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EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOK — Factory Entertainment’s STAR TREK Scaled Prop Replicas Include New Phaser Rifles

Ken Reilly
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20
EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOK — Factory Entertainment’s STAR TREK Scaled Prop Replicas Include New Phaser Rifles

First announced last August, Factory Entertainment’s new small-scale Star Trek prop replica line is growing — and today, they’ve got two more weapons from the final frontier to add to their arsenal!

To put things in the simplest terms, Factory Entertainment’s “scaled prop replica” offerings are doing essentially what Eaglemoss has done for starships — bringing fans small metal replicas of Star Trek props, measuring in between six to nine inches for desktop or bookshelf display.

Launching first with the iconic Klingon bat’leth and Vulcan lirpa weapons, the first two scaled replicas went up for preorder last summer and have finally arrived for customer fulfillment. Each measuring in at about 9″ in length, the one-piece metal sculptures are a pretty fun new entry to the world of Star Trek merchandise, especially for those of you who love alien weaponry.

The Klingon bat’leth is nicely weathered to represent a well-used warrior’s blade, with its “leather” handles sculpted into the all-metal mold, and its pointy ends nicely shaped (though its “sharp” edges have been safely dulled so nobody actually gets hurt).

The Vulcan lirpa weapon is a simple design, but well-executed; its wide blade and club ends are polished to a mirror finish, and while the blade itself is not terribly sharp — again, for safety — the edge is milled to a fine tolerance to present its traditional shape. (The solid club end, though, could do some damage if you swing it hard enough!)

The company hasn’t forgotten about Starfleet, though, as today they’ve unveiled the next two entries in their scaled Star Trek replicas: a pair of Federation phaser rifles, from two different eras of the franchise — and both are in stock for shipment to fans today.

The first is Captain Kirk’s groovy phaser rifle from “Where No Man Has Gone Before” — the only time it was used in the Original Series — which retains its 1960s look complete with the long, spindly emitter and three-barreled midsection. The 6.5-inch rifle replica is one of the few (if only) commercial products ever released replicating this one-time Star Trek weapon, and is available for $59.99.

While some of the details on the rifle is represented by applied stickers (understandable, due to its small size), the only real design choice we have to question is the black-and-gold spirals around the midsection — using perhaps two-tone bronze colors there would have been more accurate to the original prop.

Next up is the 24th century equivalent, the silver Type III Starfleet phaser rifle first introduced in the fourth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Debuting in “The Mind’s Eye” and used throughout that series and in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, this solid replica is the heaviest of the bunch — with its 7-inch length, the metal rifle weighs in at nearly 8 ounces.

This rifle has a set of ribbed rubber grips applied to the handles and midsection, and while the targeting scope on top doesn’t actually flip up like the screen-used prop, it is painted a nice yellow-green color to match the original — this rifle model also sells for $59.99.

The included display stands require a minor bit of assembly out of the box and could use a little bit of adjustment for future releases — while the clear tabbed stands fit into the base rather tightly, they have a tendency to wobble in place due to their rather wide design.

(They do the job, but you’ll need to fiddle around with them a bit to find the right balance for the displays.)

As we understand it, this line of small-size models is likely to remain focused on Trek weapons — so future releases could include things like the Voyager compression rifle, a Romulan disruptor rifle, a Klingon mek’leth, a Jem’hadar kar’takin blade, and more. We don’t know any specifics about what’s next in line, but it’s an interesting new product line with a great deal of potential.

Factory Entertainment’s scaled Star Trek prop replicas are all in stock now and shipping to collectors this week.

Review — QMx Finally Beams Down USS ENTERPRISE Delta Badges

Ken Reilly
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15
Review — QMx Finally Beams Down USS ENTERPRISE Delta Badges

More than three years after their initial announcement, QMx has finally brought their Star Trek: Discovery-era USS Enterprise Starfleet delta badges into Earth orbit — just in time for the debut of Captain Pike’s own series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Originally announced all the way back in February 2019, the metal Starfleet badges were showcased at that year’s Toy Fair expo in New York City… only to shuffle off the horizon, as they’d gone “on hold” by the early part of the next year (as a QMx representative told us at Toy Fair 2020), likely waiting for the then-in-the-works Captain Pike series to be announced to the public.

They’re finally here — after a long, long wait.

While that series announcement came in May 2020, the QMx badges didn’t follow, leading fans to eventually believe that the product had been scrapped all together, and that the company perhaps was moving out of the Star Trek arena entirely.

All that changed when the badges made a surprise appearance at April’s Mission Chicago convention (sold on-site by The Away Mission) — and now they’re finally available for online purchase, set for delivery to fans later this month.

The four badge sets, comprised of a full-size magnetic delta and a smaller pin-back lapel size, appear unchanged from their original 2019 Toy Fair debut — they’re still branded as licensed Star Trek: Discovery products — and represent the four service groups aboard the USS Enterprise in the Original Series (command, science, operations, and medical).

Command division — Captain Pike and Number One
Operations division — Hemmer, Lt. Ortegas, Lt. Noonien-Singh
Sciences division — Mr. Spock, Dr. M’Benga, Nurse Chapel
Medical division — Not yet seen in ‘Strange New Worlds’

To date, only three have appeared in use in the Strange New Worlds series; while Nurse Chapel had the red cross on her delta in the Original Series, the new-era Christine Chapel wears a sciences-division symbol on her uniform — making the medical badge a bit of a speculative design (unless it eventually comes into use down the road).

The miniature pin-backed delta badges are a nice inclusion to the QMx offering, especially for those of you who like to flair up bags and jackets with Trek detailing; at a substantially smaller size, the mini-delta pins are definitely good for day-to-day use.

Each measures just over 1.25″ in length, but retain the same build details as the full-size badges.

The four lapel-pin sized division badges.

Compared to the FanSets Enterprise command badge released last summer, the QMx badges are nearly identical in size and weight — though while the FanSets badge seems to be a bit more color-accurate to the warmer-gold props we saw on display last month, QMx’s designs are a bit more refined in detail in terms of matching the curves of the multi-layered delta shape to the silver backing.

(For those who prefer it, FanSets badge also comes in pin-back form, which isn’t an option for QMx’s full-size badge.)

QMx (left) vs FanSets (right)
QMx (left) vs FanSets (right)

As fans start to dive deeper into Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, having badges available to represent all of Starfleet’s divisions aboard the Enterprise is sure to be an appealing option for collectors and cosplayers alike — hopefully QMx will add an updated Starfleet cadet badge to its offerings soon too, for all of the Cadet Uhura fans beaming aboard.

Here are a few more photos of these magnetic Enterprise badges:

If you’re ready to report for duty aboard Captain Pike’s Enterprise, you can pick up QMx’s Star Trek: Discovery-era badges today for $19.95 each using the following links:

Command · Operations · Science · Medical

Keep checking back to TrekCore for all the latest in Star Trek product news!

Star Trek: Discovery
Season 1 Blu-ray

Star Trek: Discovery
Season 2 Blu-ray

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Season 3 Blu-ray

STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS Review — “Children of the Comet”

John Concagh
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217
STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS Review — “Children of the Comet”

This week’s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds adventure is an excellent story — but one that’s undercut by a rather pointless character decision. A mission to save a primitive world from disaster is another iconic Star Trek trope, and the charm of the episode is only increased by the incredible performance from the Enterprise’s youngest crewmate.

