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New photos + video preview from Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Episode 7 “Erigah”

New photos from Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Episode 4 “Face the Strange”

Star Trek: Discovery Series Finale Review: “Life, Itself” An embodiment of Roddenberry’s lofty ideals

Star Trek: Discovery 509 “Lagrange Point” Review: A Black Hole of Poor Execution

Star Trek: Discovery 508 “Labyrinths” Review: The (Inner) Voyage Home

Star Trek: Discovery 507 “Erigah” Review: In the Shadow of War

Star Trek: Discovery 506 “Whistlespeak” Review: Decoding the Relationship Between Faith and Technology

From TNG to Enterprise, Star Trek VFX Maestro, Adam Howard, shares stories from his career

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54-Disc Picard Legacy Collection, Star Trek: Picard Season 3, Complete Series Blu-ray box sets announced

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Star Trek: Prodigy begins streaming December 25th on Netflix

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Star Trek: Prodigy Episode 16 “Preludes” Review: A trip back in time

Review: Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1 Episode 16 “Preludes”

Star Trek: Prodigy divides its sixteenth episode into two distinct sections: one that explains some of our crew’s backstories, in short, easily digestible snippets, and another one that majorly develops the surprising and highly anticipated Dauntless plot from last week.

The Protostar needs repairs after the events of “ Masquerades ,” so the crew works together to fix various systems, giving them a chance to learn more about each other. We know Dal was engineered in a lab someplace by members of Arik Soong’s Children, and Gwyn was at her father’s side on Tars Lamora, but what about everyone else?

The first soliloquy comes from Rok-Tahk ( Rylee Alazraqui ), who describes her situation at their former slave labor home.  She was an imposing fighter called “The Monster” who “fought” a local hero, an event that always entertained audiences. We say “fought,” because Rok actually became friends with this hero, even though they didn’t speak the same language, and their fights were always just for show. But, this was the genesis of Rok’s aversion to being profiled as a fighter due to her size. She didn’t like fighting, even if there wasn’t any blood involved, and soon enough she tossed aside the fake combat with the hero and tried a more comical routine where she played the hero.  Unsurprisingly, this change didn’t stick well with her audience, so she landed in the labor camp where we first met her.

Next up is Zero ( Angus Imrie ), the Medusan who wasn’t always confined to their protective suit. Once upon a time, Zero and their other kin were free-roamers, aiming to explore the galaxy in lives of wonderment, discovery, and autonomy. But the Kazon found their little family and captured Zero, and they ultimately landed at the foot of the Diviner and Gwyn, something for which Gwyn is quick to apologize.

“You’d expect being a noble Tellarite Jankom would have a royal upbringing. But… it was a royal pain.” Jankom, as he begins his origin story.

Finally, Jankom Pog ( Jason Mantzoukas ) gets the most entertaining backstory. An orphan who was enlisted on a deep-space mission, we see him woken up unexpectedly on the Tellar sleeper ship he previously eluded to in “ Dream Catcher .” The only one awake, Pog is tasked by the ship’s robotic helper to repair numerous systems. We certainly chuckled heartedly at learning why Jankom always talks about himself in the third person, and we also get a first-hand look at why Pog is so fond of “percussive maintenance.” At the end of his story, we learn the young Tellarite left the sleeper ship (only to soon be captured by a Kazon ship) so the rest of the crew could survive their journey. This is a touching self-sacrifice that really does lend itself to establishing that Pog is proper Tellarite royalty, at least at heart.

Taken together, these backstories help illustrate how and why our characters are the way they are. We appreciated the insight, and the fact that these stories are presented in shorter snippets, rather than, say, full episodes devoted to each character. But to be honest, we were surprised to see Prodigy pay any attention to other stories at all considering the twist presented to audiences at the end of last week’s episode. But that’s certainly not to say this show forgot about the revelations onboard the Dauntless .

Deposited in between our heroes’ stories is the continuation of what Ensign Asencia ( Jameela Jamil ) started; namely, that she revealed herself to The Diviner ( John Noble ) as a fellow member of the Vau N’Akat, with a Drednok ( Jimmi Simpson ) paired at her side. Asencia is quick to exposit a host of answers we’ve been pondering for quite some time. Let’s break it down.

Solum, the homeworld of The Diviner, was experiencing a ruinous civil war following the Federation’s First Contact, and the Federation refused to take sides. We knew this. But thanks to Asencia, we know during the decades-long destruction that the Protostar , captained by Chakotay ( Robert Beltran ), accidentally appeared in orbit above the planet thanks to a time travel wormhole.  Believing the Protostar ’s appearance is a chance at retribution against the Federation, the Vau N’Akat captured the ship, held the crew hostage, and weaponized the Protostar with their last Living Construct.

Before The Diviner and Asencia (who reveals her true name is The Vindicator) could launch the ship, Chakotay sent the unmanned vessel back through the wormhole. This left The Order – a newly-formed group of Vau N’Akat including The Diviner, The Vindicator, and numerous others with their respective Drednoks – to follow through the wormhole after it. This means Chakotay’s last known position is on Solum in the future, although what happens to him and his crew is not elaborated on at this time. The Vindicator, meanwhile, exited the temporal wormhole in the Alpha Quadrant three years ago. And because the Diviner had so much longer to search unsuccessfully for the Protostar (he arrived from the future 20 years ago), it makes more sense why he created Gwyn, his progeny, to ensure the search for the Protostar continued.

It’s a lot to digest, but it does answer several questions we had since the beginning of the show about The Diviner’s motivations. What we found somewhat odd was that this vital part of season one’s story is revealed amongst the character-building snippets in the other plotline. Prodigy almost seems to sabotage its own momentum by not full-throatily spotlighting the incredible events surrounding the Protostar arriving at Solum, or the reveal that Asencia is not a Starfleet officer. That being said, this episode remains notable for how much storytelling it packs into 24 minutes. “Preludes” runs the gamut between comedy and tragedy, which is surely no easy feat for a show that needs to keep its younger core audience in mind.

Before the episode ends, Vice Admiral Janeway ( Kate Mulgrew ) learns the names and faces of the Protostar crew thanks to seeing the bounty The Diviner issued early in season one. Recognizing a similarity between him and Gwyn, Janeway thinks to ask their guest about the kids. But when she goes to talk to him, The Diviner knocks her out before Janeway can do anything about the sudden appearance of Drednok or The Vindicator on her ship. How will the vice admiral get out of this one?

Despite the speedy advancements in the season’s overarching arc, there is still much more to anticipate. The Dauntless crew will surely be in a bit of a bind when their captain goes AWOL, especially since the Federation ship still can’t cross the Neutral Zone and capture the Protostar . Plus, let’s consider some new questions. How and why did the Protostar enter a time travel wormhole that deposited it at Solum during their civil war? How will The Diviner, Drednok, and The Vindicator pursue the Protostar , and will they need to capture the Dauntless to do so?

As for our young heroes, they will apparently start the next episode where they left the previous one, as all they did in “Prelude” was expound on their backstories. But you know the saying: you don’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been.

Stray Thoughts:

• This is nitpicky, but Rok-Tahk explains she only received half a bowl of nutri-goop after she changed up her fight with the hero, but the amount poured into her bowl is nowhere near half of what her portion was before.
• We generally have no complaints about the animation style of this show, but there’s something about Chakotay’s face that just creeps us out. It looks too doll-like.
• Chakotay and his crew’s experience on Solum after exiting the temporal wormhole sounds like a tie-in novel if you ask us.
• Did the Tellarite ship not have shields or armor or anything to protect against errant space debris?
• Jankom Pog must be the most skilled engineer trainee in Star Trek history.
• At the end of the episode, Janeway mentions her dog, Mollie, an Irish Setter. Janeway kept a photo of Mollie in her Voyager ready room.
• It sure was lucky that The Diviner wasn’t standing next to The Vindicator or Drednok when Janeway entered the room, especially since they had no idea the vice admiral was on her way. He seems to have emerged out of thin air behind Janeway to knock her out.

Star Trek: Prodigy stars Kate Mulgrew (Admiral Janeway/Hologram Janeway), Brett Gray (Dal), Rylee Alazraqui (Rok-Tahk), Angus Imrie (Zero), Ella Purnell (Gwyn), Jason Mantzoukas (Jankom Pog), Dee Bradley Baker (Murf), along with Billy Campbell (Captain Okona) and Robert Beltran (Chakotay).

Stay tuned to TrekNews.net for all the latest news on  Star Trek: Prodigy , Star Trek: Picard ,  Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ,  Star Trek: Discovery ,  Star Trek: Lower Decks , and more.

You can follow us on  Twitter ,  Facebook , and  Instagram .

Kyle Hadyniak has been a lifelong Star Trek fan, and isn't ashamed to admit that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek: Nemesis are his favorite Star Trek movies. You can follow Kyle on Twitter @khady93 .

