Swallow is the author of several well received Star Trek tie-in novels, both for the new shows and the Relauch novelverse (as well as for some other fandoms)....
Strange New Worlds has been my favorite Trek since Next Generation, and if the quality continues, could easily be my favorite Trek ever. But with the e.p. wishing for more episodes per season, there’s a danger of diluting the show by adding weak episodes that would have never made it in a 10 episode season....
20 seems unrealistic given the longer shooting time per episode and actors’ wanting flexibility to be able to work on more than one project.
12-15 however seems very possible especially with the episodic format. Producing a longer season after the strike especially would seem wise. It would also allow Paramount to take a brief hiatus midseason (the way Discovery did originally) to stretch out the schedule.
SNW has already demonstrated that it is an ensemble show with a full cast that can basically carry or star in their own episodes. Not every main cast member needs to be on set every production day, and even the principal character, Pike, can step back in some episodes.
Several of the Relaunch novelverse TrekLit authors tried out with spec scripts before being picked up to write tie-in fiction.
David Mack, a film school grad, got script credits for 2 DS9 episodes, Starship Down and Only a Paper Moon before being contracted for some Starfleet Core of Engineers stories.
Kirsten Beyer, a theatre grad, never got into one of the shows with a spec script, but was picked up to write Voyager books, then came full circle to be in the writers rooms on all the new live-action shows.
It’s likely the impact of the sudden and unexpected death of Melissa Navia’s husband led to a lightning of her role in the second season.
She’s written about how hard it was for her to go into production just a couple of months after that. She was a musical theatre performer as a child, so it’s likely that a larger singing role was planned for her in 2 x 09. We can be thankful that she has apparently decided to stick with her career after some profound doubts in 2022.
While my preference isn’t to link to a vendor site, Round 2 (AMT’s parent) doesn’t seem to be posting these forthcoming releases on their own website yet. (Hope this is cool with community rules.) This vendor apparently saw these at a fair and booked supply. Credit to them for getting the information up....
Some of the older Klingon model designs have been updated as they are rereleased. I can see that the Enterprise D would need that too.
Definitely the case that injection-moulded plastic models and miniatures have come up significantly in quality and down in cost in the past two decades as the technology has changed.
It would be important to know if these rereleases is an updated reissue or not. The proprietor of this shop seems to be in the k is on these points. It would be worth messaging him to ask if people are interested.
By the way, from the information he seems to have got at the con where the upcoming SNW Enterprise was promoted, it sounds like AMP is reworking the model design from its limited issue Discovery Enterprise to match the refit between Disco and SNW.
I had been curious to see what the Trekyards guys’ first-look analysis would be based on the preview clip shared at STLV. Thought others might be too....
LoglineWhen the USS Enterprise investigates an attack on a colony at the edge of Federation space, Captain Pike and his crew face the return of a formidable enemy....
Martin Quinn (Montgomery Scott) was reportedly born in Paisley, Scotland.
Dropping in to note that I’m feeling very smuggly self-satisfied that I decided not to completely abandon my alias when we migrated from the other place.
I guess that I must now become an unrepentant SNW Scotty stan. I look forward to seeing the character grow.
Also not Sulu if Sam Kirk is hanging around. Sulu was some kind of xenobiologist (xenobotanist?) in the opening episodes of TOS. The move to alpha shift helmsman came later.
This exactly. Using something closer to the xenomorphs of Alien, introduces a truly frightening species that is sufficiently different that their kind of intelligence and motivations are believably difficult for Federation humanoids to understand.
I know there are other older fans struggling with this, but I think it’s saving the Gorn and Arena from absurdity.
No matter how compelling the story, TOS Arena’s ridiculous rubber suit Gorn has become one of the most recognized images from the franchise in popular culture.
Even as a child watching the episode in its first run it seemed more like silly monster movie stuff. It didn’t have the quality of truly scary monsters of that era such as the Creature of the Black Lagoon. It wasn’t in any way reaching Roddenberry’s target high value sci-fi standard of Forbidden Planet or even The Cage.
More, with so many later stories of Kirk and other captains welcoming the strange and different, coming to terms with very alien species, we need to be shown why Kirk was so hostile to the Gorn by the time of TOS.
While they could have gone for some other kind of reptilian, I like SNW’s choice to go with a the biology of parasitic R-breeder. Roddenberry’s original concept for the Ferengi was closer to the parasitic bat people of Andromeda than what TNG and DS9 gave us. The updated Gorn can be viewed as incorporating that idea and making them as terrifying.
Season 3 was originally scheduled to start production May 2nd, just before the start of the strike. It’s only the impending strike date that caused them to stand down on that.
