TREKMOVIE:

"If you are looking for something deeper, the episodes we’ve seen so far come up short. There are decisions, moments, and revelations that aren’t given enough screen time while the focus is elsewhere; this happens as early as the the first episode of season 4, where the story ends and there’s at least a full minute of (admittedly beautiful) VFX work after it’s over. It looks beautiful, but that time was really needed in other scenes to dig into, like Captain Pike wrestling with a massive decision and some moments of revelation that would have been fun to see play across our characters’ faces.

https://trekmovie.com/2026/07/22/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-season-4-mostly-spoiler-free-early-review-big-swings-still-abound/

On the positive side, there are some surprises, including the long-awaited puppet episode. Is it a gimmick? Sure. Does it make as little sense as the premise in TNG’s “Rascals”? Yep. But once we’re there, it digs into the whole idea of being puppets from a human(oid) perspective and you’re soon buying in and along for the ride. Not every episode is as successful at this. Perhaps the biggest issue, and one that comes up every season, is the short episode count. With only 10 of them in season 4, every minute feels precious, so doing extended, sillier scenes “just for fun” means not enough story exploration, less character development, and lowered investment from the viewer… at least this one. The big question, after a genre swing, is “why,” and this season, the “why” can be elusive.

Any long-running franchise needs to constantly reinvent itself in order to stay relevant. It’s just a little odd that, at a time when television is a more prestigious format than ever, Strange New Worlds has gone in the opposite direction. In 60 years of Star Trek, the franchise has never felt more lightweight. It’s also odd that with the more YA-centric SFA also airing, Strange New Worlds feels like the more immature of the two current shows.

We’ve been promised that, as the show moves towards its conclusion in the truncated final season, it will feel more like the Star Trek we know and love. Based on what we’ve seen so far of season 4, it’s got a long way to go in a short space of time, but we’ve also heard that it’s the second half of the season where that journey really kicks in. For now, it does feel like an extension of season 3.

[...]

Star Trek has always had strong, investment-worthy characters, and Strange New Worlds keeps that tradition going. That said, the character growth and drama sometimes feels like it’s happening offscreen or fluctuating between episodes, and we see the results but not the process. Character drama is high, but development feels short.

Some characters do explore new territory: La’an in particular seems headed down a specific path, one tied into her background and giving her more to deal with than just her romance with Spock, which has migrated into cute couple territory by the beginning of the season. And we’re seeing Pike navigate a post-Batel world, adding to the weight he already carries, knowing his beeping chair fate. But others are still all over the place. Ethan Peck always delivers when it comes to Spock, but his path has been far from linear and it’s sometimes hard to calibrate where he is on his path toward logic.

There’s at least one new and fun relationship developing: the one between Scotty and Ortegas. It’s not romantic (and that’s good, as we had too much of that last season), but it’s an entertaining thread that runs through multiple episodes, starting off with some fun pilot v. engineer feuding, slowly transforming along the way. [...]

There are also a few guest stars worth noting. Gia Sandhu returns as T’Pring and really delivers (without giving clarity to exactly where Spock is at, romance-wise), and Dave Foley (Kids in the Hall, NewsRadio) gets to play a weird and wacky character in episode 4. (This isn’t his first appearance in the franchise; he previously voiced a character on Lower Decks.) Some TOS characters will pop up too, no surprise, but they may not be the ones you’d expect.

As always, the show looks beautiful. The sets, the ships, the VFX, the costumes, and makeup are all creative and attention-getting, and we do indeed get to to some strange new worlds with different environments and inhabitants. And if you like pointy shoulder costumes and old-school sci-fi vibes, you’ll enjoy the aliens in the season premiere. They also seem to be much more confident and adept at using the AR wall. And yes… there are dinosaurs. And yes, they look great!

[...]

