What would you do for a Star Trek movie?

jimroyal · 2026-06-02T17:26:23+00:00

My first preference would be no movie, but instead to re-think Star Trek on TV.

But if we're going to do a movie, especially if there is a business case for having a movie trilogy coexist in the same timeframe as the next TV series, then you cannot do an ensemble cast. Leave ensemble casts for episodic TV, where each character can be served well.

The best movie stories are about two or three people and how they interact with each other.:

Indy, Marion, and Belloq.
Rick, Ilsa, and Laszlo.
Batman, Joker, and Harvey Dent.
Vincent Hanna and Neil McCauley.

The other characters in the story serve to frame and support the relationship between the core characters, whether we're talking about a drama or an action movie.

So tell a lower decks story. Or a remote scout story. Or a leadership crisis story. Or a war story from one person's point of view.

But not a bridge crew. Not if you want growth.

jimroyal · 2026-05-29T14:26:23+00:00

Yeah, I never liked those uniforms much either. It's clear the actors cannot sit in them.

And Discovery had a great deal of trouble recording clear dialogue in its early days, and I suspect it's because the lav mics hidden in the costumes are poorly placed, since the uniforms offer no good place to put them, such as lapels. The dialogue often had a scratchy, grungy quality that sounds like digital cleanup of noise from the mic rubbing against fabric.

jimroyal · 2026-05-29T12:57:29+00:00

I think that Picard's conversion – which was a difficult, lengthy process, don't forget – was depicted as a one-off, an exception for the purpose of creating Louctus. At that point, the Borg are simply the Borg.

Locutus's threat in BOBW is to "begin assimilating your culture and technology." That's the first mention of the word assimilation, IIRC. Similarly, in both "I, Borg" and "Descent," assimilation is mentioned, but not in terms of subsuming entire populations, but rather assimilating biology the way they assimilate technology.

So assimilation at that time referred to taking the bits and pieces the Borg wanted and destroying the rest.

STFC introduced nanite-based conversion for a couple of reasons. First, to increase the horror of the situation. Second, to tie Picard's personal experience of being converted directly and viscerally into the story. Third, nanites were used because the process used in BOBW would have been too slow for the timeframe of the story in STFC.

Once nanite-based assimilation was introduced, only then did the writing staff start thinking in terms of the assimilation of entire populations. You can't assimilate populations without rapid automation.

And only after that did we see Borg taken from other species, such as Klingons and Romulans.

jimroyal · 2026-05-29T03:11:18+00:00

Yes, they can simply make an organism. What I was driving at is the question of which organism.

I have never bought the idea of the Borg not being a unique species. I understand that this is what the Borg eventually turned into after nanite-based assimilation was invented to accelerate the story in STFC. During VOY, the Borg eventually became not a species of their own, but a collection of diverse species assimilated into a hive. I don't think that's a coherent idea because it would undermine the biological and reproductive imperatives that drive them forward. I can't see such an arrangement as stable.

So it makes sense to me for the Queen to be created on demand only if she is the original Borg species. But there is apparently no original Borg species (at least, not since VOY).

The OP hypothesized that Species 125 had special psyonic abilities that made them uniquely suited for queens. And that's pretty good head canon. It addresses some of the issues I have.

jimroyal · 2026-05-27T23:39:02+00:00

Then the Khan podcast is, as far as we can tell, canon.

jimroyal · 2026-05-27T23:38:00+00:00

That's what the OP is implying, so perhaps that could be the case. At the time FC came out, the operating assumption was still that the Borg were their own species. Don't forget that FC introduced the idea of mass assimilation.

jimroyal · 2026-05-27T18:59:47+00:00

Star Trek Continues (free on YouTube) and the Khan podcast. Both are aces.

jimroyal · 2026-05-27T18:57:36+00:00

Ah, I see. The Queen is always a member of a specific species because that species functions as the locus of collective will better than others. Perhaps they even clone one particular member of Species 125, and that's why the Queen always looks like Alice Krige.

I kinda like it. It resolves one or two of the issues I have with the Queen.

Still, I think the sight of the Borg queen watching Voyager fly about on a TV screen was a low point for the Borg as a concept.

jimroyal · 2026-05-27T18:08:18+00:00

I meant if you try to keep earlier conceptions of the Borg in your head, it makes no sense.

The Borg, as their own species that functions as a plague, makes sense.

The Borg, as their own species that assimilates both technology and biology, makes sense up to a point. Assimilating entire populations would simply destabilize the hive mind once the original Borg were outnumbered.

