JC's Trek Talk

The Worst of Star Trek Voyager Threshold Threshold.  For about 10 years this episode held to dubious honor of being considered the worst episode of Trek ever (until Enterprise ended in 2005 with "These are the Voyages" which actually stole Threshold's shit crown).  The crew equip a shuttlecraft with a new form of dilithium and Tom Paris breaks the Warp 10 barrier (read: infinite speed).  After returning to the ship he mutates into a lizard creature.  He then kidnaps captain Janeway, takes her to warp 10 and they both mutate into salamander creatures.  And have salamander babies on a planet.  Even Brannon Braga has admitted this episode was a "royal steaming stinker". Virtuoso Voyager meets the Qomar, a species who have never heard music.  They then go totally googoo fan girl over the Doctors opera singing.  Boring premise.  Also the Qomar come across as jerks for fangirling over the Doctor, then just as quickly replacing him with a "superior,...

The Worst of Star Trek Deep Space Nine Profit and Lace A potentially progressive episode in the tradition of trek, using Ferengi society to talk about gender inequality, the "glass ceiling" and women in business, totally wasted by playing the "Quark in drag" plot device as the butt of a joke.  What could have been a good "deeper message/moral lesson" episode was instead turned into a cringeworthy crossdressing comedy.   Let He Who is Without Sin… DS9's Risa episode.  Jadzia takes Worf on a vacation to Risa.  And he's miserable the whole time.  Which should have been obvious before they left.  And he bitches and complains the whole episode.  Yawn.  The episode was supposed to explore the topic of sex, but it wasn't able to deliver on that due to tv restrictions at the time.  The only thing we got resembling that was Terry Ferrell and Vanessa Williams in one piece swimsuits with their legs around each other. The Muse Bad boring A-plot abou...

The Worst of Star Trek The Next Generation Code of Honor The poster child for the issues in TNG season 1.  Poor casting decisions and a bad story resulted in this racist and sexist episode.  The aliens of the week being Hollywood stereotypical, tribal African caricatures all played by African American actors and the sexism throughout the episode ("a woman? Your chief of security?") make this episode nearly unwatchable.  When asked about TNGs worst episode at a convention, Jonathan Frakes famously once said "One of our worst, and the one even Gene [Roddenberry] was ashamed of, was that horrible, racist piece of shit from the first season "Code of Honor". Oh my god in heaven!" Shades of Grey The clip show.  A boring, skippable episode.  I'll give this one a slight break, seeing that the 88-89 season was shortened by a writers strike, and the writers on TNG were exhausted by end of the season despite only producing 22 episodes down from 26.  That does not...

Head Canon: The Klingon ships of Discovery season 1 The very un-Klingon looking Klingon ships seen in Star Trek Discovery's Klingon-Federation war. These ships look so radically different from other Klingon designs for a good reason: these are NOT in fact Klingon ships.  These are actually old Hur'q ships, captured by the Klingons during the Hur'q invasion in Earth's 14th century A.D.  These ships were captured and used by the Klingons until eventually being surpassed technologically by Klingon designs.  The ships were then either abandoned or kept as heirlooms by the great houses, passed down through the generations.  Even in the 23rd century, some of these ships would be used as flagships by the leaders of the great houses.  The ships would no doubt be upgraded and augmented with Klingon technology over the centuries.  As the Federation-Klingon War of 2256-2257 was at least initially fought by the fleets of T'Kuvma and the great houses (on the Klingon sid...

The Worst of Star Trek The Original Series Turnabout Intruder The finale episode of The Original Series.  Kirk's old flame is jealous of his success as a starship captain, so she steals his body to become captain of the Enterprise.  Miserably bad acting, a tired boring gimmick (the body swap trope), and a premise (Lester's motivation being that women can't be starship captains) that is sexist and insulting to what the franchise stands for (and wrong: see captains Hernandez, Georgiou, Batel and Janeway among others).  It boggles the mind that Gene Roddenberry's name is in the credits as the writer of this episode.  With this episode TOS ended with a deafening whimper. Spock’s Brain "Brain and Brain!  What is Brain?!"  This episode.  The long ridiculed, goofy third season premiere.  A goofy story filled with silly, absurd, nonsensical, cringeworthy moments like McCoy remote controlling brain-less Spock and being able to perform brain surgery after g...