“Children of the Comet” also fully commits to this show’s idea of an ensemble cast, as we start with a nervous Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) undergoing some good-natured hazing from Ortegas (Melissa Navia) — the helm officer’s insinuation that dress uniforms were expected for the evening’s events — an act that earns a friendly chuckle out of their commanding officer.

A dinner party in the captain’s quarters  — one where Captain Pike (Anson Mount) himself serves as head chef — is a charming idea and a very Pike touch, something very much in line with the officer we got to know during his stint in Star Trek: Discovery Season 2. Inviting “regular people” to dine at the captain’s table is something that sets him apart from all the other Enterprise captains we’ve known over the decades; even Captain Sisko’s dinner invites never seemed to extend beyond family or his senior staff.

(And can anyone imagine Jim Kirk serving up ribs in his quarters? Doesn’t seem like his style.)

Even in this early outing, Celia Rose Gooding’s take on Uhura is shining, with their performance bringing both apprehension and earnestness which is a striking contract against the relaxed openness of the Enterprise crew. Her retort towards Spock (Ethan Peck) and Hemmer (Bruce Horak) when they try to wind her up — calling them out in their native languages — is snarky and fun in equal amounts.

New to the ship, Uhura is still on the edge of this family, something made clear when she isn’t quite in on the Spock-doesn’t-understand-human-humour gag and his confusion over one’s need to laugh when “a situation simply cannot get worse.” The light moment is undercut a little by Uhura’s own description of her past, and the reveal that she joined Starfleet after her parents and brother were killed in a shuttle accident.

The decision to write this permanently and horrifically-tragic backstory for Uhura really seems unnecessary to me; Uhura’s family don’t need to have died for her to be unsure about her place in the world, or to be indecisive about her ten-year plan. That’s a natural part of life, especially natural part of late adolescence, and the idea that such indecision should be spawned from trauma is not really great.

It’s easy enough to do the “running away to Starfleet” idea without basing it on another traumatic family past, especially that of a person of colour. Why add Uhura to a too-long list of black main characters — including Geordi La Forge, Worf, Travis Mayweather, Jake Sisko, and Michael Burnham — whose dead parents became central story points over the decades? (And that’s not even counting the Sarah Sisko situation, or Raffi Musiker’s estranged relationship with her son.)

The whole reveal seems to be based on the shock factor, and at the very least Anson Mount delivers a graceful reaction to the story — but it still didn’t sit well with me. I do like the concept that Uhura didn’t see herself as natural Starfleet material and the consequences of that. But did it need to be tied to a textbook tragic backstory? Absolutely not.

The plot of the episode is swung into motion when the crew finds out that the comet is currently on course to hit planet Persephone III and wipe out its inhabitants, the Deleb. After an initial attempt to move it using ion thrusters fails thanks to an unexpected force field, Pike sends a landing party — Uhura, Spock, La’an (Christina Chong), and Sam Kirk (Dan Jeannotte) — down to investigate.

Even here, Uhura’s apprehension of her place on the ship and her anxieties about her mission is clear. The little snippets of expression we see of her reacting to Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) in the prep room, Chapel’s flirting towards Spock, or La’an’s prickly demeaner  are stellar, and just build up marvelously to when the landing party beam down onto the comet, much to the Cadet’s amazement.

Uhura’s awe is matched by the go-getting nature of Sam Kirk, who manages to be both charming and supportive, especially as they begin exploring the inside of the structure on the comet’s surface. Sam is a nice character, even if his only purpose in this episode is to make a Yahtzee joke and then get electrocuted by the comet — a moment which definitely ups the stakes, despite the obviousness of it all.

Sam Kirk’s zapping traps the landing party on the comet, but also attracts the comets’ wardens — aliens dubbed the “Shepherds,” who arrive in a massive, ancient vessel which far outclasses the Enterprise in speed and weaponry. The Shepherds are “space warrior monks,” in Ortegas’ words, who believe their sacred duty is to protect the course of M’hanit — their name for the comet — and they see interference from the Enterprise as blasphemy.

The sequence between Pike and the Shepherd leader is a bit… dated. It fits very well into the various anti-religious themes of the Original Series (remembering, of course, that Gene Roddenberry once wrote a Star Trek film which had Kirk fighting Jesus). In the 21st century, however, the lack of nuance to it makes it all feel a little flat.

The Shepherd’s devotion to the M’hanit — and their belief that whatever it decides to do is the correct thing to do — is rather straightforward and is perhaps meant to be so. Their intransigence to the Enterprise’s mission is a clear frustration for Pike, especially when they warn him not to retrieve the landing party.

Down on the comet, Uhura is now — at least in La’an’s mind — the only person who can make sure they don’t get killed, and she’s having a hard time trying to decipher the patterns on the “shell” of the egg at the comet’s core. The juxtaposition of Spock’s terrible ‘pep talk’ and the more upfront, Nimoy-like Spock reassurance that follows is great — if just for the face Uhura pulls when his first words of support fall flat.

These versions of Spock and Uhura gel together very well, and even this early in their time together you can see how they’ll eventually become the upfront, respectful and honest friends down the road.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AjYy4vLTdg

ETHAN PECK: “She’s just, like, an incredibly impressive and talented person, which is an incredibly talented singer as well. So I just did my best kind of, like, sneak in behind her to beautiful singing.

I myself was a trained classical musician. I played cello growing up, so I’m not totally tone-deaf, I hope — but in terms of singing, yeah, I was quite nervous about We practiced quite a lot!”

Once the landing party discovers that the comet visual responds to music, things get spectacular as Uhura begins to communicate with it through harmonic changes and repeated music phrases. Gooding is the star of this show, and both other actors in the scene give her space to shine. The scene is perfectly scripted and shot, from the use of the Kikuyu song, to the reactions on Enterprise when they hear it, to the look on Spock’s face when Uhura asks him to sing along.

The big shame of it is that it doesn’t really go anywhere — the main comet crisis is still resolved by Spock’s ingenuity, as opposed to Uhura’s insight. Sure, her voice helps them get the shield down and beam back to the Enterprise, but it would have been interesting if Uhura’s linguistic — or should I say musical — breakthrough had been the key to re-directing the comet instead.

The landing party’s safe return does not please the Shepherds, who attack Enterprise. Ortegas’ spinning evasive sequence brings some fantastic visuals as the starship dodges torpedoes while returning fire, damaging the Shepherd’s vessel just long enough to allow Spock to develop a new plan.

Jumping into a shuttlecraft, the Vulcan plans to make the comet ’move itself,’ which apparently requires the Enterprise to go right through the jaws of the Shepherd’s powerful ship. The Enterprise’s dive past the enemy ship and into the comet’s tail is visually stunning, showcasing the scale of everything involved as the ship skips over the comet to park itself right in front of it, compelling the Shepherds to move Enterprise out of way.

This act of mercy is what Pike was counting on — a diversion to allow Spock to sneak a shuttlecraft out onto the comet’s surface undetected. Spock then uses the shuttle’s heat shields to warm up the ice of the comet, shearing off large chunks of rock and water vapor that alter its course enough to save Persephone III.

