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Recap / Star Trek The Next Generation S 7 E 20 Firstborn

Edit locked.

Original air date: April 25, 1994

Worf is in his quarters, rehearsing a speech for Alexander about undertaking the Rites of Ascension, as he is almost old enough to be considered an adult in Klingon society. Things don't go quite as planned, however. Alexander, who has always related more to his human side, flatly refuses without a second thought. Picard notices Worf's preoccupation during the daily briefing, and when he learns the reason, he points out that Alexander has had very little exposure to Klingon culture. As the Enterprise is killing time waiting for a rendezvous with another ship, Picard suggests that Worf take Alexander to see the Kot'baval festival at a nearby Klingon outpost on Maranga IV, where he can learn more about the parts of his heritage that do not involve pain sticks.

Alexander has fun at the festival, enjoying the entertainment, street food, and company of other Klingons his age. After a long day, as they are preparing to leave, Worf and Alexander are accosted by three armed thugs. Worf drives them off with the help of another Klingon who introduces himself as K'mtar, a family retainer sent by Kurn to protect them. Back on the Enterprise, they reveal that one of the daggers left by the attackers bears the seal of the House of Duras, which casts suspicion on Lursa and B'Etor, who have been leading their house since Duras' death.

Riker agrees to help search for the Duras sisters. Meanwhile, K'mtar talks to Worf about Alexander's future as a Klingon warrior, as he is the only male heir to the House of Mogh. When Worf explains Alexander's recalcitrance, K'mtar offers to help train him as a warrior. After what happened on the planet, Alexander is more amenable to this idea, so that he can better protect himself and Worf in the future.

The three visit the holodeck to recreate the fight on Maranga IV. Alexander successfully downs one of the attackers with some advice from K'mtar, but hesitates and loses his nerve when asked to finish him off. Later, as K'mtar is teaching Alexander some Klingon lore, his overbearing insistence on the "proper" interpretation of the stories further deflates Alexander's previous enthusiasm. It becomes apparent to him that K'mtar is even more obsessed than his father about turning him into a warrior.

Meanwhile, the Enterprise has managed to track down the Duras sisters, thanks to a tip from Quark. They immediately plead ignorance in the attempt on Worf's life and insist the knife must have been used to falsely implicate them. B'Etor then notices to her shock that the family markings on the handle include a symbol representing Lursa's son - a son she only just discovered she was pregnant with days ago.

It turns out the sisters were correct - the blade was used to frame them, by none other than K'mtar himself. Worf catches him in his quarters just as he is about to kill Alexander in his sleep. After being subdued by Worf, K'mtar reveals that he is Alexander from the 40 years in the future and proves it by reciting their last moments together with K'Ehleyr when she died.

Future Alexander explains that, as he grew up, he tried to become a mediator in Klingon society to end the feuding of the Great Houses. The enemies of the House of Mogh took advantage of this and killed Worf, which Alexander was never able to forgive himself for. Thus, he came back 40 years to try and reform his younger self into becoming a warrior, staging the attack as a way to scare him onto the right path. Killing the young Alexander was a last-ditch effort to rewrite history after he failed in his goal. Worf reassures him that he did not fail and that he has shown him that Alexander will have his own future to look forward to, which is what he really wanted all along. They hug it out, and the adult Alexander goes his own way. Worf continues training Alexander, but with a more relaxed attitude, now that he knows his son will eventually find a calling.

Tropes featured:

• Aesop Enforcer : K'mtar tries to teach Alexander the value of becoming a warrior by staging a showy (but ultimately harmless) attack on him and Worf. He also tries to enforce the proper Klingon interpretation of their parables over Alexander's. It's not clear whether K'mtar is truly speaking for their religion's canon, or he simply thought Alexander's interpretations were too "soft".
• Call-Back : Future Alexander, recalling the day his mother died .
• Continuity Nod : The Duras Sisters' visit to Deep Space Nine the previous year is not only acknowledged, but is also a plot point. Starfleet has lost track of Lursa and B'Etor in the interim since they left the Bajor Sector, thus forcing Riker to turn to contacts like Quark to try and pick up the trail.
• Crossover : Not quite as much as the last time it happened , but one of Riker's leads to tracking down the Duras sisters is Quark , who even gets a little on-screen sparring time with the commander . His cameo also serves the purpose of recapping the broad strokes of "Past Prologue" for TNG viewers who weren't watching the spinoff show.
• Foreshadowing : K'mtar has a strangely troubled reaction to the fact that Riker managed to track down the Duras sisters.
• Grandfather Paradox : There's no telling how the Star Trek Timey-Wimey Ball would have reacted to Alexander assassinating his younger self, but fortunately for all involved, we don't get the chance to find out.
• Hand Wave : The question of how K'mtar traveled back in time is quickly glossed over as unimportant. He found some unnamed person somewhere who could send him back, and that's all we hear about it. note  Beta canon sources imply that it might have been Korath, the Klingon from the Voyager finale who also supplied Janeway with time-travel technology (which would now make it two future timelines he has helped overwrite, himself along with them ).
• Linked List Clue Methodology : How the Enterprise spends its time tracking down the Duras Sisters between Alexander's scenes.
• Luke, You Are My Father : K'mtar turns out to be Alexander all grown up. The whole plot was set in motion because he was trying to stop Worf from being killed by travelling back in time.
• Not Me This Time : While Lursa and B'Etor were disappointed that Worf was still alive, they weren't trying to kill him this time around. In fact, they've never had any particular interest in him except when the Enterprise gets in the way of their schemes. The fact that they haven't crossed paths recently is an early hint that something doesn't quite add up about K'mtar's story.
• Scare 'Em Straight : K'mtar staged the attack on Maranga IV to make Alexander more receptive to being combat trained. It works, but not for very long.
• Spanner in the Works : Riker completely derails K'mtar's plan by the simple fact that he is able to quickly pick up the trail of the Duras sisters from Quark. As K'mtar himself says, he didn't expect anyone to be able to find them.
• Spotting the Thread : K'mtar presumably brought the Duras knife from the future to give to the thugs he hired. He either didn't notice, or didn't think anyone else would notice, that it bore the mark of Lursa's now-unborn son. Then again, the timing was remarkably convenient: any earlier and it could be dismissed as an invention, any later and her pregnancy would (potentially) be public knowledge, but events happened right at the moment when Lursa knew she was pregnant but no one else but her sister did.
• Timey-Wimey Ball : Worf tells K'mtar that the future he remembers in no longer a Foregone Conclusion , given how much he has already intervened. Worf: Who knows what the future will be now that you have disrupted time? I may die tomorrow or I may outlive you.
• Trust Password : K'mtar proves he is Alexander to Worf's satisfaction by recalling the details of K'Ehleyr's death earlier in the series, which only he and Worf were present for.
• Wham Line : Lursa reveals that one of the marks on her knife represents her son, which she found out a few days ago that she's pregnant with.
• Writers Cannot Do Math : They seem to have forgotten that the age of Alexander's actor doesn't quite match up with that of the character. K'mtar says that he watched his mother die when he was three years old; during the events of that episode , Alexander was only one.
• Star Trek The Next Generation S 7 E 19 Journeys End
• Recap/Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Star Trek The Next Generation S 7 E 21 Bloodlines

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Deep Space Nine star Alexander Siddig discusses his time on Star Trek, the future of conventions and his new film Skylines

Alexander Siddig , who played Dr. Julian Bashir on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for seven seasons, has stayed busy with a multitude of projects since wrapping up on the series 22 years ago. With work in television and feature films, ranging from 24 , Game of Thrones , and Gotham , to Kingdom of Heaven , Hannibal and Clash of the Titans , the seasoned actor shows no signs of slowing down. His latest project Skylines , the third and final installment in the Skyline film series, harkens back to his science fiction roots on DS9 with the character General Radford. Siddig recently sat down with TrekNews.net to discuss his time on Deep Space Nine , appearing at conventions, a possible return to Star Trek, and compares Bashir to Radford.

