Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 could enter production before the end of the year. Paramount+ renewed Star Trek: Strange New Worlds before the WGA strike and SAG-AFTRA strikes ground production across the industry to a halt, and fans are eager to see how the second season's cliffhanger ending is resolved. Now that the unions and the studios have reached agreements, work is beginning to resume, which includes putting the next season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds into production. Collider reports to have learned from sources that filming on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 is expected to occur between December 2023 and June 2024.

Paramount+ has not confirmed an episode count or release window for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3. Since Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' first two seasons consisted of 10 episodes apiece, it seems likely that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 will have the same number of episodes. If the filming of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 does run through June 2024, fans may be looking at a year with the series. The soonest it would premiere is late 2024, with early 2025 being more likely.

When will Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Premiere?

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds came close to entering production before Hollywood's writers and actors went on strike. Producing director Chris Fisher revealed how close on an episode of TrekMovie.com's All Access podcast.

"I was going to direct the premiere episode... I had storyboarded pretty much the entire first episode," Fisher said on the podcast. "That's how close we were to starting shooting. We were one day away from flying the actors in. We were like, 'Do we fly the actors in?' That's when it went above my pay scale."

Fisher said that he and the show's other producers continued planning how to get production started quickly once the strikes ended. That planning should serve them well now.

"Myself and the producers up in Toronto, we kind of say, okay [the strikes end] at the end of this month, what would happen?" Fisher explained. "What would we need to do to then get going? And then once the strike passes that, then we set it for the next month. We're not that many weeks away from being able to start, absent all the other conflicts which may have arisen by now."

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2's Cliffhanger Ending

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2's season finale saw the Enterprise responding to a distress call from a colony outside of the United Federation of Planets' space that had come under Gorn attack. Starfleet recommends against getting involved since the colony is outside Federation borders, but the crisis is personal for Captain Pike (Anson Mount) because of the USS Kayuga's involvement. That ship is commanded by Captain Marie Batel (Melanie Scrofano), with whom Pike has a complicated romantic relationship.

The Gorn ship destroys the Kayuga before the Enterprise arrives. Pike takes a team of volunteers to search for survivors. Dr. M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun), Lieutenant La'an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong), and Lieutenant Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) join the away team that heads down to the colony, where they find Captain Batel, Montgomery Scott (Martin Quinn), and several other survivors. Unfortunately, only Pike, Batel, and Scotty make it back to the Enterprise as the Gorn beam up the rest of the survivors - including the away team - to their ship as prisoners and several additional Gorn ships arrive. The finale ends with the crew awaiting Pike's order to attack or retreat, a decision made more tense for fans who know that La'an and Erca aren't a part of the Enterprise crew by the time Captain Kirk takes over for Star Trek: The Original Series, for one reason or another.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is streaming now Paramount+. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 is also available as home media on Blu-ray, DVD, and 4k UHD, and Season 2 will soon also come to home media.

Even with the end of the writers' and actors' strikes, Star Trek star Chris Pine says there is nothing to to report as far as a fourth installment in the Kelvin Timeline series is concerned. Speaking with ComicBook.com ahead of the release of Wish, in which he plays a classic Disney villain, Pine says he hasn't seen any new scripts or heard anything new in a while. That's perhaps no surprise -- after all, Star Trek Beyond released in 2016, and despite a few false starts over the years, there hasn't been much to report since.

Still, it's something that fans are waiting to hear about. Will the timeline established in the 2009 movie continue on, or will it fade away, replaced by a new version -- or one of the handful that already exist on TV, with shows like Star Trek: Discovery on Paramount+?

"Not that I know [of]," Pine told ComicBook.com when quizzed about plans for a fourth installment. When we asked if he had seen any scripts, he said, "Of course not."

Pine played Captain James T. Kirk in a trilogy of films between 2009 and 2016. In Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond, Pine was joined by a crew that included Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, and Karl Urban. The movies represented the first time Star Trek had been rebooted since its original TV series in 1966, and even seemingly tied off the old continuity by bringing back Leonard Nimoy to bring a close to his version of Spock.

In the time since, Star Trek has embraced a multiverse approach, with new actors playing Kirk and Spock on TV, as well as a return to the original timeline with Picard, which explicitly takes place in a world where Star Trek: The Next Generation took place. Paramount has seemingly struggled with the franchise's big-screen future: occasionally, strange and exciting ideas like a stand-alone movie by Quentin Tarantino have been proposed, but when those fail to materialize, the studio seems keen to beam up the 2009 crew again.

Their last serious comment on the matter came in 2022, when the studio announced what sounded like pretty concrete plans. Unfortunately, they hadn't said anything to the cast beforehand, creating confusion and frustration not just with fans but also with the very actors they would have to convince to sign on.

Would you want to see at least one more outing for the Kelvin crew? Sound off in the comments below or hit up @russ.burlingame on Threads to talk all things geek.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 was a game-changing season for Beckett Mariner, voiced by Tawny Newsome. The season began with Mariner and her fellow lower deckers promoted to lieutenants junior grade. Despite her best efforts at self-sabotage, Mariner's commanding officer refused to demote her back to ensign, leading Mariner to commit escalating acts of unnecessary danger as she reckoned with trauma from her past, both fighting in the Dominion War and the death of her friend, Sito, while on a covert mission for Starfleet Intelligence. Ultimately, during a knife-rain delay in a life-or-death duel with a Klingon, Mariner unburdened herself and realized the best way to honor Sito's memory is to be the best Starfleet officer she can be.

It's a heck of an arc, and it should leave a lasting impression on Mariner through Star Trek: Lower Decks's future. ComicBook.com had the opportunity to speak to Newsome - who is also writing for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy -- about Mariner's big season, what the future holds, and that live-action crossover with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Before we get into Star Trek: Lower Decks, let's talk about the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds crossover. Technically, that wasn't the first time you got to dress up as Mariner since you did cosplay at Comic-Con. A significant difference between dressing up in costume at Comic-Con and getting the official Star Trek treatment? How vastly different were those experiences?

Tawny Newsome: It was vastly different. Bernadette Croft, the costumer for Strange New Worlds, is incredible. That whole team is incredible. That uniform felt so expensive. It was so perfectly tailored to my body. We filmed for a couple of weeks and then -you might be the first person I'm telling this, so I hope I don't get in trouble, but - we got COVID. Jack and I got COVID, and we had to shut down filming. I don't think we gave it to anyone else, thank God, but we had to shut down.

And so, then we came back a month later to finish filming it, and I was like, "That costume is not going to fit. I have not been doing the same activities in my life. There is no way." And when I put that costume on, it fit, I was like, "Oh my God, thank God. Thank God." I was so worried because it's down to the millimeter, it feels like. It was incredible.

Onto Star Trek: Lower Decks, when you signed up for the Star Trek comedy cartoon, were you expecting to have to go as deep and dramatic as that conversation with the Klingon during the knife rain? What was your reaction to reading that and realizing, "Oh, I've got to do that"?

I thought it was really well-earned. I think for a silly little 22-minute comedy that packs all the funny that it does, packs all the action, and all of the respect for canon that our show does, that's a lot. I don't think that we would've earned an emotional deep dive like that any earlier. I think we had to wait until Episode 9 Season 4, I really do.

I think that by doing that, we had so much energy and excitement and understanding of who Mariner is, and where she's come from, and why she's like this, it was like a little key that unlocked something huge. I saw it in the fandom. I saw people's reactions to be like, "This makes so much sense," that of course this would basically give her PTSD from the Dominion War and dealing with her friend dying. Of course, no wonder. She's not just acting out for no reason. This is a real reason.

I think that Mike and the writers played it really smart and really earned that moment. He told me he was going to do something like it, I think way back in Season 3. He told me his long game plan for it, and I was like, "Genius. This will satisfy a lot of the people who've been wondering why Mariner's acting the way she is." I was thrilled when I saw how the scene came together.

The way we recorded it, we did it a bit differently too. Mike and I read it together and we recorded it like it was a live-action scene. We weren't just doing repetition on each of the lines to get coverage. We were acting through the whole scene. It felt more similar to how you film live-action stuff.

When he told you about the scene, did he mention that it was going to tie into the original "Lower Decks" episode? I know you're a Star Trek fan from long before this. What did that mean to you, to see that line drawn?

Yeah, he did. I didn't know about the Locarno of it all, but he said, "My long game plan is to tie Lower Decks to the episode "Lower Decks," and make you friends with Sito, the ensign who died." And I was like, "That's genius. That's so smart. That will be so satisfying for the fans." And that's all I knew.

Then, to see that it was Locarno, I loved it because it's like Lower Decks is Wrath of Khan. Because I remember when I first saw Wrath of Khan, I was like, "That guy from that one episode is now the villain for this whole huge film that's become this critically acclaimed, heralded film?" And that's what Lower Decks did. We took that one guy who looks a lot like Tom Paris, for reasons we won't talk about, and we made him our big bad of Season 4. It's very fun.

You got to play Mariner on the other end of the spectrum too, after having that breakthrough, because you got that really sincere, inspiring speech to all the people stranded on that planet, the kind of speech you expect the captains on the show to give. Having played this character for so long, what did that moment feel like? Did it feel like, "Oh, she's arrived, she's fully formed now." Was it a little weird to play that sincerely after being on the other side of Mariner for so long?

No, it didn't feel weird because I feel like she's always had that in her. It's just her tactics weren't always as eloquent. For me, from a storytelling standpoint, it felt like the third beat of a very funny runner. That runner is, we've seen Ransom now twice throughout the season start his, "Though we come from different worlds," speech. I think we saw it first in episode 103, and then we saw it again in that episode where there was the volcano and the baby. He starts the cliche Kirk/Picard/Captain speech, "Though we come from different worlds..." And then we fade out and it's like a little Lower Decks-y joke.