It’s a great moment, with the clichéd worry about the loss of Spock met relieved by the sound of Ethan Peck’s very Nimoy-like laugh on subspace radio. All the visuals of this episode, from the comet’s interior to the ships to Spock’s shuttle dancing across M’hanit’s surface, were stunning — while this is a 1960’s-era show in structure and vibe, we’re a long way from models on string and recoloured paintings of Earth — and it shows.

The redirection is a success, and the planet is saved – more so, as the sublimation Spock caused while fracturing the comet has dumped a huge amount of water onto Persephone III, which is sure to kick-start plant life (and civilization) on the planet. But before we can round off with a ‘mission’ accomplished (despite the Shepherd’s declaration of M’hanit’s life-giving power) we get an interesting coda from Uhura, who has decoded the messages from the comet.

Not only, it seems, did the comet know that its course was going to be corrected, it knew that Spock was going to melt it to change it’s course. The ‘mystical’ nature of the comet has Captain Pike dwelling on his own seemingly-preordained fate, and in a move inspired by M’hanit’s knowledge of its own destiny, he searches Federation records for names he knows only from his vision of the future…

…only to find that all the cadets he’s fated to save years from now really do exist.

CAMP NONSENSE OF THE WEEK

The week’s award must go to Spock’s terrible pep talk. Uhura is right, Lieutenant: don’t take your foot off the gas on that one — you’ll get it, eventually. (Maybe.)

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

  • This episode takes place on Stardate 2912.4.
     
  • The official designation for the comet is “C/2260-Quentin.”
     
  • The Persephone system will later be visited by the Enterprise-D, as the ship picks up Admiral Mark Jameson and his wife from planet Persephone V in “Too Short a Season.”
     
  • “I am familiar with Yahtzee, Lieutenant” got big laughs at the New York City series premiere screening in late April.
Hemmer’s white eyes are a visual effect implemented over Bruce Horak’s performance. (Paramount+)
Spacesuit evolution. (Paramount+)
  • Updated with departmental coloring, the Enterprise space suits are a revamp of the design introduced in Star Trek: Discovery — which themselves carry the central Y-shaped panel that evokes the shape of the under-helmet components on the classic “Tholian Web” suits.
     
  • The cadets Pike seems destined to save are named Dusty Swender, T’quiel Dawn, Muliq Al Alcazar, Yuuto Hoshide, and Andrea Lopez, all of whom are around 9-10 years old at the time of this episode. (Let’s not ask how Federation privacy laws allow someone to look up photos and details of random kids without any kind of parental approval…)
     
  • Muliq Al Alcazar lives on Tendara Colony, future birthplace of one Annika Hansen (aka Seven of Nine).
Pike’s future rescues. (Paramount+)

Overall, “Children of the Comet” is a great episode, and Celia Rose Gooding acts their heart out as Uhura, giving us the unsure, youthful side of the character in equal parts to the charm, and grace that Nichelle Nichols brought to the role. Her backstory still leaves a slightly off taste in my mouth, though; not enough to ruin my ability to enjoy the show, but enough to start questioning whether the writers thought about it that hard.

The show is using its ensemble cast well, with Ortegas and Una (Rebecca Romijn) each having fun character moments despite being background characters in this plot. Hemmer’s soft introduction successfully underlines his hyper-competent, blunt personality, while the show continues to hint at how Spock is both the same as and different from the officer who will serve under Captain Kirk.

I’m still a little apprehensive about the writer’s treatment of Pike — even with Una’s suggestion that his fate may not be as set in stone as he believes — they’re still leaning towards his disability as something to be treated as equivalent to death itself. Maybe Number’s One about changing your fate shows us something of the change in mentality we might see, but it’s too early to tell.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returns with “Ghosts of Illyria” on Thursday, May 19 on Paramount+ in the United States, Australia, Latin America, and the Nordics, as well as on CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada.

The series will arrive to the UK and Ireland on Paramount+ on June 22; additional international distribution has not yet been announced.

More Super7 STAR TREK: TNG Action Figures… Including Armus!?

TrekCore Staff
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18
More Super7 STAR TREK: TNG Action Figures… Including Armus!?

Following last summer’s first run of 3.75″ Star Trek: The Next Generation action figures, toy licensee Super7 is expanding their Next Gen lineup with a second wave of character releases — including that evil oil slick Armus!

Super7 first hit the Next Generation scene last August with six action figures — Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Lt. Commander Data, Lt. Worf, Acting Ensign Wesley Crusher, Guinan, and a Borg drone — and the company debuted their second wave of TNG characters today with another half-dozen figures.

Photo: Super7

Retailing once more at an $18 USD price point, today Super7 added Commander Will Riker, Dr. Beverly Crusher, Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge, Counselor Deanna Troi, Judge Q, and — for the first time in Star Trek action figure history — that evil pool of sentient sludge Armus, who killed Lt. Tasha Yar in “Skin of Evil.”

While WizKids did include a tiny Armus character in their Star Trek Away Team miniatures game, the hilarious addition of Armus to an action figure line is simply too whimsical not to celebrate!

Here’s a gallery of the new Super7 Star Trek: The Next Generation — Wave 2 figures.

To add any of the twelve Super 7 Star Trek: TNG action figures to your own collection, head over to the Super7 website to place your order today.

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WeeklyTrek Podcast #179 — Season 3 Brings Big Changes for the STAR TREK: PICARD Cast Lineup

Alex Perry
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2
WeeklyTrek Podcast #179 — Season 3 Brings Big Changes for the STAR TREK: PICARD Cast Lineup

On this week’s episode of WeeklyTrek, brought to you in partnership between The Tricorder Transmissions Podcast Network and TrekCore, host Alex Perry is joined by Discovering Trek co-host Jamie Rogers to discuss all the latest Star Trek news.

This week, Alex and his guest discuss the following stories from TrekCore and around the web:

In addition, stick around to hear Jamie’s wish to see a Gorn in the flesh in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and Alex’s theory about a potential Brent Spiner guest appearance in Strange New Worlds — it’s not as crazy as it sounds!

WeeklyTrek is available to subscribe and download each week on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify — and we’ll be sharing the details of each new episode right here on TrekCore each week if you’re simply just looking to listen in from the web.

Do you have a wish or theory you’d like to share on the show? Tweet to Alex at @WeeklyTrek, or email us with your thoughts about wishes, theories, or anything else about the latest in Star Trek news!

New STRANGE NEW WORLDS Photos — “Children of the Comet”

TrekCore Staff
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124
New STRANGE NEW WORLDS Photos — “Children of the Comet”

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ first season continues this week, and we’ve got a new collection of photos from “Children of the Comet” to share with you today!

This week, the Enterprise crew works to stop a comet from impacting an inhabited world, but while they’re attempting to save that world’s population, a powerful alien vessel seeks to prevent the starship from interfering.

Here are thirteen new photos from this week’s episode, along with six previously-released images.

And in case you haven’t seen it, here’s a preview clip from “Children of the Comet” which debuted in last week’s episode of The Ready Room, along with a 90-second trailer for the upcoming season.

CHILDREN OF THE COMET — While on a survey mission, the U.S.S. Enterprise discovers a comet is going to strike an inhabited planet. They try to re-route the comet, only to find that an ancient alien relic buried on the comet’s icy surface is somehow stopping them.

