🖖 Discovery S03E01: A strong start to the season. Lots of cool tech, a number of intriguing clues and hints about the state of the galaxy, and a strong underlying theme of hope throughout the episode. And Grudge, of course, who I suspect has more to her than we’ve seen so far.
Star Trek
Trek has been part of my life since I was an infant. I have bookcases full of Trek books. One of my tattoos is the Vulcan calligraphy for “kol-ut-shan” (IDIC). This is my home fandom.
📚 forty-one of 2020: A Rock and a Hard Place by Peter David ⭐️⭐️⭐️ #startrek #tng 🖖
Riker’s sent off on a B-plot, so a troublesome first officer is temporarily assigned to the Enterprise in the hopes that Picard can corral this loose cannon. He’s an ass, but is he unstable?
📚 forty of 2020: A Call to Darkness by Michael Jan Friedman ⭐️⭐️ #startrek #tng 🖖
Almost a standard 3-star “stranded in primitive conditions/‘Bread and Circuses’ variant” adventure, but had some really weird oversights that knocked a star off.
From Q&A to The Cage
Including Short Treks episodes in a chronological rewatch means that the very recently produced Short Treks episode “Q&A”, dealing with Spock’s first day on the Enterprise, comes just before the original pilot for TOS, “The Cage” (and then the first two seasons of DIS before going into TOS proper).
Interestingly, I didn’t find this nearly as jarring as one might think, and while there are absolutely aspects I have problems with (like the external shots of the turbolifts that look like roller coasters surrounded by an absolutely ludicrous amount of open space), I do think it says good things about the care that the modern crew is taking with bringing TOS-era stories into the modern age.
Turbolifts aside, while the DIS version of the Enterprise is absolutely a modern interpretation, it is such a respectful interpretation that it works well for me, even when going from that to the very early ‘60s set from The Cage.
Part of Peck’s DIS interpretation of Spock, of course, was intended to act as a bridge between the more emotional version seen in The Cage and the more reserved version seen in the rest of TOS, and the events of Q&A tie directly into this. Romijn’s Number One is enjoyable, brining a little more warmth to Barret’s, and Mount’s Pike is quite simply an incredible match for Hunter, and it’s even more striking when watching them back-to-back like this.
So yes, as expected, there are differences. How could one expect otherwise, with five decades between the two productions? But even so, it’s quite impressive how well they mesh — at least, in my opinion. I may not agree with every choice the current stewards of Trek are making, but I think it’s clear that they have a lot of love and respect for the universe.
Möbius Trek
On Tuesday evening, I finally finished watching Star Trek: Enterprise (the finale of which is, well, a rather impressive number of bad decisions for a series finale). This was a bit of a personal milestone for me, as it was the first time where I had watched all of Star Trek’s canon at least once. Some, of course, I’ve watched many times, but ENT was the last series I’d never gotten around to watching.
Of course, that milestone only lasted for roughly 36 hours, since as of midnight this morning, the latest episode of Lower Decks went live, and I won’t get to see it until tonight. But I’m not about to complain that my milestone didn’t last long because we’re in the midst of almost six months straight of new Star Trek coming out each week!
So what now? Well, keep going, of course!
As long as I’ve just finished ENT, which is chronologically the first series, it just makes sense to continue on with a chronological re-watch. Using the list from the Star Trek Chronology Project as my guide, I’m rolling right in to the first two seasons of DIS (which, admittedly, will be a little weird for a bit once S3 of DIS starts broadcasting, but crossing time streams is pretty normal for Trek, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to cope), and then it’s on to TOS, TAS, TNG, LDS, DS9, VOY, PIC…and then we start all over again, right? ;)
Right now, I’m particularly looking forward to the TOS/TAS/TNG re-watches, both because they’re the ones I’ve last watched least recently, and because for each of them, though I picked up the remastered sets on Blu-ray for my personal collection, I’ve not actually taken the time to do more than sample a few bits here and there. It’ll be nice to finally see the restorations that have been patiently waiting for me to get around to them.
LLAP 🖖
The Typography of Star Trek
Typeset in the Future: Star Trek: The Motion Picture
If you’re a fan of Star Trek: The Original Series, you might be expecting to see the font from its opening titles in Star Trek: The Motion Picture too. This font was (perhaps unsurprisingly) called Star Trek….
The Star Trek font also appeared in a non-italic version, to introduce William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy to 1960s TV audiences. Sadly, this is where the good news ends. When The Original Series returned for a second season, it added DeForest Kelley (Dr. “Bones” McCoy) as a second “ALSO STARRING”.
The problem here is obvious, isn’t it? Unlike the Es in “SHATNER” and “LEONARD,” the ones in “DEFOREST KELLEY” have straight corners, not curved ones.
Alas, The Original Series’s inconsistent typography did not survive the stylistic leap into the 1970s. To make up for it, The Motion Picture’s title card introduces a new font, with some of the curviest Es known to sci-fi. It also follows an emerging seventies trend: Movie names beginning with STAR must have long trailing lines on the opening S.
📚 thirty-eight of 2020: The Captains’ Honor by David and Daniel Dvorkin ⭐️⭐️ #startrek #tng
Somehow the Roman gladiator planet from TOS has become a full member of the Federation, with a Starfleet ship crewed entirely by these neo-Romans. It does not go well.
📚 thirty-five of 2020: Masks by John Vornholt ⭐️⭐️⭐️ #startrek #tng 🖖
Given current events, it’s kind of amusing to be reading a Trek adventure in a society where everyone wears masks at all times, and their status is determined by the type and quality of their mask.
📚 thirty-four of 2020: Power Hungry by Howard Weinstein ⭐️⭐️⭐️ #startrek #tng 🖖
Much better than the last one. While the environmental themes are pretty heavy-handed, it’s nice to find a Trek novel where everything isn’t wrapped up neatly with a bow by the end.
📚 thirty-three of 2020: Strike Zone by Peter David ⭐️⭐️ #startrek #tng
Can’t decide if it wants to be comedic or serious, and has wildly out-of-character (or ridiculously exaggerated) moments for nearly every main character. Amusing moments, but not a good Trek novel.
