JC's Trek Talk

Short Treks In 2018 a series of Star Trek shorts "Short Treks" were produced as both an experiment in Trek storytelling and as filler material to release during the hiatus between seasons. The first set of four short treks are all set on Discovery sets and during the series. “Runaway’ features Tilly and the character Me Hani Ika Hali Ka Po, a Xahean who will come back in the season 2 finale "Such Sweet Sorrow parts 1 and 2". “Calypso” finds USS Discovery abandoned in space for 1000 years and run by an AI named Zora, something that would be revisited in the series finale "Life, Itself". “The Brightest Star”, set almost 20 years earlier than the series is sort of an origin story for Saru and how he came to be in Starfleet. “The Escape Artist” features Rainn Wilson as Harry Mudd (seen in 2 first season episodes, the character was originally portrayed in 2 TOS episodes by Roger C. Carmel). A second series of Short Treks was produced in 2019 Following the...

Star Trek Starship Creator (PC) 1998 Star Trek Starship Creator was developed by Imergy and published by Simon & Schuster Interactive in 1998 for Windows 95-XP and MacOS 7.5-9.  To call it a game is a bit of a stretch.  "Software toy" would be a better description.  As the name implies, it lets you create a starship (from one of 7 classes, the add-on pack released in 1999 adds 3 more classes) assign a crew from a list of characters from TOS,TNG, DS9, and Voyager and the movies and send the ship on pre-scripted missions.  Add-on pack also introduces the ability to send 2 ships on a mission simultaneously.  For those who are up for a bit of scripting, custom missions and crewmembers can be added.  The sequel, Starship Creator Warp II released in 2000 added some additional missions, a non federation ship class, and attempts to maked creating custom missions and custom crewmembers easier. Like Simon & Schuster's other trek offerings from the mid and lat...

Season 5 Season 5 ties back into the TNG episode "The Chase" and is basically as the producers described it an "Indiana Jones in space" treasure hunt type story with the USS Discovery and crew following the clue trail puzzle to find the progenitors (the ancient aliens from TNG The Chase who seeded all humanoid life in the galaxy) technology. The whole concept of trying to find the power to create life "the power of creation/the power of god" is not an uninteresting one. One plus of the season is that we finally after all these years get to explore (and actually see the true appearance of) the Breen, a species first seen in Deep Space 9 nearly 30 years earlier. Also introduced this season is the character of Captain/Commander Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie). Rayner is a bit of a different type of character than what the show has given us so far, and actually in hindsight a refreshing change. Initially more of a foil to Burnham, the character actually has ...

Time for a little ranking fun.  Today, I’m ranking the Star Trek series finales.  Before anyone says anything, I am not counting Star Trek Prodigy 1: because I have not really watched the series, and 2: because there has been no official announcement that the series is ended.   Keep in mind that this is my ranking, you do not have to agree.  As with any ranking YMMV. From best to worst: 1. What You Leave Behind (DS9) A worthy ending for the series, wrapping up pretty much all of the remaining loose ends (granted DS9 had so many loose ends and so many story lines going that the had to start wrapping up things several episodes early).  “What You Leave Behind” is a satisfying end to the series, the Dominion War, and Sisko’s arc.  Definitely top of the list. 2. All Good Things (TNG) “All Good Things”.  Full disclaimer: I am a TNG fan first and foremost, so I am admittedly a bit biased, but I love this episode.  The only reason this isn’t at the t...

Season 4 Season 4 begins with the crew in slightly better uniforms (now in Trek primary colors instead of the horrendous gray), and yet another apocalyptic, galaxy ending threat, this time the Dark Matter Anomaly (DMA) destroying entire planets, including possibly eventually Nivar and Earth. Following up from the ending of season 3 Michael Burnham is now the captain, with Saru being gone for a while on his homeworld Kaminar with Sukal and later back onboard Discovery as Burnham’s first officer. It was actually kinda cool to see the Galactic Barrier from TOS again after all these years (even though the show made NO effort to make it look like the barrier from its 3 appearances in TOS). Species 10-C being from beyond the barrier was a cool choice. Continuing last season’s rebuilding of the Federation Ni’Var rejoins the Federation after some political maneuvering by Captain Burnham. Grey (Ian Alexander) the previous host of Tal begins appearing to Adira and subsequently gets a synth ...