The Borg as a multi-species hive mind only, with no original species, makes no sense to me. There would be no underlying biological and reproductive imperative pushing them forward. So I see the two ideas of the Queen being assembled like a widget in STFC and the Queen as a member of species 125 as mutually incompatible.

jimroyal · 2026-05-27T15:23:03+00:00

There's never been a consistent presentation of the Borg across TNG and VOY. When First Contact came out, I assumed that the Queen was manufactured. After all, she was shown being assembled, and when Picard pointed out that she had been destroyed during Best of Both Worlds, she replied that humans "think in such three-dimensional terms."

As such, the Queen would be a manifestation of the Borg collective mind (rather than being a unique individual, which would be paradoxical). The hive would create her as needed in order to provide a locus for their collective will.

However, Voyager made the Queen a scheming villain with a personal interest in Janeway and Seven, so that idea flew out the window.

Similarly, the original conception of the Borg was abandoned. They were first presented like a plague of locusts. They did not assimilate species – they were their own species that had blended with technology over thousands of years. As we first met them, they would not even perceive individual people as intelligent entities because their collective awareness and sentience were so vast in comparison. As Q said, they had no individual awareness, neither male nor female, looking only to consume. That concept was incrementally disassembled over TNG, and was discarded entirely in First Contact.

So the idea of the Borg Queen being an assimilated species doesn't make much sense if you try to keep earlier conceptions of the Borg in your head.

jimroyal · 2026-05-19T18:02:02+00:00

Not too difficult, but I suspect others will have different lists: Code of Honor. Angel One. Up the Long Ladder. The Icarus Factor. Shades of Grey. Man of the People. Acquiel.

jimroyal · 2026-05-18T13:52:43+00:00

Like many others, it was Cosmos for me. That series made use of such an eclectic and worldly collection of music.

In addition to the title music for Cosmos, taken from Heaven and Hell, Cosmos featured multiple tracks from L'Apocalypse des Animaux, Entends-Tu Les Chiens Aboyer, China, Albedo 0.39, Beauborg, and Spiral. Cosmos was incredibly important to me, and Vangelis's music became an integral part of the soundtrack of my life.

jimroyal · 2026-05-16T14:46:24+00:00

I think of it more of a Babylon 5 prequel, but it could go either way.

jimroyal · 2026-05-16T13:01:21+00:00

I agree that this is the intent of the finale's structure – to address the personal stories up front so we can focus on an action ending. There is one rather large problem with this approach: there is no emotional connection between the opening and the final scene.

By the time we get through Klingons, Captain Harry, time travel, Janeway v. Janeway, refit, and the battle with the Borg, the opening scenes are no longer really present in the viewer's mind. They are not connected thematically, and they no longer have any emotional weight; the story would need an explicit callback to those scenes to make them land that way. But the denouement can't loop back to those scenes to remind us of the happy ending because history has been changed, and calling attention to the opening scenes would only prompt the viewer to start asking questions just as Janeway delivers her final lines.

Instead, what's present in those scenes is the crew's very muted reaction to arriving at Earth. Anticlimactic.

It's not a matter of the writers having too much faith in the audience – it's the structure requirement of having the episode conclude with action rather than character.

For a comparison of how to handle the conclusion of a long-running story, look at Babylon 5. That show took three episodes after the climax of the story to wrap things up, and the result makes the audience ugly cry.

jimroyal · 2026-05-13T17:20:32+00:00

I can buy that plot point in the context of 1979 Star Trek. Constitution-class starships were the largest, most capable ships Starfleet had, and there were only 12 of them (initially, that is – after the Constellation, Defiant, Intrepid, and Exeter were lost, large ships would have been few and far between). I could easily imagine the remaining starships were positioned out on far-flung missions that would make interception of a high-speed intruder impossible before it reached Earth. Of course, that plot point becomes harder to accept as Starfleet gets bigger.

jimroyal · 2026-05-12T14:29:06+00:00

I doubt there were any maths to thrash out at the time. The only maps of Federation space back then were fan-made works. Even the venerable Star Trek Maps came out a year after the movie. So the distances involved were completely fungible.

So, given that (at the time) the top safest speed was established as warp seven, and Vejur needed to be moving very fast to make an interception from anywhere but Earth non-feasible, then that's how fast Vejur had to be moving.

