Tag Archives: Star Trek

Aug 1 2022

The Passing Of A Star Trek Legend: Nichelle Nichols, 1932- 2022

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It’s with a heavy heart that it must be reported that another Star Trek legend is no longer with us. Nichelle Nichols, who pioneered the groundbreaking role of Lt. Nyota Uhura in the original Star Trek passed away at the age of 89.

Nichols had suffered earlier a “mild stroke” in 2015, had health issues related to her advanced age, and according to her son Kyle Johnson, she died due to natural causes. These recent years mark a somber occasion for Star Trek fans since she is the fifth member of the original series to pass away, joining Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, and Grace Lee Whitney.

One of the most distinguishing aspects of the original series back in the revolutionary 1960s was the presence of a Black woman on a starship bridge and the fact that Lt. Uhura was a senior officer. Although her role was limited in a supporting capacity, Nichols was able to inflect competence, elegance and a quiet nobility that resonated with fans of all colors and persuasions. Many instantly recognized how groundbreaking her role since she had a prominent presence on the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise. One of the original viewers turned out to be Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who met Nichols at one point and encouraged her to remain with the show because she expressed her frustrations with her role and was contemplating leaving Star Trek.

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It turned out to be fortunate that she remained because as years passed her status among fans and critics grew and grew. Not only that but by staying with Star Trek through its short three seasons she cemented her place in television history by partaking in the first interracial kiss to air on TV. That episode as we all know was “Plato’s Stepchildren” where she shared a passionate season with her co-star William Shatner. Even though in that scene she admitted to being attracted to Captain Kirk, in real life she, as well as other castmembers, didn’t think highly of Shatner. But they were able to resolve their issues in later life.

Her work in Star Trek didn’t end with the cancellation of the series. She provided voice work in the animated Star Trek: The Animated Series and reprised her role of Uhura in the first six Star Trek films. Even though the amount of screen time was limited in those endeavors, she had a strong presence with some memorable moments, the best one being her scene in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock where she has to contend with a conceited young officer who thinks her time has passed.

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More importantly, her contribution to Star Trek led to her being involved with NASA in a special project to help recruit minorities and women. Notable results of that project were the recruiting Dr. Sally Ride and Guion Bluford, the first American female astronaut and the first African-American astronaut, respectively. On Sept. 17, 2015, she flew on a NASA mission via a modified jet to accompany the SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy) telescope.

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Nichols also appeared in other TV shows and films like Heroes, Snow Dogs, Batman: The Animated Series, Gargoyles, Futurama and Are We There Yet?

Regardless of the amount of screen time she had when playing Lt. Uhura saying her famous line “Hailing frequencies open”, her contribution as a Star Trek legend to Star Trek and society is something that will resonate through the ages and the stars.

Jul 8 2022

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Boldly Goes Back To Basics With The Star Trek Franchise

The first season for the latest Star Trek TV show to stream on Paramount+, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, has just concluded with a strong episode (“A Quality of Mercy”) that represented the best stories of the season. The show is a spinoff of Star Trek: Discovery and another prequel to the original Star Trek. In this case, the show chronicles the voyages of the starship Enterprise under the command of Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) a few short years before Captain James T. Kirk assumed command.

Getting this out of the way, this series is fantastic with its much needed and refreshing back-to-basics approach for Star Trek. The franchise has been faltering lately with subpar live-action entries, Star Trek: Discovery and the second season of Star Trek: Picard. However, the franchise feels reinvigorated now with the new series. A huge part of the success of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has to do with its lead characters.

When Pike and Spock (Ethan Peck) were introduced as feature characters in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery, they quickly stood out and added a lot of gravitas and charisma to the show. In fact, the reason why the second season was so well received was largely due to the characters, how they were portrayed and their engaging storylines. After the season concluded a wise choice was made to bring back Pike and Spock into their own series to continue their story arcs.

Spock, as in the original show, is trying to find a balance between his human and Vulcan sides. Ethan Peck does a fine job as Spock and while he made the role his own, he does quietly emulate the spirit of Leonard Nimoy’s famous portrayal of the Vulcan.

Meanwhile, Anson Mount completely took over the role of Captain Pike, which was first portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter in the original pilot for Star Trek. For decades people associated the early captain of the Enterprise with Hunter, but Mount’s smooth and amenable version of Pike captivated fans to the point that when Captain Pike is mentioned it is easy to picture Mount instead of Hunter. This is something that happened over with the Star Wars franchise where Ewan McGregor made the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi his own instead of Alec Guiness, the original actor who played the Jedi. Getting back to Mount, the actor endows his Pike with a casual competence and an approachable demeanor, which makes Pike a believable starship captain. He is haunted throughout the season by the knowledge that in a few years, he will be incapacitated and spend his last days as a near invalid, as seen in the original Star Trek episodes “The Menagerie, Part I and II”). So, Pike is torn over whether or not he should avoid his fate or try to change it. Nevertheless, Christopher Pike carries on throughout the show with his sense of calm and reason as the crew of the Enterprise deal with weekly crises.