Hi, Alexander. Thank you for taking the time to chat with us today! Let’s kick things off with a couple of Star Trek questions:

Deep Space Nine has had a major resurgence in popularity in recent years — due in part to the release of Ira Steven Behr’s What We Left Behind documentary, along with the series’ availability on DVD and multiple streaming services. Being such a major part of the show, as Dr. Bashir, how do you look back on DS9?

I look back on the series with great affection. I remember that as soon as it finished, I was relieved that it was over because I was itching to get on with life and was feeling out of place in Los Angeles among all the glamorous people there jostling for attention, but as my fledgling career started to take shape and I could achieve some sense of perspective, I realized how ridiculously lucky I was to have been part of such a noble enterprise.

“Would he have quit the Federation altogether and become a professor? Maybe he wound up in command? Goodness only knows.”

In the documentary, a hypothetical eighth season was discussed in some detail. What would have you liked to have seen happen to Bashir if the series had continued?

Bashir had been recruited by Section 31 by the end of the seventh season. It would have been really interesting to see how the sometimes antithetical elements of that shady life might have caused real problems for him as a man of medicine. Also, his genetic enhancement and the internal struggles he may have had once that secret was out might have interesting to explore.

There’s been rumors and some vocal desire to see the series remastered and released in high definition. Have you heard anything about DS9 in HD and do you think we’ll eventually see that happen?

I don’t know anything about that. I remember that we switched to filming the show in an HD-ready format during the run of the show.

[Read our interview with Robert Meyer Burnett discussing some of the complications in releasing Deep Space Nine and Voyager in HD.]

Prior to the pandemic, you attended quite a few Star Trek conventions over the years and got to see first-hand the appreciation fans still have for DS9. Have you had any memorable experiences at conventions and is attending them something you miss?

I had so many memorable experiences, some life-affirming, others, not so much: stalkers, lurkers… I kind of worry for some of the vulnerable people I met and shared a laugh and hugs with so many others. The fans make Star Trek what it is.

What do you think Bashir would be doing now, more than two decades after leaving space station Deep Space Nine (following the events of the series finale “What We Leave Behind”)?

The mind boggles! Would Section 31 have finally compromised his ethics? Would he have quit the Federation altogether and become a professor? Maybe he wound up in command? Goodness only knows.

“I kind of like being slightly wicked.”

Do you keep up with Star Trek in its current form ( Discovery , Picard , and Lower Decks )? If so, what are your thoughts?

I’m sorry to say that I don’t — I watched a few excellent episodes of Discovery when it made its debut — but we have an embargo in my household on the ever-expanding list of channel subscriptions. We just had to draw a line once we realized that we were spending more on TV than food!

Would you have any interest in appearing as Bashir again — maybe in Star Trek: Picard or the announced Section 31 series with Michelle Yeoh?

Of course but I’m not sure I’d feel like stepping back into Bashir’s shoes again for a cameo, a disposable tidbit to move the action along in. I’d certainly be interested in a good in-depth look at him and where he’s at though.

Let’s switch gears a little and discuss one of your most recent projects, Skylines, where you play General Radford. For those who aren’t familiar, the film is the third and final installment of the Skyline series. What can you tell us about the movie and your character?

It’s a wonderful, old school film. Entirely entertaining and great COVID time relief. I play a general who gets a crack group together to go millions of light-years away from earth to deal with an alien species that threaten to destroy our home. It’s familiar and strange at the same time and that’s the right combination for good, honest entertainment. I highly recommend it if you like high octane sci-fi.

Both being sci-fi characters, how would you compare Radford to Bashir?

They are completely different. Radford could more easily compare to a mirror universe Bashir though!

Do you have any new year’s resolutions?

None. I don’t have the resolve or strength of purpose to see anything worthwhile to the bitter end in the name of self-betterment. I’m totally riddled with vices, I’m sure, but I kind of like being slightly wicked.

Alexander, thank you so much for joining us!

My pleasure!

Skylines is now available on YouTube , Amazon Prime and Vudu .

Check out the trailer below.

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

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

Founded TrekNews.net in 2011. UX, visual designer, and published photographer based in the Boston area. Connoisseur of Star Trek, sci-fi, '80s horror, synthwave sounds, and tacos. You can follow Brian on Twitter @brianwilkins .

January 19, 2021 at 2:51 am

The question or status of DS9’s HD remaster was resolved years ago. TNG’s Blu Ray release underperformed in the market. That put the brakes on any talk about remastering DS9 or Voyager. CBS/Paramount isn’t going to foot the bill for it, and none of the streaming platforms have offered either. Upscaling is a nice notion, but as of today, nothing will look as good as scanning the original negatives.

January 19, 2021 at 9:52 am

I’m still holding out hope that it happens. The interest level in DS9 and to a lesser extent VOY seems to rise every day. Fingers crossed.

Dusty Ayres

February 4, 2021 at 3:28 pm

You’ll be keeping them crossed forever, MK2900, because it will still never happen . Time to face reality and deal.

February 4, 2021 at 3:23 pm

My sentiments exactly, E, and I also tried to tell others in the comments section of the article about why said remastering would never happen, only to be accused of having a stick up my ass and of ‘being a liberal’, whatever that meant. Looks like people need to be reminded why, again.

Joanna Durkin

January 19, 2021 at 9:50 am

I would love to see Bashir return in Discovery (through time travel) or if that Section 31 series ever gets off the ground. Make it happen CBS!

January 19, 2021 at 10:14 am

We need more Bashir! More Sisko, Quark, Kira, Worf, O’Brien and Dax too!

May 8, 2023 at 9:09 am

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Future Imperfect

• Episode aired Nov 10, 1990

Riker awakens sixteen years after an away mission where he contracted a disease which destroyed his memory back to the point of infection - or so he's told. Riker awakens sixteen years after an away mission where he contracted a disease which destroyed his memory back to the point of infection - or so he's told. Riker awakens sixteen years after an away mission where he contracted a disease which destroyed his memory back to the point of infection - or so he's told.

• Gene Roddenberry
• J. Larry Carroll
• David Carren
• Patrick Stewart
• Jonathan Frakes
• LeVar Burton
• 16 User reviews
• 8 Critic reviews

• Captain Jean-Luc Picard

• Commander William Thomas 'Will' Riker

• Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge

• Lieutenant Worf

• Doctor Beverly Crusher

• Counselor Deanna Troi

• Lieutenant Commander Data

• Ensign Wesley Crusher
• (credit only)

• Cmdr. Tomalak

• Jean-Luc Riker …

• Nurse Alyssa Ogawa

• Transporter Technician Hubbell

• Transporter Chief

• Ensign Gates
• (uncredited)
• Crewman Nelson

• Enterprise Computer
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Did you know

• Trivia The turbo-lift scene with Riker and young Jean-Luc was added because the show was running short and was written only the night before it was to be shot.
• Goofs As Admiral Picard talks with Captain Riker in the Conference room and says "Will, you're sound of mind and body. If you are properly briefed, you'll still be able to perform your duty," you can see either a gnat, fly or mosquito buzz around his uniform.

[Riker has given a rather mediocre performance on his trombone at his birthday party]

Counselor Deanna Troi : [after Riker has blown out the candles on his cake] So, what did you wish for, Will?

Commander William T. Riker : Music lessons!

• Alternate versions In the original broadcast and the Columbia House VHS version, when Riker discovers the Romulan deception and says, "Shall we end this charade," he pronounces the word "sha-rad". This line was later ADR'd by Jonathan Frakes for the DVD to say "charade" pronounced "sha-RADE".
• Connections Featured in re:View: Rich and Mike's Second TNG Top Ten Video part 2 (of 2) (2020)
• Soundtracks Star Trek: The Next Generation Main Title Composed by Jerry Goldsmith and Alexander Courage

User reviews 16

• Jul 11, 2021
• November 10, 1990 (United States)
• United States
• Official site
• Paramount Studios - 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA (Studio)
• Paramount Television
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 46 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Let's talk about 2371.