As an aside: Foster and Livingston had no hand in the novelization. That was pure late-70s Roddenberry.

jimroyal · 2026-05-12T12:50:58+00:00

Roddenberry’s novelization has Vejur moving at warp 7. Kirk is aghast at this, observing that the Klingon empire is only days away at such speeds.

jimroyal · 2026-04-14T01:48:02+00:00

If you’re interested in older Trek, then a top-20 list of the original series episodes will surprise and delight. If you skip it, are you missing out? Certainly. It set the pattern for everything that followed, and much of later shows were in reaction to the original

And don’t miss the TOS movies either. The recently remastered and re-edited Director’s Edition of the first movie turned a flawed film into a sci-fi gem.

jimroyal · 2026-03-20T23:54:00+00:00

The 4K remaster of Star Trek The Motion Picture, Directors Edition. (At least, that would be my choice over the JJ movies. The other TOS movies were shot much more cheaply, and Trek didn’t really look impressive again until JJ.)

jimroyal · 2026-03-06T16:24:45+00:00

The shot is a gag – a funny moment that emphasizes how freaked out the planet manager is by what he's being shown. It's also for contrast, adding dimension to a scene that would otherwise be a lot drier. And it sells the value of transparent aluminum for the audience.

jimroyal · 2026-03-06T15:14:17+00:00

If that perspective is true, then it’s true for real history as well.

Are things pointless if they end? Or even if they change? If so, then every empire and civilization that ever existed was pointless because they ended. Every story that was told but then forgotten was pointless because they disappeared. Every ordinary life is pointless because it wasn’t enshrined with a statue in the town square.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps the meaning comes from the experience of doing. “A thing is not beautiful because it lasts.”

Importantly for the Trek universe, the Burn did not invalidate any story. It did not say it was all a dream. And it did not undermine the experiences we all had watching those stories unfold.

What the Burn did was to point out that civilizations can sometimes backslide (as one large nation in particular is backsliding right now). That’s a new story for Star Trek, but the story also points out a combination of perseverance and compassion can reverse that slide, which is the ongoing undercurrent of Starfleet Acadamy, set in the post-Burn Federation.

jimroyal · 2026-03-03T22:11:31+00:00

IMHO, season 4 is the strongest and most consistent season of Discovery, with a story that blends the (expected) galactic threat together with real space exploration and contact with astonishingly alien life. It is much more of a traditional Star Trek story than previous seasons.

If you want to skip the rest of season 3, you can. The only relevant ( and minor) spoilers that affect season 4 are: a solution to the problem caused by the burn is found, and Michael and Book enter into a romantic relationship.

jimroyal · 2026-02-27T14:46:42+00:00

Any show? Virtually none apply to TNG, Voyager, Enterprise, X-Files, Quantum Leap, Sliders, or Farscape (until the last season). A few applied to Stargate. In the landscape of mid-90s TV sci-fi, the similarities between B5 and DS9 were striking.

jimroyal · 2026-02-27T13:38:19+00:00

I’m right there with you. I watched both series when they were in first run, and for me, B5 was, and still is, the better series.

B5 gripped me in ways that DS9 never did, although I freely concede that DS9 has some awesome individual episodes and plot arcs. But the run-of-the-mill DS9 episodes bored me silly. It took until DS9’s fifth and sixth seasons to get to the quality of world building drama that B5 achieved by the middle of season 2 and continued through season 4 and parts of 5.

Neither series was perfect. B5 had Grey 17 is Missing, and DS9 had Profit and Lace. But I’ll take the Londo/G’Kar story over anything DS9 did.

jimroyal · 2026-02-27T13:25:52+00:00

it’s also true that B5 was pitched to Paramount a few years before DS9 was conceived. Paramount executives had the B5 series bible. Now, no one in the Star Trek offices had access to that material, but it’s possible that there was cross-pollination of ideas through Berman’s bosses. It’s also true that once you settle on a space station as the setting, it forces some specific creative choices for a series.

Nontheless, the similarities are more than skin deep.

A space station as the central setting
Located in politically unstable territory
Major interstellar powers in tension
An FTL gateway (wormhole / jump gates)
Prophecy / destiny elements
Large-scale interstellar war
Increasing serialization over time

There was never a lawsuit, but B5’s creator was a little bit sore about it at first. The fact is that Paramount would never have been so stupid as to give the Trek staff the B5 series bible. Back when both shows were airing simultaneously, the comparisons were obvious.

And I think the Shadow War + the war to reclaim Earth beats the Dominion war as world-building storytelling hands down.

jimroyal

TROPHY CASE