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Recap / Star Trek: Prodigy S1E6 "Kobayashi"

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• Achievements in Ignorance : Dal tries the Kobayashi Maru over a hundred times and on his final try he comes up with a strategy that nearly wins it, all while not knowing that it's supposed to be an Unwinnable Training Simulation .
• An Aesop : A good captain listens to his crew and puts their needs before his own desires, as Holo-Spock explains to Dal.
• Affectionate Nickname : During his last run, Dal gives nicknames to his holo-bridge crew: Uhura is "Earpiece", Scotty is "Moustache", Odo is "Jellyman", Spock is "Pointy Ears", and Crusher is "Big Red".
• Anachronism Stew : This version of the Kobayashi Maru scenario is a mix-and-match of mid-and-late 23rd century and mid-24th century elements, in both terms of setting and characters.
• Dal's desire to get off the ship leads to Holo-Spock beaming them suddenly to the Klingon vessel where Holo-Spock proceeds to defeat the bridge crew. They end up taking control over the Klingon Bridge in no time.
• Chakotay's log mentions the ship is being boarded, but doesn't say by whom.
• Both Sides Have a Point : Early in the episode, the crew push Dal to let them go to the Federation, arguing they can’t rely on the Protostar 's technology to protect them forever, especially since the protowarp is now inoperable. Dal argues that if they do, they could be arrested for allegedly stealing the ship. Jankom retorts that they can also be taken in as refugees.
• Breather Episode : After the previous two parter filled with drama, this episode mostly focuses on Dal's attempts to win the unwinnable Kobayashi Maru scenario, and the humor that arises. There are, however, important revelations relating to the Myth Arc of the series, and an important moment of Character Development for Dal.
• The Cameo : Robert Beltran (briefly) reprises his role as Chakotay, now a captain .
• Classified Information : Janeway is unable to access the Protostar 's original directive for this reason. Even when the data is decoded, it's fragmented and will take time to piece together.
• Confusion Fu : For his final run through the Kobayashi Maru , Dal decides that the only way to win is to act so unpredictably that the simulation can't adapt. It almost doesn't work because the simulation just spawns more ships, but Dal gets lucky when he beams himself over to the last ship by accident.
• Dal is seen playing the game from the TNG episode " The Game ".
• The holo-programs that Janeway demonstrates include Ceti Alpha V and a Jane Eyre novel of the sort that the real Janeway partook in.
• The Kobayashi Maru is taken from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , down to Klingons as the aggressors, though it uses the TNG-era Klingons and Enterprise -D. The test's display graphics from Wrath are also faithfully reproduced (albeit slightly tweaked to fit the TNG-era LCARS design aesthetic).
• The simulation uses holograms of Uhura, Spock, Scotty , Beverly Crusher , and Odo , complete with archival audio clips of these characters (except Crusher, who gets new lines courtesy of Gates McFadden ).
• Dal's climactic strategy involves blaring rock music, similar to the climax of Star Trek Beyond .
• Dal recalls an old Klingon saying : "Revenge is a dish best served cold." This is a double reference to Khan, who is actually the one in Star Trek canon to have said that, and General Chang from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country , who waxed poetic about revenge and cold (though in the context of the Cold War , and not in the same sentence).
• Dedication : This episode is dedicated to three actors of the Star Trek franchise who had passed away: Leonard Nimoy , René Auberjonois , and James Doohan . (It also features Nichelle Nichols , who died about half a year after this episode was aired.)
• Designer Babies : A flashback reveals that Gwyn is this, having been created directly from her father's genetic material.
• Dal decides to run the Kobayashi Maru , figuring he'll ace it and prove he's worthy of being captain. Viewers familiar with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan or Star Trek (2009) will know he's in for a rough surprise. Dal only thinks to ask the point at the very end.
• While selecting a holographic crew, Jankom suggests one James T. Kirk. Dal dismisses that idea out of hand, claiming the crew doesn't need two captains, not realizing Kirk actually managed to "beat" the Kobayashi Maru test himself (by cheating, but a distinction he holds nonetheless).
• Eat the Bomb : Murf does this out of ignorance, swallowing a box of photon grenades. Luckily, Murf survives the blast with little more than bad gas.
• Dal's first run of the Kobayashi Maru nets a score that doesn't break 5%. In fact, one of his scores is under .01%!
• Dal finally manages to beat the Kobayashi Maru , only to blow it at the last second by accidentally blowing up the Enterprise when he rests his feet on the firing controls of the Klingon ship.
• Failure Montage : Dal failing the Kobayashi Maru again and again and again, capped off each time by a photon torpedo blowing up the Enterprise .
• Fake Shemp : Spock, Uhura, Odo, and Scotty are portrayed with archival audio of their original actors, all of whom are credited.
• Fire-Breathing Diner : Murf belches intense light after the photon grenades go off inside him.
• Fleeting Demographic Rule : Dal becoming obsessed with trying to beat the Kobayashi Maru is very similar to Boimler's desperation to get 100% Completion on the "infiltrate the Borg" simulation in the Star Trek: Lower Decks episode " I, Excretus ". Although the target audience for Prodigy probably shouldn't have been watching Lower Decks .
• Heroic BSoD : Gwyn is still rattled by her father's betrayal and spends part of the episode lying in sickbay despondent. Zero helps shake her out of her sadness.
• Hive Mind : Zero mentions that they were once part of a Medusan one and that they felt sad when the Diviner took them from it.
• Loud of War : Dal plays loud music over every channel to disorient the Klingons.
• Love Is a Weakness : Dreadnok argues this in the flashback to dissuade the Diviner from creating Gwyn. He warns him that such emotions could be used against him.
• Made of Indestructium : Murf swallows a box of photon grenades. When they go off, it results in a Fire-Breathing Diner and little else.
• The Mutiny : When Dal tries to abandon the Kobayashi Maru in his first run-through, his crew start to turn against him. Jankom encourages them, much to Dal's annoyance.
• The design of the Kobayashi Maru is based off of the ship's design seen in Star Trek Online 's "No-Win Scenario" TFO.
• When asked to choose his crew, Dal is presented various badges throughout canon up to that point, even alternate timelines and illusions.
• During one of the failures, Dal shouts out "FIRE EVERYTHING!" in the same kind of inflection Nero did.
• Some of Dal's ideas are drawn from how canon characters attempted to handle the test, such as Sulu not entering the Neutral Zone and Mackenzie Calhoun simply shooting at everyone.
• Dal using AC/DC to overwhelm the Klingons' communications is reminiscent of Kirk using the Beastie Boys in a similar manner at the climax of Star Trek Beyond .
• The Needs of the Many : Holo-Spock name-drops this trope in a Rousing Speech to Dal, convincing him to finally take his crew to the Federation.
• The Reveal : The Protostar 's original captain was Chakotay, and for some reason this knowledge has been fragmented so Hologram Janeway can't access it, including a password in Vau N'Akat despite them having no known contact with the Federation.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here : Dal's first suggestion dealing with the Kobayashi Maru ? Turning the ship around and leaving them to their fate. However, the hologram bridge crew gives him a What the Hell, Hero? for this as he has absolutely no reasoning for leaving them behind.
• Ship Tease : When Gwyn thanks Dal for saving her from "Murder Planet", he claims that Janeway wouldn't let them leave without her, which saddens Gwyn a little. At the end of the episode, Jankom lets it slip that it was actually Dal's idea. Gwyn then gives Dal a quick smile (which he doesn't notice).
• Take This Job and Shove It : Hologram Odo threatens to "resign his commission" when Dal proposes abandoning the Kobayashi Maru .
• Uncertain Doom : Last we see of Chakotay, he and his presumably minimal crew are about to fight off a boarding party. Where he went after that, we don't know.
• Unwinnable Training Simulation : Dal decides to run the Kobayashi Maru , not knowing the point of it. Played for Laughs .
• Wham Line : "I'm suddenly realizing... you aren't my first crew."
• Wham Shot : Janeway brings up a navigational chart showing that their brief time in protowarp has flung the Protostar all the way into the Gamma Quadrant, 4,000 light years from their last location.
• What the Hell, Hero? : The holographic crew do not respond well to Dal's initial strategy of ignoring the Kobayashi Maru 's distress call, with Odo even threatening to quit.
• Star Trek: Prodigy S1E5 "Terror Firma"
• Recap/Star Trek: Prodigy
• Star Trek: Prodigy S1E7 "First Con-tact"

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All 20 Episodes Of ‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ Season 1 Now Available Digitally

| July 21, 2023 | By: TrekMovie.com Staff 9 comments so far

There is good news for fans of Star Trek: Prodigy who are missing the show since it was removed from streaming on Paramount+.

Prodigy available digitally now

Episodes 11-20 from the first season of Star Trek: Prodigy were released this morning digitally and are now available for purchase at Amazon , Google , Apple , and elsewhere in the USA. This is the first time all of season 1 has been available since the show was removed from Paramount+ in June . This has been confirmed for the USA, but may also be the case in other countries. [NOTE: The two-part series premiere is considered a single episode, which is why some digital sellers list the season as having only 19 episodes.]

Blu-ray news next?

Volume 2 of Prodigy season 1 (with episodes 11-20) showed up for pre-order earlier this month on Amazon and other retailers but was subsequently removed. We are awaiting more details about the release, but with the digital release now available, hopefully, an official announcement will arrive soon.

Still waiting for new streaming home for Prodigy

Work on the second season of Prodigy is still underway. Paramount has committed to licensing both seasons of the show to another outlet; however, there is no news yet on where or when this will happen.

Earlier in the week, c0-executive producer Aaron Waltke tweeted about working on post-production for one of the season 2 episodes, teasing how it ties together Trek lore.

Can’t give any spoilers due to NDA… But I just watched down the final mix of a new #StarTrekProdigy episode that ties together 56 years of Star Trek canon, lore, and legacy… The world needs to see this. — Aaron J. Waltke (@GoodAaron) July 15, 2023

Keep up with news about the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com .

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FYI if you purchased the first season through VUDU before this, the 11-20 episodes are considered purchased as well so you don’t have to pay extra!