Then I love that, in my mind, it's almost the third beat of that multi-series long runner is Mariner doing the real version of that speech. That just speaks to what type of show this is, that we can set up a long - and I don't know if that's what the writers were intending, but that's what I got from watching it - we can set up this long thing that's tongue-in-cheek, but then pay it off with something real and emotional. That's the magic of Lower Decks.

While also being a show where you can describe an episode as, "The one with the volcano and the baby." Which is its own sort of special, I would think.

But when you describe "serious Star Trek," you sound just as nuts. So, that's not unique to Lower Decks. The one where a Rumpelstiltskin chases Miles O'Brien around the space station? That's in an hour-long drama, my friend.

I don't know if you've seen scripts from Season 5 yet, I know Mike McMahan was deep into writing them, but how different do you think playing Mariner is going to feel after what she experienced in Season 4?

We're fully back. We just got back into the recording of 5. I've read the scripts, I've read almost all of them, and recorded I don't know how many, but we're in the middle somewhere, and it's great. I think the biggest thing that I've noticed is they've had to balance Mariner's need for pushing back against authority but doing it with the newfound responsibility of managing... What word do you use in the military? Managing ensigns.

Delegating? Organizing?

Commanding.

Commanding, I guess, yeah.

Leading missions. God, I would suck in the military. I'm like, "What do you do? You hold a rehearsal for your cadets, what do you do?"

She's got to balance that type of responsibility and that type of maturity with still her very Mariner-like tendencies of instigating a little bit of chaos, but also breaking rules that don't serve people in order to make Starfleet better. I think that has found some really nice fertile ground that we get to see Mariner behaving a little differently in season five.

Star Trek: Lower Decks is streaming now on Paramount+. Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 is currently in production.

Star Trek: Lower Decks star Tawny Newsome isn't leaving the USS Cerritos anytime soon. Newsome has played Beckett Mariner through four seasons of Star Trek's first animated comedy and is currently recording lines for Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5. Amid that, she's also joined the writers' room of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, the upcoming live-action Star Trek series focusing on a young adult audience. ComicBook.com spoke to Newsome recently and asked about how her work voicing Mariner in Lower Decks might influence her contributions to Starfleet Academy. Newsome took the opportunity to address some speculation she's seen about her commitment to Lower Decks now she's writing for Starfleet Academy.

"One thing I do want to say because I have seen fans speculate that I'm not going to be as available for Lower Decks: full cards on the table, Lower Decks takes priority," Newsome says. "That was my job first. That's my priority, and everyone involved with both shows is understanding of that. I'm not going anywhere on Lower Decks is what I want to say."

Tawny Newsome is bringing her lifelong Star Trek fandom to Starfleet Academy

Newsome went on to to say that she doesn't necessarily feel like her time working on Star Trek: Lower Decks is having a particular influence on what she's bringing to Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Rather, it's her lifelong love of Star Trek that's coloring her work.

"I don't know that Lower Decks itself is influencing my work [on Starfleet Academy], but just my lifelong fandom and my tendency to always gravitate towards a lot of the fun and funny in a lot of these storylines, that influences all of my work," she explained. "I'm always just pushing for fun and funny and silly and with a little bit of pathos that sneaks up on you and gives you some meaning where you didn't expect it."

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy's Writers' Room

Newsome sounds as if she's enjoying her time in the Starfleet Academy writers' room. She went on to praise showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau for the team they've assembled.

"I'm always just pushing for fun and fast and funny, and really holding onto canon," she says. "I love this world for a reason, so the canon's super important to me, and we've got a room full of people also doing that. We've got a room full of the loveliest people in the world. I keep shouting this: Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau, our two showrunners, really did a no-assholes rule for this room, and everyone is delightful. I think that the rest of Hollywood should take note because I don't know how the f*** they did that. It's great."

What is Star Trek: Starfleet Academy?

In early 2023, Paramount+ greenlit Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, which had been rumored since at least 2018, with plans to enter production in 2024 (though those plans were made before the strikes and may have since changed). Kurtzman and Landau are showrunners of the series, which will follow the coming of age of Starfleet cadets attending Starfleet Academy in San Francisco. They have not yet specified in what era of Star Trek the show is set. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is expected to debut on Paramount+ in 2025. Here's the synopsis for Starfleet Academy from Paramount+:

"Star Trek: Starfleet Academy will introduce us to a young group of cadets who come together to pursue a common dream of hope and optimism. Under the watchful and demanding eyes of their instructors, they will discover what it takes to become Starfleet officers as they navigate blossoming friendships, explosive rivalries, first loves and a new enemy that threatens both the Academy and the Federation itself."

Star Trek: Lower Decks is streaming now on Paramount+. Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 is currently in production.

Star Trek: Prodigy's first season is coming to Netflix on December 25, a Christmas gift for audiences who have been missing Trek on the platform since it left for Paramount+. While most of the Trek series and movies will remain at Paramount+, Prodigy's first season will stream on Netflix...and so will its second, with the show having been saved from cancellation by Netflix. As the biggest and most stable streamer in an unsteady market, Netflix has been able to dip into its cash reserves to license big IP from other studios -- even those that own their own, competing streaming services.

The Star Trek franchise used to stream exclusively on Netflix. The world's largest streaming subscription service, Netflix offered audiences a chance to get caught up on classic Trek series and films at a time when not everything was widely available for free and legally. That all changed when Paramount+ (then called CBS All Access) launched, and Trek both new and old began migrating there. Since Paramount and CBS Studios own Star Trek, it's a move that makes perfect sense, but for Netflix users, it has undoubtedly been a bit of a bummer.

Star Trek: Prodigy, which aired on Nickelodeon and Paramount+, was cancelled and pulled from the streaming platform earlier this year. Unlike other streaming projects that were shelved for tax credits, never to be seen again, Prodigy got a home media release and, shockingly, a second season -- albeit not at Paramount+ or Nick.

Netflix saved the show, announcing a second season, which will air in 2024. That will make it the first Star Trek show to stream anywhere other than Paramount+ in the U.S. since the long-running sci-fi franchise entered the streaming era with Star Trek: Discovery in 2017.

"Thank you to our incredible Star Trek: Prodigy fans, who championed not just a show, but a community that's always been connected by the belief that we build a better future together," said executive producer Alex Kurtzman and co-showrunners Dan and Kevin Hageman in a statement last month. "We set out to inspire you, but you inspired us. The team is still hard at work on the second season, and we can't wait to share it with the amazing fans around the world."

Here's the official synopsis for the series:

Star Trek: Prodigy sees Star Trek: Voyager's Kate Mulgrew returning as Kathryn Janeway, both as a hologram and as the flesh-and-blood original, now a Starfleet admiral. The voice cast also includes Brett Gray (Dal), Ella Purnell (Gwyn), Rylee Alazraqui (Rok-Tahk), Angus Imrie (Zero), Jason Mantzoukas (Jankom Pog), Dee Bradley Baker (Murf), John Noble (The Diviner) and Jimmi Simpson (Drednok). Also featured in the series are recurring voice cast members Daveed Diggs (Commander Tysess), Jameela Jamil (Ensign Asencia), Jason Alexander (Doctor Noum), Robert Beltran (Captain Chakotay), and Billy Campbell (Thadiun Okona).

You can pick up Star Trek: Prodigy on DVD and Blu-ray, as well as buying it digitally on platforms like Apple and Vudu. It will start streaming for free again when Netflix picks it up next month.

NERF's LMTD line of blasters based on iconic weapons from popular movies and video games has covered IPs like Star Wars, Aliens, and Halo in the past, but Star Trek fans are finally getting into the battle. Back In September of 2022 ComicBook.com revealed two new Star Trek NERF phaser blasters that were designed to celebrate the 35th anniversary of The Next Generation TV series were being released, and over a year later they are finally in stock and shipping here on Amazon priced at $119.99. The set includes a Type 3 and a Type 2 blaster, which are detailed below.

We'll start with the Star Trek: The Next Generation NERF LMTD Star Trek Starfleet Type 3 Phaser rifle, which is a motorized 1 shot blaster (internal 5-dart clip) that features light-up effects that simulate the look of being assimilated by the Borg in homage to the 1996 film Star Trek: First Contact. It also features phaser sounds and authentic First Contact movie sounds. Seven foam Nerf Elite darts are included.

As your secondary blaster, there's the Starfleet Type 2 Phaser, whcih fires 1 dart and has a pull-back priming handle. Amazingly enough, it's not sold separately! The Type 2 phaser will be included with the Type 3 phaser rifle.

Speaking of Star Trek: The Next Generation, fans can now order the Star Trek: The Picard Legacy Collection, a limited edition, individually numbered, 54-disc Blu-ray collection that includes every series and film featuring Jean-Luc Picard with over 35 hours of special features tossed in for good measure. If that wasn't enough Picard for you, the set will also include an exclusive edition of The Wisdom of Picard with new artwork and quotes, a one-of-a-kind deck of playing cards, a magnet sheet with Captain Picard's badges, and four custom Chateau Picard drink coasters.

The ultimate Picard Blu-ray box set is in-stock and shipping now here on Amazon and here at Walmart for $199.95. If you prefer, you can get the Star Trek: Picard - The Final Season Blu-ray here on Amazon for $26.23. A limited edition SteelBook version was sold out at most retailers, but it was still available here at Best Buy at the time of writing.

