Tag Archives: Star Trek

The Return of Captain Picard

It’s been nearly 18 years since we last saw Sir Patrick Stewart in the role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. And later this year, he’s bringing Captain Picard back in a brand new Star Trek series for CBS All Access – appropriately called “Star Trek: Picard”. We were given a teaser trailer for this new Picard series last month and today CBS released the very first image for the show:

There is even an animated version of the image that was shared on Twitter:

We don’t know much about the show’s plot other than it takes place 20 years after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis. We know Picard is no longer in Starfleet and has retired to his family’s vineyard in La Barre, France. We also know that the destruction of Romulus that was shown as happening in the 2009 J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie will also play an important part in the show. As mentioned in the teaser trailer, Picard led one of the largest rescue armadas ever to Romulus. Something happened resulting in Picard retiring as an admiral. And something in this new series brings Picard out of retirement.

I am so excited for this show! We’ll find out more later this month and San Diego Comic-Con.

The “Way of the Warrior” Star Trek Mission Crate

UPDATED on 8/20 to include tweet from Loot Crate on their new Shipping Status page. 

Subscription boxes have become popular with different fandoms over the last few years led by Loot Crate and others like Funko. These subscription boxes usually come every 1 to 2 months with a bunch of nerdy exclusives and other goodies based on a theme. I had been a subscriber for Loot Crate’s main subscription boxes – or “crates” – but canceled my subscription because I was finding the contents and themes for the crates hit or miss. Then late last year, Loot Crate announced they would be doing Star Trek subscription boxes. As you can imagine, I jumped on board immediately and bought a subscription for their Star Trek Mission Crates. How could I turn down getting a subscription box filled with Star Trek exclusives in partnership with Quantum Mechanix every 2 months?

Their first Star Trek Mission Crate subscription box was “Wolf 359” themed. It shipped in January in a box that looked like a shuttlecraft from the Original Series. Inside, it came with an exclusive “Locutus” limited edition statue from QMx and some other goodies. I didn’t blog about it here but this post here does a really good review of the box. 

Today I received the second Star Trek Mission Crate subscription box which is “Way of the Warrior” themed. “Way of the Warrior” was the title of the 2 part episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that saw Michael Dorn join the cast as Worf after war breaks out with the Klingon Empire. (Despite taking the theme from DS9, I had a little giggle when I noticed the box was labeled as “The Next Generation”.)

Opening the box revealed all the goodies!
Klingon socks, badge, and sticker with Mirror Universe tribble and Worf!
Worf looks pretty badass!

The box included:

  • A Worf “Master Series” Limited Edition Statue from QMx.
  • A Mirror Universe Tribble from QMx. 
  • A pair of Klingon socks.
  • A Klingon emblem badge from QMx.
  • A Klingon sticker. 
  • A Star Trek: Discovery Lapel Pin. 

Everything is this subscription box was awesome. I believe the Discovery lapel pin was handed out at the 2018 Office Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas earlier this month and since I couldn’t attend – I was glad to score one through this way! I have no complaints about the box. This Star Trek fan is impressed.

However, I do have a general complaint about my overall experience with the Star Trek Mission Crate subscription. I feel like Loot Crate is struggling a bit to fulfill the promise of shipping these boxes every 2-months. The second Star Trek Mission Crate subscription box was supposed to arrive in March. And it was supposed to be “Dark Frontier” themed after the 2-part Star Trek: Voyager episode “Dark Frontier” and feature Seven of Nine in some fashion. In May, I received an email saying this box was delayed and was expected to ship mid-July. That’s the last thing I heard about that box. Then in early July, I received an email saying that the “Way of the Warrior” box was delayed until late July. No word on what happened with the “Dark Frontier” box. Then on July 31st, I got another email saying the “War of the Warrior” box was delayed again to mid-August. The box finally arrived but still no word on the “Dark Frontier” box. It has been almost 7 months between boxes. I really want to see Loot Crate be more transparent about what’s going on with these boxes, which boxes are supposed to ship when etc. 

Overall though, I’ve been very impressed with the 2 Star Trek Mission Crates I’ve received so far and really excited for more!

UPDATED: Loot Crate responded to my tweet about this blog post alerting me to their new Shipping Status page. It just launched. 

Why Star Trek: Discovery is a missed opportunity

When I have written about Star Trek: Discovery, it has been with optimism and excitement to see Star Trek back on the small screen. That hasn’t changed. But back in August, we got a bit more information about the premise of Star Trek: Discovery — including that it’s set in the “Prime Timeline”.

So what does that mean, exactly? Well, its a missed opportunity I think. Let me explain.

