#star trek discovery speculations

[sophiaforevs]

Disco Season 5 speculation:

Okay so here's what we know:

The trailer for S5 says they're looking for an ancient treasure.

Modern Trek likes to reference/followup on 90s era Trek when they get the chance. We saw this with Guinan and Q as well as the Changelings in both Picard and Disco S4.

SO what do I get when I mix those two things together?

I think it has to do with the Iconians. The Iconians were an ancient space-faring empire from 200k years ago who seemingly vanished but are talked about in the mythology of a lot of different worlds. Their big thing was teleportation tech and some of it survived at least until the 24th century- the Iconian Gates. These passageways could instantly teleport you anywhere in the galaxy.

"But they already have transporters and the Spore drive, why is this important?"

Because transporters are limited in the size of what they can send and how far they can send it and the Spore Drive requires a ship and a very special person to pilot it. But the Iconian Gates are the size of a doorway and don't require a pilot. You just tell it where you want to go and *poof* you're there. And it bypasses any known shielding technology so you can see why it fits in the "treasure" category.

But this presents a problem, specifically that it inconveniences me. See, I'm GMing a game of Star Trek Adventures the Star Trek ttrpg and I've already planned out that the Iconians will be the BBEGuys (or rather, tech they left behind) and I don't want Disco to contradict what I have planned! It's inconsiderate is what it is.

So I think we can all agree, following up on the Iconians would be really cool, it's best for me everyone that they do something else.

[letmeliedown]

the mirror universe stuff really highlights how star trek is a fantasy show with a science theme and not a sci fi show. yeah there's a parallel universe where all the particles are different and it makes everyone fundamentally evil. we've developed an objective definition of evil and it involves being bisexual with a taste for camp and fetish wear. it's pretty advanced stuff, you wouldn't get it

[itsmyfandomandilikeit]

What we actually know about the renewal of Star Trek: Prodigy

Ok so there's been some speculation going around that Prodigy is or is not being renewed. The fact is that there has been zero news on the topic, official or otherwise, and anyone claiming to know differently is wrong or lying.

That being said, there are some things we do know:

1. Netflix is of course notorious for canceling things. I am an Inside Job fan. I know. However, they almost never leave things ambiguous. They aren't shy. When things are canceled, they make a clear public statement saying that it's canceled. Usually within two weeks of airing.

2. All of the clear public statements we've gotten from Netflix and the Prodigy crew have been consistent: Netflix will decide when they get more data. Recently, Aaron Waltke said on a podcast that they will review the viewing numbers from the first six months after season 2 was released, which occurred on July 1. This lines up with Netflix's data release schedule, which collates viewing data from the first and second halves of the year.

3. They are also waiting on a few other things. Namely, Netflix still commissions Paramount to create seasons of Prodigy. The sale of things like DVDs, Blu-Rays, digital downloads, and those new ship models that are coming out this December, affect the price of a season of Prodigy. Merchandise sales and licensing pay for a portion of it, and Netflix has to cover the rest of the cost. I'm sure the new theme park ride affects this as well. The cost to commission a season of Prodigy is determined by a number that is very much, at the moment, in a state of flux because of the upcoming physical media and merchandise releases, which could do well or not.

4. It was announced that the Hagemans have been added to a LEGO Ninjago project, and there has been some speculation that they will be unable to work on Prodigy because of this. This is irrelevant. The Hagemans have stated repeatedly that they typically work on 2 or 3 projects at once. To my knowledge, Aaron Waltke was working on Transformers One during the production of Prodigy season 2. This is just normal. They're getting work because their work has done well.

5. Prodigy costs the least of any Star Trek project to produce, but it is also the only Star Trek project that Netflix has access to. If, say, Section 31 does extremely well, Netflix can't get any portion of that success except for through Prodigy. Netflix also knows that very few new users are actually signing up for Paramount+, and indeed many users are leaving the platform, so Prodigy remains a good investment for Netflix. No matter how well this season of Lower Decks does, Netflix can't buy it because it's not for sale.

6. Data from 2023 indicated that Prodigy outperformed all of the rest of Star Trek on Netflix (admittedly, the US is not counted in this). What's especially notable about this is that it was only available for one week in 2023. In the first half of 2024, Prodigy continued to do well on the Netflix platform, despite it effectively only playing reruns during that time. Netflix will not release numbers for the second half of 2024 until next year.

7. Prodigy has the budget and appeal of a children's show, but it also has an avid adult audience. Many adults are watching it just because it's Star Trek or because they want to keep up with the overall story. Anyone who wants to maintain Star Trek completion must watch Prodigy, which is only available through Netflix.

8. Marketing is typically the lion's share of the cost of any media, but no marketing was done for Prodigy. It relied on word of mouth and the Star Trek brand. This affects how expensive it is to Netflix.

9. Finally this is not about the show itself but I just don't think that the story is over because plotlines in Star Trek never really end. Watching TAS is like the Leo Dicaprio pointing meme of seeing how Discovery was designed from a ton of these episodes. Every detail of the older shows is spun into entire plotlines in NuTrek. Whether or not Prodigy is renewed, these characters and species have been added to the canon and more than likely it will never let them go. If there isn't a new season, there will be video games, books, comic books, theme park attractions, stupid hats (that I'll buy), sunglasses, t-shirts, board games, markers, branded blankets, posters, and anything else you can think of. I kinda don't know how I feel about this but it is what I think. No matter how many seasons of Prodigy there actually will be, I'm sure the characters and settings will be brought back thirty years from now for better or worse.

