just saw a star trek ad on twitch, it was showing clips of all the shows, then it said first contact day, is that a thing now or has it always been?

I could be wrong, but I think this is the first time that there's been a coordinated corporate event to "celebrate" it. I think it's just a cynical attempt by Paramount to advertise and shine a spotlight on their streaming service which was rebranded just last month to Paramount + (formerly CBS All Access).

The trailer for Picard season 2 is out. Despite how they kept saying that this wasn't more TNG, the 1st season focused on Data and now it looks like season 2 will focus on another TNG character. I guess it's for the better as the episode with Troi and Riker was the best one and the new cast is mostly meh.

in before they cgi young picard

The Trial Never Ends!

That teaser better be well thought out. I loved the Q storylines and the philosophizing Q episodes always had.

I hope it's not a rehash of Tapestry or All Good Things. The way they're talking about time and how you can't go back and do things over is basically what Tapestry was about. And then All Good Things was about Picard going back in the past and future, gathering his friends and saving the galaxy.

Guinan is supposed to be back too, which would make sense since they're bringing back Q as well.

i think the ship on his desk was the USS Stargazer that JLP commanded for twenty years and was destroyed in a fight with the ferengi pre TNG, maybe will play into season 2? season 1 stunk and i low key hate Q stories so im not planning on loving it

Same here, never understood the love for Q, every time an episode brought him in I cringed and knew I'd be in for something I'd not likely enjoy

The tablet sitting on Picard's dining room table I believe is this.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki...ts%20in%202374.

Maybe we're going to get some lore about Q vs. Guinan vs. Prophet/Pah-Wraiths, you know, three of the time traveling entities with the most screen time so far in the franchise?

The next Star Trek movie has been officially announced. The release date will be June 9, 2023.

....and that's it. They haven't said a single other thing about it.

As far as we know there were 4 Star Trek films in development:

1) The one where Chris Hemsworth comes back as Kirk Sr. and was to be directed by S.J. Clarkson. This would feature the Kelvin cast.
2) The Quentin Tarantino one with a story by Tarantino and script written by Mark L. Smith. Supposedly this was based on the TOS episode "A Piece of the Action." After initially expressing interest in directing it, Tarantino later said that he wasn't going to direct it but could still help with the development of it. This would also feature the Kelvin cast.
3) The Noah Hawley one that seems like it was going to be have a more cerebral story and feature a completely new cast of characters.
4) The Kalinda Vasquez one. She is a writer on Star Trek: Discovery. JJ Abrams' Bad Robot will be producing. No other details have been released.

It seems like the 4th one is the one currently on deck. After recently watching some youtube clips of the JJ Abrams movies, despite all their flaws, the casting was amazing on those. I love Scotty and McCoy especially. I would be excited for the Kelvin cast to return.

The dilemma with the movies is that Paramount wants Star Trek to be a blockbuster franchise, but the series has never really done well overseas so it's hard to see how they could get $1 billion in box office if they do another $300 million big budget one. The mid budget tier of movies has disappeared. Maybe they could try something small budget? Do a talky drama. After all, some of the best episodes have been about ethical debates. Even Wrath of Khan was mostly them talking over the viewscreens.

But Discovery has been utterly mediocre and it seems like they're going to do something along the lines of Discovery (which took influence from the JJ movies), rather than something interesting like the Tarantino one or the Noah Hawley one. So expectations are very muted at the moment.

Although the films are uneven, I also like the Kelvin cast so hopefully they will return. I guess the main issue there is money, especially for Hemsworth, Pine and even Saldana. Hard to see how they can keep this cost below £50m, and the money upfront will have to be good as the back end won't prop up their numbers.

The one thing that is a must is that they distance themselves from the Discovery mess. Almost all ST fans hate it, and if they start to boycott, the movie is dead in the water.

ST TNG S6E18: Starship Mine

Good episode, with Picard doing a John McClane to protect his Enterprise from what seems like terrorists, but turns out to be criminals. We know Patrick Stewart can go all Ahab/badass, and he lets a bit of whoop-ass out of the can in this one, comfortably killing bad guys with impunity by the end.

