Regarding point 1, Roddenberry was indeed very open about his desire to make sure that when people watched Trek, they saw a version of the future where things were more egalitarian. He wanted a woman to the first officer on the ship, even though he also had Pike voice some consternation about having a woman on the bridge regarding yeoman Colt. He wanted people of colour on the ship. During the height of the Cold War, he wanted a proud Russian character on the ship, and even made up a story about being a Russian magazine article criticizing the lack of representation. He wanted people of colour on the ship. According to George Takei, when he tried to convince Roddenberry to include gay representation, Gene said that he wanted to, but couldn’t push for that with the studio. TOS famously had the first scripted interracial kiss in a North American television show.

As you alluded, even if we recognize that some of Roddenberry’s motivations were money and ratings oriented – like having Chekov’s hair be styled like the Monkees’ to appeal to a younger demographic, or his introducing the Vulcan IDIC he could sell merch of it – we also have to acknowledge that he was dedicated to portraying that egalitarian future as much as he could given the constraints of the era.

But how do you know the motivations of the people making those decisions today?

I do agree with you that the modern iterations of Trek are not nearly as progressive relative to our time as TOS was in the 60s.

Star Trek taught me to have hope for the future

What I would not give to never hear about another Star Trek film “in the works” before it actually starts filming.

TrekMovie playing the clickbait game with the best of 'em.

The guys being interviewed didn’t even say they wanted to make a darker Trek, just that the story they’re working on is darker than what they’ve done before, for whatever value that has.

I have to imagine IDW already has something in the works.

What is this whataboutism?

TNG Season 8 was great fun. Mike McMahan also wrote Warped: An Engaging Guide to the Never Aired 8th Season, that is basically full episode outlines for an entire season, based on his TNG_S8 posts.

Additionally, I’d recommend https://bsky.app/profile/foundepisodes.bsky.social, which I recently discovered, and is inspired by TNG_S8

Best episode of the season so far, pretty easily. One of the best episodes of the series.

Gene Roddenberry could claw his way out of his grave, drive to my door with a platter of my favourite Tex Mex to soften the blow, and personally tell me that atrelene is, was, and always has been a Q, and I would still call bullshit.

• T’Pring!

• Orions!

• Black & White episode!

• TOS hair Uhura!

• Dragon!

• Trelene… ̄\_(ツ)_/ ̄

I cannot express frequently enough how much it bothers me that his current iteration of Paramount own Trek, Avatar – martial arts and friendship, not blue cat people – and TMNT.

Regardless of what I do or do not want, Paramount keeps announcing that they’ve got movies in pre-production.

Interesting that they didn’t include Sam Magg’s credit as the writer of Star Trek: Picard’s Academy, one of the worst comics I’ve ever read.

Considering that there’s unlikely to be a new Trek television series for quite some time now, I think any claims that some bit of supplementary media is canon is unlikely to be tested any time soon.

Okay, but what if she was also T’Rul gathering info on Starfleet before taking on the Seska role?

I dunno, I’ve never heard of it.

Not canon, but

Basically, the AR wall is a giant LED screen that they can use to display a background of some sort as opposed to having the actors acting against a green screen. It allows them to create some interesting locations for stories without without having to build a full set or find an appropriate location.

SNW even uses it for their main engineering aboard the Enterprise, though that’s why we didn’t see main engineering at all in season three; it apparently takes too long to set up and break down in front of the AR wall.

The technology is becoming increasingly common, and some of them do use generative AI. However, the one the Star Trek productions use does not.

I remain skeptical. Unnamed sources claiming it was someone on the art department who hand drew it is not entirely convincing. I’d like to see the layers. Or, failing that, an explanation for why the characters are so inconsistent and indistinguishable from one panel to the next. Why the shadows don’t make any sense. Why the hands when we see them don’t make sense.

Also, the article claims the AR wall is using machine learning, and I’d like to see a source on that. My understanding, based on what the VFX supervisor for Disco, PIC, SNW, and SFA has said is that their AR walls do not integrate machine learning.