Image (Credit): Cast of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy in the series second season. (Paramount+)
“Season 1 is about letting go of who you were in the past to start again at Starfleet Academy…Season 2 is about thinking you knew who you were, only to realize that as you grow older that your life is going to go in directions you didn’t expect and you’re going to have to shift your perception of yourself.”
-Statement by Noga Landaux, co-showrunner ofthe television series Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, during the 2026 New York Comic-Con Star Trek Universe panel. The second and last season returns in March 2027. It is not clear why it is taking so long for the second season to drop given that filming wrapped up back in February. Could it mean that it still has a chance to be picked up again for a third season, or is that just wishful thinking?
Image (Credit): The crew from Black Mirror’s USS Callister. (Netflix)
“In Serling’s day, the atom bomb, civil rights, McCarthyism, psychiatry and the space race were of primary concern. Today he’d be writing about terrorism, the economy, the media, privacy and our relationship with technology…That’s what we’re aiming for with Black Mirror: each episode has a different cast, a different setting, even a different reality. But they’re all about the way we live now – and the way we might be living in 10 minutes’ time if we’re clumsy.”
-Statement by Charlie Brooker, creator of the Black Mirror series, as quoted by Collider. Season 8 of the series will premiere on Netflix shortly. The series has been very timely as we deal with new technologies, social media, and now artificial intelligence. You might also recall two earlier episodes with the USS Callister, which was a clever and dark mimicking of Star Trek. Another good episode, called “Beyond the Sea,” also dealt with space travel. Hopefully, we will get a least one more space-related episode out of the new season.
“It’s not like they’re writing the show and then having to come up with, ‘Oh, how to end this?’…This is a 40 episode story. So the ending… is very satisfying because it’s the end of a novel.”
–Statement by actor Ashley Zukerman, who plays Daniel Keene in the Silo television series, regarding the fourth and final season of the series coming out on July 9, 2027. If you missed the series, particularly season three, it is a show you need to watch. We talk about living in lava tubes on the Moon or Mars, but this show is about living in an underground silo for generations here on Earth after some pretty horrible terra-forming above. You can catch it on Apple TV.
This week we celebrate the 60th anniversary of Star Trek, a simple science fiction story from 1966 that was first broadcast in Canada and barely lasted for three seasons. But from that tepid beginning arose an idea that led to multiple spin-off television series, movies, books, and more.
And it has been a hopeful show that took the dark edge off of science fiction. As creator Gene Roddenberry said back in 1985:
I believe in humanity. We are an incredible species. We’re still just a child creature, we’re still being nasty to each other. And all children go through those phases. We’re growing up, we’re moving into adolescence now. When we grow up – man, we’re going to be something!
Today we still have plenty of people attacking Star Trek for being too liberal or “woke” as they say using the word of the week, but the show was always that way.
Discussing battles with TV executives about women on the USS Enterprise, Mr. Roddenberry noted:
I had insisted on half women on board [the Enterprise]. The network came to me and said, ‘You can’t have half women. Our people say it will make it look like a ship with all sorts of mad sexual things going on — half men and half women.’ So we argued about it like a poker game and they finally said, ‘Okay. We’ll settle for one-third women.’ I figured one-third women could take care of the males anyway.
Star Trek moved forward before the rest of the country, but it saw a future that was slowly realized over time. And even if it seems we are going backwards at times, he understood that as well when he said:
I have nothing but admiration for this silly race of ours. Even with the Hitlers in it and so on. Sometimes it goes into ugliness, but, in all though, it is a beauty. It’s like a rose, which also has thorns. We’re something.
So let’s not get too depressed just because we seem to have a Ferengi in the White House. Think long term like Mr. Roddenberry, and move past the thorns.
If you are not in the mood this weekend to see The Dog Stars, the latest Ridley Scott film, remember we still have another Ridley Scott show coming later this year.
Blade Runner 2099, a new 8-episode series, premieres on Amazon Prime this November 25th. While Mr. Scott was not involved with this production, his view of the future continues to amaze and haunt us.
Set in Los Angeles 50 years after the last film, the new series includes plenty of humans and Replicants, but this time it is the Replicants who are on top. It is quite a twist in the story at a time when AI is everywhere and AI-related unemployment is a continual worry.
This trailer on Youtube shows you what to expect from the newseries.
Unfortunately, Harrison Ford will not be returning for this new series, but it still boasts a good number of well known talent, including Michelle Yeoh (Star Trek: Discovery), Hunter Schafer (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes), Dimitri Abold (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes), Lewis Gribben (Somewhere Boy), Matthew Needham (House of the Dragon), Maurizio Lombardi (Ripley), and others.
I want to walk into the future with my eyes wide open, so I am eager to watch the new series.
Update: As far as the role of AI in books, movies and television, I recommend a YouTube video by The Art of Storytelling titled “Sci-Fi Was Right About AI.” It touches on Blade Runner and Dune, as well as Star Trek, Star Wars, The Matrix, and many earlier works as well.
