Keep it civil! "Don't yuck, someone's yum."

Widely considered to be one of the best episodes of TOS, perhaps of the franchise at large. Personally I like it, but don't consider it to be at the level of best of the franchise. If you get the chance you might want to try to find the comic version of Harlan Ellison's version of the story. I read it some years back, and see why Gene was opposed to adapting it directly into Trek as it was.

Without spoilers, it had some elements that Trek would avoid except as allegory on alien planets, and didn't see depicted in UFP humans until the dreck that was Picard. Almost as if that was with good reason or something.

i wondered what if jj abrams timeline of kirk was replaced by tos kirk in star trek 2009, into darkness and beyond?

2009 and into darkness kind of highlighted how green the new kirk was and in star trek beyond kirk was having depression or something which clouded his thinking.

if tos kirk was in kelvin kirks place in all 3 movies would tos kirk have done any better in those settings?

what do you think ?

Spock — He’s the most iconic character in the franchise, but that’s 90% Nimoy. Show the legend some respect and shelve him after Peck finishes his run. Data , Saru, and Odo were all logic driven and analytical… it’s possible to write new characters with their own sets of challenges and motivations.

Mirror Universe — Jung’s Shadow is an evergreen archetypal pattern. Yesterday’s Enterprise goes to the exact same place but without the need for the constant self-referential lore..

Fan Service Writing / Preference for Pre-Existing Lore — LD’s endless Trek allusions make Family Guy’s 80s pop culture nods seem minuscule by comparison. The amount of it in new Star Trek makes the showrunners seem creatively bankrupt.

Bonus (stuff I think is OK to retread):

Tribbles — can never have too many tribbles.

Klingons — They’re truly the cool side of pillow. They will never grow old. Their opera is non pareil. They go hard yet have biggest hearts in the whole quadrant.

The Neutral Zone — Space is the final frontier, but we haven’t seen the limes galactica in some time. Disco zipped around the galaxy and time all willy-nilly. In TNG it was the proving ground that made Picard’s diplomacy and brinkmanship believable.

Optimism — The manure is always hitting the fan on our side of reality. An imperiled world existed behind the writing of TOS, TNG, DS9, and ENT. Where Discovery was laden with tear-filled paranoia, good Trek is all about curiosity and progress.

STARTREK.COM: "Speaking to StarTrek.com, Star Trek executive producer Alex Kurtzman gives us insight on the decision to incorporate Garrett into the story, "It was daunting because 'Yesterday's Enterprise' is so beloved, but we credit Craig Sweeny for this. What was interesting was the idea that you're meeting a proto-captain. Rachel Garrett, she's not yet a captain."

"This story and this adventure is something that begins to shift her perspective about sacrifice particularly and what it means to be a captain and what it means to be a leader. She comes in with, I think, a fairly typical Starfleet view. It's very black and white. It's very by-the-book, it's very rules-focused."

"Through the experience of meeting Georgiou and working with the Section 31 team, she begins to understand that truth and the ability to do the right thing often lives in a gray area," explains Kurtzman. "That it isn't always covered by Starfleet. Starfleet represents the best of us. It represents the thing we aspire to be, but it can't always solve the problem. So you need Section 31 and you need people like the team in Section 31 to be able to allow Starfleet to be what it is."

A lifelong Star Trek fan and a member of Alok Sahar's Section 31 crew, Rob Kazinsky tells StarTrek.com, "For me, this is a story about Rachel Garrett. This is the interesting part because Rachel Garrett is the only captain of the Enterprise that hasn't had their own show."

"How does Rachel Garrett go from being our Rachel Garrett to being the captain of the Enterprise," continues Kazinsky, "and how much impact does Philippa Georgiou have on the captain of the Federation starship getting that role? That's the most fascinating."

"And it goes back to that other question, 'Can Philippa Georgiou be redeemed?'" Kazinsky concludes. "Even if you have done evil, terrible things, it doesn't mean you can't, at the same time, do good things. You may not ever clean your slate, but you can always choose to do good. Rachel Garrett has the potential to be the most interesting character that's ever been in Star Trek.

Like Kazinsky, Kacey Rohl sees Garrett's interaction with Philippa Georgiou leading to her future iteration, "It's interesting to me that moment where Georgiou decides to set off the Godsend, and potentially sacrifice herself, connects to where Rachel Garrett ends up in 'Yesterday's Enterprise.' I think that's an interesting line that she carries, in Rachel's connection with Georgiou and having witnessed that [willingness] to the choice that Rachel ultimately makes.

[...]"