The new Star Trek movies — including Star Trek Beyond — are all set in what is called the “Kelvin Timeline”. This timeline was created when Nero traveled back in time and attacked the U.S.S. Kelvin at the beginning of 2009’s Star Trek. It sort of “reset” Star Trek — or rebooted it. Everything that existed in Star Trek before 2009’s Star Trek such which includes all the previous TV shows and movies remain part of the “Prime Timeline”.

This new “Kelvin Timeline” was exciting because now Star Trek could be explored in different ways completely untethered by what’s canon and what’s not canon. Look at what they did in Star Trek Beyond for example. Simon Pegg and Doug Jung, who wrote the movie, had the freedom of coming up with a story that saw the Enterprise destroyed and crew stranded on a planet that that sits on the other side of an unexplored nebula.

LucasFilm went through the motion of resetting canon back in 2014. Star Wars had this huge “expanded universe” that was developed over the course of two decades after the original Star Wars trilogy which included stories about what happens with Luke, Leia, and Han after Return of the Jedi. In order to make room for the new trilogy of movies starting with the Force Awakens, LucasFilm didn’t want to be tied down to this expanded universe and wanted the freedom to go in whatever direction their new creative team wanted to go. Again — untethered by canon.

But there’s more to the story for Star Trek.

Star Wars has a single owner: LucasFilm. Star Trek had a single owner too (Paramount) up until 2005 when the rights to Star Trek were split due to the Viacom/CBS split. Paramount continues to own the rights to Star Trek movies, but CBS now owns the rights to Star Trek TV shows. This created a few problems. For example — CBS continues to market the original Star Trek series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, etc. to consumers. Paramount, on the other hand, is marketing the new Star Trek movies — like Star Trek Beyond — to consumers. You end up having two entities marketing a bunch of Star Trek stuff to consumers. While Paramount was originally marketing 2009’s Star Trek movie, CBS was pushing a bunch of product for the original series. You got a bunch of product with Shatner’s Captain Kirk plastered all over and then product with Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk on it. As you can imagine, this just creates a ton of consumer confusion. But this is what happens when you’ve got business people wanting to milk a franchise for all the profit they can get out of it. Rumor has it, JJ Abrams wanted Bad Robot to have end-to-end control of Star Trek and was really concerned about this exact situation. However, when he couldn’t make things work so he just jumped ship over to LucasFilm and took on Star Wars. Bummer, right? (Well, not a bummer if you’re a Star Wars fan and loved The Force Awakens.)

By introducing a new Star Trek TV show, CBS and Paramount had an opportunity to work together and create a shared universe that could exist between this new TV show and the movies. The new Star Trek movies have already re-introduced Star Trek to a new generation. Instead, CBS and Paramount continue to push Star Trek independently of each other. The result is Star Trek: Discovery which is in the “Prime Timeline” and is another prequel before Kirk. A missed opportunity.

I still remain cautiously optimistic about Star Trek: Discovery and am excited to see the show. But I can’t help feel a bit bummed we’re not seeing further exploration of the “Kelvin Timeline” and all the new stuff introduced to us in the new movies.

Thoughts on the new U.S.S. Enterprise 1701-A

Even if you haven’t seen Star Trek Beyond yet, just by watching the trailers you would know that the Enterprise gets destroyed. And it shouldn’t be a surprise that the crew gets a new Enterprise at the end of the movie . This new “highly advanced” starship that was already under construction at Starbase Yorktown. Since the Enterprise gets destroyed, the decide the name this new starship the Enterprise NCC-1701-A. The new Enterprise was designed by Sean Hargreaves.

I was a huge fan of the previous Enterprise from the J.J. Abrams films which was designed by Ryan Church. The design of the Enterprise-A borrows a bit from Ryan Church’s design but aims to call back to the original Enterprise designed by Matt Jefferies. I am mostly a fan of Sean’s design except for one piece: 

I am not a fan of the wait the nacelle pylons integrate into the engineering section near the back of the ship near the shuttlebay. It’s just too pointy and fat.

We have only seen the Enterprise-A on screen very briefly. So its possible that the design could change by the time we see her on screen. But I look forward to seeing her in action!

Star Trek 50th Anniversary Pin

Happy 50th Anniversary to Star Trek

On this date in 1966 — Star Trek first aired on NBC and started a legacy that would grow into something awesome.

I missed out experiencing the initial rise of Star Trek in the 70’s after the original series was cancelled as I wasn’t born yet. However, I did live through Star Trek’s resurgence in the 80’s with the movies and Star Trek: The Next Generation. For many fans, Star Trek means “Kirk, Spock, and McCoy”. And there is no arguing against that. Those characters are the heart of Star Trek’s legacy. But for me, Star Trek means “Picard, Sisko, and Janeway” — and yes even “Archer”. My love of Star Trek didn’t begin with the original series. It began with Star Trek: The Next Generation and continued with all that followed.

