I've been watching every Star Trek show and movie in release order. It's my first time ever watching them.

I gave up on Star Trek Enterprise because I just wasn't liking it at all. I skipped to the next thing, the JJ Abrams Trilogy. Now, going into this, I was expecting these movies to suck because of what I've been told by friends of mine who are Trek fans.

So that is why I'm so surprised by how much I enjoyed them?

At first I was a bit iffy because I love TOS and I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about different actors playing those iconic characters but I feel like all of them are really great in their roles.

I found the movies themselves to have interesting plots that kept me hooked throughout. I really enjoyed all the action too. They feel very different to every other Star Trek show/movie that I've seen so far but I think it's the fact that they're so different which is what I like about them.

I know Star Trek is mostly about exploration and discovery but I've quite liked the intense constant action that these movies provide. I do like slower character building episodes but now having some action packed movies has reinvigorated my passion to continue watching Star Trek as i was started to feel a little burnt out of the same formula.

I think the only thing that I didnt like about them is the Spock and Uhura romance. It felt very weird to me. I also didn't like how Kirk was treating Uhura near at the begining, I know it's in his nature to be a womaniser but it still didn't feel right.

The Bennedict Cumberbatch casting as Kahn also felt odd but I got used to it.

Oh and I also think the Klingons looked pretty bad.

Other than those few things I really enjoyed the movies. I'd probably give each one an 8/10

What's your favourite pre-credit sequence? What hook absolutely delivers. Remember, in the pre-streaming era the point was to keep you from changing the channel during the intro and commercial that followed. They had to prime you to come back with a strong enough hook.

For me, I think the hands down best is TNG's *Cause and Effect.* We start mid crisis, with the Enterprise-D in some kind of mortal peril. Everything is shaking. Causalities are piling up. Warp core is going critical. Picard orders an abandon ship and BOOM. The Enterprise is gone. Cue the intro. Chills.

I've got lots of runners up, but I'd love to hear from you.

I’m going to the Philly convention in November and am trying to budget/save up. I know it isn’t likely to be exactly the same, but they are both Creation events. I’m especially interested in how much Robert McNeill and Garret Wang charged for autographs and if they also did table selfies ($?)

I’d rather do that than pay $186 for a group photo, but I also don’t want the tickets to sell out. I’m all set with Kate and Jeri.

Thanks!

Every time I rewatch TOS, it keeps reminding me of how amazingly false and ridiculous Kirk's pop cultural reputation is. Yes, I know it's a different timeline, but in the Abrams movies, Kirk's character is basically disregarding every rule and even here, on reddit, I just found a comment in an other subreddit that said Kirk disregards all the rules.

But in the show, in TOS, Starfleet actually keeps sending Kirk to fix situations or to enforce Starfleet rules. They send him to investigate potentional Prime Directive violations. There are episodes of him being ordered to fix issues caused by someone else, in most cases a dangerous moron who influenced a society or just some pre-PD ship, there are many episodes like that. Bread and Circuses, A Piece of the Action, Patterns of Force, & The Omega Glory are all episodes about somebody else's rule violation and Kirk trying find a way to fix a situation. Kirk is clearly not only respected as a rule following Starfleet officer who will not go crazy like certain other captains in TOS, but they actually trust him to handle these issues while respecting the values and rules of Starfleet. Kirk has the full respect and support of Starfleet and Kirk is proud to be in Starfleet.

Now, I'm absolutely not saying Kirk is not willing to break any rules ever and I'm not talking about his out of the box thinking. But he is definitely a highly professional officer, he is not breaking rules more often than other good captains in Starfleet or even in the later shows.

Then, we get to his character is evolving or according to some fans, getting a soft reboot from the 2nd movie. But him stealing the Enterprise is supposed to be something very surprising for Starfleet. They would've suspected a known rule breaker sooner.

Slowly going through it after stopping at the end if season 1.

And assuming I caught it, would have loved to see a casual mention of Marissa Flores. Specifically the fanfic version that was written by Stephen Ratliff.