Working on Star Trek: Picard may have been a bit like coming home for makeup department head James MacKinnon. Though the series began focused solely on Patrick Stewart's Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: Picard Season 3 brought back the entire Star Trek: The Next Generation crew. Though uncredited, MacKinnon started his career as a makeup assistant working under Star Trek legend Michael Westmore on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Since then, he's gone on to work on the film Star Trek: First Contact and to do Emmy-winning makeup work for Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Short Treks, and Star Trek: Picard. Now his oldest and latest Star Trek work is collected in the Star Trek: Picard Legacy Collection, which is on sale now and features all seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, all four movies featuring the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast (including First Contact), and all three seasons of Star Trek: Picard.

ComicBook.com had the opportunity to speak to MacKinnon about seeing his own Star Trek legacy wrapped up in one box set. Here's what he shared with us:

You worked early in your career on The Next Generation, you then worked on Picard. We're doing this interview specifically for the Star Trek: Picard Legacy Collection set that collects all of that. How does it feel to see all of it in one big box set? Is there something special and sentimental for you about seeing all presented together?

James MacKinnon: Yeah, I mean, it's my career. It's my livelihood, it's my career, it's my passion as a makeup artist. Again, I have grown as a makeup artist too. I would say back in those early days, I wasn't that good. I was good, but I'm better now and as an artist, I've been doing this 35 years now and I still can't not learn more even though I'm retiring in seven years and I am trying to give these kids the knowledge that I know that Mike Westmore gave me back when I started. He's like my mentor, so that opportunity to work with him, now I get to do that with these kids and to be part of this legacy cast from when they were young kids and I was super, super young because they're a couple of years older than me, not by much. It's all smoke and mirrors here.

But yeah, it's a dream as an artist to be on a franchise that has shaped my life and taken me through a journey that I couldn't be more thankful to make these friends and that I can consider these actors friends because I've known them for so long.

I have to wonder, you talk about being better now than you were then, and thinking about the whole thing in one box, considering how much the industry has changed, how much of what you were learning on Next Generation are you still implementing and using on Picard? Or has the game changed so totally that it's a different world at this point?

It's a little bit of both. I think our technology has changed. As an artist, we're trying to keep ahead of the cameras and the TVs and all that stuff where you can see all this detail. I always say that 8K and 6K is for NASCAR and Animal Planet, not for women over 50. It's too much detail. But as an artist, I have to figure out how to make that work. I do the beauty makeups as well on the show besides the prosthetics with Silvina Knight. We have to figure out how to make those makeups, besides the prosthetics, so that you look at it and go, "Is that Mike in makeup, or is that Worf?" If you go look at him and go, "I see an edge" or "I see a weird thing, it took me away from that character." That's my job is to make sure that you are not taken away from a mistake that I made or that I was rushed or scheduled behind or whatever.

And as well as for Jeri Ryan to look as beautiful as possible because she's 27 now as well (27 is my go-to age). We just have to make sure everybody looks fantastic and that's our job. I always tell actors, "I'll worry about your face. You worry about your acting." Because they don't need to worry about what I'm watching. If I don't touch them up, it's because you look fantastic. I'm only in there because I need to do something really quick, but you worry about your lines and I'll worry about your face.

I have to wonder, you mentioned that the Next Gen crew, you've become friends, you've worked with them a long time, and that crew has something of a reputation for being pranksters, really fun, really goofy. Do any of them stand out in your mind for being the most fun when they're sitting in the makeup chair?

One day, we schedule things for it to be very smooth, and their job is not to make things smooth for me, so they change things around the next morning. We do a call sheet the previous day to know what we're going to shoot the next day, and in the morning they're like, "We're going to pull this other scene up. We need Worf, Brent, and Jonathan at the same time." And guess what? I do their makeups all three. I have literally all three actors sitting in three different chairs next to each other. They're ranting and raving and calling each other what they do, and I'm doing a quick thing and I go over to Mike and I go to him and I come back and I do some here and literally I'm touching three actors at the same time, and I still got them out, I don't know how, in the right amount of time. I don't know how I did it and I wouldn't let somebody else do their makeup because I know how to do it fast and quick, but perfect in that timeframe.

I don't want to do that, but that was a fun opportunity to have those three guys sitting in the chairs and touching them, literally too. But they got in the chair and they got to set at the same time. But they have their old habits and fun things that they do because they're friends outside of work as well. Everybody goes to dinner. Now I'm kind of part of that little thing. Me and John and Brent go to sushi every once in a while. It's fun to have that part of the family. I guess I'm the makeup legacy guy.

You submitted the episode "The Last Generation" for the Emmys and got that nomination. Congratulations, by the way. I assume that that episode was submitted because it had all the cool Borg stuff and not just because you had a cameo in that episode.

Maybe a little bit of both.

Well, for prosthetics, it's our biggest makeup, the Borgs and the Borg Queen, and everybody except for the Ferengi is basically in it. I wish he was in that episode. But yeah, you have to choose that. And for our beauty makeup category, which we got nominated, as well, we did the episode before that, and that has more cuts, wounds, and injuries that are not prosthetics as well as beauty makeup because the second that you put a three-dimensional piece on somebody, it splits from that category and goes into character. And unfortunately, two years ago, I could be in both categories, but we have some crazy new rule that you can't have the same people, which we're trying to get rid of because it's stupid because I do both, but somebody got a little pissed off that people were nominated more than they should be, I guess

Was that always clearly the one you were going to submit? Were there any other episodes that you considered as a close second or was "The Last Generation" always obviously the one?

I think Season 1 was hard to pick from because we did 1,500 makeups in Season 1, which is a lot, a crazy amount. But every episode had a ton of makeups every time. There was a lot of makeups in every episode. That was a hard one to do. I think I ended up doing "Absolute Candor," which was Jonathan's episode to direct, which had the rock guy and all that stuff. You tend to lean towards your big makeup-type things and the Borg Queen is iconic. It's a five-hour makeup. It's 14 prosthetics and oh, there was a question you asked earlier, those makeups are foam latex back in the day, silicone now, but on that Borg, her Giger-ish type piece is foam latex, because that would be way too much, she would be leaning forward and it'd probably sag off.

That combination of the past and the present does meld together. Even though foam is the past, it has its application still. It has its place, still now, and silicone has its place in certain situations too. It all depends on the prosthetic. If it's a fight scene, you don't want a silicone big 50-pound head on there. If they do a backflip, they're going to snap their neck. It's a lot of thought put into that kind of stuff. You've got to think about it. On Discovery, those heads weigh 15 pounds on a stunt person and we're like, "They can't do stunts. They got to be foam for their comfortability and their health too."

One might assume with the advances in technology it becomes easier and quicker to do this stuff. Were there any instances where that was not the case because maybe recreating some of those older style effects was established in TNG has become more difficult?

It's not easier now. I think it's actually harder. You had more availability with 35-millimeter fuzzy prints to get away with it back then because it's grainy. Now it's super crisp, so you do have to sweat it out. I sweat it out every day at work because I'm like, "Are you going to see that edge? Are you going to see that line? Are you going to see that eyebrow blocker? Are you going to see the ring or the lace from the eyebrows or any of it?" They open their mouth and there's flesh in there. How do you get rid of that flesh? You're always going in there dropping little drops of mouth stuff to change the mouth so you don't see the edge of the prosthetics.

Jason Zimmerman's amazing visual effects, as much as I love him, I want him to do the spaceships. I don't want him to touch my stuff because when you are up for an Emmy, you have to say, was this digitally enhanced or touched up? And I always like to say "no," which usually happens.

That's the other thing as an artist too, with visual effects, there's only a certain amount. We thought we were going to lose our jobs because it was all going to be monsters, and it was all going to be visual effects, and that went away, and it went back to people wanting practical and actors working with practical makeups. But there is a certain amount that we know we can't do and visual effects have to take over and there are things that Jason has to worry about, the ships, and not worry about, little teeny things where they want to shoot it later or they want to do it in visual effects because it's going to cost a million dollars instead of me doing it and it's going to cost $5,000, but they would rather spend the million later because they don't have to wait 10 minutes for me to do it on set. I guess that costs more.

I imagine that, having worked on Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, there were things that maybe you wanted to do that you didn't get the opportunity to do then. Did you have the opportunity to cross things off a Star Trek wish list while you were working on Picard?

Well, one was again having my mentor be my boss, Mike Westmore. Just learning from him and watching his department-head techniques, to take those, for me, to the next level too. And Mike is still today a good friend and we talk all the time. He wrote in his Makeup Man book -- I don't think this, but he wrote it -- I'm the next Mike Westmore after him, which I don't agree with, but I appreciate him writing that because there are a million other makeup artists that worked on these shows. I've been lucky enough to work on so many and be department heads and stuff, but there are other artists who have done just as much and have worked tirelessly as prosthetic people for Picard. I just got lucky and it was a nice path for me.

You mentioned earlier your work on Star Trek Discovery, which is different from Picard, visually, despite both being Star Trek shows coming out at the same time. As a makeup artist, a prosthetic artist, is there a definable aesthetic difference to you in working on the shows, on Michael Dorn versus the Klingons in Discovery for example, that you try to keep in the forefront of your mind?

It's about lighting. It's about your DP. It's the prosthetic company that makes the pieces. There's a company that made the stuff for Discovery, so they make things differently and it's a different process. Vincent Van Dyke for Picard, he makes it easy for us. You put on his prosthetics and you're like, "Oh, that's a piece of cake" because they're so beautifully sculpted and made, and the organicness to it is flawless. It actually is easier for me. A big old alien with overlapping pieces, in theory, is pretty simple because you're not hiding a lot, but putting prosthetics on Jeri, that's a woman's skin. The prosthetic has to be spot on, beautiful edges, so it floats and melts into her skin and you don't see that separation or that ring, which we call a blood donut or a prosthetic donut where it becomes this donut on the side of her face. How do you make that prosthetic where it's so thin? And then that has 3D prints on top of it, the metal part that pops into the prosthetic. How do you get that to be flawless into her skin? She's got a tap, so this is a movable area. So throughout 18 hours of shooting, is that going to buckle or wrinkle through the day? It's those things that you have to do and know as an artist to make that realistic and believable.

