Rest in Peace, Walter Koenig

Walter Koenig has passed away. What a legacy.

Unlike some of his coworkers Walter didn’t make a big deal about the amount of material he had behind his depiction of Chekov over the years. He was left out of The Animated Series entirely (except for writing an episode). The rewards started piling up, though. He was given a prominent part in Wrath of Khan, off on another starship and still in the midst of a vital career. He gladly swooped in when more popular colleagues opted out of Generations, and ended up with one more memorable moment as he laments how young new officers seem (Kirk says he was younger). And he shows up vocally in Picard, as Chekov’s descendant honoring his late successor in the role, Anton Yelchin…

I was never a fan of Babylon 5, but when I watched through the series my favorite episodes were always when Koenig showed up, again, without ever making a fuss about his role.

He was among the first original cast members to write a memoir, Chekov’s Enterprise (which I haven’t yet read). He wore ridiculous wigs but no one ever seemed to care, or simply pointed out it was part of the character’s original mandate.

And he was the highlight of the most successful original cast film, The Voyage Home. Fans dispute a lot of things, but I think there will always be agreement on that one.

Here’s to you, Walter.

“New Life and New Civilizations”… 60 Years and Counting!

I just completed a rewatch of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ third season, which proved fortuitous timing, since I had just finished catching up on the latest fourth season episodes, up to “Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass,” which unexpectedly ends in a callback to “New Life and New Civilizations,” which itself concludes a story thread winding through the third season, and the series itself, Pike’s relationship with Captain Batel, in the most emotional way possible, evoking Next Generation’s classic “The Inner Light” by imagining a whole alternate life they get to lead…

Because Batel dies at the end of “New Civilizations.”

Christopher Pike has taken an extraordinary path to solidifying his rank as an icon of the franchise. Featured as the captain in the first, rejected pilot (“The Cage”) of the original series, he ended up in the two-part “The Menagerie” in which the first pilot was repurposed…and Pike’s legacy repositioned as tragedy, his career dramatically cut short in a crippling accident that leaves him immobile and speechless, with the only escape possible the fantasy he experienced in “The Cage”…(Talk about metaphor!)

And that was the end of Pike…Until 2009, when the character returns in Star Trek, and then Discovery, almost a decade later, when we meet the current incarnation, who becomes aware of his horrible fate and struggles to accept it…

But Strange New Worlds was originally posited, and embraced, as the unlikely return of the traditional episodic format of the franchise. This current season has been increasingly ridiculed by how it’s chosen to further pursue it (the puppet episode will likely endure as the latest “worst episode ever,” joining the likes of “Spock’s Brain,” “Profit and Lace,” “Threshold,” “These Are the Voyages…”), but it seems more likely, to me anyway, that the fourth season is a direct expression of the unexpected longevity of the series, and the idea of it reaching beyond what it thought it was going to get to do.

Pike’s fate already loomed over the series. Then it started introducing more familiar characters, starting with Kirk, and it became clear that the series was headed in two directions: Pike’s fate and Kirk assuming command of the Enterprise.

But then someone figured out at least a third arc: Pike’s romance with Batel.

(There are plenty of other arcs that’ve played out, including exploring Spock’s relationship with Chapel, M’Benga’s surprisingly complex backstory, everything about who Number One turned out to be, and the best of the original characters, La’An.)

They must’ve figured out they couldn’t let Pike end up with two tragedies, so “New Civilizations” ends the Batel arc in the best way possible.

It takes a second visit from Trelane (whom the series also codified as a Q) to revisit it, the kind of storytelling that had become increasingly difficult to feature in the increasingly serialized shows that defined the modern era. 

And it’s absolutely worth it.

I don’t think any of this was intended to make a franchise statement, let alone for the 60th anniversary, but I can think of no better way, an overlooked giant moment or two, the unexpected further legacy of Christopher Pike continuing to pay dividends.

Happy birthday, Star Trek.

