News Star Trek

Star Trek Origin Film Is Finally Happening! Gets 2025 Release Window

So many possibilities!

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on April 11, 2024

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Star Trek is finally going to boldly head back to the big screen! During the Paramount Pictures panel today at CinemaCon (via /Film), news broke that a new Trek movie, which has been framed as an origin story, will be helmed by Toby Haynes. Haynes’ previous credits include directing episodes of Andor as well as the Black Mirror episode “USS Callister,” a brutal riff on the Star Trek franchise that explores the toxic side of the fandom. The writer for the film is Seth Grahame-Smith, whose previous credits include the underrated Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and The LEGO Batman Movie.

Even more exciting is the news that this origin film is officially happening in the near future (or a least is a much surer thing than the fourth movie starring Chris Pine as Kirk seems to be). Production on the film is set to start later this year and will premiere in theaters sometime in 2025.  

This prequel can’t help but raise questions about how it will affect the canonical Star Trek timeline(s). Will this story tie into the Star Trek: Enterprise series? As such, will Scott Bakula’s Jonathan Archer (pictured above) make an appearance, perhaps as one of the first presidents of the Federation? Or will this film completely rewrite the timeline/create a new one just like J.J. Abrams did with his films starring Pine as Kirk?

Time will tell! And it looks like we’ll get our answers sometime next year. [end-mark]

The post Star Trek Origin Film Is Finally Happening! Gets 2025 Release Window appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Star Trek: Discovery

The Game Is Afoot — Star Trek: Discovery’s “Jinaal”

This week, the Discovery crew is off on a game-style quest.

By Keith R.A. DeCandido

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Published on April 11, 2024

Credit: CBS / Paramount+

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Credit: CBS / Paramount+

If there was any doubt whatsoever that the fifth season of Discovery is a role-playing-game-style quest narrative, “Jinaal” beats those doubts to a pulp. We’ve definitely got ourselves a goal that will be found by our heroes being clever, by getting through traps, by figuring out riddles, and so on.

And it’s fun. Trek hasn’t really done this sort of straight-up game-style narrative before, certainly not on this scale, and while you can practically hear the dice rolling with each scene, it’s fun, dangit.

It helps that the episode does something that the Secret Hideout shows have been much better about than the previous wave of Trek TV shows, and that’s embracing the history on the microcosmic level as well as the macrocosmic. I love that they do things like last week’s use of the Promellians. The first wave of Trek spinoffs would have just made up an alien species rather than re-use one, but there’s no reason not to use one that’s already established. Especially since “Booby Trap” made it sound like the Promellians were a well-known extinct species, yet were only mentioned in that one TNG episode.

While this tendency can sometimes go overboard into the fan-wanky territory (cf. the third season of Picard), Discovery has generally made it work. This episode in particular makes very good use of Trek’s history, particularly the Trill both as developed on DS9 and also as seen on this show, particularly in “Forget Me Not.” And we also get some background on why the Progenitors’ technology was classified.

The clue on Trill is held by a joined Trill named Jinaal, whose current host is still alive on the world. It’s been eight centuries, and both host and symbiont are near the end of their lives—indeed, they’re clinging to life in part because nobody has approached them for their clue yet.

Discovery’s arrival is met with a riddle to prove that they figured out the clue on the Promellian necropolis last time—in particular that it initially appeared to lead to Betazed. Once Burnham provides that right answer, Jinaal’s current host is willing to talk to them, but the host who actually was there eight hundred years ago wants to talk directly to the Discovery crew. So they perform a zhiantara, first seen in DS9’s “Facets,” where prior hosts’ personalities can be temporarily downloaded into another person. The Guardians (including Gray, still apprenticing as a Guardian) perform the ceremony on Jinaal, transferring the older host into Culber.

As with “Facets”—and indeed every other science fiction story that involves characters getting a temporary new personality, a well Trek has dug into any number of times, from the original series’ “Return to Tomorrow” and “Turnabout Intruder” to TNG’s “The Schizoid Man” and “Masks” to DS9’s “Dramatis Personae” and “Our Man Bashir” to Voyager’s “Infinite Regress” and “Body and Soul” to Enterprise’s “The Crossing” and “Observer Effect”—this is at least partly an acting exercise for Wilson Cruz. And, to his credit, Cruz nails it, creating a fully realized character in Jinaal, who is crotchety, enigmatic, and more than a little manipulative.

He was a scientist who worked with the Romulan whose scout ship was found last week, along with a bunch of other scientists, after the Romulan found the Progenitors’ technology. This all happened at the height of the Dominion War, which—as we know from DS9—was a time of significant paranoia in the Alpha Quadrant. Because of that, and because of how dangerous the technology had the potential to be, the scientists all agreed to hide it and only have it be findable by someone who can figure out the clues and who could be counted on to use it for good.

Having this all happen during the Dominion War was very clever, as that was a time when worry about things like Changeling infiltration was at its height. And it’s remained a big secret since then simply because nobody knows where it is without the Romulan journal.

Besides his initial riddle and his general questioning of Burnham and Book about the state of the galaxy in the thirty-second century, there’s one final test. Jinaal claims to have hidden the next physical puzzle piece in a canyon occupied by a nasty predator animal that can cloak itself. Eventually, Burnham and Book realize that it isn’t just a big nasty creature attacking them, it’s a mother protecting its eggs. Once they realize that, they back off, which is what Jinaal was waiting for.

Having passed the compassion test, he gives them the final doodad. Culber then gets his body back and Jinaal can rest.

There are also three character-based subplots, two of which work nicely. Back at Federation HQ, Saru and T’Rina are about to announce their engagement, but Saru’s new career as an ambassador complicates matters for T’Rina’s chief aide, who advises Saru to convince his boss that they should postpone the engagement announcement. Saru goes along with this, thinking he’s protecting his fiancée, but T’Rina wastes no time in whupping him upside the head on that score. The Ni’Var President understands her staff’s need to be politically acute, but she refuses to let political concerns interfere with her personal life—a very logical decision, though logic and politics so rarely mix. It’s a nice little subplot, elevated, as usual, by brilliant performances by Doug Jones and Tara Rosling and their picture-perfect chemistry, as well as the script by Kyle Jarrow & Lauren Wilkinson, which illustrates the conflict potential when Saru’s compassion clashes with T’Rina’s logic.

On Discovery, Burnham charges her new first officer with getting to know the crew. Rayner resists this—he’s read their service records—but Burnham thinks there’s no substitute for talking to people. Rayner’s solution to this is to give each crewmember twenty words to tell him something about themselves that isn’t in their service record. It takes Tilly whupping him upside the head to remind him that his command style on the Antares isn’t going to work on Discovery. Mary Wiseman is particularly good here, showing us how far Tilly has come. (She’d better damn well be one of the stars of the upcoming Starfleet Academy series…)

The third character bit doesn’t quite work, mostly because it feels like some scenes are missing. Adira and Gray are reunited, and they apparently haven’t hardly talked since Gray went to Trill. Given the ease of holographic communication over absurd distances in the thirty-second century, this is surprising, but there it is. Gray and Adira are still obviously in love with each other and still are thrilled to see each other—but then they have a conversation that ends with them deciding to break up because the distance thing isn’t working. They’re both incredibly happy where they are. And yet, in the very last scene, they’re still hanging out on Trill, the mission itself long over. So are they broken up or not? It feels like there’s a scene or two missing there…

In that last scene, we find out that Mol, contrary to Discovery’s report that she and L’ak are on another world, is on Trill, having infiltrated the Guardians. That doesn’t bode well…[end-mark]

The post The Game Is Afoot — <i>Star Trek: Discovery</i>’s “Jinaal” appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays Star Trek: Discovery

Why Star Trek: Discovery Is My Favorite 21st-Century Star Trek

After a rocky start, Discovery has become a sterling example of Trek’s ability to ask big, challenging questions while still being a whole lot of fun..

By Charlie Jane Anders

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Published on April 10, 2024

Credit: CBS / Paramount+

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Credit: CBS / Paramount+

Back in 2022, I wrote a newsletter saying that you can love Star Trek: Strange New Worlds without putting down its sister show, Discovery. Which is true! I love both shows a whole lot. I also am obsessed with Lower Decks, which I rewatch pretty obsessively. I have a lot of love for Star Trek: Picard as well. And I’ve grown to appreciate Star Trek: Prodigy greatly since it moved to Netflix. We are truly blessed to have so much amazing Star Trek right now, and there’s no need to pick one show over the others.

And yet, I still feel the need to come out and say it: Star Trek: Discovery is my favorite Trek of the 21st century so far. 

The final season of Discovery launched last week, and I’ve been remembering why I adore this show so much. These characters have a special place in my heart, and I’ve been loving the exploration of Starfleet in the 32nd century, centuries after the other Trek shows. Discovery has become a thoughtful, expansive show that asks big, challenging questions, while also being a whole lot of fun. 

Minor spoilers for the most recent episodes of Discovery below… 

Discovery got off to a rocky start, to say the least. Annalee Newitz and I discussed the first season in the very first episode of our podcast Our Opinions Are Correct, and there was a lot to talk about. Season one leaned into being a war story, something that Deep Space Nine had already done brilliantly, and then veered into the Mirror Universe, which is one of those settings that gets less interesting the more you see of it. The first season featured a lot of upheaval behind the scenes, with co-creator Bryan Fuller leaving early on and the replacement showrunners being let go. Season two served as a backdoor pilot for Strange New Worlds, while also unspooling a somewhat tangled storyline about black ops and A.I. from the future.

Much like Star Trek: The Next Generation, Discovery really hit its stride in its third season. That’s when the crew of the Discovery traveled forward into a far more distant future than Star Trek had ever explored before. The show gained a new lease on life and the Federation felt wide open once again, with so many new places and ideas to explore. 

Season three of Discovery tells a nuanced, brutal story about rebuilding the Federation after a huge setback—and questions how far our heroes are willing to go restore what has been lost. Season four is a rich story of first contact, in which aliens from outside the galaxy have unknowingly unleashed an anomaly that threatens civilized worlds, and we have to learn to communicate with them before it’s too late. Season five, without going into too much detail, is following up one of the most tantalizing stories from TNG, about the Progenitors, those ancient humanoids who seeded the galaxy with humanoid life long ago. 

(Side note: this trope of ancient humanoids who spread their DNA around the galaxy is sorta adjacent to all those “Ancient Aliens” memes. It seems to emerge from Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken, and it inspired the movie Prometheus as well. A huge part of my young-adult novel Victories Greater than Death is my attempt to deconstruct and subvert this trope, by having my ancient superscientists turn out to be basically eugenicists who wanted to breed humanoids to be part of a bizarre weapon. I originally wanted to have everyone refer to my ancient beings as the First Humanoids, but the She-Ra cartoon introduced some ancient creatures called the First Ones. So I decided to change them to the Shapers, which was honestly a little bit less catchy.)

Anyway, at this point, I should probably lay out some criteria. What makes for a good Star Trek show, in my view? 

There are a few elements that seem really important. I love Star Trek when it explores humanism, using huge cosmic stories to show the resilience and ingenuity of human beings, and to explore what it means to be human. Exploration feels like a key part of Star Trek‘s DNA as well: not just traveling to places where no human has gone, but also finding vastly different forms of life and learning to understand creatures who are nearly incomprehensible at first glance. Finally, I like Star Trek when it explores the relationships among the crew, and lets us see how they help each other to grow and reach their full potential, something that Gene L. Coon was keen to explore on the original series and which became a key element in TNG. 

Resilience and ingenuity have been at the core of Discovery, especially since the third season. The crew are forced to grapple with a radically different future, one in which the Federation has suffered some huge setbacks, and they use their wits and pure inventiveness to help the Federation rebuild and regain its ability to travel at warp speeds. The fight against the oppressive Emerald Chain, which enslaves people and exploits whole worlds, includes many temptations to compromise the Federation’s values, and it’s gripping to watch our heroes struggle to stay true to their beliefs.As mentioned above, Discovery’s storylines have also involved the struggle to understand creatures whose way of thinking and communicating is vastly different from our own, which forms the climax of season four. 

At this point, Discovery has a robust cast of science geeks. Engineering is actually getting a bit crowded, what with Stamets, Adira, and sometimes the wonderfully deadpan Jet Reno all standing around being geniuses—and that’s before you add Tilly, who is capable of being an absolute science mastermind in her own right. If you missed all those scenes in TNG where Data, Geordi and the other crew debate scientific problems and technical solutions, then Discovery has been serving up huge chunks of catnip for quite some time now. 

A lot has been written about just how gay Discovery really is, from Stamets and Culber’s marriage to the T4T relationship of Gray and Adira to Tilly’s lesbian fungus fling. Plus, again, there’s Jet Reno. But the thing I really love about Discovery, going into its final season, is just how much beautiful romance there is across the board in this show—even besides the stuff I just mentioned. Saru has been having a whirlwind courtship with T’Rina, the president of Ni’Var, which is the reunified Vulcan and Romulan homeworld. And Captain Michael Burnham has a stormy on-again-off-again love affair going with Book, a smuggler she met when she first arrived in the 32nd century—I’m really rooting for those two to work out their problems, because they have ridiculous chemistry. I’m not used to seeing Star Trek put romance front and center for so many of its major characters, and I love it.

Finally, the thing I love about Discovery is how its characters have been allowed to change and grow, something the first two episodes of season five take great pains to remind us of. Out of the characters who’ve been there since the first season, none of them is the same person they used to be, and we’ve gotten to see them evolve over time. In particular, there’s a huge emphasis on redemption arcs, which is a subject close to my heart. Michael Burnham starts Discovery as a disgraced mutineer, and is now a highly respected captain with a twinkle in her eye. But a lot of these characters have been allowed to make terrible mistakes and learn from them, becoming better people as a result.

When people call Star Trek an optimistic show, I don’t think they’re just talking about fancy technology. I believe Star Trek’s true power is its optimism about people: our ability to keep being better than we were, and to choose kindness and understanding over brute force. More than any other Star Trek show right now, Discovery exemplifies this belief in our potential as a species, which is something that I personally really need right now.[end-mark]

This article was originally published at Happy Dancing, Charlie Jane Anders’ newsletter, available on Buttondown.

The post Why <i>Star Trek: Discovery</i> Is My Favorite 21st-Century Star Trek appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Star Trek: Discovery

Secrets, Sequels, and a Synth Named Fred — Star Trek: Discovery’s “Red Directive” & “Under the Twin Moons”

Reviewing the premiere episodes of Star Trek: Discovery’s fifth season — spoilers ahead!

By Keith R.A. DeCandido

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Published on April 4, 2024

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The start of the fifth season of Star Trek: Discovery is unique in many ways, but probably the biggest one is that it establishes that the same person will be in command of the U.S.S. Discovery for the second season in a row, which has never happened before. The hallmark of the inaugural show of the Paramount+ era of Trek has been a new captain every year: Lorca for season 1, Pike for season 2, Saru for season 3, and Burnham for season 4.

But Burnham’s still in charge in season 5. And that’s an indication that—for once—nothing has changed on Discovery. They’ve finally found a status quo, and it’s one that works.

So, of course, it’s the last season. Sigh.

There’s only one really significant change, and it doesn’t come to fruition until the end of the second of the two episodes that went live today: Saru is being promoted to the role of Federation Ambassador-at-Large, and so will no longer be Burnham’s Number One. This is a good move on several levels, as it never sat right with me that Saru took a subordinate position to Burnham on Discovery after doing such a good job as her captain in season 3. Not that Burnham didn’t also deserve the promotion, but Saru didn’t deserve a demotion, either. They made it work last year, mostly because Sonequa Martin-Green and Doug Jones make a really good team. But Saru is, bluntly, the best thing to come out of Discovery, and he deserves better.

And he’s getting it! Not only is he being promoted, but his relationship with T’Rina has deepened to the point that she hits him with a marriage proposal. Being Vulcan, she of course phrases the proposal in the most pedantic and bloodless manner possible, which Tara Rosling manages to make incredibly adorable.

Saru’s last mission comes from Kovich, a classified mission that’s a Red Directive. Not to be confused with other directives that are prime or omega, this one is not defined, but is obviously a shut-up-and-go-do-it-now-please mission that you go on and do not fuck around. (It’s Trek’s latest red thing. The original series had red alerts, redshirts, and the Red Hour, DS9 had Red Squad, the 2009 movie had red matter, and season 2 of this very show had the Red Angel.)

In this case, an eight-hundred-year-old Romulan ship has been found that has a Tan zhekran on it that needs to be retrieved. Established in Picard’s “The Impossible Box” as a Romulan puzzle box, this particular Tan zhekran has something very valuable and very classified on it. In fact, it’s so classified that even Vance doesn’t know the specifics.

Unfortunately, two ex-couriers named Mol and L’ak have gotten to the Romulan ship, and the Tan zhakren, first. Played by, respectively, Eve Harlow and Elias Toufexis, I’m honestly not sure what to make of these two yet. I’m getting a Bonnie-and-Clyde vibe from the two of them that’s kind of a mix of Spike and Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Pumpkin and Honey Bunny from Pulp Fiction, though as yet they’re nowhere near that level of interesting. (Their names are also interesting, as “moll” is a name given to a female companion to a criminal, and “L’ak” is similar to “lackey.” Makes you wonder if there’s a bad guy they’re working for…)

They take the Tan zhakren and some other stuff, and head out in their own ship, with Discovery and the U.S.S. Antares giving chase, a thrilling sequence that has Burnham in an EVA suit on the hull of L’ak and Mol’s ship, the Antares using a tractor beam, and a game of chicken among the participants. However, the ex-couriers get away, and do so in a manner that leaves dozens of warp trails behind, only one of which is the real one.

But Burnham knows this courier’s trick from her year as one between “That Hope is You” and “Far from Home,” and she puts in a call to the courier she knows best: Book.

Book is still doing his community service, helping out the worlds that were ravaged by the DMA last season. More to the point, this summoning is the first time Book and Burnham have spoken since the end of last season. Martin-Green and David Ajala continue to sparkle in their scenes together, but Book’s betrayal last season has twisted everything. The scenes are beautifully played and written, as Burnham and Book obviously still love each other deeply, but Burnham absolutely cannot trust Book anymore, and Book knows full well that he doesn’t deserve to be trusted, and it puts the pair of them in a weird place. That place remains weird, as Book stays on after the first episode, assigned by Vance his own self to be a consultant on the mission, since he knows how couriers think.

Book’s arrival signals the season story kicking in: chasing after the contents of the Tan zhekran. Mol and L’ak take the stuff they looted from the Romulan ship to a centuries-old Soong-style synth named Fred (which is fabulous). Fred has Data-like makeup, and his serial number is later established as starting with “AS” for Altan Soong, the cyberneticist son of Data’s creator, Noonien Soong, established in Picard’s “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1.”

Played with Spiner-esque curiosity-filled deadpan by J. Adam Brown, Fred is a collector of ancient things, and he’s thrilled at the twenty-fourth-century artifact. He’s also easily able to open the Tak zhekran, which contains a diary, written in Romulan. Being a synth, Fred is able to read the entire thing in half a second. He’s also not willing to pay a fair price—or, indeed, any price, and the negotiation turns into a fight, which ends with Fred and his security dead. (Why Fred doesn’t have the super-strength and speed seen in other synths like Data is left as an exercise for the viewer.)

Book figured out that Fred would be the fence in this little adventure, and so Discovery and Antares head there, but by the time they arrive, Fred’s dead, baby—Fred’s dead. Luckily, Fred is a synth, so they send the body up to Discovery, where between them, Stamets and Culber are able to extract his memory, including his speed-read of the diary. Which means they also have the text of the diary.

This is followed by another thrilling action piece, and it’s to the show’s credit that both action sequences in “Red Directive” are actually plot relevant. And character relevant, as in both sequences, we find out a lot about Antares Captain Rayner, played by new series regular Callum Keith Rennie, a Canadian actor who is, I believe, contractually obligated to appear in every show that films in Canada at least once. Rayner is a Starfleet captain of many years’ standing who is, in many ways, still acting like they’re in the middle of the Burn, when Starfleet was just trying to keep the tattered remains of the Federation together, unlike Burnham, who spent most of her life in the twenty-third-century version of the Federation.

That conflict comes to a head during the motorcycle chase through the desert at the climax of “Red Directive.” L’ak and Mol are heading to a cave system. The notion of phasering the caves to block off the entrance is floated, but there’s a 30% chance that it’ll cause an avalanche that will wipe out the city and kill thousands. Burnham rejects the plan, but Rayner thinks it’s worth the risk for a Red Directive mission and Antares fires on the caves. There’s no avalanche, and Rayner proudly declares, “70% for the win!”

But the problem is that they gave Mol and L’ak an idea. They do what bad guys have been doing in heroic fiction for ages: they cause an avalanche, meaning our heroes have to spend time saving lives, giving the bad guys the opportunity to escape.

That’s not the only consequence. The two ships are damaged when they both crash nose-first into the surface to break the avalanche and have to return to HQ for repairs. Rayner is the subject of an inquiry that includes Vance and Rillak (always good to see Chelah Horsdal as my favorite on-screen Federation President, whom I got to write a story for in Star Trek Explorer, cough cough). At first, he’s encouraged to retire, and he does lose his command, but Burnham convinces him to replace Saru as her first officer.

Before he can take over, Burnham and Saru have a final adventure together. Kovich has decided to read Burnham in on the full story. I said earlier that the season’s story is a chase, and that’s an appropriate way to refer to a season that is a sequel to TNG’s “The Chase.” The Romulan ship belonged to one of the background Romulan science officers in that episode, and he knows what the power source is of the Progenitors, the humanoid beings who apparently seeded the galaxy with humanoid life.

Now here’s where I have to confess that I really didn’t much like “The Chase,” as it was a giant wink at the viewer in desperate search of an interesting plot that it never found. I’ve got very little patience with taking the time to explain something that doesn’t need explaining, which is all “The Chase” was.

But since we do have the Progenitors (a term first heard from Kovich in “Red Directive”), it is also true that whatever they did to, in essence, create humanoid life is pretty powerful stuff, and is something that could be abused.

The diary leads them to a Promellian necropolis. (The Promellians were established as a long-extinct species in TNG’s “Booby Trap.”) This is a straight-up video-game adventure, as Burnham and Saru have to get through various security features and figure out puzzles and clues and things. And scripter Alan McElroy has a little fun, because you wonder if this is Saru’s swan song. I mean, he’s just accepted a marriage proposal, it’s his final mission, and he and Burnham have several conversations about the adventures they’ve had together, and you realize that Saru’s fulfilling every dead-meat cliché in the book. He’s the partner at the beginning of the cop buddy movie who’s one week from retirement and then gets killed to piss off the main character. We even find out he has a nifty nickname—coined by Reno and used by Book, he’s apparently referred to in his post-vahar’ai state as “Action Saru.” And it is the last season…

Luckily, McElroy is just toying with us. Saru not only survives, but proves his “Action Saru” chops by using his spines to blow up some of the security drones. And he’s returned to T’Rina in one piece, and with a new clue.

I’m liking this direction for the season. The stakes are high, but not a threat to the entirety of the galaxy as we know it. It’s a quest narrative of a type we’ve seen a thousand times before and twice at our weekly role-playing game, but we’ve seen it so often because, dammit, it works. More to the point, the threat isn’t so over-the-top insane with a high body count, as every other threat Discovery has thrown at us has been. It’s therefore a less exhausting storyline, which is all for the best.

The clue they find will send them to Trill, thus giving Adira a chance to be reunited with Gray.[end-mark]

The post Secrets, Sequels, and a Synth Named Fred — <i>Star Trek: Discovery</i>’s “Red Directive” & “Under the Twin Moons” appeared first on Reactor.

News Does It Fly?

New Video Podcast Does It Fly Asks Important Questions, Like Could Star Trek’s Transporter Work?

Answering your burning sci-fi tech questions one at a time

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on April 1, 2024

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Roddenberry Entertainment is coming out with a new video podcast series that delves into the science-fiction question of the ages: Could all the future technology described in sci-fi stories actually work?

The first episode will deal with a staple of Star Trek—the transporter. On it, scientist Dr. Hakeem Olusey and co-host Tamara Krinsky examine the fictional technology from every angle before delivering their verdict on whether the transporter is scientifically sound, something that could work given the rules of that universe.

“When Matt Jefferies was designing the original starship Enterprise, Gene Roddenberry is known to have said, ‘I want it to fly!’” executive producer Trevor Roth said in a statement. “Now it’s time to put the question to some of our other favorite entertainment inventions and see if they make the grade.”

The first episode of Does It Fly premieres on April 5, 2024, with new episodes available every Friday. Other topics to be explored include Children of Men’s species-wide infertility, Doctor Who’s TARDIS, the technological and philosophical questions of Black Mirror’s acclaimed episode, “San Junipero,” the Xenomorph incubation from Alien, the question of ape evolution from Planet Of The Apes, Blade Runner’s Replicants, Iron Man’s Arc Reactor, and Star Wars’ lightsaber.

You can check the series out on Apple Podcast, by visiting the Den of Geek website, or by going to the website, DoesItFlyPod.com. [end-mark]

The post New Video Podcast <i>Does It Fly</i> Asks Important Questions, Like Could Star Trek’s Transporter Work? appeared first on Reactor.

News Star Trek 4

There’s a New Screenwriter for the Star Trek Movie That May or May Not Happen Someday

Please, just let us boldly go already

By Molly Templeton

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Published on March 27, 2024

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While Star Trek is doing great on the small screen, its theatrical existence has been paltry of late. And by “of late” I mean that it’s been eight years since Star Trek Beyond, and Paramount has yet to create the long-promised fourth film starring that film’s cast. In 2019, Noah Hawley was going to direct it, but then that version of the film was put on hold.

For a while, WandaVision’s Matt Shakman was set to direct Star Trek 4, but then he jumped ship for Marvel’s Fantastic Four. In 2022, producer J.J. Abrams announced that the fourth film would for sure star the whole main cast from the previous three films, but reportedly the cast had not yet even begun talks with the studio about said film.

(And none of this is even taking into account the time that Quentin Tarantino said he wanted to make a Star Trek, or the scrapped concept for a film in which Chris Pine’s Kirk would somehow re-encounter his dead father, or the other Star Trek film which actually is in the works, which will somehow be an origin story for the whole franchise, maybe.)

But hark, a new screenwriter approacheth! Variety has a big story about the entire Trek universe, and hidden in that story is a new detail about what is apparently being called “the final chapter” for Pine’s crew. Steve Yockey, co-creator of The Flight Attendant and a writer on Supernatural, is now tackling the screenplay.

There are zero plot details, of course. But it might be promising that a new screenwriter is at least on board the Enterprise.

(For The Next Generation fans, Variety has an intriguing detail about Section 31: In the Michelle-Yeoh starring spinoff movie, Kacey Rohl is playing “a young Rachel Garrett.” Make of that what you will!) [end-mark]

The post There’s a New Screenwriter for the Star Trek Movie That May or May Not Happen Someday appeared first on Reactor.

Rereads and Rewatches Star Trek

These Were the Voyages — Looking Back on 13 Years of Star Trek Rewatches

Thoughts on rewatching over five decades of Trek, from “The Cage” to “Star Trek Beyond”

By Keith R.A. DeCandido

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Published on March 4, 2024

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It all started in 2011, which, somehow, is thirteen years ago.

Well, strictly speaking, it started a couple of years earlier when Eugene Myers and Torie Atkinson commenced their rewatch of the original Star Trek on this here site. They did the first two seasons, but then moved on, and my fellow Trek scribes (and dear friends) Dayton Ward and David Mack stepped in to do the third season.

That finished in 2011, and the next logical step was to do The Next Generation. However, that was a much greater commitment—seven seasons’ worth of episodes rather than three, which would require two entries per week instead of one—and Dave and Dayton didn’t really have the time to devote to that. They recommended me, instead.

The transition from one to the other involved several different writers taking a look at each of the original-series movies, with Dayton, Dave, myself, the late great A.C. Crispin, and site staff writers Ryan Britt and Emmet Asher-Perrin all taking a look at each movie before I dove into Picard and the gang.

And what a long strange trip it’s been.

In 2011, I just was grateful for the work. While I was part of the regular stable of Trek fiction writers throughout the first decade of the millennium, editorial changes at Simon & Schuster following the economic crash of late 2008 resulted in me no longer being in that stable. And my other regular gig—scripting the Farscape comic books for BOOM! Studios in collaboration with that show’s creator Rockne S. O’Bannon—was also coming to an end. The opportunity to write two articles a week about one of my favorite subjects appealed greatly from both a professional and personal standpoint.

One of the first things I wanted to do was give my rewatches their own format and style distinct from what Eugene, Torie, Dave, and Dayton did. So I stole the format used by Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping for their various unauthorized guides to genre shows published in the 1990s by having the rewatches divided into various subsections, ideally with funny titles.

Because I wanted to have fun with this, dagnabbit.

I really wasn’t thinking ahead when I started in 2011, but when 2013 rolled around and I was into the seventh season, I had a decision to make. It was, mind you, a very easy decision. The TNG Rewatch entries had proven to be quite popular and were prompting nifty discussions in the comments.

(Let me pause here to once again sing the praises of the folks here at Reactor Magazine for having a comments section that belies the usual Internet truism to never read the comments. The beneath-the-article conversations on this site have been one of the best things about writing for this site the last baker’s dozen of years.)

So after we did a second movie marathon (with me and staff writers Emmet, Ryan, and Chris Lough each doing one of the TNG movies), I launched the Deep Space Nine Rewatch, which proved to be just as popular and full of nifty conversation. I also have to confess that some of my favorite pieces for this site were for the DS9 Rewatch, particularly the ones I wrote for two of the show’s finest episodes, “In the Pale Moonlight” and especially “Far Beyond the Stars.”

