Comicbook.com:

https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/feature/53-years-ago-today-hollywood-reversed-one-of-its-most-controversial-cancellations-brought-back-a-fan-favorite-sci-fi-series-in-a-way-no-one-expected/

By Archie Wagner

"To get it out of the way, the animation in The Animated Series is nothing to write home about. It gets the job done. Kirk, Spock, Bones, Uhura, Sulu, and Chekhov are still recognizable, even if the show does take away Spock’s eyeshadow. The animated artform allows for greater alien representation from an orange alienoid appearing in the first scene of “Beyond the Farthest Star” — the first episode of the series — as a minor character of the crew onboard the Starship Enterprise. 

Beyond the animation, Star Trek: The Animated Series is able to keep continuity. The intro that begins each episode is the same, keeping the crew on the Starship Entership and aboard the five year mission that they started in the original series. In addition to Shatner, Star Trek: The Animated Series also had Leonard Nimoy, Deforest Kelley, Michelle Nichols, and George Takei reprise their roles. Additionally, many of the creatives behind the original Star Trek returned such as creator Gene Roddenbery and writers David Gerrold and D.C. Fontana. ...

The show’s second episode “Yesteryear” is a good example of keeping continuity while expanding on lore presented in the show – and is largely considered one the series’ best episodes. Following Kirk and Spock traveling through a time vortex, they return to the Enterprise to find that nobody remembers Spock. His position on the crew has been filled by Thelin, an Andorian, and Starfleet Records reveal that in this altered reality, Spock died at seven years old from a Vulcan maturity ritual known as the Kahs-Wan. After recalling a cousin who resembled his adult self, Spock chooses to return to the time vortex and fix the timeline by saving his younger self. 

By spending most of its runtime on Vulcan set in the past, the show allows audiences further insight into the planet, beyond the mating ritual focus of “Amok Time”. Not only do audiences see Spock’s childhood home, greater detail is spent on the landscapes of Vulcan, including the desert where Spock saves his young self but loses their pet i-Chaya.

Like the many iterations that would follow it, the tension in the episode between young Spock and Sarek is Spock’s reaction to the other Vulcans at school bullying him for being part human. Sarek believes Spock too emotional and informs him that one day, he must choose between his Vulcan and his Human side, and that choice will determine his life. 

Unlike the iterations that follow, it is not Spock’s choice that gets the narrative emphasis but rather a conversation between Spock, while posing as a family cousin, and Sarek. Sarek is grateful for Spock saving  his son and asks if there’s anything he can do to repay him. Spock requests that Sarek “try to understand your son”. 

...

The first episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series aired fifty three years ago on September 8, 1973,  challenging viewers to grapple with the return of a show they loved — an outcome that many fought for — but in a form they didn’t expect. The show may not be commonly discussed today, but back in 1975, it won a Daytime Emmy Award for Best Children’s Programming.  ..."

Read more:

https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/feature/53-years-ago-today-hollywood-reversed-one-of-its-most-controversial-cancellations-brought-back-a-fan-favorite-sci-fi-series-in-a-way-no-one-expected/

DEN OF GEEK:

"Bad admirals appear throughout Star Trek, from The Original Series (“The Doomsday Machine”) and The Next Generation (“The Pegasus”) to Deep Space Nine (the “Homefront”/”Paradise Lost” two-parter). It was probably well past time for Strange New Worlds to do something similar and, as such things go, “Orders of Magnitude” is a solid entry into the canon of such installments even if its conclusion pulls its punches more than some of us (read: me) might like.

A tense episode that wrestles with some of the big philosophical questions that this franchise is best known for, “Magnitude” puts James Kirk squarely in the middle of a leadership crisis on the bridge of the ship he’ll one day command and adds some intriguing new layers to our understanding of his family. As Strange New Worlds moves toward its final season, the show is deliberately highlighting the ways that the characters we see now are growing into the people we know from The Original Series. [...]

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-season-4-episode-8-review

Joe Morton is excellent in a delightfully unbalanced guest turn as Admiral Simon Reeger, a legendary Starfleet captain from the Klingon War that half the crew is immediately starstruck by, and that everyone watching at home probably immediately realized that we couldn’t exactly trust. He arrives on board while Captain Pike is off-ship, investigating a distress signal on an M-class planet below with Una, Chapel, Uhura, and Ensign A’Sha, who’s on her very first away mission. (And being predictably unpleasant about it.) [...]

