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Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 Episode 6 “Of Gods and Angles” Star Trek: Lower Decks presents an adventure demonstrating how certain stories are best conveyed through animation, as the Cerritos crew gains an electric new crewmember. This episode begins with the Cerritos in a novel situation. Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) and her […]

The post Star Trek: Lower Decks 506 “Of Gods and Angles” Review: Angling for a Good Time appeared first on TREKNEWS.NET | Your daily dose of Star Trek news and opinion.

Review: 765874 – Unification — William Shatner’s Captain Kirk returns Dropping on the 30th anniversary of Star Trek: Generations – the last Star Trek movie to feature William Shatner’s Captain James T. Kirk – the fine folks at OTOY, Inc., in association with William Shatner, the Nimoy Estate, and Paramount, have produced a fascinating short […]

The post William Shatner’s legendary Captain Kirk returns in ‘Unification’ short film appeared first on TREKNEWS.NET | Your daily dose of Star Trek news and opinion.

Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 Episode 5 “Starbase 80?!” Star Trek: Lower Decks returns to the infamous Starbase 80 in the Cerritos’ time of need, but it ends up being the kooky cast of characters on that run-down station that saves the day. The Cerritos is flying through space as the lower deckers […]

The post Star Trek: Lower Decks 505 “Starbase 80?!” Review: A Quintessential Lower Decks Adventure appeared first on TREKNEWS.NET | Your daily dose of Star Trek news and opinion.

Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2 Giveaway To celebrate this week’s home video release of Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2 on Blu-ray and DVD, we’re giving away an exclusive Prodigy prize pack and three copies of the series sophomore season on Blu-ray. The prize pack will include Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2 on Blu-ray, custom-branded headphones, […]

The post Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2 Prize Pack & Blu-ray Giveaway appeared first on TREKNEWS.NET | Your daily dose of Star Trek news and opinion.

Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 Episode 4 “A Farewell to Farms” “A Farewell to Farms” features the welcome return of a previously seen Klingon character, while a lesser-known member of the Cerritos crew takes the delicious spotlight for a change. The episode begins with an extended focus on the peaceful but restless farm […]

The post Star Trek: Lower Decks 504 “A Farewell to Farms” Review: The One with the Klingons appeared first on TREKNEWS.NET | Your daily dose of Star Trek news and opinion.

Gates McFadden sits down with TrekNews.net to discuss Star Trek guests joining her for the third season of her podcast “InvestiGates” Gates McFadden — Beverly Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation and recently in Star Trek: Picard, and animated form in Star Trek: Prodigy — is continuing her series of interviews with Star Trek-related […]

The post Gates McFadden talks beverly Crusher’s legacy, Star Trek: Prodigy & upcoming guests on her podcast “InvestiGates” appeared first on TREKNEWS.NET | Your daily dose of Star Trek news and opinion.

Because this one is all about tactics and empire building that's physically on your table and brings fans together in one place to play and chat Trek. Magnificent.

It's a bigger galactic picture and offers varied gameplay versus those now established tabletop and digital experiences. This is going to take some time, a lot of thinking and a shuttlebay full of patience to manage so buckle in for a good long afternoon of gaming.

With a base game box that is packed to the gills with tokens, playing pieces, control panels, planets, space lanes, hazards and a rule book that covered every scenario, it's a Trek fan's dream. Players could start from their homeworld and expand out across the galaxy, discovering new worlds, new civilisations and boldly... ok... you get the picture.

As we head towards the end of 2024 I pulled out the box and got ready for a steady session on the table because Gale Force Nine (GFN) are set to release a single box which will contain everything produced to date as well as some new and exciting content. Definitely a great sign for the game after seven years!

So let's just refresh on the systems as we unpack the plethora of equipment.

In the original starter box players could choose from the Federation, Romulans or Klingons with each faction offering different tactics. For instance the Klingons can't run from a fight and the Federation will never try and take over an established civilisation by force. These factors and others come into play when you reach out from your starting planet and influence how you interact with your discoveries.

No two games will ever be the same but just make sure you're ready for a long haul because GFN expect that for every player on the board there's at least an hour of game time (three players, three hours). Each round of the game sees players Build (chips, assets etc), Command (exploring, combat) and Maintain (assessing victory qualifiers and collecting resources) but don't forget to keep an eye on where your adversaries are up to!

Ultimately the aim of each player is to reach Five Ascendancy points which can be acquired by collecting and trading in your Culture tokens. In the case of the Federation should you flip over a Civilisation card when exploring a new world that will immediately give you a Culture token! Each level of Ascendancy unlocks new abilities so you can run more projects and fleets with each increase.

One of the things that I levelled against this game back in the day was that it focused heavily on TNG and TOS without much care for Voyager or Deep Space Nine. In terms of the latter, some of that has been accomplished with one of the two larger supplements which includes the Bajoran wormhole and the Gamma Quadrant. There is still to be anything forthcoming from the Delta Quadrant however!