What was the most action-packed year in Star Trek’s future history? Thanks to some deep-cut Easter eggs in the latest episode of Discovery , the answer might surprise you. As Discovery approaches the end of its fifth and final season, the show continues to expand our knowledge of the Breen, while also sending its eponymous starship on a zig-zag quest around the galaxy to solve a puzzle that explains the very nature of life itself .

Along the way, Discovery is retreading a bit of Star Trek history the crew skipped over thanks to their time-traveling shenanigans at the end of Season 2. Now, in the episode “Erigah,” Discovery has reminded us that several major Star Trek events all happened in the same year. For us, it was 1994, but in Star Trek it was 2371. Spoilers ahead.

Why the 24th century matters

The USS Voyager in the Badlands in 2371.

Although Discovery, which is now in the year 3191, exists well beyond all the other Trek shows and films, it still has several ties to the franchise’s past. From Season 3 onward, Disco’s retro-Trek connections mostly stem from the fact the majority of the regular characters are from 2258, just before The Original Series, before they jumped forward in time. But now, because the ship is on a quest to find the Progenitor tech uncovered in the 24th century by Jean-Luc Picard, many of Discovery’s Easter eggs are tied to that golden era of Trek.

The 24th century is the most robust spot on the Trek timeline, simply because three classic shows took place between 2364 and 2379: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager . When you add in four feature films, and the recent series Lower Decks and Prodigy, it’s easy to see why the 24th century is such a big part of Star Trek. But why is 2371 so pivotal? Discovery just revealed the answer through two seemingly unrelated Easter eggs.

2371, the year that everything happened

23171 was a busy stretch.

In “Erigah,” the Discovery crew learns the next clue on their list is an antique Betazoid book called Labyrinths of the Mind , written in 2371. By the end of the episode, with the help of Jett Reno (Tig Notaro), they also learn this book is in a mobile library called “The Eternal Gallery and Archive,” currently situated in a part of space called the Badlands. At the same time, Dr. Culber is researching medicine during the Federation’s struggle against the Dominion. Guess what this all has in common? Events in 2371.

As revealed in the Deep Space Nine Season 3 finale, “The Adversary,” 2371 was the year the Federation learned the Changelings had come to the Alpha Quadrant and could shapeshift into anyone and anything. This was also the year when Thomas Riker, Will’s naughty transporter duplicate, stole the USS Defiant to help the Maquis fight the Cardassians. The first place Thomas took the Defiant ? Yep, the Badlands, where Discovery is now headed.

For Voyager fans, the Badlands is the rough and tumble area of space that flung Voyager halfway across the galaxy to the Delta Quadrant. Yes, Voyager also launched in 2371. And while DS9 was dealing with shapeshifters and a Riker doppelgänger, and Voyager was trying to figure out how to get home, the beloved USS Enterprise-D was forced to separate its saucer section and crashland on the planet Veridian III. While Will Riker (the good one) is crashing the Enterprise in Star Trek Generations , Picard is fighting a mad scientist named Dr. Soran and dealing with a time-traveling Captain James T. Kirk. All in the year-of-our-Q, 2371.

In our universe, all these events played out between May 1994 and January 1995. Star Trek was packing in as many events as possible, and impressively, fans were able to follow all the twists and turns in the canon. Discovery may not have meant to make a connection between a fictional book, the Badlands, and the most important year in 24th-century history, but when you look at all the stuff that happened back then, it was, as William Shatner might say , a very, very good year.

Star Trek: Discovery streams on Paramount+.

• Science Fiction

The Future of ‘Star Trek’: From ‘Starfleet Academy’ to New Movies and Michelle Yeoh, How the 58-Year-Old Franchise Is Planning for the Next Generation of Fans

“I can’t believe I get to play the captain of the Enterprise.”

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In other words, “Star Trek” is not just a franchise. As Alex Kurtzman , who oversees all “Star Trek” TV production, puts it, “‘Star Trek’ is an institution.”

Without a steady infusion of new blood, though, institutions have a way of fading into oblivion (see soap operas, MySpace, Blockbuster Video). To keep “Star Trek” thriving has meant charting a precarious course to satisfy the fans who have fueled it for decades while also discovering innovative ways to get new audiences on board.

“Doing ‘Star Trek’ means that you have to deliver something that’s entirely familiar and entirely fresh at the same time,” Kurtzman says.

The franchise has certainly weathered its share of fallow periods, most recently after “Nemesis” bombed in theaters in 2002 and UPN canceled “Enterprise” in 2005. It took 12 years for “Star Trek” to return to television with the premiere of “Discovery” in 2017; since then, however, there has been more “Star Trek” on TV than ever: The adventure series “Strange New Worlds,” the animated comedy “Lower Decks” and the kids series “Prodigy” are all in various stages of production, and the serialized thriller “Picard” concluded last year, when it ranked, along with “Strange New Worlds,” among Nielsen’s 10 most-watched streaming original series for multiple weeks. Nearly one in five Paramount+ subscribers in the U.S. is watching at least one “Star Trek” series, according to the company, and more than 50% of fans watching one of the new “Trek” shows also watch at least two others. The new shows air in 200 international markets and are dubbed into 35 languages. As “Discovery” launches its fifth and final season in April, “Star Trek” is in many ways stronger than it’s ever been.

“’Star Trek’s fans have kept it alive more times than seems possible,” says Eugene Roddenberry, Jr., who executive produces the TV series through Roddenberry Entertainment. “While many shows rightfully thank their fans for supporting them, we literally wouldn’t be here without them.”

But the depth of fan devotion to “Star Trek” also belies a curious paradox about its enduring success: “It’s not the largest fan base,” says Akiva Goldsman, “Strange New Worlds” executive producer and co-showrunner. “It’s not ‘Star Wars.’ It’s certainly not Marvel.”

When J.J. Abrams rebooted “Star Trek” in 2009 — with Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Zoe Saldaña playing Kirk, Spock and Uhura — the movie grossed more than any previous “Star Trek” film by a comfortable margin. But neither that film nor its two sequels broke $500 million in global grosses, a hurdle every other top-tier franchise can clear without breaking a sweat.

There’s also the fact that “Star Trek” fans are aging. I ask “The Next Generation” star Jonathan Frakes, who’s acted in or directed more versions of “Star Trek” than any other person alive, how often he meets fans for whom the new “Star Trek” shows are their first. “Of the fans who come to talk to me, I would say very, very few,” he says. “‘Star Trek’ fans, as we know, are very, very, very loyal — and not very young.”

As Stapf puts it: “There’s a tried and true ‘Trek’ fan that is probably going to come to every ‘Star Trek,’ no matter what it is — and we want to expand the universe.”

Every single person I spoke to for this story talked about “Star Trek” with a joyful earnestness as rare in the industry as (nerd alert) a Klingon pacifist.

“When I’m meeting fans, sometimes they’re coming to be confirmed, like I’m kind of a priest,” Ethan Peck says during a break in filming on the “Strange New Worlds” set. He’s in full Spock regalia — pointy ears, severe eyebrows, bowl haircut — and when asked about his earliest memories of “Star Trek,” he stares off into space in what looks like Vulcan contemplation. “I remember being on the playground in second or third grade and doing the Vulcan salute, not really knowing where it came from,” he says. “When I thought of ‘Star Trek,’ I thought of Spock. And now I’m him. It’s crazy.”

To love “Star Trek” is to love abstruse science and cowboy diplomacy, complex moral dilemmas and questions about the meaning of existence. “It’s ultimately a show with the most amazing vision of optimism, I think, ever put on-screen in science fiction,” says Kurtzman, who is 50. “All you need is two minutes on the news to feel hopeless now. ‘Star Trek’ is honestly the best balm you could ever hope for.”