I think this means they’ve made a deal somewhere. Just as a note I immediately pre-ordered it on Amazon and they may have hidden the listing but it still shows in my account as pre-ordered with a 9/27 delivery.

Cool. I already got the first blu-ray, and ai pre-ordered the second blu-ray, so I’ll try to be patient and not pay for them again digitally.

Most encouraging.

FTM I’m still planning on getting the Blu-ray upon its presumably impending release in September, but I’ll be closely following all Prodigy news and adjusting plans accordingly.

Don’t do it. If they can’t sell the show after finishing season 2 they’ll end up writing it off for taxes like with final space and it’ll vanish from your library even though you bought it.

It just depends. It seems more in danger of that while NOT being available. Purchasing it digitally will show streamers it is more popular than Paramount figured on. But yes, buy physical media. Thing is season 2 is NOT on physical media … yet. It may never be but to encourage it, it seems we need to SHOW the interest in it.

Season 2 isn’t on any media, physical or otherwise. We won’t get to see it at all until they find another platform for it.

Disney wouldn’t sell a Star Wars series to another streamer if the numbers were less than expected. That’s because they know the value of the IP as a whole and they understand respecting the fan base is something that needs to be factored in for the long term health of the franchise (Note that they have cheesy and cringeworthy 80s Star Wars cartoon content on D+ for completists to watch) The P+ team is simply made up of third tier people who couldn’t get hired at Disney, won’t be at P+ long term and only see Trek as a short term numbers thing and not the long term value of the franchise as a whole. What’s next? Selling off lower performing episodes of various series to other streamers? Visionless bean counters and desperately dumb anthropomorphic LinkedIn pages come to life.

I’m pretty sure Star Wars shows were sold and aired to CN and Warner Bros even though there was the Disney Channel.

The whole idea of streaming channels only selling shows to themselves has proven to not be profitable. Max is already going back to the old model of producing shows and licensing them to other networks.

Nickelodeon

Star Trek: Prodigy episode list

• View history

The following is a list of episodes from Star Trek: Prodigy , listed in production order.

• 1 Series overview
• 2.1 Season 1
• 3 References

Series overview [ ]

Episodes [ ], season 1 [ ], references [ ].

• ↑ http://www.thefutoncritic.com/showatch/star-trek-prodigy/listings/
• 2 No Time to Spy: A Loud House Movie

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How Star Trek: Prodigy creators pulled off animated cameos for the ‘Trekkiest Trek that ever Trekked’

The new episode ‘Kobayashi’ is a Starfleet fantasy draft

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Star Trek: Prodigy is the latest installment in the Star Trek canon , an animated series designed to be an on-ramp for kids who are totally unfamiliar with its 55 years of sprawling mythology. On Prodigy , a crew of five young people (and one indestructible blob creature of indeterminate age) have commandeered the U.S.S. Protostar, a highly advanced Starfleet vessel that they find buried on a mining asteroid where they were once held prisoner. Through the guidance of a holographic mentor in the likeness of Voyager ’s Captain Kathryn Janeway (voice of Kate Mulgrew), Prodigy gradually introduces the Protostar crew and a new generation of viewers to the key sci-fi concepts and philosophical principles behind the Star Trek universe.

In today’s new episode, “Kobayashi,” the Protostar’s self-appointed captain Dal R’El (voice of Brett Gray) wanders onto the ship’s holodeck and, seeking a way to win his crew’s respect, loads up an advanced command training simulation called “Kobayashi Maru.” He needs a crew, but rather than invite his comrades to play, Dal tells the computer to populate his simulated vessel with “some of the best you got.”

[ Ed. note: This article contains spoilers for the “Kobayashi” episode of Star Trek: Prodigy .]

In a flash, the bridge is manned by an array of familiar faces from Star Trek series past — Spock, Uhura, Scotty, Odo, and Dr. Beverly Crusher — all of whom are total strangers to the viewpoint character. Dal, a selfish teenage brat, bungles his way through countless attempts at the Kobayashi Maru test, baffling his Starfleet all-star team with his ineptitude.

One could be forgiven for assuming that the team behind Prodigy simply threw a bunch of legacy characters together in the hopes of inspiring fan interest (and articles like this one). But, according to episode writer Aaron J. Waltke, the story of “Kobayashi” actually began with a specific character need and grew into an increasingly complicated endeavor that allowed Waltke, a lifelong Trekkie, to create his dream holodeck episode.

“Very early on we wanted to balance a few things with the characters’ story arcs, specifically how quickly we introduce them to the world of Star Trek as most fans know them,” Waltke tells Polygon. “[We needed to] get Dal to realize that as much as he fantasizes about being in the Captain’s seat and ready for leadership, that maybe he still has to learn a thing or two. It dovetailed quite nicely into the discussion of ‘Well, what is the greatest leadership test in all of Star Trek?’”

First introduced in the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , the Kobayashi Maru test is a simulation in which a command officer candidate leads their ship into hostile territory in order to rescue passengers from a damaged civilian vessel. What the player doesn’t know is that the test is fixed — no matter what they try, their ship is always destroyed by overwhelming enemy forces. The scenario is designed to teach a prospective captain to cope with failure and to confront the real possibility of losing their ship, their crew, and their life in the line of duty. (James T. Kirk, famously, cheated at the Kobayashi Maru , reprogramming the test and becoming the only person ever to complete the mission successfully.)

While the Kobayashi Maru remains an often-referenced piece of Star Trek lore, Waltke realized that it had never actually been depicted on television before, and that The Wrath of Khan remained its latest appearance in Star Trek’s internal chronology. Since Prodigy is set 98 years later, the Prodigy team felt certain that Starfleet would have updated the test in the interim to use holodeck technology, giving the writers license to revamp the simulation to suit their own purposes. This eventually led to the idea of employing Starfleet legends as non-player characters.

“If you look at The Wrath of Khan , it’s not just random ensigns or whatever that are at Starfleet Academy,” says Waltke. “It’s literally Spock and Uhura and Sulu. They’re there, as this all-star crew. You have the best crew that you’ll ever have. Now, how are you going to face this, cadet?” Waltke argues that, when compared to Khan ’s depiction of the Enterprise senior staff administering the test to Lt. Saavik as a live-action role play complete with death scenes, Prodigy ’s holographic fantasy draft is relatively plausible.

Bringing the premise to screen presented a host of challenges, not the least of which was deciding which characters would make the lineup, one of the geekiest workplace arguments that anyone’s ever been paid to have. The Prodigy writers room attempted to create the perfect Star Trek bridge crew, an exercise in which diehard Trekkies (Waltke included) have participated for as long as there’s been more than one cast to choose from.

A consensus crew proved impossible, but the technical requirements of the episode helped narrow down their choices. Waltke felt strongly that the characters had to have their original voices, and sought out and spliced together lines of dialogue from classic episodes that would be appropriate for their new scenes.

Having the right line in the script wasn’t enough, either — the performance and sound recording also had to be the right fit. Finding applicable sound bytes was a painstaking process that Waltke took on primarily by himself, reading about 90 teleplays and rewatching 40 episodes from across the franchise looking for perfect matches, and then bringing the specific timecodes to the Star Trek archives where the individual audio tracks are stored.

“I’m not gonna lie, it was probably one of the hardest writing experiences I’ve ever had. Obviously rewarding, but there were cases where I thought I had finally found the perfect line and then I would go track down the audio and the [actor] was just too far away from the 1960s microphones that were recording, or they were rattling something.”

Throughout the years-long production cycle of the animated episode (which was written way back in 2019 and finalized in the past month or so) the scene had to be reworked multiple times, requiring return trips to the archives. One draft of the script featured eight holographic crew members, but the process of streamlining the scene meant Worf, one of Waltke’s personal favorites, was written out of the episode.

Waltke and company eventually put together functional snippets of dialogue for Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Uhura ( Nichelle Nichols ), and Scotty (James Doohan) from The Original Series and Odo (Rene Auberjonois) from Deep Space Nine . When it became clear that one character would need to be able to interact more directly with Dal, Gates McFadden, The Next Generation ’s Dr. Beverly Crusher, returned to perform her character for the first time since 2002. McFadden even improvised a few lines, one of which — “The phenomenon of your stubbornness belongs in a medical textbook.” — made it into the final episode.

The difference in sound quality between the new and old sound recordings is definitely noticeable, but between the playful tone of the episode and the in-universe artifice of holographic simulation, it’s easily dismissed. Frankly, it’s also more charming that way: A truly seamless integration of the archive audio might actually be unsettling, considering that Nimoy , Doohan, and Auberjonois are dead.

Prodigy doesn’t typically clutter its episodes with references to previous series (that’s squarely the domain of its sister show, Lower Decks ), but executive producers Kevin and Dan Hageman let Waltke go “hog wild” on “Kobayashi.” Janeway introduces Dal and shipmate Jankom Pog to the holodeck by flipping through a few familiar scenarios, from the Vulcan kal-if-fee battle rites to the real Janeway’s well-worn Brontë program.

Of course, it’s important that all of this fanservice for longtime Trekkies doesn’t overwhelm the story. After all, none of these in-jokes and cameos mean anything to the show’s younger viewers.

“We specifically pivoted it in a way that there’s an irony there, so newer audiences can still be on the adventure with Dal. He’s with this dream team and has no idea who any of them are, but senses that they’re good at what they do. He thinks ‘aha,’ finally I have a crew that I can work with,’ only to find that the problem is with himself. So there’s a story there that works whether or not you understand any of the Star Trek references at all. But the fun was, if we’re gonna go there, why not pack as much stuff for the super-fans as we can?

