Is it over?

I guess word on the street is that Alex Kurtzman is out at Star Trek. I’ve been so checked out with the news and Star Trek that I hardly noticed.

Am I happy about it?

I dunno. I guess so.

Do I think Paramount will make improvements?

No. I’m not that delusional.

Star Trek is dead as a quality IP. I’ve said that time and time again. We’re living in an era where studios will keep rolling out these corpses and drawing every last bit of blood from them. We will thus never be granted the time to grieve over our favorite franchises like we would our dearly deceased loved ones because reality is just an episode of Black Mirror. For any Trekkie holding out hope, I have some advice: you’ve had enough Star Trek. It’s time to live and let go. Whatever iteration that comes next will be just as bad if not worse.

I’m sorry for your loss.

As much as we focus the blame on Kurtzman, I honestly feel like this is no one’s fault (unless you want to classify late stage capitalism as a person or persons). But it is wild to me that JJ Abrams played a hand in the death of not ONE iconic sci-fi franchise, but TWO. Star Wars, however, will recover. Kids still talk about it and love it. It only took them 50 years, but it seems like they’ve made progress in breaking away from the Skywalker saga. In my view, Star Wars will safely survive for another generation. But it’s unclear if Star Trek will. Despite being an expansive universe, its episodic and theatre-like presentation is out of step with modern storytelling. Star Trek favors the cerebral. Audiences—or, rather, studio executives—prefer the spectacle of emotion and explosion. Kurtzman tried it that way and failed to bring in a new audience and alienated the old one. (There’s an interesting article about this here)

Star Trek is dead and I’m fine with it. But let’s say Paramount does the unthinkable and resurrects this Lazarus. Again, this absolutely won’t happen but let’s say it does. How can it be done? Well, thankfully, we already have a template.

It’s called Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

“Isn’t that the boring one?” you might ask.

Yes, but let’s not focus on the execution. Instead I want to draw attention to the concept. TMP was a HUGE production. Everything naturally seemed larger than in the Original Series. But this is also one of the more cerebral productions in the official canon. Producers weren’t aiming to make Star Trek like Star Wars. They were aiming to make it more like 2001: A Space Odyssey. Obviously this led to a slower pace, but I don’t necessarily believe that’s what led to audience rejection. A rushed post-production did that. If you watch TMP in its final “director approved” form, it might actually be the best ST film. Space felt magical, dangerous, mysterious. Starfleet felt real, structured, and disciplined. It was a major break from the pulpy aesthetic of TOS. So just imagine if someone like, say, Denis Villeneuve had his hands on this material.

Sadly we don’t live in that world. Villeneuve will be handling the James Bond franchise for Amazon. And as much as I don’t wish it, the death of Star Trek is a harbinger of things to come for James Bond.

A movie about space zombies

I’m not here to judge the quality of Star Trek: First Contact as a Star Trek movie. Trekkies like Angela Collier and Mike Stoklasa have informed me that Star Trek has to be super serious, boring, and never fun. So on that note, First Contact is a terrible Star Trek movie. But as a movie movie, I say that 1996 was my year of awakening. Twister. Independence Day. Star Trek: First Contact. Or, “the triple headed dragon” as I like to say in film history. They changed everything. It was during this era that SFX/CGI was it it’s peak. Special effects were still special and First Contact still holds up remarkably well.

But I’m not here to talk about that shit. Instead I’m gonna talk about the first five minutes or so. It might be hard for kids to remember, but it used to be that plots kicked off starting at the first frame. They were very economical in how they established characters and backgrounds and typically stuck with the “show don’t tell” rule. In First Contact, post credits, the first frame was Picard being assimilated by the Borg. Seconds later, it’s revealed to be a dream. Then BAM. The plot kicks off. No time wasted. Even as a kid, I thought damn, wanna take me out to dinner first? But there was no need. I knew exactly what was going on and what the motivations were.

Mind you, I was a TNG fan so I knew what the history was. But watching this opening now, I can’t help but think how the runtime would be wasted nowadays on thirty minutes of Picard whining to Deanna Troi about his emotional scars and blah blah blah. But this was the 1990s. This was the era of confined space action films like Die Hard, Under Siege, Air Force One, etc. So we all had one question on our minds: what if the USS Enterprise was hijacked by space zombies? And it wasted almost no time in getting us answers.