[leohtttbriar]

For the Reverse Unpopular Opinion meme: would love to give you the excuse to talk about voyager. (or if that's too easy, something you like about your least favorite star trek series??)

i love voyager. so so much. i tried to think if i love another star trek series i've seen any less than voyager, but i can't honestly say that i do? i love ds9, tos, discovery, and, yes, even snw. i am in the embarrassing position of admitting that i really just love star trek, in a mostly uncomplicated way.

of the things i love about voyager, the premise is probably the biggest one. i have rambled about this a lot already but: i think it confronts for the first time in star trek the inherent sadness associated with us studying the stars--and therefore the sadness that science-fiction writers mostly imagine their way out of, often as a way to speculate a time when this reality may be less real: the fact that space is big. it is too big. the fastest human beings have ever traveled, with their own bodies along for the ride, still isn't fast enough to get us to the moon in less than three days. light--the speed limit of the universe--needs a full eight minutes to get from the sun to us--a relatively close planet. space is enormous. we measure things that are "close" in light-years. everything is so spread out and that's just from the perspective of being inside a galaxy, which is actually crowded when compared to intergalactic space. everything is so far away and so long away and it feels impossible to think of getting anywhere in a time meaningful to us and our lifespans. which is in its own way heartbreaking.

and while in voyager they are clearly not alone in the way we feel we could be (and in practice are until we get the smallest sign that even non-intelligent life exists off our very own special rock) with all the aliens they meet and the fact that they are on a ship that can go faster than light, they are stranded and they are on their way back home and it will still take them a life-time. that's the reality of the story: that they will spend the rest of their lives trying to get back. and though i know they do get back much quicker than that, where i'm at in the beginning of season 3 that is still the reality of it. and this makes literally everything that happens in the show so fascinating--even if it's a plot or an idea that not only happened in another series but was done technically better in that series. every plot in voyager is colored by the tension between what the star trek ethos is as a whole--exploration and diversity and learning and humanity--all in an optimistic light--and what voyager is about--getting back home. it makes me think of the tension in the actual "voyagers," somewhere now in interstellar space, and the golden record with a map of earth's position etched onto it: spacecraft meant to never be returned but contained on them is a deep, deep hope that in some way they will be. this tension, to me, affects everything on the show.

but that's maybe too big an idea without specific examples from the series--i might ramble about that at another point lol

in the spirit of your question, i will say there is one star trek property that i don't particularly care for on the whole and that's the 2009 movie (and sequels). but i will also say what that movie did right and what i do love about it even if i don't love the movie as a whole is how it portrayed the high-tech poetics of star trek in a much more immediately understandable way than even the 90s shows could for a 21st century audience. the "apple-store" aesthetic is really an argument about how this is the future and it's sleek and stylish and humans have advanced in their engineering and scientific abilities. and among this high-tech argument is uhura front and center: she's very loudly and explicitly a linguist and she fits in this silicon-valley look despite the fact that nowadays things like linguistics are considered "soft sciences" in a general way and treated like that very specifically by the tech-industry now (the attitude being "there's an app for that"). but uhura makes a central discovery in one of her labs at the beginning of the movie which gives her and kirk a leg up on understanding the Movie Threat. the 2009 movie significantly raised her importance as a character, to the point that the "main trio" in those movies is, arguably, more kirk/spock/uhura than it is kirk/spock/mccoy---especially if you're going by the movie posters.

also they gave her this line:

UHURA: And did I not, on multiple occasions, demonstrate an exceptional aural sensitivity, and I quote, "an unparalleled ability to identify sonic anomalies in subspace transmissions tests?"

which is excellent world-building about communications-officers, if you care for that sort of thing. and it provides a starting point for an argument about how listening to a universe (famed quiet due to the lack of material through which sound can travel) is essential to understanding it---an idea that can be further extrapolated via sci-fi regarding things like: listening to gravitational waves if we record them right; or working on the idea that all matter is but a vibration in a quantum field; or, from a more cultural concern, the implication that it is absurd to think you can travel to an alien world and not bring someone with an "exceptional aural sensitivity" who can facilitate an exchange of language and, thereby, meaning.

[spirk-trek]

I would love to hear your thoughts on kirk's backstory and what happened on tarsus iv, I feel like I've read so many conflicting takes on here and none of them actually match up with the episode (conscience of the king)

Hi anon! The way you worded this makes me think you were just looking for information and not a fic request. Forgive me if I was wrong!! 😅

I think the reason there are so many conflicting ideas is because of how vague it is in canon itself (which is cool, leaves a lot of room for interpretation). Because of this, when I recently wrote a thing about Tarsus IV I also struggled with "research" for it. Here's what I came up with:

!!! Disclaimer! I am not declaring any of this the One True Canon™! This is just my interpretation/speculation based on existing lore !!!

To me, it makes most sense for Jim to be sent to Tarsus IV with his mother, and for her to be a civilian scientist/researcher of some kind. I find it very hard to believe the massacre could have taken place if Starfleet were present, which would include George Kirk, Jim's father. George is said to have been absent often due to his work (SNW), so it wouldn’t be strange for him to be separated from his family (this is also just normal in Star Trek in general, i.e. Sulu [AOS] and like… everyone with children in TNG).

A more recent Trek book called Drastic Measures seems to back this exact idea up (depends who you ask which novels are canon, and this book was written for Discovery so take it with a grain of salt).

Sam would, in the TOS timeline, be 10 years older than Jim (~23). That would make it unlikely he'd be tailing after his mother to remote colonies. It's much more likely he was concerned with his own career/family/life.

So, in summary of those points, I think it was just Jim and Winona. Jim is between 12 and 14 years old, and his mother was a civilian researcher (the novel I mentioned earlier made her a xenobiologist, probably for plot reasons).