“Let’s just make this the Trekkiest Trek that ever Trekked.”

New episodes of Star Trek: Prodigy premiere every Thursday on Paramount Plus.

Star Trek: Discovery boldly goes where no Trek has gone before by saying religion is... OK, actually

Star trek: discovery is cracking open a box next gen closed on purpose, star trek: discovery is finally free to do whatever it wants.

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S2.E1 ∙ Into the Breach: Part 1

S2.e2 ∙ into the breach: part 2, s2.e3 ∙ who saves the saviors, s2.e4 ∙ temporal mechanics 101, s2.e5 ∙ the mystery spiral, s2.e6 ∙ imposter syndrome, s2.e7 ∙ the race, s2.e8 ∙ veritas, s2.e9 ∙ the time devouring scavengers: part 1, s2.e10 ∙ the time devouring scavengers: part 2, s2.e11 ∙ the last flight of the protostar: part 1, s2.e12 ∙ the last flight of the protostar: part 2, s2.e13 ∙ a tribble called bridule, s2.e14 ∙ the mirror universe, s2.e15 ∙ the ascension: part 1, s2.e16 ∙ the ascension: part 2, s2.e17 ∙ on the edge of the abyss, s2.e18 ∙ behind enemy lines, s2.e19 ∙ ouroboros: part 1, s2.e20 ∙ ouroboros: part 2, contribute to this page.

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'Star Trek: Discovery' Series Finale Marked a Flawed but Ambitious End to a Successful Franchise Reboot | Commentary

I f you've been part of the "Star Trek" journey, you'll understand the significance of measuring your life in the series finales you've witnessed: "The Next Generation." "Deep Space Nine." "Voyager." "Enterprise." Each one a milestone.

And now, with the final episode of "Star Trek: Discovery" streaming on Paramount+, we add one more to the mix, like the rings of a tree trunk — or rather, Saturn. This series, now complete, is sure to spark intense conversations and debates among fans as it finds its place in the vast Trek universe.

Debuting in 2017, "Discovery" represented the franchise's return to television after an extended hiatus of over a decade following the 2005 cancellation of "Star Trek: Enterprise." With an impressive budget and an aesthetic approach wholly distinct from the 1960s original and the various sequels and spin-offs that aired during the '80s and '90s, the series garnered new loyal fans for the franchise even as it ruffled the feathers of some longtime devotees.

"Discovery," a creation of Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman, was not without its challenges. Starring Sonequa Martin-Green as Commander-turned-Captain Michael Burnham, the series had to navigate the changing tides of television sensibilities and the demands of a vocal fanbase. It wasn't always a smooth journey, but it aimed to give audiences something both familiar and fresh.

And just as the show was often more ambitious than its execution allowed, one can say the same about the finale, "Life, Itself." Spanning a staggering 88 minutes, it's the longest single episode of TV Trek ever. Initially filmed as a regular season-ender, it was later tasked with concluding the entire series, leading to a hasty epilogue that attempts to tie up loose ends. The result is a final episode that feels both too rushed and too languid, with a feeling of checking off boxes as it cycles through plot points. 

Certain characters get showcase moments (let's hear it for Doug Jones' Ambassador Saru!) while others are left wildly underserved (pity poor Anthony Rapp as Commander Paul Stamets). Meanwhile, the central storyline of the season involving an alien race who seeded intelligent life in the universe (itself an excavation of a bit of lore from a 1993 episode of "The Next Generation") reaches a resolution that's tidy enough, but calls into question why we went on this journey to begin with.  

Then again, the finale also demonstrates the unique challenges "Discovery" has faced since its debut. As a prequel set nine years before "Star Trek: The Original Series," it asked a lot from fans, both in terms of its storytelling approach (while long-form serialized stories aren't new to "Trek," "Discovery" leaned into the format hard) and its digressions from extant lore (a.k.a. the all-important canon, constantly unfurling like a tapestry ever since the '60s).

By ostensibly situating the show within the original timeline (as opposed to the alternative universe of the 2009-2016 trilogy starring Chris Pine) and having to tiptoe around issues related to canon, the producers realized the prequel setting was creating more problems than it was solving. Thus, at the end of the second season, the good ship Discovery pulled up stakes and decamped to the far-flung 32nd century, wholly unexplored in prior Trek tales and free from any pesky continuity conundrums to worry about.

The trade-off, however, was that the new setting, bereft of the trappings fans knew and loved, made for an uphill climb as far as retaining audience investment. "Discovery" arrives in a future where "Star Trek's" utopian future has fallen into disarray — Starfleet is disbanded; the Federation is a shadow of its former self. Thus, it fell to the time-displaced crew of the Discovery to reclaim the ideals of optimism they represent and restore Starfleet to its formerly preeminent perch.

Not a bad mission statement, but as was so often the case with "Discovery," the loftiness of its ambitions had a tendency to run headlong into the dodginess of its execution, with characters behaving inconsistently from episode to episode and wordy technobabble serving as a substitute for problem-solving. Still, "Discovery" now has a complete beginning, middle and end, and the fans who came into the franchise through this show will no doubt continue to revisit and cherish it. 

The "Discovery" finale arrives precisely 30 years and one week after the final episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" aired. That episode, 1994's "All Good Things," remains one of the most beloved finales of all time, Trek or otherwise. As such, perhaps it's unfair to force comparisons, but on the other hand, it's impossible not to, given the symmetry of their airdates.

When "The Next Generation" concluded, the franchise was at its absolute peak in terms of public awareness and acceptance, and its finale reflected that. By contrast, "Life, Itself" is an invite-only affair, reflecting its place as a streaming skein with a fraction of "The Next Generation's" substantial audience. 

As fans of the prequel series "Star Trek: Enterprise" (cut down in its prime after a mere four seasons … the wound still hurts), we remember well when that show first premiered (in the fall of 2001) and the subsequent sturm and drang amongst the fandom over whether it should be considered canon. Viewers eventually came around to, if not embracing, at least accepting that the show exists. We suspect something similar is in store for "Discovery" as years turn into decades.

But as we wait for history to weigh in on "Star Trek: Discovery," let's not overlook its most remarkable achievement. It's not just a show; it's a catalyst. In the seven years since "Discovery's" debut, it opened the floodgates to a plethora of spin-offs -- with more "Trek" in production at once than at any other time in history. This is a testament to the enduring power and appeal of the "Star Trek" universe and a cause for celebration among fans, regardless of which flavors of the franchise they prefer.

There's the still-going "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" (now setting course for its third season). There's the recently concluded "Star Trek: Picard." There's the soon-to-conclude "Star Trek: Lower Decks" and "Star Trek: Prodigy," which was canceled by Paramount but rescued by Netflix. But that's not all! A "Section 31" movie is on the way, depicting the seedier side of Starfleet and spinning off directly from "Discovery's" second season. There's also an upcoming "Starfleet Academy" show starring Holly Hunter and set during "Discovery's" 32nd century timeframe. 

Truly, it's a bumper crop of TV Trekking for anyone inclined to delve into new and different corners of the final frontier. And none of it would exist if "Discovery" hadn't shaken loose the cobwebs and made it safe to go boldly once again.

All five seasons of "Star Trek: Discovery" are available to stream on Paramount+.

The post 'Star Trek: Discovery' Series Finale Marked a Flawed but Ambitious End to a Successful Franchise Reboot | Commentary appeared first on TheWrap .

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Why discovery is ending with season 5 & what it means for star trek.

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How To Watch All Star Trek TV Shows In Timeline Order

Discovery’s ending sets a star trek record & creates 2 new admirals, star trek: discovery’s incredible scott bakula enterprise twist explained.

• Star Trek: Discovery ending after season 5 marks a significant shift in the Star Trek universe on Paramount+.
• Discovery's success set the stage for new series like Picard, Lower Decks, and Prodigy on Paramount+.
• The decision to end Discovery is part of the evolving business landscape of streaming services like Paramount+.

Star Trek: Discovery ending with season 5 came as a surprise and causes a ripple effect to the Star Trek franchise on Paramount+. On March 2, 2023, the announcement came that Discovery season 5 will be its final season , with heartfelt statements made by executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Michelle Paradise, series lead and producer Sonequa Martin-Green, who portrays Captain Michael Burnham, Paramount chief programming officer Tanya Giles, and David Stapf of CBS Studios all praising the success of Star Trek: Discovery .

Star Trek: Discovery launched on the CBS All-Access streaming service in 2017 and was originally a prequel series set before Star Trek: The Original Series. Discovery jumped 930 years into the future of Star Trek' s canonical timeline at the end of season 2. Discovery was not met with overwhelming love from hardcore Star Trek fandom since its inception, but it endured and found its creative footing. Discovery 's success became the cornerstone of Star Trek 's expansion into an entire universe of new series streaming on Paramount+, which includes Star Trek: Picard , the animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Prodigy (which is now on Netflix), and Discovery 's direct spinoffs, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and the upcoming Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.

Star Trek: Section 31 , the first made-for-streaming Star Trek movie on Paramount+, is also a spinoff of Star Trek: Discovery.

The Star Trek TV franchise has existed for 57 years and consists of 12 shows (and counting). Here's how to watch them all in timeline order.

Why Star Trek: Discovery Is Ending With Season 5

A five-year run is an achievement in the streaming era.