As I barrelled through the Dominion War that ended DS9 in 2015, however, I had another decision to make. I didn’t really want to move on to Voyager, as I was never a big fan of that particular spinoff. But it had been a few years since the original series rewatch, and my own takes on TNG and DS9 had been popular enough that I thought it was worth doing my own look at the original series, especially given that we were coming up on the show’s 50th anniversary in 2016. To make it stand out from what Eugene, Torie, Dave, and Dayton did, I had two additional features. I didn’t just cover the 80 episodes that were produced between 1964 and 1969 (counting “The Cage” in there). I also looked at the animated series released in 1973 and 1974 and all the movies featuring Kirk and the gang from 1979-1991 as well as the re-cast ones released between 2009 and 2016.

Once I finished that off—which included some lengthy discussions of the movies—I figured I was done. In 2017, I moved on to do the Superhero Movie Rewatch, which kept me going for some time. Plus, I still had Trek stuff to write about, as Discovery debuted that fall, and—having, at that point, written a ton about Trek for six years—I was excited to review new episodes as they came out, which I have done, not just for Discovery, but also Short Treks, Picard, Lower Decks, and Strange New Worlds, plus periodic pieces on the kids’ show Prodigy. (This will continue, as I’ll be reviewing the final season of Discovery when it debuts in April.)

And then 2019 was coming to a close, and my superhero movie rewatch was catching up to real-time. I found myself confronted with two facts: (1) 2020 was the twenty-fifth anniversary of Voyager’s debut. (2) A lot of people—mostly women who grew up in the 1990s and for whom Janeway was their captain—thought I wasn’t giving Voyager a fair shake.

So in January 2020, I started rewatching Voyager. This turned out to be a much more important thing than expected thanks to the apocalypse that started a couple of months later. For myself and for a lot of readers, having a new Voyager Rewatch twice a week was a welcome bit of consistency in a world that had gone completely batshit. Best of all, it was a very enjoyable experience for me to get to rewatch Voyager with fresh eyes.

Once I neared the end of 2021 and Voyager’s final season, my next step was inevitable. I’d rewatched all the other older shows and I’d reviewed all of the newer shows—to not do an Enterprise Rewatch would’ve just been silly. I needed to have a complete set, after all.

(To that end, I also needed to cover two more feature films. While I did all the movies with Kirk, Spock, et al, as part of the original series rewatch, I’d only covered First Contact of the TNG films. I included Generations as part of the original series rewatch, but that still left two unrewatched by self. Luckily, Picard’s third-season reunion of the TNG crew gave me the excuse I needed to do rewatches of both Insurrection and Nemesis in 2023.)

Now I’ve come to the end of that, and I find myself disappointed that it’s over—seriously, doing these rewatches has been tremendous fun—but also satisfied with the body of work that I’ve created. I especially love hearing that people are doing rewatches of their own and then reading my entries after each episode. Best of all, folks are still commenting on things I wrote over the entirety of the last thirteen years.

The most interesting part of the rewatches for me has been the revelations. I’ve been watching Star Trek since birth. I grew up on the reruns of the original series on Channel 11 in New York City, and eagerly consumed all the movies as they were released, was a devoted viewer of TNG and DS9, a somewhat less devoted viewer of Voyager and Enterprise, and now am an equally devoted viewer of the various new shows.

On top of that, I’ve been a professional Trek fiction writer since 1999, having written sixteen novels, thirteen novellas, ten short stories (with two more on the way), six comic books, one reference book, one RPG module, and a bunch of material for an RPG sourcebook.

I mention all that, not to show off, but to say that I know a lot about Trek. Despite this, each rewatch gave me new insights into the shows in question that I did not expect.

The original series. After decades of watching the show, I’d kind of settled into the notion that the first season was uneven but very good, the second season was the show at its best, and the third season was crap.

Rewatching it from 2015-2017 revealed two big things: one was that I was at once unfair to season one and too kind to season two. Both are uneven, both are very good—and in particular, I found that the second season moved away from one of the things that makes Trek unique and important. The first season wasn’t about scary monsters that had to be destroyed, but rather about people, even if they were alien: the salt vampire was the last of its kind trying to survive, the creature killing miners was a mother protecting her eggs, the Gorn invasion turned out to be the Gorn responding to an invasion, and so on. But in season two, it was all kill-the-monsters: the giant amoeba, the doomsday machine, the cloud creature, etc.

Also, while the third season was, indeed, terrible, it did have one thing going for it. Where most of the female characters in seasons one and two succumbed to the stereotypes of the era about the so-called fairer sex, the final year gave us some fantastic women: Elaan, Dr. Miranda Jones, Gem, Mara, Natira, Deela, Losira, Zarabeth.

The Next Generation. I went into my TNG Rewatch with the notion that Jonathan Frakes was a fairly limited actor and that Riker went from being conceived as the big action man while Picard was the cerebral captain to being Picard’s second banana in more ways than one. I also went into it with the notion that Geordi La Forge as a character was mostly harmless, the dorky engineer, created as a nice tribute to a fan. (George La Forge was a quadriplegic Trek fan who died in 1975; at David Gerrold’s instigation, the differently abled member of the Enterprise-D crew was named after him.)

I came out of my TNG Rewatch with a much greater appreciation of Frakes as an actor. He was superb in many of his spotlight episodes, most notably “Frame of Mind” and “The Pegasus,” plus he just had a general relaxed charisma that worked beautifully. The first season had way too much strutting and lookit-me-I’m-manly writing of the character, plus Frakes himself was wooden as hell in that first year—but so was most of the cast. Growing the beard for season two obviously relaxed him some, and he settled into a good character played by a much better actor.

As for La Forge, the character’s actions in “Booby Trap,” “Aquiel,” and most especially the morally repugnant “Galaxy’s Child” have aged very very badly. His treatment of Leah Brahms in the latter episode especially makes it hard to sympathize with the character in any way. I hasten to add that none of this is the fault of Burton, who is a national treasure.

Deep Space Nine. Of all the shows, DS9 is the one that had the least difference between how I felt about it when I started the rewatch in 2013 and when I finished it in 2015. I love DS9, it’s both my favorite of the Trek shows and, in my opinion, the strongest of them (though SNW is challenging it in the former category). Most of my feelings on the show—lots of good, some bad—didn’t change on rewatching.

However, there was one negative that came out of writing about the show for this site, and that’s this: the all-male writing staff really blew it by totally missing that they made Benjamin Sisko the product of a rape, then compounding the error by having all the characters being totally okay with it.

Voyager. The primary benefit of rewatching Voyager in 2020 and 2021 was to give the show a fair shake. As I just said two paragraphs ago, DS9 was Trek at its finest, and Voyager’s first five seasons had the misfortune of airing alongside DS9’s final five seasons, and it was bound to suffer from the comparison. Plus, I found it overwhelmingly frustrating that the show kept running away from its premise.

Knowing that going in, I was able to focus more this time on what the show was as opposed to what it wasn’t, and they did some damn fine individual episodes. Voyager was often brilliant at the execution of the high concept, and telling a cracking story in 42 minutes (or 84 for the two-parters).

I also came away from the rewatch with a much greater appreciation of Roxann Dawson as an actor. She created a wonderfully complex character in B’Elanna Torres, one who struggles with depression and anger issues, and is that rare half-human, half-alien character in Trek who doesn’t really embrace either side of her heritage, and finds herself lost because of it.

Enterprise. Alas, where my negative impressions of Voyager were ameliorated by my rewatch, the same cannot be said for the first Trek spinoff to fail in the marketplace. My lack of interest in Enterprise’s weekly portrayal of Mediocre White People Failing Upward in the early days of the millennium felt completely justified in the early 2020s.

But I did come away this time with one happier thought regarding the show, and that’s the work done by Jolene Blalock as T’Pol. Rick Berman-era Trek had a tropism for hiring women for their looks to then play complex characters who were nonetheless male-gazed like whoa, starting with Terry Farrell as Jadzia Dax, continuing to Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine. Blalock was the worst example, because at least Dax and Seven were written well, mostly, but Blalock was constantly being written in ways that pandered to the heterosexual-teenage-boy-who-wants-to-see-boobies demographic.

But Blalock did superb work to rise above that, and also to take advantage of the other way she was written, which was as the only grownup on the NX-01. T’Pol’s logic and experience saved the crew’s asses more than once.

50th anniversary. One other item I want to mention: In addition to the original series, I also rewatched another TV show that celebrated its golden anniversary in 2016: the Adam West Batman. To close out the 2016 calendar, I celebrated the double anniversary with four extras: The Green Hornet (produced by the same folks that did Batman), Incubus (a movie starring William Shatner that was entirely in the constructed language of Esperanto), preview shorts featuring Batgirl and Wonder Woman (again, produced by the same folks who did Batman), and finally a joint endeavor, the failed 1964 pilot for an Alexander the Great TV series starring Shatner and West. Had it gone to series, the pop-culture landscape would’ve been so different…

It has been a joy and a privilege to do these rewatches of the first five decades’ worth of Trek on the screen, from “The Cage” to Star Trek Beyond. And who knows? Maybe in a decade or so, I’ll think about doing a rewatch of Discovery…

In the meantime, on the 18th of March, I’ll be debuting my next big project for Reactor Magazine: a Babylon 5 Rewatch! 2024 marks the thirtieth anniversary of B5’s debut as a TV series (following the pilot that aired in 1993), and with creator J. Michael Straczynski planning a reboot, now seems the perfect time to look back at the original.[end-mark]

The post These Were the Voyages — Looking Back on 13 Years of <i>Star Trek</i> Rewatches appeared first on Reactor.

News Star Trek: Discovery

The Final Season of Star Trek: Discovery Will Warp onto Paramount Plus in April

Captain Burnham will only get to say “Let’s fly” so many more times

By Molly Templeton

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Published on February 14, 2024

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It’s been a long, strange, occasionally baffling journey, and now it’s coming to an end: The fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discovery will begin on April 4th with a two-episode premiere.

The synopsis is mysterious! And vague!

In a recent TVLine interview, Sonequa Martin-Green, who plays Captain Burnham, teased a major twist in this final season, saying, “There’s a big thing. A biiiig thing in Season 5.”

Along with Martin-Green, Discovery stars Doug Jones as Saru, Anthony Rapp as Paul Stamets, Wilson Cruz as Hugh Culber, David Ajala as Cleveland Booker, and Blu del Barrio as Adira. For the grand finale, Mary Wiseman will return as Sylvia Tilly, and Callum Keith Rennie joins the cast as Rayner. There are also two recurring stars: Elias Toufexis as L’ak and Eve Harlow as Moll.

Star Trek: Discovery has Michelle Paradise and Trek mastermind Alex Kurtzman as showrunners. Its arrival on Paramount Plus in 2017 heralded the beginning of a new Trek era that now includes the now-concluded Star Trek: Picard, the animated Star Trek: Lower Decks, the beloved Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and more.

The USS Discovery sets off on her final mission on April 4th. [end-mark]

The post The Final Season of <i>Star Trek: Discovery</i> Will Warp onto Paramount Plus in April appeared first on Reactor.

Column Star Trek

Star Trek: Enterprise Rewatch: Fourth Season Overview

A look back at the fourth and final season of Star Trek: Enterprise.

By Keith R.A. DeCandido

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Published on February 5, 2024

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Star Trek: Enterprise Fourth Season
Original air dates: October 2004 – May 2005
Executive Producers: Rick Berman, Brannon Braga, Manny Coto

Captain’s log. Having saved Earth and stopped the Sphere-Builders from taking over the galaxy, Enterprise is diverted to 1944 Earth to do one last Temporal Cold War favor for Daniels, which apparently ends the entire thing, to the relief of both the crew and the viewership.

The scars of the mission to the Delphic Expanse take a while to heal, particularly for Archer and T’Pol, with the former reuniting with an old girlfriend (who’s also captain of the NX-02, Columbia), the latter by going home to Vulcan, where she winds up married to her long-affianced Koss in order to save her mother from political reprisal.

Some Augments that were taken out of stasis and raised by Arik Soong attack a Klngon ship, and Enterprise gets caught up in their and Soong’s attempts to create an empire for their genetically engineered selves, though it all goes to crap pretty quickly.

Forrest is killed when the Earth embassy on Vulcan is bombed, allegedly by Syrranites—radicals who are Surakian fundamentalists, as it were—but truly by a faction within High Command that is secretly in bed with the Romulans. The Syrranites have unearthed Surak’s katra and his writings. The former is put into Archer’s head by Syrran on his deathbed, and he’s then able to find the latter, causing a revolution on Vulcan and restoring mind-melds in the bargain.

After encounters with both the inventor of the transporter and some Organian scientists, Enterprise is asked to mediate the long-standing rivalry between Andoria and Tellar Prime—but the Romulans don’t like all this peace crap, and try to sabotage the talks with a remote-controlled ship with a holographic skin. This almost works, and Archer has to fight Shran to the almost-death in order to help move past it, then they work together to contact the Aenar the Romulans are using.

Klingons retrieve the Augment wreckage and are able to genetically engineer Klingons who are physically superior, but look human—but who also have a nasty disease. Phlox is kidnapped by the Klingons to try to fix it, and he does, but at the expense of giving millions of Klingons smooth foreheads, thus explaining a makeup change from 1979 for whatever reason.

Finally, Enterprise is caught up in the Terra Prime movement, which wants to remove all alien influence from Earth, and is doing it at the barrel of a gun. Archer and the gang stop their terrorist attack just in time for a Coalition of Planets to be formed.

Highest-rated episode: a tie between “Home” and “Babel One,” which both received 10s.

Lowest-rated episode: the absolute twaddle of “Bound” with a well-earned 0.

Most comments (as of this writing): “These are the Voyages…” a finale that still has people talking nineteen years later, with 44.

Fewest comments (as of this writing): At the moment, of the entries that have comments available, it’s “Terra Prime,” with a surprisingly low 11.

Favorite Can’t we just reverse the polarity? From “Affliction”: If the flow regulators are locked open, the warp core will breach if you drop out of warp, but if you go faster, the pressure is lessened. This is actually rather a spiffy bit of sabotage, akin to that which we saw in the movie Speed…

Favorite The gazelle speech: From “Observer Effect”: Archer sacrifices himself to try to save Tucker and Sato. He is also surprisingly unaffected by the corpse of his best friend sitting up and talking to him…

Favorite I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations: From “The Forge”: T’Pol has to remind Archer at one point that she is part of a species that evolved on Vulcan, so she’s way more suited to wander across the Forge than his human ass. One of the things she mentions is the nictitating membrane, or “inner eyelid,” something Spock needed the better part of a day to even remember he had…

Favorite Florida Man: From “Demons”: Florida Man Has Miracle Baby With Alien Lover!

Favorite Optimism, Captain! From “Divergence”: Phlox absolutely owns this episode, taking charge of the entire situation once he’s on the road to a cure, manipulating K’Vagh and Krell both with verve and aplomb.

Favorite Good boy, Porthos! From “The Forge”: When Archer expresses disbelief that Vulcan children have sehlats as pets, T’Pol reminds Archer about Porthos. Archer’s riposte is that Porthos won’t eat him if he’s late with dinner, to which T’Pol replies that Vulcan children are never late with their sehlat’s dinner. (Well, at least not twice, anyhow…)

Favorite Better Get MACO: From “Borderland”: Even though the Xindi crisis is over, there are still MACOs assigned to Enterprise. They guard Soong while he’s on the ship and Malik when he boards as well, and they prove as useless as ever in repelling a hostile boarding party, as the Augments take them down in seconds flat.

Favorite Ambassador Pointy: From “The Forge”: Soval is very obviously humbled by Forrest’s selfless gesture, and he rebels against the High Command from the minute they start accusing Andorians and Syrrannites of the bombing.

He also admits to being able to do mind-melds.

Favorite The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined… From “In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II”: Like Spock before him and Sarek after him, the MU version of Soval has a goatée. Tradition!

Favorite Blue meanies: From “Kir’Shara”: At one point, Kumari takes a hit intended for Enterprise, at which point Shran proclaims to Tucker that now Archer owes him two favors (the first for helping during “Zero Hour”).

Favorite Qapla’!: From “The Augments”: We meet two Klingon captains in this episode. One is incredibly gullible, the other incredibly incompetent. Not a banner day for the Empire, this…

Favorite No sex, please, we’re Starfleet: From “Bound”: I mean, where to start? The three Orion women turn all the human men (except for Tucker) into drooling idiots or posturing morons, or both. Plus T’Pol and Tucker finally decide to become a real couple after dancing around it for several years, and making us endure simply endless “Vulcan neuro-pressure” softcore porn scenes in season three…

Favorite More on this later… From “The Augments”: At the end of the episode, Soong thinks that he should abandon genetic engineering in favor of cybernetics and artificial intelligence, and muses that it may take a few generations to get it right, a hilariously clumsy bit of foreshadowing of the work of his descendent Noonien Soong in creating Data, Lore, and B-4.

In addition, Soong dismisses the story of Khan and his followers escaping Earth on Botany Bay as a myth, but it will be proven correct in the original series’ “Space Seed” (and again, after a fashion, in Star Trek Into Darkness) when Khan and his gaggle around found by Starfleet.

Favorite Welcome aboard: Several past recurring regulars make their obviously last appearances this season: Vaughn Armstrong as Forrest, Molly Brink as Talas, Jeffrey Combs as Shran, Jim Fitzpatrick as Williams, Gary Graham as Soval, John Fleck as Sillik, and Matt Winston as Daniels. This season also gives us a few new recurring regulars for the final go-round: Michael Reilly Burke as Koss, Joanna Cassidy as T’Les, Derek Magyar as Kelby, Ada Maris as Hernandez, and Eric Pierpoint as Harris.

Some folks who have made regular guest appearances in this era of Trek spinoffs also come back for one last hurrah: Lee Arenberg (“Babel One,” “United”), Cyia Batten (“Bound”), Kristin Bauer (“Divergence”), J. Paul Boehmer (“Storm Front”), J. Michael Flynn (“Babel One,” “United,” “The Aenar”), Robert Foxworth (“The Forge,” “Awakening,” “Kir’Shara”), Wayne Grace (“Divergence”), Brad Greenquist (“Affliction”), Harry Groener (“Demons,” “Terra Prime”), J.G. Hertzler (“Borderland”), Gregory Itzin (“In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II”), William Lucking (“Bound”), Christopher Neame (the “Storm Front” two-parter), Richard Riehle (“Cold Station 12,” “The Augments”), Mark Rolston (“The Augments”), John Rubinstein (“Awakening,” “Kir’Shara”), John Schuck (“Affliction,” “Divergence”), Joel Swetow (“Terra Prime”), Brian Thompson (“Babel One,” “United,” “The Aenar”), Marc Worden (“Affliction”), and Tom Wright (“Storm Front”).

Three actors get to play roles established on the original series: Kara Zediker as T’Pau (first seen and played by Celia Lovsky in “Amok Time,” appearing in “Awakening” and “Kir’Shara”), Bruce Gray as Surak (first seen and played by Barry Atwater in “The Savage Curtain,” appearing in “Awakening”), and Steve Rankin as Colonel Green (first seen and played by Phillip Pine in “The Savage Curtain,” appearing in “Demons”).

The “Storm Front” two-parter gave us some folks famous from other contemporary shows: Golden Brooks (Girlfriends), Steven R. Schirippa, and Joe Maruzzo (both from The Sopranos).

Other nifty guest stars include the great James Avery (“Affliction,” “Divergence”), WWE wrestler Big Show (“Borderland”), Adam Clark (“Demons,” “Terra Prime”), Bill Cobbs (“Daedalus”), Abby Brammell (“Borderland,” “Cold Station 12,” “The Augments”), Peter Mensah (“Demons,” “Terra Prime”), Michael Nouri (“The Forge”), Leslie Silva (“Daedalus”), and Peter Weller (“Demons,” “Terra Prime”).

And we have some folks better known for their roles on other Trek shows, starting with the amusing two-episode appearance of Jakc Donner (Tal from the original series’ “The Enterprise Incident”) as a Vulcan priest in “Home” and “Kir’Shara,” moving on to Brent Spiner (Data on TNG and Picard) playing his second of four members of the Soong clan, Arik, in “Borderland,” “Cold Station 12,” and “The Augments” (and also doing a vocal cameo as Data in “These are the Voyages…”), and concluding with Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis reprising their roles as Riker and Troi from TNG (and later Picard) in “These are the Voyages…”

But the best guest is the very very young Todd Stashwick, who will later go on to play Shaw in Picard season three, as a Vulcan-who’s-really-a-Romulan in “Kir’Shara.”

Favorite I’ve got faith… From “The Forge”:

Favorite Trivial matter: Probably the one for “Divergence,” with all its Klingon-y goodness…

It’s been a long road… “I’ve been told that people are calling us heroes.” On the one hand, this is the show Enterprise really should’ve been all along. After two years of giving us the most lackluster exploration of outer space imaginable and one year of a 9/11-inspired season-long arc that didn’t really work, they finally decided to embrace being a prequel and show the roots of what would come later.

What was most successful about the season was that they didn’t allow themselves to be constrained by the one-hour format. The season was a delightful mix of single episodes, and two- and three-parters, giving some stories the space they needed.

Unfortunately, the execution left a lot to be desired. They all started promising, with the Augment three-parter giving us Brent Spiner snark; the Vulcan three-parter giving us the attack on the embassy that killed Forrest, a devastating loss; the Andorian three-parter opened with Shran’s ship being destroyed and Archer trying to negotiate a fragile peace, ending the first episode with a brilliant cliffhanger; the Terra Prime two-parter, the Klingon two-parter, and the Mirror Universe two-parter all had excellent first episodes, as well.

And every single multipart storyline blew the ending. The Augment trilogy turned into nonsense with the Augment kids looking more like they should be arguing over what mousse product to use in their hair than being the vanguard of the next step in human evolution. Both the Vulcan trilogy and the Klingon two-parter expended a great deal of story energy fixing things that weren’t broken, giving unnecessary fan service at the expense of an engaging story. The MU diversion was just that, a diversion, and not as fun a one as it could have been, as Trek has dipped into the MU well way too often. And the fascinating political commentary of Terra Prime devolved into an action hour with a big ray gun pointed at Earth.

Probably the most successful story was the Andorian one, which would’ve made a fantastic two-parter. Alas, they tacked a third part on, and “The Aenar” adds almost nothing to the story that wasn’t already accomplished by the first two parts.

The standalone episodes run the gamut from brilliant (“Home,” a fantastic coda to the third season’s trauma) to dreadful (“Bound,” a throwback to the worst excesses of the original series).

And the season was bookended by two abject failures. First was pathetically ending the Temporal Cold War with SPACE NAZIS! and then ending the season and the series with a misbegotten disaster of a TNG crossover holodeck episode that fails as an Enterprise finale, fails as a parallel storyline to a rather good TNG episode, and just generally fails.

While the fourth season is better than the previous three, it’s too little, way too late. By the time the fall of 2004 rolled around, Enterprise had hemorrhaged viewers to the point that no matter what they did in season four, it wasn’t going to be seen by enough viewers to justify the expense of producing the show. Three years of Mediocre White People Failing Upward had not proven to be a winning story strategy, and the final season did little to ameliorate that. Excellent work by various guest stars—the likes of Spiner, Gary Graham (whose Soval was at his best this season), Jeffrey Combs, John Schuck, James Avery, Bill Cobbs, Harry Groener, Peter Weller, Joanna Cassidy, Michael Nouri, and Vaughn Armstrong all served to show up how incredibly lackluster the main cast was. No one more embodied this than Ada Maris, whose Captain Hernandez proved in three episodes to be far more charismatic and interesting a shipmaster than Scott Bakula was able to scrape together over four seasons.

Warp factor rating for the season: 5

This ends, not just the Enterprise Rewatch, but all the classic Trek rewatches that I’ve been doing for this site on and off since 2011. Later this month, I’m going to do a wrapup of the five rewatches of the original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise. And keep an eye on Reactor for news of my next big project… [end-mark]

The post <i>Star Trek: Enterprise</i> Rewatch: Fourth Season Overview appeared first on Reactor.

News Star Trek

Get (Virtually) Up Close to the U.S.S. Enterprise (and Quark’s Bar) in New Star Trek Experience

The Roddenberry Archive will allows fans to explore a variety of Star Trek locales from the comfort of their own homes.

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on February 2, 2024

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Have you ever looked around your cramped living room and wished you were sitting at Quark’s bar on Deep Space Nine or on the Bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise (or the U.S.S. Voyager, or even the U.S.S. Cerritos) instead?

If so, you’re in luck! OTOY, Paramount Game Studios, and The Gene Roddenberry Estate broke news via Deadline that there’s going to be a “Roddenberry Archive” app available on the newly released Apple Vision Pro, an augmented or virtual reality headset that Apple is marketing as a spatial computing platform.

The Archive will give Trekkies nearly two hours of Star Trek spatial experiences across the franchise via “hundreds of fully realized locations, artifacts, and unique items—spanning every Star Trek TV show and film across the franchise’s nearly sixty-year history.”

That includes the bridges of multiple starships, all the way from the U.S.S. Discovery to the U.S.S. Protostar on the Prime Timeline (and don’t worry, there are also ships from the Kelvin Timeline, the mirror universe, and myriad other alternative realities we’ve seen over the decades). The Deadline article goes on about the technical specs of the Apple Vision Pro, which frankly didn’t make sense to me beyond the fact that they were trying to convey that the capabilities of the new hardware are impressive.

“Through our multi-decade collaboration with OTOY, we have been working to push the frontiers of immersive technology to fulfill my father’s legacy, creative intent, and ideas in ways that can be experienced today and by generations yet to come,” Rod Roddenberry, President of Roddenberry Entertainment, said in a statement to Deadline.

He added that the Apple Vision Pro offering is “a remarkable milestone in realizing my father’s vision for the Holodeck” and “also fulfills one of my mother’s greatest wishes.”

Roddenberry’s mother, of course, was Majel Barrett, who played several characters in the Star Trek universe including Nurse Chapel in the Original Series, Number One in the series’ initial pilot, “The Cage,” Lwaxana Troi on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, and the voice of the computer interface you’ve heard across several Trek series.  

According to Roddenberry, Barrett recorded her phenoms in 2008 in hopes of preserving her voice for posterity. Through these recordings, her voice now posthumously narrates portions of the archive, which her son understandably found “deeply moving.”

A 2D version of the Archive is available for your review here, for a limited time. Sometime later this year, Apple Vision Pro users will have unlimited viewing time and access to all Trek-related 3D experiences available on The Archive. [end-mark]

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Paramount finally announced that the movie will, in fact, star people other than Yeoh. Omari Hardwick (Power), Kacey Rohl (The Magicians), Sam Richardson (Ted Lasso), Sven Ruygrok (One Piece), Robert Kazinsky (Pacific Rim), Humberly Gonzalez (Ginny & Georgia), and James Hiroyuki Liao (Barry) have come on board the great ship Star Trek.

Hardwick is probably best known for the series Power, but SFF fans may recognize him from Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead or Boots Riley’s brilliant Sorry to Bother You. Rohl is the name I’m most excited about here; she was incredible as The Magicians’ prickly Marina, and also excellent on both Hannibal and Arrow. Sam Richardson faced shapeshifters in Werewolves Within and has done a ton of voice work, including roles on Harley Quinn and Star Trek: Lower Decks.

Kazinsky is, depending on whether your tastes run to robots or vampires, best known for being a pain in the ass in Pacific Rim, or Sookie Stackhouse’s creepy love interest on True Blood. James Hiroyuki Liao appears in the upcoming Orphan Black: Echoes, while Humberly Gonzalez appeared in two episodes of the original Orphan Black.

In short, the filmmakers have assembled an impressive cast of stars and actors-on-the-rise. Star Trek: Section 31 is written by Craig Sweeny and directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi, a producer and frequent director on Star Trek: Discovery. The movie is expected to arrive next year. [end-mark]

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Captain’s star log. We have jumped ahead six years to 2161. After ten years in service, Enterprise is going home to be decommissioned—and also to be present for the signing of the charter that will make the United Federation of Planets a thing. Archer is still struggling with his speech, while Mayweather and Sato are speculating about what they’ll do next.

Then we pan over to a side console, where William Riker is sitting in an NX-01 uniform. He orders the holodeck to freeze and save the program then end it. We revert to the Enterprise-D holodeck, and Riker’s holographic Enterprise uniform is replaced by his Starfleet uniform.

According to Riker’s personal log, Admiral Pressman has just come on board, and he’s agonizing over whether or not to confide in Picard about the real reasons for Pressman’s presence. Troi is the one who suggested re-creating the NX-01’s final mission on the holodeck to aid him in making the decision. Troi also, over dinner in Ten-Forward, suggests he skip ahead to when they’re contacted by the Andorian. She also suggests Riker take on the role of the ship’s chef, who was the closest they had to a ship’s counselor.

Back on the holodeck, Enterprise is hailed by Shran, which comes as something of a shock, as they believed that Shran died three years previous. Shran admits to having faked his death because, after he left the Imperial Guard, he got involved with some unsavory characters, who have kidnapped his daughter, Talla. He needs Archer’s help to get her back, and Archer owes him. T’Pol advises against acceding to Shran’s request, as they can’t risk being late for the charter signing (and Archer not being present to give his speech), but Archer does owe Shran…

They head to Rigel X. Chef was planning a final meal with everyone getting their favorite dish. Riker poses as Chef preparing those meals discussing life, the universe, and everything with the crew. Later Riker brings Troi on board the holodeck to show off the ship. They observe a conversation between Tucker and Reed, with the latter teasing the former about his continuing to perform routine maintenance on a ship that’s about to be mothballed. But Tucker unconvincingly claims that he practically built the engine singlehandedly, and will care for her to the end. Troi then indulges in some foreshadowing by saying how sad it is that Tucker won’t be coming home from this mission.

