r/startrek

I love almost all of Star Trek (TOS is not for me), but if there’s one series that feels more relevant with each passing year, it’s Deep Space Nine.

TNG excelled at exploring timeless moral and philosophical questions. The episodic nature of the show with the Enterprise arriving, examining a dilemma, and moving on necessitated that things be wrapped up neatly at the end of each episode. DS9, by contrast, stayed in one place long enough to live with the consequences. It explored occupation, resistance, religious extremism, refugees, intelligence agencies, propaganda, political polarization, war, and the moral compromises democracies make when they feel threatened. These ongoing narratives became the DNA of the series.

As the United States marks America 250 and reflects on what 250 years of freedom and democracy mean, I find myself thinking about DS9 more than any other Star Trek series. Not because it celebrates America or criticizes it outright, but because it asks the kinds of questions every free society should be willing to ask. How do we preserve liberty without sacrificing our principles? What happens when fear begins to outweigh freedom? How much compromise is too much before we become the very thing we claim to oppose?

When I look at today’s world, and at the conversations surrounding America 250, Freedom 250, immigration, war, political polarization, and democratic institutions, I don’t think DS9 predicted our moment. Instead, I think it understood that power, fear, identity, and moral compromise are recurring features of human history. TNG imagined the future we should aspire to. DS9 explored what it takes to get there, and what we risk becoming if we don’t. That’s why, for me, it remains the most relevant Star Trek ever made.

Do we know if earth has any of its own ships for defense purposes in the next generation era. We know post burn they do. Also, several other federation plants have their own ships like the vulcans have for an example.

Watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture : Director’s Edition after only really knowing the Theatrical Cut, and honestly, it’s far better than I remember.
I feel it doesn’t really feel like a normal film, but like a huge, expensive, upscale episode of the original series. But also weirdly like the missing bridge between TOS and TNG.
Starfleet as mature, ordered and exploratory and not just action and space battles. That whole “what is this intelligence and how do we understand it?” thing is very TNG before TNG. And that’s the shame of it.
People knock TMP for being slow, cold, too ponderous, not “proper” Trek. But TOS was full of this stuff. It was always metaphysical. Godlike beings, machine intelligence, fate, and the crew bumping into things they can barely comprehend.
“The Cage”, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, “The Changeling”, “The Immunity Syndrome”, “City on the Edge of Forever” feel like a template for TMP that takes that strand and gives it full 70s cinema scale.
V’Ger is basically Nomad as a god, shot like 2001.
I get why people wanted more pace after Star Wars. But watching the Director’s Edition now, it feels far more deliberate. Less a failed blockbuster and more cosmic Trek in the big screen. Kirk still has that twinkle now and again too… Transmit now Spock!
And a wink to Chekov.
It may not be the most fun of the Trek films but I wonder if it might be one of the purest Trek films.

So, obviously, throughout the series Winn was various flavors of unpleasant. A simmering, unfortunate mixture of heady self-righteousness and scheming opportunism. However, there was always JUST enough there to keep her from out-and-out villainy (her attempts to take out Bareil in her first episode not-withstanding). "The Rapture" especially made a pretty solid go of fleshing her out (admitting to Kira she had been wrong about Sisko's status as Emissary, discussing her own persecution at the hands of the Cardassians for preaching the Bajoran faith, etc.).

IMO, though, "The Reckoning" is more or less the moment in the series that begins her descent into full-on villainy. And, honestly, it's hard not to feel a LITTLE bad for her (even if I still hate her). Think about the events of the episode from her perspective: as we find out later, she spends her whole life never once hearing from/being spoken to by the Prophets. Something which happens to literally EVERY other major character in the show (sometimes multiple times), including goddamn QUARK. And now, one of them straight-up appears on the station, brought there by the alien Emissary (Sisko) and possessing the body of someone who openly hates her (Kira). After a lifetime of devotion and doubt, of being convinced she must matter despite a lifetime of evidence to the contrary, she is finally in the presence of the thing she has made the fixation of her existence. She gets on her knees, offers herself to it, and begs it to talk to her. And the Prophet doesn't address her, acknowledge her role on Bajor, or even just say "Fuck off, I'm busy." It straight-up IGNORES her.

I gotta admit, as much as she is the fucking worst, it was hard not to feel kinda bad for her in the moment. All in all, I'm pretty sure THIS is the moment that begins her final fall. But, maybe I'm off. Anyone else have an idea when her final descent into villainy begins? Or was she always a villain, and this was just a well-deserved karmic kick to the face?

