star trek crossover – Trekking with Dennis

Rating Your “Unpopular” Star Trek Opinions!

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for practically the entire Star Trek franchise, including recent seasons of Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, and Starfleet Academy.

Later this year, Star Trek will celebrate its sixtieth anniversary – that’s six decades of sci-fi adventures, space exploration, and a wonderful fan community that I absolutely adore! Today, I thought it could be a bit of fun to look at some of the Trekkie community’s so-called “unpopular opinions” about Star Trek. If you read my piece about fan theories a few weeks back, I’m going to do something similar this time around: I’ve compiled a bunch of “unpopular opinions” from across social media, and I’m going to dissect them!

I went to Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, TikTok, and other social media pages, scanning posts and comments sections, and I pulled out twenty-five “unpopular opinions” for this piece. And rather than just state them and share my opinion, I thought it could be interesting to try to answer two questions! Firstly, I’ll share whether I agree or disagree. And secondly, I’ll try to gauge whether the opinion in question could fairly be described as “unpopular.”

Still frame from The Enterprise Incident showing Spock and the scanner — I scanned social media to detect your most controversial opinions…

Here’s a couple of examples so we’re all on the same page!

Example #1: “Khan sucks as a villain because he’s lame and boring, and his evil scheme makes no sense.”

I would say I disagree (vehemently) with this opinion! But I would concede that it is a genuinely *unpopular* opinion within the fan community and with a wider audience. In fact, it’s such an unpopular opinion that I’ve never seen anyone genuinely express it!

Still frame from Star Trek II showing Khan — Khaaaaaan!

Example #2: “Captain Picard is the best Enterprise captain, better than Kirk or Archer or anyone else by miles.”

This one’s a toughie on the “agree/disagree” bit, because Kirk, Archer, and really every Star Trek captain across the franchise have plenty of their own strengths. But if I had to come down on one side or the other, I’d say I agree; Picard is a great captain. However, this is clearly not an “unpopular” opinion within the fandom – ask any group of Trekkies who their favourite captain is, and it won’t be long before you hear multiple people say “Picard!”

So… does that cover everything in terms of the format?

Still frame from Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 2 (Q Who) showing Q materialising next to Picard. — Who’s the best Enterprise captain?

It should go without saying, but everything we’re going to talk about today is *entirely subjective, not objective* – and it’s just one old Trekkie’s take, at the end of the day. If you hate my opinions, think I’ve got it completely wrong, or if I criticise a show or character you adore, please try to keep that in mind! There are a variety of opinions out there about this wonderful franchise, and I share mine with the Trekkie community in the spirit of light-hearted celebration in this landmark anniversary year.

Some of these “unpopular opinions” have clearly been shared in a tongue-in-cheek way (at least, I hope they have!) and I’m not planning on taking any of this too seriously. This also shouldn’t be interpreted as an “attack” or “hate” for any folks in the fandom who genuinely hold any of these opinions. This is meant to be a bit of fun, partly at Star Trek’s expense, as we move closer to the 60th anniversary.

With all of that out of the way, this is your final chance to nope out if you don’t want to get into some potentially controversial Star Trek opinions!

“Unpopular” Opinion #1:
Threshold is a great body horror episode.

Still frame from Threshold showing (mutating) Paris and Janeway

“Threshold” and “great” in the same sentence, eh? We’re starting off strong! I can see where this is coming from; Tom Paris’ gradual mutation into a salamander-like “hyper-evolved human” does have some genuinely disturbing moments, brought to life by some solid prosthetics during the sequences in sickbay. The idea of mutating in real-time, and not being able to do anything to stop it… that’s the same kind of idea behind classic body horror films like The Fly, only with a Star Trek flavour in this case.

I would say, though, that for whatever successes Threshold might have on the body horror front in the middle of the story, the ending really nullifies all of it. The CGI salamanders weren’t great to look at, nor were they frightening or disturbing in any way, and the typical episodic TV “reset” of Paris and Janeway back to their normal selves meant there were no lasting consequences for either of them. This comment is clearly a response to Threshold’s meme status, and I’m glad that Trekkies are willing to re-examine even the most disliked episodes! But for me, Threshold is still a weak story, and while there is some creative body horror-adjacent storytelling in the middle, it’s completely negated by the way the episode wraps up.

Unpopular? ✅Yes.✅
Agree? 🛑No!🛑

“Unpopular” Opinion #2:
Spock and Chapel’s romance is too big a part of Strange New Worlds – and it sucks.

Still frame from Charades showing Spock and Chapel kissing

100% agree on this one – no notes! Chapel’s “crush” on Spock in The Original Series was cute. But it wasn’t a huge part of the show for either of them, and it didn’t need this kind of on-again, off-again storyline in Strange New Worlds to make sense. In my opinion, Strange New Worlds has been way too focused on Spock and putting him in situations which, frankly, are toe-curlingly cringeworthy. The Chapel-Spock romance is part of that. I had hoped that, with the addition of Chapel’s fiancé, we’d have seen the back of this storyline – but alas.

I think I could’ve stomached an episode or two in which this relationship existed and ran its course. But I agree with the original poster, here: it’s become way too big a part of the show. When combined with other “Spock comedy” storylines (which seem to be the only Spock storylines the producers are interested in or know how to write), it quickly became too much. Cringeworthy, unnecessary, and arguably treading on the toes of The Original Series, too. A bad combination all around! And, based on the number of likes and comments on posts like this, I think it’s a fairly common take among Trekkies, too.

Unpopular? 🛑No!🛑
Agree? ✅Yes.✅

“Unpopular” Opinion #3:
T’Rul should’ve become a recurring character on Deep Space Nine.

Still frame from The Search Part I showing T'Rul

In The Search, which kicked off DS9′s third season, we’re introduced to the USS Defiant for the first time: the first Federation starship (officially) able to cloak. The cloaking device was loaned to Starfleet by the Romulans, and Sub-Commander T’Rul was the officer assigned to oversee it, and make sure it wasn’t being used in a way that violated Federation-Romulan treaties. However, after her first appearance, T’Rul disappeared from Deep Space Nine. Martha Hackett, who played the character, would go on to have a recurring role on Voyager as Seska.

I quite like this idea, to be honest. T’Rul would’ve added something different to DS9 during some of the episodes set aboard the Defiant, and it could’ve been fun to see a Romulan getting to know the crew and learning how to live with the Federation. There wasn’t a Romulan character like that through the entire TNG era, and it wouldn’t be until we met Elnor decades later that we’d get to spend more time with a Romulan. I can see plenty of stories where T’Rul could’ve played a role, and I especially like the idea of her trying to socialise with members of the crew, perhaps teaching us a bit about Romulan culture and customs along the way. Definitely a niche idea, though!

Unpopular? ✅Yes.✅
Agree? ✅Yes.✅

“Unpopular” Opinion #4:
The first few episodes of Lower Decks were too “horny,” and this turned off potential viewers.

Still frame from Second Contact showing Boimler in an alien's mouth

Assuming the original poster meant “horny” as in “overly sexualised,” I have to say I don’t agree. Not that the first episodes of Lower Decks had a lot more sexual imagery and language than TNG-era Star Trek – they absolutely did! But I disagree that the early episodes are unique in that regard! I’ve only seen up to the first part of Season 3; Lower Decks is still a show I need to catch up on and finish watching. But I didn’t feel the tone changed or softened very much across the first two-and-a-bit seasons – which is basically half of the show.

In the run-up to Lower Decks’ premiere, I was a firm advocate for the fact that Star Trek can be funny, that Star Trek has always been funny, and that being an animated comedy shouldn’t matter as long as the show is good. I think the general response from Trekkies has been that Lower Decks is a solid addition to the franchise, even recapturing that episodic, TNG style which Discovery and Picard had moved away from. But did some of its crude humour or over-the-top moments mean some Trekkies switched off? Probably. In fact, almost certainly. Not every Star Trek show is right for every viewer, so folks who want to take the franchise seriously, and who don’t want a Rick and Morty-inspired take on Star Trek were probably never going to enjoy what Lower Decks had to offer.

Unpopular? ✅Yes.✅
Agree? 🛑No!🛑

“Unpopular” Opinion #5:
Chekov was “useless” in The Original Series.

Still frame from The Trouble with Tribbles showing Chekov

I think I can see where this one is coming from… but I really don’t agree. Chekov was a late addition to TOS, joining in from Season 2. He only appeared in 36 episodes in total – less than half of The Original Series. But… none of that makes him “useless.” In fact, I’d argue very passionately that Chekov’s presence on the bridge alongside Sulu, Kirk, Uhura, and the others was a very powerful and symbolic statement: at the height of the Cold War, a mere five years after the world almost blew itself up over the Cuban Missile Crisis, here was a vision of the future in which Russians, Americans, and humans from all over the world were living and working together in harmony.

Like most of the cast of The Original Series outside of “the big three” of Kirk, Spock, and Dr McCoy, Chekov got fewer moments in the spotlight and fewer lines, and because he joined the show later, I guess that shows up even more. He was also absent from The Animated Series, due to the show’s tight budget. But he does get storylines and interesting moments across practically all of his episodes, and he stands in for Sulu at points in Season 2, as well. Not useless at all!

Unpopular? ✅Yes.✅
Agree? 🛑No!🛑

“Unpopular” Opinion #6:
Discovery is overrated.

Behind-the-scenes cast photo from Discovery S5

I had to do a double-take when I saw this. “Surely,” I thought, “the original poster must’ve meant underrated, or maybe over-*hated*?” But no, this is their unpopular opinion! To be blunt, I don’t think Discovery is rated particularly highly by a large swathe of the fan community. It has its fans, of course – myself included for the most part. But “overrated” suggests that the show is held in high esteem when it shouldn’t be, when really I’d be arguing the opposite: that too many Trekkies wrote off Discovery without giving it a fair shake, and that Season 2, and parts of Seasons 3 through 5 all had good episodes, interesting moments, and more.

For something to be “overrated,” it has to have that acclaim within the fan community, and I just don’t see Discovery having that kind of reputation for the most part. I think it’s absolutely fair to criticise Discovery, as I’ve done on many occasions here on the website. And if the original commenter dislikes some or all of the show, then that’s okay. But I couldn’t say Discovery is overrated… because I just don’t think the fan community at large rates it very highly to begin with!

Unpopular? 🛑No!🛑
Agree? 🛑No!🛑

“Unpopular” Opinion #7:
Captain Janeway did the right thing with Tuvix.

Cropped screenshot from Across the Unknown showing art of Tuvix

Tuvix’s controversial status lives on! One of the best things about Star Trek is that many episodes make you stop and think. They present complex issues with moral quandaries, and they don’t shy away from reckoning with them. And Tuvix is one such example. Do you kill a man you barely know while he’s pleading for his life in order to save two of your friends? Captain Janeway believed she had to, and even stepped in to do it herself when the Doctor refused.

I can understand her point of view. The mitigating circumstances are the unique perils of the Delta Quadrant, and Tuvok and Neelix’s skills in navigating it. But was it the “right” thing to do? The episode pulls no punches, and I’ve even heard some fans say it’s the worst thing Janeway ever did. I don’t agree on that front – wiping out an entire timeline and the lives of everyone in it has to take that prize! But yeah, it was a shitty thing to do. It was a tough situation, and Janeway made the call that she felt gave her ship and crew the best chance of making it home. And hey, if you disagree… play the new video game Across the Unknown and make a different choice!

Unpopular? ✅Yes.✅
Agree? 🛑No!🛑

“Unpopular” Opinion #8:
Wesley Crusher is fine/underappreciated/good.

Still frame from The Dauphin showing Wesley

Things have changed a lot for Wesley over the years, I think in large part due to actor Wil Wheaton’s incredibly positive attitude and the great way he’s advocated for and represented the Trekkie community. But there was a time when Wesley was wildly unpopular; in the early days of Star Trek fansites, back when I was first getting started with the internet in the ’90s, hating on Wesley was one of the most common things you’d see. I never felt Wesley deserved all the hate he got; some of it crossed a line, really, into something a bit unpleasant or even sinister. We’re talking about a child, after all, or a teenager, and attacking a performer because you don’t like their character is just stupid.

However… I get where the original dislike stemmed from, especially in stories where Wesley could seemingly do no wrong, or was better and more competent than the trained officers around him. Partly, this came from Gene Roddenberry – Wesley was a bit of a self-insert character for Gene, even being named for Roddenberry’s own middle name. But Wesley did have weaknesses and flaws, even in The Next Generation’s first season. His inability to get accepted to the Academy being just one example. And when Wesley did make it to the Academy, the accident he was caught up in tested his loyalties and morality to the limit. Is he the best character in Star Trek? Arguably not. Is he better than folks give him credit for? I’ve gotta say yes.

Unpopular? ✅Yes.✅
Agree? ✅Yes.✅

“Unpopular” Opinion #9:
The reboot/Kelvin timeline Enterprise is a beautiful ship.