Troi goes off to have a session with Barclay, and Riker now cosplays as a MACO who goes on the mission to Rigel X. Archer comments on how appropriate it is that the last planet they’ll visit is also the first one they visited…

Shran and T’Pol meet with the bad guys, T’Pol having fabricated a fake of the jewel the kidnappers think Shran has stolen (he hasn’t, but they don’t believe him). Once they get Talla back, all hell breaks loose, as the fake jewel flashes some lights and the rest of the away team, who has been lying in ambush, fires on the bad guys.

Tucker almost falls to his death, but Archer saves him. They all get back to the ship and head off. Shran is happy to accept a lift to get them far away from the kidnappers, who can only go warp two.

Riker-as-Chef has more conversations with the crew, then Riker watches Archer and Tucker talk about the impending charter signing and what it means. Then T’Pol reports an intruder alert.

The aliens have caught up to Enterprise and boarded her, er, somehow, and demand Shran and Talla. Tucker throws himself into the notion of enabling them to signal Shran with an elaborate rewiring of things that is utterly unconvincing, but the aliens fall for it anyhow, and one big-ass explosion later, all the aliens and Tucker are all mortally wounded. Phlox tries to save Tucker’s life (no such effort is made to save the aliens), but he dies on the table.

Riker then breaks the chronological sequence by going back to before the intruder alert, when Tucker visited Chef to discuss the final meal.

T’Pol and Phlox are present backstage to wish Archer well on his speech (T’Pol having to adjust his neckline). Archer impulsively gives T’Pol a hug before going out and giving his speech.

Riker and Troi are seen in the back of the arena, talking about the historic speech and the charter signing that would lead to the Federation. Riker says he’s ready to talk to Picard about the Pegasus, and they exit the holodeck.

Thank you, Counselor Obvious. Troi is the one who suggests that Riker visit the holodeck to help him with the decision he’s agonizing over.

If I only had a brain… Data briefly speaks with Troi over the intercom about finishing a discussion they started, but Troi asks for a rain check, an idiom that Data struggles with.

The gazelle speech. Archer, typically, leaves writing his speech until the last minute and refuses to take credit for anything during it.

I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol admits to Tucker that she will miss him after they’re no longer assigned to the same ship.

Florida Man. Florida Man Dies Hilariously Unconvincing Death!

Optimism, Captain! Phlox is unable to save Tucker after he’s in the middle of an explosion, and later is one of the last people to wish Archer well before his speech.

Blue meanies. Shran has left the Imperial Guard and faked his own death over the prior six years. He has mated with Jhamel and had a daughter, and apparently Archer hasn’t repaid all the favors he owes Shran…

No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. T’Pol and Tucker’s relationship ended not long after it began, apparently, though they’re both mature enough adults to continue to serve on the same ship for the next six years.

I’ve got faith…

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

–The final lines of the episode, spoken first by Picard, then by Kirk, and finally by Archer.

Welcome aboard. Recurring regular Jeffrey Combs is back as Shran, while Jonathan Schmook plays the alien kidnapper. While this is Combs’s last appearance as Shran, he will return on Lower Decks as AGIMUS in “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie.”

And, of course, the big guests are Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, and an uncredited Brent Spiner as, respectively, Riker, Troi, and Data. The former two will next be seen in Picard’s “Nepenthe,” while the latter will next be seen in Picard’s “Remembrance.”

Trivial matters: The episode takes place simultaneously with the TNG episode “The Pegasus.”

While Jhamel is not seen, she is mentioned, and its made clear that the relationship with Shran hinted at in her appearance in “The Aenar” came to fruition.

This is the third straight Trek series finale, following DS9’s “What You Leave Behind” and Voyager’s “Endgame,” that is directed by Allan Kroeker.

Having written the lion’s share of the episodes from the first three seasons, this is the first (and, obviously, last) writing credit for Rick Berman and Brannon Braga in the fourth season.

After having one or two Trek TV shows in production consistently since 1987, there will be a gap of twelve years before the next one, when Discovery debuts in 2017. It will be four years before there is any kind of Trek screen production, the 2009 movie.

The novels Last Full Measure and The Good that Men Do, both by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin, establish that the holodeck program Riker was utilizing was not an accurate portrayal of history, with most of what was depicted therein actually taking place in 2155, not long after “Terra Prime.” This is uncovered by Nog and Jake Sisko after some Section 31 files are declassified in the early 25th century. In the novels, the characters point out several inconsistencies in the program that indicated that it was fake, all of which were complaints made by fans after the episode aired. They also established that Tucker’s death was a fake as well, a cover-up for him to engage in a long-term deep-cover mission.

Aside from Riker, Troi, and Data, this is the final appearance of everyone in it to date.

It’s been a long road… “I’m sure you’ll make the right choice.” I have often stated that the idea is far less important than the execution, and this is a prime example of that, because the idea here actually isn’t all that bad a one. It’s a nice idea, knowing that this was closing off the then-current era of Trek television, to tie it back to the show that started the era in question eighteen years earlier.

But holy crap, is the execution an unmitigated disaster.

I remember back in 2005 when they were talking about how Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis would be appearing in the Enterprise finale, my first thought was how cool it would be to have a framing sequence on the U.S.S. Titan with Captain Riker and his wife Commander Troi consulting the historical documents about Enterprise’s final mission.

So imagine my shock that they were instead appearing as Commander Riker and Counselor Troi on the U.S.S. Enterprise-D.

A lot of pixels have been lit on the subject of how terrible this is as the Enterprise finale (both Rick Berman and Brannon Braga have spent a lot of time at conventions and in interviews apologizing for it since 2005), and while I’m happy to add to it here, I do want to take a moment to say how this is also a complete and total failure as a parallel story to “The Pegasus,” which was one of the highlights of a very uneven final season of TNG. We’ll leave aside the fact that Frakes and Sirtis are very obviously ten years older than they were when they filmed “The Pegasus” (this is why I figured it would be a story of them on Titan), there is absolutely nowhere in the episode where any of this fits. There is simply no opportunity for Riker to go haring off to the holodeck for hours at a time to agonize over this decision. And then at the end, he resolutely decides to confide in Picard—which is something he does not do at any point. Well, at least not willingly—he only comes clean to Picard when he doesn’t have a choice at the episode’s climax.

And that’s only the start of what a dreadful finale this is. Just as Frakes and Sirtis very much look ten years older, the rest of the crew looks not at all to be six years older. No changes in hairstyle (well, okay, Jolene Blalock’s wig is a bit froofier, but that’s it), and neither Reed nor Mayweather nor Sato have been promoted after a decade of service, which is completely unconvincing.

After finally having Tucker and T’Pol come together as a couple bonding over their unexpected kid in “Demons” and “Terra Prime,” we’re told that their relationship apparently didn’t live out the year, as they’ve been broken up for six years. To call that disappointing is a major understatement, though it’s as nothing compared to the disappointment of Tucker’s “heroic” death, which is so clumsily constructed you can see the strings, and is one of the most ineptly written death scenes in television history. Connor Trinneer stops short of actually saying, “I have to have my death scene now!” but that’s the only saving grace of this ridiculous scene.

It is fitting that Enterprise has proven itself once again to be completely incapable of repelling boarders despite having Space Marines on board, as the aliens have free rein on the ship before Tucker blows them up.

Watching it again for the first time in nineteen years, the thing that annoyed me the most was, bizarrely, the scenes of Riker-as-Chef talking to the various crew. Not that the scenes themselves were bad—quite the opposite, they’re charming as hell, and easily the best parts of the episode—but this is something we should’ve been seeing all along. To find out now in the 97th and final episode that people talk to Chef about their troubles is leaving it way late. I’ve never been fond of the often-discussed-never-seen character trope in television, and the use of Chef in this episode is so much more interesting than the way he’d been used in the 96 previous episodes.

Berman and Braga spent their three years as show-runners making the early days of space exploration as bland and uninteresting as possible, and their final episode lives down to that standard in pretty much every way.

Warp factor rating: 1 [end-mark]

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Captain’s star log. After a summary of “Demons,” we get more of Paxton’s speechifying about the purity of humanity and the desire to get rid of alien influence. As an example of the horrible future that awaits them, he shows an image of the human/Vulcan hybrid baby. Because nothing says “humanity is doomed” like a cute little pointed-eared baby. Sure.

Sato is unable to jam the signal and unable to get through to Starfleet Command. Paxton has aimed the verteron array at Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco. If all the aliens aren’t out of the solar system in twenty-four hours, he’ll fire on Starfleet HQ.

Enterprise returns to Earth after Paxton takes a potshot at the ship with the array.

Samuels meets with Soval and Andorian Ambassador Thoris. Apparently there are Terra Prime demonstrations outside both the Vulcan and Andorian embassies. Thoris wants to know why they haven’t left Earth yet.

Samuels travels to Enterprise. Their options are limited. Paxton has jiggered the array so that destroying it will also wipe out the Utopia colony. Plus destroying the array will set back the Mars terraforming project and also endanger the colony. Samuels wants Archer to destroy it anyhow—the greater good and all that—but Archer recommends taking a small tactical team to try to extract Tucker and T’Pol and the baby and stop Paxton. If it doesn’t work, then Enterprise will go ahead and fire on the array.

Paxton wants Tucker to refine the array. He just wants to destroy Starfleet HQ—as he says, he needs a scalpel, not a bludgeon. Right now, the array will wipe out half of San Francisco along with Starfleet. Paxton also lets Tucker and T’Pol meet their daughter, and T’Pol gets to spend time with her—but at gunpoint, as Paxton threatens T’Pol and the baby’s lives if Tucker doesn’t do as Paxton wants.

Paxton explains how he got Tucker and T’Pol’s genetic material: from the frozen samples that are on board Enterprise, making it clear that at least one person on Enterprise’s crew is a Terra Prime supporter.

While he works, Tucker talks with Greaves. Tucker didn’t like Vulcans all that much for a long time, but once he got to know some actual Vulcans, he changed his tune. Greaves admits that he’s never met any Vulcans, but he also blames them for the billions who died in World War III. When Tucker reminds him that first contact was after the war, Greaves reminds him that Earth was under observation by the Vulcans during the war. They could’ve stepped in and prevented it, but didn’t.

Reed meets with Harris, who provides intelligence about Mars that is useful: if they fly just ten meters above the surface, the sensors can’t detect them, as they’re still calibrated for the thinner atmosphere Mars had before terraforming began. But they’ll have to get to Mars first; Reed assures Harris that they have that in hand.

Tucker sabotages the array instead of improving it, because of course he does.

Mayweather flies Enterprise toward Mars while hiding in a comet, and then uses that comet to hide the shuttlepod. Before they take off, Gannet reveals to Mayweather that she’s not a Terra Prime spy, she’s a Starfleet Intelligence spy. But she hasn’t revealed herself because she still hasn’t found the actual Terra Prime spy on board. Mayweather doesn’t entirely believe her, and leaves her in the brig.

Tucker manages to escape captivity around the same time that a strike team that includes Archer, Reed, Mayweather, and Phlox (the latter because of the baby) invades the mining facility. When Archer arrives in the main control room, right when Paxton’s deadline hits, he contacts Sato, who was left in charge, and tells her to stand down, as they’ve taken over. Sato is grateful, as she was under significant pressure from Samuels to destroy the array.

Then a firefight ensues when Greaves fires on Tucker when Archer sends him to turn off the array. Reed shoots Greaves, Paxton shoots Reed, and so on. It finally ends with a window breaking, and Paxton setting the array to fire. However, Tucker’s sabotage worked: instead of Starfleet HQ, it fires semi-harmlessly into the San Francisco Bay near the Golden Gate Bridge. (I say “semi-harmlessly” because I’m fairly certain some marine life did not get through that unscathed…)

The rescue almost didn’t get pulled off due to sabotage of the shuttlepod, which Mayweather discovers. At first they think that Kelby is responsible, but soon they trace it to Ensign Masaro, who shoots himself in the head rather than answer for his crimes.

The halfbreed baby, whom Tucker and T’Pol name Elizabeth after Tucker’s sister who was killed in the Xindi attack, does not survive, though Phlox’s autopsy determines that the cause is a flaw in Paxton’s cloning procedure and that Elizabeth would’ve survived if he hadn’t screwed that up, which means that future halfbreeds are definitely possible (which we already kinda knew…).

The conference to negotiate the formation of the Coalition of Planets is back on, Mayweather and Gannet have kissed and made up, and the delegates to the conference all agree to attend Elizabeth’s funeral.

Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Apparently the verteron array is being used to divert comets that strike the surface of Mars to the poles to aid in the ongoing terraforming of the red planet.

The gazelle speech. Archer gives a semi-rousing speech to the delegates to the conference reminding everyone how far humanity has come in the last century, from wondering if they were alone in the universe to starting the process of a major interplanetary alliance. It’s a bit better than the speech for which this rewatch section is named, I’ll give him that…

I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol immediately starts to take care of Elizabeth from the moment Paxton locks her in a room with her.

Florida Man. Florida Man Saves The Day With Sabotage!

Optimism, Captain! Phlox admits to Archer that he originally took the assignment to Enterprise as a diversion, something to allow him to get away from the complications of family (which are way more complicated on Denobula Triaxa) for a few months. He never anticipated finding a new family, and he takes Elizabeth’s death particularly hard (as does everyone else).

Ambassador Pointy. Soval is, notably, the first person to stand and applaud Archer after his speech to the delegates.

No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. After being informed by a tearful Tucker that Elizabeth could have survived with a better cloning procedure, T’Pol moves to hold his hand, leaving hope for the two of them in the future…

I’ve got faith…

Welcome aboard. Back from “Demons” are Harry Groener as Samuels, Peter Weller as Paxton, Eric Pierpoint as Samuels, Peter Mensah as Greaves, Adam Clark as Josiah, and Johanna Watts as Gannet. Back from “In a Mirror Darkly, Part II” are Gary Graham as Soval and Derek Magyar as Kelby. In addition, Joel Swetow makes his third appearance as an alien on Trek as Thoris, having previously played a Cardassian gul in DS9’s “Emissary” and a Yridian freighter captain in TNG’s “Firstborn.” Josh Holt plays Masaro.

Trivial matters: Strictly speaking, this marks the final real appearance of everyone in it, as the only ones we see again in the next episode are holodeck re-creations, and none of them have appeared again in any Trek production after that (at least not so far).

Though both had recurring roles on Enterprise (and both made guest appearances on prior Treks), this is the first time both Gary Graham and Eric Pierpoint have appeared in the same episode. The two were the leads on the tragically short-lived Alien Nation TV series.

This is also the final episode of Trek to be scored by Jay Chattaway, who used many of the same musicians as on the first Trek episode he scored, TNG’s “Tin Man,” which also guest-starred Harry Groener. Chattaway, who is now in his 70s, appears to have retired. The flute theme he created for TNG’s “The Inner Light” has continued to be a music cue on Picard.

An alternate history where Paxton’s movement was successful and Earth became isolationist in 2155 was explored by William Leisner in the short novel A Less Perfect Union in Myriad Universes: Infinity’s Prism.

The characters of Samuels, Soval, and Harris all appear in several post-finale Enterprise novels. Samuels is established as being the Prime Minister of Earth, a position he would retain through the Earth-Romulan War, and appears in The Good that Men Do and Kobayashi Maru by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin and The Romulan War duology by Martin. Soval continues his role as Vulcan ambassador in those same novels, as well as in regular rewatch commenter Christopher L. Bennett’s Rise of the Federation series. Harris appears in several of Bennett’s RotF books as well, continuing his work with Section 31.

Shran was originally supposed to play the role played instead by Joel Swetow, but they decided they wanted to use him for the finale instead. Why he couldn’t appear in both episodes is unclear.

It’s been a long road… “The final frontier begins in this hall.” This is a surprising letdown after a very promising first part. There are a number of reasons for this, but the main one is that Terra Prime’s actual plan was completely unconvincing to me. I mean, seriously, if you’re trying to effect permanent change to make Earth pure again, quite possibly the worst way to go about it is to engage in terrorist activities and trying to use a very cute baby as the face of evil.

Seriously, I found myself laughing out loud when Paxton finishes his Evil Speech of Evil by gravely saying that this is what the future will be and he shows us, um, a cute kid. Yeah, she’s got pointed ears, but that’s not a particularly big change. The whole thing might’ve worked better with a human/Andorian hybrid with antennae and blue skin or a human/Tellarite hybrid with porcine features or something that really looked like a halfbreed. But Elizabeth just looks like a cute baby with funky ears, and the reason why I’m emphasizing the cute is that most people’s reactions to a helpless and adorable little baby is to be protective and want to save it, not think that’s it’s the face of evil. (Of course, the reason why it’s a human/Vulcan hybrid is so we can have Maximum Tucker/T’Pol Angst, which is only not the feeblest development of their relationship by virtue of the existence of the endless “Vulcan neuro-pressure” scenes in season three…)

And then Paxton threatens, not an alien embassy, but Starfleet Headquarters, which is mostly full of humans. And also indirectly threatens the Mars colony, which is also full of humans.

But then it wouldn’t make for exciting enough television, I guess, to have Terra Prime politicians getting themselves elected to the government, have Terra Prime-sympathetic journalists (they almost went there with Gannet, but made her a spy instead, which, um, okay) pushing their agenda, and all the other things that would actually have a chance of working.

There are parts of the episode that work nicely. I especially like Greaves’s justification for his membership in Terra Prime: the Vulcans sat by and watched as World War III raged. That’s a brilliant bit of writing there, because you can absolutely see where Greaves is coming from. But it’s just one piece of dialogue swimming upstream against Peter Weller snarling and a big gun threatening Earth. Paxton should’ve been Joe McCarthy or Donald Trump, and instead he’s a Bond villain. Snore.

Also having Harris and the proto-Section 31 in this two-parter is a complete waste, yet another gratuitous use of the worst thing ever to happen to Star Trek as a franchise.

Archer gets a Mulligan on the gazelle speech, and it almost works. It’s certainly more hopeful and impressive than what he said at the top of season two, but it’s still in the bottom tier of Captain Speeches in Trek history.

Still and all, this would’ve made a nice series finale, with the moving toward an alliance, with the victory of unity over prejudice, with Tucker’s sad declaration that future human/Vulcan hybrids should be just fine, and with Phlox’s happier declaration that he found a new family on the NX-01.

But we get one more. Alas.

Warp factor rating: 6

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Paramount has hired Toby Haynes (Andor) to direct a script by Seth Grahame-Smith (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter). And while details are scarce, Deadline’s sources say “the project is an origin story that takes place decades before the 2009 Star Trek film.”

The last Star Trek film was Justin Lin’s Star Trek Beyond ins 2016, and everyone has their own, generally quite strong, opinion about that one. (“I like the beats and shouting.”) It is well past time for us to return to their version of space, and Haynes is an interesting choice of director. Along with most of Andor, he’s directed episodes of Doctor Who, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and Black Mirror (notably, U.S.S. Callister).

And this film seems to be set in an unexplored bit of the Trek timeline. “Decades before” the film that introduced Chris Pine as Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock could mean Trek Teens, but I prefer to believe this is something else entirely.

Once upon a time (in 2016), Paramount announced a version of Star Trek 4 that would have Pine’s Kirk meeting up with his father, who was briefly played by Chris Hemsworth (in the 2009 Star Trek). That movie seems to have been long since scrapped, but there’s always the possibility this is a different Papa Kirk film. Or not! The very few people who know are not forthcoming.

At any rate, Star Trek was (mostly) set in the 2250s, meaning this new film will be set sometime earlier in the 2200s. What this means for the competing Star Trek timelines—the Kelvin timeline of the recent films, the Prime timeline of most everything else—is anyone’s guess.

Neither of the new Trek movies has anything resembling a release date.

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Captain’s star log. On the moon, at the Orpheus Mining Facility, John Frederick Paxton, the mine’s owner, and a doctor named Mercer are checking up on a baby in an incubator, who’s been sick. The baby has the tapered ears of a Vulcan. We’re apparently supposed to just know that she’s a Vulcan-human hybrid, even though she only just looks Vulcan.

Enterprise has been summoned back to Earth to be present for the signing of a treaty that will lead to a Coalition of Planets, which will include Earth, Vulcan, Andoria, Tellar Prime, Coridan, and Denobula Triaxa. Earth’s Prime Minister, Nathan Samuels, is giving a press conference, with the various delegates and the Enterprise “senior staff” (everyone in the opening credits) observing.

The reception afterward includes some rather nasty bitching and moaning from Tucker about how Samuels didn’t give Enterprise credit for their part in this (the Andorians and Tellarites are pretty much only there because of Archer and the gang), and said bitching and moaning is particularly bitter toward Samuels. Archer, for his part, is happy to stay out of politics.

One of the reporters covering the event is named Gannet, and she and Mayweather used to be an item, presumably when he was at Starfleet Academy. It seems to have been an acrimonious split, though Gannet appears interested in rekindling things.

Samuels compliments Sato on the work she did improving the universal translator. Meanwhile, T’Pol quietly and politely agrees with Tucker that Enterprise is due more credit—but she’s interrupted by a medtech named Susan Khouri, who gives T’Pol a vial with a hair sample, says, “they’re going to kill her,” and collapses—only then does her coat fall open to reveal a nasty phase pistol wound.

Khouri eventually dies from her wounds. Phlox examines the follicle and shocks everyone by saying that (a) it’s a Vulcan-human hybrid, and (b) the person to whom this follicle belongs is the offspring of Tucker and T’Pol.

T’Pol maintains that she has never been pregnant (why she needs to insist that when a simple examination from Phlox would provide evidence of that is left as an exercise for the viewer). But she also maintains that this is not a hoax and that there is a child of theirs out there somewhere.

Archer discusses it with Sameuls, with the latter preferring to keep the news of the hybrid quiet. It’s a difficult time right now, and there’s a “Terra Prime” movement that has been growing since the Xindi attack, which wishes to isolate Earth from alien contamination.

Gannet shows up on Enterprise, saying she’s doing a story on the ship and asking Mayweather for a tour. They wind up making out in a shuttlepod, then take the party to his quarters.

Samuels has asked Archer to let Starfleet handle the investigation, but because Archer is the lead in a TV show, he is incapable of allowing people not in the opening credits to deal with things, so he has Reed contact Harris. Harris reminds Reed that Reed told Harris never to contact him again. Reed says he contacted Harris, which isn’t the same thing. Harris says that this means Reed is still working for him whether he likes it or not, a declaration that would have much more weight if this wasn’t the antepenultimate episode of the entire series. Harris reveals that Khouri is also part of Terra Prime.

On the moon, Paxton expresses concern to Mercer over Khouri’s betrayal, particularly that Mercer might also start feeling sympathy for the abomination. Mercer’s assurances that he’s loyal don’t sound all that convincing. Paxton also watches footage of Colonel Green from just after World War III where he’s advocating eugenics.

Phlox has Khouri’s autopsy report, and it includes a growth hormone used in low-gravity environments. It’s hardly ever used anymore since artificial gravity was invented, but it’s still used in a few places, like Orpheus on the moon—which is also, according to Harris’ intel, a hotbed of Terra Prime activity. Sato also reports that there’s a weird glitch in the universal translator.

On the moon, they’re cleaning up from a cave-in, and they find Mercer’s body, the victim of a carefully constructed “accident.”

T’Pol and Tucker go undercover as new employees of Orpheus. Tucker befriends a man named Josiah, who invites Tucker to a meeting of people who are sick of alien influence affecting Earth. Tucker goes to the meeting and is outed by Josiah at the same time that T’Pol is taken prisoner. They’re brought before Paxton, who identifies himself as the leader of Terra Prime. He plans to return Earth to its rightful owners. It’s not clear what role the hybrid child is supposed to play…

Archer, Reed, and Sato interrupt Mayweather and Gannet’s nookie because they’ve discovered that Gannet is a Terra Prime spy. She was listening in on all the universal translators, which triggered an ID protocol that Sato was able to trace. Gannet also made several trips to Orpheus, which were not, according to her editor, for a story as she claims. Gannet demands to have a lawyer, and Archer puts her in the brig, apologizing to a hurt Mayweather.

Paxton’s chief flunky Greaves pilots Orpheus off the surface of the moon and flies it to Mars, which surprises pretty much everyone. Archer orders Enterprise to go after them.

Orpheus lands on Mars near the verteron array that is used to divert comets. Paxton reconfigures it to fire on the moon, and declares that all non-humans must leave the Sol system or there will be more damage done.

To be continued…

Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Apparently, despite all the medical advances we’ve seen in the twenty-second century, somehow the ability to determine if a woman has ever been pregnant has been lost. (This is me, rolling my eyes…)

The gazelle speech. Archer seems to be the only member of his own crew who doesn’t mind that Samuels never mentions them in his speech. He’s just happy to see the Coalition of Planets becoming a thing.

I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol somehow just knows that she has a daughter out there, even though she was never pregnant. Tucker goes along with this. Sort of.

Florida Man. Florida Man Has Miracle Baby With Alien Lover!

Optimism, Captain! Phlox is the one who moves the plot along by examining the hair follicle and examining Khouri’s autopsy.

No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Mayweather and Gannet get very hot and heavy, and even start talking about future plans together right up until she’s arrested.

More on this later… The Coridan ambassador having a complaint about Tellarites and trade with the Orions mirrors a similar issue that comes up when Coridan applies for admission to the Federation a century hence in the original series’ “Journey to Babel.”

Also the baby seen at the top of the episode is the first-ever Vulcan-human hybrid, which we know will become a bit more common in the future, given that the most popular character in the entire franchise is a Vulcan-human hybrid…

I’ve got faith…

“It’s estimated that there are at least five thousand unregistered aliens on Earth. Now, another study puts that figure at ten thousand. This insanity is the direct result of our government’s policy and the enforcers of that policy, Starfleet! We need to send a message to the people in power.”

–Josiah, rabble-rousing with depressingly familiar rhetoric.

Welcome aboard. Eric Pierpoint returns as Harris, last seen in “Divergence.” Harry Groener, who previously played Tam Elbrun in TNG’s “Tin Man” and a magistrate in Voyager’s “Sacred Ground,” plays Samuels. Peter Weller plays Paxton; he will later play Alexander Marcus in Star Trek Into Darkness. Patrick Fischler plays Mercer, Adam Clark plays Josiah, and Johanna Watts plays Gannet.

Steve Rankin plays Colonel Green in footage Paxton watches. Green previously appeared as an Excalbian re-creation in the original series’ “The Savage Curtain,” played by Phillip Pine. Rankin previously played a Romulan in TNG’s “The Enemy,” a Cardassian in DS9’s “Emissary,” and a Klingon in DS9’s “Invasive Procedures.”

And this week’s Robert Knepper moment is the appearance of the great Peter Mensah, whom I had completely forgot was in this two-parter as Greaves.

Pierpoint, Groener, Weller, Clark, Watts, and Mensah will all return next time in “Terra Prime.”

Trivial matters: Colonel Green was established in the original series’ “The Savage Curtain” as a fascist from the twenty-first century. He was remembered by Kirk as one of the greatest villains of human history. Here, he’s specifically tied to the chaos of World War III and its aftermath (as seen in the movie First Contact), and is seen advocating eugenic genocide to avoid humanity being horribly mutated by radiation in what was referred to in TNG’s “Encounter at Farpoint” as “the post-atomic horror.”

Green is also a major player in the novel Federation by Enterprise‘s co-producers Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, and also appears in Federation: The First 150 Years by former Enterprise consulting producer David A. Goodman and “The Immortality Blues” by Marc Carlson in Strange New Worlds 9.

The Coalition of Planets is obviously a precursor to the Federation, which will be founded seven years after this episode.

This is the last of 29 Trek episodes directed by LeVar Burton, who also played Geordi La Forge on TNG, Voyager, and Picard and in four movies. Burton has continued to be active as a TV director, most recently having lensed several episodes of NCIS: Hawai‘i.

The Coridanite ambassador has a completely different appearance from the Coridanites seen in “Shadows of P’Jem” (and later in Discovery’s “Far from Home”). The novel The Good that Men Do by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin explains this as the ambassador wearing a ceremonial mask.

It’s been a long road… “Terra Prime forever!” This is a very effective episode generally, and one that has become more depressingly relevant as social commentary, as the rhetoric espoused by Paxton and Josiah is the same anti-other nonsense that’s been getting way too much play in this country about certain illegal immigrants and in the UK during the entire Brexit mishegoss, among many other places.

I’ve said this a lot during this rewatch, but this is the kind of story Enterprise should’ve been doing all along, and while it was nicely seeded in the bar brawl in “Home” particularly, the fact that it took until the penultimate storyline to cover it is annoying.

The Xindi attack especially is something that would prompt a subsection of humanity to go all xenophobic and isolationist. Not everyone, of course—what I especially like is that the rise of Terra Prime is concurrent with the advancing of the Coalition of Planets. Which is the way of things, sadly—progress is often met with violent regressives. Ending slavery led to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. More recently, expansion of rights for non-heterosexuals has led to a rise in violence against them.

Josiah’s speech was especially mind-blowing to watch in 2024, as that speech resonates at least as much as it did nineteen years ago. (Though I’m sure writer Manny Coto was inspired by the anti-Muslim rhetoric flying about in the wake of 9/11.)

Peter Weller has aged nicely into the kind of person who is good at angry-white-guy roles (see also his turn in Star Trek Into Darkness, not to mention his recurring roles on Sons of Anarchy and The Last Ship). He absolutely nails Paxton’s confident arrogance here, making him a bad guy to be reckoned with.

The episode loses a few points for a couple of things that twigged me greatly. The first is, as mentioned above, the fact that T’Pol has to say to Tucker that she’s never been pregnant. Unless Vulcans gestate really really really fast, there’s no way T’Pol could’ve had a kid without anyone knowing, as the only time she was away from the ship for a significant period was between “Home” and “Borderland,” which was only a few weeks. And, again, we have the means to medically determine if a woman’s ever been pregnant now, so the notion that it’s not something that could be determined by Phlox waving a scanner over her is ludicrous.

