A fond farewell to Star Trek: Discovery

About a month and a half ago Paramount+ released the last episode of Discovery, “Life, Itself.” 

I guess I didn’t offer thoughts sooner because I needed to process it a little. But I can say now, it’s one of the best final episodes of a Star Trek show ever.

Probably feeling motivated to say so because one of the blogs I follow thought otherwise. Codswallop.

First the Progenitors arc had to conclude. This was probably the best season arc of the series, better than the Klingon/Mirror Universe arc of the first (I’m still disappointed the series disposed of Lorca so easily), the Red Angel arc of the second, the Burn arc of the third, and an improvement over the Species 10-C of the fourth. But they all had solid moments at the very least. The series on the whole presented a considerable tapestry of high drama balanced with human (and/or alien) moments and characters who came and went, some of which we saw again elsewhere (Strange New Worlds), some to have dropped off seemingly permanently (Tyler, so important in those first two seasons).

But “Life, Itself” is a lot like “What You Leave Behind,” the finale of Deep Space Nine, which is the one I’ve seen most, other than “These Are the Voyages…” from Enterprise (I’m its one fan, and a highly enthusiastic one, at that). Like “Leave Behind,” there’s a huge chunk just finishing out an arc (the Dominion War), and then an extended sequence just letting the audience, and the characters, say goodbye.

Discovery was always pretty sentimental. Of course it actually shows a series of hugs, even with characters otherwise absent from the season. But then it leaps into the future. We get to see Burnham’s happy later life, with Book, with their son Leto.

No Star Trek series, not even Picard, followed a single character as passionately as Discovery did Michael Burnham. For the entirety of the series we watched her sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of the mission. We saw her relationships with Tyler and Book grow seemingly insurmountably complicated. One of them couldn’t be salvaged. The other? Thank goodness.

Better yet, we finally circle around to the Short Trek “Calypso.” The fandom tends to take later material for granted. It seems more motivated to advocate for a Picard follow-up with all the younger characters. But for me, “Calypso” was always special, the first time we really see something from Star Trek take a look at the bigger picture, well beyond Starfleet, even though it revolves around an old Starfleet ship. More than Prodigy, more than Voyager, this is what it’s like to stumble on the legacy. And it takes on a life of its own. 

Oh, and that Kovich reveal. It’s the first real acknowledgement that Enterprise really does matter.

Discovery deepened Star Trek lore in ways no one expected or any other Star Trek has so far dared. And it stayed that way right to the end. I loved how the Breen were used. I loved how Culber ended up a more interesting character than Stamets. I loved how “Face the Strange” one-upped “Shattered” (Voyager), but was bold enough to focus mostly on characters from the present season rather than leaning heavily into callbacks. I loved that Discovery once again looked like it was going to blow all the way up, but allowed a perfectly human conclusion to happen anyway.

It would be foolish to believe this kind of era is going to happen again, with so many different series launched simultaneously, regardless of how long any of them lasted or the number of episodes. This was a direct result of the need for streaming content, making a statement while the getting was good. It led to a new Star Trek show that’s been doing exactly what fans two decades ago claimed was irrelevant (Strange New Worlds), and as a result being the most popular of them.

I think Saru is one of the great characters. I think Burnham is. I think Admiral Vance sing-handedly redeemed a whole rank in the lore.

I will long treasure Discovery.

Star Trek: Discovery 5x2 "Under the Twin Moons" Review

rating: **** (Classic)

summary: The crew begins its search for the clues that will help it locate the expected treasure.

review: The second episode of the fifth season lands better, for me, than the premiere, having more focus and more to say about the new circumstances and even new characters like Rayner.

Online, Discovery has become known as the worst of the new Star Treks, too polarizing or perhaps merely too ambitious to contend with the much more obvious crowd-pleasers that followed (Picard, Strange New Worlds, even Lower Decks).  As I look back at its legacy, though, I see a rich tapestry that's ably demonstrated all over again in "Under the Twin Moons."

What I've long loved best about Discovery is its ability to depict the classic "smartest in the room" mentality of Starfleet, spread generously around the whole room (last season maybe got a little carried away with this), which as Burnham and Saru are trying to survive another of those death squad security systems and then figuring out the clue behind it, is once again in full glory.

But the best part of the episode is how it revisits the complicated history Burnham and Saru share (just these two alone have reached what Gene used to call "beloved character status," at least as far as I'm concerned), and how Rayner gets to reflect it.  Rayner is interesting, a welcome new wrinkle in the far future the crew has inhabited now for three seasons, an example of the working reality Starfleet was in before the revival, and early on I even began to wonder if he'd not actually a double agent, actually working with the pair of villains we'll be following this season (which if he is would itself be another fascinating callback, this time to Lorca), but the end of the episode turns it around completely by having Burnham offer him second-in-command  Burnham's reputation at the start of the series still colors how many fans view her, which is unfortunate, so it's nice that the series itself continues to dwell on it.  If Voyager seemed (again, mostly in the unforgiving eyes of disgruntled fans) to shy away from its complicated origins, then it's nice for Discovery to have never lost sight of its overall arc.