This tells us that the script for the season premiere has been locked for some time.
I very much wanted SNW to be its own show for at least a few seasons.
It’s not the Pike’s Enterprise I fan-campaigned for based on The Cage or Discovery season two.
I’m enjoying it for what it is even so, and accepting that the powers that be at Paramount wanted ‘familiar faces’ in their new Star Trek offerings, which means legacy characters. It’s the best of the new live action Trek whatever. All to say that I appreciate your frustration, I’ve decided to make peace with it myself.
Kurtzman’s making shows for a streamer that says its strategy since the merger has become is “franchises, familiar faces and fandoms.”
I do suspect the needle has moved towards more legacy characters. It seems only the shows targeted at a younger audience get mainly new crews. Starfleet Academy and the 32nd century seem our best hope of seeing new characters and settings.
No highlighting is necessary. No need to be a fan to instantly associate the rubber suit Gorn of Arena with the franchise.
The meme of Kirk in a ripped tunic fighting the rubber-suited Gorn with the Vasquez Rocks behind is one of the most recognizable images in pop culture.
Goldsman and Myers have my respect for their attempt to salvage it.
I think we may already have enough to figure out what happened but the technological explanation is yet to come. Much of the plot mechanics related to the Gorn so far rely on issues around what can be detected or transmitted and differences in solutions.
The writers’ challenge for the saucer subplot was that they wanted Spock to be surprised by both the adult Gorn in the environment suit and by Christine Chapel.
Their arrivals behind Spock on the exterior of the saucer were both unexpected, and were key elements of the suspense. His surprise and ours was necessary.
We would have expected however Spock to have done some kind of local tricorder scan of the wreckage when he arrived. It’s possible that a tricorder scan was done, was negative, but we didn’t hear any report because there were no vocal coms back to the Enterprise. Uhura gave a play by play based on telemetry, we didn’t hear Spock report directly.
In that case, we’re owed an explanation about why the new tricorder technology failed. As long as we get it in the second part, I’d be fine.
Given the established interference field technology of the Gorn, I would be perfectly comfortable if the follow up episode acknowledged that the Gorn environmental suits put out some kind of localized disruptive stealth.
The new Starfleet tricorder technology is designed for unsuited Gorn. It’s designed to solve the problem of Gorn biology but not Gorn technology.
Gorn technology is different, they are driven by different species biological imperatives (as in the coronal flares), and that’s an extra hurdle for Starfleet.
We have already seen however that Scott designed a system to both spoof human life signs to Starfleet tricorders and Gorn as well as hide human life signs for hundreds of people. To do this, he used some of the specialized technology from the scientific research array that was studying the nearby sun.
Spock would naturally follow up on his surprise encounter on the saucer. Scott would be the natural collaborator to figure out how it was that the Gorn came up behind him undetected by his tricorder.
So then, what about Chapel in the saucer? If she was the sole human life form, and he completed the scan, why didn’t his technology detect her?
A couple of possibilities exist.
– Chapel’s suit has some local stealth technology. She got into her suit as soon as she saw Spock pass by. Given it was in her quarters it’s a personal suit not a generic one, and she’s established as being a war veteran who had to fight despite being medical corps, and/or
– the distortion field or stealth technology put out by the Gorn’s environmental suit was large enough to hide her as well.
I was born in 1989, so I grew up with the TNG era and ENT, and I always dismissed TOS as a kid as the cheesy 60s original version that TNG remade and left in the dust. It wasn’t until high school that I actually sat down and watched TOS and fell in love with it. I even now wonder if Kirk is better than Picard, it’s a debate...
Not sure I can say that about movie Picard, and would definitely disagree that Picard in Picard was better than Kirk in TOS or the movies.
I’m from an older generation that saw TOS and loved it long before TNG existed. Taking the long view, I think it’s great that the shows are demonstrating that different kinds of leadership work, and some work better in central contexts than others. SNW seems to be making that point directly, but it’s also not afraid to laugh at itself and ask us to join in.
In the 90s, I became a huge TNG fan, loved its more serious tone, idolized Picard as an leader, and found TOS’ campiness hard to take. So I stopped watching TOS other than the movies that were still coming.
Another 30 years on, TNGs flaws (and Picard’s) are more evident to me. At this distance, TOS is such an artifact of its time that I can just accept and enjoy it again for what it is.
But in the 90s, there were other, vocal, OG TOS fans who never got that Star Trek feeling from TNG. They wanted more adventure, but I suspect that some also wanted more of the cheekiness and cheesiness that TOS delivered with a straight face. I felt at the time that both Voyager and Enterprise were to some extent designed to bring them back to the television side of the franchise, but in hindsight were also very much a reflection of the era in which they were made.