As the away team try to unlock the relic’s secrets, Pike and Number One deal with a group of zealots who want to prevent the U.S.S. Enterprise from interfering.

Written by Henry Alonso Myers & Sarah Tarkoff. Directed by Maja Vrvilo.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returns with “Children of the Comet” on Thursday, May 12 on Paramount+ in the United States, Australia, Latin America, and the Nordics, as well as on CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada.

The series will arrive to the UK and Ireland on Paramount+ on June 22; additional international distribution has not yet been announced.

STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS Premiere Interviews with Alex Kurtzman, Henry Alonso Myers, Melissa Navia and Christina Chong

Ken Reilly
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11
STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS Premiere Interviews with Alex Kurtzman, Henry Alonso Myers, Melissa Navia and Christina Chong

ast weekend’s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premiere in New York City was a gold-carpet celebration held with the full cast and creative leadership team in attendance — along with a number of lucky fans from the area — and today we’ve got a few additional interviews from the event to share!

First up, we asked franchise boss Alex Kurtzman and Strange New Worlds’ Melissa Navia (Lt. Erica Ortegas) to describe the challenges of producing television during the height of the pandemic — especially during the extreme restrictions in place in 2021-era Toronto, where the show is filmed — and how the new AR wall technology allowed the show to thrive despite that situation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLzQAGj6-L8

TREKCORE: What was it like spinning up a production like this in the middle of the pandemic, with all the concerns that you talked about — I’m sure some of you haven’t?

ALEX KURTZMAN: I mean, obviously the number one concern is always safety. How do you get everybody back into it in a way that’s safe? And I have to say CBS was unbelievable just in terms of the 3000-page document that they put together and changing out of air filters in every building, and a huge retrofit to make sure that people were at the safest and the protocols are very specific.

And then, part of the job is to forget about all of that — and try and go there and have fun, and make a show where you can’t tell that ANY of that was happening while you’re watching it.

TREKCORE: Do you think it would have been possible to produce the show in these conditions without the AR wall that you guys implemented up in Toronto?

KURTZMAN: Sure, it’s possible. It would have been very different — because the AR wall just opened the door to us, especially for a show like “Strange New Worlds” where the expectation is you’re going to be on one every week. We would never have been able to do that practically at the level that we’re able to do it now without the AR wall.

TREKCORE: We’ve seen five episodes of the season, and I feel like your team is getting more nuanced with it, even compared to “Discovery” —

KURZMAN: For sure. Oh, my God, yeah. I mean, it’s funny — like, I look at “Discovery” [Season 4] now, and then I look at what we’re doing [on “Strange New Worlds”]… it feels like we were like in the stone age back then, but that’s where the technology was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=worRzMcex0Y

MELISSA NAVIA: So “Star Trek” became our world essentially, and it was we all got to know each other on set. We could barely kind of hang out outside of set, so we got to know ourselves and our characters.

One thing the showrunners did was, which we’re all really appreciative of, is that they allowed our personalities to become a part of our characters, so we were really able to inform what our characters were doing, together with the excellent writing.

But yes, so much of that time in Toronto was locked down until like, I think, July, pretty much. I was always happy to go to set. As soon as I’d get emails from wardrobe being like, “Are you available tomorrow for fitting?” I’m like, “I’m not doing anything! I have no place to be! I’m in Toronto for YOU guys!”

Working on a television show on a film set, like, you really see how when something needs to happen, people make it happen. So what that meant for our cast and crew, like, we needed to test, we needed to mask up, we needed to wear shields, wear masks… and the crew, absolute shout out to the crew, who have been incredible. They’ve been masking up since day one on Season 1.

I laugh because there’s still like — at the end of season one, there’d be guys who have been working with all season. And I see them taking a sip of water and I’d be like, “You have a beard!” because your brain creates a face, but it really is, like, to wear a mask 24 / 7, to be working on a TV show that’s as as much hard work as this one is, it’s been incredible and they’ve been wonderful.

They’ve been the reason that our show didn’t shut down at all during Season 1.

Fellow castmate Christina Chong (Lt. La’an Noonien-Singh) shared her epiphany regarding the universe she’s joined, only realized for the first time once she watched the Strange New Worlds opening credits sequence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b1Rlg12RiQ

CHRISTINA CHONG: I’ll be completely honest with you. It only landed with me how big this whole thing, this whole show was and how much it means the “Star Trek” fans, the community, when I watched the opening credits the other day.

TREKCORE: Was that the first time you’d seen them?

CHONG: Yeah. I watched those and was like, “Oh my God, I get it! I get it, how amazing it is!” Like, the idea that — I know it sounds ridiculous, I hadn’t thought about this before — but the thought of like, that these people, on this ship…

And I was suddenly looking at the Enterprise and the graphics, going “Oh my God, all our little characters are on that ship! And they’re all going to explore strange new worlds!” I was like, “Duh! Yeah, of course!” I just never thought of it like that before, right? I was doing a job. And it’s been so quick, everything’s been so quick.

Suddenly I just had a moment on the plane to just go “Oh my God,” and I started tearing up. And so I’m probably going to go cry now when I watch it.

Finally, executive producer and co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers talks about updating 1960s-era production designs for the modern series, and the integration of new technology in the new Enterprise sets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BltTBjbEYY

HENRY ALONSO MYERS: The design of the Sixties was really influenced by modernism, midcentury modernism. and a lot of those ideas. Those ideas are still interesting design ideas. And so Jonathan Lee, who was our production designer, really tried to incorporate those into the sets, but also to kind of bring them to the future using different materials, making things more substantial.

The great unsung hero of our show probably is Tim Peel and his Motion Graphics department, who build these unbelievable displays that exist throughout the entire ship. We have lots and lots of meetings, so these displays actually work. It’s hard to imagine what that would be like, but for someone like Melissa Navia, who plays Ortegas, when she’s at the console and is doing a thing, and the thing responds back, just being able to pan to that… which just looks cool. The communicator still looks cool!

TREKCORE: The redesign of those classic props are really nice.

MYERS: I mean, the goal is to put something there for the people who love that, but also not have to be a barrier to entry. You don’t have to know about that thing to enjoy the show. The show is about characters, about a group of people who know and care about each other and go on adventures.

And sometimes they’re funny, and sometimes it’s scary, you know what I mean? But they also have very cool communicators and cool outfits. Stuff that gets to use classic design in a way that makes people who watched the original show go, like, “Squeee!”

We’ll have a few other episode-specific interview segments to share with you over the next few weeks, so be sure to keep your sensors locked here at TrekCore!

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returns with “Children of the Comet” on Thursday, May 12 on Paramount+ in the United States, Australia, Latin America, and the Nordics, as well as on CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada.

The series will arrive to the UK and Ireland on Paramount+ on June 22; additional international distribution has not yet been announced.

INTERVIEW — Robb Pearlman and Jordan Hoffman on THE STAR TREK BOOK OF FRIENDSHIP

Alex Perry
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INTERVIEW — Robb Pearlman and Jordan Hoffman on THE STAR TREK BOOK OF FRIENDSHIP

Across near-60 years of Star Trek history, the franchise has brought fans a large roster of great friends, from the good-natured ribbing between Spock and Dr. McCoy, to the supportive Burnham and Tilly, to the generation-spanning connection between Ben Sisko and Curzon, Jadzia, and Ezri Dax.

