*****SUPERNOVA-SIZED SPOILERS!***** The third and final season of the original “Star Trek” (1966-9) (TOS) is often unfairly maligned in fandom for its drop in quality from the previous two. Yes, it’s true that creator/producer Gene Roddenberry took his hands off the wheel, along with a revolving door of producer/writers, including Gene Coon and John Meredyth…
Tag: Star Trek TOS
Star Trek: The Original Series; examining “Metamorphosis,” 55 years later…
*****55-YEAR OLD STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!***** The Star Trek Original Series (TOS) episode “Metamorphosis” was first broadcast via the NBC network on November 10th, 1967. This was a heady time for the sophomore series, with creator Gene Roddenberry producing, along with some terrific writing talent attached to the show, including script editor Dorothy Fontana (1939-2019), and prolific…
Star Trek: Prodigy: “All the World’s a Stage” is an affectionate ode to fandom…
*****STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!!***** On the Good Ship… I’ve touched on my admiration for Star Trek: Prodigy (PRO) in this column before, and while I can’t promise episode-by-episode reviews, every now and then an episode might come along that prompts me to take a closer look. Most installments of this freshman Star Trek series (created by Dan…
Scanning all Star Treks (1966-present)…
*****STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS AHEAD!***** With the annual Star Trek Las Vegas convention (aka “the 56 Year Mission”) right around the corner, I thought this might be a good time to take an overview of the entire televised Star Trek franchise. I’d previously examined all of the Star Trek feature films, so I thought I might explore…
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, S1.10; “A Quality of Mercy” upsets the ‘Balance’…
*****STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!***** Rebalancing Balance of Terror. The season one finale of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (SNW) is now streaming, and while the prior two episodes of this 10-episode run (“The Elysian Kingdom” “All Those Who Wonder”) haven’t been quite as solid for me, the rest of the season has been terrific, so I had…
Star Trek’s classic episode,”Balance of Terror”: Not bad … for a remake
“It moves as we move…” Back in 1980 or so, I bought a first edition copy (the dark blue cover) of Allan Asherman’s must-have “Star Trek Compendium,” wherein I read that “Balance of Terror,” one of my favorite episodes of the Original Series (TOS), was actually based on a 1957 World War 2 movie called…
To the edge of the galaxy and back; Sally Kellerman, 1937-2022…
Pioneering Roles. Yesterday, February 24th 2022, was a particularly hard day. I woke to see the televised Russian invasion of Ukraine, watched as LGBTQ+ rights were squashed by Florida lawmakers, and, to top it all off, I’d heard that actress Sally Kellerman, a presence in TV and film for as long as I can remember,…
New poster for “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” epitomizes Roddenberry’s ‘space western’ in a single image…
*****POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS***** Yesterday (as of this writing) a flood of rumors emerged regarding the slew of new Star Trek coming out this year; this month’s return of Star Trek: Discovery (Feb. 10th), the season 2 premiere of Star Trek: Picard (March 3rd), more rumors of the long-gestating Star Trek…
Star Trek: Singing the Body Electric…
*****STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS AHEAD FOR TOS, TNG, PICARD, DISCOVERY***** With apologies to both Walt Whitman and Ray Bradbury, Star Trek’s attitudes on ‘the body electric’ have undergone a paradigm shift from 1966 to 2021. The season one finale of Star Trek: Picard, S1.10: “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2″ saw Admiral Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) awakening…
William Shatner, 90, takes a brief, real-life Star Trek…
These are the voyages of New Shepard… This past week, something amazing happened; something that I have complex feelings about, and that I feel obligated to mention here. William Shatner, Star Trek’s “Captain Kirk” himself, at 90 years old, took a suborbital hop roughly 100 kilometers (62 miles) above the Earth and back in an…
Star Trek going forward: ‘Tomorrow isn’t Yesterday’–nor should it be…
Not Yesterday’s Enterprise. This is one of those columns I wish I didn’t have to write, but I wanted to make a one-stop column addressing much of the simmering, seething anger I see online for just about any Star Trek made beyond 2005—or beyond 1987, for some. For as long as I can remember, each…
Is Star Trek’s transporter room a chamber of horrors…?
Trauma of the G-rated “Star Trek: The Motion Picture.” When I was a kid, some million and a half years ago, “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” (1979) made its big screen debut. The film took the low-budget spartan sci-fi TV series and upgraded it into an A-list Hollywood feature…even going so far as to hire…