Entertainment
Modern Star Trek’s So Ugly It Makes The Writing Look Good
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
When longtime fans complain about NuTrek, they usually focus on the writing, which is understandable; after all, you can only hear so much vulgarity-induced Zoomer slang before you ask why characters hundreds of years in the future all sound like today’s edgy teens and not, you know, competent Starfleet officers. However, the biggest problem facing the franchise today has nothing to do with the writing or even acting.
The worst thing about modern Star Trek is that it has become relentlessly ugly. Despite spending over eight million dollars per episode, the uniforms, ships, and outer space visual effects are the worst in over 60 years of franchise history. If you doubt that, don’t worry: like a good Ferengi, I’ve got all the receipts!
Credit Where Credit Is Due
Let’s start with the uniforms, and in the spirit of fairness, let’s start with what has actually worked well. The uniforms in Strange New Worlds look great, though that was always a given; one of the goals of the show was always to update and modernize the aesthetic of Star Trek: The Original Series. That earlier show’s ‘60s uniforms are still absolutely iconic, and SNW simply updated their look, giving us something akin to the Kelvinverse: a slick redesign of the most timeless uniforms in the entire franchise.
This may be a hot take, but I actually really liked the uniforms in the first two seasons of Star Trek: Discovery. They felt like sleek, modern versions of the blue Away Team jackets worn by Captain Pike and Spock in the first Star Trek: The Original Series pilot episode.
Plus, they fit into existing lore better than most fans think: there have been weird uniform variations in this franchise from the beginning (like different insignias for different ships and variant uniforms for different specialties), and the Golden Age of Trek constantly featured characters using different styles of uniforms (like the mix of TNG and DS9 designs in Generations).
Throw in the fact that the Discovery was an experimental ship seemingly backed by Section 31, and these characters getting snazzy blue uniforms makes perfect sense. However, the crew ditched this killer look once they jumped to the 32nd century. Instead, they embraced brand new uniforms that just had one major problem: they were downright ugly, beginning a decline in Star Trek aesthetics that continues to this day.
It’s About To Get Ugly
In Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery, our favorite characters get new uniforms that feel like a serious downgrade: those beautiful blue costumes get replaced with soulless gray uniforms whose dreariness is only broken up by a colorful division stripe. The characters looked blander than ever, and it didn’t help that this season’s storytelling was a serious downgrade from Season 2. Adding insult to injury, these drab uniforms looked way too much like what Kirk and crew wore in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and that movie’s pastel pajamas are widely considered some of the worst uniform designs in the franchise.
Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 tried to correct this terrible design, replacing the blandness of the previous season with uniforms that were bold and colorful. That’s a good idea on paper, but in practice, the new uniform designs looked like what you’d get if you ordered Original Series costumes from Temu.
It’s hard to take any of these characters seriously when the open flap on the bottom of their tunics makes them look like a white-collar boss who felt wild enough to untuck his shirt and unbutton the bottom buttons to celebrate Casual Friday in style.
No, Captain, My Captain
The next Star Trek fashion fail is partially the fault of arguably the most popular living Star Trek actor: Patrick Stewart. When Paramount lured him back for Picard, he was insistent that he didn’t want to wear a Starfleet uniform, which is why his character and his Season 1 crew run around in dark outfits that Stewart might as well have stolen from the set of David Lynch’s Dune. This is a big part of why the first and second seasons are so painful to watch: on top of writing so bad it makes Nemesis look like a masterpiece, the costume design for our series regulars is lazy and completely phoned-in.
The Starfleet uniforms were a bit better than Picard’s crew, but not by much: they alternated between looking like updated TNG Academy uniforms to uniforms that looked like plainer takes on the ones worn in Lower Decks. By Season 3, everyone was just wearing leather jackets with some light Star Trek theming on them.
This caused our returning TNG crew to look (embarrassingly enough) like bikers from an AARP-themed motorcycle club. It was like the producers were deathly afraid for this to look or feel like an actual Star Trek show, which is insane for a wildly expensive revival of the show that definitively brought the franchise back to life.
These Students Failed Fashion 101
The latest offender on the Star Trek fashion front is Starfleet Academy, a show that can’t decide exactly what it wants its protagonists to look like. Sometimes, instructors like Jet Reno wear uniforms that look like colorful hourglasses slapped haphazardly on a large expanse of black fabric.
The Doctor is wearing something akin to a monochrome version of his Voyager outfit, and Holly Hunter’s chancellor is wearing something like a monster maroon tunic without any of the flair. Over at the War College, Commander Nelrec is wearing something that looks like somebody tried to draw the Battlestar Galactica reboot duty blues from memory after being hit on the head.