She’s dead, Jim

First off, fuck all yall for not reading Mer Rouge. And secondly, I want to thank everyone for really putting in the views this month. The blog has been on the upswing viewership-wise lately, so everyone should pat themselves on the back for a job well done.

But enough of that shit. Let’s talk about the important things: Starfleet Academy and the death of Star Trek.

Have I watched SFA? Fuck no. Do I have anything against its existence? No, not really. The concept doesn’t particularly appeal to me, but then again the Alex Kurtzman era of Trek has been fumbled so many times that I kinda quit giving a shit. A few have complained that no one wants “One Tree Hill” ripoff in the Star Trek universe, but I think that’s beside the point. They forget that Deep Space Nine was a huge swing which paid off because fans gave the Rick Berman and the show-runners the benefit of the doubt. The Next Generation was a huge hit critically and financially. Fans were open to the idea of a Star Trek that was a little bit different. The same could have been said for SFA had Alex Kurtzman not shit the bed with Discovery, Strange New Worlds, Section 31, etc. Like DS9, SFA could be the next great Star Trek show but it’s too late. The damage has been done and fans are actively rooting against Alex Kurtzman and SFA.

This was apparent on YouTube when Redlettermedia released their review of DS9 the same day Paramount released the first two episodes of SFA on the platform. Unfortunately for Kurtzman and Paramount, Redlettermedia got more views. But why this was an undisputed W for the Kurtzman haters is because Mike Stoklasa and Rich Evans are effectively the thought leaders in the anti-NuTrek movement. For a studio that presumably spent hundreds of millions on this production, it should be embarrassing to lose to two drunks in a Milwaukee basement. So in essence, this was a true David and Goliath situation.

Honestly, good for Mike and Rich (and that sex pervert Jay Bauman as well). But I’ve reached the zen phase of my grief. I’ve accepted, if not happy over, the death of Star Trek. If there was some good to come out of the Kurtzman era, it was season three of Picard. I’m not talking about the quality of that particular series, because if we’re being honest with ourselves, Picard S3 was just as bad as everything else under NuTrek banner. But it did provide a sense of closure. There was a happy ending for the entire TNG crew, which in my mind at least, provided a happy ending for the entire Berman-era of Star Trek and thus Star Trek as a whole. That’s better than what most cherished IPs will get.

But I have a bad feeling that Mike and Rich (especially Mike) are holding out hope that things will improve. In their DS9 review, they mentioned that younger audiences are rediscovering old Star Trek through reaction videos. While I too think that’s a good thing, I don’t want my hope mistaken for a desire that Trek should continue.

It’s over for me. We should cherish the old and embrace the new. What happened to Star Trek is a sign of the times and it’s not alone in its downfall. Every franchise will eventually face the same fate. While it sucks to see a beloved family member succumb to a slow agonizing death, it’s also a part of the life cycle that we have to accept. And we have to accept that Star Trek is in a deep demented state. It doesn’t have much longer. You can fight it or come to peace with it.

I choose peace.

But I’ll be GODDAMNED if I let Amazon fuck up James Bond…

If u love it let it go

This is the great dying of beloved franchises. And while I can sit back and laugh at Star Wars and LotR fans for their respective enshitifications, I too have witnessed the sad decline of the much loved series Star Trek, which had as much of an impact on me as James Bond. Luckily for me, I had Redlettermedia guide me through the mourning process and now I hardly think about Star Trek at all. In fact, in my head canon, Star Trek effectively ended with Enterprise in 2002. Fans can gloat on about how under appreciated Discovery was, or how good Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds is, etc, etc. But it’s over for me.

This is the way it should be. For something to be truly appreciated, its very existence has to be jeopardized. But this also allows us to pave way for the future.

I could have bitched and moaned about Denis Villeneuve and Amazon’s decision to focus the next Bond movie on 007’s early adventures in a 3+hour action romp, but whatever. That’s out of my control. I’m an old Bond head and the next film is not being made with me in mind. I turn 109 next summer. It’s time for some new blood. But unlike with Star Trek, there will be no one to help me through the mourning. James Bond doesn’t have that kind of fan base. I have to sit alone in a garage with a bottle of Taaka and a loaded .38 and weep alone. At least that’s the way James Bond would have wanted.