I’ve seen food in replicators materialize in many episodes. No barriers, food just materializes but what do you think would happen if you reached for it while it was materializing?

Do they just trust everyone in the future to not do that?

This is a question I have been thinking about because maybe I’ve been watching too much trek lately

I'm kinda curious if in Starfleet when a captain gets promoted into the admiralty ranks are they promoted to commodore or the 2 star rear admiral. We've seen plenty of examples of commodores and 2 stars but what do you go into right after captain ?

I feel like once they got to Q in the Enterprise lineage, some would argue it might attract Q. Others would argue it’s just too on the nose given starfleets history with Q. Other camps might be traditionalists and insist the naming convention continues. I can also see Q either having a full episode where he’s harassing the Enterprise-Q because he’s so flattered that they named it after him, or one where he’s sulking and mischievous because they skipped Q in the lineup.

I know that criticisms of Academy are hit or miss, and a recent post made a solid point that many of Academy's critiques are poorly made. Still, I think there's more than enough structural problems for an analysis regarding why I, in my own opinion, view Academy as being a show that's just outdated in 2025/2026.

Before getting into that, it's worth noting that Academy's premise is just innately hard to pull-off. You may have noticed that there's a lot of high school dramas around, but fairly few, if any, college dramas. One reason, is that high school has controllable variables. Everyone usually comes from the same neighborhood, characters aren't adults, so adulting can just be ignored, and today there's an end goal vis a vis 'go to college'.

College, on the other hand has none of the above. All of a sudden you have a cohort who can drink legally but probally doesn't have a clue about taking our a mortgage. You can also say goodbye to any common variables. Colleges have a bazillion clubs, even more sports, on top of many discrete departments. Classes are more lecture based, unless they're seminars - only the latter of which are going to be interesting to watch. Professors often don't have close relationships with their students, not to mention that you have graduate students and TAs in the mix as well.

Basically college is incredibly difficult to map out - and that's before jobs, careers, and internships make into the mix. As a result, Trek always mentions the Academy, but is quick not to linger. Wrath of Khan has Academy students being quite heavily involved, but they support the main-cast. Likewise, Nog provides a really good Academy insight, and often provides valuable services (Sisko's desk for example) but again a big part of his character is contrasting him with seasoned officers like O'Brien and he's not single handedly saving the day. In effect, making Academy a university show would be incredibly hard to do, hence the show chose the 'make it a high school' option.

On its own that might not be a problem, but the issue is that Academy just feels outdated. In particular, it takes tropes and storylines from high school dramas that a lot of good dramas (Sex Education and Derry Girls for example) have really moved beyond.

For example, at the most basic level, the series centers around the trope of a young man (Caleb) with a chip on his shoulder being taken under the wing by a maternal figure (Ake), who will mold the young man into a responsible member of society. This is not only one of the most cliche tropes imaginable, but also results in Caleb's character lacking room for growth (ironically). In particular, Caleb 180ing into a Starfleet role model cuts off so many interesting character ideas. For example you could have Caleb just up and leave Starfleet entirely, but continue to work with the organization on his own terms - showing that you don't need a Com-Badge to do good. You could also have him explicitly call out Starfleet for its many flaws or have him openly question the Prime Directive, or point even just point out that Starfleet can often become enmeshed in group-think. You don't have to make him right all the time, but a character who both learns from their school and refuses to fully conform to their institutionalization is something that isn't cliche - and ironically is something that Beckett Mariner did fairly well in Lower Decks as she both cleaned up her act, but also remained skeptical of Star Fleet jingoism.

Then you have the rest of the cast being nearly one for one versions of high school drama tropes. For example, Genesis being obsessed with success is one of the oldest high school drama motivations, and one that doesn't really add much to her character. For example, we never see her considering undermining her friends in the name of getting ahead, or anything else that shows how toxic hyper competitiveness can be - which if anything validates the behavior.

Jay-den really does not do all that much. A pacifist Klingon is a really cool idea, and reminds me of an old post I once saw about how Klingon counsellor could adapt Klingon ideas of battle towards concepts of mindfulness. Heck, having him believe that as a doctor he must reject Klingon tradition only to discover that he can adapt traditions in a new way is peek Star Trek. Yet he never really dives too deep into Klingon philosophy.

SAM is the quirky fish out of water - which often means that quirkiness is substituted for character development.

Tarima being scared of her own power likewise is a fairly standard trope. Personally I think it would have been cool if she was actually alright with her abilities, and more of the story surrounded other characters accepting her.