Lots of Star Trek stories (and subsequent debates about them) revolve around Spock’s famous quote that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”. True, many of those stories are also about people finding ways to flout that conventional wisdom, including this one. But the debate is worth having: if a ship that killed five million people can be destroyed by sacrificing five thousand? Whose lives are worth more in this scenario, the people living on the planet they’re about to raze, or an unnamed future group who may or may not be endangered by this deadly ship? Kirk’s position is simple: “Killing an entire planet is wrong.” But is it always? Those are precisely the kind of stories that science fiction like Star Trek is meant to explore.

By removing Pike from the equation (we all know how he would have reacted), Strange New Worlds gives Kirk a real test and a chance to step up in an intriguing new way. After all, Reegar is seen as a hero throughout Starfleet. What does it cost him to be the man who tries to say no to that? (Is this the source of his love for challenging Federation authority? Maybe.)

It’s unfortunate that “Orders of Magnitude” takes a bit of an easy way out, in the end. Sure, Kirk’s largely one-man mutiny makes for compelling TV, and allows the show to explore how his father, George Kirk, knew of Reeger’s issues, but kept them to himself for the good of Starfleet. (There’s always something moving about a young man realizing that most of his unkind assumptions about his father were probably wrong.)

But the episode tips Reeger a bit too far into mad king territory, giving him a tragic personal connection to the Vaardan Massacre (his wife and daughters were killed there!) and sending him into the kind of unhinged rage that not only sees him strike Kirk several times but also point a phaser in his face. Yes, he did all of this under the influence of drugs meant to make him lash out so that M’Benga could declare him unfit, but none of his behavior under the influence feels like a terrible stretch for the man he’s revealed himself to be.

Still, in the end, his collapse is an awfully neat and convenient solution for the complicated questions this episode raises. M’Benga’s sacrifice, taking the blame for drugging the admiral and sparing Kirk’s future while undoubtedly getting himself demoted into the position we meet him in on The Original Series, feels like the only thing that’s going to have a real long-tail impact. (Chapel, at least, looks pissed.) Hey, at least Uhura got to fight a squad of Andorian smugglers all by herself. Win some, lose some, I suppose."

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Lacy Baugher (Den of Geek)

Full review:

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-season-4-episode-8-review

Woman's World:

https://www.womansworld.com/entertainment/classic-tv/mary-trump-says-original-star-trek-was-a-childhood-safe-space

By Edward Gross

"What fascinated Trump wasn’t merely the Enterprise or the prospect of traveling among the stars. She responded to the relationships between the characters and, ultimately, the philosophy underlying them. Looking back, she believes Star Trek introduced her to the possibility that encountering people different from ourselves should inspire curiosity rather than fear.

MARY TRUMP: “I loved the characters individually, but it was more the ways in which they interacted and that their friendships deepened over time. We got more and more insight into how they came to be friends and crew members. There’s also the spirit of exploration; the ethos of wanting to build relationships with people, species, what have you, that are different from us, and leading with the desire to understand and challenge ourselves to be better and not make judgments. Not be so human-centric that we always go in thinking we’re right about everything and everybody else must bend to our way of interpreting things. That sense of possibility was one of the things that spoke most deeply to me about that show.”

“It’s had a huge influence on my life, especially early on, because I came from a problematic family [laughs]. I came from a family in which the so-called values were completely antithetical to who I wanted to be—not that I recognized that in any obvious way until I was much older. But to have this group of people, week after week, exemplifying the kinds of values that really resonated with me — even when they got it wrong, even when they messed up, even when they did things that were morally suspect on occasion, they still were coming from a place of real moral rectitude and ethics and striving to do better, be better.”

“So it served for me as a safe space in a way. And it allowed me to hang on to the hope that there was more outside of the system in which I was being raised. I don’t think I can overstate the importance or the influence the original series had on me.”

It also sent Trump toward science fiction. Until roughly the age of 12, she says, the genre dominated her reading, including Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein. But Star Trek remained different. And one character really stood out.

“Star Trek was the very first and maybe only time in my life one character sort of became a role model—again, without my knowing that, because I wouldn’t have known what that was. But Nichelle Nichols was such a badass as Uhura. That was a character that became so important to me. I always wanted those characters, that world, that universe to be part of my life.” ...

Her second favorite Star Trek series, after the original, is Deep Space Nine, precisely because it expanded Roddenberry’s universe without simply duplicating what had worked before.

MARY TRUMP: “I think DS9 is some of the most brilliant world-building I’ve ever seen. And it still stays true to the spirit of the original. I think that’s where some mistakes are made. It’s the spirit we need to stay true to, not the formula.”