What is Star Trek About? A Reflective Essay What is Star Trek about?  This is an interesting and loaded question.  From it's beginning with the original series in the 1960's Star Trek is and always has been about deep, thoughtful, intellectual stories about an optimistic future for humanity.   The concept as conceived by Gene Roddenberry was a future in which humanity (a united humanity) works together with other races and species in common cause.  The cause being exploration, learning and personal betterment.  A future where humanity has overcome its internal struggles and provincial attitudes and prejudices and moved beyond national squabbles, beyond poverty, disease, war, into a more enlightened future.  In the original series this was often shown in the form of episodes that were in truth morality plays, set in a sci-fi concept and a future several hundred years hence. Episodes like "Let That be Your Last Battlefield" that took a very blunt look ...

Thoughts on Star Trek Discovery and Star Trek Starfleet Academy's 32nd century Starfleet Ships I am not a fan of the 32nd century Starfleet ship designs from Star Trek Discovery and the upcoming Starfleet Academy series.  I get that these are designs from a far future when new technologies and techniques have been developed by Starfleet, but there are a number of things about these ships that just don't work for me. Overall Esthetics I know that these are designs from the 31st and 32nd centuries when technologies have evolved and changed over the centuries and new technologies have been developed and discovered (see programmable matter).  That said, many of these designs don't look remotely Starfleet.   The Courage and Eisenberg classes look much more at home as battleships in some alien fleet.   The Mars Class with it's crab claw looking nacelles(?) is interesting, but again not very Starfleet.  The design would much better fit an alien ship. ...

Thoughts on Starfleet Academy's Uniforms and Combadges The two trailers and small number of pictures released to date for the upcoming Starfleet Academy gives us a pretty good look at the series uniforms and combadge.  Some thoughts: Starting with Jett Reno (Tig Notaro) in the standard(?) instructor(?) uniform.  The asymmetric bottom is very much in keeping with Star Trek Discovery's 32nd century uniforms.  Not entirely sure why they didn't just use the Discovery season 4-5 uniforms.  Overall not a huge fan of this one.  The silver and black stripe just looks strange. Robert Picardo as The Doctor (EMH) from Voyager.  His special uniform (flag officer?) is mostly white, the color for medical in Star Trek Discovery.  It still has the weird asymmetric bottom (see above). Here we see Lura Thok in a special uniform with Discovery style gorgets showing her rank.  A dress uniform maybe? Holly Hunter as Nahla Ake in what I guess is an officers uniform....

The Kelvin Timeline In light of the recent announcement that there will most likely not be a 4th Kelvin Timeline JJ-Verse reboot movie I though I would give my opinions of the Kelvin reboot movies. Star Trek 2009 Officially just titled "Star Trek" this movie "rebooted" the Star Trek franchise after it's forced hiatus following the cancellation of Star Trek Enterprise 4 years earlier.  This in itself is not a bad thing.  The issues are in execution.  First, taking Star Trek, something that has always been more than a bit intellectual and focused primarily on problem solving and characters and making it into fully action "pew pew" shootemup summer action flicks.  This totally doesn't fit with the franchise.  The biggest explanation for this is that the creative powers and primarily director J.J. Abrams were more familiar with Star Wars and tried to make Trek more like Star Wars.  Star Trek is NOT Star Wars.  The result as I see it in Star Trek 2009 i...

Scale and Size: a Discussion There is quite a lot of debate and vitriol online of late regarding size and scale of starships in Star Trek.   In an attempt to quell the fan debate SNW season 3s "What Is Starfleet?" documentary establishes a length of 442.6 meters for the constitution class USS Enterprise.  This numbers fails for several reasons.  As pointed out by VenomGeekMedia on a recent video discussion about starship scale and perspective, this size fails for several reasons.  1: with a crew compliment of 203 (during Pikes time) or even 430 (in Kirk's time) the accepted 289m length (TOS era) or 305m (Movies refit) is plenty big enough for the crew.  Despite what J.J. Abrams and Alex Kurtzman may think, 289m is actually quite large.  To  be frank J.J. Abrams blatant upscaling of the Kelvin Enterprise to around 750 meters long simply doesn't work.  For one, the bridge, with a window viewscreen through which we can see from the outside peopl...