Secondly, Enterprise continues to give us a united Earth that’s mostly Caucasian. Both the prime minister of Earth and the head of Terra Prime are WASPy white dudes. Worse, though, is that we do actually get a couple people of color in the guest cast this week—and they’re both bad guys! As wonderful as it is to see Peter Mensah, and as good as Adam Clark is, it would’ve been nice to see some Black folks who aren’t xenophobic terrorists. And the complete lack of Latin, Middle Easter, or Asian people (beyond Sato) remains tiresome. They even give poor Mayweather a subplot, but it’s all in service of his being duped by his ex, which is only a nominal improvement over how they usually ignore the ensign.

Still, this is one of Enterprise’s stronger social commentary episodes, and one that nicely shows the growing pains of Earth in the transition between World War III and the founding of the Federation.

Warp factor rating: 8

Keith R.A. DeCandido will be Author Guest of Honor at the inaugural ConVivial in Williamsburg, Virginia this weekend, alongside Music Guests of Honor HipHopMcDougal, Cosplay Guest of Honor Angela Pritchett, and Fan Guest of Honor Candi O’Rourke. Keith will be doing lots of programming, and also will be performing with the Boogie Knights for a few concerts. His full schedule will be posted to his blog soon.

The post Star Trek: Enterprise Rewatch: “Demons” appeared first on Reactor.

Captain’s star log. After a summary of Part I, we see Archer ordering T’Pol, Tucker, and Reed on the bridge of the Defiant, trying desperately to break free of the docking clamps in the Tholian dock. But once they accomplish that, the Tholians ensnare them in their web, and the Mirror Universe one engages way faster than the last one we saw…

Tucker and T’Pol get weapons back online, at which point Defiant is able to blast its way out of the web. They make a run for it, picking up Enterprise’s escape pods along the way.

Archer tasks Tucker with fixing the warp drive, which they rather desperately need. At T’Pol’s suggestion, Tucker is to employ the slaves the Tholians had on board. Archer also makes it clear to T’Pol that he doesn’t trust her, and is only leaving her alive because he needs her help to get Defiant up and running. T’Pol assures him that she is loyal to him now with Forrest’s death. She also informs him that Forrest had ordered T’Pol to kill Archer while on this away mission.

Because the original away team came over in EVA suits, they all change into uniforms that are available on Defiant. Archer wears the green variant tunic for a captain, while T’Pol, Reed, Tucker, and Mayweather all wear Defiant uniforms as well (T’Pol in blue, the other three all in red). The remaining crew who were rescued from the escape pods stay in their Enterprise uniforms.

Sato comes to Archer in the captain’s quarters. Archer has summoned up the database from the Defiant’s native universe, and he taunts Sato with her counterpart’s history—including who she married and how she dies, which Sato expresses no interest in knowing. Sato in turn calls up Archer’s records, and is amused to see that the mainline Archer is way more successful, having actually gotten to captain the Enterprise. Sato says that the brass will have to give him a command now, and Archer points out that he has a command: Defiant.

Kelby discovers a bit of sabotage, and is then killed by a reptilian creature. After torturing one of the slaves, they discover that Kelby was killed by the slaves’ overseer: a Gorn named Slar.

They track Slar to a Jefferies tube, but the Gorn has laid a trap, which badly injures Reed and a MACO. Archer and another MACO are able to stop the Gorn, mostly by increasing the gravity where Slar is standing so he’s pinned. Archer then repeatedly shoots him.

Recovering the parts that Slar stole, Tucker is able to get the warp drive going, and—against T’Pol’s recommendation, as they are fewer than fifty people trying to crew a ship that’s meant to have a complement of over four hundred—rendezvouses with the assault fleet.

The flagship of said fleet, the I.S.S. Avenger, is under attack by rebels, a fleet of Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites. Defiant shows up and makes short work of the other ships. Archer pointedly destroys the Vulcan ship just to annoy T’Pol and then lets the Andorian ship go so they can tell their rebel friends about the Empire’s shiny new ship.

Admiral Black and his first mate, Soval (who, of course, has a goatée), come over to Defiant. Black is impressed and promises that Archer will get his own command for this. When Archer reminds him that he has a command, Black laughs derisively at his naïveté and says they’ll be taking Defiant back to Earth and tearing it to pieces so they can reverse-engineer it. Nobody will be commanding this ship.

Not liking that idea, and also concerned that Black will take credit for obtaining the Defiant, Archer kills Black. He then makes a rousing speech in Avenger’s shuttle bay making it clear that he’s going to use Defiant to engage in a coup against the emperor.

T’Pol goes to Soval’s quarters to recruit him to her plan to oust Archer and destroy Defiant—but not until she’s downloaded the schematics so the rebels can build a new one. Soval reluctantly agrees.

Archer and Sato’s pillow talk includes her speculating about what it takes to be an emperor’s consort (and Archer saying she doing fine so far) and Archer deciding to expel all the aliens from Defiant (though Sato talks him into keeping Phlox).

T’Pol goes to the bridge to get Defiant’s schematics. Shortly after that, Archer has her put off the ship to Avenger (along, presumably, with other non-Denobulan aliens).

Phlox is later summoned to Avenger for a medical emergency, but it’s a ruse by Soval and T’Pol, who recruit Phlox to their cause. They both claim to be loyal to the Empire, but they don’t want to see Archer in charge. Phlox eventually agrees.

Sato discovers T’Pol’s downloading of the schematics, and beams over to Avenger to take her into custody, which she does after the Obligatory Catfight.

Soval takes over Avenger’s bridge, aided by an Andorian and an Orion. Soval also talks Phlox through Defiant’s sabotage. However, Tucker catches Phlox in the act and stops him, reversing the sabotage, enabling Defiant to destroy Avenger.

Archer continues to Earth, where he informs Admiral Gardner that there’s a new sheriff in town, as it were. Later, Archer and Sato have a post-coital conversation where he tells her to wipe out the database of the other universe, as it’s too tempting a target to the rebels or to someone like T’Pol. Archer then drinks from the glass Sato has handed him, only to belatedly realize that it contains some rather nasty pharmaceuticals. As he loses consciousness, he sees Sato and Mayweather—his trusted bodyguard—kissing.

Sato then goes to the bridge as they enter orbit of Earth, and she announces herself to Gardner as Empress Hoshi Sato and for them to await further instructions.

Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Slar steals two parts from Kelby, without which Tucker can’t repair the warp drive.

The gazelle speech. After seeing the service record of the mainline Archer, the captain continues to hallucinate the NX-01 captain, who regularly taunts him and goads him to bolder actions, including killing Black and leading the team to search for Slar himself.

I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. Despite her words to Archer that Forrest’s orders are no longer valid, she spends pretty much the entire episode trying to carry them out…

Florida Man. Florida Man Is A Miracle Worker In Any Universe!

Optimism, Captain! Phlox isn’t interested in helping T’Pol and Soval foment rebellion until he realizes he may get rewarded for it by the emperor with many concubines. Wah-HEY!

 No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Archer and Sato spend a good chunk of the episode in bed together, only to discover at the end that she and Mayweather are plotting behind his back. Also during the Obligatory Catfight between T’Pol and Sato, they each make pointed comments about the others’ sexual conquests, Sato about Tucker, T’Pol about Archer.

The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined… Like Spock before him and Sarek after him, the MU version of Soval has a goatée. Tradition!

More on this later… T’Pol comments that, while it may take centuries, humans will pay for their arrogance—we already know from DS9’s “Crossover” (and that show’s subsequent MU episodes) that she’s right.

I’ve got faith…

“Perhaps it was a pet owned by the original crew.”

“Unless one of them owned a velociraptor, I find it extremely unlikely.”

–Archer and Phlox speculating about who or what killed Kelby.

Welcome aboard. Recurring regulars Gary Graham and Derek Magyar are back as the MU versions of Soval and Kelby, respectively; both will return as their mainline selves in “Terra Prime.”

John Mahon plays the MU version of Gardner. While the mainline version has been mentioned several times—in passing in “Shadows of P’Jem” and “First Flight,” and then being established as Forrest’s replacement as Commander, Starfleet following the latter’s death in “The Forge”—only his MU counterpart has ever been seen onscreen.

The late great character actor Gregory Itzin plays the last of his five Trek roles as Black, having previously appeared in “Shadows of P’Jem” as a Vulcan captain, twice on DS9 as a Klaestron politician in “Dax” and as a thief in “Who Mourns for Morn?” and on Voyager as a Dinaali doctor in “Critical Care.”

Finally, for the first time on Enterprise, Majel Barrett lent her voice to the Defiant computer, using the same vocal style she did on the original series when she voiced the Enterprise computer. With this appearance, she voiced Starfleet computers on all the Trek TV shows that aired in her lifetime.

Trivial matters: This, obviously, continues from “In a Mirror, Darkly,” and also serves as both a prequel to the original series’ “Mirror, Mirror” and a sequel to the original series’ “The Tholian Web.”

It was during production of this episode that the cast and crew learned that UPN would not be renewing the show for a fifth season.

Part of why the episode was two parts was to amortize the cost of re-creating the Defiant over two episodes’ budgets.

This is the only episode of the show called Enterprise in which no scenes take place on a ship called Enterprise.

Phlox at one point comments that Earth’s literature is different in the mainline universe from what he’s read in the MU, indicating that the MU has been parallel but nastier going back centuries. Writer Mike Sussman has credited a similar conversation in the TNG novel Dark Mirror by Diane Duane, in which the Enterprise-D crew travelled to the MU, as the inspiration for that.

The details of Sato and Archer’s lives in the mainline universe were created for the screen graphic, and parts of them were visible in high-def if you pause and squint. Archer in particular is listed as having gone on to serve as an admiral, as Starfleet’s Chief of Staff, as Earth’s ambassador to Andoria, as a member of the Federation Council, and eventually Federation President.

Sussman had a notion for a fifth-season MU episode, had the show been renewed. He collaborated with Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore for a novel version of it, Age of the Empress, which appeared in the Mirror Universe: Glass Empires trade paperback, and which picked up right from this episode, with Empress Sato consolidating her power. An additional followup story, “Nobunaga” by David Stern, appeared in the Mirror Universe: Shards and Shadows anthology.

Because there was still a hope when writing this of a fifth season, Sussman left the final fates of Reed, Phlox, and Archer vague so they might be available for a later episode.

The presence of the Defiant in the MU will be a plot point when the U.S.S. Discovery visits the MU in its first season, which takes place a century after this.

It’s been a long road… “One day, humanity will pay for its arrogance.” Parts of this episode are enjoyable as hell. And parts of it are just awful.

Among the enjoyable parts: Archer manipulating the artificial gravity to stop the Gorn, which is one of those “why don’t they do this more often?” things. Phlox’s discourse on the less brutal nature of Earth literature in the mainline universe is a delight, with the additional amusing comment that Shakespeare is just as dreary in both universes. Sato’s takeover at the end from a gobsmacked Archer is beautifully played, with a scene that director Marvin V. Rush lensed very similarly to the scene in the “Queen of Heaven” episode of I, Claudius when Castor dies of poison and watches his wife Livilla kiss Sejanus (played by Sir Patrick Stewart).

And Gregory Itzin oozes corrupt menace as Black. It’s funny, I remembered his part as being much larger from the times I watched this episode previously (both when it first aired in 2005 and when I was rewatching episodes in preparation for my own MU fiction), but he’s only really in two scenes, which is a pity, as the episode could’ve used more of him.

It certainly could’ve used less of John Mahon’s unsubtle performance as Gardner, which is one of the awful bits. So is the CGI Gorn, which just comes across as fan-service filler, with the added lack-of-bonus of reminding us all of the mediocre state of CGI in 2005. (At the time, CGI was absolutely horrible at conveying mass. It worked for things that were light and airy or ethereal, like Species 8472 on Voyager or the Kaminoans in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, but not for things that needed to convey physically threatening menace. See also the 2003 Hulk movie.)

Also the story ends just as it’s getting good. Sato making her move makes for a fine twist, but it makes for a lousy ending, because it’s by far the most interesting thing that’s happened in the episode, and it begs for a followup. (At least we got one in the Glass Empires trade paperback…) On the one hand, it seems to be a belated apology for how little screen time Sato and Mayweather have gotten by having them be on top in the end. On the other hand, it’s not the real Sato and Mayweather, and it doesn’t happen until the end. So while it’s an attempt to make up for their being marginalized, they wind up still being marginalized…

However, the worst thing about this episode is the same as the worst thing about the last one: Scott Bakula is just horrible as the sneering MU Archer. The script leans into it a little bit, as he’s very obviously batshit and out of his depth here, but even so, it’s just painful to watch him. Bakula comes across like a teenager who’s never been on stage before try to act but not quite getting it right.

The two-parter is a fun diversion, and it’s nifty to see the re-creation of the Constitution-class ships as a nostalgia hit, but it doesn’t really hold together, and, as with the first part, loses a lot on rewatching.

Warp factor rating: 5

This is the final Enterprise Rewatch entry for 2023. We’ll be taking the holidays off, then be back on the 8th of January 2024 with “Demons.” Here’s hoping everyone has a safe and wonderful holiday and a joyous new year.

Keith R.A. DeCandido urges everyone to pick up Star Trek Explorer #9, which has, among other things, Keith’s new Discovery short story “Work Worth Doing,” which explores the backstory of Federation President Laira Rillak. It’s the first Discovery story to appear in the magazine.

The post Star Trek: Enterprise Rewatch: “In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II” appeared first on Reactor.

Below you will find: MUSICALS. QUEER PIRATES. A CHONKY DRAGON. MULTIPLE MEET-CUTES. FRIENDSHIP.

The Magic of Good Omens

Getting to spend more time with Aziraphale and Crowley is always something to be thankful for, especially since the first season of Good Omens covered everything from the original book by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Good Omens 2 delivered the goods—giving text to the subtext of the angel and demon’s romance, performed to perfection by Michael Sheen and David Tennant respectively. Each episode of the second season brought me joy, with the minisodes (the Nazi zombie magician one was a particular favorite) being the whipped cream and sprinkles on an already delectable viewing experience. And now that Amazon’s given the greenlight to a third and final season, even more magic (and presumably the Second Coming) can ensue.

—Vanessa

When Jim Met Spock

I want Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to do its own thing, not just play prequel connect-the-dots. Truly. I swear that I do. But there are things that matter to me, points of clarification and history that need addressing. Chief among those was: How did Kirk and Spock meet?

It needed to be something casual, of course; no swelling score and heightened drama to signal its import. We rarely get so obvious a cue when meeting the people who change our lives. But I needed to see it, and the writing on Strange New Worlds gave me hope on that front—namely by allowing James T. Kirk to behave like himself instead of the depressing Zapp Brannigan-ized headcanon that the character has become to so many. Look at this weirdly charismatic bookworm who must help anyone who looks even slightly sad! He can’t stop himself from trying to play that Vulcan’s chess game from across the bar. He’s not gonna inappropriately flirt with Uhura, but he will bring her a cookie. He can sense that La’an is tuning into him, even if he can’t understand why. That’s the guy I remember.

But the show did one better by setting up an antagonism between Spock and Jim’s older brother, Sam. The two scientists never got on particularly well, but in the lead-up to our legendary meetcute, we see Spock getting aggravated with Sam for minute-but-incredibly-irritating things, namely being messy and never clearing his dishes. So when Jim and Sam have a fight in front of Uhura (over their dad and legacy and who is the favored son, which Sam should be talking about with said father instead of his little brother, by the by), Jim is understandably embarrassed and a little miffed at his brother’s behavior and his storming off—

—leaving Spock the perfect opening to clear Sam’s dish in annoyance and instantly bond with soulmate life partner t’hy’la future captain. Uhura introduces them and grins, as though she knows she’s just done something momentous. Jim invites Spock to sit with them. It’s mundane. It’s silly. It’s absolutely dazzling.

—Emmet

The Second Joyous Gorgeous Season of the Ongoing Miracle That Is Our Flag Means Death

LET’S TALK ABOUT JIM. As a queer, nonbinary person of Puerto Rican descent, I really never thought I’d see a queer, nonbinary Puerto Rican on TV. It’s too niche an identity for TV Executives to bother with, I figured. Sure, there have been major strides made in terms of Latinx representation in media (Wednesday! Andor! Anything Pedro Pascal is doing!) but for a character to be Latinx AND queer AND gender nonconforming seemed like too big of a gift to ask for.

And then, there was Vico Ortiz.

Granted, Jim isn’t specifically Puerto Rican on the show, as OFMD exists in a kind of vaguely Victorian Era Atlantic Ocean liminal space. But Vico is Puerto Rican, Vico’s accent is Puerto Rican, and that matters. Like, remember when Diego Luna was doing the press tour for Rogue One and was talking about how important it was that a Star Wars character was allowed to have his Mexican accent? It’s the same thing. They aren’t anglicizing the way the actors speak, so there are Mexicans in space and Puerto Ricans on the high seas.

Specifically, really hot queer nonbinary Puerto Ricans on the high seas. Because this season, Jim was allowed to have short hair and a polyamorous relationship and a drawn-on mustache. We got to see Jim as part of Blackbeard’s crew in a sexy, bondage-y leather-and-rope situation. We got to see them kiss people and stab people and saw off Izzy’s leg and it’s just ALL SO SEXY. Like, how am I even supposed to concentrate on anything else when a character like Jim exists. Maybe this isn’t nerdy joy, maybe this is nerdy yearning, but whatever. We are blessed for having a character like Jim on TV both for Representation reasons and for horny reasons.

—Christina

I’ve never met a fictional Purgatory I didn’t love, but OFMD’s Gravy Basket might have vaulted to the top of my list. The lighting, the inexplicable pig, the need for a reasonably priced inn, the Thinking Cliff—it all adds up to a great netherworld/peek into Ed’s tortured psyche.

—Leah

Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi was a popular fantasy release this year, so I don’t think I’m breaking any new ground by talking about how excellent it is. Amina’s infamous pirate days are behind her; she’s dedicated to being a mother now, and protecting her family by staying out of the limelight. But when she’s blackmailed into a quest to find the missing daughter of a wealthy noble, she finds herself more willing to return to her old ways than she would like to admit. The twelfth-century cities along the Indian Ocean are richly imagined and heavily researched, and Chakraborty weaves together whimsical characters and high stakes with a mastery recognizable to fans of her previous Daevabad series. But our main character, Amina, is a fantastic centerpiece: torn between the need to protect her family and her own habits towards recklessness, Amina is a rare protagonist, and one I’m looking forward to following through the series.

—Bailey

The Carousel Ride in The Last of Us

I don’t have any particular nostalgia for shopping malls—they weren’t a big part of my teenage life—and yet this scene, set in an extended flashback in which Ellie and Riley spend a night in abandoned and decaying mall, has stuck with me all year. Maybe it’s down to the Cure (a band that was very much a part of my teenage existence). Not only does this mall have a relatively pristine carousel in working condition (something the malls I grew up with definitely did not have), but as it starts to whirl the opening notes of “Just Like Heaven” chime out and suddenly I was fully drowning in nostalgia. Turns out, not even the apocalypse can dim Robert Smith’s mopey romanticism… It’s the perfect song to sell this moment, capturing the giddy joy and awkwardness of these two friends/crushes, uncertain about everything except their happiness at being together again.

In the middle of an ultimately devastating episode, this scene carves out precious space for these two teenagers, whose lives have been defined by danger and loss and strict rules for survival, to bask in the warm lights and just enjoy being together as the carousel spins and the familiar song plays. And I love that it’s not rushed: it all lasts just a little under two minutes, with roughly 30 seconds in which they simply ride in companionable, tipsy silence, reveling in the moment as the music surrounds them, and it’s perfect. It can’t last, but within the world of The Last of Us, these moments of joy feel so triumphant and so hard-won that they resonate for me in a way that outshines everything else.

—Bridget

Launching Koroks Across Hyrule

This was another excellent year for video games, and while I spent my fair share of time with smaller indie games—Dredge, Sea of Stars, Cocoon, and the surprisingly SFF-tinged Powerwash Simulator to name a few—I sunk at least 400 hours into The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Like its predecessor, Tears of the Kingdom shows you the end goal (defeating a particularly ghoulish version of the ancient evil know as Ganon), but encourages you to meander your way to the finish line. And meander I did. Investigate rumors about the missing princess with a reporter who also happens to be a pelican? Sure! Follow a group of pitchfork-wielding locals into battle? You betcha! Rebuild an entire seaside village? It would be my pleasure. But it was the task of reuniting several hundred adorable, bumbling forest spirits that brought out the best and worst in players, including myself. The first few times I came across a korok with a too-big backpack, I treated them with care, building a makeshift cart to safely deliver them to their friend across the field. Then I realized I could attach the korok directly to my horse’s hitch and bounce on down the road, the korok “oof”ing all the way. By the tenth time, I noticed that the game designers often left building materials near the stranded korok—including rockets. And thus the Hyrule Aeronautics and Space Administration was born…

–Sarah

“Dear Alien Who Art in Heaven”, from Asteroid City

In this year of extraordinary films, I would argue that Asteroid City was one of the best. (In fact, I’m going to argue that, soon, in essay form.) And “Dear Alien Who Art in Heaven” is a perfect encapsulation of why: on the surface it’s silly and catchy, almost lighthearted. But it’s also a group of children processing the terror of the unknown, in a song, while their teacher desperately tries to stick to her script and ignore that her understanding of reality has to change. This is happening while the kids’ parents are being told lies by their government in another room—even though at least some of the truth has already come out in the papers. And then the parents see their kids performing this musical number through a closed-circuit TV, even though they’re only a few feet away and could just come outside to watch.

There’s so much going on here, and the song is good, and Seu Jorge is back in the Andersonverse! The alien’s in their heaven and all is right with the world.

–Leah

Dressing Up for Ren Faire

I’ve always been too timid to throw myself into the earnestness of cosplay or Halloween costumes without a clear theme, but for my first trip back to a Renaissance Faire in a decade, I had to at least make an effort. It helped that I was joined by the boundlessly creative Tor folks—not to mention the perfect Etsy find in a secondhand dirndl that was exactly my size and adorned with edelweiss (my Oma’s favorite flower) buttons. Walking through the Ren Faire in a swishy dress that fit like a glove and fit the brief made me feel like saying “hurra” (apparently “huzzah” in German).

—Natalie

David Tennant Owes Me Money for Making Me Feel Too Many Feelings

David Tennant has been many things over his career. A duck with far too much money. The literal Casanova. One of the most frightening Marvel villains. A detective who can’t seem to shave for his depression, stuck in a seaside town full of secrets. But, of course, he gained prominence in the public eye by playing the starring role on Doctor Who when the show came back from the dead in the 21st century. As his iteration is my Doctor—being the person who is your favorite, or even the fundamental version of the character in your eyes—I was heartbroken when he left. And I’ve enjoyed many of the projects he’s been a part of since (Scrooge McDuck has never been more lovable, which is a weird thing to think at any point in life), but I always assumed that the Doctor would be the role he was forever tied to in my mind.

Then he became Crowley in Good Omens, based on one of my favorite books. And he was absolutely perfect. How rude of him. Oh, and a cameo in a very good spate of Clone Wars episodes turned into a full co-starring role as keeper of all lightsaber knowledge on Ahsoka, the ancient droid Huyang.

This year conspired against me—the second season of Good Omens was arriving mere months before Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary, with Ahsoka smack in between them. David Tennant was set to play the Doctor again, alongside one of the show’s greatest companions, Donna Noble, a character who’d received a decidedly unjust fate at the end of her tenure. I was already prepared for the emotional wallop of having the Doctor and Donna back, but before I could even reach those summits, Good Omens slid in out of nowhere and K.O.’d  me with a love confession from Crowley to millennia-long best friend Aziraphale that goes decidedly awry. I gasped. I cried. I might have genuinely had a panic attack out of surprise? It was glorious.

Two months later, there’s a robot (I should mention that I am always emotionally compromised by robots) voiced by David Tennant, giving Ahsoka Tano advice about her relationship with former-Padawan Sabine Wren. David-Tennant-the-robot telling the duo not to separate and, when they don’t follow his advice, David-Tennant-the-robot openly grieving in the wake of their possible deaths. And there’s me, sobbing again over robot feelings.

Then there was David Tennant several weeks after that, back as the reminted (and justifiably confused) Fourteenth Doctor, immediately reunited with his best friend who can never remember him, Donna Noble. Of course that problem got fixed, as it was always meant to, but this Doctor noticed some interesting changes in the midst of all that. He was quicker to say that he loved people, attuned to Donna’s moods, constantly holding onto her as though separation might kill him. Just two best friends, clinging to one another in a reunion they knew couldn’t last forever until… it did. He broke me a third time.

I just don’t think that one actor should be allowed to shove me through a meat grinder of emotions on multiple television shows in the space of less than six months. David Tennant owes me money.

—Emmet

Chuck Tingle Takeover

Chuck Tingle took over this very site! And it was magnificent! Go check out the index if you missed any of it, and read Dr. Tingle’s excellent horror novel, Camp Damascus.

—Leah

Everything About Reservation Dogs

Reservation Dogs wrapped up its third and final season in September, and while fans might be tempted to mourn or wish for more, this is a show about how to say goodbye, and how the things and people we love are never really gone. And it does so with incredible humor, intelligence, and earnestness—it absolutely made me cry throughout its run, but not nearly as often as it made me laugh out loud, or left me beaming and feeling happy to be alive.

If you haven’t seen the series, please give it a chance at some point (it’s currently streaming on Hulu). It’s such a special show—I could go on and on about the wonderful cast (impossible to pick a favorite, though it’s fun to try!) and how perfectly the overall arc of the narrative resolved in the final episodes, but mostly I just want to thank creator Sterlin Harjo and everyone else who worked on the show for making television that’s not quite like anything else I’ve ever seen before; I’m so excited to see where this cast and creative team go in the future.

—Bridget

Levi’s garden in Scavengers Reign

Scavengers Reign took me completely by surprise, both because I had seen zero advertising for it before it appeared on HBO Max, and because it’s a wholly original and engrossing science fiction epic. It’s a brutal tale of shipwrecked space-haulers fighting to survive and escape a mostly-hostile alien world populated by telekinetic salamanders, giant parasitic crabs, and other fascinating perils—so where is the joy, I hear you asking. Among the survivors is Levi, a robot that finds itself slowly changed by the planet, its circuits altered by symbiotic spores. It is primarily through Levi that we’re able to occasionally slow down and appreciate the beauty of this world, as the robot begins to wonder and even dream for the first time.

–Sarah

Big Door Prize

Did no one else watch The Big Door Prize? A perfect cast, a lightly goofy premise, a lot of teen and adult drama, a great moment of tension involving a Ferris wheel, and the long-underappreciated Josh Segarra playing the owner of a kind of weird restaurant? (Segarra was so dour, so serious, on Arrow, and I am loving the way Big Door Prize and She-Hulk let him branch out.) The whole idea here is that a weird vending machine appears and if you give it your details (including your SSN, which, no thank you!) it will give you a card that tells you your destiny. This works out for people in all kinds of ways. Also there are weird moles, and Chris O’Dowd, and I really just think you should try it.

—Molly

James Urbaniak in Oppenheimer

As my group chats can wearily attest, I’ve talked of little else but Oppy since July. I’ll be writing about the movie more in the new year, but for now, for this list, I want to give a shout to the pure joy of seeing Dr. Rusty Venture himself, James fucking Urbaniak, appearing as mathematician Kurt Gödel, walking through the Princeton campus beside Tom Conti’s Einstein. In real life, Einstein once claimed that he stayed at Princeton: “Um das Privileg zu haben, mit Gödel zu Fuss nach Hause gehen zu dürfen” (more or less “to have the privilege of walking home with Gödel”—but even kinder than that in a way that doesn’t quite translate) and it made me so happy to see him included in the movie.

—Leah

Loki Gave Birth to the Multiverse Because Loki Is a Mom

Apologies, but I’ll never stop yelling about this particular thing. So many excellent bits about the second season of Loki aside, this part had me screaming at my television. Because the Loki of Norse mythology has done all sorts of fun things, and one of those things was having a truly ambiguous gender. Another one of those things was giving birth to a bunch of really cool animals (Sleipnir, anyone?) So Loki is a trickster god and a cosmic problem and a multifaceted being, but Loki is also a mom. Unfortunately, the MCU didn’t much like those aspects of the myths, and made Asgardian culture pretty sexist, or at least very into gendered norms. And yet…

Loki goes fully arcane at the end of season two and saves the multiverse by literally pulling the cords of all timelines together, dragging them to the End of Time, and using sheer force of will to weave them into a tree (that looks an awful lot like Yggdrasil, of course). The act is clearly arduous, painful, demands every bit of his strength—and at the end, the multiverse is born. It can’t be any clearer than that.

LOKI IS OUR MOM. THANKS MOM.

—Emmet

(Spoilery) Moments from Mrs. Davis!

Jay’s Sandwich

Jay’s whole thing is that he feeds people. He runs his decrepit diner out in the desert, and any time someone stops in, he makes them a plate and listens to their sorrows if they want to talk. He gives and gives and gives. The moment when Sister TK comes in, makes him sit at his own bar, and makes him a simple TK was one of the most moving artistic moments I had this year. I had to pause. I might have cried. (I do not cry.) There are Reasons for that, and I’m not gonna talk about them. But it makes me happier than I can say that this ridiculous show went there.

—Leah

 “The wings… are LITERAL.”