Temporal Investigations Incursion Report Filed Stardate 58624.3 Commander JT Stern, DTI Analyst Transmitted over secured channel Alpha 236 Zeta 2 I. SUMMARY OF INCURSION Stardate 58460.1 The USS Cerritos NCC-75567 was assigned to conduct updated scans of the time portal on planet Krulmuth-B, first discovered by an Orion science ship in the 23rd century. An away team of 4 junior officers led by Ensign Beckett Mariner were sent to the surface to conduct the scans. During the away mission the portal was inadvertently activated and Ensign Bradward Boimler and later Ensign Beckett Mariner were thrown back in time from 2381 stardate 58460.1 to 2260 stardate 2291.6. At the time of their arrival in the past the portal was being analyzed by an away team from the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 under Captain Christopher Pike as part of a routine survey. With the assistance of Captain Pike and the crew of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 the two ensigns were later returned to their own time frame. Temp...

Season 3 Because of the major setting change (an over 900 year time jump into an unexplored 32nd century future) Season 3 seems like a "soft reboot" of sorts, starting with Burnham arriving in 3188, a year ahead of Discovery and meeting courier Cleveland Booker "Book" (David Ajala) and establishing their relationship and the downfallen state of the Federation/ Starfleet in the aftermath of the galactic scale cataclysm known as the Burn (in which all dilithium when inert and many ships were destroyed. The scarcity of dilithium this season is a pretty blunt analogy for nonrenewable resources and fossil fuel scarcity. Interesting choices to be sure. Season 3 also establishes Ni’Var (Vulcan + Romulans, going back to the Spock connection), with a whole episode “Unification III” devoted to following up on TNGs “Unification” part 1 and 2 Vulcan/Romulan reunification storyline. The main story arc of the season focuses on the Burn (for what that was worth), and United Ea...

Subject: Captain James Tiberius Kirk Serial number: SC937-0176CEC Report: List of violations of the Temporal Prime Directive "Tomorrow is Yesterday" USS Enterprise inadvertently thrown back in time to 1969 Earth after using light speed breakaway factor to escape the gravity of a black star -Destroying a 20th century aircraft with the USS Enterprise tractor beam -Getting caught and arrested by a 20th century military police officer for trespassing -Assaulting a 20th century Air Force colonel -Exposing a citizen of the 20th century, the military police officer to the USS Enterprise -Exposing a citizen of the 20th century, USAF Captain John Christopher to the USS Enterprise and extraterrestrials (Spock) -Revealing information about the future (UESPA, Starfleet) to USAF Captain John Christopher "City on the Edge of Forever" Captain Kirk and Commander Spock travelled back in time to 1930 Earth using the Guardian  of Forever to correct changes to the timeline caused by a ...

Strange New Worlds Season 3 Trailer Star Trek Strange New Worlds season 3 trailer just dropped. My initial impressions: Looks like a lot of quirky, one-off episodes, but I hope there's some actual exploring strange new worlds. Right now, I'm most interested in the conclusion of the Gorn cliffhanger season left us hanging on. (And we used to think that having to wait 3-4 months to for the conclusion of Best of Both Worlds, Redemption or Scorpion was bad...) Observations: 0:10: Maybe the "50's sci-fi" episode is a commentary on this being a sci-fi show? 0:15: Is that a holodeck? Ummm...Ok? 0:19: Why does that guy look like Trelane? Also the way he snaps his fingers is decidedly Q-ish... 0:24: A three armed edosian(?). Tying into TAS. MmmKay. 0:43: I'm liking Uhura's new 'do. Also, I'm glad to see we get more new Scotty. (granted, I'm a bit biased since Scotty (James Doohan) is one of my top favorite Star Trek characters. I usually don...

Season 2 Picking up from season 1’s cliffhanger ending (the arrival of the USS Enterprise) season 2 immediately jumps into a new world-ending, galaxy spanning threat story arc with the red signals, the red angel suit time travel stuff and later section 31/Control and the sphere data. With so much going on story wise it felt a bit incoherent to me. The dark tone of season 1 was eschewed in favor of a brighter feel and a bit more closeness with established canon. The seemingly fan-service opening of the premiere with the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 under Captain Pike turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as the one good thing to come out of season 2 was Anson Mount as Captain Pike and ultimately Star Trek Strange New Worlds. That said the redesign (and obvious scale-up) of the classic USS Enterprise NCC-1701 to fit the modern Discovery aesthetic was another major point of consternation with the fandom. Me personally I don’t hate it, it’s not the best design for the Constitution class...