My partner, our older GenZ offspring* and I were pretty stunned at the end of that.
I’m trying to think of the last time the franchise had an episode with such a dark ending that was not the first episode in a clear multipart sequence.
This is not cozy Star Trek.
That ship definitely has a late 24th century Sovereign-class look to it.
That third nacelle looks like the full scale Protostar drive.
The Electrical and Plumbing Store in Ottawa is a longstanding independent business, and have a good reputation in Eastern Ontario.
They sell online now too. Many of their products are US brands though.
That’s how Sam interpreted it, and it’s why she imitated it / mirrored it back.
But what if it wasn’t pro forma?
Does anyone else have any lingering questions or hypotheses around two nonsequiturs in the episode?
I’m wondering why and how the photonics chose the form for Sam - and whether her form is based on a real person - such as Sisko and Cassidy’s daughter Rebecca.
I’m also really wondering how a photonic being can have a pagh…
These definitely seem like things that might be followed up on later.
This has some value added in terms of contrasting the outcome of DS9 ‘The Visitor’ with Jake’s Prime Timeline outcome.
I like the SFA outcome, and I think it respects what Avery wanted in terms of showing that Sisko was a fantastic Black father who left a legacy of good parenting to future generations.
I was very moved at how Jake was a truly adult version of the youth we saw in DS9 but that he also had the posture and dignity that Avery Brooks brought to Sisko.
Cirroc Lofton really can act and it’s outrageous if he’s not been getting work if he wants it.
If you’ve seen him as himself in his podcast, there’s no doubt about his performance in this episode.
It makes me very much want to see him cast in something else.
Wondering if there’s a minimum wait before retesting and that would put them beyond the time limit.
Or perhaps she’s previously tested failed the test and this was her best result.
Skydance only bought Paramount this past summer after production of SFA season one was well advanced and SNW was largely done seasons four production.
While there is genuine reason for concern regarding future Star Trek, it’s very hard to make the case regarding anything in pre production before 2025.
As if Star Trek wasn’t corporate from the beginning!
Every major difference between the original pilot ‘The Cage’ and the original series / TOS was rooted in corporate priorities.
The bright, primary coloured uniform tunics, bright colourful flashing lights on the bridge and other sets were designed to promote NBC’s ‘Living Color’ television broadcasts.
Kirk was younger, physically more vigorous and less cerebral than Pike, no matter what Roddenberry wanted. Action adventure hero, romancing women, was what the network wanted no matter that Roddenberry wanted Kirk to be a ‘stack of books with legs’ and for Yeoman Rand to be the original third principle character and long term romantic interest.
I’m rather wondering if this kind of advertising targeting GenX middle aged and senior men is an inevitable coda to the 1990s wave of colonic irrigation humour.
A most excellent way to celebrate…
Voyager in TAS Filmation-style tribute by Gazelle Automations. Animated Threshold
Hopefully this episode will satisfy the “what happened to the Klingons?!!” questions lingering from Discovery.
…And perhaps kickoff a new narrative with Jay-Den as Heart of Glory did for Worf in TNG season one.
That’s a point.
Although in the case of the introduction of the Cardassians, there were significant contradictions vs the geopolitical situation of the Federation as presented repeatedly in the earlier seasons of TNG.
In relation to fan outrage though, even modest ‘filling in gaps’ — or ‘dancing between the raindrops’ as the EPs of SNW call it, is frequently met with with complaint that “no one has ever mentioned that before.”
Well, I can see your point.
I also was always supportive of WW III being pushed back by a half century.
But you can’t argue that there haven’t been major retcons.
Oh, it definitely did contradict established continuity — certainly more than Spock having had a foster sister or Khan descendants that we hadn’t heard of previously.
TNG initially presented a stable and peaceful utopian civilization. Picard and his officers spoke repeatedly about this in the early seasons.
There were long term stable borders with the Romulans, established relations with the Klingons but no major armed conflicts in the lifetimes of the senior officers.
‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’ was given as the exemplary lesson on how the alternative, more violent, alternative history would have played out but even that was quite far back, with the Enterprise-C.
The Ferengi were in early TNG a new and mysterious alien group on the borders.
The Borg was the most disruptive threat in generations, one that required new technology and new more military forward leadership approaches.
And then suddenly it turns out there has been a major ongoing border conflict with Cardassia, marginalized refugees from occupied planets living in camps bordering Federation utopia, and Starfleet has had its serving crew in armed conflicts.
How can you sincerely argue that isn’t a ‘major change?’
It’s interesting though.
We get the perception in early TNG that it’s been a long stable period of peace, exploration and expansion that’s suddenly disrupted by the Borg.
Then, we find that there have been significant ongoing regional conflicts with the Cardassians, some in Starfleet service have seen combat and torture, and that there have been marginalized refugees that have been marginalized and largely forgotten the Utopian Federation worlds.
BUT we accepted at the time as an audience.
In fact, unlike many of the elements of TNG that were outraging TOS fans in 1987-1989, there was nary a murmur about this at the conventions or on the BBS about the introduction of the Cardassians and Bajorans or the significant retcons.
As someone who was around for the TOS fan backlash in the early years of TNG, I don’t think that this has anything at all to do with the cumulative weight of lore or lack thereof.
My thought rather is that a show at the height of its popularity can get away with a great deal in terms of retcons and rewriting its own canon/lore.
A new show that does that takes a larger risk and is more likely to attract backlash.
I was listening to the video and thought I heard “fighting” but that could have just been my misunderstanding.
I get the discomfort about speculation.
It definitely sounds like there’s been ‘stuff’ behind the scenes already. Not TNG Chaos on the Bridge or Disco season one and two level, but definitely frictions.
(The actor who plays Genesis recently let slip when asked about Jonathan Frakes, that he’d been originally scheduled to direct her character’s second season feature episode but there had been “fighting going on” and Frakes was pushed back to directing a later episode!)
If the backdoor pilot episode in Disco season four didn’t work the way they’d hoped, it would be unfortunate if the characters and their actors have paid the price for the ‘notes’ from the senior executives.
However, as we saw with Number One in ‘The Cage’ if the the television franchise head thinks it’s worthwhile to bring back a character or an actor, one or both will happen eventually.
Wasn’t Roddenberry’s original concept for the Ferengi closer to the Furies in this episode?
They were supposed to have large bat ears and the cannibalism rings a bell too — at least the rumours Picard mentions about the Ferengi in TNG ‘Encounter at Farpoint’ included cannibalism.
While the “capitalists on steroids” concept for the Ferengi doesn’t align with the Furies, I still can’t help thinking that Secret Hideout and the Roddenberry estate haven’t pulled out another old idea and reworked it.
Roddenberry’s concept was reworked in the posthumous Andromeda tv show that combined a few of his ‘trunk’ of concepts that were never greenlit. According to the fandom wiki, Magog in Andromeda were “a savage bloodthirsty species feared throughout the universe…(with) baser instincts to kill other living beings for food, or forcibly infest them with Magog eggs for reproduction.“
This ForgottenTrek page on the Ferengi does mention cannibalism and big ears, but I don’t see the prosthetics sketch with the big bat ears that I am recalling.
Do khaosworks@startrek.website or USSBurritotruck@startrek.website happen to have any other references for the original Ferengi concept at hand?