Aside from Christopher Pike and Spock, the series has many interesting characters. Some are familiar characters who were well recast (Celia Rose Gooding as Cadet Uhura and Jess Bush as Christine Chapel), others are new to the franchise, such the ship’s security cheif, La’an Noonien Singh (Christina Chong) and the ship’s engineer, Hemmer (Bruce Horak), and they were all instantly captivating.

Unlike recent TV shows with serialized storytelling techniques, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, went back to the basics in terms of episodic storytelling. The episodes were standalone entries and the season as a whole lacked a unifying plot thread. It’s simply about the adventures of Christopher Pike and his crew on the Enterprise. Some of the stories were well crafted and smart, others fell a bit short, but the approach worked quite well. The best episodes this season were “A Quality of Mercy”, “Memento Mori”, “All Those Who Wander”, and “Strange New Worlds”. The last two were notable in that “All Those Who Wander” was a well-done homage to Alien with a shocking and sad character death, while “Strange New Worlds” was an exceptional pilot episode that enraged right-wing nutjobs with its claim that their recent and current activities wind up being the cause for a second American Civil War and ultimately, World War III. As mentioned before, not every episode is a homerun, but had interesting twists. But, the only misfire was “Spock Amok”, it was supposed to be one of those lighthearted, humorous episodes. However, it failed to deliver any laughs and was unfocused, but it had a few good nuggets.

As with modern Star Trek shows, this one boasts cinema-quality special effects and production that rivals the best of J.J. Abrams and the Kelvinverse, but with superior storytelling and characters. That is the key with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, it focused on telling tight stories that do not meander and spin wheels like the second season of Star Trek: Picard. Like the Berman-era Trek shows, this one makes the effort to devote episodes to other characters besides Pike and Spock, unlike Star Trek: Discovery. In just a handful of episodes we learned some vital background info on several characters. For instance, La’an not only suffered from childhood trauma thanks to the predatory Gorn, but was a descendant of Khan Noonien Singh, yes, that Khan. It was revealed that first officer, Una Chin-Riley or Number One (Rebecca Romijn), is not human, while the ship’s chief medical officer, Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) was secretly hiding his ill daughter in the ship’s transporters as he tried to find a cure for her. Since the time was taken to explore these side characters, they became endearing, we cared about them and wanted to know more. More importantly, when these characters suffered, we felt for them.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds injects new life into the Star Trek franchise with its simple and effective back-to-basics approach, but its fused with so much more to elevate it. In addition to its crisp production values, and solid cast, the show captures the soul of Star Trek with a sense of adventure and discovery.

José Soto

Feb 28 2022

Where Are the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Followups?

As we get ready for the second season of Star Trek: Picard to stream in a few short days and we have seen Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), or rather her hologram, appear as a one of the main characters in Star Trek: Prodigy, these developments begs the following question. Where are the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9) followups?

Ever since DS9 aired its final episode back in 1999, we have yet to see any meaningful followup or sequel to the show. Its reputation has increased significantly over the years as fans have come to appreciate how innovative and unique DS9 was compared to other Star Trek shows.

What set Star Trek: Deep Space Nine apart were several factors. Start with its premise, it took place on a space station, not a starship. This helped develop long-running arcs and storylines over several episodes and seasons that explored the socio-political landscape of Star Trek. What was interesting was that this predated the current model of TV shows with their season-long arcs. What also set DS9 apart from other Trek shows (at least, until recently) was that it had a darker, grittier tone with more mature and grounded stories and characters. No one was purely good or evil, not even its main character Benjamim Sisko (Avery Brooks), who suffered from PTSD over a Borg attack that killed his wife. In one infamous episode “In the Pale Moonlight” he manufactured evidence to entice the Romulans to enter the Federation’s war against the Dominion. The show was riddled with anti-heroes such as Quark (Armin Shimerman), the greedy Ferengi bartender, and Garak (Andrew J. Robinson), a former Cardassian spy with a nebulous past. Many of the characters like Major Kira (Nana Visitor) struggled to adjust to a new life. In her case, Kira was a former terrorist/freedom fighter who found herself as Sisko’s second in command and operating under Federation rules. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine explored controversial issues such as racism, religion, and the impact of war. In fact, DS9 was noted for running a long storyline where the Federation was at war with the Dominion and many of its related stories had clear anti-war messages.