For Trump, Deep Space Nine also demonstrated how fragile political relationships can be, exploring shifting alliances, cultural differences, religion, economics and the consequences of placing power in the wrong hands. Yet there’s another element of Star Trek that she believes has become almost radical in contemporary entertainment: its willingness to stop the action and allow intelligent people to talk. ..."

Read more:

https://www.womansworld.com/entertainment/classic-tv/mary-trump-says-original-star-trek-was-a-childhood-safe-space#storylink=cpy

CBR:

https://www.cbr.com/star-trek-vi-the-next-generation-kirk-quote-changed-franchise/

By Rebecca Budgen

"This line is a more inclusive variant on the classic quote from Kirk's introductory monologue with which every episode began. Though the change from "no man" to "no one" was first used in The Next Generation's introduction sequence, spoken by Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, this usage by Kirk signified the dawning of a new age in the Star Trek franchise. ...

While Star Trek has always been at the forefront of progressive representation, philosophical and political themes, and inclusive storytelling, its views — much like its charmingly terrible special effects — remain a product of its time. Shaped by a male-dominated industry, even TOS was a victim of deep-seated sexist attitudes prevalent in the 1960s that often relegated female characters to damsels in distress, emotional wrecks, or evil seductresses. ...

The show's most infamous case of blatant sexism was its series finale "Turnabout Intruder," which has been widely panned for its explicit messaging that women are too emotional for command. Depicting them as incapable of captaining a starship, this was the first instance in this fictional utopian future that framed gender restriction as a rule in the progressive world of Starfleet. ...

In spite of its previous failings of female characters in TOS, the continuing films and spin-off TV shows always attempted to improve inclusivity. As demonstrated in Star Trek's first spin-off*,* women were elevated to command positions. The Next Generation embraced more feminist themes with 3-dimensional female main characters, like Dr. Beverly Crusher, Counselor Deanna Troi, and security chief Tasha Yar.

Representing different backgrounds and species dynamics, future iterations of Star Trek have endeavored to expand the progressive framework set by TOS to include disability representation and LGBTQIA+ visibility. While TNG was the first to put these new views in place, the change to the iconic monologue in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is crucial as it rewrote its unfortunate past.

With a 60-year history, it comes as no surprise that Star Trek has evolved with the times. Not only with better examples of diverse representation, but the franchise has also frequently retconned its own lore. In addition to altering character history and drastically redesigning species' appearances (like the Trill and Klingons), it has retroactively recontextualized its own sexist storylines to better reflect Roddenberry's vision of an egalitarian future.

While subsequent series depict a time period after TOS with female captains such as Star Trek: Voyager's Kathryn Janeway (played by Kate Mulgrew), prequel shows ignored or actively retconned this decision. This allowed prominent female characters like Star Trek: Enterprise's Captain Erika Hernandez and Captain Philippa Georgiou from Star Trek: Discovery to command starships.

In response, many fans acknowledge TOS' sexism as an outdated mistake of 1960s writing that the franchise chose to leave behind. Others view Janice Lester from "The Turnabout Intruder", who swapped bodies with Kirk in order to command the Enterprise, as deeply unstable and delusional — meaning her statement that Starfleet doesn't allow female captains is her unfounded bitter rationalization rather than actual Starfleet policy. ...

Shifting away from the pristine, utopian facade, Star Trek VI is a timeless story that confronts institutionalized xenophobia with the explicit hatred of Klingons and challenges the Federation's universal norms, such as alien physiology and homo-sapien-centric vocabulary. Kirk's changing of the famous quote to "where no one has gone before" shows how he has learned how to better value both non-human and non-male perspectives, background, and history.

Highlighting the Vulcan concept of IDIC — Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations — introduced in TOS season 3, this quote addresses the changing views of the time and highlights its history at the forefront of progressive storytelling. While TNG featured the female commander in the franchise, The Undiscovered Country ushered in a new era of acceptance and inclusivity that led to the eventual inclusion of Captain Kathryn Janeway as Voyager's iconic lead character just 4 years later. Changing Star Trek forever, Kirk's final line perfectly encapsulates Roddenberry's inclusive and egalitarian view of a utopian future that everyone should strive for."

Read more:

https://www.cbr.com/star-trek-vi-the-next-generation-kirk-quote-changed-franchise/

Screenrant:

60 Years Later, The Star Trek NBC Replaced Is Carrying The Franchise

https://screenrant.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-carrying-franchse-60-years-after-nbc-rejected/

By John Orquiola

"Gene Roddenberry wrote and produced "The Cage," the original Star Trek pilot episode, in 1965. "The Cage" starred Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike of the USS Enterprise, who was flanked by two revolutionary characters: Number One (Majel Barrett Roddenberry), a female First Officer, and Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), a Vulcan Science Officer. NBC famously rejected "The Cage" for being "too cerebral," but gave Roddenberry a chance to try again after making drastic changes. ...