When talking about makeup and prosthetics, often the bigger pieces, like the Borg Queen, get most of the attention. Is there something, a more subtle technique, a more subtle piece of work that you did on Picard that you wish got a little bit more attention in addition to the big showy Borg Queen-style stuff?

I think that our Borg Queen from Season Two was much more like the Jeri thing. Those pieces on her, she he had a lot of freckles, so we incorporated her freckles into that makeup. Our Borg Queen [in Season 3] was gross and ugly, and this one [in Season 2] was beautiful. the skull sculpture is very similar to our Borg Queen in [Season 3] Episode 10. There's a combination of those two together as well. Those makeups came together, even though they're separate. There are queen ants in different hives, so there are different queens in this world. We were able to meld those two together, and as an artist to be able to do that soft, beautiful face with all the stuff coming in the back, that's fun to be able to achieve it without it. Our Borg Queen Episode 10 is not an easy makeup. It takes a long time. But those are a bunch of overlapping pieces where you can hide all the wrinkles or buckles, but you can't do that on a woman's face.

Looking back on Picard now through all three of the seasons, what stands out as the biggest challenge? What was the biggest trick you had to figure out, or hill you had to climb to get it just right?

His name is Terry. Terry, our showrunner -- and I am saying this in a nice way -- is a fan. He's a fantastic writer. He created a beautiful orchestra of episodes that flowed together and all this stuff was really, really thought out. The whole thing was amazing, and to be a part of that, that was the best and good part about it was to achieve the creations that he wanted throughout the season and orchestrate that.

The other episodes were, to me, Season 2, besides the Borg Queen, was a current-day cop TV show because we were riding around in cars so we didn't have a lot of makeups except for the Borg Queen. The first season was just a ton of makeups all the time, but not like Season 3, where there was Ferengi and there were special characters created by him, and that flow was amazing throughout the season. I think I answered it. That was the hardest and best process to create that well-designed method, I think.

You mentioned that you've got some years left before you retire. Is there anything still left on that Star Trek bucket list that you'd like to do before then?

I was up for the Star Trek movie that got canceled last year. I got hired and then fired in a week because it went away really quickly. I hope that comes back around for me because that would be fun to do. I just worked with Chris Pine on his directorial debut called Poolman last year, which was at Tiff. We flew out to see that at Tiff. That relationship is brewing on that end as well. It's a cool ass movie. I can't wait for people to see it. Yeah, I think a little Star Trek movie would be nice.

Star Trek: Picard The Legacy Collection is on sale now. You can order the ultimate Picard Blu-ray box set here on Amazon and here at Walmart

Star Trek: Picard has run its course with the show's third and final season streaming on Paramount+ earlier this year. While the Star Trek: Picard - Season Three Blu-ray has been available for a while, Star Trek: Picard The Legacy Collection, which is on sale now after a short delay, offers Star Trek fans the opportunity to own Jean-Luc Picard's entire Star Trek story in one high-end set that collection every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Picard, as well as the four Star Trek films featuring the TNG cast, plus bonus collectibles like a magnetic set of Picard's badges, Chateau Picard drink coasters, The Wisdom of Picard book, and more.

Production designer David Blass played a large role in crafting Jean-Luc Picard's final chapter. Working on Star Trek: Picard Seasons 2 and 3, Blass led the design team that created the look of the new U.S.S. Stargazer and U.S.S. Titan-A, the planet M'Talas Prime, the fearsome Shrike, and more. To coincide with the release of Star Trek: Picard The Legacy Collection, ComicBook.com had the opportunity to talk to Blass about his work modernizing the aesthetic of TNG-era Star Trek and what might remain on his Star Trek project wishlist. Here's what he shared with us:

I know you were a Star Trek fan before working on the show, and that you had hoped to get the opportunity to work on the franchise. How did this experience working on Star Trek compare to what you thought it might be like when you were coming up in the industry?

David Blass: Way more painful, and I think Terry Matalas, the showrunner, would agree with me. You have this idea that you're going to achieve this goal, and it's going to be so much fun because you're finally doing what you set out to do and whatever. And I remember going up to him, he's shooting on the bridge of the Enterprise-D with the cast and everything, and our heads are exploding because you're in the moment and you're like, "There's nothing worse than achieving your lifetime goal of doing something and then failing miserably at it."

It's like, all of a sudden, the pressure of the world, we're like, "Oh, okay, great, create a brand-new starship, make it look cool." And so, again, you're like, "But what if it sucks? What if everyone hates it?" It's saying, "What if?" and then getting into it, and then realizing the pressure to do it and to deal with everything that the other designers throughout history had done with it. It's like, "Oh, you want to do a planet? You have no money. You want to do this great ship? We have no money." And then you see that the reasons for the decisions that they made for certain things were because "We have no time. We have no money. This is what you got. Deal with it, dude."

You got to do a lot of exciting stuff on Star Trek: Picard. Is there anything left on Star Trek wishlist that you didn't get to do that you'd still like a shot at?

I wanted to do more. I wanted to do the engine room on the ship, something like that, or I think I would have loved to do more Klingons and to have Michael Dorn there in full regalia as Worf. But I'm a huge fan of the Star Trek novel The Final Reflection, which is all Klingon-based, and I would have loved to design a Klingon vessel and to design one that is iconic, whether it's a Bird-of-Prey or a classic D7 cruiser or something like that. I would have loved to have done that.

But again, in a perfect world, you look back at The Next Generation, and they had seven seasons of 20-something episodes. I had two seasons of 10 episodes. It's not even one full season of what they had to do and the room that they had to play with and everything. And also, Season 2 was so different from Season 1, and Season 2 is so different from Season 3. It wasn't one of these things that get carried over from one thing or another.

A big part of these seasons of Picard was modernizing the look, starting with that Next Gen aesthetic and modernizing it. What did it mean for you to modernize that? Was there storytelling going on in your head about how that culture has changed? Or was it just starting with what the show needed and somebody else can fill in the blanks? What was that process like?

We started with the modernizing it. That's a tough word to play with because you run into the idea of modernizing it, to upgrade it to what we could do today. So things like, we have the transparent OLED screens because they look like holograms, but they're actually a real functioning piece of glass that has graphics on it. You're like, "How cool is that, and to use that technology?" So, for me, that's kind of modernizing the set.

But what I didn't want to do was to make it look like a different version of just, "Hey, I'm going to redo Star Trek and make it look like whatever I think will be new and cool for our modern audience." So, specifically for Season 3, we looked at Voyager, which was Voyager, and kind of the Enterprise-E, and we said, "Okay, this is kind of our guide of what Star Trek looks like, and we want to just evolve it a little bit." It's like, "What does an elevator look like today? What did it look like 20 years ago?" Same thing. That's why turbolift should look the way turbolift should look like.

We actually included, in the hallways, the big octagon door. "Why does that door look the way it does?" Because in the Star Trek future, it made sense. A door is still a door. A door 20 years ago looks like a door today. That's what a door looks like. We went with that idea of trying to evolve it. We studied those sets and just said, "We're not here to put our stamp on things. We're here to make it look like Star Trek: The Next Generation."

Something I saw in one of the featurettes was you talking about "space crate," that ubiquitous background material. That's one of those things that never occurred to me but now that you've pointed it out, it's like a bell going off in my mind. Were there any other cool little details that you feel like only a production designer or somebody truly obsessive about Star Trek would notice, that you latched onto and tried to work further into Picard, that maybe other people still haven't picked up on?

Space crate was a fun thing, and I can just use that as an idea for, "Okay, we don't have enough money to do things. We got to find cool textures and ways to do things." And this is how they solve that problem in Next Generation, and you'll see it if you go back and watch anything in the '90s. It was a common thing, because there was this one prop house that had a ton of it, and you would just go to the prop house and rent it, and we used it in Roger Corman movies and everything. Everyone used it at the time. And then the prop house went out of business, and with it, the stuff got sold and whatever.

When we started Season 2, I'm like, "Okay, find me some of that for the Stargazer," and no one could find it, because I went with the prop house. "No. No one has it." I'm like, "Okay, but it was something before it was a prop. What was it?" And everyone's like, "Oh, it's custom this and that." And then it wasn't until Season 2 that Liz Kloczkowski, I gave her the same mission, and she came back a day later, and she's like, "Oh, it's freezer spacers. They use it in freezer pallets." I'm like, "Can we still get it?" And then she's like, "Yeah, they're only 60 bucks a piece." I'm like, "Buy them all. We'll use them."

And then everyone's like, "Okay, but we use this in the last set." I go, "We're going to use it in every set." And then people just got it. They're like, "You stick it on the wall, you stick it on the ceiling, you stick it on the floor, you just keep using it, and it gives the look of Star Trek." And once you establish that, "Oh, that's a thing," everyone buys into it. And then especially now that audiences have seen it, they're like, "Oh, okay, yeah." And then the cinematographers were like, "Wow, it works really good with light." But the first time we brought it up, they're like, "Oh, we're going to do a camera test because we don't know how this is going to look on camera." And I go, "Have you seen this show called Star Trek?" And they would cut up, and they'd make tables out of it, and they did tons of stuff. But we took that and, again, used that for everything.

We used the graded plexiglass in sickbay and the transporter room, that type of thing. I would have loved to have done an updated holodeck. We had designs at one point where we were going to do that, the holodeck-off version with the grid lights and everything like that. That was going to be a fun version, but we never got around to it.

You've built on Star Trek: The Next Generation as a base, but then you've added things wholesale. The Shrike is this brand-new ship design. Did you find it was more of a challenge to add something wholesale to that Star Trek tapestry? Or was it more challenging to try to extrapolate from what was already there, if that makes sense?