Something I do see exaggerated sometimes is the method of killing in the massacre. An antimatter chamber appears to be what was used, similar to A Taste of Armageddon, so it would not have been mass carnage or a big dramatic fight in the end. Just... zap. 

SPOCK: "He was certainly among the most ruthless, to decide arbitrarily who would survive and who would not [...] and then to implement his decision without mercy. Children watching their parents die. Whole families, destroyed. Over four thousand people. They died quickly, without pain, but they died.”

However, these are also quotes from the episode, so I can see why people might think the massacre itself was more violent: 

- JIM: “Four thousand people were needlessly butchered.” - LEIGHTON: “I remember him. That voice. The bloody thing he did.”  - JIM: “Are you sure you didn't act this role out in front of a captive audience whom you blasted out of existence without mercy?” - KARIDIAN/KODOS: “Murder, flight, suicide, madness. I never wanted the blood on my hands ever to stain you.” 

There was a revolution of some kind, probably brought about by people easily radicalized out of hunger and desperation.

- KARIDIAN/KODOS: [reading] "The revolution is successful…” - SPOCK: “There were over eight thousand colonists and virtually no food. And that was when Governor Kodos seized full power and declared emergency martial law.”

If Kodos already had his ideas about eugenics, which it sounds like he did, he would have seized this as an opportunity. This would make him an even more solid comparison to Hitler, which they were definitely going for to at least some extent (this was written two decades after WWII which many involved in the making of star trek were deeply affected by if not veterans themselves).

Because of the above quotes, I also think there’s merit to the idea of there being multiple formal executions where Kodos gave his infamous “speech” each time rather than just once (this would be another reason Jim would remember it enough to write it down), rather than one massive execution of 4,000 people. However, this quote could be interpreted to mean the opposite:

SPOCK: “Kodos began to separate the colonists. Some would live, be rationed whatever food was left; The remainder would be immediately put to death.”

Arguably, the even more traumatic suffering would be the period of starvation and upheaval leading up to the massacre. To me, a 3-6 month period of slowly worsening starvation as the food supply shrank and shrank to nothing would make the most sense.

One aspect I don't quite get is that Kodos's body was supposed to have been "burned beyond recognition.” Since we know from Conscience of the King his death was staged, then this fake death can’t have been pulled off in the midst of Starfleet intervention upon arrival (they would have taken him into custody to stand trial rather than kill him on sight anyway). Burning yourself to death is a highly unusual form of suicide, so I’m not sure if that’s supposed to allude to him being fake killed in the carnage following the execution when the people didn't react the way he wanted or expected? My only theory is that there was unrest and rioting for the period of time between the massacre and Starfleet arriving with relief, and he used that to fake his death once he knew he would be put on trial.

Anyway, this is super long so I'll cut myself off there. Hope that answered your question, sorry for being crazy! If anyone has anything to add, please do!

[quasi-normalcy]

So the thing about Star Trek: Picard is...

Say what you will about the first season, but it’s meaningful. In fact, Rios says explicitly what it’s about in the fourth episode: “the existential pain of living with the consciousness of death and how it defines us as human beings.” Pretty much all of the character arcs are about different reactions to this, and the supposed “grimdarkness” of the setting reinforces this point; the Federation has become reactionary and xenophobic because it was a utopia that experienced mass death right on its doorstep for the first time in living memory. The conflict with the Synths is ultimately rooted in the fact that we die; they don’t. The fact that the finale was called “Et in Arcadia ego” really just telegraphs this; “Even in Arcadia [utopia], I [Death] am.”

And the second season, for all its many flaws, carries this theme forward, proposing that love, togetherness, and companionship are the only meaningful candles in the dark. Q is dying; he awaits meaning, and he doesn’t find it. And so he opts instead to do one last favour for Jean-Luc so at least he can spare his favourite mortal from his own fate of dying alone. Jurati is able to connect with the Borg Queen because she recognises that her own motivation is something similar: the Queen can feel herself dying across infinite realities and she doesn’t want to be alone. Seven and Raffi find each other; Rios gives up his entire life for a shot at love. It’s an infernal mess, a budget-saving exercise in want of a plot, but I’m going to be honest: I kind of adore it. I think it’s beautiful for all its flaws.

Throughout the first two seasons, we have serious contemplations of transhumanism and identity in the face of death. Picard escapes death using technology, even as his friend, a living machine, embraces his end as a necessary part of being human. Soji loses her identity even as she gains knowledge of herself as an immortal android. Jurati too embraces transhumanism and, to some extent, loses her identity by so doing, but–in an interesting twist for Star Trek–this is not stigmatized; this is framed as what’s best for her. All of this is philosophically rich, high-octane fuel for thought, as speculative fiction should be.

The third season, meanwhile–for all that I have loved (some of) the nostalgia hits injected directly into my veins–bugs me because of how absolutely lightweight it feels. Death is gone. Not just as a theme, but gone from the narrative. Sure we kill off Ro, and T’Veen, and Vadic, and Shelby, and Shaw, but it feels like nothing. Death holds no dominion; Data is back; so’s the Enterprise-D; so’s Q (or maybe he’s come in from an earlier point in his timeline; it’s not clear). Kirk apparently is alive again, resurrected offscreen sometime after Generations and kept in a covert warehouse awaiting new adventures. Apparently Terry Matalas has already formulated plans for bringing Todd Stashwick back if when he gets his “Legacy” spinoff. I’m half-surprised that they didn’t reveal that Romulus magically popped back into existence in a background Okudagram somewhere. The Federation is as “grimdark” as it has ever been depicted, but unlike the first season (or Deep Space Nine, or even the first season of Discovery), this is never seriously interrogated or problematised. We go through the motions, cargo-cult-like, of moral debate in episode 7, but it’s not connected to anything. We hear that Vadic was the product of Section 31 war crimes; Picard looks shaken up by this, but then he and Beverly immediately decide to commit some war crimes of their own by executing her. This is never mentioned again. The whole exercise feels perfunctory, as I have said above: like ten-year-olds playing with action figures. It doesn’t feel like Picard, and frankly, for all of the surface detail it gets right, it feels even less like TNG.