Its really good to hear from 90s Trek fans who are willing to give TOS and new shows like SNW and Lower Decks a genuine try and appreciate them for what they are.
Now, I hope you and OP will give TAS a try. There’s some great stuff in there!
TAS is imperfect, and for some the Filmation animation is hard to get past. It does however have some great episodes, and several were written by TOS writers. I can’t imagine skipping it.
It was originally targeted for Nickelodeon, but children’s linear television viewing has dropped severely since 2017.
Worse, Paramount’s US cable carriage deal with Comcast would have required Paramount to wait at least 6 months to stream after a Nickelodeon premiere. So, they flipped it to run first on Paramount+. The show got decent views, but didn’t necessarily get to the target family and kids. Paramount seems to be reducing its focus on reaching kids as a streamer.
With Nickelodeon tanking further in the pandemic, it’s too expensive for them so the cable-led option is still a nonstarter.
I’ve been trying to think of which non-Disney streamer has enough of a kids and family audience globally to make Prodigy both profitable and reach the target demographic.
Distributor Wildbrain Spark (formerly DHX) has had a deal with Paramount+ and PlutoTV to carry some of its extensive kids library, so they could reverse and have Paramount license to them.
Wildbrain Spark (run principally through YouTube) has 168 million subscribers globally and 21 million unique views monthly in the US alone. They tend to skew younger, but may be extending into the older school age and middle school market.
It’s pretty gritty for kids, but many school aged kids are up for that. It’s especially so given that Prodigy uses the classic situation of exploited orphans who are given hope and opportunities for something better.
It’s also taking advantage of the fact that Janeway in particular and Voyager generally has been the gateway for preteens into the franchise since its been available on streaming.
I went to the Star Trek Convention last week - it was my first time there and I had a blast. Overall a great experience and it’s safe to say I have some new friends that I’m looking forward to seeing again next year. At the same time, I found all of the cash-only photos and signatures with the actors to be pretty...
The actors are giving days of their lives to come to the cons and need to be compensated for it.
While I would find it creepy to pay for the time, I also see it as a sign of respect on fans’ part and as a way to make sure that the whole process is run safely and respectfully. But then, even in the old, old days of Trek conventions before paid availability, I felt uncomfortable to approach the actors and other panelists in the very limited time that they were out on the floor.
If not for the paid signings and photo ops, there would be fewer stars at these events. The old 80s and 90s cons had at most one or two actors and a producer, designer or writer. The price for admissions would be higher and there likely would be less availability for photos and autographs, and it would be poorly managed.
I’ve been to both political conventions and amateur sports events with photo ops and signings. In one case, the politician had a photographer who literally followed up with an ‘opportunity’ to buy the photo. (I’d rather use my own camera.) The sports star was mobbed and just took and signed pieces of paper and handed them back without interacting. Neither was a good experience for me.
David Mack, a tie-in Treklit author well known for tense drama, sometimes darker but strong portrayals of legacy characters, will be bringing us the tale of Seven’s journey to the Fenris Rangers. Mack’s consistently been nominated for the award for best genre fiction tie-in novels, and has recently won. He seems to be...
I’m a Relaunch novelverse fan myself so I understand where you’re coming from.
I grieve the end of the novelverse, especially when I feel it often outshone the serialized writing that the new live action Trek shows have been struggling with. (I do note that some of the shows have been incorporating parallel plot and character evolutions and events to both the novelverse and STO.)
All of the new books, with the exception of the ones continuing to build on Vanguard/Seeker suffer from the requirement that the writers must “put all the toys back where they found them.” That is, they have to slide within canon and, by form, not have any lasting impact on the characters or universe. I think that’s why Mack’s latest Vanguard-related offering ‘Harm’s Way’ was considered by many to be the best new novel of last year.
That said, with Mack, McCormack, Swallow, and Miller writing the Picard-related books, they’ve all been better than I had ever expected them to be. Working off the bible for the show, they have dove deeper and often made what came on screen much more coherent.
The article is making a lot of a brief response by Waltke to a question following up on a mysterious pre-STLV tweet on the platform formerly known as Twitter....
I often consider Screenrant clickbait, but kudos to Mark Donaldson for getting one of the first analyses of the beauty shots and the Doctor’s description from the Prodigy 2 x 01 sneak peak made available at STLV....
I wonder how widely they are distributed to space/science/tech museums, hobby shops and toy vendors. Lego seems to have a lock on that distribution chain.
We don’t get to those places as much as we did as when our kids were tweens, but those are the places that we picked up some of the less widely available models and Lego kits. Somehow being in the shops and seeing the offerings was more motivating than looking at online catalogues for them.
