To clarify, Melumad does the incidental music in Prodigy, but the theme is by Michael Giacchino. He also scored, among many other things, the three Kelvin Timeline films, so he probably brings that “cinematic” feel you’re describing.

Melumad does occasionally integrate part of Giacchino’s Kelvin Timeline themes. For example, I want to say it appears toward the beginning of Prodigy 1x11.

Westlake is great, but so is Nami Melumad (who does the music for Strange New Worlds and Prodigy), so I’m absolutely not behind a call to have her fired, whether that call is meant to be tongue-in-cheek or not.

I agree it’s overused for the average episode of Trek, but if we accept that they’re doing a Section 31 movie, what’s the point of a low-stakes feature film (even a streaming film), especially one centered around Section 31?

Also worth noting that the article describes it as “Big stakes emotionally, big stakes for the characters in our story”, so the “stakes” are referring at least in part to character stakes, not necessarily universe-ending stakes. (Though I admit in practice it will probably be both.)

Great notes, as always.

In addition to the already-cited references, the Beagle could additionally be a sly reference to Archer’s pal Porthos.

Interestingly, Jolene Blalock is credited simply as “Jolene”. EDIT: Mike McMahan says this was at her request. https://bsky.app/profile/mikemcmahan.bsky.social/post/3ld3v4usznc2i

Our T’Pol also had some indirect experience with the concept of katra transference when Archer briefly carried Surak’s katra.

Grain of salt since I can’t remember where I heard this, but my understanding is that TOS-ENT and the first ten movies is generally a single combined license, but all of the new shows need to be licensed individually, I’m not sure if the Abrams films are licensed as a package or individually, but they’re separate from the other films.

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Fun fact: The TNG episode of the same name was originally intended to star Patrick McGoohan as Ira Graves.

Not only do you not need to catch up with Disco, but the end of season 2 of Disco doesn’t dovetail to the beginning of Strange New Worlds super-well when you watch them back-to-back; if anything, they feel like they lightly contradict each other.

Though if I were to recommend a single episode it would be “Through the Valley of Shadows” from season 2, which is probably the only “important” episode as far as Strange New Worlds goes, though the key stuff gets recapped in SNW.

The Short Treks episode Q&A gets some references in the series too, though if you don’t watch it you likely won’t realize you missed anything.