Entertainment
How Worf Accidentally Created Star Trek's 2009 Reboot
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
After Enterprise fizzled out, a new film brought the world’s greatest sci-fi franchise back to life: Star Trek (2009), a snazzy reboot that brought back the characters and impeccable vibes of The Original Series. To mollify fans worried that the new film would completely retcon older Star Trek media, Paramount set all of its Trek reboot films in a parallel universe that was completely different from the familiar “prime” universe. What most fans don’t realize, though, is that this parallel “Kelvinverse” (so named after Kirk’s father’s doomed starship) would have been impossible without “Parallels,” an often-overlooked episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
In that episode, Worf returns from a bat’leth tournament only to find himself slipping in and out of different realities; this allows him to experience the lives of different Worfs while seeing how different things could be aboard the Enterprise-D. He is married to Deanna Troi in one reality, for example, and is the first officer of the ship in another. Eventually, Worf (with the help of Data, Geordi, and the rest of the senior officers) discovers that this all started because his shuttle accidentally weakened the barrier between different quantum realities, and he is able to fly back to his own reality while closing the dimensional fissure behind him.
How Worf’s Multiverse Adventure Created The Star Trek Reboot
This makes for a fun episode (especially if you’re a Worf fan), but what does this story have to do with Star Trek (2009)? Back in 2008, that film’s cowriter, Bob Orci, gave an exclusive interview to TrekMovie, and their conversation focused primarily on how the new movie’s timeline could exist without erasing all the franchise lore that came before it. Orci basically gave fans a crash course on quantum mechanics, and he cited Data’s comments from “Parallels” to sum up that “all possibilities that can happen do happen” in various other realities.
That may sound pretty basic, especially for those who are familiar with Marvel’s various movies and TV shows involving the Multiverse. But the MCU was less than a year old when Orci gave this interview, and the Multiverse was not yet even a sparkle in Kevin Feige’s eye. Therefore, the writer walked Trek fans through how the upcoming Kelvinverse film was rooted strongly in both real-world quantum mechanics (which the interviewer helpfully pointed out is known as the Many Worlds Theory) and the Trek lore established in “Parallels.”
The Many Yawns Theory?
For Star Trek fans, the Many Worlds Theory is both blessing and curse: it allows for telling stories in different realities, contextualizing settings like the Mirror Universe and explaining how the Kelvinverse and any future reboot realities can exist alongside the Prime Universe of shows like The Original Series and The Next Generation. But (as Red Letter Media recently pointed out), this theory arguably cheapens the drama of the choices our characters make. Not only is there a dimension where they made a completely different choice, but the existence of countless other dimensions means it doesn’t really matter who lives and who dies because everyone is alive somewhere else.
Whether you love or hate the narrative sandbox it created, “Parallels” paved the way for the existence of Star Trek (2009), a movie that saved the franchise when Trek was falling into cultural obscurity. Those reboot films are controversial among some fans, but their success undeniably helped make Star Trek into a mainstream hit once again. If you’re one of the fans who hated it, that probably won’t bother anyone involved; after all, quantum mechanics tells us that there’s a universe out there where this is your favorite film series of all time!
Entertainment
Jon Stewart hits back at MAGAs reaction to Bad Bunnys Super Bowl halftime show
Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX halftime show may have been brimming with popular music, Easter eggs, and celebrity cameos, but not everyone was a fan.
In The Daily Show clip above, Jon Stewart discusses the right’s reaction to the show, from the Kid Rock-fronted alternative event to right-wing pundits complaining that they could have found someone “more uniting”.
“Why the f*** is it the Super Bowl halftime entertainer’s job to unify the country?” asks Stewart. “In what world is that their job? Oh, isn’t there another person whose job description is much more along those lines?”
Stewart goes on to share Donald Trump’s Truth Social reaction to the performance, in which he called Bad Bunny “absolutely terrible”.
“You know, the right has a lot of balls, complaining that Bad Bunny didn’t do enough to unify this country, when you only found out a few days ago that Puerto Rico’s a part of it,” says Stewart. “And before you get your panties in una torsión, a unifying pro tip might be to tell your guy to stop tweeting out racist slop during, I don’t know, Black History Month.”
Entertainment
New Star Trek Spinoff Is Running Out Of Time
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The new Star Trek spinoff, Starfleet Academy, has proven to be very controversial, but its fans always offer the same rebuttal to any criticism of the show: “give it time.” The logic goes that this show might need time to find its footing, just like The Next Generation and Voyager did. However, given that the show is limited to 10 episodes per season and a maximum of four seasons, Starfleet Academy is officially running out of time to impress viewers.
This reaction to a new spinoff began with Star Trek: The Next Generation, whose first season was its absolute worst. Season 2 wasn’t much better, but the show (thanks largely to new showrunner Michael Piller) transformed into must-see TV with Season 3. After Deep Space Nine had a similarly rocky Season 1, it became gospel among many Trek fans that you should always give a new series a season or two to really find its footing.