I’m getting a tour of the USS Enterprise from Scotty — or, rather, “Strange New World” production designer Jonathan Lee, who is gushing in his native Scottish burr as we step into the starship’s transporter room. “I got such a buzzer from doing this, I can’t tell you,” he says. “I actually designed four versions of it.”

Lee is especially proud of the walkway he created to run behind the transporter pads — an innovation that allows the production to shoot the characters from a brand-new set of angles as they beam up from a far-flung planet. It’s one of the countless ways that this show has been engineered to be as cinematic as possible, part of Kurtzman’s overall vision to make “Star Trek” on TV feel like “a movie every week.”

Kurtzman’s tenure with “Star Trek” began with co-writing the screenplay for Abrams’ 2009 movie, which was suffused with a fast-paced visual style that was new to the franchise. When CBS Studios approached Kurtzman in the mid-2010s about bringing “Star Trek” back to TV, he knew instinctively that it needed to be just as exciting as that film.

“The scope was so much different than anything we had ever done on ‘Next Gen,’” says Frakes, who’s helmed two feature films with the “Next Generation” cast and directed episodes of almost every live-action “Trek” TV series, including “Discovery” and “Strange New Worlds.” “Every department has the resources to create.”

A new science lab set for Season 3, for example, boasts a transparent floor atop a four-foot pool of water that swirls underneath the central workbench, and the surrounding walls sport a half dozen viewscreens with live schematics custom designed by a six-person team. “I like being able to paint on a really big canvas,” Kurtzman says. “The biggest challenge is always making sure that no matter how big something gets, you’re never losing focus on that tiny little emotional story.”

At this point, is there a genre that “Strange New Worlds” can’t do? “As long as we’re in storytelling that is cogent and sure handed, I’m not sure there is,” Goldsman says with an impish smile. “Could it do Muppets? Sure. Could it do black and white, silent, slapstick? Maybe!”

This approach is also meant to appeal to people who might want to watch “Star Trek” but regard those 668 hours of backstory as an insurmountable burden. “You shouldn’t have to watch a ‘previously on’ to follow our show,” Myers says.

To achieve so many hairpin shifts in tone and setting while maintaining Kurtzman’s cinematic mandate, “Strange New Worlds” has embraced one of the newest innovations in visual effects: virtual production. First popularized on the “Star Wars” series “The Mandalorian,” the technology — called the AR wall — involves a towering circular partition of LED screens projecting a highly detailed, computer-generated backdrop. Rather than act against a greenscreen, the actors can see whatever fantastical surroundings their characters are inhabiting, lending a richer level of verisimilitude to the show.

But there is a catch. While the technology is calibrated to maintain a proper sense of three-dimensional perspective through the camera lens, it can be a bit dizzying for anyone standing on the set. “The images on the walls start to move in a way that makes no sense,” says Mount. “You end up having to focus on something that’s right in front of you so you don’t fall down.”

And yet, even as he’s talking about it, Mount can’t help but break into a boyish grin. “Sometimes we call it the holodeck,” he says. In fact, the pathway to the AR wall on the set is dotted with posters of the virtual reality room from “The Next Generation” and the words “Enter Holodeck” in a classic “Trek” font.

“I want to take one of those home with me,” Peck says. Does the AR wall also affect him? “I don’t really get disoriented by it. Spock would not get ill, so I’m Method acting.”

I’m on the set of the “Star Trek” TV movie “Section 31,” seated in an opulent nightclub with a view of a brilliant, swirling nebula, watching Yeoh rehearse with director Olatunde Osunsanmi and her castmates. Originally, the project was announced as a TV series centered on Philippa Georgiou, the semi-reformed tyrant Yeoh originated on “Discovery.” But between COVID delays and the phenomenon of “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” there wasn’t room in the veteran actress’s schedule to fit a season of television. Yeoh was undaunted.

“We’d never let go of her,” she says of her character. “I was just blown away by all the different things I could do with her. Honestly, it was like, ‘Let’s just get it done, because I believe in this.’”

If that means nothing to you, don’t worry: The enormity of the revelation that Garrett is being brought back is meant only for fans. If you don’t know who the character is, you’re not missing anything.

“It was always my goal to deliver an entertaining experience that is true to the universe but appeals to newcomers,” says screenwriter Craig Sweeny. “I wanted a low barrier of entry so that anybody could enjoy it.”

Nevertheless, including Garrett on the show is exactly the kind of gasp-worthy detail meant to flood “Star Trek” fans with geeky good feeling.

“You cannot create new fans to the exclusion of old fans,” Kurtzman says. “You must serve your primary fan base first and you must keep them happy. That is one of the most important steps to building new fans.”

On its face, that maxim would make “Section 31” a genuine risk. The titular black-ops organization has been controversial with “Star Trek” fans since it was introduced in the 1990s. “The concept is almost antagonistic to some of the values of ‘Star Trek,’” Sweeny says. But he still saw “Section 31” as an opportunity to broaden what a “Star Trek” project could be while embracing the radical inclusivity at the heart of the franchise’s appeal.

“Famously, there’s a spot for everybody in Roddenberry’s utopia, so I was like, ‘Well, who would be the people who don’t quite fit in?’” he says. “I didn’t want to make the John le Carré version, where you’re in the headquarters and it’s backbiting and shades of gray. I wanted to do the people who were at the edges, out in the field. These are not people who necessarily work together the way you would see on a ‘Star Trek’ bridge.”

For Osunsanmi, who grew up watching “The Next Generation” with his father, it boils down to a simple question: “Is it putting good into the world?” he asks. “Are these characters ultimately putting good into the world? And, taking a step back, are we putting good into the world? Are we inspiring humans watching this to be good? That’s for me what I’ve always admired about ‘Star Trek.’”

Should “Section 31” prove successful, Yeoh says she’s game for a sequel. And Kurtzman is already eyeing more opportunities for TV movies, including a possible follow-up to “Picard.” The franchise’s gung-ho sojourn into streaming movies, however, stands in awkward contrast to the persistent difficulty Paramount Pictures and Abrams’ production company Bad Robot have had making a feature film following 2016’s “Star Trek Beyond” — the longest theaters have gone without a “Star Trek” movie since Paramount started making them.

First, a movie reuniting Pine’s Capt. Kirk with his late father — played in the 2009 “Star Trek” by Chris Hemsworth — fell apart in 2018. Around the same time, Quentin Tarantino publicly flirted with, then walked away from, directing a “Star Trek” movie with a 1930s gangster backdrop. Noah Hawley was well into preproduction on a “Star Trek” movie with a brand-new cast, until then-studio chief Emma Watts abruptly shelved it in 2020. And four months after Abrams announced at Paramount’s 2022 shareholders meeting that his 2009 cast would return for a movie directed by Matt Shakman (“WandaVision”), Shakman left the project to make “The Fantastic Four” for Marvel. (It probably didn’t help that none of the cast had been approached before Abrams made his announcement.)

The studio still intends to make what it’s dubbed the “final chapter” for the Pine-Quinto-Saldaña cast, and Steve Yockey (“The Flight Attendant”) is writing a new draft of the script. Even further along is another prospective “Star Trek” film written by Seth Grahame-Smith (“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”) and to be directed by Toby Haynes (“Andor,” “Black Mirror: USS Callister”) that studio insiders say is on track to start preproduction by the end of the year. That project will serve as an origin story of sorts for the main timeline of the entire franchise. In both cases, the studio is said to be focused on rightsizing the budgets to fit within the clear box office ceiling for “Star Trek” feature films.

Far from complaining, everyone seems to relish the challenge. Visual effects supervisor Jason Zimmerman says that “working with Alex, the references are always at least $100 million movies, if not more, so we just kind of reverse engineer how do we do that without having to spend the same amount of money and time.”