Of all the revelations on the delightfully bonkers Mrs. Davis, from Jesus Christ to the Holy Grail sneakers ad, this was the one that had me absolutely cackling: Nun Simone has no love lost for the universally hailed AI known as Mrs. Davis, yet even she is disillusioned to discover that this do-good algorithm, which has transformed into a modern religion, was based on a Buffalo Wild Wings app. People have sacrificed their lives, often literally, for a chance to be granted “wings” via app filter, and they aren’t even poetically metaphorical—gah, it’s perfect. And the fact that it was delivered in conversation with Ashley Romans as app developer Joy—a welcome return to television after her short-lived brilliance in Y: The Last Man—was the spicy buffalo sauce on top.

—Natalie

…Everything!

Mrs Davis is a show that encompasses an unbelievable number of things, and I was entirely in for everything: cell phone smashes, Betty Gilpin’s determination, exploding heads, Jesus making all kinds of delicious food, a screwy heist, and Shohreh Aghadashloo in a role that no one should ever spoil for anyone else, ever. Magic sneakers! Never-seen commercials! A really special roller-coaster, literally! I can’t talk about this show with anything approaching coherence, but it was the most inventive, most unexpected, most itself thing on television this year. Let Leah tell you more.

—Molly

Welcome to… Schmicagoooo!

While I enjoyed season 1 of Schmigadoon!, I couldn’t keep up with all of the classic musicals lampooned (though of course I appreciated Jane Krakowski’s riff on the Baroness from The Sound of Music), but season 2’s shift to Schmicago! was right up my musical theater nerd alley. Titus Burgess as the Narrator; Alan Cumming and Kristin Chenoweth showing us what would happen if Sweeney Todd and Miss Hannigan fell in love, then decided to grind some orphans into sausage; and, yes, Krakowski stealing the spotlight again as a gender-swapped Billy Flynn in lawyer Bobbie Flanagan. It was a smorgasbord of superstar cameos and sly winks that I was delighted to catch.

—Natalie

The Appendix to Matt Singer’s Opposable Thumbs

Opposable Thumbs is a co-biography of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. It’s one of my favorite things I read this year, and among its many great moments, singer includes an appendix titled “Buried Treasure That Siskel and Ebert Loved”—a chronological list of 25 movies that the critics championed, but that, for whatever reason, never landed with audiences. It’s such a cool and big-hearted gesture to use the last pages of this book to spotlight these movies, and I think S&E would have loved it.

—Leah

Madeline Usher’s wig in The Fall of the House of Usher

There was a lot to enjoy in Mike Flanagan’s camp horror miniseries The Fall of the House of Usher: Carla Gugino’s performance as a demonic entity, abundant references to Edgar Allan Poe’s canon, and the dramatic monologues we’ve come to expect from Flanagan’s work. But every time Madeline Usher (Mary McDonnell) stepped into the frame, her silver wig became the central focus. I cannot emphasize enough how positive this comment is. There’s a great scene later in the show when we encounter an emotional climax for Madeline’s character, and when she reaches up, we’re expecting her to take the wig off, a metaphorical shedding of the armor and chilly exterior she’s worn all season. But she just unclips the bangs. Excellent.

—Bailey

The Ending of Killers of the Flower Moon

DO NOT READ THIS BLURB IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE.

OK?

The moment when Martin Scorsese takes us to the set of a radio program (The Lucky Strike Hour, a real show from the 1930s) to show us the immediate mediation of the white supremacist terrorist murders of the Osage—all of whom are voiced by white actors—is breathtaking. The moment when he himself steps out to read the obituary of Mollie Kyle, taking us into what can only be the future from the radio station’s perspective, to show us that after everything we’ve seen, the killers outlived those they wronged, and that now Scorsese is calling himself out for being complicit in the ongoing mediation of a terrorist nightmare, is one of the greatest cinematic moments I have ever seen.

—Leah

Justice for Ro Laren and Donna Noble

You know how you watch a show that purports to be (sometimes) about empathy and decency, and then something horrible happens that seems to undermine those themes and it’s just left hanging there? Because that was how it felt to watch Ensign Ro and Donna Noble’s last episodes on their respective shows, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Doctor Who. In Ro’s case, it was always particularly painful because the show, at the time, clearly sided with Picard’s hurt feelings over her desertion to the Maquis. How could she do that to him? He had placed his trust in her, a man who never did so easily, and that betrayal was going to haunt him for the rest of his life. With Donna, it was even easier to see where the story was falling down—not only did the Doctor forcibly block Donna’s memory without her consent, but it was done on a narrative level to make the Doctor really sad.

When Jean-Luc confronts Ro Laren in the final season of Picard, it makes no difference that she returned to Starfleet some time ago and was reinstated (after a lengthy rehabilitation process that he knows nothing about). He is still angered by her actions, unwilling to trust her. And finally, thirty years after her defection aired on television, Ro gets the chance to counter this narrative… because Jean-Luc betrayed her, too. She questions his loyalty to institutions, calls him out for his entirely conditional support, tells him that he confused morality with duty. Jean-Luc may still be heartbroken by what happened, but he doesn’t have more right to that hurt than Ro Laren does. He never did and, in fact, the fault for this hurt lands equally at his own feet. And though Ro does die shortly afterward (having given Picard information essential to the Federation’s survival), she does so on her own terms—and Picard is left with the knowledge that his own pride prevented him from healing this wound a long time ago.

In Donna’s case, the ending is much happier, but no less emotional; The Doctor knows that Donna will die once he releases the knowledge in her brain and they save London together. Donna, once restored, tells him these are the best sixty seconds of her life, and dies in his arms. The Doctor tells the Meep’s forces that they were defeated—”by the DoctorDonna.” But a moment later, Donna gasps back to life, and everything is fine. Donna Noble gets her story back, her memories back, and everything that she deserves. And it happens in a snap because that’s how easy it should be. Television gets pulled together quickly and often in a hodgepodge state. It’s great to hit the Undo button now and again.

—Emmet

Grimm! (yes, the TV show from 2011)

My year began with a very weird time in which I couldn’t do anything. (Recovering from surgery is a trip.) And so I watched Grimm. I watched all seven seasons of it, all the patently absurd character twists, the shift from fairy-tale monsters to elaborate otherworldly schemes, the relationships that made no sense and the … listen, I still don’t really understand what happened with Juliette, but I’d probably watch a whole show about it. I watched Grimm partly just to watch Portland (while I was stuck inside, not being in Portland), but also because a magical procedural is a ridiculous and perfect idea. Please give me another one. Twenty-two episode seasons and all. Please.

—Molly

Dungeons and Dragons Rolled a Nat 20

There was a lot of trepidation around the original announcement of a Dungeons of Dragons movie. While the tabletop game has had a large impact on the fantasy landscape (as well as a generally improved image in the eyes of the public), its vastness in scope and generally complicated ruleset make it difficult to sell. But this movie does it justice—charming, funny, heartfelt, and imaginative, bolstered by a cast that commits to their performances (Regé-Jean Paige as Xenk Yendar and Michelle Rodriguez as Holga Kilgore come to mind). Honor Among Thieves balances introducing new viewers to an unfamiliar world with callouts that players will recognize and appreciate. There’s an attention to detail here that points to a genuine love for Dungeons and Dragons and enthusiasm for sharing that love with others. I would watch a sequel. I would watch 10 sequels.

—Bailey

THEMBERCHAUD.

–Leah

In a year full of excellent movies, Honor Among Thieves may have been the most fun. It’s hard to pick a favorite moment or character or even an easter egg—but I see you, Bobby the Barbarian!—because it all fits so perfectly together as a whole. And that’s because everyone commits to the bit. The performances are all pitch-perfect, and the characters are recognizable “types” without being cliche (okay yes, the tiefling has a predictably tragic backstory, but a sorcerer who lacks self-confidence? COMEDY GOLD!). The meta-references are clever, but never overshadow the story. And best of all, the writing is funny, but never mean or snarky—this movie loves DnD, and it wants us along for the ride.

–Sarah

Wait okay, also: “Oh, Jarnathan…”

—Leah, again

Taylor Swift Friendship Bracelets 

The Swifties are a fully realized fandom. There is a plot, a mythology, layers of backstory you have to know in order to get all the references. You can analyze Taylor Swift the same way we analyze Lord of the Rings. One day someone will publish the Swiftmarillion. I’m right and you know it.

The Swiftie friendship bracelets quickly became a key element of her record-breaking Eras Tour this year, with fans exchanging homemade bracelets featuring lyrics and references with each other at shows. It’s a beautiful way to connect and share in each other’s excitement, but the cutest part of this is that the fans just…started doing this, and it spread. Taylor had nothing to do with it beyond a throwaway lyric in her song “You’re On Your Own Kid”. It’s one of the truly great parts of being in a fandom—someone does something really stinkin’ cute and it catches on like wildfire. Everyone is being creative in a way that’s relatively accessible and easy to participate in, and you don’t actually have to go to a show to participate (fans are mailing each other bracelets, or exchanging them at screenings of the Eras Tour movie, too). And it’s just so goddamn sweet, you know? (Made even sweeter knowing that Taylor’s new boyfriend, Travis Kelce, got her attention after making a bracelet for her with his number on it. WHAT A MOVE.) From what I hear, it’s spreading to other fandoms too. So get yourself a bead kit now, especially if you plan on being at WorldCon in Glasgow next year–I’ll have an arm full of nerdy bracelets to share with you.

—Christina

That Time Tech Tried Riot Racing Exactly Once and Won on The Bad Batch

A lot of great Star Wars stuff happened this year; droid bars became a thing; Din and Grogu got a house; Ezra Bridger pretended to be a stormtrooper again; Anakin Skywalker’s spirit teased Ahsoka into not dying; nightsisters were everywhere. But much of the best drama and comedy in that galaxy far, far away belonged to The Bad Batch. For most traumatizing entry, I give the award to “The Outpost,” a devastating short war film that finally breaks Crosshair of his loyalty to the Empire at great cost.

On the flip side, we had the early season episode “Faster,” in which half the Batch (Omega, Wrecker, and Tech) are dragged off by their employer Cid to a world called Safa Toma, where she has a droid pilot involved in a sport called Riot Racing. The droid in question is played by Ben Schwartz doing what he does best (self-aggrandizement via flawless delivery), but he’s offed by one of Cid’s criminal business associates who is hoping to collect money for her bad racing bets. This leaves Tech to step in and race in the droid’s stead… mostly because he’s interested and because Omega said they had to help. (You do what little-big sister tells you. It’s their only hard and fast rule.)

Riot Racing is basically Mario Kart, with added Star Wars flavor, but because it’s a bit slower and grubbier than podracing, there’s even more room for deadly shenanigans and it’s easier to see what’s happening on the track. And because Tech is incredibly intelligent—and more than a little autistic, as this season helpfully highlights—he handles the race with his usual straightforward unflappability and keen focus, while Wrecker worries at him over the comms. If you’re into competence porn, this is where it’s at. The fast and criminal nature of the sport overlaid with Tech’s utter calm makes the episode a very special kind of fun because it’s never about the tension of winning so much as the puzzle of how he will manage it. Tech’s perplexity on learning that Wrecker and Omega didn’t believe he would survive (“You sound surprised,” he says when Wrecker cheers over the fact that he won) makes the victory that much sweeter.

Is it even funnier that this occurs while the group is trying to keep a low profile and their most cautious members (Hunter and Echo) are on a cargo haul? Yes. Yes, it is.

—Emmet

Deadloch: The Greatest Feminist Comedy Crime Series to Ever Come Out of Australia

Deadloch tends to be described as a “feminist noir comedy” or a “black comedy murder mystery,” but it’s incredibly difficult to capture what makes the show so brilliant without digging into everything that happens across its eight hour-long episodes. The creators of the series called the project “Funny Broadchurch,” but it goes so far beyond a straightforward parody or wacky Australian spoof of the ultra-grim British/Nordic crime genre—it’s hilarious, but in genuinely surprising ways, while also weaving together some deeply compelling (and also very goofy) characters into its central mystery.

Set in the titular Tasmanian town, the story follows two mismatched female detectives as they investigate the homicide of a local man—at first the spoofing of conventions (one detective is a  hyper-organized straight shooter, the other is a foul-mouthed trainwreck) feels relatively safe, even as it smartly calls out some of the more troubling tropes we’ve seen play out a million times (the sexist police commissioner automatically assumes the murder victim must be a woman, and seems offended to find that he’s wrong). But as the series goes on, it becomes clear that the show is operating on a much higher level—the humor isn’t a veneer, it’s the entire point: startlingly irreverent humor as both a survival mechanism and a way forward, veering from the goofy to the absurd, from endearingly silly to absolutely savage in its takedowns of everything from the casual misogyny and homophobia of the locals and police brass to the hypocrisy and entitlement of the town’s wealthier and supposedly more enlightened residents.

But even that doesn’t do it justice. I finished watching Deadloch a few weeks ago and I can’t stop thinking about—both in terms of ridiculous and amazing bits of dialogue that cracked me up and the perfect balancing act it manages to pull off, in the end. The series is likely not for everyone, but it’s brilliant, and one of my favorite things to happen all year—it’s available on Amazon Prime if you want to check it out!

—Bridget

Characters Who Are Actually Allowed To Age and Still Be Rad

Ahsoka Tano. Stede Bonnet. Una Chin-Riley. Donna Noble. Blackbeard. Captain Christopher Pike. Hell, even Brother Day. And every character played by Pedro Pascal, everyone’s favorite middle-aged adoptive dad. It was a really, really good year for remembering that adventures, stories, lives don’t end at 40, 50, or beyond.. (Am I going to note here that there are still more men getting good grown-ass roles than anyone else? I sure am. But this year, unlike so many others, gave me a little bit of hope that it doesn’t always have to be like that.)

—Molly

Everything Is a Musical Now, Dammit

It’s no secret that I love musicals, and generally wish they were in more things. And sure, sometimes we get lucky, and the world provides. Buffy has a rightfully famous musical episode, after all, and I have the Quantum Leap Man-of-La-Mancha episode to keep me warm when the winter is particularly foreboding.

But I want more, and I deserve to be accommodated for no reason other than significant complaining. (That’s not true, the real reason is that I’m empirically right about musicals being a fascinating art form to port over into every other art form. I will never stop insisting this.) It must have worked, too, by the varied evidence this year.

“I’m Just Ken” was easily one of the best parts of Barbie, and contained endless homages to movie musical history therein. The Marvels went to a planet where people sang instead of speaking, and choreographed dance breaks ensued. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off offered layers of meta-reimagining to its source material, but the final form of Scott’s original story? A musical. The Enterprise crew accidentally activates an improbability fold on Strange New Worlds, causing everyone in the crew to break into song when their feelings are running high. BOOM. Musical. I have won my debate with no one. Thank you.

—Emmet

***

Those are our picks—be sure to share your own moments of joy in the comments!

The post A Few Things That Brought Us Nerdy Joy in 2023 appeared first on Reactor.

The clip, which is an exclusive from IGN, comes from the season two episode, “Charades,” where Spock briefly becomes human after a little bit of a DNA mix-up. In it, Number One (Rebecca Romijn) offers Spock some chewing gum, which he tries like a curious schoolboy. Things take a turn, however, when he tries mixing the gum with nuts and then with pickles. Not a good combo by any stretch.

TrekMovie.com has another clip from the bonus features—this one is with prosthetic design supervision head J. Alan Scott where he talks about the “half masks” the show created, making becoming a Klingon, let’s say, as easy as putting on the equivalent of a wig with a forehead and getting some face paint done.

Check it out below:

The home release version comes with featurettes titled “Producing Props,” “The Costumes Closet,” “The Gorn,” “Singing in Space,” and “Exploring New Worlds.”

You can buy the DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K UHD Blu-ray at the retail store of your choice.

The post Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Home Release Includes Cut Scene Where Spock Chews Gum appeared first on Reactor.

We’ve focused on standalone essays and articles, here, but we’re also quite proud of all the television reviews and movie coverage we’ve published in 2023—a year indelibly marked by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, which brought new focus to a number of issues affecting the actors, writers, and other artists and professionals whose creativity and labor are indispensable within the entertainment industry. Without them, we wouldn’t have all these amazing shows or movies to talk about, and what would we do without bickering angels and demons, fabulous pirates, adorable dragons, Starfleet, and Barbenheimer?

We hope that you enjoy the selections below, and please feel free to tell us about the articles and columns (and movies and shows) that struck a chord with you over the last year…

Genres on the Rise: Competence Porn and Cozy Fantasy

Competence Porn Is Comforting — Where Can I Find More of It? by Rachel Ayers

There’s something so very gratifying about watching people live up to their full potential—getting to see all the hard work they put in pay off, not just in their private satisfaction but as part of a group of similarly talented, driven people who have dedicated themselves to their craft, and a shared goal. It’s not unusual to dream about being outstandingly good at something, and in the end there’s a level of pure enjoyment that comes from seeing someone doing something they love, perform flawlessly, and win the day.

 

Sixties Fantasy Sitcoms and the Rise of Cozy Fantasy by R. Nassor

Cozy fantasy books make room for magic homemaking in regular, everyday life in a way not many works of fiction tend to do. Cozy, much like horror or comedy, is an emotional genre. The books are written to evoke warmth and comfort, and while the process can be subjective and responses might from person to person and over time, certain key elements tend to remain the same. We can see some of the DNA of the ’60s fantasy sitcom mirrored in this new wave of cozy fantasy because we still respond to those elements—the comforts of home, family, friendship, and security, with just enough magic to keep things interesting and add a bit of comforting escapism into the mix.

 

Movie Moments from 2023

To Every Other Jobu Tupaki After Jamie Lee Curtis’s Oscar Win by Maya Gittelman

It’s funny, isn’t it? This is a story about a wild, wonderful multiverse of possibilities, and we still live in the universe where a story gets made out of our specific trauma and that story swept the Oscars, winning seven out of eleven nominations—including Best Supporting Actress—but not for the queer girl at the everything bagel core of the story whose heartache broke the world.

How a Chonky Dragon Wyrmed His Way Into Our Hearts by Leah Schnelbach

I think part of it is how he works with his shape. Rather than trying to fly, he chugs along like an earthworm. Rather than rearing up on his hind legs to impress them with his size, he rolls toward them, reveling in the way his weight carries him. He just seems so happy and excited to have something to hunt. And don’t get me wrong, I love the party in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, but I have to admit I was rooting for Themberchaud a little bit.

I Said I’d Make a Woman: Barbie and the Pygmalion Paradigm by Kristen Patterson

[T]hough Barbie’s success may feel unprecedented in our current cultural moment, the story of Barbie herself that Gerwig chooses to tell—that of a doll’s decision to become a real woman—actually has thousands of years of precedent in a story model that pervades multiple genres of film and literature, though is especially at home in tales of magical realism and science fiction: the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea.

 

Perspectives on Horror in Film and TV

“Not Much Choice”: Disability and Monstrosity in the Alien Franchise by Jay Kang Romanus

Disabled people don’t choose our disabilities; we’re instead thrown into an unhelpful world and told to survive. We’re taught to hate our own existence by the kind of bigotry represented by Chicago’s law, which described us as “disgusting object[s]” and condemned us for the crime of stepping outside. By the time of 1997’s Alien Resurrection—the fourth and final movie featuring Ellen Ripley—her journey of self-acceptance mirrors the journey disabled people must take in order to learn to live with ourselves in a world like this.

The Horror of Powerlessness: Skinamarink and the Rapture by Sarah Welch-Larson

Skinamarink is slow cinema masquerading as found-footage horror. The film’s inciting incident is of two children waking up to find that their father—and all the exterior windows and doors to their house—are gone. They’re left to fend for themselves in a home that has turned hostile, trapped in the dark with no way in or out, with only a TV and toys for company. Like most slow cinema, the film consists of long, quiet takes in which not much happens on screen; the genre invites contemplation and reflection. There isn’t much plot beyond the premise. The most common reading of the film is that it’s about child abuse, heavy fare for a difficult movie—but my own experience with Skinamarink had to do with another sense of powerlessness: that of childhood fear of the Rapture.

Science, Fiction, and Fungi: What The Last of Us Gets Right by Corrado Nai

Stories like The Last of Us do not transport us to a distant future or to an unrelatable, unrealistic scenario: they catapult us into the midst of a present we do not take seriously enough. The Last of Us hits us like a punch in the face, warning us to pay attention while we can. We need those stories. For many vulnerable people, better funding and research, a better understanding of the realities of fungal pathogens would mean a safer and healthier future. When it comes to fungi, all of us should care.

Spotlight on Superheroes

How Miles Morales Reclaimed His Own Story in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse by Monita Mohan

The creators of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse played upon our fears of their lead character of colour disappearing from the story, and turned that fear into the central plotline. Miles is desperate to belong in the Spider Society, and the spectacle of hundreds of Spider-People feeds into that desire. Miles has been the one and only Spider-Man of his world for a year— wanting to belong to something and be with people like him is understandable. He could easily have been lost in the crowd, the sole Miles Morales in a sea of Peter Parkers (with some exceptions). We live in a world where people of colour are still expected to diminish themselves to fit in, to toe the company line and maintain the status quo. To watch Miles defiantly refuse to follow the herd, even if that meant not being welcome among people he so desperately wanted to be with, is a statement in itself.

Eugenics and the Human/Animal Divide in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 by Leigha McReynolds

The Guardians defeat the High Evolutionary by refusing to reinscribe the hierarchies that he creates and sustains: by refusing the eugenic logic that some lives are better and some lives are not worth living. As audience members, our ability to recognize that what the High Evolutionary does is wrong makes us feel good about ourselves. We, too, are the good guys. But in reality, uncritical acceptance of eugenic systems and new eugenic practices align us with him, not the Guardians. We may be watching “just” a superhero movie, but our awareness of the history of eugenics and the dark side of genetic technology is part of the High Evolutionary’s defeat.

Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, and Terrence Malick Meet at a Diner to Discuss Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania by Leah Schnelbach

Our scene opens in a New York Diner—the kind that would have been bustling at 3:00am only a few years ago, but in our rent-hiked, COVID-ravaged city only a few people are sitting. They’re engaged in a heated discussion—or at any rate, two of them are, while a third seems to shrink into a corner of their shared booth…

Deep Dives Into Star Trek

Why Did Star Trek: Picard’s Final Season Focus on the Wrong Family? by Emmet Asher-Perrin

The final season of Picard was so touching. Wasn’t it great seeing all our friends back together again? Wasn’t it moving to learn how they’ve changed? Cathartic to let them all band together to save the galaxy one more time? Who wouldn’t want to be at that poker table, huh?

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way—we need to talk about Beverly Crusher.

 

“A Critical Division of Starfleet Intelligence”: Section 31 and the Normalization of the Security State by Jaime Babb

The revelations presented are truly heinous—even difficult to watch—and the entire season-long arc largely results from blowback against Section 31’s crimes against sentient life. And yet… the story pairs these revelations not only with complete legitimation of 31 as an organization, but complete acceptance of its crimes on the parts of our ostensible heroes. Worf—you know, the honourable guy? Whose friend, Odo, was deliberately infected with a plague by Section 31 with the intent of using him to wipe out his entire race? That Worf?—even calls them a “critical division of Starfleet Intelligence.”

Ben Sisko’s Non-Linear, Non-Binary Arc in Deep Space Nine’s “Emissary” Saved All My Lives by Jonathan Alexandratos

It betrays the pitch-after-pitch, experimental game of baseball Sisko thought he was living. It betrays linearity. The answer isn’t to ball all this up and throw it away, though. It’s to simply be. To exist. To know that existence is not just non-linear but non-binary. Sisko, like all humans, contains the capacity to exist across many pasts, choices, and futures. All of those existences can inform one another. We exist in dark recesses and hopeful speculations, and you are, like any good Motel 6, leaving a light on for you. It is upon this realization that the “Emissary” script notes the parenthetical: “And [Sisko] finally starts to grieve properly.”

Gaming Is Life

I Am a Mature and Responsible Adult Who Will Attach Rockets to Anything Just to See What Happens by Kali Wallace

Playing video games is not revolutionary praxis. But creating space for pleasure in a world that demands nonstop productivity in service of distant and often unachievable goals is.

I’m talking about fun. It’s good to have fun. Fun without a purpose. Fun that does not contribute in any material way to your economic status or career progress. Fun that does not serve any boss except itself, does not need or ask to justify its existence on any moral or practical axis, does not exist only as a stepping stone to a specific achievement.

 

The Very Small and The Very Large: Outer Wilds as Interactive Space Opera by Melissa Kagen

Videogames are great at being enormous and intense, and they’re great at being intimate and cozy. When we are very lucky, we find a game like Outer Wilds, which is both at once. This is also what excellent space opera tends to be—asking huge questions, but couching them in tiny, human-to-human connections. Philosophically vast, but snarky and personal. Intimate community plus vast, empty space.

How Baldur’s Gate 3 and Honor Among Thieves Finally Captured the Soul of D&D by Tyler Dean

Past attempts at adapting D&D have come across as lackluster, generic, or subpar fantasy fare that failed to realize that the game didn’t draw in generations of player because of its lore…it did so because it gave its players a deep sense of belonging. Honor Among Thieves, if you strip away its (admittedly very funny) one-liners and affable silliness, is a heartfelt story about the power of found family. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a video game that encourages its players to question whether or not they are being led into a gilded cage, unable to trust their own desires, and either struggling, heroically, to resist temptation, or else giving into it with relish and a touch of morbid curiosity.

 

Close Reads

Finally, let’s all take a minute to appreciate another year spent with the awesomely eclectic Close Reads column, curated by Leah Schnelbach. Digging into “the tiny, weird moments of pop culture,” Leah and their guests have explored the life-affirming joys of Pushing Daisies, the modern murder mysteries of Rian Johnson, and watching the Wachowski sisters’ Speed Racer for the first time. Trek fans can revel in the wonders of Worf’s character arc and Odo’s cooking, and others can wax nostalgic over Jumanji’s amazing Aunt Nora and the Book It! reading program—you can check out the full series here!

 ***

There’s so much to talk about, so let’s continue this in the comments—let us know what you think! And as always, if you’re feeling nostalgic or just looking for more deep dives into pop culture, you can always check out our “Some of the Best…” articles from previous years: here’s last year’s Film, TV, and Pop Culture list, last year’s list of Fiction articles, and our round-ups from 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017. Thanks for reading!

The post Some of Tor.com’s Best Articles About TV, Movies, and Pop Culture appeared first on Reactor.

While we’ve seen the publication of one DS9 standalone novel—Alex White’s Revenant (2021)—and it’s not impossible that more might surface eventually, the post-Litverse focus has understandably been on supporting recent live-action and animated series, with a number of new novels and audio dramas tying in to Discovery, Picard, Strange New Worlds, and Prodigy. Despite some thoroughly pleasurable outings in these television series, none of them have so far managed to displace DS9 as my personal favorite Trek of all time. 2023 saw the launch of Star Trek: Defiant, a new comic book series issued by IDW featuring DS9 characters, but I wasn’t really expecting new DS9 prose fiction any time soon.

All of which makes The Autobiography of Benjamin Sisko not only somewhat of a surprise but a particular treat. Following the format established in works covering the lives of James T. Kirk, Jean-Luc Picard, Kathryn Janeway, and Mr. Spock, this volume offers Sisko’s reminiscences about pivotal moments in his life—some loud, some quiet—and his general reflections on topics like morality, responsibility, leadership, betrayal, grief, and love.

The book’s conceit, as conveyed in the introduction, is that some time after Sisko’s departure from corporeal existence in “What You Leave Behind,” an energy beam containing an encrypted message emanates from the wormhole. Nog realizes it includes Sisko’s old command codes, and after it’s been decoded Jake spends two years sorting through the fifty hours of video in the message and creating a chronologically-ordered transcript of what he considers the most relevant passages. In our reality—and who knows, all of DS9’s grand story, along with every one of us, might be contained within a Benny Russell dream—Derek Tyler Attico is the weaver of the tale.

From its very start, going back to the pilot episode, DS9 set itself apart from other Trek shows by having its lead character contending with single parenthood and learning to deal with being revered as a major figure in an alien religion. As Sisko says in Chapter Twenty-Two of this book, “When she [Kai Opaka] told me I was to be the Emissary, I honestly thought it was a lot of what we used to call mumbo jumbo, but now I see how far ahead, and patient, Opaka was with me. She was not a nonlinear entity, but her faith gave her the ability to see far beyond all of us.” Which brings us to another key point: Sisko was not only perceived as critically important in the Bajoran faith, but was later revealed to have an actual touch of alien within him, since his biological mother had been inhabited by one of the nonlinear wormhole-dwelling aliens commonly called Prophets by the Bajorans when she conceived him.

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Sisko’s Autobiography honors this unique legacy in three ways. First, the narrative leaves Sisko in the otherworldly realm, his fate unresolved. Having him return safely to linear spacetime and reconnect with his family, of course, would have been a valid imaginative choice, and it was one ultimately taken by the relaunch novels. However, a core part of Sisko’s story is intriguing precisely because of his nonhuman provenance, and I think that attempting to “solve” that mystery, while also covering his entire life leading up to it, could potentially be unsatisfying and overwhelming in the scope of a single book. Attico does a fine job of making Sisko relatable by emphasizing that despite Sisko’s special place beyond linear existence, he sees himself as an ordinary mortal:

Even later, when I became comfortable as the Emissary and the responsibility it carried, I still never wanted or sought the power or the influence. Regardless of my lineage, I am not a messiah, or some magical being. I am just what I have always been.

A man.

The second way the Autobiography gets Sisko right is by having his message fundamentally be about connecting with his son. Sisko here imparts the lessons he has learned through a difficult and eventful life, while encouraging Jake to continue forging his own path and being his own man.

Thirdly, because Sisko’s signal originates in a nonlinear realm, Attico is able to introduce some arresting shifts in time—as for instance when, at the end of Chapter Eight, the scene transitions to B’hala as it was 20,000 years in the past. I won’t spoil what Sisko observes there, but it does answer a sixth-season question left open-ended by the series.