The Borg expansion does add in a feature which makes it impossible to avoid the Collective as they will spawn and head directly for the nearest opponent. In a one player game that's a given and with their "AI" ability it actually becomes more of a challenge to see how long you can last out rather than attempting to defeat them which is near impossible.

As with Attack Wing before it, the Borg dynamic is naturally overpowered and almost invincible meaning that any true attempt to defeat them would likely require at least two if not three or more players hounding their cubes until the bitter end. There's a ton of new content in the Borg packs beyond the ships such as additional/expanded rules, new nodes and tokens. For me this has become something of a go to where I can try out different factions against the Collective to see which is most effective. So far the results are not promising!

One thing that frustrated me was how fast the Borg could come out of the gate and be on top of your home system. Best case three turns, worst case two - the margin was that fine. However, by a bit of YouTube research and just thinking more about strategy it's actually quite straight forward to elongate the game - just make sure that any pathways into your territory are completely used up. For example if a planet has four space lane options, use all of them to connect it into your network. This is where the additional resources and the built ships really come into play as otherwise players wouldn't stand a chance to build any form of defence.

This is a real step upon the multiplayer concept with the Dominion faction starting on the other side of the Bajoran Wormhole and having to make their way into the Alpha Quadrant as part of the initial setup. Of course they could just fly around the Gamma Quadrant but at some point trouble will come calling.

The nice piece here is that the Gamma Quadrant systems can ONLY be used on that side of the wormhole and there's some familiar planets in there for the Karemma, Dosi and of course the Great Link.

The problem with the Dominion War campaign is that four players are needed to form two alliances consisting of four already developed and explored worlds (ready for conquering). That's a lot of people to get together and at least a four hour play time both of which I would personally struggle with but may suit other gamers perfectly. I expect that in this case I may field the Dominion as a faction against the Borg or in a smaller 2/3 player scenario perhaps even without the wormhole piece.

Ascendancy is a superb, detailed and in depth Star Trek game that does require some time and patience to get the most out of it. If you want quick and straight forward pick up some Fluxx cards or head for your copy of Away Missions but for a real test of your metal this is the game to do it. Will you try and conquer from the Gamma Quadrant? Dominate from the off with the Klingons? Offer peaceful co-existence via the Federation or watch your foes be assimilated by the Borg? You make the calls!

Star Trek Ascendancy is available NOW from retailers stocking Gale Force Nine. Prices (for expansions) start from around £25 ranging to around £75 for the base game set.

Two starter sets, 30 waves of individual ships, prize events, faction packs, a total rehacking of the points system... and that's just the scant surface moments I can recall from those times.

Containing five golden models, this new pack includes the NX, Constitution refit, Excelsior, Galaxy and Sovereign Classes plus 115 new and updated options to outfit them.

Each of the classes can either be fielded as the Enterprise in its different registry guises or an alternative ship from including the NX-02 Columbia, USS Excelsior, USS Atlas or USS Galaxy. It also marks the first retail appearance of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-A.

Some of the ships, such as the Enterprise-D have seen modifications to their existing cards and a significant number are now superseded by the contents of These are the Voyages.

Captain options are extensive with all possibilities including Styles, Harriman and Jellico included, each with their own neat twists to add. Crew options are exhaustive too with every canonical crew represented in almost every single way and that includes Porthos.

The pack also continues the new updates of Lower Decks, First Officer and Night Shift although the latter of those three only appears on a couple of cards.

There are some "obvious" choices to go for such as the E or the D but the A, B, refit and NX-01 aren't without their advantages since a smaller ship score allows for more upgrades and a thoroughly packed out starship.

These Are the Voyages is a very unique set though and one that players/collectors may not want to directly add into their big box of cards. The Q scenario actually turns this more into a set to have available for one off game occasionally “stealing” cards from it to supplement an existing fleet. It also shows that there is still life in the game after a decade. New features abound, there is still some expansive thinking as to how to keep the game alive and with Into the Unknown requiring a re-mortgage or the sale of a kidney you can understand why players are choosing to remain firmly in the Attack Wing stable.

What we didn't mention in the review for Adversaries... was that a lot of the cards included with both of these expansions do effectively retire a chunk of older Attack Wing content. The costs of cards have dropped, the new features make these a lot more appealing to select and being in a set means there's some form of theme running through the options.

Unusually here there are two Voyager card options as well as USS Nova and the Delta Flyer II but let's not get bogged down in the names because there's a lot packed into this set that needs unpicking.

Aside from the cost changes which make Voyager an extremely appealing ship choice, the range of captains is certainly an eye opener with most of them also having the ability to double up as crew. Chakotay - in much the same way as with Turanj in the Adversaries... pack can be flipped to take command if the captain is lost. Big bonus there which keeps your ship with some form of command skill if things do go a bit pear shaped.