So no; I’m not pleased that the first two seasons were ignored.

[anotheruserwithnoname]

Some good news and some bad news regarding Season 3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. The good news is that now that the strikes are over, production of Season 3 is set to begin next month! This is good because there have been rumours swirling around possible cancellation in the wake of Star Trek Discovery being ended after its 5th season. But SNW continues (Lower Decks has also been renewed for Season 5). The only caveat to that is Paramount Plus still cancelled Star Trek Prodigy even with its Season 2 complete, so nothing is a guarantee anymore. (And even then, it's been reported that Prodigy S2 will at least get some sort of Netflix release).

(Further good news is Season 2, with its amazing musical and Lower Decks crossover episodes, is set for Blu-ray release before Christmas.)

The bad news - though this is likely educated speculation on Screen Rant's part - is the possibility that the 10-episode 3rd season my be split, with only 5 episodes airing in 2024 and having to wait till 2025 to see the rest. Aside from that wrecking viewer momentum, those 5 weeks will come and go very quickly. If this news is correct, though, they could be telegraphing some sort of 5-episode story arc, which should be good but I actually prefer SNW's episodic format as it better supports the type of experimentation we got with not only this past year's musical and part-animated episodes, but the episodic format is what made TOS what it was. No official word on any cast changes, though I will be surprised if S3 doesn't reintroduce Dr. McCoy in some fashion.

I haven't written much about SNW but it's my favourite of the live action modern Treks. I stopped watching Discovery and Picard but SNW has kept me. I've had songs from the musical earworming for the last week or so after I rewatched it. And I greatly appreciated the time-travel episode "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" for finally canonizing an explanation as to why the prequel series haven't always lined up with what we know as canon from TOS, TNG, etc. which as far as I'm concerned frees the writers to deviate and retroactively serves to rectify canon issues dating all the way back to some episodes of DS9, never mind Enterprise, Discovery and SNW itself. I will explain for those who don't know but I will put a spoiler break here for those who might be waiting for the Blu-ray or haven't had a chance to stream season 2 yet. If the break doesn't appear below, stop reading now if you don't want the spoiler.

s

p

o

i

l

e

r

The episode reveals that due to the many time travel events over the years (including ones we haven't seen on screen by enemies of the Federation; the episode relates one involving Mary Queen of Scots (in-joke for the actress) what we have been seeing in SNW etc. is an alternate timeline. Maybe not as extreme as the Kelvin timeline of the films, but events such as the Eugenics Wars - indeed, the birth of Khan himself - were delayed by decades. This major change to the timeline - and then you fill in the blanks by factoring in even minor changes such as the guy who accidentally killed himself with McCoy's phaser in City on the Edge of Forever, Sisko replacing Gabriel Bell in the Bell Riots, the Voyager crew going back to 1996, Archer and T'Pol heading off agents of the temporal cold war in the early 2000s, etc. - and you can see how it's possible that things progressed differently resulting in SNW and Discovery being more technologically advanced than TOS-era ships should be as established in TNG, DS9 and Enterprise that used the original tech and designs. Also character differences, like Pike's crew being aware of T'Pring and Khan when Kirk's crew in TOS did now despite Spock having worked with La'an Noonien-Singh and Kirk being aware of La'an's feelings for him. Or the lack of reference to Kirk's brother, who dies in a famous TOS episode, having been former Enterprise crew. And it literally stems from two lines of dialogue. It's exhibit A of how quickly and simply a show like Doctor Who can fix things.

[biblioflyer]

The writer's strike and franchise fatigue: two heads of the same coin?

Context: I'm shamelessly reposting a comment on a popular webforum where someone posed the question "What's next for Star Wars?" that prompted a lot of discussion about the whats and whys of what's working, what isn't, and of course everyone's favorite hobby: performing yet another autopsy on the Sequel Trilogy. I declined to go there in favor of speculating on the production side.

Ultimately I think the future of Star Wars requires Disney to do what a lot of franchise owners have been resistant to doing for various reasons: allow their creative teams a wide latitude to fully develop their ideas without unnecessarily harsh deadlines tied to quarterly earnings reports. Now that isn't to say that projects can fail on their own merits.

I don't know for a fact that Book of Boba Fett was timid, awkward, and boring because the showrunners couldn't make a cut that worked with the time and resources allotted, but we were mostly all impressed with Rodrigues' work on Mando so we were cautiously optimistic that a Cool Gangster Drama with Boba Fett could be a thing. So what the hell happened? Solve that mystery and I think you ensure that Star Wars has a future.

Looking at another popular "Star" franchise, we see a lot of similar problems with uneven writing and what seems to be differing opinions both inside and outside the franchise as to what exactly it means for something to carry that name. What sort of stories can you tell? How do you tell them? Can you have a point of view character or does it always have to be ensemble? Can you deconstruct the setting only to reconstruct and reaffirm it in the finale without losing the fans?

What explains "bad" writing? Coercion by the studio? Writer inexperience? Showrunner inexperience? A failure to find the right balance between modernizing the storytelling of a franchise without it becoming illegible as part of that franchise or to cling so hard to fan service that it is afraid to experiment and becomes a less interesting and murkier Xerox of itself?