The trouble here is that the genres (or big swings) seem to be the rule rather than the exception. There’s a sense that the writers started with “what if we did this?” and then worked backwards to try and build a story around it. As a result, the show often seems lightweight, sometimes dipping into intriguing topics and moments but leaping out before we really get a chance to explore. Modern Trek has tended to move away from the franchise’s traditional allegorical storytelling to focus more on character drama. At a time when there’s a lot to say about the state of the world, this feels somewhat off-brand for the franchise. (That said, they’ve also had to learn when that doesn’t work, like a whole season of Discovery about uncertainty, rooted in our communal experience during the Covid pandemic, dragged on despite thematically echoing what was happening in the real world at the time.)

For those who want to know what swings to expect:

401 – Dinosaurs and pointy-shouldered aliens (“Valles Marineris”)

402 – Horror (“The Griffin Incident”)

403 – A romp (“Human Best Friend”)

404 – Film Noir (“A Case of Chiaroscuro”)

405 – Puppets (“Level-Five Transporter Accident”)

406 – Disaster movie (“Off-Hour”)

The season premiere, dinosaurs or no, feels like a regular Star Trek episode with its twists & turns, striking visuals, moral quandaries, and lots of talk about what makes the ideals of the Federation and Starfleet so important, even though it doesn’t fully dig into the nitty-gritty of the moral dilemma at the heart of the episode. [...]

While it’s undoubtedly fun seeing the crew get turned into puppets (and yes, they really do go there, and bring some interesting ideas along for the ride), others, such as the horror episode (being previewed this weekend at SDCC) feel largely pointless, becoming an exercise in style over substance, dominating the story instead of supporting it."

Iain Robertson and Laurie Ulster (TrekMovie.com)

Full article:

https://trekmovie.com/2026/07/22/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-season-4-mostly-spoiler-free-early-review-big-swings-still-abound/

Finally got the frame through for this 18 x 36 print from Vice press, wish I'd gone for the foil variant now. But a great looking print. Now I need a place to mount it.

​

Happy 10th Anniversary to the latest installment of the Kelvin series. Shame we never got a fourth.

...it went alright!

Unfortunately, my wife had a pretty bad migraine today, so while she was up for watching and appreciating the film, she didn't have much to say and was in some pain during it, which definitely will have coloured her enjoyment of it. So this is gonna be a shorter post.

Still, she did enjoy the film, odd though it was.

She broadly had the same complements and critiques we all do; Why is Kirk going to Genesis to get Spock's body when he has no clue Spock's body's been resurrected, and the Katra (soul, I guess?) is in McCoy's body? They don't need Spock's corpse, Sarak kept going on about his SOUL, which is in McCoy, so why bother going to Genesis? Especially when even David and Saavik were surprised the torpedo even landed there, and apparently it only did so by accident when it got caught into the fluctuating gravity well? Shouldn't he just be going to Vulcan?

(The answer is, originally it was going to open the movie with the Grissom, and not the Enterprise. David and Saavik were meant to find Spock's empty casket, report it to Starfleet, and Kirk was meant to get word that Spock's body might have been returned to life, hence why he and Sarek got the idea to go grab the body. But in editing, it was decided to open with the Enterprise rather than make the audience wait half an hour for it, so a plot hole accidentally got created in post)

The funny thing is, she got distracted by our cat when the title of the film popped up, so she had no clue what the film was called until after it was over! As a result, she was speculating what the plot was going to be. When they run across a child, she exclaims "Wait... is that Spock resurrected as a child?!" It suddenly dawned on her what the plot would be.

She was happy to have Spock back. Of all the characters on Trek, he's her favourite. It also lets her continue shipping him and Kirk, a thing she likes to joke about (I bring this up every time but if you haven't seen my prior posts, she has no clue there are decades of Kirk/Spock fanfics, or that those fanfics helped keep the franchise and fandom alive in the 70s, she came to this conclusion entirely independently of the fandom).

She took great joy in Uhura FINALLY getting her cheeky and confident personality back. We hadn't seen it since the very early TOS days so it was nice seeing Nichelle Nichols indulge in that moment at last.

Ah yes... Chekov's infamous pink monster outfit. My wife had a few things to say about that nightmare outfit. We took turns making fun of it. It's especially funny that everyone else in the scene gets to look a unique brand of cool, then you have Chekov dressing like a weird creepy child doll.

