Usually contracts have to be negotiated after five seasons. Especially after the strikes last year, studios are committed to never budging an inch on contracts or residuals, even if it means losing money in the short term. To them, it’s worth it to cancel even a successful or popular show if it means keeping their workers in a perpetual state of gig work and at a disadvantage for contracts on new shows.
Judging by Nacelle’s website, it looks like once again these will be expensive display figures that kids can’t play with.
As a parent of young Star Trek fans, the fact that this is the worst-merchandised franchise in the world is incredibly annoying
Actually this brought up a completely buried memory for me. For a few years I lived in the same neighborhood as him – at the time, cool guy that I was, I had a Starfleet badge on my coat, and one day I was at the grocery store and had an awkward moment with him where our carts got sort of wedged together negotiating the too-narrow checkout lanes. He saw my pin and gave me a Vulcan salute as he moved into his lane. He seemed nice and a bit sheepish. The staff at the coffee shop I used to go to told me he was extremely lovely.
I struggle to think of a Trek character more Star Trek than Saru. DSC has its (sometimes severe, sometimes not) flaws, but it has an impressive track record of occasionally absolutely nailing how to make some of the trekkiest Trek characters.
It’s going to be interesting where the series ends up in the inevitable reevaluation once a few years have passed.
They’re also paying attention to when they need to renegotiate contracts. After the strikes, studio leadership has really doubled down on not giving an inch on writers’ and actors’ salaries even if it means cancelling a successful show. It’s more valuable to them to keep workers in a state of perpetual gig work than anything they’d make from the show.
I loved this issue. If they ever decide to canonize anything in the comics, I hope it’s this one.
The shape of Hy’Rell’s head bumps resemble those of Xindi-Primates, first appearing in ENT: “The Xindi”, one of six intelligent Xindi species that were native to Xindus.
I believe it was mentioned in an interview that she’s an Efrosian, which would be the first time we’ve seen one since TUC! The hair and the blue eyes seem consistent.
Reno partying with Hysperians –– now that is a show I want to watch
Man, you have to watch the one with Giant Spock (“The Infinite Vulcan”)
I just finished watching Space Babies - I have to say, I missed this. It’s been a long time since Doctor Who was fun - I love all Doctor Who, even the bad ones (especially the bad ones) but my heart is really with the bizarre, campy, man-in-a-rubber-suit style episodes like this one. If anyone was worried this was going to get Disney-fied, this is RTD at the most RTD. I might as well have been watching the Ninth Doctor take Rose to the End of the World. Ncuti is the Doctor the very instant he steps on screen, and the Doctor/Ruby chemistry is absolutely perfect. I don’t love her being a mystery box but as long as the explanation is suitably weird I’ll go with it.
A bit of a new experience for me in that this time I got to watch it with my daughter — she’s nine and a huge Trek fan. She liked Church on Ruby Road and we watched a bit of other doctors, but I wasn’t sure she’d take to this, but she was just beaming the whole time. Bit of a new experience for me because other than some Tom Baker episodes on old VHS tapes, I was an adult by the time I came to DW. It’s fun to see it through the eyes of a child.
Also, uh, did the Doctor just suggest that the world of Star Trek is real in his universe?
I don’t know how you could get past Capaldi’s first series and not see what an incredible Doctor he is.
I tried so hard to like things in the Chibnall era –– I was so excited when Whittaker was cast and I think she did the best she could – but after reading Elizabeth Sandifer’s evisceration of the Chibnall ethos in her piece on Kerblam! (which I think also applies to ENT, tbh) I think I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m not really going to get there.
I’m down, I’m super excited for the new series and who knows when Prodigy will air
Enterprise’s mirror universe episodes also have that Dr. Mengele version of Phlox. Of course, I’m always happy for an excuse to pretend that Enterprise didn’t happen.
It’s okay man, chronophages happen to the best of us
evolved to be more sensitive to light, resulting in everyone tending more towards malevolence, and barbarism, and queer coded villainy.
You know, I spent the whole episode sort of wondering if they were going to try and speculate that all the species of the Mirror Universe are campy jerks because in that universe the Progenitors were campy jerks. But I suppose I’m glad they didn’t try and explain it, and it’s still just a little pastureland for the actors to go chew scenery.
I still don’t get it. It doesn’t really make sense to me. If it takes a lot of focus and concentration to maintain the solid form, why is one considered weak for doing so?
They seem to be saying that the solid form is a sort of defense mechanism, like a snail shell or an opossum playing dead (or maybe an environmental one, like that it prevents the jelly form from losing too much moisture in a warm environment). It’s difficult to maintain, and implies you’re in a position of retreat or weakness. Now that the Breen presumably have no predators and no environmental necessity for the solid form, it’s seen as a cultural taboo.
While I’m a little bummed the Breen aren’t the space-arctic-wolves I imagined them as during DS9, I think it’s an interesting idea. I do always like when they describe how cultural practices in a particular species comes from how they exist in the ecosystem of their home planet, like the Kelpiens (Saru and the Kelpiens being for me, Disco’s most successful addition to Trek canon).
”The last recorded exploration was over a century before Doctor Vellek was even born.” That does potentially raise the question of how Burnham would have been so familiar with Lyrek in the previous episode, though of course she and most of the rest of the Discovery crew might have been alive before Doctor Vellek’s birth.
We’ve seen that in her one year as a courier, Burnham learned everything about every planet because of secret criminal space knowledge. Even if the last recorded exploration was that old, presumably space pirates with their gritty streetsmart know-how have some sort of Mos Eisley medieval market nearby.
Oh. Wow. Yikes.
But what about all the interesting ideas they’ve pitched for Legacy? Like…the ideas that were come up with. That involved things. You know the ones.
I have definitely been proven wrong by Star Trek things that look terrible at the outset, but…this looks terrible. I mean I guess we’re getting a Deltan, so that’s fun? And a chameloid is a bit of a deep cut? But jesus, I could not want to see this less. I hope I’ll be proven wrong!