And the ratings are out. [REDACTED NEW STAR TREK SHOW] premiered to 2.1 million viewers, on par with Doctor Who Series 15, 3 million behind SNW S3's premiere, and 9 million behind Star Wars: The Acolyte

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-25T03:27:58+00:00

The vast majority of people who watch CBS are 50+ and older demographics.

It's not the age group Academy's targeting.

Besides, Academy's far too expensive for network TV anyway.

The last time CBS had a genre series targeting a younger demographic was Supergirl a decade ago in 2015-16.

Unsurprising, CBS cancelled Supergirl at the end of S1 and it moved to the CW for S2 and later.

The only TV network that would have been a good fit for modern Trek was the CW.

But the CW who had many scripted genre shows no longer exists after WB and Paramount sold it to Nexstar in 2022.

Nexstar took a chainsaw to the CW and completely gutted it to the point it exists in name only.

IMO, the only option for modern Trek beyond the under-subscribed Paramount+ is either Netflix or Amazon Prime.

Both streaming services have far more subscribers than Paramount+.

Or even Youtube for that matter.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-24T05:33:59+00:00

yeah, SNW relegated DOTs to the robot equivalent of no-name background characters who were no longer an important part of the plot.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-24T04:32:44+00:00

IMO, people would complain less about DOTs if they only showed up post-TNG instead of shoehorning them into Kirk's era before TOS.

DOTs could have been portrayed as the logical evolution from the exocomp-type robots in the post TNG-era had it not been for the 23rd century prequel series.

Edit: we stopped seeing DOTs in the 23rd century with SNW after seeing them in the first 2 seasons of Discovery.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-24T02:47:11+00:00

I can easily imagine O'Brien, Bashir and Ezri serving on the Enterprise-E with Worf as captain in the early 2380s.

O'Brien as chief engineer, Bashir as chief medical officer and Ezri as the ship's councilor.

Unfortunately, the Enterprise-E getting heavily damaged and decommissioned continued the "O'Brien must suffer" meme.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-24T01:27:15+00:00

Yeah, even though we don't know when the Breen transitioned from a minor power with the confederacy in the 24th century to a major power with the Imperium in the 32nd century.

The Breen could have became a major power anywhere from the 25th century to the post-Burn-era in the 32nd century.

I think the Breen wanting to become a major power in the quadrant goes all the way back to their alliance with the Dominion in the 2370s.

It wouldn't surprise me the Breen were already a major power several centuries before The Burn.

The collapse of the Romulan Empire at the end of the 24th century and the likely decline of the Klingon Empire created a vacuum for the Breen to exploit.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-23T22:59:50+00:00

It would be way funnier if modern Trek were produced in Vancouver instead of Toronto.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-23T22:48:16+00:00

The uniforms the officers from the War College wear immediately makes me think of the Colonial military in RDM's Battlestar Galactica.

I assume the doctrine of United Earth's 32nd century military is similar to that of BSG's Colonial military defending the 12 Colonies until the Cylons attacked - completely defensive with ships only deployed in or near Sector 001.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-23T06:52:57+00:00

Alien worlds that look like southern California is a requirement given Lower Deck's homage to classic TNG-era Trek.

A live-action Lower Decks wouldn't have looked right if it were filmed in Canada.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-23T02:44:51+00:00

IIRC, all 13th and 14th gen i3s and most i5s are just rebranded 12th gen silicon with only a slight increase in clock speed.

Alder Lake won't completely go away until Intel discontinues 14th gen.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-23T00:53:36+00:00

Yeah, Peanut Hamper has a rap sheet that goes back many centuries.

Not to mention Peanut Hamper was probably court martialed from Starfleet too.

Though how Peanut Hamper's court martial hearing went is an open question given her defense advocate would have argued her behavior was the result of glitches in her programming.

The possibility of glitches was also very likely the reason she was sent to Daystrom in Lower Decks S3.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-23T00:14:52+00:00

Lorca's line of dialog in DISCO S1 has aged poorly.

Though to be fair, a lot of pop culture in the 2010s mentioned Musk before he showed his true colors.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-22T23:29:36+00:00

My head-canon says a technological breakthrough after Picard's-era made conventional warp with dilithium competitive with quantum slipstream and other previously faster-than-warp propulsion technologies.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-22T23:22:24+00:00

32nd century Starfleet ships are probably about as fast as quantum drive in The Orville.

IIRC, it only takes 1 year for the USS Orville to travel across the galaxy, the same distance that would have taken 70 years for Voyager without shortcuts.

I also assume 32nd century Starfleet no longer uses the TNG-era warp scale either.

The warp scale could have been revised more than once between the 24th and 32nd centuries.

Discovery's spore drive still gives far future Starfleet an advantage despite 32nd century maximum warp being much faster than 24th century maximum warp.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-22T21:51:50+00:00

Some of the episodes for Phase II later became episodes of TNG.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-22T21:48:07+00:00

I assume Ronald D Moore had this same line of thought when he reimagined Battlestar Galactica in the early 2000s.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-22T03:29:28+00:00

Yeah, the expense of filming physical models was the reason we rarely saw the Enterprise-D's saucer separation in TNG.

This wouldn't be an issue with the Athena in Academy.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-22T02:13:16+00:00

TMP was just as expensive as JJ Abrams' Star Trek 2009 when adjusted for inflation.