The sense we get is of Sisko not only poring over his life in order to share a measure of wisdom and grace with his son—and in a way, to give his son the permission he might need in order to live fully without him, nicely underscored by a reference to “The Visitor”—but of journeying through his own nature in order to better understand himself. “It is the unknown that defines our existence,” maintained DS9’s pilot, and in this chronicle the unknown continues to inform our central character.

Having established that we won’t be moving forward in the post-finale timeline, Attico wisely places the emphasis of Sisko’s recollections on the episodes of his life about which we know least. The early chapters are considerably longer and more descriptive than the ones where Sisko catches up with his posting to Deep Space Nine in 2369 and we revisit events we’ve seen unfold on-screen. These childhood and adolescent vignettes and escapades add a welcome richness of character and warmth to a tough, complex figure. Sisko’s early years are characterized by strong familial bonds, Creole cooking, jazz, and the ever-recurring presence of New Orleans itself. It’s an intoxicating combination. We learn of Grandpa James and Grandma Octavia (named after James Baldwin and Octavia Butler respectively). We follow along with an overeager Sisko who suffers an accident that leaves him immobilized for six months, during which time he develops a fascination with model starships. Later, he attends Booker T. Washington Public High School and experiences bullying; then eventually, first love.

Sisko’s observations occur every couple of pages, as for instance when he reflects on the importance of teachers in Chapter Two:

I’ve been in Starfleet for over twenty years. I’ve seen some very impressive technology and breakthroughs, but the truth is that the future isn’t built with technology or even by engineers. The future is built by teachers. Every mind that is educated, every consciousness that is opened to new ideas and different ways of thinking, is a brick paving the way toward tomorrow.

I’ll share two more examples. In the same chapter, Sisko crafts a lovely analogy between two very different crews:

I’d watch the kitchen crew cooking, cutting, cleaning, and arranging food on dishes like they were works of art. Everyone would work independently, but also in unison, not unlike the bridge of a starship.

And in Chapter Three, Sisko muses on death itself as a great unknown, harkening back to the comments I made earlier:

You know Jake, I think of all of the advancements of humanity, of all the things we’ve accomplished and overcome over the years. Climate change, racism, poverty, disease. But humans still have a hard time dealing with death. Perhaps it’s because, despite all we have achieved, it is still a great unknown.

As I hope is illustrated by these excerpts, Attico convincingly channels Sisko’s voice, which is no small feat. It makes the entire journey convincing. His writing combines the plain and down-to-earth with more poetic beats, as when Sisko speaks of people “frozen in the amber of grief.” These stylistic choices reinforce Sisko’s compelling mixture of perseverance and sensitivity.

For fans of Trek lore, there’s a wealth of it to enjoy here. Many characters from across the Trek continuum have cameos or are referenced: Doctor Pulaski, Zefram Cochrane, Solok, Admiral Owen Paris, Cal Hudson, Philippa Georgiou and Michael Burnham, Kosinski, Tryla Scott and Admiral Savar, Geordi La Forge, Leah Brahms, Elizabeth Shelby and others I don’t want to reveal. Too many? Possibly. I did get a kick out of Sisko mentioning Mardah, the Bajoran dabo girl Jake dated in Seasons 2 and 3. At one point Sisko receives a copy of Mr. Scott’s Guide to the Fundamentals of Starships and Engineering, samples “Vulcan’s Forge” ice cream, and so on. You get the idea. And of course this couldn’t be a bona fide DS9 book without a reference to self-sealing stem bolts; Attico obliges on page 112 of the hardcover edition. In terms of episodes, some of the references I found particularly delightful, often because I didn’t expect them, were, in no particular order, to TNG’s “Identity Crisis,” DS9’s “Explorers,” “Past Tense, Part I” and “Past Tense, Part II,” “The Quickening,” “Captive Pursuit,” “Battle Lines,” “Paradise,” “Second Sight,” “Tacking Into the Wind,” and “The Siege of AR-558.” In case this sounds overwhelming, it’s not. While picking up on Attico’s plentiful references enhances Sisko’s account, it’s not necessary to enjoy it.

Complementing the writing, the book features a neat insert with color photographs from various stages of Sisko’s life. (An aside: one of these shows a 1973 issue of Incredible Tales of Scientific Wonder with a DS9 story—but I thought, per “Far Beyond the Stars,” that Benny Russell was writing these in the 1950s? Maybe it’s a reprint!).

The chapters leading up to Sisko’s assuming command of the titular station see him meeting Curzon Dax, serving aboard several starships, and enduring trying war experiences, first with the Tzenkethi and more traumatically in Wolf 359. Sisko’s compassionate reconsideration of Picard as a victim of the Borg leads to a wonderful line: “When you let go of hate, the first person you free is yourself.” Of course, Avery Brooks is mentioned in the Acknowledgments at the end of the book. If this volume is adapted into an audiobook, I would love for Cirroc Lofton to narrate it—how immersive, and affecting, that would be.

Though each of the previous Trek “autobiographies” have things to recommend them, for my latinum this is the best one yet. It truly capitalizes on the possibilities of the form, fleshing out, in a deeply hopeful and humanistic fashion, one of Trek’s most enduring and commanding characters. It doesn’t offer pat solutions to life’s difficulties, but inspires us to meet them as best we can. “I came to this station when I didn’t care about it,” Sisko notes with bracing honesty while looking back on the Dominion conflict, “and I had to abandon it during a war when I didn’t want to be anywhere else.”

Just as the Celestial Temple here serves as Sisko’s place of contemplation away from home, so for many of us Deep Space Nine came to represent a special fictional abode where we found ourselves exploring fascinating questions. The show became our own wormhole of possibilities, which we are now free to experience, as Sisko does time itself, in whatever order we choose. When I ranked all of the post-finale DS9 books, Andrew J. Robinson’s confessional epic about Garak, A Stitch in Time, was one of my top picks. Without a doubt, the very differently-spiced The Autobiography of Benjamin Sisko, a thoughtful valentine to the series, represents another high point in this expanded universe.

If this turns out to be the final in-world Star Trek autobiography, I’d find it a fitting conclusion to the series. And if they keep going, here’s my suggestion for one that could be packed with bombshell revelations: The Autobiography of Liam Boothby, Starfleet’s Constant Groundskeeper.

Have you picked up this latest installment, or are you currently reading any Star Trek novels or comic books? Please let me know whatever you’re enjoying!

Alvaro Zinos-Amaro is a Hugo- and Locus-award finalist who has published over fifty stories and one hundred essays, reviews, and interviews in professional markets. These include Analog, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Galaxy’s Edge, Nature, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Locus, Tor.com, Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, Cyber World, Nox Pareidolia, Multiverses: An Anthology of Alternate Realities, and many others. Traveler of Worlds: Conversations with Robert Silverberg was published in 2016 to critical acclaim. Being Michael Swanwick, out in November 2023, is Alvaro’s second book of interviews. His debut novel, Equimedian, is forthcoming in 2024.

The post The Emissary Speaks: The Autobiography of Benjamin Sisko, Edited by Derek Tyler Attico appeared first on Reactor.

Star Trek: Discovery is really just teasing us with this one—not a trailer, but a super brief and tense moment from its final season.

This is the second clip we’ve seen from the upcoming season, and like the last one, it gives away very little about the overarching plot—except that obviously there’s something important about that symbol Michael wants to get to. Here’s the season synopsis:

The fifth and final season will find Captain Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery uncovering a mystery that will send them on an epic adventure across the galaxy to find an ancient power whose very existence has been deliberately hidden for centuries. But there are others on the hunt as well … dangerous foes who are desperate to claim the prize for themselves and will stop at nothing to get it.

The last clip introduced three new characters: Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie), L’ak (Elias Toufexis), and Moll (Eve Harlow). Along with Michael and Book, the returning cast includes Doug Jones as Saru, Anthony Rapp as Paul Stamets, Wilson Cruz as Dr. Hugh Culber, Blu del Barrio as Adira, and—hurrah!—Mary Wiseman as Sylvia Tilly. Tilly went off to the Academy to teach cadets in the middle of last season, and presumably that leads into the upcoming Starfleet Academy series. Maybe. Probably? But I’m so glad she’ll be back on Discovery for this last adventure.

Alex Kurtzman and Michelle Paradise are co-showrunners on Star Trek: Discovery, which begins its final voyage on Paramount Plus in April 2024.

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Captain’s star log. We open in Bozeman, Montana in 2063, the familiar tableau from First Contact of a Vulcan ship landing and making the titular contact with Earth. But then Cochrane whips out a pistol and shoots the Vulcan and the humans board the ship and take it over. Yup, we’re in the Mirror Universe…

We jump to 2155 and see the I.S.S. Enterprise, under the command of Captain Max Forrest, heading to a rendezvous with the assault fleet. Major Malcolm Reed and Doctor Phlox show Forrest and his first officer, Commander Jonathan Archer, their new toy: the agony booth, a much more effective disciplinary tool than what they’ve been using. They’re testing it on a Tellarite crew member, and Reed can’t even recall what it was the Tellarite did to deserve being tortured.

Archer reiterates a request he made to Forrest to go to Tholian space. Archer has received intelligence of a technology in their territory that will give them an edge against the rebels. Forrest refuses, and threatens Archer with the agony booth if he doesn’t shut up about it.

The captain’s woman, Hoshi Sato, joins Forrest in his quarters and distracts him from work. Forrest reveals that the Terran Empire is having trouble putting the rebellion, despite the official reports to the contrary.

On his way to the bridge, Forrest is ambushed, his MACO bodyguard killed, by Reed and Sergeant Travis Mayweather. Archer is taking command, ordering Forrest to be put in the brig, not killed. (Reed wants very much to kill the captain.) Archer insists he has orders from Starfleet to enter Tholian space and retrieve the technology they believe is there. Neither Second Officer T’Pol nor Sato know of any such communiqués, but Archer insists he got it on a private channel. Archer promotes T’Pol to first officer and orders her to pull a Suliban cloaking device out of storage and to help Chief Engineer Tucker install it.

Archer promotes Mayweather to be his personal bodyguard, and also makes it clear that he’s keeping Forrest alive in order to get Sato to cooperate with him, starting with her sending a message to Admiral Gardner.

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Enterprise finds the warp signature Archer is looking for, but they’re also ambushed by a one-person Tholian craft. They exchange weapons fire, and the Tholian tries to self-destruct to avoid capture, which the transporter renders a failure. The Tholian is beamed to the decon chamber, where Phlox indulges in torture. The prisoner eventually reveals that the Terran ship they captured is in the Ventaak system.

Heading there, the cloak is overloaded. Archer looks into it, including asking Forrest if he is responsible. Or maybe Admiral Black’s spy on board did it. Forrest points out that, if Black sent a spy, Forrest wouldn’t have the first clue who it was.

Reed then provides evidence that Tucker was responsible, which leads to Tucker being put in the agony booth for four hours.

T’Pol frees Forrest and he takes the ship back—but Archer anticipated that. Enterprise is locked into a course to the Ventaak system, and no one can change it. Not even Archer, who installed a random code to lock it out. It will take T’Pol weeks to decrypt it.

Forrest puts Archer in the agony booth, but releases him on Admiral Gardner’s orders. The admiral was intrigued by Archer’s data and wants Forrest to continue to pursue it. Archer briefs the senior staff, explaining that the Tholians created an interphasic rift that led to a parallel universe. They lured a ship through with a phony distress call. According to Archer’s intelligence—gained from a slave of the Tholians—the ship was quantum dated and it’s not just from another timeline, but from a hundred years in the future.

Archer is to lead the away team onto the ship. Forrest orders T’Pol to accompany him and make sure he doesn’t make it back alive. Tucker confronts T’Pol about how he suffered in the agony booth for no reason, but T’Pol reveals that she mind-melded with him to mentally force him to sabotage the cloak, and then did another mind-meld so he’d forget. So he really was guilty, even if he doesn’t remember it.

The Tholian prisoner is able to send a distress call biologically, so Phlox is forced to sedate it. But it fights past the sedation, leading Phlox to kill it—but not before it gets a message out.

Sure enough, Enterprise is attacked, but since they’ve arrived at their destination, Forrest has control again. The Tholians, however, make short work of Enterprise.

Meanwhile, Archer and his landing party are on the U.S.S. Defiant, where they find the corpses of the crew who succumbed to the brain-damaging effects of interphase. And then they’re forced to watch as Forrest orders the crew to abandon ship and Enterprise itself blows up.

To be continued…

Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Apparently MU Starfleet doesn’t shield as well against delta rays as the mainline universe’s Starfleet, as Tucker is disfigured by multiple exposure to such.

The gazelle speech. The MU Archer is not particularly ambitious, but that may have been an act to get Forrest to trust him. Either way, he shows plenty of ambition and gumption here, and Forrest and T’Pol are both gobsmacked by it.

I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol is perfectly happy to use mind-control on Tucker, and also use him for sex, in order to remain loyal to Forrest.

Florida Man. Florida Man Victim Of Mind Control By Alien Seductress!

Optimism, Captain! Phlox helped design the agony booth and made sure to make it a pan-species torture device, and also one that would have long-term efficacy by working on different nerve clusters.

Good boy, Porthos! In the MU, Porthos is a snarly rottweiler.

No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Let’s see, we’ve got Sato going from sleeping with Archer to sleeping with Forrest to going back to sleeping with Archer, we’ve got T’Pol using Tucker to help her through pon farr, and we’ve got the sexualized women’s Starfleet uniforms from the original series’ “Mirror, Mirror.”

The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined… After Zefram Cochrane’s successful warp flight, Vulcan made first contact, as they did in the mainline universe, but this time Terrans kill the Vulcan pilot and take over his ship.

Also T’Pol declares that the Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that there are no parallel universes, because of course they have.

More on this later… This episode tells the other side of the story of the original series’ “The Tholian Web,” establishing that the Defiant was lured by a distress call into the interphasic rift, which was caused by the MU’s Tholians doing crazy-ass experiments.

In addition, we learn that the agony booth that was used on the I.S.S. Enterprise in “Mirror, Mirror” was invented by Phlox and Reed.

I’ve got faith…

“They call this ‘progress’.”

“There’s something to be said for a good old-fashioned flogging.”

–Archer and Forrest discussing the agony booth.

Welcome aboard. Vaughn Armstrong returns for what is his final Trek appearance to date as the MU Forrest, while Franc Ross plays the big bearded guy who leads the charge against the Vulcan ship in the teaser. James Cromwell and Cully Fredrickson appear via archive footage from First Contact as Zefram Cochrane and the Vulcan captain, respectively, though stuntman Steve Blalock plays the Vulcan captain when he gets shot.

Trivial matters: This is the first of two parts, to be continued next week. It’s also the seventh episode to involve the MU, following the original series’ “Mirror, Mirror,” which introduced the concept, and the DS9 epsiodes “Crossover,” “Through the Looking Glass,” “Shattered Mirror,” “Resurrection,” and “The Emperor’s New Cloak.” It’ll be seen again when the U.S.S. Discovery winds up in the MU at the end of “Into the Forest I Go,” and stays there through “Despite Yourself,” “The Wolf Inside,” “Vaulting Ambition,” and “What’s Past is Prologue,” with a version of it also showing up in the “Terra Firma” two-parter.

This is the first episode to take place entirely in the MU, a distinction it and Part 2 will retain until Discovery’s “Despite Yourself.” This two-parter is the only MU story to date that has no characters from the mainline universe in it. (Well, no living ones, since technically the corpses they find on Defiant are from the mainline universe, but you know what I mean…)

The MU has appeared in tons of tie-in fiction: see the Trivial Matters sections for both “Mirror, Mirror” and “Crossover” for a detailed listing.

The teaser mixes footage from First Contact with new material.

The opening credits are redone, with different music (thank goodness) and visuals that emphasize Earth’s history of warfare. Archival historical footage was used, as well as bits from the 1980s TV series Call to Glory, the 1927 film Wings, the 1990 film The Hunt for Red October, the 2000 film U-571, and the 2005 film The Jacket, as well as battle scenes from Enterprise and Voyager.

In addition to being a prequel to “Mirror, Mirror” and the other MU episodes, this serves as a sequel to the original series’ “The Tholian Web.” The two crew members on the bridge are an attempt to re-create the two corpses on the bridge in that 1968 episode, though it’s not quite accurate. For one thing, the Defiant crew have a different logo on their uniform, even though they had the same delta as Enterprise crew in the original series episode. (The notion of different ships with different insignia was only seen in the second season. In seasons one and three, everyone had the same insignia on their uniforms.)

This is the first full appearance of a Tholian, after only seeing the head of one in “The Tholian Web,” and not seeing a specific (only their ship) in “Future Tense.” Amusingly, the original conception of “Future Tense” was for the Defiant to be the ship they found.

It’s been a long road… “Will you kindly die?” I find myself less enthusiastic about this two-parter than I was when I first watched it when it debuted in 2005, or when I watched it again a couple years later when I was gearing up to write my own fiction in the MU. I think at least part of it is that I’m well and truly sick of the MU at this point. DS9’s forays into the MU were a case of diminishing returns prior to this, ditto Discovery’s subsequent to this.

But I think the biggie is that the MU doesn’t really bear rewatching. On first watch, you get the novelty of seeing familiar characters in new roles, but once you know that’s coming that novelty has worn off. While dramatic fiction about horrible people can work—shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and The Shield, e.g.—they work because the characters have depth and complexity.

MU Trek characters have no depth to speak of. That’s part of the point, as mentioned by Spock in the very first MU episode in 1967 with his line about how civilized folk can pretend to be barbarians more easily than the other way ’round.

Having said that, “In a Mirror, Darkly” does have more than a few redeeming features, the two biggest being at the episode’s commencement. The reworking of the denouement of First Contact is a masterpiece, and I can’t say enough wonderful things about the opening credits. I mean, anything that gets that fucking song out of there is automatically an improvement, and the choices in visuals are inspired, showing us the much more warlike Earth of this timeline.

It’s great to see Vaughn Armstrong back, and I like that he’s very similar to the mainline Forrest in terms of temperament, but he’s still a cruel bastard, as is fitting for a Terran Empire shipmaster. Connor Trinneer beautifully plays the beaten-down engineer, Jolene Blalock and Linda Park nicely dig their teeth into the more manipulative characters they’re playing (and Blalock looks so much better with the long hair), and John Billingsley and Dominic Keating are effectively nasty as the sadistic versions of Phlox and Reed.

The weak link here is Scott Bakula, and this will come as no surprise to anyone who’s followed Bakula’s career, because even at his best, he’s always been horrible at playing angry mean people. Probably the worst acting in his career prior to 2001 was in the Quantum Leap two-part Lee Harvey Oswald episode, where Oswald’s personality was bleeding into Sam Beckett’s, and Bakula was just dreadful. (That storyline had plenty of other problems too, as it was less a story than an excuse for producer Donald P. Bellisario to give a middle finger to JFK assassination conspiracy theories in general and Oliver Stone’s JFK movie in particular.)

And he’s just awful here, looking less like a conniving MU Starfleet officer and more like a teenager who just got cut from the football team. The only moment that works is his fuck-you to the just-freed Forrest when the latter finds out that Archer locked Enterprise on course. His “The bridge is yours” to Forrest is his best (and arguably only good) moment in the episode.

Warp factor rating: 6

Keith R.A. DeCandido urges everyone to pick up Star Trek Explorer #9, which has, among other things, Keith’s new Discovery short story “Work Worth Doing,” which explores the backstory of Federation President Laira Rillak. It’s the first Discovery story to appear in the magazine.

The post Star Trek: Enterprise Rewatch: “In a Mirror, Darkly” (Part I) appeared first on Reactor.

As someone who was so successful at being a man that I actually graduated, I want to help!

So it’s a really good thing that science fiction and fantasy offer us so many excellent examples of guys who are secure in their masculinity and ready to do the right thing, even when it’s tough.

Superman (DC Comics)

The best word I can think of to describe Superman is “nurturing.” There are so many images online of Supes hugging someone or offering comfort to someone in pain. The most powerful superhero is also the most tender and compassionate, to the point where his greatest superpower is the ability to take care of people in pain. My favorite onscreen Superman is now Tyler Hoechlin’s gentle, self-effacing dad from Superman & Lois, who wears his heart on his sleeve and is willing to open up about his feelings. Superman doesn’t just have super-hearing—he has super-listening.

Ballister Boldheart (Nimona)

Ballister starts out as an underdog—the first knight chosen from among the common folk—and then he loses everything after being framed for a terrible crime. You’d forgive him for turning bitter and closed off—but when he meets the shapeshifting Nimona, he’s still willing to see the good in her and to become her partner in crime. He keeps doing the right thing, even when he’s in pain, and forgives his boyfriend Ambrosius for some truly hurtful behavior (albeit in the line of duty). Sir Ballister is a mensch.

The Middleman (The Middleman)

At first blush, the titular hero of the criminally underrated superhero show appears to be just an uptight caricature of an Eisenhower-era square-jawed straight arrow. He drinks milk instead of anything with caffeine or alcohol, and delivers ridiculous lines with a deadpan delivery. But over the course of one brilliant season, the Middleman reveals layers of character, along with a keen sense of honor. One of my favorite episodes puts the Middleman in contrast with his predecessor, a toxic tool who gives really bad advice to the Middleman’s friend Wendy.

King T’Challa (Black Panther)

Just as Superman is absurdly powerful, T’Challa has it all: he’s not only one of the greatest superheroes in the Marvel Universe, he’s also king of one of the most advanced countries, Wakanda. He’s also suffered grievous loss, including the death of his father, King T’Chaka. But as played unforgettably by Chadwick Boseman, T’Challa is a wise leader, one who’s able to laugh at himself but also willing to listen to his council and do the right thing. Even when it costs him a lot, he upholds his code of honor. (And I highly recommend Christopher Priest’s formative run on Black Panther for more of T’Challa being a great ruler and a good man, though he’s willing to fight dirty when circumstances warrant.)

Captain Pike (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds)

Star Trek is full of men who uphold lofty principles while holding their heads high. But Christopher Pike is pretty much the platonic ideal of a good dad. He’s strong and resolute, but also generous and fair. He’s surrounded by people who are good at their jobs, and he doesn’t second-guess  them or try to undermine them in any way—instead, he lifts them up and gives them more confidence. Confronted with a scary vision of his own future, he works through it by talking it through with the people he trusts. And he still manages to be a relaxed, reassuring presence. Plus he’s always cooking delicious food. Pike is exhibit A for being secure in your own masculinity.

Steven Universe (Steven Universe)

For most of the episodes of Steven Universe, Steven is a bundle of cheerfulness and friendliness, always willing to see the best in everyone—even if they’re trying to kill him. He finds a way to save the people he loves, sometimes against terrible odds, and he even helps the genocidal, imperialist diamonds to be better people. He’s happy to have a shield while letting his friend Connie wield the sword. But most of all, in the sequel show Steven Universe Future, he does the hard work of confronting his trauma, even if he struggles with admitting it at first.

Cheese (Reservation Dogs)

Reservation Dogs isn’t classified as a genre show, but it does feature a lot of magical realist elements. And Cheese is an incredible character, a turbo-nerd artist who usually gets the best lines of dialogue. In particular, though, I’m blown away by “Frankfurter Sandwich,” an episode in the final season where Cheese goes on a male-bonding trip with some older men and winds up leading them gently to confront their buried traumas. It’s one of the best episodes of television I’ve ever seen.

Uncle Iroh (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

A former military leader, Uncle Iroh has settled into drinking tea and goofing off, and serves a gentle mentor to his hotheaded nephew Prince Zuko. He’s a huge part of the reason why Zuko becomes a better person over the course of ATLA. To be sure, Iroh did some terrible things when he was younger, but now he’s gotten over himself and just wants to hang out and make really good tea. (Note: I came up with Iroh thanks to this Reddit thread.)

Din Djarin (The Mandalorian)

Okay, sure: the Mandalorian works as a bounty hunter, and sometimes his job is a dirty one. But the thing I admire about Din Djarin is the fact that he has a code of honor that he sticks to—except that he’s willing to break it to save his adopted son, Grogu. Specifically, he takes off his helmet when there’s no other way to rescue Grogu, and he pays the price for it. The only reason that he adopts Grogu in the first place is because he decides there are lines he won’t cross, and selling a child to bad people is one of them. And he’s a really good dad! Plus when he gets the Darksaber, he doesn’t cling to it, but rather finds a way to give it to its rightful owner, Bo Katan.

Sunny (Into the Badlands)

In a post-apocalyptic world, five hundred years from now, Sunny is the right-hand man to the Baron Quinn, one of the warlords who dominate the Badlands. Sunny is constantly thrown into situations where he has divided loyalties, or where he has to choose between following orders and doing the right thing, and he usually finds a way to do the right thing. (Even though he’s done some pretty terrible things in the past.) When he takes M.K., an orphan with a mysterious power, under his wing, he does everything he can to teach and protect his new charge.

Henry Deacon (Eureka)

In a “town full of geniuses,” Henry Deacon might just be the smartest of them all—but when this underrated show begins, he’s working as a mechanic because he has ethical objections to the work that Global Dynamics is doing. Henry isn’t just the guy who steps in and fixes things when all the out-of-control science goes off the rails, he’s also the town’s moral center. (And eventually, he becomes its mayor.) Emmy-winning actor Joe Morton, who plays Henry, also plays a resourceful, kind alien refugee in the movie The Brother From Another Planet.

Frodo and Samwise (The Lord of the Rings)

In a world of warriors, wizards, and supernatural badasses, Frodo is just a humble regular dude, who takes on a burden that would crush almost anybody and carries it (almost) to the finish line, battling temptation the entire way. And Samwise is the steadfast friend without whom Frodo couldn’t possibly have made it.

This article was originally published at Happy Dancing, Charlie Jane Anders’ newsletter, available on Buttondown.

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of the young-adult trilogy Victories Greater Than Death, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, and Promises Stronger Than Darkness, along with the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes. She’s also the author of Never Say You Can’t Survive (August 2021), a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times. Her other books include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. She co-created Escapade, a trans superhero, for Marvel Comics, and featured her in New Mutants Vol. 4 and the miniseries New Mutants: Lethal Legion. She reviews science fiction and fantasy books for The Washington Post. Her TED Talk, “Go Ahead, Dream About the Future” got 700,000 views in its first week. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.

The post 12 Male Role Models From Science Fiction and Fantasy appeared first on Reactor.

Captain’s star log. While en route to Berengaria to scout locations for a starbase, an Orion pirate ship intercepts them. The pirate captain, Harrad-Sar, wishes to discuss business with Archer on his ship. Archer, Reed, and two MACOs beam over (Reed expressing great apprehension).

Harrad-Sar does pleasure before business, giving them fancy food and drink, and then introducing the entertainment: three scantily clad Orion women—Navaar, D’Nesh, and Maras—who dance seductively and who have a very specific effect on Archer, Reed, and the two (male) MACOs.

Then he proposes his business plan: they’ve discovered a world that has magnesite. But he doesn’t have the infrastructure to exploit it. He’s willing to give this world to Earth in exchange for ten percent of the profits from a mining operation. Archer is willing to give it a look. Harrad-Sar also gives him a gift: the three women.

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Reed shows the trio to their quarters, with the women constantly speaking in double entendres, and Reed sweating a lot and thumphering around nervously. The women’s presence is disruptive to say the least. The human men start acting out in aggressive and territorial (and testosterone-laden) ways. The human women are all getting headaches. Meanwhile, T’Pol is unaffected and Phlox’s sleep cycle is being disrupted.

D’Nesh focuses on Kelby as the object of her attention, and Kelby starts acting like a complete asshole—aided by his resentment over Tucker still being on board instead of back on Columbia where he belongs. Navaar, meanwhile, goes after Archer, going so far as to kiss him before he’s summoned to the bridge.

They arrive at the planet, which is defended by a wussy science ship whose weapons don’t even affect Enterprise. Archer is ready to destroy the ship, but Reed refuses the order to fire, as it will destroy them. The ship then moves off, ending the argument.

D’Nesh and Kelby engage in pillow talk during which the former convinces the latter to do anything for her. He then engages in sabotage, until Tucker discovers it and stops Kelby by beating him up.

Phlox has determined the cause of the problems: the women are emitting pheremones. They give men an adrenaline surge and give women headaches (to eliminate competition). T’Pol is unaffected—but so is Tucker. Turns out that the mental link they share after having sex (which is why they’ve appeared in each other’s daydreams) also has given Tucker an immunity to pheremones. (How a telepathic connection blocks a biochemical reaction is left as an exercise for the viewer.)

The women are imprisoned in the decon chamber for everyone’s protection, and a search of their quarters turns up a communications device, with which they’ve been talking to Harrad-Sar. Navaar nearly gets Archer to release them, but T’Pol drags him back to his senses.

Harrad-Sar shows up and contacts them, revealing that there’s a bounty on Archer’s head, and this mission’s objective was to gain it. The Orions easily disable Enterprise, which is still in bad shape from Kelby’s sabotage, and Harrad-Sar starts to tow it. He also reveals that he’s the slave, and Navaar, D’Nesh, and Maras are the ones really in charge.

The three women got their guards to open up the door to the decon chamber, and they come to the bridge and use their super-duper pheremones to get Archer to give her command—and also put T’Pol in the brig. Tucker then shows up and shoots Archer, Reed, and Mayweather. Then he enacts his and T’Pol’s plan (which Archer had approved before he got his brain all mushed by pheremones) to lose the Orions’ tow. This works. The women are sent back to the ship.

Tucker pretends to be heading back to Columbia until he manipulates T’Pol into admitting that she wants him to stay, even going so far as to kiss him. Only then does Tucker reveal that he put in a request to transfer back to Enterprise three days earlier. (Why Hernandez accepted the request is left as an exercise for the viewer. As is why T’Pol didn’t then sock him in the jaw for being a manipulative ass.)