A somewhat belated farewell to Star Trek: Lower Decks

So yeah, I'm kinda late, a whole year late, finishing the final season of Lower Decks.  Honestly, I stopped prioritizing it when the season opened with what I found to be repetitive material for the series.  Having watched through the whole season...I gotta say, I'm not at all surprised the series is done, because that was a whole season of the show, to my mind, spinning its wheels.  Aside from rounding out a better appreciation of Tendi's Orion family/society, I'm not sure there's much value in it, except pointing out once again that if you give Andy Robinson's Garak any screentime at all, he's just going to steal all the attention shamelessly.  Even Boimler!  The whole season predicates that he basically ends up happy being...Harry Kim.  I find that a tad ironic.  Even Mariner's fate as happily adjusted doesn't feel all that earned.  It's very much as if Mike McMahan himself grew bored and just filled out a contract.  Rutherford randomly, in the final episode, giving up his implant?  Okay!  Sure!  It's not a total loss.  If you're a fan of the show it's worth it, and there are efforts to round out the rest of the classic franchise (though there's kind of a needless dig at Discovery in the process), and how it ends wrapped up in a big Klingon drama is very much in keeping with franchise lore.  

Goofy fun, great characters, ran its course.  Plenty of fans think that about the rest of the franchise, right?  Seems about right.

Star Trek: Section 31 review

 rating: ****

the story: Georgiou is recruited by Section 31 all over again.

the review: My X (Twitter) feed is full of abject hate for Section 31, so it seems more important to just go ahead and review it here now than to rest on the hiatus the Companion has been on in recent years.  It doesn't deserve the hate.  It deserves very much the opposite.

When Michelle Yeoh's Georgiou was killed off at the beginning of Discovery, a lot of fans were surprised.  Few enough of them seemed all that interested when she returned, via her Mirror Universe counterpart, later that first season.  Maybe it's because you kind of had to be a fan of both Deep Space Nine and Enterprise (which, aside from me, seems somewhat impossible) to appreciate the Mirror Universe beyond its "Mirror, Mirror" introduction in the original series at that point, but this was a big deal for the series, and for the franchise.  In fact, the rest of that season took place in the Mirror Universe, and somehow Mirror Georgiou ended up sticking around, including being recruited by Section 31 and ultimately winning a trip back home (kind of) via the Guardian of Forever later in the series.

Now, the biggest hiccup anyone might have with Section 31 is how she happens to find herself at the exact moment in time as her archnemesis.  Probably Carl's doing (the Guardian).

The movie opens with Mirror Georgiou's secret origin, how she became emperor in the first place, via an extremely logical explanation of how things worked there, and even the kind of life one might expect there (one twit on X suggested that home Mirror Georgiou returns to was hardly what they thought the Terran Empire would look like...but what else would you really expect? aside from the twit watching anything but the opening seconds?).  We learn she had to make a series of brutal decisions, only the last two of which we witness, including what to do with her competitor, and lover.  

Then we catch up with her in her present, which is about halfway between The Undiscovered Country and Next Generation, which can also be determined in the life of Enterprise-C captain Rachel Garrett, the youthful career of which we catch up with here.  Mirror Georgiou is leading an assumed identity until Section 31 bursts through the anonymity.  We meet the crew of misfits (and what a fun bunch they are!), and plunge into the mission.

It's worth pausing here to relish all the franchise lore we're getting to feast on.  First of course Mirror Georgiou herself, whom regular viewers of Discovery got to experience as close to redeeming herself as such a figure could enjoy.  (Section 31 itself exists to finish the job as completely as forgiving fans will allow.)  After "Mirror, Mirror," Deep Space Nine caught up with the Mirror Universe in a series of episodes throughout its seven season run (second through final seasons, almost a visit a season), from how far the Terrans fell to how they finally pick themselves up again.  Enterprise, in its final season, explains the crucial decision that shifted Earth's fate to Empire (First Contact, but with Cochrane shooting the Vulcans).  Section 31, in part, fills in the remaining gap, how it wasn't as simple as Mirror Spock being the one man to make a difference.  The rest of the dominoes had to fall, too, and that's what we see play out here.

There's also, of course, Section 31 itself, another gift of Deep Space Nine, the black ops Federation organization that also popped up in Enterprise and even Star Trek Into Darkness, and then finally Discovery, where Mirror Georgiou first signs up (up until realizing the timeline wouldn't square, I still hoped to see Ash Tyler pop up one more time).  A lot of fans still cling to the idea that Star Trek, and Starfleet and the Federation by extension, should only focus on the hopeful ideals of humanity's perfect future, but that was never the case even in the original series, where Spock could be subjected to bigotry on a regular basis (up to and including McCoy's banter).  Anyway, Deep Space Nine was my favorite series in the '90s, and so anything that keeps its legacy alive is welcomed by me, and Section 31 is easily its most visible legacy.  Playing someone like Rachel Garrett off of that (the other nice thing, beyond a Tyler cameo, would've been seeing her in the classic uniform, which spanned Wrath of Khan through Picard's days at the Academy).

