Thoughts. Before starting what is retroactively our final Trek of this era, I just want to take some time to gather my reactions, thoughts and questions as we move into this final phase. All of the shows, ALL OF THEM (not just the new stuff), have introduced various topics and concepts which could be expanded on. With many questions raised that have never been answered. Some of these questions are huge, while others are smaller, more personal stories. Some of them are just things I’ve always been curious about.
Star Trek: Enterprise had various episodes across all four seasons about a Temporal Cold War, featuring a mysterious character known as Crewman Daniels – but we’ve never seen any fallout from this war and the character’s fate was never revealed. That seems like a massive story that deserves an ending to me. Perhaps a series or film that is split between different time frames could cover multiple aspects? And honestly, I’d appreciate some more Enterprise continuity in general. But I guess I want that for all of the old shows.
Time gaps. There are 104 years between Enterprise (S04E21 Terra Prime) and Strange New Worlds (S01E01 Strange New Worlds). We’ve gotten a few Short Treks that fit in there, but surely more stories could fill the gap? We have all these disparate new stories now but how could we pay off all of those things? I mean, again, there’s 790 years between the end of Star Trek: Picard and the start of Starfleet Academy – with I think maybe just one episode of Star Trek: Voyager set during that span. The Voyager episode in question, S04E23 “Living Witness” is set 672 years after Picard and 118 years before Starfleet Academy. So something in one of those eras sounds like a good idea to me.
Did Spock actually have a sister, and if so, why is she mentioned so infrequently (in SNW)? I suppose being mentioned twice is more than poor Sybok got…before he returned briefly in SNW at least. How did Christopher Pike meet Spock’s sister? Can we have a series that’s all about her, please?
How did Pike come to be on Boreth and learn of his future fate, as described in SNW?
Why did Enterprise, the Kelpians, the Klingons and Discovery open a wormhole to the future – as seen in the SNW S01E01 flashback? Did Discovery travel into the future – and is this how the ship ends up abandoned for 1,000 years (as seen in the excellent Short Treks S01E02 “Calypso”)?
What was the basis for the Federation-Klingon War often mentioned in SNW? How and why did it take place? What were Pike and the Enterprise up to during this conflict which affected the crew? How did the conflict end?
In Spock’s backstory in TOS, Sarek did not approve of Spock joining Starfleet Academy rather than the Vulcan Science Academy. This has never made sense to me because Sarek clearly respects Starfleet, serving as an ambassador for them multiple times. It isn’t because the Academy is on Earth; we know from TNG that Sarek eventually married multiple human women, so a prejudice there seems ridiculous. So why was Sarek so upset with Spock’s decision?
In TOS, the crew of the Enterprise encountered the Galactic Barrier multiple times (in “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, “By Any Other Name” & “Is There In Truth No Beauty?”) and it was recently referenced in a Starfleet Academy episode (S01E05 “Series Acclimation Mill”) but it’s never shown again. One of those Trek elements that have just been dropped by the wayside. There are a lot of those actually.
Whatever happened to the Guardian of Forever? It was featured in two of the best Star Trek episodes (TOS “The City on the Edge of Forever” & TAS “Yesteryear”) and was later pictured in Starfleet Academy S01E05 “Series Acclimation Mill” as one of the topics on screen in the “Confronting the Unexplainable” classroom, labeled Immortal/Non-Corporeal Entities. Whatever happened to it? Why wasn’t it mentioned between TAS and Starfleet Academy – a gap of over 900 years?
And thinking about “Yesteryear”, one of the joys for me in “Star Trek: Lower Decks”, is that they often included continuity from the long denied Star Trek: The Animated Series. Could we get more of that, please? It has always felt like a legitimate Trek series to me and I’m delighted by all the recent inclusions.
What about the Mirror Universe? On the one hand, it has already been well established and explored in various Trek episodes. We now have tales set in the eras of Enterprise, TOS, Section 31, DS9 & Prodigy – with a sly reference in Lower Decks. But I’d love to see more of that universe explored. There are several large gaps that could be filled in there. I mean, there are 112 years between the Enterprise and TOS Mirror Universe episodes. Plenty of time for all sorts of stories. We know that the Defiant from “The Tholian Web” traveled back in time, across universes, becoming the prototype for the ISS Enterprise. We know what happened to Mirror Kirk and Mirror Spock, thanks to the DS9 installments, but what about the ship they served on? And what about Mirror Georgiou? How did she come to be in the Prime Universe in the first place? There are so many possibilities. These are just a couple of examples.
The Next Generation also introduced much of Trek mythology that was only featured in singular episodes, never to be revisited in any meaningful way. These aren’t quite dangling plot threads, but these gaps in the Star Trek firmament have stuck with me and it would be nice to get some expansion on those stories.
For example, in TNG’s S03E08 “The Price”, we met the Barzans who were auctioning off a wormhole, which seems to claim the lives of several Ferengi. The Barzan Wormhole and the Ferengi got a sequel in Voyager’s S03E05 “False Prophets” but the Barzans themselves were never seen again.
And in TNG’s S06E20 “The Chase”, the writers introduced a race, the Progenitors, that seeded the galaxy with their DNA, explaining why most of the aliens we meet in Trek are so similar, but then we never saw or learned anything more about them – except for a background reference in Starfleet Academy S01E05 “Series Acclimation Mill”, with as one of the topics on screen in the “Confronting the Unexplainable” classroom, which included “Multi-Species Accelerated Evolution,” a display about the Progenitors.
