Star Trek Discovery Trailer Breakdown

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As I write this, it’s been a little over 10 years since Star Trek disappeared from our TV screens.  In that time, the franchise and the cultural landscape it inhabits have undergone a serious change.  The franchise got reinvented as a slick action vehicle 2009, which is only now starting to find a genuine identity in the likes of Star Trek Beyond.  Meanwhile, the TV landscape has been completely transformed by material like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, House of Cards, Supergirl, Mad Men, American Horror Story, and countless others. 

Outside the realms of TV, technology is quickly advancing on the heels of Star Trek through VR and 3D printers, while also growing into directions the shows couldn’t have imagined such as social media or streaming video.  Meanwhile, on the political scale, the world is gripped by the tendrils of xenophobia and fascism as the gap between wealthy and poor grows ever wider.  Suffice it to say, it’s a different world now than it was 10 years ago and one that needs a different Star Trek and, this fall, CBS is going to give it to us with Star Trek Discovery. 

Static Thoughts - In A Mirror Darkly

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It seems these days that alternate realities and parallel universes are everywhere.  That’s actually kind of to be expected as nerdy media becomes more and more of a dominant genre.  Back in the day geek material struggled for mainstream relevance unless it stripped out as many of its big ideas as possible but these days people are making movies and shows out of Ant-Man and Dr. Strange.  As such, digging into more complicated ideas like the Multiverse, pocket universes, or altered continuity are becoming more and more widespread. 

The Flash has really embraced this idea with the Multiverse and Flashpoint, Legends of Tomorrow had its own altered universe episode, Stranger Things was built on a dimensional foundation, and Agents of SHIELD has found serious success with an altered continuity story set in a world where the bad guys won called ‘Agents of Hydra.’  As I’m eager to capitalize on this trend I thought I’d look back at hands down my favorite altered reality story, coming to us from the most hated Star Trek series of them all Star Trek: Enterprise- this is ‘In A Mirror Darkly.’

Static Thoughts - 7 Cameos to Expect in Star Trek Discovery

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Currently, we don’t know much about the upcoming Star Trek Discovery.  There’s been a lot of outdated information thrown around in the wake of Bryan Fuller’s departure from the project.  Combine that with the show’s string of delays and the show’s early positive buzz has given way to a low background hum.  However, I’m still hopeful the series will turn out good, and there is at least one thing we know about it- the time period of its setting.  The one consistent piece of news about Star Trek Discovery so far has been that the show will be another prequel to the original Star Trek series. 

A lot of folks have taken this news hard given the last time this was tried it gave us Star Trek: Enterprise, but I actually enjoy Enterprise, so I’m willing to look on the bright side, in particular, all the doors this time period opens up.  Specifically speaking the show will be set after the events of Enterprise but prior to Star Trek, the original series.  Given that I’m a massive Trekcionado, I’ve come up with 7 things from across the Star Trek franchise we can expect to cameo in Star Trek Discovery. 

Week of Review - Why I Love Voyager

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As I continue to celebrate Star Trek’s 50^th anniversary and the release of the new film, we come now to Star Trek: Voyager.  This is the series where most hardcore Trek fans consider the franchise to have stumbled, citing Voyager and Enterprise, along with the last 2 TNG films, as the collapse of the franchise in its final years before the reboot.  Personally I can’t say I agree with that. 

Certainly, the two final films of the TNG series are awful but having gone through all of Voyager and Enterprise they are not bad Star Trek, in fact I’d rank them well above Next Generation and, most pertinent to this conversation, I’d actually say Voyager is my favorite Star Trek show of the entire franchise.  Not necessarily the best, that’s probably still reserved for Deep Space 9 or the original series, but definitely the one I liked the most, the one I tend to revisit most often, and the big reason for that is, bizarrely, that everyone on the ship seems like horrible people. 

Week of Review - The Dominion War

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In 1993, Star Trek: The Next Generation had become so successful that the powers that be decided to produce a spin-off show.  The idea for the spin-off took awhile to coalesce, with the central concept of a Trek show set on a space station eventually manifesting after the network passed on a similar premise from J. Michael Straczynski entitled Babylon 5.  The resulting show was Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and it’s widely considered to be the best Star Trek show of all time.  The series was about the titular station Deep Space 9, a platform set-up over the backwater world of Bajor near the edge of Alpha Quadrant. 

The station was intended to watch over Bajor as it recovered from centuries of occupation, but in the first episode the station’s new command Ben Sisko discovers a stable wormhole nearby that leads across the galaxy.  Now, it’s up to Deep Space 9 to facilitate the political, exploratory, and military forces that pour between two sides of the galaxy.  All of that lead together into a 4 season long mega-arc that stands as the greatest Star Trek story ever told: the Dominion War.

Week of Review - In Defense of Star Trek The Animated Series

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Edited by Robert Beach

For day two of my celebration of Star Trek, I thought I’d focus on an obscure and somewhat forgotten chapter in Trek’s history. In 1969, Star Trek concluded its three-season run after budgetary restrictions and dwindling audience interest forced it off the air. Even though the show was a prestigious series in its time, garnering a lot of admiration from doctors and scientist, the ‘60s just wasn’t the age of genre shows on TV. That all changed in the ‘70s when TV took over as the outlet for disposable, high-concept viewing. 

While movies spent the ‘70s getting more challenging and more adult, TV doubled down on the stranger genre elements, giving us major series like Wonder Woman, 6 Million Dollar Man, and The Incredible Hulk as well as forgotten gems like Logan’s Run and the Planet of the Apes series. Seeking to capitalize on this trend, Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry pushed for a new series, yet was met with some resistance due to the cost of creating sets and costumes. Given how much of this new genre television was aimed at younger audience, Rodenberry went to one of the biggest names in cheap, younger entertainment: Hanna-Barbera. Thus, Star Trek: the Animated Series was born.