Anyway, I really wish these had been available 5 years or so ago when our kids were at their peak Lego building stage. My spouse and I would have loved to build these with them. It’s good to see other families will have something to offer their kids other than SW or the very few NASA Lego sets. (The Lego techno construction machine sets just didn’t hold their attention, and only one was up for the birds and flower advanced sets.)
Now, we need to see the Protostar and the new Voyager-A kits soon please!
Yes the original film exists, but you can also see the edges of the prostheses, the wear on the sets, and the ripples in the seams of costumes (as regrettably you can see in most seasons of Picard). People watch remasterd TNG anyway, but the rough edges show.
Red and Panavision capture everything all the time now.
Yes, people have worked to that production norm in cinema for nearly a century now, but very few cinematic features are filmed in a week.
Hey, I get that you’re angry, and I totally agree that not enough of the return is going to the creators and crews, but those same folks involved in production are talking about an unrealistic norm of gruelling long hours in production. They need both decent pay and residuals and humane production schedules.
Bottle episodes don’t perhaps save as much as they used to.
With the UHD, the bottle episodes involve a great deal of interior ship scenes with extensive lighting issues. Anson Mount has talked about ‘bridge days’ as being some of the most gruelling shooting days on Discovery.
Yes can bottle episodes save on new/redressed sets and new props, but they also cause more wear and tear on the sets themselves. The makeup challenges are no less although SNW has just has Spock with prostheses within the main cast.
In the end, we have to accept that for new shows to be visually engaging for new fans, they need to be up to the same product standards as other new science fiction. That standard is very high and there are few short cuts.
Arguably one of the best moments in the SNW Musical episode subspace rhapsody was Bruce Horak Cameo as the captain of the Klingon boy band. But there is a deleted scene of the opera version that while absolutly best scene won, would be fun to see released to fans
I am sceptical of your assertion that this episode has a very negative score though. I don’t see a rating for this episode that low on any aggregator.
IMDb currently has the episode rated audience reviews at 7.0. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 100% fresh for pro reviews.
The score is lower on IMDb than other for episodes because there are folks brigading against it. A distribution that is clustered at 8, 9, and 10 then flat though the middle and spiked with a high number of 1s is fairly good evidence of a campaign to gatekeep against certain kinds of things.
IDIC, let others enjoy what they enjoy, not every episode need to be made for your preferences.
TMDB is even less representative than IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes (which already skew older, male and are very American in representation).
It’s fine if you subscribe to a group that aligns with your own views, but don’t take the self-selected non statistically valid outcome as anything but a reflection of the subgroup that subscribes.
Paramount+ on the other hand needs to draw in a large and demographically diverse audience to maintain a subscription base. The episode wasn’t a hit with your niche, but other ones will be. It definitely was a hit in our household.
I suspect many of us also take exception to the intransigent insistence on using the perjorative ‘STD’ when that is not and never has been the short form for Discovery. (We haven’t see ST:TOS and ST:TNG in use in decades.)
I love Prodigy and am advocating strongly for its return. What I have no tolerance for is denigrating another show in the franchise, that has been successful in its own audience niche, to promote the ones I most wish to see.
It’s been fun seeing so much of Kirk this season, but does that mean he’s now a regular? I don’t see how he could take a position on the Enterprise for years yet, so would that imply he just keeps coincidentally visiting all the time? Starts to strain plausibility after a while.
It’s also something that happens in real navies and the coast guard.
Sending a candidate for captain or first officer to shadow on another ship before a command level promotion is regular practice. In some cases, they are expected to complete shadowing on as many as two or three ships other than the one they regularly serve on.
I like it when the new shows incorporate regular naval or military practice even though many fans, unfamiliar with military service, take unnecessary exception. (This goes for negative fan reactions to Ortegas behaving exactly like many combat pilots in real life.)
LoglineAn accident with an experimental quantum probability field causes everyone on the USS Enterprise to break uncontrollably into song, but the real danger is that the field is expanding and beginning to impact other ships—allies and enemies alike....
Christina Chong reportedly switched to auditioning for television roles after an injury sidelined her musical theatre career for a time. It doesn’t sound as though she ever expected the kind of role she has with La’an.
She’s currently releasing a series of music videos for an album. The next one will come out at 4:00 pm EDT today August 7th. You can check out her other offerings on her YouTube channel. I’ve posted her release of two weeks ago to the Quark’s community here on this instance as it seems the better place to follow her singing career outside of the franchise.
