Short Treks E09: “The Girl Who Made the Stars”: A sweet fable told to a young Michael Burnham (with an adorable tardigrade stuffie) by her dad. Gorgeous animation—and the being the girl in the story meets sure looks like it came right out of The Abyss! Maybe a crossover? 😉 🖖

Short Treks E08: “Ephriam and Dot”: Extremely cute, and definitely a love letter to TOS Trek—though perhaps so much so that more casual or newer watchers might be confused by some of the images that flash by. It worked for me, though. Plus, the narrator is Kirk Thatcher! 🖖

📚 fifty-nine of 2019: Gods Above, by Peter David. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A little odd, because I didn’t know beforehand that the New Frontier books were quite so serialized, and I was coming in mid-story. Still an enjoyable follow up to TOS’s “Who Mourns for Adonais?”. 🖖

RIP D.C. Fontana

Sad news — D.C. Fontana, one of the pillars of Star Trek, has died.

As a writer, Fontana is credited with many episodes focusing on Vulcan culture and helped blaze a trail for female writers in sci-fi television. She is the mind behind The Original Series and The Animated Series episodes like “Yesteryear” and “Journey to Babel,” which introduced Spock’s father Sarek and mother Amanda. She co-wrote the Hugo Award nominated The Next Generation episode “Encounter at Farpoint” with Gene Rodenberry, and she continued to write for TNG and Deep Space Nine. Her last produced credit was an episode of webseries Star Trek: New Voyages, starring Walter Koenig.

Found on Facebook, original creator unknown, but it sure made me laugh. Welcome to the holiday season!

📚 fifty-six of 2019: Taking Wing, by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Captain Riker’s first assignment post-Nemesis. Also, quite coincidentally, in many ways a sequel to the last Trek novel I read, with several direct ties, and by the same authors. 🖖

📚 fifty-four of 2019: The Sundered, by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Captain Sulu and the crew of the Excelsior mix it up with Tholians and a mysterious new race with ties to Earth. A good, easy bit of fluff to spend a quiet day reading. 🖖

Short Treks E07: “Ask Not”: A bit predictable — I figured out what was going on long before the reveal — but still enjoyable, and better than the last two. About those views of Engineering, though…how is there room for all that with all the empty space around the turbolifts? 🖖

Short Treks E06: “The Trouble with Edward” Okay…yes, it’s funny (and be sure to watch all of it). I laughed quite a few times. But wow, are they playing fast and loose with canon and biology. Hard to say much more without spoilers, but…I’m very torn on what to think. 🖖

Short Treks E05 “Q&A”: Cute, and nice to see Spock and Una playing against each other. Really dislike the Discovery-style “exterior” views of turbolifts, though; it makes no sense, and is as visually jarring as the Budweiser version of engineering from the Abramsverse. 🖖