It Gets Ugly When You Run The Numbers
Needless to say, this has become the most common defense Starfleet Academy fans have used against any and all criticisms of the show. Those fans love to make comparisons to TNG and say that critics should give these cadets time to find their space legs, just like we gave Picard and crew time. However, what these Starfleet Academy fanboys don’t realize is that the new show is racing the clock, and it’s all Paramount’s fault.
Back in the Golden Age of Star Trek, shows ran for seven seasons, with (outside of the occasional writer’s strike) 26 episodes per season. This is why shows like Voyager could afford to have a rocky first season: whenever there was a bad episode, fans could reasonably expect that a good one was around the corner. Even if the first two seasons were wildly rocky (looking at you, The Next Generation), there would be 130 episodes left that would be, relatively speaking, very good.
Each Season Is A Bubble, Waiting To Pop
But those were the salad days of network television. In the streaming era, shows are more streamlined, and Starfleet Academy (like Strange New Worlds before it) has only 10 episodes per season. Moreover, executive producer and co-showrunner Alex Kurtzman has confirmed that the show is designed to last only four seasons, mirroring the four years it takes the cadets to complete their academy training.
That means that Starfleet Academy has a much more limited window to find its audience than fans think. Every episode represents ten percent of an entire season, meaning that a few bad episodes can make the entire season feel like a mixed bag. This is why fans began turning against the more whimsical episodes of Strange New Worlds: while the occasional lighthearted story can be fun, it feels weird when 30 percent of your third season is devoted to overly wacky episodes.
Starfleet Academy is facing a similar problem because the writers keep dragging decent stories down with juvenile humor. Tales of parental trauma and racial diaspora exist uneasily alongside jokes about cadets eating comm badges and vomiting glitter (incredibly, these are different cadets). By the time the show ends, fans may well wonder how much more character development we might have gotten if there had been fewer scenes of farting fish, drunken dancing, and other try-hard attempts to make us laugh.
The Show Will Be Over Before You Know It
It’s also important to remember that Starfleet Academy lasting four seasons is actually a best-case scenario. Previously, NuTrek shows like Discovery and Lower Decks were prematurely canceled by Paramount. Strange New Worlds, meanwhile, unexpectedly had its final season (which recently finished filming) cut in half. While Starfleet Academy has already been renewed for a second season, poor reception of Season 1 could very well get the show prematurely canceled.
That may already be happening, as Starfleet Academy recently tumbled out of the Top 10 list on Paramount+. With any luck, the show will continue to smooth out its rough edges and grow more impressive over time, like The Next Generation before it. But considering that Starfleet Academy will have fewer episodes in its total run than TNG had for only two seasons, it’s important for fans and showrunners alike to realize that this new show is rapidly running out of time to win over new audiences.
Entertainment
Marvel's Biggest TV Show Was Doomed From The Beginning
By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
It’s currently the year 2026. For six years, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been off the air, and every day since, fans of the adventure series have been wondering when their favorite characters will show up in the MCU. They won’t.
From the very beginning, the signs were there that Disney had no interest in fully integrating the television series into the MCU. All you had to do was watch the second episode, “0-8-4,” a bottle episode that could be set in any universe, with any cast of characters, and needed a last-minute 30-second Samuel L. Jackson cameo in order to keep viewers going into Episode 3.
No Show Should Start With A Bottle Episode
“0-8-4” has Agent Coulson’s (Clark Gregg) team in Peru to recover an artifact of “unknown origin.” Bringing back the “hero ducks down and a shockwave comes from their stick” move from Serenity, the team flees back onboard their ship, “the Bus,” with members of the national army. That’s right, the second episode of the brand new big-budget MCU television series is a bottle episode.
Bottle episodes utilize existing sets, typically with only the main cast involved, and are heavier on dialogue. They can be great when used right, like Supernatural’s “Baby,” but “0-8-4” was only the second episode to air. Going right into a bottle episode was meant to let us see how the characters interact with one another and develop relationships, but Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was also a Marvel series, and nothing about this episode took advantage of the setting.
How many lost civilizations exist in the Marvel universe that the artifact could have been tied to? It could have been part of Nova Roma. Instead of the Peruvian army, Coulson’s ex could have been leading a unit of The Wild Pack. Something. Anything small to tie the story into the larger world, instead of being a generic adventure. Then again, bottle episodes are cheaper to produce, so “0-8-4” should have been a clue that the show’s budget was being throttled in order reach 22 episodes a season.
Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Is Too Good For Modern Marvel
The best of “0-8-4,” besides FitzSimmons, the best part of every episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., is the brief cameo appearance of Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury after the credits. For over a decade, fans have complained that they have never experienced another moment like that. That was the second clue in “0-8-4” that the series was never, ever, going to reach its potential.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. eventually found its groove by, ironically, abandoning all connection to the MCU and saying, “Screw it, we’re doing Ghost Rider,” or “Let’s adapt Secret Empire.” It was a fun, fantastic sci-fi adventure show. 14 years later, the unrealized potential that Disney had right there still hurts. Given the current state of the MCU, though, maybe it’s good that FitzSimmons, May, Quake, Coulson, and Mack can be remembered on their own. But….What If?
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