But yes, Lower Decks and Night Shift. The former means that two cards bearing that text can take up a single Crew slot on your ship roster as long as they are from the same faction. With Night Shift, the text on the card listed under that heading is in play when your opponent has the Initiative Token. There are six of the Lower Decks cards in this pack offering the chance to disable opponent upgrades, take Time Tokens when another upgrade would be hit and even providing Free Actions. Night Shift seems to be limited to two cards in the form of Harry Kim as a Captain and the Elite Action, Coffee, Black.

Personal thoughts on both of these new abilities is that it does provide the Federation faction with even more advantages with no hint that these new inclusions will be available for other factions in the future. It also seems these new features have really split the fanbase for the game with several notes that it's changed the dynamics completely. I guess sometimes you do need to stir things up and hey, it's not as if you HAVE to use these new packs or their additional spins. My thoughts would be to run this and the Adversaries pack as a campaign combo using the Delta Quadrant missions included. Then the new rules are kept enclosed to these ships. IF Wizkids do produce some more sets and further the Lower Decks and Night Shift rules into those then all the better.

Some of the other cards in here are well worth a punt too. Seven of Nine allows use of the singular Borg upgrade buried in the set. The XO, pilot and CMO from Caretaker are all discards (well played once again, Wizkids). You can upgrade your ships defences with Ablative Armour, add weapons in the form of Transphasic or Gravametric Torpedoes. Changing speed can be made through Variable Geometry Pylons. The Nova Class can benefit from Rechargeable Shield Emitters and even the Delta Flyer can pop some added Photonic Missiles.

The Raven does seem under represented here with nothing "anti-Borg" or able to slip past the odd Cube. Perhaps a missed opportunity not to double-side Magnus Hansen as a Borg drone? Nor are there any references to the creatures the Equinox used to speed up their voyage home. Erin Hansen interestingly can only be equipped to the Raven - which I also feel should apply to her husband!

Another point is that the symbol for the Luna Class turns up AGAIN on the Bio-Neural Circuitry card... surely this has to be a sign that the Titan is on the way? Otherwise, frankly what's the point.

The new Star Trek shows display excellent writing, acting, directing and visual effects. It produces entertaining television. The current series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds seems to have tried to recapture that original innocence, with its premise, its stand-alone episodes and that thrilling variation on the original opening with updated imagery. But most episodes seem to explore mostly the styles of presenting the established (if visually updated) Star Trek universe—comedy, horror, mixing animation with live action, musical comedy. Star Trek now seems to comments on itself more than any outside world, real or imagined, including the self-consciousness of Lower Decks.

Discovery tried to push the envelope at times, and bravely explores diversity and the internal life of a starship in a different way, though its obsession with feelings feels excessive at times (in my weaker moments I’ve referred to Captain Burnham as Captain Emo.) While season 4 in particular pushed Star Trek forward, even in this series, Star Trek mythology generated lots of story.

It’s not that these shows lack values or significant content. And it's not that decades and hundreds of Star Trek stories should be ignored. But maybe the emphasis seems different. Strange new worlds aren't primary. At best the new shows are about the characters and their relationships and interactions within the canonical Star Trek mythology. They seem to be less about exploring the previously unknown, or involved with testing our assumptions against what is found out there. Character-driven drama with technobabble is not all of what Star Trek started out to be.

Maybe it’s at least partly inevitable. When Star Trek began, nothing like it had been done on television before. The series invented its story universe with every episode, and so every episode was exploring the unknown. Perhaps it’s impossible to get back that innocence.

For a lot has happened in 57 years. Back when it began, Star Trek’s content was shaped more directly by generations of science fiction and not quite two decades of television drama.

Science fiction that followed Jules Verne speculated on new technologies and what might be found on other planets, both imagined from the basis of known fact and science. The science fiction that followed H.G. Wells used imagined technologies, phenomena and forms of life as metaphors to illuminate aspects of human life. (This is how Margaret Atwood divides it, and it’s a good starting point.)

Following either progenitor, s/f writers also explored highly speculative science with cosmological and philosophical implications—everything from alternative archeology and anthropology (some of which has turned out to have some basis in fact) to implications of quantum physics and the additions and alterations over the years suggested by new astronomical and sub-atomic data.

While some of these stories came from science fiction writers, a great many were created by veteran television writers, sometimes re-purposing plots found everywhere, from ancient drama and classic fiction to TV westerns and Captain Video. This was television drama, but westerns and other shows also often told morality tales, and so did Star Trek.

Yet as the first full-hour network drama set in the far future, Star Trek was also open-ended: everything was possible in locations in time and space where no one had gone before.

But seeds of the current situation were also sown back then. Gene Roddenberry believed that for a series with continuing characters set in the strange new worlds of the future, the show had to create and maintain a self-consistent story universe.