I think equal, because the Shrike was a challenge. Someone said, "Oh, we did like 80 versions." I go, "No, we did one version of the Shrike. We just did 79 versions that weren't the Shrike." And that was the thing. Terry knew what he wanted, and a lot of times, it's just that we want the vibe. And you look at something like the Bird-of-Prey, and that just comes on the screen, and you're like, "Damn, look at that. That's cool. That's cool."

It's the idea of creating something, and we really worked hard on that, but I think the idea of doing that, and then also, the Stargazer, which was a completely brand-new design and the most updated look. The Titan in Season 3 really owes a lot to the Stargazer because the Stargazer had been defined, it set the tone, and that was actually harder because the idea of going, okay, we can do a saucer again. We don't have to do, "Which version of nostalgia and tone do we go with?"

We went with kind of the idea of the Dodge Charger, the new version. You look at it, it looks like the 1960s Dodge Charger, but it's upgraded. We went with that classic look. I think what Andy Probert and Herman Zimmerman did with the Enterprise-D is phenomenal. It's just a completely different thing, and it's exactly what it needed to be and everything. We just were in a little bit of a different world because we were battling all the different versions of what it could be, so learning what it should be was hard.

We never find out where the Shrike came from, do we? Do you know the ship's origin story within the universe?

We went with the idea that if you're going to go rob a bank, you don't use your own car. "Where did the Shrike come from?" It came from the people in the places and whatever. They got the ship, but it's not going to be a Dominion ship because then it's telling that, "Oh, this is who's doing all the sketchy stuff." It was the idea that they had the ship that they had bought, stolen, ordered, whatever, from the bad-guy, ships-are-us depot. That was the thing. But again, I think we had six or seven different designers working on that design, and it was a collaboration of everyone coming together to finally make that, and bring that to life.

Modern sci-fi shows and movies look much different than they did back a couple of decades ago. A lot of that, I think, has to do with that there's now decades worth of sci-fi that you can look back on. Did anything outside of Star Trek stand out in your mind as being an influence on your approach to Star Trek: Picard? For example, to me, M'Talas Prime has a little Blade Runner-y look. I don't know if that's intentional or not.

Oh, yeah, 100%. When we looked at the M'Talas Prime, our directing producer, Doug [Aarniokoski], had said there was a video clip on YouTube of the pitch that they had done for the new Blade Runner, and it's Dave Bautista in these little teeny alleyways with neon. We had also done, in Season 2 of Picard, this Okinawa alley when we were in the bad alt universe when we introduced Elnor and Raffi, and they're in this very similar Blade Runner-y type of world. And we did that whole street, and we did that whole scene, and everyone was just blown away by how cool it was, and it was for one teeny tiny scene. So we did this amazing set and it's like, "Wow, that was a waste of all this cool stuff." And then when we came back for Season 3, Terry was like, "Yeah, do that, but just bigger." And that was kind of the idea of it.

But I think it's impossible nowadays to run away from the dystopian vision that Blade Runner has given us. I think Altered Carbon does a nice version of it, and then a lot of different people do different things. It's a cost-effective way to do alien, cool, futurey stuff without doing slick and shiny because slick and shiny costs a lot of money. The dystopian, "Oh, put some neon in the background and put some smoke in there" is a lot more cost-effective to do.

Watching some of the commentary tracks and the special features and stuff, it comes up a few times that you and your team really littered those sets and those backgrounds with little touches, and some of them don't even necessarily get a big shot where they come through on-screen.Iis there something that you were proud of in one of those sets that didn't necessarily get a lot of screen time or a lot of focus that you wish had a bigger moment to shine?

Yeah, I would say the Picard Chateau, his library. Tim Stepeck, who was the decorator in Season 2, just did a phenomenal job layering it. There was like 82,000 layers of Picard's history in there. In Season 1, Picard goes to the archives to pull up his stuff, and he walks into this darkened, very empty room where he has all his memorabilia. It really bothered me when I saw that. I was like, "Okay, I get it from the storyteller's thing," but Picard has always been that guy where he has his history around him, and he has the tapestry and the flute, and it's all on his desk. And I said, "He would have that stuff at his house." I mean, why wouldn't you? Why would I have to go to someplace and sign into my thing to see the Picard Day banner?

It worked perfectly for the storytelling, but I said, "Well, let's bring all that stuff, all the gold models and the things back to his house." And the library was actually two stories. There was a spiral staircase that went up to a whole upper deck that was completely decked out with more stuff, and every bookshelf had details and things from his past and all this stuff, and we barely saw it because there were so many different timeframes. We start out in the Prime timeline with Picard and Laris, and they're having this conversation and looking for a book, and then, all of a sudden, we're onto an alternate version of Picard with Q and the skulls and things. Then I'm like, "Oh, so we never saw the old upper stairs. We never saw this. We never saw the kitchen. We never saw the hallway." And everything was totally detailed out. It was a phenomenal set.

Star Trek: Picard The Legacy Collection is on sale now. You can order the ultimate Picard Blu-ray box set here on Amazon and here at Walmart

Paramount Home Media has released the Star Trek: The Picard Legacy Collection, a limited edition, individually numbered, 54-disc Blu-ray collection that includes every series and film featuring Jean-Luc Picard with over 35 hours of special features tossed in for good measure. If that wasn't enough Picard for you, the set will also include an exclusive edition of The Wisdom of Picard with new artwork and quotes, a one-of-a-kind deck of playing cards, a magnet sheet with Captain Picard's badges, and four custom Chateau Picard drink coasters.

The ultimate Picard Blu-ray box set is in-stock and shipping now here on Amazon and here at Walmart for $199.95. If you prefer, you can get the Star Trek: Picard - The Final Season Blu-ray here on Amazon for $26.23. A limited edition SteelBook version was sold out at most retailers, but it was still available here at Best Buy at the time of writing. While you're at it, make sure to check out our interviews with Star Trek: Picard production designer Dave Blass and makeup artist James MacKinnon regarding their work on Star Trek as it relates to the new Blu-ray box set.

Star Trek: The Picard Legacy Collection Features:

• 35 hours of bonus features
• Premium Packaging Containing 54 Blu-ray Discs and Exclusive Collectables
• All Series and Films Featuring Captain Jean-Luc Picard
• Star Trek: The Next Generation - Seasons 1-7
• Star Trek: Picard - Seasons 1-3
• Star Trek: Generations
• Star Trek: First Contact
• Star Trek: Nemesis
• Star Trek: Insurrection
• Exclusive Collectables:
• Magnetic Captain Picard Badges
• 4 Custom Chateau Picard Drink Coasters
• Custom Deck of Playing Cards
• Exclusive Version of The Wisdom of Picard, The Wisdom of Picard: The Legacy Collection Edition
• Featuring New Cover Art
• Including quotes from the latest seasons of Star Trek: Picard

Star Trek: Picard - The Final Season Special Features:

• The Gang's All Here - Featurette (Exclusive)
• The Making of the Last Generation - Featurette (Exclusive)
• Audio Commentary on select episodes (Exclusive)
• Deleted Scenes (Exclusive)
• Gag Reel (Exclusive)
• Rebuilding the Enterprise-D - Featurette
• Villainous Vadic - Featurette
• Picard: The Final Season Q&A

One of the Star Trek franchise's most unusual journeys has another interesting turn: Star Trek: Prodigy has been nominated for an Emmy Award. The Star Trek brand page took to social media to congratulate the team behind the cancelled series for their Children's & Family Emmy Award nomination for Sound Mixing and Sound Editing for an Animated Program today. The series, which aired on Nickelodeon and Paramount+, was cancelled and pulled from the streaming platform earlier this year. Still, unlike other streaming projects that were shelved for tax credits, never to be seen again, Prodigy got a home media release. And, shockingly, a second season -- albeit not at Paramount+.

Enthusiasm for the series continued, resulting in a second season that's heading to Netflix in 2024. That will make it the first new Star Trek show to stream anywhere other than Paramount+ (or CBS All Access, its previous branding) in a market where Paramount+ has been available since the long-running sci-fi franchise entered the streaming era with Star Trek: Discovery in 2017.

"Thank you to our incredible Star Trek: Prodigy fans, who championed not just a show, but a community that's always been connected by the belief that we build a better future together," said executive producer Alex Kurtzman and co-showrunners Dan and Kevin Hageman in a statement last month. "We set out to inspire you, but you inspired us. The team is still hard at work on the second season, and we can't wait to share it with the amazing fans around the world."

You can see the "congratulations" post below.

Congratulations to the #StarTrekProdigy crew on their Children's & Family Emmy Award nomination for Sound Mixing and Sound Editing for an Animated Program! ? #StarTrek pic.twitter.com/Mj8Ta5MSNY

-- Star Trek (@StarTrek) November 3, 2023

Here's the official synopsis for the series:

Star Trek: Prodigy sees Star Trek: Voyager's Kate Mulgrew returning as Kathryn Janeway, both as a hologram and as the flesh-and-blood original, now a Starfleet admiral. The voice cast also includes Brett Gray (Dal), Ella Purnell (Gwyn), Rylee Alazraqui (Rok-Tahk), Angus Imrie (Zero), Jason Mantzoukas (Jankom Pog), Dee Bradley Baker (Murf), John Noble (The Diviner) and Jimmi Simpson (Drednok). Also featured in the series are recurring voice cast members Daveed Diggs (Commander Tysess), Jameela Jamil (Ensign Asencia), Jason Alexander (Doctor Noum), Robert Beltran (Captain Chakotay), and Billy Campbell (Thadiun Okona).