I loved how last season the show finally moved past the straight hero complex and refocused on the science, and that this season follows up on that, while also tying in with the Next Generation episode "The Chase."  It's rare, even in a franchise that has long since moved on from its episodic storytelling origins, to revisit concepts from that period, but Discovery has long since demonstrated its ambitious nature.  This will be a heck of a way to go, and "Twins Moons" is a fine way to prove that.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - The whole season links in with existing Star Trek lore!
• series - An episode that deepens long-term storytelling, from the start and as recently as the last two seasons.
• character - New character Rayner becomes integral to the season, and arguably, the series.
• essential - Another fine selling point for the series as a whole.

notable guest-stars:

Oded Fehr (Vance)

David Cronenberg (Kovich)

The Fifty Best Episodes from Throughout the Star Trek Franchise

Recently Variety came out with a list of the best Star Trek episodes (you can see it here), which was surprisingly decent, but I thought it could have been punched up a little.  So here's what my list looks like, although it's not a ranking but rather listing by each series (it's worth noting I would probably agree with Variety's pick for overall best episode).

"The Menagerie, Parts 1 & 2" (Star Trek: The Original Series 1x11, 1x12)

Very brilliantly incorporating the original pilot with its own lead character, Pike (which sets him up for an enduring legacy later unfolding in the J.J. Abrams films, Discovery, and Strange New Worlds) into the franchise's first two-part episode, it's if nothing else a functional embodiment of the kind of frugal ingenuity the original series would often have to work around on its shoestring budget.

"Balance of Terror" (Star Trek: The Original Series 1x14)

Star Trek is best known as a franchise where weird science fiction happens, and yet from very close to the very beginning the franchise proved it had a lot more ambition, tapping into real world events with allegorical takes that even for their time would've seemed impossible in any other context.  The presence of a black woman and Japanese man in important roles on the bridge had already sent signals in this regard, but tackling the Cold War only a few years removed from its harrowing peak (the Cuban Missile Crisis) in "Balance of Terror" by essentially saying Americans and Russians could probably still get along if they could just stop viewing each other as mortal enemies...Because, yeah, that's what's really going on in Kirk's showdown with a Romulan warship.  

"City on the Edge of Forever" (Star Trek: The Original Series 1x28)

It wasn't just finding its own distinct audience but winning over the sci-fi mainstream that established Star Trek's long-term potential, and that's exactly what was accomplished with "City," written by acclaimed sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison, which Ellison himself made an important part of his own legacy by insisting for years that his version was better than the beloved episode that ultimately resulted from the production process, in which Kirk tragically must allow an idealist to die in order to preserve the timeline.  Not much in the way of romance, but Edith Keeler will probably remain his most notable dalliance, in any incarnation.

"Mirror, Mirror" (Star Trek: The Original Series 2x4)

If Star Trek must be known for weird sci-fi, then at least let it have awesome consequences, such as this memorable visit to an alternate timeline, in which all our favorite characters have been turned into their evil counterparts, giving Kirk a chance to inspire even the irredeemable and therefore once again living up to the franchise's impossible ideals.  Later inspires storytelling in Deep Space Nine, Enterprise, and Discovery to highly fruitful results.

"The Trouble with Tribbles" (Star Trek: The Original Series 2x15)

The original series didn't take itself too seriously (by its third and final season, many fans began to wonder if this was indeed a fatal impulse), and this comic romp pitting Kirk against Klingons and a surprising nuisance is by far the high water mark in that vein, setting a standard not matched until...Well, it'll come up, don't worry.

"Yesteryear" (Star Trek: The Animated Series 1x2)

The very brief animated adventures distilled the original premise to its most basic form, leaving little room for the very human delights of the characters themselves, with one notable exception: this peek behind the curtain of Spock's childhood that would later inform the J.J. Abrams version of the character in Star Trek.

"The Measure of a Man" (Star Trek: The Next Generation 2x9)

The first season of the new generation was raw, lacking direction, distrustful of its finest elements, all of which was completely reversed in "Measure," in which Data is explored at the benefit of both Picard and Riker around him as his very existence is put on trial, with all three, to their adject horror (for each of them, very different reasons), forced to participate.  The most sophisticated episode of the franchise itself to that point, proving the more cerebral tone set by Picard was not, after all, a mistake.

"The Defector" (Star Trek: The Next Generation 3x10)

With its own identity settled, the series could return to the idea of the first season, which was to see if it could rephrase the stories of the original series in a fruitful manner, and "Defector" is essentially exactly that, "Balance of Terror" revisited, a Romulan getting to see just how far they can push their luck when the Cold War was still relevant, in its last days, in fact.  Star Trek taking a victory lap.

"Sarek" (Star Trek: The Next Generation 3x23)

Another of the walls that needed definitively knocking down (although it's worth noting an unrecognizable McCoy does appear in the pilot) was embracing the most familiar elements of the original series, and finding a way to make them newly relevant, which is what happens when Spock's dad passes the torch to Picard (in the process allowing Patrick Stewart some meaty acting).  Allowing Sarek to stand on his own, rather than adjacent to his son, is mere bonus.

"The Wounded" (Star Trek: The Next Generation 4x12)

Foreshadowing Deep Space Nine in more ways than one by introducing the Cardassians (completely with Dukat actor Marc Alaimo in an unrelated role), "Wounded" allows a supporting cast member to truly embrace the spotlight as Miles O'Brien is tasked with handling a former commanding officer who has gone off on one of those revenge plots that pop up frequently in the franchise.  Arguably Colm Meaney's best moment in the role and franchise.