So besides envisioning the basic template of as diverse a crew as he could get away with (or perhaps as diverse as anyone could imagine existing in a few centuries), as well as assembling talented collaborators and working carefully on how the series would look, GR did what Wells and other designers of alternative worlds knew to do: he made rules.

As writers introduced new planets and new aliens, later writers had to honor the basics of those planets and characters if they used them in subsequent stories. (There were periods of adjustment but once the template was found—for Klingons, say—it remained consistent.) Events in one story might inform later stories, until a kind of backstory was created for the main characters and Star Trek as a whole.

Some of the “rules” were set forth in the Star Trek Writer’s Guide, which was revised as the series went on (I have before me the third revision: 31 typed and mimeographed pages dated April 17, 1967.) It provides character background, technology and capabilities. Believability in action is stressed, but also meaning, the metaphorical layer.

The rules were needed because each episode had a different writer and director. That’s also why actors playing the major roles became caretakers of their characters and what they did and how they did it. Together they created the Star Trek universe.

That universe expanded with new crews in a new century, beginning with The Next Generation. A rich storytelling universe supported hundreds of stories for five main crews and sets of characters, over nearly 40 years.

Canon is an interesting concept, and today it is a powerful one. While the dictionary defines it as a general law or principle, its second definition is a collection of sacred books regarded as genuine. The Star Trek rules and guidelines (commonly called its Bible), along with that long history of story, had become canon law.

Those of us raised as Catholics recognize canon law as the fundamentals of the institution of the Roman Catholic Church. Violations of canon were serious stuff, heavily sinful. Canon was zealously guarded by Church hierarchy. Violating canon was heresy, punished by excommunication (an early version of being blocked,unfriended or ghosted—in other words, excluded and exiled.) Canon today seems to have become a real factor in what stories are told.

But the hierarchy in charge of Star Trek is not the only arbiter. Star Trek’s relationship to the corporate entities that made the shows was always complicated. According to GR, he was constantly fighting against corporate control. That control seems to have become more pronounced at the end of the Berman era. Today Star Trek is seen as a valuable “franchise,” and the changes in corporate ownership in recent years has been dizzying. The switch to streaming is still fluid, as evidenced by recent cancellations and the abrupt changes in access to the catalog.

But there is another factor strongly in play, with roots in the original series era. With GR’s connivance, fans organized to write letters demanding that the original series be renewed after the first and second seasons. After the original series left the air, fans organized Star Trek conventions. There had been science fiction conventions where some attendees wore costumes, but there had been nothing the size and specific focus of those Star Trek conventions in the 1970s forward. With the letter campaigns and especially the conventions, the phenomenon of fandom was born—not just for Star Trek, but for everyone.

Fandom then acquired new tools for expression. Mostly through the bulletin boards on sites devoted to Star Trek, the Internet started to have influence, especially in the final years of Star Trek: Enterprise and the Star Trek: Nemesis feature film. The negativity on the Internet, together with low ratings and box office failure, ended in the demise of the Rick Berman era in 2005, and the lineage from Gene Roddenberry through Berman was broken.

By the time of the J.J. Abrams features, social media was prominent. Abrams and then the creators of Star Trek: Discovery and other television shows paid closer attention to social media, made producers and stars more accessible, and saw conventions as potent promotional opportunities.

Meanwhile, fandom (which may be defined as a subset of the more diverse universe of Star Trek fans) was becoming more aware of the business side of Star Trek. Online discussions were at least as likely to be about production costs and box office as possible meanings in Star Trek stories. Corporate, producers and fandom were growing more aware of each other, and engaging more directly.

Today fandom is a real force in Star Trek and its storytelling. In particular, fandom engages in questions of canon. Variations are closely debated, and though some are accepted, others are condemned. Star Trek canon is not enforced only by a corporate Vatican but by a hyper-informed and vigilant fandom. This process is not all destructive, but it is consequential.

Gene Roddenberry respected fans and interacted with them at conventions. But he was very direct and firm that fans would not dictate Star Trek content. Today fandom may not write the stories, but it is one factor that may be limiting the storytelling.

These seem to me to be the chief factors leading to my impression that today’s Star Trek is less about exploring strange new worlds or ideas and their implications, and more about itself and its own mythology.

The apparent emphasis on character interaction over situation and ideas may be another important factor. Taken together, the character emphasis and the self-referencing tendency may help to explain my impression that current Star Trek gives much lower priority than in its formative years to really engaging with urgent concerns of today’s world by means of exploring strange new worlds. In sometimes awkward but sometimes revelatory ways, that’s what the original series and TNG did. That to a great extent is what inspired Star Trek fans in the first place.

Today’s Star Trek shows have revisited and expanded on issues that past Star Trek stories explored, for a new audience. They have dealt to some degree with certain implications of technology, though they seem oddly obsessed with cloning.

