Star Trek

My Dear Gen X,

My joints hurt just as bad as yours do and we need to talk about "Strange New Worlds"...

Guys, it's really good.

I know you. Your parents are old and sick and you're wondering how they'll manage. I know your kids have gotta finish strong in high school this year. I know your spouse is not perfect.

Watch this show and let it carry you back to the reasons you loved Star Trek when you were a kid. I know you, and I know this is what you need right now.

Maybe you are...

1.) One of those that saw Mr. Spock on our parents' black and white TV in the 60s or 70s and thought that he had a perfectly reasonable approach to life. At least to an 8-year-old.

2.) That girl back in grade 10 who had a really unhealthy relationship with Deanna Troi because of some previous life trauma.

3.) Like my father, you liked the skimpy outfits (...no, protect, protect... you know the one) but also, AHEM... more importantly he likened Spock's experiences to his own as an immigrant.

3.) One of the uber nerds back in grade 7 that lit up the local BBS or early Usenet with fierce discussions of Kirk's superiority over Picard.

4.) Re-watching old episodes of TNG (God bless you BBC America) and it makes you feel like you're visiting with old friends.

5.) A lover of competence porn. Don't you wish your team at work had the competence and work ethic of Star Fleet? I love watching Miles having coffee (double strong, double sweet) with his sleeves rolled up getting ready to put in some hard hours.

6.) Your dad watched TOS in his dorm room in college. You watched DS9 in your first apartment when you moved out.

Listen guys, make the time for the show. I know you've gotta go walk the dog because the kids never do. But seriously remember the reasons you got into Star Trek when you were young.

There no such thing as time travel. But this show will remind you about the things you loved about Star Trek.

And if you're one of those fans that cares about canon and timelines and are rightly concerned about the show runner's respect for the source material... Put it like this, the show scores enough points to allow loose standards when it comes to canon.

Discovery doesn't feel right. Lower Decks is awesome but scratches a different itch. I never watched Prodigy (sorry). This show is a gift to us in our old age.

This is modern Star Trek at it finest.

Expanded review of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2.9

https://vocal.media/futurism/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-2-9

@startrek #startrek #sciencefiction #music #song

Specifically Johnson talks about the episode's significant moments of character development, not getting all your players to sing. Presumably that will be another video down the line.

Arguably one of the best moments in the SNW Musical episode subspace rhapsody was Bruce Horak Cameo as the captain of the Klingon boy band. But there is a deleted scene of the opera version that while absolutly best scene won, would be fun to see released to fans

Didn’t see this coming. Prodigy EPs the Brothers Hageman have dropped a scene from season two, episode one.

And it’s on the official StarTrek.com site.

My spouse is muttering ‘makes no sense at all…’

I’m enjoying just having gorgeous new Prodigy animation to see. And those of you who love a great flyby of a new ship - get ready!

It's been fun seeing so much of Kirk this season, but does that mean he's now a regular? I don't see how he could take a position on the Enterprise for years yet, so would that imply he just keeps coincidentally visiting all the time? Starts to strain plausibility after a while.

review of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2.9

https://paullevinson.blogspot.com/2023/08/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-29-operetta.html

@startrek #startrek #strangenewworlds #sciencefiction #music

-- The SNW command delta is complete.

-- A user from another instance has taken the lead on an original Constitution-class.

-- Worf has a wordmark.

The fandom is making a good showing (if not as overwhelming as the My Little Pony space).

If you haven’t yet tried (or succeeded) in dropping a pixel, just head to the Canvas and login identifying your instance and username. You’ll be sent a PM with a confirmation code to authenticate your login.

Once in you can just drop pixels or join a faction. So far there are two active Star Trek factions: Quark’s (short name QUARK) and The Klingon Empire (short name KLINK) that you can join.

I think this episode is part one of the holonovel followed by the second part during the second half. The only break we take from seeing the holonovel be played is when they tell captain Janeway (where she implies that she has to be made to look good) about the first half and when Tom and Tuvok are in the mess hall being hassled by everyone who wants to help write the second half.