The reasons for Star Trek: Discovery ending reportedly has to do more with the overall business of streaming and the landscape of the marketplace. A detailed analysis by TrekMovie examined the pressures Paramount Global is under to cut costs and make the Paramount+ streaming service profitable, which is an issue every streamer, including Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+, is dealing with. Paramount CFO Naveen Chopra announced that 2023 was their "peak year" in streaming investment, which means the company is trimming its bottom line. Star Trek: Discovery ending seems to be a result of the changing business of streaming.

Paramount is now in the midst of a sale with conglomerates like Sony and Skydance negotiating to take over the studio.

Star Trek: Discovery season 5 was not intended to be the end of the series. Following the cancelation, Paramount+ allowed the cast and crew of Star Trek: Discovery to return to Toronto for 3 additional days of filming. Star Trek: Discovery 's series finale, "Life Itself", directed by Olatunde Osunsanme and written by showrunner Michelle Paradise, is an extended episode that concludes with a special coda to wrap up the series and Discovery 's major character arcs. Paradise promised fans Star Trek: Discovery would not end with a frustrating cliffhanger that would never be resolved.

Discovery Ends As A Star Trek Success Story

Star trek owes its renaissance to discovery.

Star Trek: Discovery has its share of loyal fans and detractors, but there is no arguing that there would be no Star Trek universe on Paramount+ without Michael Burnham's show leading the way. Discovery helped keep the nascent CBS All-Access streaming service afloat in its early years before its rebranding into Paramount+. The two live-action and two animated Star Trek shows that launched since 2020 were made possible by Discovery . Star Trek: Discovery was the franchise's first foray into serialized prestige television, and i t raised the bar for Star Trek series in terms of cinematic visuals and production values .

Discovery opened the door for LGBTQ+ representation in the other Star Trek series.

Further, Star Trek: Discovery broke important ground for diversity, inclusiveness, and LGBTQ+ representation . Sonequa Martin-Green is the first Black female lead of a Star Trek series, and Burnham subsequently became the first Black female Captain to lead a Star Trek series. Anthony Rapp's Paul Stamets and Wilson Cruz's Dr. Hugh Culber were the first openly gay couple in a loving marriage portrayed in Star Trek. Discovery season 3 added Blu del Barrio's Adira Tal and Ian Alexander's Gray as Star Trek 's first non-binary and transgender stars. Discovery opened the door for LGBTQ+ representation in the other Star Trek series, like Jesse James Keitel portraying the non-binary Captain Angel in Strange New Worlds .

What Happens To Star Trek After Discovery Ends?

Star trek will keep on going with tv series and movies.

Star Trek on Paramount+ had a historic 2022 where all five Star Trek series aired new episodes, resulting in a new episode of Star Trek nearly every Thursday throughout the year. Star Trek entered 2023 with much the same hoopla but Star Trek: Discovery season 5 both not premiering until 2024 and ending, along with Star Trek: Picard season 3 being its final season, casts a pall over the franchise, although Picard season 3 and Strange New Worlds season 3 were huge successes with critics and audiences .

Star Trek: Prodigy season 1 is available on Netflix and season 2 is awaiting its premiere date, with the future of the all-ages animated series dependent on its streaming performance.

Star Trek: Lower Decks ending with season 5 later in 2024 accompanied the news of Strange New Worlds ' season 4 renewal. When Discovery and Lower Decks are over, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, which is targeting a 2026 release, will join Strange New Worlds as the two remaining Star Trek series on Paramount+. However, after spinning off 5 new series and a made-for-streaming movie, Star Trek: Section 31 , Star Trek: Discovery' s run can be considered a success by any measure , and its positive impact on Star Trek will continue to be felt into the future.

Will Star Trek: Discovery Return For Season 6 Or Movies?

There are always possibilities..

Star Trek: Discovery planted numerous seeds for the Star Trek on Paramount+ franchise to continue to grow, but there is no indication that Discovery itself will continue with a season 6 after its season 5/series finale . Discovery 's 32nd-century timeline will be continued by Star Trek: Starfleet Academy , with the potential for some Discovery characters to appear in the new series. A Star Trek: Discovery streaming movie on Paramount+ might be possible (depending on how Star Trek: Section 31 performs) but not any time in the near future with the general uncertainty surrounding Paramount's sale.

Star Trek 's theatrical side is ramping up after nearly a decade since Star Trek Beyond premiered in theaters in 2016. Paramount Pictures announced an Untitled Star Trek Origin movie directed by Toby Haynes will start production later in 2024 for a 2025 or 2026 release. X-Men producer Simon Kinberg is reportedly negotiating to oversee the Star Trek theatrical franchise the way Alex Kurtzman runs Star Trek on Paramount+. And the ever-rumored Star Trek 4 produced by J.J. Abrams hopes to one day reunite the USS Enterprise cast led by Chris Pine. Star Trek: Discovery was a new beginning for Star Trek on television, and Captain Michael Burnham's series undoubtedly leaves Star Trek better than it found it.

Star Trek: Discovery is streaming on Paramount+

'Star Trek: Discovery' season 5 episode 9 offers a tense but questionable cliffhanger

It's the old enemy infiltration by way of cunning disguise chestnut, but once you've seen The Orville's take on this, it's hard to take seriously.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Star Trek: Discovery" season 5, episode 9

Here we are then, just two episodes away from the very end of "Star Trek: Discovery," but we'll save the nostalgic look back over the last six years, eight months, one week and two days for next week. And no doubt there will be some kind of emotional farewell at the end of next week's installment, but just how cringeworthy that will be remains to be seen. 

Best non-cancellation last episode of a TV sci-fi show ever, in the "Five Seasons or More" category? Well, it certainly isn't " Enterprise ," sadly, and let's face facts, it's got to be the " The Next Generation " episode "All Good Things" (S07, E25) with "Unending," the "Stargate SG1" episode (S10, E20) in second place. 

And as we've seen, the quality of writing on this fifth and final season of "Discovery" has picked up, arguably an improvement the last three seasons, but unquestionably over the last season, which was the switching off point for many who had given "Discovery" the benefit of the doubt for so very long. And, despite this installment, entitled "Lagrange Point," being directed by Jonathan Frakes, it's not terrible. 

Watch Star Trek on Paramount Plus: Get a one month free trial  

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While Frakes has some excellent examples of episodic television under his belt, including "Falling Skies," "The Orville" and even "V," plus both "The Next Generation" and "Deep Space Nine" and "First Contact" of course, he has also helmed a few episodes –— almost always of "Star Trek" — that are...well, the sci-fi TV franchise equivalent of the Roger Moore Bond movies. And let's leave it at that. 

Not knowing more about the writing and production procedure employed on "Discovery," it's hard to know if the writers know what director will be assigned to which episode and whether or not they therefore cater for that individual, or if the director just takes the script and alters it as much or as little as they like. That's ultimately what contributes to the often-seen inconsistency that we talked about a week or so ago.

This week, a few select members of the command crew of the USS Discovery attempt to infiltrate a Breen dreadnought. And to be perfectly honest, after having watched the epic "Orville" episode "Krill" (S01, E06) it's a little hard to take this somewhat clichéd tactical approach seriously. But, for the most part, it's carried off with too much of a hitch. 

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The Breen have successfully snuck in under the nose of the USS Discovery and half-inched the Progenitors Puzzle. You know, like Belloq in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," and we get to see them attempting to open the final clue, a little like the wonderfully hilarious slaves-get-killed-horribly-first approach that was used to great affect in "The Mummy." Missed opportunity there for a couple of really creative and horrific sacrificial deaths Frakes. Being dragged into an unknown dimension just wasn't unpleasant enough. Also, Wilhelm Scream?!

That said, there is some nice, creative choices of edits and a Starfleet commendation should be awarded to whichever writer championed a line of dialogue where Captain Rayner (Keith Rennie Callum) finally tells Lt. Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) to shut up . Sure, some fans adore her innocent, bumbling, comedy relief-style appeal, but it's not always conducive to Every Single Scene. 

And finally, breaking news this week as, according to The Hollywood Reporter , longtime "X-Men" producer Simon Kinberg is in talks to produce a "Star Trek" movie franchise for Paramount. Toby Haynes, who directed episodes " Andor " is on board to direct the new feature, with Seth Grahame-Smith writing the script. The project is said to be set decades before the events of the dreadful 2009 movie that was directed JJ Abrams, likely around modern times.

It is said to involve the creation of the Starfleet and humankind’s first contact with alien life. This is music to the ears of all fans who believe that keeping Trek ridiculously far flung into the future is an awful, awful idea. Also, someone other than Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman calling the shots is an excellent, excellent idea. 

And while this period in Trek history is so very interesting as we saw in the vastly underrated "Enterprise," it does feel like everyone either wants to fast forward into the future or slam the franchise into reverse and go all the way back...but always, always leapfrogging over the most underutilized period, which is "The Wrath of Khan" movie era: Monster Maroons, Admiral Kirk, the USS Excelsior ... and all of that unexplored wonder. 

The fifth and final season of "Star Trek: Discovery" and every other episode of every " Star Trek " show — with the exception of "Star Trek: Prodigy" — currently streams exclusively on Paramount Plus in the US, while "Prodigy" has found a new home  on Netflix.  

Internationally, the shows are available on  Paramount Plus  in Australia, Latin America, the UK and South Korea, as well as on Pluto TV in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland on the Pluto TV Sci-Fi channel. They also stream on Paramount Plus in Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In Canada, they air on Bell Media's CTV Sci-Fi Channel and stream on Crave.