The gazelle speech. Archer justifies to Reed his initial willingness to beam over and talk to Harrad-Sar by saying, rather sadly, “Anything to have one less hostile species out there.”

I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol makes a couple of sardonic jokes in sickbay, prompting Archer to comment that she’s picking up Tucker’s bad habits.

Florida Man. Florida Man Assaults Replacement.

Optimism, Captain! Phlox has to mainline stimulants to keep from falling asleep at the hands of Orion pheremones.

No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. I mean, where to start? The three Orion women turn all the human men (except for Tucker) into drooling idiots or posturing morons, or both. Plus T’Pol and Tucker finally decide to become a real couple after dancing around it for several years, and making us endure simply endless “Vulcan neuro-pressure” softcore porn scenes in season three…

More on this later… Berengaria VII was established in the original series’ “This Side of Paradise,” where Spock mentioned seeing a dragon on that world.

I’ve got faith…

“What are you trying to do?”

“Get them out of my head. The pain helps—you should try it.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“When I was on my parents’ ship, we picked up some Deltans once. Their ship was having engine trouble.”

“I don’t know that species.”

“The females are unbelievably attractive. Very open about… I was fifteen—I couldn’t think straight, could barely breathe. Only thing that got me through it was weight training with my dad. He said if I was exhausted—idle hands and all that.”

“Well, did it help?”

“Helped my biceps…”

–Reed and Mayweather in the gym discussing the Orion women.

Welcome aboard. Two recurring regulars from DS9 return for this one: William Lucking (who played Furel in “Shakaar,” “The Darkness and the Light,” and “Ties of Blood and Water”) plays Haraad-Sar, while Cyia Batten (who was the first of three actors who played Tora Ziyal, in “Indiscretion” and “Return to Grace,” and who also played Irina in Voyager’s “Drive”) plays Navaar. The other two Orion women are played by Crystal Allen and Menina Fortunato. In addition, recurring regular Derek Magyar is back as Kelby; we’ll next see him playing Kelby’s Mirror Universe counterpart in “In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II.”

Trivial matters: Tucker and T’Pol had sex in “Harbinger.” Tucker transferred to Columbia between “The Aenar” and “Affliction,” but returned to Enterprise for reasons of plot in “Divergence,” and stuck around for more reasons of plot. Enterprise encountered an Orion slave auction, almost losing nine crew to slavery, in “Borderland.”

This episode establishes that—contrary to the implications of the original series’ “The Cage,” with Boyce’s mention of “green animal women,” as well as the entirely male Orion crews seen in the animated series’ “The Pirates of Orion,” not to mention the slave auction in “Borderland”—Orion society is female-dominated.

Mayweather discusses Deltans, who were seen in The Motion Picture in the person of Ilia, and who also exude sexual pheremones that adversely affect humans. This is the first time since that 1979 movie that Deltans—who are the most Gene Roddenberry creation ever—have been mentioned. They will appear again in Picard’s “The Star Gazer.”

Harrad-Sar mentions the Gorn, who were established in the original series’ “Arena,” and who will be seen two weeks hence in the Mirror Universe in “In a Mirror Darkly, Part II,” and have been seen throughout Strange New Worlds.

While Berengaria VII still hasn’t been actually visited onscreen, it has shown up in several works of tie-in fiction, most notably in the Romulan War novel Beneath the Raptor’s Wing by Michael A. Martin, in which—as indicated by this episode—it becamse the site of a starbase. The character of Elias Vaughn, who appeared in numerous novels, including many of the post-finale DS9 stories as the first officer of Deep Space 9 under Kira Nerys, was established as being born on Berengaria.

The female-dominated Orion society has been seen in more depth on Lower Decks in the twenty-fourth century and Discovery in the thirty-second.

It’s been a long road… “The Syndicate wants your head, Captain.” This storyline was hoary and stupid in 1966 when it was called “Mudd’s Women,” and it’s pretty much inexcusable in 2005 and nigh-unwatchable in 2023.

One of my biggest problems with Enterprise when it aired was that, watching it, I felt like it was being written as if the previous thirty years of television didn’t exist. This episode exemplifies that belief. I suspect that writer Manny Coto was going for some kind of retro thing, penning a script that felt like an episode of the original series. But there’s a thin line between retro and dated, and “Bound” trips over that line and falls flat on its face.

Watching this putrid episode is just a chore and a half, from the squirmy sweaty Archer and Reed trying hard not to drool over Cyia Batten, Crystal Allen, and Menina Fortunato slinking around while painted green to watching Kelby and Archer act like total idiots to everyone sitting around sickbay and having a hearty laugh at how the Vulcan is acting more human despite her protests. And yes, that was a trope of the original series, but it was also a general trope of television at the time, and it’s aged really badly. It’s particularly ridiculous in this episode in which the Enterprise crew have committed some appalling acts, from Kelby’s sabotage to Tucker beating the shit out of Kelby to Archer nearly blowing up a ship that was not a threat to Tucker shooting half the bridge crew. And yes, there were pheremones involved, but after all that, there really should be an inquiry and investigation, not a bunch of people sitting around sickbay giggling at T’Pol making a funny.

And then we have Tucker lying to T’Pol in order to manipulate her into saying out loud that she has the hots for Tucker and wants him to stay, and only then admitting that he put in for the transfer three days earlier. That should be enough for T’Pol to change her mind about wanting him to stay right there…

The closest this episode comes to a vague attempt at the possibility of a something remotely resembling a redeeming feature is the revelation that the women are the true power and the men are slaves. Orion women just pretend to be slaves. Mind you, the episode isn’t at all interested in exploring what this means, it’s just in it for the gotcha moment, the Big! Amazing! Twist! You! Didn’t! See! Coming! without any consideration given to whether or not the twist actually makes sense.

More than that, though is that this revelation a) makes no sense for Harrad-Sar to reveal to Archer in the least, and b) changes absolutely nothing about the episode. If Harrad-Sar was the one in charge and the women really were slaves, not a single element of the plot would alter even a little bit.

It’s a total waste of William Lucking; it’s not entirely a waste of Batten, Allen, and Fortunato as, at the very least, they’re fun to look at if you’re sexually attracted to women. But this episode is a pathetic embarrassment that just makes it clear that this show deserved to be cancelled.

Warp factor rating: 0

Keith R.A. DeCandido urges everyone to pick up Star Trek Explorer #9, which has, among other things, Keith’s new Discovery short story “Work Worth Doing,” which explores the backstory of Federation President Laira Rillak. It’s the first Discovery story to appear in the magazine.

The post Star Trek: Enterprise Rewatch: “Bound” appeared first on Reactor.

Captain’s star log. After getting the highlights from “Affliction,” we learn that Columbia is going to rendezvous with going-zoom-fast Enterprise because Tucker needs to be on board to fix the engines. (Why Tucker can’t just relay instructions over comm lines is left as an exercise for the viewer.) Archer springs Reed from the brig to supervise the physical transfer of Tucker from Columbia to Enterprise on a tether while both are at warp five-plus.

They manage it, though the tether is lost, and Tucker is rather shocked when MACOs escort Reed to the brig when it’s done. Tucker does a hard reboot of the engines, which will only work if Columbia wraps its warp field around Enterprise so they can stay at ludicrous speed.

Tucker pulls it off, because he’s just that awesome. Archer asks Columbia to stick around.

On Qu’vat, Antaak visits Phlox in his cell, where he’s been beaten. Antaak has discovered a weakness in the virus that may enable them to cure it. Phlox points out that K’Vagh won’t let them work on a cure, he just wants Klingon Augments. Antaak replies that they don’t have to tell him what they’re doing…

Columbia joins Enterprise on the search for Phlox. Archer—who has gone through Reed’s correspondences—asks about this Harris guy he’s been talking to. He was with Starfleet Security up until a few years ago, but now he’s off the grid. Reed is unable to speak further on the subject beyond the fact that he worked for Harris once.

Tucker agrees to help Kelby with repairs. He and T’Pol lie to each other when they ask if the other is sleeping okay.

On Qu’vat, Antaak and Phlox discuss family, with the former revealing that he was disowned when he chose to become a physician. The Bird-of-Prey returns, with Laneth reporting that Enterprise was destroyed and that K’Vagh’s son Marab was captured by the humans and therefore died without honor. (This, boys and girls, is why you always stick around to make sure there’s a body. Or blown-up ship.)

Phlox claims to K’Vagh that he’s found the “off switch” that will deactivate the virus and make Augments. K’Vagh then reports that to General Krell, who says that the project has been shut down. Krell’s fleet will arrive in three days, and K’Vagh has until then to prove that he has valuable research that’s worth sparing the plague-ridden colony.

K’Vagh reveals that his son, Laneth, and the others who sabotaged Enterprise were volunteers on whom the Augment treatments were tried after they ran out of prisoners to experiment on. Those volunteers are now getting sicker, and Laneth complains of how she felt fear when she was on Enterprise. She worries that even with the enhanced strength and intelligence, if they survive, they’ll be outcasts because of how they look and act.

Phlox is able to narrow it down to four possible treatments. In the lab, he’d need a week to determine which was the cure. Since they don’t have that kind of time, they have to test them on Antaak, K’Vagh, and two of K’Vagh’s warriors.

Harris contacts Archer, insisting that Phlox is on an important mission, which Archer calls bullshit on, as you don’t assault and kidnap someone to send them on a mission. Harris refers to “the Charter, Article 14, Section 31,” ahem ahem, and that what Phlox is doing is necessary for the stability of the quadrant. Archer continues to call bullshit. Archer then goes to Reed, showing him the medical scans that show that Marab has been experimented on. Reed admits that he was ordered to delay Enterprise from finding Phlox because he was needed to find a cure. He doesn’t know where they might be taken, but Reed does know that Starfleet Intelligence has reports of a medical research facility on Qu’vat. Archer restores Reed to duty, and they head to Qu’vat, Columbia hanging back in reserve.

Harris then contacts Krell, with a report that the Klingon saboteurs failed to stop Enterprise. Krell tells Harris to just order them home, but he doesn’t have that authority, so Krell intends to destroy them. Harris poutily says that wasn’t the arrangement and Krell laughs in his face for being so naïve.

On Qu’vat, K’Vagh is the one who has the cure. Antaak is philosophical about dying from a plague that’s pretty much his fault, but Phlox thinks he’ll be able to synthesize a cure in time to save him (and, presumably, the two guards).

Enterprise arrives at Qu’vat, with Archer and Marab beaming down. K’Vagh is surprised first that Enterprise is intact and his son is alive, and also that Phlox was working on a cure, not perfecting the Augment genome. Archer wants to take Phlox back, but the doctor is very close to perfecting the cure, and he just needs more time.

That time is in short supply, as Krell’s fleet has arrived. Enterprise and Columbia engage the fleet, and while the firefight is going on in orbit, Phlox uses Archer to speed up the process, as he needs human antibodies to finish the cure, and it would go faster by injecting Archer with it. Archer makes all kinds of silly faces (and also gets some minor cranial ridges) and then Phlox has a cure. He then beams a canister with the virus onto Krell’s flagship, and tells the general that, if he destroys the colony, he and his entire crew will die of the virus.

Krell reluctantly stands down. The cure for the virus has one rather major side effect: loss of cranial ridges. Antaak grumps that his own targ won’t recognize him now, and now millions of Klingons who contracted the Augment-enhanced Levodian flu will be human-looking. And it will be inherited, so they’ll pass it on to their children.

Tucker says he’ll remain on board for a bit to help Kelby with repairs. Archer thanks Hernandez for the help, with the latter wondering how Archer survived without her all these years. Archer also still has vestigial cranial ridges, and a craving for gagh, which Phlox insists will pass.

Harris contacts Reed to say that everything came out more or less okay. Reed says he quits and never to contact him again. Harris all but laughs in his face.

Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Tucker does a good old-fashioned hard reboot and reset to factory settings to get rid of the virus. Why he needs to come over to the ship himself and do this simple thing that tech support always tells you to do is (once again) left as an exercise for the viewer.

The gazelle speech. Archer gets to squirm in a chair and make funny face and get minor cranial ridges.

I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol is in charge during the firefight in orbit, and is a nice calm presence, teaming up with Hernandez to kick all the butt.

Florida Man. Florida Man Does Crazy-Ass Space Walk.

Optimism, Captain! Phlox absolutely owns this episode, taking charge of the entire situation once he’s on the road to a cure, manipulating K’Vagh and Krell both with verve and aplomb.

Good boy, Porthos! Porthos is down in the dumps because Phlox is missing, though Archer suspect that he more misses the fact that Phlox sometimes sneaks him cheese from a stash in sickbay.

Qapla’! General Krell collaborated with Harris and Section 31 for his own reasons. Harris was stupid enough to let him.

No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Neither Tucker nor T’Pol are willing to admit that they’re getting into each other’s dreams. It’s really kind of silly.

More on this later… We officially have an explanation for why the Klingons we saw on the original and animated series looked so different from the Klingons after that. And the seeds for an explanation of why we’ve seen none since then (and why the three we’ve seen in both modes, Kor, Kang, and Koloth, are like that) are sown as well, though that has not been explicated on screen. (See Trivial Matters below.)

I’ve got faith…

“I need a little more time to cure this plague!”

“Cure? You were supposed to perfect the Augment genome!”

“I lied.”

–Phlox saying “Bazinga!” to K’Vagh.

 Welcome aboard. Back from “Affliction” are Ada Maris as Hernandez, James Avery as K’Vagh, John Schuck as Antaak, Terrell Tilford as Marab, and Eric Pierpoint as Harris. Pierpoint will return in the “Demons”/“Terra Prime” two-parter.

Also appearing are prior Trek guests Kristin Bauer as Laneth, having previously played one of Quark’s fantasy women in DS9’s “If Wishes Were Horses”; and Wayne Grace as Krell, having previously played a different Klingon, Torak, in TNG’s “Aquiel” and a horny Cardassian legate in DS9’s “Wrongs Darker than Death or Night.”

Trivial matters: This is the second of two parts, continuing from “Affliction.”

Following this episode, the Klingon Language Institute provided terms for the two types of Klingons: QuchHa’ (“the unhappy ones”) for those without cranial ridges and HemQuch (“the proud forehead”) for those with.

This episode establishes that millions of Klingons are QuchHa’ following this, and that they’re considered inferior to some degree or other. This is by way, not only of explaining the Klingons we saw in the original series, but why we never saw mixed crews, as it makes sense that all QuchHa’ in the Klingon Defense Force would be segregated. It also retcons the less-than-honorable behavior of some of those Klingons in the original series, if they weren’t considered “proper” Klingons.

Prior to this two-parter, various works of tie-in fiction proposed all manner of explanations for the discrepancy between types of Klingon, all of which were superseded by new onscreen evidence. John M. Ford’s The Final Reflection posited that Klingons created “fusions” of Klingons with other species, humans among them. The My Brother’s Keeper trilogy by Michael Jan Friedman posited that the Klingons with cranial ridges were a new species created via genetic engineering. Several works that came out pre-Enterprise, notably the graphic novel Debt of Honor by Chris Claremont & Adam Hughes, posited that there were two different species of Klingons, with the smooth-headed ones being ascendant during the original series, but became outcasts by the movie era.

This is the first Trek episode directed by David Barrett. He’ll return to the franchise to direct two episodes of Discovery, “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad” and “Saints of Imperfection.” Barrett’s father, Stan, played a small role in the original series’ “All Our Yesterdays.”

While Kelby is mentioned several times, Derek Magyar doesn’t appear.

Reed’s determination to not do anything for Harris anymore will last all of four episodes, as our heroes will once again deal with him in “Demons.”

The other half of this story, to wit, how the Klingons got their grooves back, as it were, was told in the Star Trek: Excelsior novel Forged in Fire by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin, which also served as a prequel to DS9’s “Blood Oath.” The novel focused on Hikaru Sulu, Kor, Kang, Koloth, and Curzon Dax, establishing the relationship the latter four of them would develop, and part of the plot explains how the QuchHa’ were eliminated (as evidenced by those three Klingons having cranial ridges in the twenty-fourth century). The novel also connects in an interesting way to the original series’ “The Omega Glory.”

The Columbia is not seen again onscreen, but is featured in the Romulan War novel Beneath the Raptor’s Wing by Martin, the Destiny trilogy by David Mack, and Federation: The First 150 Years by David A. Goodman.

It’s been a long road… “My own targ won’t recognize me!” Parts of this episode are excellent, especially the climax where Phlox basically owns everyone. It starts with Archer and K’Vagh arguing over who gets Phlox and the doctor barging in and saying that he can speak for himself, thank you, and from that moment forward, he’s totally in charge, and it’s fabulous. Some of John Billingsley’s best work is in the back half of this episode.

So much of the rest of the episode is pointless filler, though. The lengthy sequence where Tucker gets on a tether between two ships travelling way way way faster than light and shimmies between them is visually pretty nifty, but at no point does anyone explain why Tucker can’t just explain what he’s doing and walk Kelby and/or T’Pol through it over video chat. Especially given how long the transfer takes.

The entire subplot with Harris and Reed and Section 31 is just so much sound and fury signifying nothing, especially since Harris is so unbelievably stupid in this. I mean, his original notion of having Reed sabotage Enterprise was idiotic, because all it was going to do was call attention to the conspiracy. If Harris had just told Reed to hide the fact that the sensor grid was down when Phlox was kidnapped, maybe I could see it, but all of this extra sabotage just shone a light on the conspiracy. And then Krell turned out not to be trustworthy, which any idiot could’ve seen coming, but Harris is obviously not just any idiot.

In the comments section of my “Affliction” rewatch, the reader “mr_d” pointed out that, for all of Section 31’s protestations that they’re necessary, protestations that are echoed by people who are fans of the use of 31 in Trek (a number that will never, under any circumstances, include me), they’re actually not very good at what they do. This two-parter is a classic example, as they don’t do anything particularly useful here. In fact, the first question that comes to mind when you realize that there was conversation between Earth and Kronos on the subject should’ve been the same thing Phlox said when he was kidnapped: why not just ask for help?

Ultimately, it’s more filler for a two-parter that doesn’t have enough story for two parts, and really is only in service of explaining something that didn’t really require an explanation. It certainly didn’t require taking two episodes out of a season to explain it. While the end result is still eminently watchable, thanks to the continued wonderfulness of putting Billingsley, John Schuck, and James Avery in a room together, it still feels like paperwork masquerading as a story.

Warp factor rating: 6

Keith R.A. DeCandido’s most recent work includes several short stories: “Prezzo” in Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird, a story about Italian immigrants in 1930s New York City and monsters; “Know Thyself Deathless” in Double Trouble: An Anthology of Two-Fisted Team-Ups (which he co-edited with Jonathan Maberry), teaming H. Rider Haggard’s She with the Yoruba goddess Egungun-oya; “Another Dead Body on the Corner” in Joe Ledger: Unbreakable, featuring Ledger in his days as a Baltimore homicide cop; “What Do You Want From Me, I’m Old” in The Four ???? of the Apocalypse (which he co-edited with Wrenn Simms), about the four septuagenarians of the apocalypse; “The Legend of Long-Ears” in The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny, a Weird Western tale of Bass Reeves and Calamity Jane; and “The Kellidian Kidnapping” and “Work Worth Doing” in the two most recent issues of Star Trek Explorer, the former a Voyager story featuring Tuvok, the latter the backstory for Discovery’s President Rillak.

The post Star Trek: Enterprise Rewatch: “Divergence” appeared first on Reactor.

Maybe it’s the blending of recognizable Earth food cultures with alien civilizations on the promenade that gives DS9 such bustling, vibrant warmth?

I don’t think it’s surprising that, as my second novel comes out, I’ve begun to rewatch DS9 before bed. I like to joke that maybe because I’m a triple cancer, I’m obsessed with the series where they live on a space station instead of darting around the galaxy. For me, it’s far more cozy (and complicated) to stay put. And God knows I love to stay home. My second novel, The Thick and The Lean, posits a world where sexual pleasure is mundane and public but food pleasure is highly taboo. Like DS9, it also explores land rights and colonization, along with Big Agriculture and body politics. The world of The Thick and The Lean is a distorted mirror to our own, with the hope that it, in some small way, this reflection helps us see ourselves more clearly—but it’s also deeply personal, drawn from my own experiences with disordered eating. It feels more exposing than anything I’ve published before.

On the station, the connections over food, drink, and Klingon opera aren’t limited to public establishments. Captain Sisko is an avid home cook, and he loves to feed his senior officers. (Somebody get me Benjamin Sisko’s astrological chart—another cancer? Benjamin, I, too, love a dinner party.) And through these little slices of life, where the crew gets to just simply be together as chosen family, we get gems like Odo stirring.

Take this simple scene, the opening for Season 3 Episode 4 “Equilibrium”. The episode opens with the camera following Jake, looking pleased as punch, as he carries a beautiful platter of what appears to be crudités to Kira and Julian. He’s helping Captain Dad aka Sisko prepare a dinner party for the senior officers. Kira, in civilian clothes, is waiting with pleasant expectation, looking even happier than Jake. (Emotional sidebar: it’s these little moments with Kira that just wreck me. Kira, who spent her whole life under Cardassian occupation, is delighted to have her boss cook her dinner.) Julian is also happy to be there, playing a bit of the petulant teenager but he manages to make it charming—yuck, beets!

As Sisko realizes he must flip his catfish, Odo, who has been studying the cooking with his normal intensity, takes over stirring the soufflé. Jadzia, in uniform, comes in from a long day in the upper pylons—boy is she tired! But she’s been looking forward to this dinner all day. Real “Honey I’m home” vibes from our favorite Old Man in the body of a young woman. (It sounds to my untrained ear like she’s been doing O’Brien’s job. Maybe O’Brien’s been cloned or his wife has been taken over by a malevolent spirit or some other unique horror, or maybe he’s just on vacation?) We see Jadzia embracing other food traditions and glimpsing at perhaps part of why she could never be more than just Julian’s friend. He’s too young for her by several lifetimes.

As he mentions in this scene (and many others), Sisko learned to cook from his father’s restaurant in New Orleans. He serves a pretty traditional meal here—blackened catfish, creamed spinach, sautéed beets, Jake announces with pride. Captain Sisko reveals a tiny bit of his ethos about the importance of cooking with grown food, instead of eating replicated ingredients. (We assume the beets are from Bajor? Or a greenhouse on the station?) In other episodes, he states this preference clearly, but here he tells us in actions, not words. By cooking this meal, Sisko is connecting his crew with his family lineage. He cooks because he cares.

So, in under two minutes, we get: proud Jake with the platter, Captain Dad’s pepper shaker dance, teenage Julian, Honey I’m Home Dax, and happy Kira. How soft Kira is in this scene! How far we’ve come from Season 1.

And nothing delights Kira more than Odo’s stirring.

Odo is here to learn. “Just because I don’t need food, Commander, doesn’t mean I’m not interested in its preparation.” I can imagine him later, in the privacy of the security office, turning into a beet, to see what it feels like, before attempting a Tarkalean hawk, then settling finally into a puddle of what looks like oatmeal to rest in his bucket.

Odo stirs with his head as much as his arms. How strange it must be, to have a body. Like Sisko, he understands that food is more than nourishment. For solids, it’s culture, it’s history, it’s also community and connection. It’s the past meeting the future. It can even be love. It will take until season 6 for Kira to realize that she’s in love with Odo, but I wholeheartedly agree—he looks very cute while stirring.

Originally published April 2023 as part of the Close Reads series.

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The Thick and the Lean

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Chana Porter (she/they) is a novelist, playwright, teacher, MacDowell fellow, and cofounder of The Octavia Project, a STEM and writing program for girls, trans, and nonbinary youth that uses speculative fiction to envision greater possibilities for our world. She lives in Los Angeles, California, and is also the author of The Seep, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her new novel The Thick and The Lean comes out from Saga Press April 18th.

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The Good

The absolute best thing, bar none, about season four is the recurrence of T’Lyn, magnificently voiced by the great Gabrielle Ruiz. The Vulcan science officer’s deadpan is the perfect contrast to the spectacularly manic main four, and she has proven to play beautifully off of three of the four regulars. (We haven’t really seen her team up with Rutherford yet.) She gives good command advice to Boimler in “In the Cradle of Vexilon,” she’s a useful helpmeet on the Orion adventure that she joins Mariner and Tendi for in “Something Borrowed, Something Green,” and the ongoing relationship that develops between the super-serious T’Lyn and the goofily dorky Tendi is just epic. Plus, T’Lyn has arguably the funniest line of the entire season, though its humor can only really be appreciated in context and with Ruiz’s voice: “Ah—it is a volcano.”

In past seasons, Captain Freeman has been somewhat inconsistently portrayed, depending on the needs of the plot. Sometimes she’s the Trek equivalent of the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert. Sometimes she’s a brilliant captain. Sometimes she has to carry the idiot ball in order to make the joke work. But this season, she’s mostly been what all Starfleet captains should be, even the ones on the crappy ships: a badass. From her reconstructing the planetary computer in “In the Cradle of Vexilon” to her brilliant negotiating with Grand Nagus Rom in “Parth Ferengi’s Heart Place” to her dramatic rescue of her daughter in “Old Friends, New Planet,” Freeman has been much more in the mode of Trek‘s fabulous captains this year.

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System Collapse

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System Collapse

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The looks into the lower decks of Ferengi, Klingon, Romulan, Orion, and Bynar ships has been a delight.

In general, the looks into the Orion society we’ve gotten, mostly in “Something Borrowed, Something Green” and “Old Friends, New Planet,” has been very enlightening, a long overdue look at a culture that goes back to “The Cage” in 1964 and which has had very little done with it outside of a really terrible Enterprise episode before now. (We’ve gotten some on Discovery, ‘tis true, but that’s all been in the far future, and mostly focused on the Emerald Chain as a criminal organization, not much—at least not yet—on Orion culture as such.)

The AGIMUS-Peanut Hamper pairing in “A Few Badgeys More” proved to be an absolute delight. Having them turn into besties who are less interested in planetary conquest and more interested in being with the ones they love is, at once, hilarious and also completely true to Trek’s core ethos. Plus no one ever went wrong making use of Jeffrey Combs or Kether Donohue, and they’re both fantastic.

“Caves” was quite possibly the best piece of Trek satire the show has done, doing a hilarious riff on the franchise’s tropism for cave sets, and nailing several other clichés at the same time, all the while telling a story that’s a very Trekkish tale of friendship and solving problems through talking rather than violence.

Moopsy! “I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee” gives us the most adorable psychotic monster ever in Moopsy! Moopsy is fabulous! (Okay, Moopsy is crazy-dangerous, but still…) Moopsy!

The Bad

On the one hand, Mariner gets some character development this season, but while this should be good, it feels like we’ve gone over this territory before. We know Mariner has had trauma in her life that would explain her constant self-sabotage (the death of a dear friend on the U.S.S. Quito, as established in “Cupid’s Errant Arrow”), but they decided to insert another trauma on top of that, one that was never mentioned before: her best friend at the Academy was Sito Jaxa, from TNG’s “The First Duty” and (of course) “Lower Decks.” Sito’s death in the latter episode did a number on Mariner, and while her coming to terms with it in “Old Friends, New Planet” indicates that she’ll do better, we’ve had indications of that before. And Mariner has constantly backslid. It’s grown tiresome. (For an alternate take on Mariner, check out the brilliant Jaime Babb’s “How I Learned to Love Beckett Mariner” on this here site…)

While it was entertaining to see all kinds of ships get zapped by what turns out to be Nick Locarno’s zappy thing from Nova Fleet, the actual resolution of that plotline was a major disappointment. First of all, they fooled me, at least, into thinking it was Badgey responsible, and while that’s mostly on me, the execution in “A Few Badgeys More” could’ve been clearer. Also the fact that the ships weren’t destroyed, but instead somehow the top brass of each ship was exiled and the lower-decks folk put in charge and part of Nova Fleet strained credulity to the breaking point. It wasn’t clear where Locarno got all his wonderful toys or how they worked or, well, anything. It was just dumb.

The rivalry between Rutherford and Livik that we saw in “I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee” was kinda weak-sauce, but if it became a recurring thing, it could’ve worked. But we didn’t see it again until “Old Friends, New Planet,” when their argument was resolved by the stupid Mark Twain thing.

SPEAKING OF THAT, oh my goodness was the stupid Mark Twain thing stupid. Introduced in “Something Borrowed, Something Green” as a method of resolving arguments by having both sides cosplay as Samuel Clemens on a holodeck re-creation of his steamship the A.B. Chambers, it was incredibly dumb in that episode, and even dumber when it was brought back for the finale. Especially since most people’s impersonations of Clemens sound more like a mix of Colonel Sanders and Foghorn Leghorn than the famous author…

This is technically a good thing, but I’m putting it under “bad” because it lasted for three years: there is no way, none, that officers in Starfleet would be quartered in open bunks in an open-access hallway. Even on modern submarines, which are the poster children for holy-shit-we-don’t-have-enough-space, officers get at least a modicum of privacy. It is patently absurd that on a starship that has a theoretically unlimited power source (the annihilation of matter and antimatter) they can’t spare some space for officers to have private bunks. So while it’s good that they finally allowed our heroes to have, y’know, walls in their sleeping quarters this season, it’s fixing something that should never have been there in the first place.

Not nearly enough of T’Ana, Shaxs, or Kimolu and Matt. Though what we did get of them was, as always, fabulous.

Moopsy!

The Spectacularly Nerdy

The Ferengi are allied with the Federation! This is the perfect accomplishment of the Grand Nagus Rom regime. We already know that the Ferengi are part of the Federation in the thirty-second century thanks to Discovery, and there’s something incredibly appropriate about seeing that process start on LD of all places, and especially by having Rom and Leeta forge that alliance. Plus Max Grodénchik and Chase Masterson get to reprise their roles, joining the legion of past Trek folk who have voiced their characters on LD.

