I loved the Star Trek panel out of San Diego Comic Con. I got to watch the whole thing through, and this is my version of geeking out about it. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s on Paramount Plus’s YouTube channel. Go watch it and then come back, so we can talk about it the same way we would if an episode of television had dropped on a Thursday.
It’s been an incredible two weeks, and I’m sorry for having taken off for a little bit. I had some health issues I had to sort through. But we’re back, there’s a lot more fun stuff coming, and a whole lot dropped in San Diego that I want to give you my thoughts on. Hopefully I can predict some of the future while I’m at it.
The panel began with the show that started spearheading everyone’s interest in a lot of this. Discovery blazed trails, sure, but I’m talking about the nostalgia period, this wave of Star Trek that reflects the Treks that came before it. Lower Decks pays a lot of homage to The Next Generation and lives there in a very big way. Prodigy very much lives in and connects to Voyager. The way I understand it, there may or may not be some other things coming, and of course we’re going to get a dedication to Deep Space Nine as well, which is one of the things they talked about in the panel.
Picard Season Three and the Number of Enterprises
First, the Picard panel. For season three they brought out the Next Generation stars you know and love. A few couldn’t be there, but for the most part everybody else was. When you see them together you can’t help but be moved, and I’m so looking forward to it.
They did drop a nugget, and it may have been on purpose, I don’t know. Sir Patrick Stewart was talking about one of the things he liked the most, and he specifically brought up the number of Enterprises there would be. So clearly we’re going to see the original Next Generation Enterprise, with the carpet and everything, which I’m excited for.
I was telling Mrs. Know-It-All that the one thing I’m really interested to see is whether they do any updating. Nothing as radical as the jump from TOS to the new Strange New Worlds. I’m thinking about the LCARS screens. Back in the very beginning they were etched glass. Some of them were actual monitors displaying things that had been created as digital assets, but for the most part they were etched glass, and when you touched them nothing happened. They had to add sound effects. So I’m wondering if they’re going to update them to be a little more like the screens on Strange New Worlds and a lot of the other shows moving forward, where you touch them and they react like they’re actually a screen of some kind. That’d be kind of dope to see.
This is me geeking out, by the way, because in a former life I was chief engineer of the USS Starquest for Starfleet, the international Star Trek fan club. The Ops station has three conditions. In theory, when you flip to yellow alert, you’d slide up and it would bring up an entirely new panel with a new set of stuff, and then of course there are several other states. That’s according to the technical manuals. Now imagine if they could actually do that. That’s a deep cut, a sweaty geek reference for anyone to notice, so I don’t think they’d ever bother with it. I still hope we get a little more interactivity with the screens, because that’d be a lot of fun.
We know for a fact there’s going to be one singular villain. I really don’t know who the villain is going to be, and I’m very excited to see what they have coming.
Seven of Nine in the First Officer’s Chair
I do know we’re going to get to see Seven of Nine as a first officer aboard a starship, which I think is awesome. She got the field commission and command of the Stargazer at the end of Picard season two. Spoilers for Picard season two. The internet exploded over it. Everybody was like, Jeri Ryan, girl, you belong in that outfit. She looks amazing. And I definitely have to get me some of those new current versions of the uniforms.
Worf looks amazing too. I feel really good about the fact that they haven’t altered or changed or manipulated the Klingons to any extreme yet. You get Worf and he looks like Worf, and I’m thrilled about that. Hearing Michael Dorn’s voice during that trailer reveal, man. That’s the teaser with everybody in it. It’s the second teaser, the one from this convention, and it’s a different one from the teaser that dropped before last season’s finale of Picard.
Everyone seems like they’re chomping at the bit to have one more strong adventure, and I’m okay with that. There’s a camp that says All Good Things was a fluke, or that it wasn’t perfect. I don’t live there. To me All Good Things is an absolutely perfect series finale. It sent them off wonderfully and beautifully, and then you have the movies as codas. But if you want to give them a victory lap and let them come out one more time for an encore, I’m down.