Engaging in such questions as race, the arms race and the nuclear age, cultural differences and such larger questions as a more complex reading of human nature, Star Trek formed its character: the essence, the soul of Star Trek. The commitment to retain that character by today’s Star Trek creators as well as viewers is heartening. It was the motivation for many over the years to become devoted Star Trek fans (whether or not they became vocal members of fandom.) But that commitment loses its power if it becomes the rote of canon. It has to be actualized.

Perhaps I’m wrong about the current shows. My perspective is derived from watching Star Trek for all of those 57 years. That does not make me (in today’s terms) the target demographic, to say the least. Perhaps newer viewers see the same kinds of explorations, and feel themselves changed by them as we once did.

But consider this possibility: at its best, Star Trek once engaged with the strange new worlds that illuminate our world—the world that television drama largely refused to examine. These were the urgent public problems and mysteries that most vexed us as viewers. Now Star Trek seems to live in the no-longer-strange old world of its own mythos. Mythologies can be defining and healthy, generating new stories and insights, but they can also become stultifying and irrelevant, until eventually they consume themselves.

by William Severini Kowinski

Star Trek: Insurrection has become a problematic movie as the ninth in the original ten (or Trekalog) of Star Trek features. Even its title has become troublesome. (There’s no insurrection to overthrow the government in this story. We now know better what that looks like.) Though I have great affection for this film, I’ve been bothered by its shortcomings, from the first time I saw it in a theatre the week it was released in December 1998. I felt then it could have been a great Star Trek movie, as well as a brave one. In many respects, it dazzled me. I still believe thematically it remains a major evocation of the soul of Star Trek.

Others have come to value it over the years, or at least elements of it. Jerry Goldsmith’s score—especially the lovely Ba’ku theme—remains one of my favorites, and the acting, the characterizations, the humor gave it an attractive buoyancy. After many subsequent viewings, I’ve found more that’s annoying but I also retain that initial affection, and admire it even more for its courage.

The conventional wisdom has become that it is more of a television episode than a movie. Insofar as I even know what that means, I take the opposite view: I think it tries too hard to be an action movie. Or more generally, it may simply be that the Star Trek features series started to run out of luck. Many if not most very good feature films have a pretty long history. They may have been conceived five or eight or ten years before they get made. Even some sequels take years to develop. But Star Trek movies rolled out at a faster pace—every two or three years. They typically emerged from assembling bits and pieces of screenplay drafts, often at the last minute, with lots of different imput. This fortuitously resulted in some excellent films. Unfortunately that kind of luck doesn’t always appear.

But before wallowing in the details, the most important element of this movie is the core story, the principles that are at stake. In special features interviews for the first expanded DVD of this movie, writer Michael Piller said that he wanted to move away from the darker Star Trek (not only the previous feature, Star Trek: First Contact, but the ongoing television stories, particular of Deep Space Nine) and the darker path science fiction had been taking in general in the 1990s, to revive the optimistic spirit and idealistic modeling of Gene Roddenberry’s original vision. “I wanted to do one for Gene,” he said. So Insurrection pivoted on a moral issue with a real world history, as well as portraying a society that emphasized a different aspect of the soul of Star Trek.

The title sequence—set to that lilting but slightly unconventional Goldsmith theme—depicts a happy, healthy and busy agrarian society with some pre-industrial mechanisms. But we quickly see hidden observers, Starfleet uniforms and unknown aliens (the Son’a), just before violence disrupts this peaceful day. The android Data has seemingly gone berserk, and has deliberately unmasked the hidden observers. He also appears to be wounded.

Meanwhile the Enterprise-E is far away, on yet another minor diplomatic mission (“Does anyone remember when we were explorers?” Captain Picard asks.) After being contacted by an Admiral Dougherty requesting Data’s schematics, and then a brief conversation with the Admiral about Data apparently gone amok, Picard (against the Admiral’s wishes) diverts the Enterprise to the distant planet involved, in an untraveled pocket of the galaxy called the Briar Patch because its environment disrupts starship technologies.

Maneuvering a shuttle and a bit of Gilbert and Sullivan, Picard and Worf disable Data, and Geordi La Forge learns what went wrong: Data had been attacked and engaged his ethical subprograms. But why was he attacking the Son’a and Federation personnel—everyone but the Ba’ku on the planet?

Picard and the Ba’ku investigate what Data found that got him shot: a holo-ship, programmed to simulate the Ba’ku village. When several Son’a attack them, Picard realizes what is happening: a conspiracy to transport the Ba’ku onto the holo-ship and abduct them. “You go to sleep one night in the village. Wake up the next morning on this flying holodeck transported en masse. In a few days, you’re relocated on a similar planet without even realizing it.” But the question remains: why?

Those forced relocations and related behaviors (up to and including genocide) have happened multiple times on every inhabited continent on Earth, from ancient days through our own time in the 21^st century. Many would observe that they are still happening.