"The Inner Light" (Star Trek: The Next Generation 5x25)

"City on the Edge of Forever" set up a precedent for transcendent experiences that the franchise eagerly pursued for years, leading to episodes like "Inner Light," in which Picard finds himself living a whole alternate life he at first resists but gradually comes to embrace as the audience itself learns this is no sinister plot but epiphany filled with the simple pleasures about the mere act of living.

"Chain of Command, Part 2" (Star Trek: The Next Generation 6x11)

The casting of Patrick Stewart as Picard was always a double-edged sword, a brilliant Shakespearean actor often seeking material truly worthy of his talents (and too many critics secretly believing the material was never truly up to it).  The argument against that assumption begins with Picard's desperate series of interrogations opposite a sadistic but equally elegant Cardassian foil, played by frequent Star Trek guest actor David Warner, which allow Stewart to truly cut loose.

"Ship in a Bottle" (Star Trek: The Next Generation 6x12)

Too easy to overlook in later years, Picard (and crew) have a cunning foe, and moral dilemma, in the form of the holographic Moriarty first introduced in the second season and at last revisited late in the series, tackling existential matters somehow unaddressed by Data or even Voyager's holographic Doctor, both of whom would be dazzled by Mortiarty's subtle wit.

"Tapestry" (Star Trek: The Next Generation 6x15)

And yet Picard's greatest foil was neither elegant nor subtle (and yet, paradoxically, was both whenever he sought a mere verbal joust), and Q reaches his finest moment in "Tapestry," in which he serves as guide to Picard's chance to rethink his life's greatest regret, an event so terrible it turned the track of his life from something resembling Kirk to, well, the Picard who proved so inspiring they literally wrote a leadership book based on him.

"Duet" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 1x19)

Star Trek fans can be slow to embrace new crews, and Deep Space Nine was no exception (contrary to popular belief, the serialized Dominion arc of later seasons never really changed the overall impression among casual fans), but "Duet" was an early and obvious standout, in which Kira is forced to confront her racial prejudices when she meets what even she must admit is a good Cardassian.

"Necessary Evil" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 2x8)

The intellectual bent of its immediate predecessor gave the series the ability to explore many shades of gray, which led to another standout Kira spotlight, in which her background as a terrorist is explored in ways that complicate her relationship with Odo, even as they begin the slow process of inextricably linking them together for the duration of the series.

"Blood Oath" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 2x19)

The improbable return of not one but three Klingons, and the actors who played them, from the original series is proof how far the franchise had come in sophistication, as Dax finds herself compelled to fulfil an oath her previous host made with them.  

"The Wire" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 2x22)

It took a few seasons, but the series began to truly embrace the nature of its stationary existence by settling into the lives of the many strange denizens both resident and visitor, none more fascinating than the "plain, simple tailor" Garak, whose secrets, though of course never fully revealed, burst forth in "Wire" to the utter consternation and fascination of Bashir.

"Crossover" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 2x23)

The first time the series, and franchise, revisits "Mirror, Mirror" subverts every happy expectation from that episode's conclusion, and in the process setting up a recurring arc and proving how valuable that alternate timeline really is in exploring our dark potential, as well as our redeeming impulses, thereby proving "Crossover" doesn't spoil that ending but rather affirms Star Trek's ideals all over again (the series itself in a nutshell, by the way).

"Civil Defense" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 3x7)

Life aboard the station, once Cardassian and now under joint Federation/Bajoran control, came with its own peculiar complications, especially when a security subroutine is triggered and a self-destruct sequence begins, causing everyone to scramble to avert it, including Dukat, whose usual pompous attitude has its best spotlight, including a moment even he wouldn't be able to deny as definitively piercing it.  Probably.

"Past Tense, Parts 1 & 2" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 3x11, 3x12)

Not so much "City on the Edge of Forever" as it became a touchstone, but in how it presented the past as a chance to criticize our present, Sisko finding himself at the heart of riots centered on the plight of the homeless, a predicament still very much relevant today, alas.

"Explorers" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 3x22)

It took until the third season, but once the series knew what to do with Sisko, he became the indisputable center of its best storytelling.  This episode draws on Sisko and his son, an experience they share free from typical drama as they build an ancient Bajoran solar ship just to prove it can be done, and the surprising results, both personal and galactic, that follow.

"The Visitor" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 4x3)

Sisko and son receive their definitive spotlight in one of those "City" episodes, a reset button designed to provide maximum emotional impact as Jake loses his dad unexpectedly, but discovers he can get him back, if he's willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, which takes a lifetime we get to see play out in all its bitter tragedy.  Variety's, and mine, pick for best episode of the franchise.

"Trials and Tribble-ations" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 5x6)

The series chased the comedic whimsy of the original Tribble episode throughout its run, mostly with the Ferengi, but this one's the most successful, in part because it lets loose so completely, free from any greater significance than sharing memories and having fun.

"For the Uniform" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 5x13)

It's easy to assume Sisko's greatest enemy was Dukat, Winn, or the whole Dominion, but it's really Eddington, who betrayed him to join the Maquis, and this whole episode is the revenge plot writ large, arguably the best example of the idea in the entire franchise.  If you ever wondered what a Deep Space Nine movie would look like, this is it.