Christine Dinh (StarTrek.com)

Full article:

https://www.startrek.com/en-un/news/rachel-garrett-section-31-to-enterprise

Feels like inception doesn't it? Stewart a good actor, is playing Picard who is a bad actor. Still a bit overdone I think. Was it just Stewart as a Brit wanting to shit on the French? I mean I know he was playing himself instead of Jean Luc, but the hell man? You character is French, why would he hate the French himself?

We know that in 2025 well see the release of SNW season 3 SFA season 1 and Kahn, however what would I do if I could produce Star Trek for 2026

In short, I'd like to think that 300% shields, a new way to do a medical scan, and whatever kind of slipstream travel they did at the end wasn't simply lost.

I know, plot holes, but still. And as for the crew, they were right to be suspicious of Reg, but Geordi leaned into him a bit hard when he started to do good.

ROBERT MEYER BURNETT @ The Salty Nerd Podcast:

"Well, look, first and foremost Star Trek worked because it's allegorical. And in a science fiction fantasy context Star Trek was telling stories about our world today, I mean, meaning what was going on when it came out in the 60s.

And it was addressing things in a provocative way that people would sit down and pay attention to - didn't matter what your political affiliation was - because what was going on in Star Trek's shows was out there. It, it was, you know, to boldly go where no one has gone before out in the universe.

So you could watch these thoughtful beautifully written shows that were addressing issues of the day, you know, but in a in a science fiction fantasy context the same way that Rod Sterling did that with the Twilight Zone. So people could watch these provocative shows and be provoked, be thoughtfully provoked by them, and sit down and watch heroic characters uh basically be put through their paces. But at the same time it offered you something to chew on.

Star Trek never told you what to think but it presented you things to think about that related basically back to your own life, I mean, it dealt with emotional issues. It dealt with political issues. It dealt with spiritual issues. It dealt with all kinds of things that we as human beings deal with in our our daily lives. But they did it with a ... that was the inside chewy nuggets. But you had a beautiful hard candy shell that tasted like a cherry Jolly Rancher.

And that was the sci-fi of it all.

And the thing about Star Trek today is: it's not about anything! What they've done is: they've taken what the iconography of Star Trek [is] and they're making shows that have no, there's nothing thoughtful about them. You know like introduced the Gorn in Strange New Worlds. They didn't do any like ... the thing about Star Trek is: it never had villains! It had antagonists.

[...]

If you look at what Strange New Worlds has done to the Gorn: they've made them a generic monster race that is half xenomorph from the Alien franchise and half werewolf or whatever the hell they are. And they've turned them in ... They've reduced them. It's so reductive. And the people writing this show I got to say: they're dumb. They're not smart people.

And and they're doing what so many fantasy TV writers are today: They all grew up watching Buffy and Angel. And they only can write shows like Buffy and Angel. Star Trek has all become about interpersonal relationships. Everybody's shipping everybody else. Is Spock gonna get together with Nurse Chapel or is he going to keep T'Pring as his bride ... it's so monumentally stupid. It has nothing to say and yet people have embraced it because it looks like Star Trek.

And you've got a very handsome man at the front of it, and there's no chain of command on that show. It's like: "hey, I'm going to make dinner for only the principal characters. Doesn't matter whether you're a yeoman or whether what you, just the principles, all of you come to my, come to my cabin."

And you know [...] they did the singing, singing show which Buffy pioneered, you know, once more with feeling, I mean maybe cop rock did it before that, but these shows are written by people that have nothing to say. They haven't read books! They certainly haven't read any science fiction and they're not even keeping up Star Trek!

[...]

And now we still have four Kurtzman seasons of Star Trek coming! We have Strange New World seasons three and four. And we have Starfleet Academy seasons one and two. So there's going to be four more years of this insulting, brain dead, stupid, whatever ...

MATTHEW KADISH:

"Rob, what do you think about [Rob] Kazinsky's claim here: that Alex Kurtzman told him directly that Star Trek's "dying"?

ROBERT MEYER BURNETT:

"Well it's dying because it's no longer relevant! They're not presenting an audience ...

Look whether you're watching a overt fantasy like Star Wars, there's still enough to chew on. I mean: I remember seeing Empire when I was 13 years old and the life lessons that Yoda was imparting ... you know I'm an old man with one foot in the grave and I'm still ... I got a Yoda, big Yoda right behind me, and I'm still thinking about what he said in a theater in 1980 to me, in May, you know, and it resonates, and that's why people love this stuff.

And I'll tell you something: that's why kids today are gravitating more toward manga and anime. Because those shows are are much more thoughtful, much more interesting. They have a lot more to say, they're not afraid of emotion. They're not afraid of portraying real human connection.

I mean, the thing about Star Trek Strange New Worlds and Modern Star Trek is: it feels fake! It's like you're watching a faximile of a faximile of what they thought Star Trek was - but then they didn't really want to make that!