Not sure if it was the migraine or not, but she didn't feel much when the Enterprise was destroyed, nor when David died. For fans the destruction of the Enterprise was usually the big emotional gut-punch of the film but for my wife it was just another thing which happened. She didn't really get as attached to the Enterprise as the rest of us.

Though she did say something which made me giggle as the Enterprise broke up in the atmosphere: "Oop, Elon lost another rocket again!"

Towards the end of the film, her brow furrowed as she asked "Hey, how come that Klingon captain looks like the guy from Back to the Future?"
"That IS the guy from Back to the Future, sweetie, it's Christopher Lloyd!"
She felt a bit embarrassed about that and said "Oh, haha, that would explain it, then!"

Come the end of the film, she simply said:

"I liked 2 better."

Nonetheless, solid film, kept us engaged and interested, and she did like it!

Now we're all prepped to watch Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in September! This weekly watch through the films was all in preparation for that film hitting cinemas here in the UK in a few months, so it'll be a while until I post again. I'm really looking forward to it!

The two actors discuss how the love for ‘Star Trek’ itself and everything that follows in that universe is generational

TREKMOVIE: "The brand new August issue of SFX Magazine features a Strange New Worlds cover story, including an interview with showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers. The pair tease the themes for the first four episodes, promising we can expect a “fun homage to pulpy, Edgar Rice Burroughs adventure serials, a bona fide Trek ghost story, a The Hangover-esque shore leave romp, and a noir-ish thriller that goes as far as offering a sci-fi explanation for its moody, genre-appropriate monochrome.”

https://trekmovie.com/2026/07/17/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-showrunners-defend-continuity-reveal-season-4-episode-themes/

This adds context to the episode titles revealed yesterday with the first four being:

1. “Valles Marineris”
2. “The Griffin Incident”
3. “Human Best Friend”
4. “A Case of Chiaroscuro”

Speaking to SFX, Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers pushed back against allegations from some fans that the show has taken too many liberties to remain in canon with the original Star Trek. For example, Lieutenant Kirk frequently meeting up with Captain Pike’s crew in Strange New Worlds has stressed the line from Star Trek’s “The Menagerie” that Kirk only met Pike when Pike was promoted to fleet captain.

Though we don’t expect to see them again, the Gorn morphed from being a seemingly unknown race in Star Trek to an intergalactic threat in Strange New Worlds, despite Strange New Worlds taking place before Star Trek. “Despite the fact that some people will say we’re not in the same continuity [as the Original Series] we believe we are,” Goldsman told SFX.

We know we’ll see a young David Marcus, Kirk’s son, in at least one episode this season, and Myers said it was an opportunity to “rethink” why Kirk wasn’t part of David’s life growing up. “Kirk is heroic, and none of us wanted to imagine that he is a lousy father, so that offered a lot of opportunities about how to get into his mind, emotionally,” Myers told SFX.

Goldsman reiterated his promise that all the characters’ arcs will be tied up by the end of next year’s Season 5, when characters like La’an Noonien Singh, Erica Ortegas and Number One are no longer aboard the Enterprise, and Chief Medical Officer M’Benga cedes the role to Dr. McCoy. [...]

Strange New Worlds is nothing if not consistent in taking “swings” that Goldsman and Myers say push the boundaries of Trek in classic and new ways. In the SFX story, Goldsman said he doesn’t “think it is very easy to break Star Trek.” They’ll put that to the test with their puppet episode. Myers said they look at each episode like a movie and ask themselves how they can make each one still feel like Star Trek. [...]"

Bobby Oler (TrekMovie.com)

Full article:

https://trekmovie.com/2026/07/17/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-showrunners-defend-continuity-reveal-season-4-episode-themes/

You can read the full profile with Goldsman and Myers, including why they say there will not be a special episode marking the show’s 60th anniversary , by picking up the August edition of SFX.

New merch dropped saying SNW (2022- ) & Prodigy (2021- ).