Authors Robb Pearlmann and Jordan Hoffman shine a spotlight on this plethora of pals in The Star Trek Book of Friendship — You Have Been, and Always Shall Be, My Friend, and we had a chance to chat with the pair about their new book.

TREKCORE: For fans who may not associate “friendship” as one of their top five words connected to Star Trek, what’s your pitch on why you wanted to focus on it?

ROBB PEARLMAN: I think if it’s not in the top five, it’s often number six for people! It was always in the top five for me personally.

JORDAN HOFFMAN: Well, it’s funny because you’re right. I think you maybe think about exploration, about making first contact or crazy sci-fi ideas. Then, of course, for a lot of people, Star Trek is all about technology and cool aliens.

I think the number one scene for almost all Star Trek fans out there, though, is the scene that’s quoted in the title ‘”You have been and always shall be…” That is for me, the most emotional and the most important moment of Star Trek — the two hands on the transparent aluminum in the warp core chamber from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. And that is a moment of friendship.

Yes, surely, we need not go to the stars to embrace what we have right here on Earth, which is friendship between people. I think, for sure when Gene Roddenberry went to sell Star Trek to the studios, he wasn’t like, “oh, it’s a great show about friends.”

It’s exploration! It’s science fiction! It’s technology! But it wouldn’t work if you didn’t have cool characters and the friendships they share.

PEARLMAN: I’m only child, so I’ve always been very keenly aware of friendships and non-familial relationships between peers in pop culture. It always stuck out to me in Star Trek.

And going to all of these conventions for all of these years, the one thing that kept occurring to me is how deeply rooted all of these fans’ friendships were and how they all started with Star Trek.

They’re coming from literally all parts of the world, all socioeconomic classes, people who would never meet normally were all brought together by Star Trek. That grew into these amazing, amazing friendships where they look forward to seeing each other once or twice a year.

Yes, they talk about Star Trek all the time but they talk about more than that: they’re sharing their lives together.

TREKCORE: And to that point, the way you structured this book is as a long conversation between the two of you. How did you land on that as a structure for how to approach this book?

PEARLMAN: Every book I publish, especially every Star Trek book, I have to put my publisher hat on as well as being a writer. I want the books to make sense and to provide something for the readers and the fans.

I know that when they’re spending their hard-earned time and money, they deserve a return on their investment. Everything that I put into a book should have a purpose and I don’t want to just keep throwing things against the wall. I want a book to have a meaning for it.

I kept thinking about this friendship thing and exactly what we were talking about. I was like, well, I want to do something with friendship. I’m not quite sure what it is.

I was starting to come up with ideas. It was a book of lists or more literal and trivial sorts of thing. I was like, if I’m writing a book about friendship, I need to work with a friend to do it. Then I thought, who better than my friend Jordan who likes it as much or will understand where I’m coming from as much as I would.

We started just batting ideas back and forth because it was all during COVID. We were talking over Zoom once and just really trying to figure out the right angle. Then I just had this light bulb moment, and I was like, this is the book! It’s a conversation.

HOFFMAN: We were trying to do our work, which was figuring out what the hell will the book be. We know we’re doing Star Trek friendships, but as Robb and I will do whenever we have the opportunities, we’ll waste time and start talking about how much we love Garak and Bashir, and how much we love all the weird characters like the Gorgon and Armus and things like that, and making jokes about Bones and Spock.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, and we were supposed to be on this call to figure out our book. Then Robb realized, wait, this is the book because we’re talking about funny stuff about Garak and Bashir, and Janeway and B’Elanna, and all these things.

Then it just became a case of figuring out which friendships to feature. We figured out roughly two dozen. Then we just set up a series of Zoom calls, where we spoke every Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. for an hour, for as many weeks as we needed to do it to get through everyone.

If we knew oh, next week, we’re going to talk about Malcolm Reed and Trip Tucker, then let’s make sure we watch a few episodes that we haven’t seen in a while beforehand. It was like, “Oh, what are the best Garak and Bashir episodes? let’s make sure we watch them.” or for Bones and Spock, we’d watch “The Galileo Seven.”

PEARLMAN: Yes, we wanted to make sure that the book had a personality and a point of view, and then it didn’t just read as, oh, this friendship isn’t that great. We wanted to look at it in a multi-dimensional way.

I think for that, we realized that we weren’t able to bring everything to every friendship, which is why we asked our other friend Erin Macdonald to weigh in. We wanted to work with our friend J.K. Woodward on the art because he would understand what we were trying to do, how we were trying to do it, and bring his own personality to it as well.

Then when we were thinking of someone to write the foreword, we thought — who better than real-life friends and onscreen friends than Robert Picardo and Ethan Phillips? It was truly a fan-friend effort every step of the way.

TREKCORE: What was it like working with artist J.K. Woodward on the book’s illustrations? Did you just give him the character pairings or let him approach each section creatively?

HOFFMAN: It was a mix of both. We knew what the pairings were and we did send them to him. For some of them, he took images direct from screenshots, and from others, he used his imagination.

There are some angles that don’t exist in the show that he created. I think there’s an angle of Archer from the outside of the ship, I don’t know where he got that from. Then there are a few where he got creative and would surprise us. The one that I’m most proud of is when we talked about O’Brien and Bashir and their friendship.

We talked about their holosuite adventures, including the Alamo. And I said, as far as I know, we’ve never actually seen them at the Alamo. So we’re like, let’s get J.K. to do something that no one’s ever done. Given that this is an officially licensed product, this is now the only quasi-canonical visual image of O’Brien and Bashir at the Alamo.

You now have J.K’s interpretation of that moment.

PEARLMAN: Whenever I’m thinking about how a book looks, I’m really thinking about a book holistically, as far as like design, where the text is going to go, and where the art’s going to go.

I tend to give pretty detailed art notes about what I think should happen. I’ve worked with J.K. Woodward before and I knew that I didn’t necessarily need to do that for this book because he knows Star Trek. For the introduction, I thought it would just be fun because this is a conversation between me and Jordan, to have us illustrated in the book as well. I was like, here are just some ideas.

Jordan and I are sitting on a couch watching TV, there’s a bowl of popcorn. He just took that and ran with it and put the hat on, put those Spock ears on. I think because he’s our friend, he understood us and how far he could push it really and what would make it a really good visual for it. It was great!

HOFFMAN: Then the other element that Robb mentioned, bringing in Erin, which I think came from a moment in our conversations when we were talking about B’Elanna and Janeway. We’re talking about the importance of women scientists, their representation on Voyager, and what that meant at the time in the 90s. We can only take that so far, you know? We’re both guys.

I’m pretty sure it was important to women in the sciences, but then Robb’s suggested it would be great if we’re on this imaginary couch watching Star Trek, and our real friend Erin were just to just pop in and out to talk with us. We reached out to her and it was great that she was able to do that. She makes an appearance more than once in the book.

TREKCORE: When you are each watching Star Trek, what kinds of friendships are you most interested in watching?

PEARLMAN: Usually, I’m a little put off by “bros” just because of who I am! I just find that naturally repelling. But I think what the writers were able to do, and what the actors were able to do, with pairings like Bashir and O’Brien or Tom Paris and Harry Kim is start off there and then transcend it.