Reymi comes across as arrogant and pretentious for no good reason. His initial fight with Jayden is just childish - in real life he would have been immediately been lampooned as a petty bully. His fight with Caleb is likewise contrived - in reality both would likely just give each other the cold shoulder. A great example of this 'enemy to friend' done right is O'Brien and Bashir, where at first neither likes each other, but they can act professionally because they are, well, professionals.

Plotwise, we have the classic high school activity tropes, and they all feel a bit stale. Chief amongst them, the fight with the War College feels unnecessary. School rivalries are common, my university had one, and it manifested with the odd joke here and there and a friendly prank every now and then. But making your identity entirely about a school rivalry is just immature at best, and downright childish at worst. What makes the rivalry more annoying is that there's no real stakes involved. We don't know why these two entities would dislike each other, other than because they are just said to be rivals. On the other hand, if the show made it so that the Academy was replacing the War College then that suddenly creates both a reason for the rivalry, makes the intense bickering make more sense, and provides an obvious plot point of 'rather than replace why don't we work together' which is what the show tries to do, but more ham-fistedly.

Bracka is another case of style of substance. He's over-acting, and that can be fine, if it serves a villain's point. The issue is that Bracka doesn't really have that much depth. He hates the Federation, and so concocts a crazy Galaxy ending plan to take them down with a stolen doomsday weapon. No offense, but that's a borderline Saturday morning cartoon level scheme. Like Bracka could easily have been someone who attempts to politically undermine the Federation, or who uses subterfuge to manipulate the Federation into weakening itself.

In addition, the reveal that he was not actually done in by the Federation feels like a cop-out. A really sophisticated show could easily have Bracka have a legitimate point, but be going about it the wrong way. In fact Caleb himself could easily concede that Bracka is right to criticize the Burn era Federation, but instead have Caleb state that he's going to try to walk a middle-path between skepticism of the Federation and blind jingoism.

Finally, the plot itself escalates way too quickly. The show flip flops between high school level antics, the students getting in way over their heads, and 'end of the galaxy level missions'. Part of the reason for this is the shorter seasons, but that's sort of a iffy excuse. Bracka could have a way less ambitious plan - one directly involving the academy (maybe he wants to sabotage the 'future' of the Federation just like they sabotaged his future). Likewise, the show could have focused more on the classroom learning. Once again, this comes down to the same problem mentioned above. For an Academy show you either have to show the really boring lectures and classroom material, or you have to cut that all out, at which point why even set it at the Academy.

In the end, the actors in Academy are doing a good job, but ultimately Academy feels like a show that's really two decades too late - and going forward I really hope that there's more of an effort to make the characters and writing reflect that while college kids are not necessarily Jean Luc Picard, at the Academy you would expect them to also not be Marty McFly or Biff Tanner.

I’m struggling to come up with another off hand.

I recently caught myself thinking about a bizarre anomaly in the two most popular sci-fi universes: Star Trek and Star Wars. Both of these worlds completely lack a whole range of things without which their societies fundamentally couldn't exist. I’m talking about cinema, television, radio, and pop culture as a whole. Furthermore, global brands have mysteriously vanished—the very corporate identities that have been everywhere since the 1920s, thanks to industrial expansion that allowed a single company to mass-produce identical products for hundreds of millions of consumers.

This absence is especially glaring in Star Trek, which takes place in our own timeline's future. The characters themselves frequently make references to Earth’s past. They mention classical poets, legendary writers, and recreate entire historical eras on the holodeck. But where is their own Michael Jackson? Where is their Freddie Mercury? Where is the cinema?

Everyone has monitors, holographic technology, and real-time intergalactic video conferencing, yet they miraculously forgot about the most important art form of the modern era. It’s a massive riddle, and the fact that a trillions of humanoids operates with zero pop culture or mass media really makes you wonder about the underlying reasons behind this narrative choice.

>TL;DR: I created a new website (easily used on mobile or desktop) with episode guides for TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT, with Tim Lynch's spoiler reviews, short & full synopses, quick rating overviews by Jammer and Algernon_Asimov (where available), and full-text search. Each can be installed as a stand-alone "app" on mobile.

https://gabindu.gitlab.io/trek-guides

I've always been a fan of the original spoiler-reviews posted by Tim Lynch on Usenet, and although they can be found online, they were quite hard to navigate and/or read (especially on mobile) - so I decided to create a new site (with permission by Tim himself). Without changing the actual content, all his posts were reflowed and reformatted, and his end-of-seasons re-reviews were integrated on each page (as popup "knowls") for easy comparison.