You can pick up Star Trek: Prodigy on DVD and Blu-ray, as well as buying it digitally on platforms like Apple and Vudu. The series isn't streaming for free anywhere (although it seems inevitable that it will head to Netflix soon).

Star Trek: Lower Decks wrapped its fourth season on Thursday with an episode that brought back some familiar characters and pushed the beloved series protagonists serving on the lower decks of the U.S.S. Cerritos into new places. The episode also featured some cinematic action and a grander tone appropriate for a finale and perhaps more. In the past, the biggest Star Trek shows jumped from television to film. Star Trek: The Original Series did it, with Star Trek: The Next Generation doing the same. Now Paramount+ is plotting new straight-to-streaming Star Trek movies, the first being Star Trek: Section 31 with Michelle Yeoh. ComicBook.com asked Star Trek: Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan if he had an idea for what a Star Trek: Lower Decks movie could look like. It turns out that he has multiple ideas spanning animation and live-action, as well as characters beyond those in Lower Decks.

"I have an idea for an animated Lower Decks movie," McMahan tells ComicBook.com. "I have ideas for live-action Lower Decks movies. And I have ideas for brand new, totally original Star Trek movies that don't tie into anything we've seen before. I think Star Trek is an amazing genre to think about. I love the idea of not micro but small-budget Star Trek movies, where you get the bigness of a movie set, but you get to tell a Star Trek story that drives across a moment instead of a thing that has to be dealt with, like a Khan."

He continues, "I think there are cool ways to make Star Trek movies that aren't quite like the Marvel system and aren't quite like DC or the superheroes in general, but I would love a world where there's going to be Star Trek movies all the time, and when you go, you don't know which crew it's going to be about or if it's going to be a comedy or suspense or a drama. I loved Captain America: The Winter Soldier, that it went from the first one [Captain America: The First Avenger] being a period piece superhero movie to being a spy thriller. I think there are ways to make Star Trek movies like that so that when you go, you don't know what you're going to get, you just know that you trust seeing that Starfleet Delta and that you're going to get a cool movie within that genre."

One might think that Paramount+'s first Star Trek movie project being about Section 31, a morally gray spy unit working largely independently of Starfleet's chain of command, is a step in that direction. McMahan would agree.

"Yes, and I am a big fan of Craig [Sweeny, writer] and everybody with Section 31," McMahan says. "I think it's going to be awesome. And I'm Mr. More when it comes to Star Trek. I want to see Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, which sounds awesome. I want to see more Prodigy. I want to see more movies. More, more and more like, let's go."

ComicBook.com also spoke to McMahan more in-depth about the Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 finale and what it means for the show's future. Here's what he had to say:

Star Trek: Lower Decks Creator Mike McMahan on the Season 4 finale

ComicBook.com: At what point did Mariner's backstory firm up in your mind? Was this always the plan? Because it feels like an explanation for her attitude towards taking responsibility in Starfleet could have gone several different ways. How did you end up landing here?

Mike McMahan: I knew for a long time that Mariner was affected by her time in the Dominion War. There's a lot of earlier hints about that in the series. I always wanted to tie her to that original "Lower Decks" foursome, because it fits into the timeline. I held back for a really long time partially because part of me doesn't want to tell people why Mariner or any character is behaving the way they are. I just think there's a chance that you're jumping the shark at that, and I also wasn't sure if tying Mariner directly to a character from a previous episode would be too distracting or too specific. And oftentimes, I'm too cautious with stuff like, "When can I bring T'Lyn in?" or "When can I promote them?" And I'm really, really careful.

This is such an important show to me, and this is such an important franchise to me, that I tend to maybe be too careful. Part of it is I want people to love watching Lower Decks. I don't want to make people feel like they don't know what's going on. A lot of the time, with the legacy stuff, I am waiting until I can find a way where if somebody has never seen the stuff I'm referring to, it doesn't matter because they still get it. Locarno is a bad guy from the past, Sito was an old friend, things that if you know it all, you'll know it. If you don't know it all, it's fine, or maybe it'll inspire you to go watch more Star Trek, which is even better.

But this season being about Mariner gets promoted, but Ransom won't let her get demoted -- there's that episode earlier on where he is like, "I know what you're up to. I'm going to support you unconditionally" -- that creates Mariner's story arc this season, that she can't do the pressure release that she usually does. And then when she's in that cave with that Klingon in a fight-to-the-death rain delay and she knows she can talk about stuff that will never get out because Ma'ah will die or she will die, it's kind of a win-win for her. That's the first time she's able to communicate honestly about something because she is in a space, weirdly a Klingon therapeutic space, where she can speak about it. It's so painful. That felt earned to me. That felt like a thing where I'm like, "This feels honest, this feels good," and that's when I let myself do that stuff.

I understand that it's not the same thing as what you're talking about, but it's also a little funny to hear you say you're too careful about things after giving us the "Naked Time" orgy scene a couple of seasons ago. I get it, but it's funny.

Well, it's funny too because it's a two-second thing that makes total sense within the world of the show. And I don't think of Star Trek as being a Puritan thing. I think of Star Trek as being human. It's funny. I wasn't the one who put that kind of stuff into Star Trek. But also at the same time, I want to make a show that makes you laugh. That makes you go, "God, that was fun." Or like, "Oh, I've never seen that before." I'm incredibly careful about canon stuff, and I'm a little less careful about, "Is this going to make you laugh out loud? Will this make you love this? Is this something you haven't seen in Star Trek before?" It doesn't have to be a history book. This is a whole different genre for Star Trek. And I am dancing between all the classic Trek and something totally new for Trek, and it just has to be a funny show on its own.

This finale ends up forming this third chapter of what is now a trilogy of episodes that started with "The First Duty" and then the original "Lower Decks" episode. Now we have this "Locarno trilogy" or whatever fans might want to call it. Was that on your mind, this larger franchise meta-story, or was your focus entirely on your characters?

No, I mean, it's a Nicholas Meyer Wrath of Khan. I was trying to make it very clear that Star Trek does this really well, and it did it once with features after an episode hadn't aired for a really long time. Now this is what Star Trek can do animated. You see that people a lot of the time are like, "Oh, animation is good for Star Trek because you can see more squiggly arms on aliens, or go to more places." But another power of it is it is this kind of magic of doing what Star Trek does best and saying that these one-off characters could, possibly, show up again.

You mentioned that Mariner goes through a lot this season. She comes to terms with a lot of things. I know you are deep into Star Trek: Lower Decks Season Five at this point. I know you probably don't want to say too much, but how different should fans expect her to be going forward now that she's resolved a lot of things?

Mariner hasn't resolved anything, but she's been unburdened by them. I think it's important to say that mental health isn't something you solve, it's something that you take care of and that you are aware of, and that communication and there not being a stigma about it and things that you carry don't necessarily have to be heavy. There is a possibility to diffuse them. Going forward, Mariner is Mariner. Mariner is a funny, loving, chaos-creating, sci-fi badass, who is just a little less burdened by the things that she was carrying before. I find, because I'm done writing season five, the Mariner in Season 5 is the Mariner that I love from Seasons 1 through 4, just happier.

As you said, this episode is very Wrath of Khan, including the ships hiding in the clouds sequence. Considering you had done those "Crisis Point" episodes that lovingly made fun of the Star Trek movies, was there any worry going into this about, "How do we get the audience to take us seriously now after we had so much fun taking the piss out of the Star Trek movies?"

No, because even when we're taking the piss out of the Star Trek movies, it's clear we love it and we're doing a cool movie. A lot of it is the framing and the stakes and the music a lot of the time. Something Lower Decks does well in my opinion is makes you laugh and then immediately pivot to real stakes. That's a skill of ours that is partially the performances, the editing, the music, but I'm never worried we're not going to make a moment land because my directors and everybody, they know the score, they know what we're up to and we can pivot like that.

A lot of this episode is about Mariner, but Boimler also gets his big moment in this episode when he gets to captain for the first time, which is interesting because, in one of the earlier interviews I did with Jack Quaid, I asked him about Boimler potentially becoming Captain. He's said something like, "I know he wants it, but I don't know if he actually wants it." Is this a reaffirmation that maybe he really does want it and will be good at it? What made this the right time and what does it mean for him now?

What spoke to me about that moment was that it ties directly to that Redshirts episode in a previous season where, in this moment, Boimler was trusted by Ransom and the Captain to get this done. And what I think is interesting is, people love that they see him in the chair because they believe in Boimler too. But what being a Captain is about isn't about sitting in a chair in the middle of a bridge during a high-stakes moment. Freeman is being the captain there. Freeman is putting herself in danger, flying through a fireball. Boimler is being trusted and he's in that chair, and it's great. But being a captain is more than just that moment, and moving forward, Boimler's now had a taste of the epic part of being a Captain, but you have to earn being a Captain in a lot of different ways, and the thrill of that does not take him across the finish line yet with where we're going.

I have time for one more question. Since I didn't get a chance to ask you about this towards the beginning of the season. I'm going to roll it back to the premiere to have you weigh in on one of Star Trek's biggest controversies: Did Janeway do Tuvix wrong?

Janeway didn't only do Tuvix right, she also did us right. Although, I don't know if she did him right, but look, listen, she's not in the Alpha Quadrant. She's surviving, and she's doing what she has to with the resources that she has. Now, did Tuvix beg for his life, and she still murdered him? Yeah, that was pretty rough. But you know what, dude? Did anybody, did any of us really want more Tuvix? I was relieved. I did not want to watch another five seasons of Tuvix. I didn't want to lose Tuvok for that. I think people are still allowed to argue about the ethics of Janeway's decision, which is fine. Sometimes things are not black and white. Sometimes you're allowed to do the right thing, but it not be good. Sometimes you can do everything right and still not win. But ultimately, I'm glad we didn't have to watch Tuvix again. What a sigh of relief that he wasn't in the next episode, Tuvixing it up.

