose beyond a corporate board and investors looking to make a quick profit. The streaming TV landscape is also oversaturated with attempted revivals of once-popular shows, as well as franchises trying to recapture their glory days. There’s much more limited room for manoeuvre for a Buffy reboot in 2025 than there might’ve been even a few short years ago.
If I recall correctly, Buffy’s seventh and final season came to an explosive end – but left the door ajar for potential future stories. But with many character arcs being complete, and with Buffy herself having literally been to hell and back, what kind of new adventures could she realistically get into? And with several characters dead and other performers no longer available, would fans be interested in half of a reunion? Would brand-new characters – who would need to be added to fill out the lineup – be as interesting or as welcomed by the returning fans that the reboot’s producers hope to entice?
Buffy at the end of the series.
There was a charm to Buffy the Vampire Slayer in its original form. It was something different on TV; soft horror that had a lot of the monsters but without crossing over into anything outright terrifying. It could be light-hearted and funny, but it was also serious enough in the way its characters were handled that moments of drama and tension still worked. The mix of episodic storytelling – a literal “monster of the week” – with ongoing story arcs and character development was also something rare on television at the time.
I don’t know how you replicate that today. With so many other horror shows on the air – from Stranger Things to The Terror and beyond – there’s a risk that Buffy the Vampire Slayer would seem tame or campy in comparison to some of those other offerings. Or, conversely, if Buffy was “updated” to be more violent and terrifying, really leaning into the horror angle, that the show would lose itself. Everything that made it unique would be erased; lost in the slop of big-budget streaming TV.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer didn’t need to rely on cheap jump-scares or gore to be entertaining.
Some films and TV shows work in context – but they’re very much anchored to the time and place of their creation. You couldn’t reboot Cheers in the 2020s – not successfully, anyway. It’s an ’80s show with an ’80s theme and tone, and it wouldn’t work if you tried to transpose it to a brand-new decade. I can think of plenty of others, too – from British classics like Fawlty Towers to big-budget American shows like Seinfeld. Some story premises are genuinely timeless… but others aren’t.
Is Buffy the Vampire Slayer in that category? Is it a show so inherently linked to the turn of the millennium that it couldn’t work in the 2020s? I fear it might be – and while I could entertain, perhaps, the idea of a complete reworking of the concept, with a brand-new cast of characters taking on a horror series with episodic elements, I’m not sure bringing back some of the original cast will work, either. Twenty-five years ago, Buffy and her friends were at high school and university. Now… what will they be doing? They’re all going to be in completely different places in life, and that would also take something important away from the series – part of its core identity.
Is Buffy too much of a late ’90s/early 2000s show to work in the 2020s?
I’ve been wrong about these things before, and if this reboot does go ahead, then I’ll probably at least take a look at the trailers to see whether it seems like it has a chance of being any good. But to me, it feels like the kind of utterly soulless project born in a corporate boardroom, not a genuinely organic creation. To bring back a series that already ran to 144 episodes across seven seasons, you need to find a reason for doing so – and some way to tell new stories that weren’t possible last time. I don’t see what those stories could be, and without key characters who were essential to the original show, as well as the school setting which did so much to keep things grounded and relatable… what’s left?
I look at the failure of many recent reboots – Dexter, Frasier, Roseanne, and even, to some extent, the likes of Star Wars – and wonder what fans of Buffy will make of this idea. Returning to the core concept might have some merit to it, though even then I’d probably argue that a new series, with new characters, would be less restricting and a better way to go. But bringing back a handful of characters, now in their forties or older, to revive this high school drama? I mean… doesn’t it seem like a bit of a stretch?
A Buffy reboot without most of its cast will likely go about as well as the Frasier reboot did under similar circumstances.
Having said all of that, I was pretty excited in 2019 and 2020 for Star Trek: Picard – a series which brought back the fan-favourite character from The Next Generation for a new adventure. So perhaps the Buffy die-hards will be just as thrilled at the prospect of her return as I was for Jean-Luc Picard. And maybe, if the reboot is a success, it’ll be more a case of passing the torch from one generation of vampire slayers to another – and those new characters could go on to expand the franchise.