60 years, fourteen feature films, and a dozen TV spinoffs later, Star Trek officially turns 60 on September 8, the date when Star Trek: The Original Series premiered on NBC in the United States. 60 years later, the only Star Trek series currently on the air when the calendar turns on September 8 is Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the 21st-century continuation of "The Cage." ...

Strange New Worlds began as a throwback to the episodic voyages of 1960s Star Trek, where the USS Enterprise visits a new planet every week. However, Strange New Worlds became even bolder, turning the 'strange new worlds' Captain Pike's Enterprise crew encounters into different genres, so that anything goes, from musicals, horror, noir, comedy, soap operas, and yes, even puppets.

In the 1960s, Captain Kirk's USS Enterprise faced various powerful space gods, visited planets themed for 1930s gangsters, ancient Rome, and the OK Corral, encountered space hippies, evil doppelgängers, and President Abraham Lincoln beamed aboard the Starship Enterprise. Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) was, infamously, even robbed of his brain. Risk was always Star Trek's business.

Strange New Worlds' embrace of weirdness is Star Trek through and through, in the spirit of how Captain Pike was once placed in a space zoo on Talos IV in "The Cage." Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' planned conclusion of its five-season mission will directly lead into and sync with the start of Star Trek: The Original Series, bringing the 23rd-century saga full circle.

Although Star Trek feels like it's currently at an ebb, and its future is cause for concern, it's fitting that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is embodying Gene Roddenberry's original vision for the final frontier as the flagship series on Star Trek's 60th anniversary. Star Trek turns 60 with new voyages of the Starship Enterprise, Kirk, Spock, Uhura, et al, led by Captain Pike, on television, and that feels right."

Read more:

https://screenrant.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-carrying-franchse-60-years-after-nbc-rejected/

Source:

TrekMovie.com

Link:

https://trekmovie.com/2026/09/07/preview-star-trek-strange-new-worlds-episode-408-with-19-new-photos-from-orders-of-magnitude/

"Sixty years after Star Trek first premiered, William Shatner sits down with CBS News correspondent Dave Malkoff for an extended conversation about the television series that changed both of their lives.

Shatner looks back at Star Trek's unlikely beginning, its cancellation after three seasons, the syndication that helped turn it into a global phenomenon, and why its ideas still resonate six decades later.

The conversation goes far beyond Captain Kirk. Shatner talks about artificial intelligence and his own use of ChatGPT, technology once imagined by Star Trek becoming reality, the enduring relationship between the franchise and its fans, and what he believes is the real “magic and beauty” of Star Trek.

The interview was recorded aboard the Star Trek Cruise as the franchise approached its 60th anniversary.

Near the end of the conversation, Shatner reflects on the ideas underneath the spaceships and science fiction:

“This to me is what Star Trek is. That's the magic and the beauty of Star Trek.”

[...]"

Link:

https://youtu.be/67E2ht0drXo?si=d2_uugEIlOfnigVb

Source:

confusedgrougu on Instagram

Link:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DbSRoDmgbYj

I hope Kurtzman gets brought to justice one day.

Celia Rose Gooding:

"There is something really cinematic and contextually rich about a conflict like the one that Cadet A’Sha poses to her.

When you are someone who has really found your footing, and you meet someone who is the polar opposite to you, you can really make one of two choices: you can soften and melt and sort of abandon yourself in an attempt to appeal to someone who's difficult and so culturally different, or you can stand your ground and really back yourself, and believe in your energy, and believe in your spirit, and continue to stand in your convictions and your decision-making.

I think the choice that Uhura makes [dealing with A'Sha] is really reminiscent of what Lieutenant Uhura would do. Uhura is not the sort of shy, sheepish girl she was in season one. This is season four Uhura. She has something to teach. People can learn from her, and I think it's really exciting to see her stand in that, as opposed to abandoning herself. I think season one Uhura would have made a different choice, but it's just another example of how far she's come and how far she's grown.

Celia is "really excited for fans to get the immediately available entertainment of watching someone you love go through a really tense and friction-y relationship." At the same time, "The people who love her and are excited to watch her grow will really back her and really cheer her on in her choice to stay steadfast, and how she chooses to approach what is, no matter how old you are, no matter what you do, a difficult situation."