Speaking of that, we also had Robert Duncan McNeill coming back for the second time on LD, this time to voice his other Trek character, Locarno. In addition, they dragged Shannon Fill out of retirement to again voice Cadet Sito Jaxa in flashback, also getting Wil Wheaton to reprise the role of Cadet Wes Crusher in that same flashback. Plus we finally get to see poor Cadet Josh Albert, whose death drove the plot of “The First Duty,” but whom we never actually saw until “Old Friends, New Planet.”

“Twovix” is made up almost entirely of Voyager references, from the merging of crewmembers from “Tuvix” to getting versions of the salamanders that Janeway and Paris turned into in “Threshold” to the Borg to the macrovirus from “Macrocosm” to Dr. Chaotica from the various Captain Proton holodeck episodes to the clown from “The Thaw” to (for some stupid-ass reason) Michael Sullivan from the two stupid-ass Irish stereotype holodeck episodes that were stupid-ass. (Though strangely, not a single actor from Voyager was used to voice a character in the episode.)

In addition, “Twovix” sorta-kinda crosses over with Picard season three, as the latter established that Voyager was in the Fleet Museum at the turn of the twenty-fifth century (twenty years after this episode), and “Twovix” is when the ship was officially made into a museum piece, with the Fleet Museum being its eventual destination after its inaugural display on Earth.

Finally, having the Ferengi put in a paywall in order to disarm the Genesis Device was just perfection itself.

Moopsy!

Like season two, this one ends in a cliffhanger, with Tendi going off to become the Mistress of the Winter Constellations once again. One assumes that this will be reversed like, y’know, almost every other time a main castmember leaves the ship (including on this show, viz. Boimler’s promotion and transfer to Titan at the end of season one). Besides, T’Lyn finally broke down and agreed to be Tendi’s science bestie—she has to come back!

There’s lots of stuff I didn’t cover in this overview (like, I didn’t even mention Goodgey…), so please feel free to tell me in the comments what you thought was good, bad, and/or spectacularly nerdy!

Moopsy!

Keith R.A. DeCandido’s most recent work includes several short stories: “Prezzo” in Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird, a story about Italian immigrants in 1930s New York City and monsters; “Know Thyself Deathless” in Double Trouble: An Anthology of Two-Fisted Team-Ups (which he co-edited with Jonathan Maberry), teaming H. Rider Haggard’s She with the Yoruba goddess Egungun-oya; “Another Dead Body on the Corner” in Joe Ledger: Unbreakable, featuring Ledger in his days as a Baltimore homicide cop; “What Do You Want From Me, I’m Old” in The Four ???? of the Apocalypse (which he co-edited with Wrenn Simms), about the four septuagenarians of the apocalypse; “The Legend of Long-Ears” in The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny, a Weird Western tale of Bass Reeves and Calamity Jane; and “The Kellidian Kidnapping” and “Work Worth Doing” in the two most recent issues of Star Trek Explorer, the former a Voyager story featuring Tuvok, the latter the backstory for Discovery’s President Rillak.

The post The Good, the Bad, and the Spectacularly Nerdy — Star Trek: Lower Decks Fourth Season Overview appeared first on Reactor.

Captain’s star log. At the Qu’vat colony, a scientist named Antaak is conducting experiments under the direction of General K’Vagh. K’Vagh brings in a prisoner, who insists that he see the magistrate, but his protests are ignored as Antaak injects him with something that causes him great pain—and which also makes his cranial ridges disappear…

Enterprise is returning to Earth for the launch of her sister ship, Columbia, and also bid adieu to Tucker, who is transferring to NX-02 to take over as chief engineer. T’Pol confronts Tucker, who insists that he’s not transferring because of her. She looks skeptical, as does everyone in the audience.

Phlox and Sato depart from a meal at Madame Chang’s, which has become much more popular since they last visited Earth, which Sato takes rueful credit for. She spread the word far and wide as only a communications officer can about how fabulous the place is. They’re jumped by some aliens; Sato tries to fight back using the black belt in aikido that we only recently found out she has, but she’s clubbed on the head from behind and the kidnappers take the doctor away. She hears the aliens speak in another language right before she loses consciousness.

Archer and Reed arrive at the scene and talk to the investigating officer for Starfleet Security, Commander Collins. Sato doesn’t remember what the kidnappers said before she fell unconscious. Collins also mentions Phlox’s prior assault in a bar, but Reed recalls them being a bunch of dumb drunks, unlikely to have planned something like this six months later. They also picked up ionization disturbances that could be from a transporter—something not a lot of people have access to.

On Columbia, Tucker is working his new staff pretty hard, to the point that several have requested transfers. Hernandez has denied them, as she needs people. She also gently berates Tucker twice, first for reporting to engineering before reporting to her (he says he wanted to see what the lay of the land was before talking to her) and second for not switching out the patch on his uniform to a Columbia one.

On Archer’s orders (and with his coaching, since he learned some stuff from Surak’s katra), T’Pol initiates a mind-meld with Sato, which enables her to recall what was said by the attackers. Sato and T’Pol both recognize the language as Rigelian—and, it turns out, a Rigelian freighter left orbit of Earth two hours after Phlox was kidnapped, and its trajectory does not match its flight plan.

Reed tries to check the satellite network over Earth to see if transporter activity was detected in the area, but the grid was down for maintenance right then. When Reed tries to contact Starfleet Operations to ask about that, he instead gets Harris, a black-leather-clad operative for whom Reed used to work. The pair meet in person in San Francisco, where Harris makes it clear that Reed still answers to him, even though he doesn’t work for his “section” anymore (gee, think maybe it’s the thirty-first section????).

Phlox is brought to Antaak by K’Vagh. Antaak and Phlox met at a medical conference, though Antaak was disguised as a Mazarite at the time (Klingon physicians were—perhaps not surprisingly—not invited to the conference). They need Phlox’s help. There is a strain of Levodian flu that is threatening to devastate the empire. They’ve already had to wipe out the population of an entire planet to try to contain the virus. Phlox—who is disgusted at being kidnapped and at the Klingons’ medical practices—initially refuses to be Antaak’s lab assistant. But K’Vagh makes it clear that Antaak is to be his assistant.

On Columbia, Tucker has dinner with Hernandez, who wonders why he changed his mind about leaving Enterprise. He even said in an interview after the Xindi crisis that he couldn’t imagine serving on any other ship. Tucker says he was getting too familiar on Enterprise and while he has friends there, he feels there’s value in working with colleagues instead of friends. This is almost convincing.

On Enterprise, T’Pol is meditating. Mentally, she’s on a virtual plane of existence, one that is basically a big white space. Tucker shows up there, to both of their surprise. He was daydreaming on Columbia. Tucker criticizes her choice in mental vacations, as he thinks it should be a beach in Florida or the Fire Plains on Vulcan.

Enterprise catches up to the freighter, but it’s been destroyed. All the corpses they find are Rigelian. Reed reports that he can’t identify the signature of the weapons used on the freighter, but we see his viewscreen and know that that’s a lie. Archer orders that the black box be retrieved.

On Qu’vat, Phlox tries to convince Antaak to go public with this and ask for help. The IME would be more than willing to provide resources. Antaak says that they already have the IME’s entire database, which K’Vagh had stolen. K’Vagh brings in a person infected with the virus, but is at Stage 1—it doesn’t become contagious until Stage 3. Antaak moves to euthanize the patient, but Phlox stops him, saying that’s barbaric. While they’re arguing, K’Vagh casually takes out his disruptor and kills the patient, ending the argument.

On Enterprise, Reed contacts Harris on a secure channel and expresses his consternation with lying to his captain, and proposes the notion of reading Archer in on what’s going on. Harris thinks he’s adorable and encourages him instead to tell Archer that Orion raiders hit the Rigelians.

Enterprise comes under attack, cutting short Reed’s conversation. A Klingon ship is attacking them, and a boarding party transports over, all of whom are bereft of cranial ridges. They commit sabotage on the computer, and then most of them retreat; one, Marab, is shot by a MACO, and they have to leave him behind. The Klingon ship warps away; Mayweather is unable to pursue, as helm control is nonresponsive.

Archer and T’Pol are shocked to realize that, though the prisoner looks human, he is biologically Klingon. Warp drive is down and it will take at least six hours to repair. T’Pol also reports that the black box from the Rigelian freighter has been erased. Archer orders T’Pol and Sato to try to reconstruct the data.

On Qu’vat, Phlox is appalled to realize that there’s human Augment DNA in the flu virus. The other shoe drops: Antaak was trying to create Klingon Augments, using Augment embryos they salvaged from the wreckage of the ship Soong and the Augments stole. K’Vagh says that they couldn’t allow an inferior species (humans) to create super-soldiers. Phlox points out that they were relics of a time before Earth banned genetic engineering, and K’Vagh sneers and says he didn’t believe the Vulcans when they said that, either.

However, the experiments didn’t go well. Initially it was fine, and while the Klingons lost their cranial ridges, they did become stronger and smarter—but then their neural pathways degraded, and they died horrible deaths. One of the test subjects had the Levodian flu and the Augment DNA mutated the virus into this nasty-ass strain that is now threatening to wipe out the Empire. Phlox is more than a little peeved that they left that out of the information they provided him initially.

On Enterprise, while working on the recorder, Sato asks if there are residual effects from the mind-meld, because she had a dream about meeting Tucker in a big white space—basically, exactly what happened when T’Pol meditated and Tucker daydreamt—which disturbs T’Pol a bit, especially since Sato says the dream had a romantic quality to it.

Unfortunately, their investigation reveals that the recorder was erased on Enterprise by a microdyne coupler, which was last accessed by Reed. This leads Archer to have T’Pol double-check Reed’s analysis of the weapons signatures on the freighter, and it turns out to definitely be Klingons, not maybe being Orion, as Reed said. Reed refuses to explain himself, and Archer is forced to throw him into the brig.

On Qu’vat, K’Vagh makes it clear that Phlox has a timetable. The doctor counters that he needs weeks to work on this, but they only have five days before a fleet will arrive to wipe out this colony to contain the virus. (Phlox also points out that they should’ve kidnapped Arik Soong, not him, but Antaak says he was too well guarded to abduct.)

Antaak suggests sustaining the Augment DNA so that the Klingons who are enhanced don’t die horribly. Succeeding in the original experiment would probably convince the High Council to hold off on wiping the colony out. Phlox, however, refuses to go along with that, and he’s taken away at disruptor-point.

On Earth, Columbia successfully launches from drydock.

On Enterprise, Marab is thrown into the brig next to Reed. Marab tells Reed that he’s lucky to be alive—on a Klingon ship, lying to the captain is punishable by death. Reed also says that he is working toward the same goal as Marab: a cure.

The ship shudders. Apparently Marab and the rest of the boarding party sabotaged the warp drive. The matter/antimatter intermix chamber is malfunctioning. Increasing speed alleviates the pressure on the flow regulators, which are locked open, so Mayweather puts his foot on the gas. But they can’t sustain ludicrous speed for very long…

To be continued…

Can’t we just reverse the polarity? If the flow regulators are locked open, the warp core will breach if you drop out of warp, but if you go faster, the pressure is lessened. This is actually rather a spiffy bit of sabotage, akin to that which we saw in the movie Speed…

The gazelle speech. Archer gets to coach T’Pol in how to initiate a mind-meld, as he picked up a few things after having a couple of Vulcan katras embedded in his brain meats for four days.

I’ve been trained to tolerate offensive situations. T’Pol gets to initiate her first mind-meld and also learns that she and Tucker have a mental link.

Florida Man. Florida Man In Denial Over Why He Requested A Transfer.

Optimism, Captain! Phlox is kidnapped by Klingons because he was awesome at a conference. He’s willing to work with his kidnappers when it comes to curing Klingons of a deadly flu bug, but draws the line at creating Klingon Augments.

Better get MACO. The MACOs are, as usual, completely ineffectual in repelling boarders, though at least one of them is able to get them a prisoner, at the price of being shot himself.

Also when Reed is tossed in the brig, Archer has a MACO do it rather than a member of Reed’s security staff, which is considerate.

Qapla’! The Klingon High Council is revolted by the notion of human Augments, and want to try to do to themselves what was done to the humans in the past. It doesn’t go particularly well.

We also see Klingon medicine at its worst, as their “quarantine” measures involve utter destruction of all patients. 

No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Tucker insists that he’s not transferring off Enterprise because of T’Pol, even though they’re obviously connected enough to be mindlinked.

More on this later… While the phrase “Section 31” is never used in this episode, it’s obvious that the organization that Harris belongs to (and that Reed used to be affiliated with) is supposed to be an early version of that black ops organization introduced in DS9’s “Inquisition,” and seen (sigh) far too often in Trek since.

Also, this two-parter finally provides an explanation for the discrepancy between what Klingons looked like in the original and animated series, and what they have looked like in every other Trek production.

I’ve got faith…

“I don’t know who’s in charge of your mess hall, but he’d give the Chef on Enterprise a run for his money.”

“I stole him from the Republic. Captain Jennings said I could have anything I wanted when I left, so I took his cook.”

–Tucker and Hernandez chatting over dinner in the Captain’s Mess.

Welcome aboard. Several Trek veterans are back in this one: John Schuck as Antaak, having previously played a different Klingon, the ambassador in The Voyage Home and The Undiscovered Country, as well as a Cardassian legate in DS9’s “The Maquis, Part II” and a member of the chorus in Voyager’s “Muse.” Eric Pierpoint as Harris, having previously played an Eska hunter in “Rogue Planet,” an Iyaaran in TNG’s “Liaisons,” Captain Sanders in DS9’s “For the Uniform,” and the mythical Klingon figure Kortar in Voyager’s “Barge of the Dead.” Brad Greenquist as the Rigelian kidnapper, having previously played Khata’n Zshaar in “Dawn,” Demmas in Voyager’s “Warlord,” and Krit in DS9’s “Who Mourns for Morn?” And Marc Worden as the doomed prisoner in the teaser, having previously played Worf’s son Alexander in DS9’s “Sons and Daughters” and “You Are Cordially Invited.”

Ada Maris officially makes Hernandez recurring, returning from “Home.” Derek Magyar debuts the recurring role of Kelby. Terrell Tilford plays Marab, Kate McNeil plays Collins, and Seth MacFarlane makes another appearance as an engineer being ordered around by Tucker, though it’s unclear whether or not he’s the same unfortunate who got chewed out by Tucker in “The Forgotten.”

And finally, the great James Avery plays K’Vagh, and the amazing thing is that it took so long to cast him as a Klingon, as he’s perfect in every way.

Shuck, Avery, Maris, Pierpoint, and Tilford will return in “Divergence” next time. Magyar will return in “Bound.”

Trivial matters: This is the first of a two-parter that will conclude in “Divergence,” and was specifically done to address the discrepancy between how Klingons looked in screen productions made between 1967 and 1974 and how they looked in all screen productions made since 1979.

Tucker requested a transfer to Columbia at the end of “The Aenar.”

Phlox was previously attacked while visiting Earth in “Home.” That episode also established that Madame Chang’s was Phlox’s favorite source of egg drop soup, and Sato went there on the doctor’s recommendation.

Collins says that assaults against aliens are rare, a statement belied by both Phlox’s previous assault in “Home” and the events forthcoming in “Demons” and “Terra Prime.”

Sato was established as having a black belt in aikido in “Observer Effect.”

Archer held the katras of both Syrran and Surak for several days from the end of “The Forge,” through to “Awakening” and “Kir’Shara.”

T’Pol took Tucker to the Fire Plains on Vulcan in “Home.”

The Klingon ship stolen by the Augments was blown up over Qu’vat in “The Augments.”

Antaak references the Hur’q invasion, which was established as a long-ago event in which Kronos was pillaged in DS9’s “The Sword of Kahless.”

Hernandez’s previous assignment, the Republic, appears in The Romulan War: To Brave the Storm by Michael A. Martin.

This is the first time Section 31 has appeared outside of DS9. But it will continue to appear on this show, in Star Trek Into Darkness, and on both Discovery and Picard for no compellingly good reason.

It’s been a long road… “Given the choice between honor and saving lives, I choose the latter.” On the one hand, this two-parter doesn’t have any particularly good reason to exist. I’ve never had much patience with storylines that try to explain something in-universe that has a very good out-of-the-box explanation. And honestly, the previous time they addressed the discrepancy between original/animated series Klingons and all the other Klingons, in DS9’s “Trials and Tribble-ations,” was, to my mind, sufficient. Worf just said, “It is a long story” and “We do not discuss it with outsiders,” and that’s it. That’s all we needed.

Having said that, unlike some other examples of this breed—like TNG’s “The Chase”—this is a genuinely compelling story. If they did have to come up with an explanation for smooth-headed Klingons, having it be the result of trying to create Klingon Augments based on the genetically engineered humans was, frankly, a stroke of genius.

And the storyline created around it is genuinely compelling. Honestly, the whole storyline is worth it to have three actors of the calibre of John Billingsley, John Schuck, and James Avery in a room together for large chunks of it. Avery in particular is magnificent, bringing a calm and efficient brutality to the role of K’Vagh.

Ada Maris gives us in Hernandez a wonderful shipmaster. I love how even-tempered and friendly she is without ever once losing her authority or command presence. It’s a magnificently low-key charismatic performance, continuing the good work she did in “Home.” Honestly, given how lackluster Scott Bakula has been in the role of Archer all this time, one longs for the alternate universe where the NX-01 was commanded by Hernandez as played by Maris.

The episode loses points for the insertion of Section 31 bullshit. Leaving aside that the whole concept of 31 is idiotic and a blight on the franchise that has metastasized into a cancer (though I will admit to it making more sense on twenty-second-century Earth than it does in the twenty-fourth-century Federation), it’s just there to pad out the plot and create artificial conflict between Archer and Reed.

Warp factor rating: 8

Keith R.A. DeCandido will be an author guest at Philcon 2023, where he and Wrenn Simms will have the official launch of their anthology The Four ???? of the Apocalypse, which they’re publishing through their very-small press, WhysperWude. Several of the authors who contributed to the anthology will be present as well, and it will be part of the eSpec Books/WhysperWude launch party Saturday night at the con. Keith and Wrenn will also have a table in the dealer room where they’ll be selling and signing Keith’s books, as well as some of Wrenn’s craft items. Keith’s full schedule can be found here.

The post Star Trek: Enterprise Rewatch: “Affliction” appeared first on Reactor.

After four successful and generally quite well-received seasons of Lower Decks, it’s almost difficult to believe that Paramount+ (then called CBS All Access) had to disable comments and hide the likes-to-dislikes ratio on its YouTube trailer. The animation was too Rick and Morty-ish! The ensigns were too goofy to belong in Starfleet! The trailer even featured (*gasp*) nudity, something of which Gene Roddenberry would surely never have approved! Surely this travesty would be a colossal flop! Surely Harve Bennett Rick Berman JJ Abrams Alex Kurtzman would be fired any day now for gross mismanagement of the franchise! Surely, surely, surely…

For my own part, however, I always knew that it was going to be good. Not because of the trailer, but because of who was writing it: Mike McMahan, showrunner of Rick and Morty, creator of Solar Opposites and—far more importantly—the man behind the infamous TNG Season 8 Twitter feed. In tweet after tweet of bizarre, hilarious imaginary episode summaries, he’d demonstrated to my satisfaction a deep understanding of what had made Star Trek: The Next Generation work as a series. The fact that he was being handed the keys to actual, canonical Star Trek was, of course, completely ridiculous—but also very, very welcome.

And I’m pleased to report that my faith was rewarded upon the series’ debut… mostly. Lower Deck’s premiere episode, “Second Contact,” wasn’t really anything to write home about, but it was perfectly serviceable as a pilot, rapidly introducing the premise, the setting, and even the basics of the Star Trek universe in general for anyone just joining us. But where it really shone was in its characters: Brad Boimler, whose ambition is matched only by his inexperience and neuroticism; D’Vana Tendi, an adorable scientist who’s delighted just to be there; and Sam Rutherford, who was clearly and explicitly patterned after Geordi La Forge and whom I therefore liked right away.

And then, of course, there was Beckett Mariner.

As the reader may have inferred from the title of this article, my initial impression of Mariner was not… good. Indeed, she rubbed me the wrong way pretty much from the moment that she drunkenly sliced Boimler’s thigh open with a rusty bat’leth a minute and a half into the premiere, and she did little to redeem herself in my eyes in the rest of the episode. Some of this is simply because there was no apparent follow-up to the aforementioned drunken thigh-slicing, something that—even given near-miraculous 24th-century medical technology—should almost certainly have resulted in a court martial. Part of it was that she managed to come across as kind of a jerk even when her illicit activity in the episode turned out to be a secret off-the-books humanitarian relief project. And of course the implication that she was only allowed to stay on the Cerritos because her mom was the captain and her dad an admiral did nothing to endear me to her: such blatant nepotism should have no place in the Star Trek future.

But if I had to lay my finger on just one thing that bugged me about Mariner, it would be this: she was Cool.

This, perhaps, seems like an odd thing to complain about, but hear me out: there’s a world of difference between trend-setting characters who are organically cool because of how fans respond to them and trend-chasing characters who seem to have been designed by committee to tick off as many “Cool Guy” traits as possible; and Mariner, bless her heart, is relentlessly coded in the latter category.  She has attitude! She disrespects authority! She rolls-up her uniform sleeves, plays sick riffs on the electric guitar, and gets black-out drunk on contraband whisky! When the character was unveiled at San Diego Comic Con in 2019, voice actor Tawny Newsome even described her as “a weirdo rock-and-roll party queen who just wants to ride her skateboard and eat her piece of pizza in peace, man.” Slap a pair of sunglasses on her and she’s basically Poochie the Rockin’ Dog from The Simpsons.

Subsequent episodes doubled-down on this characterization. True, Mariner got to have a “pet the dog” moment in “Envoys” when she deliberately engineered a situation in which Boimler got to save the day, but that only highlighted two further frustrations that I had with the character: (1) that the show kept trying to burnish her coolness by humiliating Boimler, and (2) that no matter how outlandish she appeared, she would inevitably be proven to have been right all along by the end of the episode. The nadir of both occurred in “Cupid’s Errant Arrow,” where Mariner became convinced that Boimler was incapable of attracting a hot girlfriend, and eventually discovered—over his naked, cockblocked, and unconscious body, of course—that he was infested with a parasite that made him irresistible to women.

It’s not until the seventh episode, “Much Ado About Boimler,” that the series started teasing the idea that there was more to Mariner than meets the eye, revealing that she actually used to be a brilliant, ambitious officer when she was fresh out of the academy, before something happened to make her the insubordinate slacker that we all knew and… well… knew. “Crisis Point” subsequently fleshed her out some more: here, Mariner vents her frustrations in a typically questionable manner by simulating the mass murder of the Cerritos crew on the Holodeck; however, as the episode plays out, we eventually learn that she hates herself more than she does anyone else. And as she literally tries to kill her own holographic doppelganger, she and the audience realise that her insubordinate jerk persona is just an act that she puts on because people have come to expect it; when the chips are down, she loves Starfleet, her mom, and her friends. Not coincidentally, “Crisis Point” is also the first episode where someone (in this case Tendi) calls Mariner out on her bullshit and has her admit wrongdoing and promise to do better by the end of the episode.

But for me, Mariner only truly clicked as a character in “An Embarrassment of Dooplers” midway through the second season. Here, she opts to “help” Boimler crash a Starfleet Command gala by posing as his own transporter duplicate, and—through an escalating series of poor decisions—manages to transform these innocuous shenanigans into a pitched car chase through a crowded space station with a trunk full of bubble bath and stolen disruptors. And it was at that point that I realised: as good as Mariner is at being a badass action hero… that’s literally all she knows. She’s the exact person you want by your side if you’re in a barfight with a gang of Nausicaan street-toughs or fleeing the dreaded spider-cow of Galardon; but if you just want to go to a boring command shindig, you’ll be lucky not to spend the night in jail. Beckett Mariner wasn’t just a one-dimensional awesome badass: she was a comprehensive attempt to imagine what someone who seemed like a one-dimensional awesome badass would be like if you actually met them as a real person.

The dark truth about coolness is that it’s frequently just a form of dysfunctionality that you don’t have the context to recognize. Television, more often than not, never gives you that context. In TV land, perennially spending your off hours getting wasted just means that you’re cool: in real life, it means you’re somewhere on the alcoholic spectrum. In TV land, constantly letting your fists do the talking means you’re a hero: in real life, it means that you have anger-management issues and quite possibly a death wish. And pushing all your friends away, as Mariner tends to in the process of cultivating her mystique (see for example “Mugato Gumato”), doesn’t make you a rugged individualist… it makes you a person with no friends. In Mariner, we get the context, and it’s not always pretty.

But the brilliance of Lower Decks is that, for all that it’s an adult animated comedy, it is, first and foremost, a Star Trek series; and so Mariner’s arc across the past two seasons has been about earnestly striving to improve herself with the love and support of her friends and family—together with their complete willingness to call her out on her shit if and when it does arise. Several times, she has become a prisoner of the very badass persona that she spent the first part of the series assiduously cultivating. During season 3, we the audience got to see her put in the work to be a better person…but her mother did not, and so, in “Trusted Sources,” immediately leapt to blaming her when a media exposé slagged the Cerritos and its crew, even though she was the only one who gave a uniformly positive interview. Captain Freeman’s rush to judgement was unfair—but we can’t really blame her for it, because it seems exactly like the kind of thing that first-season Mariner might have done. Meanwhile, her relationship with Jennifer Sh’Reyan ended in disaster when it turned out that Jennifer had only been attracted to her badass persona, and so was just as quick to blame her even though she, theoretically, should have known Mariner best. Even Boimler, we later learn, had assumed that she’d sabotaged the exposé, even though he was too much her friend to say so. Nevertheless, by the end of the season, Mariner had settled into a comfortable groove with the rest of the crew, and had become a good enough officer that, when she was promoted to lieutenant junior grade in the season four premiere, it felt justified.

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But self-improvement is rarely a monotonic process, particularly when the underlying source of one’s problems remains unaddressed, and so a substantial part of season four is about Mariner’s backsliding. Her insubordinate badass persona, we find, was not chosen by accident, but as a response to trauma—the trauma of losing her best friend and idol from her academy days, Sito Jaxa (introduced in TNG’s “The First Duty” and killed in action in TNG’s eponymous episode “Lower Decks”). Thus, Mariner’s promotion induces a shame spiral in her, first because Sito never advanced beyond ensign and, to a greater extent, because the higher she ascends in rank, the greater the likelihood that she, like Sito’s superiors, will eventually need to order someone to their death. The badass persona is thus an elaborate effort at self-sabotage: every time Mariner starts to ascend in rank, she gets herself busted back down to Ensign. And when it turns out this time that Commander Ransom knows her too well to let her get away with it, she becomes worse than ever before, engaging in outright stupid, death-seeking behaviour.

When this backstory was first revealed in “The Inner Fight,” I must admit I had some difficulty with it. It does, admittedly, explain a great deal about her behaviour, but I found it difficult to believe that Mariner could have been carrying this trauma around with her for more than a decade without anyone helping her—especially given that “Empathalogical Fallacies” took pains to show that Starfleet takes a wholistic approach to its officers’ well-being. But the more that I thought about it, the more that I realised that her friends and family did try to help her; she was only on the Cerritos in the first place because her mother was actively trying to save her career, and her friends did everything that they could to protect her from her own recklessness. But even a therapist can only help someone to the extent that they are willing to be helped, and here again Mariner’s own badassery becomes a prison: she can’t get help without exposing her vulnerability, and that is something that she’s pathologically unwilling to do. With this in mind, as much as I love that Mariner’s friends and family are there for her, I adore the fact that it is ultimately an opponent—Ma’ah, who, as a Klingon warrior, is himself no stranger to death, duty, or stupid, death-seeking behaviour—who is finally able to get her to open up and, by so doing, talk some sense into her.

Over the four seasons of Lower Decks, Beckett Mariner has grown from a stale caricature into a fully realised individual. Her arc has first deconstructed and then reconstructed what it means to be a hero, and shown that we can all learn to be better than we are—just so long as we are willing, and we have a community of people who are willing to help us be better. I have previously lamented the decline of utopianism in contemporary Star Trek, but in this, I think that Lower Decks is being just about as positive towards humanity as Star Trek has ever been. And if you asked me now who my favourite character on the series was…I would probably still say Tendi or Rutherford (or T’Lyn), but Mariner would be right up there too. And I’m fascinated to see where they take her from here.

Jaime Babb is a writer, editor, and lapsed physicist currently living in Montreal. She can be followed on Tumblr at quasi-normalcy.tumblr.com.

The post How I Learned to Love Beckett Mariner appeared first on Reactor.

On December 25, 2023, the entire first season of Star Trek: Prodigy will be available to stream on Netflix. Here is the streaming platform’s “Geeked” handle on Twitter X sharing the news:

BIG NEWS: Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1 hits Netflix on December 25! #GeekedWeek pic.twitter.com/VvWsOYxmLm

— Netflix Geeked (@NetflixGeeked) November 9, 2023

The first season initially dropped in two installments of ten episodes each, giving us twenty episodes to spend with the ragtag crew of the U.S.S. Protostar as they escape the prison planet on which they were trapped, and go on a quest to join the Federation (and who may, inadvertently, cause its destruction). The cast includes Kate Mulgrew playing a hologram version of Captain Janeway, and is Star Trek’s first foray into creating family-friendly programming.

We still don’t have a specific release date for Season Two (which will give us another twenty episodes in the series) though Netflix has said it will come out sometime in 2024. I’m just thankful that the show has found a new home, and that we can celebrate that (along with the upcoming Doctor Who special) on Christmas Day, just as Santa would want us to.

The post Merry Christmas! Season One of Star Trek: Prodigy Will Drop on Netflix This December appeared first on Reactor.