c/star-trek

Paramount Max, here we (eventually) come. Unless this whole financial house of cards implodes first, of course.

So I'm a long time Trekkie and besides most of the newer shows (like Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Academy) I'm pretty familiar with each of the shows - the old ones anyway.

But when i managed to convince someone to watch a single episode of Star Trek I'm a little bit at a loss. Personally I'd go for one of the Ibsenesque power plays, just because the person in question likes Psychological thriller sci-fis - like Black Mirror.

So I'm stuck between these episodes:

• TNG: "The Survivors" - This was heart wrenching the first time I saw it. It's one of those episodes that reminds of the old Frankenstein conundrum: who is really the monster? As an incurable romantic, I flip flop between condemning the antagonist and sympathising with his pain. He made a prison of his own making and I can sort of identify with that.
• Enterprise: "Cogenitor" - Though I find Enterprise hard to get into (because it's such a departure from the rest of Star Trek), this episode sticks out to me as another conundrum. What if someone didn't know what freedom or individuality was introduced to those concepts, only to be forced back to a reality of servitude, subservience and being an organic appliance in people's lives without the right to have your own.
• Voyager: "Nemesis" - I thought about this one purely for the reveal at the end. It's not the best episode, but it's one of those reveals that show you the lengths people are willing to go to when trying to destroy an enemy - even at the cost of people's lives, and minds.
• DS9: "Duet" - this episode is the least sci-fi, but it sure shows the ravages of war - on the minds and hearts of anyone. Survivors guilt is one thing, and cowardice another, but what can be said for those who had to witness atrocities and felt powerless to do anything about it? The woes of a filling clerk...

These are just my picks, some episodes that stuck with me. But what episode - if only a single one, from any of the shows would you pick as someone's first introduction to Star Trek?

Have a great one!

Not much to chew on here but the fact that he is optimistic is a good sign for me (I will take any hope I can get).

I will say that everyone I’ve interacted with in the — I’ll call it the new Paramount — understands what Star Trek is in the sense that they don’t want to mess it up. They understand how important it is. This isn’t just a cash cow to them. This isn’t something where they just need to put laser guns and a spaceship together and get it out there. They understand that this is something special, and so they’re working very hard to make sure that what they do next lives up to that.

For those who don't remember Star Trek: Voyager, Season 4, Episode 13.

::: spoiler Tap for spoiler It's the episode where evil aliens probably inspired by Freddy Krueger force you to fall asleep and invade your dreams. The Voyager crew all share a collective dream in which the aliens control. :::

This one scared me as a kid. Revisisting it as an adult, I think it's more cool than anything. Not really scary and at times funny. Y'all liked this one? It's a neat episode.

Last year my grandfather passed away. We bonded together through Star Trek. I had to go through a wardrobe and empty it out today. The wardrobe itself didn’t belong to him, so it is getting returned. Anyways I found a small bag that contained hotel keys. I started looking through the collection and burst into tears. 😭 He kept two keys from the Hilton the summer of I want to say ‘98. My family went up to Las Vegas with him for a work trip he had, attending a apparel industry related convention. One of the days my mom broke away take me to The Experience. We went on The Klingon Encounter (look it up on YouTube, you’ll find recordings of the attraction). My grandfather didn’t get to see The Experience.I only remember The Klingon Encounter; Quarks as I know now was more adult oriented with the alcohol they served.

It is bittersweet finding these keys. I’ll probably put these in a frame or something. I am never letting go of these.

Here is a photo of me with one of the Klingons at The Experience.

Clear as mud, where the timeline thing is concerned.

I get it strange because we have TOS comics which are great of course. But I've become quite attached to the redesigned Enterprise, the updated interiors and the new faces to our familiar crew. So it would be cool see what we could have been if a show was greenlit. Hell who knows what Paramount will do once SNW ends next year. They didn't sell off the sets, so there's always a chance that the new trek showrunner still does it. But IDW would be a good fall back.

::: spoiler Logline A time ripple damages the Enterprise, forcing young and old Uhura to cooperate and fix the timeline. :::

Written by: Henry Alonso Myers & Robbie Thompson

Directed by: Chris Fisher

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From Janeway, Picard and Sisko to modern Star Trek: what happened to the ethical future we were once asked to imagine?

I have been watching Picard, and I am genuinely surprised by how much the ethical structure of Star Trek has changed.

I am not talking about nostalgia, and I am not saying that characters should remain exactly the same for thirty years.

I am talking about something much more fundamental.

TNG, DS9 and Voyager were built around an ethical premise that, for me, was one of the strongest elements of Star Trek:

THE END DOES NOT JUSTIFY THE MEANS.

This principle appeared again and again.

Characters could make mistakes. They could become angry, afraid, traumatised or confused. They could even cross ethical lines.

But the line existed.

And when they crossed it, Star Trek stopped and examined what that meant.

That was the difference.

The characters did not simply ask:

Can we do this?

They asked:

Do we have the right to do this? What will this choice make us? What responsibility comes with the power we have?

Voyager is probably the clearest example.

They were trying to cross an impossible distance to return home. They could have justified almost anything through survival.

But they did not.

Again and again they accepted a longer journey, greater risk and personal sacrifice because reaching home could not justify destroying another civilisation, exploiting another species or abandoning the principles they represented.

That was not weakness.

That was the entire point.

Humanity had evolved technologically, but Star Trek proposed that perhaps we could also evolve ethically.

And this is where I struggle enormously with Picard.

Picard himself feels fundamentally different.

The Picard I knew could certainly be wrong, but his reasoning had extraordinary internal coherence. He questioned himself. He debated. He understood that being captain was not simply having authority — it was carrying responsibility for how that authority was used.

The new Picard often feels reactive, impulsive and strangely ineffective.

For me, that is not simply “an older and more vulnerable Picard”.

It changes the architecture of the character.

And Seven of Nine is even more difficult for me.

Seven was one of the characters I identified with most.

Her journey in Voyager was not simply about becoming emotional or “more human”.

It was about learning how to be human while maintaining discipline, logic and integrity.

She struggled with identity, belonging and emotion, but what made her extraordinary was precisely her effort not to become governed by impulse.

She could be wrong. She could be severe. She could misunderstand human behaviour.

But revenge was never the foundation of the character.

Her relationship with the Doctor was particularly important because both of them were learning what humanity meant almost from the outside. Their logic often exposed the inconsistencies of ordinary human behaviour.

Now I find Seven driven by anger, punishment and revenge.

At times she feels closer to a Klingon archetype than to Seven of Nine.

For me, this is not character development.

It is a different character.

And the change goes beyond Picard and Seven.

The entire universe feels different.

The older Star Trek made an extraordinary effort to maintain coherence.

Character coherence.

Ethical coherence.

Political coherence.

And even scientific coherence, as far as science fiction could reasonably achieve it.

Of course there were mistakes across hundreds of episodes, but you could feel that the writers cared about the rules of the universe they were creating.

A decision made years earlier could still matter.

A species had a culture and internal logic.

Technology had rules.

Characters carried the consequences of what they had experienced.

And most importantly, Star Trek was never simply fantasy in space.

It was asking something.

What could humanity become if we improved?

Not if we became perfect.

If we improved.

What…