Still frame from Star Trek 2009 showing the Enterprise

To this day, I know Trekkies who point-blank refuse to watch the Kelvin films. But… I think the out-and-out hate for the reboot has begun to fade, thanks to the passage of time. Practically everything about the 2009 reboot was controversial in some quarters of the fan community when the film was released, including the redesign of the USS Enterprise. The design took the original Constitution-class from TOS and changed a lot of things, with a different colour scheme, bulkier nacelles, a lit-up main deflector, and more. It’s certainly a different interpretation of the classic ship from four decades earlier.

I’m actually pleased to see opinions like this. There will always be holdouts – people who can’t get over the changes and who only want to stick to a certain design philosophy or a particular era of Star Trek. But as time passes and puts distance between us and the premiere of these designs, I think it’s nice to see more Trekkies revising their opinions, revisiting some of these elements of the reboot films, and coming away with a more positive impression. It gives me hope, quite honestly, for the future of the fan community in the years to come, and that some of today’s controversies may also be forgiven over time!

Unpopular? 🛑No!🛑
Agree? ✅Yes.✅

“Unpopular” Opinion #10:
“Faith of the Heart” was a good song for Enterprise’s title sequence.

Still frame from the Star Trek Enterprise title sequence showing the show's title

This is another example of the passage of time smoothing things out, I think! I remember hopping online, circa 2001, to try to download Faith of the Heart – and then burning it onto a CD and a MiniDisc (remember those?) so I could listen to it on the go! Sure, it was different – the whole sequence, really, is a very “2000s” way to open a show, and it feels a bit dated today. But I’ve always enjoyed the song, and I certainly never agreed with folks who said it “ruined Enterprise,” or turned them off so completely that they wouldn’t even watch the show!

“Archer’s Theme,” the music heard during Enterprise’s end credits, is the track some folks argue the show should’ve used instead. And I get wanting Star Trek to revert to type; to have the ship warping over a starry background while an orchestra plays a piece of music. But did “Faith of the Heart” really change much about the series? It’s still Star Trek. And if you hate it… well, it’s never been easier, thanks to DVDs and streaming, to skip it! That being said, I think this is still a minority position within the wider fan community, even if the song’s reputation has recovered somewhat over the years.

Unpopular? ✅Yes.✅
Agree? ✅Yes.✅

“Unpopular” Opinion #11:
Neelix and Kes were a good couple.

Promo photo for Star Trek: Voyager showing Neelix and Kes kissing

This one has to be trolling, right? I’d go so far as to say that, if Neelix’s relationship with Kes had been in focus in Voyager much more than it was, it could’ve been genuinely detrimental to both characters and even the entire series. As the setup for getting Neelix to help Janeway and ultimately join the crew, it tracks. But what it says about Neelix – a man in the Talaxian equivalent of middle age – falling in love with a girl who’s… one year old, and the Ocampan equivalent of, what? Seventeen or eighteen? It’s… really, truly icky.

Moreover, the relationship exaggerated some of Neelix’s worst qualities. In episodes like Parturition, we’d see him getting jealous and possessive over Kes in a way that, frankly, felt uncomfortable. A man who seems positive and happy-go-lucky on the outside seemed to have a dark, possessive, almost abusive streak, and if that had been brought up even once or twice more, it would make Neelix truly difficult to root for. Fortunately, this isn’t an opinion I’ve ever seen another Trekkie endorse, though!

Unpopular? ✅Yes.✅
Agree? 🛑No!🛑

“Unpopular” Opinion #12:
Sybok was a fun and deep villain in Star Trek V.

Still frame from Star Trek V showing Sybok.

The Final Frontier has its issues. But is Sybok one of them? This commenter argues he isn’t, and that a religious zealot who belatedly realises that he’s wrong and he’s been lied to or manipulated gave Sybok a lot of depth. I’d add to that that the idea of exploring a Vulcan offshoot – someone who doesn’t care to suppress his emotions – was also something different. It was certainly unique at this point in the franchise, coming before the Vulcans got more development in episodes like TNG’s Sarek, and of course, through storylines in Enterprise.

The problem I have with this, really, is not so much in concept – I think the original poster is right about that – but in execution. Sybok’s best moment is arguably his final one, when he sacrificed himself to help his brother and the Enterprise escape. Prior to that… Sybok wasn’t *outstanding*, really. There is more to The Final Frontier than some fans give it credit for. And like most Star Trek characters, really, there are elements to Sybok, to the way he’s written, and to the portrayal on screen that worked or that hold some interest. And I will say, to the original comment’s credit, it’s not an argument I’ve seen before.

Unpopular? ✅Yes.✅
Agree? 🛑No!🛑

“Unpopular” Opinion #13:
All of “Kurtzman Trek” sucks and should be considered a failure.

Behind-the-scenes photo from Star Trek SFA S1 showing Kurtzman directing

In the time Alex Kurtzman has been in charge of Star Trek for CBS, then Paramount, and now Skydance, there have been more than 200 episodes (and a TV movie) produced and broadcast. Are you telling me, original commenter, that there’s absolutely no merit to *any* of it? Because I find that hard to believe! Even Trekkies who’ve hated most of modern Star Trek have enjoyed some projects – Picard’s third season, or perhaps Strange New Worlds. Alex Kurtzman was in charge of the franchise for that, and was executive producer on both shows.

I don’t think you can write off an entire era of the franchise, any more than you could say “Berman Trek” was bad, or “Roddenberry Trek” sucked. But even if someone is of the opinion that *all* of modern Star Trek is atrocious and without merit… we can agree to disagree without getting into personal attacks. I hope! Has Alex Kurtzman got everything right? No – and I think he’d admit that. But has there been some fantastic Star Trek on our screens since he’s been helming the franchise? I believe there has been.

Unpopular? 🛑No!🛑
Agree? 🛑No!🛑

“Unpopular” Opinion #14:
Voyager focused too much on Janeway, the Doctor, and Seven of Nine from Season 4 onwards.

Composite of promo photos for Star Trek Voyager showing Janeway, Seven, and the Doctor

I was surprised to see this on one of the “unpopular opinion” posts – not because I disagree (I don’t), but because I’ve never seen anyone else share this opinion online before! For me, the back half of Voyager’s run felt swamped by one character: Seven of Nine. Seven would apparently “learn” some lesson in how to be human one week, only to seemingly forget it all in time for the next story. This led to several Seven/Janeway and Seven/Doctor episodes being so awfully repetitive that I sometimes mix them up. Voyager’s still a great show, don’t get me wrong, but taking some spotlight episodes away from Seven and redistributing them to neglected characters like Chakotay, Tuvok, or B’Elanna wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Picard rehabilitated Seven of Nine for me, though – I even went so far as to say that that series made Seven into an interesting character for the very first time! So this aspect of Voyager, while admittedly not great, doesn’t feel so bad in hindsight, I guess. And the issue isn’t really that most of these episodes are “bad,” but rather that they’re too narrow in their focus on one or two characters at the expense of other members of the cast. When I used to use Twitter and I shared a similar opinion about Seven of Nine being repetitive and boring, though, I got a fair bit of pushback! So I think this opinion can truly be said to be “unpopular” within the fan community.

Unpopular? ✅Yes.✅
Agree? ✅Yes.✅

“Unpopular” Opinion #15:
The Maquis were right to leave the Federation.

Photo of the Maquis Raider filming model

This comment went on to lay out that, in the writer’s opinion, the Maquis had every right to reject the Federation and want to leave, regardless of whether they wanted to fight the Cardassians or not. This seems to come from a place of “popular sovereignty;” the political philosophy which states that people should be free to choose how they are governed – and whether they want to remain as part of an institution like the Federation. The right to secession, by definition, exists if popular sovereignty exists within the Federation – something we’ve seen a lot more of in Discovery and Starfleet Academy, to be fair.

So should the Maquis have been allowed to leave? I would say yes… in principle. But it also isn’t quite so straightforward. The Federation had to balance the rights of its citizens along the Cardassian border with the need to avoid war with the Cardassians – something that would have impacted Maquis colonists *and* the rest of the Federation. Sometimes, as Spock would say, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” If you’re one of the few, in that case… that kinda sucks, especially if it means you have to abandon your home. So it’s not quite as cut-and-dry as presented. But as a general rule, if Federation member worlds want to leave, even if they began life as colonies… they should surely be allowed to do so.

Unpopular? 🛑No!🛑
Agree? ✅Yes.✅

“Unpopular” Opinion #16:
The Tellarites and Andorians deserve more screen time.

Still frame from Lower Decks Mining the Mind's Mines showing Jennifer

The four original founding members of the United Federation of Planets were humans, Vulcans, Tellarites, and Andorians – yet only Vulcans have really been explored across Star Trek’s nearly six decades of history. Enterprise told more stories with the Andorians, sure, and we’ve seen Tellarites (and half-Tellarites) in Prodigy and Starfleet Academy. But these two races still feel underrepresented across the franchise as a whole. Partly, it must be said, that’s because of their almost complete absence from all three shows of The Next Generation era.

Since the turn of the millennium, Star Trek has made moves to address this. But it would still be neat to get a major Andorian or Tellarite character in the next live-action film or series. These two races are important to the Federation within Star Trek’s fictional history, so it is kind of odd, when you think about it, that they haven’t been seen more often. I would suggest, perhaps, that the more complex prosthetic makeup – when compared to the likes of the Vulcans, Bajorans, and so on – may have made it a bit more difficult or expensive in years gone by. Less of an issue today, though! It’s not an argument I’ve seen very often, and I think that, especially prior to Enterprise, a lot of Trekkies had more or less forgotten about both of these races, and didn’t seem to care much about them.

Unpopular? ✅Yes.✅
Agree? ✅Yes.✅

“Unpopular” Opinion #17:
Jack Crusher was an especially bad character in Picard Season 3 because of what his existence says about Beverly.

Still frame from No Win Scenario showing Jack

This post argued that Jack Crusher’s “secret birth” storyline actively harms his mother’s characterisation. By essentially hiding Picard’s son from him, concealing the birth, and disappearing for decades, Dr Crusher – in this person’s opinion – committed an unforgivable sin, and it was also something that she wouldn’t have done based on the way she was in TNG.

For my two cents, I didn’t think Jack was the best part of Season 3. The storyline he was wrapped up in, while not his fault on his own, wasn’t all that great, and I found it hard to buy into the idea that the character was only twenty-one years old (since the actor who played him was in his mid-thirties). Further, giving this version of Picard a storyline about discovering he had a long-lost son didn’t feel right, either – it felt like a story better-suited to someone younger, which seemed to go against other themes in the season. However, on the specific criticism of Jack “harming” Dr Crusher’s character… I don’t think I agree. It was explained in the show why she did it – to keep Jack safe from the shenanigans that constantly swirl around Picard – and I actually felt that this version of Dr Crusher had a bit more personality than she did in most of TNG. It wasn’t a random thing; Dr Crusher didn’t decide to leave for no reason. And her reasoning made sense in the context of the show.

Unpopular? ✅Yes.✅
Agree? 🛑No!🛑

“Unpopular” Opinion #18:
Strange New Worlds’ Gorn arc is good, and the Gorn make for entertaining villains.

Still frame from Hegemony Part 2 showing a Gorn

I didn’t really realise that this one was quite so controversial until I saw some of the comments under posts expressing this opinion! Personally, I’ve really enjoyed Strange New Worlds’ take on the Gorn – transforming them into almost Xenomorph-inspired “monsters” has definitely shaken things up. At the same time, though, leaning too heavily on the monstrous angle does raise questions about the Gorn’s sentience and ability to be a spacefaring race, so there probably are moments where it went a little too far in one direction.

Strange New Worlds had a bit of a challenge, I suppose, when it came to villains. Most Star Trek villainous factions are off the table: Discovery had recently done the Klingon war, DS9 has already done a big Cardassian war, there can’t be the Romulans in a big way due to the timeline, and returning to the likes of the Xindi from Enterprise wouldn’t have worked very well, either. So to pick a race like the Gorn – who have run-ins with Starfleet in this era – wasn’t a bad idea. And giving them a new, more frightening presentation has – in my view – worked pretty well.

Unpopular? ✅Yes.✅
Agree? ✅Yes.✅

“Unpopular” Opinion #19:
It’s hard to get used to the way Avery Brooks delivers his lines.

Still frame from In The Pale Moonlight showing Sisko

This one’s a toughie for me, because I first watched Deep Space Nine in the mid-1990s when I was a wee bairn. I can’t remember ever thinking that the way Sisko speaks is weird or offputting, as this commenter suggests. In fact, all of my DS9 memories are positive from that period, and Sisko quickly became one of my favourite parts of the entire Star Trek franchise. His vocal delivery, cadence, and manner of speaking weren’t things I’d considered at all until I read this post.

I suppose, to be fair to the commenter, Avery Brooks might come across as a bit of a thespian; the way he speaks and emotes is at least partially inspired by acting in the theatre for a live audience. But the same is definitely true of Sir Patrick Stewart, in that case – and other Star Trek regulars, too. Many actors get their start in stage productions, and that’s not a negative thing at all. Obviously, the way any of us feel about an actor and a performance is going to vary, and I would never say that everyone “must” like Captain Sisko or the way Avery Brooks portrayed the character. But for me… this just isn’t something I ever remember feeling when DS9 was new, and I haven’t heard this argument before.

