Serialization in Star Trek. When it comes to discussion of serialization in Star Trek, Deep Space Nine is the go-to series—at least prior to Discovery and Picard. The Original Series was famously episodic, and The Next Generation, for the most part, followed that same pattern. DS9 itself barely moved away from the model in its first season, but then things started to change. By the time Voyager came along, the winds of serialization were blowing. But how do these two Next Generation spinoffs...

Watching TOS for the first time, in 2020. For many of us, the five-year mission of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the crew of the USS Enterprise is what hooked us on Star Trek and made us lifelong fans. But there are many who have never seen The Original Series, and still others who are just now finding Star Trek itself for the first time. What is it like to watch those episodes from the 1960s with modern eyes and sensibilities, without decades of seeing the mythos be built layer by layer, and the...

Lower Decks pre-launch speculation. Starfleet is preparing to become animated once again in the new CBS All Access series Star Trek: Lower Decks. Mike McMahan, writer and producer of the Cartoon Network animated comedy series Rick and Morty and creator of the Hulu animated series Solar Opposites, is introducing us to the people who really make a starship run. Apart from two 2019 installments of Short Treks—“Ephraim and Dot” and “The Girl Who Made the Stars”—Lower Decks marks the first...