Posted inFilm/TV

What makes a home for ‘All Those Who Wander’?

Reading Time: 8 minutes The first season of Strange New Worlds started with Captain Pike grappling with foreknowledge of a terrible fate that awaits him in Star Trek canon. Meanwhile, Spock this season has struggled with a relationship that The Original Series tells us is doomed. In both cases, SNW made the road to these futures feel uncertain in […]

Posted inFilm/TV

Once upon a time in ‘The Elysian Kingdom’

Reading Time: 9 minutes Classic Trek series always left room for play, and sometimes did so quite literally, with beloved characters play-acting in completely different roles for many episodes. Holodeck episodes in The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager allowed crew members to play-act consciously. Q-continuum, time-travel, and mirror-universe episodes invited a range of unwilling, unintended, and naturalized […]

Posted inFilm/TV

Can any civilization ‘Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach’?

Reading Time: 9 minutes There are many useful narrative structures for humanist stories, and all tend to get airtime in classic Star Trek series. Some involve a juxtaposition of multiple storylines, to hold different crises and outlooks in tension. Others present the full problem early on, allowing different perspectives and conflicts to emerge as characters struggle to find a […]

Posted inFilm/TV

‘Spock Amok’: Walk a mile in my ears

Reading Time: 9 minutes One of the most important facets of Star Trek: The Original Series was its spirit of play. In some ways, this was necessary. The series would often be filmed haphazardly, scripts written and handed off to actors last-minute, the late-60s wing-and-a-prayer production flying by the seat of its pants to make it all work on […]

Posted inFilm/TV

‘Memento Mori’: To live with the prospect of death (Strange New Worlds)

Reading Time: 9 minutes Like any self-respecting Trekkie, I learned the basics of gunpower from Star Trek: The Original Series. One of TOS‘s most memorable scenes comes from “Arena” (Season 1, Episode 18), when Captain Kirk, trapped on a planet with minimal resources, has to use his wits to survive an encounter with a brutish reptilian species called the […]

Sign In

We've recently sent you an authentication link. Please, check your inbox!

Sign in with a password below, or sign in using your email.

Get a code sent to your email to sign in, or sign in using a password.

Enter the code you received via email to sign in, or sign in using a password.

Subscribe to our newsletters:

OR

By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Conditions.