Unpopular? ✅Yes.✅
Agree? 🛑No!🛑

“Unpopular” Opinion #20:
Bending the rules of “canon” is okay.

Every time a new Star Trek story touches on a character, alien, faction, or even an aesthetic or design we’ve seen before, some folks crawl out of the woodwork to moan about “violating the integrity of canon!” I’ve actually written about this subject before, and I tried to lay out that my position is a bit more nuanced than the black-or-white, “respect all canon” versus “I don’t care” debate that flares up, from time to time, within the Trekkie community! In short, I’d argue that the foundational building blocks of a fictional world and its key characters should be kept the same, but the minutiae can be changed.

As an example: warp drive works using dilithium, so future Star Trek stories need to keep that in mind. But if one episode says warp seven takes a week to reach Romulus and another episode says it takes three days… that kind of thing doesn’t matter. Nor does the fact that uniform designs look different from one show to another. So, yes, canon matters because basic internal consistency within Star Trek’s fictional setting is important if I’m to maintain my suspension of disbelief. But it isn’t the only thing that matters, and we needn’t sacrifice interesting narrative ideas at the altar of “canon purity” if there’s a fun story to be told.

Unpopular? ✅Yes.✅
Agree? ✅Yes.✅

“Unpopular” Opinion #21:
A crossover between Star Trek and Star Wars is a great idea.

Still frame from Return of the Jedi showing Vader and Luke on Endor

As a kid playing with action figures, I already achieved this goal thirty-five years ago! Jokes aside, fans of both Star Trek *and* Star Wars have speculated about what a crossover might look like for decades. And who knows… with Paramount buying up everything in Hollywood, maybe it’s no longer the impossible dream that it once appeared to be!

There are some pretty big hurdles, though, just from a practical point of view. Both franchises are owned by competing companies, and both have decades’ worth of complicated lore and history. Then there’s the question of time and place – Star Wars famously takes place “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” whereas Star Trek takes place in a vision of our future. Which characters would be involved? And how would Star Trek’s technology co-exist with hyperdrives, lightsabres, and the Force? As tempting as it might sound on some level, I don’t think I’d go for it if I were in charge!

Unpopular? 🛑No!🛑
Agree? 🛑No!🛑

“Unpopular” Opinion #22:
The Prime Directive is unethical.

Still frame from Star Trek Insurrection showing the duck blind

Several commenters argued that the Federation’s Prime Directive is a fundamentally unethical policy, because it condemns whole civilisations to extinction just because they haven’t developed one specific technology. And, on the surface, that seems to track – stories like Pen Pals, Dear Doctor, and the beginning of Into Darkness quite clearly show Starfleet has the ability to intervene, but chooses not to, even when there’s an existential risk to an entire race of sentient beings.

The Prime Directive, fundamentally, is about not interfering with or altering the trajectory of societies that haven’t yet discovered alien life. And it makes sense, right? Think of the chaos it would cause to our own society if aliens descended from the skies – even if they had the best of intentions. We aren’t ready for that, and maybe we won’t be for a long time. The rigidity of the Prime Directive throws up some strange situations, though – but we often see our heroes finding ways around it, and the fact that they never seem to get in trouble suggests that Starfleet is okay with rule-bending, sometimes!

Unpopular? 🛑No!🛑
Agree? 🛑No!🛑

“Unpopular” Opinion #23:
Too many people are related to Spock, best friends with Spock, falling in love with Spock, or revere Spock.

Still from YesterYear (Star Trek TAS) showing Spock

Spock has become a larger and larger part of Star Trek, over the years, even as we’ve moved further away from The Original Series. He and his father appeared in The Next Generation, Spock crossed over to the Kelvin timeline where he met his younger self, and Spock has had two long-lost siblings that he never mentioned: Sybok and Michael Burnham. Chapel falls in love with Spock, La’an falls in love with Spock, and all the while, Spock is betrothed to T’Pring. Characters like Boimler talk about Spock with reverence, too. Yeah… it’s kind of a lot, huh?

It can feel, sometimes, like Spock is too present and too big a part of the storylines he’s included in. I’d be totally fine with stepping back from Spock, for a while, and giving other characters a chance to be in the spotlight. The Burnham connection has been established at this point, and there won’t be any retconning or removal of that. But going forward… if we’re lucky enough to see more Star Trek entering production, setting Spock aside would probably be for the best – at least for a while.

Unpopular? 🛑No!🛑
Agree? ✅Yes.✅

“Unpopular” Opinion #24:
René Auberjonois should’ve played Odo with an exaggerated French accent.

Still frame from What We Left Behind showing Odo

This one… I think it was entirely tongue-in-cheek! But I thought it was funny, and it’s my list so I’m including it. René Auberjonois played the French chef in The Little Mermaid, and his French accent is pretty iconic! It would’ve certainly shaken things up, with Odo becoming much more of a comic relief character, especially if Auberjonois really hammed it up. Would it have made DS9 *better*? Uh, probably not. Would some of his conflicts with Quark have been a lot funnier, though? Yes.

Look, this was just a bit of silly fun. I’m pretty sure no one’s out there seriously suggesting that giving *any* Star Trek character a comedy accent would’ve improved the show. But it’s fun, as fans, to think about these things sometimes. How different would episodes like The Die Is Cast have been if Odo were hamming it up, sounding like the French chef from The Little Mermaid? And, to the credit of the original commenter, it’s not an opinion I have *ever* heard expressed before!

Unpopular? ✅Yes.✅
Agree? 🛑No!🛑

“Unpopular” Opinion #25:
Star Trek *should* change over time, and not simply re-make TOS or TNG for every new series.

Still frame from Vox in Excelso showing the cadets

As early as the ’70s, when The Animated Series entered production, Star Trek was changing. When Phase II was reimagined as The Motion Picture, and Star Trek went to the cinema for the first time, the franchise changed. Star Trek, like any long-running franchise, moves with the times. That means the way shows look and feel changes, it means the way characters are cast and handled changes, and it means the nature of storytelling changes, too. The entertainment industry is not a static, stagnant thing, and if the higher-ups at Star Trek tried to recreate The Original Series every time… well, the franchise probably would have died out a long time ago.

That being said, some experiments and changes work better than others. I’m firmly of the opinion, having seen multiple seasons of modern Star Trek, that the franchise *needs* the freedom episodic television brings, and that serialised stories need to be a much smaller part of Star Trek in the future… assuming there will be a future. It seems that Skydance, Star Trek’s new corporate overlords, are more interested in films than streaming TV, so that could be another change coming down the pipeline. But the original poster is correct – Star Trek can’t afford to be left behind as the entertainment industry shifts around it. Figuring out what to change, how far to take those changes, and what fundamentals need to be left in place, though… that’s a tougher set of questions, and modern Star Trek hasn’t always stuck the landing, unfortunately.

Unpopular? ✅Yes.✅
Agree? ✅Yes.✅

So that’s it… for now!

Concept art of the USS Enterprise in Spacedock for The Search for Spock — Concept art of the USS Enterprise in Spacedock.

Stay tuned, because I have *at least* another twenty-five of these “unpopular” opinions that I’d love to write up one day.

I hope this has been a bit of fun. If I tore a hole in an opinion you agree with… please try not to take it personally! This is meant to be a bit of light-hearted fun, joining in with the Star Trek fan community in my own way, and not something to get too upset about or offended by. I tried to pick a mix of different opinions from across social media, touching on different parts of the franchise, including things I agreed with and didn’t agree with.

If you missed it, I have a two-part review of Starfleet Academy’s first season, which is now live on the website. You can find part one by clicking or tapping here, and the follow-up by clicking or tapping here. And there’s more Star Trek content to come as the 60th anniversary nears! I’ve got plans for re-watches, theories, and more, so I hope you’ll check back from time to time. Thanks for joining me to dissect these “unpopular opinions,” and Live Long and Prosper!

Most Star Trek films and TV shows discussed above can be streamed now on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the service is available. The Star Trek franchise – including all films, TV programmes, and other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Skydance/Paramount. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Uh, Guys? Star Trek: Discovery Is Still Canon…

Thu 26.12.24Thu 20.03.25Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Lower Decks – including the series finale.

Just a relatively short piece today. First of all, I hope you had a very Merry Christmas! Yesterday was the big day, and I had an enjoyable time stuffing my face with a bit too much turkey and Christmas pudding! However you chose to celebrate, I hope you had a fantastic day.

Now, on to the weirdest piece of Star Trek “news” that I’ve seen in a while!

I’m not fully caught up on Star Trek: Lower Decks, but apparently one of that show’s final episodes contained a kind of crossover or “multi-verse” story. As part of that storyline, at least one Klingon character appeared to “transition” from the more familiar Search for Spock/Next Generation style to a style closer to that seen in Discovery’s first season.

Three cropped frames from Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 showing a Klingon appearing to transition from one visual style to another. — The sequence in question.

I’ve touched on this before, but the fairly extensive redesign of the Klingons became a sore spot for some Trekkies – particularly those who were already inclined to dislike Discovery. I don’t feel that, on its own, the Klingon redesign ruined Discovery for anyone, nor turned away potential viewers. But it became one piece of a bigger conversation about how Discovery was playing fast and loose with Star Trek’s internal consistency and “canon.”

A writer for the website Giant Freakin Robot has decreed that “Star Trek just erased an entire series from canon,” citing the aforementioned appearance of a redesigned Klingon as evidence. Let’s clear that up right now: that is not true! Love it or hate it, Discovery remains an official part of Star Trek’s canon – and with a brand-new spin-off series set at Starfleet Academy featuring several Discovery characters being well into production, I don’t see that changing any time soon.

So let’s repeat that, in case anyone missed it: Star Trek: Discovery has not been erased from canon!

Promo photo for Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 showing the main cast in costume. — The main cast of *Discovery’*s fifth season.

I’m not Discovery’s biggest fan, to be honest with you. Take a look at my recent review of the show’s fifth season, or my critique of the decision to set the show in the mid-23rd Century when it was first being put together as examples of how critical I can be of the series. But Discovery wasn’t awful across the board; the show got a lot of things right, and even if you don’t enjoy every character or every storyline, there should be at least something for most Trekkies to find interesting or entertaining across the show’s sixty-five episodes.

But even if there isn’t, and even if you hate Discovery and everything it stands for as a series… that doesn’t magically make it “non-canon.” By all means, criticise Discovery. And if you want to go so far as to say it’s not part of your personal head-canon… go for it. Trekkies have been doing that since The Next Generation and even The Animated Series were airing. Heck, there’s still a contingent of fans today who subscribe to the idea of a “Roddenberry canon,” only considering films and seasons that Gene Roddenberry personally worked on to be part of their unofficial head-canon. So you’ll have company if you choose to disregard an entire series!

Still frame from What We Left Behind showing Deep Space Nine in HD. — Some fans may not consider anything after *The Next Generation* to be “canon.”

This argument seems to hinge on a few frames from a single episode – the briefest of clips which showed a Klingon changing from the more familiar visual style that began in The Search for Spock to the newer look from Discovery’s first season. That is simply not “evidence;” certainly not enough to declare than an entire five-season TV show is “non-canon.” It’s wishful thinking at best – and a clickbaity lie at worst.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t cover something like this, but unfortunately the original article has been picked up and cited by numerous other blogs, websites, and social media channels, leading to a kind of snowball effect. People I know who don’t even watch Star Trek have asked me about Discovery’s status, and I’ve seen too many people taking it at face-value and assuming it’s true – even though it clearly isn’t, and simply reading the original article would’ve told them that! I felt a need to push back against this spiralling story and make sure that the truth is out there… even if it’s just on this one tiny corner of the internet.

A cropped article claiming Star Trek: Discovery is non-canon. — A crop of the original clickbait article.

There could be a larger conversation to have here about whether, in time, every Star Trek story should be considered canon. With the franchise closing in on 1,000 episodes and films, Star Trek can feel incredibly dense and convoluted for new fans, and that’s an issue that can arise. Trying to figure out how to get started with a franchise like Star Trek can end up being offputting, so there’s a case to be made for either removing some of the older stuff or just starting with a clean slate.

And that’s exactly what the Kelvin timeline films tried to do, if you think about it. They stripped away much of what had come before with the aim of rebooting Star Trek for a new audience after several years of declining viewership. Your mileage may vary when it comes to enjoying those films… but they brought in a bigger audience than Star Trek had ever seen at the box office and turned a massive profit. So there’s something to be said for a reboot, sometimes! But that’s probably a longer conversation best had on another occasion.

Promo photo for Star Trek: Discovery Season 1 showing L'Rell and T'Kuvma carrying a torch. — Two of *Discovery’*s redesigned Klingons in Season 1.

If you desperately wanted this news to be true and for Discovery to have been cancelled, overwritten, and officially stripped out of the Star Trek franchise… well, sorry to burst your bubble! But there’s a lesson here in fact-checking things we read online, not getting swept up in a snowballing news story, and not trusting a random article written by some guy on the internet! And yes, I’m aware of the irony of me making that kind of statement!