But in the words of megalomaniac Paul of Tarsus, it’s time to put childish things away and accept that James Bond died by a brutal missile barrage in No Time To Die. That’s the way he would have wanted it.

A weird week to die

Through the fire and flames and the rotten stench of a decaying world, I felt myself unnerved by the string of celebrity deaths this past week. Gene Hackman and Michelle Trachtenberg’s passing dominated the headlines, but there were two others that I feel went under the radar: Roberto Orci and Jocelyn Ridgley.

Jocelyn Ridgley might not be well known outside of Red Letter Media fandom but she made quite an impact for her role as Nadine in a Mr. Plinkett review and for Zorba in Space Cop. Reports indicate that she was killed in a murder-suicide in Arizona. To my knowledge, her death hasn’t been addressed by the Red Letter Media crew but it appears that she is the same Jocelyn Ridgley named in the Arizona media.

Roberto ‘Bob’ Orci might be better known as he rose to fame along side Alex Kurtzman when they became showrunners of Hercules. They’d later team up for Xena, Alias, and Fringe and wrote screenplays for Mission Impossible III and Transformers. However their internet notoriety came when they produced and wrote Star Trek (2009) with JJ Abrams, followed by Star Trek Into Darkness four years later. This was a turning point in Hollywood history; an omen for what was to come for all established IPs (but that’s a story for another day). What’s forgotten in the Orci story is that when Abrams stepped away from Star Trek to helm Star Wars, Orci was initially named as director for what eventually became Star Trek Beyond. By that time, Kurtzman had already established himself as a director so it only seemed natural that his partner would follow suit. But that deal fell through and Orci seemingly disappeared from not only Star Trek, but the spotlight altogether. To make this saga even more strange, it was later announced that Kurtzman, not Orci (who was a genuine fan of Star Trek), would essentially be the gatekeeper of Star Trek for both film and television, a role that Rick Berman similarly held in the 1990s, and the rest is history. Orci died of kidney failure on February 25, 2025.

Orci came to my attention in the run up to the release of Star Trek 09 as he regularly interacted with fans on Trekmovie.com. These interactions weren’t always cordial, particularly in 2013 when Into Darkness polarized critics and fans alike. To be honest, Bob Orci always struck me as a weird guy. It’s Hollywood so that shouldn’t come as a surprise but he never struck me as a weird eccentric guy, which is far more socially acceptable. Instead he came across as a weird tech-billionaire type, minus the billions of dollars. I never followed his social media but allegedly after his exit from Star Trek he became a 9/11 truther and entertained a number of other conspiracy theories. Later it was revealed he was in an abusive relationship with his wife, both alleging the other of abuse, and that he was in and out of rehab for alcoholism. I assume this partially explains his exit from Star Trek. It’s a sad ending for a guy who became a showrunner at age 24.

Michelle Trachtenberg presumably died of liver failure on February 26th, but because her family has refused an autopsy, her death remains undetermined. I grew up watching her on the Adventures of Pete & Pete and EuroTrip was an often quoted film in high school. Her passing is a reminder that the cold touch of death could reach us at any moment and that fame and age cannot protect us.

Thankfully Gene Hackman lived a long and fruitful life when he died sometime in February of this year. His body, along with the body of his wife, was found on February 26th. Initial thoughts were that the couple died from carbon monoxide poisoning but that is now seemingly not the case. What should be a celebration of his life and achievements is instead a tragic event shrouded in mystery.

Not since the great die-off of 2016 have I been so rattled by celebrity deaths. These folks passed away either too young or under mysterious circumstances. As cursed as this world can be, we should wake up each morning and look in the mirror and be amazed that the universe has made itself aware through your eyes. Because one day it will all be over.

What a weird ending

I’ve always been a defender of Star Trek TNG Seasons 1 and 2. They at least tried things.

Did it always work? Almost never.

But there’s this episode from season 1 that always haunted me. It’s kinda a popular one: The Big Goodbye. It features legendary actor Lawrence Tierney and it’s about the holodeck malfunctioning. After they fix the problem and the episode is about to end, one of the characters realizes that he’s simply a computer program. As Picard is about to leave, the program asks the Captain a chilling question:

“When you leave and this world still exists, will my wife and kids be waiting on me at home?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

Picard departs and the program ends. End scene.

It gives me goosebumps every time I watch it.