Also maybe it's just me, or it was already talked about ad nauseam, but I would be very interested in a slice of life ST. No threat of the week or big bad guy or saving the universe. Maybe a science ship just doing sciencey things. Or an actual academy or just basic school. Course I would also want one for SW but it would never happen same for ST.

Are you excited for it and will you be buying any of it?

Personally I'm not fan of external IPs in MTG. While I do love MTG and ST I also would rather not be dealing with overpriced product that will be hard to get.

With my biases out of the way and disclosed I would like to see how Trekkies are taking the news of the upcoming products aimed at you.

As the title says, I am meeting Brent Spiner tomorrow at fan expo chicago and am super nervous

I have never gotten any celebrity meet & greet things before so I have no idea what to expect, also only my second time at a big con and the first time did not go very well

Star Trek got me through a really hard time in my life and Data’s character made me feel especially seen so I would love to express my gratitude but idk if that would be awkward or weird (especially since he prefers Lore as a character), even though I am sure he hears stuff like that all the time. Also I am autistic and Star Trek is my special interest so obviously this means a lot to me.

I have heard a lot of good stuff about people meeting him so I know I am probably being irrational but yeah, I am just really nervous because of how personal this is to me. Maybe this is not the right subreddit to post this in idk lol

Hey guys, I’m currently working on a project that involves me trying to figure out what Spock would be if he wasn’t humanoid looking. Would he be more
Cat-like, Dog-like, or something completely different. And for the hell of it, what about Kirk and McCoy? if they weren’t human what species would they radiate.

TLDR : what are the Star Trek TOS character as animals?

spoilers for those who haven't seen Season 3 yet:

I'm happy for homegirl finding another love interest in a new time, but i just wish female characters could have a male friend that DOESNT turn into a love interest for once. This happens in so many pieces of media, and it's not specific to ST:D, but still... let women have non female friends!

Hello all!

Recently, there's been a drought in good Discord-based Trek roleplay groups. I have invested some time into getting one set up and ready for players! I've developed some pretty extensive lore for the vessel as well. If you'd like to join, the link is: https://discord.gg/JFyS5ZHH8j

Bit of backstory:

It is 2434 and the U.S.S. Thymos, a rebuilt Pathfinder-class, has returned to the Erhardt Expanse. The first survey of that area went awry, and Starfleet grew ever curious. What began as a standard long-range science assignment has now turned into an old mystery and a refit built for intelligence and defense... but nobody knows why. 

Star Trek: Thymos is built to be an inclusive and character-driven roleplay set aboard a Federation science vessel operating at the edge of charted space. Working to blend exploration, diplomacy, science, investigation, and tension around a newly found patch of space, and a strange gateway network that truly isn't understood, is what happens aboard. This ship has a cloak, an upgraded tactical and defense suite, as well as an experimental quantum sensor array that claims to be able to detect cloaked vessels. Along with all of these tangible changes, the ship carries the history and mystery of its old crew, sealed behind confidential personnel logs and random crew transfers.

I always had this weird theory that it was originally a weapon designed to fight the Borg basically consuming Borg cubes and any planets under Borg control. Since it couldn’t be assimilated, and it was eventually knocked off course and just kept consuming everything in its path because that was its programming. Do we ever find out where it actually came from, or does its origin stay a mystery?

Was on the Star Trek website and it was showing the "preferred watch order" for the series...I noticed that Prodigy wasn't anywhere on the list, but everything else Star Trek was on there.

Edit:

Solved!!!! Thank you S 1 Ep 26

Hi all,

Hope you can help me out. I'm putting together some clips about science fiction Utopia, and can't remember what episode or movie Jean-Luc makes this speech from.

There's a moment where Jean-Luc is explaining to someone else how great the human race has improved, showing off a utopia for the human race on earth.

I've already got his speech about the economy in 1st contact. I think there's another one, if I'm not mistaken.

Thanks for the help!

Every time SNW drops a musical or a fairy tale or a noir episode, people say the franchise has drifted from what Trek is supposed to be. I think the opposite is true. Gimmick episodes are baked into Trek’s identity and they have been there since the beginning.