So Discovery remains an official part of canon. As Star Trek continues to grow, some parts of Discovery will simply be rolled into the broader lore of the franchise, while others may simply be left by the wayside. That’s the way it’s always been, quite frankly, and you don’t have to look far to find characters, factions, and entire storylines that were tried in one episode or film and never revisited. If you don’t like some aspect of Discovery, I’d say don’t worry – there’s a reasonably high chance that it will never be so much as mentioned again!

And to the original writer of the clickbait article, as well as to everyone else who jumped on it without bothering to check if it was true: please try to do better. The Star Trek fan community doesn’t need nonsense like this!

The Star Trek franchise – including Lower Decks, 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.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 2, Episode 7: Those Old Scientists

Thu 26.09.24Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-2 and Star Trek: Lower Decks.

Before Season 2 aired, we got an announcement at one of the Comic-Cons, Star Trek Days, or other such live event about a crossover episode – and I was pretty excited! Not excited enough to push through my Star Trek burnout to watch it last year, but we’ve been over that so let’s not get back into it. Suffice to say that Those Old Scientists captured my attention long before I sat down to watch it… and I had pretty high hopes that the episode would be fun, if nothing else.

Star Trek doesn’t do full-blown crossovers like this very often, looking back. If we don’t count re-cast characters in shows like Discovery or the return of “legacy” characters from shows that are no longer airing, then the last time there was a fully-fledged crossover episode was quite a long time ago. Back then, characters like Troi and Barclay cropped up in a couple of Voyager episodes, and the Enterprise-D even paid a visit to DS9. There was also These Are The Voyages – the finale of Enterprise – but maybe the less said about that last example the better!

Behind-the-scenes photo from Those Old Scientists showing director Jonathan Frakes. — Director Jonathan Frakes in a behind-the-scenes photo.

Those Old Scientists brought characters from Lower Decks into Strange New Worlds, and it promised a degree of light-heartedness imported from Star Trek’s first foray into the world of animated comedy. Add into the mix Star Trek legend Jonathan Frakes as director, and the stage was set for a truly outstanding episode.

I had a blast with Those Old Scientists – the title of which, in case you missed it, is a pun on the initials T. O. S.; a joke that first appeared in Lower Decks and that makes reference to the way Trekkies have referred to The Original Series for decades. Now that I think of it, Those Old Scientists could be the first self-referential Star Trek episode title, and the first to be named for a pun!

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 (2023) showing Boimler on the bridge. — Ensign Boimler as you’ve never seen him before!

But I don’t think Those Old Scientists was entirely perfect or free from narrative flaws. While I had a ton of fun watching Boimler and Mariner stumbling their way through the 23rd Century, there are a couple of weaknesses in the way the episode was scripted and structured that took away from the more emotional and entertaining moments. That isn’t to say the episode was “bad” by any stretch, and I love that Paramount greenlit a crossover like this. But I would be remiss not to point out some of the moments that didn’t work – especially because there’s a recurring theme that has also taken the shine off of other Star Trek projects in recent years.

In short, Those Old Scientists tried to cram in too many character interactions and sub-plots, and these came at the expense of what should have been the episode’s more powerful emotional moments. Too many scenes and meetings between 23rd and 24th Century characters felt rushed… and when several of these could have been so much more interesting, entertaining, and/or emotional with just a couple of extra minutes awarded them, I just think that’s a bit of a shame.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 (2023) showing M'Benga and Boimler. — Dr M’Benga with Boimler.

This is something that modern Star Trek has done in other ways in other episodes and shows, and I find myself making some variation of the same remark over and over again: if there isn’t enough time to do justice to a storyline or to make a scene work, then put it back on the shelf. That doesn’t mean “never do this, it’s a terrible idea,” but rather that every episode and every story has to prioritise; an episode can’t possibly cram everything in. And in several places, Those Old Scientists felt… crammed.

I would have loved to have seen more of four character interactions and storylines that should’ve been key to the episode’s success. Firstly, the Orion captain and his apparent desire not to be considered a pirate. Secondly, Mariner’s conversation with Uhura and how Mariner – potentially – may have been the one to push Uhura to realise that taking breaks from work is important. Third, Boimler’s conversation with Nurse Chapel about Spock, and the possible ramifications on the Chapel-Spock relationship. And finally, the ensigns’ conversation with Captain Pike, in which he seemed to allude to his impending accident and disability.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 (2023) showing Captain Pike. — Captain Pike toward the end of the story.

Those moments felt like the core of the episode – but a desire on the part of the writers and director to have Mariner and Boimler meet everyone and go all over the ship cut into those moments. An episode like Those Old Scientists needed to prioritise what was important so those aspects could really shine through… and I can’t help but feel that the right balance wasn’t struck this time.

When what we ultimately got were a handful of moments with other main characters, I can’t help but feel I’d have traded most or even all of those for a few more minutes on those bigger, more impactful storylines. Boimler’s moment with Dr M’Benga or when he visited the bridge, as well as some of Ortegas’ lines when she was with Mariner and Uhura… these were fun but ultimately felt like fluff in an episode where other storylines could and should have taken priority. As fun as some of these moments were, perhaps the real issue is that there were just too many of them in an episode that didn’t have time for it. If Those Old Scientists had been structured completely differently from day one, with a focus on entertainment and comedy without a more serious side… maybe it would’ve been okay. But then I can see the potential pitfalls with that idea, too.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 (2023) showing Nurse Chapel and Boimler. — I would’ve liked the story to have spent longer on a handful of key moments.

The Orion captain felt so underdeveloped that I don’t even remember his name. I liked the idea of a member of a race known for one overwhelmingly negative stereotype wishing to be seen on his own terms. In that sense, the Orion captain was not unlike the Ferengi scientist from The Next Generation Season 6 episode Suspicions. That idea can work well, and a story that touches on harmful stereotypes and building bridges between the Federation and other factions is something I’d be supportive of.

But this character and his ship needed way more time on screen to to justice to something with such a heavy theme, and the result of the short runtime dedicated to this idea meant it was underwhelming – especially at the end. Captain Pike promises the Orion captain that his people will be known as the scientists who discovered the time-portal (apparently he didn’t make good on that promise, but that’s a whole other tangent), and the Orion captain basically says “oh, neat,” and then toddles off stage. There was no depth to a character who felt like he should’ve been way more developed – and I lament the missed opportunity to tell a more complex story with this “not all Orions are pirates” idea.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 (2023) showing the Orion captain. — The Orion captain felt pretty one-dimensional.

Mariner’s time with Uhura and Boimler’s conversation with Chapel both needed a bit more time – but these moments still managed to convey at least the majority of what they were supposed to. If the only criticism I really have of these is “I wish we got more time with some interesting and unconventional character pairings,” then that isn’t really a terrible thing. Again, I just feel like opportunities were missed to give a bit more depth to these moments.

Perhaps, though, this is something Strange New Worlds will pick up in a future episode or season. Chapel’s relationship with Spock was always destined to burn out, but maybe both of them will think on what Boimler said and that could lead to drama or interesting conversations in the future. Likewise with Uhura, perhaps her conversation with Mariner will help her change and grow – though in that case I’d argue we’ve already seen some of that growth over the past season-and-a-half.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 (2023) showing Mariner and Uhura in the latter's quarters. — Ensigns Mariner and Uhura.

The final place where I felt Those Old Scientists needed to have spent more time was the conversation between the two ensigns and Captain Pike. After they were caught trying to contact the Orions, both ensigns were in trouble – but Pike also hinted to them that he knew what lay in store for himself in the future. This should’ve been a huge revelation to Boimler in particular, and maybe Pike would’ve wanted to push these two future-dwellers to see what they knew – or at least share something with them that he can’t with anyone else except for Una and Spock. There was potential here.

Instead, Pike launched head-first into a “traumatic backstory” about his father and his birthday that wouldn’t have felt out-of-place in Discovery… and no, I don’t mean that as a compliment. This moment just wasn’t set up very well, and the idea that Pike would simply dump this exposition onto two people he doesn’t know (and who he clearly shouldn’t feel are trustworthy) just missed the mark for me. It’s something that could’ve worked if we’d had more time for this scene and maybe had another moment or two between this trio of characters earlier on.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 (2023) showing Boimler, Mariner, and Captain Pike. — Boimler and Mariner in Pike’s quarters.

Okay, that’s basically all of my criticisms out of the way! So now we’re free to talk about what I liked… which is basically everything else in Those Old Scientists.

First of all, the time-portal. This is exactly the kind of randomly weird artefact that Kirk, Picard, and Janeway seemed to stumble upon almost every week. An ancient relic of a long-lost civilisation powered by a magical macguffin… everything about it, including its design, felt wonderfully old-school Star Trek, and I’m 100% there for that!

This is what Strange New Worlds has been so good at, in my opinion: recapturing the feel of “classic” Star Trek in a way that other modern productions haven’t always managed to do. There was something really fun about Pike and the crew finding this time-portal that harkened back to the days of The Next Generation and The Original Series, and it would’ve made for a fantastic self-contained story even without the Lower Decks crossover.

Behind-the-scenes photo from the set of Those Old Scientists with Jonathan Frakes and three actors. — Director Jonathan Frakes with Babs Olusanmokun, Jack Quaid, and Ethan Peck on the set of *Those Old Scientists*.

We should also talk about how good Boimler and Mariner looked when they crossed over into live-action. Jack Quaid and Tawny Newsome resemble their 2D characters – so that’s a good start – but the costume design for their uniforms, the prop work for their combadges, and particularly the hairstyling to bring Boimler’s iconic purple quiff and Mariner’s bushy ponytail to life were all fantastic.

There are some animated characters for whom this crossover idea just wouldn’t work – for a number of reasons. Not every voice actor can be as good at live-action work; the two skills are not the same. Not every actor bears even a vague resemblance to their animated counterpart. And so on. On this front, Those Old Scientists succeeded – and it was so much better to reimagine Boimler and Mariner in live action than to try to have Pike and the crew awkwardly interacting with animated/CGI avatars. That would have been a travesty!

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 (2023) showing the animated Lower Decks characters. — The animated main characters of *Lower Decks*.

And since we’re talking about animation: I loved that we got an animated epilogue with Pike and the Strange New Worlds crew drawn in Lower Decks’ distinctive style. It was a blast to see our favourite characters reimagined in this way, and the “weird alien drink” angle even gave it an in-universe explanation for why the characters might see themselves in that kind of distorted way.

With Paramount continuing to struggle financially, with the matter of a sale and long-term ownership still unresolved, and with the likes of Discovery and Picard coming to an end… I can’t help but wonder if there might’ve been a sort of “backdoor pilot” angle to this epilogue. You know, Paramount just testing the waters to see if an animated Strange New Worlds might be viable. I could be completely wrong about that – and the show has been renewed for a fourth season already that (presumably, at least) will continue to be live-action! But like The Original Series before it all those years ago, I can’t help but wonder if an animated continuation might be on the cards one day. Obviously I’d rather have more live-action, but if the choice is animation or cancellation… I think Those Old Scientists has opened a door, at least.

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 (2023) showing three animated characters. — Could *more* animated Star Trek be on the agenda?

One final point on animation in Those Old Scientists: the animated opening title sequence was amazing! Seeing the whole thing recreated – with a couple of inclusions from Lower Decks for good measure – was just incredibly cute and not at all what I was expecting. The Enterprise looked great in that style – similar, in some ways, to how it appeared a few years ago in the Short Treks episode Ephraim and Dot. After the opening aboard the Cerritos, this was a great way to mix things up heading into the main part of the episode.

I think I’m inclined to give Those Old Scientists a bit of a pass on the whole “contaminating the timeline” thing. Star Trek has occasionally stumbled over time travel stories – and I’ve said more than once that time travel isn’t usually my favourite story premise in the franchise – but because this episode had a less serious tone for the most part, I think we can overlook most of that. Boimler and Mariner undeniably messed with the timeline – but no more so than other characters elsewhere in the franchise going all the way back to Kirk’s crew and their early adventures with time travel.

As a Trekkie, it’s been a lot of fun to watch a character like Boimler on Lower Decks and how he geeks out at things that you or I would get just as excited about – and that theme continued in Those Old Scientists. Set aside Boimler’s excitement to meet his heroes like Pike, Spock, and Una – his enthusiasm for small things like computer panels or a tricorder really elevated the episode and made it a lot more fun. It reminded me of visiting Star Trek: The Exhibition in the mid-1990s, or more recently the 50th Anniversary exhibit in Blackpool here in the UK. I was fascinated and excited to see some of the props from Star Trek… and Boimler was, too. That point of connection felt great as a long-term fan.

But it wasn’t only Boimler who got excited. Mariner also met one of her heroes: Uhura. The scenes between the two of them were great, particularly as Mariner came to realise that this younger version of the person she had learned about and looked up to was somewhat different to what she’d expected!

Still frame from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 (2023) showing live-action Boimler and Mariner. — Boimler and Mariner in engineering.