(A seeming throwaway background for another character additionally finally, finally satisfactorily explains the Eugenics Wars.)

The storytelling in Section 31 is highly engrossing, beyond what most of the current era has achieved, possibly because it's forced to be so self-contained.  There's the suggestion this was supposed to be a series, and that this was only going to be the pilot; if so it's the best pilot Star Trek ever managed.

In giving Mirror Georgiou so much material, including how effectively layered its big reveals are, it satisfies on levels most of the theatrical movies never could, a truly accomplished ending and showdown with the villain, someone who really matters to the hero.  (In contrast to pretty much every other Star Trek fan, I favor Into Darkness over Wrath of Khan in how it handles our genetic superman as something other than a random force of nature Kirk bumps into twice.  The only other time it's really this perfect is First Contact, in which we learn of the Borg Queen's existence and how much it means for Picard to settle with her, apart from all other considerations.)

I really don't know how else to try and sell the achievement of it, and besides, emphasize how fun the side characters are.  There's a lot here just to reflect how much closer Section 31 is to our reality, and much better use of some of the types the franchise has been using in recent years...At this point Section 31 is actually the best thing to emerge from the modern era, excepting Strange New Worlds' current highwater mark, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow."

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Outlined sufficiently in review. 
• series - If accepted as part of Discovery continuity, explains itself.
• character - Mirror Georgiou takes her place among the great characters in franchise lore.
• essential - For any number of reasons, Star Trek is now effectively incomplete without Section 31.

notable stars:

Michelle Yeoh (Georgiou)

Jamie Lee Curtis (Control)

Star Trek's legacy expands...

At this point I've begun to see the current era of the franchise as something I'm very likely just going to catch up with later, the way I piled through all the episodes and movies previously.  It just began to seem, everyone currently interested in all this new material is already watching it and having their thoughts, and obviously that was never really this blog, which functions as an archive, reference material, very often with thoughts that are very unique to it, and so for any number of reasons it just makes sense to sit back, as I have been, comment in the moment when it seems really necessary (such as Strange New Worlds' magnificent "Tomorrow and Tomorrow ands Tomorrow," which demanded immediate recognition as what I think is an indisputable all-time mark, and maybe help others to see it that way, too).  The other part is that I wrote up the bulk of this when I was heavily blogging across over a whole series of blogs, and so working here was part of keeping all those balls juggling in the air, and I slowed down considerably in recent years, and keeping up with new Star Trek fell into that, too.

But I've been watching!

This era of streaming Trek has been a lot of hitting notes fans thought were missing from previous eras.  Discovery, when it leaped into the far future, still made time for this by fleshing out the Breen, at very long last.  Strange New Worlds is doing what no other Trek has really been allowed to do, which is to revisit the original series, at a slant, even bringing back the big names beyond Spock.  Picard was a direct continuation of Next Generation, as well as featuring Voyager's Seven.  Lower Decks often functioned as an old folks home, too, bringing back odd bits of continuity, fleshing out dangling elements like the Orions, even the Pakleds...Like Lower Decks, which tended to linger on Voyager characters about as much as Next Generation, Prodigy was half the Voyager version of Picard, although arguably hit its highest nostalgic mark in its second season by revisiting Wesley Crusher and finally, finally giving fans a glimpse of his adventures as a Traveler.

This is to say, eventually all of that will be reflected here.  All the episodes will be here.  I don't know how long the streaming years will last.  We still have Strange New Worlds, we're very shortly going to have the Section 31 film, Starfleet Academy.  Who knows what else.  It'll be here.  I still love Star Trek, rest assured.  I know how internet fandom of any stripe can randomly just break off.  I still have fantasies of expanding to include The Orville, even Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, which vanished from the internet long before the show even finished, although I remain as big a fan of it as I ever was.  

One year away from sixty years, folks.  Well, maybe by then I'll have either made significant progress toward once again having a truly comprehensive look at all of it, or have made good headway.

Steady as she goes...

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)