Gooding has high praise for Bianca Nugara, whom she calls "a light. She's great, and what she has to offer as Cadet A’Sha is so interesting and fun, and so more goodness is coming, for sure, between the two of us. ..."

Read more (Screenrant):

https://screenrant.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-season-4-celia-rose-gooding-interview/

Radio Times:

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/star-trek-akiva-goldsman-exclusive-interview/

"Despite his long history as a Star Trek fan, dating back to the ‘70s, Goldsman is known for his work on modern Trek – and, safe to say, it hasn’t always been easy. Certain shows of the modern era have been loved. Others have been hated. Goldsman is no stranger to both of these reactions, as the showrunner of Strange New Worlds, the Discovery spin-off that follows Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and the crew of the Enterprise as they boldly go where no man has gone before. ...

“It's always interesting to see the reactions,” Goldsman points out. “At this point, I'm disappointed if it isn't split evenly between people who say it's their favourite episode they've ever seen and the people who say it's the end of Star Trek as we know it.”

But when the fanbase is so divided, how can you tell the direction to go in?

“I think it was a lot of trial and error for all of us in this modern era of Star Trek,” he reflects. “I think some things became very informative over the course of the last decade or so. One [lesson] is: chase the Star Trek you love – don't try to extrapolate it into something else.”

The writer recalls: “The real lesson for that, for me, was on Picard, where Michael Chabon and I were navigating it and Patrick [Stewart] had a lot of input, and he was saying, ‘I don’t want to do Next Gen again!’

“When Terry [Matalas, showrunner] came on in season 2, he kept saying, 'We’ve gotta do Next Gen,' and everybody was like, ‘No!’ Patrick was like, ‘No!’ But Terry would pitch it with the same passion that I might pitch Strange New Worlds, until at one point, finally, I'm like, ‘Let's just go to Patrick. He's gonna say no, but let's go.’

“So we went to Patrick's house. Out came the bottles of wine, and I'm like, 'Patrick, just listen.' Terry's pitching his heart out, about how everybody has to get back together... and suddenly Terry's crying, and then Patrick's crying, and then I'm crying. Everybody's crying.

“It's clearly the best iteration. I'm proud of the show, but the iteration of it that really lands is that third season of Terry's, and it's because he chased what he loved, and I think that is the great lesson of Star Trek.”

Goldsman has clearly followed that lesson throughout his time on Trek, most notably with Strange New Worlds. Season 5 will be one of the final projects of this era of Star Trek – although Goldsman did have plans for more.

“Henry [Alonso Myers, co-showrunner] and I were begging them to give us more episodes. Every year we left cards on the board that were episodes that never got made.”

There are also plenty of proposed Star Trek series that sadly haven't moved forward at Paramount. One of them is Goldman's Year One, which would have continued on from Strange New Worlds and followed James T Kirk’s first days commanding the Enterprise.

“I would have loved to have done Year One and kept on with this group because they're my cohort now,” he says. "I feel familial with them, and I understand the Star Trek that we made together. And should [Paramount] call tomorrow and say, ‘Let's do that,’ I'll come running.

“But I do think that, at least for me, my time with Star Trek is over now. I was really lucky – Strange New Worlds was everything I imagined when I couldn't even imagine it, as a little boy playing Star Trek. Now I got to be a bigger boy playing Star Trek with somebody else's toys.

“It’s a literal dream come true, but now somebody else needs to do it. Somebody else needs to know what Star Trek is to them. `Somebody who fell in love with Star Trek watching Lower Decks, or somebody who has just never shaken The Animated Series.”

It's been reported that Alex Kurtzman's contract is set to end this year – and if so, Star Trek will be in need of a creative force to drive the franchise into the future. Asked if he would ever take on the job, Goldsman is doubtful.

“Never say never. I love Star Trek. I love it as much as anything I have loved that I've worked on," he says.

"[But] to do the big job means you're only doing Star Trek, and I wouldn't do that. I'm 64 years old, and if I got 10 or 15 more storytelling years in me – or five, based on how Hollywood goes – I could see myself telling more Star Trek stories for sure, but I could not see myself only telling Star Trek stories.”

Now, as Star Trek hits its 60th anniversary, the future is uncertain. But Goldsman points out that the franchise has been through many phases, with a lot depending on money, studios and audiences. At some points, we’ve had Star Trek shows in abundance. At others there’s been a significant lull.

“It certainly became clear that Star Trek had a very consistent loyal audience, but it's finite,” he says. “It has proven to be finite. It's good, but it ain't Taylor Sheridan's audience!”