There were plenty of funny and cute moments throughout the episode as Boimler and Mariner stumbled their way through the 23rd Century, and I had a smile on my face much of the time. There were a couple of missed opportunities, though; character moments and storylines that really needed a bit longer in the spotlight to truly shine. As much as I enjoyed this crossover and feel like it was truly “made for the fans,” I can’t help but feel that Those Old Scientists tried to cram too much into its runtime.

I don’t want to be too negative, though. By far my biggest takeaway from the episode is how fun it was to get a crossover like this – and if we’re fortunate enough to see Star Trek remain in production over the next few years, I hope Those Old Scientists won’t be the last crossover episode. With the franchise’s 60th anniversary only a couple of years away, that could be a great opportunity to do something like this, bringing together characters from different parts of Star Trek for one spectacular story!

Another thing I’m reminded of is that I need to finish catching up on Lower Decks! Season 5 is right around the corner, and I’d love to get back up to speed with the series before it goes off the air. This was an enjoyable, entertaining crossover – and I’m glad to have belatedly seen it.

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.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 – the trailers

Sat 10.06.23Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 and the trailers and teasers for Season 2. Spoilers are also present for Star Trek: Discovery.

There are only a few days left until Strange New Worlds Season 2 arrives, and as the show’s marketing push ramps up we’ve been treated to two major trailers and a handful of additional clips. Today I thought it could be fun to take a look at what’s been revealed about the season so far, and share my thoughts on how Strange New Worlds looks to be shaping up.

On balance, Strange New Worlds Season 1 was probably my favourite television series of 2022. It was, in my view anyway, the best that modern Star Trek has had to offer, ditching the serialised approach taken by most projects since 2017 in favour of a return to a style of storytelling that felt much closer to the franchise’s roots. Its stellar cast was backed up by some fantastic writing, a beautiful score, elaborate sets that both harkened back to The Original Series while taking advantage of cutting-edge technology like the AR wall, and a combination of CGI and animation work with some incredible practical effects and puppets. It was fantastic across the board – with not a single one out of the first season’s ten episodes that I’d consider to be sub-par.

No pressure… but Season 2 has a lot to live up to!

First of all, I can’t tell you how glad I am that the new season is arriving in June and didn’t follow last year’s dismal scheduling display. In 2022, Discovery, Picard, and Strange New Worlds all overlapped one another thanks to some truly moronic decisions at Paramount – scheduling decisions that contributed to Strange New Worlds’ first season not being available here in the UK. I will give credit where it’s due and note that in 2023, Paramount is doing a much better job with scheduling Star Trek. There’s been a decent break since Picard’s finale, and breaks like that are good and healthy for any franchise.

But enough about all of that! We’ve already caught a glimpse of Number One on trial – something that was set up right at the very end of Season 1 when she was taken into custody by Starfleet security personnel. Star Trek can do courtroom drama exceptionally well, and while it feels like a safe bet that Una won’t be unceremoniously kicked out of Starfleet… how we get to that point and what role Pike and the others might play feels like it has the potential to be high-stakes entertainment at its very best.

As an aside, I was a little disappointed to note in this sequence that the redress of Discovery’s Federation HQ set felt nakedly obvious. There are a handful of examples in modern Star Trek where this has happened – the Ba’ul prison cell in Discovery Season 2 being one example that leaps to mind – but as Paramount has pumped more money into the franchise and Star Trek has continued to expand, it’s something I’d hoped to see less of.

In Discovery’s first couple of seasons, this same sound stage was used to depict the USS Shenzou and Georgiou’s Section 31 vessel, so the same set can be used in different ways. Here, though, the redress doesn’t feel quite as extensive, and I see too many elements from the 32nd Century’s Federation HQ present in the court-martial set. Here’s hoping that the story itself will be too tense and dramatic to make its setting much of an issue!

When Discovery premiered in 2017, the redesign of the Klingons became something of a sore spot in parts of the fan community. The Strange New Worlds trailer prominently shows off Klingons in their much more familiar style – closer to their post-Motion Picture appearance than anything we’ve seen since Enterprise went off the air (or since Worf appeared in Picard’s third season). I daresay that’ll make some folks happy!

The Klingons are fantastic, and an absolutely iconic part of the Star Trek franchise. Discovery’s first two seasons prominently featured Klingon characters and storylines, and Klingon characters have also cropped up in Lower Decks, but this will be the first time in several years that we’ll get at least one Klingon-focused live-action episode.

I’ll be particularly interested to see whether and to what extent Strange New Worlds will reference Discovery’s Klingon War storyline. This new season takes place in between Discovery and The Original Series, an era in which the Federation and Klingons should be maintaining a kind of uneasy peace. Spock certainly appeared to be on good terms with the Klingons in the clips we saw; will they know he’s the brother of the human who started the war? Will the war even be mentioned at all, or will Strange New Worlds simply step over this relatively recent addition to canon? Lieutenant Ortegas mentioned something about “the war” in one of the clips, so it’s possible it will at least be made reference to.

The Klingons need to be handled with care. When you think about how many appearances Klingons have made across the history of Star Trek, and the extent to which we’ve gotten to know about Klingon culture and history, making too many changes – especially in a time period so close to The Original Series – could be offputting. However, what we can see seems, if anything, to be a step closer to familiar canon and a move away from at least the aesthetic presentation of the Klingons that Discovery and the Kelvin films employed. That could be a positive thing… or it could be something neutral! I’ve never really had much of an issue with the Klingon redesign – and I liked some of what I perceived to be an “Ancient Egyptian” influence in some of Discovery’s Klingon designs.

Spock drinking bloodwine with the Klingons.

It looks like the Gorn are also coming back! The Gorn played a role in two of Season 1’s most action-packed episodes, and overall I like what Strange New Worlds has done with this relatively unknown Star Trek faction. Giving the Gorn more of a Xenomorph-inspired horror vibe has taken the series in a completely different direction, and any story with the Gorn is sure to be tense, dramatic, and exciting!

Several clips seemed to show Captain Pike (and others) getting into combat – and I could be wrong, but it looked like they were fighting the same kind of warriors that we saw in The Cage. If so, that could mean that a return to Rigel VII is on the agenda – though why, exactly, is still unclear. It could just be a coincidence, but the way it looked certainly felt familiar.

There were several romantic moments glimpsed particularly in the second trailer. Pike and Una shared a kiss, as did Spock and Nurse Chapel. My first thought on seeing those clips was that we could be in for an episode inspired by The Naked Time and The Naked Now, with some kind of technobabble explanation for lowered inhibitions or misbehaviour among members of the crew. I could be wrong about that – it’s just a guess!

Pike and Una would make an interesting couple – but there’d be an element of tragedy with Pike’s future once again set in stone. We don’t know what became of Una after the events of Strange New Worlds, but it seems unlikely that she’d follow him to Talos. A doomed romance could be on the cards, perhaps, or one that deals with themes comparable to The Next Generation Season 6 episode Lessons – a story in which Captain Picard had to wrangle with the idea of becoming romantically involved with someone under his command.

Spock, though, is a character who needs to be handled delicately. We know a great deal about Spock’s life, including his romantic entanglements – and lack thereof. Spock’s also a character who’s been messed with a lot, with retcons and additions complicating one of the Star Trek franchise’s most beloved and iconic characters. There’s room to make additions, don’t get me wrong, but internal consistency is important – and if we’re to buy into the idea of this Spock being the same man as we see in The Original Series, the films, The Next Generation, and into the Kelvin timeline… he needs to be handled with care.

As an aside, Spock is a character who has often been discussed in an asexual or ace-adjacent context. As someone who is asexual, I’ve always found something relatable in Spock’s presentation. Though he would have romantic attachments, and he would go through a biological mating cycle, outside of a mere handful of few episodes Spock can feel like a very relatable character for people on the asexual spectrum. Season 1 already introduced us to Spock’s betrothed, T’Pring, and adding an ongoing relationship – or even a one-night stand – with Nurse Chapel into the mix would risk detracting from an important character. Again, Spock needs to be handled with care, and there are a couple of points of concern that the trailers raised in that regard.

Another potential pair who need to be handled carefully is La’an and James T. Kirk! Although Paul Wesley put in a thoroughly fantastic performance as Kirk at the end of Season 1, this came in a sequence set in The Original Series era, years after the events of Strange New Worlds. I confess a degree of scepticism when I saw Kirk on the transporter pad, and while he can be integrated into the series in a way that perfectly fits with everything we know about him and his background… I’m just not sure it’s something I’d have done.

That being said, there are some incredibly enticing possibilities that come along with Kirk’s inclusion. We’ve never seen how Kirk and Spock met in the prime timeline, for example, and whether this will be their first meeting or whether they’ll be catching up after being buddies at the Academy, it could be fascinating to learn more about how they came to become such close friends. There’s also the potential to see a younger Kirk working with Pike and Number One, with the building blocks of his own leadership skills being formed and honed. Again, this feels like something worth seeing.

But as with Spock, there are pitfalls. Kirk never mentioned serving with Pike, nor did he seem especially close to the Enterprise’s former captain during the events of The Menagerie – which should rule out any kind of close bond or mentor relationship between the two men. More significantly, though, is Kirk’s run-in with La’an – something that Una seemed to pick up on.

Kirk’s encounter with Khan – the original Khan – is legendary. The Wrath of Khan is one of the best films ever made, with even non-Trekkies rating it very highly. There’s limited room for manoeuvre here, and bringing Kirk into close contact with another member of the Khan family years before his run-in with the man himself is something that has the potential to undermine or detract from that wonderful story. A friendly meeting could be fine… but pairing these two up for a long period of time would almost certainly cross a line.

Well, all that’s left is to talk about that crossover!

When the Lower Decks crossover was announced, I felt it was a really fun idea. And from what we’ve seen of it in the trailers, Boimler and Mariner’s visit to the Enterprise looks absolutely fantastic. The details of the story – including how and why Mariner and Boimler might end up on the Enterprise – are still under wraps, but it looks like they’ll get to meet both Pike and Spock… something that Boimler in particular will clearly adore.

The Lower Decks uniforms look great in live-action, and it’s amazing how closely actors Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid resemble their characters. I was already feeling excitement at the prospect of Star Trek’s first major crossover of the current era – but having caught a glimpse of it, now I can’t wait!

Mariner and Boimler will appear in live-action for the first time.

So Strange New Worlds is almost upon us! Season 1 was fantastic, although it was sadly tainted by Paramount’s indefensible decision to only broadcast it in the United States at first. But Season 2 looks set to continue this fun, retro Star Trek series. There were plenty of smaller clips or images seen in the trailers that both harken back to Star Trek’s past and look to be telling brand-new stories, and above all, I’m excited to see a continuation of Strange New Worlds’ episodic style of storytelling.

When the series lands next week I’ll do my best to keep up with weekly episode reviews. I wasn’t able to do that for Season 1 with the series “officially” unavailable to me – but beginning with Season 2 I hope you’ll join me for my thoughts and my take on each of the season’s ten episodes.

I hope this was a fun look ahead!

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 will be broadcast on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the service is available. Season 1 is available to stream now. 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.

Star Trek at Comic-Con 2022 – thoughts and impressions

Mon 25.07.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Picard Seasons 1-3, Star Trek: Lower Decks Seasons 1-3, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Seasons 1-2, and for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise – including upcoming and unreleased projects.

This year’s San Diego Comic-Con is winding down – and we got a lot of Star Trek news to process over the weekend! I didn’t attend Comic-Con myself, but I’ve been following the event online, and there were several big announcements, a big surprise, teasers and trailers, and comments from Star Trek stars past and present to dive into. I’ll do my best to take a look at all of the major points today!

I’m actually a little surprised that there was so much news coming out of Comic-Con; a Lower Decks trailer and something about Picard felt like certainties, but beyond that I was wondering if Paramount might hold things back and put together a repeat of last year’s “Star Trek Day” broadcast event where the franchise could be centre-stage.

A billboard promoting Star Trek at San Diego Comic-Con.

An event like Comic-Con is a double-edged sword in some ways for corporations like Paramount. On the one hand, there’s a lot of attention directed at Comic-Con even from mainstream news outlets, which can be good for promotional purposes. But on the other, Star Trek has to compete for that attention with the likes of Marvel, Star Wars, Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series, and many others.

So I hope it was a success from Paramount’s point of view and managed to bring at least some new eyes to the Star Trek franchise. It feels as though Paramount put a significant amount of investment into this weekend’s events and promotional materials, so as someone who hopes to see Star Trek continuing to be a success, I’d like to think it paid off!

The *Strange New Worlds* panel at Comic-Con.

So let’s start with Star Trek: Picard. We didn’t get to see a proper trailer, instead getting another teaser that showed off the main cast of Season 3. I’m still quite disappointed with how the casting situation has been handled, and the fact that we aren’t going to get to spend more time with characters like Elnor and Soji feels like a backwards step – at least in some respects – for a franchise that should be moving forward. But that decision has long ago been taken, so let’s consider what we did see instead of what we didn’t!