The workload doesn’t seem to faze him either. “Visual effects people are a big, big ‘Star Trek’ fandom,” he says. “You naturally just get all these people who go a little bit above and beyond, and you can’t trade that for anything.”

In one of Kurtzman’s several production offices in Toronto, he and production designer Matthew Davies are scrutinizing a series of concept drawings for the newest “Star Trek” show, “Starfleet Academy.” A bit earlier, they showed me their plans for the series’ central academic atrium, a sprawling, two-story structure that will include a mess hall, amphitheater, trees, catwalks, multiple classrooms and a striking view of the Golden Gate Bridge in a single, contiguous space. To fit it all, they plan to use every inch of Pinewood Toronto’s 45,900 square foot soundstage, the largest in Canada.

But this is a “Star Trek” show, so there do need to be starships, and Kurtzman is discussing with Davies about how one of them should look. The issue is that “Starfleet Academy” is set in the 32nd century, an era so far into the future Kurtzman and his team need to invent much of its design language.

“For me, this design is almost too Klingon,” Kurtzman says. “I want to see the outline and instinctively, on a blink, recognize it as a Federation ship.”

The time period was first introduced on Season 3 of “Discovery,” when the lead character, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), transported the namesake starship and its crew there from the 23rd century. “It was exciting, because every time we would make a decision, we would say, ‘And now that’s canon,’” says Martin-Green.

“We listened to a lot of it,” Kurtzman says. “I think I’ve been able to separate the toxic fandom from really true fans who love ‘Star Trek’ and want you to hear what they have to say about what they would like to see.”

By Season 2, the “Discovery” writers pivoted from its dour, war-torn first season and sent the show on its trajectory 900-plus years into the future. “We had to be very aware of making sure that Spock was in the right place and that Burnham’s existence was explained properly, because she was never mentioned in the original series,” says executive producer and showrunner Michelle Paradise. “What was fun about jumping into the future is that it was very much fresh snow.”

That freedom affords “Starfleet Academy” far more creative latitude while also dramatically reducing how much the show’s target audience of tweens and teens needs to know about “Star Trek” before watching — which puts them on the same footing as the students depicted in the show. “These are kids who’ve never had a red alert before,” Noga Landau, executive producer and co-showrunner, says. “They never had to operate a transporter or be in a phaser fight.”

In the “Starfleet Academy” writers’ room in Secret Hideout’s Santa Monica offices, Kurtzman tells the staff — a mix of “Star Trek” die-hards, part-time fans and total newbies — that he wants to take a 30,000-foot view for a moment. “I think we need to ground in science more throughout the show,” he says, a giant framed photograph of Spock ears just over his shoulder. “The kids need to use science more to solve problems.”

Immediately, one of the writers brightens. “Are you saying we can amp up the techno-babble?” she says. “I’m just excited I get to use my computer science degree.”

After they break for lunch, Kurtzman is asked how much longer he plans to keep making “Star Trek.” 

“The minute I fall out of love with it is the minute that it’s not for me anymore. I’m not there yet,” he says. “To be able to build in this universe to tell stories that are fundamentally about optimism and a better future at a time when the world seems to be falling apart — it’s a really powerful place to live every day.”

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• View history

History [ ]

In approximately 2410, an adult Alexander Rozhenko had become a diplomat. His efforts for peace were perceived as a weakness by other Klingons . This ultimately led his political enemies to assassinate his father , Worf , on the floor of the Klingon High Council Chamber . Rozhenko was unable to save him, which he perceived to be due to his never training as a warrior and becoming a diplomat instead.

In order to attempt to prevent his father's death, Alexander traveled approximately forty years back in time to 2370 . In that time period, Alexander staged an assassination attempt on the Worf of that time, leaving evidence framing the House of Duras .

Alexander then adopted the identity of K'mtar, gin'tak to the House of Mogh. He hoped that Worf would be sufficiently worried by the assassination attempt that he could convince Worf to send the young Alexander of that time period to a Klingon training academy , thus enabling him to protect his father in the future.

When Worf stated that he would let Alexander make the choice, K'mtar threatened to invoke ya'nora kor , a bid to take custody of Alexander away from Worf. When this failed, he snuck into Alexander's room, and attempted to kill him, knowing that this would end his own existence, but save his father.

Worf caught K'mtar as he was about to carry out his plan, and attempted to kill K'mtar. While being choked, K'mtar confessed to Worf that he was actually Alexander, and expalined why he had returned from the future. Worf told him that with time now disrupted, anything could happen, and that things had changed . ( TNG : " Firstborn ")

Understanding the Uncertainty Surrounding Star Trek 4 and Chris Pine’s Involvement

C hris Pine appears to be just as curious about the fate of the next installment in the Star Trek movie franchise as fans are. Despite being the face of the rebooted series, Pine has openly expressed his cluelessness regarding the development of Star Trek 4 . With the last movie in the series released back in 2016, the actor finds himself sourcing information about the potential sequel from public news outlets, much like any other fan.

Melissa Navia on “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” “Star Wars,” and “Downton Abbey”

“I honestly don’t know,” Pine said in a recent interview. Uncertainty seems to be the only constant with the future of the Star Trek franchise at Paramount, despite the series’ continued success on television and streaming platforms. As the industry speculation rages, Pine remains on standby, much like his character’s iconic starship awaits its next mission.

FAQ Section

While the Star Trek franchise continues to thrive on television and through streaming services, the future of its cinematic universe remains a mystery. One thing is certain though: both fans and lead actor Chris Pine are eager for news about the potential continuation of the beloved space saga on the big screen. Until Paramount unveils concrete plans, the anticipation for Star Trek 4 will continue to be a topic of speculation and rumor within the fan community. It seems, for the time being, that Chris Pine—like Captain Kirk—will wait for the call to adventure, bound to the bridge of the Enterprise, ready for a voyage into the unknown.

The post Understanding the Uncertainty Surrounding Star Trek 4 and Chris Pine’s Involvement appeared first on Kevin Hearld .

• May 10, 2024 | ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Debuts On Nielsen Streaming Top 10
• May 10, 2024 | Podcast: All Access Breens Out On “Erigah” With Commentary From Elias Toufexis Of ‘Star Trek: Discovery’
• May 9, 2024 | Star Trek Franchise Wins Peabody Award
• May 9, 2024 | Recap/Review: ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Gets Cool Under Pressure In “Erigah”
• May 8, 2024 | Chris Pine Talks “Big F-ing Deal” Landing Kirk Role; Surprised ‘Star Trek 4’ Has Another New Screenwriter

THEORY: Did ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Finally Resolve The “Calypso” Mystery?

| April 23, 2024 | By: Iain Robertson 35 comments so far

“ Face the Strange ,” the fourth episode of Star Trek: Discovery’s  final season, gave us a fun, old-fashioned Trek time travel adventure, but one scene in particular seems to tie into an intriguing and previously unexplained look into the far future.

Playing the long game with Short Treks

In “ Calypso ,” the second episode of Star Trek: Short Treks , we were presented with a vision of a future USS Discovery where the ship had been abandoned for almost 1,000 years. The ship’s sole inhabitant was Zora, a sentient AI with a penchant for watching musicals from Hollywood’s Golden Age to pass the time. While season 3 of Discovery partially delivered on the showrunner’s promise to provide a link to “Calypso” by showing how Zora emerged from the “ Sphere Data ,” just how the USS Discovery ended up abandoned in that far future has remained a lingering mystery.

Zora’s POV in “Calypso”

“Face The Strange” didn’t see Burnham and Rayner jump anywhere near that far—just to the year 3218, 30 years or so into the characters’ futures. In this dark future, the Breen had obtained the Progenitors’ technology from Moll and L’ak and used it to launch a devastating attack on the Federation. Burnham and the rest of Discovery’s crew had been dead for decades, and Zora was again the ship’s lone occupant, with a penchant for the music of Doris Day.