Tom and Tuvok write the ending off screen (there is dialog where they argue about a logical ending or a wild twist). The Twist is that part two picks up with the player of the novel meeting Tuvok in the hallway to go to the holodeck to help write the ending. When the player gets there they then get attacked by Seska and get to help rescue Voyager while novel character Janeway helps save the day by brilliantly editing the simulation (in a holonovel simulation).

I hoped for Barclay but it's Beverly Crusher.

I first got into trek with the 09 movie. It was a lot better than I expected and a good friend of mine is huge into Trek.

I decided to give the tv series a try. After being a little unsure what to watch I started with ENT. I figured it’s my first time watching trek and it’s their first time exploring and I liked that parallel. I’ve recently rewatched this series and liked it a whole lot more. This series is much better after having seen at least TNG, DS9 or VOY.

My watch order, not including new Trek was,

ENT > TNG > VOY > DS9 > TOS > TAS > PRO > TOS movies.

I watched all the other new trek stuff as it came out and watched the TNG movies a few months back.

By far, the TOS movies were the hardest to enjoy. The 2, 3, and 4 movies were decent, but 5 was really bad.

TOS series was also a little hard to get through. I could only watch a few episodes at a time. Unlike PRO which I watched in a day.

It’s hard to pick a beat or favorite series, but if you were going to watch one I think I’d easily recommend TNG. It’s such a great show and has such a great cast.

I’m loving all the new trek stuff as well. I’m really surprised at how good PRO was. And SNW has been a masterpiece.

I’m rewatching DS9 now and I’m at the start of season 3. Wow, this show has so many good episodes just one after another.

I have begun a Starfleet Delta, but haven’t figured out how to share the overlay template. It’s discernible enough as a delta now that others might wish to join in.

Canvas has groups called factions. In have created one called c/quark’s

cross-posted from: https://startrek.website/post/666960

There’s a pixelated drawing board for Lemmy now.

My own artistic skills are dubious, but with some help I could lay out the markers to start a Starfleet delta to stake out some Trek-positive space on the canvas.

So I was looking at the skulls from Picard Season 2 Episode 2, and when I came across Commodore Y'Shi's, I recognized something familiar on the nameplate. Turns out it was the Voth Symbol seen in "Distant Origin" (Season 3 Episode 23). So, I got the design from Star Trek Design Project, and flipped it and there it is. The Saurian Symbol on Commodore Y'Shi's plate (from the Confederation Timeline) is the Voth Symbol turned 180 degrees. I don't know if this was intentional (probably is) or not, but fun easter egg.

Also sorry for the horrible picture, threw it together in paint quickly without caring for neat design.

‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Returns To Top 10 Streaming Chart

"Among the Lotus Eaters" cracks the top ten.

https://trekmovie.com/2023/08/04/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-returns-to-top-10-streaming-chart/

@startrek #StarTrek #StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds

Links to the playlist for Star Trek: Strange New World's "Subspace Rhapsody"

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/1Jqy2Y91uYUdUwxXSTZa2v?si=Z0OcNbo0Sje8ltxDl-mjwg

Apple Music https://music.apple.com/us/album/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-season-2-subspace-rhapsody/1698596327

@startrek #StarTrek #StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds

Archived version: https://archive.li/FbJx6

In space, everyone can hear you sing. That’s the premise of this week’s special musical episode of the Star Trek prequel Strange New Worlds, which swaps photon torpedoes for jaunty flashmobs as the crew of the starship Enterprise find themselves inexplicably bursting into song – much to their bemusement. It’s an oddball delight, even if the science behind it seems a little fuzzy.

When a classic recording of the Cole Porter musical number Anything Goes somehow creates a harmonic quantum field (we know), characters are compelled to reveal their deepest emotional secrets via belt-’em-out Broadway-ready numbers. The crew are pleasingly aware of how daft the situation is even as they strive to resolve being made to sing original songs by Kay Hanley and Tom Polce from 1990s alt-rockers Letters to Cleo. It is slightly cheesy, very self-indulgent and clearly designed to boldly launch a thousand memes of Mr Spock singing his Vulcan heart out. But it is also heartfelt, in keeping with the show’s unfashionably optimistic outlook.