"Waltz" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 6x11)

In the final episode of the series, Sisko and Dukat finally square off, physically, but their battle of wits never really gets better than "Waltz," in which a Dukat driven to despair by the death of his daughter (forget hiccups in the Dominion War that surround it) has Sisko at his mercy, but can't seal the deal.

"Far Beyond the Stars" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 6x13)

Too easily dismissed as too on the nose, Sisko's vivid experience of a black man's difficulties with segregation remains all too relevant today.

"In the Pale Moonlight" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 6x19)

The episode that settled into the series highlight for most fans sees Sisko making moral compromises in order to gain advantages in the increasingly desperate Dominion War, and appearing to be the first Star Trek character to reject the notion of being a saint in paradise.

"Maneuvers" (Star Trek: Voyager 2x11)

Arguably the peak of the original vision for the next series, Chakotay finds himself in the clutches of Seska, who has betrayed the crew and attempted to leverage her relationship with him in order to solidify her place among the Kazon.  

"Tuvix" (Star Trek: Voyager 2x24)

What ultimately defined this series was its willingness to let Janeway make the hard decisions, which she started doing in the pilot itself, stranding her crew an impossible distance away from home based on moral principles alone.  "Tuvix" inverts this idea by confronting Janeway with a scenario that betrays the audience's own concept of the franchise's ideals, even though Star Trek had been telling similar stories from the very start.

"Distant Origin" (Star Trek: Voyager 3x23)

One of its finest episodes saw the series remove nearly every trace of the usual trappings by having Chakotay taken prisoner by a species who spend "Origin" tackling an analogy for humanity's own reluctance to accept new science.

"Worst Case Scenario" (Star Trek: Voyager 3x25)

By the third season the series had all but abandoned any further dramatic complications from Janeway's decision to merge a stranded Maquis crew with her own; "Scenario" finds Paris triggering a holodeck program that allows everyone to see just how badly it might have played out.

"Message in a Bottle" (Star Trek: Voyager 4x14)

The Doctor proved to be one of the standout characters of the series, and incredibly useful any number of ways, including this first contact with home territory in which his program is sent to an experimental new Starfleet ship, in which he meets a very different medical hologram and the two somehow manage to save the day despite their glaring inexperience with such matters.  Arguably the best non-Tribble comedy of the franchise.

"Living Witness" (Star Trek: Voyager 4x23)

With a huge debt to "Distant Origin" before it, "Witness" again takes a look outside the usual parameters, sticking a backup version of the Doctor in a scenario where he must somehow defend his crew against a historical misperception of its adventures.

"Timeless" (Star Trek: Voyager 5x6)

The series' "City," in which Kim and Chakotay, in the near future, are somehow unhappy that the crew did get home, because of cost at doing so, which leads them on a quest to undo it.

"Latent Image" (Star Trek: Voyager 5x11)

One last Doctor spotlight, in which the crew must face its own reluctance to allow his programming to expand far beyond its original parameters, so he can learn from his own mistakes, a heartbreaking inability, as it turns out, to reconcile his own thought process.  

"Cold Front" (Star Trek: Enterprise 1x11)

The series that followed tried to have its cake and eat it, too, with fans uncomfortable with looking backward instead of forward, a prequel to a century before Kirk when Starfleet was just getting its space legs, but with Archer also embroiled in a Temporal Cold War that looked far into the future, and the natural consequences of the frequent time travel trope of the franchise.  "Cold Front" is the shining moment of the arc, in which Archer confronts two separate yet equally inscrutable agents, Silik and Daniels, one of whom is already clearly his enemy, the other proving he is a friend. Yet Archer will never quite be happy being pulled into the conflict.  Launched in the wake of 9/11, the series found itself having to address a new era, and eventually discovered its premise had already made room for it, as our own times make clear.  

"A Night in Sickbay" (Star Trek: Enterprise 2x4)

Typically considered one of the worst episodes of the series (this will not be the only time I buck this trend), "Sickbay," for me, is an excellent way to understand Archer's struggles to understand where humans fit among alien cultures, his bewilderment but eventual ability to navigate the stars his successors so often take for granted.

"Twilight" (Star Trek: Enterprise 3x8)

The series' "City," in which Archer is confronted with a reality where his long-term memory is shot, and he still has to try and find a solution to the Xindi conflict, with the unexpected patience of T'Pol his only asset.

"Similitude" (Star Trek: Enterprise 3x10)

For me, there's no question that Trip was the best character in the series.  Here he finds himself (or a version of himself does) in an impossible moral dilemma that pushes him to his very limits.

"Stratagem" (Star Trek: Enterprise 3x14)

The whole third season was one long arc revolving around the Xindi conflict, and this is the episode it pivots around, in which Archer must somehow convince Degra to betray his own people in order to help him find a way to victory.  