Zora’s musical taste and familiar shots of her “Zora Vision” POV suggest an attempt to resolve the remaining mystery linking the Short Treks episode to Discovery . One big clue is that “Face the Strange” was written by Sean Cochran, who co-wrote “Calypso” with Picard co-creator Michael Chabon. So if we accept that the callbacks to “Calypso” were deliberate, what can they mean?

Zora’s POV in “Face the Strange”

Let’s take a look at three potential possibilities…

THEORY 1: “Calypso” is part of the same alternate future

The first and most obvious explanation is that “Calypso” is a continuation of the possible future shown in “Face the Strange.” The Discovery’s crew are killed by the Breen, who succeed in conquering the Federation. Zora is then left on the deserted ship for the next 1,000 years (which would place it around the 43rd Century), whiling away the centuries listening to Doris Day and watching musicals—in particular, the Fred Astaire/Audrey Hepburn classic Funny Face —until she encounters the character of Craft (Aldis Hodge).

Zora’s musical tastes, the abandoned ship, and the “Zora vision” scenes would definitely suggest “Calypso” as a continuation of this particular future. Since Burnham and the Discovery crew are fighting to find the Progenitors’ technology before Moll and L’ak  (and likely to succeed), this would mean that future would cease to exist, and “Calypso” is an intriguing never-to-be alternate future, similar to the outcome of episodes like Voyager’s  “Timeless” or  Next Generation’s  “All Good Things.”

There are however some inconsistencies between the two futures.

Firstly, the version of Discovery seen in “Calypso” is the 23rd-century version, prior to its 32nd-century refit. Most notably, the ship clearly has the original NCC-1031 designation, missing the ‘A’ that was added in the refit. Of course, the obvious, real-world reason is that “Calypso” was made between seasons 1 and 2 of Discovery , before the show’s jump to the future and redesign of the ship. This doesn’t make sense in-universe, but Short Treks has some other canon hiccups, so trying to explain away the missing “A” designation may be asking too much. The ship seen in “Face the Strange” is also in worse condition, but it’s likely Zora had Dots available that could repair the ship.

The Discovery in “Calypso” – No bloody A, B, C or D

Another inconsistency is that in “Calypso,” Zora tells Craft “the crew is away at present,” and says she has orders to maintain her current position, which doesn’t match with the events shown in “Face the Strange,” where she clearly stated that the crew had died. However, we don’t know what 1,000 years of isolation may have had on Zora. As a sentient life form, it’s possible by the time of “Calypso” she’s been experiencing some kind of AI senility or has repressed the traumatic memories of the crew’s demise. It’s also possible that she incurred some damage over the centuries, making her misremember the events.

In “Calypso,” Craft states he’s a soldier fighting the “V’draysh,” which is a bastardization of “Federation,” according to Michael Chabon. This doesn’t make sense if the Federation was defeated 1,000 years earlier; would the name still be in use? The name “V’draysh” was used once in the third season of Discovery, where it indeed related to the Federation.

Federation HQ destroyed in “Face the Strange”

While it’s possible that “Calypso” is a continuation of the alternate timeline established in “Face the Strange,” there are enough inconsistencies that we should consider some alternative scenarios.

THEORY 2: “Calypso” is Zora’s dream

One new piece of information we find out about Zora in “Face the Strange” is that she dreams. Her first line to Burnham is “Captain, is that you? Or is this another dream?” Although we’ve no idea when this started, it seems the years of isolation coupled with Zora’s continued development have led to her having dreams. Obviously, this isn’t unprecedented in Trek. Data eventually evolved to the stage where he could dream, so it follows that Zora can too.

Could the events of “Calypso” be Zora dreaming of some company after years of isolation? It’s certainly a possibility, and dream logic is a good way of explaining away the inconsistencies, such as the USS Discovery’s appearance and the whereabouts of the crew. “Calypso” was an atypical, sometimes surreal Star Trek story, and having it be a dream does make a degree of sense, with Zora its unreliable narrator.

Zora wonders if she is dreaming in “Face the Strange”

There could also be a clue in the music Zora’s listening to in “Face the Strange.” “Que Sera Sera” is a song about a girl asking her mother about the future and what will happen to her. Is this a hint that the Zora we see past this point is her guessing about her future?

One major argument against the dream theory is that “Calypso” isn’t Zora’s story, it’s Craft’s. It starts with him and follows his time on Discovery and his odd love story with Zora. The story is told from his viewpoint. The only time this switches to Zora’s point of view is at the very end when Craft leaves Discovery and the camera remains behind, revealing Zora has named his shuttlecraft “Funny Face” and then returning to the bridge where Zora is again playing the movie. Although possible, the majority of dreams are in the first person. It would be unusual to dream a story from someone else’s viewpoint where you’re a secondary character. Then again, Zora isn’t human. Who knows what AIs dream of. Electric sheep maybe?

Craft says goodbye to Zora in “Calypso”

THEORY 3: “Calypso” is still in the future and episodes aren’t linked

It’s also possible that beyond the aforementioned links, the timelines from “Calypso” and “Face the Strange” are not directly linked. Zora’s musical tastes and use of her “Zora Vision” POV is something that will evolve regardless and so the future seen in “Calypso” is still to come. To completely tie it into the canon, some explanation could be made for why the ship had to be de-retrofitted before being abandoned for the best part of 1,000 years. The Discovery team didn’t know season 5 would be their last, so tying up the “Calypso” loose end and directly linking to Discovery’s final fate probably wasn’t a part of the plan.

The Discovery crew faces their future at the end of “Face the Strange”

Whatever will be, will be

There is a nice poetry to the “dream” theory, so that is our preferred way to look at it. The most likely explanation is that we’re not supposed to know. “Calypso” is an intriguing (and, to be honest, beautifully told) look at the Discovery’s possible future. While it’s been hinted at in Discovery , the Short Treks episode probably works best as a fun “what if.” The sequence in “Face the Strange,” besides serving as a warning to Burnham and Rayner of the price of failure in their mission, also offered Sean Cochran and the show’s producers a fun tip of the hat to “Calypso” as well as offering an enigmatic hint as to its connection to Discovery .

From Short Treks “Calypso”

But what do you have to say? Let us know in the comments below

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definitely on the “Dream Team”, it’s the only one that makes sense

Is it just me or was there some exciting plan to jump forward where the Federation was so gone what was left had gone wrong and only the Discovery reunited with the crew could rekindle it, then they chickened out all “there is no way we can do a Trek show without mommy Starfleet Command there to help!!”

I definitely sense a tension along those lines. The beginning of s3 certainly seemed to point in that direction. They could’ve been Robin Hoods.

You’ve nailed the particular item about TREK that has frustrated me endlessly since the mid-80s. I never felt it had to be adventures set within Starfleet. After they went rogue in TSFS, I thought the crew should live out their golden years on the BoP/Bounty, and that the money production saved on matte shots and other earthcentric filler like spacedock could be put into showing some actual strange new worlds. Would also allow more time for the supporting cast and for a genuine ‘band of bros and sis’ feel among them. (and frankly, Starfleet didn’t deserve them after all the political paranoia evinced post-Genesis … suddenly this evolved future civilization is coming off contemporary, feeling more shadowy-Watergate than I could see as remotely credible.)

The key bit that informs my take on TREK comes from David Gerrold when he talked about how good drama revolves around ‘Kirk has a decision to make’ and not ‘Kirk is in danger.’ The original series buttressed that by often having the ship out on the rim where he couldn’t rely on timely responses from the hierarchy and had to make hard calls on his own. What better way to take that further than to have them on the Bounty, getting into situations and making ethical choices that DON’T have to cowtow to a distant and possibly unreliable bureaucracy?

I also though DS9 (which I really really like, far above any other followup to TOS), should have turned a corner with Sisko supporting the Maquis, not hunting them down like Starfleet’s pit bull. But again, that would have put them outside the auspices of ‘mommy Starfleet’ as you say.