I fell in love with the characters and storylines. I fell in love with all the fancy 24th century technology and science used in the stories. I loved the stories that put characters in tough situations that invoked thought and emotion. The stories that were thought provoking were the best episodes! Like when Picard was assimilated by the Borg and Riker was forced to use the deflector to try and destroy the Borg ship with him on it. They made us wait the entire summer to find out what happened! They wouldn’t kill Picard, would they? Like when Worf broke his back and the crew was confronted with having to chose between respecting Worf’s cultural beliefs and theirs when he proclaims he wants to go through ritual suicide. Like when Neelix and Tuvok were merged together into a new individual named Tuvix and Janeway had to make the call to split them back into individuals despite Tuvix’s protest. Did she make the right call? And of course who can forget when Sisko decided to try and bring the Romulans into the war with the Dominion and sought Garek’s help — which didn’t quite go the way he had planned. In many of these stories, the characters had to deal with repercussions and consequences of their actions. Many of the stories pushed intelligence to find solutions rather than simply pulling out a phaser.

While my love of Star Trek didn’t start with the original series — it wasn’t until I was older I realized that the subsequent shows that came after continued what the original series started by challenging us to think about the things happening in our world today and how we can be better. How can we improve ourselves? Star Trek inspires me to be better each and every day!

We have seen amazing adventures and stories over the last 50 years of Star Trek and I am so excited for what’s to come. Star Trek Beyond was one of the best Star Trek movies yet (in my opinion — I know some will completely disagree with me on this). And we’re getting a brand new Star Trek show called Star Trek: Discovery which arrives in January.

Live long and prosper. #LLAP50 #StarTrek50

Star Trek 50th Anniversary

Bryan Fuller named showrunner for new Star Trek series

In case you missed it, CBS announced plans back in November for a brand new Star Trek TV series which will make its debut January 2017. And today, it was announced that Bryan Fuller will be co-creator and executive producer of this new CBS Star Trek series — essentially the showrunner. Bryan launched his career writing episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. He has gone one to many high-profile projects in recent years including creating the show Pushing Daisies and serving as executive producer and writer on NBC’s Hannibal and also the first season of Heroes. Admittedly, I haven’t gotten into these new shows Bryan has been working on but I’ve had friends talk about these shows and how much they have liked them. I think Bryan is the perfect person to bring a new Star Trek TV series to our screens. Here is a quote from Bryan from today’s announcement:

“My very first experience of Star Trek is my oldest brother turning off all the lights in the house and flying his model of a D7 Class Klingon Battle Cruiser through the darkened halls. Before seeing a frame of the television series, the Star Trek universe lit my imagination on fire. It is without exaggeration a dream come true to be crafting a brand new iteration of Star Trek with fellow franchise alum Alex Kurtzman and boldly going where no Star Trek series has gone before.”

He’s a fan of Star Trek and has clearly proven he can write really good stories. I am hoping he brings back some of the modern day allegory in stories that made Star Trek compelling and thought provoking. Star Trek hasn’t always been about epic starship battles. For example, Star Trek really put an emphasis in the “science” in “science fiction” by addressing some scientific theories in storylines.

I encourage all Star Trek fans to give Bryan your support as he brings this new Star Trek TV series to life. Let’s give Bryan a chance to bring something to the table before offering up nerdy fanboy criticisms.

Now the big question is what direction will Bryan go with the new Star Trek TV series?

Will it take place in the same universe as the new Star Trek movies (fans call this the “JJ-verse” )— creating this shared cinematic universe for Star Trek like what Marvel is doing?

Will Bryan jump ahead and reboot The Next Generation in the same universe as the new Star Trek movies? A reimagining of TNG could be pretty fantastic. Try to think about how a modernized and updated Enterprise-D would look? Because the new movie universe reboots the Star Trek timeline — Bryan would have tons of freedom going in and making twists to TNG storylines. Things could turn out way different for the TNG characters.

He could also stay in the current era seen in the new Star Trek movies and tell the tale of another starship. Remember, there are other constitution class starships in Starfleet. Could be neat to follow the adventures of another crew in a constitution class starship. Could pave the way for some of the Enterprise crew to show up in the show.

Or he could completely go in a different direction, creating an entirely new universe and unhinged by any canon what-so-ever.

I personally would like the show to revolve around the crew of (a) Enterprise in some form. The Enterprise has always been a key character in Star Trek and seeing her return to TV would be awesome.

But we’re getting a new Star Trek TV series in less than a year from now which, as a Star Trek fan, excites the hell out of me! This year Star Trek celebrates its 50th anniversary as well. And new Star Trek movie Star Trek Beyond comes out later this year too. 2016 is going to be a very interesting and fun year for Star Trek.