There is room, I would argue, for more episodic television in 2025, and that’s what Buffy used to be. The biggest horror and horror-adjacent streaming shows today are wholly serialised affairs: From, The Walking Dead, The Last Of Us, etc. And there’s room for a show inspired by the success of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to go back to the format’s episodic roots instead of telling one ongoing story. I don’t know whether this planned reboot even intends to do that… but I think there could be space for a series like that. If there’s a gap in the market anywhere, it’s on the episodic side of things.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer may be back on our screens in the years ahead.
So I guess that’s where I’m at when it comes to this idea. Part of me hopes that it won’t go ahead at all; Buffy was such a unique and singular show that tainting its legacy with an uninspired, corporate reboot – which will probably be squashed into eight-episode serialised seasons that don’t suit the format – would be a disappointment. If it does actually enter production, though, my only hope is that the creative team genuinely understand what made Buffy work in the first place and work on the reboot with that in mind.
Will I watch an all-new Buffy the Vampire Slayer if it gets made? I think, at the very least, morbid curiosity will push me to check out the trailers and see how it looks. But I’m not optimistic about a reboot in the current media environment, and it feels like a project that’s been sharted out by a corporate leader in a suit who’s desperate to find “content.” That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the potential quality of the revived series! If it looks good and reviews well, though… who knows? Never say never, I guess.
Honestly, though, I think I’d rather leave Buffy in the early 2000s where it belongs.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the HD remaster) is available to stream now on Disney+ in the UK, and Hulu in the United States. The series is also available on DVD. Buffy the Vampire Slayer may be the copyright of the Walt Disney Company, Mutant Enemy Productions, and/or 20th Century Fox Television. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I did something I never usually do: I pre-ordered a game. Violating yet another of my own game-buying rules, I paid extra for the “founder’s edition,” which – among other things – granted me access to Civilization VII on its actual release date instead of five days later. Do I detest myself for succumbing to that? Just a little. Was it worth the £120 (that I put on the credit card and plan to spread over a few months)? Well… read on to find out, I guess.
This piece is my “first impressions” of Civilization VII, and I suppose I should first define that term so we’re all on the same page! A game as massive and varied as Civilization VII will take days – weeks, even – to fully get a handle on. Having only played the game for around six hours (split into two sessions) and completed a single game, I can’t in good conscience call this a “review.” I’ve had an opportunity to jump in, played around with some of the settings, and completed what was basically a tutorial game. That’s enough to give me a taste of a game this massive, but not enough for an article that I could reasonably title a “review.” So in this piece I’m going to share my immediate thoughts and feelings about the game – and later in the year, perhaps when there have been one or two updates, patches, and pieces of additional content, I’ll return and share some further thoughts.
A solider in the opening cinematic.
If that’s not what you’re looking for, that’s totally okay. I won’t be offended if you jump out and read someone else’s review instead! But if you like the sound of what I’m doing today, I hope you’ll read on.
For some context, I came late to the Civilization series. I think I played either the first game in the series or Civilization II in the mid-1990s, but only briefly on a friend’s computer. When I started getting into strategy games around that time, it was real-time strategy titles like Command and Conquer, Red Alert, and Age of Empires that I enjoyed the most. Turn-based strategy didn’t hold much appeal to me… not until Civilization VI came along twenty years later!
It’s time for the dawn of Civilization VII!
I’ve sunk well over 1,000 hours into Civilization VI since it launched in 2016, and it quickly became one of my favourite strategy titles of all-time. I’ve bought every single piece of DLC for it, played a bunch of scenarios and special campaigns, and I’ve had an absolute blast. When Civilization VII was announced last year, it shot right to the top of my “must-play” list, leading to me pre-ordering it so I could pre-install it and play it as soon as it was available! There are very, very few games for which I’d break my “never pre-order or pay for expensive premium editions” rules – so I hope Sid Meier, Firaxis, and Take-Two are especially grateful today!
