JC's Trek Talk

On Section 31... I have never been wild about the whole concept of Section 31, since it was first established in DS9's season 6 episode "Inquisition" in which the clandestine organization abducts Dr. Bashir and then tries to recruit him.  The organization was portrayed as rogue, operation outside the purview and even official knowledge of Starfleet and the Federation.  This is in contrast to the Cardassian Obsidian Order or Romulan Tal Shiar both of which are well known and operate with the tacit approval of their respective governments.  Although the concept of Section 31 is an intriguing one in the context of DS9s many shades of grey, I personally find it unnecessary and completely antithetical to Gene Roddenberry's original vision of Star Trek.  In season 7's "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" Section 31 pops up again to meddle in Romulan Tal Shiar affairs, and then at season (and series) end it's revealed that Section 31 created a virus to commit gen...

Worst Starfleet Starship Designs: A Rant In 2009 we were introduced to the Kelvin timeline and JJ Abrams version of the classic NCC-1701: Yeah... Dude! It's not a hot rod! It's the Starship Enterprise.  It doesn't need all the aerodynamic fins and sh*#, it's in space.  The supposed scale is ridiculous (and doesn't work), the nacelles look totally stupid, the overall color scheme is more TMP than TOS, and I don't even know what the f*$# is going on with the neck sitting way back on the drive section. In Star Trek Beyond, it had apparently gone through a refit (IRL the ship's neck and pylons were slimmed down to make the destruction by Krall's swarm more plausible).  And it actually looks worse.  A lot worse. Into Darkness gave us this hot mess: The USS Vengeance.  When I first saw it I was like "what is this? Really? Is this a joke???" For a Star Trek ship: NO.  Just no. When Star Trek Discovery was first announced and anticipation was hig...

Legacy Discovery leaves behind a varied legacy, for its divisiveness and perceived lack of quality among Star Trek series, as well as for its boldness in trying new things and blazing trails in both storytelling techniques and inclusivity. Discovery also blazed a trail being the first Star Trek series on a streaming platform, being the flagship series for CBS All Access and ushering in a new era for the Star Trek franchise. For better or worse it established a new aesthetic for the franchise and served as a launching pad for the much praised Star Trek Strange New Worlds as well as the upcoming Star Trek Starfleet Academy series (expected in 2026) and the Star Trek Section 31 streaming movie (expected in 2025). It is also important to point out that at the time of the show’s creation Franchise executive producer Alex Kurtzman and co wanted to do something completely different. They definitely accomplished that. Said Kurtzman, Discovery was never intended to be the one Star Trek ser...

Fan Criticism Fan reaction to the series has been mixed to say the least. Despite all the initial hype, the delayed release and radically different look and feel of the series compared to all previous Star Treks was met with curiosity, derision, and even ridicule by some fans. The phrase “not your father’s Star Trek” was bandied about by the studio execs defending the show, while many of the most ardently outspoken fans against the series railed against its “wokeness”, it’s hyper serialization, it’s not being “real Star Trek”, it’s main character Michael Burnham being a “Mary Sue”, the Klingons not looking like established Klingons from previous series and movies, and even the design of the titular ship. The fanbase became divided into the borderline toxic hate filled “never Discovery, it’s not real Star Trek, it’s woke garbage” camp, and the "it’s Star Trek love it or hate it, any trek is better than no trek” crowd. This reviewer falls somewhere in the middle. While it is de...

A Fan Theory... Just a theory I had...the technology used by the Caretaker to transport USS Voyager, Chakotay's Maquis ship, USS Equinox, Dreadnought, etc. to the Delta Quadrant actually utilized the mycelial network. The Nacene (the Caretaker and Suspiria) are described as a sporocystian life form.  A sporocyst is a structure in Ascosphaera fungi. The important words here are ‘spore’ and ‘fungi’. The USS Discovery’s spore drive used spores of a species of fungus, Prototaxites Stellaviatori to travel vast distances near instantaneously using the mycelial network.  Also, in “Cold Fire” it is established that Suspiria naturally lives in a subspace layer called Exosia. Theory: Exosia is actually the Nacene’s name for the mycelial plane, the subspace layer in which the mycelial network exists. I know that Discovery travelled across the Mycelial Network with little to no ill effects, while the USS Voyager et.al. suffered heavy damage/casualties in the process, however, it should be...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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...

Season 1 The first season. The first two episodes don’t even feature the titular ship, so as a viewer I was a bit confused. The first two episodes serve as more of a prologue than a proper pilot to the series, being set on the USS Shenzhou under captain Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh). The main characters of Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), the Kelpian Saru (Doug Jones) the first member of his species seen in the franchise (a species created for this series), and recurring characters Keyla Detmer (Emily Coutts) and Voq- later Voq/Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif; credited in the first 4 episodes as Voq under the pseudonym Javid Iqbal-which the fans quickly saw through) are established in these episodes. Even as a prologue “The Vulcan Hello” and “Battle of the Binary Stars” ask a lot of the viewers, trying to get them invested in a main character who has gone from loyal first officer to mutineer, assaulting her captain, starting a war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, g...

Series Origins Star Trek Discovery, the sixth live action series in the Star Trek franchise (7th series overall if you count the 1970s animated series) was announced to the public in November of 2015, with a planned release in January 2017. Production began in 2016 "on the heels of" the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. From its announcement Star Trek Discovery was highly anticipated by fans as it would be the first new Star Trek series on TV since the cancellation of Star Trek Enterprise in 2005. Since that show’s ending CBS and Paramount had undergone a corporate split, as a result of which the rights to Star Trek were also split. Paramount had retained the motion picture rights to the franchise (and hence were able to release the three “Kelvin Timeline” reboot movies produced by J.J. Abrams) while CBS as a result of the split got the TV side of Paramount (the TV studios and IPs, and as a part of that, the TV Star Trek rights and properties). The new series would both her...

Star Trek Discovery Series overview and review What is this? This is the start of my series of posts of a retrospective review of Star Trek Discovery. From a hard core trekkie POV. My trekkie credentials: Born in the mid 1980s, I grew up watching TNG and TOS reruns, watched DS9 and Voyager, and later Enterprise. Saw First Contact and Insurrection in theaters. I'm an old school trekkie. This series of posts contains frank (and possibly unpopular) opinions on the series, the characters, plotlines, creative decisions, etc. You, dear reader, do not have to agree with my opinions. I am not asking you to. I will be starting the series this week with the origins of the series and the retrospective review of season 1. Starting next week I will be posting the rest of the series one section /season at a time. New post will drop at 10:00 AM EDT on Tuesdays. Without further ado, let's go!