Star Trek

[Sparky Prime]

Season 5 trailer of Lower Decks is online.

Harry Kim finally gets a promotion! At least... what appears to be a Harry Kim from at least one universe.

[andersonh1]

Finally!

[andersonh1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgOZFny ... N__9HNNruQ

That is wonderful. Amazing what they can do with CGI and prosthetics. The original series is still my favorite, and the Kirk, Spock and McCoy friendship is the core of that show. Revisiting Kirk and Spock like this was pretty darn emotional. I've been a fan almost all my life. Always good to see these old friends again.

I'm not quite sure what some of the vignettes signified, but it looks like Gary Mitchell allowed Kirk to go spend time with Spock as Spock is dying. A gift for his old friend perhaps? I like to think so.

[Sparky Prime]

The prosthetics and digital work is exceptional.

I like the detail of showing the Daystrom Institute graphic that showed they had Kirk's body, since that was one of the Easter eggs in season 3 of Picard... Which didn't sit right with me when that seems like a pretty major development to have Kirk's body in storage of a top secret facility with no explanations or follow-up. Good on the creators of this short for giving that some purpose.

I agree it looks like Gary Mitchell is giving Kirk a gift. I'm assume they show him as a means to explain how Kirk is alive at any rate.

I'm curious who all the people in the garden are and why they're there. Saavik (Robin Curtis) of course, and the alien in TNG uniform are the only two I recognize. The alien is from Discovery, which they introduced simply to explain what was happening to Georgiou, as someone who crossed universes and then time traveled in a universe that wasn't their own. Looks like he appears here in order to send Kirk to the Kelvin universe to see Spock.

Not really sure what the point of the water hallway with the three versions of Kirk was. It sorta reminds me of the time travel sequence in The Voyage Home, so maybe it just represents his traveling between universes.

Even with no dialog, I have to say, I liked this short more than what a lot of the nuTrek shows. This is just excellent.

[Sparky Prime]

Lower Decks season 5 episode 9

I've skipped the rest of the season. Based on the synopsis for much of this season, it hasn't really interested me. But this episode... This is what I've been waiting for.

Spoiler

The focus of this episode is what happened to Boimler's transporter clone who had stayed on the USS Titan. Last we saw of him, Section 31 faked his death and a Defiant class starship picked him up. Well, it's implied to be Section 31, but Boimler says in his log he can't confirm who he's working for. He's been promoted to Captain of this ship, the Anaximander, with the mission of chasing the creators of the interdimensional fissures which are destabilizing the multiverse. His crew is a bunch of people from across the Trek multiverse: a version of T'Pol that has been married to Trip for 63 years, a version of Curzon Dax, a version of Garak serving as the ship's doctor, along with his husband who is an EMH version of Dr. Bashir from yet another universe, and the rest of the crew are various versions of Harry Kim. Nice to hear all the actors returned to reprise their roles.

Boimler is restless, not having had much luck in catching up to whoever is creating the rifts, and he'd rather be exploring the universe rather than the multiverse. Then they rescue a version of Mariner, who is able to give them the solution they've been missing. Every rift creates a second somewhere else in the galaxy and the Anaximander has been chasing them through the wrong rifts. Somehow this means if they create a rift, it'll bring the culprits to them. The plan works but the culprit ship runs, prompting the Anaximander to fire on them as they enter another rift, damaging both ships. Both land on a nearby planet, where the crews are captured by Khwopians. It's revealed the captain of the culprit ship is Lily Sloane. In her reality, humans and Vulcans decided to explore the multiverse rather than the galaxy, but they weren't aware that every rift they made created another elsewhere.

They all escape thanks to Garak breaking them out, and go to repair the Beagle (Sloane's ship, based on the ring concept Enterprise). But the Kim's steal it. Or rather, Lieutenant Kim steals it, and tricked the Ensign Kim's into coming with him, intending to take them back to his reality so they can be promoted like he has. Curzon is injured fighting Khwopians so the crew could get onboard the Anaximander, and T'Pol mindmelds with the Dax symbiote to preserve its memories. A nice character moment given they'd been at odds throughout the episode, but not really sure why the writers went this route when we don't really see any pay off for it. Catching up to the Beagle, all the Ensign Kim's are beamed over, but Lt. Kim dies as the Beagle blows up in a rift he creates, which turns violent. In order to save the multiverse, the crew has to sent the rift to one universe, where it'll destroy that reality. Boimler suggests his own, believing his counterpart and friends will find a way to stop it. So long as his counterpart doesn't freak out... Which leaves the episode off on a To be Continued.

I thought this was a fun episode. Nice to see the multiverse concept used to good effect, especially since so many franchises lately haven't. Don't like that they turned Lt. Harry Kim evil though. That just felt overly silly and unnecessary to me. Come to think of it, same thing with how they portrayed Curzon Dax, making him out to be some over the top battle thirsty loon. Other character inconsistencies I could dismiss as mutliverse variations, but these two just didn't work IMO. Loved to see so many Star Trek actors reprise their roles.
I have some questions with the story...

Spoiler

When we last saw duplicate Boimler, someone was on the Anaximander to beam him onboard, officially recruit and hand him his Section 31 comm badge. So what happened to those agents? Why did the ship end up being crewed by people from various universes? None of them are Section 31 agents, given they have standard comm badges. And the two crew members they "recruit" during the episode are happenstance, saved from an escape pod and a shuttle about to explode. I assume the others joined the crew under similar circumstances. The Anaximander also had a cloaking device when it picked up Boimler, but we never see it used or even referenced in this episode. Just seems like it's apparent this isn't what the writers had in mind when they set this thread up... if they had anything in mind at all.