If you just want the headline, I’ll say this: Civilization VII is already a lot of fun, and I only encountered one bug in my first six hours of playing. However, there are missing features that have been part of the series going all the way back, paywalling content at launch – including entire civilizations and leaders – is pretty scummy, and while the base game feels solid… it’s incomplete. There will undoubtedly be DLC packs over the next few months and years that add in a lot of the missing content and features, but all that will do is push up the price of a game that I’ve already paid a lot of money for. If you’re a Civilization VI fan ready to move on to a new challenge, Civilization VII feels like a no-brainer, and just getting started with the game and understanding all of the changes will take time. But if you’re brand-new to the series and looking to get started with a game that’s already complete… pick up the complete edition of Civilization VI when it’s on sale!
Mississippian archers (their unique unit) next to a city.
Visually, Civilization VII is stunning. I was surprised to see just how graphically impressive the game is considering its relatively small install size (Civilization VII takes up about 15GB of disc space) and that it’s a game that also has to function on the Nintendo Switch. I played the PC version, just so you’re aware of that. Units all have smooth animations for movement and combat, and there’s a ton of variety in the way units and buildings look depending on what era you’re in and which faction you’re playing as. There also seem to be more unique military units – each of the three civs I played as had at least one, which is noticeable coming from Civilization VI.
Environments look stunning, too. Mountains, deserts, and grassland all looked great – but where I was most impressed was in looking at coastal waters, rivers, and forests. These places feel genuinely alive in a way that they just didn’t in Civilization VI, and sending a unit marching into dense jungle or forest had a different feel to it as a result. Water looks great in the game, too, which is something some titles can struggle with. And the addition of navigable rivers adds a whole new challenge to exploration and combat.
There are some beautiful environments in Civilization VII.
Let’s talk about Civilization VII’s biggest and most-discussed new feature: choosing leaders and factions separately from one another. This was a big part of the game’s marketing and one of the main ways Civilization VII stands apart not only from Civ VI but from other entries in the series, too. This isn’t a totally unique thing to Civilization VII, as choosing a new faction in each era was also a big part of the turn-based strategy game Humankind a couple of years ago – and I think that’s worth keeping in mind. But as to how it works in Civilization VII… I have to admit that I’m still on the fence.
On the surface, picking one leader and then being able to choose up to three different factions (one per age) as the game progresses is interesting. Not only that, but it means the number of potential combinations of leaders + civs is huge! Someone smarter than me will have to crunch the numbers on that, but if we assume new leaders and factions will be added periodically, the sheer variety on offer should mean that games never get old or feel repetitive. But is that really how it’s going to work?
Choosing a faction one-third of the way through the game!
Two things. Firstly, it seems to me that, in order to make sure every combination of leader + faction is competitive or at least functionally playable, some of the most different – and outstanding – unique features have to be toned down. A faction like Civilization VI’s Polynesians – whose unique traits were that they started with a ship at sea and could navigate ocean tiles from the start of the game – could never work with Civ VII’s random leaders and heavy focus on the middle age being one of maritime exploration.
It’s also clear that the developers want to prevent players from accidentally screwing themselves over by picking a leader whose traits make them somehow incompatible with a particular civilisation, or whose bonuses would be completely useless. As another example from Civilization VI, Canadian leader Wilfrid Laurier is granted bonuses for building on snow and tundra, while the Brazilian civ gets bonuses from rainforest tiles – which don’t spawn anywhere near snow and tundra. In order to avoid these problems and counteract them, Civilization VII’s leader bonuses and civilisation-specific bonuses feel a little bit more restricted. That isn’t to say they’re bad, it’s just they’re arguably toned-down from what they might’ve been if leaders and civs were joined at the hip as in past titles.
Choosing a leader and civ separately is a first for the Civilization series.