Star Trek Starfleet Academy Trailer A new trailer for Star Trek Starfleet Academy dropped over the weekend at NYCC. My thoughts: We get a few good views of the USS Athena NCC-392023, the ship that apparently houses Starfleet Academy.  There's a flashback with Nahla Ake in a Discovery season 3 style uniform.  The dialogue establishes that she has some kind of connection with Caleb Mir.  More of Paul Giamatti as the bad guy (though I'm not too sure why this series needs one). We see Tig Notoro (Jett Reno), Mary Wiseman (Sylvia Tilly) and Robert Picardo om various scenes with with cadets, ok cool.   We get a shot of the Athena's bridge, which I still think looks a bit too much like he SNW esthetic for 900 years hence. Lots of shots of character moments, cadet camaraderie, training, but mostly just eye candy.  Like Discovery this series looks to put a lot of focus on character drama, relationships, connections.  I'm worried that it could overpower the seri...

Strange New Worlds Season 3 Season Review Overall Impressions Uneven would be one word to describe this season, especially the first half, with a serious episode, followed by a lighthearted episode, followed by a serious episode, followed by a lighthearted episode, followed by a serious episode.  The back half of the season is more consistently serious (except of course for the Vulcan episode).  On the whole though, some pretty decent trek.  This season seemingly ended the Spock-Chapel arc and replaced it with the Spock-La'An arc, mainly to put Chapel with Roger Korby (originally established in TOS "What are Little Girls Made of". the season also expanded on and eventually wrapped up the Pike-Batel arc by adding a Batel-Gorn subplot first established in season 2's finale Hegemony, in this seasons finale New Life and New Civilizations.  As an audience member and having seen TOS, the foreknowledge that Pike will end up with Vina in TOS "The Menagerie part 2" m...

Star Trek Strange New Worlds Season 3 Reaction: Episode 10 New Life and New Civilizations The season 3 finale.  We finally get the see the end of Captain Batels story.  Scotty gets "pranked" into dressing in dress uniform and kilt much like how Uhura got pranked in Children of the Comet.  I'm really liking the characterization of Scotty here and in recent episodes.  I'm liking seeing more Sam Kirk.  The eye stabbing out thing was a bit much.  Batels eyes lighting up looked a little like the Zetarian from TOS "The Lights of Zetar".  Also cool seeing more Kirk and Spock working together.  Spock calls Kirk "Jim" for first time.  The mind meld to allow the two ships to work together in perfect synchronicity was a pretty cool idea.  The Pike-Batel alternate future together, alternate timeline, at different stages, different time, seeing Pike and Batel's daughter growing up scene was definitely inspired by TNG's The Inner Light.  Also the...

The Fandom: a Rant There's something I need to get off my chest: people need to take a chill pill.  You and I may not like some Star Trek series and love others, and that's fine.  You don't have to like every series that is released.  Just because you don't like a certain series doesn't mean everyone hates it.  Bad is subjective.  Some people like lower decks and Prodigy.  I personally do not.  I really like SNW, some people in this comments section obviously do not.  I am also not a fan of Enterprise or very much of Voyager, two series that were produced during the Berman Era.  I love SNW, a Kurtzman Era show.  Regardless, whether you or I like the newer shows or not, they're still Star Trek, and still canon.  Deal with it.  I personally despise Section 31, Into Darkness, and most of Discovery (first 4 seasons).  I still accept that they are and always will be part of the franchise and canon.  You and I as viewers DO...

Star Trek Strange New Worlds Season 3 Reaction: Episode 8 Four and a Half Vulcans So...another "Vulcan hijinks" episode.  And more of the La'an-Spock relationship.  Still not sure about this one.  The story line about the mission to the planet undercover as Vulcans is interesting.  Not sure about the choice of music for the corridor scene.  I got a giggle at Pike doing the "Space the final frontier" speech as a Vulcan.  Honestly I'd have liked to have seen a bit more of the mission down to the planet, but I'm guessing story and probably budget considerations said otherwise.  The human characters acting "super Vulcan" comes off as a bit campy and stilted.  Also: contrary to the writers belief Vulcans can use contractions.  The twist of "we've fixed the problem but we don't want to use it" is cliche at this point and over used.  Honestly the "humans being over-done Vulcans" gag wears thin fast.  The Vulcan with a human...