Later, in his confrontation with Admiral Dougherty, Picard asserted that removal “will destroy the Ba’ku, just as cultures have been destroyed in every other forced relocation throughout history.” Relocation and related oppressions certainly destroyed American Indian cultures that had flourished for many centuries.

After Dougherty parries his proposals to delay the procedure for further study of alternatives while the Son’a and Ba’ku share the planet, Picard lays it on the line: “We are betraying the principles upon which the Federation was founded. It’s an attack upon its very soul.”

Though there are technical interpretations of how the Prime Directive does or doesn’t apply, Picard is consistent in his assertion about history. For him, the nuances of “non-interference” are based upon a hard-won founding principle, which in a TNG episode he spelled out to his crew: “We are not invaders. We are explorers.”

When the Federation was founded, it committed to not repeating this history, to respecting the cultures and the lifeforms on planets it explored. A number of Next Generation stories were about this very subject.

This is what Starfleet’s Prime Directive is really about. It is what makes the Federation different, not only in the fictional universe it inhabits, but in our universe as a vision of justice, diversity, and respect for all life. It is as Picard said, an element of the Federation’s soul, and a major expression of the soul of Star Trek that has inspired so many for generations.

Dougherty counters: “Jean-Luc, we are only moving six hundred people.”

“How many people does it take, Admiral, before it becomes wrong?” Picard replies. “A thousand? Fifty thousand? A million? How many people does it take, Admiral?”

With its swelling music tag, this speech is a popular moment with many Trek fans. Personally I feel this choice of tone makes Picard sound too pompous and self-righteous—he’s not really asking the question, he’s being indignant. It’s no wonder that Dougherty dismisses his objections and orders him to another part of the galaxy. But his point is solid—and controversial.

Many people, evidently including some members of the cast, see sense and maybe a more persuasive case based on the numbers: Dougherty said that the regenerative properties of the rings’ radiation could benefit billions. Doesn’t helping billions justify moving six hundred people (and probably sacrificing their current perpetual youthfulness, perhaps condemning them to imminent death)? Don’t the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?

Invasion and exploitation always justifies itself on supposed principles, as long as they don’t get in the way of the invader’s gain. What may look like a sensible calculus is usually a convenient rationalization for greed, based on greater military power and (almost always) assumptions of racial and cultural superiority. Even the implication that the Federation can do what it wants with this planet because it is in "Federation space," (and apparently the Ba'ku who live there don't have to be consulted) is a species of imperialism.

Picard had allowed himself to be swayed by this calculus before, in the seventh season episode “Journey’s End,” as described in an earlier post. In that story it was young Wesley Crusher who rebelled against the forced relocation of a group of American Indians. Perhaps it was this incident, augmented by the youthful idealism and rebelliousness revived by the rings, that reminded Picard so forcefully of the costs of violating this principle—as well as the price of upholding it.

There are also a few scenes involving the Ba’ku culture, particularly two conversations between Picard and Anij, as they grow closer. In essence, Anij talks about fully inhabiting the present moment, without reviewing the past or planning for the future. “You explore the universe,” Anij says to Picard. “We have discovered that a single moment in time can be a universe in itself, full of powerful forces. Most people aren’t aware enough of the now to even notice.”

Here on Earth, mindfully exploring the present moment is a both meditation technique and its intention, developed in Zen and other Buddhist practice, only recently adapted in American and European contexts. A different approach to valuing the present moment was a theme in Star Trek: Generations, where it was a consequence of mortality, rather than a lesson of immorality.

Though our own (often small) Native cultures were crushed before many of their profound insights were known or understood, some of those cultures made deep impressions on the dominant culture, and that continues to happen. For instance, the Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) Confederation of tribes existed democratically, probably for longer than the United States has so far. Contacts with Founding Fathers and others, some scholars say, meaningfully influenced the idea and structure of the United States. In turn, it influences the United Federation of Planets, though the Haudenosaunee had a different Prime Directive than Starfleet: In every decision, consider the impact on the seventh generation to come. (For us, seven generations takes us into the 23^rd century.)

The Son’a’s appearance is different in the novelization—not the wrinkled wraiths we see on the screen but with surgically thin baby smooth skin, and ostentatiously adorned in robes and jewels. Perhaps this was too close to a Hollywood reality. Apart from their skin stretching salon, just about the only remnant of the Son’a’s conspicuous love of luxury is the incongruous sofa that is Ru’afo’s command chair on the bridge of his ship. (In the film, the Son’a have two alien slave races: the Ellora, who look like Vegas showgirls in body paint, and the Tarlac, who resemble the aliens in Buckaroo Banzai.)

Apart from some Harlequin romance level descriptions, Dillard does elaborate on motives and intentions. The duck-blind observation of the Ba’ku, in her interpretation, was itself always a ruse, to mask the secret of what the Son’a and Admiral Dougherty were up to. It takes an extra step to realize this from the actual movie, for the only hint I got was the implication of Dougherty saying the Ba’ku originally came from elsewhere in space (and hence weren’t covered by the Prime Directive), suggesting he mus have known they weren’t a pre-warp society that required secrecy to study.