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When Scott's application to the NASA astronaut training program was turned down, he was naturally upset...as any 6-year-old boy would be. He chose instead to write as much as he possibly could about science, technology and space exploration. He graduated from The University of Coventry and received his training on Fleet Street in London. He still hopes to be the first journalist in space.

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Inside the ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Series Finale: The Last-Minute Coda, the Surprise Easter Eggs, and What Season 6 Would Have Been About (EXCLUSIVE)

SPOILER WARNING: This story includes descriptions of major plot developments on the series finale of “ Star Trek : Discovery,” currently streaming on Paramount+.

Watching the fifth and final season of “ Star Trek: Discovery ” has been an exercise in the uncanny. Paramount+ didn’t announce that the show was ending until after the Season 5 finale had wrapped filming — no one involved with the show knew it would be its concluding voyage when they were making it. And yet, the season has unfolded with a pervasive feeling of culmination. 

Popular on Variety

“I think there’s more to it than just, ‘Oh, it was a coinkydink!’” the actor says with a laugh, before explaining that she’s thinking more about subtext than direct intent. “I’ve gotta give Michelle her flowers. She has always asked the deeper questions of this story and these characters. Those questions of meaning and purpose led to questions of origin and legacy, and, yes, that is quite culminating.”

Martin-Green and Paradise spoke exclusively with Variety about filming the finale and the coda, including the surprising revelation about the origins of one of “Discovery’s” most memorable characters and what Paradise’s plans for Season 6 would have been.

“It’s the Most Complicated Thing I’ve Ever Seen”

Once the “Discovery” writers’ room decided the season would be organized around a search for the Progenitor’s technology, they also knew that, eventually, Burnham would find it. So then they had to figure out what it would be.

“That was a discussion that evolved over the course of weeks and months,” Paradise says. Rather than focus on communicating the intricate details of how the technology works, they turned their attention to delivering a visual experience commensurate with the enormity and complexity of something that could seed life across the entire galaxy.

“We wanted a sense of a smaller exterior and an infinite interior to help with that sense of power greater than us,” Paradise says. Inspired in part by a drawing by MC Escher, the production created an environment surrounded by towering windows into a seemingly endless procession of alien planets, in which it’s just as easy to walk on the walls as on the floor. That made for a daunting challenge for the show’s producing director, Olatunde “Tunde” Osunsanmi: As Burnham battles with the season’s main antagonist, Mol (Eve Harlow), inside this volume, they fall through different windows into another world, and the laws of gravity keep shifting between their feet.

“It’s the most complicated thing I’ve ever seen, directorially,” Paradise says. “Tunde had a map, in terms of: What did the background look like? And when the cameras this way, what’s over there? It was it was incredibly complex to design and shoot.”

Two of those planets — one in perpetual darkness and rainstorms, another consumed by constant fire — were shot on different parking areas on the Pinewood Toronto studio lot.

“The fire planet was so bright that the fire department got called from someone who had seen the fire,” Paradise says. “It should not be possible to pull those kinds of things off in a television show, even on a bigger budget show, with the time limitations that you have. And yet, every episode of every season, we’re still coming in on time and on budget. The rain planet and the fire planet we shot, I believe, one day after the other.”

Martin-Green jumps in: “Michelle, I think that was actually the same day!”

“It Felt Lifted”

The last time a “Star Trek” captain talked to a being that could be (erroneously) considered God, it was William Shatner’s James T. Kirk in 1989’s “Star Trek: The Final Frontier.” The encounter did not go well.

“I had my own journey with the central storyline of Season 5, just as a believer,” Martin-Green says. “I felt a similar way that Burnham did. They’re in this sort of liminal mind space, and it almost felt that way to me. It felt lifted. It really did feel like she and I were the only two people in this moment.”

It’s in this conversation that Burnham learns that while the Progenitors did create all “humanoid” alien species in the galaxy in their image, they did not create the technology that allowed them to do so. They found it, fully formed, created by beings utterly unknown to them. The revelation was something that Martin-Green discussed with Paradise early on in the planning of Season 5, allowing “Discovery” to leave perhaps the most profound question one could ask — what, or who, came first in the cosmos? — unanswered.

“The progenitor is not be the be all end all of it,” Paradise says. “We’re not saying this is God with a capital ‘G.’”

“There’s Just This Air of Mystery About Him”

Starting on Season 3 of “Discovery,” renowned filmmaker David Cronenberg began moonlighting in a recurring role as Dr. Kovich, a shadowy Federation operative whose backstory has been heretofore undisclosed on the show.

“I love the way he plays Kovich,” Paradise says of Cronenberg. “There’s just this air of mystery about him. We’ve always wanted to know more.” When planning Season 5, one of the writers pitched revealing Kovich’s true identity in the (then-season) finale by harkening back to the “Star Trek” show that preceded “Discovery”: “Enterprise,” which ran on UPN from 2001 to 2005.

In the final episode, when Burnham debriefs her experiences with Kovich, she presses him to tell her who he really is. He reintroduces himself as Agent Daniels, a character first introduced on “Enterprise” as a young man (played by Matt Winston) and a Federation operative in the temporal cold war. 

This is, to be sure, a deep cut even for “Star Trek” fans. (Neither Cronenberg nor Martin-Green, for example, understood the reference.) But Paradise says they were laying the groundwork for the reveal from the beginning of the season. “If you watch Season 5 with that in mind, you can see the a little things that we’ve played with along the way,” she says, including Kovich/Daniels’ penchant for anachonistic throwbacks like real paper and neckties.

“I didn’t know that that was going be there,” Martin-Green says. “My whole childhood came back to me.”

“We Always Knew That We Wanted to Somehow Tie That Back Up”

Originally, Season 5 of “Discovery” ends with Burnham and Book talking on the beach outside the wedding of Saru (Doug Jones) and T’Rina (Tara Rosling) before transporting away to their next adventure. But Paradise understood that the episode needed something more conclusive once it became the series finale. The question was what.

There were some significant guardrails around what they could accomplish. The production team had only eight weeks from when Paramout+ and CBS Studios signed off on the epilogue to when they had to shoot it. Fortunately, the bridge set hadn’t been struck yet (though several standing sets already had been). And the budget allowed only for three days of production.

Then there was “Calypso.” 

To fill up the long stretches between the first three seasons of “Discovery,” CBS Studios and Paramount+ greenlit a series of 10 stand-alone episodes, dubbed “Short Treks,” that covered a wide variety of storylines and topics. The second “Short Trek” — titled “Calypso” and co-written by novelist Michael Chabon — first streamed between Season 1 and 2 in November 2018. It focuses on a single character named Craft (Aldis Hodge), who is rescued by the USS Discovery after the starship — and its now-sentient computer system, Zora (Annabelle Wallis) — has sat totally vacant for 1,000 years in the same fixed point in space. How the Discovery got there, and why it was empty for so long, were left to the viewer’s imagination. 

Still, for a show that had only just started its run, “Calypso” had already made a bold promise for “Discovery’s” endgame — one the producers had every intention of keeping.

“We always knew that we wanted to somehow tie that back up,” says Paradise, who joined the writers’ room in Season 2, and became showrunner starting with Season 3. “We never wanted ‘Calypso’ to be the dangling Chad.”

So much so, in fact, that, as the show began winding down production on Season 5, Paradise had started planning to make “Calypso” the central narrative engine for Season 6. 

“The story, nascent as it was, was eventually going to be tying that thread up and connecting ‘Discovery’ back with ‘Calypso,’” she says.

Once having a sixth season was no longer an option, Paradise knew that resolving the “Calypso” question was non-negotiable. “OK, well, we’re not going to have a season to do that,” she says. “So how do we do that elegantly in this very short period of time?”

“I Feel Like It Ends the Way It Needed to End”

Resolving “Calypso” provided the storytelling foundation for the epilogue, but everything else was about giving its characters one final goodbye.

“We want to know what’s happening to Burnham, first and foremost,” Paradise says. “And we knew we wanted to see the cast again.”

For the latter, Paradise and Jarrow devised a conceit that an older Burnham, seated in the captain’s chair on Discovery, imagines herself surrounded by her crew 30 years prior, so she (and the audience) could connect with them one final time. For the former, the makeup team designed prosthetics to age up Martin-Green and Ajala by 30 years — “I think they were tested as they were running on to the set,” Paradise says with a laugh — to illustrate Burnham and Book’s long and happy marriage together.

Most crucially, Paradise cut a few lines of Burnham’s dialogue with Book from the original Season 5 finale and moved it to a conversation she has with her son in the coda. The scene — which evokes the episode’s title, “Life Itself” — serves as both a culminating statement of purpose for “Discovery” and the overarching compassion and humanity of “Star Trek” as a whole.

To reassure her son about his first command of a starship, Burnham recalls when the ancient Progenitor asked what was most meaningful to her. “Do you know how you would answer that question now?” he asks.

“Yeah, just being here,” Burnham replies. “You know, sometimes life itself is meaning enough, how we choose to spend the time that we have, who we spend it with: You, Book, and the family I found in Starfleet, on Discovery.”

Martin-Green relished the opportunity to revisit the character she’s played for seven years when she’s reached the pinnacle of her life and career. “You just get to see this manifestation of legacy in this beautiful way,” she says. “I will also say that I look a lot like my mom, and that was that was also a gift, to be able to see her.”

Shooting the goodbye with the rest of her cast was emotional, unsurprisingly, but it led Martin-Green to an unexpected understanding. “It actually was so charged that it was probably easier that it was only those three days that we knew it was the end, and not the entirety of season,” she says.