It was alright

Let me be clear: the second season of SNW was a step backwards. It did some things right. It expanded Rebecca Romijn’s Una Chin-Riley, a character that was essentially a non-factor in the first season. And Paul Wesley appears to be stepping into the role of James T. Kirk admirably. But showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Meyers ultimately dropped by the ball by trying to do too much.

Don’t get me wrong, Star Trek, in many ways, encourages genre-hopping. That’s the wonderful thing about science fiction. It can be a courtroom drama, western, musical, etc. and no one will bat an eye. The problem is that old Star Trek use to air 900 episodes a season. Current Trek can only do 10. It’s disorienting to have one episode establish a main character as a war criminal and then make the next episode an over-the-top musical.

Moreover, there’s the problem of Captain Pike and Starfleet competency. I understand that they want to make Pike a more laidback Captain as compared to other Starfleet legends like Kirk and Picard. But Trek fans like seeing their Captains be competent and fully in charge. There’s a reason why Captain Shaw from Picard was such a hit. That dude was a hardass disciplinarian. We LOVED watching him put Picard and Riker, two beloved heroes in the Trekverse, in their place. Pike isn’t Shaw, obviously, but it would be refreshing to see Pike be a more commanding presence (which is why it might be a mistake giving Kirk an expanded role in the series).

With Kirk, Uhura, Spock, Chapel, and Scotty now introduced to the show, it’s now only a matter of time before McCoy, Sulu, and maybe Chekhov are brought on. So it’s gonna piss me off if they try to remake TOS, UNLESS they skip over those three years and go straight on into The Ongoing Mission, which finishes up Kirk and Spock’s original five-year mission then leads right up to The Motion Picture. In fact, this will almost certainly happen.

Something’s off

After shitting the bed one too many times, Alex Kurtzman and company finally did something right with the first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Then, almost as if we’re in the Twilight Zone, they went out on a high note with the third season of Picard. It seemed like Kurtzman finally had this Star Trek stuff figured out and for the first time in awhile, the future of the franchise looked bright.

And maybe it still is. But considering Prodigy and Discovery got (mercifully) axed, it’s now up to Strange New Worlds to carry the banner (Lower Decks doesn’t exist in my eyes). The first season was solid, not great, but it seemed like writers figured out that you don’t have to do too much to tell a good Star Trek story.

Thankfully they’re still doing that. Unfortunately the writing has regressed in a way that’s difficult to put my finger on. Season 2 is simply poorly written. Not in a stupid Alex Kurtzman way, it’s just plain bad.

Truth be told, I hardly remember the first episode other than I cringed a lot. I love Carol Kane. But her character is straight up annoying. And the fan service is unnecessary. Stealing the Enterprise?! Where have we seen THAT before?!

The second episode was marginally better: a simple courtroom case to determine the fate of first officer Una Chin-Riley. Obviously they were going for a Measure of a Man vibe, but it was a little too on the nose. Star Trek has a history of doing courtroom drama, almost ALL of it good. Additionally, courtroom drama should be the easiest thing for a television writer to produce; everything is front and center and self-contained. The gold standard for Star Trek courtroom drama is, of course, The Measure of a Man, but what was brilliant about it was that it contained five actors and showcased Patrick Stewart’s acting skills. It was amazingly simple. In SNW S2 Ep. 2, there was too much focus on interpersonal drama and the speeches went on far too long. Perhaps if they waited later in the season to have this court case, it might’ve been more impactful. But where it stands, the episode fell flat.

But what really pissed me off was the third episode. Going back in time to present day Toronto (where the show is conveniently filmed)? Lame. And more fan service bullshit by introducing child Khan? Yes, Star Trek II is an incredible movie but it’s time to let it go. But there’s also the issue of Paul Wesley as James T. Kirk.

Wesley seems like a competent actor and a nice guy. But let’s be frank: no one is sold on him being the greatest Captain in Starfleet history. And I don’t think it’s his fault. No one in Kurtzman’s production team has probably told him how to play the role.

As I’ve said a million times before, William Shatner is actually a great actor. He understood that when you play a Starfleet captain, you’re playing two roles: the captain and the man. Patrick Stewart and Avery Brooks understood this too. When you play the captain, it’s okay to be over the top and hammy; being in command of a ship is a performance in itself. The drama occurs when the captain doesn’t know when to drop the facade.