Dillard also elaborates earlier on Picard’s thoughts from his initial confrontation with Dougherty. He reasons that the Federation would probably need no more than a few years to figure out a better way to benefit from the cellular regeneration effects of the rings, and that the Son’a were rushing things for reasons of their own. He doubts that the full and true plan had ever been presented to the Federation Council. Clearer indications of Dougherty’s and Picard’s suspicions and realizations in the movie (perhaps as Dillard developed them) might have added texture and interest to the movie’s story, making it more of the unraveling of a mystery.

I don’t want to belabor what I experienced as flaws in the film. Every film has flaws, but some are serious enough—or there is an accumulation of them—to weaken the credibility and flow of the movie, or to engender confusion and raise questions, all of which are harmful when they take the viewer out of the story. My disappointments are no doubt heightened by my conclusion that this could have been the best of the TNG features.

My first impression that this was a movie that just missed being really good was based on what seemed to be a confusing rhythm, a sense that, despite some slow scenes and comic moments, it just rushed on, with no rhythm but momentum. I felt it needed more pace; it needs to breathe. It’s not as if running time was a problem—this was the shortest of all Star Trek features.

I was also taken out of the flow by elements of the story that didn't seem credible, like the simpleminded plan to relocate the Ba’ku (they weren’t going to notice they were no longer on their planet, with its hills and sky?) or Data and the others in their invisibility suits tromping around supposedly undetected, as if the Ba’ku had no other sense but sight.

I was always uneasy with the portrayal of the Ba’ku, though the actors rescued it for me. Subsequent viewings suggest why they seem less credible than symbolic: their gracefully styled but rigidly earth-tone clothing, their uniformly pristine village buildings-- more elegant versions of a Phoenix suburb (as Marina Sirtis suggests in a recent commentary) and (as Jonathan Frakes notes) their unbroken whiteness.

I get the impression now that not everybody making this movie was on the same page, contributing to a lack of clarity and pace that can prevent viewers from just riding along on a voyage, with its ups and downs, sidetracks and problems solved together. Confusion and disagreement about the core issues probably also contributed. Even in the third season of Picard, Captain Shaw’s erroneous if funny description of this movie’s events, particularly that it was Picard who violated the Prime Directive, suggests this confusion, as well as how the story might be whispered about at the time so that the Federation saves face.)

The CGI is now a little outdated (this was the first Trek film to use it exclusively) but the Briar Patch is visually stunning, and the action scenes are fun. Despite its reputation, this movie didn’t do so badly at the box office, either. It’s too bad that it couldn’t more seamlessly bring together its moral center, the story and the mood, as did its model predecessor, The Voyage Home.

On November 9, 2024, an iconic piece of Star Trek history - the "hero" or working Type II Pistol Phaser prop which had been used for close-up photography in such memorable TOS episodes as "Court Martial" and "The Gamesters of Triskelion" and had been extensively pictured in the famous 1968 behind-the-scenes reference book "The Making of Star Trek" - sold at Julien's Bid Long & Prosper auction for a record shattering $910,000 (based on a hammer price of $700,000 plus a 30% buyers premium); making this phaser the most expensive piece of Star Trek memorabilia ever sold at auction. The emergence of this prop into the public consciousness was just a recent development; as it was privately held for nearly 50 years by it's consignors who inherited it from a relative in the Hollywood prop industry. The original pre-auction estimate for the phaser was $100,000 - $200,000; which was consistent with earlier, recent Star Trek memorabilia sales history. In the Heritage Greg Jein Collection auction on October 14, 2023, Lot #89139, the Jein TOS Hero Phaser prop that is virtually identical to this piece realized a final price of $187,500 including buyers premium - or approximately 1/5th of the price observed in the Julien's auction.

The TOS “hero” phaser props were elaborately constructed based on the design created by Walter “Matt” Jefferies, the Art Director and Production Designer for TOS – who might be best known as the creator of the original U.S.S. Enterprise starship. The working phaser features:

• A removable Hand Phaser unit (also called a Type I Phaser) that mounted into the Type II body and could be secured in place or released by depressing the bronze colored cylindrical button (or “Lock Release” ) projecting outwards from the left-side of the Type II body
• A moving silver thumbwheel ( or “Force Setting Wheel”) on the top surface of the Hand Phaser that would, when rotated fully forward, raise a clear acrylic “sight” mechanism out of the top of the unit, lifting slightly the rear of the silver rectangular meshed plate or “Electron Aspirator Pile” and also causing the beam emitter at the very front of the Type II body to extend forward
• Fully rotating the silver thumbwheel forward would also cause a tiny “grain of wheat” light bulb mounted into the beam emitter to illuminate. This would be useful for the graphic artists working on the post production “special effects” processing for the series to correctly add in the bright blue or red or white colored light beam seen projecting from the phaser when it was firing.