Incredibly, the cadet uniforms are even more stylistically scattered: they mostly wander the campus in drab grey uniforms that look like an even worse version of what everyone wore in Star Trek: Discovery Season 3. Sometimes, though, they unzip that to wear just tight red shirts and black pants (which they adorn with futuristic tactical vests for rousing games of laser tag). Speaking of laser tag, after winning a single game against the War College, they wear letterman jackets, which leaves me wondering if anyone on the writing staff actually played sports in school.
None of these designs is great (minus the inexplicably comfy-looking Starfleet Academy hoodie), and several are downright ugly. That ugliness is made worse by the sheer visual chaos of characters that have more wardrobe changes per episode than most cosplayers do all year. This is symbolic of Starfleet Academy’s biggest problem as a show: it’s trying to be too many different things all at once, ultimately losing its own identity in a frantic rush to please fans of every era.
Clothing Maketh The Spaceman
Believe it or not, this barely scratches the surface of what makes NuTrek so ugly. I haven’t gotten around to forgettable ship designs (quick, draw the Starfleet Academy teaching ship from memory, I dare you!) and lazy outer space effects that make battles increasingly hard to follow. Those battles alternate between being visually boring (like the Battle of the Binary Stars in Discovery) to pathetically lazy (like Riker threatening the Romulans in Picard with an entire fleet of copy/paste ships). After spending more than $8 million per episode, NuTrek gives us space battles with less variety and excitement than Deep Space Nine did in the ‘90s.
The biggest issue is still the clothing, which has just gotten worse since Discovery first aired nearly a decade ago. Star Trek is a franchise with over half a century of cool clothing designs, and The Next Generation is proof that Paramount once knew how to update the designs that made The Original Series into a pop culture phenomenon. If the creators behind NuTrek are completely incapable of making these shows look decent, they will have nobody but themselves to blame when audiences stop watching altogether.
Entertainment
Wordle today: Answer, hints for April 19, 2026
Today’s Wordle answer should be easy to solve if you can never sit down.
If you just want to be told today’s word, you can jump to the bottom of this article for today’s Wordle solution revealed. But if you’d rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.
Where did Wordle come from?
Originally created by engineer Josh Wardle as a gift for his partner, Wordle rapidly spread to become an international phenomenon, with thousands of people around the globe playing every day. Alternate Wordle versions created by fans also sprang up, including battle royale Squabble, music identification game Heardle, and variations like Dordle and Quordle that make you guess multiple words at once.
Wordle eventually became so popular that it was purchased by the New York Times, and TikTok creators even livestream themselves playing.
What’s the best Wordle starting word?
The best Wordle starting word is the one that speaks to you. But if you prefer to be strategic in your approach, we have a few ideas to help you pick a word that might help you find the solution faster. One tip is to select a word that includes at least two different vowels, plus some common consonants like S, T, R, or N.
What happened to the Wordle archive?
The entire archive of past Wordle puzzles was originally available for anyone to enjoy whenever they felt like it, but it was later taken down, with the website’s creator stating it was done at the request of the New York Times. However, the New York Times then rolled out its own Wordle Archive, available only to NYT Games subscribers.
Is Wordle getting harder?
It might feel like Wordle is getting harder, but it actually isn’t any more difficult than when it first began. You can turn on Wordle‘s Hard Mode if you’re after more of a challenge, though.
Here’s a subtle hint for today’s Wordle answer:
To rise.
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Does today’s Wordle answer have a double letter?
There are no recurring letters.
Mashable 101 Fan Fave: Nominate your favorite creators today
Today’s Wordle is a 5-letter word that starts with…
Today’s Wordle starts with the letter T.
The Wordle answer today is…
Get your last guesses in now, because it’s your final chance to solve today’s Wordle before we reveal the solution.
Drumroll please!
The solution to today’s Wordle is…
STAND
Don’t feel down if you didn’t manage to guess it this time. There will be a new Wordle for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we’ll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints. Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today’s Strands.
Reporting by Chance Townsend, Caitlin Welsh, Sam Haysom, Amanda Yeo, Shannon Connellan, Cecily Mauran, Mike Pearl, and Adam Rosenberg contributed to this article.
If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
Not the day you’re after? Here’s the solution to yesterday’s Wordle.
Entertainment
Hurdle hints and answers for April 19, 2026
If you like playing daily word games like Wordle, then Hurdle is a great game to add to your routine.
There are five rounds to the game. The first round sees you trying to guess the word, with correct, misplaced, and incorrect letters shown in each guess. If you guess the correct answer, it’ll take you to the next hurdle, providing the answer to the last hurdle as your first guess. This can give you several clues or none, depending on the words. For the final hurdle, every correct answer from previous hurdles is shown, with correct and misplaced letters clearly shown.
An important note is that the number of times a letter is highlighted from previous guesses does necessarily indicate the number of times that letter appears in the final hurdle.
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If you find yourself stuck at any step of today’s Hurdle, don’t worry! We have you covered.
