The Upcoming Shows

Star Trek Day 2021 wasn’t quite the level I expected. 

With insights from cast past, present and future, there was a real sense of heritage and family which was quickly lost in the madness of new footage for Prodigy, Lower Decks and Picard.

With the dust having now settled after a few days, let’s take a look back in brief at the latest news on the handful of Trek shows currently in production.

Slated for a mid-October release, the new trailer for Prodigy finally allowed fans to see CG Janeway voiced by Kate Mulgrew. Focusing more on the discovery of the Protostar and the formation of the initial motley crew, Prodigy’s trailer dropped in some neat shots of the bridge plus a first look at the two antagonists how are hunting for the prototype starship. 

It’s my there are also shots of a new style combadge and LCARS displays on the ship as she restarts. Couple of interesting pieces in here too. One it looks like the Protostar can enter atmospheres easily and land (rather than crash) and may have some form of new land vehicle hidden away in its stores. That new truck is driven by Dal and seen more than once in the footage. 

Also we see Gwyn tied to the captain's chair (main pic, top) which indicates that all isn’t plain sailing between the characters to begin with. 

Prodigy is a real dilemma to me. It’s definitely Trek but I'm not sold on the look of the animation, It's very similar to the Star Wars animation of The Bad Batch which has just aired on Disney+ and could be the first show I'm not seriously hooked into. The whole kids factor and where this is aiming doesn't seem to sit well with me and I have my concerns that it could be The Show Too Far... but then I was utterly wrong about Lower Decks.

Big news here as well because Discovery's fourth season will be hitting screens from November 18th. Why is this important? Because this will be the first time since 2000 that there will be two Star Trek series on air at the same time. The last time it happened was for DS9's seventh season and VGR's fifth.

The trailer for the second half of Lower Decks' second season teased Tendi as a giant bug, the Borg and a ton more. It seems that the show will be continuing its trend of drawing on events and characters from the past in no uncertain terms.

In there we've got Shaxs buried under containers not unlike Worf and a major, MAJOR homage to The Wrath of Khan featuring Rutherford. Honestly, there was so much crammed into that two minutes that only a slow down and freeze frame helped. We are getting something Mirror Universe themed but the best nod has to be the outfits featured in this pic (middle and bottom left) that have been oft mentioned since their appearance in season three of TNG!!!

But this still remains the most consistent and exciting version of the franchise in existence at the moment. The scope is incredible and even this season 2.5 trailer is only going to be a scratch on the surface. Bring it on and bring it on NOW.

That said, the biggest attention grabber for the day has to be the news that Picard's second season will be arriving in February 2022 and that the series has concretely been picked up for a third season. 

We still haven't spotted a single frame of Guinan in any of the promotional work for season two but the trailer here goes a long way to confirming what the enigmatic metropolis-style poster was all about.

While not only having Q transport them into a fascist parallel universe, the crew of the La Sirena are also going to be travelling back to the 21st Century. The recent announcement that Annie Wersching would be playing the Borg Queen have to be in response to the footage that was intended to be shown on September 8th. We got our first look at the captured and disabled monarch who is being kept as only a torso and a head - and the reason why she's in the show.

The Borg Queen is the way to travel back to the 2100's and that also means Sanctuary Districts and Seven of Nine driving cars recklessly. It's a big departure from the worlds of season one and could they be attempting to capture a similar vibe to either The Voyage Home or VGR's Future's End? Both of these Trek instalments chose to go for a "present day" setting with a good level of success it has to be said.

Ok....bit of a drum roll because I was more excited for the news from Strange New Worlds even more than Lower Decks. We knew who was in the cast but until Star Trek Day we were still in the dark as to whom they would be playing. The diversity here is stunning with fans of TOS receiving a huge payoff while also including some new and intriguing roles into the starship mix.

Anson Mount, Rebecca Romjin and Ethan Peck return as Pike, Number One (Una) and Spock respectively but now we know who will be filling out the rest of the main crew. Babs Oluksanmkun breathes new life into Doctor M'Benga originally played by Booker Bradshaw in A Private Little War and That Which Survives. Jess Bush takes on the role of Nurse Chapel which means that there will be two characters on the ship who were originally played by Majel Barrett-Roddenberry.

Celia Rose Gooding has the monumental task of stepping into the early life of one Cadet Nyota Uhura which must be an incredible honour and also slightly scary at the same time. Christina Chong will also be heading in a familiar direction with her playing La'An Noonien Singh. I can't imagine that's a fluke and might suggest some superhuman heritage at the least.

Then we have Bruce Horvak as Andorian Aenar (first seen in Enterprise) Hemmer. Horvak himself is registered blind - another first for the franchise and the first regular cast Andorian.  Finally Melissa Navia will take on the role of Lt Erica Ortegas. For those of you with a deep knowledge of The Cage, Ortegas was the original surname for the part that evolved into helmsman Jose Tyler.

Strange New Worlds, even from these images, looks to be the most exciting prospect for Star Trek in the 21st Century. Kurtzman was wise to jump on the opportunity following the popularity of Anson Mount's Christopher Pike. His portrayal of the iconic second Enterprise captain was as off the chart as we could have expected and now seeing shots from the new series would seem to back this up as a Very Good Move.

No trailer for this one as yet and it's slated to air at some point in 2022.

What did surprise me was the lack of Discovery material given that the show is going to be back for the already filmed fourth season and an announced fifth. Amazing to think that only a few years back it was the only - the first - of this new age of Star Trek shows, some of which have surpassed the benchmarks it set.

For now let's enjoy the second half of Lower Decks second season and then await the arrival of Prodigy just next month!

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