I did appreciate that they got some things right with the Defiant class. The writers of DS9 never realized it was designed with landing gear, similar to what we saw with Voyager, so it was nice to see a Defiant class ship landed on a planet for the first time. I think this was also the first time we saw the nose phaser strip used. DS9 actually always got this wrong, showing the phaser beam coming from a port under the deflector dish.

So... not a perfect episode, but it was still a pretty great episode, one of few true highlights of Lower Decks for me.

[Sparky Prime]

Lower Decks has retconned Star Trek Discovery as a separate universe. Sort of.

Spoiler

The multiversal rift from the previous episode has an effect on everything around it, causing it to transform into parallel universe versions. A Bird of Prey becomes the Klingons from Discovery. Obviously this is just a joke on the writers part, given the distain Discovery has among many fans, but I have to say, I like the implication that it is a separate universe, given the discontinuities.

The Cerritos undergoes similar changes... Becoming a Terran Empire California-class, but also becomes a Freedom, Galaxy, Sovereign, Miranda, Oberth... I guess it's a possibility that the Cerritos could have been built as a different class vessel in some universes, but it should have stayed a California-class like in TNG "Parallels", where every version of the Enterprise-D we saw was a Galaxy-class.

Interestingly, rather than close the rift, they inadvertently turn it into a stable interdimensional portal. Then they relocate Starbase 80 nearby so that Starfleet can begin exploring the multiverse. Sorta like DS9 is to the Bajoran wormhole. I don't get their reasoning for why it has to be Starbase 80. They say it's so outdated it wont be effected by the multiverse altering waves the portal puts out but that seems counterintuitive to me. Wouldn't something older have more possibilities and therefore be more effected by multiversal shifts? Not sure I like the idea of a permanent mutliverse portal in Star Trek. At least, this era of Star Trek. It just seems too consequential that'd have huge ramifications for the Star Trek universe. It's also the second time a nuTrek series has introduced an ill-defined portal in space, with Picard also doing that at the end of season 2.

For a series finale, I felt like this was lacking. Some of the previous season finales did a much better job of balancing characters and plot. This felt rushed and a bit disjointed, like they were trying to squeeze in where they would have liked the characters to be after another season or two. Not that I felt this was a bad episode. Despite the shortcomings, I enjoyed this episode.

Lower Decks as a whole... it was hit or miss for me. There were some great episodes, but I never really could tell who they wanted their audience to be. Some episodes seemed to be a parody of Star Trek, others more of a love letter to parts of the franchise and sometimes they just were doing their own thing. I also don't think it was a good representation of actual 'lower deck' officers. The main characters were often just as (or more so) important to the ship as the command crew. And for a ship that was supposed to be relegated to second string missions, they seemed to be on the front lines a lot of the time. As such, they never really seemed to settle on one coherent tone for the series which made it hard for me to get into it.

[andersonh1]

One of my Christmas presents this year was the animated Star Trek series from the early 70s. I've seen bits and pieces of this show way back when, but I don't remember any of the plots, so I'm essentially watching most of it for the first time. It's that familiar limited Filmation animation from back in the day, but it's not bad, and the quality on blu-ray is very good. Nice to hear almost all the regulars from the live action Trek present, though I think Walter Koenig/Chekov is missing. I'm going to enjoy revisiting these old friends for new-to-me adventures. I will say that I seem to remember the second episode, "Yesteryear" where Spock goes through the Guardian of Forever and prevents himself from being killed as a child. That whole plot felt very familiar, and I'm sure that was Mark Lenard playing Sarek.

[Sparky Prime]

I remember seeing reruns of TAS on Nickelodeon when I was little. Although the only two I remember the plots of are "The Eye of the Beholder" and "The Ambergris Element". We had a recording of those, so I watched them many times growing up. I appreciated that they had aliens and technologies that were more ambitious than they could have pulled off in live action at the time.

[andersonh1]

I remember seeing reruns of TAS on Nickelodeon when I was little. Although the only two I remember the plots of are "The Eye of the Beholder" and "The Ambergris Element". We had a recording of those, so I watched them many times growing up. I appreciated that they had aliens and technologies that were more ambitious than they could have pulled off in live action at the time.

Yeah, I'm expecting some aliens and some ships we just could not have seen in the live-action version. There's an alien with a third arm sitting at Chekov's station in the first couple of episodes, Arex I think is his name. They'd never have been able to realize such a alien convincingly in live action in the 60s show. "Yesteryear" also show's Spock's pet sehlat that he told McCoy about in one episode, the "six foot teddy bear with fangs". It's more cuddly than he let on. And I noticed the round design of Vulcan cities from that episode has appeared in Enterprise and in the TOS with updated effects.

[Sparky Prime]

There's an alien with a third arm sitting at Chekov's station in the first couple of episodes, Arex I think is his name. They'd never have been able to realize such a alien convincingly in live action in the 60s show.

Yeah, I remember that alien. The only other series that species has appeared in is Lower Decks, but they probably could make it in live action now with how far prosthetics and CGI has come.

"The Eye of the Beholder" I recall featured telepathic slug-like creatures with a tentacle type trunk and were much larger than a human. "The Ambergris Element" had an aquatic species, and took place largely underwater, so the Enterprise had unique shuttle that doubled as a submersible, and the crew had personal forcefields allowing them to breathe underwater. Voyager eventually got close to that with the episode "Thirty Days", using the Delta Flyer as a submersible, and Enterprise had the Aquatic Xindi species. But it'd be interesting to see more aquatic settings in live action.