I don’t think Chris Pine does this with his interpretation of Kirk, but he has a unique charisma of his own. Plus he has the luxury of playing an alternate Kirk. Wesley is playing the OG Kirk. While I understand that he doesn’t want to mimic William Shatner, I’m just suggesting that he probably needs to. Don’t be afraid to speak in Shatner’s unusual cadence. It’s actually a VERY effective way of communicating. It’s theatrical, it’s bold, it’s memorable…just like James T. Kirk!

Could’ve been worse

I was on the edge of my seat throughout Picard Season 3. Not because I found the story itself particularly thrilling, but because I was waiting for the writers and producers to shit the bed at any moment.

But it never happened.

And for that alone, the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard can be deemed a success. Yes, the bar has been set that low.

Actually, I’m going to something that I swore I’d never do: defend Alex Kurtzman. ACTUALLY…fuck that: I’m going to defend the decision to bring back the Borg, which is a decision I presume Alex Kurtzman fully supported.

To be honest, I’m a little disappointed that the Changelings weren’t made the main villain as I was quite excited to see them return. And I agree with most fans that between Voyager and the first couple of seasons of Picard that the Borg are mostly played out. BUT, being as they were the main villains during Berman-era Trek, I feel pretty content with how they were closed out in Picard: in one last standoff with the Enterprise D.

But, I guess they’re gone now (I don’t know for sure because I refuse to watch Picard season 2), so it’s time to push Star Trek forward. The franchise’s new savior is Terry Matalas, who is apparently pushing for Star Trek: Legacy, which if the last episode of Picard is any indication, will star Seven of Nine as captain of the Enterprise G, her former lover Raffi as her first officer, and Jack Crusher…Picard’s son…as a “counselor to the captain” or some shit.

Speaking of Jack Crusher, the writers could’ve done better and the actor kinda overplayed it. Yet somehow I don’t absolutely hate him 👍.

So I guess I’ll continue letting Paramount steal money from my wallet so that I can watch the adventures of Captain Seven (or is it Captain “of Nine”?)

Picard Season 3

It’s been an emotional week for me. And that could be a part of the problem: Star Trek: Picard season 3 caught me at the right time.

I don’t think I’ve ever properly explained the impact that TNG made on my childhood. Without it, everything might’ve been different. Perhaps I would have been able to able to live out my dream of being a Las Vegas lounge singer in Carson City. Who knows? But alas, I watched it and now nearly 30 years after the show ended, I’m about to initiate mutually assured destruction with my employer. C’est la vie.

Now after the shitshow that was Picard seasons 1 and 2, the question we should ask ourselves is: “what makes us think that season three would be any different?”. And I’m not entirely sure I have a satisfying response. We’re only two episodes in for fuck’s sake.

But I will say this: season three already feels a bit dialed back. This is a good thing. If I’ve said this once, I’ve said it a million times: Star Trek works best on limited budget, reliant on big emotions and intriguing science fiction dilemmas.

NuTrek, however, has basically abandoned the “intriguing science fiction dilemmas” part in favor of intergalactic politics. Which is fine. That could be interesting, but in NuTrek, the United Federation of Planets usually comes across as just another dirty player on the chess board. This unfortunately contradicts everything that made Star Trek appealing to sci-fi fans initially.

Fortunately in the Trek-verse there’s a film called Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan which is usually considered the franchise’s finest hour. While the plot does involve a science fiction macguffin, the story itself is about aging, friendship, family, loss, and revenge. In short, it’s a space opera.

So if you’re a NuTrek producer and you know that the quality of your product has been shit the past two seasons, what do you do? The answer is you steal from the best. While The Next Generation films are considered a disappointment, we’re finally given a real taste of what that universe would look like had Rick Berman and company handled the movies properly, albeit on Paramount+. And in my view, kudos to Alex Kurtzman and Terry Matalas for unapologetically ripping off Star Trek II.

In fact, they’re not only ripping off Star Trek II, but they’re ripping off the entirety of the TOS movies right down to lines of dialogue and sound effects. And I don’t have a problem with any of it.

This means that someone from the TNG crew…probably Picard…will get a glorious death scene and I am not prepared for it. In fact, I nearly cried when they started using the First Contact theme, which is one of my favorites, for the end credits.

Despite all of my bitching about NuTrek, if producers keep up the quality from the first two episodes, then guys…I’m telling you: I’m just not ready for it to end.