It became something not necessarily different, but more meaningful for the characters, but also for the viewers themselves. I find “frenemy” relationships endlessly entertaining so I could watch those all day. Give me a good Odo-Quark scene any day. Or Bones and Spock! I find those completely delightful.

But really, maybe it’s just because of the environment that we’re working in now, I just like friends being friends and being really supportive and kind and nice to each other.

HOFFMAN: Yes, the “frenemy” certainly is the one that has the most crackle and brings the most humor and it’s endlessly watchable. But I think, to Robb’s point, God, when these two individuals would do anything for each other – that’s the best.

I think we talked about the moment from Wrath of Khan as being the quintessential Star Trek moment. If there was a silver medalist for that, it would be the moment at the end of “The City On The Edge of Forever” when Kirk prevents Bones from saving Edith Keeler. He says, “My God, Jim, I could have saved her,” and Spock steps up because Jim can’t even talk. He’s so distraught. He says, “He knows, Doctor. He knows.”

It’s such a simple line, it’s five words. It’s so simple but it’s because you know Spock loves Kirk so much in his own way that he’s the only one that can interpret what he’s feeling at that moment and that comes from a friendship that is a once in a lifetime. If each of us have one of those friendships in our lifetime, we’re lucky.

That sort of deep emotional connection is what makes this so special and I think the fact that it does exist in Star Trek, which is all about openness and exploration, and maybe what you began with, not what you automatically think Star Trek is going to be about, maybe that’s what makes it resonate even more.

TREKCORE: Jordan, you’re a prolific writer, but this is the first book with your name on the cover. What is that like?

HOFFMAN: I’m excited! I’m looking forward to the day when I stumble upon it without prior awareness. That’ll happen eventually. I want to go into the non-comics section of Forbidden Planet and see it there. As one who’s written for newspapers, I have in the past been on the subway and seen somebody reading something I wrote and that’s always a trip because I always want to whisper, “That guy knows what’s talking about.”

It is exciting because it is the first book with my name on the cover and of course, it is a Star Trek book because that is one of my first true loves, one of my big first true love so I’m thrilled.

TREKCORE: Meanwhile, Robb, you’ve written a lot of Star Trek books already. What keeps you coming back to doing this again and again and again?

PEARLMAN: It’s so vast, the breadth is so wide, and you can always find something new to talk about it. I think going back to what we were talking about earlier, you can always find something authentic and meaningful to talk about in Star Trek. Something that is going to make people laugh for a little while or make them think for a little while.

I think it’s a gift to me that you can keep going back into these 56 years later and always find a new angle and a new take on it. You can tell from my other books I don’t really do the straightforward kinds of things. I always like looking at things from a different angle and there are so many angles in Star Trek that each are as interesting and worthy as the next one.

HOFFMAN: One of Robb’s biggest gifts is humor. I think Robb’s books all approach Star Trek with humor right up there. Humor has always been a part of Star Trek since the very beginning. Now it’s a little bit more explicit with Lower Decks, but Star Trek has been hilarious. Who’s funnier than Spock? Nobody’s funnier than Spock.

Since day one, humor has been an important part of it and I will dare say, Robb Perlman is an important author of Star Trek humor. He really has been bringing that, drawing that out of the franchise now for a decade.

TREKCORE: What’s next for Hoffman and Pearlman in Star Trek?

HOFFMAN: Well, for me, I’ll say by the time this has published, fans will have just seen me in Chicago, and I will be on the Star Trek Cruise next year. I’ll be wherever Star Trek wants me. Robb and I both live in the New York City area, we will be promoting this book where we can just because we like to meet Star Trek fans, and we’ll have signings where we can and if there’s an event that makes sense for us to be at.

I think that’s and then just, I tend to as a freelance writer, whenever I can think of a way to write about Star Trek for one of my outlets in a provocative way, I always look to do that.

PEARLMAN: For me, after Star Trek: Book Of Friendship, comes The Girl Who Made the Stars, which is an adaptation of the Short Trek. Then I have Trek The Halls, which is a holiday book that’s coming up. Star Trek: My First Book of Colors, which is which is complimentary to Star Trek: My First Book of Space that I worked on with Erin Macdonald.

There’s also a super-secret Star Trek project coming out this year that I can’t talk about yet… but it’s a completely new format for me, so I’m super excited.

The Star Trek Book of Friendship — You Have Been, and Always Shall Be, My Friend arrives on May 10 and is available to purchase now.

Multiple STAR TREK: PICARD Actors Confirm Departure From Series

TrekCore Staff
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Multiple STAR TREK: PICARD Actors Confirm Departure From Series

The second season of Star Trek: Picard debuted its finale episode today, and after the events of “Farewell,” multiple members of the series’ cast have bid their own adieu to the final frontier.

(Don’t worry, Patrick Stewart isn’t going anywhere!)

*** WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD! ***

Following Cris Rios’ decision to stay behind in the 21st century in “Farewell” — and Guinan’s story of how his life ultimately ended in that past era — Santiago Cabrera shared the below post on Instagram following the finale, noting “It’s been a hell of a ride.”

While not a “formal” goodbye message, Cabrera joined the cast of HBO’s The Flight Attendant last September, which was filming during Picard Season 3’s time in studio.

After her assimilation as the new Borg Queen, Dr. Agnes Jurati’s story has come to an end as Alison Pill shared with MovieWeb this week that she didn’t participate in filming on Star Trek: Picard’s third and final season.

Jurati (Alison Pill) has her own secret. (Paramount+)

Speaking about the upcoming final year of Picard, Pill said:

“I know that season three will be the end. I wasn’t a part of season three, so I don’t have much to say about it in terms of spoilers. I will get to watch along with everybody else.”

On Instagram this morning, the actor also shared some behind-the-scenes footage of her time doing stunt work in full “Borgati” makeup and costume, from the Jurati-Elnor battle in “Hide and seek.”

Finally, in what is sure to be a disappointment to many, young Romulan cadet Elnor seems to have finished his Star Trek: Picard journey — after being resurrected in the final moments of “Hide and Seek” — as Australian actor Evan Evagora announced through his Instagram account today he’s not returning for the third season.

MAY 6 UPDATE: Soji actor Isa Brones also bid farewell to her character on Instagram today.

While it’s possible one or more of these three departing Picard stars may make a brief appearance in Season 3 — similar to the few moments checking in with Soji Asha in “The Stargazer” this season — it’s likely that “Farewell” will serve as each actor’s swan song.

It’s unknown as of this writing if Laris actor Orla Brady — while the final moments of the finale seemed to indicate she may stick around with Jean-Luc Picard, the actor emphasized the “ambiguity” of that ending in an interview in this week’s episode of The Ready Room.

(Brady also shared photos from London in September and from Ireland in early October when Season 3 was filming — so we’ll have to wait and see on that.)

Both Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine) and Michelle Hurd (Raffi) have both made public statements about filming Season 3 with the returning Star Trek: The Next Generation cast.

