Star Trek | the m0vie blog

New Escapist Column! On “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” and Old Trek Tropes…

Posted on May 6, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist yesterday. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which is streaming weekly on Paramount+. The premiere released this week, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the series.

Strange New Worlds is very much a blast from the franchise’s past, essentially serving as a spin-off series from the original and unaired pilot The Cage. That feels somewhat appropriate, given that Strange New Worlds has little interest beyond nostalgically chasing the feeling of old Star Trek, trying to recapture the vague memory of the older franchise. The result is an episode that offers a shallow but efficient riff on classic stories like Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, and which ends with the suggestion that the key to world peace is that we should all become Star Trek fans.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Star Trek | Tagged: enterprise, escapist, nostalgia, star trek, star trek: strange new worlds, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Star Trek: Picard” and Storytelling Fundamentals…

Posted on May 5, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of Star Trek: Picard, which is streaming weekly on Paramount+. The final episode of the second season released this week, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the series.

On paper, the second season finale of Picard cycles through a series of checkboxes regarding the show’s long-form arcs, dutifully ticking off each of its obligations in a manner that could theoretically be satisfying. However, this just demonstrates how clumsy Picard is when it comes to storytelling fundamentals. There are interesting and big ideas at play in the second season of Picard, but the show frequently fails at finding ways to develop these ideas organically or cohesively.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Star Trek | Tagged: farewell, long-form, Narrative, picard, plotting, star trek: picard, storytelling, structure, the escapist, theme | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Star Trek: Picard” Squanders the Borg…

Posted on April 28, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of Star Trek: Picard, which is streaming weekly on Paramount+. The ninth episode of the second season released this week, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the series.

The second season of Picard has been a stew of nostalgia for nineties Star Trek, drawing particularly heavily from Star Trek: First Contact. This has inevitably seen the return of the Borg as a major threat. However, the second season of Picard falls into many of the familiar traps of the larger Star Trek franchise when it comes to handling probably the most iconic antagonists from the last thirty or forty years of the franchise. Picard knows the Borg are iconic and important, but has no idea what to do with them.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Star Trek | Tagged: borg, star trek, star trek: picard, villain decay | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! Make It So – Season 2, Episode 8 (“Mercy”)

Posted on April 25, 2022 by Darren

I am recapping Star Trek: Picard for The Escapist, and so was thrilled to join the wonderful Kurt North on Make It So: A Star Trek Universe Podcast to discuss the eighth episode of the second season, Mercy.

I have somewhat complicated feelings about Picard. There are parts of it that I love, and parts of it that I am a bit more skeptical about. One of the joys of coming into the podcast to discuss the episode was getting the chance to talk about the season as a whole, given how its various arcs were set up and how they paid off. It seems particularly opportune, given that Mercy is a somewhat stronger episode than those surrounding it.

Anyway, it was a huge honour to be invited on, and I hope you enjoy. You can listen to the episode here, or click the link below.

Filed under: Podcasts!, Star Trek | Tagged: make it so, metaphor, nostalgia, patrick stewart, plotting, star trek, star trek: picard, the voyage home, time travel, we made this | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the Uncanny Valley that “Star Trek: Picard” Occupies Between “Star Trek” and Prestige Television…

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of Star Trek: Picard, which is streaming weekly on Paramount+. The seventh episode of the second season released this week, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the series.

One of the big problems with modern Star Trek has been the extent to which the franchise finds itself caught between the past and the future, between a nostalgic impluse that pulls it back to the plotting that defined the franchise’s long history and something more ambitious that pushes it towards prestige television. The recent shows have never quite managed to square that particular circle, and this problem comes to the fore as Picard tries to delve inside the head of its protagonist.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Star Trek | Tagged: franchise, mad men, picard, prestige television, sopranos, star trek, star trek: picard, Television, the next generation | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Star Trek: Picard” and “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home”…

Posted on April 7, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of Star Trek: Picard, which is streaming weekly on Paramount+. The sixth episode of the second season released this week, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the series.

One of the interesting aspects of the second season of Star Trek: Picard has been the way in which it has been drawing more overtly from classic Star Trek tropes, with the season taking a number of cues from Star Trek: First Contact. However, the season has drawn most overtly from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. What is interesting about this is that the show understands that The Voyage Home isn’t just about time travelers from an imaginary future, but about fugitives from television.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Star Trek | Tagged: future, hope, idealism, Mental Health, picard, star trek, star trek iv the voyage home, star trek: picard, Television, time travel, utopianism, Voyage Home | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Star Trek: Picard” Offers “The Next Generation” a Glimpse Through “A Mirror, Darkly”…

Posted on March 10, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of Star Trek: Picard, which is streaming weekly on Paramount+. The second episode of the second season released this week, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the series.

The second episode of the season is an interesting twist on a classic Star Trek trope. Star Trek: The Next Generation never really did a dark alternate universe story, comparable to something like Mirror, Mirror, Crossover, Living Witness or Twilight. It often seemed like The Next Generation was incapable of imagining the world any other way than the way that it was. As such, Penance offers something new for Jean-Luc Picard. Reflecting the gulf that exists in the more-than-a-quarter century between The Next Generation and Picard, the episode offers Picard a chance to look at a darker alternative future.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Star Trek | Tagged: jean-luc picard, Mirror Universe, Next Generation, picard, star trek, star trek: picard, star trek: the next generation | 1 Comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Star Trek: Picard” Tries to Go Back to the Future…

Posted on March 3, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of Star Trek: Picard, which is streaming weekly on Paramount+. The second season premiere released this week, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the series.

The second season premiere of Picard is a much more openly nostalgic affair than the previous season had been. While the previous season often found itself caught between the past and the future, the second season seems to turn its gaze more earnestly backwards. It’s a complicated and somewhat flawed show, often retreating from the more interesting implications of its big ideas, but Picard is at least interested in grappling with the legacy of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and exploring why the utopian future it promised audiences seemed to slip from grasp.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Star Trek | Tagged: escapist magazine, star trek, star trek: picard, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! Primitive Culture #114 – Star Trek and Vietnam

Posted on February 28, 2022 by Darren

A little while ago, I had the pleasure of sitting down with the wonderful Tony Black to talk about Star Trek and Vietnam.

The general reading of classic Star Trek tends to play up the show’s liberal credentials, to read Star Trek as a utopian and pacifist series that was very much on the right side of history. This antiwar reading is supported by episodes like Errand of Mercy, The Trouble with Tribbles and Day of the Dove, among others. However, the show’s politics are decidedly more complicated. Like America itself, Star Trek was divided over the Vietnam War, as reflected in episodes like Friday’s Child or The Omega Glory, and most especially in A Private Little War.

The result was a fun (and involved) discussion, and you can listen to it below or directly via Primitive Culture‘s homepage on trek.fm.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Podcasts!, The Original Series | Tagged: A Private Little War, doves, Errand of Mercy, friday's child, hawks, podcast, star trek, star trek: the original series, the day of the dove, the omega glory, the original series, the trouble with tribbles, the united states, vietnam | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” Challenged “The Next Generation”…

Posted on January 7, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist on Friday. This week marked the 29th anniversary of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, so it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at the show. In particular, the show’s relationship to its elder sibling, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Deep Space Nine had a surprisingly contentious relationship with The Next Generation, often positioning itself as directly adversarial to the more popular and more beloved Star Trek spin-off. There were points at which Deep Space Nine seemed positively iconoclastic, particularly in its establishing of a fraught relationship between Sisko and Picard. This approach would be controversial today, if it were even allowed within the framework of a modern franchise, but it allowed Deep Space Nine to boldly push itself in striking new directions.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.