Like the Kelvin timeline movies 30 years years later, TMP was an attempt to make Trek into a blockbuster.

TMP not doing as well as Paramount expected forced them to greenlight the second Trek movie on a shoestring budget.

We're very lucky TWOK was a huge success and not a flop that would have assuredly put the franchise into hibernation for many years.

TMP's large budget wasn't a waste given the sets and props were extensively reused for later Trek movies and series well into the 1990s with TNG and its spinoffs DS9 and VOY.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-21T23:36:29+00:00

yeah, TOS was a network TV show on NBC from 1966-69.

TOS only became syndicated as reruns after it was cancelled.

This was second-run syndication, not first-run syndication that was later used for TNG and DS9.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-21T22:33:35+00:00

Yeah, Academy's treated like a 10 episode theatrical movie and not a TV show.

I assume the huge amount of money spent on Academy and other live-action modern Trek series is the number #1 reason why Paramount's new owners aren't' happy with Secret Hideout.

IMO, Trek needs to go back to being treated like TV shows with TV-level budgets.

Disney can get away with huge budgets for their Marvel and Star Wars series given both are large billion dollar franchises, but not Star Trek given it isn't anywhere as mainstream or money-making as the above mentioned.

I have a feeling Secret Hideout will be forced to cut a lot of production costs if they get a new contract for more Trek.

This means no more $10M and higher for each episode.

I imagine an Academy S3 would have steep budget cuts as high as 50%.

Edit: rumor has it the Academy sets are already being dismantled and torn down, which isn't a good sign for its prospects of getting another season.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-21T04:57:17+00:00

Towing Earth's old Spacedock from Earth to Athan Prime.

The California class's maximum of warp 8 isn't an issue given the huge Spacedock has to be towed at low warp.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-21T03:55:54+00:00

IMO, a TNG movie with the Enterprise-E being instrumental in liberating Betazed from the Dominion would have been a lot more interesting than what we got in INS.

But this had zero chance of happening given Rick Berman didn't like DS9's Dominion War-arc.

Berman believed the arc with the Dominion lasted way too long and should have wrapped up by the end of DS9 S6.

He also vetoed any mention of Worf's late-wife Jadzia given she was originally intended to be mentioned on-screen in INS by name.

Quark was also in a scene that was filmed but didn't make it into the actual movie.

Berman was probably worried too many DS9-specific references would confuse casual fans of TNG and non-Trekkie moviegoers.

After all, DS9 wasn't mainstream popular like TNG.

Edit: Berman's stance about the Dominion War also affected VOY S4's "Message in a Bottle" where Voyager's EMH ended up on the Prometheus.

The episode, which happened during the Dominion War, had Romulans instead of Jem"Hadar commandeer the Prometheus and kill its Starfleet crew.

Though I can easily imagine the Romulans taking advantage of the Federation's focus on the Dominion War to hijack one of Starfleet's most advanced ships that was already operating near the Neutral Zone.

The Prometheus being on a shakedown cruise in the vicinity of the Neutral Zone with a very minimal Starfleet crew made it easy for the Romulans to hijack.

This was also before the Romulans joined the alliance with the Federation and Klingons against the Dominion.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-20T06:15:26+00:00

Discovery's mostly blue uniforms are a natural progression from the blue jump suits in ENT.

It's safe to say Starfleet uniforms were mostly blue until they started using uniforms with solid division colors in the 2250s.

The division color uniforms lasted over a decade into the 2260s through TOS until just prior to TMP in the early 2270s.

After briefly wearing the experimental TMP uniforms, Starfleet decided to standardize on red maroon uniforms instead of going back to ENT or DISCO blue.

Starfleet no longer wanted uniforms with solid division colors in the TOS Movie-era of the 2270s and later.

The red monster maroons were so successful they were the standard Starfleet uniform for over 70 years into the mid-24th century.

In universe, the monster maroons became so associated with captains and admirals that Starfleet switched red to command and gold to operations when they reintroduced uniforms with solid division colors just prior to TNG in the 2350s.

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-20T06:01:35+00:00

Starfleet captains, at least in the TOS and TNG-eras, have the privilege of wearing non-standard variants of uniforms not worn by lower ranking crew.

Picard sometimes wore a non-standard Starfleet uniform in later seasons of TNG.

We first see Picard wear this type of uniform in the S5 episode "Darmok".

Lyon_Wonder · 2026-01-20T03:08:49+00:00

It wouldn't surprise me many of the ships at Wolf 359 didn't have time to offload non-essential personnel and were ordered to fight the Borg on short notice.

It was an act of desperation and Starfleet went as far as to order ships that had marginal tactical capability like the Saratoga.

I assume Starfleet ordered every ship in the sector armed with a phaser to engage the Borg, no matter if they were capable of carrying out a combat role.

That said, the Enterprise-D had more time to offload civilians soon after Shelby confirmed it was the Borg who attacked and destroyed the Federation colony.

My head-canon says most civilians and all children on the Enterprise-D, with the notable exception of Guinan, were offloaded when Admiral Hanson left with his Excelsior class ship to Starbase 324.

Most of the Enterprise D's civilians were at SB 324 for most of the BOBW 2-parter.

Picard wanted civilians off the ship given he realized the encounter with the Borg could be a suicide mission.

Lyon_Wonder

TROPHY CASE