Star Trek: Picard is currently in post-production on its third and final season — likely to air in 2023 — on Paramount+ the United States, and on CTV Sci Fi Channel and Crave in Canada. Outside of North America, the series is available on Amazon’s Prime Video service in most international locations

STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS Series Premiere Review — “Strange New Worlds”

John Concagh
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STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS Series Premiere Review — “Strange New Worlds”

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds had a lot of expectations to live up to, and it’s safe to say that the series’ first episode met most of those expectations and more. “Strange New Worlds” is both a stellar introduction to the new show and a fantastic homage to the most classic of Star Trek tropes: the Prime Directive dilemma.

The episode opens with a lofty monologue about the wonders of first contact ready by Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romjin) — the Enterprise first officer known best as ‘Number One’ — accompanied by footage from an alien bunker tracking a UFO in their skies. The Kiley, who live in a near-current-day-Earth society, eventually get a clear image of the vessel: a single-nacelled Starfleet ship.

Pike sporting a traditional sure-everything-is-fine beard. (Paramount+)

It’s a tantalizing start to the story — undercut a little by the smash cut back to the frozen fields of Bear Creek, Montana… where an off-duty Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) is spending his shore leave making pancakes, watching The Day the Earth Stood Still on repeat, and enjoying the intimate company of fellow Starfleet captain Batel (Melanie Scrofano).

Captain Pike, in his full beard and phone-call avoiding glory, is still reluctant to return to space after being shaken to the core by the vision of his future imparted upon him back in Star Trek: Discovery’s “Through the Valley of Shadows” — something entirely off-limits to share with Batal, thanks to the super-secret classification surrounding all things Discovery.

She encourages him to get back into uniform, telling him he’s “got better places to be” — and Starfleet Command seems to agree, as soon Admiral Robert April (Adrian Holmes) tracks down the wayward Pike to order him up to the Enterprise. Pike’s hesitant to follow April’s directive, even after he learns Una’s been captured during a first contact mission that’s gone wrong — “You can quit when you get back,” April tells him.

Spock and T’Pring enjoy the sandy landscape of Vulcan — and each other. (Paramount+)

From the winter snow to the sands of Vulcan, we head next to check on a nervy Spock (Ethan Peck) sharing a meal with T’Pring (Gia Sandhu) on the anniversary of their betrothal. It’s an odd scene: they’re clearly both deeply attracted to each other, but it’s still a little disjointed, especially when T’Pring goes from dismissing his Starfleet career as “gallivanting around the galaxy” one moment to proposing to him in the next.

Retconning “Amok Time” is a risky move, no matter how you do it — but I don’t think it’s the worst idea. If anything, having the pair start off as being so close and committed to each other makes T’Pring’s treatment of Spock in “Amok Time” even crueler. We’ll see more of this pair together later this season, and presuming T’Pring continues as a recurring character beyond Season 1, there’s plenty of time for the show to portray the decline and ultimate collapse of their relationship.

As for Spock’s own statements on their relationship: can we really trust a person who has never told a truth about his personal life — ever? I’m cautiously optimistic. They’ve got time to try and get us from A to B, even if they’ve given themselves a lot of distance to cover.

Eventually both Pike and Spock return to the Enterprise — the captain arrives by way a rather glorious shuttle trip up to Spacedock — and after catching up on some ship’s business, we get a very poignant moment where the two reflect on the loss of Michael Burnham (along with the rest of the USS Discovery crew) just a few months earlier.

La’an reports for duty as Captain Pike’s acting first officer. (Paramount+)

It’s really satisfying to see Strange New Worlds treat the series from it was spun off seriously — as we’ll revisit later in the episode — when it really had no requirement to do so (beyond vague references to how Pike received a vision of his future). Taking the time to allow these character to contemplate the effects of their Discovery encounter is a welcome component to the story, even if it’s not critical to the series as a whole.

We are quickly introduced to our new Enterprise crew as the ship prepares for departure: Lt. Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) at the helm; young “prodigy” cadet Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) at communications, and stern-faced Lt. La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) assigned as an interim ‘Number One’ filling in for Una. The nice moment of Pike’s return to the bridge is, however, marred by his own second-guessing… made more apparent by the hallucination of his future disfigurement reflected in his armrest console.

Eventually, Pike opens up to Spock about the vision seen on Boreth, and how it’s changed him — or, more clearly, how he doesn’t yet know how it will change him. Pike’s fixation on his injury and the feeling that it represents the “death of the man [he is]” is a bit disappointing. Sure, it’s a great plot beat, and the character of a man who knows how his life will end and must face what that knowledge does to him is great — but Pike’s life doesn’t end with that accident.

Pike shares details of his future fate with Spock. (Paramount+)

We know that much, even if he doesn’t and I think by now we should have moved past the 1960s ableist views around disability. I can understand why they didn’t do that; Pike facing the certainty of his death is tonally perfect with the message of this episode, and perhaps the whole series — but it could’ve been handled a lot better.

At the very least, Spock’s advice to the captain  — to use his knowledge to improve himself and his ability to command — is sensible. Pike is going to have to live with his knowledge and learn from it, and that core theme is key clear throughout the episode. Arrival at Kiley 279 kicks off a classic Star Trek prime directive mystery, with an empty starship and strange sensor readings quickly being interpreted as a threat by La’an.

The sparring between her and Spock, which quickly turns into an agreement on the danger, was rather fun and a nice demonstration of La’an’s determination. An attack from the surface confirms Spock’s theory that the Kiley can’t have a working warp drive… but instead, they have something much worse: a “warp bomb.”

Spock’s further conclusion — that the planet is not ready for first contact — means that they must find a way to rescue Una and her crew (all 2 of them, which… doesn’t seem like a lot to run a starship) without causing any more cultural damage.

Classic-style Trek can’t skip a conference room meeting. (Paramount+)

The next stop is sickbay, where the gregarious Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) and his new nurse, Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) proceed to “mess with their genomes” — providing a fun backstory for the myriad of alien-design disguises we’ve seen many a Trek hero wear. La’an’s refusal to be sedated for the procedure is a mildly overdone moment about how determined she is to always be alert, but it fits — barely.

What follows is almost textbook. After beaming down and knocking out some scientists (thanks La’an’s quick suggestion to nerve-pinch the locals), the trio are outfitted in local garb to infiltrate the Kiley base — though their task becomes classically complicated by difficulties with Spock’s disguise. The solution, to build a more stable disguise from the genes of the two Kiley scientists who were beamed aboard, is stymied when the one they need escapes.

The day is saved by Cadet Uhura, who calms the panicked Kiley down by talking to him about the local sport “tagball,” a nice callback to future-Uhura’s ability to quickly digest the media of planets, as seen in episodes like “Bread and Circuses.”

A cheerful Uhura puts the panicked alien visitor at ease. (Paramount+)

Spock’s disguise holds up long enough for the team to make it to Una’s cell, despite a curious Kiley scientist spotting his fluctuating ears in an elevator. Number One’s rescue delivers two bombshells: first, that she and La’an are well acquainted, and secondly, that the Kiley developed a warp bomb because of Starfleet… after watching the space battle between Control and the combined Starfleet/Klingon/Kelpien armada in “Such Sweet Sorrow” which ended with Discovery flying through a wormhole to the future.

It’s a clever plot twist — acknowledging that there can always be unintended consequences of our actions, no matter how noble they might be — and feeds into the ways in which Strange New Worlds won’t let us forget where it came from.

