Why would you need to put on a show?

Well it was a literal show to establish himself as the leader of his little pirate society, so I thought the ridiculous show trial worked. But I also think his motivation to be that sort of leader was a little out of left field.

Yes, good call. I can’t believe I forgot to mention it, too!

I also wonder if a completely stabilized Omega molecule would even be viable as a power source - the original VOY episode doesn’t seem to really touch on that, but it does seem like its energy potential comes from it being destabilized.

But with The Daleks’ Master Plan, the story was not sold overseas.

Censors in Australia and New Zealand deemed it too violent, and without their buy-in, selling to other markets was not profitable.

Combined with the move towards colour, the black and white story was thought to have little future value and consigned to the bin.

Every recovered episode is to be celebrated, but damn. This is impressive.

not seeing Discovery blipping first right as the blockade is lifted, at least a few seconds or a minute before all other ships warping in.

I had the same thought - let the first responders be the first responders!

Hopefully we’ll see Stamets or someone show up as a guest lecturer at some point.

does anyone actually care about a gay character on Star Trek in the year 2026?

Well, yes - plenty of people care about, and celebrate, representation.

Most of the investment — approximately $32 billion — is being drawn from a pool of money set aside almost four years ago by former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government to modernize NORAD, the binational North American air defence command shared with the United States.

So not necessarily new funds, but perhaps a more solid plan on what it will be spent on.

That’s pretty permissive overall - I like it.

reluctantly lowers the phone

I am absolutely okay with Star Trek being just one of many franchises they’re managing, and not the largest or most prominent.

In the case of SFA, I do think they’ll be looking closely at the demographics - are they actually reaching the younger audience they were hoping to reach? I think that’s far more important than “was it a top 10 show” or whatever other limited metrics are available to us.

I could go on a whole rant about how that should be impossible, but I think I’m happy to let a gag be a gag in this case.

It’s going to continue to gather strength, and will eventually be the villain of season four.

You have Nus in custody, but we saw how well that went last time. So will we see Paul again in Season 2?

Kurtzman: No, not in Season 2. There’s nothing we want more than to bring Paul back and there’s nothing Paul wants more than to come back, so we are going to figure that out in Season 3.

This is the kind of confidence I’m looking for right now.

Okay yeah, I knew it was ringing a bell. I think they probably should have called that back at least once during the season. I can barely remember things for one week, let alone nine.

Honestly, I’ve never paid attention to fan productions, so I didn’t even know this thing existed, but you’re right about one thing - if nothing else, it looks gorgeous.

I find it wild that they can use actual footage from the shows to promote this thing. Is this just the BBC being less litigious?

A pretty solid finale to a pretty excellent season.

I liked a lot of it - Reno and the cadets having to solve the problem using their wits alone, Nus Braka’s ridiculous show trial, and the ultimate resolution of de-weaponizing the minefield (which one would think has long-term implications, if they’ve truly found a way to permanently stabilize Omega). The cast was stellar, which we’ve come to expect at this point.

I’m not completely satisfied with the resolution of the individual story arcs. I don’t think we got enough of Sam 2.0 for her inner conflict to really land, and while I assume ther and Genesis’ made-up language is a callback to something, but I honestly don’t remember it clearly. And I thought Anisha came around to Nala and the Federation too quickly at the end - I would have liked to have seen her a little angstier in that final scene.

The overall theme of the season has been identity, and choosing who you want to be. The cadets all went through that coming-of-age process, but so did the Doctor, and arguably Ake as well. I do hope we get to know Genesis better in season two, and Darem deserves more as well.

And I do hope they find Ocam - I assume he wandered off into the woods or something after episode 8.

I think there’s a lot of potential.

You get a couple of episodes to get attached to the Deltan character before she gets killed off. You get about four episodes to get attached to Fuzz before his betrayal, which would actually give it some weight. You can actually spend some time exploring what it means for San to have crossed over to the Prime Universe, and how it affects Georgiou (and maybe explain why isn’t way older than he appears to be, that’d be nice). You get enough time to make Garrett’s arc actually work.

It really seems like ten hours of story stuffed into a two-hour bag.

I…enjoyed the S31 movie on its own terms. I wouldn’t call it particularly “good” or recommend it to anyone. Mostly, it just made me sad that we didn’t get the full 10-episode season, since it seems apparent that they didn’t really change the story - just compressed it to an extreme degree.

a personal preference for flash over substance

The wonky camerawork that people like to single out definitely seems to be a trend that he set. In interviews, he talks a lot about letting the emotion of a scene guide the direction, but I can’t really say it shows.

It’s all positive city here, man, I don’t know what to tell you. [laughs]… Yeah, we’re always positive about the future. We never know what the future will bring. But there’s no reason not to be positive about it. Skydance has been terrific, and CBS has been terrific. Paramount plus has been terrific, and we’ll just see what happens.