There's also some comedy interludes with Data impersonating what might be the most vacuous office in Star Fleet.

Tim Russ turns up in a minor role before we went on to be Tuvok in Voyager, and he has a lot of presence in a small part.


7/10

Just rewatched this one last week. Agree with you overall, but the bolded is easily the best part.

From an interview with Akiva Goldsman:

Oof

So why did they bother with it?

In other encouraging news, Strange New Worlds is confirmed to be an episodic, planet of the week-type show that is tonally liberal (i.e. they can do action one week, drama the next, comedy the next, etc.).

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/he...g-q-for-picard

this popped into my feed a few times and finally figured hey why not, only 1 minute into it and there's a sinatraesqe tribute song about how much the lounge singer misses the cast from deep space nine

don't know what to expect, but it's clear there's some intense dedication here and not just some documentary they winged on a whim, going to watch in full and report back when i get a chance



edit: lol seems to be age restricted, even more psyched now here's the youtube link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHixW9PLsAc

ST TNG S6E19: Lessons

Pretty good episode, with Picard getting romantically involved with a new officer. The romance is well written and believable, and it's interesting that the new officer bears more than a passing resemblance to Bev Crusher. There's some quite deep referencing back to 'Inner Light' (subtextual in the first half, right out in the open later on), and really the only thing wrong with it is it felt a little too pat an ending. I think this could have been a developed relationship over several episodes tbh.

Also interesting is it shines a light on the loneliness of command.

8/10

ST TNG S6E1920: The Chase

Fun detective story, involving a story that answers a significant question at the heart of Star Trek.... why are so many species humanoid, and how can they interbreed?

Interesting to see Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans and humans in a big old chase for the special whatsit.

8/10

ST TNG S6E1921: Frame of Mind

Star Trek does Jacob's Ladder/In The Mouth of Madness, with Jonathan Frakes giving a very solid perfornance of someone descending into confusion and near-madness. The technobabble they use to explain what happened is a bit goofy, but decent episode.

7/10

ST TNG S6E22: Suspicions

Very poor episode. I think hanging an episode on Crusher doing a whodunnit is totally fine, but the acting feels functional and wooden, the script is terrible and gets characters to say things that are really not in character in a purely functional and uninteresting way (Whoopi Goldberg is the only one in the whole episode that actually makes her lines work, even Stewart is struggling with this one, and the few Riker lines make him seem like a total tool), and it suffers from the voiceover from Crusher that just feels like its trying to patch over a first-draft script.

2/10

Picard season 2 trailer.



Looks terrible.

-------------------------------------------------

"Suspicions" episode is okay. Probably no better than average, but the Gates and Whoopi scenes elevate it above the very worst episodes.

is terrible...

-------------------------------------

The Picard trailer looks fine, but all 4 seasons of serialized, big budget Trek that they've done so far have been painfully mediocre so I'm expecting the same from season 2.

Strange New Worlds was the show I had high expectations for. Uhura and Nurse Chapel will be on the show, which is alright since it makes sense that some crew would carry over when Kirk became captain.

But there is also a Khan relative or descendant on the crew. So looks like they're going to double down on the fan service and rehashing. My guess is that her character arc is about overcoming the legacy of Khan and facing discrimination or something like that. I haven't watched Voyager but isn't that Seven of Nine's character arc, but with the borg? And I haven't seen DS9 but I know there's an "augment" character there as well who might have a similar character arc. There was also a report that T'Pring, the vulcan female from Amok Time, will appear on SNW.

And I bet there is a decent chance that Khan himself will appear on the show at some point and they will come up with some silly reason why they put him back in cryosleep and no one on the Enterprise remembers him in Space Seed.

I really hope the show doesn't become: "Space, the usual frontier. Our mission: To explore worlds we've already been to. To seek out old life and old civilizations. To boldly go where we've gone many times before."

ST TNG S6E23: Rightful Heir

Worf has a crisis of faith, meets Klingon Jesus, then gets caught up in the dynamics of the shifting power politics of the Klingon Empire. Odd but enjoyable.


6/10

And this marks the last appearance of Gowron in TNG, though he'll have several appearances in DS9.

I really liked Gowron's arc in this actually.