As a bonus, I included various things a geek like myself appreciates:

• Screenshots and misc. episode metadata pulled from various sources
• short (spoiler-free) and full synopses
• Jammer's ratings (with links to his full reviews)
• Algernon_Asimov's "Essential?" ratings ("Engage!", "meh", "Just for fun", "Avoid" - shown as icons), where they exist (TNG & DS9)
• full-text search
• keyboard shortcuts for quick navigation (on desktop)

The site is completely ad-free and without monetization. Enjoy!

I'm watching The Hunt for Red October and at least three people in this movie were on Star Trek.

Gates McFadden (Dr. Crusher) plays Jack Ryan's wife.

One of the Russians was the USS Excelsior's Helmsman in Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country.

One of the DSRV crew was Data's First Officer on the episode where Data was Captain of a ship looking for Romulans helping the Duras Sisters.

Anyone know of any others?

More Lorca. Morca.

I know there's been a good amount of annoying characters. ie: Nelix, Quark, Wesley, etc. But for me, the worst one by far is Tilly. She often just kills any tension with her babbling and simping for Michael Burnham who is prettyannoying herself..

So what do you think? Who do you find to be the most cringey?

Having finished Lower Decks and rewatched the Crisis Point episodes, I’m going back to watch the source material, which includes the first Trek movie. But now I’m seeing that the directors cut is actually shorter. So for purposes of the gratuity spoofed in crisis point, I’d like to watch the longer version of that scene if the directors cut edited it shorter

Anyone going to unofficial destination star trek in blackpool

When he's not busy falling off of cliffs whilst screaming all the way down, we get some close-ups of the character known as Lazurus. His beard seems to change from scene to scene. In once scene it looks like they glues maybe 10 strands of hair to his chin and called it a day. It's not even a difference between the evil Lazurus and the righteous, good Lazurus, as the beard can change on the same Lazurus scene to scene.

I can't embed a picture as an example, but maybe this link will work (mods, please delete this link if this isn't allowed)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16AXn6bK6GImCcv1WiWMP8LqlQ_vBIecu/view

BTW, this has gotta be one of the worst episodes of TOS. I do think "Beard of Lazarus" would make a kick-ass band name though.

The Borg Collective always wants to add to its perfection and Xenomorphs are biologically distinctive but not very smart except for Xenomorph Queens, so seeing the Borg encounter them would be interesting especially if a Drone was implanted by a Facehugger and implanted it, automatically allowing it to be assimilated.

A Xenomorph Queen would be great because it is intelligent and creates variants based on who it implants, the bad thing is that they are pests with acid blood and hate everyone else but their body could be useful, just don't let the Borg Queen get burned or implanted.

Even Species 8472 would be helpless if a Facehugger implanted them and created a Xenomorph/Undine hybrid.

It seems like there are 3 basic types of clothing people in star trek wear.

1. uniforms.
2. Cat suits
3. MC Hammer pants. mostly worn by civilians and colonists.

Do others see it this same way?

Just wanted to share my thoughts and feelings after finishing Discovery.

I had never watched anything Star Trek before Discovery. Of course I have heard a lot about Star Trek and know the most important characters (like Spock and Picard) and ships (like the Enterprise). So even though I didn't have a real connection to the previous installments of Star Trek I still thought it was cool when we saw Spock and some of his original footage in Discovery.

I started watching Discovery when it was out on Netflix and watched until season 3, after which it was streamed on another platform and I stopped. Only recently I got to watch it in its entirety and of course I started from season 1 episode 1.

I don't really know why but I feel like seasons 1 and 2 and partly 3 were peak for this show. After the time jump the show just felt so empty to me. I liked the characters pre time travel and never managed to get the same feeling for the characters from the future. Also the storylines from seasons 3, 4 and 5 just felt generic and the episodes started feeling repetitive. The first two seasons on the other hand were more exciting, more intriguing and I felt like they legitimately wanted to develop the characters into something.

I think the biggest disappointment for me is how Burnham developed. She seemed to have completely renounced her Vulcan upbringing and instead of being half Vulcan and half human she progressed to become fully human. This for me was very apparent the moment she started making "Marvel like jokes" in high stakes situations, which was so out of character for her. Looking back, season 1 and 2 Burnham was really the best version of her.

I think the character development I liked most and where I felt like the show writers did a good job was Saru's. His plot line and ending felt thought out.

What do you guys think? Did any of you have the same feeling about seasons 3, 4 and 5?