With this revelation, Pike decides to throw caution (and General Order 1) to the wind and reveals himself and Spock — whose disguise has now rather painfully worn off — to the Kiley. Their leader is unimpressed with Pike’s explanation of his mistake, and only really deigning to listen to his pleas for unity after the captain orders the Enterprise into low orbit to show her “who has the biggest stick.”

We’ve all thought about a scene like this, and it works, somehow, if just for the shots of the Kiley staring in awe at the starship that hangs in the sky — but even with the Enterprise’s intervention, talks between the government and the opposition factional are still breaking down. Pike is spurred into action, however, by a cursory remark from La’an, and returns to the planet to bring an important warning in the form of Earth’s own history… and his own, personal future.

Enough said. (Paramount+)

Pike’s speech — in all its on-the-nose moral-message-of-the-week glory — is, quite frankly, wonderful. It’s uncompromising about the state of our world, and the “power of possibility” to change it. Mount’s delivery, especially of lines like “right up until the end, life is to be worn gloriously,” is brilliant; he sells the classic captain’s speech in just the way you’d expect. It’s a demonstration of how much Strange New Worlds is taking the emotional maturity of Discovery and marrying it to the moral certainty of the Original Series.

Sure, parts of it will certainly aggravate a certain collection of people — using contemporary news footage of the January 6 US Capitol siege is more direct than Star Trek has ever gone before — but there’s nothing more in line with the franchise’s point of view than  beating the bigots over the head with a message until they get the point. Pike’s message, illustrating how in Earth’s history that violence escalated all the way into a world war, sinks in with the Kiley society at large — even if it has apparently ruffled a lot of feathers in the Federation Council.

It’s a nice, round-up ending,  even if Pike and La’an’s discussion about trust and growth is a bit contrived. The character stuff around La’an feels a little off in this episode. I’m not sure it was unnecessary, or poorly executed; Christina Chong sells La’an’s detached, bitter-but-determined personality well, but considering the focus on Pike, it seems a little distracting.

The final reveal of Lieutenant Samuel Kirk (Dan Jeannotte) — who’ll later die on Deneva — joining the Enterprise crew feels even more contrived, especially as someone who’ll report to Spock, but it makes up for it by being a fun twist. We end with a rejuvenated Captain Pike, ready to return to the stars; it’s a triumphal, if expected, ending.

Oh, that OTHER Kirk. (Paramount+)

CAMP NONSENSE OF THE WEEK

There was a lot of classic camp nonsense in this episode, but this week the award goes to Pike’s exasperated “Why is it always an alley?” meta comment after the Enterprise trio beams to the surface. It’s always an alley, Chris, and I don’t know why. No one does.

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

  • Like the Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 finale, this episode is dedicated to the late April Nocifora, post-production supervisor on Discovery who passed away in 2021.
     
  • 1951’s The Day The Earth Stood Still was directed by Robert Wise, who also directed Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The climax of that film mirrors the climax of the episode well, with the alien alliance imploring a warring world to lay their arms down and join them in stars. (Also: does this mean that Robert Wise is canon in the Trek universe?!)
     
  • The shuttle which brings Pike up to the Enterprise is named for Star Trek: Discovery scientist Paul Stamets.
     
  • The USS Archer (NCC-627) is the first one-nacelled ship seen in the 23rd century (not counting the Kelvin in that alternate reality); it seems to be inspired by Franz Joseph’s Saladin or Hermes-class designs.
The one-nacelled USS ARCHER, named of course for the NX-01 captain. (Paramount+)
  • Chief Kyle (André Dae Kim) works some wonders with the Enterprise transporter; first equipping the landing party with new clothes and gear in mid-beamdown, then materializing a medical solution onto the surface of Spock’s eye.
     
  • The fact the Kiley are all dressed in clothes similar to mid-20th century Earth — fedoras and all — is a nice touch.
     
  • La’an’s mention of the Gorn — and their rather bloodthirsty nursery planets — represents the first mention of the species in this era; while Terran refugee Lorca kept a Gorn skeleton in his lab aboard Discovery, the species is still generally unknown to the Federation at this point in Trek history.
     
  • From her personnel record, La’an Noonien-Singh’s parents were named Sa’an and Ronu, with a brother named Manu. She is the sole survivor of the SS Puget Sound, rescued as a child by then-ensign Una Chin-Riley of the USS Martin Luther King, Jr.
La’an Noonien-Singh’s personnel file. (Paramount+)
  • The development of General Order 1 into “the prime directive” is a nice nod to the nebulous nature of the rule in Captain Kirk’s time. Kirk’s less-than-strict adherence to it fits with it being somewhat loosely-enforced prior to the 2260s.
     
  • Originally located “100 AUs from Earth” (as of “The War Within, the War Without), Starbase 1 now seems to have been relocated to a near-Jupiter orbit following its near-destruction during the Klingon War; domes filled with forestry and other Earth-sourced nature preserves have also been added since we last saw it in Discovery’s first season. (The Jupiter location feels like an homage to the classic science fiction film Silent Running.)
     
  • It took me a minute to figure out that Sam Kirk wasn’t just Paul Wesley in a moustache.
     
  • While this is his first live-action appearance, Robert April was named-checked twice in Star Trek: Discovery display graphics — as one of Starfleet’s most decorated captains (“Choose Your Pain”) and as Pike’s predecessor on the Enterprise (“Brother”).
We probably should have seen this coming, right? (Paramount+)
  • Nurse Chapel is a civilian on the series (though outfitted in a Starfleet uniform with rank cuffs, questionably); she’s on leave from “Stanford Morehouse Epigenetic Project.”
     
  • Thanks to his half-Vulcan physiology, Chapel injects Spock with her medications in a different location than the human Pike and La’an.
     
  • M’Benga’s sickbay features an “emergency medical transporter” pad.
     
  • Pike’s video presentation includes stock footage of Starfleet Command from Star Trek: Discovery as well as the Starfleet Museum seen in the Star Trek: Picard series premiere.
     
  • In Star Trek history, Pike explains that a second US civil war expanded into the Eugenics Wars, then into World War III.
     
    While the Original Series indicated the Eugenics Wars took place in the mid-1990s, Star Trek: Picard Season 2 took great pains to note that historical records of the early 21st century were extremely fragmented after the devastation of World War III — allowing the current Trek production team to shuffle the Eugenics Wars up into the late 2020s era — but keeping Khan’s creation set in 1996 (as seen in this week’s finale).
Off to the next adventure! (Paramount+)

I’m still unsure about how the writers are treating Pike’s disability. They are admittedly backed into a corner by both “The Menagerie” and “Through the Valley of Shadows,” but there was room for a better narrative here – one about living life to the fullest with a disability, with a less fatalistic (and outdated) perspective. On the other hand, this is just the first episode — they have time to address this more fully, and frankly, I’m willing to give it to them.

As a premiere, “Strange New Worlds” isn’t perfect, but it’s a fun, interesting and enjoyable episode (with a moral message you could probably see from space). This first episode is a clear mission statement about the show’s pacing, style, and message, how much this homage to the Original Series isn’t going to go over the same ground: it’s ready to give us new lessons.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returns with “Children of the Comet” on Thursday, May 12 on Paramount+ in the United States, Australia, Latin America, and the Nordics, as well as on CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada.

Additional international distribution has not yet been announced.

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