"These Are the Voyages..." (Star Trek: Enterprise 4x22)

Like "Sickbay," more typically considered one of the worst episodes, even for the whole franchise, but I just never saw it that way.  I thought it was a celebration of Trip, just when everyone would've assumed that honor should fall to Archer, in the final episode of the series, that also pulls in Riker and Troi from Next Generation to try and give some overall context (and an otherwise impossible visit from familiar faces), in which Trip chooses to sacrifice himself so Archer can make history.  To my mind, profound on a lot of levels, but as with the best of Star Trek, at the human one most and best of all.  The scene immediately following his death, Trip gets to have the last word on his life anyway.

"An Obol for Charon" (Star Trek: Discovery 2x4)

For a series that pushed the idea of genius-level Starfleet crews so heavily, this episode displays that alone the best the first of the modern versions has so far accomplished.  But the true achievement is in finding a connection between Saru and Burnham right when it seems most impossible.  I still want a Hallmark ornament commemorating it.

"Absolute Candor" (Star Trek: Picard 1x4)

The idea of further adventures featuring Picard seemed for years to be a pipedream, and yet for three seasons it was a reality.  Early on he's given the chance to find new allies among the Romulans, his (and the franchise's) most implacable foe, and he gets to get a little sword-fighting in while doing so.

"Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2" (Star Trek: Picard 1x10)

The series slowly but deliberately made amends for many perceived sins of the past, including the culminating of the first season's elegy for Data in allowing him to end (a version of) his existence more squarely on his own terms.

"Kayshon, His Eyes Open" (Star Trek: Lower Decks 2x2)

The sheer spastic lunacy of references populating this animated comedy hits a high point in one of its perfect moments, when the  Next Generation episode "Darmok" is revisited in the most unlikely of ways.

"We'll Always Have Tom Paris" (Star Trek: Lower Decks 2x3)

Boimler meets one of his idols, and Voyager has a hilarious callback to its earliest seasons, suggesting how deep this farce (I say in the best possible sense) of a franchise love letter can cut.

"All the World's a Stage" (Star Trek: Prodigy 1x13)

Once this kid version of Star Trek finally settled into itself, it could finally just tell Star Trek stories, and this one happens to be a very good one, in which our unlikely crew is confronted with a version of its own dilemma.

"A Quality of Mercy" (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1x10)

The franchise truly comes full circle in this delightful further exploration of Pike's having learned his impending fate, and in the process of deciding just how horrified he is of it, "Balance of Terror" is echoed.

"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2x3)

Like the preceding episode, "Tomorrow" features a rare series appearance from Kirk, and yet it's La'an who is and who steals the spotlight, basically of the whole series, as she confronts the specter of her own past, which just so happens to revolve around the arch franchise villain, Khan.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2x3 "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" Review

rating: **** (Classic)

the story: La'an ends up thrown into the past, where she and a Kirk from an alternate reality have a chance to prevent the rise of her ancestor Khan.

review: "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" is one of those instant classics.  It's arguably the best episode of any Star Trek in the modern era.  It's the kind of creative statement and achievement that speaks to the entire franchise.  

When the character of La'an Noonian-Singh was introduced in Strange New Worlds, her surname gave her immediate recognition in a series that was otherwise set to feature a mix of well-established (Pike, Spock, Number One, Uhura) characters, some less well-knowns (M'Benga), and assorted all-new creations.  La'an represented a mix of all the above.  She herself was brand new, but her distinctive last name meant she was related to one of the most famous, and infamous, characters in all of Star Trek, one who debuted in the original series ("Space Seed") and went on to be featured in two feature films (Wrath of Khan, which many fans still consider the undisputed best movie of the franchise, and Into Darkness).  As the first season progressed we learn more about La'an, including the prejudice she faces, and feels, due to this unusual ancestry, giving her the kind of depth only the best-established characters otherwise enjoyed.  By the end of the season she had become one of the major characters of the series.

Early in this second season, she has taken great strides to outright stealing the spotlight from all of them.  "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" is a monumental achievement.  Like a lot of episodes in the franchise, it hinges on classic time travel tropes.  There was a time in the fandom when the overly familiar was hugely frowned upon, but at the moment fans have grown once more accepting of it, which is why Strange New Worlds exists at all, with the ability to once again embrace the episodic format that dominated most of the rest of the franchise once upon a time.  Early feedback has deemed "Tomorrow" reminiscent of the classic example of time travel in franchise lore, "City on the Edge of Forever," in which Kirk must prevent a drastic change in the timeline by allowing a woman he inevitably falls in love with to die.  The daring twist of "Tomorrow" is that La'an must actually allow Khan to live.

It's impossible to grasp the impact of the episode without spoiling that.  There's so much to talk about, and so much to love, and it all needs discussing.

The Strange New Worlds version of Kirk first appearing at the end of the previous season gets an unexpected chance to shine as part of all this.  Star Trek now has three versions of the character, catching up with Spock in that regard.  Perhaps moreso than Spock, this Kirk is an unexpected revelation.  William Shatner will always cast a huge shadow over the role and the franchise, and will be as synonymous with it as Leonard Nimoy and Spock, and yet Chris Pine has proved to be resilient in the mainstream (this year he just headlined a successful launching of a new Dungeons and Dragons cinematic vision).  Paul Wesley, who made his name in The Vampire Diaries, will probably never be in serious competition with either of them, and yet in "Tomorrow" he gets to give as dynamic and complete single experience with the role as has yet been attempted.  His hustling games of chess, eating hotdogs, even the awkward dynamic with La'an all combine to a show-stealing appearance, if he weren't appearing opposite Christina Chong's La'an.  This whole episode only works if Kirk and La'an are a compelling pair, and for a version of Kirk only making his second appearance, and being tasked with keeping up with someone not named Spock, it's a challenge well-met.