So they want to make it more like Star Wars. And ... you can tell it is inauthentic! [...]"

Full Interview (Salty Nerd Podcast on YouTube):

https://youtu.be/rcwzcDSQs1g?si=5oMATenVCkIUNfsJ

(RMB starts at Time-stamp 3:05 min)

They are saying the Rhys Darby's role on SNW is to be the Q-like entity Trelene.... yet another big call back to a character that was supposed to have first and only happened during Kirk's five-year mission. Why are they doing this? Let's hope the rumors that he is portraying Trelane are false. But it doesn't look good.

GFR: "The Enterprise creative team writes Trip like a wet, behind-the-ears Ensign, not a reliable, seasoned officer. Luckily, Trineer’s performance is so much fun he’s easy to love. [...]

There’s so much more that could be said about what Enterprise got right. The rest of the supporting cast works nearly as well as the ones we’ve highlighted. Malcolm Reed’s obsession with protocols. Hoshi’s fear of, well, everything. Mayweather’s past growing up on a space-faring freighter.

However, Enterprise never moved fast enough to capitalize on its strengths. Shran got a couple of episodes a season, and Phlox was kept locked away in his sickbay chasing the occasional escaped Tyberian bat.

With cancellation imminent, in the latter half of its fourth season, Enterprise tried to become the show it should have been all along. That effort resulted in a flurry of episodes involving the alien races Archer and his crew were meant to befriend in order to pave the way to the Federation we knew from Kirk’s Trek-era.

The stories they should have been telling were condensed into a few episodes and shoved out the door at warp speed, a last-ditch effort to get the Enterprise where it was going before the axe fell. [...]"

Joshua Tyler (Giant Freakin Robot)

Full article:

https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/enterprise-failed.html

Quotes:

"[...] As the show’s writers became increasingly out of touch with the character, Archer turns into a placeholder for an already determined future success. His attitude doesn’t matter, his mistakes don’t cost them anything, and his decisions are rendered irrelevant as Enterprise gives him a pre-determined, grand destiny.

An ill-equipped Archer struggling to figure out how to command on the frontier should have been the entire show. Instead, they kept trying to narratively force the character into Captain Kirk’s cookie-cutter mold while Scott Bakula gave us something else.

Archer isn’t Captain Kirk. He’s obsessed with water polo. He spends his off-duty hours hugging a Beagle. He’s more comfortable talking about warp theory than negotiating with hostile aliens or making out with green women.

Enterprise never fully embraces who Archer is. He has a destiny, and one way or another, he has to fulfill it.

Putting T’Pol In Charge Causes Problems

The rest of the ship’s crew are a similar mix of good ideas that never fully come to fruition. That’s especially true of T’Pol, who, in her most vital moments, serves as a reality check for Archer, the person to tell him he has no idea what he’s doing.

It wasn’t a bad idea to have a Vulcan on Enterprise. [...]

It was, however, a bad idea to make that Vulcan Archer’s first officer. T’Pol could have served that same function as a science officer or observer outside the human command chain.

Enterprise is supposed to be a show about mankind’s first leap out into the stars. Instead, it’s a show about humans reaching out into the stars whenever Archer’s on the bridge. When he’s not, it turns into a show about how a Vulcan named T’Pol told humans what to do on their first attempt to go it alone.

It’s particularly wrong-headed in light of Archer’s own resentment towards Vulcans. He sets out on his journey, determined to prove humans don’t need help from Vulcans. For his initial act as Captain of Earth’s first warp 5 ship, he makes a Vulcan his first officer. Nothing about this makes sense.

In the show’s final season, there was a last-minute, half-hearted attempt to reconcile all of this and turn the Vulcans back into creatures best known for their inability to lie, but by then, it was too little, too late.

The frustrating thing here is that T’Pol is a good character, and Jolene Blalock is good at playing her. [...]

This analysis may make Enterprise seem terrible, but it isn’t. When considered in total, Enterprise is a very good Star Trek show, better even than its direct predecessor, Star Trek: Voyager.

Enterprise excels at all the little things. For example, the crew’s fear of using the newly invented transporter system is an ongoing subplot in every episode. The show sticks with it, keeping the team running around in shuttles and coordinating docking sequences.

A lesser series would have been unable to resist overusing the ship’s transporter to save both time and money on production. Enterprise resists that temptation, so this small decision, and many others like it, adds a feeling of danger and instability to everything the series does. [...]"

Joshua Tyler (Giant Freakin Robot)

Full article:

https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/enterprise-failed.html

Video Essay on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/LDaKTmDhbxs?si=pKtb_5c2CepAM5yN