First of all, Seven of Nine’s field commission seems to have been made permanent, and she’s seen in uniform for the first time. That was neat, and seems to further her wonderful arc from both seasons of the show so far. The design of Worf was perhaps the most interesting to me; after the Klingons had undergone a major redesign for both the Kelvin films and Discovery, the design of Worf shown off in the Picard Season 3 teaser is much closer to the post-Motion Picture Klingon look that Worf had during The Next Generation’s run.

Absent from the teaser was Brent Spiner – so we still don’t know who he may be portraying. It’s tempting to suggest that his absence may be hiding some major design secret (such as a reimagined Data, Lore, or B4) but I’m not convinced of that yet. Altan Inigo Soong (from Picard Season 1) feels like the most obvious choice for Spiner to portray, but we don’t know that for certain.

At the panel, Sir Patrick Stewart indicated that a visit to “more than one” USS Enterprise could be on the cards in Season 3, which could imply anything from travelling through time to a Search for Spock-inspired starship theft! Precisely which Enterprise(s) Picard and the crew may visit wasn’t stated – so could it be Pike’s Enterprise, perhaps?

Sir Patrick Stewart speaking during the *Picard* panel.

There’s actually not much else to say about Picard right now. The teaser didn’t give much away, and aside from design choices like several characters wearing leather jackets, we don’t actually know a whole lot more about the show’s final season than we did before Comic-Con. Some of what was discussed – like a potential female villain and revisiting the Enterprise – sounds interesting, and Picard Season 3 is definitely one of my most-anticipated right now. But after an underwhelming Season 2 and the disappointment of the rather callous cutting of under-used characters, there’s no doubt it has serious work to do. Nothing I saw at Comic-Con has me anxious or worried… but because what we saw was relatively barebones, nothing blew me away either.

The upcoming video game Star Trek: Resurgence made an appearance at Comic-Con. Still scheduled for release later this year, the panel didn’t go into a lot of story details for obvious reasons, but the game seems to be shaping up nicely. It looks to be very much in line with Telltale Games titles from the past few years – the likes of Batman, The Wolf Among Us, and The Walking Dead, to name but a few – and considering that developer Dramatic Labs is made up of a number of ex-Telltale creators, that makes sense! I’ll be sure to take a detailed look at Resurgence when it launches, so stay tuned for that!

I wasn’t expecting to see any kind of teaser or trailer for Strange New Worlds Season 2; although filming recently wrapped up we’ve only just finished watching Season 1, so Season 2 is likely ten-plus months away! There was no news about a potential third season renewal either – although I suspect that’s just a matter of time!

The biggest news from the Strange New Worlds panel, though, was the surprise announcement of a crossover with Lower Decks. I’ve been longing for a proper crossover between the current crop of Star Trek shows – so this is great news! Strange New Worlds had moments of humour and comedy in its first season, so the pairing is not as unnatural as it might first appear. I’m not quite sure how the episode will blend live action and animation, though – will Boimler and Mariner appear as cartoons on a live-action set? That’s something to watch out for!

A truly unexpected crossover is on the cards!

The crossover episode will air as part of Strange New Worlds’ second season sometime next year, and will be directed by Jonathan Frakes. Frakes has directed some of Discovery and Picard’s best episodes and knows the Star Trek franchise inside and out, so I’m really hopeful that this crossover will end up being as much fun as it sounds! I might not have chosen to stick Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds together, but with both shows hitting their stride after successful debut seasons, the time is right for a crossover. Hopefully it will be the first of many as Star Trek’s renaissance continues!

There were some interesting pieces of merchandise shown off at Comic-Con, too. I didn’t see any Prodigy toys or figures, but there were some prototypes from Playmates and EXO-6 showing off their latest figures of the likes of Captain Kirk, Locutus of Borg, and other classic characters. Factory Entertainment also debuted their Motion Picture insignia and Type II “dustbuster” phaser – which I hope will come to the UK!

A new “dustbuster” phaser replica may be coming soon!

Alex Kurtzman teased us with news that there may be two unannounced Star Trek projects in early production. With Picard finishing its run after Season 3 next year, I feel like an announcement can’t be far away for at least one new project, but what that project may be is still unknown! One potential series is the untitled Section 31 spin-off that was announced back in 2019, but my gut says that project probably won’t see the light of day. There’s been talk of a Ceti Alpha V miniseries focusing on Khan, and there’s also a rumoured Starfleet Academy series. Any of those could be announced before the end of the year – so watch this space!

I wonder, though, if one of these unannounced projects could be a 25th Century post-Picard series, perhaps even a spin-off focusing on Seven of Nine and Raffi. There seemed to be a lot of investment in new sets built for Picard Season 2 that were only seen at the beginning and end of the season, so could those sets be repurposed for a new series set aboard the new USS Stargazer? It’s all speculation at this point, of course, but I can’t help wondering!

A trailer for Lower Decks Season 3 debuted at Comic-Con, and the series has recently been confirmed to be returning on the 25th of August – in just a month’s time! The trailer picked up from where the Season 2 finale left off, with Captain Freeman in custody and the crew having to figure out what to do next. It seems like we saw several clips from the first episode – at least, that’s the impression I got – so there may be surprises still to come later in the season!

One story will take the Lower Decks crew to Deep Space Nine, and we saw the station and nearby wormhole shown off in the trailer – along with the familiar Deep Space Nine theme. I absolutely adore Deep Space Nine, and after the station was briefly glimpsed in a Season 1 flashback, it will be amazing to head back there for what will be the first post-Dominion War episode in that setting. Series creator Mike McMahan has promised us a look inside the station as well as some familiar faces, too!

One of those familiar faces seems to be the Klingon General Martok – an important recurring character in the latter part of Deep Space Nine’s run. It may be too much to hope for to get a real Deep Space Nine-inspired story that picks up some of the dangling threads that series left behind… but I can’t help it! I’d love to see the next chapter in the Deep Space Nine story unfold on screen, and even just getting a glimpse or a tease would be fantastic.

Other scenes in the trailer seemed to show a return to one of the first planets visited by Mariner and Boimler in Season 1, stealing the impounded USS Cerritos (presumably to rescue Captain Freeman), Boimler in Cetacean Ops, Rutherford and Tendi at Sisko’s restaurant in New Orleans, Boimler and Mariner acting as Starfleet recruiters, Dr T’Ana performing an amputation, and more! We saw Captain Freeman in uniform alongside Commander Ransom briefly, so I assume she will be able to escape the false charges laid against her!

The trailer looked like the familiar blend of animated comedy hijinks and throwbacks to The Next Generation era that we’ve come to expect from Lower Decks across its first two seasons. We’ve had some genuinely outstanding episodes so far – and only a couple of duds, really – so more of the same is no bad thing! I’m curious to see how the Captain Freeman cliffhanger will be resolved – will it be a one-episode story or will it rumble on for much of the season?

There was a surprising absence at Comic-Con: Prodigy. There was no mention of Prodigy (aside from a poster as part of the broader “Star Trek Universe” marketing), and that strikes me as odd. We’re supposedly going to be seeing ten more episodes of Prodigy before the end of this year to round out the show’s first season, so it was surprising that nothing was mentioned. We don’t even have an official broadcast date for the next batch of episodes – and there’s currently no new Star Trek being shown for the next few weeks.

There was nothing *Prodigy-*related at Comic-Con this time.

It’s possible that we’ll come to learn more about Prodigy’s next steps and some of these in-production but unannounced projects in the near future. The 7th of September will be “Star Trek Day,” for example, and we could see another presentation of some kind to mark the occasion. Prodigy could also follow Lower Decks and kick off the second half of Season 1 in late October or early November – this would keep Star Trek on our screens through the holiday season and into 2023.

There was a comment from William Shatner about Star Trek that a lot of folks have picked up on on social media. At Comic-Con, Shater claimed that Gene Roddenberry would not approve of the direction of modern Star Trek, saying that the franchise’s creator would be “spinning in his grave” at the many of the creative and narrative decisions that have been taken. I think it’s worth pointing out that Shatner was similarly dismissive of The Next Generation, the Kelvin reboot films, and practically every Star Trek project that doesn’t feature his take on Captain Kirk. I don’t think we need to dedicate a lot of time to what Shatner has said; he’s entitled to his opinion, of course, and really the question of whether Gene Roddenberry would or wouldn’t approve of certain shows, episodes, or stories is rather a moot point. Modern Star Trek is doing some great things – and I for one hope it’s here to stay!

So I think that about wraps things up.

For me, the biggest and most interesting piece of news is the Lower Decks-Strange New Worlds crossover. A story like that has massive entertainment potential as both shows have demonstrated respect and reverence for past iterations of Star Trek. It seems to me that the crossover could be a real “made for fans” moment – but perhaps also one that could bring in new viewers to both series. Blending animation and live-action can be a challenge, but Star Trek has always risen to meet technical and creative challenges as it strives to tell new, different, and exciting stories!

The tease of new projects on the horizon is fascinating – but until we start to get information about what those projects may be, it’s hard to get overly excited! I’ve got a few different articles and lists here on the website looking at pitches and concepts – as well as putting together a few ideas of my own – so check those out if you’re interested. As and when Alex Kurtzman and the creative teams see fit to tell us more, I’ll be sure to cover it in-depth and give my thoughts!

So that was Comic-Con. Star Trek put in a decent showing this year, and it seems like we have a lot to look forward to both later this year and in 2023.

The Star Trek franchise – including all shows, films, and properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. Some images used above courtesy of Star Trek/Paramount Global on social media. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 – a wishlist

Fri 22.10.21Sun 13.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-3 and the trailers and teasers for Season 4. Spoilers are also present for the following Star Trek productions: The Voyage Home, The Final Frontier, The Undiscovered Country, The Next Generation, First Contact, Voyager, Enterprise, and Picard.

Discovery’s fourth season is now less than a month away, so it’s time to look ahead. This time, though, I’m not going to be indulging in theory-crafting or even speculation… what we’re going to go through today are some of my wishes for the season. I did something similar last year in the run-up to Season 3, and if you want to see how my wishlist turned out you can find a follow-up piece I wrote after the season had aired by clicking or tapping here.

Season 3 did a reasonably good job at establishing the USS Discovery’s place in the 32nd Century, and though I have criticisms of several aspects of the Burn storyline, it was brought to a fairly conclusive end by the season finale. That should mean that the stage is set for a new story this time around, and on this occasion I’d like to lay out some of my personal preferences for Season 4 and how I’d like to see things unfold.

The USS Discovery in the Season 4 trailer.

The obvious caveat applies: I have no “insider information” and I’m not trying to claim that anything on the list below will be included in Season 4. This is merely a wishlist from a fan of Star Trek… nothing more. Everything I’m about to say is also entirely subjective! If I don’t include a point you want to see, or something I talk about sounds like something you’d hate, that’s okay. The Star Trek fandom is expansive enough for fans with all kinds of different points of view; we don’t need to fight, especially not about hypotheticals!

With all of that out of the way, let’s get into my Discovery Season 4 wishlist.

Number 1: A proper role for ex-Captain Saru that makes sense.

One of the things I didn’t like about the short Season 3 epilogue at the end of That Hope Is You, Part 2 was that Saru was unceremoniously shuffled off Discovery. In order to make way for Burnham’s ascent to the captain’s chair, Captain Saru had to leave his position on the ship, and a way was found to make this plausible by giving him a deeply emotional connection to Su’Kal.

As a story point, I actually don’t fault any of that. Saru had been feeling alone and isolated with no other Kelpiens around in the 32nd Century, and his desire to help Su’Kal led to them forming a close bond. I can quite believe that he’d want to take a leave of absence to visit Kaminar and to spend more time with Su’Kal, helping him integrate into society as best he can after so long on his own.

But unfortunately the rushed epilogue didn’t do justice to this story point, and quite frankly treated Saru with disrespect. Not since Dr Pulaski was dropped at the beginning of Season 3 of The Next Generation has a main character been handled so poorly, and I would have wanted – and expected – to see much more of a send-off for Saru. Not only had he been Discovery’s captain for all of Season 3, but he was a character we’d spent a lot of time with across Seasons 1 and 2 as well.

Season 4 will bring back Saru; he isn’t leaving the series as some folks had predicted, and I’m glad for that! But his role in Season 4 is unclear at best, and the biggest question I have is this: why does the USS Discovery need two captains on board?

Captain Saru was in command of the ship for a time.

In The Final Frontier and The Undiscovered Country, Kirk and Spock would serve on the same ship despite both holding the rank of captain, so it isn’t entirely without precedent in Starfleet for this situation to arise. In that case, though, Kirk had been demoted from the rank of Admiral, and in The Undiscovered Country in particular both officers held different positions: Kirk was in command of the Enterprise, Spock was in command of the overall mission to negotiate with the Klingons.

In short, I think the premiere of Season 4 (or whichever episode brings Saru back to the ship) needs to at least pay lip service to this point. Perhaps Saru could be given a title like “captain of the science department” in the same way as Scotty was “captain of engineering.” I wouldn’t want to see him demoted to the rank of commander – like poor Decker was in The Motion Picture! Presumably Captain Burnham has some degree of leeway when it comes to building her crew, so perhaps she’ll ask Saru to serve in a temporary role. Regardless, I hope Discovery doesn’t just ignore this point.