Nothing about this episode makes any sense, at least not to me, and it's frustrating to watch.

Nog not saying "cool beans kids, but I'm a fully commissioned officer and you'r all cadets so we're going back home, kthx".

The rapidity with which Nog crosses over to the dark side in exchange for a promotion to Lt Cdr, and they even got his rank pips wrong as they're those of a Lt. (gg wardrobe!).

Then there's Jake being TBH kind of a whiny prick, moping around and of course "Captain" Waters' crippling addiction to space oxys.

Thankfully plot armor made it so when they abandoned ship they weren't captured, tortured, then eaten by the Jem Hadar but got away clean. Phew!

No wonder they changed it from Nog and Kira to Nog and Jake, Kira wouldn't have put up with any crapola.

They don't even need to dump every DS9 season at once they could trickle them out every few months.

There are some things about why a backdoor pilot episode of Deep Space Nine was never made due to the fact that Picard appeared in one episode since TNG aired its sixth or seventh and final season.

This is, ultimately, just a TOS episode. Except, instead of a god turning out to be an alien, it is the Devil who is an alien imposter. The episode is fine, at best, but as I was recently rewatchibg it I couldn't escape the idea of what would be different if the alien imposter masquerading as the devilish Ardra wasn't actually an imposter? What if this was the actual Ardra who had made a deal a thousand years before with the ancestors of these people and what if she actually, probably had interfered in their history in ways that benefited them and brought them prosperity?

Suddenly the surety gets much more interesting. You don't have to make her an actual god-like being. She doesn't need to be a Q, for example. She could just be like the Squire, an alien with technology so advanced that in her relative relationship to the people she interacts with she might as well be a goddess. Even if the Enterprise can prove that she isn't the Devil, does it matter if she actually is who she claims and did what she said she would do?

Now, instead of a TOS rehash, we have an episode about the Prime Directive. And we could explore a little explore idea. So often, when an advanced species gives a less technologically advanced species technology it goes poorly. Here you could have it go perfectly well for everyone. Now, you can explore whether or not the Prime Directive is always a valid way of handling contact. You can also explore the idea that if the contract is valid, does Picard have a right to invalidate it simply because she isn't the actual Devil itself? How much do you get to change another culture "for its own good," even when you're factually right about all your claims?

All of these ideas and more are much more interesting to me than Ardra simply being an imposter. It seems like they're was a lot of potential here that the writers didn't capitalize on that they could have to make a much more memorable episode.

COLLIDER:

"While much of that can be attributed to Roddenberry's indignation at being ousted from his creative role in the film franchise, he did make a point: Paramount sold Star Trek's soul for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan's bigger box-office. Roddenberry felt the movie militarized Starfleet, with its excessive violence at odds with the pacifist ideals he had instilled in the franchise from the start, best exemplified in Starfleet's Prime Directive. One can debate if his views are justified or not, but it's hard to deny the distinct change in tone from the first film to the second, from philosophy to frontier justice.

https://collider.com/star-trek-4-voyage-home-fixed-franchise/

And if Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan "broke" Roddenberry's vision of the franchise, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock stepped on the pieces. Its very existence is attributed to reversing the death of the ever-popular Spock (Leonard Nimoy), tainting the film's legitimacy within the franchise. The militarization of Starfleet was still very much in play, and the exploration and discovery that drove the original series had fallen by the wayside.

But the biggest thorn in the creator's side came from the decision to destroy the USS Enterprise, which Roddenberry saw as an essential part of the franchise, as important as any one character. While the film did serve as a Band-Aid of sorts, with the themes of loyalty and friendship hewing far closer to Roddenberry's vision, it didn't fix what had been broken.

[...]

The Star Trek franchise was at a crossroads: would the fourth Star Trek film continue the box-office-friendly trajectory it was currently on, arguably more Star Wars than Star Trek; or would it restore Roddenberry's vision? The answer: Both. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home stood out as the highest-grossing Star Trek movie until the release of 2009's Star Trek, which rebooted the franchise.