This isn’t always a comfortable topic, but the Civilization series – and many other historical and strategy games, too – come in for criticism sometimes for being historically inaccurate or insensitive. Because of the way it breaks leaders and factions apart, it’s possible in Civilization VII for Napoleon to take charge of Egypt or Harriet Tubman to lead Prussia. While Civilization VII veers away from any truly controversial picks (there’s no Hitler or Chairman Mao, for example) some of the combinations are odd at best. The AI, for its part, doesn’t seem to really care which leaders and civs it chooses, so expect some truly random ones if, like me, you mostly play against the computer.
For all the criticism of past Civilization games for being western-centric, not reflecting real history, and so on… at least they could claim to attempt to fictionalise real-world empires and historical factions. This disconnect between leader and civ is going to take some getting used to on my end – which is to be expected, I admit – but something about it also feels a bit… I don’t know. Uncomfortable in a sense, perhaps. Maybe it’s because I was a student of history (it’s the subject I studied at university) but something about breaking leaders and their civs apart is something I don’t feel thrilled about.
I’m not sold on the separate leaders and civs… not yet, anyway.
Mechanically, this separation also leads to one of Civilization VII’s biggest weaknesses: there are only three eras. In Civ VI, there were eight at launch, with a ninth added later. Not only that, but eras in that game were expanded to add “golden” and “dark” ages, giving new policies and other effects. There are a few “golden” and “dark” age elements in Civilization VII, but they don’t seem anywhere near as impactful. And to be fair, how could they be? If there are only three eras, who wants to spend at least one-third of the game in a dark age with all of the drawbacks that could bring? But to me, that highlights the difference between the two titles… and I’m not sure it’s an improvement.
What arguably is an improvement, though, is that every player in every age should be playing a civ with era-specific advantages. In Civilization VI, if you were playing a faction like Egypt, the majority of your bonuses and your only unique units were only any use in the early game. And if you played Germany or the United States, you’d have to wait until the late game to take advantage of your bonuses and unique advantages… if you could last that long. Civilization VII feels more balanced in that respect, with each civ having bonuses and advantages – based on real history – that make sense and work in their eras.
There are fewer eras, but more civs that have relevant bonuses and unique abilities in those eras.
I was a little disappointed to see so few options when starting a new game. There are only a handful of map types – and they’re all pretty basic. As someone who prefers longer, slower games over short, fast-paced ones, there don’t seem to be a lot of options to play on a “massive” map over a longer time frame, which is also a bit of a letdown. Most leaders and factions are also locked until certain gameplay requirements are met to unlock them… which might be fun for you if you like the challenge that comes with unlocking things. For me, I’d usually rather everyone was available to play straight away, with those challenges and unlocks saved for things like achievements.
I’m also disappointed that, for some reason, it isn’t possible to re-name cities and towns. This is something I always like doing in any strategy game, and it was possible in Civ VI so I have no idea why it hasn’t been implemented here. There’s a petition on the Civilization forums to add city re-naming to Civilization VII, so I have to imagine it will be implemented sooner or later, but why couldn’t it be part of the game at launch? That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Why can’t I rename my cities?!
While we’re nitpicking and talking about relatively small things: why can’t I quit to the desktop from the in-game pause menu? That was possible in Civilization VI, and it’s silly to force me to go back to the menu only to have to quit to the desktop from there. A minor annoyance, sure, but a pretty basic thing to resolve that someone should’ve picked up on before Civilization VII launched!
In terms of gameplay, I found some AI units seemed to occasionally take a very circuitous route before attacking, which didn’t really make a lot of sense to me. While standing one tile away, you’d think they’d move to the next tile and attack. Instead, some AI units seemed to walk the longest route around before starting their attacks – and there wasn’t an obvious reason why. As far as I could tell they weren’t doing this to avoid terrain disadvantages or to link up with allied units; it was just a quirk of the game’s pathfinding or AI.
AI pathfinding feels imperfect right now.