"Tomorrow" tackles big franchise mysteries.  It explains the sliding time scale of when exactly the Eugenics Wars occurred (Voyager, Deep Space Nine, and Picard all traveled to relative contemporary times and didn't seem to have been touched by them), and even contextualizes Enterprise's Temporal Cold War, concluding a mystery that series never got around to doing itself as to why it happened at all, and probably even the identity (or species) of Future Guy (the Romulans, as long suspected).  But most of all, as Kirk in Final Frontier once claimed, "Tomorrow" concludes that you can't fix things by removing pain from the equation.  La'an can't fix herself by preventing Khan's ascension.  It's not that he's a boy when she finds him, but that his evil has to happen for all the good that follows.  

The whole story predicates on La'an needing to fix the timeline when she discovers something changed it and led to a version of reality where Kirk exists much as before, but outside the boundaries of Starfleet, the Federation, where humans never embraced the stars, not in a Mirror Universe kind of way, but without having truly realized their potential.  Kirk's convinced to play along since his brother's dead in this one but alive in the other (in the original series, the episodic format didn't really let him mourn Sam's eventual death in "Operation: Annihilate!").  Turns out temporal agents have been postponing the Eugenics Wars for years (and it's even hinted that the wars lead directly into WWIII, helping explain that, too).  For a franchise that has dipped into the past and the future many times, it's always been reluctant to explain any of this foundational material, in-canon, making "Tomorrow" important on that score alone.

By the end of the episode, the normally stoic La'an finally breaks down, the result of the cathartic experiences she's had.  Pike has struggled with his eventual fate since his appearances in Discovery, and the previous episode had just explained how Number One, Una Chin-Riley, got her own reckoning, while Spock hurdles toward confrontations with his own destinies (the implosion of his relationship with T'Pring, a confrontation with Sybok), and these are expected developments, given presentation.  "Tomorrow," no one could have seen coming.  Her antipathy toward the Gorn will clearly continue to play out, and yet here La'an gets to confront something far more personal, and find some closure from it.

When Star Trek cuts this deep, it's rare for it to play out this way.  Often it'll be a dark experience, but certainly nothing that feels remotely like a romp, which is how Kirk's effect takes "Tomorrow."  The lack of truly standalone episodes in modern lore means it's often hard to pinpoint standout experiences that are comparable to what's been previously achieved, and yet "Tomorrow" not only successfully evokes templates but moves well beyond them, and makes its story deeply personal in the process. 

To top all that off, the episode also makes great use of the new character Pelia, who is deliberately positioned to echo Next Generation and Picard icon Guinan, who put in a similar appearance in the latter's second season, and there's really no question that Pelia's appearance in "Tomorrow" is not only pitch-perfect for the character, but hugely immediately enjoyable, and a welcome distraction in the episode itself.  If this were somehow the only time you see the character, you'd love her for this spotlight alone.  

criteria analysis:

• franchise - "Tomorrow" is a deep cut that speaks to the whole history of Star Trek storytelling.  It revolves around Khan, Kirk, and explaining how the whole timeline works.
• series - Back in the Enterprise days fans always worried how a prequel to make a meaningful impact on franchise lore without breaking it.  "Tomorrow" is a textbook example of how to do it.  
• character - La'an instantly claims what Gene Roddenberry once termed "beloved character status," rocketing her not only in importance to her own series but throughout Star Trek lore in this appearance.  And this version of Kirk gets his best spotlight, too.
• essential - There's not even a question.  It's the kind of experience that speaks to all three other criteria for mandatory viewing, and even if none of them fit, it would still need seeing to believe, if you didn't like Star Trek in the first place, it would explain the whole phenomenon well enough on its own.

notable guest-stars:

Paul Wesley (Kirk)

Carol Kane (Pelia)

Further thoughts on the third season of Star Trek: Picard

Having finished watching the third season of Star Trek: Picard, I find I'm less enthusiastic about it than I would have thought.

For me, the best season of the series remains the first one, even if for half the final, two-part episode I experienced the kind of reservations that plagued my interest in the second and third.  I'm just not overly convinced that a completely serialized season works.  Babylon 5, for a lot of Star Trek fans in the '90s looking for something to energize them, suggested it was the inevitable future, but even it wasn't completely serialized.  Individual episodes could still tell their own stories.  I found Battlestar Galactica so hopelessly grim within just the first few episodes, I not only swore off any further suggestions that this was how Voyager should have played out, I was all the happier it didn't.  Deep Space Nine, when it attempted complete serialization at the beginning of the sixth season and end of the seventh, was further proof, for me, that story gets lost in the shuffle, not elevated.  You have to know what keeps the story interesting, not just keep the story going.

In the second season, I kept wanting more from the few elements that interested me (Q, Guinan), and less from the ones that didn't (Jurati as the Borg Queen's puppet, Rios in ICEland), it was difficult to know what to make of the results.  Later, I better appreciated the season, including how Guinan was used.