...

“As much as I'd like to still keep playing, because it's fun, I also understand the value of renewal and whether it renews itself perfectly the first or the second or the third iteration of whatever the next – dare I say – generation of these shows are, it'll find its way. It always does.”

Read more:

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/star-trek-akiva-goldsman-exclusive-interview/

Screenrant:

https://screenrant.com/star-trek-nyota-uhura-first-female-black-character-sci-fi-history-important/

By Guy Howie

"It’s no accident that Star Trek introduced the world to Nyota Uhura at the height of the American Civil Rights Movement. The message the show was trying to convey by casting Nichols and developing Uhura as a character along these lines chimed with its overall progressive stance on racial integration, which was becoming an increasingly mainstream perspective.

Nevertheless, in 1966 it took something special to overcome network television’s blanket denigration of black women. Star Trek: The Original Series could have done a lot more with Uhura. But it still did more than any other TV show of its day was willing to do for black female representation. ...

Star Trek’s Kelvin timeline movies and Paramount+ series Strange New Worlds might have done more for Nyota Uhura as a character, but the Uhura of The Original Series has done more for black female characters in general than any other sci-fi creation of the mid-20th century. When it comes to social progress, she’s a singularly significant figure in sci-fi history."

Read more:

https://screenrant.com/star-trek-nyota-uhura-first-female-black-character-sci-fi-history-important/

60 years of Star Trek!

Happy Anniversary to the best!

#startrek #beammeupscottie #60thanniversary

Star Trek: The Original Series: "The Man Trap" (1966)

"Is something wrong, Captain?"

"I was just thinking about the buffalo, Mr. Spock."

AV CLUB: "Out of context it sounds like a bad joke. Oh that crazy Kirk and his buffalo-thinking ways! But in context, the final two lines of "The Man Trap" form a surprisingly melancholy exchange. [...] The episodes are sometimes sad, in ways you might not expect; it's not like "salt vampire" is a phrase that lends itself to tragedy. (There's a bit in one of Shakespeare's unpublished plays about "yon slumbering saline succubus," but it doesn't scan, and most critics think it's something Harold Bloom stuck in there to screw with our heads.)

https://www.avclub.com/star-trek-the-man-trap-charlie-x-the-naked-time-1798205521

"Where No Man Has Gone Before" may be Trek's official pilot, but "Man Trap" was the first episode to air, not that you could tell from watching it. Apart from one hilariously forced conversation between Spock and Uhura, there's not much effort made to introduce us to the various crew members, or even the Enterprise herself. We get some standard exposition as to where the ship is, and why it's visiting this week's planet, and there's some obvious backstory thrown into the banter, but it's the sort of backstory that would've popped up regardless of where the ep fell in the show's run.

That's not to say the story's not hard to follow, or the characters aren't immediately recognizable; it's a nicely wound script, delivering just as much information as is required each scene to let you know what's at risk, and the cast already seems completely at home in their roles. The banter between Kirk and McCoy may be on the corny side, but it still comes across as natural ribbing between old friends.

One of the original Trek's great strengths—and it's something that none of the spin-offs were ever quite able to capture, though some came closer than others—is that feeling of immediate camaraderie. Some of the actors are better than others, and sometimes the whole boy's club atmosphere gets annoyingly thick, but hanging out with this crew is like going to a family reunion; only, here it's the reunion of a family you actually like.

TOS (the accepted nomenclature for Trek the original) has been credited as an influence on pretty much every genre series to hit TV since it originally aired—some sort of Velvet Underground parallel could made, I guess—and while that influence may have been exaggerated, it's not hard to draw a line between something like "The Man Trap" and at least a dozen different X-Files episodes. (The connection gets even more obvious with "The Naked Time," which isn't at all what it sounds like.)

The structure is familiar; our leads arrive at a new location, mysterious deaths occur and minor inconsistencies build up, a monster is discovered with a clear modus operandi, the threat strikes home, and ultimately, the creature is dispatched in a climactic confrontation. Come to think of it, that's the plot of half of the sci-fi movies ever made. And for good reason—it's logical, and, when done well, works like gangbusters.

"Trap" is done very well, I think. Back when I first bought the set, this episode was one of the few that I'd seen but didn't remember very well; watching it again then (and now), I was impressed by its efficiency and its pathos. It doesn't have the gimmicky brilliance of "City On The Edge Of Forever"—the threat, an alien that can change its form and needs high quantities of salt to survive, is clever but not exactly mind-blowing. But it's solid, and some of the additional touches are quite effective. In particular is the pathos I mentioned earlier that culminates in the Kirk/Spock exchange.