Diplomacy leaves something to be desired, unfortunately. Making friends and alliances with another faction works well enough, and while the system is different from Civilization VI it’s something I daresay I’ll get used to in time! But when a war comes to an end, it’s very odd – and very limiting – that there are so few options for making peace. In Civ VI, to end a war you could offer or demand money, great works, rare resources, and so on. In Civ VII, the only options on the table when trying to end a war are cities – and in some cases, it seems like an enemy won’t accept a peace offer if you refuse to give up a city – even if they haven’t conquered any of your cities or even killed a single unit in combat.
This really limits the way war works, and unless it’s addressed it’s going to be a weight around the game’s neck. There are occasions where, after capturing a city, I’ll want to keep it or sell it back as part of a peace treaty. But that’s far and away not the only way I want to make peace – in fact, in Civ VI cities were usually the bottom of my list when negotiating. The fact that some war-hungry powers won’t make peace very easily makes the game feel unbalanced, and it means war and combat – two of the most important features in a 4X strategy game – are less useful. Starting a war is always going to be a risk, but if I know that making peace is painfully difficult in some cases, it makes me far less interested in even attempting to play the game that way. Again, this is limiting.
The peace treaty system needs some work.
Weirdly, declarations of war don’t seem to survive the transition from one era to another. In short, if you’re at war with someone when the age ends, you won’t be when the new age begins. Since we were speaking of things that limit the warfare and combat system… that’s another.
Think about it: if you’re running out of time in the ancient or exploration ages, why would you start a war that you’d be unlikely to finish in time? I’m kind of hoping this is a bug or something that will be changed, because automatically ending a war just because the clock rolled over feels like something that really puts the brakes on that side of the game. Eras can be long, sure, but by the time you’ve got research and unit upgrades done, there might not always be time for a full-blown conquest. Now, the flip side is that this adds another level of strategic planning to the game, which some folks might appreciate. But in Civilization VI, if you were at war in one age you’d remain at war when the next one rolled around.
The exploration age ended while I was at war with three civs…
…but we were at peace when the modern age began in the very next turn.
I struggled with cities and towns rebelling – but not in the way you might think! Relatively early in my game, one nearby city rebelled from its founder and asked to join my empire (who wouldn’t want to be part of the great Empire of Dennis, after all?) This city then spent the rest of the game threatening to rebel against me… but without ever doing so. I don’t know why it never went into full-blown revolt; I had a military unit stationed there, but that was all. It became annoying to keep seeing these pop-ups warning me of an imminent rebellion, when no rebellion ever came.
It’s great, though, that cities can revolt if certain conditions are met. I just wish I knew what the conditions were so I could either trigger them in enemies or avoid them in my own settlements! This feels like an evolution of the way it worked in Civ VI, and it’s definitely something I want to dig into more in my next game.
I kept getting this message warning me that a revolt was imminent… but it never came.
Gwendoline Christie has taken over the role of narrator for Civilization VII. She has a wonderful voice, and particularly in the opening cinematic I think she did a good job. But… there… are… some… sentences… that… she… reads… with… a… lot… of… unnecessary… pauses… in… between… words… and… clauses. It’s almost like she’s doing a William Shatner impression – which, unfortunately, I don’t mean as a compliment. She also seems to have a tendency toward over-enunciating certain words, which I definitely picked up on. It’s not the worst thing in the world, sure, and I’ll get used to it. These lines can be skipped, too, with a simple click of the mouse. But I thought it was worth noting.
As in any new game, there are changes to the rules that can feel a little arbitrary. But given enough time, I’ll get used to all of them. I didn’t do spectacularly well in my first game, but I feel like I learned a lot and I’m starting to understand how some of the changes work. Civilization VII feels like a solid start, with plenty to build on in the months and years ahead.
Charlemagne and Hatshepsut are going to war!
One of the biggest changes for me was the lack of a builder unit. Builders in past Civilization games have played different roles, but I think I’m right in saying they’ve always been present in some form. Civilization VII doesn’t use builders, with buildings and occupied tiles being handled from the city menu. That’s definitely gonna take some getting used to!
Cities being different from towns is also a big change. Towns can’t construct wonders and can only purchase buildings and units with gold, but can also specialise and focus on one thing – food, happiness, gold, etc. – adding more of the chosen resource to your civilisation’s total. Again, this is something I’ll need to spend more time with to really get the hang of, but I think it’s at least an interesting change.