This last season will need similar effort.  I understand all the story beats and why they played out the way they did, but eventually it became so inevitable, and the familiar crew used so much it distracted from the pleasure of seeing them again.  Picard needed more grounding.  He needed more time with Beverly Crusher, who while being taken more seriously than ever before still found herself relegated to the background, no resolution, again, between herself and Picard, who instead spent most of his time with Jack Crusher (it would have been interesting as a subplot to somehow tie in the first Jack Crusher to all of this).  Data, instead of having a triumphant return, limped into the ensemble, and never felt any more important to Picard than he did in Next Generation, a direct contrast to their increased bond in the movies, which was so important it was the driving subplot of the first season.

This isn't to say I didn't enjoy the season.  As someone who's remained connected to these characters throughout the years (I remain one of the few fans of Nemesis), it wasn't such a long time since I saw the crew together, so for now, it's difficult to appreciate seeing them again.  I never had a problem like this with the original cast, since by the time I was born, the original series was long over and the movies were still in the midst of playing out, and by the time I was really able to appreciate any of it, both the series and the films were long concluded.  Seeing the crew age through the movies was just a matter of fact, as was following along with their sporadic later appearances, right down to Spock in Star Trek and Into Darkness.  (And, I guess, Walter Koenig voicing Anton Chekov.)  Even seeing the Enterprise-D again feels diminished by spending so much time aboard.

Most of this is quibbles.  In a lot of ways, this season is making amends for how the movies ended, and that the first two seasons avoided most of the cast.  If nothing else, Worf had a great part (the exception that proved the rule), and showed Riker in command mode, and of course Captain Shaw (who was also short-changed, eventually, but whose arc in general was one of the season's true highlights).  Finishing out, finally, the Borg saga, and even rounding out the Dominion War arc, finally including the Next Generation crew in it, that was well worth the time and energy put into everything.  If the season had included a few more wrinkles into the plot, rather than spend much of the back half coasting to the finale, believing the mystery behind Jack was enough, it would have been easier to appreciate.  But it was still well worth it.

Early thoughts on Picard third season

Like viewers in general, I'm loving the third season of Picard.  While the first and second seasons certainly had their hooks and narrative plotlines worth exploring (the first being a dramatic conclusion to Data's original arc, the second being the same for Q), clearly a very different creative direction was taken this time.

In short, this season has been functioning as an extended movie.  Not even a Next Generation movie, but in the style of the first six films.  Yes, as some perennially grumpy fans have pointed out, daring to once again evoke Wrath of Khan (Picard's son!), but in the storytelling, even the music in the end credits (although speaking of the music, it's of course worth noting that the main credits borrow First Contact's theme, which has been my favorite Star Trek theme since, well, First Contact).  While Next Generation in its day sort of surpassed the original show's popular appeal, it never really reached the same levels of cultural impact, and for fans of the original show, it never really escaped its reputation of being something different.  I have a blogging acquaintance who's positively obsessed with finding parallels between them, and will insist Picard is basically Kirk, but I don't see in what universe that was ever remotely true, except in Picard's youth (and further contrasted by the fact that the aged Kirk was never remotely similar to the Picard we first meet).

I hope addressing the presence of Picard's son in the season isn't considered a spoiler.  If so, so be it.  They share a brief moment where they talk about the hair, of course.  If anyone cares to remember, although of course the young Picard in "Tapestry" sports a full head of hair, the picture of Tom Hardy as the young Picard in Nemesis finds him bald, although I always figured it was for production convenience (and to otherwise suggest Picard, for that photo, shaved his hair off).  Even at that point I couldn't have cared less how little Hardy really looked like Patrick Stewart.  He was a great actor giving a great performance!  But hardly likely to show up in the franchise again, right?  Even in a season of wish fulfillments!  (Could we still hope for Colm Meaney?  Please?)

I found aspects of the second season to be disagreeable to the digestion.  I loved the first season wholeheartedly.  I'm finding I'm really enjoying this one, too.

Star Trek and the Changing Face of Eugenics

First airing February 16, 1967, the original series episode "Space Seed" introduced the genetic superman Khan Noonien Singh, who would appear twice more in the franchise (1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and 2013's Star Trek Into Darkness).  Khan was described as a product of the Eugenics Wars, a still-nebulous concept in canon material that was supposed to take place somewhere in the 1990s.  In 1967, the term "eugenics" was broadly understood to have Nazi connotations, although it was a concept widely shared in the United States as well.  Eugenics was the idea that a "perfect" human could be engineered through selective breeding.  In Nazi hands it led to a genocidal purge of undesired ethnicities for a "pure" nation.  

Khan was presented as a monster incapable of reconciling his existence with those he found inferior, which was basically everyone else except the goons sent into the same exile as himself.  When Kirk finds his ship coasting in space and revives him, Khan attempts a coup of the Enterprise and is subsequently sent into a second exile, and an attempt at revenge.  

The extent of Khan's genetic engineering was physical as well as mental, so that he represented the idea of perfecting both by bypassing chance, willful education and fitness efforts.  In doing so, he developed a level of arrogance he couldn't see past, what Kirk eventually called two-dimensional thinking.  By taking his abilities for granted, Khan never considered that there was a chance anyone without his advantages could be his equal, much less superior.