Something that I found fascinating in the discourse around the writer's strike is that the format of streaming TV with its short seasons has turned everyone involved in these productions into gig workers. Unless you're one of a half dozen showrunners who have helmed widely acclaimed franchises, modern tv has become severely siloed on the production side: writers have limited opportunities to learn directing, editing, and show running. They also have limited opportunities to see how their work translates to the screen when it lands in the hands of directors, actors, set decorators, and FX artists.

If you add up all of the live action Star Trek shows produced to date, you end up with 8 seasons of streaming that equal roughly 4 seasons of broadcast era TV. Which means that under the old paradigm, a traditional TV show would only now just be airing its second "good" season. Which, shockingly enough, maps very neatly to attitudes about Strange New Worlds and Picard Season 3, and to a lesser extent Discovery season 4.*

*To the extent it will ever be allowed to make a second impression, which is another seeming "problem" of the streaming era that needs addressing since any "failed" first season is very likely to result in a sub-franchise that is going to get cauterized and forgotten about given the era of a permissive financial environment for funding additional seasons and permitting a production to recover and learn from their mistakes is pretty much dead and gone.

Were I Disney, given these realities, I would probably fund 2 or 3 "stables" of Star Wars writers and production teams. One for light hearted action comedy, one for "serious drama," and a third for something more esoteric. Maybe a fourth for big budget tentpole films. Keep them employed and give them opportunities to develop their tradecraft.

Don't be so quick to slash and burn a dud, use failure as permission to experiment. If nobody cares about Book of Boba Fett anyway, why not take some risks and see if some writers who are claiming they can turn in a second season that can "fix" the first season by turning the stories that go nowhere or are halfhearted into the first chapters in more meaningful stories? People already tend to avoid series that have only one season anyway and become ever more likely to do so the more time passes without more seasons so you're just throwing away your investment by not trying to salvage it.

This is incidentally why I'm not antagonistic towards the prospect of trying to rehabilitate the Sequel Trilogy. The Prequels are poorly made but were rich in potential. That potential was not left on the table, it was exploited until we can no longer separate the Prequels as they originally stood from all of the tie in media that added depth and nuance to the setting and storybeats.

So were I Disney and I have all of these props and set pieces in storage doing me absolutely no good, then of course it will eventually be time to try to make the Sequel Trilogy good. Maybe do some Director's Cuts and then build out the universe to make it feel less claustrophobic and less overtly a bigger, louder, dumber rehash of the Original Trilogy.

[ohhfarts]

Mild spoilers for Star Trek Discovery and Glass Onion.

OK, the leading ladies of my 2 favorite movies of 2022 in one photo ahhhh (!) What if they were both in the SAME movie?

A buddy movie obviously

Action-drama-comedy

Them against the world

Justice delivered, as well as kicks to the head, continuous Empress Georgiou style sass, and the *coolest* outfits

Maybe/ probably Janelle Monae also does the soundtrack.

Coincidentally both have played multiple characters in the same story/ franchise and were excellent

Coincidentally both have experience with scifi/ speculative fiction storytelling, but this movie doesn't necessarily have to be either

The last scene is the two of them walking away from an enormous explosion. Maybe one last guy tries to get up and is re-kicked.

Post-credits scene may also have additional re-kicking.

[squireofgeekdom]

Tagged by @fezwearingjellybananas! thank you!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

117 (115 of which are solo authored)

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

810,361 (717,002 of which are solo authored, and more than a quarter of that is just mitm 😂)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Whatever catches my attention long enough to give me a fic idea that I finish writing, honestly! I'm fully of the 'scroll twice to get to the end of my fandoms list' writer. But for specifics I'll try to just stick to the past two years, where I've collaborated on fic for USS Interpreter - a cast of original Star Trek ttrpg characters, the Spider Gwen comics (and Squirrel Girl comics), Star Trek Strange New Worlds (and Discovery, and a bit of TOS), Spider Man 2017, Raimi Spider Man, The Flash, IDW Transformers, The Untamed by way of Murderbot fusion/crossover, and Arcane

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Does It Hurt? - MCU CACW fix-it fic, with Tony and Bucky, and tonyrhodey

Don't Miss It - Ford and Mabel Gravity Falls Weirdmaggedon fic, optimistic speculation at the time

Meet in the Middle - My very, very, veeery long-ongoing driftrod fic

More than This - Aro (and ace) Obi-Wan

What You (Don't) Need to Hear - Aro Stanford and Dipper Pines

I do love that 2/5 of these are aro-centric fic

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes! I love comments and I enjoy replying, and from talking to regular readers I think it helps encourage folks to comment. It's never something I expect from when I comment on other's fics, I just want to share my appreciation, but I always am happy to get replies myself.

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Restraining myself to the past two years for specifics, I think You're Just A Little Boy, my transmasc La'an fic, has the most outright Unhappy Ending - at least for this fic, I might write a more hopeful follow up. I'll throw in when you're gone we won't say a word (but you know that's okay), my alternate future Pike fic, goes in for the most bittersweet, and I've definitely cried the most over it

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I write a lot of happy endings, but they're often threaded with a bit of angst or bittersweetness. Fungus Not-Amongus is altogether pretty delightful fluff for Tilly and Pike, though.