I don’t know if I’d have stuck with DSC in s3 even if they had upheld this ANDROMEDA-style take on things, just because TPTB didn’t have the golden-platinum crutch of Anson Mount to keep the show going in spite of the bad writing. But I’d have probably at least considered watching it, just to see how they dealt with things.

I think that is the problem with Trek now… e instant communication and thousands of starships to back you up, and the adventures of your single starship on the frontier just don’t seem to matter as much. In TOS, Kirk makes the wrong decision and it’s intergalactic war and millions of lives on the line. In TNG the best episodes is where Picard is compromised by the Borg and they get to take over or destroy the starfleet. DS9 rectifies this by letting Sisko basically command the entire fleet (though it sure looks silly when space combat is lines of thousands of ships just running into thousands of other ships). I feel someone in Discovery was trying to fix the problem of being “out there” again (probably whoever put color into the big E bridge) and then got overruled (along with boring down of the big E bridge). Calypso basically hinted they would be left out there alone in some primitive starship. The fate of the entire Federation depending on their ability to rebuild alliances, rebuild ideals. You could explain the lack of far off magical tech by the fall. Instead they chickened out, I don’t know why, but it’s condemned Discovery to rather the rather bland where they literally have to have the Federation fall apart AGAIN to fix it. Anyone play Star Control 2? They need to make that into a TV show lol

kmart — I LOVE what you wrote here regarding the events post ST3:TSFS and really everything you said here. VERY insightful!

Thanks. As you come across my postings here, you’ll see I’m very big on exploring ‘treks not taken,’ including what they could have done with an Enterprise-B limited series.

Michael Chabon was the worst choice to write any Star Trek story. “Calypso” don’t fit in any possible way to canon.

Calypso was a great episode of Trek, and fairly beloved based on reviews at the time. Sorry it wasn’t for you!

“Calypso” is one of Star Trek’s best episodes, and it was written before later seasons of Discovery made it not fit canon.

Yeah, he’s terrible lol look at Picard Season 1? Embarrassingly bad.

He wrote the two best episodes of SHORT TREKS, “Calypso” and “Q&A.” He also did a great job with PICARD season one.

The first season of Picard was fantastic up until the two-part finale when it was (somehow) simultaneously drawn out and rushed. It felt like the original plan was for Picard to fully and truly die, but then either Stewart decided he wanted to continue with playing Picard, or TPTB intervened, but that was by far the biggest misstep in season 1.

Unfortunately, while season 1 was lauded by critics, it was mostly derided by fans. As such, subsequent seasons largely ignored some of the more intriguing idea introduced in season 1 – exploring the state of the Romulans post supernova (is the empire completely gone, are they trying to rebuild, etc.); exploring a bit more of the Zhat Vash (i.e. did it survive after the events of the finale) – but not too much more; what’s the general state of the Federation as it appears to have entered a bit of an isolationist state; and what’s up with the scary AI things as seen in the premonition and briefly in the season finale.

Alas, I highly doubt any of those ideas will be explored at this point.

Why does it need to fit into canon? It’s 1,000 years in the future.

Canon is overrated. Calypso was a lovely story and exactly what Trek should be doing.

I have very little confidence they’ll resolve this storyline between short treks & season 5. They would have explicitly made it apparent they were connecting to that short trek in that episode & not be so nuanced.

I’m imagining the extra shooting they did to make it a “fitting series finale” is along the lines of Poochie from the Simpsons…I have to go now, my planet needs me. [poochie died in space during his trip home].

I hope they never clearly explain it and leave a sense of mystery. “Calypso” was so lovely, partially because it wasn’t concerned with overly pat canon connections.

To this day I always wondered how this story came around? It seems weird it would be a coincidence Chabon set this story so far in the future a season before it happened on the show itself. But then you have to wonder if he was told directly the plan then what were the parameters? How far could he go with it? Did they always know it was something they would have to deal with and had a plan or was it all after the fact?

I would love if someone just talked about the short and how it came about? Maybe we get it after the show ends.

My guess is that Chabon et al. wanted to create a wild future possible story line for Discovery that was outside any continuity restraints or existing plans they had. Maybe Calypso served as a pilot for where Discovery eventually went with its future jump, even if the details were ultimately quite different.

As you note, maybe Chabon will someday do a commentary track on the story and reveal its origin. He was quite communicative about his work on Trek while he was doing it.

There’s also still the open question, who upgraded the probe that Pike and Tyler fought with

Wasn’t it just Control in the future?

I’m squarely in the camp that I just don’t care to see it explained in any way. Whatever plan Chabon had to tie in this flash forward was dropped a long time ago, and it will be nothing more than a shoehorn explanation, at best.. with no story payoff. Just let it be, and make up your own head canon if you want to.

Yep. I still wish Enterprise hadn’t felt it necessary to explain the Klingon foreheads.

I generally find a lot of these genre “and that’s why x has y” explanations pretty thin. I don’t need to see how Indiana Jones got his scar, how Nick Fury lost an eye or how McCoy got his nickname.

There’s something to be said about leaving some things to the imagination.

Small point to respond to but just gotta say – I actually kind of like the Enterprise explanation for the ridges. I just don’t think they needed to bend over backwards to explain it away. A simple dialogue exchange in a random episode would have been enough.

I loved Calypso and I am VERY OK with it having been Zora’s dream, or in-universe really happening in that alternate future with a few inconsistencies. I have a feeling (no idea) that this is all we will get regarding Calypso and I’m OK with that — not everything needs to be explained.

Calypso was one of the most beautiful, artful pieces of Trek ever made. I almost wish it had been expanded into some kind of standalone feature-length piece.

Agreed, it was beautiful!

Based on what happened in Season 2, Calypso was seemed to be a red herring for the crew abandoning the Discovery with the Sphere data, which allowed it to gain sentience. It was a possible future that was averted when they took the Discovery into the far future.

It was a lovely episode, but it really didn’t fit into continuity, both before and now.

For me, it makes more sense that “Calypso” be in the same time-line as season 2 if the Red Angel had not changed time by jumping into the 32nd century. No jump, no refit.

I was wondering what they’d do, as two of the other three first season Short Treks did, indeed, tie in.

But I always saw the thousand year reference, together with “V’draysh” being used in Season Three, as pointing to an abandoned option for Season Three- they jump forward, the crew temporarily abandons the ship, the Federation has gone bad (or is seen as having done so), Calypso happens, the crew returns, and we pick up from there.

There is a possibility that Zora de-evolved the ship during repairs as she became more senile after 100s of years of isolation and being alone. We’ve seen the DOTS repair and repaint many times. Maybe, with Zora’s confused directions, they repaired the ship to its earlier version. You’ve gotta love Star Trek! There are always possibilities.

Yeah the DOTs and programable matter means Zora could have refit Disco back to the earlier form as she got sentimental in her old age and Isolation. I just view it as, yes, it was an extension of the “bad future” seen in this episode.

I remember enjoying this short when it came out. It would probably be cool to leave it as-is, not explain anything at all. A mystery piece.

I agree, Calypso was an intriguing and beautifully told story.

If it’s all Zora’s dream—and the writers don’t bother to clue us in to that, a la Data getting a whole episode where it is made very clear that he is experimenting with dreaming—that’s super lazy writing . I’ll come back to this.

I could be fine with ‘What if?’ Trek stories that show us events in an unexplained, divergent timeline. I will point to Marvel’s animated What If? show as proof of the viability of this storytelling approach for a modern, expansive, TV & film franchise.

I have just one, big problem: the entirety of Star Trek as a franchise, to date.

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Star Trek TV and movies haven’t historically done pure ‘What If?’ storytelling. In fact, Trek writers across the decades have worked hard to preserve the coherence of the ‘Prime’ timeline and any offshoots or variations we see.