Similarly, Paradise says she’s “not sure” what more she would’ve done had there been more time to shoot the coda. “I truly don’t feel like we missed out on something by not having one more day,” she says. “I feel like it ends the way it needed to end.”

Still, getting everything done in just three days was no small feat, either. “I mean, we worked ’round the clock,” Martin-Green says with a deep laugh. “We were delirious by the end — but man, what a way to end it.”

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First Look | Star Trek: Prodigy - Season 2, Episode 1

Admiral Janeway is about to take the former crew of the U.S.S. Protostar under her wing on a real Starfleet ship!

Star Trek: Prodigy  creators Kevin and Dan Hageman revealed an extended first look at the second season's premiere episode this weekend.

Commenting on the exclusive clip, the Hagemans shared, "Our talented and dedicated  Star Trek: Prodigy  team is hard at work on Season 2 and all of us can’t wait for the world to see it. It’s just too good.”

In the clip, the former crew of the  U.S.S. Protostar  and now warrant Starfleet officers in training — Dal, Rok-Tak, Zero, Jankom Pog, and Murf — are reunited for an internship under the command of Admiral Janeway. They soon meet The Doctor, a dear friend of Janeway, who escorts them to the admiral's new ship. Starfleet has asked Janeway to observe a new wormhole to deem if it poses a threat — the very wormhole they created when they self-destructed the  Protostar .

Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1 is available to stream on Netflix outside of markets including Canada where it is available on CTV.ca and the CTV App, France on France Televisions channels and Okoo, in Iceland on Sjonvarp Simans Premium, as well as on SkyShowtime in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Central and Eastern Europe. Star Trek: Prodigy is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

‘Star Trek: Discovery’ is over. Now Alex Kurtzman readies for ‘Starfleet Academy’ and ‘Section 31’

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In “Star Trek” terms, and in the real world of “Star Trek” television, Alex Kurtzman, who oversees the 21st century franchise, might be described as the Federation president, from whose offices various series depart on their individual missions. Indeed, to hear him speak of it, the whole enterprise — honestly, no pun intended — seems to run very much on the series’ ethos of individual initiative and group consensus.

The first series to be launched, “ Star Trek: Discovery, ” has come to an end as of Thursday after five seasons on Paramount+. Others in the fleet include the concluded “ Picard, ” which brought “The Next Generation” into a new generation; the ongoing “ Strange New Worlds, ” which precedes the action of what’s now called “The Original Series,” from which it takes its spirit and several characters; “Lower Decks,” a comedy set among Starfleet service workers; and “Prodigy,” in which a collection of teenage aliens go joyriding in a starship. On the horizon are “Starfleet Academy,” with Holly Hunter set to star, and a TV feature, “ Section 31, ” with Michelle Yeoh back as Philippa Georgiou.

I spoke with Kurtzman, whose “Trek” trek began as a writer on the quantum-canonical reboot movies “ Star Trek ” (2009) and “ Star Trek: Into Darkness ” (2013), at Secret Hideout, his appropriately unmarked Santa Monica headquarters. Metro trains glide by his front door unaware. We began the conversation, edited for length and clarity here, with a discussion of his “Trek” universe.

Alex Kurtzman: I liken them to different colors in the rainbow. It makes no sense to me to make one show that’s for everybody; it makes a lot of sense to make a lot of shows individually tailored to a sect of the “Star Trek” audience. It’s a misnomer that there’s a one-size-fits-all Trekkie. And rather than make one show that’s going to please everybody — and will almost certainly please nobody — let’s make an adult drama, an animated comedy, a kids’ comedy, an adventure show and on and on. There’s something quite beautiful about that; it allows each of the stories to bloom in its own unique way.

Do you get pushback from the fans?

Absolutely. In some ways that’s the point. One of the things I learned early on is that to be in love with “Star Trek” is to engage in healthy debate. There is no more vocal fan base. Some people tell you that their favorite is “The Original Series,” some say their favorite is “Voyager” and some say their favorite is “Discovery.” Yet they all come together and talk about what makes something singularly “Trek” — [creator] Gene Roddenberry‘s extraordinarily optimistic vision of the future when all that divides us [gets placed] in the rearview mirror and we get to move on and discover things. Like all great science fiction, you get to pick your allegory to the real world and come up with the science fiction equivalent. And everybody who watches understands what we’re talking about — racism or the Middle East or whatever.

What specific objections did you find to “Discovery”?

I think people felt it was too dark. We really listen to our fans in the writers’ room — everybody will have read a different article or review over the weekend, and we talk about what feels relevant and what feels less relevant. And then we engage in a healthy democratic debate about why and begin to apply that; it seeps into the decisions we make. Season 1 of “Discovery” was always intended to be a journey from darkness into light, and ultimately reinforce Roddenberry’s vision. I think people were just stunned by something that felt darker than any “Trek” had before. But doing a dark “Star Trek” really wasn’t our goal. The show is a mirror that holds itself up to the times, and we were in 2017 — we saw the nation fracture hugely right after the election, and it’s only gotten worse since then. We were interpreting that through science fiction. There were people who appreciated that and others for whom it was just not “Star Trek.” And the result, in Season 2, Capt. [Christopher] Pike showed up, Number One showed up, Spock showed up, and we began to bring in what felt to people more like the “Star Trek” they understood.

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You’re ending the series after five seasons. Was that always a plan?

You know, we were surprised we didn’t continue, and yet it feels now that it was right. One of the things that happened very quickly as streaming took off was that it radically changed watch patterns for viewers. Shows that used to go 10, 12 seasons, people would tap out after two — like, “I got what I want” — so for any show to go five seasons, it’s a miracle. In ways I don’t think we could have predicted, the season from the beginning feels like it’s the last; it just has a sense of finality. The studio was wonderful in that they recognized we needed to put a button on it, we needed a period on the end of the sentence, and so they allowed us to go back, which we did right before the strike, and [film] the coda that wraps up the series.

“Discovery” is a riot of love stories, among both heroes and villains.

There’s certainly a history of that in “Star Trek.” Whether or not characters were engaged in direct relationships, there was always a subtext of the love between them. I believe that’s why we love the bridge crew, because it’s really a love story, everyone’s in a love story, and they all care for each other and fight like family members. But ultimately they’re there to help each other and explore the universe together. If there’s some weird problem, and the answer’s not immediately apparent, each of them brings a different skill set and therefore a different perspective; they clash in their debate on how to proceed and then find some miraculous solution that none of them would have thought of at the outset.

One of the beautiful things about the shows is that you get to spend a long time with them, as opposed to a two-hour movie where you have to get in and out quickly and then wait a couple of years before the next one comes along. To be able to be on their weekly adventures, it affords the storytelling level of depth and complexity a two-hour movie just can’t achieve in that way.

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It’s astonishing how much matter you got into these things. Some storylines that only lasted an episode I remembered as seasonal arcs.

The sheer tonnage of story and character we were able to pack into “Discovery” every episode was kind of incredible. The thing to keep in mind is that “Discovery” was made as streaming was exploding, so what I think you’re also seeing there is a lot of writers who were trained in the network world with an A, B and C story applying it suddenly to a very different kind of storytelling in a much more cinematic medium. And when you have that kind of scope it starts to become really, really big. Sometimes that works really, really well and sometimes it was too much. And we were figuring it out; it was a bunch of people with flashlights in the dark, looking for how to interpret “Star Trek” now, since it had been 12 years since it had been on a television screen.

Are you able to course-correct within a season?

Sure. You get people you really trust in the room. Aaron Baiers, who runs Secret Hideout, is one of my most important early-warning systems; he isn’t necessarily in the room when we’re breaking stories, but he’s the first person who’ll read an outline and he’s the first person who’ll read a script. What I value so much about his perspective is that he’s coming in cold, he’s just like, “I’m the viewer, and I understand this or I don’t understand it, I feel this or I don’t feel it.” The studio executives are very similar. They love “Star Trek,” they’re all die-hard fans and have very strong feelings about what is appropriate. It then goes through a series of artists in every facet, from props to visual effects to production design, and they’re bringing their interpretations and opinions to the story.

Did “Strange New Worlds” come out of the fact that everybody loved seeing Christopher Pike in “Discovery?”

I really have to credit Akiva Goldsman with this. He knew that I was going to bring Pike into the premiere of the second season of “Discovery,” and said, “You know, there’s an incredible show about Capt. Pike and the Enterprise before Kirk takes over; there’s seven years of great storytelling there” — or five years, depending on when you come into the storyline. I said, “We have to cast a successful Pike first, so let’s see if that works. Let’s figure out who’s Number One, and who Spock is,” which are wildly tall orders. I hadn’t seen Anson Mount in other things before [he was cast as Pike], and when he sent in his taped audition it was that wonderful moment where you go, “That’s exactly the person we’re looking for.” Everybody loves Pike because he’s the kind of leader you want, definitive and clear but open to everyone’s perspective and humanistic in his response. And then we had the incredibly tall order of having Ethan [Peck] step into Leonard [Nimoy’s] and [Zachary Quinto’s] shoes.

He’s great.