8. Do you get hate on your fic?

I have once or twice, but not for a good long while, I've been quite lucky

9. Do you write smut?

Not yet! Got a project or two down the pipe that might have some, but it's not something I typically write

10. Do you write crossovers?

Yes! All the time. In the past couple years, I've written Ghosts in Your Head, Ghosts in My Head, The Flash fic in a Pacific Rim setting, more of a fusion setting, but I'll count it. Intersections, with Spider Gwen & Squirrel Girl, which are technically both Marvel Comics, but I'll count them as a crossover event in the comics spirit. Artificial Survivor is more of a Untamed fic in a Murderbot fusion setting, but the Murderbot characters are technically alluded to, so I'll count that too. Plus there's the Star Trek/Star Wars crossover with Star Trek OC's I'm helping out on. Generally you can find a lot of crossovers I've written, I find them really fun.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! A reader asked to translate a tonyrhodey fic a few years back

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

Given that I specified solo-authored fics above, you can probably guess the answer to that is yes! 😁 I'm co-writing fic about ttrpg Star Trek characters - I play & write Chief Engineer Piper Hawthorne. @severeannoyance is our captain and @plokoonsdisapprovingeyebrows is our Star Wars expert for our Star Wars crossover fic.

14. What‘s your all-time favourite ship?

Given that MITM is 1/4 of my solo wordcount, and I have updated it in the past two years, it's probably gotta be driftrod, at least for this ask. ask me next week, you might get a different answer 😂

15. What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I have a West Wing / X-Men 2 crossover that's been sitting in docs for many many years. I might release some of the finished scenes at some point, like I did with E2bard, because there's lots of good stuff and I always have fun with the West Wing character voices

16. What’s your writing strengths?

Dialogue, introspection, and replicating particularly strong character and narrative voices

17. What’s your writing weaknesses?

I tend to repeat phrases and overuse dashes, and don't expect much setting description XD

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I usually just indicate that something's in another language and keep it in the same language as the rest of the fic - English for me, I'm currently pretty monolingual, but I think other options are perfectly workable for other authors.

Not actually related to the question, but I've gotten comments in other languages or with phrases in other languages, and I always find them an especially high compliment - that my fic was not only worth reading in a language that wasn't someone's first, but that they also put in the time to leave a comment. I usually have to use a bit of google translate and ask my bilingual friends for help translating (thank you), but all the comments have been very nice.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I think I wrote what was Star Wars fanfic for vocab assignments back in middle school, though I didn't know that was what it was called. My first published fic was for Bleach.

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

Sticking in the past two years, Ghosts in Your Head, Ghosts in My Head is one I'm really proud of. And of course I have to mention Meet in the Middle, something I've stuck with for more than five years at this point.

tagging @severeannoyance and @plokoonsdisapprovingeyebrows plus @philcoulsonismyhero and @vetoing-clocks if yall want! Plus a blanket tag for anyone who wants to!

[allmyevilplans]

"Star Trek: Discovery" is over. What did it mean?

Today, the first of the 'New Trek' series ended.

ST:D premiered in September 2017 - shortly after Trump, not that far before COVID - as the first Trek television in 12 years. It was, more-or-less, a 'reboot' - but not in the sense of retreading familiar ground with a new perspective.

Rather, ST:D was an effort to 'modernize' the Star Trek television serial for the streaming era. It did it by - in first season, at least - being Star Trek in name only. Action forward, focused on 1 or 2 characters entirely and eschewing both the ensemble format and parable/morality tale roots of basically every show before it, ST:D was both trapped in broader continuity by being set in the in-universe timeline between existing properties and breaking the same continuity by introducing new characters and technologies that had never been mentioned before. It was trying to have its cake and eat it, too.

The end effect is Star Trek trying to be Star Wars in scope and not succeeding. They were criticized for it, too. From the second season forward ST:D feels a lot more like Star Trek, but the course corrections (more focus on characters other than Michael Burnham, updates to Klingon makeup, blatant reference to Starfleet as a family and the wonder of exploration and camaraderie) feel heavy handed to say the least.

Seasons 3-5 are fascinating because they explore a show that was hauled off the rails by the objections of its viewer base. ST:D never quite manages to break free of being the Michael Burnham show - but it *feels* like Star Trek in a way the first couple seasons simply don't, even if it feels way too overt about it. Flinging itself into the far future - dealing with 2024's scientific speculations and extrapolations (programmable matter, etc.) truly broke new ground with Star Trek as a property and pushed itself further forward from where the series timeline officially ended (and the technological forecasting stagnated) - the nearly unbearable 'Star Trek: Nemesis' movie.

It's important to remember that ST:D predates 'The Mandalorian,' 'The Orville' (which is really quite good in seasons 2 and 3), all the Star Wars shows, Amazon Prime picking up 'The Expanse' - in fact it predates every prestige sci-fi show made for streaming platforms. It made the idea of sci-fi television a *thing* again.

ST:D was often bad, starting far too grim and bloody minded and ending up a bit too fluffy and cheesy. It was sometimes also extremely good - often in spite of its ambition. It was Trek trying not to be Trek but quickly finding out that Trek is so cherished and praised because it *is* utopian, it *is* about people, and that it can't be divorced from its morality tale roots. ST:D feels like it was often flailing because it probably was: the inherent series premise simply didn't work with the property is was in, so it had to change what it was about very, very quickly, and pulling a handbrake that way leaves you in a spin.

I think Discovery is most meaningful because it made all those other properties possible. I don't think, in isolation, that it stands all that tall on its own - I, for one, didn't watch it until Strange New Worlds was coming out and I wanted background on the new series.

Important, but not great.

[california-slow-take]

“I would speculate that he saw it as a city that symbolized the kind of tensions and optimistic future that he wanted to depict in ‘Star Trek,’” Bernardi says. “... Different people — different aliens, in other words — coming together, struggling together, on a ship, i.e., San Francisco.”

Over the decades, “Star Trek” has returned to and expanded upon its version of San Francisco. Helmsman Hikaru Sulu, played by George Takei, was born in the city. The original starship Enterprise was canonically built at the Mare Island shipyard. In 2161, the Charter of the United Federation of Planets was signed in San Francisco, just as the Charter of the United Nations was signed here in 1945, another San Francisco fact that may have endeared Roddenberry to the city. 