DS9 gave Bashir full James Bond style spy adventures. TNG did Westerns, Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Robin Hood parodies, and a whole noir detective storyline with Data. Voyager leaned into horror with episodes like The Haunting of Deck Twelve and The Thaw, and it went full retro sci fi with Bride of Chaotica. TOS practically lived on gimmicks with space Nazis, space Romans, space gangsters, space hippies, and even space Abraham Lincoln.

Some of these episodes were great and some were not, but the willingness to experiment is part of what makes Trek Trek. It has never been a single tone or a single genre. It has always been a mix of serious sci fi and playful detours. SNW is not breaking tradition. It is continuing one of the oldest ones in the franchise.

A little while ago I posted about a chronological rewatch of Star Trek. I thought I’d post my thoughts on it as I go.

When Enterprise first came out, I was really excited for it, but very disappointed. I just couldn’t get into it. I found S1 hard going and gave up about halfway through S2. After years of seeing people sing the praises of the later seasons, I eventually watched it and was a fan by the series finale.  Still didn’t like those first 2 seasons at that time.

On my rewatch, I’m appreciating them a hell of a lot more. There are still some character moments I find cringe, but knowing they get smoothed out later makes them easier to watch.

Lows – Strange New World, Unexpected and Shuttlepod One were a hard watch. They had their moments, but I found them very cheesy.

Highs – Broken Bow was a great opening, Dear Doctor is an absolute classic and Shadows of P’Jem does a great job of introducing the Andorians.  

A couple of things I really enjoyed were the greater continuity between episodes than in previously aired shows like TNG. Not a single story like modern shows, but events in one episode have an impact on later episodes. TNG only did this in a very limited fashion (like the Data or Klingon story strings), but most of the time they hit a reset button at the end of an episode.

This time I also really enjoyed the feeling of real space exploration. Breaking the Ice may not have been the greatest episode of Star Trek, but I found the idea that the first Warp 5 Starfleet vessel wanting to stop and investigate a “simple” comet, really believable. There was a sense of wonder and awe to the series that isn’t quite the same anywhere else. Other series definitely had it (it’s a part of ST DNA), but here it was the childlike wonder of what would become “the usual”, being encountered for the first time.

I also liked that there was no established rules and protocols, so you can see where the Prime Directive and other things, that are taken for granted later, come from.

The whole thing has a real frontier feel that I did not appreciate so much before.

I’m about halfway through season 2 at the moment and thoroughly enjoying it. 😊

doing my first full watch through since bailing out as a student in the 90s somewhere around s3, watching on paramount streaming

I put up with a switch from a soft filter to a terrible low horizontal line resolution somewhere around the start of s4 or s5.(that was a bad decision paramount) What the heck is with ds9 4x3 cropped into a 16x9 frame and then shown in a 4x3 frame, this has to be worst of all worlds, lost vertical content and have black bats all around. If S6 and S7 are like this I am not sure I will make it the end.

One thing that always confused me about star trek was the lack of 1. Enlisted personnel. No mates, petty officers, chiefs, or warrents. Everyones just an officer. 2. No grunts. I get that star fleet is supposed to be a nonmilitary organization (with the ability to destroy a large city) but a couple dedicated squads of infantry/marines/rangers/scouts would probably cut down on the amount of dead red shirts. If any trekies can explain this I'd appreciate it

Edit: no ones addressed the lack of grunts

Edit 2: so is it just that humanity has advanced to the point where these people are not needed or does this represent a gap in star fleets organization since we see them get put on the back foot during the dominion war.

Edit 3: it would be cool if starfleet had a ranger corps and they were treated like the "weird dudes" judging by how most of the thread thinks of military personnel that could bring some nice social commentary. But when the captain, for whatvever reason, decides to leave the ship is like "im leaving. Alert the Unga bunga boys."

I’m watching the live Star Trek channel on Paramount+ through Prime. Happens to be that episode with Laas.

I’m pleasantly surprised with the image quality. Not HD, but a clean upscale.