Number 2: Go into more detail about the ban on time travel.

The Enterprise-E approaching a temporal vortex.

The ban on time travel that was introduced in Season 3 was evidently intended to be a way for Discovery to avoid questions about how the Burn was able to happen, why Georgiou couldn’t simply return to her own time, and why the time-traveling Federation of the 29th and 30th Centuries that we’ve glimpsed in past Star Trek productions had ceased to exist. But the ban has created some storytelling issues in and of itself, and I would like Season 4 to at least try to address some of these.

Firstly, who enforces the ban? Admiral Vance seemed to imply that everyone in the galaxy – from the Emerald Chain to the Federation – simply goes along with it, but that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Yes, the Temporal War was certainly a bad thing. But as the war and its effects fade into memory, are we seriously supposed to believe that someone like Osyraa wouldn’t jump at the chance to use time travel to give herself and her faction an advantage? That’s to say nothing of factions like the Borg – are they signed up to the ban on time travel too?

Osyraa, head of the Emerald Chain in Season 3. She seems like someone who would use any weapon or technology at her disposal – regardless of any ban!

Even if the answer is “all pieces of time travel technology were destroyed,” that doesn’t really hold water either. It’s impossible to un-invent a powerful, weaponisable technology – as I said on several occasions during Season 3’s run! Even if everything were destroyed – something which seems like it would be impossible for every faction to prove – what’s to stop someone recreating it? The Emerald Chain had scientists like Aurellio at their disposal, and once the basic principles were understood it seems like rebuilding the technology would be a task within reach of anyone with the means and inclination.

Time travel was considered something so mundane in the 29th and 30th Centuries that its basic principles were taught in school across the Federation. Even if we discount early depictions of time travel (like the slingshot method seen in The Original Series), the fact that time travel is possible has been known to the Federation since the 22nd or 23rd Centuries at least, and even if we’re generous and say that time travel technology wasn’t “officially” invented until much later, the technology still existed for centuries prior to being banned.

The HMS Bounty was easily able to travel back in time by slingshotting around a star.

In today’s world, nuclear weapons are a comparable technology. If there were a worldwide ban on nuclear weapons, would we trust the likes of China or Russia to abide by it? Could we guarantee that every nuclear weapon was destroyed by our own governments, or might some covert hawkish faction seek to keep control of at least some of them as a contingency? In short, a ban on nuclear weapons is a noble ambition – but even in the aftermath of a nuclear war I can’t see it being workable. Even if such a ban were put in place, the weapons programmes of countries like North Korea prove that, with enough determination, anyone can recreate complex technology from scratch.

Perhaps there’s some kind of time travel arbiter that monitors the whole galaxy, and intervenes to prevent time travel from occurring. That would be one explanation. But it’s also possible that whatever this gravitational anomaly is is connected to time travel or the Temporal War – meaning Captain Burnham and the crew could be about to dive headfirst into a time travel story!

Number 3: Standalone episodes and smaller storylines to offset the main season-long arc.

The Season 3 two-parter *Terra Firma* was largely a standalone story.

Discovery used this formula to great effect in Season 3, which came after Seasons 1 and 2 had both leaned very heavily into serialised storytelling. I very much hope that Season 4 will continue in the same vein, because having smaller stories, character arcs, and fully standalone episodes added so much depth to the series.

We already know of one potential side-story: Adira and Gray, and in particular Gray’s quest to become corporeal again. That story has a lot of potential, and it’s actually one of the things I’m most looking forward to about Season 4. Hopefully there can be more side-stories like this, looking at other characters and taking some of our heroes to different and unexpected places.

Strange New Worlds has promised a return to a more episodic style of storytelling. I don’t expect that Discovery will go all-in on episodic television in the same way, not least because we already know that they have the mystery of the gravitational anomaly to solve. But I hope that, along the way, we get some detours and unconnected stories that take Captain Burnham and the ship to different places – literally and thematically.

This would be a great way for the series to show off characters who didn’t get as much to do last season, or who we haven’t spent much time with at all. Season 3 brought us an interesting story involving helm officer Keyla Detmer, and while that story wasn’t perfect it was great to spend time with a secondary character in far more detail than Discovery had ever done before. Which brings us to my next point…

Number 4: Make use of the show’s full cast – including secondary and recurring characters.

Some of the bridge crew at the end of Season 3.

As mentioned, Season 3 began this process. We got to spend more time away from Michael Burnham than Discovery had dared do in Seasons 1 or 2, and some of the episodes which placed Saru, Booker, and even Georgiou at their centre worked exceptionally well. I’d love Discovery to continue down this road, perhaps spending time with characters like Stamets – he didn’t get as much to do in Season 3 as some of the others.

With Georgiou departing for an unknown destination last year, there’s potentially space for another main cast member. We could see someone like Bryce, Rhys, or Nilsson promoted – or a character like Willa, Admiral Vance’s aide-de-camp from Season 3, join the crew. In some ways I’d like to see a new character, perhaps a 32nd Century Starfleet officer. Booker provides the crew with the viewpoint of a 32nd Century native, but he also has a different role as an outsider who isn’t a member of Starfleet. Bringing a new officer who’s native to this era aboard the ship could be an excellent move, one which could provide a lot of storytelling potential.

Detmer got her own storyline last season.

At the same time, giving more characters moments in the spotlight and their own arcs is something worth doing. We learned more about people like Owosekun, Detmer, and even Tilly in Season 3 than we ever had before, and continuing this trend by ensuring more characters get some degree of exploration is absolutely something I’d want to see.

In a season that will run for 13 episodes there’s obviously a limit; a ceiling on the number of characters and storylines that the series can fit. With that understood it obviously won’t be possible for everyone to get a fully-rounded character arc, their own storyline, and a spotlight episode putting them front-and-centre! But choosing some characters to give that amount of attention to is still important, and even those characters who don’t get a full story or their own episode this time can still have more to do than sit at their station and say “yes ma’am!”

Number 5: Bring back Nhan!

Saru wasn’t the only character who left the USS Discovery and whose story feels incomplete. Nhan actress Rachael Ancheril was promoted to Discovery’s main cast at the beginning of Season 3 only to be shuffled off the show after only a few episodes. Nhan – the first Barzan main character in Star Trek’s history – was left behind to be the guardian of the USS Tikhov following a disaster that claimed the lives of the ship’s crew.

The Tikhov’s mission was an interesting one – it serves as a seed vault for the Federation, storing samples of plants from across the Federation and beyond. From the point of view of Nhan potentially reuniting with Burnham and the crew, though, the Tikhov was rotated between Federation member worlds, with representatives from each taking responsibility for the ship for a set period of time. Nhan seemed to suggest that she saw her mission as keeping the ship safe until the end of the Barzans’ tenure, after which it’s safe to assume the ship would be delivered to a new commander.

Nham hugs Burnham immediately before remaining behind on the USS Tikhov.

It wasn’t stated on screen how long each planet’s turn to look after the ship lasts, but that’s actually a good thing! It could be that each member world has to care for the ship for a year or two, or that it was almost the end of Barzan II’s tenure as guardians of the Tikhov – either of which could mean Nhan is almost done and could return to duty.

It was a shame that Nhan was dropped, and I don’t know if there were production-side reasons for the decision. It feels rather arbitrary, and while Nhan wouldn’t necessarily have had a huge role to play in the latter part of Season 3 she was a fun character and someone the show could and should bring back. The USS Discovery doesn’t have a permanent security or tactical officer – at least not among the main characters. Nhan could fill that role going forward, and it seems as if the ship could use a dedicated security officer based on all the scrapes that they get into!

Nhan was also a character who provided a contrast to Michael Burnham. Where Burnham could go on emotional rollercoaster rides, Nhan was mostly stoic. And where Burnham had a loose interpretation of the rules and regulations, Nhan appeared steadfast in her dedication to Starfleet’s way of doing things.

As a character from an under-explored race, Nhan could do for the Barzans what Saru has done for the Kelpiens – showing us their history and culture in more detail. The Barzans only appeared a couple of times in Star Trek prior to Discovery, but there’s a chance for a connection with The Next Generation or to explain how they came to join the Federation – and perhaps why they chose to remain a Federation member even after the withdrawal of Earth and Ni’Var. Which brings us to the next point…

Number 6: Give us a broader look at the state of the galaxy in the 32nd Century.

A non-canon map of the galaxy.
*Image Credit: Star Trek Star Charts (2002) via Memory Beta*

Season 3 focused primarily on two factions: the rump Federation and the Emerald Chain. Earth, Ni’Var, and Kwejian also appeared, though the first two are ex-Federation members. We know that the Burn decimated “the galaxy” and saw many Federation members quit the organisation, but that was 125 years ago – a lot can have happened since.

Though we briefly saw Cardassians, Lurians, and a few other familiar races, we know nothing about many others. What became of the Klingon Empire? The Dominion? The Borg? Was the Burn truly galactic in scope, reaching all four quadrants in equally destructive fashion – or could some parts of the galaxy have escaped some or all of the Burn’s impact?

Are the Borg still around in the 32nd Century?

Admiral Vance told us that 38 member worlds remained in the Federation – with Earth and Ni’Var being two of the most prominent members to leave. But if the Federation had over 350 member worlds at its peak, more than 80% have quit the organisation – or been conquered, destroyed, or had some other fate befall them. Barzan II appears to remain a Federation member, as does Kaminar. It’s possible based on the Season 4 trailer that Ni’Var will rejoin the organisation – but what of the others? Who’s left in the Federation? Who quit? Who joined after the 24th Century that we might recall from past iterations of Star Trek?

Prior to the Burn, did the development of warp or transwarp speeds allow the Federation to travel further and settle other parts of the galaxy, perhaps? Could races like the Ocampa and Talaxians have joined the Federation in the Delta Quadrant, for example?

In short, the 32nd Century is a vast sandbox for the producers and writers to play in! So far we’ve only seen a tiny little corner of that sandbox – so I hope Season 4 can broaden the view and show us a bigger picture of the state of the galaxy and its factions.

Number 7: More Admiral Vance!

In Season 3, Admiral Vance embodied the very best of Starfleet’s values. Even though he was dealt a very bad hand in the aftermath of the Burn, he remained loyal not only to the Federation and Starfleet, but to the ideals the organisations have always stood for. Even when negotiating with Osyraa – a powerful adversary – Vance refused to compromise on his convictions.

The arrival of Rillak – a new character who will serve as the Federation’s president – could mean that Admiral Vance is sidelined. If Burnham is reporting directly to the President it seems like she’ll be going over Vance’s head, or at least around him. I guess I’m just concerned that Discovery doesn’t really have space for two “big boss” characters, and that Vance may lose out to Rillak in terms of stories and screen time.

President Rillak could occupy a very similar narrative role to Vance.

It’s possible that Rillak is being set up in a deliberately antagonistic way, and that the decision was taken to keep Vance as a more sympathetic character. I didn’t really like Rillak’s interaction with Captain Burnham in the recent Season 4 trailer, but at the same time what she had to say wasn’t too far removed from what Vance had to say at a couple of points in Season 3. He could take a tougher line with Burnham and Saru when he needed to without coming across as one of Star Trek’s typical “evil admirals!”

Actor Oded Fehr brings Vance to life and gives him a real gravitas, and there’s scope to learn more about who Vance is and what makes him tick. Vance told us he has a wife and child; perhaps we could meet them and see how he is when he’s off-duty in a more casual setting.

When Osyraa and the Emerald Chain were plotting their attack on Federation HQ in Season 3 I was genuinely worried for Admiral Vance! The Emerald Chain attack didn’t kill him off – fortunately – so he lives to fight another day! I know we’ll see him in some capacity in Season 4, but I hope he gets more to do than just chair a few meetings.

Number 8: Kill off a main character.

Speaking of characters who felt at risk, Season 3 only saw the character of Ryn killed off. Ryn was a fun character for sure, and his death was very sad, but at several key moments where Discovery could have been a little bolder at swinging the proverbial axe, main characters appeared to be safe thanks to their plot armour.

The character I felt most embodied this side of Season 3 was Owosekun. In the season finale it seemed as though she was about to make the ultimate sacrifice – setting off a bomb in a low-oxygen environment – but the Sphere Data-powered DOT robots saved her life at the last minute. There were other characters in that group, including Tilly, Detmer, Bryce, and Rhys, who likewise could’ve been killed off in the season finale.

All of these characters survived last season’s finale.

I’m not arguing for any one specific character to be immediately killed off, and as I like all of the main characters for their own unique reasons any death would be a tragedy! But some stories work better or feel more impactful when the heroes lose a friend, and the Season 3 finale would have undeniably had a lot more emotional weight if someone hadn’t made it to the end.

So Season 4, here’s your challenge: kill off a main character! Let’s not repeat what happened to Nhan and Georgiou, being shuffled off the ship to some other destination. And let’s not set up a story where everyone is in danger only to have them all miraculously saved at the end. Instead let’s actually kill off a major character at the right point in the story. Doing so would raise the stakes dramatically and hammer home that whatever threat Captain Burnham and the crew are facing is genuinely deadly.