[...]

Here is where the film starts franchise repairs. Other sci-fi films would have spent the entire run time searching for a way to destroy probe, wrapping up the movie with a spectacular final battle that sees it blown to bits. But Star Trek IV allows the crew of the ex-USS Enterprise to take the time to study what the monolith is searching for, before realizing that it is the sound of extinct humpback whales. And the plan they formulate involves not confrontation, but going back in time to explore the "strange new world" of 1986 San Francisco.

Again, it would have been easy to simply take what they needed and go, but the peaceful, right way to do it is to gather what is necessary without resorting to violence. This also gives each crew member a chance to shine, and brings back the humor and optimism that had been missing from the last two installments. And when the whales they plan on taking home are under threat from a whaling ship, they hilariously uncloak their Klingon Bird of Prey and teach the whalers a lesson they'll never forget. [...]

The whales answer the signal, the giant monolith goes away, and all is well in the Federation — and the franchise — again.

In David Alexander's Star Trek Creator: The Authorized Biography of Gene Roddenberry, Alexander notes that Roddenberry loved the film; its anti-war, pro-environment and optimistic messaging, combined with the central dilemma being resolved with intelligence and humor, endeared it to the Star Trek creator. It was, and is, a return to form, capped off with the introduction of the newly christened USS Enterprise, NCC-1701-A, righting the wrong and symbolizing that the franchise has been fixed. Until Star Trev V: The Final Frontier screwed it up again, that is."

Lloyd Farley (Collider)

Full article:

https://collider.com/star-trek-4-voyage-home-fixed-franchise/

SCREENRANT:

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3's finale, "New Life and New Civilizations," resolved the Starship Enterprise's conflict with the ancient evil called the Vezda, which tied directly to the destiny of Captain Marie Batel (Melanie Scrofano). Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) had to let go of Batel, but not before she gifted them with an alternate future where they lived happily and raised a family together.

https://screenrant.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-anson-mount-favorite-episode-tng-inner-light/

At the Italian Global Series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds roundtable with Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn, and Celia Rose Gooding, ScreenRant's Ben Gibbons asked Anson Mount whether Pike's experience with Batel changed how he approached the character, considering Chris' own tragic destiny that lies ahead. Read Anson's response below:

ANSON MOUNT: "Yeah, in order for the series to even start, we had to deal with the question of ‘how do you have a sense of adventure and consequence when you know what your third act is’? And where do you find meaning? And the answer to that is the journey is the destination, and it's a lesson Pike kept having to learn over the course of the series.

I don't think it ever occurred to him that there could be a gift so huge and precious as what Marie gave to him in the living of that life together, and it kind of gave him back something that he had had to write off. I just thought it was great writing in that in that way.

It harkened back to probably my favorite episode of Star Trek ever, which is “The Inner Light” from The Next Generation, when Picard gets hit by this bolt from a strange craft and he wakes up as a different person on this planet, and then eventually gives in to it and lives this entire life. It was a sort of a direct reference to that at the same time."

The penultimate episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation season 5, "The Inner Light," saw Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) live the life of Kamin, an inhabitant of the long-dead world, Kataan. Picard experienced decades as Kamin, who had a wife and children. Picard realized he was meant to carry the knowledge of Kataan's existence when he returned to his reality aboard the USS Enterprise-D.

Similarly, Captains Pike and Batel were able to avoid their separate tragic destiny, as Marie used her powers as the Beholder to gift them both with a happy life where they raised a daughter and grew old together. However, Batel had to take her place as the immortal warden of the imprisoned Vezda, and Pike returned to his mission as Captain of the Enterprise."

John Orquiola (ScreenRant)

Full article:

https://screenrant.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-anson-mount-favorite-episode-tng-inner-light/

The other day, I posted to /tos that YouTube suggested a video showing Brent Spiner on To Tell the Truth, pretending to be someone else.

Today, it suggested Gene Roddenberry and two pretenders.

Why do I think that Rita Moreno was friends with Lucy, so should have been the one who would have actually met him?