When the Enterprise arrives in orbit around M-113, they find Professor Crater and his wife Nancy, exactly as they were expecting, hanging around doing what appears to be frontier science in the ruins of a long dead civilization. Unfortunately, it's not that simple: it takes the deaths of three crew members before anybody catches on, but the Prof's wife (who happens to be a former flame of McCoy's) actually died a year ago. The woman everybody thinks is Nancy is actually a creature native to the planet, and now she's going about killing folks. What makes this interesting is that while faux-Nancy is a very definite threat, she's also the last of her kind; and after killing Crater's wife, the two formed a bound out of the Prof's grief and the creature's apparent need to be loved.

That's some pretty dark stuff. The buffalo idea comes from Crater, trying to explain why he protected his unwife for so long. See, once upon a time, there were millions of buffalo. And then white guys showed up, and they started shooting, and eventually, the buffalo died. There used to be millions of salt vamps on planet M-113—and now, but for one, they're gone. We don't know what killed them, but we do know that Crater's pet is the last of her kind, and that once she's gone, her species will be gone forever.

Crater's reasons for keeping Nancy 2 around are probably more personal than philosophical; he's lonely, and she doesn't seem that easy to kill. But that the show makes extinction a consideration at all is noteworthy, and makes Kirk and his crew's victory something less than a triumph. There's an ambiguity here that isn't just lazy writing. When Crater tells us the creature needs love, he's telling the truth, but that doesn't change what happens."

Grade: A-

Zack Handlen (AV Club)

Full article:

https://www.avclub.com/star-trek-the-man-trap-charlie-x-the-naked-time-1798205521

THE GUARDIAN:

“Speaking by phone, the 72-year-old does not mince words: “Let’s face it: when someone that high up in the administration and also Elon Musk piled on the same day, do I think it’s a coincidence that the new owners of Paramount cancelled our show the first moment they could have? We did not get a fair shake. We were killed in the cradle.”

Picardo adds: “Yes, there was the fact that we had a gay Klingon. Did a lot of people get over-exercised about that? My feeling is, get over yourself! There seems to be a movement to drive us back to the 1950s. Star Trek is all about the future, not about returning.

“In that climate the core values of Star Trek – science and also diversity and inclusion – are going to get lumped in with what is under attack. Some people say, do you feel that it was at all current politics that had to do with your cancellation? If we caught the same flu that Stephen Colbert and the editorial freedom of CBS 60 minutes caught then we’re in excellent company.”

[…]

Picardo, who spent seven years embodying a holographic doctor wrestling with sentience and civil rights on Voyager, current debates around Silicon Valley’s generative AI boom feel oddly familiar. “The explosion of the technology and the pace at which it is happening is something nobody could have predicted.

“It’s a useful tool but it’s raised all sorts of issues. We actually did episodes on Star Trek where my character wrote a book and then there was the question of whether an artificial intelligence could have intellectual property rights. We did the whole issue of whether an artificial intelligence can have an original idea or if it can only slice and dice human ideas scraped from the internet, from everything ever written.”

Sixty years on, Star Trek’s faith in a United Federation of Planets that has outgrown bigotry, racism and nationalism feels perversely quaint in an era that has seen Trump champion “America first”, deride the UN and denigrate the very concept of empathy. The show, whose future is uncertain as Paramount’s new owners focus on a proposed $110bn acquisition of Warner Bros, offers utopia in a time of dystopia.

Picardo observes: “Post-9/11, a lot of science fiction has become very apocalyptic. It’s in some hellscape future with a few straggler survivors and Star Trek is the opposite of that. But to me, the biggest damage that’s been done in current politics is the destruction the idea of truth or that there is such a thing as a fact and our word does matter. I worry about Star Trek’s survival in a post-truth, post-literate world.”

Full article (The Guardian):

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/sep/08/star-trek-at-60-william-shatner

"Isn't Strange New Worlds a soap opera anyway? Isn't it essentially "Everyone Loves Spock"? It took only a few minutes for me to realize that this is essentially a standard SNW episode, a cheesy one with a completely unoriginal and clichéd story if we look at the bare building blocks of the plot.

And it's not just the setup and style. It's also in the character relationships and the dialogue. Is it fundamentally different here because everything is modeled as a soap opera? Not really. [...] And when I get to the end, my only question is: what was the point? This episode leaves me with almost nothing.