There is an eccentric tradition of US TV series’ embracing their inner glee-club kid by staging a musical episode, from high-kicking fantasies Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena: Warrior Princess to postmodern sitcoms such as Scrubs and Community. These interludes tend to occur in later seasons, when shows have found such a familiar groove that hard-pressed writers are either looking for a fun way to keep things fresh – or are just running out of ideas.

That doesn’t apply to Strange New Worlds, which is only in its second season. This week’s barrage of show tunes kind of makes sense, given that this is a series that, Mr Benn-style, has been trying on a different genre every week. Being set on the classic USS Enterprise and featuring younger versions of recognisable characters such as Spock and language savant Uhura (lady-killer James T Kirk is also floating around in the background, although yet to graduate to captain) seems to have given Strange New Worlds the confidence to experiment. A ship-wide outbreak of full-throated singing is not even the strangest thing the show has attempted in the last fortnight.

A recent crossover episode with Star Trek: Lower Decks – the ribald cartoon spin-off overseen by the former Rick and Morty writer and producer Mike McMahan – brought cartoon characters (voiced by The Boys’ Jack Quaid and Space Force’s Tawny Newsome) on to the Enterprise. The interpolation of animated sequences and live-action (explained by the classic Trek plot device of a time portal) created a fizzy, frantic romp.

Spock – one of Star Trek’s most highly regarded, serious characters, played here by Ethan Peck – is frequently placed into farcical situations more suited to Frank Spencer. A season one episode channelled Freaky Friday by trapping Spock and his Vulcan fiancee in each other’s bodies, forcing them to vamp their way through crucial missions. This season, his pointy ears and sharply symmetrical haircut vanished when a shuttle accident transformed him into the pouting, impulsive equivalent of a hormonal teenage boy. Somewhere up there, Leonard Nimoy – who directed the 1980s comedy romp Three Men and A Baby – is raising a Spock-like eyebrow in approval.

But the phasers are not always set to fun. There has been a terrifying riff on Ridley Scott’s Alien, with chest-bursting xenomorphs hunting harried crew members on a stranded ghost ship, plus an impassioned, episode-long courtroom drama exploring alien rights and even a Trek spin on Richard Linklater’s romance Before Sunrise, with two Starfleet officers from different timelines bickering and bonding on a mission to present-day Toronto.

This hopscotching is an antidote to the recent wave of ambitious small-screen sci-fi that leans heavily on serialised storytelling, from Prime Video’s hardscrabble asteroid belt drama The Expanse to Apple TV+’s densely plotted, millennia-spanning Foundation. Even Star Trek: Discovery, the series that relaunched the franchise on TV in 2017, has leaned into epic, season-long stories that skew to the dark and brooding. The pick ’n’ mix approach of Strange New Worlds is a welcome palate cleanser, even if it means any overarching story arcs seem rather secondary (the second season wraps up next week and you would be hard-pushed to identify a unifying theme). It all chimes with the highly episodic spirit of the original series, when audiences of the late 1960s were presumably never sure what the next week’s instalment would bring. As Cole Porter said: anything goes.

I worked hard at imitating the Leonard Nimoy Spock's raised eyebrow for quite a while. I don't regret the time spent practicing that in front of a mirror. I never mastered a fully raised eyebrow, but I can do a slight eyebrow raise.

Whenever someone is being greedy or acting a fool, I say, "hoo-man," in a bad Ferengi accent.

Jean-Luc Picard's "make it so" is a go to phrase for me.

My first sip of coffee for the day is always my Janeway moment.

When someone says something far fetched, I say "really." I think I'm channeling Benjamin Sisko. No one else sees it that way.

I say "p'takh" a bit too often. Not to anyone who understands Klingon. Not yet, anyway.

Any Star Trek mannerism or phrase you've incorporated into your life?

Written by Dana Horgan & Bill Wolkoff

Directed by Dermott Downs