The Golden Gate Bridge has been destroyed and rebuilt in the series. When the crew of the Discovery visits 32nd century Earth, it makes a point of visiting Starfleet Academy in what looks like the Marin Headlands to hug a tree. And, in what I would argue is the absolute best “Star Trek” movie, the cast of the original series lands a Klingon ship in Golden Gate Park and spends 122 minutes gallivanting around 1980s San Francisco in order to bring a pair of whales to the future. (Though you, like me, might scream at the screen when Kirk and Spock walk through a “Sausalito” that is clearly the Presidio as they discuss how they’re going to get back to San Francisco.)

[twilightzonecloseup]

1.02c Chameleon

Director: Wes Craven

Writer: James Crocker

Cinematographer: Bradford May

Summary:

In orbit above the earth, a spacewalking astronaut notices a strange blue light flashing off part of the space shuttle Discovery. When the shuttle returns to earth, two engineers, Brady (John Ashton) and Gerald (Steve Bassett), are asked to inspect one of the exterior cameras after it malfunctioned in orbit. When Brady removes the camera, he is engulfed in blue light and disappears—leaving just the camera. The camera is moved to a sealed observation lab where a team of NASA scientists can securely examine it. Dr. Curt Lockridge (Terry O’Quinn) and his team try to reason through what happened while they wait for consultation from a higher ranking scientist, Dr. Vaughn Heilman (Ben Piazza). 

The camera flares up in blue light again, but now the observation lab is occupied by, what appears to be, Brady. “Brady” pleads with them to let him out. They attempt to reason with him, but “Brady” becomes increasingly irate. In a fit of desperation, “Brady” shape shifts into the form of Brady’s wife, Kathy (Lin Shaye). Kathy then pleads the case to the scientists to let “Brady” go home. This reveals that when this shapeshifter absorbs someone, it also absorbs their knowledge and memories, as the real Kathy is safe at home. 

The scientists catch the shapeshifter up in its misunderstanding. It morphs back into its Brady form and begins to lash out. They decide to forcibly sedate the Brady-Thing, and Heilman enters the room to examine it. The Brady-Thing wakes up and absorbs Heilman. Rather than taking on Heilman’s form, it morphs into a bomb with a clock counting down to detonation. As it turns out, Heilman used to work in weapons R&D. Lockridge decides to enter the room himself as a sign of trust, to reason with it and set it free. When the countdown reaches zero, another flash, and out of the room runs the shapeshifter, now in the form of Heilman. 

Lockridge chases after it, out onto the tarmac of the airfield. The shapeshifter explains to Lockridge that it ended up on earth out of pure curiosity and assures him that Heilman and Brady are not being held prisoner. Unable to explain its nature in human language, it offers Lockridge the opportunity to merge with it as well, and travel the universe. Lockridge declines and the shapeshifter transforms into a swirling ball of light, launching itself into the open night sky.

Closing Narration:

“Imagine yourself a visitor to many worlds, drifting on the solar wind, a thousand voices singing in your memory. Now imagine you're this man, who can only guess at the wonders he might have known, wonders that exist for him now only as a riddle... from The Twilight Zone."

More about Chameleon:

Chameleon was conceived and written by supervising producer James Crocker. On the DVD commentary for this episode, Crocker explained that his inspiration for writing this story was simply that he liked shapeshifter stories. It was refreshing to hear to be honest, as sometimes producers who envision themselves as creatives build up grandiose creation myths for their creative output. Anyway, I think that this approach worked out well for Chameleon as a Twilight-Zone story. Crocker successfully took inspiration from  preexisting stories about shapeshifting alien beings and synthesized something original from it. (My assumption is that his inspirations were The Andromeda Strain (1971), The Thing (1982) (or The Thing from Another World (1951)), and maybe just a touch from the Star Trek TOS episode “The Squire of Gothos.” But, that’s just my speculation!) 

Superficially, Chameleon reminded me more of a story that might appear on The Outer Limits. However, the shorter runtime of the episode gives it a Twilight Zone-y flair of presenting the viewer with a strange premise for them to mull over on their own. That is, Chameleon is relatively fantastic, rather than explicative, which would be more in line with the more sci-fi leaning Outer Limits. 

No specific episodes of the original series immediately come to mind to pair Chameleon with, which is a good thing. If every episode had an analog in the original series, this reimagining of the series wouldn’t be showing much imagination! However, if I’m pressed to pair it, I’d go with The Lateness of the Hour (2.08) for depicting the panic response of suddenly not comprehending who or what you are or The Invaders (2.15) for depicting a fundamental difficulty in communicating between people from different planets. While this isn’t a Twilight Zone episode, The Outer Limits episode Corpus Earthing also came to mind when watching this story for the first time.

✨Support✨

[dgcatanisiri]

Discovery ending with this next season frustrates me, because I feel like it's got so much more it can do - this final season is going to be the chance to really explore the 32nd century, now that the big events of the Burn and reuniting the Federation are pretty much wrapped up. Discovery is able to really explore the strange new world of Star Trek's far future... And we're about to wrap it up?

Plus there's the fact that we're only getting two seasons of Captain Michael Burnham, which definitely disappoints me, because sure, the whole series has been about her growth and development from fallen first officer to redeemed captain, but I still feel like there's so much more we can see with her, to say nothing of the other characters, several of whom I feel like haven't even really gotten to know.

