I’m not certain about the retro-style logo on the wall (I suspect the blockier lettering on the tote bag represents the actual series logo), but might this be the first look at (a version of) the series uniform?

I think the general policy is that genetic augmentation to grant superpowers is bad, while genetic treatment of disease or other medical conditions is generally okay.

They tiptoed right up to the line without outright stating it.

the SNW stardate madness would seem to continue

Nature is healing.

hopefully not the same way as Paris and Janeway went.

Nah, there’s a flower involved. That can only mean one thing.

I don’t remember seeing them before.

I also don’t remember any previous shots that establish that the conference room is off the bridge…

This one won’t be going down in history as my favourite episode.

Much of the episode is devoted to zombies, and zombies are boring. Moving on.

This might just be reflective of where my headspace has been at lately, but it bugged me that the crew showed absolute contempt for a treaty. There was absolutely no discussion of whether it was moral or just to violate it - they just wanted something, so they went ahead and took it. This isn’t exactly new ground for Star Trek, but it wasn’t something that I enjoyed watching in 2025.

I can’t decide if this was a bad Pike episode, or a good Pike episode that happened to reveal things about the character that I don’t appreciate. It’s telling that Batel didn’t tell him about her treatment because she knew that he would react in exactly the way that he did.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about clearing up the ambiguity of what happened with M’Benga last season, but I think it was handled pretty well - the strongest part of the episode by far. It seems like he might have a…different career path ahead of him when he leaves the Enterprise.

The Ortegas/Una story wasn’t bad, either. I do find it interesting that Pike will not be filing a report on this mission because it was off-the-books, but Ortegas gets reprimanded and sent for remedial training. I’m not sure how that works when there’s no mission to log.

I thought the directing and/or editing was pretty lifeless (heh) in this one, too - not a lot of tension throughout.

Yeah, and I think it also makes sense to assume that Paramount+ produced “The Ready Room”, considering they wouldn’t acknowledge that the second season of “Prodigy” existed.

I’m loathe to support layoffs, but I’m not that opposed to taking things away from the streaming platform and giving them to the production studios.

It took me forever to find the story, but I think what happened is that they sit down the Paramount+, which handled “publicity, photo, events, awards, talent relations, etc.”.

Those roles have been offloaded to the studio (CBS Studios), and I guess this event, and probably the recent Universal thing, have been put together by them?

I’ve struggled with this question for years, and haven’t been able to come up with an answer I feel good about, so the “correct” answer is probably, “consider the person’s tastes and cater to them.”

I do believe that it’s probably not a good idea to start with the “best” episodes - they tend to break the usual format, and once you’ve seen them, there’s nowhere to go but down.

Instead, I’m on a continuous search for the most “average” episodes - solid, enjoyable, and representative of what the series and franchise are as a whole. But I still don’t have a simple answer.

According to the official site, the final schedule won’t go up until the week of the convention.

I’m sure it wouldn’t work for <insert technobabble reason here>, but this is the unfortunate consequence of treating it so casually in season one…

Possibly, but looking at the episode titles, episode 9 “Terrarium” seems like it could be a good candidate for a Gorn return.

It really didn’t seem like it, but:

You will see more of the Gorn. The Gorn are not gone, but the Gorn are not the primary adversary for season 3.

The entire series is set in a snow globe on Sam Kirk’s mantle, in the home where he lives to be 147.

Camera spin continues to be a big part of the visual language.

I was genuinely surprised that Olatunde Osunsanmi didn’t direct.

Hegemony, Part II

I appreciated the continued exploration of the Gorn as a truly alien alien species. All the stuff with their different sensory modes, and solar-associated life cycles, is a lot of fun to me.

It also seems like they’ve written the Gorn off as a going concern, which I think is fine. This is a good place to leave it until “Arena” - they even added some dialogue about the various Gorn stories being somewhat vague, so there’s some wiggle room for them to seem a little different when they’re encountered again in the future.

They managed to film the AR wall in a way that didn’t just seem like a round room, which I appreciate.

Wedding Bell Blues

Give this show all the makeup and costuming awards immediately.

It was a fun romp, and I always like it when two opposing characters have to team up against the universe. I could have done with more dancing at the end - it seems like the actors put in a lot of work for a fairly brief scene.

I’ve never been a big fan of drawing a connection between Trelane and the Q, so I’m glad neither was mentioned by name (Edit: I think…?).

Please give me a Sam Kirk spinoff that runs for 50 years.

not short sighted fiscally

Talk about a big ask…

I don’t think there’s much to worry about - Goldsman may be open to the idea, but he’s also got another job lined up, so I think it will remain hypothetical.

“Unfortunately Discovery’s loss was our gain. So they basically said, ‘Look, we think we’re done after four seasons.’ And we said, ‘Hey, what about our whole ‘Let’s get the fans to the TOS era,’ because what happens to all these people, and how does this person will come up?’ And they were like, ‘No, that’s fair. That’s true.’ And they said, ‘What do you need to get there?’ And we said, ‘Six episodes’ and they said okay.”

“The good news was, when I say ‘they,’ really the folks who make this show wanted this to happen too, but there are fiscal constraints that are real. You know what’s going on with Paramount. So to move things forward in that environment was a challenge, but everybody—CBS, Paramount, Strange New Worlds, and [Alex Kurtzman’s production company] Secret Hideout were all pulling in the same direction. And that’s how we ended up getting six episodes. So it was a wasn’t really a negotiation, but it was a heavy lift for pretty much everybody, because everybody wanted not to have another Discovery circumstance where it felt abrogated in a way that wasn’t thorough.”

Surprisingly candid stuff. I’m glad that some of the CBS pencil-pushers are creative-minded enough to make this happen.