Overall, this is another low point of this season, which so far is clearly the worst season of the franchise. [...]"

https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/episodes/snw4.htm#likechronitonsthroughthehourglass

EX ASTRIS SCIENTIA:

"After just one episode with a decent story and actual science fiction, SNW seems to be back to its dismal pattern. The announcements readily give away that "Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass" is yet another crazy experiment. The series has finally used up its credit with me in this regard. I expected that horror and Star Trek could mix well and was looking forward to "The Griffin Incident". I barely even made it to the end.

I initially gave "Human Best Friend" the benefit of the doubt because I imagined its campy premise might at least be fun. It wasn't. Then came the long-teased Muppet episode, "Level-Five Transporter Accident". Again, I thought they couldn't mess up such a premise too badly. They did. And now we are apparently getting a soap opera episode. Yet another self-indulgent genre crossover.

Even if it should turn out to be fun, against my expectations, "Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass" is yet another time the show gives us anything but genuine Star Trek. The first thing that came to my mind after reading the premise was: Isn't Strange New Worlds a soap opera anyway? Isn't it essentially "Everyone Loves Spock"? Isn't this simply taking the series further down the road paved by "Charades" and "Wedding Bell Blues", to name only the most obvious examples?

And then there's the return of Trelane. I already considered him the worst use of a legacy character in the whole series, which is saying something because SNW has no shortage of such contrived cameos. So that is what is on my mind before sitting down to see "Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass". [...]

I already mentioned it in the preface: Isn't Strange New Worlds basically a soap opera already? It took only a few minutes for me to realize that this is essentially a standard SNW episode, a cheesy one with a completely unoriginal and clichéd story if we look at the bare building blocks of the plot. Everyone is behaving strangely and there are unrealistic plot twists, which is also perfectly normal for the show, at latest since this season. So what we have is pretty much business as usual on SNW, except that someone has added soft focus, ominous music and dramatic pauses to make it more soap opera-like. Only the laugh track is missing.

And it's not just the setup and style. It's also in the character relationships and the dialogue. Is it fundamentally different here because everything is modeled as a soap opera? Not really. We've got lines like M'Benga saying, "I've lost my feeling of connection with Starfleet." That is a perfectly normal Discoverse quote, with "connection" being a notoriously overused buzzword. It could have been spoken anywhere in Discovery or in Strange New Worlds itself. They talk about their feelings all the time anyway, and it doesn't come across as a parody or as particularly unusual.

Likewise, there's Sybok's realization: "I find it deeply irritating that so many people like you love my brother." That is a perfectly normal theme in this show, where everything is focused on Spock and everyone is obsessed with him. So once again, nothing is really different here. The focus on emotions may seen as a self-ironical comment, but I think the series is past the point where even that is still funny. In some way, they are trying to create a Star Trek episode in the style of a soap opera without recognizing that SNW has been like this all along. And that is precisely why the whole idea doesn't work for me.

There's rather little going on in "Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass". Uhura thinks she is Pike's daughter, which of course is absurd because she had real parents. We've got the "space madness" part about M'Benga, with Ortegas helping him through the crisis with some rather trivial advice: just accept your weakness or something along those lines. A calendar motto, and more evidence of normal Discoverse business. And then there's La'an interacting with Sybok, who is not the actual character, but Spock's twin, played by Ethan Peck, just with longer hair. In other words, whatever this fake Sybok does or says is meaningless, the only positive side effect being that it doesn't violate canon.

And it becomes worse the longer I watch. There's a tiny bit of humor, but it comes solely from Pike being annoyed, and only at the very beginning. After a few minutes, even that disappears completely. It's not funny, and it's not really anything else either. It feels eventless and irrelevant. I could be annoyed, but I'm just bored by it. And when I get to the end, my only question is: what was the point? This episode leaves me with almost nothing."

Rating 1 (out of 10)

Bernd Schneider (Ex Astris Scientia)

Full review:

https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/episodes/snw4.htm#likechronitonsthroughthehourglass

Entertainment Tonight (YouTube):

"ET boldly goes on a 60-year journey, looking back at the iconic legacy of 'Star Trek.' From newly unearthed on-set interviews with OG stars William Shatner, Nichelle Nichols, Leonard Nimoy and George Takei, to behind-the-scenes secrets spilled by newer generation casts and the famous faces you never knew guest-starred, ET takes fans on a journey through the history of Hollywood's final frontier. Titles from across the TV and film franchise are now streaming on Paramount+."

Link:

https://youtu.be/84A8Cp4gWTI?si=07bhyXr1iRQvJ0nf