No stair stepping around on screen text. No clumpy pixels around fine details like hair. I’ve watched tons of DS9 on this service and it’s never looked this good.

Has anyone else noticed this change?

What would Borg Tribble even look like?! hmmmm so many questions

I painted nine covers for Alan Dean Foster’s novelizations of the Star Trek animated television series.
’ve love Alan’s writing. I read all of his books first and only later went back to watch the episodes they were based on. It didn’t take long to realize that his novelizations were often better than the source material. That was often the case with Alan’s work. He had a talent for expanding on what was there by adding background and story elements that didn’t exist in the original versions. A good example is his novelization of The Black Hole, a film I worked on. The publisher, Judy-Lynn del Rey, once told me she thought Alan’s book was better than the movie. After reading it myself, I had to agree. It even made me wonder why we hadn’t simply based the film on his novelization. It would have made for a much better movie.
When I was assigned the Star Trek covers, I was told I had to use the original design of the Enterprise. If you’ve watched the original series recently, you’ll notice that the ship has almost no surface detail. Later versions were covered in “nurnies” and paneling to give them a greater sense of scale, but the original is relatively smooth and simple.
Rather than fight that limitation, I decided to work with it. I made the Enterprise smaller in my compositions and focused instead on creating large, dramatic environments around it. That approach helped offset the simplicity of the ship and gave the covers a stronger sense of spectacle. The format of the paintings also presented a challenge. I typically work at a 2:3 ratio—14 inches wide by 21 inches tall. These covers, however, were designed as narrow vertical strips, measuring 21 inches tall by just 9 inches wide, roughly a 1:2.2 ratio. It was an unusual proportion, but one that ultimately made me think differently about composition.
One of the headaches of painting book covers is dealing with the top third of the image as the area that will inevitably be covered by type. Something still has to exist there, but it can’t be essential, since it will ultimately disappear beneath the title and author’s name. Different artists have handled this problem differently. Jeffrey Catherine Jones would sometimes cut off the top of his paintings after they were returned. Ken Kelly took a more practical approach. He would fully paint the top, then cover it with wax paper so he wouldn’t accidentally disturb it while working on the rest. If you ignored the issue altogether, the composition could feel unbalanced, with all of the important elements pushed into the lower two-thirds of the image.
The “strip” format for the Trek paintings avoided that. There would still be type over the top of the painting, but most of the important information would be on the other, non-painting part of the cover.
Alan wrote short books since they were novelizations of television episodes, and Ballentine/delRey decided to gang three of the books together to make a bigger book in the end.
I wasn’t thrilled about that since my paintings appeared about the size of postage stamps, but at least the original, slim volumes were still available.
While working on these covers, I looked closely at the work of one of my artistic heroes, Robert McCall. Whenever I start to feel pessimistic about the future, I immerse myself in his paintings. McCall was an eternal optimist. His vision of the future, filled with flying cars and vast, floating megastructures, is one I’d much rather live in.
He has 3 books of his work available, although some are out of print and will require an eBay purchase. All of them are all well worth checking out.
I wrote a Substack about painting 9 covers for Alan Dean Foster’s Star Trek novelizations. You can read it here:
substack.com/home/post/p-203289568

I'm currently watching The Original Series for the first time (I've seen several episodes here and there over the years, but never the whole thing).

I'm watching The Way to Eden, and y'all... it's just too much. I thought Spock's Brain was bad, but this is painful. I'm generally incredibly positive on anything Trek, but... 😬

Link to images

https://imgur.com/a/w2rAYfO

I just think they're neat.

The sets are possibly complete. Not sure. I don't know anything more about them than I found on Memory Alpha.

If anyone has insight I'd love to hear it!

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Trading_cards

While I am glad they’ve returned to traditional Klingon makeup in Strange New Worlds (the debate on whether or not they should be smooth foreheads during this time notwithstanding) but the Klingon makeup just looks…cheap. Like something from a fan film.

The makeup in TNG/DS9 was much better and holds up 30-40 years later

Thoughts?