Hurdle Word 1 hint
The edge.
Hurdle Word 1 answer
BRINK
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Hurdle Word 2 hint
Moody.
Hurdle Word 2 Answer
POUTY
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Hurdle Word 3 hint
America’s bird.
Hurdle Word 3 answer
EAGLE
Hurdle Word 4 hint
A platform.
Hurdle Word 4 answer
FORUM
Final Hurdle hint
Cheapskate.
Hurdle Word 5 answer
MISER
If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
Entertainment
Star Trek’s Most Ambitious Villain Helped Create The Franchise’s Most Complex Hero
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
When Star Trek: Voyager first came out, the most fascinating character was the Doctor. While Robert Picardo’s performance was superb, it’s fair to say this character was mostly fascinating on a conceptual level. We had seen things like hypercompetent Starfleet captains and exotic aliens before, but what we hadn’t seen was a fully holographic chief medical officer. Voyager’s Emergency Medical Hologram seemed like the perfect embodiment of the Star Trek ethos. He’s a technological strange new world and new life, all rolled into one.
However, what casual audiences didn’t realize is that the Doctor wasn’t completely unique. Long before Picardo’s character ever sawed bones in the Delta Quadrant, Captain Picard dealt with another extraordinary hologram: Moriarty, the brilliant foe of the famous investigator Sherlock Holmes. Over on The Next Generation, Geordi LaForge accidentally created this villain as a sentient hologram when he asked the holodeck to create a challenge worthy of the android Data. Later, Star Trek: Voyager executive producer Jeri Taylor revealed that, in-universe, the holographic Doctor was created because Starfleet took advantage of the same accidental breakthrough that created Moriarty!
It all started in “Elementary, My Dear Data,” the Next Generation episode in which the titular android and Geordi LaForge recreated Sherlock Holmes’ adventures on the holodeck. Thanks to his positronic brain and his encyclopedic knowledge of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes novels, Data is able to easily solve every mystery that is thrown at him. That’s when Geordi makes a seemingly simple request. He asks the Enterprise computer to develop a holodeck foe that could actually defeat Data, one of the smartest beings in the entire galaxy.
The computer obliges and creates a sentient version of Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’ greatest foe. Following Geordi’s instructions, the Enterprise computer included much of Data’s vast programming, which resulted in the holographic character becoming self-aware. Moriarty ended up threatening the Enterprise on two different occasions, and Picard eventually got rid of him by trapping the unknowing villain in a simulation where he thought he had left the holodeck and could explore the stars. This was meant to be a happy ending for Moriarty, but in the show’s typically bleak fashion, Star Trek: Picard later showed us a different, more hostile version of this character created by a malevolent Section 31 AI.
How A Villain Created A Hero
What does all of this have to do with Robert Picardo’s holographic Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager? Elementary, my dear reader! Very early in Voyager’s development (the show didn’t even have a name yet), executive producer Jeri Taylor was inspired by Moriarty to create a new character. As reported in A Vision of the Future-Star Trek: Voyager, Taylor wrote down notes for a holographic doctor “who, like Moriarty, has ‘awareness’ of himself as a holodeck fiction. He longs for the time when he can walk free of the Holodeck.”
A few days later, she wrote down additional notes that contain a startling bit of Star Trek lore. “The Holo-Doctor represents a new, state-of-the-art technology which has capitalized on the serendipitous incident which created Moriarty, and has programmed a holographic character which has self-awareness of his situation and limitations.” While Moriarty is name-dropped on Voyager a couple of times, the show never mentioned what Taylor’s notes seem to confirm: that Lewis Zimmerman could never have created the Emergency Medical Hologram program if not for Geordi LaForge accidentally creating Moriarty on the holodeck.
From Villain To Leading Man?
If that’s not strange enough, there was a period of time when Voyager’s producers were considering making Moriarty a mainstay character on the show. As reported in Star Trek–Where No One Has Gone Before, Taylor’s notes mentioned that “everyone agreed that was a little too broad, and we couldn’t figure out why anyone would take him along.” After dismissing the idea, they decided “that having a holographic doctor with the full consciousness of being a hologram might be fun, and we’d never done anything like that before, except for Moriarty.”
There you have it, gentle reader. Without the character of Moriarty on Star Trek: The Next Generation, we’d never have the Doctor on Voyager. In this way, Trek’s most ambitious villain helped create the franchise’s most complex hero. Thanks to Jeri Taylor’s notes, we also know that, in-universe, Lewis Zimmerman would never have been able to create the Doctor if not for Geordi accidentally creating a sentient Moriarty so Data could have fun. In retrospect, this does make Zimmerman’s arrogance that much weirder. After all, he has a lot of attitude for someone who owes his entire career to the two biggest book nerds in the galaxy!
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