TNG, DS9 & Voyager often mentioned the Breen, and DS9 featured them heavily in Seasons 4-7, with Lower Decks including them in a single episode – but we never actually got to see what a Breen looked like under their “Return of the Jedi” inspired uniforms, which felt like a slight, but memorable disappointment for me at the end of DS9. The same DS9 that introduced us to Section 31, which has since been expanded on in Star Trek: Enterprise, the confusing Section 31 streaming movie, Star Trek: Lower Decks and even popped up in the Kelvin Timeline movie Star Trek Into Darkness. But there is probably still so much more to tell about this mysterious organization. Things like this just fall through the cracks, never to be heard from again. I don’t really expect to get further explanations for all the various dropped plotlines after all this time, but I just thought I’d give some examples of how often this kind of thing happens.
In the series finale of Star Trek: Lower Decks, we saw a previously unknown historical iteration of the Klingons, both in their appearance and ship design – but we’ve never seen those versions before or since; will we ever see how those versions fit into Klingon history?
The various Short Treks have plenty of dangling threads. Will we ever see or learn anything more of those characters?
Tilly (Mary Wiseman) and her mom (Mimi Kuzyk), and Xhaan Royal Me Hani Ika Hali Ka Po (Yadira Guevara-Prip)?
Aldis Hodge as Craft? Will we ever hear Annabelle Wallis again as the voice of Zora, Discovery’s mysterious future sentience? How does Discovery gain sentience – or was it always so? Why is the ship abandoned for a thousand years?
What about the planet Kaminar and the Kelpians, Saru (Doug Jones), Siranna (Hannah Spear) & Aradar (Robert Verlaque)? Will we ever see the predatory Ba’ul – or were these just backstories for a fun one-off Trek story?
Will we ever again see Rainn Wilson’s take on Harry Mudd? And what was that crazy reference to him penetrating a space whale? Maybe I don’t want to know the answer to that one!
Michael, the little girl on the space station with her unseen mom and sweetheart of a dad in “The Girl Who Made the Stars” – was that just a delightful one-off or is there a deeper meaning there that I’m missing?
What about the TOS homage story about the Tardigrade and the DOT? The Tardigrade seemed to travel in time and space. Was that just a trick of the storytelling?
The SNW / Prodigy / Picard themed Short Treks seem self-explanatory but even those could be fleshed out a bit.
And this may seem counterintuitive to an episode obviously based in spirituality, but I have plenty of questions relating to “76874 04 Unification”, when Kirk is seemingly guided through the afterlife to be with Spock at his time of death. Like…who is the mysterious unknown alien character that seems key to this journey? And how does Kirk travel from the Prime Universe through time into the Kelvin Timeline where Spock passes away? Why was this unknown character deemed appropriate for that? And beyond this metaphysical journey, will the events of the Kelvin Timeline ever be referenced within the Prime Universe? More questions I’ll probably never get answers to.
Starfleet Academy introduced many new story elements and there are so many things I don’t understand. The Burn. Ni’Var. The Emerald Chain. The series illuminated the state of Betazed and the sad fate of the Klingons in the distant future but what about worlds like Trill & Vulcan, which is now called Ni’Var? Clearly, the Romulans have somehow survived and even seem to get along with Vulcans, but what actually happened to them? What about the Qowat Milat, the Romulan warrior nuns who communicate via absolute candor, who were introduced in Star Trek: Picard? Speaking of elements introduced in that series, the new body for Jean-Luc Picard at the end of Season 1 would surely have had ramifications down the line, no?
Speaking of Starfleet Academy, the series featured that wall of names with many we know and love from various Treks and many others we didn’t. Names like Commander Paul Stamets, Commander Airiam, Lieutenant Commander Hugh Culber, Lieutenant Ash Tyler, Admiral Katrina Cornwell, Vice Admiral Drake, etc. Will we even learn who these people were? Captain Philippa Georgiou was featured on that list as well. We have seemingly met two iterations of Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh in “Section 31” & “The Brightest Star”) but without context these appearances have been hard to reconcile; is this just one more Trek mystery for the history books?
What about Sylvia Tilly? We’ve also met her twice, in Short Treks S01E01 “Runaway” and then again in the distant future of Starfleet Academy. How do these adventures for Georgiou, Tilly, and the brief appearances of Discovery (in Strange New Worlds, Prodigy, Short Treks and possibly Starfleet Academy) all tie in with one another?
How are other species handling this new future? The Orions? The Andorians? The Kelpians – who I clearly want more of? How did Earth recover from the devastation that allowed the Academy to reopen in the first place and did “Dad-miral” Vance (Oded Fehr) have anything to do with that? Pretty please on that last one! Will we ever meet the mysterious Federation President Rillak in this future and if so, who / what species are they? I want to know everything!
And speaking from a queer Trek fan’s perspective, will we ever learn more about time traveling lesbian character Jett Reno (Tig Notaro) who was said to have lived in 2 very different centuries? Will the new series have any LGBTQ+ characters? This era of Trek has been more inclusive than any other with elements in nearly every project to date, but Starfleet Academy is making me hungry for even more representation, not less.
I want more DOTS, the worker robots introduced in this new Trek era via appearances in Strange New Worlds (S03E02 “Wedding Bell Blues”), Short Treks (S02E03 “Ask Not” & S02E04 “Ephraim and Dot”), Picard (S03E05 “Imposters”) and various episodes of Starfleet Academy. They were a little jarring at first, feeling a bit more like Star Wars than Star Trek, but I’ve really grown to love them!
I guess I’d be happy to see any familiar faces in the new series. Even just a couple. The problem is that I legitimately enjoy most of Trek and I’d love to see elements of EVERY Trek series explored in the new one. But that’s just me being greedy, right?
Also, the most Trek episodes we’ve had in any given series in this era of Trek is 50, and those were half-hour episodes (Lower Decks). The longest live action series to date has been 46 episodes, with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. We can do better than that…can’t we?
Nevermind. I’m clearly asking too much of any one series. But maybe we’ll get one or two of these things? I guess it is time to find out.