• A rotating ring piece as part of the aluminum front nozzle section (or “Photon Accelerator”)
• A machined aluminum rear “Deflector Shield” component with 4 fin-like projections incorporated in the design. (This detail was simply painted onto mid-grade level phaser props.)
• A removable grip or handle which also served as a PowerPack for the Type II unit; as revealed in the episode “The Omega Glory”, where discarded powerpacks were found as evidence of extensive use of phaser weapons in a battle

This historic piece with it’s intricate internal design mechanisms truly represents the pinnacle of 1960’s propmaking expertise.

Presented below is the complete Julien's auction catalog description, with accompanying photos, for this iconic hero phaser, as well as several rare images that reveal the elaborate internal construction details of the prop.

Special thanks to John Long, the renowned Star Trek prop expert and prop maker who masterfully performed the restoration and conservation activities on both this Hero Type II Phaser and the Hero TOS communicator prop also sold at the Julien's Bid Long & Prosper auction, for his very gracious permission to include his detailed photography of the phaser's interior within this article.

Lot #7 Star Trek: The Original Series | William Shatner "Captain James T. Kirk" Hero Screen-Matched Phaser Prop

An original screen-matched, hero, Phaser prop used by William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk in the television series Star Trek: The Original Series (Desilu Productions, 1966 - 1969).

This iconic prop, created in 1966, is one of only four hero or “practical” versions of the Phaser used on the show which feature intricate details and moving parts that were unique to those few props, making it exceedingly rare. This Phaser is known in the collecting community as the "Finney" Phaser because it was seen on screen used by actor Richard Webb who portrayed the character "Finney" in the season one episode "Court Marshall." Held by its current owners for nearly fifty years, this Phaser was thought to be lost until now. The current owners inherited the Phaser from a close relative who was a Hollywood prop industry veteran that purportedly acquired it from a former Paramount Pictures employee that worked on early Star Trek productions.

Construction
Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry wanted to avoid the sci-fi cliche “ray-gun” and preferred that his new weapons have details and features beyond just a static prop. To that end, the hero Phasers feature a removable top-mounted Phaser 1 that could be used by itself or in place within the larger body which, when combined, were collectively referred to as a Phaser 2. Both of these pieces are marvels of prop engineering with various electric switches, hidden linkages and moving parts that can only be seen when the pieces are opened to reveal their inner workings. The intricate interior details with both custom and off-the-shelf parts from the 1960s are specific matches to another acknowledged hero Phaser previously owned by prop maker and collector Greg Jein. The handle of the Phaser, which is also removable, is the battery compartment that powers the light in the emitter tip.

In addition to the fact that this Phaser perfectly matches the materials and methods of construction seen on the Greg Jein Phaser, this Phaser was also showcased in The Making of Star Trek, a book published in 1968. The Making of Star Trek included a photo section featuring many key Star Trek props. The section on the Phaser included detailed photos, including interior images of the Phaser 1 section perfectly match this Phaser.

Screen-Matching
Thanks to the fact that Star Trek has been re-mastered from its original film to high-definition Blu-Ray, this Phaser can clearly be matched to specific scenes in multiple episodes which is a highly unusual and sought-after feature.

This Phaser holds another distinction that sets it apart from its counterparts. It was apparently designated by the prop master as “The Beauty Phaser,” which is demonstrated by its excellent condition and its many close-ups throughout Star Trek’s three seasons, the only Phaser used in this way. We have been able to identify unique details, scratches and flaws on this Phaser to make positive identifications of this prop to a number of specific episodes. It can be seen in close-up in the episodes, ”Court Martial”, "The Cloud Minders", "The Gamesters of Triskelion" and “A Piece of the Action,” a singular honor.

Restoration
While the Phaser was already in exceptional condition, it nevertheless underwent restoration to stabilize inner working parts to allow gentle movement without risking damage. The interior battery compartment had corrosion fro a previous battery. The corrosion was removed and the compartment was stabilized to prevent further damage. During this process, an external power source was used to illuminate the original bulb still present in the nozzle tip. Although it is possible to use a battery to enable the lighting of this bulb, further work would be required to fully stabilize these connections for reliability. The original acrylic semicircular top meter cover was absent from the Phaser, a replacement has been created for display purposes and comes with this lot. This part was not affixed to the Phaser in any way, to maintain the integrity of the piece.

Estimate: $100,000 - $200,000

Some very special internal construction imagery courtesy of Star Trek TOS expert John Long ...

A perfect match of the interior hand phaser compartment cover appearance with a 1968 photo published in The Making of Star Trek ...

A closeup screen shot from the 2nd season episode "The Gamesters of Triskelion" ...

A closeup screen shot from the 1st season episode "Court Martial" ...

Some breathtaking modern day imagery of the hero phaser, illuminated again!, courtesy of John Long ...