He’s amazing, just a delight of a human being. And Rebecca Romijn‘s energy, what she brings to Number One is such a contemporary take on a character that was kind of a cipher in “The Original Series.” But she brings a kind of joy, a comedy, a bearing, a gravitas to the character that feels very modern. Thank God the fans responded the way they did and sent that petition [calling for a “Legacy” series], because everybody at CBS got the message very quickly. Jenny Lumet and Akiva and I wrote a pilot, and we were off to the races. Typically it takes fans a minute to adjust to what you’re doing, especially with beloved legacy characters, but the response to “Strange New World” from a critical perspective and fan perspective and just a viewership perspective was so immediate, it really did help us understand what was satisfying fans.

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What can you tell me about “Starfleet Academy?” Is it going to be Earth-based or space-based?

I’m going to say, without giving anything away, both. Right now we’re in the middle of answering the question what does San Francisco, where the academy is, look like in the 32nd century. Our primary set is the biggest we’ve ever built.

So you’re setting this —

In the “Discovery” era. There’s a specific reason for that. As the father of a 17-year-old boy, I see what my son is feeling as he looks at the world and to his future. I see the uncertainty; I see all the things we took for granted as given are not certainties for him. I see him recognizing he’s inheriting an enormous mess to clean up and it’s going to be on his generation to figure out how to do that, and that’s a lot to ask of a kid. My thinking was, if we set “Starfleet Academy” in the halcyon days of the Federation where everything was fine, it’s not going to speak to what kids are going through right now.

It’ll be a nice fantasy, but it’s not really going to be authentic. What’ll be authentic is to set it in the timeline where this is the first class back after over 100 years, and they are coming into a world that is only beginning to recover from a cataclysm — which was the Burn, as established on “Star Trek: Discovery,” where the Federation was greatly diminished. So they’re the first who’ll inherit, who’ll re-inherit, the task of exploration as a primary goal, because there just wasn’t room for that during the Burn — everybody was playing defense. It’s an incredibly optimistic show, an incredibly fun show; it’s a very funny show, and it’s a very emotional show. I think these kids, in different ways, are going to represent what a lot of kids are feeling now.

And I’m very, very , very excited that Holly Hunter is the lead of the show. Honestly, when we were working on the scripts, we wrote it for Holly thinking she’d never do it. And we sent them to her, and to our absolute delight and shock she loved them and signed on right away.

And then you’ve got the “Section 31” movie.

“Section 31” is Michelle Yeoh’s return as Georgiou. A very, very different feeling for “Star Trek.” I will always be so grateful to her, because on the heels of her nomination and then her Oscar win , she just doubled down on coming back to “Star Trek.” She could have easily walked away from it; she had a lot of other opportunities. But she remained steadfast and totally committed. We just wrapped that up and are starting to edit now.

Are you looking past “Starfleet” and “Section 31” to future projects?

There’s always notions and there are a couple of surprises coming up, but I really try to live in the shows that are in front of me in the moment because they’re so all-consuming. I’m directing the first two episodes of “Starfleet Academy,” so right now my brain is just wholly inside that world. But you can tell “Star Trek” stories forever; there’s always more. There’s something in the DNA of its construction that allows you to keep opening different doors. Some of that is science fiction, some of it has to do with the combination of science fiction and the organic embracing of all these other genres that lets you explore new territories. I don’t think it’s ever going to end. I think it’s going to go on for a long, long time. The real question for “Star Trek” is how do you keep innovating, how do you deliver both what people expect and something totally fresh at the same time. Because I think that is actually what people want from “Star Trek.” They want what’s familiar delivered in a way that doesn’t feel familiar.

With all our showrunners — Terry Matalas on “Picard,” the Hagemans on “Prodigy,” Mike McMahan on “Lower Decks,” Michelle Paradise, who has been singlehandedly running “Discovery” for the last two years, and then Akiva and Henry Alonso Myers on “Strange New Worlds” — my feeling is that the best way to protect and preserve “Star Trek” is not to impose my own vision on it but [find people] who meet the criteria of loving “Star Trek,” wanting to do new things with it, understanding how incredibly hard it is to do. And then I’m going to let you do your job. I’ll come in and tell you what I think every once in a while, and I’ll help get the boat off the dock, but once I hand the show over to a creative it has to be their show. And that means you’re going to get a different take every time, and as long as those takes all feel like they can marry into the same rainbow, to get back to the metaphor, that’s the way to keep “Star Trek” fresh.

I take great comfort because “Star Trek” really only belongs to Gene Roddenberry and the fans. We don’t own it. We carry it, we try to evolve it and then we hand it off to the next people. And hopefully they will love it as much as we do.

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'Star Trek: Discovery' ends as an underappreciated TV pioneer

Eric Deggans

Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham. Michael Gibson/Paramount+ hide caption

First, an admission: Though this column will offer a lot of discussion and defense of Star Trek: Discovery as a pivotal show, it won’t spend much time talking up the series’ current, final season or its finale episode, “Life, Itself,” dropping Thursday on Paramount+.

That’s because, for this critic, the last few seasons of Discovery have been a bit bogged down by the stuff that has always made it a tough sell as a Trek series: overly ambitious, serialized storylines that aren’t compelling; new characters and environments that don’t impress; plot twists which can be maddening in their lack of logic; big storytelling swings which can be confusing and predictable at once.

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The show’s finale features the culmination of a sprawling scavenger hunt which found the crew of the starship Discovery bounding all over the place, searching for clues leading to a powerful technology pioneered by an alien race which created humanoid life throughout the galaxy. Their goal was to grab the technology before another race, ruthless and aggressive, could beat them to it, laying waste to everything.

It's no spoiler to reveal that Discovery ’s heroes avoid that nightmarish scenario, wrapping its fifth and final season with a conclusion centered on Sonequa Martin-Green’s ever-resourceful Capt. Michael Burnham and fond resolutions for a multitude of supporting characters (there’s even a space wedding!)

Still, this good-enough ending belies Discovery ’s status as a pioneering show which helped Paramount+ build a new vision for Star Trek in modern television – breaking ground that more creatively successful series like Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds would follow years later.

And it all began with a singular character: Michael Burnham.

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Discovery debuted in 2017 on CBS All Access — the streaming service which would become Paramount+ — facing a serious challenge.

As the first new Trek series in a dozen years, it had to chart a path which offered a new vision of the franchise without going too far — carving out a new corner in the universe of Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock not long after the release of Star Trek Beyond , the third feature film produced by J. J. Abrams featuring rebooted versions of those classic characters.

Producers set Discovery ’s story 10 years before the days of Kirk and Spock (originally depicted on NBC for three seasons starting way back in 1966). The new series wouldn’t be centered on a starship captain, but its second in command: Burnham, a Black woman who also happened to be the hitherto unknown adopted daughter of Vulcan ambassador Sarek, Spock’s father (she would get promoted to captain of Discovery much later).

A Black human woman who was raised among the emotionally controlling, super-intellectual Vulcans? Who Trek fans had never heard of over nearly 60 years? Before I actually saw any episodes, my own feelings ranged from cautiously intrigued to cynically pessimistic.

But then I saw the first episode, which had an amazing early scene: Martin-Green as Burnham and Michelle Yeoh as Discovery Capt. Philippa Georgiou walking across an alien planet – two women of color marking the first step forward for Star Trek on a new platform.

People once sidelined in typical science fiction stories were now centerstage — a thrilling, historic moment.

Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou and Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham in the very first episode of Star Trek: Discovery. Jan Thijs/CBS hide caption

And it got better from there. Back in the day, Trek writers often felt hamstrung by creator Gene Roddenberry’s insistence that, in the future depicted by the show, humans were beyond social ills like greed, prejudice, sexism, war, money and personal friction. The writers chafed, wondering: How in the world do you build compelling stories on a starship where interpersonal human conflict doesn’t exist?

But Discovery found a workaround, putting Burnham in a position where logic led her to mutiny against her captain, attempting a strategy which ultimately failed — leaving humans in open combat with the legendarily warlike Klingons. Discovery also featured a long storyline which played out over an entire season, unlike many earlier Trek shows which tried to offer a new adventure every week.

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The show’s first season had plenty of action, with Harry Potter alum Jason Isaacs emerging as a compelling and unique starship captain (saying more would be a spoiler; log onto Paramount+ and check out the first season). Fans saw a new vision for Trek technology, leveraging sleek, visceral special effects and action sequences worthy of a big budget movie, with design elements cribbed from several of the franchise’s films.

Later in its run, Discovery would debut Ethan Peck as Spock and Anson Mount as Christopher Pike, classic Trek characters who eventually got their own acclaimed series in Strange New Worlds . So far, five other Trek series have emerged on Paramount+ from ideas initially incubated on Discovery – including a critically acclaimed season of Picard which reunited the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation .

Not bad for a series one TV critic eventually called among “the worst in the [ Trek ] franchise’s history.”

Discovery’s unappreciated legacy

Unfortunately, Discovery has taken some turns which didn’t work out quite so well. At the end of Discovery ’s second season, the starship jumped ahead in time nine centuries – perhaps to remove it from Strange New World ’s timeline? – placing it in an environment only distantly connected to classic Trek .

And while Discovery initially seemed cautious about referencing classic Trek in its stories, later series like Strange New Worlds and Picard learned the value of diving into the near-60-year-old franchise’s legacy – regularly tapping the show’s longtime appeal, rather than twisting into knots to avoid it.

There are likely fans of Discovery who would disagree with this analysis. But I think it helps explain why the series has never quite gotten its due in the world of Star Trek , initially shaded by skeptical fans and later overshadowed by more beloved products.

Now is the perfect time to pay tribute to a show which actually accomplished quite a lot – helping prove that Roddenberry’s brainchild still has a lot of narrative juice left in the 21st Century.