That is the 100% correct answer. Thank you.

[Laughs] Of course.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 Cast

Star Trek: Lower Decks stars "lower decks" crewmembers of the U.S.S. Cerritos Ensign Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), Ensign Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid), Ensign Tendi (No?l Wells), and Ensign Rutherford (Eugene Cordero). Provisional Ensign T'Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz) joined the crew in Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 3. The U.S.S. Cerritos' bridge crew includes Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis), Commander Jack Ransom (Jerry O'Connell), Lieutenant Shaxs (Fred Tatasciore), and Doctor T'Ana, (Gillian Vigman).

Mike McMahan (Rick and Morty, Solar Opposites) created Star Trek: Lower Decks. In Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4, "an unknown force is destroying starships and threatening galactic peace. Luckily, the crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos isn't important enough for stuff like that! Instead, Ensigns Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, Rutherford, and Provisional Ensign T'Lyn are keeping up with their Starfleet duties, avoiding malevolent computers and getting stuck in a couple caves - all while encountering new and classic aliens along the way."

How to watch Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4

CBS' Eye Animation Productions, Secret Hideout, and Roddenberry Entertainment produced Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4. Secret Hideout's Alex Kurtzman, Roddenberry Entertainment's Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth, and Katie Krentz (219 Productions) are executive producers with showrunner Mike McMahan. Aaron Baiers (Secret Hideout) also serves as an executive producer. Titmouse (Big Mouth) serves as the animation studio for the series.

Star Trek: Lower Decks streams exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. and Latin America. In Canada, Star Trek: Lower Decks airs on Bell Media's CTV Sci-Fi Channel. Star Trek: Lower Decks will also be available to stream on Paramount+ in the UK, Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and South Korea later this year.

Nick Locarno was a Starfleet cadet who led Nova Squadron, a distinguished group of pilots at Starfleet Academy. Locarno wanted to finish his time at Starfleet Academy with a bang and decided he'd accomplish that by having Nova Squadron perform a banned flight maneuver during the commencement ceremony. Wesley was at the academy and a member of the academy at the time, and he went along with the plan. The flashback in Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4's finale shows how Locarno managed to convince Wesley to go along with the idea by pushing at Wesley's desire to earn Captain Jean-Luc Picard's approval. That makes it all the more ironic that Wesley lying about the incident after one of the Nova Squadron pilots died while attempting the maneuver earned him the sternest talking to he'd ever received from Picard.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Is Now Even More a Star Trek: The Next Generation Sequel Than Ever

The Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 finale even more firmly ties Star Trek: Lower Decks to Star Trek: The Next Generation. Lower Decks has always been a successor to Next Generation and its spinoffs, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, both in terms of chronological Star Trek timeline and in spirit. However, "Old Friends, New Planets" feels like the third chapter of a trilogy with "The First Duty" and the original TNG "Lower Decks" episode.

That's because of the relationship between Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) and Sito Jaxa (Shannon Fill, who also returns as a special guest star in this episode of Lower Decks). Sito was also a member of the Nova Squadron during "The First Duty." The character returned in the Next Generation episode "Lower Decks," the namesake and inspiration for Star Trek: Lower Decks, as an ensign serving aboard the Enterprise. As a Bajoran, Sito was chosen for an undercover mission to return a Cardassian defector to Cardassian territory. She never returned and has been presumed dead.

Mariner, a first-year at Starfleet Academy at the time of the Nova Squadron incident, considered Sito a friend and looked up to her as a mentor, which viewers get a glimpse of in this week's flashback. The past two Star Trek: Lower Decks episodes reveal that Sito's loss and the trauma of serving during the Dominion War made Mariner fear command, associating it with having to order her friends to their deaths, as Sito was ordered to hers. A heart-to-heart with a Klingon in last week's episode set her straight and made her realize that she owes it to Sito to live up to her memory and her potential. She's willing and eager to sabotage Locarno's grand designs, and she does.

With Season 4 of Star Trek: Lower Decks coming to an end today with the episode "Old Friends, New Planets", Funko has finally launched the first wave of Pop figures inspired by the animated series. The wave includes Pops of Badgey, Beckett, Bradward Boilmer, D'Vana Tendi, and Samanthan Rutherford, and pre-orders can be found via the links below.

• Star Trek Lower Decks - Badgey - See at Entertainment Earth
• Star Trek Lower Decks - Beckett Mariner - See at Entertainment Earth
• Star Trek Lower Decks - Bradward - See at Entertainment Earth
• Star Trek Lower Decks - D'Vana - See at Entertainment Earth
• Star Trek Lower Decks - Samanthan - See at Entertainment Earth
• See Star Trek Lower Deck Funko Pops on Amazon

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 Cast

Star Trek: Lower Decks stars "lower decks" crewmembers of the U.S.S. Cerritos Ensign Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), Ensign Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid), Ensign Tendi (No?l Wells), and Ensign Rutherford (Eugene Cordero). Provisional Ensign T'Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz) joined the crew in Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 3. The U.S.S. Cerritos' bridge crew includes Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis), Commander Jack Ransom (Jerry O'Connell), Lieutenant Shaxs (Fred Tatasciore), and Doctor T'Ana, (Gillian Vigman).

Mike McMahan (Rick and Morty, Solar Opposites) created Star Trek: Lower Decks. In Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4, "an unknown force is destroying starships and threatening galactic peace. Luckily, the crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos isn't important enough for stuff like that! Instead, Ensigns Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, Rutherford, and Provisional Ensign T'Lyn are keeping up with their Starfleet duties, avoiding malevolent computers and getting stuck in a couple caves - all while encountering new and classic aliens along the way."

How to watch Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4

CBS' Eye Animation Productions, Secret Hideout, and Roddenberry Entertainment produced Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4. Secret Hideout's Alex Kurtzman, Roddenberry Entertainment's Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth, and Katie Krentz (219 Productions) are executive producers with showrunner Mike McMahan. Aaron Baiers (Secret Hideout) also serves as an executive producer. Titmouse (Big Mouth) serves as the animation studio for the series.

Star Trek: Lower Decks streams exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. and Latin America. In Canada, Star Trek: Lower Decks airs on Bell Media's CTV Sci-Fi Channel. Star Trek: Lower Decks will also be available to stream on Paramount+ in the UK, Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and South Korea later this year.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 comes to an end this week. Paramount+ is being even more secretive about the Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 finale than it was about last week's episode, which brought back Star Trek: Voyager star Robert Duncan McNeill as Nick Lorcano, his character from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The First Duty." Paramount+ hasn't released the finale's title or synopsis and has only released three preview images from the episode. One of those images shows Lieutenant Junior Grade Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) with Locarno after he abducted her at the end of last week's episode. The others show Mariner's crewmates aboard the U.S.S. Cerritos, lower deckers -- Lieutenant Junior Grade Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid), Lieutenant Junior Grade D'Vana Tendi (No?l Wells), Lieutenant Junior Grade Sam Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), provisional Lieutenant Junior Grade T'Lyn -- and senior officers Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis), Commander Jack Ransom (Jerry O'Connell), Lieutenant Shaxs (Fred Tatasciore), Lt. Commander Andy Billups (Paul Scheer), Doctor T'Ana, (Gillian Vigman). -- assembled on the ship's bridge. You can see all of the episode's preview images below.

As mentioned, the title and synopsis of Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4, Episode 10 is still unknown. Along with that, we do not know who directed or wrote the episode.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 Cast

Star Trek: Lower Decks stars "lower decks" crewmembers of the U.S.S. Cerritos Ensign Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), Ensign Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid), Ensign Tendi (No?l Wells), and Ensign Rutherford (Eugene Cordero). Provisional Ensign T'Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz) joined the crew in Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 3. The U.S.S. Cerritos' bridge crew includes Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis), Commander Jack Ransom (Jerry O'Connell), Lieutenant Shaxs (Fred Tatasciore), and Doctor T'Ana, (Gillian Vigman).

Mike McMahan (Rick and Morty, Solar Opposites) created Star Trek: Lower Decks. In Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4, "an unknown force is destroying starships and threatening galactic peace. Luckily, the crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos isn't important enough for stuff like that! Instead, Ensigns Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, Rutherford, and Provisional Ensign T'Lyn are keeping up with their Starfleet duties, avoiding malevolent computers and getting stuck in a couple caves - all while encountering new and classic aliens along the way."

How to watch Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4

CBS' Eye Animation Productions, Secret Hideout, and Roddenberry Entertainment produced Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4. Secret Hideout's Alex Kurtzman, Roddenberry Entertainment's Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth, and Katie Krentz (219 Productions) are executive producers with showrunner Mike McMahan. Aaron Baiers (Secret Hideout) also serves as an executive producer. Titmouse (Big Mouth) serves as the animation studio for the series.

Star Trek: Lower Decks streams exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. and Latin America. In Canada, Star Trek: Lower Decks airs on Bell Media's CTV Sci-Fi Channel. Star Trek: Lower Decks will also be available to stream on Paramount+ in the UK, Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and South Korea later this year.

The penultimate episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4, titled "The Inner Fight," featured the return of a Star Trek: Voyager actor reprising a role other than the one for which they're best known. SPOILERS follow for Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4, Episode 9, "The Inner Fight." Robert Duncan McNeill is well known to Star Trek: Voyager fans for playing Tom Paris, the helmsman aboard the U.S.S. Voyager during that vessel's storied journey through the Delta Quadrant. He reprised the role in voiceover for the Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2 episode "We'll Always Have Tom Paris," but he's reprising another character in Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4.

McNeill voices Nick Locarno in the Star Trek: Lower Decks episode "The Inner Fight." McNeill first played Locarno in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The First Duty."

Who Is Nick Locarno in Star Trek: Lower Decks?