Star Trek Gripe Star Trek can't cast child actors (especially recurring characters) age appropriately.  Especially if the character is nonhuman or half human, TPTB always cast the role waaay too old. Example 1: Alexander Rozhenko.  We know he was born during TNGs 3rd season.  When the characters is introduced (season 4, played by Jon Paul Steuer then 5 years old) he looks about 2-3 years old.  When next we see the character (mid-season 5), he's played by Brian Bonsall (then 10 years old), and looks to be at least 6-7.  By the end of the series Alexander looks maybe 8 or 9 years old.  When we see the character some years later on DS9 season 6, he's played by Marc Worden, and looks to be mid-late teens.  TNG season 3 was 2366, DS9 season 6 is 2374 (8 years).  At 8 years old he's already serving on a Klingon ship during a time of war.  Yeah, right. Example 2: Naomi Wildman.  We see Naomi's birth in the Voyager season 2 episode Deadlock (mid...

Star Trek Strange New Worlds Season 3 Reaction: Episode 7 What is Starfleet? I love the documentary announcement at the beginning of the episode.  The documentary as a framing device for the episodes primary story is an interesting and refreshing change.  It also gave a lot of opportunities introspective moments for the crew.  Storywise, it's a nice standard Star Trek Mission complete with moral quandary and debate between the crew, very much giving TOS and cold war vibes.  It was nice to see the shuttlecraft, albeit briefly.  We haven't seen it in a bit.  Also the reveal through the "telepathic connection" with Uhura that the creature  wants to die and the plan that the crew device is very TNG in many ways.  Putting the credits and title as an ending instead of the normal title sequence was a nice touch to not break up or take away from the documentary style of the episode. Observations:  The on-screen specs of the Enterprise stating the shi...

Star Trek: Nemesis Star Trek Nemesis.  Not my favorite Star Trek movie.  In fact, my least favorite TNG movie and my least favorite of the first 10 trek movies.  Some of my biggest grievances with the movie:  Shinzon.  Not the strongest trek movie villian.  The basic concept is not a bad one, a corrupt/ "evil" clone of Picard, a mirror for Picard (paralleling B4 being a "mirror" of sorts for Data), but I feel like the message would have been stronger if Shinzon had just been a straight mirror, not a clone that looks different because he was never "aged up" to Picard's age (to explain away the visual differences between the actors.  Nothing against Tom Hardy, but I firmly believe that it would have been better and simpler to have had Patrick Stewart play Shinzon.  And Patrick Stewart is a high enough caliber actor to play both Picard and Shinzon. The "truck chase" scene.  Not my favorite scene.  Not a bad scene necessarily, but - and othe...

Star Trek Strange New Worlds Season 3 Reaction: Episode 6 The Sehlat Who Ate It's Tail So we start onboard the Farragut.  We finally get to see the real James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley) which is cool at this point.  It's fun to see Enterprise and another ship working together.  The away team beaming into the corridor of the damaged USS Farragut (including Scotty talking about the damage and heading to engineering) really reminds me of the Enterprise away team beaming into the corridor of the severely damaged USS Constellation in TOS "The Doomsday Machine".  Paul Wesley does a pretty good job as "TOS Kirk": his mannerisms, delivery, without being over the top.  As one who was hitherto skeptical of Paul Wesley as "new Kirk", I was pleasantly surprised, and dare I say, I would like to see more.  The phone thing is kinda funny, especially with the triple split screen.  The twist at the end was cool, with the "scavengers" being the descendants of h...

Fan Reaction to Starfleet Academy's Jem'Hadar/Klingon Hybrid Character: A Rant I don't understand all this hate/vitriol online suddenly about the female Jem'Hadar/Klingon hybrid character from Starfleet Academy. People saying: "oh there can't be a female Jem'Hadar because the Jem'Hadar were all males". In the 24th century. There were no female Jem'Hadar in the 24th century because they were all genetically engineered (essentially clones "bred" not born) to be male. The Dominion genetically engineered the Jem'Hadar to be super soldiers and engineered/cloned them all to be male (being clones there was no need for women, also the Dominion mindset at the time being that having women would have made them weak). Things change over 800+ years. After returning to the Great Link Odo could have changed the Dominion and ultimately caused them to decide to clone female Jem'Hadar. For all we know the Dominion as it was in the 24th century ...