Q, TNG and a bit of TOS - August 2023 Star Trek ebook deals ( www.simonandschuster.com )
For those unfamiliar, every month Simon and Schuster offers an array of Trek ebooks at a promotional discount price....
Video podcast interview with Treklit author James Swallow ( mstdn.social )
Swallow is the author of several well received Star Trek tie-in novels, both for the new shows and the Relauch novelverse (as well as for some other fandoms)....
Star Trek executive producer wants more Strange New Worlds episodes, and I’m nervous ( screenrant.com )
Strange New Worlds has been my favorite Trek since Next Generation, and if the quality continues, could easily be my favorite Trek ever. But with the e.p. wishing for more episodes per season, there’s a danger of diluting the show by adding weak episodes that would have never made it in a 10 episode season....
New AMT model kits coming - SNW Enterprise, Cerritos ( www.culttvmanshop.com )
While my preference isn’t to link to a vendor site, Round 2 (AMT’s parent) doesn’t seem to be posting these forthcoming releases on their own website yet. (Hope this is cool with community rules.) This vendor apparently saw these at a fair and booked supply. Credit to them for getting the information up....
A real tweet from Walter Koenig yesterday. Anyone planning on seeing him at GalaxyCon? ( lemmy.world )
Trekyards’ take on Prodigy’s new Voyager-A ( youtu.be )
I had been curious to see what the Trekyards guys’ first-look analysis would be based on the preview clip shared at STLV. Thought others might be too....
Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 2x10 "Hegemony"
LoglineWhen the USS Enterprise investigates an attack on a colony at the edge of Federation space, Captain Pike and his crew face the return of a formidable enemy....
Did anyone else dislike TOS in their youth but came around to it when they got older?
I was born in 1989, so I grew up with the TNG era and ENT, and I always dismissed TOS as a kid as the cheesy 60s original version that TNG remade and left in the dust. It wasn’t until high school that I actually sat down and watched TOS and fell in love with it. I even now wonder if Kirk is better than Picard, it’s a debate...
Brief update on Prodigy S2 production from writer Aaron J. Waltke (@[email protected]) ( mastodon.social )
Follow-up toot:...
Reflections on my first Star Trek Conference ( medium.com )
I went to the Star Trek Convention last week - it was my first time there and I had a blast. Overall a great experience and it’s safe to say I have some new friends that I’m looking forward to seeing again next year. At the same time, I found all of the cash-only photos and signatures with the actors to be pretty...
Cover Reveal - Firewall - upcoming Seven of Nine novel by David Mack ( davidmack.pro )
David Mack, a tie-in Treklit author well known for tense drama, sometimes darker but strong portrayals of legacy characters, will be bringing us the tale of Seven’s journey to the Fenris Rangers. Mack’s consistently been nominated for the award for best genre fiction tie-in novels, and has recently won. He seems to be...
Prodigy EP Aaron Waltke teases more about Prodigy season two ( screenrant.com )
The article is making a lot of a brief response by Waltke to a question following up on a mysterious pre-STLV tweet on the platform formerly known as Twitter....
USS Voyager NCC-74656-A Prodigy Season two First-look analysis ( screenrant.com )
I often consider Screenrant clickbait, but kudos to Mark Donaldson for getting one of the first analyses of the beauty shots and the Doctor’s description from the Prodigy 2 x 01 sneak peak made available at STLV....
BlueBrixx USS Enterprise NCC 1701 D Galaxy Class Building Set Review ( youtu.be )
Sneak Peek – Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 Episode 10 – Finale ( trekcentral.net )
Final StarTrek Canvas space ( startrek.website )
Thanks again to all who joined in the creative fun on Canvas. It’s been great getting to cooperate with you in this midsummer enthusiasm....
SNW Musical Episode: Klingons’ Boy Band Number Was Almost an Opera ( tvline.com )
Arguably one of the best moments in the SNW Musical episode subspace rhapsody was Bruce Horak Cameo as the captain of the Klingon boy band. But there is a deleted scene of the opera version that while absolutly best scene won, would be fun to see released to fans
WOW - Prodigy Second Season Sneak Peek! ( ca.startrek.com )
Didn’t see this coming. Prodigy EPs the Brothers Hageman have dropped a scene from season two, episode one....
Kirk sticking around?
It’s been fun seeing so much of Kirk this season, but does that mean he’s now a regular? I don’t see how he could take a position on the Enterprise for years yet, so would that imply he just keeps coincidentally visiting all the time? Starts to strain plausibility after a while.
Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 2x09 "Subspace Rhapsody"
LoglineAn accident with an experimental quantum probability field causes everyone on the USS Enterprise to break uncontrollably into song, but the real danger is that the field is expanding and beginning to impact other ships—allies and enemies alike....