Locarno was a Starfleet cadet who led the distinguished Nova Squadron. He convinced the squadron to attempt a banned flight maneuver for the academy's graduation ceremony, which led to the death of one of their squad mates. Locarno lied to cover up his role in the fatal accident and pressured the other Nova Squadron members, including Wesley Crusher, to back his story. Eventually, Captain Jean-Luc Picard figured out what was happening and commanded Wesley to tell the truth, lest the captain do it for him. Once Wesley broke ranks, Locarno took full responsibility for Nova Squadron performing the banned maneuver. His impassioned plea saved his surviving squad mates from facing expulsion from Starfleet Academy, as he did.

Star Trek: Voyager's creators cast McNeill as Tom Paris because they wanted a character like Locarno to undergo a redemptive arc early in the series. They thought of bringing Locarno back but ultimately felt Locarno was an irredeemable character, selfish to the core, and altered McNeill's character to become the Tom Paris that Voyager fans know and love.

What's Locarno's history with Beckett Mariner?

"The Inner Fight" reveals that Beckett Mariner knew Locarno at the academy. She was closer to Sito Jaxa, a member of Nova Squadron who appeared in "The First Duty" and returned in a later Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Lower Decks," which gave Star Trek: Lower Decks its name and focus. Sito is presumed dead at the end of "Lower Decks" after she, a Bajoran, is sent undercover to return a defector to Cardassian territory.

Locarno and Mariner are reunited at the end of "The Inner Fight" after Locarno abducts her. It's unclear what his plans for Mariner are.

Locarno is the Person Behind the Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 Mystery

At about the same time that Locarno abducts Mariner, Capt. Carol Freeman and other members of the U.S.S. Cerritos crew discover that Locarno is involved with a series of attacks on various ships throughout the galaxy using a mysterious spacecraft. ComicBook.com asked Star Trek: Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan about this season-long mystery in a previous interview.

"I wanted there to be a breadcrumb trail of something that led to a really cool season finale," McMahan said. "I think that's a fun thing, on a rewatch especially, to get to watch go down. I also really loved and wanted to get more of the storytelling we saw in 'wej Duj,' which was the three-ships episode, Season 2. Getting to do a little breadcrumb thing that replaced, if you go back and watch the first season, there were more cold open bits, standalone comedy bits that you would open the show with, and then it would get into the episode. I missed the modularity of that a little bit. We had also just experienced Season 3, where we had been building up the story of Rutherford and the Aledo and Buenamigo all season, and getting that to all work resulted in the second to last episode feeling like I had to do it instead of I wanted to do it. I still love that episode, but we needed 11 episodes that season to really resolve all of that. I told myself we would do a comic book run that filled the gap between those two episodes for Mariner being out and adventuring, but I think that I should've triggered that one episode earlier, but it's hard to navigate all that."

He continued, "Then this season, I wanted to give our characters time. Now, by just having the modularity of doing these little sketches, of seeing lower deckers and bridge crews on other alien ships and popping into them and having them be removed from the narrative, except in the Betazoids are being affected by it. You're going to see other people being affected by it, but it doesn't drive the narrative of any individual episode. It's existing within it, and it's causing changes to happen within the show, but the Cerritos isn't directly being targeted by it. That was really fun for me because then I could start an episode and be like, 'All right, we're going to see some Ferengi lower-deckers.' That was really cool. And then it gets to a place which is really like... I don't want to give anything away. I'm going to stop there."

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4, Episode 9, "The Inner Fight," is streaming now on Paramount+. The Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 finale streams Thursday on Paramount+.

At some point during peak Star Trek - when there were five Star Trek shows in production, one releasing right after the other on Paramount+ -- I came across Stellaris. I'm not a player of grand strategy or 4X games, but it occurred to me that a game like Stellaris - which cast players as the controller of an interstellar polity - could be recast in the Star Trek universe with relative ease. It turned out that some interpret modders had already had the same idea. Thus, I purchased a copy of Stellaris and immediately downloaded a total conversion mod that turned it into a Star Trek game.

I played it for a bit, but not too long. Ultimately, the novelty of turning Stellaris into a Star Trek game wasn't strong enough for me to climb the steep learning curve required to understand the various nuances of complex 4X-style gameplay. But then Paradox Interactive, the company that published Stellaris, announced Star Trek: Infinite, a 4x-style game bearing the official Star Trek license, and my curiosity was piqued again.

I tell you all of this so you know that I coming at Star Trek Infinite as a Star Trek fan first and foremost and not a great lover of 4X games. That perspective, the search for a unique Star Trek experience within the gameplay, undoubtedly colors my opinion of Star Trek: Infinite.

Star Trek: Infinite allows players to take control of any one of four major factions in the Star Trek galaxy: the United Federation of Planets, the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Star Empire, or the Cardassian Union. Each faction has its distinct strength that lends it to loosely pursuing one of the four "X" strategies (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate) that give the genre its name. The Federation is based on diplomacy and peaceful galactic exploration, while the Klingons, a warrior culture, are more invested in their military, and so on.

Each Star Trek: Infinite campaign is slightly less random than a game of Stellaris because Star Trek: Infinite is rooted in Star Trek canon. In each game I started, the major powers are arranged in roughly the same areas relative to each other, and galactic events proceed in a more-or-less fixed sequence, starting with the Romulan sneak attack on Khitomer that leads to an alliance between the Federation and the Klingon Empire (events Star Trek: The Next Generation fans will be familiar with).

Other Star Trek polities are considered minor powers. They're allowed more leeway to stray from established Star Trek stories. Events around them may transpire differently than in Star Trek's shows. The Betazed might ally with Cardassians while the Federation can, theoretically, liberate the Bajoran Republic well ahead of schedule. This keeps things interesting, though there are some oddities. For example, early on, the Federation can colonize the Denobula and Risa, which should each have established populations.

All the pieces are there, and the game mechanics seem solid in their fundamentals (though, admittedly, this is not my area of expertise). Explore new worlds, use diplomacy with familiar civilizations, and send spies and military fleets against those who don't cooperate. The major powers are designed to encourage you to play them within their established moral character -- Starfleet will typically put diplomacy and scientific exploration first; Romulans will always have a few spies in place wherever they go. Yet, the game didn't spark that Star Trek joy. Instead, Star Trek: Infinite made me realize how important characters are to the Star Trek experience, for me, at least.

I'm sure some fans will enjoy moving their fleets around on the galactic map, expanding their territory, and completing the long list of tasks the game offers. For me, it feels too much like meaningless busywork without a performance to anchor it all, which explains why games like Star Trek Online and Star Trek: Resurgence -- which both put so much effort into honoring the experience of watching a Star Trek episode over recreating the political reality of the universe that those episodes transpire in -- resonate with me more strongly.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Star Trek: Infinite is available now for PC. A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.

A new Star Trek novel from veteran novelist Dayton Ward will bridge the gap in events between Star Trek: The Next Generation's episodes with the Cardassians and Benjamin Sisko's arrival on Deep Space 9. Star Trek: The Next Generation - Pliable Truths is set in the year 2369, the same year on Star Trek's timeline that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine begins, with Captain Jean-Luc Picard handing control of the space station over to Commander Sisko in the two-part pilot episode, "Emissary." Occurring shortly after Captain Jean-Luc Picard's capture by Cardassians and torture at the hands of Gul Madred, as seen in the classic Next Generation two-parter "Chain of Command," Pliable Truths sees Picard arriving on Terok Nor, the Cardassian space station that will soon be rechristened Deep Space 9, to mediate the end of the Cardassian occupation of Bajor. However, Ro Laren, the Bajoran Starfleet officer that Picard has taken under his wing aboard the Enterprise-D (and whose story comes full circle in Star Trek: Picard), is tipped off to a Cardassian secret that threatens the fragile peace and Bajor's future.

Simon and Schuster will publish Star Trek: The Next Generation - Pliable Truths through Pocket Books in May 2024. Here's the official synopsis from the publisher's website:

"A thrilling new Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine adventure from New York Times bestselling author Dayton Ward! 2369: Shortly after Starfleet thwarts a Cardassian attack on a Federation star system, the Cardassian government orders an end to its fifty-year occupation of the planet Bajor. As a result, a newly installed Bajoran government requests immediate assistance from the Federation to mediate how the withdrawal will proceed and what recompense, if any, Bajorans are owed from their brutal oppressors. Captain Jean-Luc Picard is ordered by Starfleet Command to oversee these tense negotiations on Terok Nor, the massive Cardassian space station still orbiting Bajor, even as he still deals with his own recent trauma as a prisoner held and tortured by a Cardassian interrogator.

"As these critical peace talks get underway, Ensign Ro Laren receives a call for help from a friend thought long dead, exposing an insidious secret from inside Cardassian space. Now, Picard and the crew of the Starship Enterprise must act to prevent an interstellar incident from reigniting deadly hostilities between the Federation and the Cardassians, and shattering any hope of justice for the Bajoran people..."

Ward has written many Star Trek novels, as well as Star Trek short fiction, Star Trek reference books, and articles for Star Trek publications, including Star Trek.com. Some of his recent work includes the Star Trek: Discovery novels Drastic Measures and Somewhere to Belong and Star Trek: Coda: Book 1: Moments Asunder, which began the trilogy that ended the old post-Star Trek: Nemesis novel line.

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Pliable Truths is the second Star Trek novel that Pocket Books has announced for 2024. Star Trek: Picard - Firewall by David Mack, which will be released in February, is a Star Trek: Picard prequel story focusing on Seven of Nine, revealing her struggles with Starfleet upon returning with the U.S.S. Voyager from the Delta Quadrant and how she ultimately joined up with the Fenris Rangers. The novel is available to pre-order now.

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Pliable Truths goes on sale on May 21, 2024. It is available to pre-order now.