A large city in the modern age.
Civilization VI introduced several gameplay mechanics revolving around climate change – and these have been removed from Civ VII. I will concede that the implementation of sea level rise and climate mitigation in the previous game was imperfect, but it added a lot to the late game in particular – as well as forcing players to consider how they use resources earlier in the game, too. It made for a lot of calculations like whether I could risk waiting for the technology to do nuclear power and renewables or whether I’d have to industrialise and use coal and oil, then try to clean up the mess later! It was a creative inclusion, and one that I’m sure could’ve been adapted this time.
I wonder if things like climate change and sea levels will be added as DLC somewhere down the line. These mechanics weren’t part of the launch version of Civilization VI, so maybe the plan is to see how they could be implemented once Civ VII gets going. If so, I guess I can get on board with that.
Discovering a natural wonder!
One element from Civ VI that its sequel retains, though, is natural disasters. In my first game I encountered a storm at sea, a blizzard, tornado outbreaks… and so many river floods. Seriously, there’s gotta be a way to tone down the frequency of some of these natural disasters, because when the same river has flooded for the twelfth time in a single playthrough… it starts to get annoying!
There also didn’t seem to be an easy way to ask for aid – in Civ VI, after suffering a natural disaster, players could request help in the form of gold. This added another layer to the game’s diplomacy, but it seems to be absent here. If natural disasters (floods especially) were less frequent, maybe I wouldn’t have even noticed!
I genuinely lost count of how many times the rivers flooded in just one game.
So I think that’s everything I had in my notes.
Civilization VII has a lot of potential to be a fantastic strategy game, one I can already see myself playing for hour after hour. There are a lot of changes from Civ VI – some of which feel rather arbitrary – and some weaknesses compared to that game, too. For me, I think the biggest weakness right now is that there are only three ages (or eras) to play through. While these are different, and arguably bigger and better than they have been in the past, it makes Civilization VII feel… smaller.
I’m also not fully sold on the separate leader and civ mechanic – at least, not yet. I like that different factions in different eras all feel tailored to those eras, avoiding the problems that could come from playing a civ with bonuses that only worked in one part of a longer game. But in order to keep things relatively fair, I can’t help but feel some of the most unique and interesting leader and civ bonuses and abilities have had to be toned down.
Archers preparing a ranged attack.
All that being said, my six hours flew by and I had a lot of fun getting into my first Civilization VII game. I tried my hand at exploration, diplomacy, war, combat, trading, and I even founded my own religion. There are a lot of fun-sounding civs to try out, including plenty that aren’t western or European, which is great to see. And as always, Civilization VII has a fantastic soundtrack!
Visually, the game shines. Animations look great, the landscape looks beautiful, and there are plenty of unique features in every civ in terms of the way units and buildings look. This definitely keeps things interesting and gives the game a ton of variety. I would say that, compared to Civ VI, Civilization VII is leaning more toward “realism” and going for a less cartoonish or board game-inspired look. Whether that’s your preference or not is going to be subject to personal taste!
A walled town.
I hope this has been interesting and informative. I tried to hit all of the big points from my first Civilization VII game so I could share my first impressions fairly, but there’s a lot more to this game that I need to explore. Later in the year, perhaps after some of the first patches, updates, and pieces of DLC have been released, I’ll definitely have more to say.
Now that I’m done writing this… I’m gonna jump back into Civilization VII, pick a new leader, and go around again. And if that isn’t a ringing endorsement (or a desperate cope from someone who spent £120 on this game) then I don’t know what is!
Seriously, though, unless you’re some kind of super-fan… just get the base game. I was silly to reward Firaxis and Take-Two for their shitty business practices, and I’m not pleased with myself for wasting extra money on in-game silliness that I didn’t need.
Civilization VII is out now for PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X consoles. Civilization VII is the copyright of Firaxis and/or Take-Two Interactive. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 