Or the fact that, while Discovery has lasted for more seasons than TOS and Enterprise, it's still going to end with fewer episodes than either, while I grew up on TNG, DS9, and Voyager, shows that got seven seasons of roughly twenty-six episodes per, and ended like one season shy of a 200 episode mark.

It feels to me like (as in "I have no evidence for this and am basing this idea solely on vibes, so I understand entirely that I may be completely wrong in assuming this") this isn't a natural ending for the series but a dictate from on high in response to the fan demand for other ideas for Trek series - pre-pandemic, the Georgiou-focused 31 spinoff was announced, expected to go into development after Discovery Season 3 finished. But then the pandemic hit, and, partway through lockdown, Paramount looked at the fan demands for a Pike's Enterprise-centered spinoff, and greenlit that, pushing Georgiou's series to the backburner, because that made five Trek series in active production (Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and SNW), and they didn't want to risk franchise fatigue through having too many shows in active development.

And as a result of that, Michelle Yeoh has been taking other offers, seen her star rise further, so Paramount probably wants to be able to have her headline a series (remember how Genevieve Bujold was initially Voyager's captain because UPN wanted a lead actor with award(s) backing their name?). So now, Paramount wants to push the series centered on Michelle Yeoh and her character. And, hey, Star Trek Picard is wrapped up, it's in its final season, it's perfect to take that open slot in development.

EXCEPT... The fans are clamoring right now not for the 31 series, but to give Seven a series. To do something more with Starfleet and the 25th century. To continue the world of Trek that was foundational for a generation with TNG, DS9, and Voyager (not to discount Enterprise, of course, but it was set in a different era). And with Lower Decks and Prodigy being animated, having a longer development period, they're basically on a different schedule than the live action shows, so something had to give. The studio wants one thing, the fans want another, and the producers of Trek decide that they are going to try to make both satisfied. With SNW even existing because of fan demand, it was safe, and Discovery, the flagship of the current era of Trek, was the one on the chopping block.

This is a pure speculation on my part, so I could be completely and entirely wrong. But this is what FEELS like is going on.

And it sucks, because Discovery has found its stride, and, even if you want to say that it continually doing these massive scale season long stories has gotten tired, that doesn't mean it was ready to be put out to pasture. Just that there might need to be some lower stakes in the series - my theory for season four, in the wake of the third season, I speculated that the season could be centered on more standalone style episodes with the overarching story of reuniting the Federation.

Now, maybe I'm wrong - maybe what they're going to do is scatter Discovery's crew some so that the characters less utilized get a starring role in a spinoff and I've got their game plan entirely wrong. I mean, my crystal ball is perpetually cloudy, so it could be I've got the wrong idea completely, and this is a natural ending point for the series. I do not know.

But I do know that I feel very much like Discovery could have sustained several more seasons, not just this last one.

EDIT: Pointed out elsewhere, this may just overall be a side effect of streaming contracts overall, the entire era of television we're in, that just getting five seasons is a sign of success of the series in the first place, given how many shows get cancelled one or two seasons in. which... Fair. Makes sense. Don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence/corporate dictates.

Still. I don't necessarily feel like that discounts my vibes on the matter, either - it could be that they were willing to wrap Discovery here and not push back like they would have at other points in the series' production BECAUSE they had multiple alternatives to bring to the forefront of other Trek series.

Of course, I could just be saying this as a grumpy Trek fan who is totally down for enough Trek to exist to have an entire network based JUST around airing different Trek series 24/7, so I WANT to have fifty series of three hundred episodes a pop, want more of every Trek series regardless.

[leohtttbriar]

the pivot from having discovery set in the TOS time period, including the nostalgic plot surrounding a nostalgic character like spock, to being set in the far far future, beyond the periods of any other star trek series, is such a cool move. you get these moments where michael and the others are turned into somewhat legendary figures, you get ruins and keepers of old that the characters get to stumble upon, you get the sudden split between 'childhood' and 'maturity' and the innocence of the first rearing up to protect the latter, you get the implied conceits about 'what of an institution, if anything, is worth preserving' and 'how can institutions preserve an idea anyway'-- all combined into the poetics of myth. forward-looking sci-fi that is yet about history. futurism in setting, but not quite in story, but also still speculative.

[darylelockhart]

One of the things that I love about 'visions of tomorrow' in science fiction is the speculation of fashion design. The wild ideas designers have about what people will be wearing in the future is, to coin a phrase...fascinating.

I learned via social media that I'm in the minority in loving Gersha Phillips' work on Star Trek: Discovery, but I really love her 'mirror universe' looks. Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I saw plenty of wild sci-fi looks. Lots of weird fabric choices. Women essentially froze to death - they wore nothing. And leather. What was with the leather? Star Wars fashion choices stand out to me because they were really very practical choices, except for Leia. I dig that she was supposed to be this royal figure and just walked around in Servalan mode all day, but she was also a rough and tumble explorer, and I don't think her costumes showed this accurately until the sequels. Also, these were stories from 'a long time ago', so I was never really inspired to check Star Wars' design for anything but the retrotech.

Anyway, I think the first time I really noticed what Star Trek was doing was during TNG. I grew up on TOS, but there were so many ideas to process that I never got into the clothes until the movies came out. TMP and Wrath of Khan were fantastic, and that sent me back to the TOS episodes to try and catch some of the inspiration. But nothing hit me like TNG, especially the off duty clothing. This is mostly because I was in high school, and, well, it was the High School of Art & Design, so I was kind of a fashion nerd. (more about that someday. My mom actually graduated from Fashion Industries High School and I went to Fashion Institute of Technology before NYU. Fashion design was a pretty big part of my young life.)

One person I've always wanted to meet and talk over coffee with is William Ware Theiss. The attached article is pretty much what Imagine the notes from that chat would look like.