Starting with Mirror, Mirror and all the way through Discovery’s adventures in the mirror universe, Trek TV writers have bent over backwards to help us understand what we were seeing, whenever we saw a divergent timeline.

For all the many time travel stories (and all of Janeway’s headaches caused by temporal paradoxes), the writers have always tried to connect the dots for us.

Even the Kelvin-verse movies spent precious screen time showing how that alternate timeline diverged from Trek ‘Prime.’ We got a passing-of-the-torch scene with two Spocks (Nimoy and Quinto) and so forth, to really make sure we understood.

This is important because as the audience, we want to enjoy time with these characters we love. When an incoherent storyline distracts us from going on the adventure with these beloved characters, we get frustrated. The plot can be twisty and momentarily confusing, but it ultimately exists to provide opportunities for Kirk, Sisko, Burnham, et al to face challenges, be heroic, and grow—not make us go, “well I’ve seen the whole show, and it just doesn’t make any sense.”

The so-called ‘beta canon’ of books, comics, fan-made productions, etc. is another animal, of course. There, anything goes. And it has to be this way because after so many hundreds of TV episodes and so many movies, it gets really hard for writers to keep it all connected. I think a fair argument could be made that there is now way too much canon to keep tying everything together perfectly and tell exciting, new stories with familiar characters. That’s fine for books and comics and whatnot. There you have the freedom to take our familiar characters and play with them in a new sandbox if you want to.

But the TV and movie writers have always given us exposition—and a fair amount of technobabble—at least attempting to preserve a unified chronology of the Star Trek universe. They didn’t alway succeed 100%, but we’ve never seen them just throw in the towel on trying to make it all make sense.

If Calypso ends up being an unexplained ‘What if?’ it would be a first for ‘alpha canon’ Trek, I think.

I don’t hate the idea of Star Trek doing this, but could the writers / producers maybe give us a heads-up that they’re going this way? Or do it with some consistency instead of a one-off Short Trek that leaves fans wondering and theorizing?

Back to Marvel’s What If? series—there at least you have The Watcher giving you some intro voiceover explaining what’s going on. You see Timmy, audiences like mystery and surprise, but also really appreciate it when you make things understandable .

My conclusion: in the context of Star Trek, this is just lazy writing and/or a willful disregard for the unwritten rules of logical storytelling that Trek has established with its fan base for decades. It seems especially lazy or careless since Face The Strange bothers to hint at some answers, but doesn’t actually give us any that make sense.

Granted, we still have a few Disco episodes to go. They might surprise us by revisiting this whole debacle and clearing things up, Trek-style. They’d have to jump through some hoops to reconcile the discrepancies, but we’ve seen plenty of crazy stories. It’s sci-fi, anything can happen. It was a chroniton explosion. Q’s son did it. Whatever.

Somehow, I doubt these writers care . Discovery has always been a show that prioritized ham-fisted emotionalism over logical storytelling. I think that will be its legacy. Prove me wrong, Discovery writers! Time is running out, and as far as I know there’s no alternative timeline in which you will get a season six to be entertaining and coherent.

Screen Rant

Star trek: voyager’s paris & torres relationship almost didn’t happen says robert duncan mcneill.

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Every Voyager Character Who Has Returned In Star Trek (& How)

The conners season 6 ben twist sets up roseanne’s decades-long plot hole resolution, star trek: ds9 guest star was almost tng's captain picard.

• Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres might not have become a couple if a Star Trek: Voyager season 3 episode had turned out differently.
• "Blood Fever" was originally meant to feature Tuvok more heavily but was changed to Tom at the last minute.
• The episode accelerated Tom and B'Elanna's romance and solidified their relationship, leading to their love confession in season 4.

Tom Paris actor Robert Duncan McNeill revealed that Star Trek: Voyager almost didn't make his character and B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson) a couple in season 3. After their official get-together at the beginning of season 4, Tom and B'Elanna became the only stable couple among Voyager 's cast of characters for the rest of the show's seven seasons. Their relationship ended up going further than most Star Trek couples , culminating in their marriage and the birth of their daughter in season 7.

While the seeds of Tom and B'Elanna's future romance were planted as far back as season 1, any explicit hint of their relationship wasn't cemented until Voyager season 3, episode 16, "Blood Fever." During the episode, Ensign Vorik (Alexander Enberg) infected B'Elanna with his Vulcan Pon Farr, causing her to choose Tom as he mate while the two were trapped in a system of caves on an alien planet. However, "Blood Fever" almost forwent setting up Tom and B'Elanna as a couple in favor of a different storyline.

Star Trek: Voyager's beloved characters have returned in Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Lower Decks, and especially Star Trek: Prodigy.

Robert Duncan McNeill Explains Why “Blood Fever” Wasn’t Supposed To Start Tom And B’Elanna’s Relationship

Another character was supposed to feature more heavily in "blood fever".

In an interview with Star Trek Monthly , issue 28 around the time of the episode's airing, Robert Duncan McNeill revealed that "Blood Fever" was originally supposed to star Tuvok (Tim Russ) and B'Elanna as the episode's duo , but that it was changed to Tom at the last minute. According to McNeill, Voyager 's creative team decided to replace Tuvok with Tom almost on a whim, but the decision ultimately had huge implications for Voyager 's storyline due to it fully cementing Tom and B'Elanna's future relationship. Read McNeill's full quote below:

"Originally that episode was written for B'Elanna to go into Pon Farr and to be trapped in the caves with Tuvok, who would help her go through this and deal with it because he's Vulcan and he's been through it. At the very last minute, literally like the day before we started shooting that episode, they thought, 'Why don't we make it Tom Paris and B'Elanna trapped, and let's see what happens with that.' So they made this change."

Logically, having Tuvok be the one to help B'Elanna in "Blood Fever" would have made sense. As McNeill pointed out, Tuvok had experienced the Pon Farr and was equipped to help B'Elanna manage her symptoms if not alleviate them. Tuvok was still a big presence in "Blood Fever," and was the first person to realize what was wrong with B'Elanna as well as Voyager 's source for Vulcan knowledge about Pon Farr. However, the decision to jump-start Tom and B'Elanna's relationship was a good one, as the romance might have never come to fruition otherwise.

Would Paris And Torres Still Have Become A Couple Without “Blood Fever”?

Tom and b'elanna's future as a couple might have been more rocky.

Although it's possible Tom and B'Elanna would still have gotten together had "Blood Fever" played out differently, the chances would have been much slimmer. The Paris/Torres relationship had been teased subtly in earlier seasons, but "Blood Fever" brought their feelings out in the open and was arguably the catalyst for the two finally admitting their love for each other at the beginning of Star Trek: Voyager season 4 . Tom and B'Elanna's love confession coming so quickly on "Blood Fever's" heels seems like no coincidence when looked at in hindsight.

Ultimately, Star Trek: Voyager made the right decision to feature Tom more heavily in "Blood Fever" and the episode was the perfect beginning to Tom and B'Elanna's love story.

It's impossible to say exactly how Tom and B'Elanna's relationship would have evolved without "Blood Fever." However, the development of their romance would likely have taken much longer , which may have cheated audiences out of seeing nearly as much of their relationship progression or resulted in the creative team getting bored and dropping the storyline entirely, leaving a lot of unresolved potential. Ultimately, Star Trek: Voyager made the right decision to feature Tom more heavily in "Blood Fever" and the episode was the perfect beginning to Tom and B'Elanna's love story.

Source: Star Trek Monthly , issue 28

Star Trek: Voyager is available to stream on Paramount+.

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The fifth entry in the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek: Voyager, is a sci-fi series that sees the crew of the USS Voyager on a long journey back to their home after finding themselves stranded at the far ends of the Milky Way Galaxy. Led by Captain Kathryn Janeway, the series follows the crew as they embark through truly uncharted areas of space, with new species, friends, foes, and mysteries to solve as they wrestle with the politics of a crew in a situation they've never faced before. 

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