Even though Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was a success, it was not as well regarded by fans and critics because it deviated too much from traditional Star Trek tropes. However, over the years, more and more people have come to appreciated DS9 for its unique merits and is now considered one of the best, if not the best, Star Trek TV shows.

But, ever since “What You Leave Behind”, the final episode of DS9, aired there has not been any meaningful followup or sequels to the show, aside from other media like books and comics. There have been some minor references to the show in other Star Trek TV shows and film over the years. The most notable one was an appearance of Odo (René Auberjonois) as a holographic character in the Star Trek: Prodigy holodeck-centric episode “Kobayashi”. Meanwhile, Star Trek: The Next Generation continues in Star Trek: Picard, characters from Star Trek: Voyager such as Janeway and Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) are currently appearing in Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Prodigy, respectively.

So, why hasn’t DS9 been revisited? A full reunion is not possible anymore since Auberjonois and a couple of other DS9 actors have passed away, and Brooks is no longer actively acting. Still, it would be great if several DS9 characters could reappear in current Star Trek TV shows or have some episodes or films take place in the DS9 station or nearby locales. There are many lingering questions about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that fans want answered. Will the Dominion return to threaten Earth and the Federation? What happened to the planet Bajor? Did it ever join the Federation? What happened to the Cardassians after they were defeated in the war? Will Sisko return after joining the Prophets in their non-linear plane of existence? Being that he now exists outside of time and space, he can in theory return to our existence at any time, including the current Star Trek shows.

OK, showrunners. We the fans of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine have been very patient. We are waiting to revisit this innovative and novel corner of the Star Trek universe. Let’s make this happen.

Jan 9 2022

Top Ten Most Anticipated Films & TV Shows Of 2022

After a couple of years of relatively few genre offerings, 2022 looks like it will reverse that trend with plentry of film releases and television shows airing or streaming. These are the most anticipated films and TV shows of 2022 but note their releases are not certain and will change as we just saw with Morbius, which was delayed from January 28 to April 1. Also some of the films and TV shows listed may turn out to be inferior dreck while other unlisted films and TV shows may wind up surprising everyone and become the newest classics. Without further delay here are the top ten most anticapated films and TV shows of 2022, plus some notable mentions.

Films

10. Sonic the Hedgehog 2

The first Sonic the Hedgehog was a real surprise and proved an entertaining and solid live-action film based on a video game franchise was possible. The sequel will more closely follow the Sonic videos and include more characters from the games, such as Quills and Tails.

9. The Flash

The DC Extended Unverse (DCEU) faces a reboot that replaces Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill as Batman and Superman in this live-action solo film for the Flash. This film which is loosely based on the comic book mini-series Flashpoint is bound to be controversial with many DCEU fans

8. Everything Everywhere All At Once

Michelle Yeoh stars in this trippy looking film about an ordinary woman recruited to stop an multiversal evil by channeling the skills and memories of alternate versions of herself from different realities. If anything, it should be an acting tour de force for Yeoh.

7. Lightyear

Everyone’s attention was captured the moment it was announced that this Pixar film about Buzz Lightyear would not be based on the Toy Story character but a pulp sci-fi adventure that the toy was based on. An additional bonus is that the title hero is voiced by everyone’s favorite hero, Chris Evans.

6 Thor: Love and Thunder

Director Taiki Waititi reinvigorated the Thor films with his Thor: Ragnarok. That film was so successful and beloved that Marvel Studios greenlit a fourth Thor film helmed by Waititi. This cosmic-based entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) once again stars Chris Hemsworth in his legendary role as Thor and features the Jane Foster Thor and the Guardians of the Galaxy.

5. Jurassic World: Dominion

The conclusion of the Jurassic World trilogy finally unleashes the dinosaurs into our modern world with disastrous results! The concept is a throwback to those old dinosaur films with the prehistoric animals running amok in our streets; plus Jurassic World: Dominion is bringing back our favorite characters from the original Jursassic Park.

4. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Part One

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse took everyone by surprise over its innovative animation and fantastic storytelling about growing up, legacies and all the wild variations of Spider-Man. It was little wonder it won the Oscar for Best Animated Film. The trailer for the sequel promises more of the same as Miles Morales meets a future version of Spider-Man and more.

3. Avatar 2

The first Avatar is usually looked down upon but it is actually a great sci-fi film by James Cameron. The master director always gave us entertaining and exciting epics and this follow up to Avatar will most likely be as thrilling and present cutting-edge special effects. Just wait until the first trailer drops. By then, the excitement and anticipation for Avatar 2 will be explosive.

2. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Our first glimpse of the sequel to Doctor Strange wowed audiences after the end credits of Spider-Man: No Way Home. The teaser featured the wild visuals and appearances by many characters to whet our appetites, including the Scarlet Witch, fresh from WandaVision. Even more enticing was the teaser’s final stinger that revealed an alternate, darker version of the Sorcerer Supreme, which possibly ties to the What If…? animated show. Then there are the rumors that the film will introduce non-MCU characters like the Fox X-Men and the Fantastic Four. let’s hope those rumors pan out.

1. The Batman

Director Matt Reeves takes his turn with DC’s most popular superhero and the trailers have blown us away which promise an emphasis on a gritty and mature version of the Caped Crusader that seems more like a crime thriller comic book brought to life that evoke the gritty, early Golden Age Batman from the comics books. The moody and dark trailers focused on a raged-fueled Batman and an actual mystery from a fiendish villain have stoked our cravings for the newest live-action Batman. Thankfully we only have to wait a few more weeks to see The Batman.

Other Noteworthy Films:

65; Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom; Black Adam; Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; Distant; Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore; Moonfall; Morbius; Nope; Secret Headquarters; Samaritan; Super Mario Brothers; Turning Red

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Oct 14 2021

“The Most Profound Experience I Can Imagine” William Shatner Goes Where Few Have Gone Before

On October 13, 2021, history was made as sci-fi melded with science fact when actor William Shatner became the oldest person to ever go into space onboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital launch vehicle.

At 90 years young, Shatner is, of course, best known for portraying Captain James T. Kirk, in the original Star Trek and the first seven Star Trek films. The resusable suborbital system was conceived by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as a means of commencing space tourism. Bezos invited Shatner to become an astronaut/passenger for the New Shepard’s second crewed voyage, which included three other astronauts/passengers.

Obviously Star Trek and sci-fi fans were excited by the news as finally William Shatner would be able to in a sense emulate the sci-fi legend, who voyaged through space as he commanded the starship Enterprise. Needless to say, what Shatner accomplished paled to Kirk’s feats. After all, the actor simply took a suborbital flight while Kirk traversed the galaxy as if it was nothing. Yet Kirk appreciated the situation he was in, to explore and witness what few or none have before. Now, Shatner, too, was able to have as what he said was “the most profound experience I can imagine.”

Originally the flight was to take place on October 12, but was delayed due to weather. During pre-takeoff, it was clear that William Shatner was nervous about his flight and made no secret about his ambivalence. Still, he went through with the flight and was taken aback by the experience.

The New Shepard launched from Blue Origin’s launch site in West Texas at 10:49 a.m. in a short suborbital trajectory that was similar to astronaut Alan Shepard’s first suborbital flight in 1961. The capsule that Shatner and the other three astronauts were in only remained in suborbit for about 11 minutes before it descended back to Earth. Still, that so-brief voyage left a grand impression upon Shatner and his companions.

Once he landed and was greeted by Bezos, William Shatner gave a moving and visceral description of his journey and how it deeply moved him. “I hope I can never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now. I don’t want to lose it.” Shatner confessed as he recounted his short voyage 65 miles above the planet.

Some will argue that the event was a publicity stunt for the very rich and that the cost of the flight could have been better used down at Earth. But these trips illustrate the potential of space toursim and open it up to everyday people who are not scientists or engineers. William Shatner’s journey to where few have gone before was truly inspiring and an excellent way to boost space tourism. He pointed out that observing Earth from afar made him appreciate how fragile and beautiful our world is and how it should be cherished. He also added that everyone should experience to see Earth in a new way. Many other space voyagers described a similar feeling and how it made them protective of our planet. Perhaps if more people experienced what the very few have then it could inspire them to take measures to protect Earth.

Eventually, space tourism will become more affordable and attainable for many people to the point that it can become as routine as taking a flight on an airplane. Shatner’s experience and the way he eloquently described it are excellent ways to promote space tourism and inspire countless others.

So, what next? Will Patrick Stewart be invited for a future flight or antoher Star Trek actor? How about Mark Hamill, Sigourney Weaver, or any other prominent sci-fi actor? How about prominent sci-fi visionaries, such as George Lucas or James Cameron? It’s easy to imagine Cameron staying in orbit to film his next sci-fi blockbuster. They could, as Shatner demonstrated, be the best ambassadors to motivate others and who knows? Space tourism could soon become commonplace. Anyway, no matter what, it was a blast to see a small measure of science fiction becoming reality as we can now envision what it is like for Captain Kirk to be in space as the actor who helped create the character took that next step into the final frontier.

José Soto