Number 9: A character crossover from a past iteration of Star Trek.

This isn’t the first time I’ve suggested this idea! But as Lower Decks has shown on several occasions, bringing back a character from Star Trek’s past can be a lot of fun – and emotional for longstanding Trekkies. Last season I suggested Voyager’s Doctor – or rather, a backup copy of him from the Season 4 episode Living Witness – as a potential character crossover, as the chances of him being alive in the 32nd Century seemed higher than most!

Given Star Trek’s technobabble, however, an excuse could be found to bring back practically anyone. Characters from Enterprise, Deep Space Nine, or even Picard could all appear in some form – through stasis or cryogenic suspension, in synthetic bodies, as holograms, trapped in transporter beams, frozen solid under the surface of an ice planet… and so on! With a little creativity, Discovery Season 4 could find a way to bring back pretty much anybody, and doing so would be absolutely wonderful.

Scotty appeared in Season 6 of *The Next Generation* thanks to sci-fi magic!

Aside from Voyager’s Doctor, I could suggest Enterprise’s Temporal Agent Daniels, Picard’s Soji or Deep Space Nine’s Dax symbiont as contenders for characters who could potentially have survived to the 32nd Century through “natural” means. Soji, as a character in a series running alongside Discovery, would be a fascinating choice – but at the same time I could understand if the producers don’t want to go down that route for fear of affecting or restricting future Picard stories.

If I were to fantasise I might suggest a character like Riker or Chekov. Even if they were only seen as holograms or in a recorded message I think including a “classic” character like that would mean so much to fans. We saw something comparable to this in Season 3’s Unification III, where a hologram of Spock was briefly shown. But to bring back actors like Jonathan Frakes or Walter Koenig to record even just a short message that Captain Burnham could discover would be amazing.

Number 10: Make some kind of reference to anything from Lower Decks!

*Lower Decks* Season 2 has just finished its run.

Lower Decks has now got two seasons under its belt, and although there were some teething problems at first caused by the lack of an international broadcast during Season 1, the show has definitely hit its stride. It would be absolutely amazing for Discovery Season 4 to so much as name-drop an event, character, or location from Lower Decks, even if it was just a throwaway line that had no bearing on the plot.

This isn’t just about fan service, either. At present, Star Trek’s shows are all split up, occupying different places and completely different time-frames. There will be a connection between Discovery and Strange New Worlds when the latter premieres next year, but there’s no chance for a significant crossover. Name-drops and references are the next best thing, and a way for the Star Trek franchise to remain connected.

Ensigns Tendi, Rutherford, Mariner, and Boimler.

Having wholly standalone shows doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. It’s certainly true that Lower Decks and Discovery are very different in terms of style, tone, and subject matter – but as two parts of a larger franchise it doesn’t hurt to find ways to connect them. For fans it’s a nice “Easter egg,” but for casual viewers these kinds of connections can be the deciding factor in choosing to check out another show!

As Star Trek fans, we need as many people engaged with as much of Star Trek as possible – it’s the only way the franchise will survive into the future. Having different shows that appeal to different audiences is a great idea in many ways; it casts a broad net and should, in theory, bring in many more viewers and subscribers. But the next step is converting fans of one series to fans of the franchise as a whole – and if there are connections between the shows, even small ones, that’ll encourage at least some viewers to try other Star Trek shows. So if Discovery Season 4 could acknowledge Lower Decks in some way, I think that would be fantastic.

Number 11: Continue the theme of rebuilding – but at a reasonable pace.

Ni’Var seems to have rejoined the Federation.

Season 3 introduced us to the galaxy a century after the Burn. This event devastated the Federation and known space, and clearly saw a major power shift with factions like the Emerald Chain gaining strength. The Burn as a storyline may be resolved, but the galaxy can’t simply be “reset” to how it used to be. An event so devastating will take a long time to recover from. Ni’Var rejoining the Federation is a great first step, but I hope Season 4 doesn’t try to rush these things.

With the gravitational anomaly seeming to be the main focus of Season 4’s story, rebuilding the Federation may take a back seat. However, I’d like to see at least some progress in this area, as it could be one of the major sources of hope and optimism in the story of the post-Burn galaxy. With the dilithium cache from the Verubin Nebula under their control, the Federation is finally in a position to rebuild what has been lost over the past century or more – and from a narrative point of view, bringing wayward planets and races together is a story worth telling.

At the same time, the story needs to acknowledge the severity of the Burn and strike the right balance when it comes to optimistically putting the pieces back together. Trying to rush this – or worse, trying to pretend that it all happened off-screen – would lead to a truly unsatisfying and unrealistic narrative.

Season 4 can’t simply pretend that the Burn is over and done with and completely move on to new stories. Even though the Burn was clearly intended as the main story of a single season, its massive implications and effects can’t be confined to Season 3 of Discovery. Any other Star Trek stories set in the 32nd Century – and beyond – will need to acknowledge the lingering effects of the Burn, and something as significant as rebuilding the Federation and bringing hope back to worlds that had lost it can’t simply be done off-screen so Captain Burnham and the crew can race away to their next big adventure.

So that’s it. A few of my hopes and wishes for the imminent fourth season of Star Trek: Discovery.

I don’t think I’d have chosen to go for another “galaxy-ending” apocalyptic threat if I’d been in charge of planning the story of Discovery Season 4. After the Klingon war in Season 1, Control and the Red Angel in Season 2, and the Burn, the collapsed Federation, and the Emerald Chain in Season 3 I would have liked to have seen Captain Burnham and the crew catch a break! Not every season has to be about the imminent destruction of the universe; stories which are smaller in scale can be just as dramatic and just as impactful when done right.

Regardless, this is the direction Discovery seems intent on going, and I’m interested to see what the gravitational anomaly is all about. I’m hopeful that Season 4 can deliver some fun, exciting, dramatic, and interesting Star Trek stories with Captain Burnham in command, and I’m very much looking forward to the new season. Even if none of my wishes are meant to be, Season 4 will undoubtedly still have plenty to offer.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 will premiere on Paramount+ in the United States on the 18th of November 2021. An international broadcast will follow on Netflix on the 19th of November 2021. The Star Trek franchise – including Discovery and all other properties mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Star Trek 2023: could it be the ULTIMATE crossover?

Sun 18.04.21Sun 13.11.22Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-3, Star Trek: Picard Season 1, the Kelvin timeline films, teasers for Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 and Star Trek: Picard Season 2, and for other iterations of the Star Trek franchise.

A few days ago, Paramount Pictures announced that a new Star Trek film is in the early stages of production, with a planned release date of June 2023. Though no further information about the project was given, that didn’t stop me speculating! I’ve already put together a list of a few possible Star Trek 2023 concepts, but I wanted to give this one the full article treatment.

At a few points in Star Trek’s history we’ve seen crossovers between the different shows. Usually this takes the form of a character or two from one series appearing in another. For example, we’ve seen Commander Riker appear in Voyager, Dr Bashir in The Next Generation, and Worf in Deep Space Nine. In Star Trek’s cinematic canon, Janeway made a cameo in Nemesis, Prime Spock appeared in Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness, and most significantly, we got to see Captains Kirk and Picard work together in Generations.

Captain Kirk and Captain Picard in 1994’s *Star Trek: Generations*.

So the Star Trek franchise has a history of main character crossovers going all the way back to Encounter at Farpoint, the moment at which Star Trek debuted its second entry and replaced its original set of characters. In all of these crossovers, though, even the substantial ones that were more than mere cameos, we’ve only ever seen characters from two shows interact. What if Star Trek 2023 plans to offer more than that?

In short, here’s my theory – and if it doesn’t come to pass in 2023 we can consider it a proposal or pitch for the future! As a celebration of all things Star Trek, perhaps the new film will be the ultimate crossover, featuring a cast of characters from across the entire Star Trek franchise. How would this be achieved? Some kind of time travel story, naturally, perhaps involving the extradimensional activities of a faction like the Q.

John de Lancie has recently announced that he’ll be returning as Q in *Picard* Season 2!

How amazing would it be to see Captain Archer from Enterprise working alongside Riker and Janeway? Saru and Michael Burnham could team up with Geordi La Forge and Miles O’Brien. Soji and Picard meeting Kelvin Kirk. Pike and Spock fighting alongside Worf and Malcolm Reed. The potential for such a story is almost limitless.

Comic books – and the films they’ve inspired over the last decade or so – have routinely done crossovers and team-ups, and fans tend to agree that they’re amazing when done well. Star Trek, as I’ve already mentioned, has had limited crossovers before, but nothing quite on the scale I’m thinking Star Trek 2023 could bring.

This could be Star Trek’s answer to *The Avengers*.

There have been over 60 main characters in live-action Star Trek to date, including films and television shows, and obviously it wouldn’t be possible for Star Trek 2023 to have an ensemble cast that large! But a handful of characters from different shows representing different time periods and different parts of the franchise could absolutely come together; a perfect mixture of all things Star Trek and a true celebration of the franchise as it approaches its sixtieth anniversary.

With this many different Star Trek projects all in production simultaneously, it makes so much sense to have some kind of “Avengers assemble!” moment to bring them all together. Even if such a story were limited to bringing in characters from current shows instead of Star Trek’s back catalogue, I still think it would be well worth doing. A suitable story would need to be devised, and a villain or problem for the protagonists to overcome would need to be created, but those are the basic tenets of storytelling anyway and aren’t obstacles.

Captain Pike – soon to appear in *Strange New Worlds*.

I tend to say that time travel stories are not my favourites within Star Trek – or in sci-fi in general. But time travel can work, as we saw in films like Generations and episodes like All Good Things. All it would require is a simplified explanation, perhaps involving some outside power, and if the stakes were high – a threat to the entire galaxy, for example – it would make sense to bring in as many legendary characters as possible to help defeat it.

If you’re a regular reader you’ve probably heard me say on more than one occasion that the Star Trek franchise could – and should – be doing more to tie its different shows and projects together. At present, every extant Star Trek project exists in a different time period wholly separate from everything else. There have been limited prospects for significant crossovers as a result, and while Discovery Season 3 saw perhaps the biggest connection to the rest of the franchise so far, it can still feel that all of the different parts of the franchise are doing their own things independently of one another.

The *Discovery* Season 3 episode *Unification III* referenced events from *The Next Generation* and *Picard*.

While too many ties and connections can be offputting, especially for casual viewers, not enough references or crossovers means there’s no incentive for the audience to stick with Star Trek and jump into other parts of the franchise. It’s possible to watch Discovery as a standalone show and not even be aware of the existence of Picard, for example – and vice versa. More of these connections between different parts of the franchise could, if done right, encourage viewers of one series to hop over and try out others – and Star Trek 2023 could potentially be the biggest opportunity so far to do that.

Perhaps some looming threat in the 32nd Century forces Michael Burnham to call upon Starfleet’s finest from centuries past, and she travels back in time to pick up a number of officers, scientists, and soldiers to help her defeat whatever it is that’s coming. Or perhaps an outside power like Q forces his friend Picard to work with different people from different eras to tackle some existential crisis. There are a million-and-one ways for Star Trek to introduce the kind of time travel scenario needed to link up some of the franchise’s superstars for one amazing crossover event.

So who would I pick to join the crew? I think we have to start with the main shows in production (and one that could be in production by 2023). Admiral Picard, Michael Burnham, Captain Pike, and Section 31 leader Georgiou would head up the cast, and from there we could bring in perhaps one additional member of their respective crews for a more significant role – maybe with smaller roles or cameos on the cards for others. Then I’d dearly like to bring back at least a couple of other characters from Star Trek’s past – someone like Dr Bashir, perhaps, or Tom Paris.

The film would follow these characters as they worked to solve whatever problem they’re facing, with each of the principal characters making use of their unique perspective and skillset to help contribute to the project. There could be teething problems with the team as they get to know one another, but generally I’d stick to having them work well as a team, with emphasis on how people from different backgrounds and with different outlooks can all find ways to contribute. Then there’d have to be some kind of tense final battle or confrontation before everyone – or at least, the survivors – part ways and return to their respective eras.

The Section 31 series could be underway by 2023…

I guess now we’ve crossed over from the realm of reasonable speculation into fan fantasy! And I’m not the first person on the internet to propose an “ultimate crossover” of Star Trek crews; such talk has been around since before Generations in the mid-1990s! While I don’t know whether Star Trek 2023 will go down this road, I do think that a major crossover could and should happen at some point in the future. Not only would it serve a purpose and tie together previously-separate parts of the franchise, but I bet it would be an incredibly fun film for Trekkies – and non-Trekkies too!

So that’s it, really. This half-theory, half-fantasy is that Star Trek 2023 will be the “ultimate crossover” and bring together characters from across the franchise to tell a single, epic story. Even if this film doesn’t do it, I still hope this kind of crossover event will happen one day!

The currently-untitled film Star Trek 2023 is being produced by Paramount Pictures and ViacomCBS. Star Trek 2023 has a tentative release date of the 9th of June 2023. The Star Trek franchise – including all shows, films, characters, etc. mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.