As a fan of mysteries, my mind tends to clasp onto details that writers felt important enough to mention, but had no bearing on the plot up to this point.

The fact that the ship Tendi recovered was a “medical frigate” triggered such an alarm in my head. Yes the ship was able to gas the Blue Orions, but that’s hardly a feature unique to medical ships.

We Know:

• Tendi wants to come back to help raise her niece.
• Tendi wants to be a captain
• The finale is going to have some tear jerking moments
• This is the last season.

I think we’re being prepped for the main cast to go their separate ways, not unlike the DS9 finale.

We’ve had some foreshadowing with Freeman and Starbase 80. I wonder if the finale might end with her being posted there, as an admiral. Fix it up, that sort of thing, rather than an exile.

I really want the S5 set, and the S1 poster.

Not really sold on a full set at the moment.

If we go by the gap between Strange New Worlds beginning filming, and S1’s release, we could see Academy around November of next year.

I feel like Dennis the buffer buff from the Lower Decks S3 Premiere was intended to be O’Brien, (Transporter enthusiast, war veteran) but for whatever reason it didn’t pan out…

… which I honestly felt worked out for the best. Dennis was like my grandpa.

Dude, you’re missing out then. I was dubious going in, but Time Lord Wesley was the absolute delight I didn’t know I needed. Wheaton’s performance was probably leagues better than in TNG.

Rok would still be considered an adolescent, if the lore from Star Trek: New Frontier applies, from which her species was largely fleshed out.

At that age, she would be very gruff and moody, only after molting in her 30’s (I think?) would she regain her more bubbly personality.

Is that last one granting access to closed APIs?

That’s a double edged sword if I ever heard one.

Not impossible. Freeman was effectively the villain for S1 of Lower Decks, despite clearly being one of the good guys.

And Prodigy demonstrates how a personal vendetta can net some kids a nemesis, despite largely minding their own business.

This is a large reason why I dreaded Apple making iOS apps a priority for the Mac. Everything wrong about the mobile model becomes a first class citizen.

Yeah… there were a bunch of issues with the Virtual Boy.

A Sudo 3D experience on hardware that couldn’t handle 3D graphics, needed to be setup on a table, and a color palette that made the GameBoy seem high fidelity, never mind the red was horrid to stare at for too long.

It really was ahead of its time… in all the wrong ways.

I suspect, nothing less than Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft going all in on their next generation console would be enough to bring VR mainstream. As in, the VR being the primary way to play.

Of the three, I can’t see Sony or Microsoft doing it.

Maybe Nintendo, as doing weird stuff is kinda their thing, but even that’s doubtful.

They’re all beautiful shots, but something about them doesn’t leave me curious about their contexts. I wish I could articulate it better….

Like maybe it’s not enough of a tease?

Or maybe that you could’ve told me most of those shots were from S4 and I wouldn’t question it?

Or the lack of a contextual caption maybe?

Lethe. That’s who I was thinking of. Like Cornwell was Lethe before she became Lethe.

Wasn’t Cornwell based on a character from TOS, specifically with the same name as an episode title in DIS?

I always felt there was the intent to kill her off, (even before the S2 finale) only to bring her back as an incomplete being.

Maybe maybe not? At the very least least it tells us where Carl dropped Georgiou off.

I would recommend two pins.

One being the season one you’re proposing… and a second for a focal episode to discuss and cycle it out every two days.

So for the first two days we’d focus on the first episode (episodes? It’s a two parter) then the pin would be swapped with the next episode.

This would allow more in depth discussion while acknowledging binge watching.

McMahan has previously tried to garner support for a LD movie, live action at that, but there’s nothing to suggest that it’s been greenlit. If anything, we may have gotten LD S5 instead.

“There’s every intent of a new movie coming out in the very near future”

I’m reading this to mean that the S31 movie is coming out sometime this summer. Between Discovery and Lower Decks. After October or so doesn’t sound ‘very neat future’ to me.

I’m also not reading much into the ‘trying to figure out’ how to get the movies to the big screen. We know that S31 will be a P+ exclusive. Regardless of if it’s because of some preexisting contract with what was CBS All Access when the original project got green lit all those years ago or because S31’s lore leans too heavily on S1-3 Discovery to stand on its own, S31 was never going to be in major theaters.

The purported Picard, Kelvin 4, or even the pitched Lower Decks movies? Those are probably going to actually be in theaters.

Programming to feature Star Trek: Discovery’s fifth season premiere and Star Trek: Strange New World’s musical episode sing-along!

Wondercon is March 29th through the 31st.

TBH, it feels a little barebones…. But with Picard finished, Academy in very early development, Prodigy out of Paramount’s hands, and Lower Decks expected for late 2024… there really isn’t much else they can bring to the plate, aside from maybe the S31 movie.

I enjoyed this interview. We learn that there’s some things even he doesn’t know, and also questioned, some behind the scenes head cannoning, and enough bait to keep us questioning what’ll happen, but not enough to spoil anything of substance.