In Star Trek lore, his existence and evident threat led the Federation to ban genetic engineering.  The franchise didn't seriously revisit the idea until the Deep Space Nine episode "Doctor Bashir, I Presume?" in 1997, a full thirty years after "Space Seed."  In it we learn that Doctor Bashir, a member of the regular cast since the first episode of the series, has been genetically engineered the whole time.  To look at him (a complete inverse of Khan physically, a beanstalk of a man), you would certainly have never guessed, and since this was a fifth season episode, nothing the writers had planned until plotting that episode.  Bashir had always had a healthy ego from his introduction on, a recent graduate of Starfleet medical school who boasted of his high academic achievements and selection of the assignment to a station at the edge of Federation space meant as a challenge he didn't think he'd find elsewhere.  The episode explains how his parents chose to modify his genes after finding themselves with a sickly child of no apparent prospects.

Now, no one will ever argue Julian Bashir to be the second coming of Khan.  Starfleet ends up making a special exception for him (he would otherwise have lost his career), instead punishing his father for making the decision in the first place.  For the rest of the series, the only real effect of the revelation is two episodes where he spends time with other products of recent genetic engineering, misfits whose outcomes weren't nearly as fortunate as his own.

The next time the franchise revisits the concept is the trilogy of Enterprise episodes from 2004, "Borderland," "Cold Station 12," and "The Augments," in which we learn the ancestor of Data's creator, Arik Soong, was inspired by the original Khan project in his work, and in fact nurtured the genetic material left over from it and even raised some of the results to adulthood.  (In later episodes, the series finally answers the question of how Klingons in the original series had such smooth foreheads; the Empire attempted to reverse engineer this work, and it...backfired.)  When Soong is repeatedly stymied, he eventually decides to pursues robotics instead.

Which brings us to the modern era of Star Trek programming and the reason I'm writing this.  Genetic engineering has played a prominent role in three series from this period, Picard, Strange New Worlds, and Prodigy.  We'll start with Picard, as it most resembles the franchise's historic stance on eugenics.

The second season of Picard features another member of the Soong lineage, Adam Soong, whose efforts in this field of science are meant to create a daughter for himself.  By this time the Eugenics Wars are long over, Khan has been put into cryostasis and shot into space, WWIII has yet to occur, and of course the Soongs have begun their long journey toward the creation of Data, one of the main cast members of The Next Generation, an android with an innovative positronic net powering him.  Adam Soong, although a renowned member of the scientific community, keeps his greatest work to himself, and has failed a number of times at creating a daughter of unlimited viability, genetic flaws continually cropping up and leading to premature death or debilitating conditions.  When we catch up with him, his daughter Kore has no idea she was created in a lab, although she certainly knows she can't stray far from home, since her skin can't withstand UV rays.  Eventually she runs away from home, and the Soongs continually evolve their pursuits.  Adam and Arik Soong are clearly presented as villains, although Kore, like Bashir before her, is an unwitting victim and sympathetic protagonist.  

The same can be said for Strange New Worlds and Prodigy's contributions.  Strange New Worlds gives us Number One, Una Chin-Riley, who has been hiding her Illyrian heritage since Illyrians maintain a regular practice of genetic engineering.  Prodigy's lead character is Dal, and in the 2022 episode "Masquerade" we learn that he's entirely the product of genetic engineering.

At the end of its first season, Strange New Worlds positions Chin-Riley in the same kind of peril Bashir faced when finally exposed, just as Prodigy finds Starfleet forced to reconcile Dal's existence with its ban.  Chin-Riley's case is in the past, before Khan is even revived, while Dal's is after Bashir's.  It seems recent creators are increasingly interested in challenging the moral qualms of the whole concept.  So is this a problem?

I think so.  It's one thing to argue, as Bashir does, that he had no say in what happened to him.  After all, although he knowingly lied throughout his Starfleet career, he didn't think he was otherwise responsible for conditions that ended up violating the ban.  Dal's case is different.  Although a character in a show geared toward kids and constantly presented as someone who just wants to fit in (and therefore it would be tough to come to any other conclusion), it becomes problematic that he's yet another unwitting victim we're asked to accept.  As I write this, the second season of Strange New Worlds has yet to premiere, so there's no way to know if and how Chin-Riley's case is handled, but it seems equally unlikely that she will end up unabsolved, whether by Starfleet or her crew.

I'm not making an argument against modern Star Trek, or these characters.  What I'm saying, here, is that it's a curious development in a franchise that has long been a champion of reason, spending the entire original series questioning basically everything, even the most precious indulgences of the counterculture that has long since been assumed to most closely align with its utopian ideals.  The franchise has also become a beacon of acceptance, in increasingly overt ways, and yet...this might be a step too far.  What some would call inevitable scientific progress still represents a Doctor Bashir who asks his parents, finally, why he wasn't good enough for them as he originally was.  No subsequent depiction of genetic engineering in the franchise has voiced such a thought, nor the cautionary tale (which is the foundation of the franchise) of Khan and the generation of augments that followed him.

This is a dangerous road to travel.  My hope is that someone at the controls realizes this at some point.  We don't need a Khan to point this out.  We certainly don't need another Hitler.  Star Trek is always at its best when it depicts humanity's efforts to better itself.  Through more conventional means.  Moral means.