One thing Akiva Goldsman said at the panel was that you want to give these characters an opportunity to come out, but you want it to be earned. That’s why they didn’t just throw the Next Gen cast into season one of Picard. I like that. To me it shows a level of respect that some fans may or may not feel they’ve gotten from a lot of these shows.
Lower Decks Is Doing the Satire Right
The next panel was none other than Star Trek: Lower Decks, which is such a fun show. Baby Know-It-All and I are going to be reviewing it as soon as the season starts up again in a couple of weeks. We can’t wait to see this iteration of Star Trek together and talk about it, because she has feelings, and I love seeing her get all riled up about stuff. You will too. I can’t wait for us to share the desk here.
The cast is so great, and there’s this playful banter back and forth during the entire panel where basically everyone keeps giving the showrunner crap. They’re like, hey, I got beef, and he’s like, did everyone just wait for Hall H to air their beef? It was really fun. Then of course they showed the teaser for the next season, which we’ve all seen, and it looks like so much fun.
People argue that Star Trek is supposed to be higher than this. I feel like Star Trek as a brand can stretch out. Star Wars has Rebels and animation and CGI and younger kids’ stuff, and older material, obviously. Star Trek can have all those pieces too.
And I love Lower Decks. I feel like it’s perfecting and doing right what shows like Family Guy and Rick and Morty have tried to do for a long time, which is satirize the original. Because that’s really what Star Trek is. Star Trek’s the original space odyssey. Space odyssey, mind you, which is a different animal from space opera. There have been so many questions, ever since Jay and Silent Bob mused about whether or not the janitor for the Death Star would clean the toilets, up through the original Family Guy Captain Kirk bits and some SNL skits. Everybody has done this. Lower Decks is doing it way better, and it’s self-aware in a way that I love.
Strange New Worlds Gets Crashed
Then we got what I thought was an amazing panel, and that was the Strange New Worlds panel. To say that I’m not trying to channel my best Christopher Pike here would be a falsehood.
The panel starts, strangely enough, with some of the Lower Decks folks crashing it. So they’re going to have a crossover. I don’t know how it’s going to work, and I don’t know if it’s going to go both ways or just one. But apparently Boimler and Mariner are coming to the Strange New Worlds universe in live action, played by the actors who voice them. And Anson Mount said there may be a two-dimensional, overly muscular version of himself going the other way, which I can totally see.
I don’t know if they’ll be self-aware about it, like you’re suddenly in a cartoon universe and you know it’s 2D. What I think is that those two things just exist, and you happen to be in their medium. It’s space and it’s canonical. When you’re dealing with Lower Decks you’re depicting it in animation, and when you’re dealing with Strange New Worlds you’re depicting it in live action. I don’t think they’re going to Who Framed Roger Rabbit it. I could be wrong. That might totally be what happens.
There are people who are going to say it’s gimmicky. Star Trek has many, many times done silly, childish things that end up being awesome. I’m excited for it. You know you’re excited for it.
A New Heyday, and Three More Shows
One of the showrunners, and forgive me, I can’t remember which one, said something I thought was really great. There was a time where we had a glut of Star Trek, and then there was no Star Trek, and now we’re in a new heyday where they’re developing all kinds of things. Akiva Goldsman intimated right before the end that he had to go back and finish developing three new Star Trek shows.
I’m okay with that. Star Trek is a big universe. There’s no reason you couldn’t have a Klingon-driven show, or some sort of espionage show based around the Cardassians. Give us more Dominion War. Or come back thirty years later, Sisko finally leaves the Prophets, and now you have an entire Deep Space Nine spin-off series based in that.
I think there’s so much untapped storytelling potential that we should be welcoming this stuff with open arms. This was such an exciting San Diego Comic Con.
I’ve got more coming too. We’re going to start doing some watch-throughs, and there’s material I recorded before I went M.I.A. for a minute that we’re getting finished and out the door. That includes two essays, one comparing Kirks and one on the different people who’ve played different iterations of the same characters, plus some things on uniforms and spaceships. And if you’ve got a platform, if you’re on YouTube or you do a podcast, hit me up directly. I’d love to collaborate with more of the community and do some really great Star Trek content together.
What did you think of San Diego Comic Con? Leave your questions and your take in the comments on the video above.
